Snowstorms in a Hot Climate (27 page)

“He’s not the only person who has lied to me, Marla,” she said softly, and if it was intended to wound it succeeded. She sounded so certain, so worldly-wise. So she had known about Indigo all along. Yet I hadn’t even noticed. “You live too much in here”—Germaine’s words echoed in my head. “You are sometimes very careless with your life.” Mine and other people’s. How could I have been so wrong? I could not believe it.

“He wants to see me,” she said quietly. “I think I owe him that much.”

“No.” And the word spat across the room.

“Marla, listen to me. It isn’t your fault. I know that. But you have to understand that this is my story and you can’t finish it for me. You, J.T., anyone. I need to know the truth. I’m not naïve. I know what he’s done to me. All the pain and the dishonesties. But I also know that he didn’t set me up. I owe him the chance of an explanation.”

Like rain on a watercolor, the picture of our promised future began to drain away. Lazy French days of sunshine, the new life in London, time spent doing nothing, all of it blurring into itself, leaving nothing but a few rain-washed smears.

“But—”

“I know what you’re going to say, but I don’t want to hear it. He has been nearly two years of my life. I’ve loved him more than I loved anyone, and I have to know for sure what the lies were. I deserve that much. And anyway,” she added, this time more gently, “I owe him one.”

I felt a kind of physical pain, somewhere deep inside my bowels. Conscience again? “Elly, you don’t owe him anything,” I said, horrified.

She looked at me with a sort of tenderness. “Did anyone stop
you as you went through Customs this morning, Marla? You knew that someone had set him up. He knew that you knew. Yet you said nothing. You didn’t lift a finger to save him. It would have taken only one phone call to the Paris Customs to make you quits. But he didn’t do it. He saved you. That’s why I have to see him.”

Just like that. From horns to halo. I had lost her. I knew it then, and it hurt so much it took my breath away. The world went black, and for a moment I seemed to be falling through space. Even the room had lost its definition. When I heard my voice, it came from a long way away.

“Where is he?”

“In a hotel. In Scotland. That much at least was true.”

“When will you go?”

“I don’t know. When I feel ready.”

I rallied for one last stand. “Let me come with you.”

She shook her head. “No, I think you should go home now. I won’t do anything without telling you. I promise. But I think we both need some time alone.” She waited, then said again softly, “Go home, Marla. You look exhausted. You need to sleep. It will be all right. I’ll call you later, I promise.”

The room began to slide again. “Let me stay with you, Elly. I won’t disturb you or try to persuade you.” I could feel a wave of panic building. It came from a long way away, down through many years, back to a time when each tomorrow seemed an unbearable prospect and when I had begun to realize that she was the only one who mattered. Maybe the panic touched her too, because she leaned over and put an arm around me, laid a hand on my head. We sat for a while in silence. Mother and child. It had happened before.

“I’ll call you a cab,” she said at last. “You mustn’t worry, Marla. Nothing will happen to either of us. I know what I’m doing. Go home and sleep. I’ll talk to you tonight.”

And because it hurt so much, I pulled away from her and clothed myself in adulthood. I stood up and fumbled for my bag. “All right, Elly. You do it your way. But remember that I warned you.”

H
ome. Gray skies over Haverstock Hill, an afternoon turning to evening with no change in the light. Up the stairs a musty, dusty little flat with five letters on the doorstep and a triumphant total of three messages on the answering machine. The fruits of two weeks’ absence. I could not bring myself to listen to them. I made black coffee to keep myself awake and lay on the sofa wondering when she would call. I thought about ringing California but had no idea what I would say. In the heavy gray of an English evening, everything seemed so far away. I would close my eyes to stop them hurting. But I would not sleep. The coffee would keep me awake, and even if I did doze off, the telephone would wake me. That is the last thought I remember.

The phone did not wake me; neither did the dawn. I suppose if I hadn’t been so stupid with tiredness I would have realized—realized that I had left the answering machine on, so that when the call came the machine would take it on the first ring and Elly would talk onto a piece of tape. But I didn’t realize. If you believe in fate, then that was what it was. I have not yet made up my mind on this. When I woke, it came with a rush. Outside it was brighter. At first I thought the storm had simply passed into a glow of evening. When it finally hit me that I might in fact have slept through a night and a day, I was mad with shock. On the hall table the telephone sat quietly. Beneath it a little red light flashed a fourth message. I whirled it back. A man’s voice was talking about double glazing. Then the bleep. Then Elly, curious and tired.

“Marla, where are you? It’s eight o’clock. Listen, I have to talk to you, tell you what’s happening. Are you there …?” Pause. Then, “I’m taking the night train to Scotland. Lenny will meet me in Inverness, then we’ll drive together to the hotel. I know this news is going to hurt you. I’m sorry. But please understand. I have to do it. See him, talk to him. And I have to do it alone. The hotel is the Metropole. In a place called Inverlochy. On the west coast, not far from Ullapool. Telephone number: Inverlochy seven-four-eight-nine. But please don’t call it. Not until I ring you, all right? God, I wish I could hear your voice. I so wanted to talk. Tell you I’m sorry. We were both so tired and strung out. I didn’t mean to be angry. I just felt so out of control. But it wasn’t your fault. I should never have got you into all this in the first place. That’s why I have to resolve it alone. You do understand that, don’t you? I love you, and I’ll see you soon.”

Sooner than you think. I picked up the phone. The man whose job it is to tell the time told me it was 7:56
P.M.
, precisely. British Rail took longer to answer, but I still made the night train. It never occurred to me to call first. Elly had told me herself. I owed Lenny. Whether it was an apology or an attack would become plain in due course. But whichever it was, I would deliver it in person. And I would not leave him alone with her.

The train was fully booked, with no sleeping berths. But then I wasn’t sleepy. I sat through an endless night watching fields flash by, ghostly under a half-moon. And in the small hours I was joined by J.T., conjured up as an ally and traveling companion. Why not? In a symmetrical universe he would have been here anyway, the fourth star in this doomed little cluster. And with him came his words: “She’s got no protection against herself. That’s how come Lenny can fuck her over. He speeds up
the process of her own destruction … Get her out … before it’s too late.”

And, just as in childhood the train wheels had always sung the chorus, now the smooth electric rumblings echoed his exhortation.

I’m coming, Elly. I’m coming.

T
he Inverlochy Metropole was not hard to find once you had found Inverlochy. God knows how Lenny had come to pick this particular spot. Maybe somebody from the Scottish Tourist Board was involved in payola. At a rough guess, the Metropole had last been fashionable (and full) around the time of the Festival of Britain. It was perched on the edge of the coast in crumbling dignity, looking out over a dark gray sea furrowed with waves. Summer, it seemed, had not yet reached this far north, if indeed it ever did. Even from a distance the place reeked of Daphne du Maurier. Probably the only trade it got now were old ladies who had fallen into a habit of holidays, and the occasional television crew filming yet another period serial. I parked the
hired car carefully in an empty courtyard. Our relationship had cautiously improved over the sixty miles or so from Inverness, but we were not yet on speeding terms.

Inside the Metropole, the girl at the desk was the only new thing since the fifties, young and fresh, with peaches-and-cream skin and nut brown hair, which waved unfashionably but exuberantly around her face. The kind of hair which, no doubt, she tugged and ironed into temporary obedience, not yet understanding that its very nonconformity made her spectacular. She smiled me welcome, and it was clear from her bright eyes that nothing really painful had ever happened to her, nor did she believe it ever would. She reminded me of someone I had once known.

“Gud afternoon. Can I help you?” The voice danced. Obviously she liked her work, liked the sensation of being an adult when she was still so close to a child. I realized with alarm that she made me want to cry. I was not as in control as I had thought. I took a hold on myself.

“Yes, I’m looking for a couple who are staying here. He’s American, she’s English. She would have arrived some time yesterday.”

“Oh, yes, the American gentleman.” She smiled, and I read in her eyes fantasies of lovers to come. “He met her off the train. They arrived in the afternoon. They’re in Room Twenty-five.”

So, they had spent the night together after all. Like Bothwell and Mary Queen of Scots. Elly did not mind the smell of blood on his hands. Romantic fiction. It hurt like hell. I took a breath.

“Would you call them for me?”

“Och, no, they’re no in now. They’re out sightseeing. The gentleman asked me to mark out some places of interest on his map. They left a couple of hours ago.”

My stomach felt funny. But then I hadn’t eaten for a long time.

“If you’d like to wait for them, there’s a wee lounge across the hall. But I doubt they’ll be back before afternoon. They took a long list of places and brochures, and they didna make reservations for tea.”

Her words gave me time to think. I turned back to the bright, eager face. “I wonder, do you have a room?”

“Aye yes. You’ll be wanting a single? There’s a lovely room on the third floor with a view of the sea. Number Twenty-two. It’s just a few doors down from your friends.”

“Fine. I’ll take it.”

“Do you no want to see it first?” It was part of the game: the appraisal before the acceptance. You could see she enjoyed it.

“No, no, I’m sure it’s lovely. Can you tell me which way they went, so I can try to catch them up?”

She frowned slightly. Things were not going entirely according to protocol. “I’m a close friend,” I added quickly. “And I have some rather important news for them.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I could point you out the same route I showed the gentleman.”

“You didn’t speak to the lady?”

“No, no, she didna come down for breakfast, took tea in her room. I talked to the gentleman, and then they left about an hour later.”

How did she look? How were they together? Had they been quarreling? Were her eyes swollen? This girl had probably noticed nothing. Just a good-looking couple, the man doing the organizing, the woman following on behind. Just as it should be.

I bought a map, and she set to work, drawing a thick pencil line across from Inverlochy through the peninsula below, snaking round lochs and across marshland down into Ullapool, then out to the east, taking in part of the road to Inverness, and from there looping up and back toward home.

“Actually, the gentleman was very interested in this piece of
countryside. The castle by Loch Assynt. It’s the place where the Earl of Montrose was imprisoned on his way down to Edinburgh to stand trial. He was executed later for high treason. Really, there’s no much there anymore, it’s all ruins. But he seemed very keen to see it nevetheless.”

I nodded. “I think he has an interest in history.” I imagined Lenny standing over the young girl, watching her, smiling, eyes concentrating on every word. No wonder she couldn’t remember much about Elly.

“Could they have reached there by now?”

“Oh, it would depend on which way they went. I suggested they take it in on their way back, after Ullapool and the Measach Falls. In which case you might well wait for them there.”

“How long will it take to get there?”

“Och, it’s no that far. Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes, though the road’s no wonderful, and it’s worse if it rains.”

I shot a look out through the doors. The wind was rolling in heavy clouds, bellies full of Scottish winter. I folded up the map and thanked her. I’m almost there, Elly.

T
he road was clear for the first few miles. The scenery, had I been in the mood to look, was devastating; vast spongy carpets of dark heathers and moss, broken by mounds of rock which looked as if they had been folded on top of one another; granite layer cake. A little way out the road branched. I took the instructed fork. It was my belief he would have made for the castle first. After so many years, to walk the same stones as Montrose would surely be too much of a temptation. Maybe they would be there still, battling out their own history amid the ruins of someone else’s. I was no longer thinking about what we should say, or what would be demanded of me. That would be answered soon enough. I put my foot down, pulled out, and
passed a caravan chugging its painful way up a steep gradient. The clouds had kept pace with the car, and a slow, fine drizzle was now beginning to fall. The loch and the castle when I came upon them seemed rather an anticlimax. The land was flat and crumpled, the water cold-black, and the ruins themselves small and scattered. I parked the car and walked quickly out toward the spit of land on which there had once been a fortress.

The rain was so soft I could hardly feel it falling, but tiny beads of water hovered on the weave of my jacket and clung like spray to the strands of my hair. There was no one there. I could see that even from the car. But somehow I felt the need to check, or maybe just to be where they had been. I clambered up one of the remnants of a wall. There was moss growing everywhere, and sheep droppings among the boulders. The only part of the castle which retained any semblance of architecture was one of the towers, part of which stood up, stern and silent against brooding skies. Montrose’s view must have been one of unbroken desolation, a long, bleak horizon of water against looming dark hills in the distance. He probably knew it was over by this time. That he had fought and lost for the last time, and that his nobility would not save his skin.