Fascination (15 page)

‘What kind of a dog is that?’ he asked.

‘It’s a Pomeranian.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Have you a cigarette you could spare me? I’d kill for a cigarette.’

He offered his pack, she took one and they manoeuvred around against the wind to light it, their shoulders brushing once or twice.

She looked at him and smiled.

‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw a man in a hat and a three-piece flannel suit standing on the beach. Is that a mirage, I thought, a chimera?’

‘I’m staying at the hotel.’

‘The Pamet? God, am I that far down? How are the rooms?’

They walked back to the inn together, the woman explaining that she was going to phone for her car to be driven down from Truro to fetch her. Her naughty dog was called Euclid, she said, though she realized she should never have given her stupid mutt such an intelligent name.

‘My name’s Garrett Rising,’ he said, offering his hand.

She shook it. ‘My name’s Anna…’ She paused and then said a name that he couldn’t quite catch. Demonserian? Staufferman? He thought it would be rude to ask her to repeat it, so, instead, he offered her the chance of using the phone in his room.

After she called her home, she wandered around his little cottage, curious. She laughed at the print, unzipped her windcheater and unreflectingly picked some wool-balls off the soft front of her cream
jersey, dropping them carefully in the wastebasket as she nosed around. Euclid settled down on a mat by the bed, completely docile.

‘You’ve got everything a man could need, here,’ she said, walking into the kitchen.

Except a woman, Garrett thought, automatically, and in that moment, having acknowledged his need for a woman, Garrett desired
this
woman, this Anna-woman, this tall, handsome, confident woman, more than he had desired anyone or anything in years. And in the way that this kind of mental recognition seems to transfer itself automatically and instinctively from man to woman, from woman to man, he saw Anna pause, close the icebox and turn to look at him. He knew from the small, amused frown on her face, from the merest narrowing of her eyes that she had registered what he was thinking, had noted the tiny significant change in the atmosphere. Garrett relaxed: like it or not, signals had been exchanged.

‘May I offer you a drink?’

He poured out two glasses of whisky – ‘Just cover the bottom,’ she said – and as they chinked the rims she thanked him again for catching Euclid. Garrett relished the burn of the whisky in his throat, the small fire in his belly, and, emboldened, asked her if he could buy her dinner.

‘Never on a Friday,’ she said, not perturbed. ‘Friday night we go to the movies in Orleans. Rain or shine. Oh, there’s my car.’

‘We?’ Garrett said.

‘My husband.’ She smiled, apologetically, Garrett thought, as if she’d liked the beginning of this adventure – its erotic potential.

‘But… he’s out of town. Thank you so much, Mr Rising. Euclid and I are for ever in your debt.’ Now she looked like she was about to laugh. ‘Come on Euclid, let’s go home.’

‘My pleasure.’

Garrett watched her lead the dog along the boardwalk towards a large, glossy Packard. The man driving opened the door for her, picked up Euclid, and placed him on the front seat. The woman looked back and waved, just a flick of the hand. Garrett closed the door.

In Orleans, that evening, at the Rio, Garrett watched
Sacred Autumn
with only half a mind, the other half on Anna and, inevitably, on the future of Kavanaugh-Rising Inc. When the lights went up suddenly, he sat for a moment baffled, wondering why the actress had been so tearful at the end, what had happened to make life bear down on her so. He stood up and placed his hat on his head and strolled up the aisle. Anna was sitting in the back row.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Drive me home?’

In the car, just as they passed through Wellfleet, she reached over and felt the hard ridge of his penis through the flannel of his pants.

‘Good,’ she said, ‘I thought so.’

When he woke he was first aware of a refulgent big rhomboid of lemon light on the wall facing him. The shape of the sun on the wall blinding his eyes, as if he had woken to a different, simpler world where there was only light and empty walls. He turned and noticed the drapes were parted wide and the low, early sun was filling the room. He sat up in bed and saw that Anna was dressing. She stepped briskly into her skirt and zipped it up.

‘Morning,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’

‘Early.’

‘Come back to bed.’

‘I have to go.’

He dressed quickly and together they walked down through the dunes to the beach. She slipped off her shoes and turned to him.

‘I’ll be home in no time,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Garrett.’

He kissed her and she thrust her tongue deep into his mouth, holding him hard to her. Then she buried her face in his neck and he heard her draw her breath in hard as if she were filling her lungs with the smell of him. ‘It was nice,’ she said softly into his collar.

‘What a word, my God.’

‘When can I see you?’

‘This is crazy.’ She punched him gently on the arm. ‘No, no, no.
It would all be too complicated. It’s over – we had our adventure.’

She touched his lips with her two fingers to stop him saying any more and turned and walked away from him, not looking back, striding up the beach to – where? – to Truro, she had said. Can’t be a big place, Truro, he thought – you’ll be easy to find.

Tom Harbinger held the new sheets out to him. Garrett was staring across the street into an office where he could see the receptionist through the plate glass window. The summer sun angling in painted a lucent green rectangle on the dark green walls and lit the girl as she talked on the phone. She looked a bit like Anna, he thought, younger, hair shorter, but that kind of angular face with prominent cheekbones. He remembered Anna on the phone, calling for her car, how she tucked the phone under her chin and spun the rings on her finger as she talked. She –

‘What do you think?’ Tom Harbinger said. ‘Garrett?’

‘What? Oh sure, they look great.’

He signed the docket and Tom took the sheets away. Funny how things happen, Garrett reflected, for maybe the thousandth time: we lose Foley and McBride and we get Trans-American Airlines a week later. He had thought he was lost and yet he was saved. True, airline timetables weren’t as interesting as guide books, but what did he care? He was a printer – and they needed new timetables four times a year.

He went into his office and called Laura. The doctor thought that Joanna was suffering from nerves, she told him, there was a clinic he recommended she go to. Of course, he said, whatever it costs: Trans-American Airlines had made him prosperous again. He had a sudden image of Anna shucking off her brassière to reveal her white, uptilted breasts and he felt his bowels slacken. These images came to him spontaneously and with absolute clarity, absolute palpability, as if they were memories of events that had happened yesterday. Over four months now, and not a day, not a waking hour had gone by without his thinking about her.

Listen Laura, he said, I have to go back up to Boston today. But
it’s Friday. I know, I know, but old man Foley called – he wants to see me urgently – Christ, I think he may give me the guide books back. Tell him to fuck himself, Laura said, vehemently. I’ve got to go, Garrett said: fifteen years of business and all – I owe him. You’re a weak man, Garrett, she said. Sure, he said, weak as they come.

The film playing at the Rio was called
The Golden Stranger
, starring Dalton Paul and Jayne Callot. Garrett had arrived early and for a while sat alone in the cinema with only the bored usherette for company. Slowly the seats filled and the lights eventually went down. He had a good view of the entrance but he hadn’t seen Anna come in. When the movie began he thought about leaving and laughed at the idea that a woman like Anna would go to the movies every Friday night like some kind of ordinary housewife. He hadn’t been able to book a room at the Pamet Inn and had found a kind of guest house in Orleans which was clean but basic. Now he thought about it, how could he take Anna back there, a woman like her? Ridiculous, he thought, and tried to concentrate on the film but he had missed key plot developments and the fellow he thought was the bad guy turned out to be good.

He came out of the men’s room and saw her standing alone in the lobby smoking a cigarette. It was raining outside and cerise rain slanted down through the neon areola of the sign. She wore a light coat and her hair was down. It was shorter than the last time he had been with her, he thought, as he went up behind her and touched her elbow, softly.

‘Hi.’

She turned and the look on her face, the instant, pure joy in her face only lasted a second until it turned hard and panicky.

‘What’re you doing here? For God’s sake!’

He kept his voice low and his face expressionless. ‘I had to see you. I’m going crazy. I think about you all the time.’ He smiled. ‘It’s pathetic. All the time, all day – I think about you. I can’t help myself.’

She dropped her voice and dropped her gaze. ‘I know,’ she said.
‘Me too.’ Then she looked up and her face brightened falsely. ‘Hi, honey,’ she said. ‘Look who’s here.’

Garrett turned and saw the man he’d been pissing next to in the men’s room. A tall, stooped, bald man with a slack face who looked about twenty years older than Anna.

‘This is Mr Rising – the man who saved Euclid.’

‘And may you suffer eternal punishment,’ the bald man said, his grin showing his good, even teeth. ‘Euclid is my
bête noire
.’

‘Charlie, don’t be cruel. You love Euclid, you know you do.’

‘Like my own kin. Live in Orleans, Mr Rising?’

‘Just visiting.’

‘Next time you see Euclid, pass by on the other side, I’d appreciate it. I’ll get the car, hon. Nice to meet you.’

They shook hands and Charlie, the husband, left.

Anna looked as if she were about to cry.

‘You see, you fool! What’re you playing at? What do you think this is?’

‘Come to New York,’ he said, taking out his card and scribbling on the back. ‘My office is downtown, Greene Street. There’ll be a room booked in your name at the Hamilton hotel on Sixth Avenue and Houston for one month. Come to New York and call me.’

‘No.’

‘We have to see each other again. At least once.’

‘No. Go away. It’s finished.’

‘At least once.’

There was the sound of a car horn tooting outside. She gave him an angry, flying, hopeless look and left.

After they had made love, Garrett pulled on his shirt and trousers and ordered room service – two club sandwiches and two beers. When he took the tray at the door he pretended not to see the bellboy’s smirk.

They ate their sandwiches and talked quietly about each other, how they felt about each other and how they realized that the day they had met on the beach had changed their lives.

‘Fate,’ she said.

‘Euclid,’ he said, and they laughed at that.

‘It’s hopeless, you know,’ she said, after a while. ‘I can’t leave him.’

‘And I can’t leave her.’

‘There, it’s hopeless.’

‘We can meet here.’

‘What kind of a life is that?’

‘It’s better than a life of not meeting.’

‘But what’s the point?’

‘What’s the point otherwise? We’ll see each other, that’s the only thing that’s important.’

She gave a little cry of frustration and despair, rolled over in the bed to face the wall, and Garrett stared at the carpet. The motif in the weave was of knights on prancing chargers; pennants flew from their upraised lances. The taste of beer was sour in his mouth. Perhaps they could go abroad, steal a holiday somewhere – surely they could think of some way of prolonging this, of eking out a life together. Moments together were surely better than a lifetime of separation. The thought of not seeing her was worse than death. He felt her hand searching for his and he took it.

‘We have to do something,’ she said

‘We will, I promise.’

‘What’re we going to do?’

He felt a small lifting of his spirits now he knew she was ready to try it with him, this life of moments – moments of happiness.

‘I’ll think of something.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, staring at the knights on their prancing chargers. ‘I don’t know.’

Where was I? Yes, it was a calculation I made to while away an idle moment in a busy week, just the other day, in fact. As a man, an elderly man, a man who – I say this without vanity – could be considered to be in his mid-sixties (though I am in fact seventy-five), I thought this was an interesting figure to quantify. I consulted my journals, my engagement diaries, my address books and I calculated that I had ‘known’, in the biblical sense, some forty-eight women. Not counting prostitutes, of course. You might deduce from this that I had a reasonable understanding of the fair sex. Not a bit of it.

The name is Hill. Yves Ivan Hill. English father, Russian mother with a fondness for French novels. Profession: man of letters.

I went out today, one of my ever rarer excursions, and took a stroll in the park (Hyde Park – I live to the north of that distended stretch of urban countryside). I bought a newspaper –
The Times
– and sat on a bench to read it. However, my mind began to wander, thinking of new plot lines for my movie scenario and after a while I stood up and wandered off: perambulation stimulates the imagination, I find. I hadn’t moved twenty paces when I remembered my newspaper and retraced my steps. Another man, young, shabbily dressed, was sitting on the same bench reading my
Times
. ‘That’s my newspaper,’ I told him. ‘I left it there.’ I almost added a ‘sorry’ but thought instantly: what do I have to apologize for? ‘That’s not your newspaper, mate,’ he said. ‘You left it behind – so it’s England’s now.’ I told him both where and when I had purchased it and explained politely how I had come to leave it on the bench. ‘You can have it when I’ve finished,’ the young man said. Now I am not an angry person but I felt a pure form of anger sluice through my
body. I walked away, turned and pointed at him. ‘When you next have some bad luck,’ I said, ‘remember me. Because I’ll be thinking of you.’ I stared at him then strode on, ordering myself to calm down. Moments later I heard his footsteps behind me. ‘Here, take your newspaper,’ he said. I demurred, saying that it was no longer my newspaper, that it was England’s, now. ‘Take your fucking paper!’ he yelled and threw it at me. It missed, of course, and flapped to the ground. We both left it there and went our separate ways.