David Szalay - Spring

In a polo neck now, and extravagantly scented, Fraser emerged smiling from the wetroom. Something about her posture prevented him from putting his arms around her and taking it from there, as he had intended. ‘So, should we eat?’ he said. They took the lift downstairs—the hallways of the hotel were woollen in their windowless hush, with pools of halogen light on the floor—and were warmly welcomed into the dining room, where there was another spectacular open fire, another expanse of sombre tartan. They were shown to a table. She was suddenly feeling very depressed. She put down the menu and said, ‘I think this whole thing might have been a mistake, Fraser.’

He looked up from his own menu with a notch of worry in his forehead.

‘What are we doing here?’ she said. ‘This is just weird.’

‘What are we doing here?’ He put his hand over hers. ‘I’ll tell you what we’re doing here…’

She pulled her hand away.

He had started to say something else—something about falling in love again—when she interrupted him. ‘Should we order? I’m starving.’

He sighed. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Sure, let’s order.’

They sat in silence until the waiter had taken their order. Then they sat in silence some more. Fraser was looking at her. She was looking everywhere except at Fraser. The Monarch of the Glen -style paintings on the walls. The waiting staff in their long white aprons, their standard-issue tartan ties. The man in the tailcoat—presumably the whisky sommelier—squeaking from table to table with his wheeled tantalus of single malts. The whole tree flaming in the fireplace…

‘You’re very angry with me,’ Fraser said finally.

She looked at him.

Sitting opposite her, he looked somehow implausible in his auteur’s polo neck. His shoulders were still powerful. His head—the dimpled imperial jaw—was still fairly splendid. So what was it? It was his eyes. His squinting eyes, with whose joyously sexual merriment she had once fallen thuddingly in love, were polluted with sadness. They were polluted with sadness and fear.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’

‘Of course,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I understand. This will take time. It won’t be easy…’

‘ What will take time?’ she said in a louder voice. ‘What do you think is going on here?’

‘I don’t know. You tell me. What is going on here?’

‘Fraser…’ she said, sighing exasperatedly. ‘Alright.’ She seemed to marshal her thoughts. She seemed to focus herself. ‘You made my life absolute fucking hell,’ she said. Then, in a very much less matter-of-fact tone, ‘Do you understand that? I sometimes wonder if you even understand that.’

‘I do…’

‘ Do you? I’m not sure that you do…’

‘Of course I do…’

‘You made my life absolute fucking hell, and now you seem to think you can just take me to a posh hotel and everything will be fine. That we can just sit here and have a lovely time…’

‘No,’ he protested.

‘There’s something insulting about this. There’s something insulting about the way I’m supposed to be swept off my feet by all this…’

‘You’re not—’

‘It’s a fucking luxury hotel! Wonderful! I spend all my time in a luxury hotel. Didn’t it occur to you that I might not want to spend the weekend in a luxury hotel?’

‘Katie…’

‘No, of course it didn’t…’

‘Katie…’

‘What is the point of this? What are we doing here? What do you think this is? A nice romantic weekend? Is that your understanding of emotions? Is that how you think emotions are?’

‘I said it will take time…’

‘Your understanding of emotions is just so fucking limited, Fraser. You trample on other people and then all you feel is self-pity. You’re just so fucking selfish. I seriously sometimes wonder whether you’ve got some sort of problem. Otherwise how can you not see what you’re doing? How can you not see how you’re hurting people…?’

She put her hand over her eyes to hide all the water that was suddenly there as the waiter solemnly put the starters on the table. Fraser looked on helplessly as he did. As soon as he had moved away, still hiding her face with her hand, she stood up and hurried out.

A few minutes later she sat down again.

‘Okay. I’m fine now,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

And she seemed fine in her new face. She started to eat.

‘Katie,’ Fraser said. ‘I understand what I put you through…’

‘Let’s not talk about it,’ she said. ‘Not now.’

Looking shattered, he said, ‘We need to talk about it.’

She nodded. ‘M-hm. How’s yours?’

‘I, uh… I haven’t tried it yet.’ He looked down at the slice of venison terrine, the redcurrant sprig, the four perfect triangles of toast. He wasn’t hungry.

She, on the other hand, seemed starving. She finished what was on her own plate and then ate most of what was on his.

He insisted, when they had finished the meal, on ordering two stupendously expensive whiskies from the tailcoated sommelier, and then—it was not even ten—they went for a short walk along Princes Street, as far as the floodlit Sir Walter Scott memorial.

When she stepped out of the wetroom in her silk pyjamas—and she had spent a long time in there—Fraser was lying nonchalantly propped on an elbow on the four-poster. He had taken off his shoes and socks.

‘Hey, nice PJs,’ he smiled.

‘They were a present.’

His smile wavered. It went out altogether in his pale eyes. ‘What—from…?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not from him. From someone else.’

‘So…’ Fraser started tentatively. ‘Who, uh… who was he?’

She was able to see him in the mirror, staring at his own heavy-duty toenails. And then, when she said nothing, lifting his eyes warily towards hers. ‘Just… a person,’ she said. ‘Why? What difference does it make?’

‘None.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Okay.’

They had yet to touch each other in any significant way. It was one of the things that made the situation feel so strange. However, it felt no less strange—it felt stranger—when he stood up and perched his hands on the suave silk of her shoulders. ‘Fraser…’ He kissed her exposed neck. She shrugged him off. ‘Nothing’s going to happen tonight,’ she said. ‘Okay?’

‘Okay,’ he said, smiling at her in the mirror, trying to keep it light, his eyes all over the shining ivory silk.

‘Now I’m going to sleep,’ she said. ‘I’m very tired.’

‘Me too.’

She lay on the far side of the four-poster, on the luxurious solidity of the mattress, on the edge of its precipice, listening to him splashing and spitting in the wetroom. It went quiet for a while. Then he emerged and she felt him slide into the huge bed, sending a wave through the stiff linen. The lights went off. She was tense, expecting some sort of overture, an inquisitive hand…

‘Goodnight, Katie,’ he whispered, from quite far away.

Then stillness, silence.

Which made her feel that she had treated him unfairly, and she turned over and stretched out her own hand, stretched it out into the empty space of the sheets, until finally it found his flexed, naked knee. ‘Night, night,’ she said.

*

In the morning there was some smooching. He wanted more than that, of course. He was sharply desirous of more. There was something urgent about the way he started to unpick her pyjamas. He had undone half the iridescent little buttons of the silk jacket when she stopped him, seeing with sudden force as his eyes found the waxy scoop of her sternum how the situation would be transformed into something she did not want it to be if she let him undo them all, if she let him tug the silken trousers down. Fastening the jacket to her throat, she hurried into the wetroom and had a long shower.