Rupert Thomson - Air and Fire

‘Leave me alone,’ she said.

The two women had been so close to her; she could have reached out and touched either one — a glistening bronze shoulder, a ghostly epaulette. Her mind opened in front of her like an abyss. She could hear the safety engineer laughing.

A hot wind, rising off the water, gusted across the deck. All the candles guttered and then blew out.

‘Time to leave,’ somebody cried. Which must have been a joke, since it was not even midnight and the Captain had promised dancing until dawn.

But when she turned round, she saw Montoya step over to the doctor and shake his hand. His eyes met hers for a moment across the deck, then he was climbing backwards down the ladder. She watched his plumed hat vanish below the rail.

At the late supper Suzanne sat quietly while Pineau and Morlaix traded stories that served to illustrate the foolishness of the Mexicans, the foolishness, particularly, of the local representative of the Mexican Government.

‘He’s very young, is he not,’ Marie Saint-Lô remarked, ‘to be representing the Government?’

‘Ah well,’ the doctor said. ‘His father went to school with Porfirio Díaz.’ And, when she did not seem enlightened by the information, he added, in lower tones: ‘The President.’ He faced the gathering again. ‘Apparently he was named after Félix Díaz. The President’s brother.’

Morlaix swirled the cognac in his glass. ‘Wasn’t he the one who got shot?’

The doctor nodded. ‘I believe so.’

‘I still can’t get used to that preposterous uniform.’ A lock of Pineau’s hair hung in his eyes. His twisted upper lip was sprinkled with drops of perspiration. ‘What does he think he is? A general?’

‘He’s dashing, though.’ Florestine Bardou sounded wistful, almost unconvinced.

‘And am I not dashing?’ cried the doctor. ‘Even at fifty?’

Nobody could deny that, of course, not on his birthday, and certainly not in that new waistcoat.

Madame Bardou blushed.

But the subject could not be changed quite so easily. It was a favourite among the French, especially after dinner when the blood was high.

‘He may be dashing,’ Madame de Romblay said, ‘but he’s also mad, completely mad.’

‘Did you know?’ Castagnet said. ‘He has a submarine.’

Madame de Romblay’s eyelids drooped with pleasure. She had not expected support from such a reputable quarter.

‘I’ve never seen it,’ Morlaix said.

‘He keeps it in Señor Ramon’s boathouse,’ Castagnet said.

Pineau chuckled sardonically. ‘For a small fee, I imagine, knowing Ramón.’

Monsieur de Romblay wanted to know how Montoya had come by it.

‘He bought it from the Pacific Pearl Company,’ Castagnet said. ‘I’m not sure if he ever uses it. It must be twenty years old by now. It would probably dive straight to the bottom.’

‘One way of getting rid of the fellow,’ Morlaix said.

Laughter swept the table.

‘You know that boy who works in the hotel,’ Madame de Romblay said, ‘the one who plucks his eyebrows like a girl? Well, apparently,’ and she lowered her voice and leaned over the table, ‘he spends whole afternoons up at Montoya’s place.’

‘No!’ Florestine Bardou put a hand to her throat. Though she would not initiate a story, she would, it seemed, become a willing accomplice in the telling.

‘Oh yes, Madame.’ Pineau leered. ‘I’ve been watching him.’

‘Two Mexicans live there too.’ Madame de Romblay’s tin eyes glittered, and her powdered shoulders were streaked with excitement’s generous secretions. ‘People say that the four of them,’ and she dropped her voice still lower, ‘indulge in vicious practices.’

‘Whole afternoons?’ Florestine Bardou had fixed on this single, lurid detail. Her hand still clutched her throat.

Suzanne was smiling. ‘Actually, I doubt that.’

All eyes turned on her, but it was the eyes of Madame de Romblay that felt the closest.

‘It’s true, there are two Mexicans living with Montoya,’ she went on, ‘but they’re both well over sixty. And one of them is poisoned from years of working in a sulphur mine. So I think vicious practices are probably out of the question.’

‘And how, precisely, do you know all this, my dear?’ Madame de Romblay knew how to use a simple question as an accusation. It was all in the twist she gave to the word ‘precisely’.

‘I’ve been to his house. He invited me there,’ Suzanne said, ‘for tea.’

The air softened with astonishment. Several of the company ostentatiously refrained from looking at each other. Across the deck, between two coloured streamers, Suzanne could see the moon, dented in two places, as if it had drunk too much and fallen several times.

One swift glance at Madame de Romblay and she knew that she had made a mistake. She had walked into the woman’s limelight, pricked the rumour like some ludicrous balloon. You did not do that to Madame de Romblay. She saw that she was about to be punished for it.

‘It was the strangest tea,’ she said brightly, attempting to escape through humour. ‘We ate oysters that had been harvested in the Bahía San Lucas. We drank sherry from his great-uncle’s vineyard. There was no actual tea at all.’

She had hoped for laughter, but the silence lasted. The only response issued, as it had to, from the thin, painted lips of the Director’s wife.

‘You drank with him?’

‘I didn’t know you had been to tea with Montoya,’ Théo said.

It was after two in the morning and they were taking the Director’s carriage home.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I did tell you that I was going.’

Looking at him, she could sense him trying to remember. She did not have to try. She could recall that night’s conversation word for word. His monotonous remoteness, his sudden scorn.

‘You probably didn’t hear me. You were probably too busy,’ she said, ‘with your work.’

He dropped away from her, into a long silence.

She listened to the carriage-wheels, the chink and jingle of the reins. The night was loud with all the champagne that she had drunk. She could feel his disapproval surfacing and knew that it would take the form of a rebuke. But waiting for it, that was hard. Knowing that it would come. When all she wanted to do was rest her head against his shoulder.

‘You should not have said what you did.’

It was a relief to hear him speak, even though he was condemning her. She did not reply.

Such nonsense had been talked at the supper table, but there was one moment, towards the end of the evening, that she would always cherish. The candles had burned low. The white tablecloth was littered with melting sorbets, lobster claws, the skins of fruit. Pierre Morlaix was holding forth. She could see his lips, moistened, flecked with spit. She could see his scalp beneath a flickering of silver curls. It was the usual monologue. The locals could not be trusted. They were lazy, unhygienic, sly. Animals, really. No wonder the church was taking so long. And so on. Théo had not witnessed what happened next; he must have been downstairs, dancing the promised mazurka with Madame de Romblay. For, suddenly, there was a young boy standing in their midst. Only his shoulders and his shaved head showed above the table’s edge; his eyes too — dark and sombre, bewitched by the place in which he found himself. He had been swimming; his wet skin shone. In his hands, held just below his chin, a pair of women’s shoes. Water dripped from the silver straps. The sequinned heels blinked. But it was to Morlaix that Suzanne looked. It was Morlaix she remembered. His sudden silence, as if the blood had knotted in his brain. His mouth gaping, fishlike, the next boorish words already shaped. There was nobody at the table who was so drunk that they did not recognise the irony.