The Last Letter From Your Lover (9 page)

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 happy.”

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.

When he returned to his room, a note had been pushed under the door:

Dear Boot,

While I’m not yet convinced you’re not an ass, I’m willing to give you another chance to convince me. My dinner plans have fallen through for this evening. I’ll be dining in the Hôtel des Calypsos on rue St. Jacques and would welcome company, 8 p.m.

He read this twice, then ran downstairs and sent a telegram to Don:

IGNORE LAST TELEGRAM STOP AM STAYING ON TO WORK ON SERIES ABOUT RIVIERA HIGH SOCIETY STOP WILL INCLUDE FASHION TIPS STOP

He grinned, folded it, and handed it over, picturing his editor’s face when he read it, then tried to work out how to get his suit laundered before the evening.

That night Anthony O’Hare was utterly charming. He was the person he should have been the previous evening. He was the person he perhaps should have been when he was married. He was witty, courteous, chivalrous. She had never been to Congo—her husband said it was “not for your sort”—and, perhaps because he now had some built-in need to contradict Stirling, Anthony was determined to make her want to love it. He talked to her of the elegant, tree-lined streets of Léopoldville, of the Belgian settlers who imported all their food, tinned and frozen, at hideous expense rather than eat in one of the world’s most glorious cornucopias of produce. He told her of the shock of the city’s Europeans when an uprising at the Léopoldville garrison ended with their pursuit and flight to the relative safety of Stanleyville.

He wanted her to see him at his best, to look at him with admiration instead of that air of pity and irritation. And something strange happened: as he acted the charming, upbeat stranger, he found that he briefly became him. He thought of his mother: “Smile,” she would tell him, when he was a boy, it would make him happier. He hadn’t believed her.

Jennifer, in turn, was lighthearted. She listened more than she talked, as socially clever women were wont to do, and when she laughed at something he said, he found himself expanding, keen to make her do it again. He realized, with gratification, that they drew admiring glances from those around them—
that terribly gay couple at table 16
. She was curiously unabashed at being seen with a man who was not her husband. Perhaps this was how Riviera society functioned, he thought, an endless social duet with other people’s husbands and wives. He didn’t like to think of the other possibility: that a man of his stature, his class, could not be seen as a threat.

Shortly after the main course, a tall man in an immaculately cut suit appeared at their table. He kissed Jennifer on both cheeks, then waited, after they had exchanged pleasantries, to be introduced. “Richard, darling, this is Mr. Boot,” she said, straight-faced. “He’s been working on a profile of Larry for the newspapers back in England. I’m filling in the details, and trying to show him that industrialists and their wives are not entirely dull.”

“I don’t think anyone could accuse you of being dull, Jenny.” He held out his hand for Anthony to shake it. “Richard Case.”

“Anthony . . . ah . . . Boot. There’s nothing dull about Riviera society, as far as I can see. Mr. and Mrs. Stirling have been wonderful hosts,” he said. He was determined to be diplomatic.

“Perhaps Mr. Boot will write something about you, too. Richard owns the hotel at the top of the hill. The one with the fabulous views. He’s at the absolute epicenter of Riviera society.”

“Perhaps we can accommodate you on your next visit, Mr. Boot,” the man said.

“I should like that very much, but I’ll wait and see if Mr. Stirling enjoys what I’ve written before I predict whether I’ll be allowed back,” he said. They had both been so careful to mention Laurence repeatedly, he thought afterward, to keep him, invisibly, between them.

That evening she glowed. She gave off a vibration of energy that he suspected only he could detect. Do I do this to you? he wondered, as he watched her eat. Or is it just the relief of being out from under the forbidding eye of that husband of yours? Remembering how Stirling had humiliated her the previous evening, he asked her opinion on the markets, Mr. Macmillan, the royal wedding, refusing to let her defer to his own judgment. She was not greatly aware of the world beyond hers, but was astute on human nature and interested enough in what he had to say to be flattering company. He thought briefly of Clarissa, of her sour pronouncements on the people around her, her readiness to see slights in the most cursory gestures. He had not enjoyed an evening so much for years.

“I should be going soon,” she said, after a glance at her watch. The coffee had arrived, accompanied by a small silver plate of perfectly arranged petits fours.

He laid his napkin on the table, feeling the drag of disappointment. “You can’t,” he said, and added hurriedly, “I’m still not sure if I’ve overridden your previous opinion of me.”

“Really? Oh, I suppose there is that.” She turned her head, saw Richard Case at the bar with friends. He looked away swiftly, as if he had been watching them.

She studied Anthony’s face. If she had been testing him, he appeared to have passed. She leaned forward and lowered her voice: “Can you row?”

“Can I
row
?”

They walked down to the quay. There, she peered down at the water, as if she wasn’t confident of recognizing the boat without double-checking its name, and finally pointed him toward a small dinghy. He climbed down into it, then gave her his hand so that she could take the seat opposite him. The breeze was warm, the lights of the lobster boats winking peaceably in the inky darkness.