The Janeites

by Nicolas Freeling

  “Very good,” said Paul. “Like all good jokes, true at the core, compare these lawyers of yours, especially the Pious lawyers, who go to Mass daily.

  “I’m going to give you a telling-off, because you’re a good doctor even when you behave like an imbecile, puffed up as you are with vanity and floundering about like a – but that’s what we all are, pas vrai? – dolphins, and we get caught and strangled in those abominable nets. Thrashing about, trying hard, knowing ourselves doomed. I don’t know your Jane. English humour saves us pretty often. Did it work, d’you think, with your man?”

  “To some extent. Who can say more? Early days as yet. We had a friend in common, old French politician we greatly liked, corrupt old man, very clever, immensely amusing. Strong on literature and that gave me the idea. Here we have a disciplined man, highly trained, magnificent physique, remarkable qualities, and just as in 1917 – what a waste! In my story the only survivor is a big strong chap who’s been shell-shocked into half-witted numbness and the only reality he can catch hold of is Jane, the little old woman who’d written a few books a hundred years before. Extraordinary books – she discards everything bar the moral essentials which now appear trivial. The group builds them into a standing joke, not altogether cynical because they all know they’ll be killed. Only this is worth holding to.”

  Paul is a good, quiet listener.

  “Who is it that has let everyone down? – it’s myself. I fell in love with this man’s wife. And she with me, I’m afraid. But she has gathered the courage and the honour to cut me off. And this has left me in despair.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Back to her man; where else would she go?” crossly. “This trap has sharp teeth. Lord, Thou hast made this world but the shadow of a dream.” Paul took the ash off his cigar.

  “This self-loathing that has overcome you is an unattractive trait. To indulge in anguish and contempt for yourself is consequent upon your contempt of the world, and that’s indefensible, as you well know. That the world frightens, appals or revolts is common form. Since the Lord you’re making free with gave himself trouble and suffering to redeem it, we must not have the insolence to despise it; that’s bad theology. As a doctor you are called upon to combat pain and misery: you swore, I believe, an oath to that effect. To hate the world is to increase misery; that shows you bad at your job.

  “Your private life is no concern of mine – help yourself to some whisky my dear, forgive my negligence – but I can’t have you doing your job badly; that’s pride as well as vanity. Your pettifogging adulteries are of no interest at all but they make you suffer. You shot the albatross and now you have it round your neck. It was a living thing of great beauty and now it’s a horrible carcass stinking of bad fish. Your job is to heal wounds, not to make more. From what you tell me your young woman has defied the world and nobly. You may be called upon to do something more, I cannot know, before the albatross is finished with.

  “Mustn’t feel contempt. Don’t belittle your skills. Even if it’s only prolonging a life, making an existence tolerable, restoring hope, increasing comfort. And then of course the man you heal goes out and steals from the poor, but that’s no concern of yours.”

  “Fuck you, Paul.”

  “Have some more whisky.”

  Monsieur Philippe wasn’t happy at all. Gone to a lot of trouble for a good satisfying vengeance, and it fizzles, and now where are you? Even the local paper had been discouragingly meagre. Where he had counted on a gaudy headline, much rhetorical flourish, excitable speculation, outrage; a dry little five-line account headed ‘Explosives Attempt’ and having the mayor shout about ‘cowardly, stupid and irresponsible’ – he said exactly the same about boys throwing stones: a poor show. ‘Considerable damage to the building exterior’ is meaningless. Corsicans busting a rural tax-office get a much better outcry. (He hadn’t realized that the local mayor was Geoffrey de Saint-Anne, who had ‘had a word’ with the editor.) No better than a tickle.

  As is the way with a tickle one has to scratch it in the end. Monsieur Philippe was not able to resist going to see for himself. Prudently holding to the top of the slope and peeking across; an overcast night, too, but there wasn’t much to see. That fancy stairway to the balcony was gone; some sagging masonry supported by builders’ jacks and the windows boarded up; garage door demolished – yes and no Porsche inside neither; had that gone? A result, but he’d hoped for much better. Bitched, really. Most of the blast had gone outward and been wasted.

  It had been Geoffrey’s suggestion to have a dog ‘in case of prowlers’. William is not dog-minded: ‘They bark for nothing at all.’ Nor is Joséphine doggy: vague memory of Sherlock Holmes. ‘They do nothing in the night-time as is well known.’ However, Geoffrey produced the dog. Sleeping at the back (dog in the kitchen). William noticed nothing until she poked him.

  “It’s growling.” So it was; and walking about; and bristling. One couldn’t see much, out of those front windows. No movement, or if there was it was gone now. He got a torch and had a tour: nothing. Dog had quietened now anyway.

  Still, in the morning when he let the dog out he went out with it. Ingrained habit of observation. Well maybe, or maybe not, but security types have the verification habit too, so he went back for a camera and a measuring tape. Didn’t amount to much but there had been enough of a shower yesterday to tell fresh from old. And the dog had growled in the night-time. It would do no harm to verify a bit further. Most of cop-instinct is experience.

  “Ho,” said Xavier. “You again. Retired, but now a rent-a-cop.” Scrabbling among his papers. “We’ve had a gendarmerie report… ‘Affair of stolen gas-tank’ – I love that. ‘The village supply is held in the shed. Large impressive padlock but easily opened.’ Mm, interrogation. Long confused tale about a half-empty one.”

  “There’s a big hire-deposit charge on those cylinders.”

  “Right; that’s how the shopkeeper noticed. Fella took it by mistake?”

  “Would account for the damage being minor, maybe.”

  Reading from his page – “‘The inbreaker knew his way about the village but it is suggested, no longer lives there’ – Their conclusion.”

  “Village people know a full cylinder by the weight. Townspeople might not – My conclusion.”

  “Now just supposing this geezer you fancy… we’ll have a go at these photos, might well tell us the type of car.”

  “Turning out to be the widest-sold Renault on the market.”

  “Nor is it evidence one could bring in to court: photos could have been made at any time.”

  “I’m dubious about this theory anyhow. He wouldn’t know about the village, wouldn’t know where to look. He’d know how to open a lock but I don’t see him up there at all.”

  “He may have an accomplice. Like who bashed your friend Doctor Valdez. We never saw the jeweller for that. But supposing we postulate someone familiar with that village and who got that gas-tank for him?”

  “And knew it was half empty?”

  “And thought maybe, fella won’t know the difference.”

  Monsieur Philippe was also fishing. One has to persevere. A dud at one end of the pool; try the other. There was something to be made of these people. They were behaving in a funny way. Here in the town one didn’t see the woman around: certainty she was no longer living with the doctor, and he too had changed his habits. New car – rather sharp: nice little BMW. Didn’t go with the life style. And yes, seems to be planning a move; pricy building in the Musicians’ Quarter. What was going on? Hadn’t changed jobs; still that old bicycle to go to the research place.

  Mr Cleverdick Barton – even knowing his name still thought of as Le Parisien, and a slyboots – was an enigma. One couldn’t follow him about: nothing absent-minded about that one. A cop undoubtedly; evident since that unpleasantly jarring encounter. Never seemed to go to work; had been ill judging by the doctor’s visits, but now? The village gossip was that the Sainte-Anne woman had been marr
ied to him and ho, had gone back to live with him afresh, by all accounts. What now was the story with the doctor?

  The explosion had been a flash in the pan. He’d seen as much: windows broken, a few shutters torn off, builders busy with those steps. Chewed the place up a bit, but not good enough. The tormenting taste of salt in the mouth was still there and would stay, until he got this account levelled.

  How to get at the slippery bastard? Monsieur Philippe has lost faith in direct action. He preferred to arrange for people to trip themselves up. How about a letter? A technique he has used in business; you plant a few suggestions, which work in the mind. And the fellow might well do something silly. ‘Do you think of that doctor as a friend of yours? Or your wife? They are still screwing on the sly. You ought to wake up.’ On those lines. Three or four of those, the cat’s in with the pigeons. Complaisant husbands are not infrequent but if the fellow gets the idea he’s being made a fool of… One wants the bastard to squirm.

  I’ve brought this on myself, thought William. A ‘corbeau’. Poison-pen letters in France come from a crow; a cunning bird. Sharp-eyed and slippery; easy to think of it busy writing this sort of stuff. It was of course the same man. He had ridiculed, humiliated that man in his own place. He knew he’d made a bad mistake, overplaying. He’d been angered, and had surrendered to anger. That man had been behind a sneaking attack on my friend, who had been badly hurt. The mechanisms by which this came about weren’t of great interest; in the past he’d known other nasty stories with the same kind of motive: the simpleton Janine was at the bottom of it, playing the call-girl. Think herself lucky if punishment hadn’t come her way. He’d known girls thrown out of moving cars for overstepping the bounds allowed them: she had some protector, no doubt.

  This little man was still trying to get at him, and now through Joséphine; had been spying about, keyholing, it was obvious. Ray was at risk too – but he had to control himself, to protect two people he loved… with any luck at all, Xavier would tie this sneak up, and with a ribbon round it. Pah, though; it had spoilt his day. A crow, winking and grinning, and writing little notes.

  In the course of a hunt for a telephone number that she was quite sure she had written on the back of an envelope which had disappeared, Joséphine was head down in the wastepaper bucket; simple as that, all among this week’s promotions for the supermarket and the impassioned invitations to subscribe to things: poor postman, trudging under the weight of so much Passion. First she sat up, then stood up. William wouldn’t be bothered burning such things, or hiding them from her. Wouldn’t be framing them to hang on the wall, either: in with the rest of the junk mail. Whoever did that would be careful with fingerprints, or even those handy fragments of DNA we’re always told about. Saliva under the stamp, or the lick of the envelope? It didn’t have enough importance, even as a piece of evidence to put on a courtroom table.

  True, she said “Oh, Shit” but that is not an Impassioned sort of expletive.

  If people say I’m a whore, does that make me one? If people think of me as a whore, it’s no worse than I deserve. I want to be a woman: it’s high time, I have wasted a lot of years. The world is full of women. Some are whores, some are squaws, being Helpmeet to Hubby. Lots trudge after the donkey with a load on their head: their man is riding the donkey, smoking a cigarette and wearing new shoes. Some are power-hungry, go to work and keep slaves. Around here, nearly all are doing jobs, mostly pretty menial; often at half the money a man would be getting. They carry, a great many, an impossible burden; a day’s work and then rush, to do the shopping and pick the brats up from the crèche and even then they aren’t through: cooking and housekeeping and making a Home for the man and the children. I’ll do that if it’s what it takes to have self-respect and a straight back. Of these many get abandoned, divorced, pushed out to cope for themselves. Then you have to set up as a single parent, or go lez, along with some other poor cow, it’s to be hoped they find some comfort in one another.

  But since I’m a woman I have to Be a woman, make a proper job of it. Too many years have gone, lost in being an object.

  I hope, thought Joséphine, I have a daughter. Teaching her I’ll learn; we’ll learn about being women together. a life-time’s work, that. Fucking Hard work. And since it’s my work get on with it then, stop chatting about it.

  Medicine – using the word loosely – proliferates. By a sort of Parkinson Law; there are a lot of inventions, clever mechanical tools, aids to diagnosis or in pointing out a likely treatment. Hospitals yell for more scanners, expensive toys of the sort, because everybody wants to be scanned. Doctors get into the habit of ordering tests; it pleases the patient, who has a comforting feeling of being looked after. You might anyhow find out something you hadn’t known before. One of the most frequent tools is the analysis laboratory, since haematologists find more, and more complex questions to ask of a drop of blood. The lab is like a shop on the main road, where everyone pops in to buy a bunch of flowers, so that the one on the Allée de la Robertsau does a roaring trade. Most of the work is boring counts of the banal levels in your blood like cholesterol, but the waiting-room is full of apathetic folk looking for the vampire-girls to call their name and fill the little bottle; rows and rows of these with enough of the stuff to Paint the Town Red.

  The Permanent Representative wasn’t happy; all much too public for his liking. Nobody knew or cared who he was; neither the paperwork girl at the counter, shuffling her forms, nor the technician with her bright smile and roll-up-your-sleeve. She doesn’t even look at your face, sees only your elbow; make a fist then, so that the vein is apparent. But he’s always sensitive; however banal the intervention it’s an invasion of his privacy, and how can one be sure there’s nobody around who might recognize him. He had insisted on Crystal coming with him. It wasn’t a smokescreen, nor a comfort; it was a little treat for immediately afterwards. These damn blood tests are always before breakfast, so that he had planned to have her drive him across to the Hilton or wherever, have her pour out the coffee; order a good American breakfast which he never got at home.

  Crystal didn’t care. She liked this role; it was being a sort of confidante rather than a playmate. She liked soothing him, pouring out the coffee, liked the idea of being posh too; cinnamon toast or something, yum.

  Doctor Valdez, sorry sorry, was in a mighty hurry. Off to the farflung today, and cross because he hasn’t a direct flight out of Strasbourg; It’s Frankfurt OR Paris OR Zürich, hellholes all three. AND a change in Atlanta; why couldn’t we have gone to Miami? – yes yes but we’ve Been to Miami.

  Hurry because of being conscientious: he has to give a phonecall to a colleague about a patient’s tests and the lab is always slow with the results, so he is going to whip in, pick them up, leaving the car doubleparked and Too Bad. And there on the pavement in front is Dr Barbour. That is all right. A professional discretion obtains, and they won’t even nod to each other. But there, holding his arm in a maternal manner is a woman – and that is Janine. He hasn’t laid eyes on her since – but oh dear, Janine who has never kept her lip buttoned since the day she was born.

  “Ray!” she screamed, delighted.

  “Hallo Janine. Look, forgive, I’m dashing, can’t stop.” She wasn’t listening; she never had.

  “But Ray, how lovely! You’re looking splendid.”

  “Good to see you, sorry, the police will be giving me a ticket.” She was standing there staring after him, puzzled…

  Dr Barbour is much too self-controlled to make a scene in public. ‘In public’ – right there on the main road, what a setting for a scandal.

  “Get in the car,” he said softly. Hers, the little red one, smallest car he’d ever got his legs into. “Drive home…”

  “Make coffee.” Not the breakfast he’d been looking forward to. Interrogation. Soft-voiced and lawyerly. A clumsy liar.

  “But nobody could possibly have seen…”

  Somebody in fact had. Monsieur Philippe simply delighted. And all
free, all without effort. He’d been going about his own business, had simply stopped for the red light. A chocolate with a cherry inside. Luscious that little passage on the pavement which one couldn’t hear but the body-language told all. Valdez’ car there blocking the traffic, and that little old thing of Mireille, Italian racing red. This would work nicely, would make for a valuable bit of leverage. That tall figure was unmistakable, the smooth silver hair, it set off the oddly bleached look of the face – and the way he took her by the arm… rubbing it and you could see the words ‘You’re hurting’… it was the piece in the puzzle he’d never been sure of; that the Permanent Representative had not known who Dr Valdez was, had never identified his girlfriend’s former playmate. It would be typical of old-mother-Ben to pretend she didn’t know. While knowing perfectly well and blandly instructing himself to get out there and find out. That was how she worked, staying away from anything likely to be troublesome. Yo – this was a handy thing to know.

  Dr Barbour sat at his desk. The house was quiet. The staff had gone home; Eleanor was out playing bridge; the houseman had the day off. He would drive himself, later, to – whatever it was, it would be in the diary. He likes this quiet hour before going up to change. By the door the little telltale told him that the security was on. He’d have said, up to yesterday, that his own was reliable. Anonymous letters, such as everyone in official positions must get from time to time, would never interfere, he had supposed, with the ability to think clearly. In a lawyerlike manner.