by Dirk Bogarde
‘Of pneumonia? In some private clinic? In Cannes?’
‘That is so. You may check, if you will, with the British Consul in Nice -’
‘I have not the slightest wish to do so. He is dead. And that is enough for me. But, Monsieur, do not try to cajole me into admiring Monsieur Aronovich. I know those people. I know his tribe. I detest them. They buy and sell and demand their pound of flesh. Remember your own Mr Shakespeare! He knew them … I know them, they are parasites.’ She got up abruptly, and walked with anguished little steps towards the potted palms and geraniums.
She was tugging angrily at some yellowing leaves when I said, quietly, ‘You tried to kill James, didn’t you. In your car. Tried to run him down. Just after Thomas was born? When it was certain that he was a Down’s Syndrome child. Correct?’
She stood absolutely still. One hand clutching a scatter of dead leaves, the other rigid at her side.
‘That is so, Madame, isn’t it? You saw James, and he saw you, that day. C’est ça?’
‘That’s so. I did. But I touched him. Struck him, and he fell. I hit the iron barrier outside that wretched little bar at Saint-Basile … drove away.’
‘Dented your mudguard. You should have had it repainted perhaps.’
‘One day I will.’ She dropped the dead geranium leaves into a pot on the tiled floor, wiped her hands. ‘We distress each other. Life is so strange. I was almost certain that I had got him. I hit his bicycle, from behind, so I felt certain he would not see me or the car. Helas! … How many people did he tell? Not Florence … ?’ She turned towards me with a white-knuckled clasp of her hands. ‘Who told you?
I had got to my feet by this time, and was standing by the Moroccan table. I picked up the waggling fish, flipped its jointed tail. ‘He telephoned the people up at the house where he spent so much time, the people he had known in Paris. He was unhurt -’
She cut me short swiftly. ‘An American writer called Millar? I know him. At L’Hermitage. Of course he would run to that dreadful man. Of course. Who told you?’
‘Solomon Aronovich. He just mentioned that it had happened. An accident at La Source. James, I think, rather waited for you to try again. But you didn’t, did you? Did you try again?’
She shook her head in a preoccupied way, looking at the tiles on the floor, her hair shaking under its fixing of brown ribbon. ‘No. I never did. But I wished him dead. I must confess that. I wished him dead for the wickedness he did to my child. Not because of Thomas, you understand – how does anyone know, absolutely, who is responsible for that fault in a child? It is all a question of chromosomes. But for his desertion, for the depravity of his life from then on, the cowardice, the terrible pain and grief he caused. I hated him for that, and …’ She walked slowly towards me across the tiles, her heels clacking slowly and quietly, and when she had got close to me she looked at me with steady grey eyes. ‘And I still do. I will always hate him for the lives he has ruined.’ And then she turned and went back to her chair, sat down heavily, put on her glasses, picked up her toothbrush and a piece of brass. ‘No. I never tried to run him down again. I was too shocked by the first attempt. I had never, in my long life, wished to kill another human being until then. I did not cherish the experience. But I could again if necessary …’
And then, as if we had never had the conversation at all, she said, in a high, light, conversational voice, ‘I understand from Dorothée Theobald that all goes well with your son and the French lessons? That must be very satisfactory? They are charming people, Arthur and Dorothée … not terribly clever at the bridge table — they seldom win — but charming guests and good in the garden. You have seen her garden, of course? She is passionate about it, but they do find the living expensive, on his pension. There is a modest inheritance, I believe, and that is why I suggested that they earn a few centimes by tutoring after all those years in a school, and their French is perfect. Accented, of course, but pure. So. Excellent. I am happy it has worked so well for everyone.’
She started brushing again, rather too energetically, head down, brush flying. I knew that the meeting was at an end, and moved to the curtain which covered the door to the hall.
‘All has worked very well, Madame. Thank you.’
At the door I turned. She did not look up but said, ‘I will give Florence your envelope. When she returns from Marseilles.’
‘Thank you.’ The church clock was striking eleven, as I began to open the door.
She clattered the bit of brass on to the table, placed the battered toothbrush beside it, half turned towards me.
‘You are English of course, Monsieur Colcott, but perhaps you are not a Catholic? It is possible?’
‘Quite possible. I am not. Not anything, frankly.’
She took up a little brass coffee cup, polished it absently on a sleeve, eyes fixed thoughtfully far across the humid room. ‘Nevertheless, I imagine that you believe in the sanctity of human life?’
‘No. Really not. And as I am too young to have experienced a war I can’t possibly make that an excuse.’
She raised the coffee cup in her hand, looked at it intently as if she had just discovered it. ‘No need to have an excuse. The belief is all. Or disbelief, do I mean?’ She placed the cup back on the table, folded her hands in her lap, still looking away from me. ‘I am a general’s daughter, a colonel’s widow, mother of a captain, all in the same regiment, all most brutally taken from me. A military woman, you might agree?’
‘I might agree indeed. And I do.’
‘I was born in Algeria, I am what we call a “pied noir”. We served in Indochine in ‘53, in Algeria again in ‘60, so I know enough of brutality and death, you see? It has always been about me. I cannot be expected to go through my final years encumbered with the absurdity of such a platitude. There is no such thing as the sanctity of human life in real life: that has been invented by bishops and theologians. I know. I have seen. Smelled it. I have cradled the brutally dead.’
The church clock had stopped clanging. All was suddenly still in the conservatory. I remained motionless, and then she broke the stillness with a little rasping laugh, briskly fixed a pin into the grey hair. Still looking away from me, unwilling apparently to meet my eyes, she said, ‘The meek, my dear Monsieur Colcott, do not inherit the earth. You will see. One day. I bid you goodbye.’
I still had my hand on the door-knob, pushed the door wider. She finished fixing her hair, sat perfectly still, straight-backed, head high, hands folded before her brass trinkets.
‘Good day, Madame. I shall remember what you have said, thank you.’
She slightly inclined her head, reached for the folded yellow duster, took up the brass-scaled fish again. ‘Thank you, Monsieur Colcott, for your discretion.’ She began polishing busily as I closed the door and went into the shadowy hall.
The stewardess slid a tray on to Giles’s little table, smiled indifferently at me when I refused mine, and moved on up the aisle. Giles sat looking at his tray of neatly arranged inedibles.
‘Aren’t you having yours? Don’t you want it?’
‘No. I’ll have a sandwich or something. In London.’
‘If you’d said yes, and didn’t really want it, I could have had a second helping. Couldn’t I? It was pretty mean. It’s free, isn’t it?’
‘Part of the price of your fare. Not free, mate. You’re flying Business Class.’
He was unwrapping his bunch of knives and forks. ‘Wow! Brilliant. And you’re having champagne. I thought there was a cork? Nigel Mansell and all the football people, they always have to get the cork out before they can spray it on people. There should be a cork.’
‘Well, there isn’t. And I’m not about to spray people, I’m drinking mine.’
He poked cautiously at something pink. ‘Well, it’s pretty small, your bottle. What’s this stuff?’
‘Smoked salmon.’
‘Will I like it?’
‘Haven’t an idea. Why not try it?’
A
couple of evenings after the meeting I had had with Madame Prideaux I was sweeping up a pile of ‘thinnings’ from the vine out on the terrace when the phone rang. It was still such a novelty in the house that I automatically froze wondering at the sound and then heard Giles yelling from somewhere upstairs.
‘Telly-phone! Quick!’
It was Helen, slightly irritated, on the line. ‘I had to call that damned hotel to get your number. I didn’t know you’d got a telephone!’
‘It’s new. I almost don’t know myself.’
‘Why didn’t you call me? Let me know?’
‘I haven’t got a number for you, if you are still in Valbonne. Remember?’
‘Of course I’m still in Valbonne. You could have written, anyway. It’s about the house. A letter from Andrews and Fry. They’ve had a decent offer. £300,000. I know it’s a bit of a drop, but the market’s depressed. Some American firm want it for an employee. What do you think? I said yes, but I’d have to speak to you first. It took ages to get you. That damn hotel can’t cope with English, so it’s too late to call London back.’
‘Do it tomorrow morning then. Say yes. I agree. Fine. Let’s clinch things. When do you intend to go to London?’
‘The day after tomorrow. I’m booked anyway. Eric has to be in New York on Thursday. So I said I’d go with him as far as London. When will you come?’
‘End of the week. Got to close this place up, get the tickets, so on. I’ll bring Giles, of course; will that give you time?’
‘For what? And of course Giles must come. I haven’t seen him for a month. And Annicka will come up with me from Mummy’s place. We can sort things out together. I mean you and I. So I say yes, all right? Get it all over. Just make a few lists, of things you want to keep, you know, and the stuff we’ll sell off.’
‘I will. We’ll stay at the house? Simla Road? To start with?’
‘You will. I’ll commute from Mummy’s, it’s no distance. I’ll get on to Mrs Nicholls, to get in bread, eggs, coffee, milk, all that stuff. All right?’
‘Fine. I’ll call you as soon as I’m leaving. Probably be Thursday if I can get a flight.’
‘Well, try. Don’t let’s have a weekend just hanging about. Huge love to Giles, see you.’ And she hung up.
And somehow, the way that things on occasion do happen, everything turned out perfectly smoothly. I got the bookings, alerted Clotilde, arranged with my publisher to be met at the airport, told the Theobalds and Madame Mazine at the hotel, and gave her my London number and address (just in case, by some mischance, Madame Prideaux omitted to give Florence my envelope), and finally, after tremendous effort, I got Giles to pack and repack his blue holdall, an enterprise which lasted him two days, chucking things out and putting things in. Eventually we were ready and left Jericho very early for the trip to Nice and the airport.
And then there was the pleasant early-Victorian house in Simla Road, the green iron gate, faded windowboxes, dusty lilac bushes. Opening the door, my own front door, just as I had always done for fourteen years, was suddenly intensely strange. After two months away, with so much happening to cram the weeks, it didn’t seem very much like a homecoming, rather an entrance into a new experience.
The house felt unused, even though Helen had only been away a couple of weeks and now had come effusively into the long hall and swept a slightly cautious Giles into her arms with a great deal of air-kissing and little cries of ‘You’re so HUGEl God! How you’ve grown—and brown! Aren’t you brown?’ to all of which Giles responded with twisted smiles and twisted feet.
Annie came bounding down the stairs crying, ‘Giles! How big you’ve got! And I’ve got a pony, did you know? Granny gave him to me. His name is Merlin. Hello, Daddy, kissy, kissy? Did you have a lovely holiday in France?’
All that sort of stuff. Family together again. I had forgotten how much I had got used to it and how much I had, frankly, tried to join in but had really failed at the same time. I never felt, truthfully, that I belonged in this rather emotional overtly artificial, family life business. I had been a lousy father, that I knew, and nothing had improved in the time I’d been absent. I had not, I knew, been missed by Helen or Annie, and really with fairly good reason. There wasn’t much to miss about me anyway. Oddly enough, now that I was back in the frame, among familiar yet forgotten things, like the wallpapers, the carpets, the curtain which had lost two hooks and always sagged when pulled, the Munnings prints, the bits of Helen’s hideous china, the view from the kitchen windows over the weedy, dismal, narrow London garden, the slate sky, the stale smell of closed rooms, in spite of all the things I remembered and could touch even, it all felt distant and faded. A perfectly familiar stage set, awaiting demolition. And I felt merely an observing stranger looking at someone else’s life and belongings, perfectly aware but apart, outside.
Somewhere at the very back of my head I heard Arthur’s voice saying that divorce and moving house were as devastating as death. Looking round my dusty, still, messy little office up in the attic, jammed with shelves, filing cabinets, books, papers, folders, boxes and jars of pens, rubber bands, paper-clips, gummy bottles of Tipp-Ex, and sundry envelopes, I realized that, however lugubrious the remark, he was deadly accurate. How was I to clear this terrible chaos? How to sort, stack and pack the books, manuscripts, diaries and dictionaries?
I had spent years of my life in this room with its curtain-less little window looking down over scabby gardens and the two wispy poplar trees. The greyness of it swamped me within an hour. How had I managed to live a life up here in the roof away from my children and my energetic, if irritating, wife? When I was not sealed up here reading and researching (when I was on the biographical leg of my work), I’d be abroad or anyway away from home, seeing for myself the backgrounds against which my subjects had led their lives, or talking, if I was fortunate enough to trace them, to witnesses to the events themselves. At the time I know that I found it perfectly acceptable, enjoyed it even. I had never been cut out, frankly, to be a father, let alone a devoted husband.
In the past, in my youthful prime, in between great epic feats of isolation and total immersion in my work, I got sudden violent bursts of hysteria – I suppose you could call it that – and was as desperate as a diabetic for his insulin ‘fix’ – in my case, female company. A wife was not what I desired, I was restless for ‘assorted flavours’. It would seem to me that I stored up my libidinous urges until the cork exploded from the bottle, and then I just fizzed about in a glory of lust and physical pleasure which I had no intention of continuing once the body had been satiated. I did not want a ‘relationship’ as it was called, is still called. I dreaded possession of any kind; so my casual and satisfying encounters were only ever that, and understood by my partners to be just that at all times, until the advent of one Helen Wiltshire, spinster of Chalfont St Giles. She had happened to be just a little too satisfactory, a little too adventurous sexually. Physically she proved to be a disaster area for me. And, at a late stage in my life, I was getting older if not wiser, feeling that perhaps I should settle down. (Why, for God’s sake?) We were married. And here I now was, standing in the middle of the room drained of emotion, anxious to quit, wondering how to start packing up a not altogether happy existence on which I could not look back with the slightest degree of pride or satisfaction in myself. Apart, that is, from Giles. He had been worth it.
And then there he was standing at the door, an empty hamster cage in his arms. ‘I suppose I couldn’t keep this now he’s dead? But it seems a pity to throw it away.’ He came into the room. ‘Gosh! What a mess you’ve got to pack.’
‘Worse than your hamster cage. Leave it for the men tomorrow. They’ll deal with it. I’ve got to cope up here. You all right? Had some tea or something?’
‘Yup. We’ve got to go down to Granny at Chalfont.’
‘I know. Good idea really. Saves making beds and things. It’ll only be for a day or two. You haven’t seen Granny for yonks, have you? And you like her.�
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‘Quite. She likes Annie best. I have to call her Annicka now! Mum said so, and she said so. She’s silly. I don’t suppose that Eric will be at Granny’s will he? He couldn’t be. Could he?’
‘No. He’s gone to America for a week.’
‘Mum was very nice to me. She was a bit worried that I really did want to be a, well, she said it … a “little Frenchman”. She said I didn’t have to if I didn’t want to, she’d seen a lovely school, and I could have my own room and bathroom at their new house. And there were lovely woods and places …’
I was chucking used felt pens into a bin. ‘What did you say to that. Tempting?’
‘I said I’d rather like to be a little Frenchman. I was getting used to it. But she did look sad. I felt … well …’ And he sighed. ‘Anyway. She said it was up to me, and then Annie said to come and smell her.’
‘Smell her!’
‘Yes. It was some awful scent from Los Angeles and she had been allowed to wear it to welcome us back. Really yucky … He gave it to her. Eric did. I won’t have to stay there, will I? You will remember what you said?’
‘Giles. I’m going to be very, very busy. You are not going to be kidnapped, you’ll be at Granny’s for a couple of days or so, Mum will bring you up when we are clearer here and you can look out the things you want to take to France, and then we’ll go off. Now you go off. Be very nice to Mummy, she’s not going to find it easy to let you go away with me, so be sensible. Don’t overdo things, just be polite, affectionate, and give Granny my love. Now piss off. Right?’