Perfect Happiness (8 page)

She looked along the canal and saw the cat caught in a scum of refuse by a flight of steps. A vaporetto chugged past, its varnished wood flashing in the sunlight. She no longer had that sense of panic; instead there had come a kind of dull confusion. Someone, she knew, expected her. There was someone she had to visit, to find. Zoe? No, not Zoe. She went back over the bridge and down a small alley that led to a square in which was a statue of a horse and rider. And, as she walked past this, seeing the brilliant green streaks on the metal and the graffiti incised on the rump of the horse she felt once more that assurance of having been here before, both welcome and disturbing. But the familiarity was different. It was not, this time, a sense of then but of now. It was not that she was revisiting this particular spot, but that this was where she ought to be, the point for which she had been searching, for days or for hours – she no longer knew which.

A square. A statue. A church. And over there a street that would lead to another on which was the hotel. A small, moderately-priced hotel with a red and white striped awning over the entrance and petunias in pots on the window-ledges.

The panic was quite gone now. She knew where she was. And she was happy, perfectly happy. The sun had sunk and the afternoon had entered that phase of steamy heat before the evening; she felt that she must be late, and hurried the last few yards to the end of the street. There round the corner was the hotel and seeing it she felt a further lift of the spirits. It seemed silly, now, to have been searching for so long. It was stupid to have lost the map. She must get there quickly and explain. She must have been gone for ages. She ran up the steps and into the entrance hall.

When Ruth Bowers came into the hotel Frances was standing at the reception desk. She was asking for her key. The perplexity of the porter and Frances's urgency filled the small space with tension. The porter kept shaking his head and Frances kept on asking. ‘I'm sorry,’ she kept saying, ‘I just don't remember the number, but it's on the second floor.’ Ruth laid a hand on her arm and Frances turned. In her eyes there was confused recognition. ‘Oh, hello again,’ she said. ‘It's so silly – I got myself completely lost. I simply couldn't find this place. My husband must have been waiting ages.’

Ruth Bowers moved her hand to her elbow and began to steer her away. ‘Don't worry about that just now, dear. We can sort all that out later.’ And as she led Frances out into the street Frances stared at her and said, ‘I'm not sure where I am.’ ‘I know, dear,’ said Ruth Bowers, ‘I know. Just don't worry about it.’

The curtains that blew in the light breeze from the open window were not white but flowered, a riotous arrangement of poppies and tendrilled things like passion flowers. Frances, waking from long deep sleep, lay looking at them. Presently, turning her head, she saw an envelope on the carpet by the door. She got up, opened it, and read a note from Ruth Bowers in which Ruth hoped that she had slept well and felt better; ‘That doctor certainly carried some kind of super knock-out pill – you were out cold before I tucked you up last night. I'm off for a final look at Santa Maria – my friend joins me tomorrow – and I'll drop back later in the morning to see how you're going on.’

It was ten o'clock. She rang down for some coffee, and dressed. She felt heavy, a little dopey still, but otherwise quite normal. At eleven she could go to the hospital to visit Harry. When the coffee came she sat by the window drinking it, and read Ruth's note again. And as she did so she was filled with emotion. Tears sprang to her eyes. Why should the kindness of strangers be so unnerving? She put the note back in its envelope and went to the dressing-table. From the mirror, a pale face looked at her with tired, anxious eyes. She began to comb her hair and then with sudden revulsion went into the bathroom and washed it, using soap in the absence of any shampoo. Then she sat in the sun on the little balcony beyond the window and let it dry on her shoulders. When she went back to the mirror it had dried to a coarse bounciness that reminded her of the effect of boarding-school shampooings with institutional soap-mix provided in huge vats, when she was a girl. Thus, time was, she had tugged combs through the same hair, fringing the same face, the head tumultuous with quite other preoccupations. Except, of course, that the hair was not the same at all – had grown since then by goodness how many yards, been discarded goodness how many times, was flecked now in one spot with a thin line of grey. And the face had undergone phase upon phase of change so that, looking at it, she saw, or pictured, like a flickering film, each remembered version right back to that fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, and acknowledged with a kind of sad indulgence this tribe of alter egos; innocents – unknowing unsuspecting innocents.

She checked the contents of her handbag, locked her door and went down in the lift. When she stepped out into the foyer she noticed at the reception desk a man she had seen somewhere before: a short man with greying bristly hair and a small pointed beard. And as she tried to remember who he was he turned, saw her, looked at once relieved and embarrassed and said, ‘Mrs Brooklyn – I don't know if you remember… We met for a few moments in Cambridge, with Zoe. Morris Corfield.’

‘Yes. Of course. What a funny coincidence – you're staying here too?’

‘Well, no. Elsewhere, in fact. I'm in Venice to give some lectures to a summer school. I just looked in to see if there was anything I could do to help. Zoe said you were here. How is your son?’

‘Getting on well, thank you. I hope I'll be told soon when I can take him home.’ Why did the man look so uncomfortable?

‘Zoe,’ he went on after a moment, ‘was a bit concerned. She wondered if you… There was a phone message you'd left…’

He had brown eyes, of a noticeable intense colour almost as dark as the pupil: disposition, if it shows at all, shows in the eyes. These were unassuming, faintly melancholy, and, at the moment, embarrassed. ‘A phone message? I haven't rung Zoe.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘In that case… Well, some muddle, I expect – but anyway she just felt a bit worried and asked me to look in if I was this way and see if you needed anything. The heat,’ he continued with a rush, ‘rather gets one down. Like a sauna, I always think, Venice at this time of year. I shan't be sorry to get back to London.’ He looked at her, inquiring. Meaning well.

And Frances, gazing beyond him, over his shoulder out to the teeming pavement, blinked and said at last, ‘It's quite possible I did ring Zoe. As a matter of fact I don't remember anything at all that happened yesterday. Or much of the last few days. An American woman who is staying here seems very kindly to have coped last night.’ She paused. ‘I feel… rather foolish.’

Morris Corfield said, ‘Why don't we have some coffee?’

Hours later, in the evening, she sat opposite him in a restaurant. He had told her that he was here to lecture on Baroque music to American girls at a summer school – ‘Disconcertingly large sums of money for a rather low level of address’ – that he was music critic for a weekly paper and was writing a book on Scarlatti. He had talked of his son and mentioned that his wife left him a number of years ago. He had spoken affectionately of Zoe. They had discussed the problems of getting Harry back to England with his leg in plaster. Now, he looked at her across the scraped plates and the half-empty wine-glasses and asked delicately, ‘Are you feeling more… more yourself now?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ She drank some coffee. She put down the cup and studied the circle of dregs. ‘I seem to have had some sort of crisis in which for a while I didn't really know what was going on. This person – Ruth Bowers – apparently found me in the hotel where I spent my honeymoon. I seemed to think that Steven was there.’

There was a small silence. ‘Stupid,’ she said.

‘Not at all. Entirely understandable. You must have been under a great strain, this last couple of weeks.’

‘I had thought,’ Frances went on bleakly, ‘that I was beginning to get a little better. I'm sorry to talk as though I were an invalid, but bereavement is in a way like chronic illness.’

Morris Corfield said, ‘So I understand. But you're… all right today?’

‘Much better. A little muzzy still. A doctor gave me some sleeping pills. But I know the difference between then and now.’ She smiled, with an effort.

‘It's obviously unfortunate you had to come here, when it has these associations.’

‘Everywhere has associations, in some way or another. But yes, Venice seems to have unhinged me, a little. I'm sorry – let's stop talking about my problems.’

‘Only if you wish to,’ said Morris.

She looked at him. All right, she thought, it's probably good for me to talk, even at the risk of boring this poor kind man. All the better that it should be someone I shall in all probability never set eyes on again.

‘I have had this nightmarish feeling that if I don't clutch on to everything I remember of Steven he will disappear completely. That I am responsible for him and that if I forget anything his memory will be cancelled entirely. Here, it has seemed to take me over – I've been unable to think of anything else.’

‘But it isn't only you who remembers him. Lots of people do. In that way he survives many times over.’

‘I know. Rationally I know that. Emotionally I don't. Anyway,’ Frances went on (thinking, you don't understand – no one can who has not been submerged in this…), ‘it isn't really anything to do with other people. It is private.’

‘Yes. I see that.’

‘I have always expected too much,’ she said rapidly. ‘I have always planned too much. I've always lived ahead rather than backwards. When Steven died I stopped dead. Being unhappy is an occupation – you hardly notice anything else.’

He nodded.

‘I expected marriage to be other than it turned out. I expected to have children and never did. I expected Steven to be immortal. And now suddenly the past seems to me as unreliable as the future.’

‘How?’ said Morris Corfield, warily.

‘Nothing is as you thought it was. Everything is changed by all that comes after.’

‘Oh yes. I've noticed that too.’

‘I keep remembering happiness as though it were some foreign language that I once knew and have forgotten. I don't seem to know any more what it was like.’

‘Come,’ he said gently. ‘You can't have been happy all the time. No one is.’

‘I don't mean contentment or comfort or companionship. I mean absolute happiness. Those times when…’ she looked away, ‘… when how you feel seems to fuse with the physical world. That sounds fey. It seems the only way to put it.’

‘No. I understand. I remember first experiencing it as a small boy. Something to do with snow falling and the sight of it heaped on a branch and elation over Christmas presents. Very self-sufficient, children. It's only later that such times become centred on other people.’

There was a pause. The restaurant was emptying. Outside, the Venetian evening smouldered.

Frances said, ‘And I have these fears that perhaps even such moments were not so at all. Since now there is only me to think of them. As though I didn't share them with Steven at all.’

She was filled, as she spoke, with a sense of betrayal. To talk of Steven like this to a stranger; Steven, that most private of men. Forgive me, she thought, but this is what I have come to.

Morris Corfield said, ‘It is of course pointless to say don't do so much thinking. You are obliged to.’

‘I'm afraid so.’

‘Nor is it easy to offer any consolation that isn't just… superficial. I remember feeling somewhat the same when my wife left me. What she did seemed to change the time we had together. But your husband didn't leave you. Dying is different.’

‘I know,’ said Francis wearily. She wished, suddenly, that she had never got into this. She wanted to go back to the hotel, and to bed.

Morris lit a small cigar. ‘As for happiness… Isn't it more often a personal experience anyway? Is it something shared? My feeling is that it happens to one in isolation.’

‘But because of someone else, usually.’

‘I suppose so.’ He flapped at the cigar smoke in sudden concern. ‘I'm sorry – do you mind this thing?’

‘Not at all.’

‘If I may say so, you seem to have suffered from a curious mixture of idealism and romanticism. So much expectation.’

‘Oh,’ said Frances. ‘Aren't most people like that?’

‘I doubt it. Evidently your husband wasn't from what you say. Or rather from what you have not said.’

‘He wasn't much like me, no.’

‘And the children are adopted?’

‘Yes.’

‘They know?’

‘Of course. Not… all the details.’

Morris sat frowning at the tablecloth. At last he said, ‘It's difficult for someone who has never gone through what you have to know what to say. I imagine that one of the many… difficulties… is this question of adjusting to… no, assimilating… all the things you remember. I hope it will get easier. I'm sure it will. You seem to me a very… well, a very stable sort of person.’

There was a silence. They both shifted in their chairs, suddenly uneasy. Frances began to wonder how to insist on paying her share of the bill, which lay at Morris's elbow. Snatch it up, as Zoe would? Slip across the appropriate notes?

Morris put out his cigar, frowning then at the stub as though it offended him. ‘Is there anything I can do in a practical sense? Book you a flight – that kind of thing?’

‘Thank you,’ said Frances. ‘It's very kind, but I've seen to all that. We go the day after tomorrow.’

‘Ah. Well, I'm sure back in London everything will seem… not quite so bad.’ The sentence trailed away. Frances, grimly accustomed to the responses of embarrassment and faint panic that her condition generated in others thought: poor man, plunged into all this. She began to talk brightly of the new house to which she was moving. Morris picked up the bill.

‘Please let me…’ she dived for her purse.

‘Certainly not. All these ill-gotten dollars I have… Waiter!’

They walked through the night-time city, in which the floodlit buildings glowed like stage-sets, doubly unreal, detached both from time and place. Domes and façades hung in the darkness, wonderful survivors, speaking of mysteries. And before them flowed that river of people, strolling, hurrying, talking, renewing itself every hour and every day. Men and women and children. Morris and Frances, side by side, a little awkward with one another, concerned with the formalities of parting. Stopping at last on the corner by the Doge's Palace, shaking hands, thanking and hesitating and walking away at last separately into the gilded evening.