Patricia Highsmith - The Tremor of Forgery (36 page)

He rang Ina
’
s room, and she sounded in a good mood and said she would be down in ten minutes. Ingham sat down on a lobby sofa and looked at a newspaper.

Ina came down in a pale pink dress. She had a white chiffon scarf in her hand.

‘
You look marvellous,
’
Ingham said.

“
The scarf is in case we go for a walk. The breeze
.’

‘
You
’
re counting on a breeze?
’
Her perfume, as usual, pleased him. It was so much more interesting than jasmine.
‘
Would you like to go somewhere in particular, or should I think of something?
’

‘
Francis rang up and asked us for a drink. Do you mind?
’

‘
No
.’
Ingham said. They got into Ingham
’
s car.
‘
What
’
s Joey
’
s news?
’

‘
Nothing much. He
’
s painting. Louise comes over nearly
every day.
’

‘
She lives near by? I forgot.
’

The car rolled on to the nearly silent sandy lane that curved towards Adams
’
s bungalow. Adams
’
s terrace light was on,
and he greeted them at the door before they had time to knock.

‘
Welcome! I
’
d suggest the terrace but it
’
s much cooler inside. Ha-ha
!
I Come in and see
!
’

Adams
’
s terrace faced the gulf and had a glider, table and chairs. There were
canapés
of cheese and black olives on the mosaic table in the living-room.

Ingham hoped Adams wouldn
’
t want to join them for dinner. Then he thought it might be better if he did join them. Why was Ina so cheerful? Ingham wasn
’
t sure how to interpret it. Had she given him up? Had she
‘
understood
’
and decided to tell him so? Whatever she said tonight, Ingham thought, he would ask her just one more question about John Castlewood: had she liked or loved him merely because he had loved her? Castlewood
’
s declaration of passion had been a surprise to Ina, she had written. It often seemed to Ingham that women fell in love with men who were already in love with them, men whom they wouldn
’
t otherwise have noticed.

Adams entertained Ina with bits of Arabic lore, of which he had so much. Such as that the Mohammedans expected their messiah to be bo
rn
a second time, and via a man, hence the baggy pants that they wore in expectancy. And there was talk of the Arab refugees west of the Jordan River. It was astounding how much wreckage had resulted from a war lasting only six days.

CI hope you
’
ve extended your leave from your office, Ina,
’
Adams said, refilling Ina
’
s glass from his silver shaker. He had offered them daiquiris (
‘
Jack Kennedy
’
s favourite cocktail
’
) which he had made before they arrived and stored in his refrigerator.

‘
Yes, I cabled today. I
’
m sure I can have another week, because I promised to come back if something urgent turned up.
’

OWL
’
s smile took in Ingham. He beamed goodwill on both of them.
‘
You said something about going to Paris, didn
’
t you, Howard?
’

Had he?
‘
That was if I finished my book.
’

1 think I said
I’
d thought of it
.’
Ina said.

“
With Howard? Good-1 think he
’
s getting res
tl
ess
.’
said OWL.

Ingham wondered what had given him that idea. OWL, as the talk drifted on, glanced from one to the other of them, as if trying to perceive what they had
‘
decided
’
, how much in love they were, how happy or maybe not so happy. And Ingham more and more sensed a detachment in Ina. Here in OWL
’
s living-room, where he had so often sat having friendly, ordinary conversations with OWL, Ingham tried to brace himself to turn loose of Ina
—
in an emotional sense
—
because he felt that was what she was going to suggest. How much would it hurt? And would it be his ego or his heart that would be hurt? Ina looked at him, smiling with a slight amusement, and Ingham knew she was a
little
bored, like himself.

‘I
think
I
’
m within two days of finishing
.’
Ingham said in answer to Adams
’
s question about his book.

‘
Then you should have a real holiday with a change of scene. Yes, Paris. Why not?
’
OWL bounced on his heels, as if he were seeing a vision of a classic honeymoon, blissful, in Paris.

They left after two drinks. OWL had showed no sign of wanting to come with them.

‘
He
’
s sort of an angel, isn
’
t he?
’
Ina said.
‘
Very fond of you.
—
You
’
re awfully quiet tonight.
’

‘
Sorry. I
think
it
’
s the heat. I thought we might try the Hotel du Golfe tonight.
’

The restaurant of the Hotel du Golfe
—
where Ingham had looked so often for letters that never came, letters from John and Ina
—
was nearly full, but they were able to get a well-placed table for two.

‘
Well, darling,
’
Ingham said,
‘
did you think any more about what we were talking about today?
’

‘
Of course I thought about it. Yes. I understand things are
different here. I suppose I was making too much of it.
—
I really didn
’
t mean to be telling you what to do.
’

And yet in a way, that was what Ingham wanted.

‘
If it doesn
’
t bother you, it doesn
’
t bother you,
’
she added.

Did she mean it ought to ? Ingham gave a laugh.
“
Then let
’
s not talk about it any more.
’

‘
Do you want to go to Paris? Next week?
’

Ingham knew what that meant. She had taken him back, accepted him. Go and maybe come back to Hammamet? But he knew she didn
’
t mean it that way.
‘
You mean, go on to New York from there?
’

‘
Yes.
’
She was calm, quite sure of herse
lf.
She smiled suddenly.
‘
I don
’
t think you
’
re bubbling with enthusiasm
.’

‘
I was thinking I
’
d like to finish my book before going anywhere.
’

‘
Isn
’
t it as good as finished?
’

It was, and he was the one who had said so, but he did very much want to finish his book here, in that crazy room where he was now, with Jensen
’
s paintings and Jensen upstairs. Not going to Paris wouldn
’
t necessarily mean losing Ina.
‘
If you could stay here
—
if you could bear it, the heat, I mean, I could be finished in less than a week.
’

She laughed again, but her eyes were gen
tl
e.
‘
I don
’
t think you
’
ll finish in a week. But you may not want to go to Paris.
’

‘
And you want to go to Paris instead of staying here. I understand.
’

‘
Just how long do you want to stay here, darling?
’

The waiter was showing them a skillet with two raw white fish in it. Without knowing a thing about the fish, Ingham nodded his approval. Ina might not have seen the thing. She was watching him.

‘I’d
like to stay till I finish. I really would.
’

‘
All right, then, you stay.
’

An awkward silence.

‘
I
’
ll see you next in New York then,
’
Ingham said.
‘
That won
’
t be terribly long.
’

‘
No.
’

Ingham knew he might have said, knew she was expecting
him
to say, something more affectionate. He was suddenly unsure about the way he felt. And he knew this stuck out all over him. He could make it up later, he told himself. It was just a sticky moment. His uncertain feelings gave way to a sense of guilt, of a vague embarrassment. He thought of the day in the bungalow at the Reine, when he
’
d suddenly had a hunger for Henry James, felt that he couldn
’
t live through the rest of the day and the evening, if he could not read some prose by him, and he had driven to Tunis and bought the only thing he could find, a Modem Library edition of
The Turn of the Screw
and
The Lesson of the Master.
He wanted to tell Ina about that, but what had it to do with tonight, with now?

They had a brandy after the meal. The evening, externally, improved. There were no more difficult moments. But Ingham continued to feel unhappy within himself. Phrases 6f OWL
’
s tripe drifted through his mind maddeningly. That and the happiest recollections of being in bed with Ina. He thought of being married to Ina, living in a comfortable apartment in New York, being able to afford a maid to make life for both of them easier, entertaining interesting people (he and Ina tended to like the same people), and of maybe having a child, maybe even two. He was sure Ina would want a child. He imagined his work developing, burgeoning, in that atmosphere. So why didn
’
t he jump at it?

He simply couldn
’
t jump that night.

But he did go back to Ina
’
s room with her. Ina asked him, and he accepted.

It was 3 a.m. when he got home. He had wanted to do some thinking, but he fell fast asleep almost at once. They had had, as usual, quite a nice and exhausting time in bed.

Ingham awoke in the dark, a
little
suddenly. He thought he had heard something at the street door, but when he listened, he heard nothing. He struck a match and looked
at the time
—
four-seventeen. He lay back on his bed, tense, alert. How much did Ina love him? And wouldn
’
t he be guilty of rather bad behaviour if he
pulled out now? And yet there had
been John Castlewood, who
’
d entered the picture after Ingham, and presumably Ina had taken it for granted they
’
d be married. Ingham had asked Ina about John tonight, in her room. He had asked her how much she had loved him. But the only thing he had got out of her was that she had felt, or she had believed, they might make a go of it. John Castlewood had loved her very much, and so forth, and maybe that was true. But Ina
’
s answer seemed a
little
vague to Ingham now, or there was no definite phrase that stood out in it, anyway. His mind shied away from the problem, and he thought of the crazy situation he was in, here, and wondered how it had all come about.
Castlewood
’
s assignment, of course. Then OWL with his unbelievably corny broadcasts, and
being paid
for them! Ingham had, on one occasion in OWL
’
s bungalow, seen an envelope with a Swiss stamp on it in the wastebasket. OWL had said he was paid via Switzerland. The return address of a bank had given no clue as to the payer, of course. Could it be possible, Ingham wondered, that OWL was having a fantasy about all of this, about having met the Russian who would pay him for such broadcasts? Was he pretending to himself that some of his own dividends, which might be coming from Switzerland, were payments for his talks? What was possible and what wasn
’
t? Ingham
’
s months in Tunisia had made this borderline fuzzy. The fuzziness, or inversion of things, now involved Ina. He felt it was not quite right they should marry, which was the same as saying that he didn
’
t love her enough, and maybe she did not love him enough either, and that she was not
‘
quite right
’
, whatever that was, and maybe something quite right did not exist for him. But was this feeling due to some strange power of Tunisia to distort everything, like a wavy mirror or a lens that inverted the image, or was the feeling valid?