by Sarah Long
‘Yup. Bloody good stuff. Can’t touch it for ten years, though, got to lay it down. Nee-yeow . . . dagger-dagger-dagger.’
He disappeared upstairs with the child, leaving his wife free to stretch out her legs on the coffee table while she flicked through a copy of Wallpaper* magazine that Laura had brought down from Paris but had not yet had time to look at. Susie ripped out a few pages on concrete baths that she intended to file away later in the ‘good modern’ section of her reference folder.
‘It must be wonderful having this bolt hole to come to whenever you want,’ she said, reaching up to take the proffered cup of tea from Laura. ‘If there are any weekends that you’re not using it, do let us know, won’t you? We’d be very happy to come and house-sit for you. Do you have any sugar – sorry to be a bore.’
Laura returned with the sugar bowl.
‘Thank you. Now, is there anything I can do?’
‘Well, you could grate these carrots for the salad.’
Susie looked rather surprised – clearly she hadn’t expected Laura to take her up on her offer.
‘Oh, right. I’ll just finish my tea first, if that’s all right. It’s so cosy in front of the fire.’
Harry made a timely reappearance with the newly fragrant Paris.
‘Put him in the playpen, darling, then you might give Laura a hand with the carrots. I just need to go and sort out his pyjamas. Oh, Laura, you don’t happen to have a warm pair of socks I could borrow, do you? I have such poor circulation.’
‘Yes, of course. Anything else you need?’
But the irony was lost on Susie, already through the door with the magazine tucked under her arm.
They’re going tomorrow, thought Laura. Just a few more hours, then we’ll never need to see them again.
Harry and Susie left on Sunday afternoon, after lunch but before washing up. Susie was very pleased with herself because she had picked up an unusual cast-iron coal bucket in the local brocante that she intended to use as a magazine rack. She had also bought a boudoir chair covered in yellow silk with a shepherdess pattern that reminded of her of Marie-Antoinette, but unfortunately it wouldn’t fit in the boot of their car so Harry had got Jean-Laurent to help him strap it on to the roof rack of their Renault Espace.
‘Don’t mind, do you?’ said Harry, securing the tarpaulin that he had found on a shelf in the garage. ‘You can drop it round to us sometime next week. Come and have a drink at the same time, kill two birds with one stone.’
‘Thank you so much, Laura,’ drawled Susie as the last of their luggage was stowed away, including some cuttings from the herb garden that Susie had helped herself to and planted in little terracotta pots that Laura had been saving for the spring.
‘Here, this is for you.’
She handed Laura a small chrysanthemum in a plastic pot that she had hastily picked up at the supermarket.
‘And thanks for looking after Paris this morning – it was marvellous being able to hunt out the bargains without him. You know what it’s like when you’re stuck with a baby all the time.’
‘Wait until you’ve got two,’ muttered Laura.
‘Bye, old girl,’ said Harry, looking even more enormous today in his Norwegian fishing sweater, perhaps on account of the generous quantity of Sauternes with which he had just washed down his third helping of Clafoutis.
‘Bye, Harry. Drive safely.’
‘Quelle barbe! What a bore!’ groaned Jean-Laurent as he shut the door with relief.
‘I know. I apologise. We’ll never have them again.’
‘Did you see how he guzzled his way through that Chateau Lafitte?’
‘I always tell you not to waste decent wine on English people – they really can’t tell the difference. As long as there’s lots of it, they don’t care.’
‘And now we’ve got to drive back with that damned chair rattling around on the roof rack.’
‘At least they didn’t leave the baby as well.’
‘I’m going to fix that tap. Do you want to load the car up? I don’t want to be too late tonight, I need to pop into the office to finish something.’
‘Oh no, not on Sunday night! Can’t it wait until the morning?’
‘No, I’m off to England tomorrow for an off-site meeting on deodorancy at the Lygon Arms.’
‘Lucky you. I wouldn’t mind being off-site at the Lygon Arms. Why do you have to go all the way to the Cotswolds to talk about the smell of sweat?’
‘It’s a neutral, stimulating environment for a think-tank situation.’
‘Just another few thousand down the pan, all those executives making their expensive way to a luxury country house hotel. Bloody ridiculous if you ask me.’
‘Don’t complain, it pays the bills.’
Laura cleared away the lunch things while Jean-Laurent tinkered in the bathroom and the children played in the garden. She then stripped the sheets from the guest bedroom, swept the floor, put out the rubbish and filled up the car with a selection of carrier bags containing leftover food, dirty laundry, children’s school bags and the sad chrysanthemum. Finally she strapped in the protesting children, who, now that it was time to go, decided it would be better to stay, and called Jean-Laurent to take his manful place behind the wheel.
They drove off on the all too familiar route, speculating about where they might or might not run into traffic jams. As they hit the motorway, they both fell silent, lost in their own thoughts.
Jean-Laurent wondered whether Flavia’s shopping trip would have resulted in any lingerie aux dentelles raffinées, and if she would be modelling it for him when he dropped by later on. Or maybe she would be saving the silky surprises for the Lygon Arms. The thought of her trousseau caused him to press harder on the accelerator, but an alarming flapping noise from the roof rack reminded him why he was sticking to the slow lane.
Laura was too tired to think about much. The whole point of having a country cottage was supposed to be rest and relaxation, but instead it had the reverse effect, making her feel like a worn-out drudge. She thought about Antoine, and wondered how he and Sylvie had spent the weekend. Probably a light sprinkling of celebrity parties, with plenty of quality time listening to music and making sure their hormone levels were up to scratch. She couldn’t imagine they would choose to waste time in a dreary round of wet country walks and home repairs, being exploited by house guests they didn’t like.
And Antoine had seemed to find her so interesting, even though she didn’t have a career. He wanted to know more, he was intrigued by her, he didn’t just see her as a provider of meals and other people’s comfort. I must ring him next week, she thought. As a friend and neighbour, nothing more. She would suggest calling in to see him and Sylvie in a casual, friendly sort of way. Churlish not to, really.
FIVE
Monday morning is quite possibly my favourite time of the week, thought Laura, worrying that she might be turning into a recluse. Her reasons for liking it were entirely antisocial. The children were back at school, which was always a blessed relief after the weekend. Jean-Laurent, too, had seemed quite pleased to go off to work, if you could call it work – breakfasting on Eurostar first class before being driven off to the Cotswolds, where he had reserved a feature room, to the amusement of his secretary.
‘I thought you would be going too,’ she had said to Laura. ‘It seems such a waste having the four-poster all to himself.’
But Laura was happy just to have her own bed to herself this morning, and was lying fully dressed on the covers as she leafed through a gossip magazine and read about Jacques Chirac’s infidelities. His disloyal chauffeur had revealed that he often drove the President to see one particular lady, and that the entire visit lasted three minutes, including the shower afterwards. The disgrace all lay in the three minutes. Laura had lived in France long enough to know that there was no shame in a political leader having a mistress, it was only the gawky Protestant countries like Britain who got their knickers in a twist about that. But three
minutes including the shower: that could do irreparable damage to the reputation the French fostered of themselves as world-class lovers.
In their more passionate days, she and Jean-Laurent used to play a truth game: ‘What would you do if you found out I was cheating on you?’ Both had insisted that they wouldn’t stand for it, but it was safely academic anyway, since they had been so wrapped up in each other that no one else got a look in.
The occasional frisson of jealousy only served to fan their desire in that short, intense time before they had children. There had been a secretary at Jean-Laurent’s office who made no secret of the fact that the new French recruit was the sexiest piece of beefcake she had ever had the pleasure of brushing against on her way to the photocopier. He had laughed off her infatuation, but Laura had seen the desperation in the girl’s eyes at the office party and had gloated that he was hers – the most primitive form of victory.
She had become pregnant that very night, consolidating her triumph, ensuring that it was too late for anyone else to get their claws into what was her own rightful prey. Not that she had seen it in those terms. It was officially defined as an accident, except that educated women in a stable relationship do not become pregnant by accident.
They hadn’t discussed infidelity in recent years. Once the children came along, there hadn’t been time for that kind of introsopective conversation, and what with work and babies, sex in any form was peripheral to the daily grind. The sharp intimacy of the couple had been replaced by the amorphous family which swamped everything with its dull needs and sweet rushes of selfless love.
Laura wondered if Jean-Laurent had shifted his position since living in France. Would he take a civilised view, for instance, of his wife becoming party to a cinq à sept? And would she be content to play Bernadette Chirac, regally turning a blind eye, or would she turn into a vengeful harridan, lashing out at her husband and the Other Woman? You probably have no idea until you find yourself in that position, she decided, and thankfully they were not.
She got up from the bed and went to make herself a sandwich with the baguette she had brought in earlier. It was no longer on the kitchen table; perhaps Asa had put it in the bread bin. Not there either. Laura made her way down the corridor to Asa’s room and knocked on the door.
‘Come in!’
Asa was sitting on the floor, legs wide apart, engaged in her morning workout routine. She wore a face pack and her UVA tanning machine was wastefully plugged in beside her.
‘Asa, do you know what happened to that baguette I brought in this morning?’
It was hard to gauge her expression beneath the face mask.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I thought it was stale. I put it out on the window sill for the birds – they’re so hungry at the moment.’
‘Please don’t throw away food without my permission. Particularly not fresh bread.’
She noticed some telltale crumbs on the carpet.
‘And switch off that machine if you’re not using it. Do you know how much electricity those things use up?’
‘Some of us can’t afford to go to the gym.’
‘I’m not running a bloody health farm here, you know.’
Laura retreated to the kitchen and avenged herself by depleting Asa’s supply of rice cakes, which she smothered with a generous layer of taramasalata. That wretched girl. She was the one blot on the horizon, a great ugly blot, and if it wasn’t for her, Laura’s life would be entirely perfect.
She tried to ring Lorinda to share the outrage of the missing baguette, but it was the mother-in-law who answered and unfortunately recognised Laura’s voice, which meant a few minutes of polite conversation before she could disengage.
By this time her anger had wilted, and in its place she felt the familiar weight of boredom settling in. All she had to do today was feel angry about the au pair, and once that had fizzled out she was confronted by a threatening void. The afternoon stretched ominously ahead.
It was, of course, fantastic to be her own person, and she loved her life now more than she had ever loved it – her husband, her children, her beautiful home. A magnificent city, the best in the world, was just outside her front door, waiting for her to explore its every treasure. Each morning she was free to step out and visit some hidden corner of the City of Light, following the recommendations of newspaper cuttings she kept in the desk in a file marked ‘Paris – outings’. But just sometimes, like now, she was seized by a kind of blank inertia. Nothing seemed interesting; everything was too much effort.
Her practical side would tell her to find something to do, to pull herself together. She could read an improving book, for instance. In the days when she went out to work, she used to dream of having the time to read properly instead of snatching a few chapters on the tube or late at night when she would fall asleep with the open book dropped on to the bed. But now that she had the opportunity, reading seemed so pointless, like watching daytime television, an unproductive activity that was a pale substitute for real life. And so lonely. It was company she wanted, adult company, and not in the form of the infuriating Asa.
She thought about Jean-Laurent, surrounded by colleagues at his luxurious think tank. Work made it so easy – you never had to arrange to meet anyone, they were just there. Whereas she had to make the effort to join things and organise outings. Maybe it was time to take up golf. Or salsa classes. Or have another stab at the painting on porcelain. There were plenty of things you could do, it was just that the very idea of any of them simply bored her to death.
There was, however, one idea that didn’t bore her to death. In fact, you could say it was not so much an idea as a preoccupation. For reasons she couldn’t fathom, she wanted to see Antoine again. She wanted to see if he could still have that effect on her. The way he had made her feel like the most fascinating person in the room. She would do it. She would dig out that card and give him a ring. On his home number, of course – it would be too compromising to call the mobile. If she rang now, Antoine would be at work and she could speak to Sylvie, which would be much more suitable, or else, better still, leave a message. After all, they had told her to look them up, and there was no point sitting around feeling sorry for herself.
She opened her wardrobe and pulled out the Kenzo skirt. The card was gone. In its place was a crumpled metro ticket and a cinema ticket from Saturday night when she had been in the country. Damn. Asa had clearly seen fit to help herself to Laura’s clothes again, and this time had taken it upon herself to empty the pockets first. Then she remembered, of course, that she had hidden the card in her jewellery box. She took it out, still creased, and dialled the number.
Sylvie answered straight away: she must have been sitting right by the phone. Perhaps she, too, was a desperate housewife, waiting for the phone to ring and wondering how the hell to fill her days. Surely not. Sylvie was a celebrity and it was different for them. And yet she did sound glad to hear her.
‘Yes, of course I remember you, we would love to see you. Please come for an aperitif tonight. Around seven-thirty. Your husband is not here? Never mind, come by yourself. Antoine will be so pleased.’
Laura hung up and walked down the corridor to bang on Asa’s bathroom door.
‘Asa, can you babysit tonight, please? I’m going out.’
It was a clear, cold night, and Laura decided she would walk. She needed to clear her head, having spent most of the afternoon unblocking the hand basin in the bathroom. Poking around with an unfurled coat hanger, she had identified the cause of the blockage, which was a large piece of undigested bread probably regurgitated shortly after the disappearance of the baguette.
She really should speak to Asa about it now that her eating disorder was all out in the open, but it was difficult to see how to broach the subject. ‘Asa, please could you vomit in the lavatory pan instead of blocking up the narrow pipes of the hand basin and forcing me to spend my day playing at plumber’s mate.’ It was rather like asking someone if they would mind awfully not shi
tting on the carpet.
She walked briskly down the avenue Paul Doumer, pausing to look at the lingerie display in the window of Les Caprices d’Elodie. Even after five years in Paris she was still overawed by the willingness of French women who were not millionaires to spend a hundred pounds on a bra and a pair of knickers. It wasn’t as if these were durable investments. A few goes through the washing machine and it would be time to spend another hundred pounds.
But then Laura did not have that innate French feel for la séduction, the idea of investing in the pleasure of the moment. For all her European veneer, she still belonged amongst the frumpy British, laughed at by the French for their meanness and lack of aestheticism. Why bother spending an arm and a leg on underwear that no one was going to see (British men, of course, were too busy getting into their flannelette pyjamas to notice), when the money could be saved for a rainy day. Why bother blowing a day’s wages on a romantic dinner, every delicious detail of which would be imprinted on your memory for ever, when you could more economically open a packet of sausages at home – for another evening vanished without trace.
Laura crossed the lights at La Muette, the boutiques of rue de Passy stretching away to her left as she continued down the more sedate avenue Mozart with its gracious, swirling nineteenth-century apartment buildings and its succession of small, exquisite shops.
La Comtesse de Barry, purveyors of foie gras to the gastronomic classes. Patisseries with cakes that made you realise you would never eat another British-style Danish pastry, traiteurs offering aspic-covered takeaways that looked like works of art, and primeurs with their appetising piles of fresh fruit. And, of course, the usual high density of pharmacies, the flashing green crosses reminding the French that their delicate constitutions required constant maintenance, preferably in suppository form. How could Napoleon have described the British as a nation of shopkeepers when it was so clearly the French who were born to display and entice?
At the foot of avenue Mozart, Laura turned right into the rue Poussin where a heavy stream of traffic crawled along towards the Porte dAuteuil. Here was evidence of encroaching foreign invasion: Domino’s Pizza, introducing a vulgar note from America. Less threatening to the French was the Irish store, offering a bizarre mix of rugged Aran woollen sweaters completely unsuitable for overheated Parisian apartments, bacon, Marmite, Guinness, and postcards of Irish beauty spots. The French were terrible snobs about Ireland; a golfing holiday in the Emerald Isle was the epitome of chic.