Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

— I wanted to be surprised. Chris could adore me, but not surprise me. The force of Stuart’s hunger as we stood on a corner and said goodbye, at last, after trailing Robert through half the streets of Toledo, caught at my breath with its novelty. Yet nothing was said or even hinted and afterwards I feared I had imagined it, the merest projection of my lust.

But we had a date. The most innocent date. ‘My husband would really like to meet you… sometimes he longs for an English voice. You’re Scottish, of course, but that’s just as good…’

‘Better,’ said Stuart, ‘but I’ll forgive you.’ Both of our voices were insincere, overhasty with suppressed excitement.

‘You must bring your wife. We’ll go out to dinner. Our treat. Let’s eat at the parador.’

‘That costs the earth,’ said Stuart, kindly. ‘We’ll go some-where local. Anywhere. The food isn’t what matters, after all.’

Instantly both of us were heavy with embarrassment, as if he had just declared himself, though the words were innocent enough. I forced my attention back to the venue.

‘It’s OK, really…’ (But how can I say, ‘As it happens, Chris is a millionaire…’?)

We made a date for Saturday. I don’t think Stuart’s mind was working at all, for he looked astonished when I called him back to ask him if he had a sitter for Robert. If not, perhaps a maid at the parador…

‘What am I thinking of?’ he said. ‘For a second I forgot about the children. It’s not just Robert, it’s his sister Fiona…’

There was a sister, Fiona. This was not getting easier.

‘That won’t be a problem. We’ll pay the girl more.’

— I felt that ‘girl’ slightly grated on Stuart.

‘Well actually, you see… Kirsty doesn’t like to leave the children with strangers.’

‘But what do you do when you go out?’

‘Well actually we hardly ever do.’ This confession caused him great discomfort.

In the face of that I grew bossy and rich. ‘Well tell her she has to go out. Everyone does, or they go crazy. The parador cooking is marvellous. Tell her she owes herself a treat. The children will be under the same roof so she’s hardly leaving them, is she?… We’ll expect all four of you on Saturday. Eight o’clock. Everything will be arranged.’

He looked up suddenly, looked me in the eye, our glances held with grappling hooks — we stood three feet apart, hands by our sides, imagining we were naked, touching.

‘I’ll be there,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there. Robert, kiss the lady goodbye.’

Robert didn’t want to. His Dad held him up. At the last moment he shrugged his mouth away, and his sulky jaw and cheek were presented. Stuart watched as I kissed him, tenderly, twice. I think he knew who I had really kissed.

Love and lovers, lovers and love. Believe it or not, I was glad they were gone; I was free to go my own pace again through the magical streets, smiling at people. I had my secret to hold and polish. And when the afternoon got too hot I was happy to go back to the grand hotel and creep into the high-ceilinged room where Chris was napping behind drawn curtains, kick off my shoes, kick off my dress, curl into the comfort of his half-clothed body.

‘I met a man,’ I said. ‘English. Well, Scottish. Interesting. Writing a book about Spanish cinema. With a boy of three…’ Chris was very keen on three-year-olds. Susy and Isaac, so he affirmed, were angelic at three, and perhaps they were.

‘He has a wife?’ He turned lazily and started to stroke the inside of my thigh. I thought about Stuart’s hand. I moved my thigh appreciatively.

‘Yes, my love. Red-haired like me.’

‘I adore red-heads. Ask them to dinner.’

‘Yes, my sweet. I will.’

Lovers and love. Nothing is simple. I tell you, I loved Chris no less. Water was running outside the window, filling something up or draining away, things were moving and changing inside me, we lay together in an unknown city, loving each other in different languages, for all I said had become a lie. Except that after we made love again I said ‘I love you’, and ‘Thank you’, and nothing had ever been more true; I loved him more, and more gratefully, because I had been so far away, because I had played with our past and future, and yet he was still here for me.

I wanted to talk about love that day. Love and lovers, lovers and love. I wished I could tell Chris everything, and make him see how marvellous it was that I wanted this man so much and come back to find nothing changed between us… But although I like talking, I’m not a fool. I knew that I could never tell him.

Instead I talked into his thick black hair as the world outside began to stir, recovering from the siesta. But sex had made us sleepy again; after all, we didn’t have jobs to do.

‘Thank you for being here,’ I said. ‘It’s wonderful you’re always here.’

(Yet that, in a way, was the trouble; constant presence erodes desire. You can’t long for something that’s always available.)

— I took so much for granted then.

‘You know I’ll always be there for you.’

I wonder if he’s still waiting. He’ll be out of prison, I suppose. I wonder if he has other women. In any case, he must be seventy now. Perhaps he’s impotent — no, can’t bear it.

I can’t imagine him with other women. I never had to, you see; Christopher never made me jealous…

Can that be true? It can’t be true. For milliseconds, maybe, in the distant past. Something drifts back, the smallest flotsam. Occasionally, before we left home, though it was ludicrous, I felt the slightest bit jealous of Mary Brown. Mary Brown, of all people. One of the plainest women you ever met. Because she was good, there’s no other word for it, and Christopher liked her — motherliness. She was always very good with the children. That made me jealous, God knows why. Maybe he loved her, in a way. But not sexually, of course. You couldn’t feel romantic about Mary Brown. I don’t think she knew how children are made. So there was no sense in my being jealous.

What does it matter, in any case, now none of us care about each other any more — (how is that possible?) — except Mary, still doggedly writing letters. It must be a sign of an empty life.

That phrase has an unpleasant ring. It echoes in this empty night.

— If only I could go back again.

— If only I were young enough to make amends.

If only we were all still here, and young, in garlanded Toledo.

Ah, there’s Benjamin, stumbling on the stairs. Humming as he comes, the great buffoon… but my heart quickens, all the same. A hotel room can feel very lonely.

I shall keep my temper, but I wish he’d stop humming… I don’t know the tunes that Benjy hums. Younger people know different tunes.

I wonder if I shall ever go home.

Today I thought of Mary Brown. After a gap of decades, I thought of her. But first things first, the great news first. Today I have been bad again. Good, good, bad again!

Her name was Caterina. But that’s probably her trading name. I spotted her by chance as I walked down the Piazetta dei Leoncini in the five o’clock sunlight. She stood by the fountain, pulling her thin yellow skirt against the curve of her buttocks, heavy buttocks above slender legs, pausing for a long glance over her shoulder… this certainly wasn’t an innocent Venetian girl early for the passegiata.

Her brows and eyes were black as soot. She trotted beside me like a little pony, black fringe bobbing, rouged mouth smiling.

Inside I offered her a glass of wine. I amused myself by offering this rough child a glass of exquisitely round Barolo. I am no fool, I had one too. She drank hers down in two or three gulps and grimaced slightly. Soon I should have her! I rolled the rich red around my mouth.