The Last Letter From Your Lover, Page 7

  And me? I knew in the moment you looked up at me that if we did this I would be lost. I would not be able to put you aside, as I had with the others. I would not be able to nod agreeably to Laurence as we passed each other in some restaurant. I would never be satisfied with just a part of you. I had been fooling myself to think otherwise. It was for that reason, darling girl, that I redid that wretched button at your neck. And for that reason I have lain awake for the last two nights, hating myself for the one decent thing I have ever done.

  Forgive me.

  B.

  Jennifer sat in her bed, staring at the one word that had leapt out at her. Laurence.

  Laurence.

  Which could mean only one thing.

  The letter was addressed to her.

  Chapter 5

  AUGUST 1960

  Anthony O'Hare woke up in Brazzaville. He stared at the fan that rotated lazily above his head, dimly aware of the sunlight slicing through the shutters, and wondered, briefly, if this time he was going to die. His head was trapped in a vise, and arrows shot from temple to temple. His kidneys felt as if someone had hammered them enthusiastically for much of the previous night. The inside of his mouth was dry and foul tasting, and he was faintly nauseated. A vague sense of panic assailed him. Had he been shot? Beaten in a riot? He closed his eyes, waiting for the sounds of the street outside, the food vendors, the ever-present buzz of the wireless as people gathered, sitting on their haunches, trying to hear where the next outbreak of trouble would be. Not a bullet. It was yellow fever. This time it would surely finish him off. But even as the thought formed, he realized there were no Congolese sounds: no yelling from an open window, no bar music, no smells of kwanga cooking in banana leaves. No gunshots. No shouting in Lingala or Swahili. Silence. The distant sound of seagulls.

  Not Congo. France. He was in France.

  He felt a fleeting gratitude, until the pain became distinct. The consultant had warned him it would feel worse if he drank again, he observed with some distant, still analytical part of his mind. Dr. Robertson would be gratified to know just how accurate his prediction had been.

  When he became confident that he could do so without disgracing himself, he shifted to an upright position. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked tentatively to the window, conscious of the smell of stale sweat and the empty bottles on the table that told of the long night behind him. He drew back the curtain a fraction of an inch and could see the glittering bay below, bathed in a pale gold light. The red roofs on the hillsides were of terra-cotta tiles, not the painted rust of the Congolese bungalows, their inhabitants healthy, happy people milling on the seafront, chatting, walking, running. White people. Wealthy people.

  He squinted. This scene was blameless, idyllic. He let the curtain fall, stumbled to the bathroom, and threw up, cradling the lavatory, spitting and miserable. When he could stand again, he climbed unsteadily into the shower and slumped against the wall, letting the warm water wash over him for twenty minutes, wishing it could clean away what ran through him.

  Come on, get a grip.

  He dressed, rang down for some coffee, and, feeling a little steadier, sat at the desk. It was almost a quarter to eleven. He needed to send his copy through, the profile he had worked on the previous afternoon. He gazed at his scrawled notes, recalling the end of the evening. The memory came back to him haltingly: Mariette, her face raised to him outside this hotel, demanding to be kissed. His determined refusal, even as he still muttered about what a fool he was: the girl was desirable and had been his for the taking. But he wanted to feel the tiniest bit glad about one thing he'd done that evening.

  Oh, Christ. Jennifer Stirling, brittle and wounded, holding his jacket toward him. She had overheard him ranting mindlessly, ungraciously, about them all. What had he said about her? Spoiled little tai-tai . . . not an original thought in her head. He closed his eyes. War zones, he thought, were easier. Safer. In war zones you could always tell who the enemy was.

  The coffee arrived. He took a deep breath, then poured a cupful. He lifted the telephone receiver and asked the operator wearily to put him through to London.

  Mrs. Stirling,

  I am an ungracious pig. I'd like to be able to blame exhaustion, or some uncharacteristic reaction to shellfish, but I'm afraid it was a combination of alcohol, which I shouldn't take, and the choleric temper of the socially inept. There is little you could say about me that I have not already deduced about myself in my more sober hours.

  Please allow me to apologize. If I could buy you and Mr. Stirling lunch before I return to London I'd be very glad to make it up to you.

  Yours shamefacedly,

  Anthony O'Hare

  P.S. I enclose a copy of the report I sent to London to assure you that I have, at least, behaved honorably in that regard.

  Anthony folded the letter into an envelope, sealed it, and turned it over. It was possible he was still a little drunk: he couldn't remember ever having been so honest in a letter.

  It was at that point that he remembered he had no address to which he could send it. He swore softly at his own stupidity. The previous evening Stirling's driver had collected him, and he could remember little of the journey home, aside from its various humiliations.

  The hotel's reception desk offered little help. Stirling? The concierge shook his head.

  "You know him? Rich man. Important," he said. His mouth still tasted powdery.

  "Monsieur," the concierge said wearily, "everyone here is rich and important."

  The afternoon was balmy, the air white, almost phosphoric under the clear sky. He began to walk, retraced the route that the car had taken the previous evening. It had been a drive of less than ten minutes: How hard could it be to find the house again? He would drop the letter at the door and leave. He refused to think about what he would do when he returned to town: since that morning his body, reminded of its long relationship with alcohol, had begun a low, perverse hum of desire. Beer, it urged. Wine. Whiskey. His kidneys ached, and he still trembled a little. The walk, he told himself, nodding in greeting at two smiling, sun-hatted women, would do him good.

  The sky above Antibes was a searing blue, the beaches dotted with holidaymakers basting themselves on the white sand. He remembered turning left at this roundabout and saw that the road, dotted with claytiled villas, led him into the hills. This was the way he had come. The sun was beating hard on the back of his neck and straight through his hat. He removed his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder as he walked.

  It was in the hills behind the town that things began to go wrong. He had turned left at a church that had looked vaguely familiar and begun to make his way up the side of a hill. The pine and palm trees thinned, then disappeared altogether, leaving him unprotected by shade, the heat bouncing off the pale rocks and tarmac. He felt his exposed skin tighten, and knew that by evening it would be burned and sore.

  Occasionally a car would pass, sending sprays of flint over the growing precipice. It had seemed such a brief journey the previous evening, speeded by the scent of the wild herbs, the cool breezes of dusk. Now the milestones stretched before him, and his confidence ebbed as he was forced to contemplate the possibility that he was lost.

  Don Franklin would love this, he thought, pausing to wipe his head with his handkerchief. Anthony could make his way from one end of Africa to the other, fight his way across borders, yet here he was, lost in what should have been a ten-minute journey across a millionaires' playground. He stepped back to let another car pass, then squinted into the light as, with a low squeal of brakes, it stopped. With a whine, it reversed toward him.

  Yvonne Moncrieff, sunglasses tilted back on her head, leaned out of a Daimler SP250. "Are you mad?" she said cheerfully. "You'll fry up here."

  He peered across and saw Jennifer Stirling at the wheel. She gazed at him from behind oversize dark sunglasses, her hair tied back, her expression unreadable.

  "Good afternoon," he said, removing his hat. He
was suddenly conscious of the sweat seeping through his crumpled shirt and his face shining with it.

  "What on earth are you doing so far out of town, Mr. O'Hare?" Jennifer asked. "Chasing some hot story?"

  He took his linen jacket from his shoulder, reached into his pocket, and thrust the letter toward her. "I--I wanted to give you this."

  "What is it?"

  "An apology."

  "An apology?"

  "For my ungraciousness last night."

  She made no move to stretch across her friend and take it.

  "Jennifer, shall I?" Yvonne Moncrieff glanced at her, apparently perturbed.

  "No. Can you read it out loud, Mr. O'Hare?" she said.

  "Jennifer!"

  "If Mr. O'Hare has written it, I'm sure he's perfectly capable of saying it." Behind the glasses her face was impassive.

  He stood there for a moment, looked behind him at the empty road and down at the sunbaked village below. "I'd really rather--"

  "Then it's not much of an apology, is it, Mr. O'Hare?" she said sweetly. "Anyone can scribble a few words."

  Yvonne Moncrieff was looking at her hands, shaking her head. Jennifer's blank sunglasses were still focused on him, his silhouette visible in their dark lenses.

  He opened the envelope, pulled out the sheet of paper, and after a moment read the contents to her, his voice unnaturally loud on the mountain. He finished and tucked it back into his pocket. He felt oddly embarrassed in the silence, broken only by the quiet hum of the engine.

  "My husband," Jennifer said eventually, "has gone to Africa. He left this morning."

  "Then I'd be delighted if you'd let me buy you and Mrs. Moncrieff lunch." He looked at his watch.

  "Obviously rather a late lunch now."

  "Not me, darling. Francis wants me to look at a yacht this afternoon. I've told him a man can but dream."

  "We'll give you a lift back to town, Mr. O'Hare," Jennifer said, nodding toward the tiny rear seat. "I don't want to be responsible for the Nation's most honorable correspondent getting sunstroke, as well as alcohol poisoning."

  She waited while Yvonne climbed out and tilted the seat forward for Anthony to climb in, then rummaged in the glove compartment. "Here," she said, throwing a handkerchief at him. "And you do know you were walking in completely the wrong direction? We live over there." She pointed toward a distant, tree-lined hill. Her mouth twitched at the corners, just enough for him to think he might be forgiven, and the two women burst into laughter. Deeply relieved, Anthony O'Hare rammed his hat onto his head, and they were off, speeding down the narrow road back toward the town.

  The car became stuck in traffic almost as soon as they had dropped Yvonne at Hotel St. Georges. "Behave yourselves now," the older woman had said as she waved them good-bye. She spoke, he noted, with the cheerful insouciance of one who knows the alternative to be out of the question.

  Once it was just the two of them, the mood had altered. Jennifer Stirling had grown silent, seemingly preoccupied by the road ahead in a way that she hadn't been twenty minutes earlier. He glanced surreptitiously at her lightly tanned arms, her profile, as she gazed ahead at the long line of taillights. He wondered, briefly, if she was angrier with him than she had been prepared to let on.

  "So how long will your husband be in Africa?" he said, to break the silence.

  "A week probably. He rarely stays longer." She peered over the side of her door briefly, apparently to gauge what was causing the holdup.

  "Quite a journey for such a short stay."

  "You'd know, Mr. O'Hare."

  "Me?"

  She raised an eyebrow. "You know everything about Africa. You said so last night."

  " 'Everything'?"

  "You knew that most of the men who do business out there are crooks."

  "I said that?"

  "To M. Lafayette."

  Anthony sank a little lower in his seat. "Mrs. Stirling--," he began.

  "Oh, don't worry. Laurence didn't hear you. Francis did, but he only does a little business out there, so he didn't take it too personally."

  The cars began to move.

  "Let me buy you lunch," he said. "Please. I'd like the chance to show you, even if only for half an hour, that I'm not a complete ass."

  "You think you can change my mind so swiftly?" That smile again.

  "I'm game if you are. You show me where we should go."

  The waiter brought her a tall glass of lemonade. She took a sip, then sat back in her chair and surveyed the seafront.

  "Lovely view," he said.

  "Yes," she conceded.

  Her hair fell from her head like paint from a pot, in a sheet of silky blond ripples that ended just above her shoulders. Not his normal type. He liked less conventionally pretty women, those with a hint of something darker, whose charms were less obvious to the eye. "Aren't you drinking?"

  He looked at his glass. "I'm not really meant to."

  "Wife's orders?"

  "Ex-wife," he corrected. "And no, doctor's."

  "So you really did find last night unbearable."

  He shrugged. "I don't spend much time in society."

  "An accidental tourist."

  "I admit it. I find armed conflict a less daunting prospect."

  Her smile, when it came this time, was slow and mischievous. "So you're William Boot," she said. "Out of your depth in the war zone of Riviera society."

  "Boot . . ." At the mention of Evelyn Waugh's hapless fictional character, he found himself smiling properly for the first time that day. "I suppose you could legitimately have said much worse."

  A woman entered the restaurant, clutching a button-eyed dog to her vast bosom. She walked through the tables with a kind of weary determination, as if she could allow herself to focus on nothing but where she was headed. When she sat down at an empty table, a few seats away from them, it was with a little sigh of relief. She placed the dog on the floor, where it stood, its tail clamped between its legs, trembling.

  "So, Mrs. Stirling--"

  "Jennifer."

  "Jennifer. Tell me about yourself," he said, leaning forward over the table.

  "You're meant to be telling me. Showing me, in fact."

  "What?"

  "That you're not a complete ass. I do believe you gave yourself half an hour."

  "Ah. How long have I got left?"

  She checked her watch. "About nine minutes."

  "And how am I doing so far?"

  "You can't possibly expect me to give anything away quite so soon."

  They were silent then, he because, uncharacteristically, he didn't know what to say, she perhaps regretting her choice of words. Anthony O'Hare thought of the last woman he had been involved with, the wife of his dentist, a redhead with skin so translucent he was reluctant to look too hard in case he saw what lay beneath it. She had been flattened by her husband's long-term indifference to her. Anthony had half suspected that her receptiveness to his advances had been as much an act of revenge as anything else.

  "What do you do with your days, Jennifer?"

  "I'm afraid to tell you."

  He raised an eyebrow.

  "I do so little of any worth that I'm afraid you'd be terribly disapproving." The way in which she said this told him she was not afraid at all.

  "You run two houses."

  "I don't. There's a part-time staff. And in London Mrs. Cordoza is much cleverer than I am at housekeeping."

  "So what do you do?"

  "I host cocktail parties, dinners. I make things beautiful. I look decorative."

  "You're very good at that."

  "Oh, an expert. It's a specialized skill, you know."

  He could have stared at her all day. It was something about the way her top lip turned up a little as it joined the soft skin below her nose. There was a special name for that part of the face, and he was sure that if he stared at her long enough he would remember it.

  "I did what I was bred to do. I bagged a rich husband, and I keep him ha
ppy."

  The smile faltered. Perhaps a man without his experience might have missed it, a slight give around the eyes, a suspicion of something more complex than the surface might suggest.

  "Actually, I'm going to have a drink," she said. "Would you mind awfully?"

  "You should absolutely have a drink. I shall enjoy it vicariously."

  "Vicariously," she repeated, holding up a hand to the waiter. She ordered a Martini vermouth, lots of ice.

  A recreational drink, he thought: she wasn't out to hide anything, to lose herself in alcohol. He was a little disappointed. "If it makes you feel any better," he said lightly, "I don't know how to do anything but work."

  "Oh, I think you do," she responded. "Men find it easier to work than to deal with anything else."

  "Anything else?"

  "The messiness of everyday life. People not behaving as you'd like and feeling things you'd rather they didn't feel. At work you can achieve results, be the master of your domain. People do as you say."

  "Not in my world." He laughed.

  "But you can write a story and see it on the newsstands the next day just as you wrote it. Doesn't that make you feel rather proud?"

  "It used to. That wears off after a while. I don't think I've done much I can feel proud of for some time. Everything I write is ephemeral. Tomorrow's fish-and-chip paper."

  "No? Then why work so hard?"

  He swallowed, pushing an image of his son from him. Suddenly he wanted a drink very much. He forced a smile. "All the reasons you say. So much easier than dealing with everything else."

  Their eyes met, and in that unguarded moment, her smile fell away. She flushed a little, and stirred her drink slowly with a cocktail stick. "'Vicariously,'" she said slowly. "You'll have to tell me what that means, Anthony."

  The way she said his name induced a kind of intimacy. It promised something, a repetition in some future time.

  "It means"--Anthony's mouth had dried--"it means pleasure gained through the pleasure of someone else."

  After she had dropped him at his hotel, he lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling for almost an hour. Then he went down to reception, asked for a postcard, and wrote a note to his son, wondering if Clarissa would bother to pass it on.