‘Oh, we must go, we must go,’ said Eleanor in a childish voice. ‘It’s a funfair but the whole thing is made to look like Dodge City. I’ve never actually been in, but I’d really like to—’
‘Have we got time?’ asked Anne sceptically.
‘Oh, yes, it’s only one-thirty, look, and the airport is only forty-five minutes away. Oh, let’s. Just for half an hour. Pl-ea-se?’
Another billboard announced Le Wild Ouest at four hundred metres. Soaring above the tops of the dark pine trees were miniature imitation stagecoaches in brightly coloured plastic hanging from a stationary Ferris wheel.
‘This can’t be for real,’ said Anne. ‘Isn’t it fantastic? We have to go in.’
They walked through the giant saloon doors of Le Wild Ouest. On either side, the flags of many nations drooped on a circle of white poles.
‘Gosh, it’s exciting,’ said Eleanor. It was hard for her to decide which of the wonderful rides to take first. In the end she chose to go on the stagecoach Ferris wheel. ‘I want a yellow one,’ she said.
The wheel edged forward as each stagecoach was filled. Eventually, theirs rose above the level of the highest pines.
‘Look! There’s our car,’ squealed Eleanor.
‘Does Patrick like this place?’ asked Anne.
‘He’s never been,’ said Eleanor.
‘You’d better take him soon, or he’ll be too old. People grow out of this sort of thing, you know.’ Anne smiled.
Eleanor looked massively gloomy for a moment. The wheel started to turn, generating a little breeze. On the upward curve, Eleanor felt her stomach tighten. Instead of giving her a better view of the funfair and the surrounding woods, the motion of the wheel made her feel sick and she stared grimly at the white tips of her knuckles, longing for the ride to be over.
Anne saw that Eleanor’s mood had snapped and that she was again in the company of an older, richer, drunker woman.
They got off the ride, and walked through a street of shooting arcades. ‘Let’s get out of this fucking place,’ said Eleanor. ‘It’s time to collect Nicholas anyhow.’
‘So tell me about Nicholas,’ said Anne, trying to keep up.
‘Oh, you’ll find out soon enough.’
6
‘SO THIS ELEANOR WOMAN is a real victim, right?’ said Bridget. She had fallen asleep after smoking a joint in the loo and she wanted to compensate with a burst of belated curiosity.
‘Is every woman who chooses to live with a difficult man a victim?’
Nicholas undid his seatbelt as soon as the plane landed. They were in the second row and could easily get off ahead of the other passengers if, just for once, Bridget did not unsheathe her compact from its blue velvet pouch and admire herself in its powdery little mirror.
‘Shall we go,’ sighed Nicholas.
‘The seatbelt sign is still on.’
‘Signs are for sheep.’
‘Bahaha-a-a,’ bleated Bridget at the mirror, ‘I’m a sheep.’
This woman is intolerable, thought Nicholas.
‘Well, I’m a shepherd,’ he said out loud, ‘and don’t make me put on my wolf’s clothing.’
‘Oh, my,’ said Bridget, cowering in the corner of her seat, ‘what big teeth you have.’
‘All the better to bite your head off.’
‘I don’t think you’re my granny at all,’ she said with real disappointment.
The plane stopped its creeping progress and there was a general clicking of opening buckles and discarded seatbelts.
‘Come on,’ said Nicholas, now all businesslike. He very much disliked joining the struggling tourists as they jostled each other down the aisle.
They arrived at the open door of the plane, pale and overdressed, and started to clank their way down a flight of metal steps, caught between the air crew who pretended to be sorry at their departure and the ground crew who pretended to be pleased by their arrival. As she went down the steps, Bridget felt slightly nauseous from the heat and the smell of spent fuel.
Nicholas looked across the tarmac at the long queue of Arabs slowly climbing on board an Air France plane. He thought of the Algerian crisis in ’62 and the threat of betrayed colonists parachuting into Paris. The thought petered out as he imagined how far back he would have to begin in order to explain it to Bridget. She probably thought that Algeria was an Italian dress designer. He felt a familiar longing for a well-informed woman in her early thirties who had read history at Oxford; the fact that he had divorced two of them already made little difference to his immediate enthusiasm. Their flesh might hang more loosely on the bone, but the memory of intelligent conversation tormented him like the smell of succulent cooking wafting into a forgotten prison cell. Why was the centre of his desire always in a place he had just deserted? He knew that the memory of Bridget’s flesh would betray him with the same easy poignancy if he were now climbing on to the bus with a woman whose conversation he could bear. Theoretically, of course, there were women – he had even had affairs with them – who combined the qualities which he threw into unnecessary competition, but he knew that something inside him would always scatter his appreciation and divide his loyalties.
The doors folded shut and the bus jerked into motion. Bridget sat opposite Nicholas. Under her absurd skirt, her legs were slim and bare and golden. He detached them pornographically from the rest of her body, and found he was still excited by the idea of their availability. He crossed his legs and loosened his entangled boxer shorts through the stiff ridges of his corduroy trousers.
It was only when he considered to whom these golden legs belonged that his fleeting erection seemed a small and inconvenient reward for a state of almost permanent irritation. In fact, scanning the figure above the waist, along the fringed sleeve of her black suede jacket, and up towards the bored and stubborn expression on her face, he felt a spasm of revulsion and estrangement. Why was he taking this ludicrous creature to stay with David Melrose who was, after all, a man of some discernment, not to say a merciless snob?
The terminal building smelled of disinfectant. A woman in blue overalls drifted across the glaring floor, the circular pads of her polishing machine humming as she swung it gently back and forth across the black and brown translucent pebbles trapped in cheap white marble. Still stoned, Bridget lost herself in the flakes of colour as if they were the flint and quartz stars of a white sky.
‘What are you staring at?’ snapped Nicholas.
‘This floor is something else,’ said Bridget.
At passport control she could not find her passport but Nicholas refused to start a scene just when they were about to meet Eleanor.
‘Rather eccentrically, in this airport one crosses the main lobby before collecting one’s luggage,’ said Nicholas. ‘That’s probably where Eleanor will be waiting for us.’
‘Wow!’ said Bridget. ‘If I was a smuggler,’ she paused, hoping Nicholas might challenge her, ‘this would be my dream airport. I mean, there’s this whole lobby where you could slip someone your hand luggage, full of goodies, and then go and fetch your legal luggage for Customs.’
‘That’s what I admire about you,’ said Nicholas, ‘your creative thinking. You might have had a brilliant career in advertising; although I think as far as smuggling goes the Marseilles authorities have more pressing problems to wrestle with than any “goodies” you might import in your handbag. I don’t know if you’re aware of it but…’
Bridget had stopped listening. Nicholas was being a wanker again. He always got like this when he was uptight; in fact he was like this all the time except when he was in bed, or with people he wanted to charm. Lagging behind, she stuck her tongue out at him. Nyah, nyah, nyah … boring, boring, boring.