Somehow, in the years that followed, the shadowy presences interested him as much as the famous ones, the figures who had not become known, who had failed, or who had never planned to flourish.
His visitor had been married to the Prince Oblisky. The prince had a reputation for being stern and distant; the fate of Russia and his purposeful exile concerned him more than the evening’s
amusement and the glamorous company who stood around. The princess was Russian too, but she had lived most of her life in France. Around her and her husband there were always hints and rumours and
suggestions. It was part of the time and the place, he thought. Everyone he knew carried with them the aura of another life which was half secret and half open, to be known about but not mentioned.
In those years, you searched each face for what it might unwittingly disclose and you listened carefully for nuances and clues. New York and Boston had not been like that, and in London, when he
finally came to live there, people allowed themselves to believe that you had no hidden and secret self unless you emphatically declared to the contrary.
He remembered the shock when he first came to know Paris, the culture of easy duplicity, the sense he got of these men and women, watched over by the novelists, casually withholding what
mattered to them most.
He had never loved the intrigue. Yet he liked knowing secrets, because not to know was to miss almost everything. He himself learned never to disclose anything, and never even to acknowledge the
moment when some new information was imparted, to act as though a mere pleasantry had been exchanged. The men and women in the salons of literary Paris moved like players in a game of knowing and
not knowing, pretence and disguise. He had learned everything from them.
He found the princess a seat, brought her extra cushions, and then offered her a different chair, or indeed a chaise longue which might be more comfortable.
‘At my age,’ she smiled at him, ‘nothing is comfortable.’
He stopped moving about the room and turned to look at her. He had learned that when he quietly fixed his calm grey eyes on somebody they too became calm; they realized, or so he thought, that
what they said next should be serious in some way, that the time for the casual play of half-talk had come to an end.
‘I have to go back to Russia,’ she said in slow, carefully pronounced French. ‘That is what I have to do. When I say go back, I talk as though I have been there before, and yes
I have, but not in any way that means anything to me. I have no desire to see Russia again, but he insists that I stay there, that I leave France for good.’
As she spoke she smiled, as she had always done, but now there was anguish and a sort of puzzlement in her face. She had brought the past into the room with her, and for him now, in these years
after the death of his parents and his sister, any reminder of a time that was over brought with it a terrible and heavy melancholy. Time would not relent, and when he was young, he had never
imagined the pain that loss would bring, pain that only work and sleep could keep at bay now.
Her soft voice and her easy manners made it clear that she had not changed. Her husband was known to treat her badly. He had problems with estates. She began to talk now about some remote estate
to which she was going to be banished.
The January light was liquid and silky in the room. He sat and listened. He knew that the Prince Oblisky had left the son by his first marriage in Russia, and had gruffly spent his life in
Paris. There was always a whiff of political intrigue about him, a sense that he counted somehow in the future of Russia, and that he was waiting for his moment.
‘My husband has said it is time for us all to go back to Russia, the homeland.’ He has become a reformer. He says that Russia will collapse if it does not reform. I told him that
Russia collapsed a long time ago, but I did not remind him that he had very little interest in reform when he was not in debt. His first wife’s family have brought up the child and they want
nothing to do with him.’
‘Where will you live?’ he asked her.
‘I will live in a crumbling mansion, and half-crazed peasants will have their noses up against the glass of my windows, if there is glass still in the windows. That is where I will
live.’
‘And Paris?’
‘I have to give up everything, the house, the servants, my friends, my whole life. I will freeze to death or I will die of boredom. It will be a race between the two.’
‘But why?’ he asked gently.
‘He says I have wasted all his money. I have sold the house and I have spent days burning letters and crying and throwing away clothes. And now I am saying goodbye to everyone. I am
leaving London tomorrow and I am going to spend one month in Venice. Then I will travel to Russia. He says that others are returning too, but they are going to St Petersburg. That is not what he
has chosen for me.’
She spoke with feeling, but as he watched her he sensed that he was listening to one of his actors enjoying her own performance. Sometimes she spoke as though she were telling an amusing
anecdote about somebody else.
‘I’ve seen everyone I know who’s still alive and I’ve read over all the letters of those who are dead. With some people I’ve done both. I burned Paul
Joukowsky’s letters and then I saw him. I did not expect to see him. He is ageing badly. I did not expect that either.’
She caught his eye for one second and it was as though a flash of clear summer light had come into the room. Paul Joukowsky was almost fifty now, he calculated; they had not met for many years.
No one had ever come like this and mentioned his name.
Henry was careful to try to speak immediately, ask a question, change the subject. Perhaps there was something in the letters, a stray sentence, or the account of a conversation or a meeting.
But he did not think so. Perhaps his visitor was letting him know for nostalgia’s sake what his aura had suggested in those years, his own designed self. His attempt to be earnest, hesitant
and polite had not fooled women like her who watched his full mouth and the glance of his eyes and instantly understood it all. They said, of course, nothing, just as she was saying nothing now,
merely a name, an old name that rang in his ears. A name that, once, had meant everything to him.
‘But surely you will return?’
‘That is the promise he has extracted from me. That I will not return, that I will stay in Russia.’
The tone was dramatic, and he suddenly saw her on the stage, moving casually, talking as though she put no thought into it, and then throwing an arrow, a single line intended to hit home. From
what she had said, he understood for the first time what had happened. She must have done something very wrong to place herself back in his power. In her circle, there would be knowledge and
speculation. Some would know, and those who did not know would be able to guess. Just as she let him guess now.
These thoughts preoccupied him, and he found that he watched the princess, carefully weighing up what she had been saying, while thinking how he could use this. He must write it down as soon as
she left. He hoped to hear nothing more, none of the explicit details, but as she continued speaking, it was clear that she was frightened and his sympathy was once more aroused.
‘You know, others have gone back and the reports are excellent. There is new life in St Petersburg, but as I told you, that is not where I am going. And Daudet, whom I met at a party, said
the most foolish thing to me. Perhaps he thought that it might console me. He told me that I would have my memories. But my memories are of no use to me. I told him that I never had any interest in
memories. I love today and tomorrow, and if I am in form I also love the day after tomorrow. Last year is gone, who cares about last year?’
‘Daudet does, I imagine.’
‘Yes, too much.’
She stood up to go and he accompanied her to the front door. When he saw that she had left a cab waiting, he wondered who was paying for it.
‘And Paul? Should I have given you some of the letters? Would you have wanted them?’
Henry put out his hand as though she had not asked the question. He moved his lips, about to say something, and then stopped. He held her hand for a moment. She was almost in tears as she walked
towards the cab.
H
E HAD BEEN
living in these rooms in De Vere Gardens for almost ten years but the name Paul had never once been uttered within the walls. His presence
had been buried beneath the daily business of writing and remembering and imagining. Even in dreams, it was years since Paul had appeared.
The bare bones of the princess’s story would not need to be set down now. They would stay in his mind. He did not know how he would work it, whether it would be her last days in Paris
– burning letters, giving things away, leaving things behind – or her last salon, or her interview with her husband, the moment when she first learned her fate.
He would remember her visit, but there was something else that he wanted to write down now. It was something he had written before and had been careful to destroy. It seemed strange, almost sad,
to him that he had produced and published so much, rendered so much that was private, and yet the thing that he most needed to write would never be seen or published, would never be known or
understood by anyone.
He took the pen and began. He could have written an indecipherable script, or used a shorthand that only he himself would understand. But he wrote clearly, whispering the words. He did not know
why this had to be written, why the stirring of the memory was not enough. But the princess’s visit and her talk about banishment and memory, of things that were over and would not come back,
and – he stopped writing now and sighed – her saying the name, saying it as though it were still vividly present somewhere within reach, all these things guided his tone as he
wrote.
He set down on paper what had happened when he returned to Paris, having received a note from Paul, that summer almost twenty years before. He had stood in the beautiful city on a small street
in the dusk, gazing upwards, waiting, watching, for the lighting of a lamp in the window on the third story. As the lamp blazed up he had strained to see Paul Joukowsky’s face at the window,
his dark hair, the quickness of his eyes, the scowl that could so easily turn into a smile, the thin nose, the broad chin, the pale lips. As night fell, he knew that he himself on the unlit street
could not be seen, and he knew also that he could not move, either to return to his own quarters or – he held his breath even at the thought – to attempt to gain access to Paul’s
rooms.
Paul’s note was unambiguous; it had made clear that he would be alone. No one came or went, and Paul’s face did not appear at the window. He wondered now if these hours were not the
truest he had ever lived. The most accurate comparison he could find was with a smooth, hopeful, hushed sea journey, an interlude suspended between two countries, standing there as though floating,
knowing that one step would be a step into the impossible, the vast unknown. He waited to catch a moment’s further sight of what was there, the unapproachable face. And for hours he stood
still, wet with rain, brushed at intervals by those passing by, and never from behind the lamp for one moment more was the face visible.
He wrote down the story of that night and thought then of the rest of the story which could never be written, no matter how secret the paper or how quickly it would be burned or destroyed. The
rest of the story was imaginary, and it was something he would never allow himself to put into words. In it, he had crossed the road halfway through his vigil. He had alerted Paul to his presence
and Paul had come down and they had walked up the stairs together in silence. And it was very clear now – Paul had made it clear – what would happen.
He found that his hands were shaking. He had never allowed himself to imagine beyond that point. It was the closest he had come, but he had not come close at all. He kept his vigil that night in
the rain until the light in the window faded. He waited for a while longer to see if something else would happen, but the windows remained dark, they gave nothing away. Then he walked slowly home.
He was on dry land again. His clothes were soaking, his shoes had been destroyed by the rain.
H
E LOVED THE
dress rehearsals and allowed himself to picture the potential play-goers in each seat in the theatre. The lighting, the extravagant and
opulent costumes, the ringing voices filled him with pride and pleasure. He had never, in all the years, seen anyone purchase or read one of his books. And even if he had witnessed such a scene, he
would not have known the effects of his sentences. Reading was as silent and solitary and private as writing. Now, he would hear people in the audience hold their breath, cry out, fall silent.
He placed friends, familiar faces, and then, in all the seats near him and in the gallery above, and this was the most risky and exciting prospect, he placed strangers. He imagined bright,
intelligent eyes in a man’s sensitive face, a thin upper lip, soft, fair skin, a large frame that was carried with ease. Tentatively, he placed this figure in the row behind him, close to the
centre, a young woman beside him, her small, delicate hands joined, the tips of her fingers almost touching her mouth. Alone in the theatre – the costume-makers were still backstage –
he watched his imaginary, paying theatre-goers as Alexander, playing Guy Domville, appeared. It became clear what the core of the conflict on the stage would be. He kept an eye on the audience he
had conjured behind him as the play proceeded, noting how the woman’s face lit up at the gorgeousness of Mrs Edward Saker’s costume, the elaborate elegance of a hundred years ago,
noting then how serious and still the face of his thin-lipped supporter became when Guy Domville, despite his vast wealth and golden future, decided to renounce the world and devote himself to a
life of contemplation and prayer in a monastery.
Guy Domville
was still too long and he knew that there was disquiet among the actors about the discrepancies between act one and act two. Alexander, his steadfast director, told him to
pay no attention to them, they had merely been stirred up by Miss Vetch, who had no role to speak of in act two and barely reappeared in act three. Nonetheless, he knew that in a novel it could not
be risked: a character, once established, must remain in the narrative, unless the character were minor, or died before the story closed. What he would never have tried in a novel, he was trying in
a play. He prayed that it would work.