A Fairly Good Time

by Mavis Gallant

  He began again. “You and Philippe are living apart, but you are living in his legal domicile.”

  “He can’t put me out of my own home. Can he?”

  “He won’t, but he can.”

  “But I found it. It’s mine. It’s my home. He just moved in, and then he moved out.”

  “But in the meantime he had a lease in his name.”

  “I’ve paid rent. I paid after he left. He paid for June, but I paid for July, and I’ve paid in advance for August.”

  “He abandoned it, yes,” said James. “Abandoned the conjugal domicile. But so did you. First you stayed with Renata and went around telling everyone; then you spent every night up here.”

  “But I hadn’t abandoned anything! Oh, James, I just don’t understand this way of thinking. James, you’re a kind of friend of Madame Roux’s, aren’t you?”

  “In business. For the rest she is a cow, and I was afraid she would be a pest, always watching from the shop window.”

  “She talked to you, though. She talked about Philippe and me.”

  “No more than you do, poor Shirley. You talked to her again the other day. I saw you.”

  “I just told her my mother isn’t well and that if I suddenly turn up in Canada to see how she is it will make her suspicious. I felt like telling somebody and Madame Roux just happened to be there. I keep wondering—it’s not my business, and yet it is—what you and she said to each other.”

  “We were talking one day when you came in, and I did go out the back door. We were talking about the sale of this place. She didn’t want anyone to know, and she asked me to leave when the bell rang. Later on she told me it was only you, so I might have stayed.”

  “No, I meant when you talked to her before I married Philippe, when you were still pushing those affectionate notes under my door. What did she tell you then?”

  “That you were charming. Now I must phone for a taxi. If you hadn’t given up your car to Philippe you might have driven me to the airport.”

  “I won’t drive a car, and I don’t think I gave it up. I think it was cheaper to buy it in dollars or something, and I think he paid me in francs. I never took much notice of money. Madame Roux and I used to be friends. What did she tell you?”

  “That you were charming,” he said again, and smiled.

  “Oh, please tell me. It would help me now.”

  “If you are hysterical I can’t talk to you at all.”

  “I’ll never say a word, I’ll never repeat a thing, I’ll never go back to her. I’ll never hold it against you . . . I swear.”

  “Just the ordinary things women say about each other,” James said at last rather coldly. “That you were a whore who slept with anybody. She didn’t believe you and Philippe were married at first.”

  “Did you think we weren’t married?”

  “I won’t be cross-examined,” said James.

  “We’ve never talked before, except in bed. If this is the only conversation we can have I don’t much like it.” She was quiet as he dialed for his taxi, and when he had finished she said, “You’re leaving. Claudie has left her family; she’s in a crummy hotel. She wants to live my life and she seems to think that’s the kind of place I would have chosen. Rose—where did you say Rose was? The Isle of Wight? I’ve never heard of it. Renata—Renata has vanished. Karel’s in Ibiza—he would be there. Philippe is going to a spa for his liver. Which is the liver one? He really did have hepatitis; he said so. I wish I could go somewhere in August and September. I don’t want to sit here waiting for October and the reconciliation meeting where we’re both going to say no.”

  James, watching for the taxi from the window, said without turning, “Come to Greece, if you think you would like it.”

  “And stay with you?”

  “No, we can’t in Athens. You would be with my mother.”

  “Would she want me? Wouldn’t she think there was something between us?” He turned then, and for the first time since she had known him he looked embarrassed. She said kindly, “Your mother would know right away I wasn’t a girl you were going to marry. Right?”

  “Could you learn another language?” he said. “If you had to?”

  “I learned French, sort of.”

  “Could you learn Greek?”

  “You mean you want a Greek husband for me? You can’t want to marry me yourself.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said James with a trace of Philippe’s elegance. “I owe you something.”

  “I owe you more. You gave me company when I wanted it, and although it looked scandalous to Madame Roux, and it seemed incredible to Philippe, it wasn’t complicated for me. Now you’re offering me a refuge when I need it. You do mean it, don’t you?”

  “About coming to Greece? I mean that,” he said, surprised, as if it were the easiest thing he had ever promised. “The taxi,” he said, looking distractedly at his cases. She stood up; they moved to the door together.

  “James,” she said rapidly, “Why was it a secret about all the buying and selling of apartments? You’d have lost money if I had known? I talk too much? This is what people are like,” she said, marveling. “All the creeping and rushing around, like little animals. I never hear or see any of it. You and Madame Roux, Madame Roux and Philippe. There’s something I didn’t tell you. Philippe had us watched.”

  “What else could he have done? He wanted his divorce.”

  “He could have talked to me—explained. Do you think I’d have hung on to him? Screamed and cried? Asked for money?”

  “He had to protect himself,” said James. “Supposing you were pregnant? By law he would still be the father. As soon as I saw his funny men I understood. I went to him at once and I said to him, ‘Your funny men can stand there forever. But mutual grievances, my dear fellow, will get you the cheapest and quickest divorce.’ Now what are you crying about? Would you have liked two funny men walking in at five in the morning? I saved us both, my dear,” said James, meaning himself. “You must not cry. I understand that it is very sad for you to see me leaving, but you will come to Athens, and my mother is a very nice woman. Please sit down for a moment. The taxi can wait. You cannot go out of here crying. What made you cry?”

  “It’s all right. I’ve stopped.”

  “Perhaps it was Madame Roux? Philippe did not care for her. He thought she was tougher and stronger than you, for a time, and then he didn’t understand you any more. Madame Roux thought she was stronger and tougher than Philippe, but she was only more cunning. He started off by telling her too much—unusual for a Frenchman. They don’t say much to women as a rule.” He smiled secretly; no woman existed to whom he would ever have told too much. This was about as much as he would ever say.

  “Philippe talked to women sometimes, but not to me. It was my fault.”

  “He is with a stupid young girl now,” said James. “Her name is Claire. She has golden hair down to her arse, and a nice nose. Her teeth were capped by the best dentist in Paris. You could still rescue him from this healthy young girl if you cared to. It would be an act of kindness.”

  “Oh, James, I’ve done so much of that. I don’t know how any more. Think of Claudie alone in that hotel room, believing she’s been saved from her family. Even when people say they want to be rescued they don’t really. I can’t help Philippe. He never really thought we were married. It was like being in transit between two flights or between two wars or something. It didn’t count. He may have used me to get away from home, or just to be in love. He did love me, you know, and he wanted someone unlike his mother. But in the end he wanted someone like her too. Anyway, not like me.”

  “Now I must depart,” said James, clearly irritated by this talk of love, which Shirley had laughed at from him. “How many men do you think you will marry? They will all remember you with nostalgia and regret.”

  “Oh. Thank you.”

  After a moment’s silence, which was meant to let her know that his offer did not spring from impulsiveness, he said,
“Come to Greece. Any time. Tomorrow. Stay until your divorce. If you want to marry again I can find you the person, and you will see that having known me was not a waste of time. I found my sisters husbands. I might even marry you myself.” He expected her not to take this seriously. When he married it would be to an heiress and a virgin, like Philippe’s new Claire.

  “I have to look after Claudie before I leave,” she said, “just that one thing. Then I’ll come.”

  “As you like,” he said. “But you are a fool, Shirley. All this looking after people. It’s exactly what Philippe detested. Luckily I understand you.”

  “James, do you?”

  “Oh, yes, very much. More than anyone I knew in Paris. Come to Greece. You’ll see. You’ll hate it!”

  •

  Clasping her hands to quiet them (she had been calm as long as she was passing almond cakes and pouring tea), Madame Maurel said to her guest, “When Claudie was fourteen she looked at boys. That was how it began. The dining-room table in the old apartment was near a window, and we had to pull it away from the wall so that we could all sit round it. Claudie would help when she was made to, but then she would always make an unnecessary trip around the table so as to look out of the window at men. It was during the first months of the Algerian War. There were more policemen on the streets and more conscripts about and Claudie liked to look at them. All the way around the table,” said Madame Maurel, shaking her head. “We stopped that.”

  “How?” said Shirley.

  “How do you stop a girl of fourteen doing anything? Slapped her face, screamed. Children forget scoldings but they remember blows. One day her father became furious because of the noise she was making. You see, Claudie would never cry out when she was hit, but she always had an impertinent answer to everything and she would suddenly scream for no reason. I had locked her in a room that day and she was kicking the door and insulting me. He went into the room where she was and shut the door behind him. He said something—I have never known what. She came out with him and she was pale, and for days everything disgusted her. Whatever he told her made her ill, but it stopped her. She never went near that window again.”

  “Something nasty in the woodshed.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. Now I’ve annoyed two people with one book.”

  “This is boring for you,” said Maman.

  “No, please go on. I can’t talk to Claudie unless I have something new to say to her and I can’t say anything unless I know what she has heard before.”

  “It was a difficult time,” said Madame Maurel. “Marie-Thérèse hardly spoke a word to me in those days. Oh, wait until you have daughters!”

  “Mine will be blessed with trick spiders and exploding cigars, as promised,” said Shirley. “Whatever your husband said didn’t have an eternal effect.”

  Maman sighed and said, “She did have a child, but only that one.”

  Shirley did not add to this, “She may be having another.” She wondered how Monsieur Maurel would take the news. She thought of how quickly annoyed he was, as though his nerves lay like a network outside the skin. It must have been like living with an incurable toothache. She pitied him, though it was Maman and the others who suffered for Monsieur Maurel’s aching tooth. “Claudie thinks you have not had a good life,” she said. “She thinks you were a slave to your husband.”

  “Naturally I have been,” said Maman composedly.

  “She thinks he is egocentric, and spoiled . . .”

  “Men are naturally selfish,” Maman said.

  “. . . and that everyone has been sacrificed to him.” She wanted to go on but her French was giving out. She said, “Claudie just wanted to live like a normal person. She wanted to earn her living. She thought that unless she left you she would never learn anything except housework.”

  Maman glanced at the large Norman wardrobe standing out in the hall. On the top shelves were the textbooks of subjects Claudie had begun and let go: she had started Spanish, bookbinding, pottery, bee-keeping (fortune to be made supplying honey to bakers of pain d’épices), costume design and textile design. She had tried a dozen things, but nothing paid as well and took so little effort as living at home and quarreling with the family. No wonder Maman was distressed and suspicious at her having left!

  Shirley said, “Every girl looks at her mother and wants to have a better life than she had.”

  Maman twisted the little pin at her throat. “Why should my daughter have a better life than mine?” she said. Shirley had forgotten why. “Do you know,” said Maman shyly, “when Claudie brought us Alain, well, it was too bad, but we weren’t the first decent family where such a thing had happened. As Alain was to think I was his mother, and had our name, we moved here to a new neighborhood and avoided a scandal. It didn’t break me. But when Marie-Thérèse left I felt as if part of myself had gone. They lived with us, you know, until about a year ago.”

  “Papa and Gérald and children and Mémé and everybody. You all lived here?”

  “Not in this apartment. First we had the flat just across the landing. We bought it when Alain was born. We had three bedrooms. We built an extra shower in the kitchen because Gérald insisted. Two of the children slept with their parents, and Claudie and Mémé together with two others, and Alain with us.”

  “But weren’t you terribly crowded?”

  “We didn’t feel crowded. We understood each other. Claudie was difficult and Marie-Thérèse never looked at me, but we were a family. I could do anything I liked with Marie-Thérèse once. I raised her to be my ideal of a daughter. I made Marie-Thérèse. I made her into the daughter I wanted. Then she married that . . . that Ziff from Strasbourg.” Maman looked weak, defiant and proud. She said, “Until she was seventeen she never made a remark in public without first looking at me to see if it was all right. My husband preferred Claudie, I am sorry to say. I was so unhappy when I knew Claudie was on the way! I had my one daughter and she was all I wanted. The reason Claudie is so large is that while I was expecting her I felt sick unless I was eating. I would sit down to a cup of hot chocolate and buttered bread and I would feel well again, for about half an hour. Then I’d have the nausea again. Marie-Thérèse was devoted. She would lie in bed beside me, stroking my face. She didn’t know about babies and I didn’t want to spoil her innocence, and she must have thought it strange, my being so blown up and fat and hungry and sick. Yes, my husband liked Claudie. Claudie is so . . . pretty . . .”

  She went on rambling, putting bits of almond cake in her mouth, stirring sugar in her tea, and at last she said what Shirley was waiting to hear: “If you think anything can be done about Claudie, you had better see my husband. I shall never go to her,” said Maman, weak Maman. “I wouldn’t go to her if she were dying. Claudie will have to come to me. I don’t care who brings her.” Wondering why Shirley had looked away so suddenly, Maman turned too and saw the reproduction of the Dufy regatta. “Naturally, you would never see that on a wall in America,” she remarked.

  •

  He did not sound surprised, hearing Shirley on the telephone. She thought again what poised voices most Frenchmen had and how well they spoke their language, never hesitating or stumbling. He told her to come to his office, where no member of the family had been admitted. It was in the rue d’Amsterdam in a building intended for shabby living. The offices seemed improvised; the stairs were filthy and dark. A secretary sat like a wet dog outside his door. Smeared windows near his desk looked across a court, over a large skylight, and into other offices. Shirley could see prison light shining on girls wearing nylon smocks. She sat down on the chair reserved for clients. There was nothing in the room to suggest the business of the place. Papa’s firm exported every kind of electrical machine, Claudie had said, from coffee grinders to transformers, but Claudie may have been wrong.

  He placed his hands flat on the desk—Claudie’s gesture. He was self-contained, but his silence seemed almost excited. It must have been his tactic in business
to let the other man commit himself. He knew why Shirley had come; in spite of the family’s being forbidden to call the office, Maman had probably confirmed that Shirley was on her way.

  “Well, I’m here for Claudie,” Shirley said. “She’s alone in a cheap hotel, she can’t pay her bill, and the boy she was living with is leaving France. I think. I think that sums it up. She may be pregnant too. I don’t know.”

  “Really? Claudie is indolent, lazy and dirty. I am astonished that she isn’t pregnant every day of the week. What else have you come to say?”

  “She wants to be forgiven. No, not so much forgiven as accepted by her family. Accepted as she is.” He looked at her, nodding. “She doesn’t think she should have another child. I won’t help her get rid of it. I absolutely refuse to have anything to do with it because I have just helped another friend, and I . . . at least, I have said I won’t help. Because if she has to abandon this one as she did Alain . . .” She felt as if the wheels of this conversation were sloughed in mud. That was because she did not know what she wanted to say. She was alone with Papa, therefore privileged. She had an audience, and what an audience! She had, all to herself, the ear of power. If only she were quick and clever she might have known what impression of her he had taken in a moment ago, when he relaxed suddenly and sat back in his chair.

  “Yes, and so she abandoned Alain,” he said. “What next?”

  “Well, he hardly seems her child, does he? She has nothing to say about the way he is brought up.”

  “Is that what you came to my office to say?”

  “No, although I do think it. I don’t think Alain should still use a pot, for instance, or sleep with his grandmother and all that. Claudie isn’t really ready for another baby.”

  “She hasn’t asked me. If she does ask, she will hear. She has managed until now without asking anything.”

  “She is old enough to have a personal life,” said Shirley, sounding prim.