Heat Wave (12 page)

Two days later, Pauline observes the return of Maurice: the smiling emergence from the car, the kiss for Teresa who has come out to greet him, the lugging into the cottage of the Gladstone bag – now evidently even heavier. And two days after that Pauline herself gets into her car and heads up the track.

The drive from World’s End to central London takes about two hours. Pauline has done it so many times that she has ceased to find this abrupt transition strange. Indeed, like any other late-twentieth-century traveller she is indignant about delays – the tiresome incursion of roadworks, the irritating crawl in a traffic jam. The World’s End track takes her to the main road which sweeps her round Hadbury on the girdle of ring roads and roundabouts, and eventually shoots her off on the sliproad which leads on to the motorway, on which she cruises until the landscape starts to thicken with roads and buildings, the traffic slows again and she is digested by the city’s sprawl. Once, browsing in Hugh’s office, she picked up an edition of Ogilby and saw the same journey translated into the emotive draughtsmanship of a seventeenth-century gazetteer – the road snaking onwards strip by strip, fringed by the neat insignia of church towers that would act as landmarks, the schematic trees and hills to indicate woodland or high ground, the rivers and bridges. Here were implications of time and space. Behind the stylized representations of a village or a range of hills lurked potholed roads, barren dangerous heaths, dust, mud and rain.

It is not raining today – indeed the sun is making the car uncomfortably hot. Pauline adjusts the air flow and opens the sun roof. She flips through radio channels, rejects them all and puts on a tape. The car is filled with Mozart. Thus cocooned, she skims past the village,
around Hadbury, past the fields of wheat and hay, the distant cows and sheep like farmyard toys, the petrol stations swagged with plastic bunting, the thickets of road signs. Soon she is on the motorway and quite detached from the scenery which streams past at either side. She is a part of another element, the endlessly moving belt of traffic into which she is now slotted, locked into negotiation with this car or with that lorry, overtaking, slowing up, speeding on. The green and blue distances beyond and behind are irrelevant – her dealings are with the road and its occupants.

Thus she moves imperceptibly from the country to the city, exercised only by the behaviour of other drivers and the shift from the Mozart oboe concerto to a Ravel quartet. She tunnels her way into London and steps out of the car outside the late Victorian house of which the top half is her flat. This is the city – they do things differently here, though this is not always apparent.

Ten years ago, when the renovation of World’s End was complete, Pauline hired a van with driver and associate to move down there the various pieces of furniture she had assembled. The driver got lost and had stopped off in the village to seek directions. When eventually the van arrived both men were in fits of laughter. They sat in the kitchen on packing cases drinking mugs of tea and spluttering with mirth because, it seemed, their Cockney inflection had been found incomprehensible in the village shop. They had had to repeat themselves several times before the query got through. Pauline found this tale somewhat incredible, but it seemed churlish to spoil their enjoyment of what was evidently perceived as rural insularity. They sat there in grubby vests, brimming with self-confidence and well-being, and laughed benignly. Outside, Chaundy’s tractor driver, who looked much like they did, roared up and down the field, apparently poles apart.

Pauline unlocks the front door and climbs the stairs, adjusting herself as she does so, assuming the city like a change of skin. The flat greets her with a tide of garish slippery flyers on the doormat, shouting of pizza deliveries and Indian take-aways. It is hot. Dust boils in a shaft of sunlight. She opens windows, sweeps dead insects from the kitchen table, tips the flyers into the rubbish bin, moving
briskly from room to room, checking her watch. She has switched to a different mode, without effort and almost without realizing that she has done so. She is on a new course, powered by lists and diary entries. World’s End is relegated, shunted aside, suspended somewhere down the motorway out of sight and mind.

The restaurant is one to which they have been before, but not so often as to make it tediously predictable. Hugh likes to circulate between various favoured eating places. Pauline looks fondly at him across the table, thinking that to be with him is like putting on some loved and familiar garment which induces instant ease and comfort. There is not the faintest tingle of sex about this feeling, but it does have some eerie connection with the fact that Hugh is a man. She cannot much remember sex with Hugh now – there is just an impression of genial intimacy rather than of eroticism. The experience bore no relation whatsoever to sex with Harry, which is presumably why she is able to sit here with Hugh today in perfect amity. What there is between them has not been sharpened by sexual tension, and thus cannot corrode.

‘What do you think about the idea of romantic love?’ she says. ‘Unquenchable, irresistible love.’

Hugh is busy with the menu. He glances at her over the top of it. ‘Hang on a minute.’ He completes his inspection, takes his glasses off and lays the menu beside his plate. ‘As in Héloïse and Abelard? Romeo and Juliet? Dido? That sort of thing?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘I hope you’re not suffering from it,’ says Hugh. ‘I’m told it’s very debilitating. You’re not, are you?’

‘I’m editing a novel about it.’

‘Thank goodness for that. I’d have felt obliged to seek professional advice for you. Don’t people just go to a therapist or something nowadays?’

‘Don’t be flippant,’ says Pauline. ‘It’s a serious matter, and always has been. It happens. Which is why people go on writing about it, like this guy of mine.’

Hugh sighs. ‘I’m sure you’re right. I’ve been told before that I have a low emotional temperature. That’s probably why I’m so fond
of food. Talking of which – shall we order? The salmon sounds interesting. Or there’s a pigeon breast concoction I haven’t come across before. I think I’ll give that a whirl.’

They order. Hugh is now in a state of warm complacency. He puts his glasses on again and studies Pauline. ‘I must say you’re looking extremely well. You’ve gone a sort of pale coffee colour, like a foxed book. It’s most becoming.’

‘Thank you. So you don’t accept the idea of romantic love?’

‘I never said that. I don’t subscribe to any set of religious beliefs, but that doesn’t mean I reject the concept of religion. It’s got far too strong a track record. Is this a good novel?’

‘I’m not sure. The setting’s medieval – period unspecific. There’s a Lady and a Knight, but he betrays her – he abandons her and she searches for him and in the end kills herself. And there are dragons and unicorns and werewolves.’

‘I don’t think this is my kind of book,’ says Hugh.

‘It isn’t mine, entirely. But fortunately I’m not hired to pronounce on that. I just correct the spelling. But it grows on you. It’s very sad. I actually cried. You don’t often cry over a typescript. You’re too busy creeping through it word by word.’

Hugh considers this point. One of Hugh’s attractive qualities is that he is basically a serious man and he listens to what other people say – especially to what Pauline says. He considers the point while also considering the seafood salad which he is now eating. Eventually he observes that he cannot comment on that since typescripts do not come his way, but that the assumption must be that if words have validity then they will have it regardless of the medium. There is no reason why type should not have the impact of print. He asks if Pauline’s crab terrine is all right.

‘Delicious. But print
is
more persuasive. It has authority. It’s because you know type can still be tampered with. And it’s my job to tamper.’

‘I suppose so. Can I try a bit? The terrine, I mean.’

Pauline offers her plate. Hugh helps himself to a forkful of terrine. ‘Mmn. Very nice. I should have had that – the seafood is a touch boring. So … how’s Teresa?’

‘Teresa’s fine,’ says Pauline.

Hugh looks closely at her, as though the reply was not quite satisfactory. ‘Nothing wrong, is there?’

‘Nothing at all. The weather’s gorgeous. At weekends we go and look at tourist attractions in the interests of scholarship. Maurice’s scholarship.’

‘Oh dear,’ says Hugh. ‘I really do think you should come back to London.’

Pauline shakes her head. No – she will stay put. For various reasons. And this seems to be one of those few famous fine summers.

‘Definitely something has got into you,’ says Hugh. ‘Never before have I known you talk about the weather.’

Pauline laughs. ‘Then you’d better move things on to a higher plane and tell me what you’ve been doing.’

Hugh has been across the Atlantic, visiting clients. He tells Pauline about trips to Yale and to Toronto, where he negotiates the sale of rare books to great libraries, and to New York where he acts as a purveyor of choice goodies to a man who collects modern firsts. ‘I’ve just filled the major gap on his shelf,’ says Hugh. ‘A
Ulysses
in pristine condition.’

‘Does he read them?’

‘Of course not, that’s not what they’re for.’

‘I’ll never really understand bibliophilia,’ says Pauline.

‘Nobody does. Mercifully there’s quite a bit of it around or I’d be out of business. You’re dealing with people who’ve got a bee in their bonnet. Perfectly normal in other respects. The New York fellow is a stockbroker. Stinking rich and an awful bore. He takes me out for a stupendously good dinner but the conversation’s rather heavy going.’

Pauline pictures Hugh on these trips, padding around North American cities in his shabby clothes, with his raincoat over his arm and some arcane treasure in his briefcase. She thinks of him negotiating in air-conditioned offices, eating appreciatively in carefully selected restaurants. Getting into bed in hotel rooms.

‘Where do you stay? In New York, for instance.’

Hugh looks startled, and then faintly embarrassed. ‘Well, as a matter of fact there’s a lady I stay with in New York. I’ve known her
for – oh, ten years or more, I suppose. It’s a long-standing arrangement.’

Pauline stares at him.

‘The thing is,’ he goes on, ‘she does the most amazingly good breakfasts. She’s an Italian lady who has a deli on the Upper West Side and she also runs a very informal B & B arrangement for a few regulars. Her waffles are a dream.’

‘Hugh, I do love you,’ says Pauline.

‘I’m quite fond of you too. Is the salmon up to scratch? This pigeon affair is definitely interesting.’

Pauline pays courtesy calls at various publishing houses for which she does editorial work. She sits chatting to a former colleague for a while in the office where once she clocked in daily, tests herself for corporate nostalgia and decides that there is none.

‘How’s our Maurice?’ inquires the colleague.

‘Maurice is in good health, so far as I know.’

‘And how’s the great work coming along?’

‘Very well, I believe.’

‘James Saltash is putting it about that this is going to cause a stir, this tourism book. Controversial. Pulls no punches.’

‘I don’t doubt,’ says Pauline.

‘Interesting guy, Maurice,’ says the colleague, after a moment. She eyes Pauline and veers off in another direction. ‘So you’re dug in down in the sticks for the rest of the summer?’

‘That’s right. I’m watching a field of wheat grow.’

‘Life of Riley, it must be. Unlike the rest of us …’ The colleague embarks with relish on an account of high jinks within the trade, designed perhaps to indicate what a lot Pauline is missing. ‘What are you up to, workwise?’ she asks kindly.

‘Putting commas into a novel about unicorns,’ says Pauline, and takes her leave.

No, she thinks, going down in the lift – no, you can keep it. The hurry and scurry, the wheeling and dealing. The gossip was good – I miss that. The salary cheque was more reliable than a string of small commissions. But you can still keep it.

She walks out of the building, a free woman. She has plenty of work lined up. The unicorns will be succeeded by a gargantuan account of the North Sea oil industry and a travel book on the Caucasus.

Nearly twenty years ago she entered this building – or rather, its predecessor – and became for the first time an employee. Her role was a humble one, and the building was elsewhere, a modest house in a west London street, the home at that point of the imprint which has now fallen into the imperial grasp of a large conglomerate. The house is superseded by a green glass column with a lushly carpeted entrance hall, and few of her former colleagues are still present. But, back then, it was with a tremulous sense of freedom that she had gone to work. She hardly knew what to expect, and wondered if she would be up to it, but she knew that day was a climactic one. The end of dependence, in every sense. She was stepping away from Harry, and into a new country.

Harry went to California, and Pauline went to work. In the event she found not only that she was well up to it but that she was rather better at it than most. Her role did not remain a humble one for long. She grew. She moved on and away. The Harry years fell back, removed into some other dimension, where they exist still as a narrative of which many details are lost, and just a handful of potent moments survive, about which nothing can be done.

Waking that night in her flat Pauline is disorientated. There is some racket outside that should not be there. Then she realizes that she is not at World’s End, that this is the city, and the city talks day and night. People are shouting in the street – incoherent high-pitched abuse that goes on and on, in one voice and then another, an incomprehensible torrential exchange. She goes to the window and sees that the source is a bunch of young girls, adolescents, who eddy back and forth along the pavement, bawling at each other, coming together and drifting apart like a flock of birds. It is one o’clock in the morning. She watches them in dismay, hearing obscenities and hysterical accusations. Are they drunk? High on drugs? At last they drift round the corner and out of sight, their shrieking ebbs away and she goes back to bed, wide awake and insecure. The manic
children have unleashed some nameless anxiety of her own and in the morning she has a compulsion to telephone Teresa, even though she is returning to World’s End the next day.