The Last Letter from Your Lover
Page 31“And there are no safer places you could satisfy that need?”
“Do I look like someone who wants to shuffle paper clips or do the filing?”
She smiled a little. “And what about your son?”
“I’ve barely seen him. His mother would prefer me to stay away.” He took a sip of his tea. “A posting to Congo wouldn’t make a huge amount of difference when we largely communicate by letter.”
“That must be very hard.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
A string quartet had started up in the corner. She looked behind her briefly, which gave him a moment to gaze at her unhindered, that profile, the small tilt to her upper lip. Something in him constricted, and he knew with a painful pang that he would never again love anyone as he loved Jennifer Stirling. Four years had not freed him, and another ten were unlikely to do so. When she turned back to him, he was aware that he couldn’t speak or he would reveal everything, spill out his guts like someone mortally wounded.
“Did you like New York?” she asked.
“It was probably better for me than staying here.”
“Where did you live?”
“Manhattan. Do you know New York?”
“Not enough to have any real idea of where you’re talking about,” she admitted. “And did you . . . are you remarried?”
“No.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“I’ve been dating someone.”
“An American?”
“Yes.”
“Is she married?”
“No. Funnily enough.”
Her expression didn’t flicker. “Is it serious?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Neither have you.”
“I have,” she said quietly.
He wanted to touch her. He wanted to knock all the crockery off the damned table, reach across, and take hold of her. He felt furious suddenly, hampered by this ridiculous place, its formality. She had been odd the previous evening, but at least the tumultuous emotions had been genuine. “And you? Has life been good?” he said, when he saw she wasn’t going to speak.
She sipped her tea. She seemed almost lethargic. “Has life been good?” She pondered the question. “Good and bad. I’m sure I’m no different from anyone else.”
“And you still spend time on the Riviera?”
“Not if I can help it.”
He wanted to ask: Because of me? She didn’t seem to want to volunteer anything. Where was the wit? The passion? That simmering sense she had held within her of something threatening to erupt out of her, whether unexpected laughter or a flurry of kisses? She seemed flattened, buried under glacial good manners.
In the corner, the string quartet paused between movements. Frustration rose in Anthony. “Jennifer, why did you invite me here?”
She looked tired, he realized, but also feverish, her cheekbones lit by points of high color.
“I’m sorry,” he continued, “but I don’t want a sandwich. I don’t want to sit in this place listening to ruddy string music. If I’ve earned anything through being apparently dead for the last four years, it must be the right not to have to sit through tea and polite conversation.”
“I . . . just wanted to see you.”
“You know, when I saw you across the room yesterday, I was still so angry with you. All this time I’d assumed you chose him—a lifestyle—over me. I’ve rehearsed arguments with you in my head, berated you for not replying to my last letters—”
“Please don’t.” She held up a hand, cutting him off.
“And then I see you, and you tell me you were trying to come with me. And I’m having to rethink everything I believed about the last four years—everything I thought was true.”
“Let’s not talk about it, Anthony, what might have been . . .” She placed her hands on the table in front of her, like someone laying down cards. “I . . . just can’t.”
They sat opposite each other, the immaculately dressed woman and the tense man. The thought, brief and darkly humorous, occurred to him that to onlookers they appeared miserable enough to be married.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Why are you so loyal to him? Why have you stayed with someone who so clearly cannot make you happy?”
She lifted her eyes to his. “Because I was so disloyal, I suppose.”
“Do you think he’d be loyal to you?”
She held his gaze for a moment, then glanced at her watch. “I need to leave.”
“It’s not you. Really. I do need to be somewhere.”
He caught himself. “Of course. I’m sorry. I’m the one who was late. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” He couldn’t help the anger in his voice. He cursed his editor for losing him that precious half hour, cursed himself for what he already knew were wasted opportunities—and for allowing himself to come close to something that still had the power to burn him.
She stood up to leave, and a waiter appeared to help her with her coat. There would always be someone to help her, he thought absently. She was that kind of woman. He was immobilized, stuck at the table.
Had he misread her? Had he misremembered the intensity of their brief time together? He was saddened by the idea that this was it. Was it worse to have the memory of something perfect sullied, replaced by something inexplicable and disappointing?
The waiter held her coat by the shoulders. She put her arms into the sleeves, one at a time, her head dipped.
“That’s it?”
“I’m sorry, Anthony. I really do have to go.”
He stood up. “We’re not going to talk about anything? After all this? Did you even think of me?”
Before he could say more, she had turned on her heel and walked out.
Jennifer splashed her reddened, blotchy eyes with cold water for the fifteenth time. In the bathroom mirror her reflection showed a woman defeated by life. A woman so far removed from the “tai-tai” of five years ago that they might have been different species, let alone different people. She let her fingers trace the shadows under her eyes, the new lines of strain on her brow, and wondered what he had seen when he looked at her.
He’ll squash you, extinguish the things that make you you.
She opened the medicine cabinet and gazed at the neat row of brown bottles. She couldn’t tell him that she had been so afraid before she met him that she had taken twice the recommended dose of Valium. She couldn’t tell him that she had heard him as if through a fog, had been so dissociated from what she was doing that she could barely hold the teapot. She couldn’t tell him that to have him so close that she could see every line on his hands and breathe the scent of his cologne had paralyzed her.
Jennifer turned on the hot tap and the water rushed down the plughole, splashing off the porcelain and leaving dark spots on her pale trousers. She took the Valium from the top shelf and unscrewed the lid.
You are the strong one, the one who can endure living with the possibility of a love like this, and the fact that we will never be allowed it.
Not as astute as you thought, Boot.
She heard Mrs. Cordoza’s voice downstairs and locked the bathroom door. She placed both hands on the side of the washbasin. Can I do this?
She lifted the bottle and tipped its contents down the plughole, watching the water carry away the little white pills. She unscrewed the next, barely pausing to check its contents. Her “little helpers.” Everyone took them, Yvonne had said blithely, the first time Jennifer had sat in her kitchen and found she couldn’t stop crying. Doctors were only too happy to supply them. They would even her out a little. I’m so evened out that nothing’s left, she thought, and reached for the next bottle.
Then they were all gone, the shelf empty. She stared at herself in the mirror as, with a gurgle, the last of the pills was washed out of sight.
There was trouble in Stanleyville. A note had arrived from the foreign desk at the Nation informing Anthony that the Congolese rebels, the self-styled Simba Army, had begun to herd more white hostages into the Victoria Hotel in retaliation against the Congolese government forces and their white mercenaries. “Have bags ready. Moving story,” it said. “Editor has given special approval you go. With request that do not get yourself killed/captured.”
For the first time, Anthony did not rush to the office to check the late newswires. He did not telephone his contacts at the UN or the army. He lay on his hotel bed, thinking of a woman who had loved him enough to leave her husband and then, in the space of four years, had disappeared.
Had it simply been the shock of finding him alive that had caused her literally to vibrate in front of him? Had she realized today that the feelings she had once held for him had evaporated? Had she just gone through the motions, entertaining him as anyone would an old friend? Her manners had always been immaculate.
Another knock, tentative. It was almost more irritating than if the girl had just opened the door and walked in. At least then he could have yelled at her. He got up and went to the door. “I’d really rather—”
Jennifer stood in front of him, her belt tied tightly around her waist, her eyes bright. “Every day,” she said.
“What?”
“Every month. Every day. Every hour.” She paused, then added, “For four years. I tried not to, but . . . you were always there.”
The corridor was silent around them.
“I thought you were dead, Anthony. I grieved for you. I grieved for the life I hoped I might have with you. I read and reread your letters until they fell apart. When I believed I might have been responsible for your death, I loathed myself so much I could barely get through each day. If it hadn’t been . . .”
She corrected herself: “And then, at a drinks party I hadn’t even wanted to go to, I saw you. You. And you ask me why I wanted to see you?” She took a deep breath, as if to steady herself.
There were footsteps at the other end of the corridor. He held out a hand. “Come inside,” he said.
“I couldn’t sit at home. I had to say something before you were gone again. I had to tell you.”
He stepped back, and she walked past him into the large double bedroom, its generous dimensions and decent position testament to his improved standing at the newspaper. He was glad that for once he had left it tidy, a laundered shirt hanging on the back of the chair, his good shoes against the wall. The window was open, allowing in the noise of the street outside, and he went over to close it. She put her bag on the chair, laid her coat over it.
“It’s a step up,” he said awkwardly. “The first time I came back I got a hostel in Bayswater Road. Do you want a drink?” He felt oddly self-conscious as she sat down on the side of the bed. “Shall I ring for something? Coffee, maybe?” he continued.
God, he wanted to touch her.
“I haven’t slept,” she said, rubbing her face ruefully. “I couldn’t think straight when I saw you. I’ve been trying to work it all out. Nothing makes any sense.”
“That afternoon, four years ago, were you in the car with Felipe?”
“Felipe?” She looked puzzled.
“My friend from Alberto’s. He died around the time I left, in a car crash. I looked up the cuttings this morning. There’s a reference to an unnamed woman passenger. It’s the only way I can explain it.”