A Period of Adjustment

by Dirk Bogarde

  ‘I wondered. I only wondered. About myself, really. I suppose there is a chance, isn’t there? That I might carry the virus. Or Thomas? We might both be infected. It’s possible?’

  We stood looking at each other in complete silence. The oxygenator in the fish tank bubbled quietly.

  ‘It’s possible,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’

  She picked a leaf, shredded it slowly, dropping little green scraps on the tile floor. ‘After Thomas was born, there was nothing. Of course. Nothing. We never touched. Never touched. But before …’ She dropped the stalk of the leaf, shrugged her shoulders slightly. ‘Before, it was sometimes very fine. Sometimes. But it is, I suppose, just possible?’

  ‘I suppose. I’m going back to the Theobalds’, I left Giles there. And I have to go to the hotel to explain things to Madame Mazine. She was off duty when I arrived here.’

  ‘They know, at the hotel. The telephone call this morning evidently was news. She called my mama the moment you had left for Cannes. I knew too … anyway, something.’

  ‘Something,’ I said. ‘Not everything.’

  ‘No. Not everything. Not that he was dead. From pneumonia …’

  ‘And that is all anyone has to know. Nothing else. That’s how he died, and he did.’

  ‘Mama will not weep, I fear. There will be no tears shed.’

  She opened the door into the dim hall, and we walked together to the front door. She had straightened now, was crisp once more. In control. As I stepped down on to the white gravel path she said, very quietly, ‘Thank you, William. Forgive me.’

  I waved a dismissive hand, walked down to the gate. When I turned back the front door was closing. I wondered, as I set off for La Maison Blanche and Madame Mazine, if she knew that her mama had once tried to kill James? Tried to run him down in her car. Failed to, of course. She was a bad driver always. Florence didn’t know about that little effort. Florence never would, either.

  Chapter 2

  Madame Mazine turned the ledger on her desk so that it was facing towards me, pointed to the page headed MAY. It was filled. So were JUNE and JULY, and the bookings leaked into AUGUST. I pushed it gently back towards her.

  ‘You run a very successful hotel, Madame. And with reason.’

  She nodded agreeably, closed the ledger. Giles was squirming uneasily beside me. I told him to go off to the lavatory by the bar.

  ‘So after the twenty-sixth I am roomless? And the boy?’

  ‘Hélas! Monsieur Forbin has your room every year, regular as the swallows, and the Doumer family always take your son’s room. They are all walkers. I did warn you, Monsieur. I am desolate.’

  So was I at that moment. Less than a week left of my booking, and far too much to do in the week. She was regarding me kindly. She knew the situation. I had told her my news from Cannes, and she was a close friend of Florence’s mama, Sidonie Prideaux. So she would be filled in with every detail from that source. No, she said sadly, there was no other hotel near. A Novotel in Sainte-Brigitte, and perhaps I might find a room at La Source? Or … and she rubbed her forehead with the palm of a hand as an idea drifted towards her. Or, if I was prepared to be not very comfortable and share with my son, perhaps I would like to look at the Pavilion in the garden? It was empty, apart from the hotel linen which was stacked there after ironing. No one used it unless the hotel was absolutely full. There were two beds, a shower. Would I care to look? I would, and we did.

  Eugène led us into the courtyard at the back of the hotel and opened the door into a damp-smelling void. The Pavilion had, at some time in the past, been stuck on to the back of the hotel rather haphazardly to serve as a store and an emergency ‘room’. It was presently dark. The shutters let slits of light spill across piles of stacked sheets and pillowcases. There was a tumble of striped bolsters on one bed, a bundle of folded lace curtains on the other.

  ‘Voilà!’ said Eugène, wrenching at the bolt on a shutter and flinging it wide. ‘Le Pavilion. We used to play ping-pong here – there was a table – in wet weather. We can clear it up for you in the next week, if you would like it? I am sure my aunt can make a suitable financial arrangement. The shower – you see? – is here. In the corner. And there is a toilet. But no bidet.’ He was smiling to himself.

  Giles prodded the bed with the lace curtains. There was a rusty squeeze of springs.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ I said.

  Giles shot a swift look at me, looked away, thumped one of the bolsters.

  ‘So I’ll move in here on the twenty-seventh? We neither of us use the bolsters, so can you change them for pillows. What about mosquitoes?’

  Eugène shook his head, closed the shutter, we walked out, locked the door. The smell of damp and incipient mildew lingered. I put that down, charitably, to the laundered sheets. ‘No mosquitoes at this height, perhaps one or two in August. How long does Monsieur intend to stay with us? A question of your table.’

  ‘I don’t honestly know.’ As we pushed the door into the hotel lobby, paint flaked from the woodwork. ‘I think until I can get a telephone installed at Jericho.’

  Another look from Giles, this time eyebrows raised. I looked at him without expression. I was thinking hard. He looked away, but I’d seen the flick of a triumphant smile on his lips.

  Eugène, standing aside to let us pass through the chenille-curtained door into the little lobby, laughed. Not unkindly, just rather wearily. ‘It is cold in that Pavilion in winten! There is no radiator. But maybe you will come back into the house after September? When the regulars have gone back?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I realized that I had made a commitment with the telephone. Not just to Eugène and Giles, but to myself as well. The idea had just arrived: I had probably thought it all out subconsciously, but never knowingly. Perhaps it was Fate that had decided for me and forced the decision?

  So, Jericho? Well, why not? It was mine for the next three years, rent paid in advance already. I liked it, I was quite adjusted to living there, even though it had only been a matter of three or four weeks since I had known of its existence. I was divorcing my wife (or she was divorcing me rather) amicably, I had handed in my last book to my publisher and corrected the proofs. I could take a year out, relax, consider my life and where to go, and indeed how to go, and start off again. It had to be a renewal of life if one divorced and severed family ties. I’d rather start off again here at Jericho than lumbering about in Parsons Green on my own. Helen had already declared that she would be moving off with her lover, Eric Rhys-Evans, who had a ‘super house’ in Burnham Beeches. I could well imagine it. Indoor swimming-pool, guarded by a pair of snarling pottery leopards, tasselled Knole settee, a Jacuzzi somewhere, scarlet cardinals and jolly monks enjoying a drink all over the walls, and lots of buttoned silk bedheads and gold and glass coffee tables. Well, she liked that sort of kitsch. I liked Jericho.

  At the desk Madame Mazine looked up from whatever she was doing. Eugène threw the key to the Pavilion on to the ledger.

  ‘Thank you, Madame. We’ll move in there. If it is not inconvenient to you?’

  She shook her head, removed her spectacles, slid them into their case. ‘Pas du tout!’

  Eugène moved behind the desk, reached up and took our bedroom keys from their hooks and handed them over to me. ‘Monsieur Colcott says he will stay until he can get the telephone connected at Jericho, so I have told him it is very cold in the Pavilion in the winter!’ He was smiling, but his aunt was not.

  ‘Nonsense! Things are far easier now than they were. If you have the money, Monsieur Colcott, you will very shortly have a telephone. The poles are already along the road, I think? Pas de problème.’

  I took up the keys and pushed Giles in the direction of the bar. I was desperately in need of something to fortify me. To strengthen resolve. I knew that the instant we were on our own there would be a torrent of questions from Giles. There was a torrent of questions from me myself, come to that. But Giles merely said that it was a bit early to go to the bar. I
agreed but went on in.

  Claude was leaning against the till watching a cartoon on the television. There were two people sitting with beers at a table arguing quietly, and a sad looking truck driver, his cap at the back of his head, glass of rouge in one hand, the other thrust into his greasy overall pocket. He was staring at the yellowing map of the area pinned to the wall. It was almost quiet, apart from the turned-down volume of the television. A diffused, distant scream of brakes, clang of metal, thud of running feet, but quiet in comparison to the evenings when the men came up from the fields. I ordered a brandy and a glass of Coke for Giles.

  ‘I just feel I need a strengthener. Okay? I’m not turning into a drunk. I know it’s only half past five or something, but I want it. All right?’

  Giles nodded perfectly contentedly. As far as he was concerned he didn’t care if I did become a drunk. Everything in his short life had altered so much in the short time that he had joined me that he was quite ready for anything. And, anyway, he had his Coke. Suddenly he looked up, grinned. ‘You remember those giraffes? Arthur says there is a wildlife park there. You can just walk about and see them. Elephants too! Awesome.’

  ‘You quite like Arthur and Dottie now, don’t you?’

  ‘They’re all right. He’s a bit boring. Talks to me only in French.’

  ‘That’s why you’re there. I pay for that. French.’

  ‘I know. It’s still a bit boring though. He knows more words than I do.’

  ‘You’ll learn.’

  He swivelled round on his seat. The television had changed programmes. A young, half-naked woman caressed a tube of hair-spray.

  ‘Anyway, you’d better learn if we are going to stay on here.’

  He swung round again quickly. ‘Are we? Really? I mean, about the telephone, did you mean that?’

  ‘Yes. I meant that.’ I finished off my cognac, made a sign to Claude to check it to my room, got up. Giles finished his Coke too quickly and belched.

  ‘I hoped you did.’ He wiped his mouth and followed me into the hall.

  ‘I have to telephone your mother, tell her that the search for your uncle is over. She gave me her address at the airport, didn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. It’ll be in your wallet perhaps? Was Florence very sad, about her husband being dead?’

  We got into the lobby. Eugène came towards us with the menu in his hand. ‘If you are dining tonight? Ossibuchi? Or just tagliatelle and chicken livers? A salad?’

  ‘We’ll be dining. I’ll let you know what we’ll eat soon. I have to call Spain.’

  ‘Spain!’ Eugène made a wry face as if I had decided to call Afghanistan. ‘It’s always a problem with the Spanish. You have the number?’

  ‘In my room. I’ll call down, if you’d be good enough to try it for me.’

  He said he would, give him ten minutes, and Giles and I started up the stairs. I confess that I was suddenly rather weary. It had been a long day. And an emotional one. Trouble with having a young son at one’s heels was that he couldn’t be expected to understand just how emotional and disturbing it had been. One could just as easily address oneself to a pet dog, cat or parrot. Warm, kind, uncomprehending. Helen, if I got her, wouldn’t be much better. And not all that kind either. Not in her nature. Warmth she kept for particular occasions. This was not one of them.

  Giles went forlornly down the corridor to his room, jiggling his key, and I went into my old, almost familiar room, with its Napoleon bed, and walnut wardrobe and the view out over the vegetable garden and chicken run. I never cease to amaze myself at the amount of litter I manage to collect around myself. Even after only two or three weeks in the little room it looked as if I had been its inhabitant for a year. Papers, envelopes, the box-file with all the junk about brother James, newspapers, folded and discarded, a scatter of postcards as yet unwritten, and even though I eventually discovered the card which Helen had pushed into my hand at the airport in Nice, stuck among credit cards in my wallet, it gave me no pleasure. All it offered was an address in Valbonne where her ‘chum’, Eric Rhys-Evans, had a villa. There was no telephone number, and I was not certain that she would have yet finished the job she was ‘putting together’ in Marbella. Typically she had not, as she had promised, sent me the address of the television company there. Helen was extremely adroit at keeping distances distant.

  I sat on my lumpy bed. The afternoon sun had turned the high cliffs beyond the garden to a blush of apricot and pink. I’d got myself into a bit of a jam, if I let it feel a jam. Giles, Jericho, a telephone, and the horror of sharing with him in the mildewed Pavilion. However, if one allowed oneself to dwell on the hurdles ahead, one would never gain the strength to jump over them.

  I went to the window and leant on the sill looking down into the chicken run. Two windows along to my right Giles was leaning out of his window, apparently firing an imaginary rifle at something.

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Shooting mammoths.’

  ‘Really? Mammoths?’

  ‘Something like that. Up on those cliffs. I expect there were mammoths there trillions of years ago. Don’t you?’

  ‘I expect so. If you are as bored as you sound, come along to me. I’m going to change, then we’ll go down.’

  But he had already withdrawn his head and a couple of seconds later tapped at my door. ‘It’s a bit boring. My room. And I finished the book Arthur gave me to translate.’

  ‘Already! What was it?’

  ‘Babar the Elephant. Honestly! Kids’ stuff … it was dead easy.’

  ‘That’s encouraging. That’s what he probably expected. Tomorrow he’ll give you a chunk of Flaubert.’

  ‘To eat?’

  ‘No. To read, idiot.’

  ‘I never heard of it. Did you put the call in to Mum?’

  ‘She didn’t give me the number in Spain. Clever old her, and there’s no telephone number on the card she gave me.’

  ‘What’ll you do, then?’

  ‘Take a shower. Have you washed?’

  ‘I’m not dirty. Have you got a comb?’

  The water in the shower was tepid, but cleansing both physically and mentally, except that it ran down the billowing plastic curtain and dribbled on to the tiled floor of the bedroom. Giles called out that there was a flood, and I turned off taps, grabbed the towel, and stepped out. It was hardly a relaxing event, but I felt better. Lying in a hot bath, just thinking, sorting things out, soothing the anxieties would have been a good thing. Crouched under a shower-head green with verdigris and buffeted by a sagging plastic curtain did not inspire much clarity of thought. Should I, I wondered, start the Heavy Father act and insist that the child wash? Or ignore it? I decided to make just a token gesture.

  ‘Giles, I really think you ought to clean up a bit. You look a mess, and you’ve been banging about in the aviaries with Arthur – you’ll be covered in bird-shit and stuff. Go and wash while I dress.’

  ‘I did wash. Dottie made me; she always does. And I’ve only got one clean shirt left, so I’d better keep that, hadn’t I? For tomorrow? If you like I can wash my hands in your wash basin, can’t I? There’s no soap in mine, Mum forgot to pack soap in my hand-grip. I think … I don’t know …’

  And so it begins. Life as father. I dressed quickly and we went down to the charnel house which was his room. I searched about in his meagre luggage and found, as I expected to find, a cake of soap squashed in his damp facecloth. Helen could be sluttish, but she had never failed as a good, thoughtful mother.

  ‘I forgot it.’ Giles shrugged irritatedly, pulled off his shirt, sighed heavily, and washed while I leant out of his window and considered that even if I had exercised my paternal rights over my son’s cleanliness, it had cost me energy, time and probably his goodwill. The hell with it. Start as you mean to go on, they say. So I was starting.

  ‘If we do stay here, I mean if you don’t change your mind, Arthur said that one day, when I learned enough French to talk to it, he’d giv
e me a lovebird.’ He had pulled on his shirt, was buttoning up his collar. ‘You wouldn’t mind, would you?’

  I said that it depended on what sort of lovebird. If it made a row it would not be welcome. And who would look after it when he was at school, or wherever? This last remark caused a deep scowl; he brushed his fingers through his hair. ‘It’ll be a Rosy-Faced lovebird, probably. He said they were easy for a beginner and make “quite delightful” pets. You know how he talks. The lovebirds talk too.’

  ‘How very interesting.’

  ‘He said I should have a pair, really.’

  ‘If you’re ready, let’s go down to the bar. Come on.’

  Madame Mazine called out as we crossed the lobby. ‘I have been speaking to Maurice, the driver, about your car. The mayor is back from the clinic, but he’s not strong enough to drive yet … So … ?’ She left a question in the air for me to catch up.

  ‘So perhaps I continue to rent his Simca? Is that it? I’d be very grateful, until I can make other arrangements.’

  ‘Maurice is in the bar, he went to get some cigarettes. Perhaps you could have a word with him? Clotilde will start cleaning the Pavilion tomorrow.’

  ‘But I still have a week in my room. Until the twenty-sixth?’

  ‘Indeed. But it will be better for a little paint, and the paper is quite … poor.’

  What she meant was that the paper was peeling off in grubby strips like old bandage here and there and would be replaced. Which was good news.

  So I nodded, politely, and we went down to the bar, noisier now, with the volume up on the television and a group of truck drivers arguing good-naturedly about tyre pressures. Maurice was among them. He was affable, drew me aside to a corner by the pin-table. Monsieur le Maire was home but weak. He would be relieved if I wished to continue renting the Simca. He had it in mind, anyway, to change to another model when he was better. And was there a question of a telephone? Madame Mazine and Eugène suggested that there might be. Or had he misheard? You could never be certain with Eugène. He was always so busy rushing here and there …