Dancing in the Dark (23 page)

‘I think I am too,' I gasp, as I roll over on to my back, and he groans above me.

Later, curled in his arms, I say, ‘I have to go back to England.'

‘No.'

‘I'm going to follow your advice and really try to find out who my father is. But to do that, I need to go back to the beginning, to where it all started, to the point at which I must have been conceived. I already called the airline. There's a flight to Gatwick I can get a seat on, one o'clock this afternoon.'

‘Don't leave me, Theodora.'

‘I don't want to. But I have to sort myself out.'

I have to plug the cracks which have appeared in my life before I can grow. I have to decide whether the new-found expansion of my heart is something more than a simplistic physical harmony.

I
make a phone call. ‘Are you at home tomorrow?' I ask, when Hugo answers.

‘Come for tea,' he says. ‘That way, depending on how long it takes you to pick my brains, I may be granted the privilege of taking you out for dinner.'

‘How did you know that's what I was going to do?'

‘I've always expected that, if you hadn't done so before, by the time you were thirty you would insist on knowing who your father was. And besides, I've been speaking to your mother.'

From that first meeting at the airport, my love for Hugo has been absolute and uncomplicated. When I appear at his flat the following afternoon, he leads me into his comfortable bachelor sitting room, full of books and pictures and pieces of sculpture. Hugo collects art deco bronzes: nymphs leaning into an invisible wind with their skirts blowing behind them, women bent lithely backwards with a crystal ball balanced on the palm of one heaven-flung arm, odalisques with alabaster vases on their shoulders, tippy-toed girls with bronze scarves streaming from their outstretched fingers. In my opinion, all of them are hideous.

A bottle of expensive red wine stands on a copper tray incised with a swirly art deco
design
,
alongside two glasses. A photograph album – mock red leather with a tasselled silk cord to hold the pages of black card together – sits on the arm of the chair I usually occupy when I visit. Hugo pours us each a glass of wine and hands one to me. He smiles faintly and folds himself into his own chair.

‘
Allons
. . .' he says. ‘I know your mother isn't being helpful because she told me so.' He hands me a dish of salted almonds.

Hugo, impeccable, civilized, alone. Hugo meeting a little girl off an aeroplane, taking her to fancy restaurants, squiring her around London, watching over her through the years. A question which has been hovering on my tongue for as long as I can remember suddenly materializes. ‘Why haven't you ever married?'

‘Because the person I fell in love with, years and years ago, has always been in love with someone else.'

‘That's so sad.'

‘Not really, Theo. Believe it or not, there are compensations.'

‘Such as?'

‘I still have a dream. And there's even the faint possibility that it might one day come true.'

I should have seen it before. ‘It's my mother, isn't it?'

He leans his head against the back of his armchair and drops his elegant eyelids. ‘Yes.'

‘And the person she's always loved was – is – my father?'

‘Unfortunately, yes.'

‘My unknown, undiscoverable father.'

‘The very same.'

‘Oh, Hugo,' I say, wrenched. ‘I wish he was you.'

‘So do I.'

‘Is that why you live in England?'

‘Partly. It's a more civilized place than America. And, of course –' he smiles – ‘it's nearer to my heart's desire, even though she's not here very often.'

I reach across the gap between us and put my hand on his. ‘Oh, Hugo. Darling Hugo.' He means so much to me. He matters far more than any father I might discover. Why can't that be enough?

He strokes the navy cashmere sweater draped over his shoulders. ‘Some people might look at me and think what a waste of a life mine has been, but they'd be wrong,' he says. ‘I'm a born dilettante. Never settled down to anything much. Never really wanted to. I pretended to practise law for a while, but not very seriously, because I hated it – I only went to Harvard Law School to please my parents. I grew coffee in Brazil for eighteen hellish months. Toyed with the idea of becoming an architect or an art dealer. But once I came into my inheritances and trust funds, I just spent my time enjoying myself.'

‘So fuck 'em.'

‘Precisely. And it's not your mother's fault that I fell in love with her. Nor hers that she didn't love me. We're both people with a fixation we can't shake off.'

‘What a pity that you couldn't have been each other's fixation.'

‘Isn't that the truth? And of course I should have gotten over her years ago, gone on to other things, other women. But she . . . she enraptured me from the moment I first saw her, running across the rough grass in her yellow swimsuit and diving into the lake. She looked like a streak of sunshine. I've never forgotten it. Nor have I ever found anyone else who could give me even a fraction of the pleasure that she does on the rare occasions that we meet.'

‘Maybe that's a definition of happiness.'

‘Very possibly.'

‘OK, Hugo. Since you're not my father, do you know who is?'

‘No.'

‘Do you know anything about him?'

‘Not a thing.'

‘Do you think he's English?'

‘I have absolutely no—'

‘Do you think –' I lean forward with my hands between my knees – ‘he's alive?'

He doesn't answer.

‘The way my mother's behaving, I'm pretty sure he is,' I say.

He looks relieved. ‘So am I. Though again, I'm guessing.'

‘I always believed everything she told me about him.' I take a sip of wine. ‘When she told me he'd died before I was born, it never crossed my mind that she was lying.'

‘She can be very convincing.'

‘Maybe it's stupid of me to want to find out. I mean, in the end, what does it matter who a person's father is?'

‘It matters very much indeed.' He, too, leans forward. Carefully he puts his glass down on the table beside his chair. ‘Your adorable mother has many faults,' he says. ‘The chief one being that she's never fallen in love with me. Among the lesser ones, is a strong tendency to bully people. Or to be so absolutely certain of her opinions that it amounts to the same thing. So before we go any further with this discussion, I'd like to register my disapproval of the way she's always insisted that you call her Luna. It's ridiculous. She's your mother, and in any case, her name is Lucia. Nor did I ever approve of her dragging you all over the world. Furthermore, I believe you have an absolute right to know the identity of your other parent. I've told her that many times.'

‘And?'

‘She disagrees.' He shrugs. ‘You should stand up to her, Theo.'

‘I tried it, last time I saw her, and got precisely nowhere. What I can't understand is what she's trying to hide.' I pick up the photograph album. ‘Why is this here?'

‘I thought you might find it informative in some way, though I've no idea how.'

I open the album and there, unmistakably, is my mother, aged maybe sixteen or seventeen, standing with a group of other young people at the edge of water. She holds her fists clasped under her chin, as though she is cold. I turn the pages and see her again and again, by the lake, or against a tree, caught in some private moment. She dances alone, arms raised, her body sways as though she moves to inner melodies, and despite the years which separate
then
from
now
, I can almost hear the same music as she does, the pine needles under my feet, the breeze off the lake on my bare legs.

The poses she strikes reminds me of something. Looking up, and then around the room, I understand for the first time that each of Hugo's dancing girls and zephyr-kissed nymphs are versions of my mother.

I turn a page – and freeze. ‘Who's this?' I say carefully, turning the album round so Hugo can see the black-clad figure standing motionless in the shadows of a tree, watching as the girl who is my mother climbs out of the water. He wishes her ill. Whoever he is, and I can only see him from the back, I am suddenly certain he would like her dead. And suddenly Luna's paranoia no longer seems like madness. Is it this man from whom she fled for all those years? Was this what she was trying to escape? And if so, why?

Hugo looks, shrugs. ‘No idea. Some friend of my parents, I should imagine.'

‘Why was he there?'

‘People were always drifting in and out. My parents kept a hospitable house, and of course the Americans love France, so our place became a fixture on the summer circuit among our friends.'

‘He looks kind of sinister.'

Hugo considers the photograph. ‘I can't see him very clearly but he seems more lecherous than sinister, if you ask me.'

‘I know why you've come,' Terry says. She's sitting in the long conservatory which runs across the back of her house. There's a pitcher of iced tea on the glass-topped table in front of her, a pile of old magazines from which she is cutting out recipes. Terry collects recipes but seldom uses any of them. I think she gains a certain security from knowing that if she absolutely had to, she would immediately be able to whip up a flourless chocolate-and-almond cake or produce
teriyaki
or
spanokopita
without even blinking.

‘That's very clairvoyant of you,' I say.

She stares at me over the rimless magnifiers she's recently taken to using. ‘Your mother telephoned. She said you'd be coming round, asking questions.'

‘Yes, well . . .'

‘She told me not to tell you anything. She said I had to stop you trying to find out about your father.'

‘What did you say?'

‘Basically that though I knew absolutely nothing, I still couldn't see any reason why you shouldn't be told.' She pours me a glass of iced tea. ‘Why has it suddenly come up?'

I describe Liz Crawfurd's visit, the thunderbolt James Bellamy had delivered, Luna's responses to my questions about my father. I don't tell her that I feel as if I'm cracking up. I don't tell her about Fergus.

When I'm through, she says, ‘Knowing who he is won't change anything, sweetie. The past's over and done with.'

‘It may be over, but it's never done with, and the thing is, Terry, until recently, I thought I'd come to terms with it all. But I haven't. And now, until I've sorted it out, I don't see how I can get on with the future. Nor with anything else.' Ice cubes chunk against the side of my glass. I can smell the cool freshness of mint sprigs and lemon slices. ‘Why did she lie to me? Who is he, if he's not the man in my painting?'

‘She's kept it secret all these years – does it really matter any more?'

‘
Yes!
Now more than ever
.
' I rest my head in my hands. ‘I believed everything she ever told me, and now I know it's all lies, all I can wonder is what else is completely untrue.'

Terry's face crumples with sympathy. ‘It can't have been easy, her vanishing like that.'

‘Where do you think she was?'

‘We were all as mystified by her absence as you were.'

‘Did it have anything to do with my father?'

‘Who knows? Max and I often discussed it. Hugo, too. Was she dead? Had she been thrown into jail somewhere on a drugs charge? Had she been abducted? We had no idea.'

‘What about her getting pregnant?'

Terry spreads her hands. ‘I knew nothing whatsoever about it until you were about three and she got in touch with me again. And though I've asked and asked, she's absolutely refused to say who your father was.'

‘What was this place she went to in the States?'

‘A Catholic girls' college – St Margaret's, in Maybury, Vermont. Her mother was there as a girl.'

‘So that at least is true,' I say bitterly.

‘Don't be like that, Theo. You can't stay angry at her for ever. You mustn't go on carrying this kind of stone in your heart.'

It's not so much a stone as a chrysalis desperate to break out and spread its wings. ‘I don't want to be angry,' I say dejectedly. ‘I don't even
feel
angry, though I obviously must be. Recently I've been yelling at people, going way over the top about nothing at all, and I hate being so out of control.' My hands are trembling in my lap. ‘I want to let go, and I can't. Ever since that man told me the painting wasn't of my father, nothing else seems to matter, even my business or my friends.'

‘Darling Theo . . .'

‘If you look at the timing, it almost has to be someone she met over there, doesn't it?' I ask.

As Terry nods, I stand up, too restless to remain seated. ‘I can understand why she kept his identity secret back then, but what's the point now, all these years later? I don't even know what nationality he is. I mean, I always assumed he was English, because of the painting, but he could be anything. American, most likely.'

‘Not
any
thing.'

‘I still don't understand why she kept me.'

‘Ever thought that maybe she
wanted
you? She told me once that you were all she had left of your father. All she'd ever have.'

Terry gets up too and stands behind me. Her hands are strong as she kneads my shoulders. ‘Don't blame your mother too much. If it's any consolation, I don't think she's been happy for years. She wants to be. She
tries
to be. Just can't make it, somehow.' Her fingers work on the tight muscles at the top of my spine. ‘Let's face it, sweetie, God moves in a bloody mysterious way.'