The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [17]
‘What are you doing?’
Paul was at the door, staring at him in disbelief.
Gaddis snapped the diary shut and placed it on the desk.
‘Just trying to get close to her,’ he muttered. ‘Just trying to make sense of everything.’
‘In her diary?’
Sam stood up. ‘I don’t know why I did that.’ He guessed that Paul knew. ‘I just ended up in here. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.’
‘I don’t either.’
They looked at one another. Paul was so tired, so strung out, that he simply shook his head and stepped ahead of Sam, trying to reclaim his wife’s office as his own by rearranging the items on her desk. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to the house.’
When they got there, it was as if the incident had been forgotten, but it sat heavily with Sam, who felt the shame of an otherwise decent man who has inexplicably let himself down. Why had he allowed himself to behave in such a way? It was Paul, oddly, who broke the impasse between them, phoning Sam two days later and inviting him to dinner at the house. No sooner was he inside the door than Sam was apologizing for what had happened. Paul waved away the incident and invited him into the kitchen, where a homemade lasagne – prepared by a worried neighbour – was baking in the oven. He poured two glasses of red wine and sat at the table.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about your eulogy,’ he said. ‘One particular section.’
This made Gaddis uneasy. He had been honest about Charlotte’s shortcomings in his speech, her ruthlessness in the early years of her career, her habit of abandoning friends who did not live up to expectations. Paul had asked for a printed copy and might easily have taken offence.
‘Which section?’ he asked.
Gaddis saw that Paul was holding the eulogy in his hand. He began to read aloud:
‘In our lives, if we are lucky, we occasionally meet exceptional people. Sometimes, if we are even luckier, those people become our friends.’ Paul stopped and cleared his throat before continuing. ‘Charlotte was not just one of the most exceptional people that I have ever met, she was also my most treasured friend. I envied her and I admired her. I thought that she was reckless but I also thought that she was brave. Dostoyevsky wrote: “If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.” I cannot think of another person to whom this applies more than Charlotte Berg. And so death continues to take the best people first.’
Gaddis put his hand on Paul’s shoulder.
‘You were absolutely right about that. I just wanted to tell you that what you said has been a great support to me.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘And I thought about what you were doing in her office. I tried to imagine what Charlotte would have made of it.’ Gaddis began to respond but Paul interrupted him. ‘I think she would have done the same thing. Or, at least, I think she would have understood why you were there. You wanted to go into her office to see where she had been that morning, to get close to her, as you said at the time. You found yourself reminded of Edward Crane, you became distracted by the possibility of looking at her research. It was a long day. You were tired.’
‘I was snooping,’ Gaddis replied bluntly. He was touched that Paul had tried to find a way of forgiving him, but didn’t want to be let off the hook. ‘I was saying goodbye to the Cambridge book. I knew it was over and I was feeling sorry for myself.’
‘What do you mean you knew it was over? Why?’
The reply to the question seemed so obvious that Gaddis did not bother making it. Paul went to the oven and checked the lasagne. He seemed more at ease than he had been two days earlier; his privacy had been restored. He had the luxury of being alone with his grief. Turning, he said: ‘Why don’t you keep going? Why don’t you take a look at Charlotte’s research and try to work it up into a book?’
Gaddis could think of nothing to say. Paul saw his confused reaction and tried to convince him.
‘I