said brokenly.
‘You’d have to kill him by yourself,’ said Susannah. ‘Which might be quite difficult.’
‘He’s probably not even there,’ said Nicola wanly. ‘He’s probably gone out.’
‘I hope he gets run over then,’ said Susannah.
Nicola imagined the scene, Jonathan lying in the street, as still as death, covered in blood, and began to weep again in earnest.
‘No,’ she cried, ‘don’t say that! I don’t want him to die!’
‘All right then,’ said Susannah. ‘All right, all right. We’ll let him live. But if he’s going to live, he’s going to have to shape up, he truly is.’
And she began to wonder just how Jonathan might really have been living and thinking, and feeling, for the relationship to have come to this, and she thought it might be a good idea to do something about lunch, because then Nicola might be able to talk about everything which had happened, and she might gain some true perception of this extraordinary and terrible situation.
‘It may be I who has to shape up,’ said Nicola miserably.
‘That remains to be seen,’ said Susannah. ‘The first thing to do is to have some tea and something to eat. Just a tiny snackette. Come on.’
And she took Nicola’s hand and they went into the kitchen.
43
So, she’s gone, thought Jonathan, she has actually gone. It’s all over; she’s gone. And the flat itself seemed, from the moment that the front door had closed behind her, to have stopped breathing, to have been stilled into a silence so vacant that he was almost afraid to move, and still stood on the spot where he’d been standing, just inside the sitting-room doorway, when she’d made her exit, suitcase in hand.
But I should at least have helped her downstairs with her things, he thought. There had been something so disturbing about the sight of her, carrying that large cardboard box down the stairs, hardly able to see over the top of it. She could have missed her footing. She could have fallen down the stairs. She might have broken her neck. And then the suitcase. It must have been heavy. It’s not as if she’s an Amazon. That old 1950s pigskin suitcase, from her mother’s old honeymoon luggage, with the watered silk lining beginning to fray: he remembered it, because they’d taken it on holiday to France last year, and it had earned them respect all over the Vaucluse. Useless for air travel, but just the thing on the road, in France. The French know how to read the signs at forty paces, no, make that metres. One of the very best things about being English was living next door to the French, who among all their other talents knew how to place a piece of luggage at quarante mètres : you could roll up at a decent hotel dirty and tired and crumpled at the end of a long day, and they’d give you one of their looks, but as soon as they saw that suitcase it was chouette , it was oui monsieur je vous en prie madame pas de problème. Voilà . He could remember exactly how heavy that suitcase was, taking it out of the car, glad to hand it over to someone else to carry upstairs to their room, and now she’d taken it all the way down two flights of stairs by herself: I can manage it easily, she said. Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t offered. It wasn’t his fault if he hadn’t helped her. That he should have this sense of having left undone something he ought to have done was totally unreasonable.
I suppose it’s time I had something to eat, he thought, and then I can get on with some work: because he’d brought some work home for the weekend. This Lloyd’s thing will go on and on and on , he thought: one of the biggest fuck-ups in the history of the world. It had come along at exactly the right moment for Jonathan: he was like an actor who has just been offered his first Hamlet . I’ll just get something to eat. He was quite hungry now he came to think of it.
But he didn’t go into the kitchen: instead he sat down for a moment on the sofa and looked at
‘You’d have to kill him by yourself,’ said Susannah. ‘Which might be quite difficult.’
‘He’s probably not even there,’ said Nicola wanly. ‘He’s probably gone out.’
‘I hope he gets run over then,’ said Susannah.
Nicola imagined the scene, Jonathan lying in the street, as still as death, covered in blood, and began to weep again in earnest.
‘No,’ she cried, ‘don’t say that! I don’t want him to die!’
‘All right then,’ said Susannah. ‘All right, all right. We’ll let him live. But if he’s going to live, he’s going to have to shape up, he truly is.’
And she began to wonder just how Jonathan might really have been living and thinking, and feeling, for the relationship to have come to this, and she thought it might be a good idea to do something about lunch, because then Nicola might be able to talk about everything which had happened, and she might gain some true perception of this extraordinary and terrible situation.
‘It may be I who has to shape up,’ said Nicola miserably.
‘That remains to be seen,’ said Susannah. ‘The first thing to do is to have some tea and something to eat. Just a tiny snackette. Come on.’
And she took Nicola’s hand and they went into the kitchen.
43
So, she’s gone, thought Jonathan, she has actually gone. It’s all over; she’s gone. And the flat itself seemed, from the moment that the front door had closed behind her, to have stopped breathing, to have been stilled into a silence so vacant that he was almost afraid to move, and still stood on the spot where he’d been standing, just inside the sitting-room doorway, when she’d made her exit, suitcase in hand.
But I should at least have helped her downstairs with her things, he thought. There had been something so disturbing about the sight of her, carrying that large cardboard box down the stairs, hardly able to see over the top of it. She could have missed her footing. She could have fallen down the stairs. She might have broken her neck. And then the suitcase. It must have been heavy. It’s not as if she’s an Amazon. That old 1950s pigskin suitcase, from her mother’s old honeymoon luggage, with the watered silk lining beginning to fray: he remembered it, because they’d taken it on holiday to France last year, and it had earned them respect all over the Vaucluse. Useless for air travel, but just the thing on the road, in France. The French know how to read the signs at forty paces, no, make that metres. One of the very best things about being English was living next door to the French, who among all their other talents knew how to place a piece of luggage at quarante mètres : you could roll up at a decent hotel dirty and tired and crumpled at the end of a long day, and they’d give you one of their looks, but as soon as they saw that suitcase it was chouette , it was oui monsieur je vous en prie madame pas de problème. Voilà . He could remember exactly how heavy that suitcase was, taking it out of the car, glad to hand it over to someone else to carry upstairs to their room, and now she’d taken it all the way down two flights of stairs by herself: I can manage it easily, she said. Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t offered. It wasn’t his fault if he hadn’t helped her. That he should have this sense of having left undone something he ought to have done was totally unreasonable.
I suppose it’s time I had something to eat, he thought, and then I can get on with some work: because he’d brought some work home for the weekend. This Lloyd’s thing will go on and on and on , he thought: one of the biggest fuck-ups in the history of the world. It had come along at exactly the right moment for Jonathan: he was like an actor who has just been offered his first Hamlet . I’ll just get something to eat. He was quite hungry now he came to think of it.
But he didn’t go into the kitchen: instead he sat down for a moment on the sofa and looked at
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