Read Levels of Life for Free Online Page A

time, for all time. The small distance they had travelled from the theatre to the rue Fortuny aroused a desire to travel greater distances: to all those countries whose inhabitants she had portrayed onstage – and then to all the remaining countries in the world. To go everywhere with her. Someone had remarked to him upon her Slav beauty. And so he imagined travelling east with her, comparing her features with those around them until she blended entirely into the physiognomical scenery, and there was nothing left but a sea of Slavs and Captain Fred. He imagined her tiny, lithe figure at his side, on a horse she would mount not woman-fashion but astride, in another trouser role. He saw them sharing a horse, he behind, she in front, enclosed by his arms as he held the reins.
    He saw them as a couple, putting things together, assembling a life. He always imagined them in motion. He was – they were – soaring.
     
    Though bohemian, and worldly, Fred Burnaby was not sophisticated in the manner of those who came backstage each night and sought ever more refined ways to applaud. But he was intelligent, and had travelled widely. So, after a week or two, awareness came of how others might view his situation; and he spoke their words aloud to himself.
    ‘She is a woman. She is French. She is an actress. Is she on the level?’
    He knew what his friends and fellow officers would say. How they would smirk even as he articulated the question. But their minds would be filled with generality, reputation, rumour. They themselves were perfectly happy chasing Circassian girls and pretty Kirghiz widows for a while, secure in the knowledge that they would return home and marry Englishwomen of good family for whom the practicalities of the heart were no more complicated and mysterious than the practicalities of the kitchen garden. Late at night, over a brandy and soda, they might briefly succumb to nostalgia for a different kind of smile, a darker complexion, and some whispered words in a half-understood language. But then, having done so, they would dutifully go back to the family hearth, squiffily convinced that they had ordered their lives properly.
    Fred Burnaby was not like this. And neither was Madame Sarah. She had not used flirtatiousness with him. Or rather, her flirtatiousness was not a fraud, not a tactic, but a promise. Her eyes and her smile had been a proposal, an offer which he had accepted. The fact that Mme Guérard had subsequently mentioned a pair of earrings to which Madame Sarah had taken a fancy, that he had bought them for her, and that she had expressed gratitude but no surprise: this too was straightforwardness. And to his mocking fellow officers he would reply: but did you not equally buy presents for your virginal rose-cheeked English fiancées, and did they not accept them with such a pretty affectation of astonishment that you were quite deceived? Whereas Madame Sarah had always – even though ‘always’ meant only a few weeks – been straight with him.
    She did not have a suspicious family with whom he had to ingratiate himself. There was Mme Guérard: vanguard, rearguard and état-major all combined. He recognised and appreciated loyalty. She and Captain Fred understood one another; and when events spurred him to generosity, she took his money with a calm gravity. Otherwise, there was only Madame Sarah’s son, a friendly lad who might successfully be taught sports and games. The Continentals still needed such an education in these matters. In Spain they were proud to shoot a sitting partridge. At Pau he had once been invited to join the local hunt. They had used a bagged fox doused in aniseed to make it easier for the dull-nosed hounds to follow; his horse was so abbreviated that his heels dragged the ground as it carried him; and the whole sport was over in a mere twenty minutes.
    He would happily quit England. He had known good fellowship there, but his soul was drawn to heat and dust. And though his