He doesn’t move. At last he exhales and steps back, still watching her, until he bumps into the edge of a man-size bowl. He looks round jerkily, as if it moved on its own. Then he puts the glinting square down on the lip. ‘I’ll leave it here, shall I? It’s fruit and nut.’
Is it bait? What does he want? She stares at him until he bobs his head.
‘I’d better get back. Early start tomorrow. Can’t wait to get home. I’ve got a sister about your age. I hope my family are …’
Silence. She stays very still. Maybe if she doesn’t move, he’ll forget she’s there.
‘Good night, then.’ He turns away, as if something has broken. ‘And, um … happy New Year.’
She waits a long time before she moves. He has gone – she knows he’s gone – but something lingers, a queasiness in her belly as though his questions have made her ill. Finally she picks up the thing he left for her and raises it to her nose. It has a skin of paper and metal, folded around at the top; when she unpeels it, the thing inside smells rich and creamy.
She bites it. For a second she is not a rat (a rat would be wary). But she is nothing else, either: only the taste of chocolate on her tongue, the little soft nub of a raisin and the harder crunch of a hazelnut. Another mouthful, and another, and it’s gone. She stands in the freezing silence, light-headed, disbelieving, her mouth full of fading sweetness. Why would someone give this away? It’s incomprehensible. No one gives her anything. Not since before – food, comfort, a woman’s voice singing her to sleep …
A trap. Of course it is a trap. That hand held out, that gentle voice, the expecting-her-to-be-human. A poison. She should have been careful. She should have known better.
She thrusts her hand into her mouth, gags and gags. At last the sweet stuff comes back up, thick and stringy and tinged with bile. She crouches, vomiting on the floor until she is sure it has all gone. Better. Then she scrubs the dark mess with her blanket until the stain is almost invisible. But her mind is not so easily purged: the words stay there – Simon, sorry – and the memory of his hand, offering. Those are a different kind of poison.
She gets up. She is careful as she goes out into the corridor, in case he is there; but the shadows are empty, the night silent. She tells herself that she is safe now, that she has averted whatever danger she saw in his eyes. But underneath she feels a perverse flicker of disappointment; and his voice echoes in her head, being kind, saying she’s like his sister, wishing her a happy New Year.
PART TWO
Vernal Term
17: Léo
Léo sits back in his seat and takes a deep breath. He’s alone in the carriage. The smell of steam and hot metal surrounds him, catching in his throat. The guard blows his whistle and the train judders and rattles, gathering speed. It’s like being twenty again: here’s the familiar sense of freedom, the faint guilt, the ache to stay on the train all the way to the terminal and stumble out into bustling streets and fleshpots … But he knows – as he always knew – that he won’t. He’ll change obediently for Montverre, without pausing to watch the train puff away to the capital. He stretches out his legs and crosses his ankles on the seat opposite; then he lights a cigarette and blows a plume at the ceiling. Mim hates to see him smoke. For the first few days at home she winced and coughed delicately when she came into his room, peering through the virtually non-existent tinge of grey-blue as if she could hardly make him out. Finally he gave in, and leant out of the window or stood on the terrace, staring into the drab flowerbeds with their wintry, hand-me-down air. It took the pleasure out of it, which was quite probably what Mim had in mind. She has a gift for that, for serving meals that are oddly savourless, no matter how much seasoning the cook has added; for pouring cocktails that seem to be mainly water; or for giving presents that clutch depressingly at the heart. At New Year he unwrapped a blotchy silver-paper packet that held a wilting tie the colour of mould.
It’s possible, of course, that he’s being unkind. He’s nearly forty – well, over thirty; he can’t bear the wet-wool sensation of being a child again. The afternoons, airless and muffled, while he tried to read in his room or made desultory notes on Magister Dryden’s essay questions. The evenings spent alone with Mim, or, worse, with her guests. The pretty but fatuous cousin in her high-necked blouse, asking earnest questions. The spinster of a certain age who acts as Mim’s unofficial companion, who somehow gives the impression that she’s wearing an unravelling cardigan even when she isn’t. The pigeon-breasted local bureaucrats that Mim imagines fondly are the sort of people Léo was used to meeting, when he was Minister for Culture … It should have been touching, at least, that she tried to entertain him like some visiting dignitary; but it only reminded him of the old days of being home from Montverre, when Dad would show him off to his friends. Here is my son, a credit to me. Léo would put on an act, affable and charming and a bit self-deprecating, to try to take the edge off Dad’s bonhomie-filled resentment: and now, even though Dad is dead, he finds himself donning the same mask. This time he doesn’t know whose resentment he’s trying to defuse. His own, maybe.
But the nights he spent in town were worse. One evening he went to an enormous party at the Winter Palace, and as soon as he crossed the threshold he had to steel himself not to turn around and leave; the noise and the light were like a fever. He shoved his cloakroom ticket into his pocket and made his way to the main ballroom. He plucked two glasses of champagne from the nearest waiter, drank one down in a gulp and slid it back on to the tray before the waiter had time to move away. He forced himself to sip the other as he navigated his way from group to group, smiling and nodding at acquaintances, pausing for a few minutes to swap pleasantries with businessmen or Party officials before moving on. He hadn’t expected to see the Old Man or the Chancellor, of course, but he found himself scanning the crowds for Emile Fallon; he wasn’t sure if he was pleased or disappointed not to see him.
At last he disentangled himself from a group of industrialists and ducked into a quiet, carpeted alcove. He’d drawn aside a curtain and was wrestling with the catch on the window, desperate for a breath of air, when a voice behind him said, ‘Léo! Long time no see.’
He turned. He knew her a little: Sarah Paget, was it, or Sara? She’d never been in the Ministry for Culture, fortunately, she was one of the Chancellor’s underlings. Or was she at the Ministry for Justice, these days? She was wearing a tuxedo and a monocle, her short hair slicked back. ‘How are you, old chap?’ she said, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘Looks like the monastic life agrees with you, at least.’
‘Thanks. You look well, too.’
She gave him a dry smile. ‘It’s strange not to see your lady friend – no, wait, she isn’t your lady friend any more, is she? Never mind, you know what I mean – not to see her here. She did attract attention … I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?’
Léo shook his head. Chryseïs knew Sara, and despised her; he remembered her saying contemptuously, ‘She’d rather be an honorary man than speak up for other women,’ rolling her eyes before adding, ‘and that hair is simply grotesque.’