The Road Between Us (40 page)

François waves the questions away with his stick. ‘I told you, we served together. The invasion of southern France. How is he?’

‘He’s in a nursing home.’

‘Well, tell him Lehague sends his regards.’ He checks his watch. ‘Now, I must go. I have a tour waiting.’

‘Wait. Tell me about my grandfather. Did he help liberate this camp, too?’

‘It was his idea. He never spoke about what happened?’

‘Not to me.’

‘Then I am afraid I cannot speak of it either. It is his wish. What about your grandmother? Did she tell you?’

‘I never knew her. She died when my father was one.’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. She can’t have been very old.’

‘Lung cancer.’

François shakes his head sadly. ‘Ah yes, she had a fondness for cigars that one. It makes me sad that we lost touch after the war, after all we had been through together.’

‘I’m confused. You knew my grandmother, too?’

François studies the ground, nods to himself. ‘I am sorry, Hannah, I’m a foolish old man who talks too much. I can’t say any more.’ With this he turns and gives a wave of his stick before disappearing back into the ticket office.

Feeling as if she is about to faint, Hannah sits down on a step and puts her head between her legs. A couple of minutes later the camp no longer seems blotchy before her eyes and she makes her way back towards her bike, lost in contemplation.

Back at the château she pours herself a cognac to steady her nerves and goes to find her father to tell him about her strange encounter with François. But when she finds him writing contentedly in the Doric temple she hesitates.

‘How was your bike ride?’ he says, looking up and smiling.

‘Fine.’

‘Did you go far?’

‘Not really. It was too hot. Get much writing done?’

‘A lot actually. There’s something about this place. I just feel …’ He trails off. ‘I like it here. Do you?’

Hannah purses her lips.

Over dinner that night – a salad niçoise – they drink two bottles of wine followed by armagnac. Edward wonders why his daughter is drinking more than usual, and why she seems so quiet, but he doesn’t say anything, assuming this is how she is when she is feeling mellow. Once they have washed up, he suggests a walk in the garden to clear their heads.

As they stroll in step, fireflies signal their path, and Edward trails his hand in the sticky, cool fuchsias, savouring their texture against his skin. Away from the floodlights around the house, his eyes try to adjust to the steaming dusk but are tricked by the phosphenes, the fleeting mirages of fading light. And then come the electric flicker of bats and a clatter of wings as half a dozen wood pigeons rise from a seedbed and melt into the trees. A hidden sprinkler comes on and they have to hurry forward out of its range. Hannah lights up a cigarette and as she smokes it they fall into step again.

The garden seems to have expanded, offering up new paths to explore. Though neither speaks, Edward senses that his daughter is enjoying the feeling of being lost, the blotchy, hallucinatory sights of nightfall. He squeezes her hand. They cross the river not by the stone bridge but the smaller wooden one. They then find themselves circling back by a row of marble nymphs, eerie sentries that appear to be wavering in the light of a three-quarter moon. The churring of a nightjar can be heard now, a watery staccato that seems to exist only in their imaginations.

When they reach the hump of the Roman bridge, Hannah flicks away her cigarette. As it makes a hiss, Edward pulls her back towards him, looping his arms around her neck. When her hands meet around the small of his back in answer to this, he realizes how long it has been since he felt this aware of another person’s body, of another person’s texture and heat and substance. With the darkness listening as it closes in around them, he begins shifting his weight from one foot to the other, swaying in time to the unheard music of the garden. She follows his lead.

Later, when they say goodnight and head to their bedrooms, Edward takes his notebook from the drawer in the bedside table and re-reads what he has written that day. Feeling drowsy after a few pages, he switches the light off and rolls over, only to be awoken, he knows not when, by a turn of the door handle and a creak of the floorboard. There is a movement in the shadows then
Hannah is lying on the bed the wrong way round, her feet level with his head.

‘Are you awake?’ she whispers into the darkness.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you mind if I sleep in here? I was feeling frightened.’

‘By what?’

Hannah hesitates before answering. ‘Had a bad dream.’

‘Sure.’ Edward turns on his side, props his head up on his hand and feels his daughter’s proximity so acutely it is as if she is occupying every molecule in the room. How easy it would be to gather you in my arms, he thinks, for me to hold you.

‘Did Grandpa ever tell you about what he did in the war?’

‘Not in any detail. Wish he had. I used to think about him sometimes in the cave, wondering if he was still alive. Then I would start to wonder if I was still alive. Because that’s all death is, isn’t it? Darkness. Silence. Nothingness. What I was experiencing every day.’

‘Do you want me to put the light on?’

‘No, it’s all right.’ In the semi-darkness he can make out her profile at the end of the bed, see the rise and fall of her chest. ‘Weeks would go by without a noise, then I would realize a sound had crept up on me and I wouldn’t be able to place it. Footsteps? A distant motorbike? A helicopter? Then it was gone.’

In the bedroom now there seems to be white noise buzzing around the edge of the silence. The air around them has become so dense he can barely breathe. He wants to reach down the bed and touch his daughter’s hair.

‘Night-time is when I miss Mummy the most.’ Hannah puts her arms above her head and stares up at the canopy. ‘I never used to be afraid of the dark but then … I still have dreams about her, you know.’

Edward sighs. ‘So do I. In the cave I wore my memories of her down, slicing them so thinly they were virtually transparent. I had replayed them so often in my mind that I no longer knew whether they were based on real events, or whether I had imagined them and given them solidity through repetition.’

‘What about me? Did you remember me?’

‘Of course.’ Edward extends his arm to touch her feet, but hesitates. ‘I remembered the way you used to come into our bed when you were frightened. I would go and sleep in the spare room, leaving you with Mummy.’

Hannah now turns on her side to face him and props herself up on one elbow, mirroring his position. ‘So I was afraid of the dark even then?’

‘We used to have to leave a night light on for you.’

‘I’d forgotten that. Do you remember reading me bednight stories?’

‘I do, yes … Bednight stories.’

There is a thickening of the darkness now. They lie back in it mutely. Edward can feel his heart thumping in the silence, his whole body rocking to its tempo. He feels acutely alive. Tensed.

‘Dad?’

‘Mm?’ He tries to disguise the shallowness of his breathing.

‘I feel safe here with you.’

‘And I with you … Night.’

‘Night.’

There is another long silence. Edward rolls over and takes deeper and slower breaths, to make Hannah think he has fallen asleep.

His stillness gives him away.

‘Dad?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I can’t sleep.’

He props his head up again.

‘I know Mummy’s dead,’ she says. ‘But I don’t, like, feel it in my blood.’

‘I know what you mean. Perhaps she lives on in your dreams, and mine.’

‘And our memories.’

‘Yes. And in our memories. And she lives on in you, Han. In your mouth, and your eyes, and your hair.’ Edward grinds his teeth. ‘You’re very like her, you know.’

‘Really?’ She gives a hollow laugh. ‘No one’s ever pointed that out before.’

Edward smiles; he is finding it easier to talk to his daughter in the gloom than in the daylight. ‘Obviously you look like her, but I mean in terms of personality.’

‘In what way?’

‘She was a free spirit.’

‘Mummy was? Really?’

‘I guess you never saw that side of her while I was away. She could be very funny. Reduce a whole room to weeping laughter. At restaurants she would do daft things like slipping a piece of cheese in someone’s handbag, knowing they wouldn’t find it until later. When the bill came once she wrote a rude message on the signature strip of someone’s credit card.’

‘What was the message?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘And she would always sing when she had had a few drinks. Get others to sing, too. Once, when we were on holiday in Bali, she persuaded all the diners in a restaurant to start dancing, and then jump into the pool fully clothed. It was one of those restaurants on stilts and the pool was below it. Off to one side. It was unbelievable. I can still hear her laughter.’ He sighs again. ‘When I was away, what was she like?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How did she seem?’

Hannah thinks for a moment. ‘Uptight. I used to get angry with her because all she could talk about was you. In some ways I felt I had lost her even before she died. She had her bad days … You know, on the day Uncle Niall told her that you had to be declared dead she went and burned all your clothes in the garden. Didn’t ask me if I wanted to keep any of them … Then she came in and blew out the candle on the hall table. She had kept one burning almost continuously for ten years. After that … Is there anything you want to ask me, Dad?’

Edward nods.

‘Do I think she killed herself?’

Edward nods again.

‘Yes.’

Pause.

‘Thank you for being honest.’

‘She’d tried to do it before,’ Hannah says. ‘Her wrists. I stayed with Grandpa while she was in hospital.’

Edward reaches across the bed now and squeezes her foot. ‘She was a good person.’

‘I know.’

‘Poor Han. My poor baby. Larkin was right; they fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.’

‘I’m not fucked up.’

‘You’re not, are you?’ Edward laughs affectionately. ‘I don’t know how you managed it, but you’re not.’

‘You don’t have to feel guilty about this, you know, about being with me. It’s not a betrayal.’

‘What?’ Edward sounds guilty. He is grateful for the darkness again. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘If you enjoy my company like you used to enjoy hers, that’s OK.’

He leans over and kisses her foot. ‘I’m glad we’ve had this conversation.’

‘So am I.’

‘I miss her, Han, that’s all. I miss her so much.’

‘You don’t have to.’ Hannah sits up, takes his hand and places it over her heart. ‘She’s here in this bed, under these ribs.’

Edward jerks his hand back, as if removing it from a flame. ‘Night,’ he says, rolling over again.

‘Night.’

Half an hour later, she is asleep. Feeling relieved, Edward slips out of his side of the bed and goes round to hers. In the moonlight her skin looks like marble and, for one frozen moment, he wonders if she is dead. No, her mouth is closed and she is breathing silently through her nose, like her mother. Feeling suddenly lonely, he
wonders if she is feigning sleep as he had tried to do. No, again. He studies her eyelids. They are trembling to the turns of an unknown dream. Once or twice her breathing turns into a mild snore.

There is a scent of evening jasmine and lilies drifting in from the garden, through the open window. The breeze is welcome after the stillness of the previous night and he knows he will now forever associate the fragrance it carries with Hannah. It is the smell of the natural world. Of summer. Of love. The sheets seem to be undulating slowly around her, like waves in slow motion.

IV

THE LUNCH OVER, THEY OPEN A SECOND BOTTLE OF WINE, REFILL
their glasses and stand side by side at the sink, one washing, one drying. ‘Quite tart,’ Hannah says, taking a sip. ‘But it should broaden out.’

‘What should?’

‘The wine. I’m getting gooseberries.’ She is grinning. ‘Possibly a hint of melon. What are you getting?’

Edward swirls his glass and holds it to his nose before taking a sip. ‘Pissed.’

‘A joke! Oh my God, my old man has cracked a joke!’

She flicks him with her tea-towel, then wanders outside with a sarong draped around her neck, a bottle of suncream in one hand, a Zadie Smith paperback in the other. Her sunglasses are pushed up to rest on her hairline.

‘See you out there,’ she says over her shoulder, turning from the waist in one supple movement. The hand holding the book is resting on her hip. For a minute after she has gone Edward continues staring at where she has been. His mouth has gone dry.

A quarter of an hour later, he steps out of a cooling shower, towels his still-tingling skin, and has a shave. The hissing sound made by the foam as he squirts it into his palm, the slap as he pats it on his jaw and the bristly scrape as he takes it off again induce in him a sense of satisfaction, similar to that he felt when chopping
logs. He dabs his face with aftershave and savours its cold contracting bite as he stands sideways on to the bathroom mirror, a towel around his neck.

Wearing a navy polo shirt, cream chinos and flip-flops, he heads back down to the kitchen, picks up an orange and begins peeling it. He is still hungry. When he reaches the terrace he wanders over to the easel to have a look at the portrait Hannah is painting of him. It is in oil and is still wet, but he cannot make out its colours.

As he maunders out into the garden, he tears off a segment of orange and places it on his tongue. The juice is sharp and fragrant and, feeling suddenly delirious with hunger, he devours the rest of it quickly before tossing the peel into a bush. With the return of his sense of taste, he realizes he is feeling something he hasn’t felt for years, a thing so long buried in his memory he cannot place it at first. It’s not happiness quite, it is more that he is not unhappy, a double negative that equals a positive.

These past couple of days he has felt himself taking tentative steps across an ice sheet, listening to the creaks, and expecting it to give at any moment. Now that it suddenly has, he is finding he is in over his head, not in cold water but warm. And the warmth is carrying through to his bones, melting a core that has been frozen for a decade.