A Heart Bent Out of Shape (3 page)

Hadley took a quick seat at one of the café tables just outside the station, brushing aside the vestiges of hasty departures, half-empty coffee cups and balled paper napkins, and unfolded her map. She studied it, sketching a route through the city. She glanced up to check the street name on the opposite building, looking past the fluttering flags and green bursts of formally planted trees. A lost soul with a crushed tin of beer rocked on his heels, watching her. She stood up, ignoring the line of taxicabs, and their lolling, cigarette-flicking drivers. She tied her unwieldy coat through the loops of her rucksack, took hold of her suitcase, and set off.

Hadley had no possible reference point for a place like Lausanne. She’d holidayed with her family among the dunes of a wind-blown French campsite, and spent a week in the white heat of a Spanish apartment complex, but she’d never before been plunged into the depths of a continental city. She had only been to London twice, let alone anywhere else. The last time was to celebrate with friends after their exams; she’d kissed a boy beneath the Bermondsey railway arches, and lost her sandal to the tracks as she leapt aboard the last tube train. Lausanne was entirely undiscovered, as rare and intoxicating as new love.

From the station a narrow pedestrian street appeared to point directly upwards. Hadley took it, hefting her case along behind her. The area had the slightly down-at-heel air of so many station districts, all fast food and cheap boutiques, but now and again side roads spun away, appearing tree-lined and paraded with elegant villas. After a panting climb, she emerged at the base of a grand square. She inhaled its air of dignified bustle, and immediately stood a little straighter. People were everywhere, walking with snappy direction, and despite the last fling of summer they were dressed soberly, in creams and greys and camels and chocolates and blacks. Hadley fell into step with them, and soon found herself in the winding streets of the
Vieille Ville
, the old town, with its opulent boutiques and extravagant patisseries with enticing displays. There was every temptation to stop and look and go in, bite into the end of an éclair and run her finger through a pan of just-cooled chocolate, but she kept on, her desires buttoned. As she turned up another hill she checked her map and saw that she was at the bottom of the long, looping road that led up to Les Ormes. She’d been walking for half an hour and a blister had begun to snarl at her heel. She could feel her top sticking to the small of her back, and the trickle of perspiration that ran between her breasts. She could see already that Lausanne was too elegant a place to be dishevelled in; the locals were uniformly cool and unflustered, so Hadley paused, collected herself, and did her best to appear the same.

At last she came upon the Les Ormes approach road. The accommodation office had said that the residence was built into the hillside, and that each room had a balcony. At the time, that had sounded romantic and picturesque. In front of her was a flat grey block that had none of the
Vieille Ville
beauty, nor the grandeur of the city centre; its façade was as welcoming as a prison. The name
Les Ormes
was etched on the wall in black letters and she stared at it. The main entrance didn’t present itself obviously and she went the wrong way at first, ending up by a bank of bins and a scrub of grass. She turned and walked back again. A side door banged and two dark-haired girls swung out, chattering in something that sounded like Spanish. The door slammed shut and locked again before Hadley could catch it with her foot.

‘
Excusez-moi
?’ she called after them.

‘
Si?
’ they turned to her.

‘This is Les Ormes, right? How do I get in?’

They grinned and pointed around the other side of the building. She fell into step with them.

‘You know, when I first saw it, I was sort of hoping it wasn’t,’ she said.

Hadley knew that she should probably have been trying to speak in French, for it was to be their common language for the year, but in the moment her scant knowledge deserted her. She wanted to explain that she had imagined something different, she didn’t know what exactly, just something more
Swiss.
But before she could work out how to say it they nodded in the direction of a side alley then left her, their torrent of talk barely faltering.

Trying not to feel deflated, Hadley walked around the corner and came upon the main entrance. There was a nondescript stretch of pebbled concrete, a set of bicycle racks, and, without a doubt, the most beautiful view that she had ever seen. She dropped her case and rushed to the wall. Leaning forward on the flats of her hands, she stared out over the city. The cathedral reached for the sky with five points, and a castle perched in the middle of the twisting streets, as perfect as a chess piece. Turn-of-the-century apartment buildings, majestic and comely and pouting with balconies, sat alongside pastel-painted low-rises. Beyond the tumbling rooftops lay the dazzling water of Lac Léman
with the French Alps concertinaing behind, spike after spike after spike, and almost close enough to touch. With her lips breaking into an incredulous smile, Hadley experienced a sensation more potent than wonder, or admiration, or the already forgotten worry that reality might tarnish the dream. She’d felt it on the train, again as she walked through the city, and now, with the whole of Lausanne at her feet and a hillside breeze catching her hair, she felt it more keenly than ever. There was an extraordinary sense of promise, pervading everything.

two

It is sometimes said that the first night you spend in a new place sets the tone for all that is to come. In the beginning, Hadley might not have wanted to believe such a thing, but as the evening rolled on it became a brighter, more hopeful prospect.

She was in an Irish pub set two streets back from the lakeside, in the company of an American, an Italian and another British girl. Mulligan’s was the kind of place that seemed filled with packs of strays, bound only by the loosest of ties, conference attendees and indifferent work colleagues from international companies, their camaraderie masquerading in quick rounds of drinks. Hadley and her companions sat at the rear, crowded around a table meant for two. They drank bottled beer and asked each other to repeat things above the roar of the juke box. She didn’t think any one of them was having a particularly good time but they were committed now. When Bruno had suggested a drink back in the kitchen of Les Ormes, they had all agreed, displaying the eagerness of people who were only recently thrown together, and were yet to unpick one another’s faults.

Chase, Bruno and Jenny all lived on her corridor at Les Ormes
.
Hadley had met them soon after she arrived, in the communal kitchen at the end of the hall.

She had just unpacked her bag in her room and her few belongings were now in place; her toothbrush stuck out of a bleary glass cup, her clothes were hanging in a brown wardrobe that smelt of forgotten things, her books were stacked on a folding table that ran beneath the window. She had glanced briskly in the mirror, run her fingers through her hair, then set off to brave the kitchen.

‘Hi,’ she said, pushing through the door. A girl sat at the table, propped on her elbows, her blonde hair pulled back in a soft ponytail. She looked English; it was there in the familiar set to her cheeks. She rubbed her nose with the back of her hand,
Hi
, she said,
I’m Jenny
, and then sneezed, a quickly stifled noise that sounded like a cork being pulled from a bottle. Opposite Jenny, a burly figure in a striped shirt and cream trousers was rocking back on a spindly chair. His hair was black and curly and his cheeks were dusky with stubble. He swung back and forth with what he perhaps hoped was nonchalance.
And I’m Bruno
, he said. Hadley smiled in acknowledgement then glanced past him to the balcony, where a second boy was slouching in the doorway. He was willowy, with pale hair falling across his forehead and a small, indignant mouth. One hand held a coffee cup, and the other a cigarette. He nodded at her briefly, before turning his back to send a sequence of perfect smoke rings out over the railing and beyond.

‘I just got here,’ Hadley said, to no one in particular but in the end alighting on Jenny.

‘Oh, great, you’re English too, that’s a relief,’ Jenny said, and smiled chummily.

‘And you?’ Hadley glanced across at Bruno, who was still rocking, the chair barely containing his bulk.

‘Guess!’

‘I’m not sure,’ she said, ‘Spain, maybe?’

He screwed up his face in mock disgust.
‘Italia!,’
he roared, pronouncing each syllable with great satisfaction, ‘but you wouldn’t believe it; my mother’s British, she’s from London. I went to school there for three years so my English is basically perfect. You know St Alexander’s, I suppose? Everyone always does.’

‘Not me,’ said Hadley, checking her desire to laugh. She considered whether to take a seat at the table with them, or to walk out on to the balcony, ostensibly to admire the view but really to strike up conversation with the slightly more interesting-looking boy and his smoke rings. Jenny bit her nails, Bruno swung on his chair.

‘Wow, that view!’ Hadley exclaimed, and went outside.

‘Another Brit?’ the boy said, glancing sideways at her.

‘How can you tell?’

‘Because I just heard you talking. There are so many of you here, I might as well have gone to Oxford.’

‘Oh, are there? I was hoping to get away from them myself. And you’re American?’ She resisted the temptation to add,
and why do you sound so cross?

‘New Jersey, through and through,’ he said.

He lit another cigarette and leant on the railing. His shoulders stuck out like wings through the back of his T-shirt. His arms were long and faintly freckled.

‘Do you like it here so far?’ Hadley tried.

‘I’m still deciding,’ he said.

Bruno had joined them on the balcony, and Jenny was behind him, her hands closing around a mug of tea.

‘You can go skiing about an hour from here,’ Jenny said, her voice expressing little enthusiasm for the idea.

‘Do you ski?’ Hadley asked, wondering if she needed to rearrange her quickly forming picture of her.

‘No,’ she said, ‘but people do.’

‘They certainly do,’ said the American boy.

‘What was your name again?’ Hadley asked him.

‘It’s Chase,’ he said.

‘I suppose this block’s full of lots of other students?’ She attempted to disguise the urgency of her question. So far, communal living wasn’t filling her with excitement.

‘Some are still arriving,’ said Bruno. ‘The room next to you, Kristina Hartmann, she’s not here yet.’

‘How do you know who she is?’ Hadley asked.

‘Haven’t you noticed? Our names are on all of our doors,’ said Jenny. ‘I think it’s creepy. Someone could come in off the street and find all the girls’ rooms.’

‘We’ll protect you,
bella
,’ said Bruno, ‘won’t we, Chase?’

‘Something like that,’ said Chase.

‘I think we should all go to Mulligan’s tonight,’ said Bruno. ‘Hadley, you want to come?’

‘How do you know my name?’ she said.

‘He saw your door,’ said Jenny.

‘But how did he know that was my room?’

‘Lucky guess,’ said Bruno, with a wink.

‘You look like a Hadley,’ said Chase.

‘Does she?’ said Jenny. ‘I wouldn’t have the first idea what a Hadley was supposed to look like.’

‘And what’s Mulligan’s?’ Hadley asked. ‘It doesn’t sound very Swiss.’

‘It’s not,’ said Jenny, ‘it’s brilliant.’

That first night Hadley thought they made a misshapen quartet. She learnt that Jenny had left a boyfriend behind in England, and was wondering whether to end things with him.
I have to be here for my course
, she said, in a flat and injured voice.
I never chose to come, so where does that leave me and Dave? Nowhere.
Chase, meanwhile, saw Lausanne as just a pin in a map, with lines shooting out in every direction. He hankered after searing passes in the Italian Alps, the sardine ports of southern France, the bell-shaped rooftops of Eastern Europe. Bruno’s aim seemed simpler. He was content to just be.
It’s the good life here
, he said,
la vie est belle, n’est-ce pas
? throwing his hands wide as he spoke. That night, Bruno shouldered his way to the bar time and time again, shrugging away their offers of money with gruff generosity. He had the thickset cheeks of a young aristocrat and on his little finger he wore a signet ring like a rubbed penny. It seemed to Hadley that he didn’t particularly evaluate any of them; he asked no questions nor even showed mild curiosity, as though it was enough that they were simply there, at his table.

As the others chattered away, Hadley was quiet that first night. It seemed inappropriate to proclaim this as the greatest adventure of her life, for the truth was, tucked in the back of the bar, with Bruno’s leg pushing a little too close to her own, Chase’s spiky stares and Jenny’s forlorn hunch, it didn’t particularly feel like it. Just before midnight, the others voted for a taxi back to Les Ormes. Hadley hesitated. That year in Switzerland, she had vowed to start doing things differently. She could feel the night breeze coming over the lake, and behind her were the city’s steep black streets, inviting discovery. She waved Jenny, Chase and Bruno off in their cab, explaining that she wanted to walk home, fanning away only the mildest of protests. The car whistled off and she breathed in the Lausanne night in deep draughts. She was far from home and no one really knew her; there was untold freedom in that.

Hadley walked towards the water. Across the lake,
en France
, the distant lights of Evian twinkled. Closer to shore, the waves slopped messily and invisible masts chinked and rattled. She stepped outside of herself, wanting to appreciate the moment with all of its picturesque qualities, but instead she felt slightly uneasy; it was the expanse of darkness, the absence of people, the strangeness of it all. She decided to return by daylight and explore then. She turned and walked back towards Mulligan’s, feeling just slightly defeated in her attempt as an adventurer. Through the smeared windows she could see chairs stacked on tables and a cluster of stragglers at the bar.

‘Excuse me.’

She started at the voice. She turned around.

‘I saw you with your friends inside. Are you okay, walking back on your own? It’s late.’

He was American, and he was a man. He was probably somewhere in his late thirties, but he seemed the kind to have looked like a man his whole life. He was burly chested, with big shoulders and a square and muscled look. Leather jacketed. A little hard-boiled. A lick of black hair falling forward. She took all of this in with one seemingly casual glance.

‘I’m fine,’ she said, ‘but thank you.’

She didn’t turn to go, not yet.

‘Lausanne seems like a pretty safe city, but you never know,’ he said.

He rubbed the side of his chin as though he had once had a beard. It seemed to Hadley a practised, somehow naked sort of gesture.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘I’ll look both ways when I cross the road. I won’t talk to strangers.’ She smiled and it was easy. ‘So, in that case, I guess I’d better go.’

He lit a cigarette and nodded, through a puff of smoke. She noticed his eyes then and they were softer than she had thought. A liquid blue.

‘Where are you from?’

‘England.’

‘I can tell that. Whereabouts?’

‘Somewhere in the middle.’

‘I spent a summer there once, years ago now. In Cambridge.’

‘Cambridge is beautiful,’ said Hadley.

‘Yes, very,’ he said, looking directly at her in a way that didn’t quite betray his thinking. ‘Now, tell me, what are you doing in an Irish bar on your first night? Not so very Swiss of you.’

‘How did you know it was my first night?’

‘Second, then. Third at the most. But I’d put money on the first. You’ve got that look about you.’

‘I didn’t choose it,’ she said, ignoring his last remark, ‘the people I was with did.’

‘You need to find some better people to show you around.’

‘Or,’ she said, ‘I’ll just enjoy discovering it by myself. Anyway, why were you in there, then? If it was so bad? Maybe it’s your first night too?’

‘Maybe,’ he smiled.

‘I should go,’ she said. ‘Bye.’

She began to walk away.

‘Take it easy.’

‘What’s that?’ She turned back to him.

‘I said “take it easy”.’

‘Okay, thanks. I will. You too.’

‘That’s very polite.’

‘Well, what do people usually say? I’ve never been told “take it easy” before.’

‘What, never?’

Hadley shrugged. ‘Not that I can remember. It’s not very British.’

‘Well, I’m honoured to induct you.’

‘We should be speaking French, really.’

‘
Au revoir, mademoiselle
,’ he said, his smile crinkling.

‘
Au revoir, monsieur
,’ she replied.

She walked away from him then, because it felt like the next thing to do. When she glanced behind her he was gone. Folded back into the dark city’s fabric.

In the early hours of the following morning, Hadley was startled into wakefulness. She lay for a moment, twisted in her bedclothes, listening. Her room was almost entirely dark, with just thin slits of light where the blinds didn’t meet. The noise came again. A rattling of a handle, the clacking of a key in a lock, and a soft but audible string of curses in a language she didn’t recognise. Hadley raised herself up on one elbow and listened. Perhaps it was Kristina Hartmann, taking the last unoccupied room on the corridor. She got out of bed and padded to her door.

Turning the handle, she poked her head out. Hadley’s hair was a sleep-fuddled knot, and she wore striped pyjamas that gave her a childish air. The girl in the corridor didn’t hear the opening of her neighbour’s door, and continued to fumble at her own. Hadley took in her four dark leather cases that were strewn across the hall, and her coat, a mackintosh like the ones she’d admired earlier, thrown down on the floor. The girl had golden hair that fell all the way to the middle of her back. An extravagantly patterned scarf was slipping from her shoulders. She ran an exasperated hand through her hair, whipping back a swathe of it, and Hadley noticed her nails, painted in black cherry, and the smudge of a fading love bite on her neck. The girl turned suddenly, and saw Hadley watching.

‘Oh, did I wake you?’

Hadley wondered how she knew to speak to her in English. Her voice had a vague American lilt, and she looked the part with her tall, athletic build, and bright looks, but there was another inflection that she couldn’t quite identify.

‘It’s okay. Can’t you get into your room?’ asked Hadley.

‘The bloody key they gave me won’t do anything,’ she said, rattling it again in the lock. ‘It’s useless. I guess I’ll have to wake the porter. But he’s probably awake already, wondering who’s making all this ridiculous noise. Like you.’

Hadley folded her arms across her chest, aware suddenly of her baggy trousers and ill-fitting top.

‘I’m sorry,’ the girl said. ‘I feel terrible. I just want to get in my bloody room, I’ve been travelling all night.’

The way she said
bloody
tickled Hadley. There was a whiff of the Home Counties about it. But despite her perfect language and accent, she was so far from English. Her cheekbones were high and slanted, giving her a powerful, feline look, while a mass of pale freckles dressed her down again and made her friendly. Everything about her seemed sophisticated: the linked gold chain at her neck, the shine of her smile, the perfume that Hadley caught the scent of even as she stood three feet from her. It was something smoky and daring.