Air and Fire (21 page)

‘The Sea of Cortez,' his father breathed.

His eyes gleamed. There might already have been gold stacked in the room. His eyes were just reflecting it.

‘And this is the same map?' Suzanne bent over the parchment, her face lit with the secrecy of it. Her hair had come unpinned. One curl hung
against her cheek like the spring inside a watch.

‘The very same,' he said.

‘So you know where the gold is?'

He shook his head. ‘I've no idea.'

‘But the map – '

‘There are sea serpents and women in black skirts. There are volcanoes. But I don't see any gold, do you?'

She leaned down, frowning.

‘It's like wearing a cross,' he said. ‘It doesn't mean that God exists. It just means that you believe He does.'

It was as they sailed past San Bruno, close enough to notice the bell suspended in the tower of the church, that the feeling came flooding into her. A sense that she had been left to fall into ruin, to decay. A sense that everything was over. She could see that girl, standing in a pool of ashes and champagne, the smoke still rising from her clothes. There were rooms in her and all the doors were open. Dead leaves blew across the floor. She could feel their gentle scraping against the inside of her skin.

She watched the village slip by, with a kind of desperation, as if by noticing it in all its detail she could save herself and break free. Those children poking among the fallen palm branches and the shells of crabs, those children turning to stare and then waving their thin arms. The boats drawn up on a strip of olive silt, their hulls as fine and curved as melon rinds. The church, pain-white against a cloudless sky. But she could not gather it; it would not wait for her. The view was a dismissive river. It just moved on past.

She did not know why. Perhaps it was the beauty and contentment of the day. The battle between Namu and the fish, a meal eaten by the sea. So much new knowledge. And she had found her beauty and contentment in the company of an Indian fisherman and a gold prospector from San Francisco. Imagine Madame de Romblay's face if she ever learned of that. Imagine Théo's.

A moment opened in her memory, its petals lifting to reveal a poisoned heart. How she looked up and out across the banqueting table on the
SS Providencia
and saw Théo distancing himself from her, disowning her. And how, later, as they rode home in the carriage, he held a silence that was heavy with rebuke and then, at last, and without looking at her, said, ‘You should not have talked that way.'
Should not.
Later still, close to the house, he had added something kinder, a few words that sounded like advice. It astonished her how easily he could achieve distance from
almost anything. They could have been two virtual strangers who would shortly separate and make their way to different houses for the night. They had no longer seemed to be linked by any bond or understanding. If they seemed close, it was only because they were sharing the same carriage. It was no more than geographical coincidence. Like statues in a park. Like planets.

The empty house; deserted rooms.

They shared a bed, and yet they hardly seemed to touch. His work. Responsibilities. The heat. It was love that was leaving, or had left. Not hers for him, she thought, but his for her. She was trying to gather it in, and it was slipping through her hands, like ice. The tighter she held on, the faster it melted. And when it was gone there would be nothing. No, less than nothing. Emptiness that once contained something always felt much emptier than emptiness that had never been otherwise.

She glanced up. The children, the boats, invisible. The spire almost gone. Tears were coming to her now. The sky, the land, the water, blurred. She wiped her eyes, and then looked round. She had not been observed.

‘Wilson?'

He looked up, his hat pushed to the back of his head.

‘I wish we didn't have to go back,' she said. ‘I don't want the day to end.'

He was smiling, but he did not speak. Sometimes she would see him keep something to himself, not through want of a desire to offer it, but because it might be spoiled by words.

‘Promise me something,' she said.

She saw that this would not be difficult for him.

‘Promise me that we can do something like this again. Not this exactly. Just something like this.'

He gave his promise easily. Not lightly, but easily. And she knew that she could rely on him.

But what should it be? She recalled a tedious conversation with Florestine Bardou. The doctor's wife had mentioned the Misión San Ignacio which was, she claimed, one of the finest churches in Lower California. It had been established by the Jesuits in 1728 and completed, by the Dominicans, she thought, in about 1786.

‘I hope ours doesn't take that long.' Then Suzanne saw that she had been flippant and also, perhaps, tactless. ‘Have you seen it?' she asked quickly. ‘The Misión San Ignacio?'

‘Oh no,' Florestine said. ‘I haven't seen it. But you must.' Her chin dropped; her forehead, wide and concave, seemed to expand. ‘You're so much more adventurous than I am.'

Suzanne chose to deny this – politeness demanded it of her – and yet, in truth, she could not disagree. It struck her that Florestine Bardou lived through others, encouragement being the most active part that she could play, and even in her encouragement she showed humility.

She turned to Wilson once again. ‘Have you ever heard of San Ignacio?'

‘I went there once.'

‘You have been there?' She could have cried out with delight at the coincidence, but then she saw Santa Sofía on the port bow, crouching in the shadow of the mountains. The chatter of machinery carried across the water. The harbour wall reached out, bent halfway along, like an elbow. It would soon be gathering them in.

‘What's it like?' She spoke with urgency now.

‘The town?'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘the town.' Men could be slow sometimes. They had to weigh everything, like shopkeepers.

‘Well,' he said, ‘it's famous for its trees.'

‘There are trees?' She had not expected that.

‘There are thousands of trees. Date palms, mostly. All in the same valley.'

She sat still, trying to imagine it.

‘And its water,' he said.

‘What's so special about the water?' she asked.

He thought for a moment, and then he lifted his eyes to hers. ‘That it is there at all.'

Before she could ask him to explain, he pointed towards the land. ‘Look. Your husband's waiting for you.'

‘Yes.' But she did not look.

They had passed through the harbour entrance, and both Wilson and Namu were occupied with practicalities. Wilson stood close to the mast and began to haul the sail down. Namu's eyes were fastened on the quay, the tiller shifting in his grasp as he brought the boat alongside. It was accomplished with great tenderness – a mother laying down her child. Half dozen boys squatted on the parapet above, their toes hooked over the edge. With their shaved heads and their pinched eyes, they looked capable of malice, but they caught the ropes that Wilson threw to them
and looped them around the iron bollards. It struck her that one of them could have been the boy who appeared with Marie Saint-Lô's silver shoes, though she was not sure she would have recognised him now.

She climbed the flight of stone steps that led up to the quay. It was not until she was standing on solid ground that she looked up. Théo was waiting at a respectable distance, his hands clasped behind his back. She could not see his face, only the winking of his gold watch-chain against the dark ground of his coat. The routine demands of mooring the boat, that sequence of small, sure actions, had given her time to recover her poise, had moored her too. When she waved, he lifted one hand and lowered it again, the gesture reassuringly mechanical, familiar. Her husband, waiting for her. She moved towards him, took his arm.

‘Théo, this is the American I've been telling you about.'

Wilson swung his way along the quay on his crutches. She turned quickly and included him.

‘Mr Pharaoh,' she said, ‘this is my husband, Monsieur Valence.'

The men shook hands.

‘It's a great pleasure,' Wilson said.

‘And for me.' Théo raised a clenched fist to his mouth, as if it were a cup and he might drink from it. He coughed once. ‘And I must thank you, Monsieur Pharaoh, for going to such trouble to entertain my wife, especially in your condition. Perhaps I could offer you a small aperitif?'

Suzanne smiled, not just at Théo's heavily accented English, but because she realised that he must have been assembling this little speech while standing on the quay, attaching one word to another, piecing the sentences together – and the construction was sound, of course, and the pieces fitted perfectly.

Wilson dipped his head. ‘Thank you kindly,' he said, ‘but I have to settle up with Namu.' He indicated the fisherman, who was standing some way off.

‘Settle up? Ah yes. Of course.' The gap between Théo's eyebrows narrowed and he nodded, as if some weighty legal matter had been mentioned. Possibly he had not understood; out of politeness he would let his lack of understanding pass. ‘Another time, perhaps.'

‘Perhaps you would dine with us one night,' Suzanne said.

‘Thank you,' Wilson said. ‘I'd like that.'

‘Good. Then I'll arrange it.'

She was distracted by a scraping sound that seemed to be coming from behind Wilson's back. She peered past his shoulder. The Mexican boys
had gathered a few yards away. One of them had wedged his foot into a metal bucket and was limping round the quay. Two others were bowing, shaking hands, bowing again.

Wilson swung round and flung an arm out sideways, as if he would have liked to sweep them all into the water. They scattered – though the boy with the bucket on his foot clung to his fiction, scattering more slowly, more awkwardly, than the rest.

‘Little devils,' Wilson said.

Lifting his hat to Suzanne, he pivoted on his crutches and moved away. The boys followed at a safe distance, some limping, some hopping, one with his bucket still attached. She smiled as she watched him go. It was partly the sight of the procession and partly this: she would have been willing to lay money on the fact that Wilson had never heard of an ‘aperitif.

‘You've caught the sun,' Théo said.

‘Have I?'

He touched his forehead, then his cheek. ‘Here and here.'

‘It must have reflected off the water,' she said.

‘But you enjoyed yourself?'

‘Oh yes. Very much.'

Though she was tiring now after her long day she hoisted her spirits for a moment. They were light, yet artificial; she was imitating her pleasure in the day for him. Underneath, she could hardly wait for sleep.

‘You mentioned that we might invite the American to dinner,' Théo said, as they began to climb the hill.

She looked at him. ‘What of it?'

‘Wouldn't it be awkward?' he said. ‘I mean, after all, he doesn't know anybody.'

‘He knows the doctor.'

‘Yes, that's true.' Théo walked in silence for a while. ‘It's just that some of our colleagues don't seem to have a very high opinion of Americans.'

‘Or of any other nationality, for that matter.' Suzanne smiled. ‘But I'm sure Madame de Romblay would not be averse to a little extra male company,' she said, ‘wherever it happens to come from.'

‘Well,' Théo said, ‘if you think it might be agreeable.'

When they reached the house, he mentioned that he would be dining with Jean-Baptiste Castagnet in the company offices that night. For once she was glad to be excluded. She did not have the energy for dinner. It
was as much as she could do to wish Théo a pleasant evening.

She noticed his eyebrows lower. Her apparent equanimity had wrong-footed him; probably he had been expecting to have to defend himself. He would now be convinced more than ever of her capriciousness – or perhaps he would interpret it as his reward for having given way to her. It seemed that once men saw some kind of pattern in a woman then they clung to it. This acquiescence of hers did not conform to the pattern that had been assigned to her. Her fatigue became suspicious, even perverse.

She ate a cold supper on the divan by the window. Afterwards she read a novel. Every now and then she let the book close on her thumb and, resting her head against a cushion, dreamed of San Ignacio.

Towards eight o'clock a letter arrived. She studied the envelope that Imelda handed to her. It had been secured with a dab of scarlet wax that bore the seal of the Mexican Government. Thinking that this must be another of Montoya's invitations which she would be obliged on this occasion, to turn down, she asked Imelda if anyone was waiting for a reply.

‘There was a coachman,' Imelda said, ‘but he drove off.'

‘Thank you, Imelda.'

As soon as she slit the envelope open and removed the single sheet of vellum, folded neatly in half, she knew what it would be. She did not need to see the fevered tangle of loops and flourishes or read the significance in his choice of ink (the hot vermilion of lips and hearts); she already knew. Montoya had brought his secret vigil to an end. He had declared himself.

At once she was curious to know what exaggerated form his language took, how the waves of his emotions crashed upon the page, but she could understand hardly a word of Spanish. In order to know what the letter said, she would need someone to make a translation for her, and that would be a delicate matter, most delicate. On a sudden, almost girlish, impulse she slid the sheet of paper back into its envelope and hid the letter inside one of the many cushions that littered the divan and then lay back, unable to keep herself from smiling at the thought that she had received a love letter that had been fastened with the official seal of a government.