The Falling Thread, page 8
She was dressed in white and cream, with a high lace collar. Dressed for the date on the calendar and not the state of the weather. She had a white fox fur over her shoulder. Her hair was run through with auburn. He had not noticed this before, not in their hours together in Zurich, not in their single night in Paris.
What else could he remember of that night? He had reconstructed it over and over in the months since. She had known almost everyone at the Moulin de la Galette, leaving him with an elderly senator who pressed his mouth close when he spoke, his sour breath and guttural French, as Beatriz flitted from conversation to conversation. They had eaten oysters, fat oysters coated in a bitter liquid, and then she had taken him in a motor taxi to the Boulevard de Clichy where they were joined, it seemed by prior arrangement, by a man named von Adelshausen. Beatriz introduced him as the Oberst. The lower section of von Adelshausen’s cheek bore a series of faintly knotted scars. He accompanied them to supper, where he barely touched his food, then to a hotel where he drank champagne with a measure of gin and a teaspoon of sugar he administered himself carefully as a chemist might some volatile and unstable powder. Von Adelshausen claimed Gavril was a close friend but he was critical of him and spent the early part of the evening complaining about his reluctance to invest in an armaments firm in Essen.
‘Simply nothing to him, nothing,’ von Adelshausen repeated as he became more drunk, as if Charles might be of influence.
‘When we were at the villa in Werfen, last summer, he promised me, he looked me in the eye and said, Audo, I am a man of my word. But now … ’ Von Adelshausen lifted his glass forlornly, which a passing waiter took as a signal for service until von Adelshausen shoved him away, his cheeks a scalded pink. Around midnight von Adelshausen saw a woman he knew, and rising from the table stumbled towards her, leaving Beatriz and Charles alone. They had consumed three bottles of champagne. The entire city seemed to have decanted itself into the hotel bar. A band was playing. Figures in black shifting and swaying. He had kissed her, her mouth was cold, she let him for a moment, then pulled away. Next came their choreographed arrival at Charles’s hotel. The sobering lights of the foyer where he feigned reading a newspaper, then followed a minute after he saw her ascending the stairs.
‘You have a bath,’ Beatriz said, surveying his room.
Charles sat woozily on the edge of the bed. He took a cigarette from his case and lit it. The sound of the faucet, then the smell of some unguent, rose oil, added to the water, came to him, mingled with the smoke. The sound of the water stopped. Beatriz appeared. She was wearing a blue robe, fastened loosely below the line of her breasts. Her body thin, and lithe and hard beneath it. He lay back on the bed. The room had begun to spin. There were prints of birds of the tropics around the walls; spoonbills and cockatoos and parakeets in neat gold frames. He felt his mouth flood with saliva. The glossy bedspread cold against the tips of his ears. Then the cigarette, suddenly weightless, dropped from his fingers. He had woken the next morning fully clothed. No sign of Beatriz.
*
‘Not quite the Hotel Ritz. Not quite Paris,’ Charles said, pulling his chair closer to the table with its brown glazed teapot, the jug of milk which had arrived moments before.
‘I think it’s rather lovely,’ Beatriz said, removing the pins from her hat and placing it carefully on the chair beside her. She looked so well Charles thought, so unchallenged by life.
‘Rather wicked of me really, alighting here. We are on our way to Scotch-land.’
Charles smiled.
‘I am the advance party. Some dreary duke Gavril met last year in Théoule-sur-Mer.’
He wasn’t sure if he should stand, if he should lean across the table and greet her with a kiss. He simply sat there as an elderly man at the table beside them stared over at Beatriz. His cheeks were windburned; a pewter moustache drooped over his red mouth. Eventually he turned back to his wife, pushing a piece of pudding across his bowl, his fork scratching the glaze, before lifting it to his mouth.
‘Charles, give me your news? Wright & Co., is it thriving?’ And then a smile that suggested the whole encounter was a charade. He didn’t want to talk about machine tools or cotton tariffs. He wanted to touch her, to reach across and take her hand.
‘Leon is growing terribly quickly. He’s a little brute. His latest obsession is racing – do you know anything about horses?’ Beatriz said, signalling to the waitress for a cup. ‘He tells me the best stallions are Arabian, the best mares from Abyssinia. He is taking after his father – some days he even accompanies him to his office.’
The waitress came and set down a second cup and saucer.
‘I have a dilemma. Gavril has somehow acquired a chandelier. Hideous, I should add, gaudy, third rate, vulgar.’ She spoke as if they were involved in some simple domestic conspiracy, as if they were both Gavril’s children. ‘I cannot decide on the best course of action. To have this hideous thing hang in our home or to tell Gavril that I simply cannot accept such unnecessary ornament.’
Seeing this had failed to rouse any interest, Beatriz changed the subject.
‘Tell me, did you ever buy that motor car?’
‘I did, in fact, yes.’
‘Gavril seems to be collecting them like marbles. What species is yours?’
‘It’s an Imperial.’
‘I say, that sounds wonderful,’ said Beatriz as if it were something deeply illicit. ‘Did I tell you about the expedition Gavril undertook? Drove all the way from Istanbul to Marseille, in record time. He would telegram at each stage. We threw some wonderful parties while he was gone. Von Adelshausen was on hand to help. Such a shame you met him when you did, awfully worked up about that arrangement with Gavril, he’s still yet to forgive him.’
Charles could feel the conversation escaping him. He felt himself kept artfully at bay. They talked of Alexandria briefly, about her children again.
‘Beatriz, there is something I must ask you.’
*
‘Oh, Charles.’ She looked at him as if he had said something imbecilic for which he could be easily forgiven, a look he suspected usually reserved for Leon and Zabelle.
‘But we could … ’ He felt his voice waiver, the back of his teeth suddenly very dry. ‘Beatriz, I want you to come and live with me.’
‘In England? With your wife and child?’
‘I have thought of you every day since Zurich.’
She made a shushing sound which seemed to deepen their complicity and yet to dismiss him entirely. He felt his desire reach a new pitch.
‘Your letters. Why come all this way? To torment me?’
‘Charles –’ her voice was tender, plaintive – ‘I have Leon and Zabelle, I have Gavril. These are inescapable facts.’
All of a sudden Charles felt very shabby and embarrassed to be there. He could smell his own sweat through his suit. They talked a few minutes more, stilted, polite exchanges, like people introduced only moments ago. Then Beatriz finished her tea, swirled the final sip around her cup, glanced at the clock above the door.
‘Will you accompany me to my train? If we leave now I shall be in very good time for my connection.’
*
Charles watched as Beatriz made her way to her compartment. He had half expected her to turn, to offer a wave or a smile; to hand a note to a porter, some scribbled instructions to meet her in Edinburgh or Glasgow or a tiny Highland station where she would be able to see him for an hour. She took the hand of the guard, her boot on the footplate, and stepped into the carriage. She appeared at the window of her compartment, the back of her head to him. She did not move. She must have known he was there, she must have seen him as she took her seat, but as the train blew its whistle, huffed its minerally gouts of steam into the air and began to heave itself away, she sat there motionless.
October
Leaf matter scored a dark line around the skylight. Cloud was being driven by the wind, patches of dappled sun appearing then vanishing on the plaster casts and timber floor. The room had recently emptied of students who had worked there all morning as an obese brunette in a laurel crown moved through a series of poses. Something of their residual heat remained, the air thickened by their collective breath. Eloise was sifting broken pencils from cans that had once contained condensed milk. Alexander sat with a notebook on his knee, the stub of his own pencil – pocked with teeth marks – moving rapidly in his hand. He would pause from time to time and bring a cigarette to his lips.
‘Catch you at whatever it is you’re up to and Glazier will have you on a charge,’ said Eloise. He continued scribbling then pressed the point of his pencil in a full stop.
‘That’s half the pleasure,’ he said, assessing the merit of what he had written.
Eloise came and gently took the notebook from his hands.
‘My God, Alexander. You’re writing poetry. I didn’t think you had it in you.’
When he replied it was coolly.
‘I’m fairly good at everything I turn my hand to.’
‘Oh, read a little, please do.’
He looked at her in a way that was both shrewd and very simple, like a cattle dealer, appraising both the health of a beast and its value at market. He stood up, and Eloise handed the notebook back to him.
‘A willowed green, an island full of rain, somewhere thunder moving up the river.’ He flashed his eyes from his notebook to Eloise. ‘I thought of you, I thought of your soft name, and wandered there a moment without wonder.’
He seemed suddenly to lose the will to read.
‘Marvellous! Will we be seeing an anthology from the Macmillan Company? Covers of green cloth with a crown in gold leaf?’
‘I happen to have been in correspondence with Henry Newbolt. Sent him a sheath of verses, he wrote back praising their sonorousness, offered to show them to his publisher, same chaps who did Byron.’
Reading had stirred something in Alexander. He was standing now in the space the life model had occupied earlier.
‘Newbolt wrote a cracking poem about cricket.’
He hunched forward, his fingers splayed into claws.
‘There’s a breathless hush in the close tonight, / Ten to make and the match to win, / A bumping pitch and a blinding light, / An hour to play and the last man in.’
He jumped as if startled by something.
‘You know I could have played for Lancashire. I was very handy with the bat.’ He mimed a defensive stroke. ‘But they called me the Devil Himself on account of my bowling.’
He took a measured pace backwards.
‘White Coppice First Eleven up at Anglezarke. More wickets the year we won the Palace Shield than anyone in the league. The mill up there was owned by a chap called Eccles, great friend of my father, both Temperance men.’
He affected a look of boredom, his mouth a disdainful moue.
‘I was caught taking a crate of ale into the dressing room with Willie Blythe, our wicketkeeper, both of us banned for a year. That was the end of that.’
He took another pace backwards, between two easels.
‘My run-up was the key.’
He half jogged, half shuffled towards Eloise, executing a windmill motion with his arms, so quickly it caused her to flinch. He picked up his notebook and the stub of his cigarette.
‘Are you still working on those etchings?’ he asked, inspecting his cigarette and deciding it was finished.
‘Oh, to be frank, I’m feeling a little lost with it all.’
‘I thought those nudes were marvellous – I’d some carbide needles I was going to offer you for a very reasonable price.’
‘I’m currently working on a portrait of an acquaintance of my brother. A Mr Henthorne. I spend an unchaperoned hour and a half each evening at his chambers. He bought a whole new set of oils for me, Lefranc and Foinet, from Lionel Nathan. Insists I leave it all there; oils, brushes, my apron. Artfully arranged. I think he likes to show them off to visitors.’
Alexander laughed, reaching for the jacket on the back of his chair.
‘He insists on wearing a rather gaudy silk tie like some Italian duke. I explained electric light alone was not ideal.’
‘What did he say to that?’ Alexander asked, pulling a bottle of framboise from his jacket. ‘A little contraband from my cycling tour of Luxembourg.’
He unscrewed the top and took a glug of the viscous raspberry liqueur. He passed it to Eloise.
‘Henthorne,’ she said, licking a drop from her lip, ‘told me that I could have as many lamps as I needed, which missed the point somewhat. Charles is awfully impressed by him. Calls it collecting money. What time is it?’
‘A quarter to five.’
‘Dash, I’m to be at Henthorne’s on the stroke of the hour.’
*
Eloise peered round her easel and discovered her subject fast asleep. She observed him for a moment; vulnerable, animal, denuded of his waking prowess; the sclerotic set of the lips, the soft bellows of his breathing. She put down her brush and stood back comparing the sleeper to the figure on her canvas. It was a good likeness. She had been faithful to the strains of grey in his beard, the faint pinkness, purples and carmines around the nostrils, the slight coarsening at the tip of the nose; but it wasn’t exact, there was something wrong about the mouth.
She wiped her hands on her apron, leaving silverish smears, that difficult shade of cloth on the lapel of Henthorne’s suit. She had been trying to get it right but had given up. She undid her apron and hung it on her easel. Mr Henthorne had begun to snore, sliding forward in his chair. There had been a celebration that afternoon, a festive mood as she entered the chambers, setting down her umbrella and removing her rain-slicked gaberdine, some deal with representatives of a corporation in Hong Kong. Mr Henthorne had offered her a glass of champagne. He had drifted off as she began work, his face moving through a complex set of soft reds.
The door into Henthorne’s office was open. Eloise wandered into the brightly lit suite, wood-panelling then tiled to the high ceiling. There was a bowl of Turkish Delight on the desk; she helped herself a cube, its soft perfume growing gluey in her mouth. There was a part-smoked cigar in his ashtray. She held it, light as a piece of a wasp’s nest. She wet her finger and rubbed some of the ash into her palm. It was a colour closer to Henthorne’s lapel than Lefranc and Foinet had got her all afternoon.
Eloise was glad to have got away early. It was an important night. Ever since Georges’ visit to Windermere she had pondered how to proceed. Over the past few days her pondering had resolved itself into a plan, or rather series of impulses she felt duty-bound to follow. She hurried down King Street, the street lamps coming on, the Eagle Insurance Company sign on the metal balcony that ran around the high windows. She recounted all the tiny clues from their conversations – and his coming all the way to Windermere, wasn’t that the biggest clue of all?
When she returned home Claude was bidding farewell to his tutor, a wiry man with an ancient pair of pince-nez and a dry cough in the front of his throat.
‘Any sign of your aunt, Claude?’
‘Oh, no, Aunt Eloise, I think she may be out at one of her meetings.’
‘And your papa?’
‘He won’t be back for hours.’
‘Your mama?’
‘She’s resting.’
Eloise suddenly felt responsible for the boy.
‘And you have work and whatnot to be getting along with?’
‘Oh yes, Grayson always leaves me plenty.’
*
At the Town Hall there were six speakers facing the audience. A purple cloth with an embroidered coat of arms – a shield of red and gold, a globe covered in bees – was draped over the table. An hour into the meeting and the sense of expectation with which it had opened had dissipated. Each Member of Parliament had made their speech; bloodless addresses on Home Rule and a statement about Shipping Intelligence in the Port of Manchester and the tonnage of cargo through Eastham Locks.
Two of the Members of Parliament had travelled from London, a plump man who was sweating and another with a white moustache who the chairman introduced. There followed a speech on the scarcity of the cotton operative and a claim that all the Lancashire cotton requirements could be grown within the British Empire. The final speaker was talking about electoral reform and the prohibitive cost of elections; he would occasionally bang the table, setting the surface of the water glasses trembling.
‘He is saying nothing whatsoever,’ Tabitha said to Eileen Kiernan.
Tabitha had watched them assembling the stage earlier. A pair of men in brown coats carrying the table into position, section by section, while another laid out the chairs. She had tried to appear inconspicuous but eventually a clerk, a balding man with a very kind face, approached and asked if he might be of assistance. She had simply said, ‘No, thank you,’ and hastened from the room. She’d had a story about a cousin she intended to meet but found herself unable to deploy the subterfuge. It had felt like a little defeat, an undoing. She had waited downstairs in the Statue Hall. There was a growing, expectant crowd. She had found Eileen and made a line directly for her. They had filed in with the others.
Now the chairman was nearing the end of his comments. Tabitha felt her heart starting to race. Her palms were clammy and beginning to tingle. She nodded to Eileen. They raised the banner in unison, each moving to the side as it unfurled, then stepped up onto their chairs, Tabitha steadying herself on the shoulder of the man beside her who looked up puzzled then turned away in disgust. They began to chant the slogans they had rehearsed, hissing voices telling them to sit down. Tabitha saw one of the Members of Parliament catch sight of the banner, lean across to the man next to him as if to have him confirm it. His white moustache twitched. The stewards at the front of the meeting began to hurry towards them.
