‘In effect, he is “dead”?’ Monsieur Abboud asked the doctor.
‘Yes.’
‘In a dream of death? Does he hear? See?’
‘A futile dream,’ said the doctor. ‘Some believe they hear, but I have never seen anything to suggest it.’
‘Reveillez-vous, monsieur,’ said Abboud sternly to Father.
‘Miss Venn, we will want to speak again at five this afternoon,’ said the doctor, taking Abboud’s arm in the proprietary manner of a tour guide.
‘Is Miss Venn returning to her hotel?’ Abboud asked Posy.
‘No – I guess I should stay here,’ she said, longing to go with him. He nodded.
‘Until this afternoon, then,’ he said, and went out with the doctor, leaving Posy completely ignorant of his connection to medicine or to Father.
She immediately felt her mistake. Out of some sort of dread of what would happen to Father if she didn’t sit there every minute, she had not gone back to the hotel, despite her intense wish to talk to Mr Abbot. Now, for lack of a certain name, she found herself thinking of him as Monsieur Abbot. Mr Abbot had violated the perfect anonymity of their encounter by turning up in her actual life. She also felt she deserved the personal suffering attendant upon sitting there in ignorance and confusion.
The afternoon passed with stupefying slowness, but the identity of Emile gave Posy something to brood about beside Father’s condition. She tried out every possible explanation for his presence in Father’s life, and none was plausible. This didn’t mean that her heart didn’t pound when thinking of being in his arms. Had she made a minor error – it was nothing irreversible, after all – or really embarked on a serious complication? Why was she sitting here like a stone, poisoning Father with her complicated vibes, when she ought to go back to the hotel, find Monsieur Abbot, and have a talk?
Posy also didn’t like it that there were so few other people there when they assembled yet again to talk about Father at five. Rupert and Monsieur Delamer, who had gone to the Luberon to open Father’s coffer, had not returned, and she – to her everlasting ignominy, she felt – was still somewhat resentful of Rupert’s trek to the south of France on an apparently dutiful mission. He had always had a talent for evading the unpleasantest chores. She knew she ought not to think of sitting by Father’s bedside as an unpleasant chore. Irritation rose in her, as it was wont to do since childhood when Rupert had compelled her with pinches to pick things up or dry the dishes when these tasks had been allotted to him. It was just a reflex now to feel a knot of temper swell at the least infraction by Rupert of the rules of sibling fairness. Her rational self could overrule these feelings, but, sitting here by Father, she had no access to her rational self.
She tried to get Rupert on his cell phone, but couldn’t. She herself had called Mr Osworthy, Father’s solicitor, and learned from his office that he was hurrying to Valméri, but he hadn’t yet arrived. Here in the doctor’s office were only Kip and Monsieur Abboud. She had corrected her understanding of his name, but his connection to Father was still unknown. Undoubtedly decisions would fall upon her, but she was still in the dark, and the idea of illness or accident had always made her sick, and brought out her anger at anyone who could make her suffer like this. Father and – it was her sudden intuition – Mr Abboud. It was hopeless.
They sat in a row of chairs. ‘Miss Venn,’ Emile began, with heavy emphasis, as if she had lied about her identity, and he looked unhappy, even angry at her. He was about to say more when the doctor came in with an air of brisk normalcy, took off his white coat, and reached for his suit coat from the back of his chair. He nodded to them as he put it on. ‘Bonjour.’
‘Bonjour,’ they said. Without prologue, the doctor plunged into a recitation of what they had seen for themselves, that there were no changes in Monsieur Venn’s condition. Madame Venn was somewhat improved, but Monsieur still required medicine to support his blood pressure and showed no neurological signs of recovery, not the slightest. Dr Lamm was sorry to tell them that the medical staff and the family were likely facing a decision about when to end the futile treatment.
“Pulling the plug’ on Father, then?’ Posy asked, using the bitter, shocking phrase she imagined that callous doctors used. ‘Even though it isn’t always possible to tell what will happen?’
‘The plug?’ The doctor didn’t seem familiar with the expression. ‘If you could notify anyone else who may be concerned, family consensus is important.’
‘Is it necessary that the whole family be here?’ asked Emile. ‘My wife is not here.’
‘No, no. Yet people often wish it, to accompany, to witness. Others do not wish this.’
‘What about my sister…’ Kip began.
‘Somewhat better.’
‘I mean, shouldn’t she be the one to decide, if there’s anything to decide about Adrian?’
The doctor said that it might ultimately be kinder for Madame Venn to awaken to the finality of her husband dead, ‘not to be put through the wracking – is that the English word – process of decision.’
‘We couldn’t decide such a thing, it should be his wife.’ Posy agreed with Kip.
‘When Kerry wakes up she could, you know, say what she would want,’ Kip agreed, grateful to Posy for understanding what was in his mind too. It would be awful for her to wake up and find out they’d decided to let Adrian die. ‘If we waited, then Adrian would still be alive when she wakes up, and she could say what she wants to do,’ he tried to explain more completely to the doctor.
‘Perhaps Father has told her what he would wish – “Do everything,” or else “Do not let me linger,”’ Posy agreed.
‘I think she would want to know,’ said Kip, but now the others fixed him with looks that said, You are only a boy.
‘We might easily wait another twenty-four hours, even longer, if that would give you the reassurance that there is really no more hope,’ conceded the doctor. To Emile, ‘Monsieur Abboud, your wife would have time to arrive.’
‘Excuse me, but may I ask,’ said Posy to Emile, ‘who is your wife?’
‘My wife? She is Victoire, Mr Venn’s’ – here he looked at Posy, his more intimate recollections visible to her behind his eyes, and she hoped not to the doctor – ‘eldest daughter? She can’t be here, so – I am here.’
Posy stared at him. She had never heard a syllable about anyone called Victoire. Victoire, an eldest daughter? That is, a sister to herself? The doctor looked slightly baffled at this ignorance on the part of one Venn of the existence of another.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, inwardly reeling and wishing that Rupert were there.
‘Till tomorrow, then,’ said the doctor, dismissing them. They stood, obedient.
‘Would you like a ride to the hotel?’ she asked Emile.
‘Please,’ he agreed. She knew she ought to offer Kip a ride, too, but that would foreclose a candid conversation with Emile, so she decided not to. But when the boy stuck close to them anyway, she couldn’t very well not take him along. Kip got in the backseat, and she drove them to the hotel, talking generally of Father and the doctor’s grim prognosis. Her heart was already hardening with resolution to put this little potential drama behind them and concentrate on Father’s welfare, as she ought to have done all along.
As they walked across the icy sidewalk outside the hospital, Emile took her elbow, but so far he had said nothing. When they were a few steps ahead of Kip he said, in a low voice, ‘A pity. Gênant. An unwelcome complication.’
‘I was really hoping for another go,’ Posy admitted.
‘So was I.’
‘Oh, it’s the story of my life,’ cried Posy, with passionate resentment. ‘Something always happens to spoil things.’
‘Really? You are the dark sister, then?’
‘Victoire. Victory,’ said Posy. ‘Nothing could spoil her life, I imagine.’
‘Yes, my wife is a child of light,’ Emile agreed.
They said very little after this. Posy’s thoughts kept slip
ping away from Father and into thoughts about the unknown sister. About the significance of names. Two sisters, one called Posy, i.e., an insignificant, humble, and transient bloom, as in The Flower Beneath the Foot, by Ronald Firbank, the other called Victoire, mighty marble statue, headless but triumphantly winged.
Thoughts about how unlucky she was. About how things she got involved in were apt to get spoiled. Her heart apt to be broken. Her little dash with Emile had begun to assume a preciousness out of proportion to its duration or intensity.
When they reached the door of the hotel she was able to say in the lightest tone she could manage, ‘Now you see, there is a black sheep in every family.’
‘Lequel? Which of us do you mean?’ said Emile. They waited until Kip thanked Posy and walked into the hotel. Emile stood for a moment. ‘In some societies, men are expected to marry their wives’ sisters,’ he remarked cheerfully. ‘It is not everywhere disapproved, though, of course, alas, we are not in one of those societies.’
‘Well…’ They stood awkwardly. ‘Perhaps a drink after dinner?’ he said.
‘Right,’ Posy agreed.
15
This Wednesday afternoon, Géraldine Chastine went for tea, as she often did, with her friends Wendi Le Vert and Tammy de Bretteville, two American women married to Frenchmen, and loyal friends as well as part of her professional world. Today, at Wendi’s, they began as usual by catching up on their children. Géraldine, Wendi, and Tammy could fill each other in on the children almost in the manner of the old story where people told jokes by merely mentioning an assigned number. ‘Victoire had a doctor’s appointment’ would be the shorthand, the mere phrase was enough to imply a whole constellation of bad gynecological news, low back pain, some indignity at the Hôpital des Femmes Malades.
The problems of their respective children were acknowledged among them – Wendi’s married daughter, Laure, had had somewhat too many children too rapidly; Vincent, Tammy’s son, was still out of work, her daughter, Corinne, was almost comically tactless and married to a spendthrift; and Géraldine’s daughter, Victoire – Victoire a girl universally beloved for her charm and energy and the poetic desperation of her situation – was a concern to them all, standing as she did for everything French and right-thinking, while being, paradoxically, a living example of how it would get you nowhere. Or worse than nowhere, which in Victoire’s case was the eighteenth arrondissement in subsidized housing, with a troublesome Tunisian husband, two dusky babies, endless child-care problems, a tipped uterus, and a low-paying job.
Géraldine especially was an object of sympathy because her friends were aware of the secret taint in Victoire’s blood, the permanent strike against the poor young woman that she was three quarters an Anglo-Saxon, Géraldine’s mother having been Australian. Then, she was the result of Géraldine’s liaison with an Englishman, a brief relationship whimsically resulting in a baby, who was then adopted by Eric Chastine, whom Géraldine had met and married soon after Victoire’s birth, thirty years ago. Since Victoire was born in France, been raised as French, had always lived in France, and had a French passport, she had never in her own mind thought of herself as anything but French. Wendi and Tammy, knowing the story, had long silently ascribed some of Victoire’s difficulties to the facts of her conception. Being American, they didn’t really understand why Géraldine let all this bug her, but they accepted her maternal concern.
Today the talk was of death. Madame Arias, the concierge, had lost her husband, to their eyes a short, sullen, lazy man who let his wife do all the heavy work, except for taking out the garbage containers, and always refused to meet the eyes of the building’s occupants. But Madame Arias was devastated, and they could all understand emotional devastation, especially Wendi, who was a widow, but Géraldine and Tammy could, too, now that the apprehensions normal to their phase of life had begun to creep in on them: all was going to end badly for everyone. Eventually something would happen to Eric, to Tammy’s husband, Marc, to the three of them, though they were women – yes, all would end badly, as it must.
‘Is there anything anyone can do for Madame Arias?’
‘We’ll go to the service, of course. She’ll appreciate that.’
‘I feel ashamed of all my hard thoughts about him,’ Géraldine said. ‘I didn’t know he had a heart problem.’
‘The obsèques will be in Ivry. I hope Ivry is all right with her. Sometimes they prefer to be buried in Portugal,’ said Tammy.
The teacups were refilled – thé vert, recently found to have anticancer properties. They found a few good things to say of Monsieur Arias – his celerity with the bins, his willingness, before his hernia operation, to help with heavy deliveries. But the universal nature of death itself oppressed them, like cold drops down the neck. She could not help thinking of Adrian Venn.
They passed to the subject of their meeting: an apartment for Géraldine’s friend from California. Tammy had quickly found an exquisite small place – two bedrooms on the Quai Malaquais – that might suit, but Amy would have to take it immediately, before it was listed publicly. Géraldine had now seen the space and had called Amy in her room one night before dinner, to speak with enthusiasm of its beautiful view of the Seine, twelve-foot ceilings and nice panelling, two small bedrooms and perfect kitchen recently redone, the rent rather high: forty-two thousand francs a month, seven thousand euros, but then she wouldn’t be wanting it forever. Unfurnished, but that was usually better, and Amy could see to the furnishings when she got to Paris, or, if more convenient, Géraldine could ask one of her friends to do some of the basics.
This was Tammy, passionate about the progress she had already made. ‘I’ve found some wonderful chairs, Jean-Marie Fred, signed, but how does she feel about Art Deco? And I wish I had a sense of her budget. These are a bargain but they’re still five thousand euros apiece, and we’d need a pair, to merge convincingly with the general Louis Seize tendance.’
‘She hasn’t raised a peep about money,’ Géraldine said significantly. Only people who knew her as well as Wendi and Tammy did could have heard in her voice that note of maternal pride, the rich Amy so much the ideal daughter that Victoire, poor girl, did not have any interest in being stylish, maquillée, a hostess.
‘I’ve also discovered a wonderful curtain lady,’ said her friend Wendi. ‘From the Antilles, works for nothing and does the most exquisite shirring. Nobody really understands curtains anymore. I see heavy yellow silk brocade with peach silk linings…’
Each nightfall, in the hours before dinner, the switchboard at the Hôtel Croix St Bernard hummed with reprises of the day, verifications, entreaties, reproaches, conversations with stockbrokers living in parts of the planet where the markets were still open, consultations from California not feasible before seven P.M. in France.
Leaving Emile, Posy rushed to her room and called her mother, but didn’t succeed in reaching her. She was maddened with frustration at not being able to tell Pam about the unknown sister, and was unable to guess whether her mother had ever heard of this infant. Was it her father’s dark secret or known to them both? She couldn’t stop saying the name to herself: Victoire. Victoire. Emile and Victoire.
Rupert Venn called Posy from Saint-Gond to say they would not be back tonight; Father’s secretary, Madame Hyack, proved to have the second safe-deposit key, and was away until tomorrow. He sighed, feeling sorry for himself. He was invited to dinner chez Monsieur Delamer and regarded it as a heavy prospect. Having just come back to her room, Posy scolded him for not welcoming this chance, so rarely afforded to English people, to eat in a real French home. Rupert was still mellow from a rather nice lunch with Delamer, though he didn’t say so to Posy, who he knew had the harder role, staying with Father. He had always, at least when he himself was old enough to understand, worried about Posy’s tendency to make herself miserable and lose her temper.
‘We have a sister,’ Posy said, and told him the news. Rupert was amazed and strangely excited that life could suddenly pr
esent something surprising along with the inevitable bad news.
Emile Abboud called his mother-in-law, Géraldine, to say that the prospects for Venn were grim and that he himself could do little and might as well come back to Paris – in a day or two. In the meantime she should try to convince Victoire to come have a look at her comatose parent, though he knew she probably wouldn’t.
‘He is going to die, then? Stay another few days, dear, for me. I think Victoire might yet come join you.’
‘She’s not too angry with me for being here instead of her?’
‘Of course. She says, “The only man in France to pay more attention to his mother-in-law than to his wife.”’
‘She will come to see I “have her welfare at heart.”’ Emile laughed.
‘Are there other children? What are they like?’
‘He’s stifled in progeny – there are an English brother and sister, a baby called Harry with an American mother – she’s in a coma too – some kid of fourteen or so – who can say others will not appear?’
‘The wife’s in a coma? I’m sorry for Vee’s sake there aren’t fewer children.’ Géraldine laughed, realizing that this sounded rather callous. ‘We must hope he’s awfully rich.’
‘There seems to be little concern for his “soul,”’ Emile observed. ‘No one has called a priest. But no doubt the souls of Englishmen are disposed differently from the rest of us?’
It occurred to Géraldine that here was an argument that might weigh with the somewhat pious Victoire: concern for the rascal Venn’s soul. Victoire liked to think of a world in spiritual balance. Her mother was not sure where this tendency came from, as the family was secular in its views.
‘You must certainly introduce yourself to my young friend Amy Hawkins. She’s skiing there alone,’ Géraldine had told him. She ordinarily would hesitate to introduce him to attractive single women, but Amy would meet him eventually, and it would seem odd not to make them aware of each other, staying in the same hotel. Victoire would be there soon enough.
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