A Heart Bent Out of Shape (21 page)

‘And now you regret it?’

‘What’s to regret? What’s left?’

She threw her arms wide, with her palms turned out.

‘Everything just happens,’ she said, ‘and when it’s done it’s done. No traces.’

He stepped towards her.

‘No traces?’ he said.

She shook her head.

‘What, nothing? I know you don’t believe that,’ he said.

He took his finger and brushed her cheek very lightly with it. He wiped away a tear, a single drop.

‘Don’t cry, Hadley. There’s no reason to cry.’

‘Whenever I’m with you and I’m happy, later I feel bad about it. But that’s okay, I know that’s just how it is. I don’t want it to be any other way, not yet. And I know Kristina would want me to be happy, even if I failed her, even if I couldn’t help her at all. I just hope she knows I tried my best for her, too . . .’

‘You couldn’t have done more.’

‘. . . But this is the first time that it feels like you’re not happy either.’

‘Hadley, I am.’

‘I don’t believe you. Look how you were when I woke up.’

‘You’re too precious to screw around with, Hadley.’

‘Everybody’s too damn precious.’

‘I want it to be serious with you. I want it to matter.’

‘Serious isn’t the same as sad.’

‘I’m not sad, Hadley. Far from it.’

‘Joel, I just wish we were normal.’

‘Us? We could never be normal.’

‘But what if we’d met some other way? Wouldn’t that have been better?’

Joel took her hand and pulled her into him. His eyes were a darker blue than usual, sea-coloured. His lips were apart.

‘You were a woman in a bar. And then you were on the street, in a coat that was too big for you, your cheeks all smacked red by the cold air, looking at me as though you were half afraid that I’d pounce, and half afraid that I might not.’

‘Oh, come on,’ she laughed, ‘I didn’t look like that.’

‘I wouldn’t change anything, Hadley,’ he said, ‘because if I did, it wouldn’t be us, would it? When I saw you in that awful bar I figured you were maybe a student but I didn’t care. I followed you outside because I wanted to talk to you. And then you wound up in my class.
Hadley Dunn
. Watching me that whole hour as though I was telling you a secret. And then you came to me. When you were at your lowest, you sought me out. What choice did I have but to help? How could I resist that, any of that? And how can I resist you now?’

‘There’s no answer to that,’ she said, ‘is there?’

She laid both hands on his chest. Beneath her palm she felt the banging of his heart.

‘None I want to hear,’ he said.

‘Then let’s stop talking.’

‘Hadley, I . . .’

She stepped in and stole the next words from his lips. Wrapped in a kiss, they sank slowly to the floor, and all things spoken slipped away.

twenty-four

Her flight wasn’t until later that afternoon
.
She
walked through the streets of Lausanne, catching glimpses of herself in plate-glass windows. The keen air on her cheeks made her feel spry and invigorated. It was new, this feeling. Was it how Kristina felt, zipping home to Les Ormes after seeing Jacques, on the good days, the best days?
Alive
, thought Hadley,
I feel alive
,
and instead of crumpling at the thought it made her smile.

She was headed for the lakeside. She wanted to try and see if Hugo was there, one last time before Christmas. In her bag was a new handkerchief for him. The old one was washed and dried and only a little creased, but it bore the dark stains of Joel’s blood. As much as he had scrubbed, he couldn’t get them out, he’d said. She had bought Hugo a new handkerchief to replace it, a Christmas present, she supposed. It was made of cream cotton with a blue trim and it came in a box with a ribbon.

At the Hôtel
Le Nouveau Monde she saw that, at last, Hugo was back in his usual spot, stirring his spoon in his coffee, contemplating the lake view that must have been as familiar to him as a bedside picture. His eyes were glassy when he turned to Hadley. He looked thinner in the cheeks.

‘You!’ he said, a beam lighting his face. ‘I thought you were long gone, back to your fair isle. You’re not here for Christmas, surely?’

Hadley explained she was leaving that day, and she wanted only to say Merry Christmas, and to thank him for the book. She didn’t mention the two weeks that had passed, or her attempts to find him in his usual spot.

‘Ah, the book,’ he said, ‘the book.’

‘Am I to call you Henri Jérôme, then?’

‘Henri Jérôme,’ he said. ‘I haven’t felt much like Henri Jérôme for a long time.’

‘I liked your picture,’ said Hadley, sliding into the seat opposite him. ‘You looked like a cool guy.’

‘Cool? I don’t think so. I was a lot of things but I don’t think cool was ever one of them.’

‘Okay, you were handsome. Very handsome.’

‘Ah, now that I cannot quarrel with. Coffee?’

‘Please. I’m sorry I got so angry with you last time,’ said Hadley, watching as he poured her coffee from a silver pot. ‘It wasn’t very gracious of me. But I felt so helpless. Suddenly it was the end of the road, just like you said, and I didn’t know what to do with that. You did your best for Kristina, and you were so kind to me. That earns you the right to tease a little, I’m sure.’

‘Just as I wrote, they were the foolish insinuations of a jealous old man. And I don’t like to be defeated, that’s why I was irritable, really. In real life, people get away with the bad things, the accidents that turn out to be crimes. Perhaps that’s why I always preferred fiction.’

Hadley took a silver teaspoon between her fingers and inspected it. She twirled it twice then set it back down.

‘Real life isn’t so bad,’ she said.

‘But I am sorry that I wasn’t more help to you. Not that that errant professor of yours was very useful, either.’

‘Oh, but he has helped,’ she said, ‘just in a different kind of way, I suppose.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Hugo said, bringing his coffee cup to his lips. ‘I knew, in fact, the moment you walked in today.’

Hadley looked up quickly. ‘What’s that?’

‘
Mais oui
, you have a definite spring in your step. I’d like to think it was due to your elation in seeing me again, in finding that, in coming here and seeing me drinking my coffee and cognac at always the same time there is at least some constancy in the world. But, I fear, that is self-flattery of the most futile kind.’

She laughed and looked away. This time she wouldn’t grow angry, this time he was perfectly and absolutely right.

‘You’re mischievous today, that’s what it is,’ he said. ‘I thought that the very first time I ever saw you, you know. On account of the hair. Or lack of it, rather.’

She ran her hand through it, mussing the ends. ‘It needs cutting again, it’s getting too long. Oh, here,’ she reached into her bag, ‘I’ve a Christmas present for you. Well, not really, but it’s your handkerchief. After all these weeks – sorry for the delay. Actually, it’s a new one. I thought that would be nicer than giving back your old one.’

‘A very fine specimen,’ said Hugo, turning the box in his hands. ‘Thank you.’ He looked at her again. ‘You do seem impossibly brightened. But then they say that the young bounce back more easily than the old.’

She dropped a sugar lump into her cup and stirred it, watching the crystals ebb away. She licked the spoon.

‘I’ve bounced nowhere, Hugo,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I am.’

Her eyes wandered across the café and out towards the lake. Despite the flatness of the day the waters were churning. Crested waves bashed the fleet of pedaloes, just visible by the jetty’s edge, and a blitz of twenty or more seagulls spun in looping circles.

He took her hand then, and held it firmly.

‘Be careful,’ he said.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I felt moved to, suddenly. Is my intuition wrong?’

‘I don’t know. It’s intoxicating, really.’ She gave a high-pitched laugh. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t ordered cognac, so you can keep up.’

He released her hand.
Be careful
, he said again. This time he wasn’t looking at her at all, but somewhere into the middle distance. When he spoke again his voice had changed.

‘While you’ve been busy elsewhere, I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to figure it out for myself.’

‘Thinking about what?’

‘Jacques.’

‘Jacques might as well be a phantom, Hugo. We both know that.’

‘What if that’s precisely what he is?’ he said. ‘What if he is, in fact, not Jacques at all? It’s just an idea I had, but it came to me as I wrote that card to you, as I dusted off old “Henri Jérôme”. Kristina needs a nickname for her secret boyfriend, so why not Jacques? It has a pretty enough ring to it,
n’est-ce pas
? And if that is the case, then Jacques, my dear, could be anyone. It’s a thin sort of disguise, but an effective one. Perhaps you should look at the people in Kristina’s life. The people you both knew, even. Could any of them be Jacques?’

‘She met him on the Riviera, Hugo. He’s nothing to do with Lausanne.’

‘And it was a good story, wasn’t it? Their meeting? A perfect fiction.’

‘Hugo,’ Hadley started then stopped. She began again. ‘Some people have those kinds of lives. Dazzling, perfect, picturesque lives. Maybe you did once. Maybe I will one day. Do you really doubt everything? Suspect everyone?’

‘Not everything,’ he said. ‘Not everyone.’

‘I’ve stopped looking,’ she said, ‘you know that. I’m trying to do what everyone wants me to. I’m trying to move on. Can we drop it now? Please?’

They drank the rest of their coffee quietly, swapping fragments of small talk back and forth. They both admired the slow dance of the waiters, and turned to watch as a magnificent patisserie trolley laden with fruit-decked tarts rolled past, and was greeted with delicate exclamation.

‘Would you like something?’ offered Hugo. ‘The cakes here are quite delicious.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Hadley, then added, kindly, ‘maybe another time, though.’

In the end she began to put on her coat. ‘I should get going,’ she said, ‘I haven’t started packing yet.’ She pulled her hat from her bag and set it on her head, then smoothed the tips of her hair with her fingers. Hugo watched her with his head cocked to one side and the corner of his mouth trembled.

‘What would it take to get Henri Jérôme writing again?’ she said suddenly.

‘Now that’s a question I can’t answer.’

‘I think you miss it.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘but that chapter is long finished.’

‘You’ve still got it though, haven’t you?’ said Hadley. ‘The writer’s sense. You know a story when you see one.’

‘What’s all this?’ said Hugo. ‘Compliments. Encouragement. Ridiculous flattery. If I observe again that you’re in a particularly good mood, will you refrain from biting my head off?’

‘You deduced correctly, Hugo.’

‘Hmm?’

‘You were right about me and the professor,’ she said.

‘What was I right about?’ he said, slowly.

‘Thinking that there might be something there,’ said Hadley.

‘
L’amour?
’ said Hugo.

‘You’re the one who saw it coming. God knows how, but you did.’

He laughed soundlessly, and scratched lightly at the side of his mouth with just the tip of his finger.

‘Ah, but is it love, Hadley?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know about love, but . . . maybe. Maybe it will be. In a strange way it already is.’

Hugo snorted. ‘It’s an old story, you know,’ he said, ‘a professor dabbling with his students. I thought you were a little more original than that, Hadley Dunn.’

‘Didn’t Henri Jérôme ever write about love?’

‘He wrote about death.’

‘Never love?’

‘Sex. Not love.’

Hugo looked at her but she found she didn’t have anything else to say. She shrugged. For some reason, the words that came to mind were,
I’m sorry
. She didn’t say them. She stood up to leave and they gave each other three kisses, cheek to cheek in the Swiss way, Hugo turning his face to her with a slightly injured air.

‘Well, Merry Christmas, Hugo. I’ll see you in the New Year, I hope.’

‘Only if you’ve time, you sound like you’re going to be busy,’ he said, just as she was walking away. ‘So, in the end you found yourself a Jacques after all,’ he added, ‘without even looking. A secret boyfriend all of your own.’

‘I’d have loved to have told Kristina about it,’ said Hadley, ignoring his tone. ‘It’s the last thing she would have expected of me, I’m sure.’

‘You could have whispered about your indiscretions together, and become quite unbearable around your other friends.’

‘The others wouldn’t understand, Hugo. They’d just think it was fantastic gossip and go on about it all the time.’

‘So it really is a secret affair? Oh my.’

‘You promise you won’t tell anyone?’ she said.

Hugo sat erect. He looked a little princely, sitting there so straight-backed. He waved his hand dismissively.

‘My dear, who on earth would I have to tell?’ he said. ‘Except perhaps, if I am to take your bait, the page. The blank and staring page.’

Hadley laughed. ‘Write what you want, Hugo. It doesn’t bother me. In fact I think you should. You might enjoy it.’

Their farewell stretched. Hadley waved and turned, but Hugo’s voice stopped her.

‘What a Christmas present you’ve given him,’ he said. ‘This professor of yours.’

There was something in his look that made her wrap her coat more tightly around herself. She walked back towards him, feeling the eyes of the waiter on her.

‘He’s been good to me,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘Okay? When Kristina died he was the only one who really understood how I was feeling. That was how it started. Not with anything else, but with kindness.’

‘It won’t be how it ends,’ Hugo muttered.

‘And now he’s turned my world upside down,’ she said. ‘In the best possible way.’

‘You sound as if you’re trying to convince yourself, my dear.’

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘I get it. You don’t like love stories.’

‘I don’t believe in them,’ said Hugo flatly.

‘And I don’t believe that,’ said Hadley.

‘This professor of yours, what’s his name?’

‘You know his name. It’s Joel.’

‘Joel,’ he repeated, with added emphasis. ‘What do you think he believes?’

‘He believes in life. And living it. Not hiding away, watching from the sidelines.’

He held her eye, unblinkingly. Hadley looked for the thread of humour that would twitch his mouth into a smile but there was none. She looked away first. ‘Merry Christmas, Hugo,’ she said over her shoulder.