‘But if I don’t know her, I can’t be her.’
Slippery, shifty, dodgy. It’s all there written in their expressions. Resigned to getting nowhere for now, the squat policeman says, as much to himself as Dominique, ‘We’re going round in circles.’
Dominique watches them withdraw.
‘That will be enough for now, Madame Aury.’
‘We will be back.’
She nods as she steps between them and opens the door.
‘Good night, madame.’
‘Good night, gentlemen. Good night.’
They dissolve into the hallway and she closes the door, leaning back against it, breathing in and out slowly.
‘Who was that, dear?’
It’s her mother’s voice, her face all concern and curiosity.
‘The police, Mother.’
‘The police? But why?’
‘It was an error. They mistook me for someone else.’
‘Ah.’ Her mother stares back from her doorway. ‘It happens.’
Dominique sighs. ‘It does. Now go back to sleep.’
‘You’re all right?’
‘Yes, Mother. I’m all right.’
‘Good. Now you sleep too.’
‘I will. Good night, Mother.’
‘Good night, dear.’
With that her mother closes her door and Dominique is left lingering in the hallway, leaning back against the front door, telling herself that that’s exactly what it was. A case of mistaken identity. She is no more Pauline Réage than they are.
She walks back to the armchair that the knock roused her from. She picks up her book but decides against resuming her reading. Shadow stretches out on the rug.
She longs to tell Jean. But in the morning. The police won’t come back before then. Besides, what else can she tell them that she hasn’t already? You’ve got it all wrong, gentlemen. I am not Pauline Réage. I have no idea who she is. I could pass her in the street and not know her. Thank you, gentlemen, good night, good night.
20.
‘You see the ruins of that little chapel over there?’ Dominique’s friend asks, as she guides her through a private garden that could almost be a modest public park.
Dominique looks around, puzzled for a moment, then spots it among the vines and overhanging branches. A small private chapel. The sort that aristocrats of the old order built for themselves so they would be spared the indignity of kneeling in public, the humiliation of prayer. And what, Dominique asks herself as they stand in silence staring at the ruined chapel, is more humiliating than prayer? For in kneeling and accepting that humiliation, would they not be seen to be resigning their power to a higher one?
‘That,’ her friend, a woman her own age whom she has always thought of as Proust’s Odette, the lover of the Minister of Justice, the wife-in-waiting, continues, ‘is where Napoléon married Joséphine.’
They linger, both taking in the improbable spectacle of the chapel in all its epic modesty. Dominique is meant to be impressed, and she is. But she doesn’t want to be. Why should she? Emperors and empresses are just men and women. No cause for wonder. They have to get married somewhere. But perhaps, like the aristocrats of old, the emperor too needed some place private to submit even some part of that imperial majesty to the compromise of marriage. At the same time she’s also telling herself look, look – for this unlikely place is where one form of power collapsed and gave way to another, for a general, a self-crowned emperor, an upstart from a small island, eventually stood triumphant in that private chapel where nobility once knelt, and all that fragile power that could never bring itself to kneel in public was swept away and crumbled like the chapel itself.
They continue their stroll and soon come to the broad front door of a pre-revolutionary mansion. Once somebody’s retreat. Once a convenient distance from the city, now overtaken by it, nestled in what’s left of the estate and drawing as little attention to itself as possible in case somebody notices. But no one will. The walls are high, the street is far.
It is Sunday. She did as Jean asked, rang her friend and took her into her confidence. A sort of confession. But a confession she asked her friend to pass on to her lover, and only her lover, for grey government figures are coming for her, for her publisher, and for Jean. And all over a slight little book, a novella really. A love letter she devised to amuse her lover. A love letter that got out of hand and has now become a scandal. Is her little book really that important? Her friend, both taken aback and impressed, and today looking at Dominique in a different light, agreed to help. And so, this luncheon has been organised, for the scarlet woman herself: the wicked author of a wicked book.
When Dominique enters the dining room the guests are all seated. They turn in unison and suddenly all eyes are upon her: a petite, middle-aged woman, somebody’s aunt, in a pale green dress, gloves and hat in hand.
A servant takes her coat, hat and gloves, the minister rises and approaches her, saying, ‘Madame Aury, welcome.’ He kisses her hand, then leads her to the only free place at the table. Dominique doesn’t count them, but there seem to be about a dozen guests. All the men formally dressed, with that air of grey eminence.
From the moment she enters the room to the moment she sits down there is silence from the guests, everybody staring. And she can’t help but conclude they have all been informed about the late-arriving guest and just who she is. But as she takes her place, the sundry conversations that were broken off are picked up again. They all seem to know each other, are at ease discussing mutually familiar figures, ministers and bureaucrats, and matters both urgent and amusing.
Nobody speaks to her. In fact, everybody seems to have forgotten she is there. Which suits her. These are not her people. She would rather not have to speak. It leaves her free to observe, a sort of invisible guest. And the more she sits and watches, the more she feels she is part of some pre-First World War gathering. Or something even further back. The formality, the manners, the meticulous laying of the table, the speech, that oppressive sense of everybody knowing precisely what is expected and what isn’t, what is permitted to be said and what is beneath utterance – all redolent of a world that has been long blown away but which still lives on in timeless pockets of undisturbed anachronism such as this gathering. All of them players in some form of living historical theatre, the nature of which nobody has got around to informing them of, and so they play it for real because it is.
It is only when the lunch is served and the plates are passed around that the man beside her, who she has gleaned from the talk is the Governor of the Bank of France, addresses her. Would she like potatoes, beans with her chicken? Yes, please. A little wine? Yes, a little. And so on. A ripple of polite inquiries passes round the large rectangular table.
Somebody asks the minister if he would like cauliflower.
‘Oh, no,’ says Dominique’s friend in a tone that suggests this is unthinkable, but which also suggests a certain possessiveness, the wife-in-waiting. ‘He always has courgette with his chicken.’ And for some reason Dominique is especially struck by this insignificant detail. Perhaps because it is, or seems to be, insignificant. But perhaps because it’s not. Perhaps it’s one of those details that are the gateway into the man: a man of tastes, habits and rituals that are always rigidly observed.
And for the first time since sitting down she warms to him, a fellow observer of habits and rituals. Perhaps, even, a lover of ritual – as, indeed, Dominique is.
And it is while she is contemplating this, eyes upon the minister, that she hears the wife of the Bank of France, a mature woman who has the look of a former model and whose age Dominique can’t quite place, telling the table that she always prefers the quaint, dilapidated decadence of Nice in summer to any of the new fashionable resorts.
‘Give me that charming, rundown look every time. It tells you it’s been lived in. You can feel it. All that life that’s gone before you.’ Which she says with the air of a woman who has lived.
She continues on the subject of charm and decadence, lives lived and summers past – the table itself, charmed and listening. Except for her husband, who doesn’t seem to be listening at all, and whom Dominique now judges and will forever after judge as the most buttoned-up man she has ever met, everything about him – his meticulously combed hair, his tie, his suit – giving the impression in its precision that it took hours to arrange. While his wife has an informal, even casual manner. Attractively so.
And it is at this point, while she turns her attention back to the banker and contemplates the possibility, preposterous as it seems, that he may well be the only person she’s ever met who does not possess an inner life, someone who is all surface, that the table rises, responding to some sign that Dominique didn’t notice, and the luncheon moves to the drawing room.
There, coffee, cigarettes and cigars appear. Amid small talk and puffs of smoke, one couple stands and leaves, and Dominique likewise rises, taking this as her cue to depart. She excuses herself with a nod to her hostess, a servant gives her back her coat, hat and gloves, and the minister escorts her to the door.
He leads her on: through the garden, past the chapel, to the garden gate and out into the street, escorting her all the way to her car. She, says thank you, and once more he takes her hand, kisses it and says, ‘Madame Aury, it has been a pleasure to meet you.’
With that he walks back to rejoin his guests. Dominique watches him close the gate behind him. No looking back, no farewell wave. She sits behind the wheel for some time, going over the luncheon, asking herself if it really happened.
She may have spoken five or six words the whole time – beans, yes please, a little – and apart from a few questions when the dishes were being passed round, nobody spoke to her. But as much as they may have given the impression of not observing her, they were. Subtly, unobtrusively, they were taking her in. Summing her up. Silently making judgements.
Perhaps they just wanted to get a look at her, to see first-hand just what kind of woman had written the most scandalous book of her time. What did they imagine – a figure as scandalous as the book? A female de Sade? And were they just a little disappointed with what they got?
She slowly pulls out into the street and makes her way back into her Paris and Jean, who is eagerly, possibly even nervously, waiting to hear what she has to say. The garden wall, the trees behind it, the ruined chapel nestled in the vines and trees in which the old dispensation once knelt before a higher authority in complete privacy – all recede as she picks up speed and drives back into the heart of the city.
Are they talking about her even now, she wonders. If so, what did they see? A conservatively dressed middle-aged woman, hair beginning to grey, the very sight of whom somehow takes the sting out of the scandal? Not one of them, but not an embarrassment all the same. Someone cultivated and deferring. Proper. Not some devil intent on assaulting the moral values they guard, the observance of which glues things together and keeps everybody in their place.
* * *
When she pulls up at the café called Hope she parks illegally. After a luncheon like that anybody would park illegally. A blow for humanity, she tells Jean as she sits. Besides, there were no spots.
He grins. ‘Well done. Welcome back.’
‘In one way,’ she begins, ‘it was like being a zoo exhibit. Or one of those natives that explorers brought back for palace amusement. In another, it was my first experience of being invisible.’
‘Did you speak to anyone?’
‘Five words, all to the head of the Bank of France: beans, yes please, a little – wine, that is.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it.’
He raises his eyebrows in slight surprise, then tilts his head to one side as if saying no cause for surprise; this, of course, is how these people do things.
‘They just wanted to get a look at me.’
‘They’ve read the devil’s work, now they want a look at the devil.’
‘But,’ she goes on, looking up at the waiter and ordering cognac, ‘I’ve learnt a few things. For one, the minister always has courgette with his chicken. Store that away,’ she says, ‘it may be useful one day. Second, the wife of the Bank of France prefers the decadent charm of Nice in summer to anywhere else.’
‘No doubt because her lover of the last twenty years is the mayor of Nice.’
She sips her cognac, closing her eyes and letting it flow through her. ‘How do you know that?’
He shrugs, suggesting one simply knows these things.
‘You don’t know, do you?’
‘Would it matter?’
‘Not really. Besides, you’re probably right. Her husband had a face like death the whole time she talked about Nice. And,’ she adds, as if only just putting things together, ‘with a sort of . . . anticipation in her voice.’
She looks around, observing a man at a nearby table. And although he looks like he’s reading a book, for some reason she can’t quite put her finger on she’s convinced he’s not. The face, when reading, has, she is sure, a far more abstracted look. He’s not reading, he’s listening. And she wonders again if she’s been talking too loudly. Then she tells herself to stop being ridiculous.
‘The minister,’ she says, still distracted, voice lowered, ‘walked me to my car. He didn’t say anything. When we got there,’ she dwells on the memory, mildly amused, ‘he gave me a little bow – Madame Aury, it was a pleasure to meet you – then he went. They just wanted to gawk,’ she says.
‘And be reassured.’
She indicates the man at the nearby table. Jean turns, takes him in, then looks back at her, a look that says perhaps . . . who knows?
They rise, leaving what’s left of their cognac, almost leaning against each other. Close. Just any couple, in the costumes of just anybody, but all the time creatures of the forest: the ever-watchful owl, the ever-elusive cat. He holds her hand. And if it is possible to hold someone’s hand with passion, he does. If you can transmit desire from the fingertips to the palm through that simple gesture, he has. They have regained their forest, their true, their natural, habitat. And, agents of the sacred wood once again, they leave the café behind them.
* * *
Sometimes, Dominique thinks, when the phone rings we not only anticipate the call, but the caller. Something in the ring, like a distinctive knock on a door that tells you who is there.
Her instincts are good, for when she picks up the phone it is Jean’s voice on the other end. She is in her office at Gallimard. He in his. He doesn’t wait for her to speak, he simply announces, ‘All charges have been dropped.’
‘Ah.’
‘She should be kept out of this, they said. Surely we don’t need to involve her,’ he adds, with a brief laugh. ‘Very old-style.’
‘But what of you?’ she asks urgently. ‘And Pauvert?’
‘All charges,’ he repeats, ‘have been dropped.’
She sighs. ‘That’s a relief. She should be kept out of this . . . Did they really say that?’
‘Word for word.’
‘What century are they from?’
‘Fortunately, not this one.’ He is silent a moment. ‘Well, that’s that. All done.’
‘And with five magic words,’ she says. ‘Beans . . .’
‘Yes, please . . .’
‘A little . . .’
They chuckle, then arrange to meet later. She hangs up the phone and returns to her work – she is doing a translation. A new, young American writer, a former GI in Paris on a GI’s pension. One of those who liberated the city, and for a moment she casts her thoughts back to those heady days when occupation gave way to liberation, and surrender was turned into victory. She leans back in her chair, looking round her tiny room, which she has always imagined to be something of a nun’s cell, and which she likes: close, confined, but intimate. Built for one, big enough for two with a squeeze, as she and Jean have discovered on a number of occasions. Such is the advantage, she muses, th
e relief of the moment flowing through her, of small spaces.
21.
‘What did you say?’
‘To whom?’
‘To Gaston.’
They are driving along a country road that winds and dips and will eventually lead somewhere. Neither cares where. Dominique drives. Fast. She always drives; the old Peugeot, small but nippy – like, Jean tells Dominique often enough, its owner – takes the occasional hill the way a dog that has been too long cooped up inside takes to the open spaces. Speed thrills them both.
‘I told him I was meeting a writer.’ He brushes his hair back, pleased with himself. ‘And, well, you are a writer and we are meeting.’
She grins, pressing on the accelerator, leaning into a bend as a farm whizzes by.
‘And Germaine?’
It’s not very often Dominique mentions Jean’s wife by name. It is a kind of unspoken, accepted protocol.
‘The same.’
The road straightens out; a small-town church spire comes into view in the distance.
‘Did she believe you?’
He shrugs. It is not a grumpy shrug that says can we not talk about this, or an indifferent one that says I don’t care – because he does. It is simply a shrug that says what can we do? Stop seeing each other? Impossible. One that says this is the reality of things. From the start they both knew there would be consequences: Jean would not so much tell lies as half-truths, Dominique would go along, and Germaine’s heart would lie heavy in her chest as she stared out through her bedroom window onto a bright, summer morning. Just the day for a drive to the country.
A glum mood descends inside the car as the town approaches. Neither speaks. But as they enter the square, the car now crawling, Dominique winds the window down and straightaway they hear the clank – or is it a chink? – of metal balls colliding. Old men, gathered in thought, weighing up the matter of distance, trajectory and force; a morning game of pétanque in progress.
The decision is made instantly and without need of speaking. This, this is the somewhere the road was leading them to. And without even knowing the name of the town, for neither of them noticed the sign on the way in, Dominique parks and they stroll onto the square, Jean carrying a small box of balls, the gravel crunching and shifting under their feet.
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