To Michel, it was almost a relief. Now he would be honest and open with her. He wanted to maintain good family relations, but he still felt compelled to pursue his objectives to the absolute limit. There was no going back. He explained his plans to Charlotte. He would make financial provision for her if she would agree to him freely pursuing his ‘leisure’ interests. He suggested that she should become involved and together they would live life in a happy, more open partnership. He explained that his temperament demanded a change which they both had to face.
Charlotte felt the drama overwhelming her and she almost shouted at him, “My tolerance has a limit and you have reached it with your sordidness and despicable self-deception. As for your temperament,” she spat the words in his face, “it’s got nothing to do with temperament. Your problem is pride and your inability to accept that you are who you are now, and that is not the person you were.” To Michel’s dismay, Charlotte would have none of his new proposition.
“I am your wife, remember, and you are deigning to offer me a position as one of your concubines. Is that it? You are one bag of slime. Get out!”
After a few days of fuming, Michel left the conjugal apartment and found alternative accommodation. They agreed to live separately, though they remained partners in the business and parents of three daughters.
How could she fight him? Some women among her friends were prepared to take their unfaithful husbands as they were, even accepting that they were having casual affairs within their circle of friends, but although Charlotte still loved Michel, he had humiliated her repeatedly and intended to go on doing so with her permission. Well, she wasn’t going to be such a pushover. For the time being, there wasn’t much she could do about his new girlfriend Sonia, except hope they would rot together.
She felt as though the immediate instrument of torture, the uncertainty, had been removed and she withdrew into a depressive solitude.
Chapter Twenty-Two
My Way
It was nearly two years later, in 2002, before Thérèse and George Milton next met Michel Bodin at a hotel in Evreux, to the west of Paris. They were heading for a channel port on their way home after staying at their second home. Michel rode out alone from Paris to meet them on his new motorcycle and they had lunch together. His appearance had changed to that of a middle-aged rocker with shaved head and stubbly beard, expensive leather trousers, a macho jacket with metal accoutrements, and his attitude had hardened. Gone was any attempt to conceal or justify his behaviour. Instead he challenged head-on anybody who dared to comment on his lifestyle. This time he pre-empted questions by opening up with his views. He reiterated that for him, the human race was made up of wolves and sheep. He was determined to be a wolf.
“I don’t pretend to live by anybody else’s moral code. Morality is an invention of those who don’t dare to get what they want. Who else does it benefit?”
He maintained that he was acting responsibly towards his wife, who by this time looked as though she was in mourning. A couple of years earlier, with her long, straight black hair and pale complexion, she resembled the American singer Cher. But by this time, she had aged and looked more like a bad imitation of Morticia from The Addams Family. Her conversation was almost exclusively about her health and the treatment she was having for her various ailments.
Michel repeated his assertion that he was looking after Charlotte and he was ensuring that she wanted for nothing. She was a beautiful woman and she would soon find someone else. “If you really love someone, you must be prepared to give her freedom.”
George nearly choked on his lunch on hearing this, but decided not to inflame the situation by responding to Michel’s moralising. By contrast, Thérèse was not going to accept Michel’s postulations without giving honest feedback. She described to Michel how his changing behaviour over several years before the separation had not escaped the concern of the family, and she related how they had all suffered from loss and the stress of having to manage the new set up diplomatically and without showing disloyalty to Charlotte or Michel. She put it to him that his explanations were still only revealing part of the truth. She asked for no clarification, but advised him that he was playing a dangerous game on several fronts. “I sometimes wonder, Michel, if your world is populated by other people, or whether you feel like an isolated entity.”
“What do you expect, Thérèse?” Michel riposted. “I don’t feel isolated because I have a very good understanding with Sonia. You and the family expect me to act what you call ‘normally’. Normal is a poison. Nothing in life is certain and you have to take initiatives to make things happen. I have decided to obey my own sentiments and follow my passions, so to that extent I am alone and I accept that some pain is necessary to achieve that, but I have lots of friends who share my views and they accept me as I am.” Thérèse was going to ask whether the pain was to be endured solely by Michel, or whether he expected the whole family, and especially Charlotte, to share the burden, but she decided to keep her thoughts to herself.
On his way home, Michel reflected on this conversation. He had intended to clear the air with Therese and normalise relations, but he accepted that he had probably made a mess of that. So instead of elation, his head was full of gloom and anguish. During the early part of his journey he was tense and nervous, allowing his speed to build to over a hundred miles an hour on the A13 motorway before getting into a more controlled mode. He was confused. He had thought that just as people get used to modern art, so they would get used to the fact that social norms were evolving and they should accept that he had joined that evolution. He had accepted it as part of his moral code; he would look after Charlotte, especially as she was still a feature of his plans, but things had started to go wrong and they kept going wrong since the moment she had confirmed the existence and name of his mistress.
It was Charlotte’s fault that things were not working out the way he had intended. He ought to wring her neck. He pondered upon two options: have her murdered, or find her another partner so she would move into a different orbit. He laughed out loud at the realisation that the thought of having his wife killed had entered his mind. Then he thought about the possibility in more detail. He knew some people who might recommend an operator for a sensitive job like that. But what if it was botched and could be traced back to him?
There were several reported cases where husbands had hired killers to dispose of their wives and the killers had talked. If it led back to him, that would put the lid on all his visions of the future. He recalled the attempt to abduct Charlotte in the underground car park. That was almost certainly organised by Schmitt. Huh! he thought; if a woman with a pepper spray could see off two hired kidnappers, it would be potentially too dangerous to attempt to dispose of her cleanly. He would keep that idea in abeyance.
“I am a bastard,” he whispered under his breath. His thoughts moved on.
Curiously, it was only after his conversation with Thérèse that Michel understood the depth of disapproval in the family and the full effect of his actions on Charlotte. Until now, he had been able to convince himself that the world was made up of people like his friends, who felt they could act as they pleased without hurting anybody, or didn’t care much if they did. His mind went back to when he had announced to his mother that he had separated from Charlotte and wasn’t planning to go back to her. Huguette initially tried to dissuade him. She had fond feelings for her daughter-in-law and insisted that she would always try to encourage them to stay together.
“Why can’t you live together now, you have always seemed so happy?” asked Huguette.
“I just don’t love her anymore,” was Michel’s reply. At that point, Huguette decided not to argue. She accepted that there was nothing more she could say to turn the course of events, so the conversation paused before moving onto something more banal and the break up was never mentioned again. As there was no form of reproach from his mother, Michel had anticipated that the rest of the family would follow the same line
, but he had underestimated his aunt.
Thérèse had made it quite clear that she considered that most of Michel’s friends represented a nadir of self-ishness and self-indulgence, and if he wished to continue deluding himself, that was his affair. She told him that she still found it curious that Michel should expect that he could be infinitely variable in his behaviour while those closest to him and who revolved around him should be absolutely stable and predictable.
Thérèse had asked, “Is there a stable central kernel in you that you would call ‘yourself’, Michel, or is everything about you re-configurable according to your latest passion and your friends’ latest indulgences?”
Michel hesitated. “No, I would have to invent a single description of myself. I am what people see and that can be anything.”
“Does that mean you can do or think anything without consulting your conscience?”
“I don’t know about conscience, but there are situations where I think ‘this isn’t me’ and I try to head in a different direction. I tell the truth, but not all of it because I don’t have the words to describe it. I am not good at introspection. That’s why I have difficulty expressing myself to you, Thérèse. I understand your questions and I know what you are looking for, but I can’t reply. I come out of conversations with you thinking more deeply about myself and as a result I am more able to cope with my life, but not in a conventional way. I can more easily extract myself from the herd and run free from the rails that convention wants to put us on.”
“Do you have any durable ideals or moral standards?” The tone of the discussion tensed.
“My family and protecting them.”
Michel looked up and smiled ruefully, lowering the corners of his mouth in a characteristic gesture of resignation. He raked his front teeth unconsciously with the top edge of his thumb and said nothing more.
Michel’s father, who was an absolutely dedicated monogamist, had been knocked back when, during a walk along a river bank on the outskirts of Paris, Michel announced the separation.
“I personally think you are killing the best thing that happened to you, but it’s your life. I’ve had temptations too.” He reflected for a while. “But I always put my relationship with your mother first.” The pair hardly spoke for the rest of their walk. François asked no questions, and Michel felt no obligation to elaborate.
As he continued to reminisce about these conversations on his way home, Michel came to his senses with a jolt when a lorry buffeted past him. Unconsciously he had let his speed drop to thirty miles an hour on the motorway. He cleared his head, accelerated again and was home in less than an hour.
Thérèse and George had listened calmly to Michel’s brand of logic, but later summarised their feelings by agreeing that although they disapproved of his conduct, they felt a family loyalty to him, whatever he had done. However, they would always retain their affection for Charlotte and hoped to maintain contact with her, though for the past year she had retreated into a shell and was quite uncommunicative. Charlotte later said she was too embarrassed to talk. She was psychologically crushed by the unavoidable fact of her husband’s infidelity and the choice he had offered her – participate or be side-lined. Her underlying difficulty in reaching a firm and rational clean-break decision was that she was irremediably in love with Michel and they still worked in the same office, with everyday contact to keep the kettle boiling. But a limit had been reached. She was not prepared to make herself a public laughing stock such as happened when Michel tried to hire one of his girlfriends as a secretary. The woman gave herself all sorts of airs but was useless, and Charlotte fired her within a week without knowing how she got the job in the first place.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Trouble With Office Machines
An episode that enlightened Charlotte as to where she currently stood in Michel’s affections began late one summer afternoon after the staff had left, and Michel Bodin was alone in the office reading a business proposal that he was about to present to a client later the same evening. A young, smartly-dressed woman knocked on the glass street door, peered in and smiled as if she knew Michel. He got up and opened the door with growing enthusiasm. His elegant visitor explained that she was looking for a job as a personal assistant and had been referred to him by one of Michel’s clients. Michel invited her in and after some preliminary discussion they sat down on either side of his narrow, unencumbered desk, which was actually a trestle table, in a minimalist style that Michel currently favoured. The visitor’s chair was low and Michel noticed that as the woman folded her legs to one side, keeping her knees modestly together, her short skirt rose revealingly up her thighs. Michel explained that his PA had left a week ago on maternity leave and although he had hoped to avoid replacing her immediately, there could be a vacancy sometime. The woman confirmed that was what her contact had indicated. She reached into her brief case and brought out a file. “Would you like to see my CV then?” she asked.
Before handing over the documents, she tucked an additional sheet of paper between the appendices, allowing Michel to see only that it wasn’t printed with text like the others. It was more like an image.
“This will give you an idea of what I have to offer,” she said, handing over the file with a flourish and a demure smile.
Michel read the documents thoughtfully, sipping the cold coffee he had poured earlier. The CV contained pretty standard stuff and when he reached the appendices he found Certificates of Competence in typing, shorthand and general office administration. Then he came to the loose leaf. He was puzzled at first. It was a dark photocopy which, as he studied it, revealed an image of a woman’s genitals pressed against the glass of a photocopier.
He continued examining the documents, gathered his composure to counter an increase in breathing rate and then looked up, smiling as though he had discovered the winning ingredient. “You really want this job, don’t you?” The woman was also breathing deeply, tensioning the buttons on her red blouse.
He savoured the situation and leaned forward decisively. “OK, you can start next Monday as my PA.” Michel rose slowly to his feet intending to shake her hand, but she jumped up with a shriek, waving her hands and hugged him tightly.
“Shall we celebrate?”
Michel had been contemplating future pleasures, but considered this to be an invitation to immediate delectation. He went to the refrigerator and removed the stopper from a bottle of champagne that had already been opened, and filled two polystyrene coffee cups. Then he led the woman, whose name was Caroline, to the machine room, closed the door and turned the key.
“Shall we take a celebratory photocopy to go with the one you brought?” he suggested. She smiled in response, opened the cover of the large photocopier, by the wall, placed a chair against it, stepped up, wriggled her skirt around her waist, and hopped onto the machine facing Michel with her legs apart. Michel left her there for a moment, observing her while he removed his clothes, adding to her arousal. When he was ready, she pulled her panties to one side and leaned back. He carefully removed the chair and pulled her hips towards him as he pressed against her. Leaning forward, Michel reached the start button on the copier and was satisfied to see the green glow of the scanning light reflected on the upright cover and the wall behind Caroline as it passed under them.
The copier designers had not taken account of the forces that could be exerted on a machine’s casing during such exertions and, before the mating pair reached their climax, there was a brittle cracking, splitting sound followed by a crash, and the raised plastic cover, together with the whole back section of the machine, fell to the floor. Keeping his focus on the matter in hand, Michel picked up the unresisting Caroline and transferred her to a large planning table where they consummated their employment contract without further interruption.
Before they left, Michel stuck a note on the photocopier asking someone to call in the maintenance company to repair the damage. He had tried to move the machine and inadvert
ently crunched it against the wall. As they left the office, neither looked back at the output tray of the photocopier.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Dream
2002
‘I have heard and understood your call: that the Republic should live, that the nation should reunite, that politics should change.’
President Jacques Chirac, Paris 2002
Charlotte was neither prepared to ignore nor be drawn into Michel’s orgies. Somewhere in the back of her mind she truly thought she could win him back, but Thérèse was less emotionally locked in, so she recognised that Charlotte’s desperate hopes were completely unrealistic now and she persuaded her to come to Ireland for a long weekend of relaxation and private conversation. Thérèse was convinced that listening was an act of love that Charlotte needed right now. Somewhat surprisingly, Charlotte accepted the invitation.
George found her easy to recognise at the airport, partly because from a distance her appearance and dress had not changed much over the years. Charlotte had always dressed young. But styles that were fashionable and provocative when worn in her thirties now looked anachronistic. As she approached George, the black tights, high heeled boots, and narrow ultra-mini skirt led one to expect a twenty-year-old, yet here was a woman in her fifties. When she came close to George, he noticed that her previously smooth, slightly olive complexion was grey and deeply lined with a look of mortification. Her unchanged heavy eye make-up and trademark brown lipstick with reddish outline increased the perception of aging. Thérèse had previously gently teased her on her unchanging choice of clothes and makeup, to which she replied, that was how Michel liked her to be.
A Clean Pair of Hands Page 14