From the train Douglas looked out at pallets burning in desolate factory yards, rusting track abandoned in the sidings, the distant Kent coastline.
He was on the early-morning Eurostar to Paris. A group of French girls were taking digital photos, laughing as they showed them to each other.
A man in a cheap suit was saying, ‘OK, OK, but we can’t guarantee the performance parameters of the fabric abrasionwise.’
The woman across the corridor was telling her companion that she wanted her daughter to become a dentist. It was a good ambition to have, a sensible career. ‘You never see a poor dentist, do you?’
Douglas knew his parents would have preferred him to have a proper job; they would have been far prouder if he’d entered a sensible profession with prospects. He could have become a doctor, a lawyer, or something important in international finance rather than the murky world of television. He certainly wouldn’t have been travelling in standard class.
He knew that he should not be on the train.
It was mad to see Julia.
He tried to justify the decision. He could hardly blame Emma. Their work took them away from each other and their sex life had dwindled but after two rounds of IVF that had been predictable. They could have worked harder at their marriage, been kinder, perhaps, and taken each other less for granted, but they had been so tired by all that had happened that neither of them had the energy or the will to resurrect or redefine the little they had left.
Douglas worked and drank and slept. He had lost touch with most of his friends (his schedule was so unpredictable he could never commit to any arrangements in advance) and he only saw people socially when his wife or his parents forced him to do something that he could find no excuse for avoiding.
He had met Julia in Vienna. She was working for the British Council; he was making a documentary. They had been out a couple of times, flirted and then kissed on the last night.
Julia was a few years younger and lived in London. Her husband was some kind of corporate lawyer but Douglas had not asked too many questions about him, or her two boys, just as he had skirted around the fact that he was married to Emma. He had kept it vague, half implying that they were separated. After the first betrayal the rest had followed.
They had exchanged phone numbers and told each other that it would be good to meet if they ever found themselves at a loss in a foreign city again. Then Julia sent him a text: In Paris 2July. Want to come?
Douglas felt guilty as soon as he received it. He waited a few hours and replied: Why not?
At first he thought their meeting couldn’t do any harm. They had settled on lunch rather than dinner. They did not know each other well and Douglas could treat the whole thing as just another flirtation. He had had enough of them in the past. But however much he told himself that such a meeting was normal, almost routine, he still felt the anticipation.
He tried to define why Julia was different from previous ambiguities. She was less available, less neurotic, and married with two sons. Douglas decided this made her safer (neither desperately single nor in need of a child) and at the same time more dangerous (they would both know the rules).
He wondered if his presence on the train was due to the fact that he had seen Jack and Krystyna together and had felt unexpectedly competitive. His brother had discovered a renewed sense of purpose. The despair of the abandoned husband had disappeared. Instead he had turned up at the family home with a girl who was falling out of her dress and was young enough to be his daughter. It was a form of showing off, Douglas decided, and now perhaps he wanted something of the same; a change, new energy, hope. He was not going to accept that his behaviour was attributable to something less justifiable such as lassitude, loneliness or the simple selfishness of a midlife crisis.
He had arranged to meet Julia at the Brasserie Lipp. Douglas had always liked it because it was where Hemingway had decided to write his longer stories, training for the race that would be a novel, trying to stay sound and good in his head. Douglas had once thought of becoming a writer himself but he did not have the patience. Early attempts had left him bored and frustrated, and besides, he drank too much already.
The brasserie had retained its art deco style, with ceramic tiles of palm and aspidistra and gas sconces above the coat hooks. Douglas was shown upstairs to a table next to an elderly couple who were eating their meal in silence. They had to be married to each other, he thought, to say so little. He only hoped that they did not speak English.
He sat with his back to the wall, looking out into the room. Already he worried that Julia would not think to come upstairs.
He ordered a sparkling water and tried to look as though he lunched in St-Germain every day. Although the other diners had dressed with an unstudied elegance Douglas had made an effort, buying a new white shirt, moleskin trousers and a pinstriped velvet jacket that he hoped would make him appear raffish. He’d even added a silk scarf in honour of the encounter.
He was just about to take off the scarf when Julia arrived. She was wearing a dark-burgundy blouse, her blonde hair was swept behind her ears, and a pair of reading glasses hung from a chain around her neck. She appeared to have taken as much trouble as Douglas to look effortless.
He stood up and Julia turned her head at the last moment, forcing him to kiss her on the cheek rather than the lips.
‘I hope I’m not late.’
‘No, it’s fine. I wanted to be first.’
Douglas knew that he should not have been so forward so soon. Perhaps Julia was simply avoiding smudging her lipstick but he would have to reclaim lost territory.
The couple at the next table looked up to assess the new arrival but Julia dismissed them with a firm ‘Bonjour’. She sat down and picked up the menu.
‘Oh God, I can’t read this,’ she said. She put on her reading glasses. ‘Another sign of ageing.’
‘You look fantastic.’
She could sense Douglas staring at her as she read, and she spoke without looking up, concentrating on the menu.
‘You’re looking good yourself. Not sure about the scarf.’
‘I’ve only just bought it.’
‘The jacket’s good.’ She smiled. ‘What shall we have?’
‘I thought the pâté followed by the daurade,’ Douglas said. Then he worried that he wasn’t good with bones.
‘Well, I’m going to have the beetroot salad,’ Julia announced, summoning the waiter, ‘and then some steak. I see you’re not having any wine.’
‘Not yet.’
‘I hope that’s not being done for my benefit.’
‘No. It’s done for mine.’
He poured out the mineral water and said, ‘Let’s have a bottle of Brouilly.’
Two businessmen in suits that were almost identical edged on to the next table. They were talking about a property deal. At least Douglas wouldn’t have to worry about them listening.
‘I hope you didn’t mind hearing from me,’ Julia said.
‘No. It just surprised me.’
‘I thought Paris, Eurostar, you could just come over. It only takes a couple of hours.’
Douglas didn’t want to tell her how long it had taken him from Glasgow; the effort he had made, the excuses he’d given.
‘Well, here I am.’
‘Did you think about not coming?’
‘Not really. Did you?’
‘I have to be here for my work. And there’s an exhibition I need to visit. I thought I could combine it with seeing you. You’re supposed to be the highlight of my trip.’
‘Then I’ll try and live up to your expectations.’
‘Oh I didn’t have any. I just thought we’d have lunch and see what happened.’
‘I’m not sure I believe you.’
‘Why, don’t tell me you were hoping for something more?’
Douglas offered Julia the bread. He knew he had to be careful what he said before the corridor of uncertainty closed. It was ridiculous to think of a phrase from cricket at a time like this: the corridor of uncertainty. He was still not sure if Julia thought there was as much at stake as he did.
‘When I got your message,’ Douglas began, ‘I remembered the last time we saw each other. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about it.’
‘I’m glad I made such an impression.’
‘You did, believe me.’
Douglas worried that he was saying too much too soon. The kiss had been in the American Bar, just before Julia had left for the airport.
‘Too bad you didn’t make your move earlier,’ she had said at the time.
The beetroot salad arrived.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I can’t eat that. They’ve put eggs in it. Why didn’t they say?’
‘Order something else.’
‘No, I’ll just have some of your pâté.’ She reached over.
‘Let me help you,’ Douglas said.
‘It’s good to see you,’ Julia said.
‘It’s good to see you too. I’d almost forgotten how much I liked you.’
‘You just said you keep thinking about me.’
‘Thinking isn’t the same as feeling. You’re much better in the flesh.’
‘Steady…’
He should give it up right now, he thought. He should leave the restaurant while it was still safe, before anything happened.
‘Sorry. I’m only saying what I feel.’
‘You’re very kind. I’m flattered.’
‘I’m telling the truth.’
Douglas wondered how many other people were having assignations at this very moment; or if they were waiting for the two-hour window after work and before their return home. In Paris he assumed it was commonplace, the cinq a sept. He tried to think what such a life might be like. Did people book regular hotel rooms or borrow apartments from their friends? What were the logistics of doing this regularly and how much money did you need?
Julia’s steak arrived. It was too tough.
‘Perhaps it’s horse,’ she said.
A waiter brought her a serrated knife and apologised but it made little difference.
‘This place seems to be resting on its laurels.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Douglas. ‘People seem to come here all the time.’
‘But the world has moved on since it became famous.’
‘I suppose they don’t come here for the food any more,’ Douglas said.
‘Why do you think people come here then?’ Julia asked.
‘It must be the romance of it all.’
The couple at the next table rose and squeezed past them. A waiter brought over a ‘just in case’ summer raincoat for the elderly lady. The man shook his hand and gave him a tip in cash.
‘A demain.’
Douglas tried to picture the routine. Did the man have a different guest every day of the week or did he just meet his wife? Would they just order the plat du jour or study the menu every time they came? How long would it take before they were bored? What kind of marriage did they have? And surely the restaurant would have given them a corner table by now?
‘Have you got somewhere to stay?’ Julia asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And have they let you check in?’
‘I’ve done all that …’ said Douglas.
‘Is it close?’
‘It’s just round the corner. I can’t think why you’re asking.’
‘Neither can I.’ Julia took a sip of water. ‘So, you’ve made your arrangements.’
‘Have you?’
‘Yes,’ she said, without elaborating further.
Douglas could not think what to say next.
‘What would you like to talk about? Entertain me,’ she said.
Douglas didn’t feel like talking at all, he wanted her there and then, even in the toilets, but if they were going to stay in the restaurant then he might as well ask Julia a few questions about her life.
‘Are you happy?’ he asked.
The waiter refilled their glasses.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’m not unhappy.’
This appeared to be all he was going to get.
Douglas realised, yet again, that he hardly knew this woman. What was he doing? He tried to think of other things to lessen the anticipation but he could not think of anything safe that was not dull.
‘What about you?’ Julia asked. ‘Doing anything interesting?’
‘Apart from talking to you?’
‘Well, that is obviously a highlight.’
Douglas was almost irritated that the conversation had fallen back on him. He started to tell her about the television series he was making, the history of the relationship between art and anatomy.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t taken up life classes,’ said Julia.
‘I may well do.’
‘Although I can’t see you drawing men very well. I think you’d lose interest pretty fast.’
‘Well, I do prefer women, Julia.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Shall we have something else?’ She looked at the menu. ‘You can have the pancakes, or the chocolate mousse, or, of course’ – she looked up – ‘you can have me.’
‘When?’
‘That was a joke, Douglas. Shall we just have coffee?’
‘Why bother with the coffee?’
People were beginning to leave, readying themselves for an afternoon in the office. He could see the tension returning to their faces as they rose from their tables.
‘I’ll get the bill,’ Douglas said. ‘I can’t wait any longer.’
Julia smiled.
‘I’ll freshen up.’
Douglas wanted to follow her into the Ladies. He didn’t think he had ever felt like this, wanting someone so urgently that he could think of nothing else. He signed the bill and waited for Julia. When she emerged he could smell her freshly applied perfume.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘I didn’t expect this, you know.’
‘Expect what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I mean I didn’t plan on it.’
‘No, of course you didn’t.’
They walked through the market and along the rue du Bac until they found themselves in the midst of a group of demonstrators protesting about housing developments in the Languedoc.
‘Honestly,’ Julia said, ‘only in France. A demonstration by archaeologists.’
The protesters handed out leaflets, chanted, blew whistles and let off flares and firecrackers as policemen on Rollerblades circled around them.
They neared the hotel.
‘I suppose you do this all the time,’ said Julia.
‘No,’ Douglas replied. ‘I don’t.’ They walked into the foyer and he picked up his key. ‘Could we have a bottle of champagne?’ he asked. He didn’t bother to speak French.
He let Julia enter the lift first.
‘I bet the hotel hasn’t seen this before,’ she said. ‘A couple going up to a room in the afternoon with a bottle of champagne.’
‘Do you think we are a cliché?’
Douglas opened the door and waited as Julia looked round, assessing the size and the space, avoiding the bed. Douglas had booked the largest available double room. He waited until Julia turned and smiled and then he let the door close. He took a step towards her and they started kissing, eyes half closing, her body falling into him.
Douglas felt the heat and force of the kiss. He tried not to think of his wife and resented the fact that he had ordered champagne. They would have to wait until the concierge brought it up.
Douglas wished he didn’t have to think about these things, that he could lose all sense of himself; kissing Julia so hard he could forget about everything else. He kissed her forehead, her closed eyes, her cheeks, her neck and her lips. He tried to tell himself that he had neither anticipated nor planned what he was doing; that this was a conclusion, both natural and inevitable, and he could do nothing to avoid it.
Julia took a step back.
‘Careful, my jewellery, my earrings.’
‘Never mind about that.’
‘I do mind.’
There was a knock on the door. The waiter looked unsurprised. He opened the bottle of champagne and poured out the glasses. As he did so, Julia took off her shoes. Douglas was surprised by her drop in height; how much smaller she became. He handed her a glass. Julia took a sip and watched the waiter leave. As soon as he had closed the door she looked back at Douglas.
‘I want you,’ she said.
‘What about…’
‘You don’t need to worry about that…’
They moved over to the bed, kissing all the time. They started to take off their clothes, helping each other until they were naked and desperate.
‘Come into me now,’ she said.
It was all Douglas wanted: this moment, with this woman in this life. He wished he was younger and stronger and that he could make it last for the rest of his life; that he could go on like this, that he could die like this, that nothing mattered except what he was doing now, with her, in this room.
After they had finished they looked up at the ceiling and listened to each other breathing. Douglas fell asleep.
He awoke when the bedside light was switched on. Julia was sitting next to him. For a moment he did not know where he was.
What time is it ? It’s after seven. Why are you dressed ? I’m sorry, I have to go, I have to get back to my hotel. Why? My husband will worry where I am … He’s in Paris? No, of course not, but I have to call him and I can’t do that when I’m with you. Stay. I can’t. You mean you don’t want to? Don’t make it hard. When will I see you? Soon, sooner than you think, I promise. I love you. Don’t say such things too soon. I mean it. Don’t you love me? Of course I do, just don’t make me say it out loud, I have to go. Don’t go. I have to go, if I don’t go now I’ll never go, I’ll be lost. Then don’t go.
In the doorway Julia tilted her head to one side to whisper that she was sorry.
Douglas finished the champagne and ordered room service. Then he sat up on the bed and watched French television. He wanted to see how long it would be until there was no longer any sense of Julia in the room; her footprints in the talc on the carpet, the smell of perfume and lipstick and newly washed hair, the champagne left in the glass, her weight on the bed and the fallen sheets as she had thrown them off. The next morning the chambermaid would come and erase it all.
He knew that he should go out, think of something else, and be active in the world, anything other than this lassitude.
He lay down and took in the remains of Julia’s scent as if she was still there. He didn’t normally sleep on the left side and he spread himself across the bed. As he did so he thought, involuntarily, of home, and of Emma.
He tried to shut out the memories of his wife; of the holidays they had shared, the hotel rooms they had slept in, her delight to be away from Scotland in places where she could feel the warmth on her face.
He wished he could stop thinking about her but he could not.
His head began to hurt with the speed of his guilt. Was it for desire alone that he had lost all sense of his life? Could lust, or whatever it was that had overcome him, so unravel every sense that he had of himself that he no longer knew who he was?
The next morning he visited the Musée d’Orsay. Outside there was a queue of tourists, penned into lines. He remembered that Julia had an Art World pass that allowed her to walk straight into almost any gallery in the world. She would enter as if she ran the building already, moving with an assurance Douglas knew he could never possess.
He had to queue for half an hour. He took the escalators up to the impressionist galleries on the top floor, past the determination of Caillebotte’s woodstrippers, the exhaustion of Les Repasseuses, the unhappiness of L ‘Absinthe. A group of children sat on the floor with their lunch boxes as their teacher told them to close their eyes and imagine what it would be like if the whole of their lives were a dream.
He stopped at the Monet series of Rouen Cathedral and at Renoir’s path through the high grasses: a daughter leading the way through the sunlit fields, her left arm outstretched, reaching for a butterfly. The mother’s parasol matched the red of the poppies in the light of summer. It reminded him of his childhood: of home.
He thought back to the time when he had wanted to be an art historian rather than a television producer, studying early Italian Renaissance painting in Glasgow, happy in galleries and libraries, drinking tea, yes, tea, for God’s sake, sitting in cafés in the afternoons with his friends.
He turned into a darkened room of pastels by Toulouse-Lautrec. He remembered how Emma had given him a card on one of his birthdays. It was of two people lying in bed under the sheets, and turned towards each other. Le Lit. The woman on the left had hair that had sprung up in a tuft; the figure on the right had the same lips as Douglas’s.
‘Don’t you see?’ she had said. ‘It’s us – except they’re lying on different sides. They’re the wrong way round.’
He could sense the warmth and yield of the marital bed and the give of the pillows. He had once bought a new mattress for them both on Valentine’s Day. It was pocket-sprung so that they could turn in the night without disturbing each other. ‘It’s got so much more give to it,’ Emma had told him. ‘We’ll be in heaven.’
In the art gallery he shuddered at the familiar ease of the two figures in the painting. It was a portrait of them both: he could see that now.
He wanted to sit down but there were no seats. He didn’t know whether he was going to cry or be sick. He thought of Emma and what he had done.
Her optimism. His bleakness.
Her affirmation. His drift.
He took a taxi to the Gare du Nord and crossed the river past La Samaritaine. They had once shared a meal together in the rooftop restaurant. It had been an anniversary weekend just after they had given up on having children. They had discussed how they were going to tell their parents.
It was raining when the taxi arrived at the Gare du Nord and Douglas had neither a raincoat nor an umbrella. He had not thought about the weather. Everyday life seemed to have nothing to do with him any more: people, escalators, walkways, security, passport control.
He boarded the train and edged his way towards his compartment. A man flirting on his mobile blocked the gangway: ‘Smooth like the groove, baby!’
Douglas found his seat opposite an alert elderly woman who looked up from her crossword with a nervous smile. He hoped that she wasn’t expecting a conversation.
As he sat down, Douglas imagined what it might be like to tell her his whole story, this stranger on a train, a woman that he knew he would never see again. She would be as good a choice as any, he thought, and perhaps he was lucky to have found her. Her face, even in repose, was a mixture of curiosity and joy. Already he envied her ease with the world. Was it faith, family, the love of one person on whom she could rely, or had she been born with such confidence?
The woman took out her knitting from a polythene bag. She was making baby clothes for a grandchild, a girl.
Douglas decided to order drinks and look out of the window. A bottle of red wine. He knew it looked bad but he didn’t care. He overheard a man talking about his mother-in-law: ‘The only reason she isn’t dead is because she’s more toxic than her cancer.’
He opened the bottle and the old joke came to him: Is life worth living? It depends on the liver. He thought of the colleague who had failed to eat and who had deliberately drunk himself to death on two bottles of vodka a day (it had only taken a year). There was his Uncle Gordon, living in a house divided into two flats, his wife below, visited every Wednesday by a financial adviser who was also her lover. And he thought of Ansei, the Japanese poet he’d once met in Tokyo, a man who married a woman he hated because he thought the suffering might make him write better poetry:
Now that you are going to a far-off land,
Only your scent remains,
Lavishly infused with late-autumn rain.
On arrival in London he could still pass himself off as being in control. He did not need to resort to mints or aftershave to disguise his drinking. He would take the tube and then catch one of the last trains back to Glasgow.
Two girls opposite were talking about the previous night’s party. One of them had been standing in a conservatory full of plants and a woman asked her if they were inside or outside. It was so hard to tell, she said, and the girl had said that she had often felt like that when she was blind drunk and the woman had replied, ‘I’m not drunk. But I am blind.’
Douglas knew that he had often been that drunk.
He looked out of the window to see the flooding in the fields, a dull reflection of the bleak skies above, church steeples against low dark clouds. There were people throwing fireworks from bridges on to passing trains and traffic. They came as a series of sharp white explosions and distant smoke against brick and timber yards.
This was a countryside of car parks and abandonment, disused pumping stations and recycling centres, of land being cleared for out-of-town superstores, of desolate rugby posts that reminded him of his brother Angus, the sky darkening above them all.
Back in Glasgow an open-air concert was ending in George Square. Douglas watched people leaving, couples free from anxiety, the young and the newly in love, heading on for pubs and clubs all over the city, dancing at Corinthians, or Cottiers, or the Garage, anywhere, it didn’t matter, getting wasted, slaughtered, trashed, bombed and wankered.
Douglas could not ever remember being as young as them.
He took a taxi to Hyndland. Most of the lamps in the tenement were out but an overhead light shone over the entrance. He unlocked the door to his flat and heard Emma call, ‘Is that you, darling?’
He saw her walking towards him, barefoot, wearing his favourite pale-blue blouse over her jeans. She was young and alive and her whole face was smiling.
‘I’ve missed you,’ she said. ‘Have you had a good time?’