The Catastrophist: A Novel by Ronan Bennett Page A

another six months, for a year or longer. Forever. There is value in ignorance, don’t let anyone persuade you otherwise: the blind eye serves a function. But her attitude was different. She wanted tests, she wanted to know. She may, I thought afterwards, have already suspected the truth. We went for the tests. The problem, they discovered, was not with my sperm, but with her tubes. It was pure chance I saw her the day of the doctor’s appointment. It was about three in the afternoon. The morning had been gloomy, it had never really got light. The people on the streets made their way without spirit, thinking only of home. I glanced out the window of the bus and happened to notice, from the back, a schoolgirl walking along with the aimless, dreamy preoccupation of girls of that age. Alone among the pedestrians she seemed oblivious of the sludge and the cold and the bitter drive of the wind. She looked about, saw nothing, saw no one. She reminded me of the girls from St. Dominic’s and Fortwilliam, their skinny bare legs in the winter and their touching self-absorption. This one had not yet filled out as a woman, but within six months, or a year, she would be transformed.
    As the bus drew level I still did not recognize the pale, cold face. It was abandoned, alone, so very near defeat. In shock I recognized Inès and I bowed my head in instant understanding. My first thought was to get off and go to her; I was already grasping the cold metal rail of the seat in front. And then I let my grip relax. I knew I could not face her unhappiness. Not very noble, but very easy. The bus accelerated. The stops went by, including my own. I did not move.
    I don’t recall where I got off, but I do remember wandering down Charing Cross Road and browsing in the bookshops. I bought a secondhand copy of Henry James’s criticism. I walked over Waterloo Bridge and along the Embankment. I was not like Inès, I felt the cold. The sludge seeped into my shoes, my socks became damp. I knew she would be in the flat, waiting with her news. So I walked on, my feet like ice, and on.
    Eventually I recrossed the river and made my way home, slowly and on foot. I got in around eleven. She was already in bed, silent.
    “I had a drink with Alan,” I told her as I undressed. “Sorry. I should have rung.”
    She murmured something, that it was okay. If she had seen my face she would have known at once that I knew, but she was on her side, turned away from me.
    I got in beside her and kissed the back of her neck. In those days we made love every night. She did not respond and I am not the kind of man to insist. Yet that night I did, I did insist. I should have known better. I thought it would be a kind of ecstatic reaffirmation, a defiance, of nature, of failure, of fate; instead it was desolate. In the morning she told me. She cried, only a little. I told her it didn’t matter, and we never mentioned it again.
    Inès’s love is like heated air. It cannot stand to be confined. It must expand. At that point in her life it needed a child, and not finding one, it turned elsewhere.

    Stipe listens like a good priest. And in return he gives bits of himself away. Not much, no great detail. But enough. I learn that like me he barely knew his father. Like me, he watched a mother struggle. And, like me, he loves someone more than she loves him. Enough. Enough to know there are things between us.
    He looks at his watch. The bar is empty. Anna yawns, encouraging us to go. He stares at me. I can see some calculation behind his eyes.
    “Where are you going now?” he asks.
    “Home, I suppose.”
    “Why don’t you come along with me?” he says after a pause. “I might have something to interest you.”

    On Boulevard Albert I there are only military vehicles. The settlers are in their houses.
    We pass the cemetery, the golf course and, directly opposite on the other side of the avenue, standing in a walled garden, a solid, two-story, red-brick house that reminds me