Thanksgiving

by Michael Dibdin

  How very American.

  Well you guys are getting to be just as bad. All this post-Diana crap. I mean give me a fucking break. And at least with us it comes naturally. With you it’s forced, and forced is always bad.

  So what do you want us to do?

  I want us to grow old disgracefully. And I want . . .

  Yes?

  Nothing.

  We could grow old disgracefully at La Sauvette.

  What’s that?

  My parents’ place in France. It would be perfect for that.

  Could we speak French to each other?

  It would be obligatory. I would call you madame and you would call me monsieur. We would use arcane tenses and never tutoyer each other.

  Jamais. Or the children either.

  We’d only be familiar with the servants.

  Particularly the younger, cuter ones.

  Why did you have to turn the light on? The sky’s so beautiful just now. All clear and hopeful.

  Le jour se lève, madame.

  Jean Gabin. Mmm. Quand même, on s’en fout royalement.

  What?

  We don’t give a fuck. Or maybe we do. Si on se foutait royalement?

  How come your bad French is so much better than my bad French?

  I lived there.

  You did?

  Well, only for a year. Less, actually. An academic year.

  Where?

  In Grenoble.

  How was it?

  Basically I ended up getting mauled on the whole time by these French leftists who detested the American military-industrial imperialist culture but couldn’t wait to get their hands on the product.

  Sounds reasonable to me.

  Or Tahiti.

  What?

  I saw this old French couple on the beach in Hawaii once. They were both all wrinkly and chocolate-brown and she had this very thin gold chain around her waist.

  How old were you then?

  About thirty. And they must have been in their sixties, but they were just the sexiest thing I’d ever seen. It was like something out of one of those old movies. Tondelayo, Queen of the Jungle.

  Ah, that old bitch Lamarr.

  She wasn’t a bitch.

  It was meant to be a pun. Never mind. What about me?

  What about you?

  Who would I be?

  Oh, let’s see. Some Somerset Maugham character. A gin-swigging consul who’s gone completely native. Carruthers. Slightly balding, bad teeth, but he’s very clean and his clothes are always immaculate. Except he can’t keep them on for more than five minutes, what with the pert-breasted native girls disporting themselves in innocent abandon before his Tanqueray-befuddled gaze.

  Hmm.

  His brain’s been eaten.

  It has?

  But he doesn’t really miss it.

  And will you eat my brain?

  Of course.

  Is that a threat or a promise? Where are you going?

  To the bathroom. I shall return.

  What was the other thing?

  What other thing?

  Apart from growing old disgracefully.

  I don’t remember.

  Yes you do. You said, ‘I want us to grow old disgracefully, and I want . . .’ What was the other thing?

  Oh. Hmm. Well.

  Go on.

  No, it’s silly. I think I sort of wanted to get on top of you and have you spank me. But now I’m not sure.

  Well let’s find out, shall we?

  Really?

  Let me just put this wineglass down somewhere I won’t step on it afterwards.

  Good thinking, Carruthers. Forward planning, that’s the ticket.

  I love your phoney English accent.

  And do you like my breasts? They’re holding up quite well, I think. Oh yes, you do, don’t you? Mmm. Mmm. Okay, now give my butt some attention. Ah.

  Is that too hard?

  No. Oh.

  More?

  Yeah. Yeah. Harder. Yeah. Okay, that’s enough. Mmm, it makes all the blood rush down there. Do we want me to do it to you?

  No, I got enough of that at school.

  They used to spank you?

  Of course.

  That’s barbaric.

  Actually we sort of got to like it.

  God, you Brits are so kinky. I had no idea until I met you.

  You don’t know the half of it.

  Mmm. You interest me strangely.

  Where are you going?

  To pee. Then I’m going to come back and do more things to you.

  You’ve got such a lovely arse.

  Say that again.

  Say what?

  Ass.

  Arse.

  With an accent like that, you can do anything you like with me.

  It’s exactly the same as that painting.

  Which painting?

  I don’t remember. Some Spanish name.

  Goya?

  Maybe. It’s in the National Gallery. Ours, I mean. Anyway, there’s this woman lying on . . .

  ‘The Naked Maja’?

  What is a maja, anyway?

  Just means a woman, I think. But I never liked that one. She always looked kind of preening, come-onny to me. Sort of like some vested Microsoftie’s wife. Okay, this is what you got, now let’s address my shopping needs.

  No, it’s not her I was thinking of. I don’t remember the title, but there’s a mirror involved.

  A mirror? How?

  You only see her as a reflection, never directly. Well, you see her from the back, but not her face. And her back looks just like yours. Her ‘ass’.

  She’s looking at herself?

  Uh huh.

  And you’re looking at her.

  Yes.

  Well, that’s what sex is about, don’t you think? A mutual act of adoration of the female body.

  So when we ‘do the deed’, you’re worshipping your own body?

  We both are. Me from the inside, you from the outside.

  What about my body?

  It’s gorgeous.

  I could stand to lose a little weight.

  No, I love you the way you are. That’s what’s so great about being our age. You accept people for what they are. Or not. But you don’t waste time trying to change them. Is there any more wine?

  There’s some downstairs. Hang on, I’ll get it.

  Could you bring up the mail too? I heard it come.

  You want another male? You’re insatiable.

  I know, and you love it.

  You got the hiccups?

  Yes. I don’t know why. Just came on.

  Eat some sugar.

  Sugar?

  It works.

  Didn’t for me.

  Maybe I should try and scare you.

  Sweetie, you don’t have a scary bone in your body.

  It worked before.

  When?

  Don’t you remember?

  No.

  That time at the Metropolitan Grill. You got the hiccups really badly, and it was kind of embarrassing. Then you went to the washroom, and when you got back, still hiccupping away, I was sitting at the table in a morose posture. And you said, ‘What’s the matter?’ You still don’t remember?

  For someone who hates the past, you seem to dwell on it a lot.

  It mostly bores me, that’s all. I’m not afraid of it. But you are, and that’s why you can’t remember a damn thing. It scares you.

  All I remember is you sitting with your eyes cast down on your folded hands, like you were praying. ‘What now?’ I thought.

  And then you said, ‘What’s the matter?’ Still hiccupping away like a parakeet. Do parakeets hiccup?

  I have no idea. Go on.

  And I said . . . I can’t believe you don’t remember this.

  Well I don’t.

  I said, ‘Darling, I’m two weeks late.’ And your hiccups stopped like that.

  Hold me.

  What’s the matter?

  I need you to
hold me.

  I thought you were asleep.

  I was.

  What happened?

  I had this dream.

  What happened?

  I don’t know. I don’t remember. All I know is that you left me and I was all alone.

  I haven’t left you.

  I know.

  I’m right here.

  Yes. But I’m still scared.

  Don’t be.

  You just want me to stop bothering you, don’t you?

  No. But this is silly.

  Like everything else makes perfect sense?

  You’re getting worked up, Lucy. Calm down. I’m here. I’ll look after you.

  Just hold me, that’s all. Hold me, so I can go back to sleep.

  THANKSGIVING DAY

  In summer, La Sauvette is a quiet, airy refuge from the touristic inferno on the coast below, the low house and its adjoining stone terrace shaded and scented by the set of old parasol pines, their trunks dividing the prospect over the lower foothills to the sea beyond into a triptych which changes subtly from hour to hour as the light strikes at different angles and the moisture in the air gathers or disperses.

  But when winter comes, and the mistral blows for days at a time, it can seem the bleakest and most desolate spot on earth. The pines toss their canopies and the wind thrums and shudders around the house like surf, seeking out any weakness, seething in through every crevice, undermining all the structures of daily life with its intrusive presence. By day, the sky is a tender bleached blue, the sunlight brilliant, while the air has a startling astringent clarity. Night or day, it is piercingly cold.

  My father had bought the property as a derelict farm-house back in the fifties, and until very recently he and my mother had spent every summer there, tinkering with various bits of rebuilding and renovation if they were up to the job, or enduring the endless excuses and false reassurances of the local tradesmen if the work was something which needed to be contracted out. Now that the place was finally habitable in something like the way they had dreamed of when they bought it, they were too tired and frail to come out for more than a month or so in late spring or early autumn. In summer the heat was too much for them, and no one had ever thought about going there in winter.

  So when I phoned them from Charles De Gaulle, they were surprised but pleased to learn that I wanted to stay there for a while. The realization of their dream had come too late for them, but they were genuinely glad that someone was going to take advantage.

  ‘So how are things?’ my father asked.

  ‘Still a bit difficult. You know.’

  ‘Must be, must be. Perhaps we should have come out after all. Sort of generally helped out and so on.’

  When I had called with the news of Lucy’s death, he had gallantly proposed booking them both on the next plane. It had taken me quite a while to talk him out of it, although we both knew that my mother wasn’t physically or mentally up to the journey, and that she was so dependent on him that he couldn’t come alone.

  ‘I’m fine, Dad. I just need some time to myself, you know. Come to terms with what’s happened, that kind of thing.’

  ‘You could have come here. You’d be most welcome, you know that.’

  ‘I did think about it. But if I’m in England, then everyone I know will feel they have to stop by to offer their condolences and all the rest of it. I might be ready for that in a week or two, but just now I’d prefer to be alone.’

  ‘Of course, of course. You must decide what’s best. I’ll call Robert while you’re on the way to Toulon and get him to turn on the heating and so forth. It’ll be perishing there at this time of year, and you know how long it takes those old stone houses to warm up.’

  After my phone call, I went to an unoccupied departure gate area and broke open the tape cassette with a knife I had stolen from the breakfast service on the plane. I unreeled the black ribbon completely, then hacked it into lengths which I crumpled up and dumped, each in a different garbage bin in the concourse. The tape was clearly a compilation edited from various of the many nights when Lucy and I had lain in bed for hours, talking and making love. It must have been made fairly shortly after my arrival, before Darryl Bob had given up hopes that Lucy might change her mind about him and had moved to Nevada. She hadn’t bothered to change the locks on the house when he moved out, and although he’d given her his front-door key, it would have been easy for him to have a copy made first.

  On the way across town to Orly, I read an article in Le Point about the crash in which Lucy had died. It appeared that a faulty bolt in the stabilizer fin was the probable cause. The reporter made much of the fact that this could not have occurred with an Airbus product, and that if European regulations had been in effect, then the whole fleet would immediately have been grounded.

  Lucy put in no appearances during the rest of the journey, or indeed after my arrival at La Sauvette. This both reassured and disappointed me. I knew we had unfinished business, and although I had no idea what to do about it, I’d sort of hoped that she did. She had always been quicker and cleverer than me in many ways, not least when it came to practical solutions. That was one of the many reasons I had loved her. Now, absurdly, I felt that she had betrayed my trust.

  Those days were some of the quietest I had ever spent. I talked briefly on the phone to people in London and New York about projects I was supposedly working on, in response to calls originally made to the voicemail which still had the announcement Lucy had recorded: ‘You have reached two zero six, four nine four, eight eight zero one. If you have a message for Anthony or Lucy, please leave it at the tone.’ She started with an intake of breath which sounded like a sigh, as though she mildly resented being bothered by the phone. I’d tried to get her to re-record it, but she had never got around to it. Now that that reluctant inspiration and the formulaic message were all that remained of her, I cherished them. I often called in the middle of the night, just to listen to her voice.

  There were also other messages on the voicemail. Lieutenant Mason had called several times, asking me in increasingly peremptory tones to get in touch with him immediately. Someone whose name I couldn’t identify left a number with the 775 prefix which covers all of Nevada apart from Las Vegas. He too urged me to return his call at my earliest convenience. Most disturbing of all were the clicks, indicating that someone had hung up when it became apparent that I wasn’t going to answer. Someone who had something to say to me personally, not to a machine. Someone who had already left the only message he was prepared to leave, and would now proceed to take other measures.

  As a result, I found myself paying a lot of attention to any sounds in the vicinity of the house. The road which runs along the ridge below La Sauvette is scarcely more than a paved lane connecting the various properties strung out along the hillside. Traffic is infrequent by day and almost unheard of at night. So whenever the sound of a motor broke through the incessant keening of the mistral, I stopped whatever I was doing and listened intently. Sooner or later, I knew, one of those vehicles would slow down and then turn into the dirt drive leading up to the house.

  A man in khaki uniform would knock at the door, salute stiffly, and then advise me in apologetic but implacable tones that I was to consider myself in a state of détention provisoire pending a judicial decision on the extradition request issued by the United States authorities on a charge of aggravated first-degree homicide.

  The gendarme in question would almost certainly be Lucien, unless he had retired by now. You couldn’t argue or bargain with Lucien, still less bribe him. My father had found that out when he had attempted to stop the local hunters coming on to our property in the early hours of Sunday morning and discharging their blunderbusses at anything that moved. Lucien had listened with the most perfect patient attention to my father’s litany of complaints regarding broken sleep, trampled plants and two dead cats, and his pleas for something to be done, saying not one word the whole time. When my father finally ran out of stea
m, he said just two:

  ‘Pas possible.’

  And when Lucien told you that something wasn’t possible, according to my father, you didn’t make the mistake of trying to get a second opinion.

  ‘You don’t even imagine that at some unspecified time in the future it might theoretically become possible, and that hope can thus spring eternal in the h.b. No, you just try to forget that you were ever stupid enough to bring the matter up in the first place, and then leave the country for about a year or so to give everyone else a chance to forget about it too.’

  I knew that Lucien would come for me sooner or later. I almost wanted him to. The evidence against me was just too strong. In a sense, I was guilty. I had wished Darryl Bob Allen dead, even if I hadn’t killed him. I certainly didn’t remember killing him, but then I didn’t remember anything much about the stuff I’d done at the time those photos I’d looked at on the plane were taken. And even if I hadn’t killed him, it was only because I hadn’t had the guts to do it, which made me more culpable and despicable rather than less.

  I should have, I thought now. Why hadn’t I just pulled the trigger and had the pleasure of watching his stupid, smug, gloating expression resolve itself into a mask celebrating my ultimate triumph? I was going to get the death penalty anyway. At least I could have done the job in the first place. And Darryl Bob Allen deserved to die, because he hadn’t deserved Lucy. Even now, I shied away from the thought of all he’d had and all I’d missed. It was so brutally unfair. After one dismal marriage and Christ knows how many inconclusive affairs, I’d finally found my destined mate, the love of my life, the mother of my unborn children. The catch was that I’d found her too late and then she’d died on me, one more statistic in the FAA record books. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much. Thanks for nothing.

  Sooner or later, Lucien would come to call on me. I had nothing to do except wait, so I waited. Sometimes it was light outside, at others it was dark. I seemed to be waking at three and six. The clocks in the house had gone mad. Maybe there’d been a power cut, a frequent event at La Sauvette. I couldn’t be bothered to reset them, and my own watch was still nine hours behind. Who cared what time it was?