The House in Paris (32 page)

'You said you liked the colour,' said Henrietta, hurriedly, to Leopold.

'Yes, I like it; it reminds me of you.'

Miss Watson said: 'Now, say goodbye.'

Henrietta and Leopold shook hands for the first time, like people attempting some savage rite. His hand was nervy and dry. Their eyes dropped and they edged away from each other. Henrietta looked lost. Ray held his hand out and she put hers into it gratefully. His overwrought eyes held no reflection of her, but, bending, he said: 'Henrietta, good luck.'

Miss Watson, who had possession of Henrietta's ticket, presented it at the barrier, and they both walked away alongside the long high train ... Ray and Leopold stood watching Henrietta, long fair despondent hair down her back, walk away down the platform with Miss Watson. Charles's rump hung out under one arm; she grew smaller and smaller.

She turned round, waved, and held up the paperweight.

 Ray, watching Henrietta walking away, thought: And so now …

'Come on,' he said, 'she won't look round again.'

'All right,' said Leopold. 'Where are we going now?'

Where are we going now? The station is sounding, resounding, full of steam caught on light and arches of dark air: a temple to the intention to go somewhere. Sustained sound in the shell of stone and steel, racket and running, impatience and purpose, make the soul stand still like a refugee, clutching all it has got, asking: 'I am where?' You could live at a station, eating at the buffet, sleeping on the benches, buying your cigarettes, going nowhere next. The tramp inside Ray's clothes wanted to lie down here, put his cheek in his rolled coat, let trains keep on crashing out to Spain, Switzerland, Italy, let Paris wash like the sea at the foot of the ramp. And a boy ought to sleep anywhere, like a dog. But the stolen boy is too delicate. Standing there on thin legs, he keeps his eyes on your face. Where are we going? Where are we going now?

Henrietta is gone, importantly silent, for ever. That straight talk — or was it straight? — that public school talk when the taxi got too tight has settled Henrietta. Now peace rests on girders of clever honour, like that glass roof on clever girders of steel. I think like a drunk man. What
about
that drink? But here's Leopold; here will always be Leopold —

- What have I done?

What will
she
do?

Leopold repeated: 'Where are we going?'

Ray said: 'I've got to telephone.'

But a train went out and the hollow station thundered. Leopold shouted: 'What?'

'Telephone. I've got to telephone.'

'Oh, to my mother?'

'What?'

'To my mother?'

'— For God's sake, come out of here!'

So they walked across the big space between the barriers and the buffet staircase, the exits: Ray head down, Leopold looking round him, twirling like a camellia Henrietta's cockade. Leopold took a step and a half to each of Ray's, when anyone barged their way he swerved in to Ray instinctively. Ray strode like a robber with one babe through a wood. Their inappropriateness to each other made people stare. Leopold had in blazing gold round his cap the fierce name of a battleship. His silence fell in with Ray's as imperfectly as his step — he seemed to be buoyed along.

In the hall outside the turnstile it was quieter. Ray slowed up. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'I can't stand the noise in there.'

'I rather liked it,' said Leopold.

(The devil you did. You will notice, we talk where I can talk. You will not quote Mme Fisher, you will not kick me in taxis, you will not shout in houses where they are ill. You will wear a civilian cap, not snub little girls and not get under my feet. There will be many things that you will not like. There are many things that I do not like about you.)

'What I was trying to say,' Ray went on aloud, 'was: I must telephone — yes, to Versailles, to your mother. She may be beginning to wonder why I am not back. Then I shall get a drink. Then we might get something to eat.'

'What, at the hotel?'

'I'll see; we'll check in these first, anyway.'

'Then?'

'Come on,' Ray said, quickening his steps again.

'Will my mother come tonight?'

'Come on,' Ray repeated.

'Where to?'

'A taxi out here.'

They left the hall, which was quiet enough to echo, through an open arch, and stood outside the station. Fine rain still fell outside the projecting roof. No taxi came immediately; here they stood, under the strong arc lamps, watching the rain falling against the dark. The air tasted of night and Leopold shivered once. 'Cold?' 'No.' No, he was not cold; he had been someone drawing a first breath. Ray had not seen Karen's child in bright light before; now he saw light strike the dilated pupils of Leopold's eyes. Egotism and panic, knowing mistrust of what was to be, died in Ray as he waited beside Leopold for their taxi to come: the child commanded tonight, I have acted on his scale.

Here, at the head of the ramp, they stood at a commanding, heroic height above the level of Paris, which they saw. Leopold said: 'Is it illuminated?' The copper-dark night sky went glassy over the city crowned with signs and starting alight with windows, the wet square like a lake at the foot of the station ramp.