‘Harry, I wish you please to define profit to me’ – mustering the last of her courage – ‘Who pays for the cold beers and the Scotches and wine and sandwiches and Marta’s overtime? Do your customers buy suits from you because they keep you up talking and drinking until eleven o’clock? Harry, I do not understand you any more.’
She was going to throw the Hotel Paraiso at him as well but her courage had run dry and she needed another vodka from the top shelf in the bathroom. She couldn’t see Harry very clearly and she suspected it was the same for him. There was a film of hot mist across her eyes and what she saw in place of Harry was herself made older by a lot of grief and vodka, standing here in the drawing room after he had walked out on her, and watching the children wave goodbye to her through the window of the four-track because it was Harry’s turn to have them for the weekend.
‘I’m going to make it all right for us, Lou,’ he promised, patting her shoulder to console the invalid.
So what was wrong that had to be made right? And how the fuck did he propose to correct it?
Who was driving him? What was? If she was not enough for him, who was getting the rest of him? Who was Harry being, one minute pretending she didn’t exist, the next showering her with gifts and going to ridiculous lengths to please the children? Putting himself about town as if his life depended on it? Accepting invitations from people he used to avoid like poison, except as customers – grubby tycoons like Rafi, politicians, entrepreneurs from the drug fringe? Pontificating about the Canal? Creeping out of the Hotel Paraiso with an elevator-load of hookers late at night? But the darkest episode of all was last night’s.
It was a Thursday and on Thursdays she brought work home in order to be sure of clearing her office desk on Friday and having the weekend free for family. She had left her father’s briefcase on her desk in her den, thinking she might grab an hour between putting the children to bed and cooking supper. But then she had a sudden intimation that the steaks had Mad Cow Disease, so she drove down the hill to get a chicken. Returning, she discovered to her pleasure that Harry had come back early: there was his four-track, crookedly parked as usual and no space in the garage for the Peugeot, so she had to leave it way down the hill, which she did willingly, and trudge back up the sidewalk with the shopping.
She was wearing sneakers. The house door was unlocked. Harry at his most forgetful. I’ll surprise him, tease him about his parking. She stepped into the hall, and through the open doorway of her den she saw him standing with his back to her and her father’s briefcase open on her desk. He had taken all the papers out of it and was flipping through them like someone who knows what he is looking for and isn’t finding it. A couple of the files, confidential. Personal reports on people. A draft paper by a newly-joined member of Delgado’s staff on services that could be provided for ships awaiting transit. Delgado was worried because the author had recently formed his own chandlering company and might therefore be trying to push contracts in its direction. Maybe Louisa would look it over and give him her opinion?
‘Harry,’ she said.
Or perhaps she yelled. But when you yell at Harry he doesn’t jump. He just puts down whatever he’s doing and waits for further orders. Which is what he did now: froze, then very slowly, so as not to alarm anybody, laid her papers on her desk. Then stepped one pace back from the desk and hunched himself in that self-effacing way he had, eyes on the ground six feet in front of him while he smiled a Librium smile.
‘It’s that bill, dear,’ he explained in an under-dog voice.
‘What bill?’
‘You remember. From the Einstein Institute. Mark’s extra music. The one they say they sent us and we haven’t paid.’