by Rose Tremain
“On holiday? No, no. I live here. In Pomerac. My wife is on a kind of holiday – in England.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes. Her mother’s ill.”
“Oh I’m desolated. I hope she will recover.”
Hervé moves his brittle legs. “Have a cassis, Larry. Agnès, get us both a cassis and you have whatever you want.”
Larry shakes his head. “I musn’t. I’m trying not to drink.”
“Why?”
“Dunno really. Just feel I musn’t while Miriam’s away. Afraid I’ll start feeling sorry for myself.”
“Well. Have one cassis.”
“No. No cassis. A glass of white wine . . .”
“Yes?” Agnès smiles. The smile is so clear and brimming, it chills Larry’s heart. “Uncle Hervé has a nice Macon in the frigidaire. I’ll get this.”
“Thank you.”
She goes out. Larry glances up to the mantelpiece. The photograph of Agnès and her sister has been replaced by one of Agnès alone wearing a long evening dress and holding a cello. There is something disconcerting in this picture. Larry can’t yet see what it is but believes he will discover. A small silence hangs between him and Hervé. Hervé strokes the box.
“Well, what do you think of her?”
“I think you’re very lucky, Harve.”
“Yes, I am. So fortunate the music academy didn’t want her!”
“Is she upset about this?”
“I don’t know. I would have been, at her age. This would have been her one chance of a career perhaps. Yet she doesn’t seem to mind. I think she’s very good-natured, like her mother. I like good-natured women. They age more slowly.”
Larry ponders this. If the reverse is also true and bad-natured women age rapidly, then Leni should look ninety by now. Yet she doesn’t. She hardly looks her age. “How long will she stay?”
“Agnès? Well. Till I can walk at least. Then I might give her some little work to do for me at the surgery, if she’s not homesick for Paris by then.”
“You’re looking better already, Harve.”
“Am I? My blood pressure’s still up. And I’m putting on weight with all this cooking Agnès does. Please stay for lunch and help me out with courgette soufflé, Larry. I’m not hungry.”
Grated, the courgettes look like plankton, Larry decides. This dish isn’t as aesthetically pleasing as it might be, though the soufflé itself is light. They eat it in Hervé’s dining room off fine plates on lace mats. The room smells of polish and musty fabric. Months have passed since Hervé Prière entertained in here. But Agnès says she likes the dining room. She likes the right rooms to be used for the right things. While her sister eats television suppers, she spreads her little meal on a table. Arrange this. Shine that. It’s the precision of Bach that makes him her favourite composer, not his so-much-vaunted soul.
She isn’t shy. She has quiet poise. She tells Larry how much she enjoys going to England. Her mother has relations who live in Chester Square. She loves cashmere. Once she was taken to Newmarket Races and saw the Queen come out of her box onto a flat roof. She was surprised that there was no railing round the roof to protect the Queen. In France, this wouldn’t happen. The President wouldn’t step out onto something unprotected.
She asks Larry about Oxford. She’s never been there. Her sister, Dani, is studying hard, hoping to go there to study medicine. Medicine is in the family. Music isn’t. She doesn’t know where her talent for music comes from.
“I don’t think talents do ‘come from anyone’,” says Larry; “parents like to think their children get this or that directly from them – as long as what they get is good. But heredity is never the answer to genius.”
“Oh, genius?” says Agnès. “I don’t think I’m talking about genius, in my case. I just have a small talent.”
“A ‘small talent’ is wonderful,” says Larry. “I wish my son had a ‘small talent’.”
“Larry’s son is a furniture-maker,” Hervé says.
“Oh yes? How interesting,” says Agnès.
“Could be,” says Larry, wiping his mouth on a lace napkin. “But it isn’t. He makes rubbish.”
“I thought about what you said, Larry,” says Hervé. “About the high prices he charges. I think this is perfectly in line with his revolutionary ideals.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. He’s fooling the rich clients, don’t you see? To sell a rich man a broken light bulb is clever.”
“The light bulb isn’t broken, just the piece of ceiling.”
“Even more clever.”
“Oh, is this what he makes?” asks Agnès with a little furrowed glance at the neat place settings she has laid. “Broken things? I hear about some things like this in Paris. Very new-wave.”
“New-wave?” says Larry, sipping his wine. “Micro-wave to me – chuck it all in the oven and burn the lot of it! It’s nothing but travesties.”
“Travesties?” Agnès says the word with hushed revulsion. “Yes. I can’t bear this.”
Hervé glances at Larry. The look says, you see, she is an odd girl, out of her time, so goody-goody. Like girls used to be told to be. But Larry sees this message coming and looks away.
That same evening, Larry walks up to Nadia’s flat to telephone Miriam. Nadia and Mme. de la Brosse possess the only two telephones in Pomerac. Normally, it irritates Larry, this telephoning from Nadia’s. He remembers the time of the Aquazure office and his desk with two telephones on it, one blue, one white. Tonight, however, he’s glad to have an excuse to visit Nadia. His own house feels cold. It’s almost October. For the first time, he feels a bond with Nadia, in their separate solitude.
She answers the door, wearing a pink candlewick dressing gown. Moths have fed at the elbow of this garment. Occasionally, Nadia dreams of Lingerie Departments and satin quilted robes. When she sees Larry, she folds her short arms under her breasts and apologises.
“Oh, Larry. I don’t expect you. I am just taking a bathe.”
“Is it too late to come up, Nadia? I feel I ought to telephone Miriam, if that’s alright with you?”
“Yes. Come. Come. You’re not minding I have my bed out of the wall?”
“No, Nadia.”
“I will make you some hot drink.”
It’s not yet nine o’clock. There is something sad, Larry thinks as he climbs Nadia’s stairs, in the way lonely people put themselves to bed so early. As if they’ve become children again, excluded from all the downstairs conversation. He’s becoming one of them, too. Far away in Oxford, the adult world whispers round Leni’s bed. As he asks for the Oxford number and is told to wait, he senses how little this telephone call matters to anyone there. It is simply an intrusion. The sob-sob of a child.
To his surprise, Leni answers. The voice sounds unchanged.
“Leni?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“It’s Larry. How are you, Leni?”
There’s a long silence. Larry waits. He fancies he hears the sucking of the sea above the telephone cables. He imagines the million drowned voices chattering chattering back and forth between England and France. Or do conversations bounce now? Do they zip up into space and bounce off a dish and down again? He doesn’t know. He sighs. In the 1980s, one should know these kinds of things. He looks round Nadia’s room, cluttered, garish. Behind her Japanese screen, Nadia is boiling milk.
“Leni? Are you there? Leni?”
Still no sound. The tide comes in at Dieppe, at Calais, at Le Havre. The tide at Dover, at Ramsgate recedes . . .
“Leni?”
“Miriam here, love. How are you?”
“Oh Miriam. Was that Leni I just spoke to?”
“Yes. She has the phone by her bed.”
“Why didn’t she talk to me?”
“She’s not well, Larry.”
“She sounded all right. She sounded like she normally sounds.”
“She’s been terribly ill.”
“Well. She could have ack
nowledged me, said hello or something.”
“How are you, Larry?”
So it’s still there, the normal conspiracy. Leni is defended – even her worst rudenesses. “How’s the house?” says Miriam.
“The house is fine. Why wouldn’t Leni speak to me, Miriam?”
“I’ve told you. She’s not at all strong. Where are you? Are you at Nadia’s?”
“Of course I’m at Nadia’s. Where else? Or did you imagine the engineers had finally got round to laying the requisite number of metres of telephone cable so that our house can actually be connected to the outside world?”
Silence again. Night falls on Cherbourg. Night falls on Southampton.
“Why did you phone, Larry?”
“Why did I phone? To talk to you, Miriam. You are in Oxford aren’t you, or did I imagine your departure? I do sleep alone in our bed at night, or did I imagine this too?”
“Why waste money being angry?”
“Waste money?”
“Yes, you’re wasting Nadia’s money.”
“It is not Nadia’s money, Miriam. It is my money. I do not make calls from here without reimbursing Nadia, as you perfectly well know, so what on earth is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me. You’re angry and I don’t know why.”
“I was simply reflecting, Miriam, that if Leni is well enough to say ‘Who is this?’ she is well enough to acknowledge me and ask me how I am . . .”
“Larry . . .”
“But no. Once again she can’t resist it: put Larry down, pretend he doesn’t exist!”
“Larry. Why don’t you call me tomorrow? Then we can have a proper talk. There’s a lot to tell you.”
“What? What is there to tell me?”
“Oh, about things here.”
“How long’s she got?”
“What?”
“Leni. How long’s the old vulture got?”
“I simply cannot talk to you like this, Larry. I will not. Please give Nadia my love.”
Miriam hangs up. Larry slams the receiver back into its cradle and bangs his fist on Nadia’s floral wall. Nadia’s face, still pink from her bath, peers at him with frightened eyes over the screen.
“Fucking bitch!”
Nadia comes round the screen and puts a little stubby hand on Larry’s arm.
“Oh, Larry . . .”
“I don’t know what that woman does to Miriam. Jesus Christ. I’ve spent my whole life trying to please those two, trying to succeed . . .”
“And there you are. What we struggle is never appreciated. So ironical thing. All our hard working and someone is spitting in our nose.”
“Up my nose. Up my bloody nose she gets, that cow,”
“So shame she isn’t dying, Larry.”
“Too right, it’s a shame.”
“Then you are spitting on her tomb.”
“I wouldn’t go near her tomb. Let her rot, unvisited.”
“You want Ovomaltine, Larry?”
“Yes. Okay. Unless you’ve got any whisky.”
“No. I have this Eau de Vie your Gervaise is giving me on Tuesday. That Mallélou was here telephoning to some avocat.”
“Lawyer? Telephoning a lawyer?”
“Yes. Some prison trouble with the Xavier boy. You want Eau de Vie, my darling?”
“Yes. It’ll do.”
“I don’t like it. But I can’t refuse. I think they’re spending fifty francs on this talk to the avocat.”
“What’s the boy done?”
“I don’t ask. Did you ever see that Xavier Mallélou?”
“No. They’d gone, both the sons, by the time we moved here.”
“Well he’s so handsome, my God. You can’t imagine Gervaise and Mallélou making some boy like this. But cruel. Like all the handsome boys in Nadia’s life! Such cruel face. Sit down, Larry and take some deep breath. Forget this bloody Leni woman. Nadia will get the Eau de Vie.”
Larry sits on Nadia’s bed. The top sheet is monogramed NCL, the N and the C tangling with the tall central L: Nadia and Claude Lemoine. The sheet is so thin and fine it has the quality of lawn but the green satin eiderdown is stained and frayed. Larry has never seen Nadia’s bed before. Laid out now in her living room with all its old fashioned and decaying trimmings, it embarrasses him slightly. He wonders if Nadia has ever had a lover in it.
Nadia pours Eau de Vie into a liqueur glass for Larry, returns to her kitchen and makes a mug of Ovaltine for herself. She sits on a chair near the electric fire. Larry notices how tiny her feet are, with flat round nails painted vermillion. His eye travels up from the little feet, up her pink leg, warmed by the bath, half covered by the dressing gown. Her knees look very soft and shiny.
“So my poor old bean is missing Miriam?”
“Oh . . . I’ll get used to it.”
“Why you don’t write to her and not telephone, Larry?”
“Why?”
“Well, so much distance, you don’t know the other one isn’t doing her toilet or scraping some carrots when you call.”
Larry smiles, takes a sip of the burning liquor.
“No. That’s true.”
“But if you’re writing, you know where she’s reading you. On the boiled egg or what.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s better I think. You don’t getting cross in a letter and that fucking Leni doesn’t intervene you.”
“You’re quite right, Nadia.”
“Not I mind you using the telephone, my dear. Don’t think.”
“No. I know.”
“I’m so glad you’re coming up in fact. I want to ask you, what do you think for Hervé’s new niece. You meet her?”
“Yes. I drove over this morning, mainly out of curiosity.”
“I’m so surprising when I talk with her, Larry. Not you?”
“Surprising?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought she was a very pleasant girl. I think Harve’s fallen on his feet, if you’ll excuse the pun.”
“What’s this pun? I don’t know about pun, but I am expect some little skunk with a dye head and safety pin on the nostril. Not you?”
“A punk, you mean?”
“Punk, skunk, I don’t know. I know these modern young ones. But this is so charming and so thanking me all the time, merci madame and so, and these little English clothes, I believe I am lifting Princess Diana.”
“I liked that. I liked the way she was.”
“And you’re not surprising?”
“In a way. I don’t think of young people being like that any more. In fact, in my life they never were. I never knew anyone like that.”
“So you like?”
“Yes. I would love to have had a daughter like that.”
Nadia laughs. She sounds relieved when she says: “So you don’t immediately thinking, oh my lost English princess straight from the hockey stick, come to bed with me?”
“What, Nadia?”
“I think all these men in Pomerac when they see this niece are getting these ideas. Even Hervé, when he’s so bad to me on my driving, is thinking only of the precious Agnès. So sickening.”
“Harve thinks she’s rather old fashioned. He told me she was.”
“But he still loves her, no?”
“Yes. He seems fond of her. She’s looking after him very well.”
“But you see there was no need of her coming. Nadia offered. Nadia said, I move in to you, Hervé. I bring the breakfast in bed. I wash you, my dear. I tell him, what is my life you think, Hervé? You don’t think I can do this? I have nothing in my life. Empty. Empty. And I am so good for nursing. I nurse Claude. But oh no. This princess is coming. No need of Nadia. Turn me flat. Sickening, you know.”
There is a little wrinkle of skin on Nadia’s Ovaltine. She pushes this to the side of the mug and then pops it into her mouth. Larry stares at her. He realises for the first time that this is all she wants to talk about these days: Hervé, the injuries he seems to infli
ct, some lament for what might be. He feels astonished and yet dim. How have these feelings in Nadia passed unnoticed?
“I think Harve invited the girl as much for her as for him.”
“No. I don’t think, my poor old bean. He is asking this princess to keep Nadia away.”
“Why would he, Nadia?”
Nadia puts down her Ovaltine mug, leans forward and cups her face in her little nervous hands.
“He is telling Nadia too much. Now he is ashamed.”
“Ashamed?”
“He doesn’t know me now. He tells his secrets and then, flit flit, he slaps me away like a fly.”
“What secrets, Nadia?”
“Well secrets are secrets, you know. I can’t tell you. He trusted me. But then if you trust one, you must also like that one a little, you don’t think?”
“Of course Harve likes you.”
“But not now. Off I go to Thiviers to fetch his bloody mermaid for him and so now I’m just the chauffeur. He forgets those secrets and he forgets me.”
“How could he forget you, Nadia?”
“Because I am Pole. He thinks this Pole a ruddy nuisance because she cry Polish tears when I tell her my secret. No British stiff lip. Hervé has so much British fucking stiff lip, I don’t know why, but now this girl is coming in her cardigans from Harrods or what and he thinks, thank God, no more fucking Polish crying. So, it’s okay . . .”
“It’s not okay. I’m sorry he’s upset you, Nadia.”
“Oh well it’s okay. Nadia used. What the difference. All men upset. And I’m so sorry, my dear . . .”
Nadia’s pale eyes look replenished and shining with their heavy tears. Crying suits her. Larry puts out a slightly nervous hand and gently strokes her knee.
Mallélou has arrived in Bordeaux with Xavier’s bail money. Now he sits with his son in a warm bar, drinking. He’ll get plastered tonight. Probably the boy will, too. The prison scared old Mallélou shitless. The dead faces of the men. The freezing grey brick walls. The shouting. Thank God Xavier was out. Something must be done to make sure he never gets put back in. But what? The boy’s ashen-faced. More terrified than him. And guilty. It was a good line, he tells him, nicking stuff from Mme. Motte. She let him negotiate with the suppliers and she just signed the chits. A case of wine here, a few vegetables there – it was easy. The offloading, too. Plenty of people would buy cheap and ask no questions. It was an accident he was caught. This old guy running a decrepit waterfront bar found out he worked for Mme. Motte, whom he knew. Friend of the dead husband, or some such. Out of some past and idiotic loyalty, he told her to be on her guard. After that, she began counting. The night the police came, he was found with three cases of wine in his room, and on this fragile proof he was arrested.