The Rest of Their Lives

by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent

  ‘Will you come and visit me at home?’ Henri Larnier had asked.

  There had been a hint of anxiety in his voice. Fear that his son might say no, perhaps. Fear that the words written on the scrap of paper left on the blotter and which he’d read and reread then carefully put away in his wallet were empty words. Your loving son.

  ‘I promise we’ll come over, Papa. At least once a month, if only to renew Monsieur Dinsky’s prescription, now that you’re his doctor,’ Ambroise had joked.

  Henri Larnier’s laugh was music to his ears.

  D-day plus one for us too, Papa, thought Ambroise. Manelle had a breakfast tray brought up for Samuel. He wolfed down a piece of bread and butter, watched affectionately by Beth who hastily buttered another slice for him.

  37

  That evening, Samuel insisted on inviting them to dinner in the Regent’s restaurant. ‘To celebrate my Norton’s disease’, was his excuse.

  ‘Horton, Sammy,’ Beth corrected him. ‘It’s Horton.’

  ‘I would never have imagined that one day I could be so overjoyed at having an illness,’ confessed the octogenarian.

  Samuel had put on his smart green suit for the occasion. ‘It’s the only one I have,’ he apologized to Beth. ‘And besides, no one will know that it’s my death suit,’ he added as they made their way down to the lobby. Meanwhile, Beth had had no hesitation either in donning her mourning outfit, without the veil. ‘Black is suitable for any occasion,’ she informed her grandson before he could open his mouth. ‘Isn’t that so, Manelle?’

  ‘You both look magnificent,’ Manelle congratulated them.

  The centre table awaited them. ‘I’ve always dreamed of one day dining ensconced in a Voltaire armchair surrounded by an army of waiters ready to pander to my every wish, and now my dream has come true,’ said Manelle, darting Ambroise a mischievous look as they sat down. They joked throughout the meal, sometimes laughing heartily in the sedate atmosphere of the restaurant, under the incredulous stares of the other guests. Beth, behaving like a dowager, relished having so many waiters dancing attendance on her and summoned them to satisfy her every whim.

  ‘May I have a glass of still water, my good man?’

  ‘Would it be possible to have a slice of wholemeal bread? White bread gives me heartburn, thank you.’

  ‘Would you be so kind as to bring me a warm, wet towel to wipe my hands?’

  ‘Beth, that’s going a bit far,’ Ambroise chided her.

  ‘What? Having all these waiters at one’s beck and call and not being allowed to make use of them would be as stupid as putting candles on a birthday cake and not being permitted to light them.’

  On leaving the table, Beth shelled out a generous tip of ten euros.

  ‘They don’t want to be part of Europe but they’ll have my euros all the same,’ she trumpeted victoriously.

  Manelle went to tuck Samuel up in bed while Ambroise gave Beth her injection.

  ‘You each have your own old person, fair’s fair,’ she joked. ‘You know, darling, I wouldn’t want to hold you back,’ she went on with the utmost seriousness. ‘If one day you want to move out and live your own life, you mustn’t feel you have to stay because of me.’

  ‘Really? Can I? And I was staying because I thought you couldn’t do without me. Yes, but on the other hand, I can’t leave you all alone, with your diabetes and everything. No, we’re going to have to find you a nice little old people’s home. I know one that’s not too expensive where you’ll be able to make lots of nice friends, attend cake-baking workshops, play cards and join the reading group. I’ll come and see you on Sundays and we’ll go for a walk in the grounds. It’ll be lovely.’

  At the sight of his grandmother’s crestfallen look, Ambroise hurriedly reassured her, and hugged her tight.

  ‘Don’t be silly, I’m joking. You know very well that I could never live without your cakes! But tonight, I’m afraid I’m going to have to deprive you of your young roommate,’ he added, grabbing Manelle round the waist as she came over to join them.

  ‘Make the most of it, you lovebirds. Oh, yes, make the most of it. Love’s like sweets, there’s no point just looking at them,’ she retorted with a stage wink.

  38

  The next day, when they were both standing at the breakfast buffet, Beth-the-Busybody couldn’t help asking Manelle if they’d slept well.

  ‘We ate sweets all night,’ Manelle whispered.

  ‘Wonderful! Make sure there are always some left in the packet,’ advised Beth-the-Wise.

  They’d agreed to leave at ten o’clock sharp, and they met in reception with their luggage. Samuel paid the bill and cancelled the reservations for the remaining nights.

  ‘Stay cut short, life extended!’ Beth gleefully informed the receptionist, who nodded politely without even trying to understand.

  The mood was cheerful on the return journey. They drove along the lake shore one last time. An ancient paddle-steamer was sailing on the silvery waters, its two wheels churning up an effervescent froth. The red flag with its white cross attached to the stern flapped in the wind. Craning forward like a child, Samuel missed nothing of the landscape flying past. When they reached the border, in answer to the customs officer who asked if they had anything to declare, Beth said, ‘Only a life.’ Seeing the smiles of the other occupants, the official didn’t press the matter and wondered how people could be so cheerful in such a sinister vehicle as he watched the hearse leave Switzerland. They spoke little, communing in silence with mere looks. They were happy. They had come with death as the fifth passenger and were leaving without it. Four souls who had never felt so alive.

  39

  Bouba and Abel greeted Ambroise with their customary good humour, in their office festooned with Christmas decorations. The fragile branches of the ficus were bowed under an avalanche of tinsel. From the ceiling hung countless coloured glass balls. An army of crib figures had invaded the top of the fridge. Sellotaped to the door, jolly, paunchy Santas welcomed visitors with their merry smiles. A few days away from Christmas, the two stooges did not seem to want to take off the red hats rammed down on their heads from morning to night. As he often did, the tall Boubacar replied to Ambroise’s greeting with one of his jokes.

  ‘Have you heard the one about the skeleton who goes into a cafe? The waiter asks him what he wants to drink, and the skeleton replies, “A beer . . . and a floor cloth, please.”’

  Abel waited for Bouba to stop laughing before opening his mouth.

  ‘Have you come to see the little lady? I don’t understand why they go to the trouble of doing autopsies on the over-nineties. Can’t they leave them in peace?’

  ‘You know very well that it’s obligatory in the case of a fire, especially in a retirement home,’ replied Ambroise.

  ‘The fire was caused by Christmas lights in one of the ground-floor rooms, apparently,’ said Bouba.

  ‘I don’t know. I only hope she didn’t suffer. Where is she?’

  ‘She’s still on the autopsy table. We thought it would make your job easier. Just transfer her to the trolley when you’ve finished and we’ll take her up to the chapel of rest. Take your time, there’s no family,’ added Abel.

  ‘If I dared, I’d even say the heat’s off!’ chortled Bouba.

  Ambroise thought he’d misunderstood.

  ‘What do you mean, no family? It is Madame de Morbieux you’re talking about?’

  ‘Mademoiselle de Morbieux, if you please. No, no family, that’s what the manager of the home told us.’

  As the lift took him down to level -2, Ambroise hastily called Le Clos de la Roselière. After introducing himself, he asked for confirmation. The girl who answered was in tears.

  ‘It’s so dreadful, Monsieur Larnier. Just think, three dead. Three! No, Isabelle had no family. Some distant great-nephews but they never came to see her. You were her only visitor, every year on her birthday. Oh, how she used to talk about her embalmer. She was very fond of you, you know. The da
ys following your visit, she would sing your praises non-stop.’

  ‘She told me her husband had died a long time ago but she would often talk to me about her daughter who used to take her out for lunch every Sunday.’

  ‘Pure make-believe, Monsieur Larnier. She was never married and she certainly had no children. Isabelle was a gifted storyteller. That was her profession, she was a writer.’

  ‘But what about her grandchildren and great-grandchildren who made drawings for her. I didn’t dream them up, all those drawings tacked to the walls of her room.’

  ‘Oh, those drawings were done by the pupils at the local primary school for the residents of the home. You’ll find some in all the rooms. No, I’m sorry Monsieur Larnier. In a way, we and you were her only family.’

  Isabelle de Morbieux’s naked body awaited Ambroise on the stainless-steel table. The pathologist had confirmed the cause of death as asphyxiation. Ambroise put down his cases and went over to the body. Like the other two victims of the fire that had ravaged the east wing of Le Clos de la Roselière, the nonagenarian had been asleep in her bed and had been suffocated by the smoke. The flames hadn’t had time to reach her body and her face had remained intact in death. After an autopsy, the embalming process was always time-consuming and delicate. While he washed the body with a damp cloth, the old lady’s vibrant voice echoed in his ears, as clearly as when it had rung out in the Orchid room. ‘Tell me about you, Ambroise. You never talk to me about yourself.’ Ambroise smiled. Then, as his hands ran over the white, mottled flesh, he started to talk. He told her about Manelle, her indignant shrieks and her dumbfounded look when they had first met. Manelle and her fiery eyes. Manelle and her jet-black hair, lithe body and intoxicating smell, and her precious laugh. Manelle and her lips which he could never have enough of. He explained how they both spent their days counting the hours until they could be together again in the evenings.

  ‘The Jeandrons moved out of their apartment on the second floor last month. We leapt at the opportunity. I only have to go up one floor to give Beth her jab. Oh, Beth, I haven’t told you about Beth, Isabelle. I know you’d have loved her.’

  Ambroise carried on talking while he went about the embalming process. Soon the hum of the injection pump mingled with his words.

  ‘You should have seen Odile Chambon’s dismay when we took the mog back on our return from Morges. She was so upset, Beth offered to share the cat with her. And that’s what they’ve been doing for the past three months. Alternate weeks, one week of fars bretons on the third floor, one week of endless cuddles and caressing on the ground floor. The tom doesn’t seem to mind, he seems to be perfectly happy with his two mistresses. Oh yes, and the theatre has started up again. Did I tell you I was involved with a theatre company? We’ve taken on a new recruit in the shape of Beth. We needed an actress to play an elderly lady. You should see her standing in the spotlight, performing her part. The entire company has fallen in love with her, despite her unfortunate habit of always changing the lines to suit herself.’

  Talking all the while, Ambroise manipulated the body. He sometimes broke off while he inserted a cannula or sutured an orifice, then he picked up where he had left off. He spoke to her at length about Samuel and how the old man delighted in every new day on this earth.

  ‘He and Manelle took the MRI scans back to Doctor Gervaise. He pulled a strange face, the specialist did, when Samuel pitched up in his consulting room in tip-top shape. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost, Manelle told me.’

  Talking non-stop, Ambroise proceeded to dress the body. He eased Isabelle de Morbieux’s favourite floral dress over her satin slip, knotted the silk scarf around her neck, and adorned her white hair with a slide. He lightly made up her face and spritzed her cheeks with eau de Cologne. Ambroise always carried some with him; it was useful for masking the smell of the embalming products. ‘Eau de Cologne, I’ve never worn any other perfume,’ the old lady had told him on each of his visits. ‘My husband used to love it.’

  ‘Isabelle de Morbieux, you’re one hell of a liar,’ Ambroise admonished her with a smile. ‘In three days, it’ll be Christmas,’ he went on. ‘We’re all going to my father’s. Since we’ve been back from Morges, we phone each other every Sunday and I drop in to see him from time to time. We tell each other what we’ve been up to, me my cadavers and him his seminars. We often talk about Mother. She has come back to us, her memories have filled the gulf that lay between us. Papa insisted on inviting us. Even Samuel will be coming too. And I won’t be surprised if the Yule log is a Black Forest gateau this year.’

  Ambroise leaned over the deceased to whisper in her ear.

  ‘Christmas Day, the nativity. A good day to tell everyone that there’s a little baby in Manelle’s tummy, don’t you think, Isabelle?’

  The old woman’s voice rang in his mind, clear and joyful: ‘A hell of a good day, Ambroise!’

  40

  For some time now, it had seemed to Marcel Mauvinier that his home help’s attitude had changed. The state of permanent exasperation that had previously pushed Manelle Flandin to the brink of rebellion and delighted the old man had given way to a worrying serenity. She carried out all the chores listed on the sheet of squared paper willingly. He was suspicious, wondering what this apparent tranquillity boded. This morning, there was something else not quite right but he couldn’t put his finger on it. At first, the young woman’s behaviour had seemed no different from usual. As was her habit, she had slammed the door when she came in and yelled from the passage ‘It’s only me’ loud enough to wake the dead, had come to say good morning to him in the sitting room as she did five times a week, skimmed the instructions waiting for her on the kitchen table then gone to empty the enamel chamber pot down the toilet and rinse it thoroughly. But something wasn’t right, Marcel Mauvinier was convinced. The feeling was as irritating as a stone in his shoe, arousing in him a nagging sense of unease. He closed the newspaper and fidgeted in his chair. Never had it felt so uncomfortable. Should he see this disquiet as a grim foreboding? He ended up persuaded that Mademoiselle Flandin, home help by profession and a blatant thief, like all of them – of that he was convinced and would soon prove – had decided that morning to act and fleece the inoffensive old man that he was of his fifty-euro note. Merely thinking about the theft only increased the old man’s vigilance and he did not take his eyes off the TV screen that served as a monitor.

  Today, he’d hidden the note inside the microwave on the kitchen counter, certain that even the most cunning mice eventually give in to temptation. Through the dark glass, you could guess at rather than see the bill lying in the centre of the turntable. After tidying the bedroom, putting on a wash and sweeping the passage, Manelle reappeared in the kitchen, humming to herself. She who sings last will sing longest, thought the old man. Using the remote lying on his knee, he switched to camera three. The old man saw his home help start to ‘clean coffee maker’ next to the microwave, as instructed in his cramped handwriting between ‘sweep the passage’ and ‘empty dishwasher’. At first, he thought the trick wasn’t going to work, that she would clean the percolator without even glancing at the oven, but the unmistakeable sound of the microwave door opening make his heart leap. She’d found the note! His eyes glued to his screen, Marcel Mauvinier watched every single one of Manelle’s movements. For a few seconds, she turned away from him, offering only the sight of her back. Then, what he had so long been hoping for happened. He fathomed rather than saw her hand thrust rapidly into the pocket of her overall and then heard the microwave door bang sharply shut. The sound of a trap snapping on its prey, he thought, jubilant. As she emptied the dishwasher, Manelle sang. In a soft voice full of warmth, which the old man had never heard before, she was singing ‘Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf’ as she whizzed around the kitchen clattering pots and pans. Even more than her choice of the Disney song, the way his home help had of looking defiantly at the camera between refrains alarmed him. All this stank. It was not good at all. Bu
t he’d got her. The video images would be self-evident, her kleptomaniac tendency would be unmasked and she’d have to explain herself to her employer.

  That morning, Marcel Mauvinier didn’t bother to check his watch to ensure that the forty-eight minutes paid for by the agency were up. Manelle was barely out of the door when he padded into the kitchen and flung open the oven door. The old man gazed at the dark mouth of the microwave, gobsmacked. The fifty-euro note numbered U18190763573 had disappeared. In its place, lying flat on the glass tray, was another note which he snatched with trembling hands and turned over every which way. He sniffed it, felt it and held it up to the light. The newly minted bill’s denomination was printed above the baroque arch. The image danced in front of his eyes. One hundred euros. One hundred euros that scorched the flesh of his fingers. He put the note back where he had found it. His mind was seething. The question banged around inside his head. Why had the minx done that? It suddenly dawned on him that he couldn’t spend that money. The note didn’t fully belong to him, it belonged to both of them. Fifty-fifty. Marcel Mauvinier swore. The young home help had caught him in his own trap. It finally dawned on him what it was that had been making him feel uneasy but that he hadn’t been able to put his finger on: that morning, when she came to say hello, Manelle Flandin had smiled at him for the first time.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I couldn’t have concluded this book without thanking my friend Jules Rizet who very kindly opened the doors of the mysterious universe of embalming to me. I am grateful to him for allowing me to witness this practice that is both intense and full of humanity. It is a testimony to his respect for the deceased, his humility when confronted with the challenges of his profession, his immense expertise and sincere empathy towards the bereaved. He has his own very special way of putting his love for the living into his service of the dead. I will always be indebted to him for this experience, from which I returned more alive than ever.