He hardly recognised her voice, it was so firm and brooked no appeal. It was not up for discussion. It was an order and she wanted him to comply.
His mother’s been strange for a while. She talks to herself without realising. She no longer seems sad in that way that made him so uncomfortable, or has the dejected look that sometimes surprised him; now she seems busy, run off her feet. The other day he saw her in the distance in the street. She was muttering to herself. You’d have thought she was crazy.
HÉLÈNE
On Thursday afternoon Théo stayed behind at the end of my class. He waited for all the others to leave. It was the last lesson of the day. I’d just finished the chapter on brain activity and how the nervous system works, which I usually spend two or three periods on. I saw he was taking his time putting his things away. Mathis left before him. I think he has singing or a piano lesson on Thursdays, so he never hangs around.
When we were alone, Théo came towards me. He was standing tall, jacket fastened, chin raised, his bag over his shoulder. I thought, he’s got something to tell me. I held my breath. I mustn’t force things or try to rush them. I smiled at him and pretended to be tidying the papers scattered over my desk. After a moment, he asked, ‘Can you die if you take the wrong medicine?’
My pulse quickened. There was no room for error.
‘You mean if you take medicine that’s not intended for you?’
‘No, not that.’
‘What then?’
‘Well . . . if someone takes medicine that doesn’t work. You said that medicine works on the brain. On people’s mood. But I think that sometimes it doesn’t do anything. And people stay in bed. They hardly eat and they don’t get up and they stay like that all day.’
He said this very quickly. I needed to decipher it and ask the right questions.
‘Yes, that’s true, Théo. That does happen. Are you thinking of someone in particular?’
He looked up at me. I could see his pupils dilate in response to the pressure.
Just then, the Head burst into my class without knocking. I turned to him, stunned. I didn’t have the chance to open my mouth before he ordered Théo to go home in a tone that clearly suggested he had no business being there. Théo cast me a final glance, his eyes dark and accusing, as though I were a bank employee who had secretly pressed the panic button under the counter.
He left without looking back.
I followed Mr Nemours to his office.
Calmly and with a slightly theatrical firmness, he set out the situation for me.
Théo Lubin’s mother had phoned to complain. Not only had I called her in for no reason, but now, she said, I was loitering around near her home. Even in her building. Of course, she’d related the conversation we’d had a few weeks back, which she’d called unfair and accusatory. The Head asked her to recall the exact tenor of what I said, which she’d had no trouble doing, judging by the detailed report he set before me.
Besides breaking the school rules and exceeding my remit, I’d failed to mention this encounter at the team meeting about the student. A meeting organised, did he have to remind me, after a first transgression on my part. Why had I said nothing? That was a mistake. A serious mistake. My behaviour was damaging the smooth functioning of the public education service and harming that service’s reputation.
Théo’s mother had asked for him to be moved to another class. The Head had told her he would speak to me so that I could explain myself and then make a decision.
He waited for my reaction. My argument. My justification. What on earth was I doing on those stairs? I had nothing to say in my defence, so I stayed silent. Fortunately, he didn’t have punishment in mind. He’s been teaching for over twenty years. He knows the pressure, the stresses that we’re under and the responsibilities we bear. We need to stay united. Stick together. In view of the work I’d done in the school over several years, he wouldn’t be calling for an official reprimand or warning. However, he told me I needed to put things in perspective and get myself signed off by a doctor. For at least a month. To let everyone calm down. That was a condition; it wasn’t up for discussion.
I emptied my locker and left school with the disturbing conviction that I wouldn’t be going back.
The music from Wheel of Fortune was going round in my head, ‘I’ll buy an A, I’ll offer an L, I’ll buy a C’; I’m near the target, I need to think to crack it, to find the right answer. ‘Oh no, Hélène. Come on. It’s not that simple. Who do you think you are? You weren’t thinking that you could change the direction of the Wheel, were you?’
I haven’t listened to the messages my colleagues have left on my machine throughout the day.
I haven’t called Frédéric, who’s tried phoning several times.
From my window I’m watching the passers-by wrapped up in their coats, hands in their pockets or protected by gloves, their shoulders hunched, hurrying and struggling against the damp air that cuts through their meagre defences. Among them there’s a woman wondering how long an onion tart needs in the oven, another has just decided to leave her husband, another is mentally calculating how many luncheon vouchers she has left, a young woman is regretting having worn such thin tights, another has just heard that she’s got the job after several interviews, and an old man has forgotten why he’s there.
CÉCILE
The good thing about talking to yourself is that you can tell yourself jokes. I know some good ones that my brother used to tell me when we were children. They had us rolling on the floor with laughter.
The other day I was amusing myself talking in an English accent to myself. It was funny. I must say I can put it on rather well. It’s crazy how much that enables you to take the drama out of a situation. It’s a bit like Jane Birkin taking it upon herself to comfort me. But it’s me and me alone who was talking to me, of course. And yes, out loud in my living room. I reviewed pretty much every topic.
I told Dr Felsenberg about that. He wanted to know from whom or from what the English accent estranged me.
My father died a long time ago and Thierry eventually left home. Since then, my mother has lived in a little ground-floor flat on staircase G in the building we grew up in. The council gave her a two-bedroom instead of the four-bedroom we used to live in, which means she can pay the rent and live decently. She’s not the complaining sort.
I called her the other day. I didn’t stop to think, I just picked up the phone and dialled her number. She was surprised; I don’t call often. I told her I wanted to hear her voice, to get her news. There was a short silence and then she asked if everything was OK. I said yes, and then there was silence again. My mother never asks me specific, direct questions. I live in a world that seems too distant from hers. I know that Sonia goes to see her from time to time. My mother serves tea and biscuits that she arranges in a circle on a little plate. Then she puts them in a box so that my daughter can take them away with her. I said I’d go and see her with Mathis one day soon. After another pause, my mother said, ‘OK, I’ll be expecting you,’ as though there were nothing else to hope for from life between the moment a promise is made and its fulfilment.
Ms Destrée hasn’t responded to my request for a meeting. I think that’s a bit much. She’s supposed to be the contact for Year 8 but doesn’t reply when it comes to seeing parents outside those interminable parents’ meetings twice a year. I logged on to the school website several times and re-sent my message. In the end I rang them. They told me she was ill but not how long she’d be away. I hope I can see her as soon as she’s back.
On the surface, nothing has changed. William has never referred to the dinner party with his friends. In his eyes it’s probably just a minor incident. A mood swing. He must have got himself out of it with some fancy footwork, then refilled his glass. I’m not sure whether William has noticed my body has distanced itself from his. We haven’t made love for several weeks, but this isn’t the first time. He must be telling himself that I’m going through one of thos
e dark phases that punctuate women’s lives. Something hormonal probably, since that’s the prism through which he observes the female sex, going by Wilmor’s writing.
To be honest, I’ve stopped looking. I no longer turn the computer on since discovering that my husband has also started a Twitter account, which allows him to comment in a more incisive format and even slyer way on everything and nothing without ever assuming responsibility for the content of his remarks. It’s a funny world that lets us pour out anonymous opinions all over the place, ambiguous or extreme, without ever identifying ourselves.
The very next evening after that dinner, William sat down close to me on the sofa. He put his arm around my shoulders. I felt my body stiffen; the contact of his palm burned my skin through the fabric. He told me he still had some work to do, he was sorry – it was a complicated report he had to send the head of his department the next day.
I looked at him for a few seconds, silently at first, and then asked, ‘Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?’
He laughed, that nasal laugh that sometimes hides his embarrassment. He sensed that the question was not inconsequential. That it exceeded the framework of daily domestic interactions to which our conversations have been reduced. William isn’t stupid. He stared at me enquiringly. He was waiting to see what was coming next. I asked him again.
‘Are you sure you’ve nothing to tell me . . . about you, about what you’re doing?’
I couldn’t say more. I didn’t have the strength. But I’m certain that at that moment he understood.
He hesitated.
A tenth of a second.
I saw it because, though I don’t know Wilmor, I do know William very well: a tiny twitch of his eyelids, the way he clasps his hands, the little embarrassed cough that lets him put an end to a conversation.
Then he stroked my cheek, furtively, a gesture from before, from a very long time ago: before the children, before computers, mobile phones, before the spider on the web.
He stood up. He was already turning away when he answered, ‘You’re imagining things.’
William shut himself in his office. I watched a TV documentary about mass-produced pizzas. It was about the flavouring agents and condiments added to mask the poor quality of the toppings, a trick revealed at the end of a big investigation carried out against a backdrop of mafia codes of silence and dramatic music. A real thriller. I really couldn’t have cared less, but I watched it to the end. The Sunday before I’d watched one about coconuts. Since when have peak-time documentaries been about things like kittens and mince?
I talked to myself for a few minutes. I needed to debate. My voice no longer limits itself to reassuring me. Now it also expresses opinions.
Through the door I told William I was going to bed. I tidied a couple of things that were lying around the kitchen and drew the curtains in the living room.
Then I went through the bedtime routine (make-up remover, orange-blossom water, night cream, hand cream) in a sort of ritual that I imagine all women of a certain age have.
I lay down. I turned out the light and this phrase came to my mind as clearly as if I’d said it aloud: I want to get out.
MATHIS
This evening he’s waited until his father has shut himself in his study and his mother is on her own in the living room. He’s well prepared.
He takes one last breath.
‘You know, on Saturday we’re going to the Philharmonic with Mr Châle.’
She’s surprised, as he expected.
‘Oh really? Since when? Haven’t you already been?’
‘No, that was the opera. Don’t you remember? It was on that form you filled in a while ago. You even gave me the money.’
‘And where is this form?’
‘I gave it back to Mr Châle because he has to keep all the parents’ consent forms.’
She stops for a moment (she’s spent the past two days sorting through things as though they were on the point of being evicted from their apartment). Mathis feels dozens of insects swarming in his stomach. He can only pray she doesn’t hear them.
His mother looks puzzled. But he’s ready for all her questions.
‘On a Saturday night?’
‘Yeah, because the school managed to get tickets because a group of pensioners cancelled. Mr Châle said it was a great opportunity, even if the seats are a long way from the stage.’
‘The whole class?’
‘No, just the ones who take music.’
‘And what are you going to hear?’
‘The Grand Orchestre de Paris. Henry Purcell and Gustav Mahler.’
He’s prepared the details: how they’ll go, how they’ll return, which teachers are in charge of the trip. His mother is the sort of mother who is prepared to believe that they would have a trip to the Philharmonic on a Saturday evening.
Lying is really easy. He even experiences a certain pleasure in overdoing it. He puts on his good-little-boy voice.
‘Ms Destrée was supposed to come with us, but it’s going to be someone else because she’s ill.’
Strangely, this detail seems to reassure his mother and establish the credibility of what he’s saying.
She says she’ll come and collect him after the concert so that he doesn’t have to make his own way home. He begs her not to. He’ll feel embarrassed, look like a baby. The others will make fun of him. Mr Châle has said he’ll bring back the students who live near the school so as not to inconvenience parents who have plans for the evening.
Eventually she gives in and he has the impression she’s already thinking about something else, or doesn’t have the strength to pursue her investigations any further. For several days she’s been like someone leading a secret life that’s very hectic and very tiring.
A little later, just as he’s about to turn out his light, she comes in to his bedroom.
She asks him a question, direct and unexpected. ‘Tell me, Mathis, you’re not making things up?’
Without a second’s hesitation: ‘No, Mum, I swear.’
THÉO
The cold has covered the city in tissue paper. An incredibly fine white powder has come down on the lawns of the esplanade in front of Les Invalides. The benches are empty and the wind has chased away any passers-by.
They meet at exactly 8 p.m.
Baptiste told them to wait at the street corner, close to the entrance to the gardens, in front of a no entry sign.
They wait for his signal.
One by one, with the same alert, silent movement, they scale the gates and disappear into the bushes. A first stop, just long enough to make sure they haven’t been seen.
After a few minutes, they set off again towards the back of the gardens. In single file, following Baptiste.
Behind the trees there’s a small empty space. On the ground the shape of an old sandpit is visible, now filled in with earth. Baptiste tells them to sit in a circle with gaps between them so that they can play a game.
Baptiste and his friends have brought several Oasis bottles in which they’ve mixed gin and fruit juice. Half and half. He suggests a first round to get them going and hands out plastic glasses.
It’s sugary and strong at the same time. Théo downs his in one. His eyes start to water but he doesn’t cough.
He waits for the wave of heat to spread across his shoulders and down his spine.
Quentin laughs, surprised that Théo can down it like that at his age.
Baptiste gives them some advice: they can’t sit still for too long because of the cold. They need to stand up regularly and jump on the spot and clap their hands to keep warm.
Théo says nothing. He’s waiting for the feeling of heat within him, which is slow in coming. He watches the others. Mathis is pale. He looks scared. Maybe because he lied to his mother. Hugo is sitting beside his brother, concentrating, waiting for instructions. While the older boys discuss what to do next, Théo pours himself another glass and downs it as quickly as the first. No one says
anything.
Now Baptiste explains the rules of the game. He’ll ask each of them a question and then draw a card. For example, red or black? Spades, clubs, hearts or diamonds? If they answer correctly, he’ll take a drink. If it’s wrong, the other boy will. Then he’ll move on to the next person and do the same again. And so on, clockwise round the circle.
They nod. They’re ready. They’re used to him telling them what to do.
An expectant silence.
Then Théo interjects: he’d like to ask the questions.
He hasn’t challenged Baptiste’s superiority or his entitlement. He didn’t say ‘I want to’, just ‘I’d like to’. He’s the child of the separation of property and persons, of resentment, irreparable debts and child support: he knows how diplomacy works.
Heads turn towards Baptiste, who smiles, amused.
Quentin grins.
Baptiste sizes him up for a few seconds. Evaluates the transgressor. No sign of insurrection. Just a little boy’s silly idea.
‘You? You want to ask the questions? You do realise that under my rules, if you’re in charge, you might have to drink five times as much as everyone else?’
‘Yes, I know. I worked that out.’
‘OK, I get it. You’re good at maths . . . You think you can hold your drink?’
They look at each other again. There’s a hint of mockery, but a challenge is surfacing already. Baptiste hesitates to take him at his word. Théo sees all this but doesn’t care what they think.
Baptiste has one last glance at his friends, then says, ‘Go on then.’
Loyalties Page 10