A Small Indiscretion Page 11

  “We meet again,” Patrick said, smiling.

  Louise was directly behind me and I turned and extended my hand and she gave it a halfhearted squeeze. Malcolm handed me a map. He’d drawn a black line to indicate the route we would take from Victoria out of the city to Dover, where we would catch the ferry, then another dark line from Calais to Paris. The darkness and thickness of the lines had blocked out some of the names of the roads, so I couldn’t tell where we were, or what direction we were heading, or even which way to hold the map. Impulsively, I passed the map back to Patrick.

  “You don’t mind navigating, do you?” I said.

  “Not at all,” he said.

  It was foggy and cold, and now and then Malcolm had to turn the wipers on to clear the mist from the windows. From the back, Louise kept telling Malcolm to slow down at the roundabouts and reminding him when he’d left his blinker on. How many times had this commentary run between them? A hundred, a thousand times? I was suddenly weary of them. I had barely slept at all, wondering about Patrick, wondering why he’d agreed to come, and why he’d slipped out of my life, and what Malcolm was expecting of me, and whether I had packed the right clothes. Louise would be stylish, and I would not be. Patrick would take note of the disparity. Patrick had said something to me once, when we’d been window-shopping and I’d pointed out something I liked in a shop. He’d said that at some point in my life, I would arrive upon a more definitive sense of style. The statement had deeply offended me, but it had also worried me every day since.

  I fell into a half-sleep. I sensed the three of them in my dreams, their breaths and separate thoughts. Also Patrick’s humming—incessant and beautiful and unselfconscious. In my dream a thin, silver thread extended from me to Patrick, tying us thinly by the wrists. I woke with Malcolm’s fingers on my arm. We had reached Dover.

  “Those are the White Cliffs,” Malcolm said. “And Dover Castle’s just beyond. We’ll have time to walk along the ridge before we board the ferry.”

  I peered out the car window but I could not see the castle in the fog.

  “It’s awfully damp out,” Louise said. “This wretched fog. We’ll barely be able to make anything out.”

  Malcolm ignored her and opened the car door.

  “Really, dear. I don’t know that we all want to trudge out in this weather.”

  “It’s barely spitting,” he said.

  “But this wretched fog.”

  Malcolm sat for a moment with his door open. “Let’s at least pose for a photo,” he said shortly.

  “You three go on,” Louise said. She stayed where she was, her tiny hands folded in her lap, her thin lips made even thinner by determination.

  Patrick brought his camera. We walked against the wind to the cliffs. Malcolm made me stand alone for a photograph. I tied my scarf tightly around my neck and hugged my coat close, until Patrick ordered me to let the coat blow open and the scarf fly free.

  Then Patrick went to the car and I tied the scarf around my neck again and buttoned my coat against the wind. Patrick returned with the tripod, and Louise.

  “Our lady has agreed to a photo after all,” he said.

  He set up the tripod and placed us—Louise, then Malcolm, then me—leaving a space beside Louise for himself. He set the timer, then slid into place, slipping his arm around Louise’s waist. Malcolm, in turn, put his arm around mine, but I must have pulled away, because in the photo there is a gap between us, evidence of my unsuccessful protest. And that is the immortal moment, preserved for more than two decades, then transported into our mailbox last June.

  You’ll want to know how it found its way to us, and why. You’ll want answers to the same questions that plagued me last summer, until I went to London and behaved foolishly, and the car expelled you into a ravine, and the whole matter became irrelevant.

  What did I notice, some twenty years after the fact, when I first held the photo in my hands? The silver-halo effect, yes, and the swipe of red, but also, to be perfectly frank, my clothes—the ill-fitting coat, the clunky boots, the scarf tied much too tightly around my neck. My face was not so bad. My features were the right size and shape. My skin was clear. My hair was long and dark and thick. I was young, after all.

  PATRICK RETURNED THE tripod to the car. Louise decided she could brave the weather, after all, and we took a look around. The White Cliffs were not really white; they were the color of dirty sand. The fog was dense. The ground was frozen in places, muddy in others. A single tower of Dover Castle was visible in the distance, poking through the low-lying fog. Malcolm explained it was chalk down-land we were standing on, a rare material that contained more species of plant life than an equal size of tropical rain forest. That was because it was inhospitable. It was difficult for plants to take root in it, so many tried, and the result was diversity. Where the down met the sea, Malcolm said, the chalk was exposed to the wind and weather to form the White Cliffs.

  I stood on the frosty ground at the edge of the cliff. It was very steep and there was no railing. I could have jumped. Or pushed someone.

  I was furious with Patrick for not standing beside me in the photograph. And for failing to touch me the whole morning. And for absenting himself from my life after our trip to Canterbury, and appearing, now, completely at ease with the distance imposed between us. And for acting as if I were nothing to him—perhaps I was nothing to him—and forcing me to pretend he was nothing to me.

  On the other hand, he had been solicitous of Louise. He had opened the car door for her. He had persuaded her to stand for a photograph. He had referred to her as “our lady,” and posed beside her.

  But of course I did not push him off the cliff. I believed I could not be happy without him.

  Below us was a sharp drop onto another plateau, then the ferry terminal and the sea. Malcolm said that on a clear day, you could see the Continent from here.

  “Not today,” Louise said bitterly.

  Announcements for the ferries embarking and disembarking were being made in various languages—French, English, German. Our ferry was named, and we piled back into the car and drove onto the ferry. We climbed the stairs after leaving the car and sat inside at a table by the window. The wind had picked up and the ferry had begun a gentle rocking. Louise said she hoped the motion wouldn’t make us all sick. Malcolm brought us weak coffee in foam cups. Louise said she’d changed her mind—would Malcolm go and get her tea instead?

  “Tea with lemon, dear,” she said, “not milk.”

  The air was warm and stale. The windows were covered in a film of salt that obscured the ocean and the sky. Malcolm returned with Louise’s tea. Patrick was uncharacteristically quiet. I was, too, probably, and a mood settled over the table, a vigilance, a determination not to say the wrong thing, which left nothing much to say at all. It was a relief, a distraction, when Louise began to feel sick from the motion of the boat.

  “Have you got the Kwells?” she asked Malcolm.

  “They’re in the car, my dear,” he replied.

  She stared at him silently, her mouth a frozen oval of discontent.

  “I said it three times, Malcolm. ‘Remember the Kwells,’ I said. You know how I am at sea.”

  Malcolm tried to speak but she cut him off.

  “Three times, Malcolm. How often must I say something? Or am I to do everything myself? All the packing. All the arrangements. Absolutely everything.”

  “It’s no problem. I’ll fetch them now,” Malcolm said, standing up even as he was speaking and beginning to make his way toward the stairs that led to the cars below. The three of us sat silently in his absence, then Patrick began to hum, and Louise smiled at him weakly, and I looked away.

  In a few minutes Malcolm was back at the table, frowning. Apparently, during a rough crossing the lower deck was locked in case the cars shifted. Passengers were not allowed below as a precaution. Louise did not speak, but it was as if the motion of her face were standing in for language, bleating out its awful, ugly, primiti
ve complaints. She clutched the edge of the table and her fingertips flared pink beneath her beige polished nails. Her upper lip pulled back on one side, revealing tiny, crooked yellow teeth that seemed out of place in her otherwise flawless face. She shook her blond head back and forth and rolled her eyes—elaborately, savagely—and blew a furious shiver of air out of her mouth.

  It was beyond distaste. It was beyond disappointment. It was even beyond rage. What locked on to her face was dismissal; it was contempt. It was terrible to watch, but I was drawn to it as to a car wreck by the side of the road. I found it both horrifying and invigorating. Something would have to happen now. They would not be able to survive such a display. We would be witness, Patrick and I, to the precise moment of their marriage blowing apart. But Malcolm only sat, reduced and mute, his hands folded in his lap, staring out the filmy windows toward the sea.

  What did Malcolm and Patrick see in her? How had they allowed themselves to fall in with her? Aside from her petite frame, and her sense of style, I felt myself to be in every way superior to her. I believed myself incapable of such a display, incapable of the ugliness underlying it. And I did not even really notice it, months or years into my own marriage to your father, when I began to strike that pose myself, now and then—the sighing, the childish rolling of eyes, the exaggerated discontent—particularly, and this is the secret every woman tries fruitlessly to keep from every man, at that time of the month.

  What happens to a marriage? A persistent failure of kindness, triggered at first, at least in my case, by the inequities of raising children, the sacrifices that take a woman by surprise and that she expects to be matched by her mate but that biology ensures cannot be. Anything could set me off. Any innocuous habit or slight or oversight. The way your father left the lights of the house blazing, day and night. The way he could become so distracted at work that sometimes when I called, he’d put me on hold and forget me, only remembering again when I’d hung up and called back. The way he wore his pain so privately, whistling around the house after we’d had a spat, pretending nonchalance, protecting you and your sisters from discord, hiding behind his good nature, inadvertently calling out my ill nature in the process, persisting in being optimistic, and cheerful, and affectionate, when there was clearly no call for any of that.

  These were the tallies I kept, the grudges I nursed. Would I have indulged myself that way if I’d fully understood the situation?

  I would have behaved better, I hope. I hope I would have been kinder.

  PATRICK WAS THE first to recover from Louise’s display. He raised his eyebrows at me and gave me a wink. He took out a handkerchief and wet the corners of it in a drinking fountain and gave it to Louise to put over her eyes. The color had drained from her face but she managed to smile, again, at Patrick. She placed her elbows on the table and held the cloth over her eyes with both hands. It did not seem fair that ill temper and a weak constitution should bring her the gift of Patrick’s attention, and I was envious that she should be the one to hold something that belonged to him.

  “I’ll see what they’ve got behind the counter for motion sickness,” Malcolm said.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked, when he’d gone.

  “Yes,” Louise replied, without removing the cloth from her eyes. “Go and see what’s keeping Malcolm, would you?”

  He had been gone only a moment, but I did not object. I stood up, leaving Patrick and Louise alone at the table. I found Malcolm milling around the cafeteria with his hands in his pockets. He was a good man. That was what struck me when I saw him. He was a good man doing his best, and I had a fleeting wish to carry him away and deliver him into a safer, better life. I touched his arm. He turned with a start and stepped toward me so that he was standing very close. I very nearly let my body fall into his body, but I reminded myself, in time, that it was not Malcolm but Patrick I wanted, and I took a step backward.

  “Give me the car keys,” I said. “Maybe I’ll have better luck. Where are the pills?”

  “The Kwells? They’re in the boot in my suitcase,” he said, handing me the keys. “But you won’t be allowed down there.”

  I turned from him without answering and found the door to the staircase that led to the lower levels. I took the narrow concrete stairs two at a time. The door to the third level, where we’d parked, was locked. I ran back upstairs and found an attendant, a thick man in a blue uniform. I put my hand on his arm and gave him a pleading look. “Can you help me?”

  He nodded with an official air and I followed him back down the stairs, where he opened the door. It was not quiet—there was clinking, as of metal on metal, and there was the roar of the ship’s engines—but the effect was of quiet, and I stood still for a moment, happy to be alone.

  I couldn’t remember the color of the car. Was it gray or beige or possibly gold? And I had not paid any attention to the make. I had been too distracted by Patrick, and by the seating arrangements during the car ride from London. I walked up and down the aisles, feeling aimless and ridiculous. Then I saw the map folded up on the dash, and Patrick’s wool sweater in the backseat. I opened the trunk and found the Kwells in Malcolm’s suitcase, the label indicating one tablet every six hours for motion sickness.

  Patrick and Malcolm were alone at the table when I returned.

  “Here,” I said, handing Malcolm the pills.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Louise has gone off to the loo. She’s a bit under the weather, I’m afraid.”

  “Those will help, hopefully.”

  “She might be in there quite a while,” Patrick said. “Can you make a special delivery, do you think?”

  Malcolm handed back the pills and I made my way to the ladies’ room. I could see her shoes under the stall door—tiny brown tasseled leather loafers—and the cuffs of her brown slacks. Those shoes, those slacks—were they stylish? I didn’t know. I hoped they were not. I could hear her throwing up, not violently but reluctantly, as if resisting the vicissitudes of her own body.

  “Louise?” I said. The word seemed absurd on my lips, as if she were a teacher or a surgeon or a nun and I was using her given name. But what else could I call her? I could not very well call her Mrs. Church.

  “Oh, dear,” she said. “Is that Annie?”

  “Yes, I’ve got the Kwells for you.”

  “He sent you in here, did he?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “This can’t be much fun for you.”

  “It’s no problem at all.”

  Then I heard her throw up again. I felt as if I were seeing into her soul, as I had the night of the party at the gallery. But this time it was her other self I saw, not the dark fairy of want but a middle-aged woman, like the woman I am now, plain, chastened, mortal.

  The toilet flushed.

  “Just leave the pills on the sink,” she said shortly.

  “All right,” I said, understanding that her moment of vulnerability had passed. This would be something we would pretend had not happened. We had not been in the bathroom together. I had not heard her throwing up. I had not seen her feet in their loafers under the stall door. She was not sleeping with Patrick. Her husband was not trying to sleep with me.

  When I returned from the bathroom, Malcolm was alone at the table, and I sat across from him.

  “How is she?” he said.

  “She got sick but I think she’s all right now,” I said. “I left the pills for her.”

  “Thank you.” He put his hand over mine on the table. “I’m sorry about all this.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”

  “I’ll take her to the infirmary when she comes out.”

  We sat in an awkward silence. “It’s lovely to have a moment alone with you,” he said. “I wonder if you know—”

  But he didn’t finish. I was shaking my head, shrugging off the love he kept trying to pin on me. I knew it wasn’t the rig
ht kind of love, because it required nothing of me. I did not need to worry about keeping it alive or putting it out since it was kept alive quite independently of anything I might or might not do. He would not be someone who demanded anything of me. He would hold on to whatever pieces I offered him, however flawed they might be. It did not bind me to him—somehow, it freed me.

  Louise appeared, moving unsteadily toward the table. I slipped my hand from beneath Malcolm’s. He stood abruptly and moved toward her, walking cautiously across the gently rocking ferry floor.

  He was enormous. She was diminutive. He was sturdy. She was delicate. He was cheerful. She was not. They were each the farthest point on opposite ends of the curve of human creation. It was as if with the slightest genetic mutation they would evolve into separate species altogether. Unable to mate. Unable, even, to peacefully coexist. How had it been possible for them to create a child? But they had. The evidence, the photograph, was on Malcolm’s desk at the office. That child was skiing in Saint-Moritz. That child was to join us in two days’ time.

  Malcolm bent his knees so he could put his arm around Louise’s waist. He supported her as she leaned into him and rested her head against the bulk of his arm. He turned her toward the stairs to the infirmary. For the first time I imagined them alone together in a bed. I had so often imagined Louise in Patrick’s bed. I had conjured the cottage, the bedspread, his glasses on the nightstand. The window above them, letting in the cold night air. His lips behind her knees. But she had a bed in her own house, too, a bed she shared with Malcolm, in which they slept and in which everything else that occurred between them occurred. Why had I not thought of it before? In that bed, did he see that her skin was not as taut as it once was? Did he notice the gathering of lines around her eyes and her mouth and the slight pucker of skin leading toward her jaw? Or did he experience her through a veil of familiarity and love, as your father experienced me until I stripped the veil away?