Charlotte Gray (14 page)

"Let's talk about your parents. Are they happy?"

"As far as I know." She thought of the windswept house, her father's long absences at work, his awful wordless days, her mother's nervously chattering complicity.

Dr. Burch said nothing. Charlotte said nothing. She knew he expected her to be motivated, embarrassed even, by the silence into giving more details, and that the spontaneous first rush of information would be, by the nature of its selfselection, significant either in what it chose to include or by what it chose to suppress.

So she said nothing.

Dr. Burch smiled, a humourless, slightly reproving smile, as though to suggest that Charlotte was being difficult, or impolite.

"Would you like to tell me a little more about them?"

"It depends what you need to know. They've been married for a long time. They have two children of whom they're fond. They have enough money. My father still works. They're healthy. They certainly have every reason to be happy."

"But you're not sure. Is that because you don't see them much?"

"Some rift, you mean? Not at all."

"And what about your childhood? Was your home life happy?" Charlotte sighed.

"We were a very ordinary family. I had an elder brother called Roderick. We had a dog and a couple of cats. My mother was a nice woman, a good wife and mother. My father was a serious man. He worked very hard. He was a doctor, a physician to begin with, but he became interested in psychiatry, I think perhaps partly as a result of his experiences in the Great War, though I'm not sure about the timing. He was very well read and would certainly have been aware of Freud and people like that quite early on, though of course they didn't have the kind of acceptance then that they do now. People thought they were pornographic." She inclined her head in the direction of Dr Burch's bookshelf.

"Did he practise as a psychiatrist?"

"Yes, he did eventually. It was odd, because he really rather despised most other psychiatrists. He thought a lot of it was rubbish. He hated all that talk about dreams. He was happier being a physician."

Burch said nothing and Charlotte looked at him. He raised an eyebrow, but still did not speak.

Charlotte suddenly sat forward in the chair and gave him her fullest and most charming smile, smoothing her skirt down over her hips as she resettled.

"This must be a thankless job for you, questioning all these young women about their past."

Burch recoiled a little in the floodlight of her social manner. In reestablishing the artificial basis of their conversation he was impelled into a slight awkwardness.

"We're not here to talk about me.

Miss. Gray." Charlotte felt she had won a small victory.

"Though you might make a more interesting subject."

Her attitude was now bordering on the flirtatious. Burch became firmer.

"You didn't answer my question. Was your home life happy?"

"Whom shall we call happy? It was all right."

Her eyes travelled once more down the line of books and for the tenth time unreadingly traced the kicking spokes of the K in Klein. She was thinking of another doctor's room: not that of Wolf, or Burch, but a cold first floor sitting room in a granite house in Aberdeen.

She is seventeen years old, on the point of leaving school. Her hair is clipped back off her face in the neat combs of the Academy sixth form; her schoolgirl knees are pressed together. The spaces beneath her eyes are puffed outwards in damp pink swellings; she is gasping and heaving to catch the breath denied her by the repeated sobbing of her chest. She cannot hold the grief any more and bends her swollen, shiny face down into her hands with a great cry. She wants by that noise to blow the pathways clear to her lungs and to loosen, then expunge, the gripping memory of her betrayal.

The doctor to whom she speaks does not believe her.

"I'm going to show you some pictures now," said Burch, 'and I want you to tell me what each one reminds you of He slipped his hand into the drawer of the desk and brought out a pile of folded papers. He opened the first one and passed it across to Charlotte, who had moved from the depths of the armchair to sit opposite him.

She looked at the symmetrical shapes made by the paper folded in on itself across a blob of black ink.

"Tarantula."

"Are you frightened of insects?"

"Averagely."

"This one?"

"Ink on paper."

"This one?"

"Wine on paper, paint on paper, black water on paper."

"This one?"

"Castle in a forest."

"This one?"

"Scrambled egg with truffles."

"All right. This one."

"Nothing really. Insects. Brambles. Patterns in the sand."

"This one."

"It's like an archipelago, somewhere in the southern seas. Here's the governor-general's house with its shady verandah overlooking the sea."

"Charming. This one."

"Is a face. A gargoyle on a church."

"This one."

"Is another blot. We're back to blots, I'm afraid. Ink on paper."

"This one."

"Blot."

"This one."

"Blot. Vaguely canine, but still a blot. I have a feeling they're all going to be blots from now on."

Eventually Burch slipped the papers back into his desk.

"All right.

Now I'm going to say a word and I want you to say the first word your mind associates with it. I do want you to take this seriously. You must relax. Let your mind just take its own course. Go and sit back in the armchair and close your eyes."

Charlotte sank down into the cushions, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The room had a churchy smell; she relaxed more than she expected. Burch squatted on the hard chair with a list on his lap. His eyes ran down the words.

"Drink."

"Water."

"House."

"Garden."

"Mother."

"Hair."

"Dog."

"Legs."

"Apple."

"Eve."

"Stick."

"Beat."

"Father."

"Sad look."

"One word, please. Try again. Father."

"Waistcoat."

"Home."

"Cold."

"Friend."

"Girl."

"War."

"Peace."

"War."

"Planes."

"London."

"Flat."

"Kiss."

"Lips."

"Floor."

"Board."

"Ceiling."

"White."

"Bed."

"Lie."

"Red."

"Lips."

"Blue."

"Uniform."

"Flowers."

"Roses."

"France."

"Roads."

"Sex."

"Female."

"All right. You can open your eyes."

Charlotte blinked. Burch laid the folder on his desk. On a low shelf was a rectangular basket containing some wooden blocks, like a child's building bricks. Burch started to move his hand towards them, then saw Charlotte watching him. Something in her expression appeared to make him think better of it.

"All right. Miss. Gray," he said, standing up.

"I think we've probably finished. Will you ask the next girl to come in, please."

"Have I passed? Are you going to recommend me for further training?"

"I think so."

As she passed the desk Charlotte glimpsed the notes he had made on a page

"Ensign Charlotte Gray'. The only thing he had written was: " T. C. by 1/2'. X

Gregory took the stairs two at a time, one hand clamped against the bottle of gin in his coat pocket. He had stopped worrying about his motives; he only knew how anxious he was to see the door of the flat swing open.

Charlotte was waiting, leaning against the door frame, wearing a floral summer dress with bare arms and legs. Gregory inhaled the scent of lily of the valley as he kissed her warm neck.

"Is the coast clear?"

"Yes. I don't think anyone'll be back before eleven."

Gregory ran his hands through Charlotte's hair. She pushed him away and resettled the tortoiseshell comb he had dislodged.

Gregory poured drinks.

"I'm off to France again any day," he said.

"As soon as the weather's clear."

"Another drop?" said Charlotte, sitting down next to him on the sofa.

"That sort of thing. They've given me an address in Clermont Ferrand."

"Why?"

"It's a Citroen garage in the middle of town. The owner's a part of the local network. He's called Chollet, I believe, but he goes under the name of Hercule. I'm supposed to get in touch if something goes wrong."

"Like what?"

"I ... I don't know. I'm sure it'll be all right."

"You told me nothing could go wrong in those big Halifaxes." Gregory seemed distracted, then made a sudden effort.

"I just discovered today what the G section codeword for the moon is. Guess.

It's a girl's name."

"I don't know," said Charlotte.

"Phoebe? Selena?"

"No, it's Charlotte! I've been reading all these messages about " Charlotte Unsatisfactory", "Charlotte Impeccable", "Regret Operation impossible, state of Charlotte" Charlotte and Isaac, the two most important people in my life."

"Who's Isaac?"

"Isaac Newton. The black knight."

"What are you talking about?"

"Isaac is what pilots call gravity."

"I see." Charlotte smiled and laid her hand on his knee.

"And how's your French coming on? Would you like to practise?"

"Not today. I'm just not as clever as you, Charlotte, that's the trouble."

"You don't have to be clever to learn a language. Children can do it."

"Well, I suppose I can just about make myself understood but as soon as I open my mouth they'll know I'm not French."

"You'll just have to be careful. Don't look so sad. I hate it when you go all remote like this."

Gregory lit two cigarettes and gave one to Charlotte. He sighed.

"You're worth ten of me, old thing. That's the trouble." Charlotte raised a finger.

"No R.A.F talk."

"What?"

"Isn't that what you call your planes," old girl" and " old thing"?" Gregory smiled tiredly.

"I'm not like that, you know. Charlotte. All that balls about " wizard prangs". I don't really like those sort of people."

"I know. I know you're not really like that." She had taken his hand as she began to speak in the voice of a soothing and indulgent mother, which Gregory found shamefully affecting. He laid his head on the cotton fabric of Charlotte's dress while she stroked his hair.

"I sometimes talk like that because I grew fond of those men. That's the trouble. They probably all seem absurd to you, and in some ways they do to me. But they were very young. They hadn't even begun their lives. You must forgive them a few silly phrases."

"You talk of them with such devotion." said Charlotte.

"I sometimes think you're fonder of them than you are of me." Gregory stood up.

"Come on. Don't let's waste these evenings together being morbid. Let's have dinner. What is it? Spam?"

"No. It's a pot au feu a la mode de Ministere de Guerre."

"Sounds interesting. I want you to tell me more about your training. You're not really going ahead with this, are you?"

Charlotte drew the curtains of the kitchen and lit the candles on the laid table. She told him about Dr. Burch and of how she would shortly have to go on a course in Scotland.

Gregory watched her as she spoke. Sometimes, when he heard her talk, he felt that he had merely stumbled from one thing to another without ever properly thinking about it: India, England, Nyasaland, farming, friends, women, war. He must have made decisions, some based on quick gratification, some on what was sensible, but he had never thought it through in the dimension Charlotte inhabited. It was almost as though he had never grown up at all, but had just trusted to luck and to a childish belief that things would probably work out. Perhaps if he had undergone her self-scrutiny he would not have been so shaken by the experience of war. He liked to watch the nervous intensity of her narratives, as she described her interviews and experiences. He shuddered at the completeness of her trust in him and felt unworthy of its intensity. He was, in fact, though he did not admit it, a little frightened of her; and the only way to subdue that fear was by indulging the violently erotic feeling that her fierce attention to his well-being aroused in him.

At ten o'clock he had to leave. Charlotte was asleep on the bed, her face pink and untroubled, her breathing steady. Gregory picked up his service shirt and flannel trousers from the floor and pulled them on.

He ran his hand back through his hair, then sat on the hard little chair at the end of Charlotte's bedroom and looked at her in the unlit gloom of the summer evening.

He had not told her of the true nature of his flight. Perhaps he would never see her again.

She was lying on her side with one leg raised as though running. There were tiny dry lines where the skin of her upper foot met the sole. Her toenails were painted scarlet. Gregory's eyes ran over the sharp ankle bone, up the straight shin to the pocket enclosed by the stretched sinews of her raised knee, the thin pink creases behind the other, straightened, knee, then up the sweep of her thigh, whose packed flesh was of the same firm consistency as that of her lower leg. At the top of the hip-bones were two soft folds, which, to her intense embarrassment, he referred to as love-handles.

Gregory's lips twitched as he recalled her indignation. He explained to her that it was necessary to have some flaw to balance what might otherwise have been too orthodox a figure, but Charlotte was ashamed of them, as she was of the small roundness of her belly that made her tighter skirts swell a little at the front, not fall in the perpendicular line of a fashion drawing. This too Gregory liked, though the way she lay made it invisible to his gaze, which could make out only the bottom of her ribs and her upper arm with its pale freckles trickling over on to the shoulder where her fair hair lay disarrayed, a single darker strand of it stuck to the side of her face by sweat.