The Glamour

I

The departures board showed that my flight was delayed, but I had already gone through passport control and there was no escape from the passenger lounge. Although it was a huge area, lined all along one side with plate-glass windows looking out across the apron, it was noisy, hot and oppressive. The lounge was crowded with people, many of whom were in package-tour groups headed for Benidorm, Faro, Athens and Palma. Babies cried, children ran in energetic games, and flight announcements came through the loudspeakers at regular intervals.

Already I was regretting that I had not taken the train and boat to France, but it was high season and once before I had traveled on a cross-Channel ferry at this time of year. Air travel always had the temptation of speed, even for a short journey like mine, yet since leaving home that morning I had been subjected to one delay after another: crossing London on the Underground, with two changes of train, the slow journey to Gatwick Airport with the railway carriage crowded to the doors, and now the wait for the plane.

Restlessly, because in spite of having flown more times than I could remember I always felt apprehensive before a flight, I walked around the lounge, trying to distract myself. I looked through the books and magazines, and bought a paperback; I examined the toys and gifts that were on sale; I went slowly past the airline information desks: British Caledonian, British Airtours, Dan-Air, Iberia. There was nowhere to sit down, nothing much to do except stand or walk about and look at the other passengers. I diverted myself with a game I had often played before in similar circumstances, trying to guess which of the people were on my own flight, why they were flying, where they were going to go to afterward, who they were. By some knack I was often able to guess correctly which people were on my flight. I remembered the time I had flown to Australia, when in the crowded Heathrow departure lounge I had spotted a particular woman in a noticeable, brightly colored dress. Four days later, in Swanston Street, Melbourne, I saw the same woman in the same dress.

Today, playing the same idle game, I picked out a middleaged man with two immense pieces of cabin luggage, a young woman dressed demurely in a light jacket and jeans, a businessman with a financial newspaper.

The delay was finally overcome, and three flights were called in quick succession. The crowd thinned out, and the people I had picked remained in the lounge with me. The next flight called was mine, and I followed the crowd through the boarding gate and into the extensible ramp. In the turmoil of finding seats I lost sight of the other three, and thought no more about them.

The flight was extremely short, the plane having barely gained its operating altitude before starting the approach into Le Touquet. Half an hour after leaving Gatwick we had reached the terminal. We were all waved smoothly through customs and immigration, and I went to find my train; most of the other passengers headed for the Paris connection. Mine was to be a long journey, so before boarding the train I bought a supply of food: fresh bread, cheese, a little cooked meat, some fruit, and a large bottle of Coca-Cola.

My first train was a local, stopping at every tiny station and halt on the line. It was well into the afternoon when I arrived in Lille, where I was to change. This was to the express train to Basel, but if anything it drove more slowly, and stopped more often, than the first. At the fourth stop a great silence descended on the train and station. Ten or fifteen minutes passed.

I was reading the paperback I had bought, and was only marginally aware that someone walking down the corridor had stopped outside my compartment. I heard the door slide open, and I looked up. It was a young woman of medium height and build, standing in the doorway.

She said, “You’re English, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” I raised my paperback for her to see.

“I thought so. I saw you on the other train, to Lille.”

“Are you looking for a seat?” I said, because I was already bored with my own company.

“No, I booked one in London. My luggage is in the other compartment. The trouble is I don’t speak French very well, and there’s a family in there who keep talking to me. I don’t want to be rude, but . .

“It gets to be a strain after a while, doesn’t it?”

The train lurched, then halted again. Somewhere underneath the carriage a generator started churning. Outside on the platform two men in SNCF uniforms walked slowly past the window.

“Would you mind if I joined you for a while?” she said.

“Of course not. I’d like some company.”

She slid the door to, then sat in the window seat opposite mine. She was carrying a large canvas bag bulging with possessions, and she placed this on the seat beside her.

“I’ve seen you before!” I said. “Weren’t you on the plane—I mean, did you fly from Gatwick?”

“Yes—I saw you too.”

“This morning!” I was laughing in surprise, because I had suddenly recognized her as one of the passengers I had picked out in the departure lounge.

“Where are you going now?” she said.

“I’m hoping to get to Nancy tonight.”

“That’s a coincidence—so am I.”

“I probably won’t stay more than a day or two. What about you? Are you visiting friends?”

“No, I’m on my own. I thought I might go and see some people in the south, but they don’t even know I’m in France yet.”

She had straight brown hair, a pale face, thin hands. I guessed her to be somewhere in her late twenties. I found her company very attractive, partly for the relief from my own boredom but mostly because she was so likable, so ready to talk. She seemed interested in me, making me talk a lot.

“You don’t happen to know if there’s a restaurant car?” she said. “I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”

“I’ve brought plenty of food,” I said. “You’re we!come to it.” I had already eaten some, and had been intending to save the rest for later, but I opened the bag and passed it to her. I took an apple, but she ate the rest.

While we had been talking the train had started, and already we were moving through the flat and uninteresting countryside. The sun was shining straight in through our window, and because it could not be opened it was warm in the carriage. When she arrived she had been wearing the jacket I had noticed earlier, but now she removed it and placed it on the rack overhead. While she turned away from me I could not help appraising her body. She was slim, slightly bony around the shoulders, but she had an attractive body. I noticed the white lines of her bra visible beneath her blouse. I was thinking vaguely erotic thoughts, wondering where she was planning to stay that night, whether she would like a traveling companion for more than this train journey. It was almost too good to be true, to meet someone like this on my first day. I had planned and expected to spend the holiday on my own, but not out of a principle.

We continued to talk while she finished off the food, and exchanged names at last: hers was Sue. She lived in London, not particularly close to me but in the same general area. There was a pub in Highgate we both knew, and must have visited at different times. She said she was a freelance illustrator, had been to art school in London but had been born in Cheshire. Of course I talked about myself, some of the stories I had covered and the places I had been to, why I had given up work and what I was planning to do next. We were very interested in each other; certainly I could not remember the last time I had met someone to whom I could talk so freely in such a short time. She listened to me intently, leaning forward across the space between our seats, her head slightly to one side so that she appeared to look at the seat beside me. I consciously tried to change the subject several times and draw her out of herself. She answered direct questions but otherwise did not appear to want to talk about herself.

I kept wondering: why is she alone? Because I found her attractive, it was difficult to believe she did not have a boyfriend somewhere, perhaps one of these friends she said she was visiting in the south.

The subject did not come up. I had a friend called Annette at the back of my mind. Part of the reason for my own trip was that Annette was in Canada visiting her brother, leaving me at a loose end in London. But there was no firm commitment with her, and our friendship was casual; sometimes we slept together, sometimes we did not. I had lived moderately promiscuously, often away from home for weeks on end, sleeping with women I hardly knew, never forming ties.

Sue and I both stayed away from the subject of others. We were after all virtual strangers to each other, passing time on a train, so there was no reason why anything should be said. Even so, we were already at ease with each other; minor confidences were exchanged; opinions, jokes. I kept wanting to touch her, wishing she would move over and sit beside me, or that I had the nerve to sit next to her. I was shy of her but excited by her, and the longer we talked on the more obvious it was that we were avoiding the subject of other people.

As the train approached Longuyon at last, I said, “I think we change trains here.”

“My God, I’ve forgotten my luggage! It’s in the other compartment.” She stood up abruptly. “Will you meet me on the platform?” she said. “I’m not sure which train to catch for Nancy.”

“Neither am I.” She was opening the door to the corridor. “Don’t forget your jacket.” I passed it to her. “I’ll meet you outside.”

The train started braking almost as soon as she had left. I took my own suitcase from the rack and moved out to the corridor. Several other passengers were making the same change and the doors were blocked. When the train stopped there was a press of bodies, but when I was on the platform I put down my bag and went in search of Sue. Train doors slammed and most of the people walked away. Silence fell.

Then, abruptly, a door flew open and a dumpy, middleaged woman with a head scarf climbed down to the platform. She was carrying a suitcase which she deposited on the ground. She reached into the train and brought out a second bag. Sue followed, looking harassed. There was a brief, one-sided conversation completed by the pecking of both cheeks. The woman returned to the train, closing the door behind her. I went over to help Sue with her luggage, and she was smiling.

An hour later we were on the local train to Nancy. We sat next to each other, the fatigue and tedium of travel giving us a kind of tired familiarity. I could feel the light pressure of her arm against mine, but the break had interrupted the first headiness.

It was evening when the train arrived. We asked at the tourist office for a recommendation to an inexpensive hotel reasonably close to the station, then set off down the road with our bags. When we found the place, Sue came to a rather abrupt halt outside and put down her luggage.

“Richard, there’s something we haven’t discussed,” she said.

“What’s that?” I said, although I knew what she meant.

“I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings about tonight.”

“I wasn’t assuming anything,” I said.

“I know, but here we are, we’ve only just met, and although it’s been very pleasant …”

She looked away from me, across the street. There was a lot of traffic in the town, with many people walking about in the warm evening.

“Would you like to find another hotel for yourself?” I said.

“No, of course not. But we should have separate rooms. We haven’t said anything about this, but I’m meeting somebody when I get to Saint-Raphael. A friend.”

“That’s all right,” I said, regretting that I had left it to her to bring up the subject. The longer it had gone unaired, the more it was inevitable we would make assumptions.

The hotel was able to let us have a room each, and outside the elevator we prepared to separate.

Sue said, “I’m going to take a shower, then lie down for a bit. What about you? Are you going out for a meal?”

“Not just yet. I’m tired too.”

“Shall we have dinner together?”

“If you’d like to.”

“You know I would. I’ll knock on your door in an hour.”

II

In the center of Nancy was a magnificent broad square, surrounded by eighteenth-century palaces, known as the Place Stanislas. We entered it from the south side, coming into great emptiness and peace. It was as if the bustle of the main town was unable to penetrate to this place. No more than a few people strolled or stood in its vastness. The sun beat down, striking sharp shadows on the sandstone pavings. An autobus was parked outside L’Hôtel de Ville, formerly the Duke of Lorraine’s palace, and some distance behind this four black-painted saloon cars were parked in a neat row. No other traffic entered the square. A man wearing a cloth cap wheeled his bicycle slowly across the plaza, passing the statue of the Duke which stood at the center.

In one corner of the square was the Fountain of Neptune, a glorious rococo construction with nymphs and naiads and cherubs, water trickling across scalloped levels into the pools below. The wrought-iron archways of Jean Lamour surrounded the fountain. We walked over the cobbled road, gazed up at L’Arc de Triomphe, then passed through into the Place de la Carričre. This was lined on both sides with terraces of beautiful old houses; two rows of mature trees ran down the center of the Place with a narrow park between them. We walked through this, utterly alone. Over the roofs to our left we could see the spire of the cathedral.

A car drove through, trailing smoke and a clattering noise. At the far end there was a colonnade in front of the former Palais du Gouvernement, and here another couple walked slowly past. We looked back the way we had come, to the vista of Place Stanislas glimpsed through the Arc: the bright sunlight made the clean lines of the buildings, the stately sculpted view, seem static and monochrome. The car with the smoke had passed through into the square, and now nothing moved anywhere we could see.

We left Carričre and walked through a narrow shaded lane to one of the main shopping streets. Sounds grew around us, and we saw the press of people. In Le Cours Leopold there were a number of sidewalk cafés, and we went to one of these and ordered demis-pressions. The evening before we had visited one of the restaurants on the opposite side, and after the meal had stayed drinking wine together until after midnight. We had spoken, in mostly general terms, about the other people in our lives, people from the past, although I had described my relationship with Annette as an unspecific counter to Sue’s boyfriend waiting for her in Saint-Raphael.

Now, after our sightseeing walk, she was more ready to talk about the present.

“I don’t like living in London,” she said. “It costs so much money just to stay alive. I’ve never really had any money, not since leaving home. I’m always broke, always scraping along. I wanted to be a real artist, but I’ve never been able to get started. It’s all commercial work.”

“Do you live alone?” I said.

“Yes—well, I’ve got a room in a house. It’s one of those large Victorian houses in Hornsey. It was broken up into flats and bed-sitters years ago. My room is on the ground floor. It’s quite large, but I can’t work in natural light—there’s a wall outside the window.”

“Is your friend an artist?”

“My friend?”

“The one you told me about yesterday. In Saint-Raphael.”

“No, he’s a sort-of writer.”

“What sort of writer is a sort-of writer?”

She smiled. “It’s what he says he does. He spends most of his spare time writing, but he never shows it to me and I don’t think he’s had anything published. I’m not allowed to ask about it.”

She shook her head, staring at the little plate of salted bretzels the waiter had brought with the drinks. “He wanted to move in with me, but I wouldn’t let him. I’d never get any work done.”

“Then where does he live?”

“He moves around from one place to another. I’m never sure where he is until he turns up. He doesn’t pay rent, and just sponges off other people.”

“Then why … ? Look, what’s his name?”

“Niall.” She spelled it for me. “Niall’s a hanger-on, a parasite. This is the only reason he’s in France. The people he was staying with were going on holiday, and the choice was to leave him alone in their house or take him with them. So Niall gets a free holiday on the Riviera, and that’s why I’m going down there to see him. He says he needs me.”

“You don’t sound very keen on the idea.”

“I’m not.” She looked frankly at me. “If you want the truth, I can’t afford it, and I was beginning to enjoy not having Niall around me all the time, when he started calling me from France.” She swallowed the rest of her drink. “I shouldn’t say this, but I’m sick of Niall. I’ve known him too long, and I wish he’d leave me alone.”

“Well, ditch him.”

“It’s never as easy as that. Niall’s a clinger. I’ve known him too long, and he knows how to get his own way. I’ve kicked him out more times than I can remember, and yet every time he manages to worm his way back into my life. I’ve given up trying.”

“But what sort of relationship is that?”

“Let’s have another drink. I’ll get these.” She signaled to the waiter as he was passing.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I didn’t want to. What about your girlfriend, the one who’s in Canada? How long have you known her?”

“You’re changing the subject,” I said.

“No, I’m not. How long have you known her? Six years? That’s how long I’ve known Niall. When you’ve been with someone as long as that, he knows you. He knows how to manipulate you, how to hurt you, how to use things against you. Niall’s especially good at that. I can’t get away from him because every time I try he finds something new to blackmail me with.”

“But why don’t you—?” I paused, trying to imagine such a relationship, trying to think of myself in a similar situation. It was completely outside my experience.

“Why don’t I what?”

“I can’t understand why you let it go on.”

The waiter arrived with two more glasses, and removed the old ones. Sue paid him, and he laid out the change on the table, putting the note away in the small leather pouch he carried around his waist.

“I can’t understand it either,” she said. “I’ve never found anyone else, and so I suppose it’s easier just to keep going. It’s my own fault, really.”

I said nothing for a while, leaning back in the seat and pretending to watch the passers-by. She was so unlike the passive self she was depicting. It seemed to be a destructive relationship, the way she described it. I wanted to say to her: I am different, I do not cling, you’ve found someone else now. Leave this man Niall, stay with me. You don’t have to put up with him.

Eventually I said, “Do you know why he wants to see you?”

“Nothing special. He’s probably browned off, wants someone to talk to who will listen.”

“I don’t see why you put up with this. You say you’re broke, and yet you’re traveling across France just so he can talk to you.”

“It’ll be more than talking,” she said. “Anyway, you don’t know him.”

“It seems very irrational to me.”

“Yes. I know it does.”

III

We stayed one more night in Nancy, then took another train to the town of Dijon. The weather had changed for the worse, and as the train moved slowly through the extensive suburbs of the city a heavy rain began to fall. We discussed whether or not to stay, but I was no longer in any hurry to reach the south, and we agreed to stick to the plans we had worked out the previous evening.

Dijon was a crowded, busy city, with some kind of business convention going on, and the first two hotels we called at were full. The third, Hotel Central, had only double rooms available.

“We can share,” Sue said as we retreated from the reception desk to consult. “Ask for a twin-bedded room.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“It’ll be cheaper than two rooms, anyway.”

“We could try somewhere else.”

She said quietly, “I don’t mind sharing.”

Our room was on the top floor, at the end of a long corridor. It was small, but it had a large window with a balcony and a pleasant view across the trees of the square below. The two beds were placed close together, separated by a small table with a telephone. As soon as the porter had left, Sue put down her canvas bag and came across to me. She embraced me tightly, and I put my arms around her. The back of her jacket, and her hair, were wet from the rain.

“We don’t have long together,” she said. “Don’t let’s wait any more.”

We started kissing, she with great passion. It was the first time we had held each other, the first time we had kissed. I had not known what she would feel like, how her skin and lips would taste. I knew her only to talk to, only to look at; now I could feel and hold her, press her against me, and she was different. Soon we were eagerly undressing each other, and then we lay on the nearest bed.

We did not leave the hotel until after dark, driven out by hunger and thirst. We had become physically obsessed with each other, and could hardly stop touching. I held her close to me as we walked along the rain-swept street, thinking only of her and what she now meant to me. So often in the past sex had merely satisfied physical curiosity, but with Sue it had released deeper feelings, greater intimacy, a new appetite for each other.

We found a restaurant, Le Grand Zinc, and nearly passed it by, thinking it must be closed. When we went in we discovered we were the only customers: five waiters, dressed in black waistcoats and trousers, with stiff white aprons that reached to their ankles, stood in a patient row beside the serving door. When we were shown to a window table they moved into action, attentive but discreet. Each had short dark hair plastered to his scalp with shiny dressing, and each had a pencil-thin mustache. Sue and I exchanged glances, suppressing giggles. We had found it did not take much to make us laugh.

Outside, a storm had started: brilliant, pink-hued flashes of lightning, far away, thunderless. The rain continued to sheet down, but traffic was sparse in the street. An old Citroën was parked by the curb, glistening in the rain, the double inverted V on its radiator grille reflecting back the red lamp lights from the restaurant.

Remembering a lesson learned during an earlier visit to Paris, I suggested we have the plat du jour, and in due course the comic-opera waiters served us saucisson en croâte, followed by côtes de porc. It was a memorable meal, garnished with private thoughts and secret signs.

At the end of the meal, sipping brandy, we held hands across the tabletop. The waiters stared away.

“We could go to SaintTropez,” I said. “Have you ever been there?”

“Isn’t it crowded at this time of year?”

“I suppose so. But that’s no reason not to go.”

“It would be expensive. I’m running out of cash.”

“We can live cheaply.”

“I can’t afford to go on eating in places like this,” she said.

“This is a celebration.”

“All right, but did you notice the prices?”

Because of the rain we had not checked the prices before entering, but they were clearly printed on the carte. The prices were in old francs, or seemed to be. I had made a halfhearted attempt to convert them, but had come to the conclusion they were either ridiculously low or outrageously high; the quality of the cooking and service indicated the latter.

“We’re not going to run out of cash,” I said.

“I know what you mean, and it’s not going to work. I can’t sponge off you.”

“Then what’s going to happen? If we’re going to travel together and it will bankrupt you, how much longer can we go on?”

She said, “We’ve got to discuss that, Richard. I’m still going to visit Niall. I can’t let him down.”

“What about me? Don’t you think that will let me down?” She shook her head, looking away. “If it’s just money, let’s go home to England tomorrow.”

“It isn’t only the money. I promised I would see him. He’s waiting for me.”

I took my hand away from hers and stared at her in exasperation. “I don’t want you to go.”

“And neither do I,” she said in a low voice. “Niall’s a bloody nuisance, of course I realize that. But I can’t just not turn up.”

“I’ll come with you,” I said. “We’ll see him together.”

“No, no—that would be impossible. I couldn’t stand that.”

“All right. I’ll go with you to Saint-Raphael and wait for you while you tell him. Then we’ll go straight back to England.”

“He’s expecting me to stay with him. A week, maybe two.”

“Can’t you do something?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, I’ll at least pay the damned bill here.” I snapped my fingers at the waiters, and in seconds a folded bill on a plate was put in front of me. The total, service compris, came to 3600 francs, written the old way. Tentatively, I put 36 francs on the plate, and it was accepted without demur. “Merci, monsieur.” As we left the restaurant the waiters stood in an impeccable row, smiling and nodding to us, bonne nuit, a bientôt.

We hurried along the street, the storm effectively postponing any more wrangling over the problem. I was angry as much with myself as anything: only the day before I had been congratulating myself on being unpossessive toward women, and now I was feeling just the opposite. The way out was obvious—to give in, let Sue go on to see her boyfriend, and hope to run into her again in London one day. But she had already become acutely special to me. I liked her and she made me happy, and our physical lovemaking had confirmed all this and promised more.

Upstairs in the room we toweled our hair and stripped off our damp outer clothes. It was warm in the room, and we threw open the window. Thunder rumbled in the distance and traffic swished by below. I stood for a while on the balcony, getting wet again, wondering what to do. I wanted to put off the decision until the morning.

From the room, Sue said, “Will you help me?”

I went in. She had pulled back the covers from one of the beds.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Let’s put the beds together. We’ll have to move the table.”

She was standing in her bra and pants, her hair tousled and still damp. Her body was slim, slightly curved, the thin underwear barely concealing her. I helped her move the beds and table, and we began remaking the beds, interleaving the sheets to form a large double, but before the job was half finished we started kissing and touching again. We never completely made the beds that night, although they stayed pressed together.

In the morning I made no decision, realizing I would only lose her. Talking about the problem worsened it. After breakfast at a table outside the hotel we set off to explore the town. We said nothing about continuing our journey southward.

At the center of Dijon was the Place de la Libération, the ducal palace faced across a cobblestone plaza by a semicircle of seventeenth-century houses. It was on a smaller, more human scale than Nancy, but we noticed that here too the crowds and traffic stayed away. The weather had improved again and the sun was hot and brilliant. Several wide puddles lay in parts of the plaza. An area of the palace had been made over into a museum, and we wandered around admiring the grand halls and rooms as much as the exhibits. We lingered for a time before the eerie tombs of the Dukes of Burgundy, stone manikins set among gothic arches, each mounted in a grotesquely lifelike pose.

“Where is everybody else?” Sue said to me, and although she spoke softly her voice set up sibilant echoes.

“I thought France would be crowded at this time of year,” I said.

She took my arm and pressed herself against me. “I don’t like this place. Let’s go somewhere else.”

We wandered for most of the morning through the busy shopping streets, rested once or twice in cafés, then came to the river and sat down on the bank under the trees. It was good to escape temporarily from the crowds, the endless noise of traffic.

Pointing up through the trees, Sue said, “The sun’s going to go in.”

A single cloud, black and dense, was drifting across the sky in the direction of the sun. It did not look like a rain cloud, but it was large enough to blot out the sun for half an hour. I squinted up at it, thinking about Niall.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” Sue said.

“Suits me.”

We returned to the city center. In the room we discovered that the chambermaid had made the beds for us. They were where we had left them, standing together, and when we pulled back the covers we found the sheets neatly interleaved, to make a double.

IV

We traveled farther south, changing trains at Lyons to reach Grenoble, a large and modern city in the mountains. We found a hotel, this time booking a room with a double bed, then, because it was still midafternoon, went out to look at the town.

We were becoming dedicated travelers, dutifully seeing the sights in each of the towns we visited. It gave us an external purpose, an excuse to be together, something that gave us a rest from our obsession with each other.

“Shall we go up the mountain?” I said. We had come to Quai Stephane-Jay, and here was the terminal of a funicular system. From the broad concourse at the front it was possible to see the cables stretching up out of the town toward a high rocky promontory.

“Those things aren’t safe,” Sue said, gripping my arm.

“Of course they are.” I wanted to see the view from the top. “Would you rather just walk the streets for the rest of the day?”

We had yet to discover the old part of the town, and much of Grenoble was concrete high-rise with litter and wind-tunnel effect at street level. The city guide recommended that visitors tour the university, but it was out on the eastern edge.

I talked her into it, but she feigned nervousness and held on to my arm. Soon we were lifting away from the city, gaining height quickly. For a while I stared back at the city, seeing its huge spread through the valley, but then we moved to the other side of the car to watch the slopes of the mountain rising beneath us. It was an ultramodern cable system, four glassy globes moving together in convoy, steady in the sky.

As the cars slowed down at the top we had to scramble to get out, and then we walked through the noisy engine house into the cold wind of the ridge. Sue slipped her arm around me under my jacket, holding close. To be with a girl I really liked, whom I wanted to go on liking, was a unique feeling for me. To myself I was renouncing my past, never again wanting superficial sexual conquests; after many years I had found the person I wanted to be with all the time.

“We can get a drink here,” I said. A restaurant and café had been built on the farthest extremity of the promontory, with a viewing platform that overlooked the valley. We went inside, glad to be out of the wind. A waiter brought us two cognacs and we sipped them, feeling decadent because it was still daytime. Later, Sue visited the Ladies’ and I went over to the souvenir stand and bought a few postcards. I was thinking I should send some to friends, but the truth was that since meeting Sue I had lost interest in almost everything except her.

She found me at the stand.

“I’m feeling warmer now,” she said. “Let’s look at the view.”

We went out into the wind, hugging each other again, and moved to the edge of the platform. Three coinoperated telescopes tipped down toward the valley from the raised parapet. We stood between two of them, leaning against the concrete wall and staring down. On the horizon were the mountains surrounding the town to the south; to our left, the snow-capped peaks of the French Alps were sharp against the blue.

Sue said, “Look, I suppose that’s the university.” She was pointing toward a group of beautiful old buildings, turreted and spired, along by the river. “It’s closer to the town than we thought.”

There was a plan built into the top of the parapet, indicating what could be seen. We traced the various landmarks.

“It’s smaller than I thought,” I said. “When we came in on the train, the city seemed to spread right up the valley.”

“Where are all those office blocks? I can’t see them anymore.”

“They were by the hotel.” I looked on the plan, but it was not marked. “There was a whole area of them, near where the cable cars started.” I followed the cables with my eyes down the mountainside, but the terminal was hidden from us. “It must be a trick of the light.”

“Perhaps they were designed that way, to blend in with the old buildings.”

It said on the plan that Mont Blanc could be seen to the northeast, so we turned in that direction. There were clouds behind us though, and the view of the mountains was indistinct. Beyond the restaurant were the ruins of an old fort, and we walked over to them. We found there was a charge for entering, so we changed our minds.

“Another brandy?” I said. “Or back to the hotel?”

“Let’s do both.”

Half an hour later we returned to the platform for another look at the city. Lights were coming on down there, and tiny points of warm orange and yellow glinted from the buildings. We watched the evening for a while, then took the cable car down the mountain. After we had breasted one of the rises, the city again came into full view. A mist was forming, but now we could see the newer section very clearly: blue-white fluorescent strip lights shone from the glass towers. It seemed to us impossible that we could not have seen them from the top. I took out the postcards I had bought: one of them was a photograph of the view, and in this the modern buildings clearly stood high above the others.

“I’m getting hungry,” Sue said.

“For food?”

“That as well.”

V

We arrived in Nice. It was the height of the tourist season, and the only hotel we could find that we could afford was in the north of the town, lost in a maze of narrow streets, a long walk from the sea. With our arrival my feeling of dread became dominant. We had at best another day or two together; Saint-Raphael was only a few kilometers along the coast.

Niall had become a forbidden subject, ever-present but never discussed. Even the silence about him became obvious. We knew exactly what the other would say, and neither of us wished to hear it. If I had a way of dealing with the problem it was to give my best to Sue, to hope to convey to her what we were about to lose. She seemed to be doing the same. We both had the power of concentration, and turned it full upon each other.

I was in love with her. The feeling had started in Dijon, and every waking minute with her confirmed and enlarged it. She delighted me in every way, and I was obsessed with her. Yet I drew back from saying the words, not through doubts but because she might think them coercive.

I still did not know what to do. On our first night in Nice Sue fell asleep beside me while I sat up with the light on, ostensibly reading but in fact brooding about her and Niall.

Nothing would work. An ultimatum, a choice between me or him, would fail. There was a stubbornness in Sue about Niall, and I knew I could not shift her. Discarded too was the idea of portraying myself as the wounded loser; that was actually how I felt, but nothing would make me use it as a ploy. Reason, too, was out. She freely acknowledged that her relationship with him was irrational.

She had rejected my other ideas—my hanging around in the background while she saw him; a premature return to England.

Hours of introspection produced nothing but the lame hope that she might change her mind by herself.

We stayed in our hotel room for most of the next day, leaving it every two or three hours for a walk or a drink or a meal. We saw very little of Nice, but because of my preoccupation I hated what I saw. I identified the town with my sense of loss, and blamed it for it. I disliked the ostentatious wealth on display: the yachts in the harbor, the Alfas and Mercedes and Ferraris, the women with their face-lifts and the men with their business paunches. I equally disliked the showy inverse: the English debs in rusty Minis, the worn-out Nike running shoes, the chopped-off jeans, the faded clothes. I resented the topless sunbathers, the palm trees and aloe vera plants, the shingly beaches and the exquisite blue sea, the casino and the hotels, the villas on the hills, the skyscraper apartment blocks, the suntanned youths on motorbikes, the wind surfers and paraskiers, the speedboats, pedalos and beach huts. I begrudged them all their pleasure.

My only pleasure was the source of my misery: Sue herself. Provided I pushed Niall to the back of my mind, provided I did not think beyond the next few hours, provided I held on to my lame hope, all was temporarily well.

Of course she knew.

She too had her introspections; once I found her crying on the bed. Our lovemaking became urgent, and whenever we were out we constantly touched or held each other. Often we sat in a bar or a restaurant holding hands, staring away at other people, other places.

We decided to stay a second night in Nice, even though it would only prolong the wretchedness. We agreed tacitly that we would leave for Saint-Raphael in the morning, and there we would part. This was our last night together.

We made love as if nothing were to change; then, restlessly, we sat together on the bed, the window and shutters wide open to the night. Insects hummed around the light. At last she broke the silence.

“Where are you going to go tomorrow, Richard?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I might just go home.”

“But what were you going to do before we met? You must have made plans.”

“I was just traveling around. Now there’s no point, without you.”

“Why don’t you go to SaintTropez?”

“On my own? I want to be with you.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the only thing I’m sure of.”

She was silent, staring down at the rumpled sheets on which we sprawled. Her body was so white, and suddenly I had a jealous image of seeing her again in London in a few weeks’ time and finding that she had acquired a suntan.

“Sue, are you really going to go through with this?”

“I’ve got to. We’ve been over all that.”

“Then this is the end, isn’t it?”

“I think that’s up to you.”

“How can you say that? I don’t want this to finish! You must know that by now.”

“But Richard, you’re making an issue out of this. You’re acting as if we can’t see each other again. Why does it have to be final?”

“All right, I’ll see you back in London. You’ve got my address.”

She shifted position, pulling at the creased sheet below us, freeing it from her weight and laying it over her bare knees as she kneeled beside me. Her hands fretted it as she spoke.

“I’ve got to see Niall. I’m not going to break a promise. But I don’t want to hurt you… . I’d never see Niall again, if I had my way.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’ll see him tomorrow. You go on with your holiday, tell me where you’ll be and I’ll join up with you as soon as I can.”

“Do you mean that?” I said.

“Of course I do!”

“What will you say to him? Are you going to tell him about me?”

“If I can.”

“Then why don’t I wait for you here?”

“Because … I can’t just tell him. I’ll have to stay with him for a while.”

“How long will that be?”

“I don’t know. Three or four days … maybe a week.”

“A week!” I turned away from her angrily. “For God’s sake, how long does it take to tell someone you’re finished with him?”

She bent her head. “Let me do it my way. You don’t understand the problem with Niall. I’ll have to break it to him in stages. First of all he’s got to be told I’ve met someone else, someone who matters more than him. Don’t you think that’s enough to be going on with? I can say the rest when he gets used to that idea.”

I left the bed and poured us both some wine from the bottle we had bought earlier. There was no other way but her way, I knew that. I passed her a glass of wine but she put it aside untouched.

“When you see Niall, will you be sleeping with him?”

“I’ve been sleeping with him for six years.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s none of your business.”

It hurt to hear it, but it was true. I looked at her naked body, trying to imagine some other man with her, deeply abhoring the idea. She had become so precious to me. Her head was bent, her hair concealing her face. I went to touch her, laying my hand on her arm. She responded at once, clasping my hand.

“All right, Sue. I’ll do what you suggest. I’ll leave you in Saint-Raphael tomorrow and go on down the coast. If you haven’t caught up with me within a week, I’ll either go on without you or head back to England.”

“It won’t take a week,” she said. “Three days, maybe less.”

“Just make it as soon as you can.” I found I had drained my glass of wine without even noticing I had started it. I put it aside. “Now, what about money?”

“What about it?”

“You said you were almost out. How are you going to travel after you leave Niall?”

“I’ll borrow some from somewhere.”

“You mean you’ll get it from Niall.”

“Probably. He’s always got plenty.”

“You’ll borrow his money, but you won’t borrow mine. Don’t you see that gives him just one more hold over you?” She shook her head. “Anyway, I thought you said he didn’t have any money.”

“I said he didn’t have a job. He’s never short of cash.”

“Where does he get it? Does he steal?”

“I don’t know. Please don’t go on with this. Money means nothing to Niall. I can get what I need.”

It was a small insight into what must have been their relationship. She could intend to tell him she was throwing him over in favor of someone else, and still expect him to lend her money. Everything I knew about Niall, all of it from her, was unpleasant: a bully, a parasite, a manipulator, perhaps a thief. At that moment I even hated his damned name.

I got up from the bed again, and while she watched silently I pulled on a pair of trousers and a T-shirt. I left the room, closing the door noisily. I walked along the corridor, then went down the four flights of stairs to the ground floor.

Outside, in the warm night, I walked down the street toward the café on the corner. It was closed. I turned the corner and started down the next street. This was a neglected, ill-lit part of Nice, the houses crowding one on the next, the plaster peeling and broken in many places. Lights showed from a few windows, and ahead of me at the next intersection I could see traffic moving to and fro. I went as far as this road, then came to a halt. I knew I was being unfair, that I had no hold over her, that in my own way I was being as manipulative as Niall. Just then I did not care, seeing Sue as someone who provoked such behavior in men, who probably always would. A week ago I had not known she even existed; now she preoccupied me entirely. I wanted her more than I had ever wanted any other woman.

Minutes passed, and my quick anger subsided. I blamed myself: I had walked into her life and now expected her to change everything. By my demands on her I was forcing a choice on her, making her see us as alternatives to each other. She knew Niall better than she knew me, and I knew nothing of him.

I turned and hurried back to the hotel, convinced that I was going to lose her. I took the stairs two at a time and went quickly into the room, half expecting to find her already gone. But she was there, lying in the bed with her back to the door, a single sheet covering her thin body. She made no move as I entered.

“Are you asleep?” I said softly.

She turned to look at me; her face was damp and her eyes were red.

“Where have you been?” she said.

I pulled off my clothes and climbed onto the bed beside her. We put our arms around each other, kissing and holding tenderly. She cried again, sobbing against me. I stroked her hair, touched her eyelids, and then at last, far too late but wholly meant, I said the words I had been holding back.

All she said, indistinctly, was, “Yes. And me. I thought you knew.”

VI

The morning brought another silence between us, but now I was content. We had made a sort of accommodation. She knew my itinerary, and where and when we could meet.

We boarded a bus in the center of Nice, and soon set off westward. Sue held my hand and pressed herself close against me. The bus drove first to Antibes and Juanles-Pins, then to Cannes. Passengers changed over at every stop. After Cannes we passed through some of the most beautiful scenery I had seen in France: wooded hills, steep valleys, and of course one vista of the Mediterranean after another. Cypresses and olive trees grew beside the road, and wild flowers flourished in every untended patch of ground. The roof panels of the bus were open, and rich scents blustered in; sometimes, because of the road, the smell was of gasoline or diesel oil. The whole coastline was scattered with houses and apartment blocks, high on the hills or standing among the trees; occasionally they ruined the view, but so too, in a different way, did the road.

We saw a sign saying that Saint-Raphael was another four kilometers, and immediately we drew closer, holding each other tightly and kissing. I wanted both to prolong the farewells and be done with them, but there was nothing more to say.

Except one thing. As the bus halted in the center of Saint-Raphael, a square opening out onto the tiny harbor, Sue put her mouth to the side of my face and said quietly, “I’ve got good news for you.”

“What’s that?”

“I started my period this morning.”

She squeezed my hand, kissed me lightly, then went down the center aisle with the other passengers. I stayed in my seat, looking at her as she waited for her luggage to be unloaded from the hold. Once or twice she glanced up at me, smiling nervously. The little square was crowded with holidaymakers, and I looked at them, wondering if Niall was somewhere among them. Everyone was young, tanned, attractive. Sue stood by my window, looking up at me, and I wished the bus would leave.

At last we were off. Sue stayed still, smiling up at me and waving. The bus turned into a side street, heading back to the main road, and I lost sight of her.

Alone, I fell almost at once into a depressed mood. I thought only of the worst: that I would never see her again, that in Niall’s hands she would be manipulated against me, that her feelings would diminish, that torn between two men she would settle on the one she knew better.

Apart from anything else, I simply missed her. I had never before felt so isolated.

VII

As soon as I had found somewhere to stay in SaintTropez, I took a walk around the village and discovered I liked it. Perversely, what I liked were exactly the same things I had disliked in Nice. There were the same kinds of people there, the same overt displays of wealth, the same glamour and hedonism. Unlike Nice, though, SaintTropez was small and the architecture was attractive, and it was possible to believe that at the end of the season the place would have its own identity. It was also far more cosmopolitan, with great numbers of people apparently camping or sleeping rough outside the village, and coming in every day.

I called in at the local Hertz office to book a rental car in three days’ time, when I was planning to leave. I was lucky: because of demand, only one car was available then. I paid the deposit, signed the form. The Hertz girl had a name tag pinned to her blouse: Daničle.

My arrangement with Sue was to wait for her every evening at six at Sénéquier, the large open-air café directly overlooking the inner harbor. I did walk past this on my first evening, but of course there was no sign of her.

My thoughts about Sue were infrequent during the next day. I felt worn out by her, and so I devoted myself to the less strenuous activity of lying on the beach and from time to time walking down for a swim. In the evening I went to Sénéquier, but she did not appear.

I was on the beach again the next day, rather more cautious about the sun. Well smeared with shielding ointment, and sitting under a rented beach umbrella, I passed the day regarding the people around me and thinking inevitably of Sue. She had aroused an immediate physical need, and now she was not there.

I was surrounded by female nudity: bare breasts stared sunward on every side. The day before I had hardly given this a second thought, but now I was missing Sue again, thinking of her with Niall. I could not imagine away these nubile French, Germans, British, Swiss, with their cache-sexe bikini briefs, their suntanned breasts. Not one of them could replace Sue for me, but each one reminded me of what I was missing. Yet the irony was that seminudity, supposedly a form of vulnerability, actually created a new kind of social barrier. It was impossible to strike up a conversation with someone I knew only by body appearance.

That evening I waited again in Sénéquier for Sue, wishing she would appear. I wanted her more than ever, but in the end had to walk away without her.

I had one more day and one more night in SaintTropez, and in the morning I decided to kill time a different way. The beach was too distracting. I spent the morning in the village itself, wandering slowly around the boutiques and souvenir shops, the leathergoods stores, the crafts workshops. I strolled around the harbor looking enviously at the yachts, their crews, their affluent owners. After lunch I walked along the shore in a different direction, away from the center of the village, clambering over rocks and walking along a concrete sea wall.

At the end of the wall I leaped down to the sand and continued on. The crowds were thinner here, but the beach did not present a favorable aspect to the sun: trees shaded part of the sand. I passed a sign: Plage Privée. Beyond, everything changed.

It was the least crowded beach I had seen in SaintTropez, and by far the most decorous. Here there was no display of seminude bodies. Many people were enjoying the sun, and some were swimming, but as far as I could see there were no topless women, no men in G-string briefs. Children played, a sight I had not seen elsewhere, and on this beach there was no open-air restaurant or bar, no beach umbrellas or mats, no magazine vendors or photographers.

I walked slowly across the beach, feeling outrageous in my cut-off denim shorts, my Southern Comfort T-shirt, my sandals, but no one took any notice of me. I passed several groups of mostly middleaged people. They had brought picnic meals to the beach, vacuum flasks, and little paraffin-fired Primus stoves for heating their kettles. Many of the men were wearing shirts with rolled-up sleeves, and gray flannel trousers or baggy khaki shorts. They sat in striped deck chairs, clenching pipes between their teeth, and some of them were reading English newspapers. Most of the women were wearing light summer dresses, and those who were sunbathing sat rather than lay, and were clad in modest one-piece suits.

I went down to the water’s edge and stood near a group of children who were splashing and chasing one another in the shallows. Beyond, heads protected by rubber bathing caps bobbed in the waves. A man stood up and waded out of the sea. He was wearing shorts and a singlet, and goggles over his eyes. As he passed me he took off the goggles and shook out the water, making a spray across the white sand. He grinned at me and moved on up the beach. Offshore, a cruise liner was at anchor.

Ahead, a paraskier rose up on his cable, soaring behind the outboard motor speedboat that towed him. I walked on, out of the private section and to another beach where rows of straw-roofed shelters had been erected in straight lines across the sand. In their shelter, or spread out in the full glare of the sun, crowds of topless sunbathers lay in their familiar abandonment. This time I walked up the beach to an open-air bar and bought myself a glass of extortionately expensive iced orange juice. I was now some distance from the village itself, so I left the beach and walked back along the road.

It was still early afternoon, so I returned to the beach I had used before. I settled back to look pleasurably, if innocently, at the girls. An hour or so passed.

Then I noticed someone walking along the beach who looked different from all the others; she was wearing clothes, and I was not the only man on the beach to look at her. She had on skin-tight designer jeans and a transparent white blouse, and looked cool and self-possessed under a wide sun hat. As she approached I recognized her: it was Daničle, from the Hertz office. She came to within a few meters of me, then took off her sun hat and shook out her hair. While I watched, she stripped off her jeans and blouse and walked calmly into the sea. When she came out she put on the blouse over her wet body, but not the jeans, and lay back on the sand to dry out.

I went over to speak to her, and in a while we agreed to meet for supper that evening.

I was at Senéquier at six, looking for Sue. If she had turned up I would have abandoned my date with Daničle without qualms, but Daničle had given me an inner reassurance. That evening would not be another lonely one, and if Sue did not appear my pride had a salve. I was feeling guilty about having picked up Daničle, and my reasons for doing so, and as a result blamed Sue. I thought of her with Niall, the sort-of writer, the rival, the bullying manipulator, and how if Sue were suddenly to appear everything could be put right.

I waited long past the hour, then finally conceded that she was not going to turn up.

I went from Sénéquier to a boutique I had been in earlier, where I had noticed they sold a wide range of postcards. Still feeling unreasonably vindictive about Sue, I chose a card. The picture was a reproduction of a prewar view of SaintTropez, before the commercialization. Fishermen mended nets on the harbor wall and the only boats in sight were fishing smacks. Behind them, where now the holidaymakers milled past in an endless flow and where the fashionable Sénéquier was situated, was a narrow yard with a wooden warehouse.

I took the postcard back to my room, and before changing my clothes I sat on the bed and addressed the card to Sue’s flat in London. “Wish you were here,” I wrote sardonically, and instead of signing it I printed an x.

A few minutes later, on my way to meet Daničle, I mailed it.

Daničle took me to a restaurant called La Grotto Fraiche, the only one, she said, that stayed open all year round, the restaurant the locals used. Afterward, we went to the apartment she shared with three other girls. Her bedroom was next to the main room, where two of them were watching television. As we made love I could hear the television through the wall, and occasionally the voices of the girls. When we were finished I thought only of Sue, and regretted everything. Daničle sensed that I was triste, but did not inquire. She put on a housecoat and made some coffee brandy. Soon I was walking back to the hotel.

I saw Daničle again in the morning, when I collected the Renault. She was wearing the Hertz uniform, was friendly, bright, unremorseful. Before I drove away we exchanged the double-cheek kiss.

VIII

I drove inland from SaintTropez, wanting to avoid the heavy traffic along the coast roads. The Renault was difficult to drive at first, the gearshift stiff to move and placed on the right, breaking my coordination. To drive on the right demanded constant attention, especially as the road wound sharply through mountain country. At Le Luc I joined the main autoroute and headed west on the broad divided highway, and driving became less of a strain.

I knew I was moving farther and farther away from Sue, but we had agreed on our rendezvous, and my main concern now was to see her again.

I drove along the autoroute as far as Aix-en-Provence, then turned south toward Marseilles. By lunchtime I had checked into a small pension in the dock area, and spent the afternoon wandering around the city. Well before six o’clock I went to our agreed rendezvous, the Gare Saint-Charles, and waited for her in as prominent a place as I could find. At eight, I went to find dinner.

I had another day to kill in Marseilles. I visited the Quai du Port, with its streetcars and wharves, the three-and four-masted barks lined up against the docks, the whole place deafeningly loud with the noise of the steam cranes. In the afternoon I went on a tourist boat for a tour of the great waterfront, passing the grim edifice of Fort Saint-Jean, then out into the calm bay to circle Château d’If. I spent the early part of the evening wandering on the concourse of the station, staring anxiously at the crowds whenever a train arrived from the Riviera. I was worried I would not recognize her.

IX

I came to Martigues, a short drive from Marseilles. Martigues was on a narrow but hilly isthmus between the Mediterranean and Etang de Berre, a vast freshwater lake. The center of the town was the original village, but nearby oil refineries had swelled the size and the population all through the twentieth century. It was impossible to drive into the center, tie Brescon, because a number of small but picturesque canals took the place of streets. I left the Renault in a town parking lot, then walked with my suitcase to find somewhere to stay.

This was the last agreed meeting place with Sue; if she did not appear here, I knew I was on my own.

The village was no place to be lonely. Many other visitors were there, walking along the narrow alleys or cruising through in boats, and it looked to me as if everyone else was in couples or groups. I began to dread the evening, knowing Sue would inevitably let me down. The worst of it was the persistent hope, weakening my determination to put her behind me.

The Quai Brescon was the place we had agreed, the opening of the main canal to Etang de Berre. I went there as soon as I arrived, to familiarize myself with it, and returned several times during the day. It was a placid backwater of the town, the houses built directly against the water, with numerous small rowing boats and skiffs tied up along the narrow towpaths. Few of the visitors found the quai, and there were no restaurants, shops or even a bar. Here the old people of the village gathered, and when I arrived for my evening vigil they had already assembled, sitting outside their peeling houses on an assortment of old wicker chairs and boxes. The women all wore black, the men wore weathered serge de Nimes. They stared at me as I sauntered along the quai, their conversation dying around me as I passed. At the mouth of the canal, looking out at the smooth black water of the lake, I could smell sewage.

The warm evening darkened, night fell, lights came on in the tiny houses. I was alone.

X

I drove around the Camargue to the village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the site of a shrine. I wanted to go to a place I had not mentioned to Sue, somewhere she could not find me if she tried. I also wanted to be by the sea again, to throw stones at waves and wander moodily along a beach.

But it was a mistake. The tiny village was crowded, and buses blocked the streets and parking lots. I found a place to leave the car and walked around for a while. The shrine, a miraculous well, was contained in a stone-built chapel, handwritten testimonies to its healing power attached to every wall. I read a few of these pathetic, joyful messages of gratitude, then returned to the bright and sunlit streets. Almost every building in the center was a commercialization of the shrine: effigies, candles, crosses, replicas were sold in every place. The only restaurant open was a vast modern cafeteria—plastic-topped tables and metal trays. I went inside seeking lunch, but was driven out by the crowds and the flies.

As I walked down to the beach I was attacked by the largest flying insect I had ever seen; it was yellow and black like a grotesquely swollen wasp. I assumed it was a hornet, and managed to elude it. From then on I kept a watchful eye open for more, but I did not stay long. The beach was open and flat, not used by the visitors, and when I reached the water the tiny waves broke feebly on the white sand. Just then I hungered for an ocean beach, with rocks and waves and sea wind, a sense of natural drama.

XI

The next day I went to a town called Aigues-Mortes. When looking at the map with Sue I had noticed the name and wondered what it meant. We had looked it up and found it was a corruption of the Roman name: Aquae Mortuae, “the dead waters.” The town turned out to be a walled city, massively fortified in the Middle Ages and surrounded by a number of shallow lagoons. I parked the car outside the wall, then in the humid heat followed the course of the former moat. I soon tired of this and climbed a low hill close by, staring back. The town had a monochrome quality, like an old sepia-tinted photograph: light fell uniformly, blurring colors. I could see the roofs within the walls, and in the near distance beyond the town there was an industrial site with a number of high but unsmoking chimneys. The lagoons reflected the sky.

It struck me then that this was what France had become for me: without Sue to enliven me, it was a flat, silent and unreal place, drifting past as I traveled, locking into immobility when I stared. If I thought back over the last few days, Sue dominated everything. I remembered her company, her laughter, her love, her body. But behind her, almost unnoticed, were my images of France. Sue had distracted me from them, first by her presence, then by her absence. The empty plazas of Nancy, the old-fashioned restaurant in Dijon, that mountain sight of Grenoble, the modest bathers of SaintTropez, the docks of Marseilles—they were static in my mind, moments I had passed through with my thoughts elsewhere. Now Aigues-Mortes: frozen in the shimmering sun, like some vestige of memory, it had an arbitrary, random quality, its stillness reflecting some forgotten thought or image, something distinct from Sue. France was haunting me, semiglimpsed beyond my preoccupations. How much more of France had I not noticed, how much more lay ahead?

My presence on the hill was attracting mosquitoes, which were whining unpleasantly around me, so I hurried back to where I had left the car, walking briskly through the town itself to get to the other side. The stillness had been an illusion, and bright colors cut the air.

At the entrance to the parking lot I noticed two suitcases standing together, and I thought how odd it was of someone to have left them there. I found the Renault, opened the door.

“Richard! Richard!”

She was running between the cars, dodging around them, her hair flying about her face. I felt the sense of unreality lifting from me, and all I thought was how much she looked the same, how like herself she was. Holding her again, feeling her willowy body against mine, I loved the familiarity of her, and how natural it was to have her in my arms.

XII

Driving southwest, the windows open against the heat, leaving the Riviera behind:

“How did you find me?”

“Just luck … I was about to give up.”

“But why that place?”

“You’d mentioned it, I knew you would go there. I arrived last night, and I’ve been hanging around all day.”

We were looking for somewhere to stay, somewhere to be alone together. She had been on buses for three days, traveling from one place to another, running low on cash, trying to save enough for the journey home. Niall had given her some money, she said, but he was broke too. It hadn’t been how she expected.

We stopped in Narbonne and checked into the first hotel we found. Sue plunged into the bath, and I sat on the side of it looking down at her. I noticed she had a bruise on her leg, one that had not been there before.

“Don’t stare at me.” She slumped low in the water, raising a knee to conceal her crotch from me but bringing the bruise fully into view.

“I thought you wanted me to.”

“I don’t like being looked at.”

Something had changed; I had always looked at her before. I left the tiny bathroom, pulled off my clothes and lay on the bed. I listened to Sue splashing around, then draining the water. A long silence, followed by the rustle of a paper tissue as she blew her nose. When she appeared, she had put on panties and a T-shirt.

Glancing down at me she prowled around the room, stared out through the window at the yard below, fidgeted with her clothes on the top of her suitcase. Finally she came to sit on the end of the bed, where I could not reach her without sitting up and stretching toward her.

“Where did you get that bruise?” I said.

She turned her leg to look at it. “A sort of accident. I fell against something. There’s another.” She twisted around and pulled up her T-shirt to reveal a second dark bruise on her back. “They don’t hurt,” she said.

“Niall did that, didn’t he?”

“Not really—it was an accident. He didn’t mean it.”

Because of the distance between us, I knew that she had resolved nothing, but I was glad just to have her back and said nothing. After a few minutes we dressed and walked into the town for a meal. I hardly registered the surroundings; I was travel-fatigued, had been in too many different places. And Sue preoccupied me. Narbonne felt real and alive, was not a tableau, but she distracted me away from it.

Over dinner, she at last gave me a full account of what had happened.

Niall’s friends were staying outside Saint-Raphael itself, in a converted farmhouse. Niall was not there when she arrived; she was told he was away on a trip. She waited for a day and a half, torn between having to wait and abandoning him altogether. When Niall turned up he was in a group of five people—another man and three young girls. No one said where they had been or what they had been doing. There were now nine people, including Sue, crammed into the house, and regardless of any other considerations she had been forced to share a bed with him. He was in a jumpy, violent mood at first, making Sue assume that something had been going on with one of the girls. There was an argument. The next day Niall vanished again, taking one of the cars. Sue decided to leave to join up with me, and got as far as packing her bags but Niall returned in time to stop her. She told him about me, and he started to beat her up. The others pulled him off her, and Niall’s mood immediately changed: first he became melancholy and clinging—in a way Sue said she knew how to deal with—but then changed again, saying that if she had made a decision then he would not stand in her way.

“This is what made it difficult,” she said to me. “If he had gone on acting badly I could have walked out on him. Instead, he pretended he didn’t care any more.”

“But at least you’re here,” I said. “Surely that’s all that matters?”

“Yes, but I don’t trust him. He’s never acted like this before.”

“What are you saying? That he might be following you?”

She was looking tense, fidgeting with the cutlery on the table. “I think it’s more likely he was sleeping with one of those girls and couldn’t be bothered.”

“Can we forget him now?” I said.

“All right.”

We went for a walk around the town after the meal, but our real interest was in each other and we soon returned to the hotel. We went up to the room, opened the windows wide to the warm night and closed the curtains. I took a bath and lay in the water staring blankly at the ceiling, wondering what to do. Nothing seemed to appeal, not even getting into bed with her. The bathroom door was open and I could hear her moving about, hanging up clothes, opening and closing the wardrobe door. At one point I heard her bolt the main door to the room. She did not come in to see me, and it meant nothing that she did or did not. We appeared to have reached a sort of sexless familiarity, one in which we shared a room, undressed in front of each other, slept in the same bed, yet were still separated by Niall.

When I had finished I went into the bedroom. Sue was sitting up in bed, looking through a magazine. She was naked. She put the magazine aside as I climbed in beside her.

“Shall I put out the light?” I said.

“Last week, when we were in Nice, you said something to me. Did you mean it?”

“That depends what it was.”

“You said you loved me. Was that true?”

“It was at the time,” I said. “I loved you then more than anyone I have ever known. In fact, there never has been anyone else.”

“That’s what I thought. What about now?”

“It’s not a good time to ask. I’m feeling alienated.”

“Then it’s the best time to ask. Do you love me?”

“Of course I do. Why do you think all this matters so much?”

She shifted down in the bed so her head was on the pillow. “That’s what I wanted to hear. Don’t put out the light. I hate making love in the dark.”

XIII

Collioure was a fishing village on the extreme southwesterly coast of the Mediterranean. It was built on a small bay, with a fort and a cluster of stone cottages, and was surrounded by rocky hills, brown-green under the blaze of the sun. As soon as we arrived I was struck again by a quality of frozen timelessness, that there was an unchanging life here that we could pass into and through, yet never really penetrate. It reminded me of the stasis of Aigues-Mortes, and my realization that the distractions of Sue made me unable to see properly.

But because I was with Sue, at last truly with her, I felt able to deal with this, realizing that both she and the village were different aspects of my perceptions. If I allowed them to, each one could interfere with the other, but now for the first time I was relaxed and very happy. We had no more discussions of ourselves.

During the days Collioure was almost deserted, the shutters of the houses closed against the heat. We would wander in the narrow cobblestone streets and climb the hills and watch the boats; in the evenings the locals would bring out their chairs and wine to sit in the long shadows and watch the day’s catch being loaded into ice for the trucks. There were no hotels or apartments in Collioure, in spite of what the tourist guidebook said, and so we stayed in a small room over a bar. We were les anglais to the people in the village, smiled at maternally by the women when we walked about after dark, stared at by the men, but in general left alone by everyone. There were no other visitors in the village while we were there.

Except one. We noticed him on our second day while climbing up to the hills on the eastern side of the village. As the narrow road rose above the houses it turned across the rise, making a loop from which it was possible to see down across the cottages around the harbor. From this position the walls and angles of the roofs seemed foreshortened, piling against each other to make an irregular geometric pattern lit by the morning sun. There was an artist sitting here, a small canvas propped on an easel in front of him.

He was a small man with a round head and a hunched figure. It was difficult to guess his age: not old, perhaps forty to fifty. As we passed we nodded to him, but he made no answer. I felt Sue’s hand slip from mine and she looked sharply at him, then at me, then again at the artist. She was obviously trying to tell me something, but I had no idea what it was. As we walked on she was looking back, as if trying to get a glimpse of the canvas.

When we were out of earshot she said, “That looked like Picasso!”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Of course he’s dead! It couldn’t have been him— but that man looked exactly like him.”

“Did you see what he was painting?”

“It wasn’t possible. I’ve never seen anything like it! He looked just like the photographs.”

“Perhaps it’s a relative … or someone who wants to look like Picasso.”

“That must be it.”

We walked on, talking about the way some people try to imitate the appearance of those they admired, but Sue would not accept that. To her it was a deeper mystery, and she kept returning to it.

In the end I said, “Do you want to go back for another look?”

“Yes, let’s.”

I half expected that he would have disappeared by the time we returned, but he was still there at the turn of the road, crouching on his stool and painting slowly.

“It’s incredible,” Sue whispered. “It must be a relative… . Did Picasso have sons?”

“I’ve no idea.”

We were walking back on his side of the road, so that this time we would see his canvas. As we approached, Sue called out, “Bonjour, monsieur!”

He raised his free hand, but did not turn. “Hola!”

We passed behind him. The canvas was only half completed, but the angles of the roofs had been blocked in, the pattern was forming. We walked on down the hill into the village, Sue practically dancing with curiosity.

“There’s a print of that in one of my books!” she said.

We were in Collioure for a total of four days, and on each of them, at some time, we walked up the hill to see if the artist was still there. Every day he was at his easel, painting slowly and patiently. He was in his own stasis, and progress was slow; on our last look he had added very little to what we had first seen.

Before we left Collioure we asked the woman who ran the bar if she knew who he was.

“Non. Il est espagnol.”

“We thought he might be famous.”

“Pah! Il est trčs pauvre. Un espagnol célčbre!” And she laughed and laughed.

XIV

We should have finished in Collioure, but we planned to fly back to England, and after a two-day drive through the Pyrenees we came to Biarritz. The staff in the reception of the hotel booked us a flight, but it was not for two days. After the first night I took the car and turned it in at the local Hertz office.

Sue was waiting for me at the hotel, and I knew immediately that something was wrong. She had the evasive, indirect look I had grown to recognize from the bad times, and I felt a sudden dread. I knew at once it was something to do with Niall.

But how? Niall was hundreds of miles away, and could have no idea where we were.

I suggested a walk to the beach and she agreed, but we walked apart, not holding hands. When we reached the path that led down to La Grande Plage, Sue came to a halt.

“I don’t really feel like the beach today,” she said. “You go if you want.”

“Not without you. I don’t care what we do.”

“I think I’d like to do some shopping on my own.”

“What’s the matter, Sue? Something’s happened.”

She shook her head. “I just want to be on my own for a while. An hour or two. I can’t explain.”

“If that’s what you want.” I gestured irritably at the beach. “I’ll go and lie around until you feel like being with me again.”

“I won’t be long.”

“But I don’t understand what you want to do.”

She had already moved away from me. “I want some space to think for a while, that’s all.” She came back, pecked me on the cheek. “It’s nothing you’ve done. Really.”

“Well, I’ll go back to the hotel in an hour or two.” She was moving away as I said this, missing most of it. I walked off in a huff, going quickly down the cliff path.

The beach was uncrowded. I found a place for myself, and there I spread out my towel, took off my jeans and shirt and sat back to brood.

She had distracted me again, but now I was alone I took in my surroundings at last. The beach was … still. I sat up straight, looking around, aware that something had ceased around me.

This was different from the Mediterranean beaches I had seen. There was no topless sunbathing, and unlike the Riviera coast the heat of the sun was pleasantly tempered by a sea breeze. The sea itself had muscle: long steady breakers came rolling in, making the satisfactory roaring noise familiar to me from British beaches. So there was movement and sound, denying the stillness, but still I felt locked in something that had settled, become stable.

Looking around at the other people on the beach I noticed that many of them were using changing huts, like tiny Arab yurts, erected in three parallel rows one behind the other. The people who emerged from these hastened down the beach and ran into the surf with a peculiar crouching motion, reaching forward with their arms. As the first breaker hit them they would jump up against it, turning their backs and yelling in the cold. Most of the swimmers were men, but there were a few women and these all wore shapeless one-piece bathing suits and rubber caps.

I lay back in the sunshine, still feeling uneasy, listening to the cries of the holidaymakers and thinking about Sue’s behavior. How had Niall contacted her? How did he know where she was?

Or had she contacted him?

I felt irritated and hurt. I wished Sue would take me more into her confidence about Niall. If only she would tell the truth, then we had a chance of working together to solve the problem.

I sat up again, restless. Overhead the sky was a deep, pure blue, the sun striking down from above the casino. I glanced up at it, narrowing my eyes.

There was a cloud, the only one in sight. It was a white, woolly-looking cloud, the sort you see on a summer’s day when the sun raises thermals from the fields and woodlands. This one, though, was by itself. It stood close to the sun, apparently unaffected by the breeze from the ocean. If the sun went in, what effect would it have on the beach scene around me? I imagined a sudden breaking of the gentle stasis, the people scurrying back to their changing tents, pulling on their flannelette dresses and their baggy slacks.

The cloud made me think of Niall, just as once before, from the riverbank in Dijon. Then and now I was preoccupied with him.

Niall was invisible to me; he existed only through Sue, her descriptions, her reactions.

I wondered what he was really like, whether he was as unpleasant as Sue made out. The odd thing was that we had much in common, because we were attracted to the same woman. Niall would see and know Sue much as I did, her sweet nature when happy, her evasiveness when she felt threatened, her irrational loyalties; above all he would know her body.

And Niall, of course, would know me only through her. How would she portray me to him? Impulsive, jealous, petulant, unreasonable, gullible? I would prefer to think that Sue described me in the way I saw myself, but I had a feeling that this would not survive translation. She had a way of conveying only the unpleasant qualities in someone’s character, and in this way kept alive the sense of rivalry between us.

The beach was beginning to repel me; I felt like an intruder, entering a living diorama and interfering with its natural balance. There was still no sign of Sue, so I dressed and walked up the cliff path, heading for the hotel. At the top I glanced back: the beach now looked more crowded, the rows of changing tents had vanished, and out in the breakers a number of people in wet suits were riding the surf.

I left a note in the hotel room telling Sue that I had gone for a meal, then walked down into the busy streets to find a café. I deliberately passed a few, hoping I would see her somewhere around, but there were so many people I knew I could easily miss her.

I was tired of traveling; I had been in too many different places, slept in too many different beds. I began to wonder what was in the mail for me at home, if any jobs were being offered. I had almost forgotten what it was like to feel the weight of a camera on my shoulder.

I found a sidewalk café and ordered Coquilles Saint-Jacques with a carafe of white wine. I was irritated with Sue for leaving me like that, for not being at the hotel, for not telling me what was going on. But it was pleasant there in the sun, and after the meal I ordered more wine. I decided to sit out the rest of the afternoon in the café. The drink was making me drowsy. I was looking forward to going home and being with Sue in London. In spite of everything we still hardly knew each other.

Unexpectedly, I saw her walking down the street on the other side. I had been staring lazily in that direction, and my first impression was that she was walking with another man. I sat up at once, craning to see better. I must have been mistaken: she was on her own, but she was walking in that way people do when they are with someone else. She walked slowly, kept turning her head to the side and was not looking where she was going. By every appearance she was deep in conversation with someone, but I could see nobody with her.

She reached the street intersection and paused, but not for a gap in the traffic. She was frowning, then she shook her head angrily. After a few moments she walked on, turning the corner and heading away from me.

I had not finished my wine, but I left the table and followed her, intrigued by her behavior. I briefly lost sight of her, but by the time I had turned the corner I could see her again, for all the world in the middle of an argument with her unseen companion. I found it touching to catch her in this unguarded moment. She appeared to be about to halt again, so I turned and walked away from her. I returned to the street crossing, then walked quickly along the main road until I found another side street. I hurried along this, and at the next street I doubled back in her direction. When I came around the corner she was standing still, facing toward me. I walked up to her, hoping for a sign that her mood had changed, but she merely gazed blankly at me.

“There you are,” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Hello.”

“Have you finished shopping? Or do you want to do some more?”

“No, I’m through.”

She was not carrying any purchases. We walked on in the direction she had been going before; it was clear that it did not matter whether or not I was with her.

“What shall we do?” I said. “It’s the last night of our holiday.”

“I don’t care. Anything you like.”

Irritation rose in me again. “All right, I’ll leave you alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s obviously what you want.”

We had stopped walking and were facing each other. “I didn’t say that,” she said.

“You didn’t have to.”

I turned away from her, angry with her passivity. I heard her say, “Richard, don’t be difficult,” but I walked on. When I reached the corner I looked back. She was still where I had left her, making no effort at conciliation. I felt that had to come from her; I made an exasperated gesture in her direction and walked away.

I returned to the hotel and went to the room. There I had a shower and put on fresh clothes, then lay on the bed and tried to read.

She returned late in the evening, after ten o’clock. As she entered the room I pretended to ignore her, but was acutely aware of her as she moved around, putting down her bag, slipping off her sandals, brushing out her hair. I watched as she took off her clothes and went into the shower cubicle. She stood in the shower a long time, and I lay on the bed waiting for her. It felt then as if everything was over, that even if she made one of her about-faces and became loving and affectionate and sexy again, I would reject her. There was something insurmountable between us, whether it was Niall himself or simply something he embodied. I could not stand these sudden withdrawals, her obstinacy, her irrationality.

At last she emerged from the shower, and stood at the end of the bed toweling her hair. I stared frankly at her naked body, finding it for the first time unappealing. She was too thin, too angular, and with her hair wet and swept back from her face she had a plain, vague expression. She caught me watching her and bent forward, toweling her hair from the back of her head; I could see the bony ridges of her spine.

With her hair still damp she pulled on a T-shirt, then turned back the sheet and got into the bed. I had to shift position slightly to let her in. Sitting up, the pillow propped behind her, she regarded me with wide eyes.

“Get undressed, come to bed,” she said.

“I don’t want to just yet.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“Of course I am.”

She drew a breath. “If I tell you the truth, will you forgive me?”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me the truth this morning?”

“Because I had to do something, and you would have tried to stop me. And you could have, if you’d tried. It’s Niall—he’s here, in Biarritz. I’ve spent the day with him. But you knew that, didn’t you?” I nodded, shocked by the news confirming the inevitable. “I saw him this morning while you were taking the car back. He said he wanted to speak with me alone. I’ll never see him again after this. That’s the truth.”

“What did he want?” I said.

“He’s unhappy, and wanted me to change my mind.”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I’d made up my mind, and that I was with you now.”

“And it took all day to say that?”

“Yes.”

I still felt cold toward her, unforgiving of the truth. Why wouldn’t she act on her decision? I said, “What I want to know is how the hell he followed us here.”

“I don’t know.”

“Was he following us when we were in Collioure? Was he there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Can’t you see the damage this does? You just let Niall barge in on us whenever he feels like it, you don’t tell me, and it drives me away from you. I’m sorry if he’s unhappy … but why do you act like this? What’s going to happen the next time he feels unhappy?”

“It won’t happen again.”

“I don’t believe you. I’d like to, but I don’t.”

“I’ve told you the truth!”

“All right.” I subsided, realizing how futile all this was. Sue’s face was drained of color: her skin, her lips, even her eyes looked paler than normal. As her hair dried she looked less gaunt, but now she was as angry as I was. I kept thinking that what we should do is hold each other, kiss, make love, put the clock back, the other formulas for making up, but this time it was not possible.

We sat up late into the night, both of us entrenched in our needs, angry with each other because it all mattered so much. In the end I undressed and got into bed with her, but we lay awake without making love. Neither of us would make the first move.

At one point in the night, knowing she was awake, I said, “When I met you in the street, what were you doing?”

“Trying to work things out. Why?”

“Where was Niall?”

“Waiting for me somewhere. I had gone for a walk, then you appeared.”

“You looked as if you were talking to someone.”

“So what?”

We lay on in the warm darkness, the sheet thrown down from our bodies. When I opened my eyes I could just make out her shape next to me. She always lay still in bed, without tossing, and in the dark I was never sure whether she was asleep or not.

I said, “Where is Niall now?”

“Somewhere around.”

“I still don’t understand how he found you.”

“Never underestimate him, Richard. He’s clever, and when he wants something he’s persistent.”

“He seems to have power over you, whatever you say. I wish I understood what it was.”

There was a long silence from her, and I thought she must have fallen asleep at last. But then she said, very quietly, “Niall’s glamorous.”

XV

We spent most of the next day traveling: a taxi to the airport, then two flights, with a long wait for the connection in Bordeaux. From Gatwick we caught the train to Victoria, and took a taxi to Sue’s house. I asked the driver to wait while we went inside.

There was a small pile of mail waiting for her on a table in the hall, and she picked this up before unlocking her own door. I carried her suitcases inside, and put them down. Her room came as a surprise: I think I had expected the usual cramped chaos of bed-sitter existence, but the room was large, very tidy, and what furniture there was had been chosen with taste. In one corner was a single bed, and next to this was a bookcase filled with expensive art books. Under the only window was a desk, with a drawing board, several glasses filled with brushes, pens and knives, a container for paper, and a large angle-poise lamp. There was stereo equipment but no television set. Against one wall was a hand basin, a small cooker and a massive, antiquated wardrobe. As she closed the door to the room I noticed she had fitted two heavy bolts, one at the top, one at the bottom.

“I’d better not keep the taxi waiting,” I said.

“I know.”

We were facing each other, but not looking. I felt very tired from the journey. She came up to me and suddenly we embraced, more warmly than I would have expected.

“Are we going to see each other again?” I said.

“Do you want to?”

“You know I do. The only thing wrong with us is Niall.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about. I promise you Niall won’t bother me again.”

“All right, let’s not discuss it now.”

“I’ll give you a ring later this evening,” she said.

We had exchanged addresses and numbers soon after meeting, but we went through the routine of making sure we still had them. Sue’s address was easy to remember, so I had never written it down, but I had scribbled her telephone number in the back of my address book.

“Shall we meet for a meal tomorrow evening?” I said.

“Let’s decide that later. Now I just want to unpack and look at my mail.”

We kissed again, and this time it was decidedly warm. It reminded me of how she tasted, how she felt against me. I started to regret my behavior of the day before, but she pulled back from me smiling.

“I’ll call you later,” she said.

The London rush hour had started, and it was much later when the taxi dropped me outside my flat. I let myself in and put down my bag, looking at the pile of mail on the mat. I left it there and went upstairs.

After so long away, so many different places seen, the rooms had that disorienting air of familiarity and strangeness. The flat smelled slightly of damp, so I opened some windows, then switched on the water heater and the fridge. My apartment had four main rooms, apart from kitchen and bathroom: there was a lounge, bedroom, a spare room, and the fourth room which I thought of as my study. It was here that I kept the various pieces of elderly film equipment I had picked up over the years, as well as copy prints of some of the stories I had worked on. I had a 16-mm projector and screen, and an editing bench. All these were tokens of a halfhearted intention of starting up as an independent film maker one day, even though I knew that most of this stuff would have to be replaced with modern equipment of professional standard. I should also have to rent a proper studio.

The flat felt cool after the summer weather in France, and outside it was raining. I wandered around, feeling anticlimactic and already lonely for Sue. It had been a bad note on which to end the holiday; I didn’t know her well enough to judge the changes in her mood, and I had left her just as we were on another upswing. I thought for a moment I should telephone her, but she had said she would call me, and anyway there was much to do around the flat. I had a suitcaseful of dirty clothes that had to be washed soon, and there was no fresh food. But I felt unmotivated and lazy, missing France.

I made a cup of black instant coffee and sat down with it to go through the mail. A pile of accumulated letters always looks more interesting before they are opened. What had built up for me was a number of bills and circulars, subscription copies of magazines, halfhearted replies to halfhearted letters I had written before I went away. A postcard had arrived from Annette in Canada. The best pieces of mail were two checks I had been expecting, for film work a couple of months before, and a note from a producer asking me to call him urgently. His letter was a week old.

My humdrum life was reintegrating around me. How Sue had the capacity to distract me! She had become so important to me, so immediate. When I was with her she put everything else out of my mind. Maybe in London she would seem different, the relationship would continue at a lower pressure in the context of everyday existence. What I knew for sure was that we could not possibly conduct a longterm affair in the way we had started.

I telephoned the producer who had written to me; he had left, but there was a message on his answering machine to contact him at home. I called there, but there was no answer. I walked down to the lock-up garage where I kept my car, and much to my surprise the engine started on the first attempt. I drove back to the house and parked outside. Then I collected my dirty clothes and a shopping bag, dumped the clothes in a machine at the local laundromat, and went to buy some groceries. When all this was finished I went home.

While I ate my rudimentary version of home cooking, I read a copy of the morning’s newspaper, wondering what might have happened in the world while I was away. My job had given me a peculiar attitude to news reporting: either I saturated myself in stories as they developed, or I cut myself off from them entirely. While away, I had been content to let a vacuum of non-interest develop around me. From the paper I discovered that most of the news was the same as always: a new round of pay talks with the unions, fears of an IRA bombing campaign in London, tension in the Middle East, rumors of an upcoming general election, a political scandal in the U.S.A., drought and famine in East Africa.

I called the producer again and this time got through to him. He was pleased to hear from me: one of the American networks wanted documentary footage of U.S. military involvement in Central America, and because of political sensitivity an American crew could not be used. He had been trying to find a camera operator all week, but no one wanted the job. I thought about it while we talked, and then said yes.

The evening drew on, and I felt increasingly restless. I knew I was waiting for Sue to call me as she had said she would. I had been out of the flat for an hour and a half and she might have called then, but surely she would try again later? I could easily have telephoned her, but she had said she would call me and there was a sort of emotional protocol involved. I was still feeling the effects of the day before.

I waited for her, feeling tired, and after about ten o’clock more and more irritated. I had a feeling in my bones about it, the familiar dread of Niall’s intrusion. If he could mysteriously follow us to Biarritz, it would not be beyond him to have followed us home. More likely, though, there had been a message for her at the house—a letter, a telegram, a phone call.

I stayed up until I could hardly keep my eyes open. I went to bed still irritated with her, and so fell into an unpleasant state of exhausted but restless sleep. At one dark low point of the night I resolved never again to have anything to do with her. If this resolve survived until morning, it was broken by her telephoning me before I was out of bed. I picked up the receiver and heard the sound of pay-phone pips.

“Richard? It’s me, Sue.”

“I thought you were going to call me last night. I waited up for you.”

“I rang an hour or two after you left, but there was no answer. I was going to try again later, but I fell asleep.”

“I thought something might have happened.”

She said nothing for a moment. Then: “No. I was exhausted. How are you?”

“You woke me up, so I’m not sure yet. What about you?”

“I’ve got to visit the studio. I’m more broke than I thought … there was a pile of bills waiting for me.”

“Are you going to be at the studio all day?”

“I think so.”

“Shall we meet this evening? I’d like to see you.”

We made the practical arrangements as if we were fixing up a business meeting. Sue sounded cool and distant, and I was making an effort to keep a querulous tone out of my voice. I was still deeply suspicious of why she had not telephoned.

“By the way, your card was here in the mail.”

“Card?”

“You sent me a postcard from France … at least I think it was you. It wasn’t signed.”

“Oh yes.”

Old SaintTropez—fishermen, nets and a warehouse. It reminded me of being alone while she was with Niall, and it reminded me of how things had become since. My suspicions and her evasiveness, all about Niall.

“I’ll see you later, then,” she said.

“All right. Goodbye.”

The call was over before the time pips could intervene. I went through the day trying not to think about her, but she had become so bound up in my life that I could not disregard her. She still informed everything I did or thought. Yet I knew my love of her was founded on two brief periods: a few days before she went to see Niall, a few days that had followed. I still loved her, but it was based on the past.

XVI

Full of forebodings, I walked down to Finchley Road underground station to meet her as planned. She was already there when I arrived, and as soon as she saw me she ran toward me, kissing me and holding me tightly. Forebodings dispersed.

She said, “You live somewhere around here, don’t you?”

“In West Hampstead.”

“Can I see your flat?”

“I thought we’d go for a drink now, and I’ve booked a table for later.”

“Good, we’ll go later. I want to see where you live.”

She led me off, hurrying along. As soon as we were inside she started kissing me again, more affectionately than I could ever remember her. I felt emotionally detached, so hard had my defenses built up during the day. But there was no question of what she wanted, and soon we were in bed. Afterward she left the room and walked around the flat, looking at everything, then returned to me. She sat on the bed, cross-legged and naked.

“I’m going to make a speech, and I want you to listen,” she said.

“I don’t like speeches.”

“This one’s different. I’ve been working on it all day, and you’re going to like it.”

“Are you intending to read it to me?”

“Don’t interrupt. The first thing I want to do is say I’m sorry I saw Niall without telling you. It’s never going to happen again, and I’m sorry if I hurt you. The second thing is that Niall’s going to be back in London any day now, and I can’t stop him finding me. He knows where I live and he knows where I go to work. What I’m saying is, if I see Niall it’s not going to be my fault, and I’ll tell you immediately. The third—”

I said, “But what happens if you do see him? It’ll be the same all over again.”

“No, it won’t be. You interrupted. The third thing is that I’m in love with you, you’re the only person I want to be with and we must never let Niall interfere again.”

I felt relaxed after the lovemaking, felt fond of her, felt the warmth radiating from her, but there was damage that had been done. Only that morning it had seemed to me that we had been broken apart irreparably by events, but now there was yet another reversal, Sue saying the very words I wanted her to say. What she did not know, and what I was only beginning to sense, was that it was the reversals themselves that did the harm. Each time I accommodated the change, something of the past became lost.

“What we have to do is see Niall together,” I said. “I don’t trust what he might do if he saw you alone. How do I know he won’t beat you up again?”

Sue was shaking her head. “You can never see him, Richard.”

“But if we’re together, he would have to accept the situation for what it is.”

“No. You don’t understand.”

“Then make me.”

“I’m scared of him.”

I suddenly thought of the job I had been offered, and how I was due to leave London in two days’ time. For a moment I regretted having accepted, thinking of Niall’s imminent return, the likelihood that he would see Sue while I was away. Knowing how he could influence her when I was there, I could imagine the worst. Yet to do so was to disbelieve her sincerity, her own freedom to act for herself. I had to trust her.

We eventually dressed and went to the restaurant, and while we were there I told Sue about having to go away. I said nothing of my fears, but she sensed them at once.

She said, “The worst thing about it is not seeing you until you get back. Nothing else will happen.”

She stayed with me in my flat for the next two days, and then I left.

XVII

It was ten days before I returned, red-eyed and exhausted from the thirteen-hour flight, still irritated by the shooting delays we had encountered and still oppressed by the memory of the heat and humidity. It had been difficult work, constantly hampered by lack of cooperation and bureaucracy. At every new place we went to film we had to be approved by the local officers in charge, all of whom were suspicious of us or hostile to us. In the end the work had been done, the money had been paid. I was glad it was over.

I went back to my flat, and although I was tired I was restless and discontented. London felt cold and damp, but after the shanty towns and slums of Central America it looked tidy, prosperous, modern. I stayed in the flat long enough to look through my mail, then collected my car and drove over to see Sue.

One of the other people in the house opened the door to me, and I went straight to her room and knocked. There was a delay, but I could hear movement inside. In a moment the door opened, and Sue stood there with a dressing gown held around her. We stared at each other for a moment.

Then she said, “You’d better come in.”

As she said this she gave a half-look over her shoulder as if someone was there, and when I walked in I was braced for a confrontation. Dread filled me.

The room smelt musty, and was in semidarkness. The curtains were closed, but daylight filtered through the thin material. Sue crossed the room and pulled them open. Outside was a brick wall forming a small drainage well, and bushes and overgrown grass stood in the garden above this, shading the room. The air had a faint blue haze to it, as if someone had been smoking, but I could not smell tobacco.

She had been in bed when I arrived, because the covers were thrown back and her clothes were draped over a chair. On the bedside table was a small, shallow dish, and lying in this were three cigarette ends.

I glared around suspiciously, looking for Niall.

Sue walked past me and closed the door. She stood by it, leaning her back against it and holding the gown wrapped over her body. She would not look at me, and her hair, untidy and tangled, concealed most of her face. I could see, though, that her mouth and chin were reddened.

I said, “Where’s Niall?”

“Can you see him here?”

“Of course I can’t. Is he in the house?” She shook her head. “Why are you still in bed?”

I glanced at my wristwatch, but it was still set on Central American time. The plane had landed in London soon after dawn, so I guessed that by now it must be nearly midday.

“I’m not working today—I was having a lie-in.” She crossed the room and sat down on the bed. “Why are you here, anyway?”

“Why? Why the hell do you think? I just arrived back, and I came to see you!”

“I thought you’d telephone first.”

“You promised me this wouldn’t happen.”

She said quietly, “Niall found me. He followed me home from work one evening, and I couldn’t argue with him.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About a week. Look, I know what this means. Don’t make it any worse than it is. I can’t go on being torn between the two of you. Niall isn’t going to leave me alone as long as I’m with you, so it will never work, whatever you make me promise.”

“I never extracted a promise from you,” I said.

“All right, but it’s finished now.”

“You’re damned right it’s finished!”

“Let’s leave it at that.”

I could barely hear what she said. She was huddled on the bed, her arms folded in her lap, leaning forward so that all I could see of her was the top of her head and her shoulders. She had turned slightly to one side, facing the table. I noticed that the ashtray was no longer there, that somehow she must have moved it. I knew by this guilty concealment that Niall had been there just before I arrived.

“I’ll go now,” I said. “But tell me one thing. I don’t understand the hold Niall has over you. Why do you let him do this to you? Is he going to run your life forever?”

She said, “He’s glamorous, Richard.”

“You said that before. What’s glamour got to do with it?”

“Not glamour, the glamour. Niall has got the glamour.”

“This is what’s so ridiculous! You can’t be serious!”

“It’s the most important thing in my life. Yours too.”

She looked up at me then, a thin, sad figure, sitting in the mess of crumpled sheets that were heaped across the mattress. She had started crying, silently, hopelessly.

“I’m going,” I said. “Don’t contact me again.”

She stood up, uncoiling stiffly as if in pain.

“Don’t you know you’re glamorous, Richard?” she said. “I love you for your glamour.”

“I don’t want to hear another word!”

“You can’t change. The glamour will never leave you. This is why Niall won’t let me go … when you understand the glamour, you’ll know that’s true.”

Then, somewhere in the room, somewhere behind me, I heard the sound of a male laugh. I saw that the full-length door of the wardrobe had been open all along, that there was space behind it for someone to hide. Niall was there, he had been there all along! Heady with anger I lunged at the door of the room, wrenched it open, saw the bright glint of the stainless-steel bolts. I went outside, slamming the door behind me. I was too angry to drive so I hurried down the road, moving away from her as fast as I could. I walked and walked, heading home, wanting only in the blackness of rage to get away from her. I went up the long hill toward Archway, crossed the viaduct into Highgate, then started down toward Hampstead Heath. My anger was like a narcotic, turning my brain in a relentless swirl of vicious resentments. I knew I was tired from the long flight, that jet lag was no condition in which to be rational about anything, least of all this. London seemed like a hallucination around me; the glimpse from the Heath of the tall buildings to the south, the old red brick terraces on the far side, the people in the streets and the endless noise of traffic. I cut through side streets lined with Victorian villas; plane trees and ornamental cherries and crab apples now tired at the end of summer; cars parked on both sides, wheels up on the pavements. I pushed past people, hardly seeing them, ran across Finchley Road, dodging traffic. It was downhill to West Hampstead, long straight roads with cars and trucks, people waiting for buses or moving slowly from one shop to another. I shoved past them all, thinking now only of getting home, going to bed, trying to sleep off my anger and my jet lag. I turned into West End Lane, almost home. The walking had clarified my mind: no more Sue, no more Niall, no more raised hopes or broken promises or evasions or lies. From now I was going to live only for myself, never fool myself that love was simple. I hated Sue, everything she had done to me, regretted everything I had said to her and done with her. I passed West Hampstead station, passed the twenty-four-hour supermarket, passed the police station—all familiar landmarks, all part of my life in London before Sue. I was making plans, thinking of a job the producer had mentioned on the flight back—not news, but a documentary for the BBC, a long project, much travel. When I had recovered from this I would call him, get out of the country for a while, sleep with foreign women, work at what I did best. Something hit me low in the back, and I was hurled forward. I heard nothing, but crashed into the brick surround of a shop window; the glass shattered around me. Some part of me was rolling along the ground, twisting my back, while great heat scorched my neck and legs. As I came to a halt the only sound I could hear was of glass breaking and falling, slabs of it slicing down on top of me, an endless tormenting rain, and somewhere an immense and total silence out and around me, beyond my unseeing eyes.