Géraldine knew that Adrian Venn had published Chef Jaffe’s cookbook in his glamorous series about French regional cookery, so she easily deduced that Venn had been staying at Chef Jaffe’s hotel. Now, with the excuse that she desired to be reassured about Amy’s health, given the catastrophes, she had rung Amy. Marvelling at the way Europeans all knew each other, Amy told Géraldine what she had heard, confirming that two of the guests, a Mr and Mrs Venn, had been caught in an avalanche and were in the hospital, an atmosphere of horrible gloom had swept the whole valley, and so on.
‘Oh, mon Dieu,’ Géraldine said, again and again.
Eventually, returning her attention to her charge Amy’s own welfare, Géraldine asked about the après-ski action, for this inevitably interested single women in their life-changing modes. Was there anyone attractive or friendly? But Amy firmly dismissed her questions. Yes, there had been a cocktail party, there appeared to be some unattached men, but she was not at all interested in meeting people, certainly not men, that was the last thing she wanted.
‘My current male friend is fourteen years old,’ she said, and explained about the plight of the little brother, all alone, a teenaged boy for whom she planned to do what she could to help.
In Paris, later in the morning, the worldly and well-connected Géraldine heard more about the disaster from Baron Otto von Schteussel: in the rest of the Haute Savoie, the west slope of the village of Belregarde had lost four of its eight houses, though all the inhabitants, weekenders, had survived by not being there. Because of being on the train, the baron had not heard the most recent news of the fate of anyone staying at the Croix St Bernard, but he knew three permanent residents had died in luckless Pralong, four kilometers away – this was the slide that had been captured on Antenne Deux at the moment of its déclenchement, so that all of France had seen the eerily slow-motion grace with which the monster slab of snow detached from its lofty site and slid in one mass toward the unfortunate valley, in a sheet, like a pane of glass or building facade in a demolition scene, sending a giant plume of snow a half kilometer into the air, simulating the spray of some magnificent vessel.
‘Nothing about the Venns? Monsieur Venn?’ she asked.
‘No, no, not when I left.’
Despite all the disruptions caused by the storms, the baron had succeeded in reaching Paris last night, and had come by appointment to Géraldine’s for coffee and a real estate chat this morning. A large blond man, he had a cheerful, florid face and spoke good French with a British accent, no trace of the Germanic. He had earlier sent her his card with its string of seedy-sounding Austrian honorifics, Graf, Baron and whatnot – she didn’t believe any of them, but they looked splendid on a business card. During his frequent business trips to Paris, Otto never failed to importune the Chastines on a certain real-estate matter; he worked for a multinational developer, and was constantly writing to them about a proposed luxury complex the corporation was hoping to build in Belregarde. Géraldine’s husband Eric’s family had a little chalet in that village, and now Otto had come to make another offer to buy it, in the hope that minds had changed since avalanches earlier in the week had swept into Belregarde itself.
Géraldine was naturally concerned about that, though she didn’t ski and so had never cared about the place in winter – picturesque though some found it – stone chimneys chugging smoke over ice-dripping roofs and the straw and dogshit embedded in the ice of the paths, people wearing violent purple anoraks. She loved the mountains in summer, with the wildflower walks and climbing. The baron Otto’s company had already bought up several chalets, including some that had been flattened in the avalanches of yesterday. He talked enthusiastically of the future. ‘Of course you would keep the right to reserve one of the best deluxe mountain-view units in the new complex,’ he was saying. The situation reminded Géraldine of movies she’d seen in America, westerns, when the little family that refused to move was to be swept away by the dam/railroad/mining development the villains were representing.
Baron Otto had accepted a second cup of coffee, which he now finished, and, mentioning another engagement, stood to take his leave. He hoped to see his several prospects this afternoon and head back to Valméri by the late TGV, removing the need for another hotel night in Paris. ‘Naturally the local architectural style will be respected – none of the cement horrors you see at other stations. Allow me to leave the sketches with you.’ The sketches showed pitched shake roofs, wooden balconies with fretwork decoration, symphonies of geraniums blooming from window boxes of the clustered condominiums. They would see each other in the mountains over Easter no doubt, they’d discuss all this again, hello to Eric. Otto’s wife, Fennie, had sent her best wishes.
Baron Otto, experienced in sizing up clients and investors, had always pegged Géraldine perfectly, a well-groomed woman in her late fifties, early sixties, even at this hour in the morning dressed smartly for the day in stockings and winter beige suit, hair tinted reddish blond, glasses on a string. She obviously had a native business sense, but he was not sure what drove her or explained her somewhat tense manner, for her position was that of a comfortable bourgeoise. Today she seemed a little more agitated than usual, struggling to maintain a serene and courteous semblance of attention to his words, which he could see weren’t playing. ‘The avalanches have apparently spared us,’ she pointed out. ‘We weren’t in the path at all.’
‘The global warming is supposed to produce many more of them,’ Otto warned.
‘Not in my lifetime anyhow.’ Géraldine didn’t care about global warming. She had withdrawn her attention from politics before the advent of environmentalism and had not caught up with its mood.
‘I believe you have a young American friend who is staying at the Croix St Bernard this week. Do you think she might like to buy a condominium in the Alps, or somewhere? Might it be within her… budget?’ Otto asked.
Though it was a part of Géraldine’s character to bring buyers and sellers together, to facilitate, to explain people to each other, her indignation rose with her sense that he might try to influence her protégée Amy. She still had not heard where Amy’s money came from, it was a mystery, for the girl had neither the manner of an heiress nor any palpable métier that could explain it. Probably she’d had a lucrative divorce, that was usually it. But whatever the size of Amy’s fortune, Géraldine saw it as her duty to protect her from the sharks who were already encircling her. And, of course, to advise her about how a fortune should be spent.
‘I believe I may have met her. She has a certain un-familiarity with Alpine conditions,’ Baron Otto went on.
‘She seems quite eager to spend some time in Europe,’ Géraldine agreed, and the baron’s peony-bright face brightened even more. ‘But I should tell you, I am already making arrangements for her in Paris. I do not think you need trouble about her.’
‘Maybe she’d like to have both something in Paris and something in the mountains?’ He was thinking that he had always found Madame Chastine, for a française, uncharacteristically frank about money, and he would appreciate information – in case he could be helpful to Miss Hawkins.
‘Mademoiselle Hawkins will be better off with an apartment in Paris than a chalet in Valméri, Otto,’ said Géraldine firmly, ‘and I will thank you not to try to suggest otherwise.’ She made herself clear.
When the baron had gone, she rushed to watch more of the morning television news, anxiously studying the pictures and waiting for the phone; but she didn’t think that any of the sticks and rubble shown sticking out of snowdrifts could be theirs, and no one had telephoned from Belregarde with bad news. Not that she would have minded terribly, and there was insurance. There was nothing more about Adrian.
8
Géraldine had sometimes regretted that her daughter, Victoire (also called ‘Vee’ as in vie, ‘life,’ or as in ‘victory’), alone among the children of people she knew, had taken the step of legal marriage. Mostly, marriage was out of fashion among French young peo
ple. Some were exploring the advantages of the quasi-marriage called PACS now being offered by the state, but, no, Vee had wanted marriage, white dress, assembled friends. Perhaps her bridegroom Emile had also wanted this, had liked a liaison with a solid bourgeois French family. His own had come to France only a month or two before his birth. They were Tunisian doctors, Christians who had been living in southern Senegal when warfare among local tribesmen had sent them fleeing to avoid massacre. He often had to recite this pedigree to avoid misunderstandings about his religion.
Géraldine worried constantly about Victoire; Victoire, on the other hand, thought of herself as a fortunate person. For one thing, she had recently got an apartment in one of a group of buildings designed as a social experiment under Mitterrand by a famous architect to show that public housing need not be grim: a verdant courtyard planted in box and willow, elegantly trimmed, big sunny windows, a secure gate and elevator code. Vee and Emile and their two children, Salome and Nike, had three comfortable rooms, plus kitchen and bath, or shower, rather, for there was no tub, well located off the boulevard Général Brunet near the Métro Bozaris. True, it was public housing, but many if not most of their friends from university lived in worse conditions. Architecture students were forever being found in the courtyard of the building, sketching and photographing this admirable place.
It was the sweetness of Vee’s nature and temperament that made her feel lucky and thankful, even when the evidence was against it. There were moments when she herself questioned her luck, but she was unquestionably lucky about the apartment, and her children, less so about the omnipresent back pain, which the doctor felt would disappear in time, and mostly the problems with Emile. In general, Vee was too busy ever to feel low. Bilingual, she ran an English-speaking play group for bilingual toddlers and kids whose families wanted them to learn English, she played the flute in an ensemble, and was active in the parents’ association of Salome’s école maternelle.
Her love for her children and passion for her husband were her conscious life definitions, her project. Not that she was a deluded, self-sacrificing young woman, she told herself, not at all. You decided freely on the values that would motivate your life, and because you were doing as you pleased, you were free. She valued freedom, temperamentally and intellectually. It was willingly that she ran the play group, which also did keep the wolf from the door, and she had a government supplement from the social security, and occasionally was paid for a flute gig, so even the most consternated sighs from her parents didn’t make her feel sorry for herself. In fact, she had a merry disposition, and graceful fair looks to go with it, like the dancing women on posters by Chéret.
The dashing Emile had more or less deserted Vee and the children, though they were not officially separated. He rarely dropped by. Well embarked on his career as a public, telegenic intellectual, a career that, however, didn’t bring in much money, he was exploring connections to Islam despite his Christian upbringing – he and Victoire had been married in the church of St Roche – and had even recently been quoted as saying he was looking into the issue of four wives. He had made this pronouncement on TF 1, people told her, with his charming smile that said he didn’t mean it. Sometimes, when he was home, he was irascible, and kept reminding Victoire that she was lucky he had not yet pronounced the words ‘I divorce thee.’ This tried Vee’s cheerful nature but didn’t surmount it. She knew he couldn’t help saying dazzling, outrageous things, his mind hurtling along over steeple and minaret without descending to connection and explanation. His cleverness, and his dark curls, made him fascinating to most people. When she thought of him, her heart surged toward him, and when she thought of their lovemaking, her blood stirred as though a magnet passed across her skin.
Sometimes when he did drop by, it was during the day, when the children were at school, and he wanted a quick fuck. She was always happy for an hour or two afterward, and sang around the house. Such was the case today.
Emile was there when she had to leave the house to go pick up the children; he was dressed and drinking a cup of tea when Victoire’s mother, Géraldine, called with the amazing news that Victoire’s father was near death in an Alpine accident, meaning, apparently, not Eric Chastine but someone else altogether, someone Emile had never heard of. Emile waited till Victoire got home with the children to tell her the amazing news, a biological father he had never heard she had, near death.
Victoire didn’t seem much interested or distressed.
‘You never told me your mother had “been with” a man when she was not married,’ Emile said, his note of self-parody striking her. She never knew whether he believed, or was mocking, some religious idea.
‘Probably they were married,’ she said, quite amazed at this reappearance of a father who had barely before been mentioned. ‘It is not the kind of thing I could ask.’
‘Your mother thinks you should go there while he is still alive, to say “farewell,”’ said Emile, who always seemed to put words into quotation marks, to emphasize his scorn or dissent, or amused reservation. ‘To say “adieu.”’
‘I’ve never seen him yet, why would I now?’ said Vee. ‘If Maman wanted me to meet him, why didn’t she say so years ago?’
‘He is your father, “apparently.”’
‘I’m completely indifferent – sorry for him, of course,’ she added. ‘An avalanche, how horrible. But I’m not a hypocrite to show up at someone’s bedside at the end when I never went before.’
‘To oblige your mother? It is she probably who would like things put to rest, made final. Like to think her daughter has “seen her father,” that he has seen his beautiful child, that certain “memories renascent”…’
‘Oh, s’il vous plâit, Emile,’ laughed Vee, whom Emile always made laugh. ‘You’ll stay with the children, of course, while I dash down to the ski slopes.’
Emile frowned at this practical side of it. ‘Your mother would stay with them.’
Géraldine had suggested to Emile on the telephone that Vee should go to say a last word to her father. Later, when Vee brought the children over for their regular Tuesday-afternoon visit and Géraldine had embraced the darlings, her mind having stayed on the news she had transmitted to Emile, the moribund state of Venn, she again broached the idea that Vee should meet this phantom parent while there was time.
‘It’s unthinkable, Maman. How could I feel an interest in someone who never saw me and had no interest in me, technically my father or not? He was never part of my life, and I’m not going to be part of his death. Think how hurt Papa would be. Eric – my real papa.’
Of course Vee had always known that Eric was not her biological father, but this had never been important, so completely had Eric been a wonderful parent to Vee, Vee to him a devoted, bonded daughter, the two passing through all the appropriate and healthy stages of a daughter-father relation leading in time to Vee’s appropriate transfer of love to her husband, etc. (Eric had been less pleased than Géraldine with Vee’s choice of Emile Abboud as a husband. Géraldine could at least see his powerful charms.) Géraldine also understood that loyalty was big on Vee’s list of virtues, these days especially because of her problems with Emile. Vee didn’t discuss her marital problems with her mother, her pride wouldn’t let her, but she clearly thought that loyalty was a virtue above all others and rewarded eventually from Above.
‘You’ll be sorry one day, not to have said goodbye. Not to have ever laid eyes on him,’ Géraldine insisted. ‘Eric doesn’t mind. He thinks you should go. And the girls should meet their grandfather.’
‘I hope all my illegitimate children will rally round my deathbed,’ said Eric, coming into the room. He had been half listening to the conversation. But Vee didn’t think this was funny. Her face assumed the expression of angelic blankness she always wore when her mind was resolved or resolving. She had the fair ringlets and wide blue eyes of putti in paintings, and the same manner of looking away from the central subject at something else outside the frame.
‘Anyway, the children. And the play group, and I’m playing for a Rameau festival. And how could I be someone called “Vee Venn,” it sounds like an herbal tea. Anyway, I have no wish to torment myself with sadness at the deathbed of a perfect stranger. And aren’t there real children? Think how they would feel with me intruding into their grief.’
‘I think there are real children. They would be your half-brothers and sisters. The more reason you should meet them.’ She could be talking about a stranger she had never met. Vee was struck, as she had been by other women her mother’s age, at the detachment they seemed to feel from their own biological histories, as if they couldn’t remember being in bed with vanished figures, couldn’t remember giving birth.
‘Non, Maman, pourquoi?’ said Vee, in a definitive tone of voice. When Vee had gone, Géraldine telephoned Emile at his office – she didn’t know where he was staying these days. Luckily, he was there. She was fond of Emile, they got along and understood each other. She urged him to go to Valméri and look into the situation, and he, with surprising graciousness, said he would.
9
When he woke on Tuesday, Kip remembered his dream. He had been dreaming of their parents, of a time in his childhood when they had scolded Kerry for something he had done. In the dream it was a red stain on a rug, like spilled wine, and he dreamed of his mother’s face glaring at him as Dad said, ‘All the same, Kerry, you should have watched.’ He should have watched her – was that the message of the dream? Kip was a good athlete, was on the snowboarding team at his school, and longed someday to compete in the Olympics, and so hadn’t been poking along with Kerry and Adrian, at the stately pace they skied. Now he saw he should have stuck with them. He would have spotted the avalanche, and said ‘Look out.’ He pictured them standing frozen in terror as the beast rolled at them, himself urging them to safety.
L'Affaire Page 5