Selected Stories

He shook his head, not in denial of what she said, only to indicate bewilderment. She had chosen the time she had – the middle of the night, as it had been – because it was easier then, almost a fait accompli when he returned from the night school, easier to find the courage. He guessed that, but didn’t say it because it mattered so much less than that she didn’t want to be here any more.

The muted colours of the clothes she was wearing were suitable for a bleak occasion, as if she had specially chosen them: the grey skirt she disliked, the nondescript silk scarf that hadn’t been a present from him as so many other scarves were, the plain cream blouse he’d never seen without a necklace before. She looked a little different and perhaps she thought she should because that was how she felt.

‘Where are you going, Chloë?’

Her back was to him. She tried to shrug. She picked a glass up and turned to face him when she reached the door. No one else knew, she said. He was the first to know.

‘I love you, Chloë,’ he said again.

‘Yes, I do know that.’

‘We’ve been everything to one another.

‘Yes.’

The affection in their relationship had been the pleasure of both their lives: that had not been said before in this room, nor even very often that they were fortunate. The reticence they shared was natural to them, but they knew – each as certainly as the other – what was not put into words. Prosper might have contributed now some part of this, but sensing that it would seem like protesting too much he did not.

‘Don’t,’ he begged instead, and she gazed emptily at him before she went away.

He heard her in the bedroom when she finished with the Hoky in the hall. The telephone rang and she answered it at once; a taxi-driver, he guessed, for Clement Gardens was sometimes difficult to find.

Exhausted, Prosper sat down. Middle-aged, greying a little, his thin face anxious, as it often was, he wondered if he looked as disturbed and haggard as he felt. ‘Don’t,’ he whispered. ‘For God’s sake, don’t, Chloë.’

No sound came from the bedroom, either of suitcases and bags being zipped or of footsteps. Then the doorbell rang and there were voices in the hall, hers light and easy, polite as always, the taxi-man’s a mumble. The door of the flat banged.

He sat where she had left him, thinking he had never known her, for what else made sense? He imagined her in the taxi that was taking her somewhere she hadn’t told him about, even telling the taxi-driver more - why she was going there, what the trouble was. There had been no goodbye. She hadn’t wept. ‘I’m sorry,’ was what she’d said when he came in from the night school more or less at the usual time. His hours were eight until half past one and he almost always stayed longer with someone who had fallen behind. He had this morning, and then had walked because he felt the need for fresh air, stopping as he often did for a cup of tea at the stall in Covent Garden. It was twenty to three when he came in and she hadn’t gone to bed. It had taken her most of the night to pack.

Prosper didn’t go to bed himself, nor did he for all that day. There hadn’t been a quarrel. They had never quarrelled, not once, not ever. She would always cherish that, she’d said.

He took paracetamol for a headache. He walked about the flat, expecting to find she had forgotten something because she usually did when she packed. But all trace of her was gone from the kitchen and the bathroom, from the bedroom they had shared for two and a half years. In the afternoon, at half past four, a private pupil came, a middle-aged Slovakian woman, whose English he was improving. He didn’t charge her. It wasn’t worth it since she could afford no more than a pittance.

All day Chloë’s work had been a diversion. Now there was a television screen, high up in a corner, angled so that it could be seen without much effort from the bed. People she knew would have put her up for a while, but she hadn’t wanted that. Breakfast was included in the daily rate at the Kylemore Hotel; and it was better, being on her own.

But the room she’d been shown when she came to make enquiries a week ago wasn’t this one. The faded wallpaper was stained, the bedside table marked with cigarette burns. The room she’d been shown was clean at least and she’d hesitated when this morning she’d been led into a different one. But, feeling low, she hadn’t been up to making a fuss.

From the window she watched the traffic, sluggish in congestion – taxis jammed, bus-drivers patient, their windows pulled open in the evening heat, cyclists skilfully manoeuvring. Still gazing down into the street, Chloë knew why she was here and reminded herself of that. But knowing, really, was no good. She had been happy.