by Louise Dean
‘No thank you.’ Maurice looked immeasurably demoralized, clutching one forearm across his chest. He did not smoke, and he drank modestly and rarely got drunk, but when he did he’d talk to them about his ex-wife and how he’d made her have an abortion, thinking she’d been unfaithful, which brought him on to the subject of her being the love of his life . . .
‘Look, I’m sorry about the dog thing. But we couldn’t pay the vet’s bills for something you can’t reasonably suggest happened at our house.’
‘Simone gave him a chicken bone.’
‘Oh, come on, Mauroo, even if she did, she didn’t mean to harm him.’
‘There’s a lot you don’t understand, Richard. Those people, they are not decent people. They are not much better than gypsies. They are unreliable. Cheats. All the people around here are like that one way or another. Thieves who had the luck to live here. I have broken off with Guy and Simone for good. This dog thing is the last straw.’
‘Well, I’m sorry you feel that way. We had some fun together, didn’t we? Four in the morning listening to Santana, with Guy on the harmonica. We talked about everything. Wonderful evenings. Remember how Guy used to put on that one song that reminded you of dancing with your wife and you’d say: Play it again. Every time, you’d say: Play it again. And he did. I can’t see myself carrying on here like this, so alone. But I don’t want to leave Maxence, you see. I don’t want to leave him with the bloody American. So I must stay and wait for what I’m given, I suppose.’
‘The American? He’s no worse than anyone. Well — and perhaps you should go. This is not your home, is it?’
‘After fourteen years here?’
Maurice looked at his glass. ‘I wish I’d gone back to Alsace, when I had the chance. Those fellows will be here any minute. It would be embarrassing to make introductions since we agreed this would be done on the hush-hush.’
As Richard went off, he saw through the window his former friend, hand across chest, telephone pressed to the side of his face, words being met with words, eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth and nothing more, physically rigid, strained to the limit.
He was surprised to be bathed in light as he went up the stairs to his studio. He looked upwards. Someone had rigged up a construction-site lamp and attached it to the banister of the floor above. Someone had finally had enough of the dark.
There was nothing from Rachel via email.
He sat in the shithole he was renting, drinking, to avoid thinking in any kind of straight direction.
Chapter 45
Simone was on a life support of nicotine and smoked emphatically, withdrawing her allocation of oxygen by the tweezer action of her sharp-ended nostrils, in queenly brown shudders.
Last time she was there, she said, was for lunch with the German from down the lane. It had emerged that he was in fact a bereft and bankrupt pensioner with a ‘heart of gold’. They’d had a lovely lunch. Simone had done the paperwork for him to get a small state stipend and he’d invited her to lunch as a thank-you.
Breadcrumbs on her breast, grey roots, black chignon, as she sat with Richard and Max now, she’d sat too with the German in happy faux-connubiality, moaning about the waste in the world, the two of them at their best on the bloom of the wine, entering into the mysticism of horticulture, about talking to plants, giving them red wine, and music, singing to them, then getting maudlin, the pear tree that did badly after the man who pruned it badly came back to stay, the orange tree that sulked after the radio broke, how to cajole a tree and how to argue with a tree. The earth, the land, all gone. The bottle empty.
She hadn’t meant to talk about Richard and Valérie to him, but she had to talk about it with someone. She couldn’t talk to Guy.
‘He turns and turns all day long just like his dog, doing nothing. He’s completely lost. He won’t speak about Valérie. He sniffs the air like the dog, goes in and out morose, he doesn’t even clear his plates and cups away. He sits down to do the horses and then he just pushes the newspaper away from him.’
The German had said to her, perhaps Guy blames himself, after all he hadn’t set Valérie any kind of example when it came to sticking with things, with working at a relationship. And people these days could so easily walk away from their duty. It wasn’t like in their day. Look at you, he’d said, approvingly. You worked so hard, the German said to her. Yes, that was true enough, she’d always worked hard. And as for Richard, he said, it’s no surprise he’s depressed, but he’d heard the pills help. He was a gentle sort, that German, with hair like a palm tree; handsome once and actually still a fine-looking man. The poor man, a fire burnt down his cabin, and he had nothing. He had a moustache though. Her mother used to say that a kiss without a moustache was like a soup without salt.
‘Do you know, I think the German is a little in love with me,’
she said, her cheeks pink.
Richard ordered two glasses of Champagne, one for him and one for her, and a glass of Coca-Cola.
‘Are you having a relationship with him? This German?’
‘At my age?’ It was a challenge more than a question. ‘The girl at the hairdresser’s, her brother’s wife saw you at the doctor’s,’ she said.
‘Yes, I’ve been in there a few times.’
She raised her eyebrows, put the glass to her lips, her mouth flattened as she drank, she looked so disappointed. Their relationship had changed, now he really was like a son to her, he was a burden.
They ordered three menus at eleven euros apiece. It smelt of old carpet in there, and there was something festive about the odour of cigarette smoke and mould.
‘I have bronchitis, that’s why,’ he said, raising a glass.
Simone put her cigarette out in the seashell. It might have been a seashell, or a dried pig’s ear. It was hard to tell, it had been well scarred with cigarette stubs.
‘I thought you might have been to see him because you were depressed.’ She raised her glass. ‘Your health.’
‘No.’
They touched glasses with Max’s. They drank hard, all three of them consuming two-thirds of the glass.
‘Bronchitis. Asthmatic?’
‘No.’
‘Chronic?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Mine is,’ she said, coughing, pausing, swallowing more Champagne, then coughing again, ‘it means it’s life-threatening, not a temporary thing.’
Max tore off some bread, dipped it in the Coke.
‘Go on, enjoy yourself, Max,’ she said warmly. ‘While you can. Your health is everything.’
‘Thank you for bringing him to see me,’ Richard said to her.
A plate was put before each of them with celery remoulade, a tossing of grated carrot and three shiny curling pieces of saucisse. They each removed the parsley garnish. Richard asked for a pitcher of wine.
‘You shouldn’t drink with anti-depressants. But you know that.’
‘How’s Guy?’
‘The same. You know, I give him thirty milligrams Paxil in the morning and the evening. I tell him it’s for his prostate.’
‘He doesn’t know?’
‘He wouldn’t take it if he knew.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘I have to. He’s always criticizing me. He’s bad-tempered.’
‘Even so.’
‘It’s that or he’s on the street.’
‘Come on, you love him.’
‘Yes. To put up with him I must do. But my health isn’t good. I must think of myself, that’s what the doc says, but I said to him after a lifetime of putting yourself last it doesn’t come easily to me . . .’ She finished her glass and brandished it ostentatiously.
The young waitress filled their glasses again and took away the plates; gormless and vacant, a cipher serving, she was invisible to herself. Richard gazed at her.
A group of four bottle-fed British took a table next to them and the largest man rubbed his hands, preparing to lavish the group with rosé.
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sp; ‘Look at them,’ said Simone, ‘look at their faces, thinking they will get away without getting cancer here. Do you know this is the only village in France with an English-speaking branch of Alcoholics Anonymous? They can’t be anonymous. He sleeps sixteen hours a day. I say to him, you’re depressed. He says, I’m not stressed. I say, you don’t understand what it means, depressed. He goes to bed at seven and gets up at six, then he naps through the afternoon. Do you think it’s the pills?’
A meagre steak was served to each of them with fries.
‘Bon app’.’
They fell on their plates. It was good to be hungry and good to eat even if it had to be done together.
‘Well, I don’t know how this happened, how we all came to be here, but I’m grateful for it,’ said Max, smiling like the long-absent relative at the reunion.
Richard and Simone exchanged looks.
Then after a mouthful, Maxence put his knife and fork down. The boy had tears in his eyes and could barely swallow what was in his mouth.
‘What is it?’
‘I have a problem.’
‘I knew it,’ Simone said.
Richard set down his knife and fork. ‘What problem?’
‘They’ve put me on pills. For my head.’
‘Ritalin,’ said Simone, tongue under front gum, reaching for her glass.
From the boy’s top teeth two little train tracks of spittle extended across his mouth.
‘Ritalin,’ she went on, ‘it’s a good one. Lots of clinical trials. Eat, Maxence.’
‘Is it OK to take it?’
‘You knew about this, Simone?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not OK. It’s ridiculous. Valérie wants her son to be on drugs? At thirteen years old? Ritalin is for attention deficit disorder. Max hasn’t got that! There’s no diagnostic standard for it worth the paper it’s written on. Kids have died from taking the bloody drug. She might have asked me about it! I was in the fucking business, for God’s sake.’ He pushed his plate away from him.
Simone glanced at it. ‘Mind your language, Richard. No wonder they’ve put him on the drugs. Think about it. Think about all he’s been going through! And all the things that have happened in the last few months! What you did to Valérie . . . in front of him.’
Max sat round-eyed, his front teeth on his lip.
Richard pointed at him, his anger misplaced, ‘You’re not to take them. You tell her, you’re not taking them.’
The British diners hunched their shoulders, sharing this out burst like treasure chucked amongst them, giving it a rough valuation, finding it quaint.
‘Your grandmother doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Don’t listen to her or your mother or anyone. Just me, OK? Those pills aren’t bloody sweets or anything. They mess with your mind.’
Simone raised her eyebrows and drained her glass. ‘I don’t mind it here. It is what it is. There’s a nice new little place, run by the Belgian woman who looks like a man, down dog-shit alley. They do little macaroons with your coffee. It’s a bit more upmarket. And of course it’s nice to go somewhere new.’ Her eyes welled with tears. ‘Where people don’t make comments. I get funny looks in the tabac, funny looks in the boulangerie and they go quiet in the hairdresser’s when I walk in. Richard, she’s not a bad person, Valérie. She only wants to be happy.’
‘With Jeff? She hasn’t got a chance. The man’s a liar and a cheat.’
‘Rachel was very difficult to live with. All the religion stuff and dragging him off to Africa like that all the time.’
‘They went twice! She went to help people!’
‘Guy saw her praying in the garden.’ She shook her head. ‘Africa! She should have been at home looking after Maud. It was such a shame for the little girl. We loved her and now she’s gone. That’s how life is. One asks oneself why one bothers to love, it’s the worst pain in the world.’ She sighed. ‘We miss the little tap, tap, tap at the door, “Can I come in please, Tatie . . . ?” She was very polite. It’s an enormous loss not having them next door any more.’
‘And what am I? The cat’s arsehole?’
‘Oh, Richard!’ She found something funny and began to laugh in fits and starts, almost reluctantly, putting her napkin to her lips. ‘I saw this tea-towel holder in a kitchen shop, shaped like a cat with its tail up in the air, you just poked the cloth in the little plastic suction thing, right under the tail, it made me laugh. Putting your finger into that hole like that . . .’
‘They’re getting a trampoline for me,’ said Max. ‘That will give me some exercise so I can lose weight. I like rhythm. The doctor said it would be good for me to jump up and down.’
‘I can’t deal with this.’ Richard put his hand in the air to call the waitress. Max quickly gulped down the last mouthful of Coke.
Simone ate the last mouthful of steak, and put her knife and fork together. She dabbed at the bags under her eyes. ‘It’s been difficult. Very difficult for everyone. You will have to let her go, Richard. Everybody wants love. That’s all they want. No one used to expect such a thing when I was young. It’s like a madness. I don’t know where it’s all going to end. They say religion causes wars but I say love’s worse. They come to me, you know, to have their cards read and all they want to know is whether someone loves them. They get so annoyed when you say something about their work or money or property, important things. They don’t want any of that.’
Richard craned his neck to get the waitress.
‘Are you OK, Mamie?’ Max asked.
She had her hand over her mouth, tears in her eyes. She bent her head to address the boy. ‘I pray to the angels for you every night, Maxence.’ She finished her wine with her throat trembling.
Richard took the notes out of his wallet and settled the bill with the waitress, holding the bill slip like it was something filthy.
‘You don’t want your chocolate mousse then,’ she said, deadpan. ‘It’s included.’
‘No.’ Richard got up, startling one of the British women who’d
turned again to ogle them; as he rose he knocked her elbow. Her fork fell to the floor. He stepped on it as she went to retrieve it, by accident. She sat up and put her hand on her heart.
Simone leant across the table towards Maxence.
‘Your father,’ she said in a hoarse voice, ‘is having a nervous breakdown. You might not understand that now but you will when you’re grown up.’ She got up and stood beside him, putting an arm around him, squeezing his face to her breast. She took a bread roll and slipped it into his pocket.
Chapter 46
Richard stood outside and lit a cigarette. The Dutch were sitting at a table by the fountain eating panini stuffed with chewing-gum cheese. They seemed not to see him.
They had gone with the Dutch, with Marjolein and Joop and their kids, to the beach in May and lain there with a picnic, drinking wine. Poppies in the sandy grass on the kerb. He could recall Valérie sipping on a Diet Coke, looking sourly at the kids who were arguing and in particular at Max who wanted to go home, and Marjolein sat there too, her breasts hanging like used tea bags in a too-large white bikini top, and Joop had belched or something and suggested he and Richard go for a beer at the beach café and he’d thought, there and then, shit, this is a long business this family thing. But there was always Monday.
The Dutch guy, Joop, he kept himself busy — football, drinking, the kids — and he seemed to love his wife. He had a big jaw, there was something heroic about him, Richard thought now as he put out his cigarette in the fountain.
Something so mundane, something far from anything commonly regarded as any kind of a test of man’s heroism, the family unit, what most people would consider normal and right, had beaten him. The nuclear family was set to explode, and no one was clear why, and that was possibly why his pills had sold so well.
Simone finished her own cigarette, twisting her ankle to crush it. She had been lingering next to him while the kid ate his bread roll.
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p; ‘Écoute,’ she said, and she put a hand on his sleeve. He looked at her, at her veiny face, at the mascara that had crumbled on to the bags under her eyes, at the deep brown of them, and at the dry pale mouth that was loose and moving ahead of words, ‘Take the boy home with you, Richard. I will get him in the morning. Valérie and Jeff have gone away for the night. Take him. It will give you some time together.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘You are like a son to me,’ she said.
* * *
‘Are you OK, Papa?’ Max said with edgy formality now as they opened the front door. Richard was taken aback by the occasional maturity in his son, it was somehow unsettling. He tried to throw it off.
‘Génial, Max. Excellent. It’s all going well.’
Surveying the place, Max’s face came back blank and uneven as the walls.
‘You want a coffee?’
‘No thanks.’
‘You find it strange, don’t you, your father living in a place like this?’
‘Not really.’
‘We’re going to spend some father–son time together in spite of it all. We’ll have to get out and about. Maybe.’ Without a car it would be hard to do, he reflected.
‘Fishing?’
‘No. Fuck that. We’ll go to Paris, or something on the train.’
‘Cool! Can we go to Disneyland?’
‘Well, I was thinking, you know, of something more grown up. We could go to London maybe.’
‘Oh.’
‘Hey, we’ll have a really good time whatever we do. Do me a favour, Max, and find your passport. Dig it out, OK?’
‘All right.’
‘How are things up at the house with your mother?’ He shrugged again.
‘Good, bad, awful? Come on, Max, talk to me.’
Richard could see Max’s brain working, he was hoeing with his teeth over his lip, raking through the stony ground of things important and things trivial and levelling them. ‘Fine,’ he said. Then his face came to life, ‘Gérard’s got a quad.’
Richard corrected him. ‘Jeff. Jeff ’s got a quad.’