Sue and I both stayed away from the subject of others. We were after all virtual strangers to each other, passing time on a train, so there was no reason why anything should be said. Even so, we were already at ease with each other; minor confidences were exchanged; opinions, jokes. I kept wanting to touch her, wishing she would move over and sit beside me, or that I had the nerve to sit next to her. I was shy of her but excited by her, and the longer we talked on the more obvious it was that we were avoiding the subject of other people.
As the train approached Longuyon at last, I said, “I think we change trains here.”
“My God, I’ve forgotten my luggage! It’s in the other compartment.” She stood up abruptly. “Will you meet me on the platform?” she said. “I’m not sure which train to catch for Nancy.”
“Neither am I.” She was opening the door to the corridor. “Don’t forget your jacket.” I passed it to her. “I’ll meet you outside.”
The train started braking almost as soon as she had left. I took my own suitcase from the rack and moved out to the corridor. Several other passengers were making the same change and the doors were blocked. When the train stopped there was a press of bodies, but when I was on the platform I put down my bag and went in search of Sue. Train doors slammed and most of the people walked away. Silence fell.
Then, abruptly, a door flew open and a dumpy, middleaged woman with a head scarf climbed down to the platform. She was carrying a suitcase which she deposited on the ground. She reached into the train and brought out a second bag. Sue followed, looking harassed. There was a brief, one-sided conversation completed by the pecking of both cheeks. The woman returned to the train, closing the door behind her. I went over to help Sue with her luggage, and she was smiling.
An hour later we were on the local train to Nancy. We sat next to each other, the fatigue and tedium of travel giving us a kind of tired familiarity. I could feel the light pressure of her arm against mine, but the break had interrupted the first headiness.
It was evening when the train arrived. We asked at the tourist office for a recommendation to an inexpensive hotel reasonably close to the station, then set off down the road with our bags. When we found the place, Sue came to a rather abrupt halt outside and put down her luggage.
“Richard, there’s something we haven’t discussed,” she said.
“What’s that?” I said, although I knew what she meant.
“I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings about tonight.”
“I wasn’t assuming anything,” I said.
“I know, but here we are, we’ve only just met, and although it’s been very pleasant …”
She looked away from me, across the street. There was a lot of traffic in the town, with many people walking about in the warm evening.
“Would you like to find another hotel for yourself?” I said.
“No, of course not. But we should have separate rooms. We haven’t said anything about this, but I’m meeting somebody when I get to Saint-Raphael. A friend.”
“That’s all right,” I said, regretting that I had left it to her to bring up the subject. The longer it had gone unaired, the more it was inevitable we would make assumptions.
The hotel was able to let us have a room each, and outside the elevator we prepared to separate.
Sue said, “I’m going to take a shower, then lie down for a bit. What about you? Are you going out for a meal?”
“Not just yet. I’m tired too.”
“Shall we have dinner together?”
“If you’d like to.”
“You know I would. I’ll knock on your door in an hour.”
II
In the center of Nancy was a magnificent broad square, surrounded by eighteenth-century palaces, known as the Place Stanislas. We entered it from the south side, coming into great emptiness and peace. It was as if the bustle of the main town was unable to penetrate to this place. No more than a few people strolled or stood in its vastness. The sun beat down, striking sharp shadows on the sandstone pavings. An autobus was parked outside L’Hôtel de Ville, formerly the Duke of Lorraine’s palace, and some distance behind this four black-painted saloon cars were parked in a neat row. No other traffic entered the square. A man wearing a cloth cap wheeled his bicycle slowly across the plaza, passing the statue of the Duke which stood at the center.
In one corner of the square was the Fountain of Neptune, a glorious rococo construction with nymphs and naiads and cherubs, water trickling across scalloped levels into the pools below. The wrought-iron archways of Jean Lamour surrounded the fountain. We walked over the cobbled road, gazed up at L’Arc de Triomphe, then passed through into the Place de la Carričre. This was lined on both sides with terraces of beautiful old houses; two rows of mature trees ran down the center of the Place with a narrow park between them. We walked through this, utterly alone. Over the roofs to our left we could see the spire of the cathedral.
A car drove through, trailing smoke and a clattering noise. At the far end there was a colonnade in front of the former Palais du Gouvernement, and here another couple walked slowly past. We looked back the way we had come, to the vista of Place Stanislas glimpsed through the Arc: the bright sunlight made the clean lines of the buildings, the stately sculpted view, seem static and monochrome. The car with the smoke had passed through into the square, and now nothing moved anywhere we could see.
We left Carričre and walked through a narrow shaded lane to one of the main shopping streets. Sounds grew around us, and we saw the press of people. In Le Cours Leopold there were a number of sidewalk cafés, and we went to one of these and ordered demis-pressions. The evening before we had visited one of the restaurants on the opposite side, and after the meal had stayed drinking wine together until after midnight. We had spoken, in mostly general terms, about the other people in our lives, people from the past, although I had described my relationship with Annette as an unspecific counter to Sue’s boyfriend waiting for her in Saint-Raphael.
Now, after our sightseeing walk, she was more ready to talk about the present.
“I don’t like living in London,” she said. “It costs so much money just to stay alive. I’ve never really had any money, not since leaving home. I’m always broke, always scraping along. I wanted to be a real artist, but I’ve never been able to get started. It’s all commercial work.”
“Do you live alone?” I said.
“Yes—well, I’ve got a room in a house. It’s one of those large Victorian houses in Hornsey. It was broken up into flats and bed-sitters years ago. My room is on the ground floor. It’s quite large, but I can’t work in natural light—there’s a wall outside the window.”
“Is your friend an artist?”
“My friend?”
“The one you told me about yesterday. In Saint-Raphael.”
“No, he’s a sort-of writer.”
“What sort of writer is a sort-of writer?”
She smiled. “It’s what he says he does. He spends most of his spare time writing, but he never shows it to me and I don’t think he’s had anything published. I’m not allowed to ask about it.”
She shook her head, staring at the little plate of salted bretzels the waiter had brought with the drinks. “He wanted to move in with me, but I wouldn’t let him. I’d never get any work done.”
“Then where does he live?”
“He moves around from one place to another. I’m never sure where he is until he turns up. He doesn’t pay rent, and just sponges off other people.”
“Then why … ? Look, what’s his name?”