She stood awkwardly in the corridor. When she caught sight of his bare chest, she looked away. “Would you rather I waited downstairs?”
“No. Please. I’ll only be a few minutes.”
She stepped in and walked to the center of the room. She was wearing a pale gold sleeveless dress with a mandarin collar. Her shoulders were slightly pink where the sun had touched them as she drove. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, a little windblown, as if she had driven there in a hurry.
Her gaze took in the bed, littered with notepads, the near-packed suitcase. They were briefly silenced by proximity. She recovered first. “Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
“Sorry. Inconsiderate of me.” He telephoned down for a gin and tonic, which arrived in minutes. “Where are we going?”
“Going?”
“Have I time to shave?” He went into the bathroom.
“Of course. Go ahead.”
He had done this on purpose, he thought afterward, made her party to the enforced intimacy. He looked better: the sick man’s yellow pallor had left his skin, the lines of strain had been ironed from his eyes. He ran the hot water, and watched her in the bathroom mirror as he lathered his chin.
She was distracted, preoccupied. As his razor scraped against his skin, he watched her pace, like a restless animal. “Are you all right?” he called, rinsing his blade in the water.
“I’m fine.” She had drunk half the gin and tonic already, and poured another.
He finished shaving, toweled dry his face, splashed on some of the aftershave he had bought from the pharmacie. It was sharp, with notes of citrus and rosemary. He did up his shirt and straightened his collar in the mirror. He loved this moment, the convergence of appetite and possibility. He felt oddly triumphant. He stepped out of the bathroom and found her standing by the balcony. The sky was dimming, the lights of the seafront glowing as dusk fell. She held her drink in one hand, the other arm laid slightly defensively across her waist. He took a step closer to her.
“I forgot to say how lovely you look,” he said. “I like that color on you. It’s—”
“Larry’s back tomorrow.”
She drew away from the balcony and faced him. “I had a wire this afternoon. We’ll be flying to London on Tuesday.”
“I see,” he said. There were tiny blond hairs on her arm. The sea breeze lifted and laid them down.
When he looked up, her eyes locked with his. “I’m not unhappy,” she said.
“I know that.”
She was studying him, her lovely mouth serious. She bit her lip, then turned her back to him. She stood very still. “The top button,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“I can’t undo it myself.”
Something ignited inside him. He experienced it almost as relief, that this would happen, that the woman he had dreamed about, conjured at night in this bed, was to be his after all. Her distance, her resistance, had almost overwhelmed him. He wanted the release that comes with release, wanted to feel spent, the ache of perpetual unrelieved desire soothed.
He took her drink from her, and her hand went to her hair, lifting it from the nape of her neck. He obeyed the silent instruction, lifting his hands to her skin. Usually so certain, his fingers fumbled, were thick and clumsy. He watched them as if from afar, wrestling with the silk-covered button, and as he released it, he saw that his hands were trembling. He stilled, and gazed at her neck: exposed now, it was bent forward slightly, as if in supplication. He wanted to place his mouth on it, could already taste that pale, lightly freckled skin. His thumb rested there, tender, luxuriating in the prospect of what lay ahead. She let out a small breath at the pressure, so subtle that he felt rather than heard it. And something in him stalled.
He stared at the down where her golden hair met her skin, at the slender fingers still holding it up. And he understood, with horrible certainty, what was going to happen.
Anthony O’Hare closed his eyes very tightly, and then, with exquisite deliberation, he refastened her dress. He took a small step backward.
She hesitated, as if she were trying to work out what he had done, perhaps registering the absence of his skin on hers.
Then she turned, her hand on the back of her neck, establishing what had taken place. She gazed at him, and her face, at first questioning, colored.
“I’m sorry,” he began, “but I—I can’t.”
“Oh . . .” She flinched. Her hand went to her mouth, and a deep blush stained her neck. “Oh, God.”
“No. You don’t understand, Jennifer. It’s not anything that—”
She pushed past him, grabbing her handbag. And then, before he could say anything else, she was wrestling with the door handle and running down the corridor.
“Jennifer!” he yelled. “Jennifer! Let me explain!” But by the time he had reached the door, she was gone.
The French train plodded through the parched countryside to Lyon, as if it was determined to grant him too long to think of all the things he had got wrong and all the things he couldn’t have changed even if he’d wanted to. Several times an hour he thought about ordering himself a large whiskey from the dining car; he watched the stewards move deftly up and down the carriage, carrying glasses on silver trays, a choreographed ballet of stooping and pacing, and knew it would take only the lifting of a finger to have that consolation for himself. Afterward he was barely sure what had prevented him doing so.
At night, he settled into the couchette, pulled out with disdainful efficiency by the steward. As the train rumbled on through the darkness, he clicked on his bedside light and picked up a paperback book he had found at the hotel, left by some former traveler. He read the same page several times, took nothing in, and eventually threw it down in disgust. He had a French newspaper, but the space was too cramped to unfold the pages properly, and the print too small in the dim light. He dozed, and awoke, and as England drew closer, the future settled on him like a big black cloud.
Finally, as dawn broke, he found pen and paper. He had never written a letter to a woman, other than brief thank-you notes to his mother, for whatever small gift she had sent, to Clarissa about financial matters, and his brief apology to Jennifer after that first night. Now, consumed by an aching melancholy, haunted by the mortified look in Jennifer’s eyes, freed by the prospect that he might never see her again, he wrote unguardedly, wanting only to explain himself.
Dearest,
I couldn’t make you listen, when you left in such a hurry, but I was not rejecting you. You were so far from the truth I can hardly bear it.