A Fool's Alphabet (10 page)

In the utter frankness of her character she told Pietro of all her emotions. She saw nothing to be ashamed of and hoped that by sharing them with him, she might more easily dispel the gloom or anger. In any event, she saw it as his function or duty to help her. He often looked perplexed by her honesty, but evidently tried to help in his own oblique way.

Her good humour reasserted itself, though the birth of their children did change things between them. Usually Hannah saw the change as a deepening of their affection through their involvement in a common task. Occasionally, however, she saw the feeling that existed between them as if it were a third person, an organic thing in its own right, and she worried that it had become hardened or sclerotic with all the strain it had had to take.

‘Come outside,' she said to Mary. ‘Go and play with Anton.'

Mary made off meekly enough into the garden of their rented house near Avignon.

‘Is everything all right?' said Martha Freeman, coming into the kitchen with a breakfast tray from the terrace.

Hannah smiled. ‘Yes, thank you. I do worry about that girl, though. She never seems to learn. She sticks her fingers in electric sockets. She kisses stray dogs.'

Martha said, ‘I'm going to put Jonathan to sleep in a minute. What time are we due in Uzès?'

‘Not till one. I expect they'll be late too. It's quite a long way over to Bédoin.'

‘If we can get the kids to have a nap,' said Martha, ‘why don't you tell me that story you always promised. About how you and Pietro met?'

‘Must I?'

‘Yes, Hannah, you promised me.'

‘All right. I'll keep it short.'

‘No, no. I want all the details. Absolutely everything. Clothes, who said what and when. What the houses looked like. Everything.'

‘All right,' Hannah laughed. ‘I'll make some more coffee and see you out on the terrace.'

I was living in one of the nicer parts of Ghent, in an apartment block. It had beautiful wrought-iron balconies and windows with long slatted shutters.

My parents were from Antwerp but I had come to look after my uncle, who was very unwell. My aunt was dead and there was no one else to look after him. He owned the top two apartments in the block. He lived in the lower one; the top one was not as good because it was right under the eaves and you had to walk up a little wooden staircase to get to it. They used to let it out to young men, often doctors who were still studying. It was also smaller than my uncle's flat, which was one of those huge apartments where the rooms seem to keep opening off each other for ever.

One night I was awoken by a tremendous banging from upstairs. The floors in the top apartment had only one or two thin rugs and we relied on the tenants to be very quiet at night. I could hear loud voices and laughter and the words of what sounded like English songs. There was a deafening crash, as though someone had pushed over a huge wardrobe, and I heard my uncle calling for me from along the corridor. From upstairs I could hear the sound of muffled laughter and of people trying to move very quietly, but without much success. They sounded clumsy.

I rushed naked to the bathroom (I had never worn anything in bed) but could find only my uncle's old dressing gown, which was much too big for me. I rolled the sleeves up and put it on, tying the belt tightly. I prepared to go upstairs and tell them off. I wasn't worried about speaking English, if that was what was necessary, because we had been brought up to speak it in Antwerp.

I went to make sure that my uncle was all right and then I went and hammered on the door at the top of the wooden stairs. There was a sound of surprised laughter inside and eventually the door opened straight on to the sitting room.

Wilfred, the young doctor who rented the apartment, attempted to introduce me. He was very drunk. He could barely get the words out. I was angry, but felt at a disadvantage because of my uncle's dressing gown. There were two girls in the room, and a young man with dishevelled hair I had never seen before. One of the girls was called Kitty. I had seen her around and knew she had a bad reputation. I didn't know the other one. All four of them were finding it hard to control their laughter.

The second man – not Wilfred – had an Italian-sounding name and he had a wild look in his eyes. He was thin and looked quite young.

‘What sort of way is this to behave, Wilfred?' I said. ‘You know very well my uncle's ill. And do you know what time it is?'

Wilfred shook his head slowly. He looked very pale. The
two girls on the sofa were sitting close together. Kitty was gripping the other one's arm, though whether this was to stop herself laughing or because she was frightened of me I couldn't say. Wilfred made a broad gesture with his arm from me towards his friend, as if he were trying to introduce us. Then he tried to speak, gagged, and brushed past me on his way to the bathroom from where we could hear the sound of retching.

The other man stood up and walked towards me. He said with great charm – rather theatrical in fact: ‘My friend is lucky to have such a charming neighbour.'

‘Landlady,' I snapped back.

I was rude, and I thought he would be offended, but the drink seemed to have given him some sort of fluency.

‘I should have guessed, I can see that you're wearing your rent collector's gown.'

‘My uncle is very ill and you have woken him up with your noise and your singing. It's very unfair to a sick man.'

Wilfred's friend came and stood close to me. He took my hand and looked into my eyes. His own, though sparkling with all the effort of his charm, were very sad. ‘I would be pleased to be nursed by someone like you,' he said. ‘I wouldn't mind what kind of sickness I had.'

One of the girls sniggered.

I was feeling slightly at a loss because I hadn't managed to provoke any apology. I pulled my hand away. The awful truth was that I felt suddenly aroused. The young man's eyes followed me and I pulled the dressing gown more tightly across me.

‘Will you please go to bed now?' I said loudly, trying to regain my composure.

‘Stay and dance,' he said. ‘Wilfred was going to find a record. He said he had some champagne as well.'

‘This is not a time for dancing,' I said, looking across at the two girls on the sofa. I had meant to show my contempt for them all, but the man seemed to think I was indicating that it was only the girls' presence that was a problem.

‘I can get rid of them,' he hissed.

‘Don't be ridiculous,' I said. ‘Now please be quiet, all of you, or I shall call the police. I think you had all better go and let Wilfred get some sleep. Come on, now. All of you!'

The two girls, rather to my surprise, stood up and gathered their bags and coats.

The man stood closer to me. ‘Don't change from your man's clothes. You look beautiful,' he said.

I suppose he must have been very drunk to have spoken like that, and yet he seemed quite calm. At that moment Wilfred reappeared from the bathroom. He was sweating a little on the upper lip, but looked better than before.

‘We're leaving, Wilfred,' said the other man. ‘Thank you for your hospitality.' The girls went past me and he took my hand again in the doorway. Then I did something which I still don't understand. I said: ‘My name is Hannah van Duren.' I was on the verge of saying ‘You can come and see me', but I could tell from his eyes that he understood. He kissed my hand, and began to go unevenly down the stairs, two or three at a time.

I heard his voice coming up the stairwell. ‘And be wearing your tweed suit,' he was calling, ‘and your bow tie.'

The next day I felt ashamed of myself. I'd never behaved like that before towards a man. But not that ashamed. After all, I'd only told him my name. During the morning I stayed indoors with my uncle, hoping he would call. The telephone was silent. About midday there was a ring at the door, but it was only the postman.

After lunch I had to go out and do some shopping. I got the caretaker's daughter to come and sit in our flat while I was out. I went to the market and then to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for my uncle. All the time I was turning over the events of the night before in my mind. My boyfriend had left Antwerp for a job in Paris about a year before. I was glad. We had begun to irritate each other. Although he was a kind man, and of course I was fond of
him, I no longer felt passionate about him. He was confused by me in return. I think he was secretly pleased that we now just kept in touch by letter. He told me I was staid and middle-aged, but I wasn't. The truth was that I no longer found him romantic.

I hurried around the shops and I don't know what I bought. I got it all wrong, as far as I remember, so it was difficult to cook dinner that night. I'd bought prawns to go with beef, or something like that. I was excited. Do you know Ghent? It's a boring place. Bourgeois. The word could have been made for it. Not like Antwerp, which I like. But that afternoon I thought it looked magical, it was quite different. You know how it is when you see things suddenly in a different light, in a new light, as though you were a traveller who has just arrived.

I didn't stop to ask myself why I was so excited, or what it was about this man – a man whom I'd in any case only seen for a few minutes. Maybe it was just that physical thing. You can never underestimate that – though it felt like something much more. I wanted to take his head in my hands and hold his poor ragged hair against my chest. But I didn't feel sorry for him. Well, a little bit maybe. I felt more in awe of him, really.

When I got back to the block I hurried through the hall because I didn't want to be detained by the caretaker who always wanted to talk for hours. But it was no use: he was waiting beside the lift with his horrible dog. ‘There's some flowers for you,' he said, in a way that was supposed to make me feel guilty. But I didn't. I just said, ‘Good. Where are they?' ‘Which ones do you mean?' he said. ‘Which ones do
you
mean?' I said. He was always playing silly games like this. ‘Well, there's been three lots, haven't there?'

I took the lift up to the apartment and found my uncle in his dressing gown, walking up and down in the hall. He wasn't supposed to be out of bed, and I told him he'd catch a chill. He was muttering about flowers. There were three bunches on the table in the hall.

‘These ones came first,' he said, picking up some yellow roses. ‘Then when I was going off to sleep again, the girl came up with this bunch of – whatever they are, irises. And then just before you got in, the bell rang and it was the boy from the florist's shop who brought this huge bunch here. There was a note.'

My uncle looked perturbed. He couldn't make out what was going on. Often he could go for a month with no one ringing the bell at all. He looked at me over his glasses a bit crossly, and I told him to get back to bed. I pretended I was annoyed with him. I opened the note, which said: ‘I am sorry about last night. Please come down to the street at 9 p.m. I will ring the bell.' The handwriting was rather spluttery. All three bunches were from Pietro.

I didn't want him to be too sorry. I went downstairs again to ask the girl if she would come and keep an eye on my uncle. I knew it would be all right with him, because he went to sleep straight after dinner, which he liked at about seven anyway. Then I thought about what I would wear. I supposed I should wear something very feminine, so it wouldn't look as though I was just playing his game. So I looked through the clothes I had, and there was a black dress which I
could
wear. Then I thought maybe he would only take me to a bar for a drink and I would feel overdressed. I spent along time in my room. Perhaps I should continue the game and borrow one of my uncle's tweed jackets. Then suddenly I wondered if it was wise to go out at all with this man I hardly knew. I went upstairs to speak to Wilfred, to ask him about his friend, but he wasn't there. In the end I settled on a black skirt and a white top, with a spotted bow tie of my uncle's. It was very loose, and I had to tie it myself, or try to.

I went running down to the street when the bell rang. He was standing in the doorway, trying to keep out of the rain, with the collar of his mac turned up. He took my hand and said something about the bow tie, and I was glad because it showed he wasn't going to spend the evening apologising. He rushed me over to a car on the other side of the street
and said he was going to take me to see the city. He sounded a bit unconvinced, as though he wasn't sure that there was much of Ghent to see. But in Belgium there is always a square or two, and the façades of the big buildings are often gilded, which looks good in the rain. The city is built on various waterways with bridges. There is an old castle, a huge cathedral and some lovely guild houses. He pretended he was navigating, and I let him know where to go without puncturing that illusion. He was very kind. He laughed at his own driving, though not as much as he laughed at the Belgian driving.

I loved showing him around. It made me look at the place properly and appreciate it. It also made me think about the life I lived there as I looked at it through his eyes. We got into a big brasserie in the end, with bright lights and wooden stalls. It was all right. He was drenched, because he'd held his mac up for me when we ran over from the car. He pushed his hand through his hair a lot to begin with, but then he seemed to give up. He offered me a cigarette and I began to look at him properly for the first time. I just liked his face. I don't know why. You wouldn't say Pietro's really handsome, I suppose, but it was a kind face. I liked his narrow eyes and he had a lovely mouth which moved in a very seductive way when he talked. But he was frightened. I could tell that almost straight away. He wasn't at peace with himself.

We had dinner. He had mussels, I remember. He was struck by how many mussels people ate. He wanted them with mustard, because he'd seen someone in Mons or Charleroi or somewhere eating them like that. I told him it was very bourgeois, like talking about dogs and football. He said that was all right with him and he teased me a bit for what I ordered. I can't remember what it was now. The truth was, he thought I was a really solid landlady, a bossy woman with just a bit of sparkle in her eye. I think that was what he wanted from me in some funny way. I didn't mind.