A Heart Bent Out of Shape (20 page)

Hadley carried the book back to her room. She knew why he’d sent it and she understood. It wasn’t just an olive branch. She felt sure that he’d wanted her to see the picture of him as a young man, and the praise-filled quotes from the newspaper giants,
Le Monde
and
Le Figaro
; he wanted to say,
This is who I was, and who I am still
.
For the strangest moment she imagined him and Joel facing one another, eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder, fists clenching. A younger Hugo, bristling just as Joel did now.
Henri Jérôme
.
She placed the book carefully on her shelf. Beside it was Kristina’s Riviera novel, its lovelorn postcard from the unfound Jacques still caught between its pages. Her bookcase was filling with treasure; unremarkable to a stranger’s eyes, but infinitely precious to her.

twenty-three

The night before she was due to fly home, Joel and
Hadley
met for drinks. He drove her to a small lakeside town, on the road to Vevey. It was no more than a scattering of villas, with a line of sailing boats moored in the reeds. A single café bar, with a once-cheerful awning, ripped now at the edges, fluttered in the night wind. They sat beneath the dense warmth of an outside heater, and overlooked the dark water. She huddled into her coat and Joel folded his arm around her.

‘Are you warm enough?’ he said.

‘Getting there,’ she replied. They drank whiskies and Joel smoked cigarettes one after the other. The moorings of the nearby boats chinked.

‘It’s amazing this place is even open,’ she said. ‘Who comes here?’

‘People like us,’ Joel said. Then he kissed the top of her head. ‘There’s no one like us.’

‘This is the first time we’ve really been out together,’ she said.

‘But you understand why,’ he answered, turning. In the gloomy light his face appeared grey. ‘I’d love to take you to all the best places, but I can’t. We’d run into someone we know.’

‘We could just go to your house,’ she said.

‘But that’s not going out,’ he said.

‘Well, no, but it’s doing something. That isn’t after class, or in your office, or in the back of the library.’

‘The back of the library?’

‘You put your hand on my bottom in the Poetry aisle,’ she said.

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Do you think it would matter that much if people did see us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why don’t we just go to your house?’

‘But I’m giving you all this,’ he swept his arm, taking in the blade-like reeds, the jet water, the grey-white plastic chairs of the terrace. ‘Isn’t it something?’

‘It just feels a bit like we’re hiding.’

He drained his glass. ‘I don’t want you to feel like that, Hadley. You know I don’t. I’ve hesitated taking you back, because . . .’

‘Nosy landlady?’

‘No,’ he laughed.

‘Nosy neighbours?’

‘Nosy? Non-existent, more like. I live in a block where everyone tiptoes around. I’ve ghosts for neighbours, I’m sure of it.’

‘Then, what?’

‘Then, nothing. You’re right. What
are
we doing here?’

‘Maybe you thought it’d be romantic,’ she said.

‘Romantic? Yeah. Maybe I did.’

He kissed her, then. One of his long, deep kisses, the kind he gave her only sometimes. She surrendered herself, wholly, and he was always the one to pull away. But his bitten down lip and pale eyes told her that he didn’t really want to.

‘Let’s go, then,’ he said.

All of the times she’d pictured Joel’s apartment it was always full of
him:
loaded bookshelves, rows of records, every inch of wall covered with pictures, splashy paintings and darkly photographic prints. She had somehow forgotten that he was as much of a visitor in Lausanne as her, and his lodgings probably just as sparse. His apartment was in a building a few streets back from Place Chauderon, up a narrow, steep residential street and hemmed in on either side by old apart-ment blocks, five storeys high. Joel slowed down, searching for a space to park. The streetlights were few, but she could see that the building was buttermilk yellow, each window set with shutters. Some had wrought-iron balconies, crammed with upended bicycles and plant pots with straggly winter growth. One window was plastered over with sun-faded newsprint. Approaching the door, there was a bank of buzzers, at least twenty.

‘How many people live in your building?’ Hadley asked.

Joel fumbled his key in the lock. ‘I told you, I never see anyone.’ He shoved the door with his shoulder and they went into the lobby.

The floor was tiled and the air smelt musty. She wiped her feet on a stiff-bristled mat and looked at the rows of mailboxes. The light overhead blinked.

‘Come on,’ said Joel, ‘let’s get upstairs. It isn’t exactly the lobby at the Ritz.’

But it might as well have been. She hung on to the rail for steadiness, her excitement making her jittery. She almost fell into his back as he stopped abruptly and rattled a key in a door, at the turn of the landing.

‘And we all wondered why this place was available at short notice,’ he said, throwing open the door. ‘I’d say make yourself at home, but that’s probably ambitious.’

He flicked on the lights and she looked around. It was a relatively large studio, possessed of a scratched parquet floor and high ceilings. A black leather sofa was pushed into the corner. A coffee table was scattered with old copies of the
New
Yorker
, a full-to-the-brim ashtray and a plate with a fork, remnants of tomato sauce congealing on its surface. There was a low bookcase, every shelf crammed, and a lamp with a tasselled shade like an old lady’s skirt.

‘Hadley, it’s a hole. It really is. What can I say?’

‘It’s not a hole,’ she said. She went over to the sofa and sat down on it. ‘Where’s your bed?’

‘You’re on it.’

‘You sleep on the sofa?’

‘I kept meaning to get a bed and then never got round to it. It’s actually pretty comfy.’

‘I can see that,’ she said, leaning back.

‘What time’s your flight tomorrow?’

‘Late afternoon.’

‘Packed?’

‘Mostly. Oh hey, I nearly forgot.’ Hadley went to her bag, pretending to be casual, and pulled out a gift. It was wrapped in blue paper and tied with white ribbon. ‘This is for you.’

‘You got me a present?’

‘Of course.’ She watched him as he turned it in his hands, shy suddenly, biting her lip with anticipation. ‘It’s just a small thing,’ she said.

He removed the paper, carefully, his fingers smoothing it as he went. ‘Very smartly wrapped,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have done this.’

Inside was a book. It was a collection of photographs of their corner of Switzerland, all taken in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. She had found it at the Ouchy market, in a box packed with smoke-stained paperbacks and French comic books. At first she’d wanted it for herself and then she thought of Joel. She watched him now as he turned the pages: the three hills of Lausanne, a sway-backed steamer making its way to Montreux, snow scenes with chiselled villages and slabs of rock, all in black and white and painted colour. There were pictures of pleasure seekers, lithe men and women in sunhats and knitted jumpers, merry and bright.

‘And look who it is,’ she said, pointing, leaning closer to him.

Ernest and Hadley Hemingway were standing in the snow. They wore clumpy boots and tweedy garb, billowing trousers and roll-top socks. They were turned towards one another, trading sweet but level stares, to all eyes a well-matched pair.
Chamby, 1922
, the footnote said.

‘They look happy, don’t they?’ said Hadley.

Joel smiled, as if greeting old friends. ‘Perhaps deceptively so. See that date? If it’s the end of that year, she’d just lost all of his work.’

‘Was that then?’

‘That was then. Imagine it, getting to Lausanne, that’s right, our city, and knowing that you’d lost a suitcase containing everything your man had ever written, somewhere on the train from Paris. There’s hell behind that picture.’

Hadley traced her finger over their faces. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘they look happy to me. I wish they’d stayed together.’

‘History’s full of people making monumentally bad decisions,’ Joel said. ‘You’d think we’d learn, but unfortunately fear doesn’t seem to fade with evolution. And fear’s nearly always the reason.’

‘Did Hemingway say that?’

‘No.’ He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Hadley, it’s a beautiful gift, it really is. I’ll always keep it. You know, your present is the ski trip. I mean, you can’t unwrap it, but . . . it’ll arouse less suspicion on Christmas morning. Well. Maybe. Depends what you tell people.’

‘I don’t want to think about other people. Tell me what we’re going to do in the mountains.’

He set the book aside and sank down beside her on the sofa, his legs sprawled out in front of him. He had kicked off his shoes and he stretched like a cat, the toes of his odd socks pointing. He turned to her, his smile a crinkled line.

‘We’re staying in a cabin that’s not near any of the others. There’s a fire that chokes out the whole place and will make everything you’ve got smell of wood smoke and make you want to eat it. There’s a track we can ski down to get to the village, and the only prints you’ll see will belong to deer or marmots or fox.’

‘You’ve been there before?’

‘In my imagination, plenty of times.’

‘Tell me about the bed.’

‘It’s a big bed. It’s a small cabin but the bed’s big enough to fill the whole thing.’

‘I thought the fire filled the whole thing?’

‘No, the smoke from the fire. The fire itself is small and picturesque. It’ll keep itself to itself and won’t bother us unless we want it to.’

‘It sounds very romantic.’

‘Doesn’t it? And I’ll teach you to ski, of course.’

‘What if I’m hopeless?’

‘You won’t be.’

‘But what if I am? What if I fall and get lost in the woods?’

‘I won’t let you out of my sight,’ he said. ‘You’ll be sick of me by the end. You’ll wish we’d never met.’

‘Impossible.’

‘Can I kiss you?’

‘You never asked before.’

‘I’m trying to remember to be a gentleman.’

‘Please don’t,’ she said.

She leant in and they kissed, Joel pulling her on to his lap as though she weighed nothing at all. Hadley’s lips burned. She shut her eyes tightly but once, just once, she opened them and saw his eyes were wide and staring, his pupils misted.

She closed her eyes again.

For the first time, she let him all the way in.

Hadley woke up the following morning on Joel’s sofa. She stared at the ceiling, and sank as she always did when she remembered Kristina. She stretched, her back stiff from the crooked angle she’d slept at. At first she couldn’t see Joel at all, and then she spotted his silhouette by the window. He was smoking, and looking down at the street below. She thought about the night before. How afterwards, he’d clasped her to him, held her so hard and so long that it felt like everything he needed, everything he wanted, everything he was afraid of, was in that embrace.
I didn’t know him until now
, she thought.

‘Good morning,’ she murmured.

‘You’re awake,’ he said. ‘Hello.’

He stayed by the window, the expression on his face unreadable with the bright light behind him.

‘How are you doing? Are you okay?’ he said.

‘Okay? I’m better than okay.’

‘That’s good. That’s great.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Me? ’Course. Hungover, that’s all.’

‘We didn’t drink much.’

‘Makes no difference. I’m bad in the mornings.’

He moved away from the window and his face was clear now. His eyes were rimmed red and his countenance pale, haunted by ghosts of the night. Perhaps he hadn’t slept at all. She had no memory of him beside her in the small hours. She’d had the sensation of being washed up on a shore, her energy quite spent, and as Joel relaxed his hold on her, she had drifted towards sleep.

Faced with his bluntness, she felt too naked suddenly, and pulled the blanket around her top, covering her breasts. Her clothes were strewn on the floor, and she made a sort of toga, and bent to reach them.

‘I’d have thought that this morning you’d be feeling a little better than usual,’ she said, shaking out her jeans. She let the blankets drop and put them on. She stood facing Joel, her chest still bare. ‘Or is this just an everyday occurrence?’

‘Hadley, I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being an asshole. You were . . . are . . . much too good for me.’

He walked towards her, bending to pick up her T-shirt from where it lay rumpled on the floor.

‘Here,’ he said, putting it on over her head. He fed her arms through the holes, his hands encircling her wrists. He pulled it down over her waist.

‘You forgot my bra,’ she said. Her nipples pointed through her T-shirt and Joel stared down at them.

‘So I did,’ he said. His arm hung by his side and she saw his fingers flutter. He put his hands in his pockets again. ‘If you want to take a shower, go ahead. I’ll get you a towel.’

‘Joel?’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a shower.’

A quick exit was probably best. She decided this as she stood beneath the cooling blitz of the water, soapsuds stinging tears from her eyes. When she came out she attempted to be brisk and bright. A cup of coffee awaited her on the side and she took it without looking at Joel. She sipped, holding the cup with both hands.

‘Hadley,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Whatever you may think, I don’t make a habit of this.’

‘It’s okay, I don’t think anything.’

‘Well, I just want you to know that. I haven’t actually been here, in this exact situation before.’

‘How could you have? This was our first time. Maybe that’s not a big deal for you, but it is for me.’

‘I’m your tutor, Hadley. I do think about that now and again, you know. Don’t you?’

‘Of course I do. How can you even ask me that? And I know you’re risking far more than me . . .’

‘Don’t say that, I couldn’t care less about that.’

‘But I do think about it, Joel. Yes, you’re my tutor, yes, you’re twice my age . . .’

‘Hadley,’ he began to say, but she rolled on.

‘But those things, they just don’t matter any more. How can they? Nothing matters like it used to.’

He stared at her. He rubbed his face vigorously.

‘I just don’t know what to do with you sometimes, Hadley.’

‘You knew last night.’

She glanced around for her coat and bag, and glimpsed them thrown over a chair. They were exactly where she’d tossed them as she stood in the middle of his flat with her hands on hips and said,
I like it, this place of yours, it’s got a good feel to it
,
and he’d stepped towards her, his face cracked with laughter lines. She gathered them up.

‘Please don’t go,’ he said, ‘stay.’

‘I think I’ve probably stayed too long already.’