Mr Wrong (21 page)

‘I feel awful leaving you.’

‘I feel awful having let you come.’

‘Will you really be all right?’

‘Natch. You can’t possibly stay. If you’re afraid of flying you’d be done for. The strike might go on for ages. Nobody knows. I’ll call you. Oh!’ She bent her
head.

Harriet went uncertainly up to her and kissed the damp cold forehead from which the fringe had been sponged. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, and the inadequacy echoed inside her.

‘Balls. Come again: I’m not like this all the time.’ She looked at Harriet as though she passionately wanted her to confirm this.

‘Of course you’re not. Will you call me as soon as you feel like it? I’d like to know.’

‘O.K. Be seeing you.’ Sue shut her eyes, as though the parting was done. Harriet, with one glance at Jean, who nodded to her reassuringly, went down again.

In the kitchen, Jean the younger was waiting for her, her bag in his hand. Arlette shook her hand after Harriet had put on her jacket, and said: ‘Au revoir, Mademoiselle.’ Then, her
eyes snapping with a kind of knowing cynicism, she said something very quickly to the younger Jean, who simply blushed and as usual looked at the floor. He took Harriet’s hand, and led her
out of the house into the darkness. This seemed not to trouble him at all, as he found the car as quickly and easily as though it had been broad daylight. It was some kind of van, the kind with two
seats in front and a great deal of nebulous room behind. He opened Harriet’s door for her with formality, and while he was putting her case in the back and getting into the driver’s
seat, Harriet had seconds to think about him.
He
had done this to Sue: but he seemed almost impervious: heartless and sexy, that was what he must be. She began to dislike and then to hate
him, and to dread the drive, which she knew to be a long one, with somebody she could neither talk to nor like.

For the first few miles, Harriet simply felt a mounting tension of dislike, contempt, and rage, that he should have got her best friend Sue into such a situation so calmly. She began to wish
that he understood English, so that she could tell him what she thought of him. But he couldn’t, and so all her pent-up hatred was only exacerbated by silence. He did not speak: simply drove
well and fast through the mostly dark countryside. After about twenty minutes, Harriet felt so awful about leaving her friend and being unable to attack or defend on her account that she found
tears were slipping at a remarkable and silent speed down her face.

As though he instantly sensed this, Jean stopped the car. He stopped it in one of the innumerable places for people to break down or have picnics. When he switched off the engine, Harriet sobbed
aloud: she had not expected him to stop, had no idea why he did so, and could not say anything effective to him about it. With the engine stopped the sound that she made seemed worse than ever.
Jean turned to her and took her in his arms. She tried to strike him, and heard him laugh – a warm sound of certainty and understanding. He opened his door and took Harriet with him. Outside,
she felt her knees giving way; her ankle still hurt, and she felt weak and paralysed. Jean picked her up in his arms and carried her a small distance from the car. He laid her on the ground, which
seemed sandy and smelled of thyme, knelt by her, and began, very gently, stripping off her clothes. He did this in such a way that she did not seem to have thought about it. When he had taken all
her clothes from her, he immediately began to caress her. No word was spoken, and in Harriet this achieved a kind of release. He was both sensitive to her and assured, and his hands running
casually, tentatively down her body created a passive, over-still response that he thoroughly understood. He kissed her: her head, her ears, her mouth, her breasts, her thighs and her hands. She
could not see, only feel him, and long before he stripped from his jeans, at last, she no longer cared what he was or had done, was incapable of thought, had only the need for the first time in her
life. Tim had always said that women should be talked to, and she had accepted this, without any choice of what he talked about. Jean said nothing: he prepared her and took her, and the release,
the radiant pleasure for Harriet, was like going to some new country as somebody else. He was extraordinarily careful, patient, intent, and waited for her until the end. When it was over, he
encompassed her with his arms and began to caress her again as though they were at the beginning. Harriet turned to him and kissed him. In a way, it was the first kiss she had ever given in her life.

After a time, she had no idea how long, he took her again, and this was different; she had no fears, no uncertainty, was no longer passive and they were entirely together. Afterwards, he put his
face against hers, and laughed; it was pleasure, satisfaction and joy. They were still together like that, until they could hear all the minuscule night creaks and mutters of the country were round
them.

Then, a few minutes later, he began to dress her, with the same care and finesse that he had used when he had taken off her clothes. He also dressed himself, very quickly, took her hands and
said: ‘Est-ce que tu as faim?’ She smiled in the dark, and he passed his hand over her face and knew.

They got back into the van again; again he put her in her seat formally, got into his, and drove off. He stopped at a very small café a few kilometres further on. ‘Have we
time?’ she said, realizing as she did so that she was ravenous but didn’t care.

‘We have time,’ he answered.

The café had a small vine-covered terrace, but this was dark, and Jean pushed through the bead curtains. Inside, there was a small bar and four or five tables. Jean placed her at one of
them and then went to talk to the
patron
. While he was ordering some food, she turned round in her chair to observe herself in the spotted mirror on the wall behind her. Her hair had fallen
down: very small leaves and even twigs were entangled there, and her face had an expression that she had never seen before so that she looked at it for some seconds. ‘I’m
beautiful!’ she thought. ‘I have become beautiful’: and then, because her nature was still both anxious and fearful, she wondered whether it would last. She tried to smooth back
her hair with her hands, but had no desire to put it up. Jean came back with two glasses of
pastis
. He handed her one, and then sat opposite her. They both drank, and now Jean met her eyes
frequently, and every time he did so, he smiled with a mixture of conspiracy and affection.

Unbelievably soon the food arrived. A plate of bread, oven-hot dishes with two eggs sizzling on each, and a board with three cheeses upon it, not one of which Harriet could recognize. They both
ate ravenously; the
patron
was engaged upon what sounded like a political conversation with an old friend who seemed to agree with every word he said: no notice was taken of Harriet or Jean.
When they had eaten, Jean said, ‘Du café?’ and Harriet felt herself colouring as she inclined her head and murmured, ‘Merci.’ ‘Oui, ou non?’ ‘Oui.’ While he went to get it, she wondered why saying thank you seemed a negation. The whole thing was mysterious and amazing: in one way she felt that
she knew Jean better than she had ever known anyone – in another, not at all.

Scalding coffee in small, thick, white cups arrived. They smoked with this, and the moment it was over, Jean went and paid the bill and indicated that they should go – at once.

He said good night to the
patron
, and Harriet echoed this as he led her outside to the dark. He put her in the van once more, and drove even faster to Marseille. Harriet seemed to have no
thoughts at all during the journey: only the consciousness of sitting beside him, of seeing sometimes his profile and his hands on the steering wheel in the headlights of occasional cars coming
towards them; the spasmodic avenues of planes with their scarred trunks and dusty leaves in the headlights, the aromatic warmth of the air, the velvet bulk of some small hill, and then the country
flattening, descending to the sea and the marigold lights of Marseille.

At the station, Jean parked, and got her case out of the van even before Harriet, in a dream still, had tried her door. He opened it for her. ‘Vous avez un billet?’

‘Non.’

‘N’importe.’ He led her to the ticket office which, even at this time of the night or morning, had a small queue.

‘Couchette?’ Harriet asked when her turn came.

‘Ah non. Toutes les couchettes sont prises.’ He gave her a look of indifference and exhaustion, and then looked at her again, and smiled faintly with admiring commiseration.

Jean found the right barrier and they began to walk up the train looking for a seat. This was difficult to find: people were crowded six a side, even on the wooden benches. At last Jean saw a
possible place, if the other occupants would move up. This he not only got them to do, he secured a corner seat for Harriet. He put her case on top of many other people’s things on the
rack.

‘Alors: au revoir, Mademoiselle,’ he said; picked up her hand and kissed it with the formality of a bored nobleman. ‘Oh
no
!’ Harriet screamed silently inside. ‘Not like that!’ But it seemed to be so, and she leant out of the window, as he walked away. He did not look back. She
remained at the window, until she felt that somehow or other she could face the other occupants: she
had
to; there was no choice at all. She edged her way back to the seat by the far window,
and held her hands tightly over her mouth to stop herself, until her mouth felt bruised by her teeth.

And then, without the slightest warning, he was back. He beckoned to her, and again she stumbled past the other sleepy passengers, who were either cross or stertorous. He opened the carriage door. In his hands were a chocolate bar and a small bunch
of violets. He put them into her hands, put his arms round her and kissed first her forehead and then her mouth. When he felt her tears, he kissed both her eyes, and said: ‘Comment
t’appelles-tu?’

‘Harriet.’

‘Arriette,’ he repeated. ‘Belle et tendre. Arriette. Bonne nuit.’

She nodded, clung to him a moment, and then he gently disengaged her and put her back into the carriage. This time he looked at her until she had once more found her place, raised his right hand
in a valedictory salute and was gone.

Harriet sat, holding the chocolate bar and the violets: tears now streamed down her face, but she did not notice this, until an old woman dressed in black with thick black stockings and black
gym shoes laid an overworked brown hand on her lap and said: ‘Pauvre, pauvre petite.’

Harriet nodded and tried to smile, but the old woman had the courtesy to say no more and require nothing of her.

When the train began to move, Harriet found a small white handkerchief in her bag. She wiped her face and neck and then put the flowers (they smelled only like a memory of violets) into the
handkerchief, which she carefully wrapped round their stalks. She looked at the bar of chocolate. These were his presents to her: she would never eat the chocolate, and the violets must never die.
Sue crossed her mind once or twice before exhaustion overtook her: affectionate, distant, now impersonal thoughts. Tim also crossed her mind: she would go back to work when she could bear it, but she would never bear to see him again. She had no need; life was neither so poor nor so thin a business as she
had thought.

By the time the train reached Paris, many hours later, she was wearily awake: too tired to try to go on sleeping in the same position, realizing that what she had always known as life was
inexorably drawing nearer. She wanted to wash. She staggered along the corridor to the overworked
toilettes
and washed her face and hands. There was nothing bearable to dry them on. There
was no breakfast on that train, or the one she had to change into. She eventually ate the chocolate bar very slowly – remembering his face when he had given it to her.

By the time she reached Victoria Station, the violets were crushed and limply dead. But when she finally reached her small, familiar, but now alien flat, and fell upon her bed without attempting
to unpack or even to undress, there were still pieces of thyme in her hair.

There was absolutely nothing like it.

An unoriginal conclusion, and one that he had drawn a hundred times during the last fortnight. Clifford would make some subtle and intelligent comparison, but he, John, could only continue to
repeat that it was quite unlike anything else. It had been Clifford’s idea, which, considering Clifford, was surprising. When you looked at him, you would not suppose him capable of it.
However, John reflected, he had been ill, some sort of breakdown these clever people went in for, and that might account for his uncharacteristic idea of hiring a boat and travelling on canals. On
the whole, John had to admit, it was a good idea. He had never been on a canal in his life, although he had been in almost every kind of boat, and thought he knew a good deal about them; so much,
indeed, that he had embarked on the venture in a light-hearted, almost a patronizing manner. But it was not nearly as simple as he had imagined. Clifford, of course, knew nothing about boats; but
he had admitted that almost everything had gone wrong with a kind of devilish versatility which had almost frightened him. However, that was all over, and John, who had learned painfully all about
the boat and her engine, felt that the former at least had run her gamut of disaster. They had run out of food, out of petrol, and out of water; had dropped their windlass into the deepest lock,
and, more humiliating, their boathook into the side-pond. The head had come off the hammer. They had been disturbed for one whole night by a curious rustling in the cabin, like a rat in a paper
bag, when there was no paper, and, so far as they knew, no rat. The battery had failed and had had to be recharged. Clifford had put his elbow through an already cracked window in the cabin. A
large piece of rope had wound itself round the propeller with a malignant intensity which required three men and half a morning to unravel. And so on, until now there was really nothing left to go
wrong, unless one of them drowned, and surely it was impossible to drown in a canal.