Mary Costello: The China Factory

Beyond the window a patch of rough ground led down to the sea. She watched lights flickering on the far peninsula. She did not know what she felt. She did not know what was coming. She thought that this couple, Susan and Bob, had somehow, inexplicably, brought misfortune down on top of them. She wanted to return to the way things were before. She crossed the kitchen and when she passed the table they were all laughing. In the bedroom Michael’s shirt hung on the back of a chair. His briefcase stood packed and ready for the return to the city. She stared at the chrome clasps and then crossed the floor and flipped them open. She put a hand inside and urgently searched the slim fabric compartments.

A month before she had found something. He had been in the shower that day, preparing to leave for a big meeting with a client; he had been tense and harried all morning, liable to err. The briefcase was on the dining room table, packed and ready, then as now. His mobile phone began to ring inside, and, thinking the call vital, she leaned over and popped open the clasps. The phone rang off and she could not explain what had driven her to grope in the dark compartments as if seeking an answer to a question not yet formed. She found a brown envelope, and inside a passport-sized photo. A small boy with dark hair and a solemn face looked out at her. She turned the photo over and on the back, a name and a date, in blue ink: Ross, b. 19 April 2004 . From inside the envelope, she drew out an acknowledgement slip with the letterhead of their city lawyer, and three words, handwritten in black: All sorted, Tony .

When she returned to the table Bob refilled her glass. He got up and announced that he was putting on Schubert. She knew before the approach of the first note that it would arc its way into her and with each successive note there would be an unravelling.

‘A man almost died here today,’ she blurted out, and they all turned to her.

‘Oh, I knew there was something we had to tell you,’ Michael said, seeking and then holding her look.

She watched his mouth move as he told the story. He paused every now and then to let her contribute but there was nothing she could add. Afterwards, Susan switched on the lamps. They were talking about European cities then. Bob and Susan argued gently over Venice, he insisting it was a crowded, overrated city for tourists, she pleading its history, its architecture, its light.

‘What it had in the past has been lost,’ Bob said. ‘All that literary and artistic weight has pulled it down. Now it’s just a bunch of beautiful empty buildings, gazing at their own reflection in the water.’

‘It’s a lovers’ city,’ Susan said, ‘a bit like Paris in that respect. It’s a city one must see with a lover.’

‘I don’t know,’ Michael said. ‘Romy and I fought all the time in Venice. I couldn’t stand the heat and the crowds and the narrow alleys.’ He met her eyes for an instant.

‘We spent a lot of time complaining too, Susan, if I remember correctly,’ Bob said.

‘I think maybe the lover should be new,’ Susan continued. ‘You know that early stage when you know very little about each other… and it’s all to play for and you’re in a kind of glow.’

‘Go on then,’ Michael said. ‘We’re all ears.’

‘No, it’s nothing, really,’ Susan said.

But he pleaded, mockingly, until she relented.

‘It was before I met Bob, of course! Or Duncan! I had just arrived in Paris and I was waiting in line for a phone to try to book a room. There was a guy behind me, an American too, also looking for a hotel room. We got talking. He was twenty-eight, a doctor — handsome — on his first trip to Europe. Well, actually, he was getting over a divorce. Anyway we had no luck with the phone so we went to a small café where we found another phone and we each took turns calling around while the other one stayed with the luggage. Eventually I got a room — one room with three beds — so I took it, and I gave him the option of sharing. So we checked in and then went off to see the city and later we had dinner. And the next day we did the same and we… fell in love, I guess… People fall in love remarkably easily. He was a sweet guy. We were in a beautiful city… he made me feel safe. We were lovers for a week.’

In the lamplight she had grown seductive, and the story, slipping from her, added a new dimension, made her vulnerable. Her long slender neck reminded Romy of Picasso’s gored horse that they’d seen in Barcelona — the beautiful white horse brought to its knees, the tip of a sword emerging from the ground, poised to pierce the pearl-white neck, spurt blood from the jugular.

‘And then?’ Michael asked, ‘What happened then?’

‘Oh, we had to say goodbye. He was going on to Rome and I had to return to the States.’

Nobody spoke for a while.

‘I read some research recently,’ Susan said then, ‘that proved men are actually more prone to falling in love at first sight than women.’

In the candlelight Romy looked across at Michael. His eyes met hers and she felt herself surrender.

Later on they piled into the car and Michael drove them up the mountains. The road rose and they rounded bends and the headlights shone high in the trees, like searchlights. The radio was on low and a woman sang the blues. After a few minutes, without warning, Michael switched it off.

‘Bob, are you drunk yet? Start us off on a song there.’

They laughed and argued and finally hit on a song. Romy looked out the window at the forest. All day long she had coasted on the brink of tears. She looked down to where the trees parted and a river flowed, and for an instant she saw a campfire in the clearing. Men and women and children were laughing and dancing, as if there was music there. The flames licked the trees and shadows leapt on the children’s faces. She pressed her face to the glass. Her heart beat faster. Then the car climbed and rounded a bend and the fire and the dancers disappeared.

They emerged out of the forest onto a high moonlit road. She felt her mind remote. She thought that by now she would have had the key to him. She would like to be able to say things to him. To be able to say, You are mine . She would like to be a different woman, a strong strident wife, one who would reach into a briefcase and turn her face hard towards her man and say, What’s this, then? She would like, for once, to shock him, shame him, shake that indifferent heart of his.

He reached across and took her hand. His face was lit by the dashboard. For a second his eyes were desolate. Had he loved that woman, that mother? Had he been wounded? Had he loved enough to wish her, Romy, dead?

The song ended and they started to descend. Bob asked a question and Michael answered. She listened to his voice. His words trailed out of him with strength and clarity and certainty and instantly it came to her. This is what he had carried for her — this is what he had afforded her. He had gone ahead of her and tested the world. He had verified it for her. Outside, the forest was bearing down on the car. Suddenly she felt doomed and everything run to ruin. Perhaps there is no key, she thought, perhaps there is no key to anyone, not even to ourselves, least of all to ourselves, to our own terrified hearts. The singing started up again and the words swirled around her. She longed to climb down into the forest, and walk in the river and succumb to the sound of water tumbling over ancient stones.

It is Saturday evening and below his window Andrew’s two daughters are playing Hospital with their friends. Occasionally he hears the whine of a siren and their pretend voices calling out orders. They rush around the garden tending to patients on trolleys. They race out of the house every day and rush headlong into these other roles.