A Quiet Life(140)

She wonders. When she was younger, she had idealised people who seemed to possess, in their self-sufficiency and separateness, a secret path to joy, a superior knowledge of the right way to live – people like Florence, Amy and Edward. But they have fallen away from her now. None of them could teach her how to live. Maybe it is only a quiet, day-to-day loyalty that is worth having; maybe the grand love or the great gesture is always doomed. Maybe that year in Surrey was the only time that she and Edward began to fumble towards something worth having, when they started to try to be honest with one another, and gentle. She thinks about Rosa, and what she will teach her about how to live. She wonders how she can ever teach her about honesty, when she lives a series of lies, laid one on top of the other. She wonders how she can teach her about love, when she is still trying to understand herself what is illusion and what reality. She does not even have a garden, she thinks, she does not even have a proper home for her child. How can she teach her about security?

That evening, when the others are in bed, Laura sits as usual on the balcony, looking over the lake, watching the light change, talking to her ghosts. As she fills her glass, she realises she is drinking the way Edward drank – to drown out the insistent sense of an irreconcilable life, a script that she cannot make her own.

And then, a few days later, at the end of August, through the trees, up above the lake, the car is roaring, the road is ribboning into the distance, when it turns. At last. She is driving up to meet Winifred for lunch in St-Cergue, thinking of her new coat, when the car in front of her screams to a halt, and the other half of the postcard that she tore with Edward is put into her hand. She is Pigeon again, and Edward is alive.

All through lunch with Winifred she is distracted; she is used to covering up her thoughts, but now she wants to stop, she wants to be silent and to consider what has happened. Everything has changed. Everything. He has not abandoned her. But she does not yet know what this means. All she knows is that in this moment the world is sharper, the colours stand out more, the operatic Alpine landscape that she has been coldly appreciating for several years seems to be charged with energy; even the olives they eat with their first glass of wine are saltier, juicier, tastier than anything she has eaten recently, and she herself feels more awake. But she is not listening to Winifred. She must tune back into the conversation.

Winifred is at that very moment telling Laura that she thinks she could find her a job – at a rather lowly level, to be sure – in an English library that has recently opened to serve the British in Geneva. Winifred knows the woman who is setting it up, whose husband works in the United Nations. Laura expresses enthusiasm, although she is not really listening, and Winifred promises to call them for her that afternoon.

Then they start to talk about Peter. Winifred says they have broken up. Laura does not tell Winifred what she saw in Pesaro, but as they sit there the image of Amy, the attitude of sexual abandonment, the sleeping woman in flower, is there in Laura’s head. She cannot imagine how to mention that to Winifred, however, and she says nothing, although she feels the pulse between her own legs as she remembers it. Then, without being asked, Winifred says something about Amy, about how she was planning to come to Geneva in the autumn, but that she, Winifred, has told her she will find the city too dull. There is a dismissiveness in Winifred’s voice and Laura realises she has packed that experience away with the summer. Looking at Winifred there, so confident and contained in the sunlight, she thinks that perhaps this is the secret to Winifred’s happiness; that she can pack each thing into its proper place, she can retain boundaries at each point of contact, can go on learning and growing, without losing herself in pursuit of a grander dream.

When Winifred wants to know about Laura’s relationship with Archie, Laura finds it easy enough to talk about that. She remembers when Winifred first asked her about Edward, and how it all seemed too sacred for words, but this is so different. Winifred teases her a little, and says she can see that Archie is her type, by which she means that he reminds her of Edward. Yes, he is tall, and fair … Laura cannot see other similarities, but she is happy for Winifred to tease her. There are other, much more pressing things to think about now.

Although she is longing to be alone with her thoughts, when she leaves Winifred and drives back down to the city, Laura does not think directly about what has happened. She cannot. Everything has shifted, and yet she cannot see what the new direction is to be.

As she and her mother pack that evening, Laura can hardly hear what she is saying. She is moving in a dream now, and the next day, as they drive to the train station, she finds herself nearly colliding with a stationary car. Archie is there to meet them at Annecy station, and drive them to an old-fashioned family hotel in Talloires. Yes, it is a pretty place, as Archie said it would be; yes, it is perfect for families at the end of the season. Archie is polite to Mother, friendly, more talkative with her than Edward ever was; they all seem to get on so well, like a little family. Laura wonders how he can shift so easily from the hedonist she saw in Pesaro to this civilised chatter. It does not seem fake, he is just easily influenced by those around him, she thinks. She watches his pleasure in Rosa; it is not false, he does remember his own daughters, and enjoys having her there. Before supper they swim in Lake Annecy, and Rosa enjoys his physical strength, sitting on his shoulders as he swims, fast, across the cold fresh water.

But dinner flags. Again, Laura is distracted, wanting to be alone, and finds her control slipping, her attention wandering. To excuse her manner, she says she is listening out for a cry from Rosa from the room above them, that she is not sure that she would be able to hear her. She goes and checks the room a couple of times, which annoys Mother, who thinks she is being too fussy. When they go up to bed, Laura sees Archie’s hopeful smile, but she ignores it. She does not go to him. She wants to be with her memories tonight. She wants to pleasure herself, and that night she does. Just at the moment of orgasm, a face she has not seen for so long, a young woman’s face, is in her mind, and the body she glimpsed only once, in the cabin of a dark ship, in all its innocent nakedness, springs into her thoughts. For a moment, she feels a pang of longing, not just for the girl’s body, but for what she might say if she could see her now, words that could touch and tangle, as well as hands and legs. But the thought fades, and she sleeps.