Letters From Prague (11 page)

Marsha made straight for Hugh's side. Harriet, not wishing to line up in a row of three opposite Christopher, but feeling, just for a moment, socially disconnected, found herself hovering.

‘Please,' said Christopher, gesturing to the sofa. She went to sit beside him. He stubbed out his cigarette, which was only half smoked, and drained his glass.

‘We've been reliving the distant past,' Hugh told her.

‘Is this wise?'

‘Rather enjoyable.' Christopher shifted on the sofa, crossing his legs. ‘Not many people I'm in touch with now with whom I can share my memories of those happy days.'

‘Were they happy?'

He shrugged. ‘There were moments. We survived.'

‘Made us the men we are today,' said Hugh drily, refilling his glass.

‘Quite.' Christopher lit another cigarette, and Harriet noticed a tremor in his hand as he did so, and leaned back. Inhaling deeply, he looked up for a moment at Susanna's portrait – pale hair, bare arms, silk dress – at the softness of the brush strokes, the remoteness of the gaze.

‘That's rather fine.' He went on smoking, and looking. ‘Who's the painter?'

‘A friend.'

‘Mmm.' He looked back at Hugh.

Hugh made a gesture towards the bowl of nuts: Marsha leaned forward beside him, and helped herself.

‘Are you married?' she asked Christopher abruptly.

‘Marsha …' Harriet gave her a look.

‘Divorced,' said Christopher flatly, drinking.

Marsha looked into the bowl again, embarrassed. She fingered the nuts, picking out pistachios.

‘Not a problem,' he said easily, kindly, even. ‘And I'm sorry if I got up your nose just now – in the kitchen. Had a long hot day at the office.'

She blushed. ‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Tell me about your school. What's it like?'

‘It's nice.'

‘A far cry from what we had, I can tell you that,' said Hugh. ‘Sounds like a holiday camp.'

Marsha kicked him with a trainered foot.

‘Much prep?' asked Christopher.

She looked blank.

‘Homework.'

‘Oh. No, not really.'

‘What do you do after school?'

‘See my friends.'

‘Lucky you. Remember prep, Hugh? Remember those quiet hours under eagle eyes in the Upper Fourth? The scratch of the nib and the rumble of the half-starved stomach?'

‘How could I forget?'

Harriet noted Christopher's phrasing, which was pleasing, and pictured, as she drank, high windows, bent heads, legs in grey socks swinging beneath the desk, footsteps over the floorboards to sharpen a pencil. The sounds of boys down at the cricket nets drifted in through an open window; church bells rang across the moors. There was all that. It was ordered, it was peaceful, it was what her parents must have envisaged and hoped for, and it had, no doubt, contained such nourishing hours. It had also, she felt certain, contained times as painful and lonely, in their way, as anything Lucy Snowe had experienced during the long vacation in Villette. And she saw, as Hugh refilled her glass, and she listened to their exchange of groans and laughter at the names of particular masters, particular boys, one boy waiting for another on a darkened stairway, pulling him into an empty classroom, closing the door.

And then?

He was a bit of a bully
, Hugh had said lightly of Christopher, and shrugged when asked if he himself had been a victim. Looking at the two of them now, reacquainting themselves with the past and with each other, it was hard to believe that their relationship had ever been one in which Hugh had not been in control. He was the host, he was the well-mannered listener. He was also rich and successful, and no one coming upon them now, seeing him laughing, pouring drinks, smiling with affection at his niece, would make a connection with a distant, disturbed little boy who did not know how to talk to people. He had found his place in the world.

And his wife wept in public places, and they could not have children.

‘Supper,' said Susanna, appearing in the doorway. She had changed into a pale green dress; dull pewter earrings shone softly, like shells, beneath her hair.

Christopher rose.

They smiled at each other.

No, thought Harriet, all of a sudden. No, please no.

They made their way to the dining room.

In the last of the evening light at the window, the polished table shone. This room was at the back, on the darker side of the building.

‘Hugh tells me you're en route to Prague,' said Christopher, breaking his roll into pieces. He helped himself to a quantity of butter. ‘Summer hols?'

‘Yes,' said Harriet briskly.

‘Been there before?'

‘No, never, but –'

‘Wonderful city. A dream. Crawling with tourists now, of course, as no doubt you know. Most visited city in Europe – ruining the place. All eating McDonalds and patronising the massage parlours. Like the Czechs. Still, why not? After forty years of being told what they couldn't have, people should be given what they want. And if that's trash and junk food and pornography, too bad, don't you think? Hope I'm not putting you off. Have you got any connections? Know anyone there?'

‘Well – sort of.' She was treading carefully, unwilling to share anything of herself with this man.

Christopher held out his glass to Hugh, who was settling everyone in with an opened bottle. ‘Thanks.' He turned to Harriet again. ‘You must let me give you a few tips – I know Prague pretty well by now, I'm beginning to make a bit of an impact.'

‘Doing what, exactly? Hugh's told me a little, but –'

‘Selling.' He took a mouthful of roll. ‘I'm a born salesman, I'm afraid.'

‘Why should you be afraid?'

‘Just that you look a bit high-minded.'

Harriet ignored this. ‘What do you sell?'

‘Pretty well anything. In the more desperate moments of my youth it was encyclopaedias. In London I was a commodity broker for quite a while, with a special interest in Eastern Europe.'

‘Oh?'

‘Speculating on futures in Yugoslavian bauxite and Bulgarian tomato juice, that sort of thing. Yugoslavia's not exactly the place to do business now, of course, poor bastards, and anyway – I got my fingers burned, in ways we won't go into.' He was talking compulsively, hurriedly – as if, she realised, he really wasn't quite used to conversations with women. Or perhaps that was nonsense, perhaps he always steamrollered on in this way.

He took a mouthful of cucumber soup, disturbing a gentle pool of cream and chopped chives.

‘So, I came here, and set up my own show, using the old contacts. But I specialise a bit now – raw materials for paints and plastics, mostly. Polymers, resins. Buy here, sell there, or vice versa – they need practically anything I can get them, I'm delighted to say. I'm a pragmatist, only too happy to give people what they want. Mind you, competition's pretty fierce – the whole of Western Europe has its mitts in Eastern Europe these days, doesn't it? Do you know anyone who isn't opening up a branch in Bratislava?'

‘I don't know anyone who's opening up a branch anywhere,' said Harriet, carefully tipping her shallow soup plate away from her, and keeping half an eye on Marsha. ‘I don't know if that says more about the recession or my limited acquaintance with the world of commerce.'

‘No doubt the latter. I told you, you look high-minded. What do you do?'

‘Teach.'

‘Bad luck.'

‘It's not so bad.'

‘Isn't it? What sort of school?'

‘A large west London comprehensive. I'm the head of history.'

‘God, how frightful.'

Harriet put down her soup spoon and looked at him.

‘Sorry,' he said. ‘Only joking. Must be a bit dreary, though, isn't it?'

‘No more dreary,' she said tartly, ‘than selling tins of paint, or whatever it is you do.'

‘Touche.'
Christopher had finished his soup. He licked a finger and pressed up crumbs of roll from his plate.

‘I hope,' said Hugh, with mild authority, from the top of the table, ‘that there is no disharmony among my guests.' He turned to Susanna. ‘That was delicious.'

‘Certainly was,' said Christopher, and raised his glass. He smiled once again at Susanna, who looked away. ‘And what do you do, if it's not impolite to ask. Quite eclipse the rest of us, I imagine.'

‘I look after Hugh.' She gathered the soup bowls.

‘Lucky Hugh.' He turned back to Harriet, as Susanna gave Marsha the bowls to take to the kitchen. ‘Go on, then, tell me about your school. You mustn't take me too seriously, you know, I'm just a loudmouth out of my depth in these gracious surroundings. I'm sure what you do is admirable.'

‘It's a job,' said Harriet. ‘I happen to believe in it, and fortunately I also enjoy it, though of course it's difficult, much of the time. The climate in education these days makes for a lot of stress, as I'm sure you know – I mean with the National Curriculum, the tests, the lack of resources –' She could feel herself getting into her stride.

‘Best thing to happen for years', said Christopher. ‘We've been turning out a generation of semi-literate, half-baked, unskilled and unemployable lost causes. High time schools were licked into shape.'

‘And what,' Harriet asked him, twisting her napkin, quite carried away by the force of her reaction, ‘did your privileged education do for you? Is that what has equipped you to sell plastic to the other half?'

‘Harriet –' Hugh was turning his knife over, frowning, inasmuch as Hugh ever seemed to frown, or express displeasure. ‘It's not as though you didn't have a good education yourself, is it? Why are you getting so hot under the collar?'

‘A good education is supposed to make you aware. I'm riding my political horse,' she said, realising it was quite a while since, on a social occasion, she had had need to. Like-minded colleagues and friends surrounded her life in London: no one, except perhaps her parents, would speak as Christopher had just spoken, at this polished, middle-aged table, in this clean, expensive city. She thought of her friend Jo, on long afternoons in the art room, leaning over the shoulders of her painting group, where Winston, who had learning difficulties, and roamed the playground in the dinner hour, looking for trouble, was here completely absorbed in the still life set out before them. She thought of the hours spent in curriculum meetings, of the cuts in the budget: in art room materials, books and stationery, in visits to places of interest, provision for special needs.

She recalled, as Hugh refilled their glasses, a march, on which she had taken Marsha: hundreds of union members gathering beneath umbrellas in Trafalgar Square; the forest of placards; the slow moving off and gathering pace as the six-deep column made its way down Whitehall, past the river. The rain stopped, people began chanting:
Tories out, Tories out, Tories out, out, out! Ban the tests, ban the tests, ban the tests, tests, tests!
Riverboats hooted, the sun came out. They moved into the heart of Westminster: traffic slowed and tourists stared. A detachment, whom Harriet and Marsha, right in the middle, could not see, took a petition to the offices of the Department of Education, a little group of people in raincoats walking purposefully through narrow streets behind the Cathedral. They were cheered on their reappearance: the marchers moved through Parliament Square and into the Methodist Hall. Marsha ate from her lunchbox. Harriet was one of the speakers.

She said now: ‘I've been a socialist all my life.'

‘More fool you,' said Christopher.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Come, come,' said Hugh.

Susanna and Marsha reappeared, with dishes. They set down lamb, piping ratatouille, rice with coriander and toasted almonds. Susanna served ratatouille on silvery grey plates, passing them round.

‘Do help yourselves to rice …' She noticed the silence. ‘Is everything all right?'

‘We're having a crisis,' said Harriet, recovering herself by an effort of will, and regretting her words immediately. How was Susanna on social crises? Did guests often quarrel at her dinner table?

‘Oh?' Susanna looked at her, and then at Hugh.

‘My fault entirely,' said Christopher smoothly, and smiled at Susanna across the table. ‘I can't resist getting a rise, and Harriet seems to rise so very satisfactorily. You just press the button and she's off.'

Harriet felt herself go scarlet. She bit back the words, ‘How dare you –' just as Marsha, between Hugh and Susanna, said with indignation,
‘Don't
talk about my mother like that!'

As in the kitchen, earlier, a horrified silence fell, but this time Harriet, moved by her daughter's loyalty, moved straight to her defence.

‘Okay, Marsha. Thanks, it's okay, let's just –'

There was another silence.

Christopher said: ‘I can see I shall have to watch it. My apologies.'

Hugh said: ‘You were always rather –' and stopped.

The two men looked at each other. There was a different kind of silence.

‘Rather what?' Marsha asked hotly.

‘Nothing,' said Hugh, and then, in his more familiar tones, avuncular and kindly, ‘Why don't we just talk about the weather for a bit?'

‘Is that of interest to anyone?' asked Harriet, still on her mettle, trying to calm down.

‘Yes.' Susanna spoke with surprising authority. ‘I think the weather has a real function on occasion. I don't know exactly what you were discussing –'

‘Politics,' said Christopher. ‘Always a mistake.'

‘But central to character,' said Harriet, and then: ‘Oh, all right, I'll stop. Marsha – eat up, it's all right now.'

‘Yesterday it rained,' said Hugh.

‘And today the sun shone brightly,' Harriet said gamely, doing her best.