by Louise Dean
Jeff and Rachel had been to see the head of the rugby team in L’Argens. Rachel was flushed with wine and excitement.
‘He used to be the rugby coach but he works for the social services now, he’s going to be our mentor for the adoption process, which is endless of course . . .’
‘I’m fine with that by the way,’ quipped Jeff, taking his place at the table.
‘It’s just a question of getting all the paperwork together but also, you know, I do realize,’ she threw a look at Valérie, ‘I mean I do know it’s his job to slow things down, in that very, uh, Gallic way, it gives him time to check us out, how certain we are and that.’
She finished her glass and he refilled it for her. There was a dark line on her lower lip, red wine sediment.
‘He thought we were strong candidates. We already have a child, we’re young, we’re married . . .’ She counted off their virtues on her fingers. ‘I said to him that I see us with a little African girl about Maud’s age, you know.’
Valérie served the moussaka. ‘Richard, he think he have had a very bad childhood. You know. His mother ran away with an American singer . . . maybe it was Elvis.’
‘His name was in fact Albert Hall.’ Richard received his own plate, noting the burnt bit was his. ‘I was close to my father. He was a good dad. I can’t remember missing her overmuch. She must have been very unhappy.’
‘Oh Richard,’ said Rachel.
‘Take your plate, honey,’ said Jeff.
‘He fed me, clothed me, paid for my schooling. He loved me. And now he lives in Devon, with a very plain, very kind woman.’
‘The only woman who would have him,’ put in Valérie.
‘Yes, maybe. He’s happy, though.’
Rachel sat looking disrupted, while Jeff and Valérie ate. ‘I feel sorry for that boy, for the little boy who had to grow up so fast.’
No one had ever said such a thing to him. He looked at her. Her eyes seemed somehow as useful as hands. It’s a good thing God didn’t make you beautiful or you’d be really dangerous, he thought.
Valérie put her fork down on the plate, a hard note.
‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Valou,’ said Jeff.
‘It is a very difficult dish, it takes me too long, I don’t know why I make it. I haven’t done it in years. Oh,’ she sighed, ‘I don’t know, this adoption plan of yours, it depresses me. Perhaps I am jealous.’
‘Jealous? Why?’ cried out Rachel.
‘Of your nice intentions. But for me I do not agree. For me there is the love that is natural, which springs from the interior of you, this love is passion, it comes from somewhere profound, maybe dark is the right word in English, and then you have the love that is all here,’ she tapped the side of her head, ‘which is work, just work, you know, it is about what people think of you . . . charity I think you say in English but we don’t have a word quite like that in French and maybe this is why I cannot understand.’
‘Oh no, I mean, it might start that way, but it changes, doesn’t it? It grows . . .’
‘Like with a dog or a cat, you mean.’ Valérie hid her mouth with her glass.
‘No! No, but it’s like, well your husband isn’t your blood relation, is he? But you grow to love him . . .’
‘It begins with passion. Not charity, I don’t think.’ Valérie glanced at Jeff and smiled.
‘Jeff and I were friends really, weren’t we, darling? We worked together, that’s how it started. Anyway, people are different, I suppose. I know that I could love any child. Really.’
‘Even a psychopath? Even a crazy child who burns things or kills things, who hates you?’
‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Richard said.
‘But Ri-schard, she doesn’t know what kind of a child she will get and these kids in these crazy places have seen some terrible things, they have done some terrible things. Some of them have been soldiers, some of them have been raped . . . Nobody knows what has happened to them. We have seen the film. Maybe Rachel gets a boy who shoot another boy in the back of the head.’
Max came in and put a remote control on the table next to his mother. ‘Y’a rien a’ la télé,’ he said.
‘Hi, Max,’ said Rachel. The boy looked at her. He was standing like a pregnant teenager, tummy out. His pyjamas were too short and too childish for him with a SpongeBob cartoon on them just discernible but cracked like mosaic, they were faded and pilled.
‘You all right, sweetie?’
Valérie stood up and took a glass from the draining board which she briskly filled with water from the tap, then handed it to her son. ‘Go on — bed. It’s too late for all this.’ He went out.
Valérie took the chair across from Rachel, where Jeff had been sitting until he got up to spark up a joint by the back door. They faced each other, pale and dark.
‘I don’t think it comes from being polite, love. I think that love is very malpoli, it is rude. You die for someone you love. You kill for them. You put them first even at a big price. I mean, do you think the Nazis didn’t love? I think they were maybe great lovers, they love their own people so much that they kill others.’
Richard was shaking his head as he lit a cigarette. Oh do shut up, he was thinking. He caught Rachel’s eye.
‘And who is a bad lover? Let me think? Maybe Gandhi, yes, maybe the Abbé St Pierre . . . maybe the Pope he is a very bad lover . . .’
Jeff laughed, at the door, sucking on the spliff, blowing smoke into the night, the light on his face from the porch lamp.
‘You see. You see . . .’ She was leaning over the table, a hand curled around the glass, enjoying herself, and she spoke quickly.
‘Love is a very dangerous thing, . . .’
Richard shot another look at Rachel, who looked right back at him, and he could read her thoughts in her eyes.
He looked at his wife, unleashed, in full vibrato, her hands moving; hands in her hair, hands in the air, fingers moving.
He looked at Rachel; her head now bowed, her hands crossed on the table. One woman trying so hard to sit up straight, he thought, and the other trying so hard to fall off her seat.
From across the room, Jeff piped up, pointing the spliff at them as if it were a conductor’s baton, bringing himself into the music, ‘I don’t think it’s fair to bring Catholics into it. I resent that. I mean, take my family, we’re Catholic, and I know we don’t have any good intentions at all . . .’
He closed the door and brought the little paper end of the joint to the sink where he ran water over it. His head went from side to side and he said in his creaky tones, ‘Well, Richard, you must be like some sort of Don Juan with what you do for a living.’ He turned round with the wet stub, looking for the bin, and laid it on the table.
Jeff did not look Richard in the eye; he pretended he was looking for a cloth to dry his hands.
‘I’d like to be a good person actually,’ said Rachel. ‘So that makes me really unsexy, I’m sure. In fact I don’t think you could get less sexy than that, could you really?’
Jeff put a damp hand on her back. ‘You’re OK, baby. You’re not a good person yet. There’s still a chance for you.’
‘But this is not all about you, Rachel. You know? Will this child, this African child, be lonely?’ Valérie tore the petite strip of plastic from the pack. She was smoking Marlboro Reds these days, like Jeff.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Will this child, will it feel it is in the wrong place with the wrong people? So, you will give it good food, and nice clothes and everything will be so nice of course, but is that enough? And of course he will still be black and you are very, very white.’
Jeff made a face, swilled the wine around his gums. ‘Whatever. I mean it might not even happen. That counsellor guy did say it was better for these things to go slow; the slower the better.’
‘He told us how this one couple actually brought a child back. He said it just about finished him off. I mean can you imagine? They said the kid hadn�
��t told them he loved them . . . I mean that’s just so screwed up on so many levels.’ Rachel shook her head.
‘Me, I can understand that they brought the child back,’ said Valérie, ‘it is too much to bear the feeling that you are not loved. I can understand that anything — even failure, even guilt, even the hatred of others — would be better than that.’
No one said anything.
Suddenly, breaking the silence, Jeff laughed out of nowhere and apologized.
‘What?’
‘Sorry, I was just thinking about the Pope.’
In filling his glass, Valérie emptied the bottle. ‘Maybe Richard can bring you back a child from Africa . . .’
‘I won’t come across orphans, I’m afraid.’
‘Come on, those kids have got to be depressed,’ smiled Jeff. Rachel laughed in spite of herself. ‘Oh, Jeff, that’s terrible.’
‘Well, I wish it was a funny business.’ Richard was feeling humourless. He was very tired. ‘But it’s just business.’
‘ “Business”!’
‘Yes, Rachel. That’s the truth of it. Business. It’s another way of doing good, you know. Maybe the only real way.’
‘Open another bottle,’ Valérie said.
Jeff started to laugh again. ‘Sorry. You guys give me the giggles. You Brits, you’re so . . . pompous sometimes. You kill me. The realist and the believer.’
‘I don’t think Richard is a realist. Not really,’ said Rachel.
‘Well, I can tell you he is not a romantic,’ Valérie put in. Richard stood up. ‘Well, goodnight folks, the bad guy needs a night’s sleep before he goes off to rape and pillage.’
He looked at Jeff and put out his hand, and Jeff took it and shook it and winked and mouthed at him from behind his sleeve the words ‘ball breakers’.
Max was standing in the doorway, he might have been there a while, Richard only saw him as he went towards it.
‘Max! Come on, son, I’ll take you to bed.’
But Max had his magician’s kit with him. His grandmother had bought it for him for his birthday.
‘I have a trick to show you.’
‘Oh, go on then,’ said Rachel, ‘go on, Max, I love magic.’
‘It’s past his bedtime,’ said Valérie, extinguishing her half-smoked cigarette and going to open a window. She stood looking out of the window.
‘This isn’t very good,’ said Max, his teeth just showing on his lip as he opened the box.
‘What about Ladies and Gentlemen?’ said Jeff, pouring himself another glass. ‘Mesdames et Messieurs . . .’ he effected a little drumroll with his fingers on the table.
The boy put the box on the counter, took out three cups and placed them on the table.
‘Ah it’s the old cup and pea trick,’ said Jeff, ‘a classic.’
The boy sat down where his mother had been. He fiddled a bit, squinted at the cups, sizing them up, and said, ‘Here we have three small balls . . .’ He put his right hand on the table to unwrap the three small fabric balls, and out of his sleeve dropped the fourth.
‘Whoops.’
‘Too bad, man.’
‘Start again, Max, no one saw anything.’
‘No, we didn’t see anything,’ said Rachel. ‘Start again, love.’ Max sat back in his chair, his shoulders slumping, eyes out of focus, his mouth open. Then a tear emerged from one eye and rolled down his cheek.
‘Come on, Max, it’s not important.’ Richard put a hand on his shoulder.
‘It is,’ Max said, ‘it is important. You can either do magic or you can’t.’
Valérie came back to the table. ‘It’s time for bed.’
‘I don’t want you to go to Africa, Dad.’
‘Why?’
‘In case they kill you.’
‘They won’t kill me!’
‘I don’t want to be left with her,’ he said.
Richard watched his wife’s eyes transform; the brown centres deepened, the whites seemed to yellow, a barrier of brine formed. She put a hand over her mouth.
* * *
Before he turned in, he went into his son’s room to breathe in the full-cream goodness of the sleeping child that he still was. He sat down and looked upon that slightly satisfied face, virtuous in sleep, smooth and sure now that Christmas was coming, and everything was getting better; his hands folded like a martyred priest.
We are quiet faithful creatures hiding inside noisy faithless bodies, he thought. He wondered whether Max would one day be in his shoes, drinking with friends, coming and going, worrying at the bathroom sink. Losing his hair. Losing his nerve.
* * *
As on other nights like those, Valérie had the music in the kitchen running high into the early hours while Richard clutched his pillows, sweating out the red wine, and when he woke his mouth was dry and the sun was prising the sides of the shutters from the window frames and his wife lay mouth open, still fully clothed.
Chapter 13
Before turning in, Valérie stood swaying ominously in her kitchen. The last one out, Jeff ’s hand remained on the handle of the door as he looked back over his shoulder, closing the door softly, slowly. He saw her there with her head back, her eyes shut. He bit his lip.
Until she was sure they were gone, Valérie remained in this apparently enraptured state. Then she snapped to, threw the casserole dish into the sink and let the hot water from the tap fill it.
She sat by the back door and looked at her reflection in the glass as she smoked a last cigarette. Perhaps he would come back and if he did she would kiss him in the doorway and they would never be apart. In the reflection there were no wrinkles on her face at all and she liked the way her eyes looked large and dark and her jaw and neck were sleek and hard. She twisted her hair in her hands and held it up at the back.
Jeff walked up the hill, behind his wife, his hands in his pockets, looking up at the sky, loafing, imagining all sorts of temporary things, shopping for poetry. The stars cavorted for him. He was a happy drunk.
His wife was waiting for him in their hallway and he let her kiss him.
In their bedroom a fat and furious fly buzzed around, fretting itself senseless. Jeff rose uneasily, to fetch his dirty socks from the top of the laundry basket in the corner. Rachel touched the sheets, felt them with her hands. He moved about the room with the socks, missing in the air, merely ruffling a cobweb. The man was always too late wherever he was.
Then it occurred to her, watching him, that she had no idea what would happen next, not in minutes, hours, days, weeks or years. The bedsheets were red, the pillowslips were red. The illumination didn’t stretch into the next second and she became suddenly aware of the quiet, the fly was gone, done in, legs in the air underneath the radiator and Jeff got back into bed and set to scratching a leg and a film gathered over the surface of the feeling, and though they were comfortable together, side by side, she felt return all the pretenders from her past, all the men who’d turned her away, and the feeling of being there with a fly to swat and memory-less and future-free was gone.
‘She can talk the leg off a donkey,’ he said, pulling back the sheet from his side and putting a knee on the bed.
‘Do you think she’s beautiful?’
‘Valérie? She talks too much. Way too much.’
He lay down beside her. They held each other and she kissed his chin.
‘You’re doing well, J. Here.’
The red wine was like antiseptic, it helped a lot, in quantity, early evening. It made him docile, besides which there was nowhere to go. It really was the best way to avoid temptation, to live in a place that closed at seven.
When they were asleep, their daughter came and stood in her nightdress, looking at them, the tears in her eyes stoppered by the sight of these two. She stood there for a moment or two and then perhaps she thought that as they were so still they might be dead.
She cried out loudly and they woke and took her into their warm bed between them and though they told her there we
re no monsters, it had seemed to her just the moment before as her eyes had got used to the dark and failed to find them that the dark itself was monstrous, that everything that was night was terrible and that the main thing was not to be alone. She went to sleep in the middle hearth, between the fires of both of them.
Chapter 14
Max sat in the car with his mother in a sulk. Purple, a sniffing fury, his eyes downcast, his hood up. All that gave him away as a boy, as her boy, was the sprinkling of freckles across his nose and cheeks and the long lashes downcast. His mother drove at top speed to loud music. She barely spoke to him, she was impatient, she hated him to speak and necessitate her turning down the volume. She would frown, tilting her head in exaggerated listening, ‘What?’
‘I hate this music.’
‘Don’t be so miserable.’
Other times he’d chatter on, careless, issuing wanton prophesies: ‘I think I’m going to get locked up when I’m older.’ Making boastful claims: ‘I might be great. I might be a magician, or a rock climber, the world’s best.’ And joining the two: ‘All that separates me from being that, you see, Mum, is persuading people to say it. I mean why don’t you say it, just say it? Max, you are the world’s greatest rock climber. No, go on. All right, well don’t because I might want to be something else, I’ve got to think about it. But words are really powerful. They’re magic, right? It’s not I think therefore I am, it’s if they say so, then I am.’
He looked unattractive with his now slightly spotty skin, the wisps on his upper lip, and the soft puppy fat; neither child nor man.
He made repetitive noises about the house or in the car, a pen lid clicked up and down in his hand until she screamed at him, the door of the TV cabinet kicked against the wall and kicked harder and harder after she asked him to stop, and then she’d lose her patience and lash out at him with a smack. In the mornings, before school, he kicked a ball against the kitchen wall, over and over again, a dull thud. He was less and less content. The cereal was wrong, his hair was wrong, his clothes were wrong, he was ugly, everyone hated him, he was useless at sport; thus ran his conversation.