She found me at the stand.
“I’m feeling warmer now,” she said. “Let’s look at the view.”
We went out into the wind, hugging each other again, and moved to the edge of the platform. Three coinoperated telescopes tipped down toward the valley from the raised parapet. We stood between two of them, leaning against the concrete wall and staring down. On the horizon were the mountains surrounding the town to the south; to our left, the snow-capped peaks of the French Alps were sharp against the blue.
Sue said, “Look, I suppose that’s the university.” She was pointing toward a group of beautiful old buildings, turreted and spired, along by the river. “It’s closer to the town than we thought.”
There was a plan built into the top of the parapet, indicating what could be seen. We traced the various landmarks.
“It’s smaller than I thought,” I said. “When we came in on the train, the city seemed to spread right up the valley.”
“Where are all those office blocks? I can’t see them anymore.”
“They were by the hotel.” I looked on the plan, but it was not marked. “There was a whole area of them, near where the cable cars started.” I followed the cables with my eyes down the mountainside, but the terminal was hidden from us. “It must be a trick of the light.”
“Perhaps they were designed that way, to blend in with the old buildings.”
It said on the plan that Mont Blanc could be seen to the northeast, so we turned in that direction. There were clouds behind us though, and the view of the mountains was indistinct. Beyond the restaurant were the ruins of an old fort, and we walked over to them. We found there was a charge for entering, so we changed our minds.
“Another brandy?” I said. “Or back to the hotel?”
“Let’s do both.”
Half an hour later we returned to the platform for another look at the city. Lights were coming on down there, and tiny points of warm orange and yellow glinted from the buildings. We watched the evening for a while, then took the cable car down the mountain. After we had breasted one of the rises, the city again came into full view. A mist was forming, but now we could see the newer section very clearly: blue-white fluorescent strip lights shone from the glass towers. It seemed to us impossible that we could not have seen them from the top. I took out the postcards I had bought: one of them was a photograph of the view, and in this the modern buildings clearly stood high above the others.
“I’m getting hungry,” Sue said.
“For food?”
“That as well.”
V
We arrived in Nice. It was the height of the tourist season, and the only hotel we could find that we could afford was in the north of the town, lost in a maze of narrow streets, a long walk from the sea. With our arrival my feeling of dread became dominant. We had at best another day or two together; Saint-Raphael was only a few kilometers along the coast.
Niall had become a forbidden subject, ever-present but never discussed. Even the silence about him became obvious. We knew exactly what the other would say, and neither of us wished to hear it. If I had a way of dealing with the problem it was to give my best to Sue, to hope to convey to her what we were about to lose. She seemed to be doing the same. We both had the power of concentration, and turned it full upon each other.
I was in love with her. The feeling had started in Dijon, and every waking minute with her confirmed and enlarged it. She delighted me in every way, and I was obsessed with her. Yet I drew back from saying the words, not through doubts but because she might think them coercive.
I still did not know what to do. On our first night in Nice Sue fell asleep beside me while I sat up with the light on, ostensibly reading but in fact brooding about her and Niall.
Nothing would work. An ultimatum, a choice between me or him, would fail. There was a stubbornness in Sue about Niall, and I knew I could not shift her. Discarded too was the idea of portraying myself as the wounded loser; that was actually how I felt, but nothing would make me use it as a ploy. Reason, too, was out. She freely acknowledged that her relationship with him was irrational.
She had rejected my other ideas—my hanging around in the background while she saw him; a premature return to England.
Hours of introspection produced nothing but the lame hope that she might change her mind by herself.
We stayed in our hotel room for most of the next day, leaving it every two or three hours for a walk or a drink or a meal. We saw very little of Nice, but because of my preoccupation I hated what I saw. I identified the town with my sense of loss, and blamed it for it. I disliked the ostentatious wealth on display: the yachts in the harbor, the Alfas and Mercedes and Ferraris, the women with their face-lifts and the men with their business paunches. I equally disliked the showy inverse: the English debs in rusty Minis, the worn-out Nike running shoes, the chopped-off jeans, the faded clothes. I resented the topless sunbathers, the palm trees and aloe vera plants, the shingly beaches and the exquisite blue sea, the casino and the hotels, the villas on the hills, the skyscraper apartment blocks, the suntanned youths on motorbikes, the wind surfers and paraskiers, the speedboats, pedalos and beach huts. I begrudged them all their pleasure.
My only pleasure was the source of my misery: Sue herself. Provided I pushed Niall to the back of my mind, provided I did not think beyond the next few hours, provided I held on to my lame hope, all was temporarily well.
Of course she knew.
She too had her introspections; once I found her crying on the bed. Our lovemaking became urgent, and whenever we were out we constantly touched or held each other. Often we sat in a bar or a restaurant holding hands, staring away at other people, other places.
We decided to stay a second night in Nice, even though it would only prolong the wretchedness. We agreed tacitly that we would leave for Saint-Raphael in the morning, and there we would part. This was our last night together.
We made love as if nothing were to change; then, restlessly, we sat together on the bed, the window and shutters wide open to the night. Insects hummed around the light. At last she broke the silence.
“Where are you going to go tomorrow, Richard?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I might just go home.”
“But what were you going to do before we met? You must have made plans.”
“I was just traveling around. Now there’s no point, without you.”
“Why don’t you go to SaintTropez?”
“On my own? I want to be with you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s the only thing I’m sure of.”
She was silent, staring down at the rumpled sheets on which we sprawled. Her body was so white, and suddenly I had a jealous image of seeing her again in London in a few weeks’ time and finding that she had acquired a suntan.
“Sue, are you really going to go through with this?”
“I’ve got to. We’ve been over all that.”
“Then this is the end, isn’t it?”
“I think that’s up to you.”
“How can you say that? I don’t want this to finish! You must know that by now.”
“But Richard, you’re making an issue out of this. You’re acting as if we can’t see each other again. Why does it have to be final?”
“All right, I’ll see you back in London. You’ve got my address.”
She shifted position, pulling at the creased sheet below us, freeing it from her weight and laying it over her bare knees as she kneeled beside me. Her hands fretted it as she spoke.
“I’ve got to see Niall. I’m not going to break a promise. But I don’t want to hurt you… . I’d never see Niall again, if I had my way.”