Letters From Prague (15 page)

‘He is. I don't want to have lunch with him, anyway.'

‘Well, you're not going to. Now, then. Is there anything else you want to organise while you're here?'

She looked round the room, so curiously bare after all the activity in the outer office, its walls hung with a couple of watercolours, the gleaming window giving them the city. There was the computer, a bookcase in a comer, a table with copies of
The Economist
and
Financial Times.
Other than that –

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘What do children do in offices?'

Hugh got up from his desk. ‘Dear Marsha, don't sound so sad. Sometimes I wonder what grown-ups do. How about sending a fax?'

‘Yes! Who to?'

‘Grandpa? In London? I send faxes to his office sometimes.'

‘What do you say?' They were walking towards the door.

‘Oh – what is the price of oil this morning, and what have you got in your sandwiches?' He opened the glass-panelled door to the outer office and held it for her, courteous and grave.

‘Don't be silly.'

‘I'm perfectly serious. What are you going to say?'

‘I'll ask him about Victor.'

‘Who?'

‘My mouse.'

‘I didn't know you had a mouse.'

‘I don't know if I still have.'

He followed her through to the buzz, laughing.

‘Give Grandpa my love,' called Harriet.

‘Will do.'

The door swung to behind them. She turned back to Susanna, saying, ‘That was a nice idea.'

Susanna was looking beyond her, into the office. ‘Yes.' She turned to the window, where clouds sailed slowly by, and said carefully, ‘I think it'll be fine for the rest of the day now, don't you?'

‘Probably.' Harriet picked up the paperweight, a heavy glass sphere with a small flat base to rest on. Within its transparent solidity the parts of a clock were suspended, as if in air: cogs, small brass wheels, a coiled spring. She turned it over, feeling its cool heaviness, watching Susanna watching the sky.

She said: ‘Only two more days. You've done such a lot for us – it'll feel very strange travelling on without you.'

Susanna nodded. ‘We'll miss you.'

There was a silence. The glass-panelled door sealed the office away: there was only, through the open window, the muted sound of traffic from the street below, and the sight of the drifting clouds.

Harriet ran her fingers over the smooth curve of the paperweight, looking at Susanna's profile, so clear; at her expression, so remote.

‘Susanna?'

‘Yes?'

She turned; their eyes met.

‘I should so like to get to know you better. Before we leave.'

‘We have got to know each other better.'

‘Yes, but –' Harriet rested the paperweight on the desk again, observing the separate parts – a slender pair of black pointed hands, a scattering of minute brass screws – frozen, still. She said: ‘I'm fearful of prying. I just want you to feel you can talk to me if you need to. I shan't say it again.'

‘Now is not the moment.'

‘It never is.'

‘No.'

‘Do you mind if I ask: is it painful for you, being with Marsha? Seeing her with Hugh?'

‘Yes. But I've always –' She lifted her hands to her head, and clasped it – briefly, but as if she couldn't help herself, as if she were trying to hold everything in place. ‘Never mind,' she said quietly, shaking her head, her eyes closed. ‘Never mind, never mind, never mind, never mind –'

‘Susanna –' Harriet rose from her chair. ‘Forgive me.'

Susanna's hands went over her face. ‘Stop it. Please. They'll be back in a minute.' She drew a deep breath, lowered her hands and looked at her, smiling decidedly. ‘There. Let's leave it, okay?'

Behind them the door swung open.

‘We did it!' said Marsha.
‘And
he replied. He says Victor's missing us, but he's eating well. Look.'

She waved a sheet of fax paper under Harriet's nose.

‘I wish I were eating well,' said Hugh, following. ‘Who's for lunch?'

The clouds were thickening as they came out of the building: it no longer looked as though the day were set fair, and as they set off down the street, Hugh in the lead, it felt cooler, too. He turned to reach out a hand for Susanna, saying to the others, ‘It's not far, this place, just round the block.'

‘Is it posh?' Marsha asked hopefully, leaving Harriet's side.

‘Very.' He held out a hand for her, too, but she moved to disengage Susanna's, so that she was between them, a hand each.

‘Now I've got both of you.' She swung their arms.

And Harriet, walking a pace or two behind, so as not to take up the whole pavement, observed the three of them, close and relaxed, looking, to passers-by, like a neat little family: two plus one, quite content.

An expensive-looking man in a hurry brushed past her, bumping her arm without apology.

‘Excuse you,' she said sharply, but he had gone, unheeding. As yesterday, passing the shopping arcade, with its calfskin bags and cashmere cardigans, she felt a shiver of distaste. There were too many people here earning too much money, and perhaps that included her brother. This was not just the self-styled capital of Europe but of European capitalism itself, and for all that Hugh's projects sounded useful and right-thinking there was a part of her which felt firmly: and so they jolly well should be.

The street was beginning to fill with people looking for lunch – more expensive food, more consumption. She had had enough. I shall be glad to be on the train to Berlin with a packet of sandwiches, she thought, as they rounded the corner, and then, seeing Marsha looking happily from Hugh to Susanna, and Susanna's affectionate glance in return, felt chastened. There was no less sorrow here than anywhere else: that could not, in the quietness of Hugh's office, have been made more plain.

Our way lay through some of the best streets of Villette, streets brightly lit, and far more lively now than at high noon. How brilliant seemed the shops! How glad, gay, and abundant flowed the tide of life along the broad pavement! While I looked, the thought of the Rue Fossette came across me – of the walled-in garden and school-house, and of the dark, vast ‘classes'where, as at this very hour, it was my wont to wander all solitary, gazing at the stars through the high, blindless windows
…

Is it Susanna, or is it myself? thought Harriet, surprising herself. Which of us, all solitary, is wandering in that walled-in place?

A few drops of rain began to fall. Ahead, the others quickened their pace, Hugh turning to call to her: ‘It's on the next corner, okay?'

Harriet followed the tide of life along the broad pavement, catching up with them as they reached the glass door of a restaurant hung with pink awnings. On the glass a gold creature was painted, a twisting serpent with malevolent gaze.

‘The Cockatrice.' Hugh told Marsha, holding open the door, and then, to Harriet, ‘Sorry – you've been rather left behind.'

‘I have been with my thoughts,' she told him primly.

‘And what were they?' asked a voice behind them, and they turned to see Christopher Pritchard, who made an inclination, saying, ‘Sorry, couldn't resist it. This is on me.'

‘The thing is,' he told them, as they settled themselves bemusedly at a comer table, ‘that I thought I might not see you all again for an age, and I didn't like the idea of venturing to the interior without a return of hospitality.'

‘Which interior are you venturing to?' Hugh asked him, picking up the menu.

‘The east dear fellow, always the east. Now, then.' He ran his eyes over the wine list. ‘Who'd like what?' A waitress hovered, young and superior. ‘Probably doing her PhD.' He gave her a breezy smile. ‘Can you bear to take an order?'

‘Monsieur?' She observed him from the heights.

Under the table, Marsha gave Harriet a kick. Harriet winced, and frowned at her.

‘Something wrong?' asked Christopher. ‘Susanna – what will you have?'

She shook her head, looking at him quickly, then away. ‘I don't really drink at lunchtime, thanks.'

‘Oh, surely –'

They established, with difficulty, that none of them drank at lunchtime. Hugh compromised with a beer; Christopher, with a great show of reluctance, ordered juice and mineral water.

‘So. Cheers. Cheers when it comes, anyway. And what shall we all have to eat?'

Eyes down, they perused the menu with the utmost concentration, aiming for something light but sustaining, fending off persuasion towards the rich and heavy. In the end, after a certain amount of argybargy, smoothed over by Hugh, they settled on fish, received their drinks, and sat back, politely raising glasses.

‘Cheers again.'

‘Cheers.'

‘So. What have you all been up to?'

This, thought Harriet, at her most acid, was the kind of question guaranteed to kill all conversation dead. Who should answer first? What had they been up to? Tricks? No good? Ho ho ho. And then, seeing a flicker – just a flicker – of discomfiture in his heavy face, as he looked round the table, she thought: but what a very critical person I am. Do I really need to pick up on his every intonation? No wonder Marsha reacted so strongly against him: she gets it all from me, and how is her passage through the world to be tolerable, if she cannot learn to tolerate?

‘Susanna has been showing us Brussels,' she said with a smile.

Susanna made a deprecating, gesture. ‘Some of it.'

‘I wish I had had such a guide when I first got here. Ah. Nibbles.'

They described, over a dish of crudites, something of the past few days: markets and churches and galleries and music in the park.

‘No low life?' asked Christopher. ‘No dives?'

‘Certainly not,' said Hugh.

‘What's a dive?' Marsha was munching on a radish.

‘A graceful plunge into a swimming pool.'

‘Ha ha.'

Dishes were distantly delivered by the waitress. They shook out sugar pink napkins.

‘This really is terribly kind of you,' said Hugh, deftly slicing along the backbone of his trout.

‘My pleasure. As I said, I wanted to catch you all before –'

‘Yes. Where are you –'

‘Prague,' said Christopher Pritchard, helping himself to potatoes. ‘Prague, of course. Where else?'

Outside, it had begun to rain. Drops fell against the window panes and trickled down the golden cockatrice; people hurried past beneath unbrellas. Inside, the restaurant had darkened; art nouveau lamps with pale pink opaline shades were switched on by the manager. A couple pushed open the door and came in laughing and wet.

‘M'sieur-dame?' He went to receive them, taking their umbrella.

Harriet said, carefully, studying her fish, ‘You didn't tell us you were going to Prague.'

‘When I came to dinner? Didn't know, then. Thought it might be Budapest. Thought I might be here for the duration. Yesterday a phone call from a useful contact. So – I'm off in a couple of days. Looking forward to it.' He raised a forkful of plaice to his lips, saying to Harriet: ‘We should meet up. When did you say you'd be there?'

Harriet was conscious of her family's eyes most consciously averted, and of Marsha's desperate, silent signals coming across the airwaves as she picked up her glass of mineral water and watched the little bubbles rise gently within it to break on the surface.

‘I don't think I did,' she said slowly, and there was no way in which her obvious withholding of any more than that could be interpreted as anything but rude.

For a moment there was a silence. Conversation from other tables, the splash outside of traffic through the rain, people making a dash for it – all sounded, within this horribly awkward pause, like dinner gongs.

Then Christopher said pleasantly: ‘Well. Perhaps we'll bump into each other.' And then, picking up a small silver boat of caper sauce: ‘Can I offer anyone this?'

Hugh came to the rescue, as always, taking the dish and changing the subject, as Harriet, drinking her sparkling water, felt herself blush to the roots. A discussion began between the men – contracts, negotiations, financial backing, plant – from which, in any circumstances, she would have switched off. She let the blush fade, not looking at anyone, then raised her head, smiling distantly at Marsha, and glancing at Susanna, to share the moment.

Susanna was not eating, and now she came to think of it, Harriet realised that she hardly ever did. She cooked, she presented and served most beautifully, but she did not, actually, eat. She toyed with, she picked, she pushed to one side. And what was she doing now?

She was looking at Christopher Pritchard.

And Christopher, as though he felt her gaze upon him, turned from his conversation with Hugh and returned that look – only for a moment, with not a word spoken between them, but it was clear to Harriet (and surely, surely to Hugh?) that for those few seconds, for both of them, all else ceased to exist.

The moment passed, the meal ended. Outside, they stood beneath dripping pink awnings, saying their goodbyes. The rain had stopped as they had coffee; puddles shone, the sky cleared, and afternoon traffic sent up sprays of water.

Across the street from the Cockatrice a man in a good grey suit came down the steps of a white house and turned to wave to a woman at the window, touching his hand to his lips. The woman nodded, returning the gesture; she pushed up the window and leaned out, watching him go.

Harriet turned from this scene, and rested her hand on Marsha's shoulder. She said goodbye to Christopher Pritchard, who did not, on this occasion, move forward to kiss her, but nodded to both of them, with a smile. He shook Hugh's hand, and he kissed Susanna – lightly, a brush on the cheek, once, twice. He said he hoped they'd all see each other again on his return, and they all thanked him, again, for the lunch, and then he was gone, walking away up the wet street towards a tree-lined boulevard, not looking back.