There was a pause.
‘Any particular reason?’ Harrison said finally. He could hardly keep his mind on what was being said to him. He glimpsed endless arguments with this fussy solicitor, as soon as he attempted to put his plans to work for him.
‘He seemed to think it was rather dilapidated. He rather expected you to do a bit of decorating.’
‘I rather expected him to do that.’
‘A first impression, you know … Not too favourable. Perhaps if you were to clean the windows …’
‘I’m afraid I have no time to do that,’ he said firmly. ‘I’m off to France at the end of this week.’
An enormous exhilaration swept through him as he said these words. He was not aware of having made up his mind. Clearly his mind was making itself up. His destiny was in control.
‘You’re not thinking of leaving it empty, I hope? Empty property is an open invitation to thieves, particularly in your area. The proximity to the station, you know.’
‘In that case I’ll put in a caretaker.’
‘Oh. Yes, that might be a good idea. But you won’t leave it empty for too long, will you? Will you want me to keep the spare keys? Until you take possession?’
‘No, I think I’ll collect them from you. I’m not sure of my plans.’
‘Very well. Gillian will keep them here for you to collect. Was there anything else? You’ll get in touch as soon as you return from France? How long do you think you’ll be away?’
‘I’m not sure.’
There was a sigh at the other end. ‘Do be careful, Mr Harrison. You have a considerable asset there. Don’t let it go to waste. The site alone—’
‘Thank you, Mr Viner. I’ll be in touch.’
He put down the telephone, thought for a moment, picked up the receiver and dialled a number in distant Worcestershire. He imagined the call travelling through misty shires, wolds, woodlands, coppices, demesnes, until it reached the home of Tyler, which he saw as palatial, a fit setting for the splendid presence of Tyler himself, whose actual physical embodiment Harrison saw as somewhat threatening. This he put down to the effort of looking up at Tyler’s great height, and marvelling despite himself at Tyler’s austere good looks, in comparison with which his own pleasant appearance shrank to anonymity. Also, Tyler was rich, and careless with it; his father was some sort of industrial magnate, and at the same time a gentleman. The contrast with his own modest background could not have been more marked. And yet for some reason he had been favoured by this prestigious creature, who broke the hearts not only of girls but of women too; there had been rumours, of which he had not taken much notice, but of which he could not help but be aware. Occasionally, in Tyler’s company, Harrison felt like some sort of page, striding along manfully beside his liege lord. This feeling was not uncommon among Tyler’s acquaintances. And yet he liked the man, without trusting him. Flattery came into it, and emulation too. Fortunately they had never had the same girlfriend.
‘Tyler? Harrison here.’
‘Ah. Noddy.’
Harrison winced. That was what was wrong with Tyler; he took unfair advantage. There had been an ill-judged invitation to Eastbourne one weekend, in the course of which Tyler had become privy to various family myths and legends. Bibi, in particular, had been fascinated. Tyler, it could be said, had behaved well; at least the Harrison parents had been charmed, particularly Harrison’s father who was unused to so much interest being shown in the menswear business. Tyler, apparently, was desirous of knowing how the shop was run. With a little encouragement Mr Harrison would have jumped in the car and taken Tyler into town to examine the premises. Grinding his teeth silently, Harrison had put a stop to that. In the kitchen, pink-cheeked, his mother was making a cake. ‘Lemon sponge,’ she confided to him. ‘Will he like that, do you think?’ Gracefully Tyler had thanked them for a very pleasant day. He had had the decency to make no further reference to it but to send good wishes to the Harrison parents. ‘I still remember that cake of your mother’s,’ he was apt to say. Sometimes, Harrison thought, he said it too often.
‘I just called to check whether it’s all right if I go to the flat this weekend.’
‘I thought you had inherited the mantle of commerce.’
‘I can still go to Paris, can’t I? If it’s still all right.’
‘Perfectly all right. The key is with the concierge. She has been told to expect me. You can stand in for me.’
‘You will be coming, then?’
‘Doubt it. I’ve been invited here and there. If I do turn up you’ll have to move upstairs, of course.’
‘Couldn’t we share? Surely the flat is big enough?’
‘Dear fellow, I shouldn’t be alone, should I?’
‘Oh. Oh, quite. Well, you’d give me warning, I suppose.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Well, enjoy yourself. What will you do there?’
‘I hadn’t thought. Go for walks, look at buildings, that kind of thing.’
‘If I don’t see you, leave the key with the concierge when you go. And do let me know how you get on. I’ll look in on you, one of these days.’
And he would, Harrison reckoned. He would make the journey and survey the premises, and even offer some kind of support. Tyler displayed odd moments of kindness which, in the sight of many, compensated for his ruthlessness. Harrison, who never considered himself in the same league, maintained a worried friendship on that count alone. He had no desire to prevail upon Tyler, but appreciated his moments of favour with fervent loyalty. This never failed to surprise him; he was not, as far as he knew, given to hero-worship. At the same time, he knew that he and Tyler had very little in common; indeed, everything, except Cambridge, separated them. Tyler was not lazy, did not have consoling fantasies of flight. Tyler was very much of the moment, of the here and now. He was a master of situations.
When the receiver was once more replaced, Harrison felt a wave of exhilaration. He left the shop, now gloomier than ever in the sultry haze, locked the door behind him, and made for Victoria Street to collect the spare keys. At the top of Vauxhall Bridge Road, where Italian cafés shared space with shops selling kitchen equipment and bicycle spare parts, there was, he knew, an employment agency. The prospect of Paris at the end of the week made him bold.
‘A youngish man,’ he told the woman behind the desk. ‘Not too young. To live on the premises—I can supply a flat. All he has to do while I’m away is clean the place up. The flat and the shop. You’ll take up references, I suppose?’
‘I’ve got just the person for you,’ she said, surprisingly. ‘He said he’d look back this afternoon. I could send him round to you.’
‘What’s his name?’
She consulted a card. ‘Thomas Cook.’
It was an omen. He sped up to Victoria Street, and sped back again, to await the arrival of Thomas Cook. To give himself something to do, he typed a notice saying ‘Closed for Stocktaking’. He then sat tensely, waiting for the agent of his deliverance to appear.
At five o’clock, when he was almost ready to forget the whole business, when Thomas Cook, if he existed, seemed quite possibly a further figment of his imagination, the door opened and a fragile-looking youth of about his own age entered, with an air of being immediately at home. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, and appeared to have no possessions: at least his hands hung idly by his sides. His expression was amiable, if slightly witless: he might have been the character in the fairytale who is sent out on a long and hazardous journey, to return only after some years to claim his reward. Harrison looked at him with some perplexity. Cook seemed singularly unfitted for work of any kind. However, he had turned up; that was something. And now impatience took over; he could not bear to prolong this process any longer.
‘Do you think you could take care of this place for a couple of months? Clear up, and so on? There’s a flat upstairs—did they mention that at the agency?’
‘Yes. That’s what decided me, really. I’ve only just arrived in London
, you see.’
‘Where from?’
‘The Isle of Wight. My parents live there.’
He had parents, to whom he was willing to refer. That, surely, was a good sign.
‘I may have to engage someone permanently, of course.’
He felt that this was the kind of pompous remark he was expected to make.
‘That’s OK.’
‘I’ll be gone for a month or two,’ he said daringly. ‘You can move in straight away, if you like. Just tidy up as best you can. A lot of these books can go in the basement. You’ll need cardboard boxes from somewhere. Leave the shelves free—I’ll decide what to do with the books when I come back. Familiarise yourself with the layout. I’ll pay you in cash, if you like.’
‘I’d prefer a cheque,’ was the prim reply.
‘Really? Are you sure?’
‘I’m saving up for a car.’
‘Whichever you prefer. I’ll leave a float for supplies, soap, etc. Tea,’ he added.
Cook listened to Harrison’s by now febrile plans without due enthusiasm, but seemed unsurprised by them. At the same time his large eyes ranged round the shop. Fleetingly he gave an impression of competence.
‘This will be my number in Paris,’ said Harrison, writing it down. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to manage?’
‘Can’t see why not.’
‘Buy whatever you need,’ Harrison cried, edging his way out of the door. If he hurried he could just manage to buy his ticket for France at Victoria. He was aware of obeying his destiny. If Thomas Cook decided to burn the place down he would accept the fact calmly, and without blaming himself. On the other hand if, with the assistance of Thomas Cook, he managed to transform the shop into something relatively viable he might be prepared to address the problem of making it pay. He would be a shopkeeper, but first he would be liberated. The late afternoon air was humid, hazy. Inhaling it deeply he set his face towards Victoria, and France.
FOUR
SITUATED IN A HOLLOW BETWEEN MEAUX AND MELUN, the house presented an unassuming façade of rosy brick which belied its age. Originally built in the seventeenth century, La Gaillarderie had once formed three sides of a square, with a small private chapel raising its pointed roof in one corner. Most of this had been done away with in 1793 by insurgents from Meaux, who suspected the owners, quite rightly, of royalist sympathies. Now all that remained was the original corps de logis: both the wings and the chapel had left no trace, although architectural historians still occasionally came from Paris to study the foundations. What was left was a pleasant rather low-built single pavilion of two main storeys, an attic floor, and a pitched roof punctuated by mansard windows. It was not without distinction, though not essentially different from many other country houses of the same period. Only the quality and colour of the brick, and the clean-cut creamy quoins and window surrounds, indicated a past of far greater splendour than that enjoyed by its present owners, Robert and Germaine de Bretteville. Robert had inherited the house from his father, who had in his turn purchased it from the previous owner, a lawyer who worked in Paris, spent his weekends in the country, and found the situation in the valley rather damp.
This dampness—undeniable, and rather a problem in the winter months—in summer conferred upon the house a not unpleasant smell, redolent of apples and of fading pot-pourri. This, however, was noticeable only on the upper floors. In other respects the house was more than satisfactory. The interior was as unpretentious yet as dignified as what remained of the façade. A black and white tiled hall led from the front entrance to the garden side, where two drawing-rooms, a dining-room and a morning-room enjoyed the view through double doors which opened directly on to a broad terrace: from here one descended directly to lawns which led to distant trees, for most of the grounds were coppiced, although, as the lawyer had discovered, the shooting was poor. Robert de Bretreville, when he was at home, occasionally went out with a gun and shot a rabbit: throughout his childhood Xavier had endured cold November mornings standing quite still in an attempt to avoid his father’s bluff admonitions to beat the not inconsiderable undergrowth, in order to dislodge whatever wildlife was thought to be available. Inhaling the rank smell of damp fern, in which he stood nearly up to his knees, Xavier would send his obedient mind back to what he could remember of his Greek and Latin texts and ignore his father completely. Robert in his turn, aware of his increasing girth, his ears crimson in the damp depths of the wood, would blame his studious son for being so unsuited to country life, and for preferring to spend the bleak but beautiful autumn days reading in his room. Xavier could, had he made a more enlightened choice, have accompanied his father on a round of neighbouring houses and farms, where the men, guns at the ready, were only too willing to turn out for a day’s prospecting, from which they would return in the late afternoon, their breath smelling of marc, and at that moment most faithfully resembling the hobbledehoy aristocrats their remote ancestors might have been.
Xavier’s room overlooked the terrace, as did the other four main bedrooms, his parents’ room, with double doors, forming a right angle at the bottom of the corridor. All the rooms had fireplaces and fairly exiguous cabinets de toilette: at the end of the corridor, facing the parents’ bedroom, was a bathroom, only occasionally used, mostly by guests, who had to accustom themselves to a staccato stream of rusty water before this ceased altogether, without warning. Thereafter the guest, or visitor, learned to use the washbasin in the cupboard off his bedroom, as, he supposed, did his host and hostess, who certainly had never struck him as less than immaculate. This matter of washing, however, created a note of uncertainty, which nothing in the manners of the house did much to disperse. His host, for example, decamped from time to time from the bedroom he shared with his wife and occupied another, seemingly at random. His hostess, her voice hoarse with feigned enthusiasm which she was at pains to maintain, almost gave the impression that she wished the house were empty, not only of guests but of her husband as well. If she longed for a different life from the one she had once so eagerly embraced she gave no hint. Only her wildly rolling eyes, as her husband embarked on yet another anecdote at the dinner table, betrayed an impatience which had neatly translated itself into pathological states: rheumatism, headaches, the peculiar hoarseness of her voice. Only by commiserating with those less fortunate than herself did she maintain her equilibrium, and indeed maintain the upper hand which was such a comfort to her.
It was somehow allowed that her husband should enjoy the favours of a mistress, in a room which he rented for purposes of business, in the rue de la Pompe in Paris, just as it was somehow allowed that Charles, the manservant, was permitted to avail himself of both Marie, the cook, and her daughter, Suzanne, the maid of all work. From time to time one of the women would absent herself from the room she shared with the other, go to Charles’s room, return after an hour, and resume her place without a word being said. The visitor soon got used to this activity on the floor above his head, and understood that he should forbear to comment on any nocturnal disturbance. He realised that deprived of their habitual privileges the servants would leave, that it would be difficult to engage others, and impossible to persuade them to stay. By the same token he grew used to the slightly sinister intrusion of Charles into his bedroom in the morning, and the stealthy noise of the fire being built up, the windows having remained tightly shut all night, as recommended by his hostess. His shoes would disappear with Charles and, while he was waiting for them to be returned, a clatter of hooves might give him a pretext to open the window and to lean out, taking a great gulp of the forbidden air, and to give a wave to Xavier, who sometimes went out for a solitary canter before breakfast. This—coffee and bread only—the guest was able to enjoy in the morning-room, the other members of the household having got up earlier and dispersed. He would not see them again until lunch, and then again at dinner, at which Charles officiated in a slightly grubby white jacket and a pair of frayed cotton gloves. Under those cotton gloves the guest c
ould imagine the hands that had handled the sticks and paper in his fireplace that morning, and may even still have been unwashed. He would hastily persuade himself that the bathing facilities on the attic floor were none of his concern, although it might occur to him that the hands which had provided the food he was now eating were not above suspicion. But the food was generally so excellent that the guest soon abandoned his finicky city preoccupations and settled down to an appreciation of country life.
When the sun came through the windows onto the same black and white tiled floor of the upper storey, Maud, on previous visits, had lingered, out of range of her aunt’s commands, of her mother’s ambitions, of her cousin Xavier’s courteous questions, of the visitors’ unexpected entrances and exits, and for a few minutes had stood quite still and perfectly quiet, enjoying the fall of the light onto the grey walls, onto a small Louis XVI table, which some ancient vandal had cheerfully painted white without lessening its charm, onto the glass of a picture whose subject was hidden from her by the dazzle of the afternoon glare, in this, the hottest month of the year, which she was always condemned to spend in the isolation of the countryside, in the company of people whom she knew too well and who would always remain the same. Even the guests, for the most part friends of Xavier’s, failed to interest her, for they were usually absent for most of the day, and were only encountered over the dinner table. Lunch was one course, was eaten without ceremony, was not always fully attended, and was over well within an hour. This was to allow the servants, whose voices could be heard from the kitchen quarters, to have the afternoon off. In the afternoons her mother and aunt would take a siesta, Xavier and his friend or friends would disappear somewhere in the car, and she would be left to her own devices. It was assumed that she would go into the garden, or sit on the terrace with a book, but as often as not she lingered in the upstairs corridor, redolent of heat and sleep, heavy adult sleep, or leaned her head against the glass of a sunstruck window, and wished that she were in Paris.
Incidents in the Rue Laugier Page 4