Elementals - A. S. Byatt [7]
After a long time, certainly a very long time, she heard a voice.
‘Excusez-moi, madame, est-ce que je peux vous aider?’ She did not move. The tears ran.
He knelt at her feet, in his blue linen coat, clumsy on one knee. His French accent was clumsy, too. He changed to English, the excellent English of the Scandinavian North.
‘Please forgive me, I think you need help.’
‘No.’ Her voice came from far away. She was not even sure she had spoken.
‘Maybe I can help you to your room? Bring you a drink, perhaps. I cannot watch – I cannot watch – I should like to help.’
‘You are kind,’ she said, and swayed. His words were kind, but his voice was a harsh voice, a cold voice.
‘You have a great grief,’ he said, still harshly. She heard it harshly.
‘It doesn’t matter. I must. I should.’
He put a hand under her elbow and helped her to stand.
‘I know your room,’ he said. ‘Come. We will go there, and then I will send for a drink. What would you like? Tea? Coffee? Something stronger, for the shock? Cognac, perhaps?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come.’
He supported her to the lift. He called it. It was a gold-barred lift, an old, creaking, handsome lift, like a bird-cage. He managed the doors, he held her elbow, he led her to her room, he supported her. He sat her in her armchair, with its rosy chintz frill, and looked into her swollen eyes. His face swayed before her, a white face, with ledged blond brows, a large ugly nose, blue, blue eyes in deep hollows above jutting cheekbones, a wide, thin mouth with a white-blond moustache.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Let me call for a drink. I think cognac would be best.’
She inclined her head. He used her phone, he called room service. He said:
‘You have a great grief, I see.’
‘My – someone – is dead.’
‘Ah. I am sorry.’
She could think of no answer. She put her head back and closed her eyes. She could feel him standing at a respectful distance, watching her until the waiter knocked. He opened the door, and left with the waiter. She gulped the cognac, shuddering, and went to bed.
When she passed him at breakfast the next day, she nodded silently, acknowledging him. They did not speak, and she thought she was pleased. Over dinner that night, they smiled coolly again, from opposite ends of the terrace, inexpressive northerners. She was surprised therefore, at the end of the meal, to find him bending over her table. He wondered, he said, if she would take a digestif with him, in the bar. He did not mean to take up much of her time. She thought of saying no. There was an awkwardness in his acknowledgement that she might not want to speak to him. She said yes, because she owed him something for his kindness, and because there was no warmth, no pressure, in his invitation. The Bar Hemingway is a glass box, which juts from the terrace into the garden. It is full of warm, deep yellow light. On the walls are photographs of the matadors who have slept in the hotel, who have put on their embroidered waistcoats, their sculpted breeches, their long sashes, in its shuttered rooms, and gone out to dance their absurd deathly dance with cloak and sword.
They sat, side by side, looking out at the dancing blue cube of water in the dark garden. He ordered eau-de-vie Mirabelle, with ice, and she ordered the same, indifferent. He said:
‘My name is Nils Isaksen. I am from Norway.’
‘My name is Patricia Nimmo. I am English.’
The drinks arrived, sweet, white, glistening liquid over shattered fragments of ice. The taste was fire and air, a touch of heat, an after-space of emptiness. And the mere ghost of a fruit. She would have liked to say something banal, to keep communication to a safe minimum, and could think of nothing at all.
‘I am here to write a book. I am an ethnologist. I am studying the relations between certain Norse beliefs and customs, and those in the South.’
It was a prepared little speech. He raised his glass to her. She said:
‘I am on holiday.’
‘I have never been able to spend an extended time in the South. It was always my dream. I, too, have lost someone, Mrs Nimmo.