Air and Fire (18 page)

Suzanne found her glass and held it against her cheek. The coolness burned her skin.

Montoya came and stood beside her. ‘Is something the matter? Are you faint?'

‘Leave me alone,' she said.

The two women had been so close to her; she could have reached out and touched either one – a glistening bronze shoulder, a ghostly epaulette. Her mind opened in front of her like an abyss. She could hear the safety engineer laughing.

A hot wind, rising off the water, gusted across the deck. All the candles guttered and then blew out.

‘Time to leave,' somebody cried. Which must have been a joke, since it was not even midnight and the Captain had promised dancing until dawn.

But when she turned round, she saw Montoya step over to the doctor and shake his hand. His eyes met hers for a moment across the deck, then he was climbing backwards down the ladder. She watched his plumed hat vanish below the rail.

At the late supper Suzanne sat quietly while Pineau and Morlaix traded stories that served to illustrate the foolishness of the Mexicans, the foolishness, particularly, of the local representative of the Mexican Government.

‘He's very young, is he not,' Marie Saint-Lô remarked, ‘to be representing the Government?'

‘Ah well,' the doctor said. ‘His father went to school with Porfirio Díaz.' And, when she did not seem enlightened by the information, he added, in lower tones: ‘The President.' He faced the gathering again. ‘Apparently he was named after Félix Díaz. The President's brother.'

Morlaix swirled the cognac in his glass. ‘Wasn't he the one who got shot?'

The doctor nodded. ‘I believe so.'

‘I still can't get used to that preposterous uniform.' A lock of Pineau's hair hung in his eyes. His twisted upper lip was sprinkled with drops of perspiration. ‘What does he think he is? A general?'

‘He's dashing, though.' Florestine Bardou sounded wistful, almost unconvinced.

‘And am I not dashing?' cried the doctor. ‘Even at fifty?'

Nobody could deny that, of course, not on his birthday, and certainly not in that new waistcoat.

Madame Bardou blushed.

But the subject could not be changed quite so easily. It was a favourite among the French, especially after dinner when the blood was high.

‘He may be dashing,' Madame de Romblay said, ‘but he's also mad, completely mad.'

‘Did you know?' Castagnet said. ‘He has a submarine.'

Madame de Romblay's eyelids drooped with pleasure. She had not expected support from such a reputable quarter.

‘I've never seen it,' Morlaix said.

‘He keeps it in Señor Ramon's boathouse,' Castagnet said.

Pineau chuckled sardonically. ‘For a small fee, I imagine, knowing Ramón.'

Monsieur de Romblay wanted to know how Montoya had come by it.

‘He bought it from the Pacific Pearl Company,' Castagnet said. ‘I'm not sure if he ever uses it. It must be twenty years old by now. It would probably dive straight to the bottom.'

‘One way of getting rid of the fellow,' Morlaix said.

Laughter swept the table.

‘You know that boy who works in the hotel,' Madame de Romblay said, ‘the one who plucks his eyebrows like a girl? Well, apparently,' and she lowered her voice and leaned over the table, ‘he spends whole afternoons up at Montoya's place.'

‘No!' Florestine Bardou put a hand to her throat. Though she would not initiate a story, she would, it seemed, become a willing accomplice in the telling.

‘Oh yes, Madame.' Pineau leered. ‘I've been watching him.'

‘Two Mexicans live there too.' Madame de Romblay's tin eyes glittered, and her powdered shoulders were streaked with excitement's generous secretions. ‘People say that the four of them,' and she dropped her voice still lower, ‘indulge in vicious practices.'

‘Whole afternoons?' Florestine Bardou had fixed on this single, lurid detail. Her hand still clutched her throat.

Suzanne was smiling. ‘Actually, I doubt that.'

All eyes turned on her, but it was the eyes of Madame de Romblay that felt the closest.

‘It's true, there are two Mexicans living with Montoya,' she went on, ‘but they're both well over sixty. And one of them is poisoned from years of working in a sulphur mine. So I think vicious practices are probably out of the question.'

‘And how, precisely, do you know all this, my dear?' Madame de Romblay knew how to use a simple question as an accusation. It was all in the twist she gave to the word ‘precisely'.

‘I've been to his house. He invited me there,' Suzanne said, ‘for tea.'

The air softened with astonishment. Several of the company ostentatiously refrained from looking at each other. Across the deck, between two coloured streamers, Suzanne could see the moon, dented in two places, as if it had drunk too much and fallen several times.

One swift glance at Madame de Romblay and she knew that she had made a mistake. She had walked into the woman's limelight, pricked the rumour like some ludicrous balloon. You did not do that to Madame de Romblay. She saw that she was about to be punished for it.

‘It was the strangest tea,' she said brightly, attempting to escape through humour. ‘We ate oysters that had been harvested in the Bahía San Lucas. We drank sherry from his great-uncle's vineyard. There was no actual tea at all.'

She had hoped for laughter, but the silence lasted. The only response issued, as it had to, from the thin, painted lips of the Director's wife.

‘You
drank
with him?'

‘I didn't know you had been to tea with Montoya,' Théo said.

It was after two in the morning and they were taking the Director's carriage home.

‘Well,' she said, ‘I did tell you that I was going.'

Looking at him, she could sense him trying to remember. She did not have to try. She could recall that night's conversation word for word. His monotonous remoteness, his sudden scorn.

‘You probably didn't hear me. You were probably too busy,' she said, ‘with your work.'

He dropped away from her, into a long silence.

She listened to the carriage-wheels, the chink and jingle of the reins. The night was loud with all the champagne that she had drunk. She could feel his disapproval surfacing and knew that it would take the form of a rebuke. But waiting for it, that was hard. Knowing that it would come. When all she wanted to do was rest her head against his shoulder.

‘You should not have said what you did.'

It was a relief to hear him speak, even though he was condemning her. She did not reply.

Such nonsense had been talked at the supper table, but there was one moment, towards the end of the evening, that she would always cherish. The candles had burned low. The white tablecloth was littered with melting sorbets, lobster claws, the skins of fruit. Pierre Morlaix was holding forth. She could see his lips, moistened, flecked with spit. She could see his scalp beneath a flickering of silver curls. It was the usual monologue. The locals could not be trusted. They were lazy, unhygienic, sly. Animals, really. No wonder the church was taking so long. And so on. Théo had not witnessed what happened next; he must have been
downstairs, dancing the promised mazurka with Madame de Romblay. For, suddenly, there was a young boy standing in their midst. Only his shoulders and his shaved head showed above the table's edge; his eyes too – dark and sombre, bewitched by the place in which he found himself. He had been swimming; his wet skin shone. In his hands, held just below his chin, a pair of women's shoes. Water dripped from the silver straps. The sequinned heels blinked. But it was to Morlaix that Suzanne looked. It was Morlaix she remembered. His sudden silence, as if the blood had knotted in his brain. His mouth gaping, fishlike, the next boorish words already shaped. There was nobody at the table who was so drunk that they did not recognise the irony.

As the carriage drew up outside their house, a grim smile appeared on her face. Perhaps she had behaved badly, but she had not been alone. In fact, all things considered, she believed that she had behaved quite well. There was no reason why she should apologise. She did not feel the slightest remorse.

Towards morning she woke up. A long way off she heard the mournful cry of a coyote, but she knew that it was not the coyote that had reached down into her sleep. Her nightgown had gathered underneath her arms, binding her tight. She sat up in bed and threw the damp sheet back.

Théo lay sleeping under a single mound of white. It looked as if snow had fallen in the bedroom, and then drifted. A soothing image in a climate such as this, she thought, though certainly perverse. Then she heard a clink. She could not place the sound, and yet she knew it well. Another clink. It was measured, regular; it could almost have been the beating of her own frustrated heart.

As silent as that imagined snow, her feet landed on the floor. She slipped from the bed, moved to the window. The narrow gap between the shutter-blades afforded several different views. Through one, she saw part of the hard mud path that led past the kitchen hut. Through another, a portion of the kitchen roof. Through a third, the sea.

That clink again, somewhere below.

She pressed her face to the shutters, saw moonlight running down a sword. A gasp escaped her. She stepped back.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Her heart had gathered speed; it now outstripped the chinking of the spurs. She felt nothing for the Captain, nothing at all, and yet his secret vigil excited her. These were the sleepless nights that she had predicted for him. This was the hunger.
But it was dangerous knowledge. There would be nobody to tell.

She eased back, laid her head against the pillow. Instead of spurs, she willed herself to see a man's hand bouncing coins. Then just the coins. Then she spent them.

Her heart slowed down.

Her husband, whom she had always loved, still loved, would always love, slept blindly on.

17 Calle Francesa, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico

23rdMay, 189–

My dear Monsieur Eiffel,

Though it is fully three weeks since last I wrote, I am delighted to report that everything is proceeding according to plan. All the principal arches have been erected and assembled, their sections being placed end to end in the usual manner, immediately drifted, and then bolted. The purlins will soon follow. I have divided my labour force into two equal groups, one working an early shift, one working late. In this way the Indians are afforded some respite from the considerable heat, though it troubles them less than it does me. The arrangement is also far more suited to their temperament; the idea of pay may appeal, but the idea of work, especially eight hours of it, does not. I often think fondly of those intrepid men, each one vying with the other in his zeal, who worked up to sixteen hours a day in high winds, rain and snow, to build the tower that now bears your name, and fall to wondering how long the job would have taken had you attempted it in Mexico. During the idle hours between shifts I eat lunch with Monsieur Castagnet, a most genial man, and a capable one too (he it was who solved the dilemma of the lifting-mast by commandeering half a dozen railway sleepers to anchor the base). We have discussed the church in detail, and I have found myself referring him to your renowned monograph,
Mémoire sur les épreuves des arcs métalliques de la galerie des machines du Palais de l'exposition universelle de 1867,
and those early experiments that led you so ingeniously to determine the value of the modulus of elasticity applicable to composite members. Monsieur Castagnet has always demonstrated great loyalty to timber, but even he has no choice but to agree that the galvanised wrought-iron that we are using here is a truly remarkable material. When we return to the site in
the afternoon, there are invariably half a dozen children climbing among the girders, as if the structure had been provided solely for their own amusement. I always feel that this forms the perfect counterpoint to our weighty lunchtime meditations.

Such problems as we have encountered here have rarely been of a technical nature; in Santa Sofía it is the human problems that abound. We had the greatest trouble, for instance, trying to explain the notion of a working-week to the local Indians. On the Monday of the second week of construction, six of them failed to report for work. We found them two days later, almost five kilometres from the town, grilling a rattlesnake over a fire! They seem to have only two measurements of time: a day, which lasts from dawn to dusk, and an
‘ambia'
which is the period of time that elapses between one harvest of their beloved pitahaya fruit and the next (three
‘ambia's
amount to approximately one year). If they work hard, I now tell them, the church will be finished by the next
ambia.
This, of course, they understand.

Property is another source of confusion. With the exception of a bladder or a cow's horn for holding water, a bow fashioned from the wild willow and a sharpened stick or bone for digging up roots, the Indians have no possessions. They simply do not understand the concept. This was illustrated last week, when a box of bolts went missing from the site. Construction was held up for three days while I endeavoured to ascertain their whereabouts; it seems that the role of an engineer in Mexico can stretch to encompass that of a police detective. Suffice to say that the bolts were recovered and are now in place on the central arches, where they belong. I have taken precautions against further thefts by enlisting the services of three Mexican soldiers from the garrison above the town. (I should just mention, in passing, that I have met the garrison commander, a gentleman by the name of Félix Montoya. In my opinion he lacks the experience to be able properly to discharge his responsibilities; he should be replaced as soon as possible – though this might be a somewhat delicate matter, since it lies beyond our jurisdiction.)