The Invitation(74)

29


Her


The peculiar intimacy of that night in Rome. For a year, I have not let myself think about it. And the tenderness. I had not known it could be like that, not with a stranger. No, it was something more than that. I had not known it could be like that with anyone.





1939


My husband has a house in a place called Southampton, and a yacht moored there. I have never properly looked at the sea before. In Spain, we lived in the heart of the country, surrounded by dry land for miles around. And I saw it on our journey to America, of course, but only as a uniform blue void, miles below. Now, the broad sweep of the Atlantic Ocean terrifies and fascinates me. All I can see is blue – and it emphasizes how far I have come from my old country, from my previous life.

I decide that if I learn to swim my fear of it might be managed. I will have some measure of control over it. He doesn’t like the idea of it, exactly – I can tell. He tells me that there are dangerous currents. But I persuade him. I tell him that the prospect of going sailing on his yacht – which he wants me to do – will terrify me until I know I could save myself if I fall in.

I teach myself. He offered to find me a tutor – as he has for language and elocution – but I want to do it on my own. I want it to be something that is mine alone. After a few weeks I can manage a clumsy crawl. Soon I am addicted. When I am in the water I feel powerful. And if I force my muscles to work hard enough I discover I can almost empty my mind of the grief and the guilt that remain still tied to me like my own shadow. Perhaps, one day, I will be able to outswim them.

My husband is proud of his yacht. I know nothing about boats, but even I know that she is beautiful. I suppose that I should say ‘our’ yacht, but that wouldn’t feel right. I don’t yet know that anything here quite belongs to me, not even the lace underwear I wear.

The first time he takes me out on her, he tells me the story of how she came to be his. ‘I bought her in 1930. You could say rescued her, to be more accurate. She was ready for the seabed when I first saw her.’

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Well, it’s a funny story. Her previous owner had her built in 1927. Absolutely no expense spared, you understand – his only stipulation was that she would be the most beautiful boat in any harbour she might grace with her presence. She was his pride and joy.’

‘I can imagine,’ I say.

‘Only this fellow made some unwise decisions, bad moves – whatever you’d like to call it. Anyhow, he ended up losing everything in the Crash, like so many others. Even his wife, by all accounts. She went and married some other fellow. So he rigged up this boat and sailed out to sea. No one else on board. It isn’t, I’m sure you can appreciate, the sort of yacht one man alone can handle.’

‘No.’

‘So he would have come to a sticky pass, in the end, as it was. But he shot himself, first, once he’d got a way out. And then it all went to hell, of course. The boat ended up wrecked a little way down the coast. She was almost unsalvageable, and I think many thought I was mad when I said I wanted to buy her. I rather liked the thought of it – the poetic justice of it, if you like. He lost everything as I was making my fortune.’

He wasn’t always wealthy. I know a little about what it is that he does. His work is, he tells me, in seeing opportunities where no one else would think to look.

Whichever side loses the war that has begun in Europe, he says, there will be opportunity. One of his specialisms is in buying ruins – concerns that have failed, or been run into the ground – and transforming them into something new. A little like his yacht, I suppose.

Not long ago, I had an unpleasant experience at a gala with a man who had had far too much to drink. I was coming back from the powder room, looking for my husband in the crowd.

‘Tell me,’ the man said, sliding himself in front of me, and looking me up and down. His breath smelt of alcohol. ‘How does he do it?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘He gets everything, doesn’t he? How does a nobody like him end up with so much?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Ha! Oh, you don’t, do you? I suppose you’ll be telling me you know nothing about Spain, either.’

It caught me off guard. ‘What?’

‘Well, we all know he’d made a good haul before then – picking over the scraps of ’29, when every decent fellow was losing all he had. While my father was losing most of my inheritance. But he came back from Spain rich as Croesus.’

‘My husband,’ I said, with the tremor of my anger in my voice, ‘was in Spain to fight for a cause he believed in.’

‘Fight for a cause …’ he drew the words out, making them ridiculous. ‘Well, that’s a new way of putting it. I suppose it fits, in a way.’ He shook his head at me, almost pityingly. ‘But you don’t know anything, do you?’

I think he wanted me to ask him what he meant by this. I refused to give him that pleasure. Besides, I did not – do not – want to know.

I never mentioned it to my husband. I convinced myself that it was too absurd to be worth repeating. And yet, really, it was that it had stirred up in me some unnamed fear, which I carry with me still. It is a thread I don’t want to risk pulling.

There is a couple who come out on the yacht with us sometimes, and often to supper. Randolph and Gloria Standish. I’m not sure about the husband. But I like her. She seems more straightforward than any of the other wives I have met, unafraid to speak her mind.