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.I went across to her, surprised as much by how familiar she looked as by the fact she was there.I was not thinking, only noticing.There was an awkward moment, when we stood facing each other by her car, neither of us saying anything, then spontaneously we moved quickly and put our arms around one another.We held tight, pressing our faces together without kissing; her cheeks were cold, and the fur of the coat was damp.I felt a surge of relief and happiness, a marvelling that she was safe and we were together again.I held on and held on, unwilling to let the reality of her frail body go, and soon I was crying with her.Gracia had never made me cry, nor I her.We had been sophisticates in London, whatever that meant, although at the end, in the months before we parted, there had been a tautness in us that was just a suppression of emotion.Our coolness to each other had become a habit, a mannerism that became self-generating.We had known each other too long to break out of patterns.Suddenly, I knew that Seri, by whom I tried to understand Gracia, had never existed.Gracia, holding me as tightly as I held her, defied definition.Gracia was Gracia: fickle, sweet-smelling, moody, unpredictable, funny.I could define Gracia only by being with her, so that through her I defined myself.I held her more tightly still, pressing my lips against her white neck, tasting her.The fur coat had opened as she raised her arms to take me, and I could feel her thin body through her blouse and skirt; she had been wearing the same clothes when I last saw her, at the end of the previous winter.At last I stepped back from her, but held her hands.Gracia stood looking down at the ground, then let go of my hands, blew her nose on a tissue.She reached into the car for her shoulder bag, then slammed the door.I held her again, arms around her back, but not pressing her to me.She kissed me, and we laughed.“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” I said.“Neither did I.I didn’t want to, for a long time.”“Where have you been living?”“I moved in with a friend.” She had looked away, briefly.“What about you?”“I was down in the country for a time.I had to sort things out.Since then I’ve been with Felicity.”“I know.She told me.”“Is that why you—?”She glanced at James’s Volvo, then said: “Felicity told me you’d be here.I wanted to see you again.”Felicity had arranged the meeting, of course.After the weekend I had spent in Sheffield with Gracia, Felicity had gone out of her way to befriend her.But the two women were not friends, in the usual sense.Felicity’s gestures towards Gracia had been political, significant to me.She saw Gracia as a victim of my shortcomings, and helping Gracia was her way of expressing disapproval of me, and something more general; responsibility, and sisterhood between women.It was revealing that Felicity had not arranged the meeting at Greenway Park.She probably despised Gracia without knowing it.Gracia was just a wounded bird, someone to be helped with a splint and a spoon of warm milk.That I had done the wounding was where her concern began, naturally enough.We started walking into the village, holding hands and pressing shoulders, heedless of the cold and the wind.I had become alive in my mind, sensing a further move forward, I had not felt like this since before my father died.I had been obsessed with the past too long, too concerned with myself.All that I had been damming up in me now flowed towards an outlet: Gracia, part of my past yet returning.The main street of the village was narrow and winding, pressed in by the grey houses.Traffic went through noisily, throwing up fine spray with the tyres.“Can we find somewhere for coffee?” Gracia said.She had always drunk a lot of cheap instant coffee, made too weakly and with white sugar.I squeezed her hand, remembering a stupid argument.In a tiny side street we found a café, the front room of a terraced house, converted with a large pane of plate glass and metal topped tables.Little glass ashtrays rested exactly in the centre of each one.It was so quiet as we went in that I assumed the place was closed, but after we had been seated for a minute or two, a woman in a blue gingham kitchen overall came to take our order.Gracia ordered two poached eggs, as well as coffee; she had been driving since half-past seven, she said [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]