by Louise Dean
‘You mean in the other place?’
‘Here,’ Max said. He put a wet fingertip into the salt on the plate and pushed it round, making a trail like a road in the snow.
‘Some guy just walking round like he owned the place.’
She nodded; she used the wooden spoon to stir the vegetables in the pan. She was thinking of Rachel. She said to herself, nearly daily being in that woman’s place, you were a fool, Rachel, a fool.
Rachel said a lot of silly things: We have too much so now we’re going to share. Well, she took her up on that one. All children are all of our children. Sure. Until you have to choose who gets the seat belt. Or the daddy. And she ran away as soon as it was out, their affair, she gave Valérie free rein, not even confronting her — as Valérie would have done — not even trying on some rhetoric or show-violence. Rachel took her moral credit and ran. It was a rout. And now Valérie had assumed her spoon. She used it to free the long slices of onions that were burning.
‘Max, go and do something. We’re not eating for an hour. Just go and do some homework or something and leave me alone for a bit.’ She took a sip of her wine and rattled about her for her cigarettes.
‘Ugly guy,’ he said.
‘You’re talking rubbish. Go away.’
‘Who is he then?’
‘You know who it is.’
‘Gérard.’
‘Jeff!’ she shouted, opening the pack and seeing it was empty.
‘Jeff! His name is Jeff. Stop all this Gérard rubbish.’
She put three skinned dead rabbits into the pot with a litre of stock and put the lid on it, and then she left the kitchen as he would not.
* * *
An hour or so later they sat down to eat.
‘Sit at the head of the table,’ she said to Jeff. She’d redone her mascara and lipstick and changed her shirt for dinner. Jeff was wearing a woolly hat, dirty jeans and a sweatshirt. He did not take the hat off. He sat to the side instead, facing Max, and so she sat at the head.
She served them the food and they ate without looking at each other as she went between them with questions and ideas, ‘I thought we’d have goose for Christmas . . .’ which went unanswered. Max belched explosively at one point and Jeff merely raised his eyebrows without looking up.
Max put two elbows on the table.
‘I think it would be better for everyone if you just left now,’ he said to Jeff, with dignity.
Jeff took his hat off, laid it beside his plate, and looked at the boy. ‘But you see, kid, this is my house.’
Then the man got up and went past the oven, adding with his characteristic flexibility, ‘Well, in theory anyway, until Abrams boots me out of course.’ He knelt in front of the bottom cupboard. He slid half of a cardboard box out of it and felt around inside. It was there and then he recalled a fragment of a dream he’d had about Don Abrams. In the dream he’d been in a room with other people, and he’d known that Abrams was sitting in the wings, watching him but not saying anything.
‘The dope’s gone.’
‘No, it’s not possible,’ said Valérie, rising.
‘Yup, it’s gone,’ said Jeff. He didn’t make anything of it, he simply stood up, walked out of the room and went into the TV lounge and they heard the raucous cheers of a rugby-match crowd.
When she went in, he was sitting on the sofa, he had his feet on the coffee table, his back to her and he put a finger to his lips, without looking round.
‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Not a word.’
‘Jeff. I know you miss Maud . . .’
She saw his shoulders tense. She wanted to touch him. She looked at her outstretched hand; the fingers trembled. She thought about telling him she felt for him; but she’d given him too much already and none of it was enough.
Chapter 49
Valérie put on Jeff’s oilskin coat and went in her slippers across to her parents’ house. Perhaps Simone had taken the dope back.
Just before she stepped on to the terrace she recalled that today was her father’s birthday and she went to turn round again and go back, but she was caught; a light went on.
Her father was sitting at the table he’d made. He had the olive-wood ashtray before him, and the box of red wine was on the edge of the table, a black stain on the terracotta beneath its nozzle. There was a red tinsel garland around the box.
‘I see the festive spirit is here,’ she said.
‘It comes free with the box this time of year.’
‘Is Simone up?’
‘No, she’s on the sofa, sleeping.’
‘Right.’
He was wearing overalls and a cardigan. His dog, so permanently favoured, nestled her head on his crotch. He stroked the dog, ‘Oh my beauty, oh my girl, yes, I’m here, yes . . .’ Then he added, ‘Have a drink with me now you’re here.’
‘OK,’ she said.
He lurched as he rose, against the table, and went sideways to the cabinet for a green-stemmed wineglass. He filled it with red.
‘Weather’s fucked,’ he commented, making a circular movement with his head to take in the whole world. There were some crisps on a plate and a jar of pickled mushrooms open, next to a tube with toothpicks in it. He pushed them to her with the back of his arm. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Santé.’
‘And yours.’
The old man coughed and it reminded him to light another cigarette. In the manner of the heavy smoker, he didn’t offer her one.
‘Can I have one?’
‘Oh yes, excuse me,’ he passed her the pack and went to ignite the lighter but his hand was shaking so he passed it to her. She lit up. ‘So you’ve got rid of your husband.’
‘Yes.’ She took a sip. ‘Did you only just notice?’ The old man swallowed half his glass.
‘You like your new one?’
‘But yes, of course.’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘Well, in fact. I don’t know.’
‘I see things, I see how they are.’
‘It’s not easy.’ She felt a tear at the side of her nose and stopped it with a fingertip.
The old man saw. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ He looked at his hands around the glass, not at her.
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’ve got a problem. Maybe more than one problem.’
‘I’ve made a mess of it all. It’s not that I want Richard back. I don’t. It’s just that Jeff isn’t very kind.’
‘We’re worried about the boy,’ he said. ‘The boy’s got something wrong with him. He’s got no manners. I always did say that he had no manners and we thought, well, kids are like that these days, but it’s more than that, he’s not right. You should talk to the doctor, that’s what your mother thinks.’
‘Yes, I know. I have. But he’s just a boy. It will get better.’ She shivered, looking at her wine. ‘I know I’m not a good mother.’
‘No one’s saying it’s your fault. There was a kid like that on the farm at Nancy. Strange kid. Shot the priest. He was never right.’
‘It’s not like that.’
‘No, maybe not. No. Anyway what do I know? I know shit compared to what most people know these days. I read the books but I think what’s the point, it’s all just words. We all need the rain and the sun, we can’t live without them, that’s something you can’t argue with. The trees need it, the animals . . . it’s been too long without rain now. Well, what’s it going to take for you to be happy?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You’re not a young woman. You’re a mother. You have a problem with that kid and you need to get yourself straight. You ought to leave that guy out of it, get back into your own home, get yourself together. You need to be proud of yourself. You need to be strong. Instead of mooning around that American all day, doing nothing but crying or drinking or whatever else you do.’
‘Ha. Great. Thanks. Thanks for the drink.’
‘It’s nothing.’
She pushed the empty glass away.
‘How you think you’re able to give me fatherly advice, I don’t know. You’ve become like a wino, you’re filthy, you’re useless, you don’t do anything any more, you just sit drinking all day, you’re just rotting. “Ordures” — that’s what she calls you behind your back, did you know that?’
The white of his eyes was yellow, the pores on his nose were large and the end of it purple, his eyebrows trailed as unkempt as his moustache. ‘I know,’ he said. His eyes filled with tears. He sniffed, raised a smile. ‘I could do things, you know, back in the day. I had some success. I knew people, and the little place I ran then in Marseille it was always full, and I was taking so much money I didn’t know what to do with it, but I sent most of it home to your mother. I never paid my taxes.’
‘So why did Mother have to work a market stall?’
‘She only did that for the show of it. She had a fur coat. She had dresses. She went out. You had clothes, didn’t you? And you never went hungry. And yes I drank, I’ve always drunk. Always will. It’s like diesel for my engine. I’ve drunk since I was a boy. Down in Marseille, I’d have my first brandy at six in the morning when I got up. I’d drink until I fell over, but I worked, I did something like two hundred covers in that place. I didn’t get to bed until two or three, then up at six. People these days don’t know anything about work. Or drink. Now I get drunk on the smell of a cork.’ His eyes were wet and he wiped them. ‘I sit here all day like an old cunt doing nothing.’
‘You’re depressed.’
‘That’s what she says. I’m not though. What have I got to worry about? She does all that side of things. Me, I have nothing to think about. I’ve been reading one of those books on corruption, you know, by what’s his name — you know the one.’
‘Chirac?’
‘That’s the one, but he didn’t write it himself. What a rotten stinking carcass it is, this government. It’s all backhanders, everywhere . . . You get to thinking, what’s the point?’
‘You gave up long ago anyway, when we went over to computers.’
‘People were kinder before. The postman used to bring the old folk a baguette and a bottle of wine when they couldn’t get out, and their cigarettes. Now he’d be sued for it. Well, we all give up some time. Not at thirty . . . what age are you?’
‘Thirty-three.’
‘Not at thirty-three. No. That’s too soon. Still, maybe it gets sooner with every generation. Maybe Max will give up at sixteen. Your mother went to bed with a friend of mine, just after you were born, and I caught them and I took offence.’ He touched his beard. ‘I say offence but the truth is I was heart-broken.’
‘So in revenge you went off with every tart in town . . .’
‘No, there were a couple who wouldn’t . . . Catholic sisters, though I dare say back then, a nod and a wink, Holy Mother, and you know, but no, everyone knew everyone and married women didn’t screw around. We would have given you a brother or a sister, you know, but well, I lost the taste for it all, family life, and I went away and made a living . . .’
‘So it was almost Little House on the Prairie but Mother blew it.’
‘That’s right.’ He licked his lips and served both of them a topup of wine. Glass in hand, he fell to crooning to the dog . . . ‘We used to sing that with Maud. I don’t understand all of this, I don’t know what you call it — sex, love — I don’t know. I’m too old. You explain it to me. What’s it all for?’
There were other things he didn’t understand, the principal one being why his mother had turned him out of his home. He’d got stuck on this question and it stopped him getting round to the others. But there was no answer for any of his questions, and for every question for which there was no answer there was a glass of red.
‘I don’t know if I ever did love Richard. I never knew him. I used to say to him, I don’t know you, but he didn’t seem to mind. And he was never here, remember? Max was very difficult and I felt lonely, that’s all there is to it, and you and Mother were always prying. I had no private life. Then, I fell in love with Jeff . . .’
While she spoke he sat seriously in imitation of a sober man listening hard. Under the cover of the conversation, they’d been stealing glances at each other, working out where they stood, who remembered what, circling each other like two boxers.
‘You’re a lot like me, you know.’ He filled her glass with more red, and set it back down on its sticky stain; drunk now, he pointed to the lawn in the dark. ‘The robins are confused. They don’t know whether to stay or go. I give them birdseed right down there on that bit of lawn, and they bob around and bounce right up to my feet. Even your mother says she’s never seen that before, but they trust me . . .’ He held aloft one hand as if there were a bird sitting in it, then eventually saw he was looking at an empty space. ‘I shouldn’t have gone and left you both. I thought you’d be happy to see me when I came back. But you weren’t. So I came back less and less, but you were such a good-looking girl, you had my nose, though not as big nor as broken, and I thought, well even if she hates me, even if she wants to kill me, I’m coming home to keep an eye on her, to watch out for her, because she’s all I’ve got. She’s my blood.’
He put a hand over his mouth and they both sat there in silence for a moment, then he spoke again. ‘What I want to say is that I know you never had the love you needed.’
He went at his tearful face with his sleeve. His hands were so big and crippled up, it was like trying to put out a candle with a spade; he cuffed himself.
She stood. She looked down at him and felt her throat tighten: He’s crying for himself. ‘I should get back home, it’s late. It must be midnight. Thanks.’
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, ‘a glass of wine or two for your daughter, that’s nothing, nothing at all.’
‘I feel so . . .’ she put her arms about herself, to warm her upper arms with her hands, ‘hated.’
The chair made a noise as he went to stand, and he fell back against it. The back of it was tipped against the wall, the two front legs off the floor; the plate of crisps fell to the floor and smashed as his stumpy hands made for the table to steady himself and in a half-rise, aghast, his face looked like a gargoyle in the swinging lamplight.
‘Are you all right?’
‘The table’s slippery, it’s just difficult to get a hold of it,’ he said.
‘Well, go to bed now, go to bed, don’t sit here drinking,’ she said. ‘Happy Birthday.’
Chapter 50
Inside, Simone was lying on the sofa, smoking. Unobserved, her expression was one of profound loneliness, her normally buoyant cheeks hung low, unmuscled, unpacked. Her legs came together, swinging round as if tied and lifted by a small crane; she put a hand to the small of her back, sighing, and withdrew from behind a cushion the little purple pony with gold hair. Maud’s. She put its muzzle to her lips. ‘Ah, la petite Anglaise,’ she said, smoothing the acrylic toy hair, ‘she was our angel.’
‘I know. I know,’ said Guy, his own eyes red at the sight of the pony, ‘every day — tap, tap, tap — can I come in, oh Tonton Guy, show me the harmonica, no not like this, like that, you’re doing it wrong, always commanding me . . .’
‘I know. She had you around her finger.’
‘Do you want a hot drink?’
‘It’s late. But I won’t sleep anyway. Yes, I’ll have a coffee. Make yourself one of those drinks the doctor gave you.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were talking to Valérie.’
‘Yes.’
‘And it’s your birthday.’
He looked up at the broken roof tile with the rustic scene painted on it, clock hands glued on, ‘No, that was yesterday.’
‘She knew it was your birthday and she came to see you.’ Simone sat up.
He put the kettle on and looked at the tea bag on a string. He turned it around his crooked finger. ‘She’s worried. This thing with Jeff, it’s not working. He’ll go.’
‘Did she say so?’
‘No. Bu
t I know. He’ll go.’
‘Oh, you know yourself, more like. No, he won’t. He loves it here.’
‘She’s my daughter but she’s hard work.’
‘She’s your daughter all right.’
He filled the cups, spilling more than the cups gained. Simone raised herself and went for the cloth, hearing the pitter-patter of the water on the tiles. She wiped.
‘I’m worried about Richard,’ she said, holding the cloth still for a moment, leaning on to it. She looked out through the window into the dark.
‘We can’t worry about everyone. We should just worry about our own. Valérie and Max.’
‘He has been like a son to me. He’s been good to us. This Jeff, I don’t like him. I don’t sleep, I just stay awake worrying. That’s what old age is for. You do the worrying the rest are too busy to do. I was born an old soul. My grandmother said . . .’
‘“You will carry a cross all your days . . .”’
‘Yes. And it was true, wasn’t it?’
‘You have big arms, my love.’
She made a face. Her arms were large, it was true. ‘Well, I need them, with you to carry home.’
He sat in his chair, she went to her sofa, they never swapped places. Both of them moved their feet to feel for their slippers.
‘Let’s watch television. I can’t sleep now, I’m thinking about Valérie and what’s going to happen next. If only I could protect her. I would have shot the person who ever hurt her or the boy, that’s why I keep the gun. I would shoot them and take the consequences. But who do I shoot here? Jeff?’
‘Poor Richard; all alone, no job, no car, no family, nothing, not even a pot to piss in. Nichts. Nada. Nu-ssing.’
‘Maybe he will come back if Jeff goes.’
She squeezed her nose, considered. ‘And then they would go back into their house, and everything would be the same again, if they could forgive each other. Maybe she could drive him to work, this sick pay will run out next autumn, there’s that to think about. How will the mortgages be paid then? But we wouldn’t have Maud back. These religious people are so black and white. That’s the last we’ve seen of Rachel, I don’t doubt.’ She sighed and lit a cigarette. ‘Anyway Richard’s not the same man he was, he’s lost his mind.’