Tsing-Boum (24 page)

‘Here's to old days.'

‘Here's to the present if you don't mind. To the future if you wish.'

‘Right,' he agreed. ‘Hell with the old days. Now's the time. Esther – you look great.'

‘What are you doing?'

‘You'll never believe it but I'm in the flyfly industry. Got a little airfield in Limburg, going on great – six planes and they're all mine, and I sit in the driver's seat – every licence you can get on single engines, navigation, the lot. You ought to see us – we get people from Eindhoven, Liège ‘swell's Maastricht, Hasselt – you name it.'

‘Sounds like fun,' said Esther mechanically.

‘Come on, have another, one for the future and one for the present. What's yours?'

‘Dull, feller, dull.' She smiled. ‘Married – yes, army man. What else? I live here – no not here; up the coast. Just quiet. I've had enough excitement.'

‘Go on, what do you do? Any flying?'

‘Not unless I fit the Simca with wings.'

‘You should come and look us up – no, I mean it – no distance in a car. Fly all you like – teach you to drive – do it myself. Charge? What's that? What, for the girls who flew for us? Nix, nix. And jump – you should come and teach a few of our fat business men to jump. See them shaking like a jelly before they're pushed … yes of course we got a parachute school – we got everything except you.' He made her laugh with a dramatic funny description of business men who wanted to be heroes, and one massive tycoon from Eindhoven who brought his secretary …

‘Made her jump ahead of him he did – so that in case his chute didn't open she could catch him on the way down!' Crafty twister he had been in the old days, but people changed. Confidence in themselves, a new career for which they were better suited – this one, he'd never been a real soldier, not what she called a soldier.

She was tempted to take him up on it. Not now, not in a hurry; Esther knew better than to do things in a hurry. But she would turn it around, see how the idea looked.

‘Shouldn't be calling you Esther now you're grown up and married and everything.'

‘That's right, Madame Zomerlust to you, and what's more I only sleep with my husband. But I don't mind – call me Esther if you like – it's the last sentimental corner I have left.' The two pastis had made her a bit too relaxed, but she would watch it.

‘No, no more.'

‘Esther – who'd have thought it, gone Dutch! Why you speak Dutch as well as me.'

‘Better, I hope – le gros Flamand!'

‘There's the girl – I haven't been called
“le gros Flamand”
in years!'

But he didn't make any passes, treated her with politeness, opened the door for her, gave a little bow when he left her at the car …

Ach what – harmless! A tiny touch of nostalgia – like a touch of Tuong-ot on the plain rice of Rotterdam. And she'd been careful to tell him nothing.

It hadn't occurred to her that he had her married name and the number of the Simca – plenty of information for someone with a taste and a talent for working things out.

Ruth had a school holiday – trades union conference of teachers; they never had such things in holiday times! Agitation about their pay or their pensions – the army couldn't do such things! One could not speak of a decision, and anyway she was tired of deciding things. She had had to decide so many things, from sometimes speaking French to Ruth to accepting the fact that she was not going to have another child: she could not blame Harry, poor devil – it was just one of those things, and had forced her to yet another decision, that was – almost – as hard, which was that she was condemned to the Van Lennepweg, or somewhere very like it, for many many years.

She had had dreams – so much the worse for the dreams – of a house of her own. Of planting roses and watching them grow. If she had had two children or more … Regulations!

A bright sunny day. Really she did not care whether she was making up her mind or whether she was just drawing a straw to see who got the shortest. She would take Ruth. It would be exciting for her, to go up in an aeroplane. And what did it matter – what importance had someone like the big Fleming? He knew nothing about her anyway – he had not come back to France after the summer of fifty-four.

There was another thing; if she went alone he might consider it as an invitation of sorts. Taking Ruth at least made it clear that she was not looking for any ‘adventures' today, thank you.

It was not the first time she had been out of Holland, even since living in the Van Lennepweg. They had spent the meagre
fortnight of a Dutch holiday in Denmark, and on a Rhine cruise – and Norway this year. She had not wanted to go to England, and Harry – she neither, come to that – had not wanted to go to France, and small blame to him. Hell, there were plenty of other places. She had sometimes suggested working, tentatively, to make a bit more money for these holidays – just a part-time job. For a few weeks. But no, he wouldn't have it and she didn't press it. He had the right to be awkward about things. He wasn't awkward, anyway. Did he not show absolute trust in her? Did he not give her complete freedom, as far as the Van Lennepweg could give anyone complete freedom? Did he ever ask where she had been, ever ask what she did with money, ever knit his brows at whisky bottles or cigarette packets? No, he did not.

The border already; the road went easily. Ruth was not a chatterer, and neither is Esther, she thought, smiling slightly. I am a pretty bad mother. I am not exactly a prize packet as a wife either. I try. Marx, quite a good report for effort; I suppose that's something. Takes pains with her appearance, keeps that stinking little apartment in reasonable shape, doesn't get drunk, doesn't whore about.

The big lummox of a Fleming – should she after all turn back? No – Ruth would be horribly disappointed. She was looking forward to it, and had even begged to make a parachute jump. Esther had to promise to make one herself. Didn't have to feel defiant about it, either. It wasn't nostalgia, and it certainly wasn't self-indulgence. Esther didn't know what it was: didn't have much imagination, thank God. Maybe just a bit of snobbery. Nobody in the Van Lennepweg thought much one way or another of little Mevrouw Zomerlust: she wasn't particularly liked, nor was she disliked, she hoped. But she was damn sure of one thing – none of them knew how to make a jump.

Was there disloyalty to one's husband in putting on overalls again and a jump helmet? Honestly she couldn't see it. She would tell him if it worked. Almost certainly he would laugh in his unmalicious generous way, and tell her to go ahead and enjoy herself because what gave her pleasure pleased him too.

This must be the place. A dozen cars – all a lot grander than
the Ariane but she was not going to be ashamed of the Ariane any more than of herself. Fat business men. Give them lessons – all right she would. Remember Gilles – le père Gilles with his glass eye which he took out when he jumped. Been over forty when he made his first jump.

Office place – Ruth was exclaiming with excitement. Now she had to go through with it.

‘Just wait outside a moment – I have to go in here. Why don't you go through there, and you can look at the planes?'

She had to be patient for several minutes while a big sporting golfing character went on about putting the papers through and how many hours he had. Her turn at last – soppy girl with stupid clothes and a ghastly shade of lipstick, who looked at her as though she wasn't rich enough for this league.

She had to straighten the cow out a bit. Conny Desmet was giving a lesson and would be down in twenty minutes, but …

‘No, I'm an old friend.'
Le gros Flamand
was not exactly a friend but that was no business of office girls. ‘I came to do a jump.'

‘Oh, but that's Mr Bos – he's in charge of that – oh yes, he's around.' Who the hell was Mr Bos? But Ruth would be fidgeting. The girl got up and looked through the window.

‘Oh yes, there he is on the apron. Is that your little girl? Well, that's him talking to her.'

Esther walked out into a smell of creosoted wood baked by a bright September sun, of dried grass and motor oil, her heart lifting and contracting at remembered smells, remembered excitements. It was Pau again, Pau where she had made her first jump ever. Yes, she wanted to buckle a harness on again, tighten the heavy straps around her thighs, feel that sharp empty air as she jumped into it and the exquisite second after one punched the release on one's stomach and felt the snatch of the chute. There was a glare that blinded her a second and then she saw him. The muscles in her calves and thighs jumped and twitched furiously; the blood roared in her throat and head.

Him. Talking to his daughter. She walked slowly, shakily, as though the dusty concrete on which the air danced and shimmered were the thigh-deep black mud of a delta ricefield. She
stood there a metre behind Ruth, waiting for him to see her. She said nothing because there was nothing to say. What could one say?

‘Drop dead'?

‘I love you'?

‘Good afternoon'?

‘Hallo Mevrouw – seems I've a pupil here, or have I two …'

His turn to stand rooted. Esther made a monstrous effort not to be a fly stuck on the flypaper.

‘Come, sweetie.' Ruth looked properly astonished, never having been called sweetie in her life.

‘She's told me her name,' said Laforêt slowly.

God it was cowardly. Look at him. Speak to him. Say something. Jump you fool. And she couldn't jump … Esther Marx … couldn't jump …

‘Come, Ruth.'

‘Why?' She was flabbergasted, naturally. She was getting along fine!

‘I don't know – it's the wrong place or something. I must have got something wrong but they've no place – no room or something. They're booked up. Come; I'm going to buy you an ice.'

She had gone to a great deal of trouble, working out all sorts of elaborate details to forget her cowardice. Buying a picnic lunch, taking Ruth swimming and hiring two bathing costumes from a Belgian who plainly thought her an imbecile, driving all the way over beyond Liège into the Ardennes, getting stranded with no petrol – lord, behaviour of a startled virgin – going back through Spa and up to Maastricht, letting Ruth drink beer mixed with lemonade and spending an awful lot of money …

She had managed to raise her eyes after bending down stupidly, dizzily, to fix Ruth's sandal strap, with which there was nothing whatever the matter. Just for a moment she had managed to meet his eyes before dragging the protesting child back to the car. She didn't know what her expression had been, but she hoped it had somehow managed to convey ‘I'm sorry' and that he would have understood what she meant.

For weeks she had waited for the consequences, knowing there would somehow be consequences, uneasy and frightened, cursing herself for a fool, trying to be less surprised at her agitation. After all, seeing somebody for the first time since the night in the bar you shot him – bound to be a
bit
of a shock however you looked at it. Even after twelve years. It made her furious that she could not even tell Harry, even hint – caught in her own trap: had it not been herself that had laid it down so adamantly that whatever happened the past would never never never come up between them?

Had he seen in that one second that whatever she did or said she would go back to him at the drop of his hat – if something did not stop her? – and one minute she found herself praying desperately that something would not stop her, and the next second that it would.

Would he find out where she was? Perhaps through Desmet? Would Desmet? She knew – she knew – that sooner or later she would find one or other of them waiting for her.

Esther did not tell anyone what she went through in the fortnight which followed. Laforêt – who was cursed with too much imagination – later thought that he had some idea.

It was Desmet who came. She was quite glad when at last it happened. And glad that he was so easy, so unembarrassed, so casually ready to admit he had spied her out. He had enough brass for a whole military band, that one. And the easy accustomed swank of a drum-major marching at its head.

Esther lost hers. Her head, she meant. Right bang there in the Van Lennepweg he walked in at the door as unconcerned and confident as the man come to tell you you've won ten thousand on the football pool.
‘Good
morning, Mevrouw. We've a simply great piece of news for you.'

Of course the great piece of news that people like Desmet brought was their own marvellous self. There he was, in his beautifully cut suit and shirt, with that lovely soft black leather briefcase exactly as though selling insurance, and his broad sunny smile. Walked in before it entered her head that she could have shut the door again.

‘Hallo, Esther.' Cheerleader.

‘I'm sorry, the place is a mess. My girl's at school. I wasn't
expecting anyone. I'm sorry, sit down. Can I offer you something? – I've some whisky,' desperately.

‘I'd love that. Trust Esther to have something good.' In her nervousness and haste she poured herself an enormous one, far bigger than she intended, slopping some on her fingers. It was a brand new bottle of Johnny Walker, bought just that morning, the tissue paper still wound round the bright red and gold label. When he went it was empty, and she stayed sitting there looking at it, tipping it up to her mouth to get the last drops out, throwing it in the bin and crawling after it to get it back out, with an absurd notion of sticking it up on a bracket with a ribbon round it and a little gold-edged card saying ‘Esther Marx is a whore – everybody knows that'. Esther Marx is a whore, Esther Marx is a whore, beating in her head, beating with drums, in march time. The drums swelled and banged inside her head, and the boots of a column of soldiers following, cracking down in rapid rhythm. Boots, boots, boots, boots … Go on, boots, kick me to death.