The Programme

CHAPTER FOUR-3

The days were theirs and the evenings belonged to Charles. They ate one evening at the Carlton in Cannes. As they ate, he would be greeted by acquaintances - French and English and American - and he was known to all the waiters.

“What does Colin want?” Charles complained, slightly tipsy, treating Emily like family. “He’s effectively got his own firm. It’s not as if anyone stops him doing the work he wants.”

“His firm?”

“Both of you; I meant, both of you.” He looked at Emily and raised his eyebrows. “Damned lawyers; they pick on your every word.”

“I’m sure she had a good training,” Emily replied, her voice bubbling with laughter. In only a few days, the sun and the swimming had begun to heal the brutalisation of years: it had been what she needed; a visit to a foreign land to be treated like a lady. The sudden squabbles which burst out between Charles and Carey no longer bothered her: she understood that it was part of the fabric of their relationship. It was as addictive as what she had slid into with Richard, if less harmful.

They sat in the dark on the balcony with Charles after dinner, sipping drinks, watching the sprinklers below, talking quietly. Without any prelude, she began to talk about him.

“The first time he touched me,” she hesitated. “Hurt me, I mean, I couldn’t believe what was happening. I mean, suddenly I was confronted with the most terrible, unexpected, shocking dilemma: it was such a small thing - that first time, he twisted my wrist until it brought up a welt, he claimed he hadn’t meant to hurt me and, I suppose, the pain itself had worn off within a few minutes, anyway within an hour or so. But suddenly I was being forced, immediately, without any warning, into this gigantic choice, between the whole of the life we had led - all the years we had been together, and all the dreams for the future, all the investment in it - and one relatively small incident. I knew inside that it was serious; otherwise, it wouldn’t have struck me that way, as such a big issue, but because it was actually such a short incident, such an, I don’t know, apparently small thing, I couldn’t rationally compare the two. Almost as if, obviously,” she stressed, “it was to be taken for granted that it couldn’t threaten everything we had.”

Carey murmured:

“Tiny eruptions.”

“Yes.”

Charles shook his head gloomily.

“All my life, I’ve been bemused by this. The major changes in people’s lives always seem to be about the smallest things. If I look back at Marion and I, Carey’s mother,” he threw in for Emily’s sake, “I know there was a great deal that was wrong, that when she went she needed to go, it was right; and I know we had great differences of attitude; but if I try to remember what this or that difference was about, what were the things that mattered, I can’t. Like you say, Carey: tiny eruptions.”

“It wasn’t an original saying.” It had been Matthew’s: if we do not dig beneath the surface, then we are always vulnerable to these tiny eruptions and, ultimately, we will be destroyed by the accumulated lava.

“There’s not enough respect paid to love,” Charles added. “We take it for granted, but it’s a gift.”

“It isn’t what I most remember about childhood,” Carey looked at him quizzically.

“That’s what I meant. The little things take over.”

There was a long silence while each of them thought about the different little things that had taken over their lives. Finally, Emily broke it.

“It’s all we can deal with, isn’t it? The little things. Or perhaps I mean, it’s the only way we can deal with everything else. It becomes about the little things, and then they’re not so little after all; they’re all there is.”

Charles studied her with something akin to affection.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Sorry for what you’ve gone through; sorry a man should do that to you.” He held out a wizened hand and, after a moment, Emily took it.

Carey watched them, frowning and confused.

The last night, they ate at Les Vieux Murs, a restaurant in the old quarter of Antibes town itself, on the battlement walls overlooking the sea.

“Once the season starts, you’ll need to book a week ahead to be certain of a table. People book just to come here for dessert.”

They sat at an outside table, punctiliously attended by waiters with blue waistcoats and impeccable English. Below them, on the road, a uniformed coachman guarded the restaurant’s parking spaces to the death. They ate exquisite pre-prandial tasters, carefully blended hors d’oeuvres, fish that had been landed that evening; to finish they had créme brûlée flavoured with essence of violet. Monsieur Romano himself came out to ask if they had enjoyed their meal, greeting Charles by name and shaking him by the hand.

“It means a lot to you, doesn’t it, Daddy?” Carey said after the restaurateur had gone back indoors with their requests for a final drink, with his compliments.

“But what does it mean to you?” Emily asked intensely. “I mean, it’s so different from everything Carey’s told me about you, about the firm, about your work. Things I’d heard, too,” she added, to flatter her host.

“I suppose,” he answered her, ignoring Carey’s question, “it’s a bit like those tiny eruptions. There’s a part of me that has always enjoyed the good things in life. Professionally I foreswore them in favour of, well,” he laughed, “the good fight, you might say. But I was lucky; I had the means to find a place, carve a little bit out of my life for it. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been able to find something like this.”

As they strolled back to their car - not on the road outside the restaurant but down in the car park next to the covered market - he put his arm around each of their shoulders.

“It’s been a lovely week; the best I can remember.”

At home, he left them alone on the balcony to talk: he had preparations to make for his next visitors.

“It has been a lovely week,” Emily repeated what Charles has said as she thanked her friend. “I’d never have believed I could feel so much better so quickly.”

“I’m glad,” Carey answered simply.

“It’s been a strain for you, though,” Emily continued, as if Carey hadn’t spoken.

“What? Having you here?”

“No, I didn’t mean that. Though,” she blushed as she realised how presumptuous it might have sounded, “I know you’ve been taking care of me, I really am grateful, please don’t think I’m taking it for granted. I mean, taking you for granted.”

They touched hands lightly.

“I meant with Charles. He’s not easy, is he?”

“He never has been. I’m used to him.”

“I just thought, well, you wanted something out of this week too; I wasn’t sure you’d had the chance.”

“I didn’t come with the same sort of needs as you. I just wanted time away for its own sake”.

“I’m going to move back to the flat when we get home,” Emily said.

“You don’t have to, you know. I’ve enjoyed you being in the house. I’ve enjoyed being with you here too,” she added.

She turned to pour the last of the bottle of wine they had been sharing. As she did so, she saw a sudden movement within. Her father was at the back of the darkened living-room, turning towards his bedroom, as if he had been watching.

“I’ve enjoyed being with you too,” Emily reassured her. “Very much. Perhaps I mean too much. I have to find out about being on my own, not having you to depend on.”

“I’ve sometimes thought it was the other way around,” Carey laughed hollowly.

“It’s just, well, almost too easy, isn’t it? We both needed someone; and there we both were. I don’t mean,” Emily rushed on, “that I don’t trust it, you. You’ve been wonderful to me, for me, like a sister, and it’s made the whole thing easier. It’s made it possible; without you, I still can’t be certain I wouldn’t have gone back to him.”

“And now?” She suppressed a twinge of jealousy at the idea that she might yet lose her back to Richard.

“No. Not at all. I know that. That’s why I want to be home. I know, you know, in the divorce, he’ll get half of it, I’ll have to sell it, but I want to be there for a bit first. I need to spend some time in my own home, on my own, in a way I’ve never done. I’m not explaining myself very well. You, well, you’ve been alone all your life - adult life. I haven’t. I need to do that, for a bit. It’s not equal otherwise.”

They went to their beds soon after. Charles had already shut his door, though there was a light beneath: he would be reading; he read until the early hours; still learning, he would say; still looking, said Carey.

In her bed, lying awake in the dark, she stared at the ceiling and wondered about what Emily had said. Her answer - that she wanted the time away for its own sake - had been a half truth. She knew that when she got home, she wanted her life to be different; the only thing she did not know was how.

As she was drifting off to sleep, she heard a door click. It jerked her out of the twilight. She stiffened beneath the single sheet by which she was covered, holding her breath, listening for further sounds. None of them had any need to leave their bedrooms to use a bathroom, but either of them might have gone in search of something to drink. She focused on the kitchen, but heard nothing.

Bare feet on stone floor, a scampering sound like mice. Her immediate image was Charles, going to Emily. From early in the week, he had fixed her with his attention and more than once she thought she had seen hunger in his eyes. She was less clear about Emily’s own reactions. Emily was emotionally raw; however much she claimed to be healing, she was still needy. There had been times when Emily seemed to be responding to Charles - one evening on the balcony, another in a restaurant. She had not shrugged him off when he had put his arms around their shoulders. A much older man would be a different animal than her husband.

In the hall, the scampering had stopped. It was like a freeze-framed video. She could barely hear her own breath. She watched her door handle as it turned. Without a knock, it yawned ajar. She could see by the light of the moon, entering through the kitchen window, seeping through the kitchen’s open door into the rear corridor, filling it with a faint light, the consistency and comfort of a child’s night-light.

“What do you want, Daddy?” she whispered, feeling not relief but queasy disappointment.

He let himself in, pushing the door shut behind him, and shuffled to sit on the side of her bed, wrapping his bathrobe tightly around himself:

“I wasn’t sure if you were still awake.”

“I’m awake. What do you want?” she repeated.

“I just wanted to see you for a moment. I thought you’d be asleep.”

She was puzzled.

“You wanted me to be asleep?”

Her eyes had adjusted. She could see him as he nodded, embarrassed.

“Yes, I suppose I did.”

“Why?”

“I used to do that, you know, when you were little. Whenever I came home late, and you had already gone to bed, I’d creep into your room and kiss your forehead and just look at you for a while. You were so beautiful, so peaceful. And you were mine. I used to think - did I make her? There you are, I used to wonder.”

He smiled at the memory; she returned the smile.

“I knew. I always knew you were there.”

“No, no you didn’t. That’s your memory playing tricks. Sometimes you’d wake up, and roll over, and I’d lean down and tell you that I loved you. You’d mumble back: ’Love you too, Daddy,’ is what I remember you saying. But usually, you were so fast asleep you wouldn’t have known if I’d held a trial at the foot of your bed.”

“Yes, could’ve done that too,” she said wryly. Then: “Was that why?” She meant, why he had wanted her to be asleep.

“No. Not really. I knew, if you were awake, we’d talk.”

“So?”

“I want to be here for you, Carey; I know you’re not happy, I know you’re,” he hesitated, then admitted what he believed, “I know you’re frightened. But I’m not very good at these things, not really, am I?” He had come to her room in duty, but it was a duty he had not a clue how to discharge.

She reached out a hand to pat the back of his where it rested on the sheet.

“Not really, Daddy, but it’s all right, I don’t expect more.”

He struggled for an answer, leaned down and kissed her forehead and left without another word.

She was fully awake now. She darted from one thought to another. He had been Charles - as a parent, all form and no substance: none the less, she regretted dismissing him so harshly. She also regretted her earlier suspicion about his movements in the corridor and yet, despite herself, listened for more.

She thought she was fully awake but she was drifting off again, her conscious deliberations interwoven with an fanciful, unreal image that disappeared in wisps, like a trailer for the dream to come. Another click, another door; she did not know if it was for real or only in her mind. This time it was Emily, pushing the door shut behind her, coming to sit exactly where Charles had sat.

“It’s like a train station in here tonight,” Carey managed to joke, touching Emily’s shoulder through her nightgown to tell her that she was not complaining.

“I was frightened,” Emily said. “I thought.” She did not finish her sentence. Carey knew what she had thought: that Charles had been going to come into her room.

“It’s all right,” Carey said.

Their eyes met, engaged. Carey’s hand was still on Emily’s shoulder. She squeezed it lightly.

“Thank you.” For coming.

Neither of them moved for the longest time. Then, Emily bent over to touch Carey’s lips with hers.

“You too,” she said.

She rose gracefully and left in silence.

In his bedroom, Charles sighed and snapped closed the book of which he had been unable to read a page.