Nietzsche on the Beach

After leaving Penrose, I needed breakfast, and the strongest coffee I could make. Dust lay over the swimming pool, an overnight veil disturbed by the feeble movements of a waterlogged fruit fly, struggling against the meniscus that gripped its wings in a mirror harder than glass. Sympathizing with the creature, whose predicament matched my own, I searched for the damp footprints that usually marked Jane's race back to the house and a long bath, earphones over her soapy head as the Walkman played Debussy. But the tiled verge was dry in the late November sun.

I walked to the terrace and stepped into the hall, where I bruised my shins against two of my leather suitcases. I gripped the handles, and guessed from their weight that they held my entire wardrobe.

Upstairs, drawers slammed as Jane roamed the cupboards. The punitive jolts of Carmina Burana sounded from the bedroom, a call to marital strife. Without thinking, I knew that Jane was throwing me out, and felt a deep regret that we would never drive the RN7 back to Paris together. Our marriage had ended, like those of my friends, in a mess of trivial infidelities and questions with no conceivable answers.

I had reached the villa at midnight, after an evening in Antibes with Frances Baring. From the clinic Jane had earlier called me to say she would be late, and suggested that I see a film in Cannes. But as I tiptoed past the darkened lounge the faint moonlight revealed that she had recruited other company to amuse her. The carpet was marked by almost lunar ridges, left by heel marks that belonged to neither Jane nor myself.

Aware of Frances 's scent on my hands, I moved to the children's room, and slept soundly among Tenniel's amiable menagerie. I woke at seven and telephoned Wilder Penrose from the bathroom, determined to confront him with the criminal reality of Eden-Olympia.

Jane was still asleep when I left to see Penrose. She lay facedown, an infected puncture point on the inside of her thigh oozing a faint lymph. I eased back the drawer of the dressing table and counted the used syrettes, hoping that my arithmetic was at fault.

Jane breathed quietly, an ageing Alice in an expurgated chapter of her own book. Careful not to wake her, I kissed her open lower lip, still marked by the paste of another woman's lipstick.

I met her on the landing, dragging a suitcase from the bedroom. As always, she had recovered quickly from the dose of diamorphine.

She wore jeans and white vest, a garb she had abandoned soon after arriving at Eden-Olympia. But her skin was pale and putty-coloured, and her face seemed toneless. She had cut her left hand on one of the suitcase locks, but had yet to notice the blood.

She saw me watching from the door, reached into a wardrobe and pulled out a heavy rucksack.

'Paul? You can help me. Stick that on the bed.'

'Sure. Tell me what's happening.'

'Nothing to worry about. You're leaving half an hour from now.'

'I'm leaving? Why?'

'We're both leaving. We're saying goodbye to Eden. I've told personnel to post an angel with a flaming sword by the gate.'

'Jane…' I stepped through the clutter of unpaired shoes that she was rooting from the cupboard, placed my hands under her arms and lifted her to her feet, surprised by how much weight she had lost. 'Calm down. Now when exactly are we leaving?'

'Now. Today. As soon as I'm packed.'

'And where are we going?'

Jane shrugged, staring at the chaos of half-filled suitcases.

' England, London, Paris, anywhere. Away from here.'

I reached out to the radio on the bedside table and switched off the French concert commentator. 'Why? You have another six-month contract to run.'

'I'll take a week's compassionate leave. We'll simply not come back.'

'Professor Kalman won't like that. It could damage your career.'

'Staying here will finish it. Believe me, the last thing they want is another English doctor going insane.'

'Jane…' I tried to take her shoulders, but she sidestepped me, marking the pattern of her bare feet in the talc like an evasive dance step. 'Are you all right?'

'Completely compos mentis.' She stared at herself in the dressingtable mirror, jaw thrust forward. 'No, I'm not all right. And nor are you. Where's the getaway car? I don't want to drive to Calais in the little Peugeot.'

'The Jag's outside. Tell me why you want to leave. Is it anything I've done?'

'Have you done anything? I'm amazed.' Jane rolled her eyes in mock alarm. She placed her hands on my chest. 'Dear husband, you're a decent and kindly man – more or less – and I want to keep you that way. I don't know where you stay out all night and I won't ask. I hope she's sweet and appreciates you. But I'm sure of one thing – remain here any longer and you'll end up like the rest of us.'

'Jane, why now? Has something worried you – the business at the Cardin Foundation?'

'Cardin? Not my favourite schmutter. You mean the robbery at Miramar?'

'You've heard about it?'

'Simone and I saw it on the news. Alain was driving through Théoule as the gang sped off and tried to stop them. Poor man, he was covered with bruises. I had to patch him up.' She rubbed the infected needle mark on her thigh. 'Alain said he saw you later at the Villa Grimaldi.'

'A stag night, laid on by Pascal Zander.'

'Ghastly man. I'm glad I wasn't there. He invents imaginary venereal symptoms so he can roll out his big cannon. It's quite a spectacle. He's perpetually tumescent in a nasty way.'

'A good reason for leaving. So it isn't me that you want to get away from?'

'I want to get away from myself.' She sat on the bed, hands over her small breasts as if feeling her tender nipples. 'There are too many mirrors in this house and I don't like what I see in them. Outside the clinic I hardly exist. I'm tired all the time and I keep picking up small infections. For the last two months I've had swollen tonsils – if you tried to kiss me you'd never get your tongue in my mouth.'

'Have you talked to Penrose?'

'Wilder Penrose… for a clever man he has some odd ideas. He thinks we need to freshen up our sex life. How, he didn't quite say – something about prepubertal girls. I told him that wasn't your scene, you liked them a good bit older. That's why you married me. Isn't it?'

'You know it is.'

'Good…' She stared at my hands as I sat beside her, her eyes slightly out of focus. She raised my fingers to her lips, and caught a strange scent clinging to the nails. Her eyes sharpened, and she glanced at me without comment. 'Paul… you know I'm going to bed with Simone?'

'No. But I guessed.'

'I was so sleepy, it happened before I realized it. I thought we were playing girls in the dorm, but she had other ideas. You're not upset?'

'A little. We talked it through long ago. Have you…?'

'Since school? Once. Heterosexuality is hard work – men make it into a big effort. When I get back from the clinic I'm too tired for all those emotions. With Simone I can switch off.'

'What about Alain?'

'He likes to watch. Sorry, Paul… you're too sane. If we stay here any longer I'll go to bed with Alain. I don't want that to happen.'

She sniffled into a corner of the sheet. Searching for a tissue, I pulled back the dressing-table drawers, and exposed the clutch of ampoules in her valise. 'Jane… all this pethidine. How much can you take?'

'They're nothing. Better for me than too many double scotches.'

'The diamorphine? It's pure heroin.'

'I'm all right!' She closed the drawer, and then stared at me curiously. 'You never tried to stop me. Not seriously. That's a little surprising.'

'You're the doctor, you know how to handle the stuff.'

'No.' Jane took my chin, forcing me to look her in the face. 'You're keeping an eye on me, Paul. I'm your guinea pig. You want to know what happens to people in Eden-Olympia.'

'That may be true. I'm sorry, I hadn't realized it.'

'It's part of your search for David Greenwood. You're totally obsessed with him. Why? Because we were lovers once? It was a long time ago.'

'Never long enough.' I felt myself sink slightly. 'David was making a stand against Eden-Olympia. It's the proving ground for a new kind of world, and he couldn't cope with that.'

'You've been listening to Wilder. Nietzsche on the beach – Philip Glass could set it to music.'

'He's serious, but he's starting to give himself away. I need more time, Jane. That's why I'd like to stay on for a while. Let me explain it to you, and then you can decide if we leave.'

'All right…' She leaned against me, her breathing shallow, her putty skin giving off a stale odour that I had never noticed.

As I listened to her slow heartbeat I knew how deeply exhausted she was.

I cleared a space among the suitcases and laid her on the bed, straightening the pillow under her head. I sat beside her, holding her hands between mine, and thought about her affair with Greenwood, and their quick sex probably snatched at Guy's in darkened laundry rooms. Jane was fond of me, but our marriage had been the last of her hippie gestures, the belief that impulsive acts alone gave meaning to life. Sex and drugs had to be casually dispensed, as a way of defusing the myths around them.

'Paul… I'm going to sleep for a little.' Jane smiled at me as I stroked her damp forehead. Together we listened to an approaching publicity plane that climbed the valley from the coast, bringing to the business park its tidings of another marina complex or discount furniture sale. A few hundred yards from us Wilder Penrose would be standing at his kitchen window, watching the wavering pennant as he laid his own very different plans for the new Riviera.

Дата добавления: 2015-09-07