The Realms of Gold Read Online Free PDF Page A

fact, they had given up the attempt for a while, and had made their way finally down to the sea—a strange sea, derelict and morbid, not at all the same sea that filled the bay a few miles down the coast. There had been no beach to speak of, but a clay shore where the tideless Mediterranean dully curved its idle dirty little waves. Long reeds and rushes grew. But it had at least been secluded, so they lay down on the mud and made love, which was, after all, the purpose of their expedition. Frances kept her filthy sandals on, because she knew that although they felt quite nice, almost part of her foot at that moment, she would never be able to face putting them back on again once they had caked and dried. She could remember the sight of that dirty sandal, somewhere up behind Karel’s shoulder. She thought of Karel’s shoulder, forever lost, renounced forever.
    Then they had gone back to the car, and pulled it out. She, expert in dislodging jeeps and landrovers, had finally taken off her dress, and used it to give the wheels some grip: she’d arrived back at the hotel in a quite amazing condition.
    The next day, when Karel drove back to his wife, it crossed her mind that she would leave him. She was tired of being treated so badly—abandoned in inconvenient places, pushed into muddy ditches. She had had enough of it. Something in her finally rebelled—pride, conscience, something like that—and when she got back to England she found herself behaving, somewhat to her own surprise, quite oddly. She told Karel that they should part, and stuck to it. He didn’t believe her at first: he refused to let her go, suggesting ludicrous compromises (but not, she noted, marriage). She became equally persistent. They were ruining one another’s lives, she said, and off she went, firmly, after a fortnight of recrimination, to North Africa, on a perfectly legitimate piece of work. He could not pursue her there: she had always had the upper hand, as far as mobility went. She stayed there for a month, half-expecting each day to see him appear on a camel, sun struck, across the sands to rescue her, as he had threatened to do: but he didn’t. And when she got back to England, she didn’t see him, didn’t hear from him. She was rather surprised. They had left it that if she ever changed her mind, she had only to let him know, but she hadn’t exactly changed her mind. It was as though he had ceased to exist. She was not likely to come across him by accident. They did not move in the same circles. And now she had not seen him or heard of him for months.
    Going over this old ground, she poked through the pile of papers she had brought with her to chaperone her during her dinner. There was the card for the children, there were the lecture notes, there was the note she had written to Karel. She tore it up, and pushed the pieces into the folder. The folder was full of such scraps. Then, wavering, she lit upon another new postcard—well, it wasn’t exactly new, she’d picked it up a year or two ago on another lecture tour in Florence, round the Uffizi she’d been, and there she must have bought this rather attractive card. (Her folder was full of such things also—a sediment of past journeys, tickets, old cards, street plans, hotel bills, letters, addresses.) The card was a detail from a painting by Hugo van der Goes, of the adoration of the shepherds: it showed a bunch of straw, a glass with some canterbury bells, a painted pot with two red lilies, two white irises, and one blue iris. It was extraordinarily beautiful. She looked at it and her eyes filled with easy tears. Beautiful, beautiful. She turned it over, and she wrote
    Â 
Karel Schmidt Esq.
    11 Huntingdon Rd,
        London SW6
    Â 
    She stared at that for some time, and then she filled in the message space. First of all she put the date. Carefully then she wrote:
I miss you
. Then,