She took the mirror off the wall and let it fall from her hands. It split into three almost equal pieces, as if it were something to be shared. Then she ran past him, along the corridor and up the stairs. She flung herself on to the bed.
‘Suzanne?’ She heard his voice in the hallway below. ‘Suzanne?’ The voice had moved closer. ‘What about dinner?’
‘I’m not coming.’
Since the incident with the napkin, she had divided the community. The men, with the exception of François Pineau, treated her much the same; they put it down to her comparative youth, high spirits, one too many glasses of champagne. But the women, less softened by illusion, less gullible, had not forgiven her. She could already see Madame de Romblay rising from her brocade divan and moving forwards to greet her, to gloat over her, to condemn. She could not face it. The sight of that woman’s plunging breasts would bring the bile flooding up into her mouth.
‘But — ’
‘Tell them I’m sick. Make something up.’
Her tears scalded her cheeks. She knew that he would stand in the doorway with a puzzled, faintly indignant, air. She knew he would not comfort her.
When her crying had died down and she could listen to the house again, there was no sound. He had gone.
She woke up in her clothes and called his name. There was no reply. Moonlight showed her fragments of the room: the doorhandle, a mirror, one edge of the water jug. The house had the silence of a landscape buried under snow.
She raised herself on one elbow. The moon lay on its side, the part in darkness visible, charcoal against the black night sky. She could not tell how late it was. A clock chimed in the parlour. Twice, for the half-hour. Half-hours always sounded lonely somehow. They were the furthest it was possible to be from something that was definite. Not linked to any hour of the day or night. Uncertain, incomplete. Marooned in time.
She lay back on her pillows, one arm behind her head, her left foot fitting against the muscle of her right calf. Her eyes travelled up the pale curving folds of the mosquito-net and on up the string to the brass hook, visible only as a glint, embedded in the ceiling. She imagined Théo comfortable. Sitting on the de Romblays’ veranda with a glass of Sauterne and a lit cigar. She watched smoke flurry off the tip. He would also be looking at the moon. She could almost hear his voice — the measured pronouncements, solid sounds. He would be home soon, in his own good time. She was glad that she knew where he was, and could imagine him. She turned to face the wall and fell asleep again.
When she woke, he was sitting on the bed. The room seemed darker now. He had extinguished all the lamps in the house, and the moon had fallen in the sky.
‘Théo?’
‘Yes.’
He was still angry. She could tell from that one word, the way he had snapped it off like a piece of rotten wood.
‘I’m sorry about earlier. I was upset.’
He said nothing. He just sat against what little light there was, his head and shoulders framed by the window, smelling, as she had thought he would, of sweet wine and cigar smoke.
She shifted in the bed. ‘Don’t hate me.’
Her words hung in the heavy air like a church bell at a funeral. The way that tolling lingered. You could never quite identify the point at which it stopped being heard and started being imagined. It occurred to her that falling out of love would be like that. It also occurred to her that she had lived much of her life in fear of that uncertainty, that moment of transition, that imperceptible withdrawal. He had not noticed her at first. He had not even seen her. Sometimes she had such doubts. She feared that she might become invisible again, that he might leave. Was that why she had insisted on coming with him? Because she felt she could not risk his absence? Absence made the heart grow colder. Absence made you disappear.
‘Théo,’ she said, ‘please forgive me.’
‘Why is it with you that there is always something to forgive?’
He was holding on to his anger; he would not let it go. There was no need for error, no excuse for it. Behaviour should be accurate to within one-tenth of a millimetre. Perfection was attainable. He still had not turned round, or even moved.
She sighed. ‘I don’t know.’
She had gone about this the wrong way. He hated any form of pleading or apology; they only compounded the offence. At last she saw that penitence would get her nowhere.
He rose suddenly, moved towards the door.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked him.
‘I’m not tired.’
She waited until he had left the room and then lay down. One cord of orange light unravelled against the wall. The conveyor belt must have started up. Yes, she could hear it: the distant grinding and clanking as bins of coarse ore were borne towards the crushers. What was valuable would soon be taken out. The rest would be drained off and dumped.
Her eyes drew back into the room. A china jug for water, a cake of soap, a chair. In the darkness they looked worthy of her trust, almost noble in their simplicity.
She felt a clenching inside her. A tightening, a shrinking. Like the place where a rope is tied, the place they call a knot. She had said too much to him; she had gone too far. He must have something to answer for, surely. He could have felt the need to apologise, to explain himself, to ask forgiveness. Why did the burden always seem to fall on her?
She thought she might be blind. All she could see was dazzle, one solid sheet of it. Like being too close to the doctor’s waistcoat. She lifted her head. It was the sunlight beating through the window, skidding along the floor, right into her just-opened eyes. Her own house then. Upstairs, presumably. And Imelda kneeling beside her, feet tucked beneath her dress. A look on her face that you saw in churches; her concern, which must have spread over several hours, had assumed the aspect of a trance. She could smell the girl’s spicy skin.
‘Are you sick, Madame?’
‘No, I was just resting.’ She wanted to smile, but her face resisted. The foolishness of being found, like an animal, on the floor. She sat upright, leaned against the wall. ‘Is Monsieur Valence still here?’
‘He’s downstairs, Madame, He’s having breakfast.’
A smooth crimson groove encircled half her wrist where a bracelet had bitten into her. She must have been sleeping on her hand.
‘Do you need anything, Madame?’
‘Would you make me some of your tea?’
She was not convinced of the healing properties of the drink, but she knew that Imelda took great pleasure in preparing it, and the taste had become a source of amusement to them both. It was another way of setting Imelda’s mind at rest, a touchstone for a mood. She listened to the girl’s light footsteps dwindle.
The argument came back to her. The anger — his, then hers. Why is there always something to forgive? She had left the bed without another word. Sat at her dressing-table and searched the mirror for her face. All the lamps had been extinguished; moonlight would have to do. Some powder first, to give her skin a shocked and ghostly look. A dab of rouge to strengthen it. She knew he was standing somewhere behind her, looking on in utter disbelief. Well, good. She took her time over the jewellery, changing her mind more than once. At last she settled on a necklace of emeralds and pearls, three amber bracelets and a cameo brooch. Touching perfume to the inside of her wrists, her throat, the lobes of her ears, she rose from the stool and left the room. Her performance only lasted until the moment when she closed the bedroom door behind her. Then she sank down on the floor. She was exhausted, bored. She had wanted him to follow her, but she had suspected all along that he would not. Not a sound carried through the door to where she sat. She did not even hear him undress, climb into bed. At last, surrendering, she lay down in the corridor, her head cushioned on the loose sleeve of her robe.