‘Did you know?’ Castagnet said. ‘He has a submarine.’
Madame de Romblay’s eyelids drooped with pleasure. She had not expected support from such a reputable quarter.
‘I’ve never seen it,’ Morlaix said.
‘He keeps it in Señor Ramon’s boathouse,’ Castagnet said.
Pineau chuckled sardonically. ‘For a small fee, I imagine, knowing Ramón.’
Monsieur de Romblay wanted to know how Montoya had come by it.
‘He bought it from the Pacific Pearl Company,’ Castagnet said. ‘I’m not sure if he ever uses it. It must be twenty years old by now. It would probably dive straight to the bottom.’
‘One way of getting rid of the fellow,’ Morlaix said.
Laughter swept the table.
‘You know that boy who works in the hotel,’ Madame de Romblay said, ‘the one who plucks his eyebrows like a girl? Well, apparently,’ and she lowered her voice and leaned over the table, ‘he spends whole afternoons up at Montoya’s place.’
‘No!’ Florestine Bardou put a hand to her throat. Though she would not initiate a story, she would, it seemed, become a willing accomplice in the telling.
‘Oh yes, Madame.’ Pineau leered. ‘I’ve been watching him.’
‘Two Mexicans live there too.’ Madame de Romblay’s tin eyes glittered, and her powdered shoulders were streaked with excitement’s generous secretions. ‘People say that the four of them,’ and she dropped her voice still lower, ‘indulge in vicious practices.’
‘Whole afternoons?’ Florestine Bardou had fixed on this single, lurid detail. Her hand still clutched her throat.
Suzanne was smiling. ‘Actually, I doubt that.’
All eyes turned on her, but it was the eyes of Madame de Romblay that felt the closest.
‘It’s true, there are two Mexicans living with Montoya,’ she went on, ‘but they’re both well over sixty. And one of them is poisoned from years of working in a sulphur mine. So I think vicious practices are probably out of the question.’
‘And how, precisely, do you know all this, my dear?’ Madame de Romblay knew how to use a simple question as an accusation. It was all in the twist she gave to the word ‘precisely’.
‘I’ve been to his house. He invited me there,’ Suzanne said, ‘for tea.’
The air softened with astonishment. Several of the company ostentatiously refrained from looking at each other. Across the deck, between two coloured streamers, Suzanne could see the moon, dented in two places, as if it had drunk too much and fallen several times.
One swift glance at Madame de Romblay and she knew that she had made a mistake. She had walked into the woman’s limelight, pricked the rumour like some ludicrous balloon. You did not do that to Madame de Romblay. She saw that she was about to be punished for it.
‘It was the strangest tea,’ she said brightly, attempting to escape through humour. ‘We ate oysters that had been harvested in the Bahía San Lucas. We drank sherry from his great-uncle’s vineyard. There was no actual tea at all.’
She had hoped for laughter, but the silence lasted. The only response issued, as it had to, from the thin, painted lips of the Director’s wife.
‘You drank with him?’
‘I didn’t know you had been to tea with Montoya,’ Théo said.
It was after two in the morning and they were taking the Director’s carriage home.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I did tell you that I was going.’
Looking at him, she could sense him trying to remember. She did not have to try. She could recall that night’s conversation word for word. His monotonous remoteness, his sudden scorn.
‘You probably didn’t hear me. You were probably too busy,’ she said, ‘with your work.’
He dropped away from her, into a long silence.
She listened to the carriage-wheels, the chink and jingle of the reins. The night was loud with all the champagne that she had drunk. She could feel his disapproval surfacing and knew that it would take the form of a rebuke. But waiting for it, that was hard. Knowing that it would come. When all she wanted to do was rest her head against his shoulder.
‘You should not have said what you did.’
It was a relief to hear him speak, even though he was condemning her. She did not reply.
Such nonsense had been talked at the supper table, but there was one moment, towards the end of the evening, that she would always cherish. The candles had burned low. The white tablecloth was littered with melting sorbets, lobster claws, the skins of fruit. Pierre Morlaix was holding forth. She could see his lips, moistened, flecked with spit. She could see his scalp beneath a flickering of silver curls. It was the usual monologue. The locals could not be trusted. They were lazy, unhygienic, sly. Animals, really. No wonder the church was taking so long. And so on. Théo had not witnessed what happened next; he must have been downstairs, dancing the promised mazurka with Madame de Romblay. For, suddenly, there was a young boy standing in their midst. Only his shoulders and his shaved head showed above the table’s edge; his eyes too — dark and sombre, bewitched by the place in which he found himself. He had been swimming; his wet skin shone. In his hands, held just below his chin, a pair of women’s shoes. Water dripped from the silver straps. The sequinned heels blinked. But it was to Morlaix that Suzanne looked. It was Morlaix she remembered. His sudden silence, as if the blood had knotted in his brain. His mouth gaping, fishlike, the next boorish words already shaped. There was nobody at the table who was so drunk that they did not recognise the irony.
As the carriage drew up outside their house, a grim smile appeared on her face. Perhaps she had behaved badly, but she had not been alone. In fact, all things considered, she believed that she had behaved quite well. There was no reason why she should apologise. She did not feel the slightest remorse.
Towards morning she woke up. A long way off she heard the mournful cry of a coyote, but she knew that it was not the coyote that had reached down into her sleep. Her nightgown had gathered underneath her arms, binding her tight. She sat up in bed and threw the damp sheet back.
Théo lay sleeping under a single mound of white. It looked as if snow had fallen in the bedroom, and then drifted. A soothing image in a climate such as this, she thought, though certainly perverse. Then she heard a clink. She could not place the sound, and yet she knew it well. Another clink. It was measured, regular; it could almost have been the beating of her own frustrated heart.
As silent as that imagined snow, her feet landed on the floor. She slipped from the bed, moved to the window. The narrow gap between the shutter-blades afforded several different views. Through one, she saw part of the hard mud path that led past the kitchen hut. Through another, a portion of the kitchen roof. Through a third, the sea.
That clink again, somewhere below.
She pressed her face to the shutters, saw moonlight running down a sword. A gasp escaped her. She stepped back.
She sat on the edge of the bed. Her heart had gathered speed; it now outstripped the chinking of the spurs. She felt nothing for the Captain, nothing at all, and yet his secret vigil excited her. These were the sleepless nights that she had predicted for him. This was the hunger. But it was dangerous knowledge. There would be nobody to tell.
She eased back, laid her head against the pillow. Instead of spurs, she willed herself to see a man’s hand bouncing coins. Then just the coins. Then she spent them.
Her heart slowed down.
Her husband, whom she had always loved, still loved, would always love, slept blindly on.
Chapter 8
17 Calle Francesa, Santa Sofía, Lower California, Mexico
23rdMay, 189–