‘Do you think your grandmother knew who shot your grandfather?’ she asked cautiously, one Sunday morning as they drank tea in bed.
‘No idea,’ he answered. ‘Josette was always pretty tight-lipped about him. I idolised him when I was a kid. Used to read every wartime adventure story I could lay my hands on, and I imagined him sending radio signals to secret agents or going off with the Maquis to blow up railway lines. Used to pester her for stories about him … must’ve driven her nuts.’
‘Except that Thierry reckons local resistance was fairly passive,’ explained Leonie. ‘Not much derring-do. If your grandfather was a résistant, it was probably more a matter of passing around a few clandestine leaflets.’
‘Makes sense,’ agreed Patrice.
‘But then why was he shot?’
‘Being shot doesn’t automatically make him a hero.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, in retrospect, I’m not sure how much of a hero he really was. I mean, he could even have been a collaborator himself, for all we know.’ Patrice made the suggestion with apparent nonchalance, pummelling his pillow to make himself more comfortable. ‘Not a résistant at all.’
‘That’s a bit of a jump!’
‘It crossed my mind recently, that’s all. Looking back and trying to make sense of why Josette seemed so unforgiving about his memory. The real hatred in her face that time she told me I was just like him.’ His mouth pinched tight and he spoke reluctantly. ‘She didn’t speak to me for a week afterwards.’
‘What?’
‘It was her way of punishing me. I had no one to play with, and she wouldn’t speak. I’d go for days without a word to anyone.’
‘My God!’
‘Her way of dealing with things.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Don’t remember. Eight or nine, maybe.’
‘That’s horrible. I mean, okay, I can imagine her shock at being left a widow, eight months pregnant, the whole world in chaos around her. But why take it out on a kid?’
‘Maman should never have given me his name.’ He shook his head with a wry look. ‘Having a scandal to keep quiet about would go a long way to explain my mother’s anxiety. Secrets perpetuate destructive miasms.’
‘But if he was shot for being a Nazi sympathiser, surely it could never have been kept under wraps in a place like this?’
‘You’d be surprised.’
‘But he’d have to have done something terrible to warrant being shot,’ argued Leonie. ‘I mean, most people just went along with the Occupation, didn’t they? I think very few probably dared voice open dissent, so most resistance was just quiet defiance. Didn’t make them collaborators. Silence doesn’t make people culpable.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ asked Patrice, looking at her strangely. ‘I hope that’s true.’
‘Besides, people round here would never have stood for Josette claiming he was a hero if he wasn’t!’
‘Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she just never contradicted Maman’s childish belief that he was. Anyway,’ Patrice sighed wearily, ‘what does it matter? It’s how it goes, isn’t it? Maybe he was simply murdered by some jilted lover of Josette’s. Or, in a provincial town like this, by the son of the man from whom my great-grandfather stole some land. Maybe it was the father of the girl to whom my great-great-grandfather sold a horse that threw and crippled her. It goes back and back. Generations of unforgiven deeds. Whatever it was, I inherit all the injuries that were done.’
Patrice looked so white and sick that Leonie placed her mug on the bedside cabinet and took his free hand between both of hers as if to draw off his sorrow. ‘All families hang onto past injuries,’ she argued. ‘Bad karma. We’re all the same.’
He gave her a twisted smile and nodded assent, then withdrew his hand, swung his feet to the floor and sat with his back to her, his head down.
Leonie felt a flare of alarm. ‘What else happened to you in this house, Patrice?’
He didn’t seem to hear at first; when he turned to look at her, he looked drained and exhausted. ‘Here?’ he asked. ‘I’ve told you. Nothing.’
‘Then with your parents, or at boarding school. What was done to you?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Was it when you were very little? Did something happen to you when you were Didier’s age?’
‘Didier?’
‘Gaby’s grandson.’
His eyes widened in alarm, and Leonie felt that same sense of fear she’d experienced at dinner.
‘Why ask about him?’ he said, his voice sharp with distress.
‘Because you were so upset. Please tell me what was wrong that night.’
Patrice said nothing, but she pressed on: ‘Why didn’t you come for your grandmother’s funeral?’
‘Who told you I didn’t?’ His face was filled with sudden anger.
‘No one,’ Leonie defended herself. ‘Just local talk.’
‘What did they say?’ he demanded.
‘That there was a disagreement over the will or something,’ she conceded.
‘Is that all?’ He asked fiercely, scanning her face.
‘Yes. Why?’
His expression relaxed, and he shook his head. ‘Josette’s will was perfectly straightforward.’
‘Then why? Why do you care what they said? What else did Josette do to you? Patrice, tell me.’
He shrugged. ‘Those remedies I gave you are dilutions,’ he began. ‘Pure distilled water that carries the memory of an original active substance. People are like that. We remain susceptible to predispositions we inherit at birth. I was never starved or beaten or locked in a cellar. No one set out to be cruel. Josette and my parents loved me in their way, but I inherited their susceptibilities. I repeat past damage.’ Patrice turned away again, sitting with his hands gripping the edge of the mattress, hunched against her.
Part of Leonie sensed his real distress and felt deep concern; another part recalled Thierry’s overheard comments: ‘All that self-dramatising he goes in for. Afraid he won’t shape up in the real world.’ She felt confused – disloyal, selfish and resentful that he should be able to hijack her emotions in this way. All she wanted was a tranquil Sunday morning in bed. But, she reminded herself, she had asked him what was wrong, had sought to understand. She couldn’t now reject him when he tried to explain himself, took the risk of revealing himself to her. Leonie shifted across the bed and pressed her lips against his bare shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, reaching over to pull her hand around to his mouth, kissed it and held on tight. ‘I warned you I’m not a good bet.’
‘I just wish I understood. Wish you could be happier with yourself.’
‘You must be fed up with me,’ he said sweetly. ‘But don’t leave me. I don’t think I can be alone with myself again.’
‘I won’t,’ she promised passionately. ‘Never, never.’
She half-expected that he would turn, roll over onto her, lose himself in making love to her. But he patted her hand, let go and stood up.
‘I thought I might dig over some of the vegetable patch today, if it stays dry.’ He smiled down at her, then reached for a robe and his old mules and disappeared downstairs.
When Patrice re-appeared from the garden, he was his usual self. They spent the rest of the day in the salon with a bright fire burning, reading newspapers and listening to music, closing the shutters early against the wintry gloom. If few of Leonie’s questions were answered, nonetheless it seemed that their strange conversation of the morning had brought them closer, and she treasured his avowal that he needed her. He didn’t refer again to the past and she decided not to probe further, at least for the time being. Besides, she had thoroughly disliked her own traitorous suspicion that he chose to make a big deal out of ordinary suffering. His isolated childhood can’t have been much fun, but really he’d just got into a habit of introspection through living here alone for so long.
Leonie decided that, instead of dwelling o
n old wounds, from now on they would look forward and have jolly times together. Hankering after being more normal – it was the only word for it – as a couple, and longing for them to knit themselves tighter into the social fabric of the town, she made a point of continuing to see her friends. On one of the few occasions when she prevailed upon Patrice to accompany her, she caught herself thinking that, sitting in a bar with other people, they were like two actors in a play, each striving to be what they imagined the other wanted them to be. She rapidly dismissed the idea, sure that such doubts stemmed only from her own stupid insecurity about not daring to believe that she deserved to be so happy.
At the end of November, Patrice asked if, instead of a party for his fortieth birthday, she would like the idea of going away together for the weekend.
‘Where?’ she asked, her pleasure at his romantic wish to celebrate his birthday with her alone dousing any disappointment she might have felt at relinquishing the chance to gather together Gaby, Thierry and other friends such as Audra and Martine for a bigger celebration.
‘Provence? Or the seaside? Let’s go to the Riviera!’
‘In December?’
‘Sure, why not?’
She laughed, and left it to him to make the arrangements.
Ten days later, they took the bus to the station in Bergerac, arriving in Bordeaux in time to catch the sleeper to Nice. Disembarking early, they lingered over coffee and croissants in a seafront café, glad to shelter behind the thick plate glass, then walked up to their small hotel above the harbour, carrying their weekend bags. Their room had a view of the sea, but was small and stuffy, and Patrice was jittery and nervous. But he soon explained that, although the trip was his suggestion, it was a long time since he had left the Dordogne, or made an occasion of any anniversary let alone a fortieth birthday – a daunting enough age for anyone.
Leonie readily forgave him. In truth, she had her own preoccupations. It was now nearly a month since Patrice had come to her apartment and they had made love without contraceptive precautions. Her period had not arrived, and lately he had remarked approvingly on how full her breasts were. If she was pregnant (and she was pretty certain she must be), then she would be overjoyed. It had felt far too public to go into either of the pharmacies in Riberac to buy a testing kit, or even to risk the transaction going unobserved at the Carrefour. Had this weekend not been arranged, she would have driven to Bergerac or Angoulème to make her purchase anonymously, but now she planned to grab an opportunity in Nice to buy one when Patrice wasn’t around to notice.
Before going out for dinner that night she lay in the hotel bath contemplating her flat belly: her desire, after so many years of feeling girlish and barren, to watch it swell and grow was accompanied by an inescapable foreboding about Patrice’s reaction. She reassured herself that she had not set out to trap him, had not intentionally allowed it to happen. She hadn’t expected him to come over that evening and had no reason, after his long silence, to assume they’d end up in bed. And when they had, she’d been so glad to have him back in her arms that she had genuinely forgotten the risk. Nor, she assumed, had he considered it, either. If she was pregnant then, she reassured herself, the responsibility was shared equally between them.
She ran in more hot water and began to soap herself. She must calm down, or she would blurt out the truth without thinking! Were she sure of his reaction, she would present the news as a birthday gift, but deep within her lay a terror that he would reject any idea of a baby. She couldn’t help recalling the harrowing arguments she’d had with Greg over her longing for a child, a longing which had led to their break-up. She would soon be thirty-five: she might not have many more chances. All she wanted was for Patrice to be content. He didn’t have to marry her or change anything about their relationship, just be accepting of her having his child. But she was unable to shake loose the memory of Gaby’s grandson clinging to Patrice’s thigh and the look of horror on his face, as if the child’s hands were dead things clutching at him from beneath dark waters.
Now she was becoming hysterical, she told herself, pulling the plug and stepping out of the bath. She towelled herself dry with a briskness designed to chase away ridiculous fears. The door opened and Patrice came in.
‘Oh,’ he said, looking past her. ‘I thought I’d share your bath.’
‘Too late,’ she laughed. ‘You’ll just have to enjoy having fresh water all to yourself.’
‘You could have two baths,’ he teased.
She smiled and shook her head, feeling too brittle to respond erotically. ‘I’ll turn into a prune,’ she protested. Seeing his shrug of disappointment, she regretted her mood, but, needing to clear her head, went out, closing the door on him.
As she dressed, Leonie marvelled that they had never before got ready to set off out like this for an occasion together. Patrice’s birthday was the following day; before they left home he’d told her that, although happy to splash out and have fun on the weekend, he didn’t want a fuss made of the day itself, didn’t enjoy being the centre of attention. Accordingly, Leonie had done some online research and booked a table for this evening at a seafood restaurant recommended for its bouillabaisse, a dish she knew he specially liked. Taking his arm as they exited the hotel lift, she gleamed at the reception staff and took pleasure in his holding the door open for her. He held her close as they walked down into the city centre.
While Patrice derived little satisfaction from the traditionally attired waiters, linen tablecloths and abundant glass and silverware, he was curious about the menu, and touched that Leonie had pre-ordered a bottle of champagne that the maître d’ opened and poured while they read it and discussed what they would order. She was relieved when Patrice failed to notice, after the waiter topped up their glasses, that she barely drank from hers. Their starters arrived and, as they ate, he told her stories about his first homeopathic patients and the embarrassing mistakes he’d made. Then he listened happily as she chattered about her old life in London, visits to her mother and step-family in Toronto, about the days when she and Stella had first met and become friends. The bouillabaisse was delicious, and after drinking the lion’s share of the champagne he began to speculate ridiculously about a stolid couple across the room who were assiduously tackling enormous lobsters while all the time jealously eyeing up every dish that passed them en route to other tables.
‘Don’t you envy greedy people?’ he laughed. ‘It must be wonderful to be so guiltless about self-indulgence.’
‘Like us!’ she said, as the waiter removed their dishes.
‘People who are always controlling themselves, always hyper-vigilant, can be so exhausting.’
‘You mean worrying all the time about how strangers might judge them?’
‘Not so much that. I suppose I was thinking of my parents. With them, it’s more their own unspoken prohibitions.’
Leonie held her breath: Patrice so seldom talked about Agnès and Geoffrey that she was avid to learn more. ‘Give me an example,’ she asked casually.
‘Oh, they had all sorts of rituals. An evening like this would’ve been a minefield.’
‘Is that why you don’t like dinner parties?’
He laughed. ‘Probably. My folks found it hard to relax. And they made each other worse. Maman on her own could sometimes let her hair down a bit, but Dad always had to stay in charge. He’d wind himself up so tight anticipating any tiny thing that might destabilise Maman, that she stood no chance of forgetting to be anxious.’ He caught Leonie looking at him, and smiled wryly. ‘Anxiety is highly contagious.’
She nodded. ‘Horrid. Affects everyone close to it, I imagine.’
In reply, he gave her the same strange look he had when they had discussed whether his grandfather was a collaborator, though she still couldn’t work out quite what it signified. ‘I’m talking too much,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can manage another morsel. Shall we just have coffee?’
They waited for it to be brought, and during the
sudden and disappointing silence that followed, Leonie was struck by a powerful sense of Patrice’s withdrawal. What she felt was not that he had disappeared into an intense and fully occupied inner space of his own in which, perhaps, he had returned to scenes of his youthful self in a European restaurant somewhere with his parents. She wasn’t sure how to put into words what she was picking up from him. It seemed like a dislocation from himself, a disengagement, an emptying out. It had the effect of making her anxious and fearful – the contagious emotion he had that very moment described. What right did he have to take himself away from her like that, close himself off and leave her there alone! Just when she wanted to be close, to be able to confide in him and trust him to support her. This absence made her want to walk out, go back to the hotel by herself – she’d take a taxi, if only to spite him! – then refuse to speak to him when he returned to their anonymous room. Or even, as she watched him glance from his coffee cup to the emptying tables around them, go straight to the station and run away altogether.
She forced herself to calm down but, however irrational it was to be so influenced by his simple choice to remain silent for a few moments at the end of a long day, she was not imagining the porous effect on her: she did feel as if she were perched dizzyingly on the edge of a potentially annihilating drop into the abyss.
The bill paid, they left the restaurant and Patrice sobered up in the icy wind blowing off the sea, shaking off his odd mood. Taking her arm, he looked down at her as they rounded a corner. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘We’re okay, aren’t we?’
Leonie nodded, forcing a smile, but, in truth, she felt unaccountably tired.
They came out onto the Promenade des Anglais and turned to walk along to their hotel. The freezing wind swept at them off the dark sea, tasting of salt, and Patrice laughed. ‘I love this biting cold, don’t you?’ When she didn’t reply, he asked again: ‘We’re all right, aren’t we?’
She pressed his arm close against her side. ‘Of course we are!’
They did not make love that night, for which Leonie held herself to account. In the morning, determined to throw off her pique, she delighted in Patrice’s pleasure at the birthday gifts she had chosen with such care. Audra had found them for her – proper Belle Epoque brass stair rods for the hallway, something Leonie knew he had been searching for, and an old Moroccan fruit bowl glazed in soft greens and browns. Unable to drag them on the train, she had photographed the rods laid out in a pattern around the bowl, then printed out the images to place inside his card. Eager to escape their slightly too cramped, slightly too hot hotel room, they went out, walked on the blustery beach, then spent hours chatting about nothing over the kind of brunch they never dreamt of eating at home, complete with a celebratory chocolate gâteau which they were unable to finish.
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