I Remember You (29 page)

‘Do you need it now? Let’s go back to the hotel and I’ll find it for you.’

‘I don’t want to disturb—’

‘No,’ she said, equally curtly. ‘I’m meeting Peter in a bit, so I’d better do it now. Let’s go. Hope that’s OK.’ She turned to the girls.

‘Yes!’ cried Claire eagerly.

‘Of course it is,’ said Liz. ‘See you later. Give us a call if you want to meet up.’

Tess smiled gratefully at her and put some money down on the table, fumbling slightly. Her fingers were shaking, she didn’t know why. ‘Thanks, you two. That was lovely.’

‘No,’ Liz told her, handing back the euro note. ‘Keep it. Buy us a drink next time.’

Tess nodded, acknowledging her point, and she smiled. ‘Right,’ she said and turned back to Adam. He looked at her, unsmiling. ‘Let’s go then, shall we.’

Adam walked fast. They hurried back along the uneven streets, past the knots of tourists and restaurants, dodging the pots of geraniums that clustered at the corners of the streets. She kept her arms crossed and so did he; they said nothing, but some kind of tension was mounting by the time they got back to the hotel. Tess fumbled again for her keys, her fingers all thumbs. Adam waited, frowning, by the door.

‘So—what did you decide to do, in the end?’

‘We’re flying back tomorrow. I texted you.’

‘Right. My phone isn’t working.’

She unlocked her bedroom door, and he held it open for her to go inside.

‘Well, I didn’t know how else to get in touch with you,’ she said, going over to the chest of drawers. ‘Sit down.’ She gestured to the spare twin bed and he sat down, his hands between his knees, picking at a piece of skin on his finger. She saw how tired he looked.

‘So—what time’s your flight?’

She picked up the folder with all her information in it, and started leafing through it. ‘It’s early, I’m afraid. Nine twenty-five. We’re leaving first thing.’

‘Right,’ Adam said again. ‘I’ll have to come back on my own.’

Tess slammed the folder down on the chest of drawers. ‘Adam, come on. What the fuck do you want me to say?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing, Tess, why would you accommodate me in all this?’

‘
You told me to ask them!
’ she yelled at him, surprised at the intensity of her own feelings, at how tightly she was wound up. ‘You bloody told me to sort it out, this morning! Don’t sit there and act like that. I did what you said, Adam. I’m sorry the flight’s not later, but you’ve got your own stuff to sort out.’

Adam said scathingly, ‘The “stuff”, as you so charmingly put it, is coming back next week, and they’ve said I should just take a normal flight back and meet her at the airport.’

‘Oh,’ said Tess. ‘Fine.’ It’s not my fault, she wanted to say, bewildered. She didn’t understand him, didn’t know what to say to stop him being like this. ‘Let me write down the details for you,’ she said. ‘You should get some sleep after you’ve sorted it out, you look exhausted.’ She scribbled in silence for a few moments, the sound of her biro on the notepad loud in the hot, close room.

‘I won’t take up much more of your time,’ Adam said evenly. ‘I know you have to go off and meet the Italian Stallion, and have your
Roman Holiday
fantasy for one more night.’ He paused as she turned and gave him the piece of paper. ‘You don’t have time for—’

‘Give it a rest,’ Tess said, breathing in deeply through her nose. She closed her eyes, trying to keep her cool. ‘Adam, I know this has been a long, horrible day, I know this is all awful for you. But stop taking it out on me. What have I done?’

He folded the piece of paper over and over in his hand. They were facing each other, staring intently at one another in the gloom of the room.

‘Nothing,’ he said, after a while. ‘You’re right. You’ve done nothing wrong. I shouldn’t take it out on you. You don’t realize.’

He turned for the door, but she caught his arm. ‘Adam—I’m sorry. I’m here for you. You know I am. I always will be.’

‘When it’s convenient for you,’ he said, and there was grief in his voice, a catch in his throat. He turned away, sliding the paper into his jeans pocket. ‘So just forget it, Tessa. We don’t always have to do this.’

‘Is this about after your mum died?’ Tess said, banging her hand against the wall, so she could lean on it. She gritted her teeth. ‘You don’t know—’

‘I do,’ he said. ‘I know how much I hurt you.’ She stared at him. ‘I do. You think I don’t but I do. It’s just that you disappeared. You totally disappeared, for eight, nine, ten years. When I needed you most. You were my family—and…’ He shook his head, his smile bleak. ‘No. Forget it.’

Tess laughed, her voice hollow. ‘Adam! Don’t you remember what happened between us? There were reasons—there was a reason I didn’t want to see you, you know.’

‘What—the abortion?’ he said, his voice low. ‘I know. I know.’ She stared helplessly at him. ‘But my God, everything was pretty black then. Mum—the news about the family—you know. That summer—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done what I did to you. I never regretted it, T. Never.’ He gripped her arm. ‘But it happened.’

‘You didn’t
do it to me
,’ Tess said, trying not to sound furious. She took a deep breath. ‘We both did it. But I was the one who had to get rid of it. And that happened, too, you know. Even though you—’ Her voice cracked. ‘You didn’t even ask. You never asked: And I’m still so angry with you—I’m still
so angry
—’ She breathed in again, trying to stay calm, trying to catch that scent of jasmine, and she smoothed the folder in front of her with her hands. ‘You’re right. We should just forget it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Let’s not get into this, Adam. It’s not a good idea. Not now.’

‘Not a good idea.’ Adam nodded solidly. ‘Fine, Tess. Fine.’

‘I just mean, now’s not the time. Your grandmother—’

‘Don’t call her that.’

‘Oh, grow up.’ Tess slammed her hand down on the chest of drawers, the sweat from her hand slimy on the varnished wood. It shook, violently. ‘Just grow up, Adam!’

‘Me, grow up—’ Adam said, his expression black. ‘Me, grow up! Tess, my God, coming from you, that would almost be hilarious, if it wasn’t so—’ He shook his head, searching for something. He spat the words at her. ‘
Tragic
, that’s it.’

‘At least I’ve got a fucking
job
, and a house of my own, and a life!’ she screamed at him, so angry that she feared she might lose control. Her mouth was dry, she could feel the blood pounding in her ears, around her clenched jaw. She opened her mouth, staring at him in contempt. ‘You bastard! You smug stupid bastard! I’m sorting my life out, I’m moving on, I’m changing things and you—you just stay the same. Your whole life, you’ve been in the same place, drinking in the same pub, you’ve had the same job, the same friends—and you tell me I’m not grown-up?’

‘My life’s not a fantasy,’ he said. His voice was ugly. ‘I’m not trying to live my life like something out of a film, Tess. I don’t fall in love with people just because they live in a romantic city and they whisper a few sweet words to me late at night after some wine.’

‘Peter and me are—’

‘Peter and I,’ he corrected, and she could have slapped him. ‘Peter’s nothing, Tess, he’s a phantom, he’s a dream, you can’t see him for what he really is! What are you doing? It’s like Will all over again.’

‘He’s nothing like Will,’ she said furiously. ‘Shut up.’

‘You wanted someone stable and boring and staid who’d tell you how great you were and lo and behold, there was Will, except he was so stable and boring he couldn’t even get around to having sex with you,’ Adam said, as if he were reciting a lesson. She stumbled back. It was like a slap in the face.

‘That’s not true,’ she said, her voice a whisper.

‘And now here you are and you’re pissed off with me, and you’re pissed off with Langford, so hey, presto! Wow! Here’s this handsome stranger who’s on the rebound and wants some no-strings sex, so I’ll just convince myself I’ve fallen in love with him, and then it’ll all be OK, and I’ll be able to justify it in my mind!’ Adam’s eyes were blazing. ‘Because you always can, Tess, even when you’re most at fault, you always can. But you don’t understand, he’s not offering you a future. He’s offering you a distraction from the past, and that’s not the same thing.’

She stared at him. ‘Man. I didn’t realize you hated me so much,’ she said brokenly.

He was silent, and his hands fell to his sides. She looked at him, almost afraid, and was astonished to see his eyes filled with tears.

‘It’s not that,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s that I loved you so much.’

‘What?’

He nodded in the gathering gloom of the room; she could hardly see his face. ‘For years, after you left. And I needed you so much. I missed you so much. And you were my best friend.’ He gave a ragged sigh. ‘You’re right, T. Sorry. That’s the trouble, isn’t it. With you and me. Always has been.’

‘What?’ she said again, calmer now. She pressed her hand protectively to her neck. He watched her, and touched the hand, lightly, sadly. He looked at her, his eyebrows raised, and scratched his hair which was standing up in tufts, the way it used to when he was angry, or hurt, or confused about something.

‘It’s nothing, now. We know how to hurt each other, more than anyone else. Don’t we? And we have done, comprehensively. I don’t understand why it should be like that, but it is.’

His words saddened her profoundly. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Perhaps. I know what you mean.’

‘I couldn’t hurt Francesca like that, not if I thought about it for a fortnight,’ he said. ‘And compared to you, she’s nothing to me.’

But with the mention of Francesca it was as if a spell had been broken, and Tess stepped back a little. She touched her forehead, the back of her neck; she was perspiring in the sultry heat, still breathing rapidly. He watched her.

‘I’m sorry again,’ he said.

‘Do you think there’s a way back for us?’ she said, but she knew the answer.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think we can be friends, the way we wish we could.’

‘Maybe,’ she said. She looked at him, seeing him again as she’d seen him that very morning—it seemed a lifetime ago, now. ‘I don’t think so.’ She cleared her throat. ‘And you—you have a lot of stuff you need to sort out,’ she said without rancour.

He nodded. ‘I know.’

But he didn’t know, that was the trouble. It was as if they were playing in the dark, tripping over things, hurting themselves, each other, and it had to stop. Perhaps the only way was if they accepted that too much had happened for them to ever be friends. Perhaps this was goodbye, and perhaps it should have happened a while ago.

‘I probably won’t see you tomorrow morning, then,’ Adam said. He was standing by the door.

‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Adam. I hope—I hope she gets home OK.’

‘You too,’ he said, and he bent forward as if he were going to kiss her forehead, but then he stopped. He gave a short, sad sound, something between a laugh and a cry, and he went out, shutting the door behind him.

Tess sank slowly down onto the bed, staring at nothing, not noticing or caring that the room was now in darkness. She didn’t move. She sat there for ages, trying to see where
it had gone wrong. Where her friendship with Adam had become impossible. Perhaps, she thought to herself finally, perhaps the seeds were sown long, long ago, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. What those seeds were, she knew she would probably never discover.

Her time in Rome was nearly over, and in a hospital in the middle of the river lay an old woman, clinging to life, the only one who could explain what lay in wait back for them back in Langford, away from this magical city where it seemed anything could happen.

Tess got up and opened the window, gazing out into the still night, waiting for Peter to arrive, and she did not move for a long time.

When Peter finally arrived and she opened the door, the rest of the hotel was asleep. She saw his face and something about his expression worried her, a warning note ringing in the distance.

‘Hi, honey,’ he said, coming into the room, putting his hands on either side of her face and kissing her, a long, deep kiss. ‘What a day you’ve had, hey?’

‘It’s OK,’ she said, though when she looked back to this morning and Adam’s appearance in the lobby of the Albergo Watkins, she was astonished to find it was the same day, and not several weeks earlier. She put her hand on his chest, looking at him.

‘How are you?’ she said.

‘Good,’ said Peter. ‘But I need to talk to you.’ He was always direct, he didn’t dart around the subject. He took her hands and pulled her so they were sitting on the bed. ‘I had the interview for the job today. The West Coast job.’

‘What?’ Tess’s bleary mind struggled to fit the pieces together of the last week. ‘The job…’ She was rewinding in her head. ‘That first night…you told me about it.’

‘Yeah, and I just interviewed with Donald today, on the phone. He wants me to fly to New York next week.’

‘Wow, that’s exciting,’ Tess said, trying her best to sound incredibly positive, as though that was the best news she’d ever had. ‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ Peter said, his eyes scanning her face. ‘What do you think it means?’

‘Well,
I
don’t know, do I?’ said Tess. ‘But they must like you. And why wouldn’t they? You’re—’

‘No,’ he interrupted. ‘What does it mean for us? I’m thinking about us.’ He leaned forward and kissed her neck gently.

‘Oh.’ It had been a long, long day, and Tess was tired, not least by the scene she’d just had with Adam. With horror she felt tears budding in her eyes, plopping down onto the coverlet of the bed. ‘That’s—that’s wonderful,’ she said, sniffing.

‘It’s wonderful that I’m going?’ Peter said, looking uncertain.

‘No, you idiot.’ She slid her arms around his neck, kissing him. ‘It’s wonderful that you’re thinking about us. Because—’ she gave a watery gulp—‘I am too.’

‘I don’t know what I’d do if they offered it to me,’ he said seriously. He pushed a lock of her hair away from her face. ‘It’s a great job, Tess—I just have to be straight with you.’

‘That’s why I love you,’ she told him. ‘Because you’re straight with me. It doesn’t matter. If it’s the job you want…’

‘This isn’t a holiday romance, then?’ he said. ‘Is it?’

‘We don’t know what it is, darling,’ she told him, kissing him again. ‘But it’s something. Isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He picked up her shawl, which was lying on the bed. ‘We’ve got one more night together. Let’s go out. Just for a while.’

So for one last time, she grabbed her bag and they left the hotel together, and for one last time she walked through the dark, uneven streets with Peter, hand in hand, kissing and laughing in the warm night air, not really saying much, just enjoying the fact that they were by each other’s side. They stopped in a tiny vinoteca by the river and had bread, salami
and wine, and talked about silly things, their favourite films, Americanisms and Britishisms, like getting the floor numbers mixed up the first time she came to his flat (or apartment, as he insisted she call it). They climbed onto his moped and rode through the deserted moonlit city, theirs alone, across the river and back to the hotel, and the wind was cool on her face, her neck, her collar bone, as she clung onto him one last time.

When they got back, they pushed the narrow single beds together in silence. He wrapped her in his arms and drew her close, kissing the back of her neck, holding her tight to him. She didn’t sleep, though she desperately wanted to. She lay all night, blinking, her mind racing, always in a circle, reaching no conclusions, while Peter’s cool breath blew steadily on her spine.

Early the next morning, she said goodbye to him at the door of her hotel room. They kissed for a long time, the extended handle of Tess’s suitcase banging against the plaster walls as she leaned against it, clutching on to Peter, feeling as if she would cry the moment he let her go. Tears pricked her eyes, and she held onto his shirt.

‘Don’t go,’ he said eventually, laughing as he removed her hand from his buttons. ‘Stay here.’

That was why she was sure she loved him, that idea that they could say these quite monumentally important things to each other and there was no game-playing, nothing sinister about it. That she could look into his eyes and see—what? Nothing. Nothing other than kindness and affection and a need to be loved in return, the way she did. Adam was wrong, wrong,
wrong
! Peter wasn’t a passion junkie, and he wasn’t on the rebound. Well, he was—but that was what was great. She knew that! She knew his faults as well as his strengths, and that only made her like him more. Because she wasn’t playing a game, she was totally herself. She didn’t lie to him,
or conceal things from him. He wasn’t a different person from the one she thought he had been.

‘You know I can’t,’ she said, touching one of the buttons lightly with her index finger. ‘I have to go.’

As if on cue, a car horn sounded outside.

‘That’s us,’ she said.

‘Come back here, then,’ Peter said. ‘Come back and stay with me.’

‘You might not be here,’ she said, laughing.

‘I changed my mind. I won’t go for the interview. I want to stay here.’ She shook her head questioningly, and he pressed on. ‘Imagine it—us in the apartment, just the two of us. We could go out to supper every night. You could speak Italian, buy a scooter, eat pasta…walk to everywhere you need to be, live a proper life here, buy fresh flowers in the market every day.’ She was laughing; she opened her mouth to speak but he put his finger on her lips. He said, earnestly, ‘You’d get a job at a school here easily, they’re always short of English-language speakers. There’s room for your books—you can even have your portrait of Jane Austen. Why are you going back there?’

He reached forward and kissed her gently on the forehead, and the tenderness of this small, perfect gesture touched Tess somehow, more than she could possibly have said. Her stomach turned over, and she breathed out, deeply.

‘You have to go and I have to go.’ She scrunched up her face, so she didn’t cry.

‘That’s a good look,’ Peter said.

‘Don’t,’ said Tess. ‘I—I’m trying not to.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m trying not to cry.’

‘Aw, sweetie,’ he said, and his voice was kind. He put his finger under her chin. She looked away from his eyes, at the chipboard door next to them. ‘Whatever. When you’re back home, just remember how it felt to be this way, to be this person. Remember. It’s too easy to forget that kinda stuff.’

Why are you going back there? She could still feel it all: the warm breeze in the room, the smell of the hotel, jasmine mixed with coffee and heat, most of all heat, the kind of warm terracotta-petrol-tarmac-y heat you never found in England, certainly not London, let alone Langford. The smells of Langford were wet grass, petrol, certainly, rain, a certain ‘farmyard smell’, as her mother used to put it, and something else…the smell of an English country town, whatever that was. Mustardy? Wet tweed? Cheap, horrible scented candles, the kind that were on sale everywhere?

Tess tore her mind back to the present. She wrapped her arms slowly around Peter’s neck.

‘I won’t forget,’ she said, and she raised herself up so she was on tiptoe. ‘I won’t forget. I will always remember you, darling.’

His hand slid over her hip, onto her bottom, and he pulled her towards him again, and for a few moments more she was lost in the deliciously familiar feeling of total happiness, of Prosecco and moonlight and sex. Then Peter opened the door, wheeling her bag towards the stairs, and she followed him. As she did, closing the door behind her, there was a soft click down the corridor and Tess looked up. There, in a creased shirt and jeans, his hair standing on end, was Adam. He had dark, almost black, shadows under his eyes, and he looked as though he’d got up in a hurry. There was no time to say anything—they had said too much already. She gave him a small smile.

‘I’m off, then.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

Peter was halfway down the stairs. ‘Hey, is that Adam? Bye, man. It was good to meet you.’

Adam leaned towards the staircase. ‘Bye, Peter. Good to meet you too. Tess, can I have a word?’

‘Sure,’ she said. She patted Peter’s shoulder, motioning for him to go ahead, and he took her bag downstairs. ‘What’s
up?’ she said, opening her handbag to check her passport was there. She didn’t look at him, didn’t want him to see how upset she was.

‘She’s dead,’ Adam said briefly. Tess’s head snapped up.

‘Leonora?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The hospital just called. I’m on my way there now.’

‘What happened, do they know?’

‘She just—drifted away, they said.’ He scratched his head and closed his eyes briefly. Tess looked down at the waiting group, at Peter talking to Diana. ‘You should go,’ Adam said.

‘We can cancel—’

‘No, no,’ Adam said firmly. ‘Absolutely not. It wouldn’t make any sense.’

‘My God.’ Tess put her hand on his. Outside, the minibus hooted its horn impatiently. ‘I’m sorry. Adam—I don’t know what to say.’

‘It’s over,’ Adam said, nodding, not meeting her eyes, looking past her into the distance. ‘That’s all. We can go home now.’

It was only later that Tess would think how very sad it was that the end of anyone’s life should be greeted like this. Even Leonora Mortmain’s.

April 1943

Neither of them knew it was going to happen. She would look back and marvel that she could have woken that day with no idea of what lay ahead of her. That she could start the day as a—oh, as a child!—and end it in his arms, his hands clumsily stroking her hair, their slick bodies clinging to each other, exhilarated, exhausted.

The atmosphere was tense in the Hall that early April morning; it was tense throughout the town, throughout the country. They had been at war for three and a half years now; there were men and women from the town out in the Atlantic, at danger from U-boats, fighting in Tripoli and Tunisia, in Italy and somewhere in occupied France. And what lay between France and England? Nothing, except the Channel. And so they worked, and watched, and waited.

Leonora was tense, too. A spoon had vaulted out of her hand—she had watched it spinning, almost leisurely, through the air, crashing into the wooden dresser that stood in their breakfast room and breaking a vase. It was bad luck, it wasn’t her fault. Father’s dogs, Bonhote and Tugendhat (named after First World War generals), had started to scrap in the hallway, barking loudly and suddenly, and she had jumped.

‘You’re eighteen, Rara!’ her mother had said, trying not to raise her voice, her face contorted into an agony of suppressed anger. Her mother never shouted, no one did in Langford Hall. ‘Why are you so clumsy? You
must
be more careful!’

‘The dogs barked, Mother. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize they were so close—I jumped.’ She didn’t add, couldn’t add, that she hated dogs, always had. Their big slathering jaws, the way they didn’t care, thought it was fine to simply
leap
on one, whether one liked them or was terrified of them. Once, Tugendhat had pinned her up in the corridor—he was an Alsatian mix, an ugly brute—snarling and growling, and when Leonora had screamed, Sir Charles Mortmain had hit her on the hand with the ruler three times. For raising her voice.

Her mother was harassed to a point almost past sanity. ‘I do
not
care. You should be ashamed of yourself. Look at this mess. Your father will be extremely angry.’ Mama was leaning forward, shouting at her daughter now, the pent-up anger of the tension and the sudden spring heat releasing itself. Her face was red and shiny. A greasy tendril of hair flapped out from behind her ear.

‘I’m sorry, Mama,’ Leonora said, genuinely contrite in the face of her mother’s rage. ‘I didn’t mean to, but the dogs—’

She was going to say, ‘The dogs scared me,’ but she halted, not convinced this would be the answer her mother was looking for. Her parents had no sympathy for her fear of the dogs, her father in particular.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ her mother said, stifling a sob. ‘I’ll need to find Eleanor, to see if we can have this mended. Oh, Rara, just—just go away!’

Leonora did, without a backwards glance. She ran to the door, pulled it open, ran out into the sunshine without saying goodbye, her heart heavy, her teenage sense of outrage already melting away into guilt, and sorrow, and a resolve to bring something back for her mother. An ice cream? Some flowers? A book? Her eye wandered as she caught her breath, diving
down the warren of sidestreets that was Langford’s medieval centre, and through a gap in the houses she suddenly caught a glimpse of fields, of the countryside beyond, a flash of enticing green. Spring was well under way, it was the first really warm day of the year. She shivered. She would slip quietly through the streets, out through the gap in the ancient city walls, down the stairs to the water meadows. An apple and a book, that was all she needed, she’d pick some flowers for her mother on the way back. She had a beautiful primrose-coloured hardback of Catullus’s poems in her pocket; Leonora was a romantic soul, though given scant opportunity to explore this at Langford Hall. And now she was free. She jumped excitedly in the air, scratching her bare arms. Everything was all right again, the memory of Mother’s face as she picked the coloured shards of china off the floor but a distant memory, with the extreme callousness of youth.

‘Hello there, Atalanta. What mischief are you up to now?’

She jumped, and turned around guiltily.

‘Philip! My goodness, you gave me a fright.’

‘Exactly.’ He smiled, and took her hand from her mouth. ‘If you weren’t up to something awful,’ he said, mock-slapping her fingers, ‘you wouldn’t be looking quite so guilty. What is it, eh?’

Philip Edwards was awfully annoying this year; so pompous. One year away from Langford at Cambridge, and he thought he was God’s gift to the universe. She snatched her hand back to her side, mortified at the blush she felt at the warmth of his touch. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m just escaping home, that’s all. Ma’s furious with me. I’ve been awful.’