An Unexpected Guest

by Anne Korkeakivi

“Thank you, Reverend,” Edward said. “John Donne. Lovely.”

  “I wonder if children still read him in school,” Reverend Newsome said.

  “Sometimes I wonder if children read anything in school these days,” Lucy Newsome said. “I mean other than computer programs and about biogenetics and all these things that didn’t even exist in our day. Certainly, I could bear to sell a few more of my books.”

  The table laughed, a little. It was weak, but the others appreciated her effort.

  “The asparagus arrived early this season,” Clare said, to keep things going, having swallowed her first bite of the starter and before taking another. “Despite all the rain.”

  From his seat at the center of the table, Christian Picq began a discourse in French on the Alsatian village of Hoerdt and why the very best asparagus in the world grew there. His voice was sonorous, probably from giving lectures on sociology year after year in drafty Sorbonne halls; it carried to both ends of the table. “Donc, c’est grâce à la terre très sablonneuse—”

  “In Alsace,” Madame de Louriac interjected, also in French, “they would have this as their main course. They wouldn’t serve it as a starter.”

  Clare smiled at her guests and sipped from her water glass. Had she made a mistake in serving the asparagus this way? She let an asparagus tip melt into her mouth. It hovered there and evaporated. She looked around. Everyone was eating it. The problem wasn’t the asparagus. Madame de Louriac had expected to be entertained at the ambassador’s residence rather than the minister’s. It had been a shock not just to Clare to discover she’d be entertaining such a lofty gathering in the Residence. It had been a shock to the guests themselves. They felt it. Madame de Louriac wielded her knife in sharp little strokes; she lifted asparagus towards her mouth’s dark oval, creasing the bloodred lipstick she’d used to line it.

  “It’s perfect as a starter like this,” Sylvie Picq announced in a clipped tone, and in English. She clinked her fork on the edge of her plate and picked up her glass of white wine. “When they serve les asperges as a main meal in Alsace, they do it completely differently. With thick slabs of jambon blanc and a choice of three sauces. Frankly, it’s old-fashioned to eat it that way. People still do, but it’s an exercise in nostalgia. This is the new way to enjoy it.”

  “They are just superb,” the reverend said, wiping his lip with his napkin.

  “This is a wonderful time of year,” Dr. Newsome said.

  Clare pressed the table-leg button again, and the plates were cleared. The table fell into small pockets of conversation. New wine was poured and the fish was brought out, its lemony sauce streaking the lightly spiced new potatoes. It mingled with the pesto, a springtime pageant of yellow and green. Mathilde had again proved herself a genius. The dinner was going all right. Everything was going all right. She could see Edward down at the other end of the table, nodding at whatever Sylvie Picq, sitting at his right hand, was saying. Clare couldn’t make out the words. She turned to look at the P.U.S. on her own right hand.

  “Very impressive, the French police,” the permanent under-​secretary was saying. “They caught the culprit in a most expedient manner.”

  Here was the waiter again, stepping forward from the shadows to check on their glasses.

  “Convicting him is another story,” Lucy Newhouse said, her brown eyes sharp. “He hasn’t confessed, has he?”

  The conversation was ricocheting around her. Clare lifted her glass. “Pardon?”

  “There’s an eyewitness,” LeTouquet said. “It’s as good as done.”

  As good as done?

  “Do you mean the assassination? Do you mean the suspect?” she said.

  LeTouquet looked at her with surprise. “Haven’t you heard, Mrs. Moorhouse?”

  She dropped her hand back on the table. “But how?” she said. The police were not supposed to find him that quickly, not this evening, not until after Edward’s dinner—not, in fact, at all. The doctor was supposed to have come forward to bear witness, to stop the police from going after him.

  But maybe there really hadn’t been any doctor. Maybe that had all been one big story. Maybe the Turk had been sweating from nerves and not because he was ailing.

  “Is he all right?” she said.

  Eleven heads on swaying necks, peonies on thin stems, shining in the white and gold of the tableware, swiveling to look at her.

  “All right?” asked Lucy Newsome gently.

  “I mean, did the reports say anything? About his physical condition?”

  “The assassin?” asked LeTouquet.

  “This isn’t America,” Hope Childs said from the other end of the table, seated as she was down by Edward. “If that’s what you mean. They don’t practice waterboarding and the like in France.”

  Childs was a cofounder of an organization called Actors Against Torture. They had gobs of money and a direct conduit to any media outlet they wished, which made them powerful; Edward had explained it to Clare last evening. “What I don’t get,” he’d remarked, “is if they’re against torture, why don’t they set their attentions on some of those films that come out? Not only do they glorify violence in their own right, most of them are torture to sit through.” He’d smiled then, but he wasn’t smiling now. He was staring down the table at her.

  “Maybe not, but I doubt the French police will treat a Turk who’s murdered a French official to champagne and a feather pillow,” answered Lucy Newsome, doing her level best to make Clare’s comment seem less startling.

  She couldn’t explain what she’d meant, not without betraying what she’d kept hidden. She couldn’t think what to say. She stared back at Edward.

  “Our beloved British poet John Donne,” Edward said, cutting into his fish as though she hadn’t said anything, “eventually became a priest in the Church of England, didn’t he, Reverend? Have there been many poet clerics?”

  A pause hung over the table, and then, as though in mutual agreement to leave this uncomfortable moment behind them, all heads turned towards Newsome.

  “Oh, gobs,” Newsome said. “Here in France, Philip the Chancellor, Hugues Salel; in the U.K., Jonathan Swift, Robert Herrick; in Africa, Desmond Tutu…These are just a few examples. And if you expand the meaning of the word ‘cleric’ to include all religions, you have all the mystics like Sufi or Kabir…Remember, for a long time, members of religious orders were amongst the only people who were literate.”

  Clare was saved. Her slip would be forgotten, or at least digested and incorporated into something different. They would probably wonder if she wasn’t criticizing America, which wasn’t good, but it wasn’t quite as bad as suggesting the French would treat their prisoner anything but humanely, especially as there weren’t any Americans present. Or maybe they wouldn’t take it that way either. Even the permanent under-secretary would know she was uncontroversial, apolitical. They would take her strange question as one of those inexplicable Americanisms most likely—a sort of reality-TV response. In what state had they brought him in? Only Edward would know better. She pressed her knee against the table-leg button for the dishes to be cleared.

  Conversation picked up again, and wineglasses were raised as the salad course was brought out. Sick or not, doctor or not, the man she’d met on the street wasn’t an assassin. At the very least, he hadn’t been the only person involved, and hadn’t been the one to do the actual killing. She had seen him, she had seen the time. She wasn’t mistaken about that.

  “The Musée d’Art Moderne will be opened again soon,” Bautista LeTouquet commented.

  “How wonderful,” she said. “Have you had a chance to see it?”

  Breeze wafted into the room, and with it the odor of evening. In the gardens of the Rodin Museum, the marble limbs of the statues would be incandescent in the moonlight and cold to the touch, like the memory of a great passion that had faded. The daffodils would cast an eerie glow, the hyacinths be nothing more than dark shadows. The breeze stirred the table, lifting an edge of the
tablecloth and setting the flames of the candles dancing. Clare pressed her hidden button again. When the waiter appeared, she beckoned to him to lean in closer.

  “Fermez les fenetres dans le salon, s’il vous plaît,” she whispered in his ear.

  Cheddar cheese and brie were passed, then cleared away, and the dessert brought out.

  “C’est impossible,” the de Louriac fiancée said, probing the plate before her. Even she finished every last bit of cake, strawberry, and chocolate.

  And then there was just the coffee to get through and the cognac. Clare watched the orangey liquid swirl in their glasses.

  Dinner was over.

  Fifteen

  The last of the dinner guests were on their way out, and even with her slip, and although it wasn’t late, their early departure didn’t mean the evening hadn’t been a success. What counted was that the dinner had gone on despite the ambassador’s indisposition, thanks to her and Edward’s last-minute intervention, and his guests had left pleased and relatively satisfied. Certainly the food had been good. Everyone enjoyed a good dinner; they weren’t as common in diplomatic circles as people might think. Insipid roast beef, another stuffed chicken breast in white wine sauce—meals that Mathilde would never permit to exit the doors of her kitchen. Clare patted down a chair in the living room while Edward walked the reverend and his wife to the door. She moved the flowers back from the mantel to the side table. Everyone had been accepting, ultimately, of the ambassador’s sudden indisposition and their equally sudden subsequent intrusion. Clare and Edward hadn’t even been on the original guest list, but hierarchy wasn’t personal in the Foreign Service; the hosts of the dinner that they had had to back out of to hold this one wouldn’t be insulted either. There was something wonderfully pure about the way life within the diplomatic service dispelled any ambiguity as to the link between the personal and professional. People might criticize diplomats for their glibness, but perhaps the transparency of their motives might be considered more honest than the underhanded networking that went on in most professions.

  The front door shut, and Edward rejoined her in the quieted living room.

  “Well,” he said.

  “It went well.”

  “Yes. Even with this business about Jamie.”

  He sat down in the chair Clare had so recently plumped and folded his hands over his lap. She glanced towards the dining room. “I really should check the kitchen.”

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. Still, he tapped his fingers against his thigh. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Yes. I’ll just be a moment.” She slid away, passing through the dining room past the now-barren table, the chairs pushed in, the candles and chandeliers darkened, the silver place-card holders back in their spot in the sideboard, all that glimmer and polish retired into silence.

  Light streamed from under the closed kitchen door. She swung it open.

  Mathilde sat by the central table, dressed in her thick winter coat. Her oversized handbag stood on the wiped-clean table in front of her. She looked up as Clare came in, and grunted. “I’m still waiting.”

  When Mathilde worked dinners like this, one of the embassy drivers would take her home after. “No one’s come round yet?” she said. “I’ll call. I’m sorry.”

  Mathilde shrugged. “The asperges weren’t bad,” she said, gathering her coat in close to her. “Did the minister like the potato? I went light on the garlic. But can you get someone else in next time? That cousin of Amélie’s is a numpty. C’est un vrai idiot!”

  “What’s a ‘numpty’?“ Clare asked.

  “Un vrai idiot.”

  Clare shook her head. She was too tired to humor Mathilde. “She’s a nice girl. And she and Amélie work well together.” She looked around for the kitchen phone, but it wasn’t in its cradle. “Let me get my phone.”

  She left the kitchen to collect her purse from the console. She couldn’t hear any sound from the formal living room. Who knew how late Edward had had to stay up last night, prepping for today’s meetings? She heard no noise from the rest of the Residence either; perhaps Jamie was also sleeping. She returned to the kitchen. When she opened her purse to retrieve her phone, she caught a glimpse of the Turk’s map.

  She snapped her purse shut and pressed the number for the embassy drivers on her phone.

  Mathilde eyed her and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Moorhouse.”

  “Thank you. I apologize again for making you come in on your day off. Dinner was excellent.”

  “I’ll rest here a minute, whilst I wait.”

  “Of course. You must be tired. Please don’t worry about lunch tomorrow. And we’re set for tomorrow evening as well. Perhaps you can make a Bundt cake on Saturday.”

  Mathilde looked at her good and hard, as though she was memorizing Clare’s face. “Mrs. Moorhouse,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “I know there’s ones that say, What can a Scottish woman know about fine cuisine?”

  “No one says that, Mathilde.”

  Mathilde shrugged this off. “And, I know there’s others that say, What can a Swiss woman know about cooking?”

  Clare suppressed the desire to look at her watch. Time seemed to be crawling. The embassy driver had said ten minutes. “Mathilde, you are a wonderful cook. No one argues about that.”

  “My father met my mother in a hospital during the war. They started a little hotel together, right after, peaceful-like, in the countryside. I grew up in its kitchen.”

  “I’d guessed your childhood must have been something like that.” There was nothing to do but wait. It couldn’t be that much longer. And she’d waited this long—what was another few minutes? “You have such a natural sense for cooking; it’s not something one could learn in a class. Did you just hear the bell?”

  “I never took to school,” Mathilde continued, ignoring her question. “I didn’t get on with the other kids. They thought I was suspicious-like, see, because one of my parents was foreign. This was after the war. And I didn’t like sitting there on a wooden chair studying maths and geography from a torn old book either. I was doing my own maths back home, measuring out herbs, figuring out how much flour and how much sugar. And my own science. Making a cake rise—that was what I’d call science. I took first when I did get myself into a cooking course, but I only took the course so I could get a certificate. To get a place somewhere.”

  “Yes, I saw that on your résumé,” Clare said. “I’m sure you were ten times better than any of the others.” She wasn’t going to ask how Mathilde had figured out Edward was angling for a new posting, but she could see where this conversation must be headed. Not everyone would put up with Mathilde the way Clare had. But Clare would find someone else in Paris willing to endure Mathilde’s caprices in exchange for the splendor of her culinary skills; the French were at their most tolerant when procuring a good meal was involved. “And when it’s time for the minister and me to leave the Residence, I’ll make sure you’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

  The cook continued to watch her.

  “Mrs. Moorhouse?” she finally said.

  “Yes?”

  “If I might say something just between you and me?”

  When had Mathilde ever asked permission to say anything? “Yes, Mathilde?”

  “Just remember: What’s for you no go by you.”

  Clare had seen this old Scottish saying on a needlepoint pillowcase once, when she’d brought Peter up to school at Fettes. She’d asked the teacher who kept it in his sitting room what it meant. What’s meant for you will not pass you by, he’d told her.

  “Thank you, Mathilde,” she said.

  The lights were off in the living room. She walked down the hall to her and Edward’s bedroom. Standing at the foot of their bed, Edward was holding his BlackBerry in one large smooth hand, scrolling down through his messages. “No word from Jamie still,” he said. He laid his phone down on the bureau. “I’ve left I don’t know how many messages today. When did y
ou speak to him?”

  “This afternoon,” she said. “Hang on.” She stepped back out into the hall to check that Jamie’s door was still closed and there was no sign of light under his door. It seemed cruel to leave Edward worrying about Jamie, but she had enough things to handle without the midnight revelation that she had Jamie hidden here in the Residence.

  “Just wanted to check I’d turned the hall light out,” she said, returning. She took her suit jacket off and hung it over the back of a chair.

  Edward loosened his tie and lifted it over his head. He undid the knot and looped it in half, the dark violet silk slipping through his blunt fingers.

  “Clare,” he said, his eyes trained on her, “why did you go out to check the light was off and then come back in with it still on?”

  “I—it was just…I’m tired.”

  Edward removed his own suit jacket and hung it up. He unbuttoned his white shirt.

  “I forgot,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, unfastening the buckle on his belt.

  “Okay, then,” she said.

  “All right,” he said. He slipped the belt out of his pants’ belt straps. “Clare?”

  “Yes.”

  “At dinner. You made an unusual comment.”

  Her fingers fluttered up before her. How they beat at the air, grasping for something to hold on to. “I know. I’m sorry! I don’t know what came over me.”

  “You surprised me.”

  She shook her head. “I know, I know. I don’t usually make mistakes like that.” But I do make mistakes, she thought. If only you knew.

  Edward pulled his pants off and laid them over the shelf of his suit rack. He walked across the room to her, his bare legs long and white in his boxers, his chest under his unbuttoned shirt also white, softer than it used to be. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he said. “It’s only human. ‘To err is human,’ right? Alexander Pope?” He smiled. “A Pope, but not a cleric poet.”

  She didn’t smile back. She shook her head. “Not everyone does. You don’t.”