The bed lunged and creaked as he climbed in. She listened to his breathing deepen. Then, without thinking, almost despite herself, she reached out and touched his shoulder. He shifted suddenly away from her.
‘What is it?’
There was anger in his voice. She could not answer.
‘I was almost asleep,’ he said. ‘You startled me.’ He became gentler, more persuasive. ‘You know that I have to be up early in the morning.’
‘Of course, Théo. I’m sorry.’ She turned away from him, lay on her side.
She felt him lift his head off the pillow and peer at her. She sensed his puzzlement, but knew it would not last. She closed her eyes and listened to her heart roll against her ribs. It was not long before the bed tilted and he sank back down into the sheets. Soon afterwards he was asleep.
She thought back to the summer when she met him. Though she was still only seventeen she had already been admired by many men, none of whom she cared for, not even remotely. Then, one afternoon, her father announced that Monsieur Théophile Valence, a former student of his, would be coming to their house for dinner.
When she saw him she could not look into his face. It was as if she knew that she would find what she had always wanted there, and was afraid suddenly. Her heart had vanished for a moment, completely vanished, like an animal falling into a trap, then it returned again, beating harder than before.
She remembered that she had stopped on the threshold to the drawing-room and watched the two men talking. It had been a hot day; evening sunlight gilded the arms of chairs, the raised piano lid, the crystal teardrops of the chandelier. Standing in the doorway, unobserved, it was his hands that she noticed first. They were not distinguished or refined at all. They did not taper, as men’s hands were supposed to. They were not as smooth as ivory. She could see the veins knotting just above his knuckles as he gestured; she noted the big, square palm. They were, well, they were labourer’s hands. And almost instantly the feeling took hold of her, as deep as if she was asleep and dreaming: the feeling that she wanted more than anything to surrender to his hands, to feel his hands descend and settle on her skin. Standing there she could, in fact, imagine this possession, and because she could imagine it, she knew that it would happen. It was the sweetest and most scandalous delight, to know this with such certainty before he even saw her.
At that moment her father noticed her, and he smiled and rose from his chair, saying, ‘Ah, and here, at last, is my daughter —’ And she had to pretend to be moving forwards, forwards into the room.
But what she had imagined did not happen. Nothing happened. She could not understand it.
At the Chantilly Derby that year, wearing a new dress (moon satin, daring for the afternoon), she had accepted compliments from no fewer than eleven members of the nobility, including a distant cousin of Napoleon III and a count from the Piedmont in Northern Italy, eleven pairs of lips had brushed the back of her mauve kid glove, but she could remember sitting in front of her triptych of mirrors after yet another desolate encounter with Théo and fingering her dark-blonde ringlets and thinking: What is it? What is wrong with me? For the truth was, he did not seem to see her. He just did not seem to see her at all. Autumn came, and she lay in bed like a stone, not even blinking.
In desperation she consulted her closest friend, Lucille, who was two years her senior and had more experience of the world.
‘Lucille?’ she said. ‘Am I ugly?’
Lucille stared at her, and then she began to laugh. She had a pretty laugh — like a bell, men often said — but that day it had grated.
‘It’s not a joke, Lucille.’
‘It has got to be.’
‘Just tell me the truth. I want to hear the truth.’
‘You’re beautiful, Suzanne. Everybody thinks so. I always wanted to look like you.’
Suzanne told Lucille about Théo.
‘Perhaps there is something wrong with him,’ Lucille suggested. ‘Perhaps,’ and she lowered her voice, ‘he doesn’t like women.’
Suzanne shook her head. ‘He was engaged once. My father told me.’
Lucille sighed.
When she left that afternoon she took Suzanne’s hand in both of hers. ‘Men can be slow sometimes,’ she said. ‘Men can be blind.’ She kissed Suzanne on the cheek. ‘He will come round, don’t you worry. He will come round in the end.’
And he did, of course. In the end.
She felt cold suddenly. She moved closer to Théo in the bed — gently, imperceptibly, so he would not wake — until she could feel his warmth against her belly and her thighs. It was no reflection on her that he did not make love to her more often. He was under pressure, that was all. He had so much to do.
She wedged a pillow between her knees and brought the sheet up to the soft hollow between her chin and her lower lip. I am married to the man I love, she thought, and let the thought repeat itself, over and over, until the sweet wine cut her moorings, and she slept.
Chapter 10
17 Calle Francesa, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico
30th April, 189–
My dear Monsieur Eiffel,
It is two weeks since we arrived in Santa Sofía, and I am pleased to report that things are at last beginning to run smoothly. During the past two days I have been supervising the final stages of unloading. All the longitudinal elements are now laid out on site in the usual manner, along with the majority of the end posts and tie bars, and I find myself marvelling once again at the intrinsic simplicity of the system 1 B2 4, 5 B4 8, etc. upon which all our endeavours are based. We have employed dry foundations, sinking to a depth of just half a metre; given the quality of the subsoil in El Pueblo and the nature of the shearing forces in this particular structure, there seemed no necessity to ensure against unequal settling. With the aid of Monsieur Castagnet, the timbering expert, we have fashioned a crude but satisfactory mast and a number of simple hoisting gins. Tomorrow we should be able to lift the first of the central arches into position.
I am aware that much of the above may sound pedantic, but it is a measure of our predicament. In a country as primitive as the one in which we find ourselves, nothing can be taken for granted; we must be grateful for small mercies. Though I have assembled a workforce of twenty-two men, they are, for the most part, Indians and have difficulty interpreting even the simplest of my directives. It is the clear and systematic methods on which our company prides itself, curiously enough, that seem to present an obstacle, since the ways of the native people are pervaded throughout by every conceivable illogicality and confusion. The most common word in their vocabulary is ’vara’ which, literally translated, means ‘nothing’. They come and stand before me, and when I ask them why they have come, they say ‘Vara.’ If I then ask them what they want, they reply again, ‘Vara.’ It is quite maddening. Yesterday I received three successive ‘Vara’s from one man before I was able to elicit from him that he wanted to know when to report for work on the following day! At this point we were plunged abruptly into a new quandary, one that stemmed from differing approaches to the concept of time. Most of the Indians can only count to six, some only to three. (No Indian can say how many fingers he has; his reply will always be, ‘Many.’) Since we could not communicate the idea of five o’clock in the morning we had, in the end, to settle for ‘early’ or, in the revised version, ‘much early’. You are probably far more acquainted than I am with these frustrations, Monsieur, and I realise that I will have to learn that most irksome of virtues, namely patience. If current progress is anything to go by, the project is unlikely to be completed before June.