The Last Letter From Your Lover, Page 20

  "Yesterday was such a shock," she said finally, placing her cup on the saucer. "I . . . must apologize for how I behaved. You must have thought I was very odd."

  "Perfectly understandable. Not every day you see someone risen from the dead."

  A small smile. "Quite."

  Their eyes met and slid away. She leaned forward and poured more tea. "Where do you live now?"

  "I've been in New York."

  "All this time?"

  "There wasn't really a reason to come back."

  Another heavy silence, which she broke: "You look well. Very well."

  She was right. It was impossible to live in the heart of Manhattan and stay scruffy. He had returned to England this year with a wardrobe of good suits and a host of new habits: hot shaves, shoe polishing, teetotalism. "You look lovely, Jennifer."

  "Thank you. Are you in England for long?"

  "Probably not. I may be going overseas again." He watched her face to see what effect this news might have on her. But she merely reached for the milk. "No," he said, lifting a hand. "Thank you."

  Her hand stilled, as if she was disappointed in herself for having forgotten.

  "What does the newspaper have in mind for you?" She put a sandwich on a plate and placed it in front of him.

  "They'd like me to stay here, but I want to return to Africa. Things have become very complicated in Congo."

  "Isn't it very dangerous there?"

  "That's not the point."

  "You want to be in the thick of it."

  "Yes. It's an important story. Plus I have a horror of being deskbound. These last few years have been"--he tried to think of an expression he could use safely: These years in New York kept me sane? Allowed me to exist away from you? Stopped me throwing myself on a grenade in a foreign field?--"useful," he said finally, "in that the editor probably needed to see me in a different light. But I'm keen to move on now. Back to what I do best."

  "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."

  She allowed herself to smile. "You haven't changed."

  "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."

  He winced. "I'm sorry. I won't say another thing. I just need to know--"

  "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.

  He was startled by a knock on his door. The maid seemed to want to clean every half hour. She had an annoying way of whistling as she worked so he could never quite ignore her presence. "Come back later," he called, and shifted onto his side.

  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."

  "I don't know. As I said yesterday, there are still bits I can't remember. If I hadn't found your letters, I might never have remembered you. I might never have known--"

  "But who told you I was dead?"

  "Laurence. Don't look like that. He's not cruel. I think he really believed you were." She waited a moment. "He knew there was . . . someone, you see. He read your last letter. After the accident he must have put two and two--"

  "My last letter?"

  "The one asking me to meet you at the station. I was carrying it when the car crashed."

  "I don't understand--that wasn't my last letter--"

  "Oh, let's not," she interrupted. "Please . . . It's too--"

  "Then what?" She was watching him intently. "Jennifer, I--"

  She stood up and stepped so close to him that even in the dim light he could see every tiny freckle on her face, each eyelash tapering into a black point sharp enough to pierce a man's heart. She was with him and yet removed, as if she was coming to some decision.

  "Boot," she said softly, "are you angry with me? Still?"

  Boot.

  He swallowed. "How could I be?"

  She lifted her hands and traced the shape of his face, her fingertips so light they barely touched him. "Did we do this?"

  He stared at her.

  "Before?" She blinked. "I don't remember. I only know your words."

  "Yes." His voice broke. "Yes, we did this." He felt her cool fingers on his skin and remembered her scent.

  "Anthony," she murmured, and there was sweetness in the way she said his name, an unbearable tenderness that spoke of all the love and loss he, too, had felt.

  Her body rested against his, and he heard the sigh that traveled through her, then felt her breath on his lips. The air stilled around them. Her lips were on his, and something broke open in his chest. He heard himself gasp, and realized, with horror, that his eyes had filled with tears. "I'm sorry," he whispered, mortified. "I'm sorry. I don't know . . . why . . ."

  "I know," she said. "I know." She put her arms around his neck, kissing the tears that ran down his cheeks, murmuring to him. They clung together, elated, despairing, neither quite able to believe the turn of events. Time became a blur, the kisses more urgent, the tears drying. He pulled her sweater over her head, stood, almost helpless, as she undid the buttons of his shirt. And in a joyful wrench it was off him, his skin against hers, and they were on the bed, wrapped around each other, their bodies fierce, almost clumsy with urgency.

  He kissed her, and knew he was trying to tell her the depth of how he felt. Even as he lost himself in her, felt her hair sweep across his face, his chest, her lips meet his skin, her fingers, he understood that there were people for whom
one other was their missing part.

  She was alive beneath him; she set him alight. He kissed the scar that ran up to her shoulder, ignored her flinching reluctance until she accepted what he was telling her: this silvered ridge was beautiful to him; it told him she had loved him. It told him she had wanted to come to him. He kissed it because there was no part of her that he didn't want to make better, no part of her that he didn't adore.

  He watched desire grow in her as if it were a gift shared between them, the infinite variety of expressions that crossed her face, saw her unguarded, locked in some private struggle, and when she opened her eyes, he felt blessed.

  When he came he wept again, because some part of him had always known, even though he had chosen not to believe it, that there must be something that could make you feel like this. And that to have it returned to him was more than he could have hoped for.

  "I know you," she murmured, her skin sticky against his, her tears wet on his neck. "I do know you."

  For a moment he couldn't speak but stared up at the ceiling, feeling the air cool around them, her limbs pressed damply against his own. "Oh, Jenny," he said. "Thank God."

  When her breathing had returned to normal, she raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him. Something in her had altered: her features had lifted, the strain had vanished from around her eyes. He enclosed her in his arms, pulling her to him so tightly that their bodies felt welded together. He felt himself hardening again, and she smiled.

  "I want to say something," he said, "but nothing seems . . . momentous enough."

  Her smile was glorious: satiated, loving, full of wry surprise. "I've never felt like that in my whole life," she said.

  They looked at each other.

  "Have I?" she said.

  He nodded. She gazed into the distance. "Then . . . thank you."

  He laughed, and she collapsed, giggling, onto his shoulder.

  Four years had dissolved, become nothing. He saw, with a new clarity, the path of his life to come. He would stay in London. He would break things off with Eva, the girlfriend in New York. She was a sweet girl, breezy and cheerful, but he knew now that every woman he had dated over the past four years had been a pale imitation of the woman beside him. Jennifer would leave her husband. He would take care of her. They would not miss their chance a second time. He had a sudden vision of her with his son, the three of them on some family outing, and the future glowed with unforeseen promise.