Corduroy Mansions Page 0,35
things; one should be able to share them.
“It’s hard for me to know,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t feel something for Tom—I do. It’s just that …”
“You don’t feel it, do you?” He spoke gently, as if guiding her to a source of pain, a tender spot.
“No.”
She realised that he had brought her to an understanding of her feelings she would not have achieved by herself, and she felt grateful as a result. That single word—that single cathartic “No”—had revealed a truth that had been there all along but which she had simply never confronted.
He made a gesture with his hands—a gesture she interpreted as saying, Well, there you are. And he was right. There she was: it was the end of Tom.
And the beginning of James? The thought refused to go away.
“It’s not all that easy, you know,” she said. “Ending something. It’s messy, isn’t it?”
She waited for an answer, but James was staring silently at the ceiling.
“You do understand that?” she pressed. “You must know how hard it is to end a relationship. There are all sorts of connections and ties and associations. Bits of lives meshed together. You have to cut through all of that, as a surgeon cuts through living tissue.”
He nodded. “I suppose so.”
“You suppose so?”
“Yes.”
“You must have done it yourself.”
He continued to stare at the ceiling as he answered. “Not really. No, I haven’t. At least, not quite like this.”
“Well, it would have been a bit different in your case.”
He looked at her coolly. “Why do you say that?”
She blushed. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Of course it’s the same for everyone.”
The coolness he had shown vanished. When she looked at him, she suddenly saw only regret.
“I’ve never been there,” he said quietly. “I’ve never had what you’d call a love affair.”
“But …”
“No, I mean it. People think that everybody has been involved with somebody else, whatever their nature. They find it inconceivable that one might go through life never finding anybody. But you know something, Caroline? I think that’s far more common than you would ever imagine. There are plenty of people in that position.”
Impulsively, she reached out and took his hand. It seemed the most natural, the easiest thing to do, and it seemed easy for him too.
“Poor James,” she whispered.
He smiled at her weakly. “Yes, poor James.”
For a few minutes they sat there, not speaking, and not really looking at one another either. Their hands remained together, though, and when she squeezed his gently, in sympathy, he returned the pressure. It was as if signals were being exchanged in the night, in a time of war, perhaps—flashes of light in the darkness, one in answer to the other, messages that confirmed the presence of human sentiment, as feeling responded to feeling.
After a while, she gently relinquished her grip. She leaned over towards him and whispered, although there was nobody else in the flat, nobody who would hear, “Why don’t we go to Paris together?”
His eyes widened. “Paris?” The italicised emphasis was perfect, she thought; just right.
She had no idea why she had said this. “Sorry,” she whispered. “Very cheesy.”
“Cheesy! It’s not cheesy.” He paused. “It’s exactly the right thing to do, Caroline. Paris! Of course.”
“We could go on the Eurostar,” she said.
It was a lame thing to say, enough to shatter the magic of the moment, but James was not deterred: there was nothing wrong with the Eurostar.
“There are some Bonnards I want to see there,” he said. “We could look at them together.”
She nodded her agreement; the Bonnards would be nice. But as she stood up and went to look out of the window, she thought: That’s the problem—that’s exactly the problem! Paris was more than Bonnard, at least for most young couples planning un week-end. Far more.
26. Applied Ethics
WHEN JAMES LEFT Corduroy Mansions that afternoon he did not notice the taxi drawing up a few yards away. There was no particular reason to notice it; London taxis are ubiquitous, barely noticeable other than when sought out, and often becoming completely invisible then. And his mind was on other things, preoccupied with thoughts of Paris and Bonnard, and—although not to the same degree—of the time he had spent with Caroline. There was also, of course, the memory of the lemon gems; those delicacies had left a lingering taste in his mouth, a vaguely lemony sensation that reminded him of a childhood holiday in Cyprus, where the hotel had a lemon grove in its grounds, and … No, he would