Snowstorms in a Hot Climate Read online

  Praise for The Birth of Venus

  “Simply amazing, so brilliantly written … almost intolerably exciting at times, and at others, equally poignant.”

  —Antonia Fraser

  “A broad mural bursting with color, passion, and intrigue.”

  —People

  “A witty, ingenious historical novel.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “The plot is full of twists.… Dunant credibly re-creates a past world and evokes a young woman’s passion for its art.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  “Smart and engaging … Dunant does a remarkable job of evoking Florence.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  Praise for Mapping the Edge

  “Thoroughly satisfying … Dunant’s feel for the geography of bed and willing flesh is a pleasure.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “There’s a suspenseful rhythm to the writing as the story slips smoothly from one narrative to the other.… Dunant exerts complete control over her literary devices while adding insights on motherhood, relationships, and lingering childhood trauma.”

  —USA Today

  “[Mapping the Edge] marries the suspense novel with literary fiction.… Dunant is a master at creating anxiety and mystery.”

  —The Washington Post

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2005 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 1998 by Sarah Dunant

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in Great Britain in 1988 by Michael Joseph, a division of Penguin UK, London. This edition published by arrangement with the author.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Dunant, Sarah.

  Snowstorms in a Hot Climate

  I. Title.

  PS3554.U4626S66 1988 813′.54 88-42665

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-486-9

  www.atrandom.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One: The Truth … Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part Two: … The Whole Truth … Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Part Three: … And Nothing But the Truth? Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  PART ONE

  the truth …

  one

  London 1985

  I was happy that day because I was leaving and I like departures. I understand why some people find them untidy, emotional affairs, but I have always had a hankering after them. That is one thing Elly and I have in common. I find airports the best places to leave from. Of course they have none of the romance of railway stations—no clinging good-byes framed in billowing steam, no last-minute touches through half-opened windows, no nineteenth-century echoes to gild the going. No, airports are altogether more anesthetized points of dispatch, conceived and constructed for efficiency, not grace. But then that is what gives them their power, what makes them so exhilarating. Because from the moment those automatic doors glide apart to welcome you inside, nothing, as far as I can see, need ever be the same again. However bad you are feeling, however caught in the quicksand of failed chances and repeating patterns, airports are the new horizon, the conveyor belt of travel, which in due course will disgorge you in some exotic location where you will be happy, fulfilled, or at the very least, different. Such were my fantasies in the departure lounge of Heathrow Airport on that last Thursday in July.

  The preliminaries were over. I had arrived out of the heartland of the city alone, struggling with my own cases, anonymous. I had had my ticket torn, my baggage checked, and my name punched into the computer. I had taken the habitual last walk around the outer compound, bought a clutch of glossy magazines, and then, leaving my last handful of small change on the counter, I had sauntered through Immigration to the world beyond. In the flight departure lounge the BA 177 boarding light was already flashing, winking adventure. On the other side of the ocean Elly was waiting for me. The journey had begun.

  Of course it is all fallacy, the romance just a creation of admen and soft-porn merchants. Travel changes nothing except the location. And whoever met anyone remotely interesting on a plane? There was an Egyptian woman I sat next to on a flight from Cairo to Paris once. She had silver hair and sleek features like Nefertiti. But she slept the whole way from takeoff to touchdown, and when she did finally open her magnificent almond eyes, it turned out she didn’t speak a word of English. And as for the myth of erotica in the water closet—well, whoever believed that story anyway?

  Not me. And certainly not now. Herded in through the giant metal tube, I discovered this particular DC-10 filled with ordinary earthbound people. I ignored them all and barricaded myself into my window seat, content to keep my own company for the next seven hours.

  Outside the aircraft the tarmac shimmered in the heat haze of the engines. I pushed my nose against the reinforced glass and thought of London. Six-ten P.M. Ten million people going home. The Northern Line at rush hour: just another carcass in the truck, the smells of sweat and cheap perfume amid flapping newsprint.

  At Camden Town I stand at the top of the escalator and watch myself ride up toward me, face set, shutters drawn. A dissolve to the key in the lock, followed by the unholy silence of a house where everything is exactly as I left it. The plants, perhaps, have grown imperceptibly; the flowers have drooped a fraction. I pour myself a drink and sit waiting for the tension to subside. And I congratulate myself on another day beaten into submission. I consider the people I could call, except, of course, I know I never will. In the end I eat an apple, lie on the sofa, and read a book on Icelandic myths. And every day a thousand planes take off, heading in a thousand different directions. All it takes is the doing.

  Back inside the bird I caught a glimpse of a man making his way down the aisle. Something to look at. Tall, slender body; a storm of fair hair and chiseled features; the kind of bone structure that turns women into willing wives and men into homosexuals. My eyes flickered and passed on. Such gourmet dishes are not for me. They are too rich, and I do not have the table manners. Anyway, on the evolutionary scale I have always found handsome princes too close to frogs for comfort. The fairy tale brought Elly to my mind; small, sparkling Elly, whose face had almost become a blur in my memory. And I wondered for the umpteenth time since her letter dropped onto my stairwell whether we would actually recognize each other over the airport barrier, or if somehow two years and transatlantic separation would have changed the contours of us both. Parrot fashion I recalled the words of her leaving: Elly curled in a wicker chair, frowning across at me on that day she bought her ticket for Mexico.

  “I didn’t want to tell you until I had decide
d. You mustn’t be upset, all right? I’ll miss you, you know that, but I just have to get out for a while. Be a stranger, unconnected. It’s not permanent. Just a trip—a short walk in the Americas. Six months, a year at most, and I’ll be home …”

  And then I remembered the shadows in her letter, the small cramped writing, as if someone had pushed her into a corner and was blocking her way to the door. And as the engines of the DC-10 roared skyward, I wondered about the time in between.

  Once we were airborne, with London miniaturizing beneath us, smart stewardesses in multicolored aprons started loading up the drinks trolleys. Once they began their trundling passage forward there would be no escape till they had passed. On the aisle seat a corn-fed American in a checked jacket was already settled into a Mickey Spillane. He grunted as I squeezed past him. A man in tune with his fiction. There would be violence before I returned. In the loo I bolted myself in and, as the light snapped on, turned to face the mirror.

  Maybe now is the time for you to see what I look like. I will use only solid, simple words. That way you won’t be seduced by novelistic adjectives. I am tall and have big bones. I was told by my grandmother that I am the proof of the peasant stock in the family. My great-grandfather, it appears, was a delicate, slender aristocrat who was called out to India to serve the French Raj in Pondicherry and went looking for a sturdy woman who would bear heat and children with equal equanimity. He came upon a country girl from Toulouse with rippling long fair hair and big muscles. She gave him eight children in quick succession and then died of smallpox. My grandmother has a lock of her hair in a casket she keeps by her bed. I am, it seems, her physical, if not her spiritual, heir. Except for one thing. She was beautiful and I am not. I am what I think is called “heavy featured.” My mouth is too large and my nose too prominent. My eyes are all right, but since they are the mirror to the soul, I have got into the habit of keeping them half closed. You can’t be too careful.

  On my way back to my seat I passed Mr. Magnificence. He was sitting in the first row of Club Class, long legs encased in smart soft leather boots stretched out in front of him. I followed the feet upward. Expensive trousers, tailored shirt, and the shower of golden hair over the sculptured rock of his face. Why are people so attracted to beauty? There is no real reason why good-looking lovers should be any better in bed. Except perhaps that they get more practice. This particular specimen was clearly aware of his charisma. I disliked him instinctively. He was drinking a large Bloody Mary, playing carelessly with the cocktail stirrer in the glass, while flicking through a magazine on his lap. Next to him on an empty seat lay a book, cover upward. The Meeting at Telgte by Günter Grass. His taste surprised me.

  Back with the plebeians, Mickey Spillane was making a play for real life. He had moved to the center block and was talking animatedly to the well-dressed woman sitting next to him. They both had drinks. He had already eaten his peanuts. I chased the moving trolley and came back with a plastic glass full of ice, and a hoard of three bottles of Scotch. The first taste of whiskey over ice was hot and cold at the same time. It brought back images of America: dimly lit bars with country and western on the jukebox and pool tables covered in green baize under low-slung lamps.

  I took another sip and settled back into my seat. Outside there was a vast skyscape, pure blue over snow-white clouds. England had gone. I invited Queen Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred, to look over my shoulder across the ocean of cloud. She was one of the lesser-known heroines of Anglo-Saxon England; I had written my thesis on her and occasionally still kept in touch, just to see how Anglo-Saxon intelligence might respond to twentieth-century wonders. At this altitude she would probably have expected to see God. I screwed up my eyes and fantasized a host of chubby cherubim, poking their heads out of the clouds. A landscape of divinity. Do people have revelations on aircraft? And has the rate increased since the booze became free? Aethelflaed, bored by the lack of marauding armies to conquer, faded back into history. I opened my second bottle and waited for a visitation.

  Later, as the sky turned crimson, the button-bright hostess brought dinner. I pushed a few carrots around the plastic plate but left the dead chicken as votive offering to Thor, just in case of thunderbolts. On the stereo I plugged into Handel’s oratorio. Coffee came and went. I had a brandy and wondered if I was drunk enough to sleep. I closed my eyes, but Elly’s letter was burning a hole in the bottom of my bag. The compulsion to reread what I already knew by heart was overwhelming.

  Not here, not rubbing spaces with so many other people. I clambered out of my seat, realizing as I stood up that the alcohol had, after all, had some effect. In the loo my face looked significantly more yellow under the strip lighting. It seemed too early in the trip to have contracted hepatitis. It must be the booze. I sat down on the toilet seat and, from the inner recesses of my bag, dug out the crumpled airmail envelope. Elly, in trouble.

  Dear Marla,

  The floor is littered with paper. This is the sixth attempt. How do you start after so much silence? Especially between us? Not at the beginning, that’s for sure. It would take a book. I’ll go for the middle and let you do the interpreting. You always were good at that. A historian’s training.

  First I’ll say the words. I’m sorry. There. Christ, it sounds paltry, doesn’t it? But I swear it’s true. We never were the greatest of letter writers, were we? But at least you made the effort. Not like me. Of course I’ve got excuses … I was never in one place long enough; too much was happening, some of which wasn’t mine to tell: and then, just at the time when I thought I was settled everything started to break apart and kept on breaking. Stupid I know, but that’s how it was.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t need you. I almost came to London once, just to talk to you. I even called your number one night, but you were out. Then I got cold feet. Took a plane somewhere else and talked to a mirror for four weeks instead. No substitute. Shit. I knew this letter wouldn’t stay on course. I’ll just get to the point, OK? I want you to come to America. For a visit. Now. This is always the time of year when you traditionally suffer the blues. Term has ended, another batch of students has left. Remember how old it used to make you feel? Wouldn’t a trip to the land of milk and honey help? And I want to see you. So badly. There. It’s out. I wanted to say it right at the beginning, but I was frightened it might scare you off. I need some help, Marla, and you’re the only one I can ask for it. I know I don’t deserve it. But I’m asking anyway.

  Listen, I know this letter makes me sound like a space case. But I just want you to know that I miss you, and that I’ve never stopped loving you, even if I did stop showing it for a while. Remember what we always said about how lovers are for sometimes, but friends are for always? Well, I think I’ve really learned what that means now. I don’t deserve it, but if you still feel that way too, then please come. Just cable me the flight number and I’ll meet the plane. Any time. Your best friend still?

  So much love.

  Elly. x

  P.S. Don’t worry about money. You don’t pay for anything. That’s part of the deal.

  It read like she spoke. Maybe that was what made it so raw: more than anything she said, it was the sound of her voice again after so long. I folded the letter carefully and slid it back into the envelope. Next to it sat a battered postcard. I didn’t need to read that to know what it said. On the front was a picture of a sunset over a coral reef. On the back the words

  San Andrés is here. Wish you were wonderful. Too much to tell and no time to tell it in. On my way to the Big Apple. Happy. Will write. Soon. Love Elly.

  Soon. Since then there had been a Christmas card and a bunch of flowers three days after my birthday. No words at all. What could it be that took so long to tell? I think I knew even then it had to be a man.

  Back in the cabin I found myself another seat, further away from the screen, and waited for New York and the end of the beginning.

  two

  Of course I recognized her immediately. Even in the crus
h of the arrivals lounge her smallness stood out against the crowd. Yet if she was the same she was also changed. I knew that instantly too. Her hair was shorter, cropped and spiky with flashes of red amid the brown. But it was more than that. We stood facing each other grinning like idiots, transfixed.

  “My God, it’s really you,” she said at last, and suddenly we were caught in a clumsy, clutching embrace. It was then I understood part of the change. She was too thin. The baggy summer trousers and loose jacket disguised the lack of flesh. It was like holding an adolescent girl. I could feel the contours of her rib cage pushing through the cotton top. She broke away from me, still smiling. I noticed the beginning of filigree line work around the eyes, and the slight bruising of shadows beneath them. I had always known she would age well, but the fragility surprised me. There was still a glow about her, but I detected a tension that had not been there before, a new way of holding her body against the air. Did she see all this when she looked in the mirror, or had it been too gradual? Maybe it was I who was overreacting. God knows what differences she saw in me.

  “You look great,” she said breathlessly. “Whatever you’ve been doing it suits you.”

  There was just a touch of America in her voice. I liked it, even though it reminded me of how long it had been.

  “You’ve cut your hair,” I said, because it seemed easier than anything else.

  “And you’ve grown yours.”

  Another pause. She had always been better than I in social circumstances. She took me by the arm. “No more talk till we get out of here, right? The car’s outside. I’ve left it on a quadruple yellow line, and there are armies of cops and tow trucks all around.”

  She reached down for my suitcase and began pulling it toward the door. I picked up the other side, and together we made a lopsided exit through the doors into a full-blown East Coast twilight.