Gwen rapped down the two smoking mugs, sat opposite again.
Hilary cupped her hands around one mug and shook her head. ‘Mark didn’t know about Paul, so he blamed Eddie, you know? The stuff he said – aggressive, disgusting stuff. How weird I was to have a thing for an old man. Did I get off on Eddie’s obsession, or was it the power I had over his money? Then shouting at me, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going to go now? You can’t get into his apartment if I don’t give you the key. What are you going to do? Sleep in the warehouse so you can fondle his pots and his lamps and his statues? That’s what you’d really like to do, isn’t it? Sleep with him – with his fucking collection.”’ Hilary’s lips curled back from her teeth, trembled ever so slightly.
‘You think he felt jealous when Eddie was alive?’
‘Maybe there was some power thing with them. Basically Mark never understood what all the excitement was about. Eddie and I just thought he did. He couldn’t see what we saw – about the past. Turns out it made him mad. Made him into a kind of brute – a bully.’
Gwen lifted her mug to her lips, put it down again without drinking from it; there was something in Hilary’s voice, disillusionment, a tone of fuck all. ‘But you don’t think he’d try to derail Eddie’s plans?’
‘He was kind of nuts with his threats, Gwen: “I can stop the whole fucking project. Doro’s dead; he’s buried in a hole in the ground. All that stuff in his apartment and all that stuff in the warehouse is dust and bones. It’s dug up out of graves, stolen from tombs. It belonged to people who died thousands of years ago. What is this with you – dead people, the past? It’s necrophilia, that’s what it’s called. You give me the creeps with your sarcophaguses and your burial monuments and your funeral urns.”’
Gwen squeaked with outrage. ‘But a lawyer – a trusts and estates lawyer – that’s all about people dying, and about them trying to reach into the future with what they want – to exercise their will! I mean the word, “will” – it’s all about enacting what you want from beyond the grave. That’s Mark’s job, it’s what he chose. What’s going on over there in America?’
‘I know! And I said to him, “It’s sarcophagi, by the way”; but, God, I wish I hadn’t! It just infuriated him.’ At last she sipped her tea.
‘Ginger and lemon,’ murmured Gwen, watching her.
‘I like it.’ Hilary took another, longer sip. ‘Up until I said that – “It’s sarcophagi, by the way” – I think there was maybe a chance I could have persuaded Mark to give me back the key to Eddie’s apartment. But somehow that one pedantic little remark changed everything. It seems trivial, but just as I was saying it, I realised that was the point: we weren’t speaking the same language any more. I needed to be with someone who understood what I was doing – so I could remember who I was. All I really wanted was to go to Eddie’s and sit there quietly and collect myself – Well, the thing is I couldn’t ask Mark, could I, because communing with Eddie –?’ Hilary stopped, raised her hands in mock horror.
‘He would have thought you were trying to hold a seance –’ Gwen said.
‘It crossed my mind that I could get the doorman to let me in. There’s one I’m friendly with. But there are all these procedures for access now because of the value of the stuff, and then Mark could accuse me of breaking the rules, and he’d have just what he needed to get me dumped for ever from the project. Imagine thinking that way, about a guy you were going to marry! And by then it was three or four in the morning and I wanted –’
The neglected undercurrent of Paul stirred between them. Gwen acknowledged it by lifting one corner of her mouth, not a smile, but sliding her lips around to the side of her face, making a squeegee sound inside her cheek. ‘Right – you wanted to be with someone who understood why you cared so much about all those antiquities.’
‘I got down into the street with my suitcases, and hailed a cab, and the whole thing just ran away with me. Arriving, departing. What was the name of any hotel, anyway? I felt all beaten up, and yet there was energy bubbling somewhere inside me. It was like I was right in the middle of a sentence with Paul, and I thought, Now I can talk straight to him because I’m free. So I told the cab driver to take me back to the airport.’
‘I still can’t believe you didn’t phone him!’
‘It was crazy. I thought – I imagined – that somehow he knew I was coming – or … I don’t know. Paul and I never used the phone; we always just walked in and saw each other first thing every morning. It felt like such a sure thing. I had his address and I – I was so excited – so impatient – like I was running to his arms. I wanted to amaze him. I thought it would make up for torturing him all summer talking about Mark. I kept remembering that expression on his face, when he put me in the taxi – open to whatever I decided. And this would be my answer, my fabulous, dramatic answer. I thought I was in love, Gwen, that’s the thing.’ Hilary swallowed a sob. ‘God, I’m sorry,’ she said loudly, defying it. ‘I’m so fucking tired.’
Gwen got up from her chair, slipped around the table, kneeled down beside Hilary, put her arms around her. ‘It’s fine. You have to give it time, Hil.’
‘I pounded on his door for ever!’ Hilary groaned. ‘What was I thinking?!’
‘You weren’t thinking, you were feeling.’
‘What was I feeling? None of it was real.’
‘So maybe that’s a problem people have about love. That they want it to feel passionate and impulsive. Maybe you did all this to make it feel like love when it wasn’t. To throw yourself, to jump blind. Maybe you needed the end of the world as you knew it.’
‘Christ, how does anyone ever know?’ Hilary turned her chair with a raw scrape and laid her cheek on Gwen’s hair; tears darkened the fine brown strands and swelled like beads on the flecks of green oil paint stuck to a few. ‘Any normal person would have given up and gone away, realised he wasn’t going to answer, assumed he wasn’t home.’
‘Shhh,’ said Gwen, rocking her gently. ‘It’s just as well he was there so it’s over already. One day you’ll laugh about it.’
‘When he finally opened the door, he was glowing. Hair tousled, no glasses, out of breath a little, giggling – and I still thought it was all for me. That he’d been waiting and hoping. He didn’t have on a shirt, his trousers were only half done up. It’s so embarrassing. I swear. I launched myself across the threshold, into the air, arms outstretched, before I even noticed the other man right behind him. This huge, hairy guy, half naked, twice Paul’s age.’
Gwen shook with laughter. ‘I’m sorry. I know how much it’s hurting you, but you tell it so perfectly, and I see this – tableau.’
Hilary pushed Gwen’s shoulders away, slapped at them, belligerent, half joking. ‘Bitch.’
‘Who talked first?’
‘Paul. Handled it easily. As if he were in white tie and tails and presenting me to a duchess, but with this kind of blandness, like he was – under hypnosis.’ She mimicked his English accent exaggeratedly: ‘“Ah – Hilary, what a surprise. Can I introduce you to my friend Orlando?” – or whatever the guy was called. But I didn’t meet him; he must have been as surprised as I was; made tracks. And then Paul said, “We were just having a bit
