She smiled at me in an indulgent way that made me miserable.
There’s a real world, we have to live in it, she said.
I’m not saying anything else. You’re saying we. We, you and me, in the real world.
I told her about the idea of going together, and the sense of a journey in this, and the possibility of change, but going together through all of it.
She was restless. Her thin shoulders twisted under the white tee-shirt, her velvety head bent. Let’s just be, now, she said. I’m afraid … I’m not sure … I don’t want any more hostages to fortune.
She wouldn’t explain that last bit. It wasn’t until much later that I found out about the baby who died. Maybe I could have convinced her I understood her grief, or anyway had some inkling. My baby who was killed, and hers who died, they were the same grief, though in different measures, if measures is a word you can use. If I could have explained to her that if I could feel such desolation over a person who barely existed, who never was a person, then how much worse for a child who had entwined himself in your life, and I could understand that.
At the time I thought that by hostages to fortune she meant simply children, potential children, but now I think she meant herself, her own life, anything she valued … maybe, possibly, me. At the time I thought I could change her mind about not having children, a child, she was young enough, plenty of people her age have children or at least a child, if we were quick, it was a joy we could achieve.
And her saying, I am afraid … I thought it was one of those manners of speaking. I’m afraid I can’t come to dinner on Friday night, I’m afraid I’m not fond of D.H. Lawrence. But looking back I think she meant simply that: that she was afraid.
I’m not sure that we can live without offering hostages to fortune, I said.
Maybe. But there are some risks more terrifying than others.
I took her hands and said, I would like to save you from terror. She smiled, a small dazzling wisp of a smile that made my heart wobble like a spinning top stopping. Flora, I muttered, I do love you.
Don’t say love, said Flora, don’t say love.
I mean it.
Don’t say it.
17
Gwyneth says: Have you ever eaten at that restaurant?
Not that one, says Clovis. Ones like it.
Are they good?
Well, yes, they were good. It was something one did. Make pilgrimages in search of good food experiences. Tell your friends, compare notes, get up parties to go to them. It was one of the ways you patterned your life.
Gwyneth wrinkles her face. Clovis recognises this as her expression of confrontation with new ideas. Or maybe, even, with ideas.
You don’t just go for a good feed?
Well, you do. Of course you do. But, there was something more. He is finding it hard to grasp what it was there was. He looks up at The Point, at the dim windows, misty with distance and his muzzy eyes and perhaps also fogged up with warm breaths and the steam of food and the gasses of digestion. It hangs there. The promise. The rituals. The exquisiteness of desire.
Or else just something that people with quite a lot of money can afford to do.
I been and looked up close, real close, right up against the glass, says Gwyneth. It doesn’t look like fun to me. I mean, people don’t seem to be having a good time.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by fun, says Clovis. Serious eating can be a solemn business.
Do you ever wish you was in there, doing that like you used to?
No.
Afterwards he wonders about that no. It had come so firmly, so quickly. No time to think. And it did seem to be true. He had no capacity for desiring himself into fine clothes and fine company … maybe that was the sticking point. You had to have somebody to go to a restaurant with. No point in dining on your own.
I tell you what, though. One night, you and me, we’ll get scrubbed up and go in there and have the works.
Gwyneth looks at him. She doesn’t even smile. Fuck off, she says.
The wine would be better. Clovis squeezes some more into her glass.
How?
Softer, more mellow, better flavour.
She frowns. Then she takes a mouthful out of her glass, swills it round her mouth, and spits it out elaborately.
Clovis finds this immensely funny. Not in the restaurant, though, he says.
I still think it looks dead boring, she says. But it’d be nice to be on the inside, instead of the outside.
Depends. Depends on what it costs to be in there. I’m not talking about money. Or not just. Besides, I thought you were doing your best to stay on the outside, avoid inside.
There’s inside and inside. You know that.
Possibly. Though maybe all insides have a lot in common. Gaols, restaurants, banks, offices. Schools. And possibly the outside is always about freedom. When you think about it. You and me, we’re free … it might not be much, but it’s better than a lot of things.
I’d like my own inside, just for me.
It would be solitary.
Cosy, says Gwyneth. With the TV for company. I miss the TV.
After a while she makes off across the grass. Clovis is sorry to see her go. She gets him talking, and talking shows him he’s been thinking. He’s interested in what he says, doesn’t know he’s going to say it until it comes out.
All that time not talking, it seems to have starved out that idle bushy habit of yapping on that was so much part of his old life. Now words are simple attempts at meaning. If he does mean them. His alter ego says: That’s for me to know and you to find out. Ho ho.
The food left outside the restaurant is getting tidier and organised into separate plastic pots. Far more than Gwyneth can eat. Plenty to choose from. She’s crept up early enough to see that it’s a young guy putting it there, carefully and somehow secretly, a bit out of the way and quietly so no one sees. She watches him and then says, softly, Hi. He jumps, and goes furtive.
Thanks, she says.
It’s okay.
She doesn’t say anything. Clovis has noticed how good she is at not saying anything. It’s made him wonder if it comes naturally or is something she’s learned.
It’s good food, the guy says. Hardly touched. I thought I’d give it a second chance.
Sorry it’s not hot, he says.
I’ve seen you round, he says. Do you live hereabouts?
Where would I live hereabouts, says Gwyneth, with delicate scorn.
I dunno. I haven’t been here long. My name’s Joe.
Gwyneth.
That’s a pretty name. It’s …
My mum’s name.
I’m finished, really, he says. Everybody’s gone, except Flora and her, her friend.
They are standing and looking at one another, wondering if this is all there is to say, when they hear strange sounds, a sort of whistling and rushing and a soft violent commotion. Thudding noises, and heaving, and the release of pent-up …
The screen, shrieks Gwyneth.
There are figures attacking the willow sculpture. Someone with a thin club-like weapon, others bashing and pulling at it with their bodies, someone running and throwing himself at it. She lets out one of her screams, and rushes towards them. She screams a number of times, and in between screams she shouts: Fucking bastards, stop, stop, fucking bastards. She is on the opposite side of the screen but she rushes at them, shouting and screaming, and the figures stop.
Flora comes out of the restaurant, and the tall man who’s often there. What’s going on, he asks, in a loud calm voice. Flora, call the police. He gives her the mobile phone out of his pocket.
He starts to walk towards the screen and the figures on the other side run away, off across the slope of grass, with whoops and catcalls. It’s a normal winter night, dank, frosty, with fog in the air. Impossible to see who they are, all wrapped up in overcoats against the cold, but the nimbleness with which they run suggests they are young. No sign of the weapon. They plung
e up the hill, their coats flapping wide like the cloaks of vampires.
Flora is standing looking at the screen, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide and staring. Jerome takes off his coat and puts it round her shoulders, tries to persuade her to come inside.
The screen, she says, in a voice that can barely manage a whisper. It’s a hostage too.
Jerome bends his head. He has his arm around her. But then she tenses, a summoning up of muscle, courage, energy, and turns to Joe. What’s happening here? Her voice now sharp.
She frightened them off, says Joe.
Who is this person? Is she a friend of yours?
He’s a good friend, says Gwyneth.
Flora looks at her. The light, one of those that come on automatically, is bright, but the night is large and it quickly loses itself in the inky shadows. Indeed, she says. Joe, it’s time you finished. You can’t stay all night. Off you go, both of you.
Hadn’t we better stay and be witnesses?
That’s a point, says Jerome.
Flora is walking round the screen, trying to see the damage. I don’t think it’s too bad, says Jerome, more hopefully than certainly. One end is battered, twisted, partly uprooted, but the ties are strong, it is still lozenges in a double diamond pattern.
First thing in the morning we’ll get Ted and Julia, he says.
They could be anywhere by now.
Actually, I think … I think it just needs replanting. An ordinary gardener, I think – oh Flora, it’ll be as good as new. Come inside now, it’s cold.
This is when they notice that Gwyneth has disappeared.
Where’s your friend?
Gwyneth? Oh, says Joe. He’s not much of an actor. His exaggerated surprise is of the order of farce.
There’s something going on, says Flora.
The police come and take notes. Joe has to admit he doesn’t actually know Gwyneth at all, he’s just seen her round. In the middle of his statement about Gwyneth’s speed and ferocity at chasing off the marauders the mobile phone of one of the policemen rings. It’s a colleague. They think they’ve got them.
Flora, Jerome and Joe go to the police station. Flora is sure she recognises the boys who muck around on the grassy slope with the baseball bat.
Us, says Chad. Baseball? At this time of night? We’re going clubbing. Night clubbing. Music. Dancing. Rage.
Wouldn’t you be better off home in bed?
You would, maybe. Not us.
Joe thinks the club he saw the attackers using might have been a baseball bat. But in the end it is not possible to identify them. Their parents come, full of distress and anger that anyone could suspect their children. Of course there is a mistake. Julian’s father is a lawyer, and very precise about what can and cannot happen here. The police give the lads a generic warning – if it was you, cut it out, next time you might not be so lucky.
Luck? says Julian’s dad. The only luck here is these poor kids’ bad luck in being wrongfully accused. It is the police who ought to watch out. Wrongful arrest could be the least of it.
Flora questions Joe who admits that he puts food out and that Gwyneth comes and takes it. It’s so good, says Joe, some of it, it seems a wicked waste to throw it away. He tells Flora he thinks Gwyneth is a homeless person.
And what about you, asks Flora. Do you have a home to go to?
Joe is indignant. Of course he does.
Flora and Jerome go back to his place. She sends Joe off in a taxi.
They go to bed and lie close together, warm and gentle. It’s probably illegal, says Flora, to put out food like that, rats and god knows what. God, if an inspector saw. But she doesn’t want to reprimand Joe; he is a good boy. He has a point about the waste of food. Though there is food poisoning. But it must be safer than garbage bins. She is sure he did not take the money. You have to have faith that you can know what people are like. Joe would not do that. Would he.
Neither feels sleepy, they are both jagged and wakeful after the night’s events. Flora tells Jerome one of her favourite horror stories. It’s about restaurants in Paris in the nineteenth century.
You start off with grand dinners, she says, in the most elegant of restaurants, or perhaps palaces. Glorious food for ladies and gentlemen, who only pick at it. Darnes of salmon, milk veal cutlets, fillets of sole normande, pheasant breasts, venison, foie gras, quail, puddings and ices and cakes as architecture, all practically intact, barely tasted, the sauces hardly disturbed. Dealers buy up this uneaten food and take it to cheap restaurants, in large baskets covered with a dark cloth that is known in the trade as the black flag. The cheap restaurant shakes some disinfectant over it, trims it up a bit: voilà, a classy menu. These places also hire magnificent fruit platters and whole stags and hares to hang in the doorway, but nobody ever gets to eat them, not there. Only second-hand dishes. The places smell of burnt fat, carbolic acid and vinegar – so say contemporary historians.
Wouldn’t they have just loved microwaves?
But, Flora goes on, it doesn’t stop there. The remains of these remains are sold in the open-air markets. All quite legally, they’ve been inspected. The name for this stuff is le bijou. The gem. And that’s still not the end of it. The leftovers of these leftovers of leftovers are also sold. No longer really legally, though. Fish heads, lamb bones, chewed ends of chicken, fragments of cakes and tarts. All mixed together, with all their different sauces, mayonnaise and madeira, anchovy and chocolate, custard and capers, mustard and raspberries.
Just like nouvelle cuisine, says Jerome.
Less fresh. Not entirely rotten yet, about five days old. Pretty high. This is called the harlequin.
Sounds like Barry Humphries’ technicolour yawn.
And, we’re not finished yet. The remains of this, the stuff not sold at the stalls, is peddled through the streets of Paris by con men, called coal miners. Houilliers. They come up to you furtively in dark alleys and offer you game which they say is wrapped only so it won’t attract the attention of the police. The price is low, you’re tempted, you think it’s so cheap because it’s been poached, and then, when you get it home … eughhh.
At least Joe is only taking it one step, and that for charity.
Jerome laughs, happier than he can ever remember being in his life. They make love, sweetly, and sleep.
18
Jerome
Flora did not have any pets. Once I said to her, You should get a dog. (I think I mentioned an Italian greyhound, lean and delicate and fine as herself.) Not altogether seriously, an idea for her to try out. She replied, But what if it died?
When I saw her stricken face gazing at the willow sculpture on the night of the attack it was that fear I saw, though I did not then quite understand the real terror in it. I said, We can get a gardener, and first thing next morning I rang and found a man who would come straightaway. He was a good man who was entranced by the beauty of the willow working and angry that anybody should try to damage it. He thought that he could replant it and that it would most likely grow as planned. Its fineness was its strength, he said, the great number of knots and grafts meant that it was not easily pulled apart. If they’d used a knife, now, he said, and slashed through it, that would have been your true disaster.
But under the brutal clumsy onslaught it had bowed and bent in its whippy willowy fashion and could be put to rights. Flexibility is the secret, he said. He was sure he could save it. Flora said she would ring Ted just to check.
I think your hostage is safe this time, I said, and she gave me a weak smile. I thought to myself: a willow screen is not a child, it can be neither so beloved nor so entirely irreplaceable. I put my arms around her and said, I want to look after you, I want to keep you safe, and she gazed at me with her golden brown eyes that seemed at this moment especially large in her small velvety skull. It was only later that I realised the problem. If she accepted my love and my care for her, and then I betrayed her or she by whatever means lost me, then she would be so much more desolate than if
she had never allowed herself to depend on me, or feel fond of me.
This was still before I knew about the baby who died and Vic her husband who could not comfort her in their loss. Later, when she told me this piteous history and I said, I would not be like that, I would never abandon you, she said, That is what Vic thought.
I did do a clever thing, though, at the time of the attack on the screen. I did not ask her to marry me. I was frightened of her saying no, which could be an irrevocable thing between us. I thought I would make myself necessary to her, and then ask. I simply kept saying, I want to look after you, and her gaze shifted sideways, and I thought, I shall show you.
On Sunday she said, I want you to come for dinner, I am making cassoulet. It is early stages yet, but it will be all right.
I did not have the heart to say I disliked beans, that I had resolved never to eat them again, and moreover that I did not care much for duck, and it was lucky I mentioned neither thing, since these beans were unlike any I had ever tasted, light, creamy, sweetly garlicky, and the duck crisp and not at all greasy as is so often the disappointing case with this bird.
I have eaten cassoulet in Carcassonne and it could not hold a candle to this, I said.
I should think not. Cassoulet in Carcassonne is lowest common denominator. It’s for tourists. There are real ones to be had, if you know where to look. This isn’t really a real one, not the peasant dish, it is a different kind of transformation. And I think you will find the beans will not be so windy as sometimes they are.
I told her about my namesake Jerome the exegete, who forbade his nuns to eat beans because the resulting farts might tickle their genitals and give rise to impure thoughts.
Flora laughed at that. I hope these beans give rise to farting after all, she said, so that I can try it out for myself.
I made some remarks, like if they failed offering to do it for her, and such, the idle dirty talk of lovers that so amuses them.
She told me about some little French biscuits called pets-denonne, nun’s farts. Because they are so delicate and whisper light, she said.
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