English Correspondence (14 page)

THERE WERE STRANGERS
here keeping boredom at bay. They were making an effort; to shriek, to laugh, to ignore the time, to loosen their ties, to hitch up their skirts, to eat without thinking, to keep drinking. This was an interlude. There might be one again tomorrow, but who could tell? Work was as far away as death.

One man was pulled back, caught by his mobile. He cupped a hand to his free ear, walked away from the crowd, bent as if in abdominal pain, talked figures.

They weren't all too young for her, or too raucous – but she thought of Jerry. Alone in this crowd she thought of him, even though she hardly knew him. The half step she'd taken from not knowing him at all had carried her here. She was anxious about the moment of meeting. The music was loud. She had drunk a quarter of the bottle quickly and was now watching the level.

No one was dancing but they kept moving in their seats, shifting from elbow to elbow, tipping their chairs, crossing and re-crossing their legs, clasping their ankles, making abrupt English gestures that stopped short of contact. She watched them but kept an eye on the entrance; revolving doors that were out of keeping with the bare brick and concrete. Jerry walked in. He must have seen her through the radiating panels of glass because he walked straight over to her. She was surprised he recognised her. She wasn't distinctive.

‘I'm sorry I'm late,' he said.

He had suggested they meet up in a bar on the old West India Docks, in the shadow of the Canary Wharf towers.
They'd agreed on the time. He must have known he wasn't late. He said it because she'd got there first and it was an easy greeting.

‘You're not. I was early,' she said. ‘I walked about for a bit, but it was getting cold so I came in. I've already started on the wine.'

‘I'll catch up.'

He sat down, facing her and the sheer wall of window behind her.

‘Have some,' Sylvie said. ‘The clean one is yours. I was going to say empty, then I realised mine was too.'

She poured a glass for him. She hoped he hadn't counted on going over to the bar, waiting there, finding change, walking back.

‘You've come from upstairs somewhere?' she said.

‘More or less. Along and up, yes.'

‘It doesn't seem like London,' she said.

The windows looked on to water. He glanced out through the reflection of his face and the back of her head. She was conscious of her neat French haircut, as if Jean-Guy were holding up the mirror to show her his handiwork. She never knew what to say when he did that. It was seven o'clock and had been dark since half past four. She thought of the view behind her. She had looked at it before she sat down. It didn't seem English, but she hadn't been able to place it. Dutch perhaps, or Scandinavian. The buildings, lit up on the far side, rose in steps. The river was too wide for comfortable London bridges. Cleaned up and tamed, railed in for safety, it stretched out and shimmered blackly.

‘It's very strange,' Jerry said, ‘the way people lean on the guard rail, over there, with their backs to the river. They talk and look up at the buildings. It's natural to stare at water. But they don't seem to want to.'

‘Perhaps they're afraid of drowning,' said Sylvie.

‘You couldn't drown here. They wouldn't let you.'

‘Why not? What else won't they let you do?'

‘You can't jump in front of a train. Or down the gap.
They've got those sliding doors at the edge of the platform to seal off the drop.'

‘I noticed. They're like empty shop windows. I found it confusing.'

‘The Jubilee Line Extension,' he said. He paused, as if he were beginning a poem but only knew the title, then he said, ‘I've never even been down there. It takes a lot to get me on to public transport. People say they admire the architecture of the new stations. As something to say, it probably has about another year in it.'

‘So how do you get here?'

‘I slog it out in the traffic. Staring into the sun, if there is any, morning and evening. Through Tower Hamlets.'

‘You don't like it here, do you?'

‘Not particularly.'

‘Does anyone?'

‘They complain, but they've got used to it, they seem at home.'

‘Which bit of home?'

He thought.

‘A bedroom. There are blinds to cut down glare – and pin point lighting. Everyone drinking glasses of water, going to fill them up from a sort of udder, then tucking themselves back in with their computer terminals.'

‘You make them sound docile.'

‘No. I've given you the wrong idea. They're peevish, full of wants. One day I'll come in and find them under blankets, wearing ear plugs and eye shades expecting to be transported across the Atlantic.'

‘What age are they?'

‘Young. Really young. They make me feel old and deaf.'

Sylvie poured what remained in the wine bottle into their glasses. Because she owned a restaurant she was used to doing it unassumingly. She suddenly felt lighter, frivolous even. She was relieved Jerry was real, nothing to do with her. Something had happened to him lodged in her imagination; although incorporeal, he hadn't floated free. She felt glad for both of
them that they didn't know each other. The note she had sent him had been casual. She had simply mentioned that she was in London.

‘I might take up smoking again. Get out of the nursery and join the adolescents on the fire escapes,' he said.

‘I saw them,' she said.

She had caught sight of them when she'd walked between the high buildings. They had looked precarious. Exposed in their dark suits, with the wind whipping round the block.

‘I had a cigarette the other day. I hadn't had one for about twenty years,' she said.

‘What made you?' It was the first question he'd asked her. She had been asking too many.

‘I was in a bar and someone gave me one.'

She thought of Jacques. His way of stubbing out a cigarette, as though, if he didn't persecute it, it would re-ignite. She wondered what he would make of it here; the crowds and expanses of floor.

‘My wife would find out,' Jerry said. ‘That's the drawback. She takes any carelessness with my health as a personal reproach.'

‘She looks after you,' Sylvie said.

‘I often think it would be a relief to her if I predeceased her. Flagrantly.'

‘Is there an ideal length of time, do you think, for being a widow?'

‘You tell me,' he said.

‘It's probably one of those things you can't tell in advance,' she said. ‘Does she work here too?'

He looked puzzled.

‘Your wife?'

‘Gillian? No, she's miles away. She hardly ever comes to London.'

He looked past Sylvie and out at the water. She was glad he didn't launch into questions he didn't need to know the answer to. Are you in London long? Where did you learn
such good English? She imagined a queue of different sized people at Tower Bridge and one of those open-top tourist buses. He didn't ask the questions. It was as restful as being alone. Both their glasses were empty.

‘I'll go and get some more, shall I?' he said.

She didn't shake her head, so he got up and went to the bar. She wondered if her letter was in his pocket. From her, a strange woman, meaning strange, not a stranger. He might have read it, finishing a cup of coffee, and left it on the kitchen table. Then, on his way out he'd have picked it up and slipped it in his jacket. There was nothing really in the letter. Nothing anyone would find interesting.

The girl who was serving him left him to answer the telephone. The boy further along the bar stood idle. Jerry didn't bother him. He waited for the girl to finish her conversation. He came back to their table, poured wine for them both. Sylvie took a sip. It was different from what she had chosen, without being nicer.

‘You don't want a place up a mountain, do you?' he said. ‘I have a house in the Vosges, but we never go there. I'm going to have to sell it.'

‘I'm supposed to be selling my father's flat,' Sylvie said. ‘That's why I'm here, but I haven't got on with it. I haven't done anything much.' She was aware of her fingertips tense on the base of her glass. ‘I started reading the letters I wrote to him. It was a mistake.'

‘That sort of thing is. I don't know why it should be, but it is,' he said.

He leant back in his chair, stretched out his legs. She relaxed too and adjusted her feet. He hadn't noticed the change in her tone of voice.

‘When the office moved over here,' he said. ‘I threw a lot of papers out. My secretary said I should do it. She rigged up a black bin liner, sellotaped it to the edge of my desk. Norma has something of the Girl Guide about her. I'd forgotten about the personal stuff. It quite cheered me up to find it.
I thought reading old letters might be a laugh. I should have just chucked them.'

‘They were embarrassing?'

‘Worse.'

‘But you knew what was in them?'

‘I honestly couldn't remember most of it.'

‘So what did you expect?'

‘A slice of life. Mine, but a bit removed.'

‘It wasn't?'

‘I mean some of it must have been a nice surprise at the time, but I couldn't get any sense of that back. Absolutely no sense of nice surprise at the time,' he said.

‘So?' she said.

‘There was one, a circle with spikes coming out of it and words in boxes, like something from the report and accounts. I thought, when I opened it, she was giving me advice about strategy. Bloody patronising, but I was big enough to overlook that. Then I looked at it properly and discovered she was writing about our relationship. Flow charts, that's what they're called. Not a love letter. None of them were love letters.'

‘I'm sorry,' Sylvie said.

‘I'm not saying I behaved well, or that I didn't deserve these travesties. Polemics about where we stood and where we were going, laced with darlings and available dates. I couldn't decide whether there was something truly wrong with me or it was a sign of the times.'

‘At least you hadn't written them.'

‘Somehow that didn't make any difference.'

‘Who was she?'

‘Oh, a former work colleague,' he said.

He fell quiet and Sylvie thought, he's either forgotten or he doesn't want to remember any more.

‘I liked the book you left behind. You should have read it,' she said.

He shook his head. He wasn't interested. She wondered whether to ask him about the daughter who had given it to
him, or to think of something else. He had suddenly sunk. He had allowed himself to, as if he knew her very well, or she wasn't there at all. What did you say to men when that happened to them? Where was their resilience? She looked at him and the expression on his face and thought, it's a reflection of their physiognomy, they go soft and feel terrible. It's all to do with beefing them up again. Could she be bothered? What she didn't say, at this point, was, what's the matter? She had learned that much.

‘I tried reading a bit of the book to my husband. It was a mistake. He didn't get it, but he never would have done. It wasn't just my feeble translation. He resists because it's written in English. He finds it threatening.'

He was still silent and she remembered how he had looked, sitting alone at the restaurant table. She remembered his silence. It was his talking that surprised her.

‘What did you do with your letters?' she said.

He bucked up a bit. ‘I shredded them.'

He looked at her again, then away, out at the darkness behind, as though he were following their committal.

The revolving door kept turning, flinging out more and more people. They came out clumsily, missing the rhythm of it. Overcoats, suits, briefcases, heavy umbrellas, telephones; nothing that distinguished their gender. Sylvie couldn't help staring at them. She had a sense that she was facing all this life and Jerry was missing it.

‘You said when you called you had a dinner to go to,' she said.

It wasn't that she wanted to lose him, she didn't. But he had to leave anyway. She might as well look after him.

‘Tonight?'

‘I think that's what you said.'

He pulled a printed sheet of paper from his pocket, not even a diary.

‘Christ, you're right,' he said, ‘How did you know? Will you be all right? Can I get a cab for you?'

‘I'll be fine.'

He picked up his glass and took two gulps. He put his hands on the table and half got up. He looked across at Sylvie and got stuck, puzzled that she hadn't mirrored him.

‘I'll stay,' she said. ‘I'm not in a hurry.'

He stood up straight. She remained where she was. He looked worried, torn between being a confident English schoolboy or a recessive one.

‘I've enjoyed this evening,' she said.

‘Let's meet again before you go back.'

‘I'd like that,' she said.

She went back on the Underground. She basked in the harsh lighting and studied the other passengers' faces. She felt she was seeing everything clearly. She got out at her station and walked up the wooden slatted escalator. Compared with where she had just come from in Docklands, it felt like a branch line of a country railway. Outside it was beginning to be frosty. She appreciated the rush of cold on her face, the exhilaration of breathing, the empty echoes of her shoes on the pavement. She liked having a key in her pocket. At the restaurant she rarely used one. She got it out too early, four street lamps too early. By the time she reached George's flat it had turned from hot to cold in her fingers.

WITHOUT PAUL LYING
next to her, Sylvie could indulge her insomnia. She had slept for about an hour and woken, in the way of a cork pulled out of a bottle. The dream she'd been dreaming had been mean, not voluminous. It had squeezed her out. She couldn't recall it and she couldn't have stayed there. She got up and wrapped her jersey round her shoulders, walked into the kitchen. There was enough light to see by. The dark wasn't solid. She filled the kettle with water, banged it down on the stove, lit the jet. Blue flames shot with orange, as compelling as a camp fire for staring at, at this time of night. The gas blew into the silence.