by Unknown
He asked Madame Besson if this house was on its own – truly on its own – with nothing to spoil the view, and she said, Yes, it was on top of a hill, with its own drive, its own road that led to it and nowhere else. ‘Lonely,’ she said. ‘Very lonely. But I think that’s what you want, Monsieur Verey, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I guess so. Is it stone? Is it beautiful?’
There was a moment’s pause and Anthony could tell that Madame Besson had covered the phone receiver with her hand. Then she came back and said: ‘I haven’t actually seen it. My daughter went to get the details. She says it’s quite nice.’
Quite nice.
It didn’t interest him then, if that was all it was. ‘Quite nice’ was not how Anthony deigned to see his future. Better to have no future than to have that. And he was beginning to be weary of estate agents. They didn’t seem to understand who he was – the Anthony Verey, who lived in fear of ugly surroundings – and so they were wasting his time.
And yet. He had to go on in his search. He had to try to find it, the place where he could live and be happy. Anthony said to Madame Besson that he would come by on Friday and pick up the keys and get directions to the house. He said he wanted to look at this property on his own.
‘Whatever you prefer, Monsieur Verey,’ she said. ‘I will tell the owners. But it is a very isolated place. I wouldn’t like you to get lost.’
The night before Anthony went to look at this house, he, Veronica and Kitty were invited to dinner with some French friends of Veronica’s near Anduze, Monsieur and Madame Sardi. Veronica had redesigned their garden, made it, they said, ‘the true garden of our dreams’. The Sardis’ gratitude, Veronica told Anthony, often expressed itself in invitations to fabulous meals.
Their house was solid, grey-stuccoed, turreted, a kind of miniature château, whose style of architecture, Anthony commented as they drove in, didn’t suit the region.
‘Anthony,’ said Veronica sternly, ‘you’re not going to spend the evening making criticisms, are you?’
‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘I’m too well mannered. But look at this: why isn’t it stone? This stucco belongs in the Loire. Or are your friends barbaric enough to have rendered the stone?’
‘Shut up, Anthony,’ said Veronica. ‘We’re going to have a nice time.’
‘I didn’t say we weren’t.’
‘Shut up then.’
The Sardis – Guy and Marie-Ange – were people at ease with their wealth. The first thing visitors saw was an impressively large fountain, not dissimilar from the one in front of the White House in Washington, DC, that played a sparkling fan of water into a lily pond, set in the middle of an immaculate gravel turning circle, bordered by Florentine cypresses, topiarised box and pincushions of tenerium and santolina. As they got out of the car, Kitty said: ‘I love this garden. The air smells of the maquis.’
‘That’s the whole idea,’ said Veronica. And Anthony wondered, with a small frisson of pleasure, whether this didn’t sound a bit like a snub. He looked at Kitty, dressed for the evening in a navy silk Nehru jacket and boxy white trousers which made her short legs look even shorter. She was smiling. She didn’t appear snubbed. But he remembered with relief that, early tomorrow morning, she was setting off for Béziers, to talk to some gallery owner about her pitiful paintings, and so he and V would be alone for at least twenty-four hours. Snub or no snub, she’d soon be gone. Perhaps he’d even be able find a way of willing her to stay away.
The Sardis’ guests were greeted, not by Marie-Ange, but by a butler, who offered them flutes of champagne from a silver salver. Taking a grateful sip of the champagne, Anthony immediately caught sight of a marble pedestal on which rested a fine nineteenth-century copy of a Borghese vase, very like the one in the Louvre. He couldn’t resist stepping nearer to appraise this. He almost put on his glasses to verify his initial findings (‘Possible restoration to rim? Probable value, region of £30,000 . . .’) but restrained himself from doing this, afraid to appear too much like a vulgar auctioneer. Nevertheless, this was how Marie-Ange Sardi found him, gulping champagne from the too-meagre flute, and examining the Borghese vase.
‘Ah-ha! Veronica told us that you’re an antiques collector,’ she said in faultless English, ‘and I see you’ve gone straight to the vase. What d’you think?’
‘Oh,’ said Anthony, ‘good evening, Madame Sardi. I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t resist a tiny look . . .’
‘No, of course, why not? It is rather special. My husband found it in Florence. It’s an 1850s copy of the Borghese vase in the Louvre. I adore the dancing figures, don’t you?’
Marie-Ange was a woman in her fifties, well-groomed and slim, but with her skin beginning to suffer the ravages of sun-worship. Anthony made his quick assessment and guessed it was astute. (‘Possibly part Jewish, despite the Catholic-sounding name. May have brought Guy Sardi some kind of fortune, to which he then added another one in investment banking, rather like Benita and Lloyd Palmer . . .’)
Anthony now dared to whip out his spectacles and put them on. He longed to touch the vase. ‘It’s very fine,’ he said. ‘The satyrs on the handles are such an extraordinary detail, aren’t they! So you and your husband are collectors, too?’
‘No, not really. We just buy things we like. We’ve got a lot of Louis XVI furniture. And there may be a few pictures that interest you. We have a couple of Corots down here, but we spend most of the year in our house in Paris, so our best treasures are there.’
Ah, thought Anthony, really deep money, then, the kind of unassailable fortune I should have made – always assumed I would make, until I suddenly became aware that the time for making it had gone. Though he smiled and nodded politely at Marie-Ange, he felt himself squirm, once again, with envy. He wanted to turn round and walk back out into the garden and listen to the birds for a moment and then drive away. But Marie-Ange had put a light hand on his arm. ‘Do come and meet Guy,’ she said, ‘and the others.’
Others?
Oh God. Veronica hadn’t warned him this was a dinner party. And no doubt, the friends of Guy and Marie-Ange Sardi would all be rich, all be serene in their certainty of a future in which their white linen table napkins would always be starched and enormous, their wine served at the correct temperatures, their chauffeurs at the doors, their clothes lined with silk . . . As Anthony turned from the vase to follow Marie-Ange into the salon, he felt that same sudden weariness come over him that latterly he experienced in his shop after a day when he’d sold nothing.
Guy Sardi was a tanned and handsome man, a little shorter than Anthony, but with a bearing so confident and upright it made him seem larger than he was. His eyes were still beautiful, with thick, dark lashes. These eyes said: I can seduce at will: men and women of my circle, servants, CEOs of international companies, secretaries, casino croupiers, maids, and even dogs come and try to lick my hands . . .
Sardi’s handshake was firm, almost brusque, and made Anthony feel limp and old. Looking at Guy Sardi, imagining how he himself appeared through Sardi’s eyes, Anthony thought, How completely absurd it is, my desire to go on living! I was finished a long time ago. Why am I so afflicted with this ridiculous tenacity?
He exchanged a few obligatory sentences about the Borghese vase, then – when his host went to welcome a new guest – started to move to Veronica’s side. But, as he approached, he heard her talking in French to a woman he vaguely recognised, who might have been a politician or might have been one of those actresses whose name you never quite remember, but who makes a living out of a thousand small appearances in big-budget films. Anthony assessed that such people could be mortally offended if you didn’t recognise them, so he made a sideways sashay towards a waiter going round with a champagne bottle and held out his empty glass.
Over the waiter’s shoulder, above a small mahogany spinet (‘French, late 18th century . . . with a four octave keyboard with ebony naturals (worn) and ivory accidentals’), he spied one of the Corots
. He waited for his glass to brim again and then, relieved by this at least and sipping as he went, moved towards the Corot, his left hand agitating involuntarily upwards towards the pocket where his spectacles resided.
Before he was able to concentrate on the picture, however, Anthony’s eye was caught by a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame, standing on its own on the spinet. It was a head-and-shoulders photograph of a young man of astonishing beauty. He smiled at the camera. Juvenile curls flopped over one eye. His sensuous mouth was slightly parted to reveal the tutored, white teeth of an adored and pampered child.
Anthony gaped. He knew that his own mouth had literally fallen open and he closed it quickly. He felt slightly breathless. ‘That,’ he wanted to whisper aloud, ‘is what I mean by beauty. That face epitomises human grace and loveliness to me . . .’ By the young man’s just-recognisable resemblance to Guy – particularly the same sleepy eyes, with their long eyelashes – Anthony guessed that this was the Sardis’ son. He was about twenty-five. He was wearing an ordinary white T-shirt, probably hadn’t really posed for the picture . . . just turned to the photographer and smiled, knowing that what this smile expressed was all the certainty, all the inevitable dazzle of his marvellous future. ‘Catch me now,’ it said, ‘before I soar away and leave you all behind . . .’
Marie-Ange, the ever-vigilant hostess, appeared at Anthony’s side. Behind them, the chatter in the salon was animated, indicating that more people had arrived, and, in truth, Anthony wasn’t sure how long he’d been gazing at the photograph of the young man. He was aware that Marie-Ange might think him rude, or at best slightly weird, to spend this cocktail hour snooping at the Sardi family’s personal possessions. But, in fact, her voice was amused and gentle as she said: ‘You found Nicolas. I took that picture in the garden here last summer.’
‘Your son?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s very . . . handsome. Beautiful, in fact. He’s beautiful.’
Marie-Ange gazed lovingly at the photograph. She reached out and touched the young man’s floppy hair.
‘He’s directing a film at the moment. He’s only twenty-four and he’s directing his first feature film. Guy and I are rather spellbound.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Anthony. ‘I’m spellbound.’
‘Well,’ said Marie-Ange. ‘Now you must come and meet everyone. Most of our friends are lawyers and bankers, so everybody speaks English.’
Lawyers and bankers.
The world is so dull, thought Anthony. So cripplingly tedious. So full of all that you’ve met a thousand times before and which has never moved you and never will. And still it goes on . . .
Marie-Ange Sardi had her hand on his arm and was leading him towards the noisy group of middle-aged people, guzzling their champagne. He had to let himself be steered away, but he couldn’t resist turning one last time to look at the photograph of Nicolas.
Come to me, stammered his heart. Find me, Nicolas. Give me back my life.
When you live alone, thought Audrun, when you’ve lived alone for thirty-four years, you find it difficult to endure the presence of a stranger in or near your house. You can’t help but imagine all the wrongdoing of which he’s capable.
Audrun made coffee for the surveyor while he went in search of boundary markers. Her mind wasn’t on the coffee, but on the surveyor’s feet, trudging back and forth. She knew what these feet would do: trample flowers, tread down the shine on the new grass, scuff the gravel, stumble into the vegetable patch, imprint the earth.
Boundary markers.
She told the surveyor, whose name was Monsieur Dalbert, that he wouldn’t find any of these. She said he would never find them, never. Because this was not how things had been done.
Once, there had been a byre on this plot, where a grey-brown donkey had been tethered in darkness. Sometimes, during Audrun’s childhood, Serge had untethered it and it had stood there, blinking in the daylight, while he put panniers on its back and loaded these up with wood or sacks of onions. Audrun could remember cupping her hands gently over the donkey’s poor eyes. Then later, after Serge died, Aramon had told her: ‘You can build the bungalow there. All right? Where that useless nag expired. Where the byre collapsed. Use the stones as hard-core.’
Monsieur Dalbert wasn’t interested in memory. He was interested in certainty. He said he didn’t wish to contradict her in an impolite manner, but there would certainly be boundary markers indicating where her ground ended and Aramon’s began. The commune of La Callune would have insisted upon these when permission to build her house had been granted.
Out of her kitchen window, she watched him toiling in the afternoon heat. Sun rays bounced off his bald head. He was a small man, but full of petty cruelty, she could tell, proud of his ability to wound. Audrun crumbled some black earth from the geranium pot on her kitchen window sill and threw it in with the ground coffee because she knew this could have the power to quell her anxiety, to watch the surveyor imbibing geranium compost and never knowing it.
She set the tray of coffee things on the terrace table and waited. The dogs in the pound at the Mas Lunel were braying, scenting the stranger, even at this distance. And no doubt Aramon would be smiling up there in the detritus of his life, smiling as he drank, thinking: Now the last reckoning is about to arrive, the one that chucks Audrun out into the arms of Mother Nature, ha! The one that leaves her with nothing except her sainted forest.
Black earth in the coffee; under the floors, the bones of a dead animal, the mossy stones of the fallen byre . . . If these peculiarities could coexist in time, then other more exceptional things could . . . could what? Well . . . they could suddenly happen. For who had imagined that Marilyn Monroe would die like that, with her poo-poopy-doo soul fluttering out of her arse while a washing machine turned, while people came and went from her house on Fifth Helena Drive, Brentwood, California, USA in the small hours? But that was the way it was. Apparently.
Back and forth Audrun watched him go, the bald surveyor, staring at the driveway, consulting his bulky papers, laying down his steel measure, straightening up, catapulting the measure back into its housing, searching among weeds and nettles. Back and forth, treading everything down.
Then he strutted back and climbed the three steps to the terrace where Audrun waited and plonked the sheaf of builder’s plans on the table. With a jabbing finger, he located the boundary markers on the stiff paper: ‘Here, here, here and here.’
Audrun stared at him.
‘I can’t find them,’ Monsieur Dalbert said, wiping sweat from his forehead. ‘The markers have either been illegally cut or removed from the ground.’
Audrun said in her mind: I told you. There weren’t any boundaries.
‘They should not be touched, ever,’ said Monsieur Dalbert. ‘Boundary markers are the property of the commune. Did you know that it is a felony to remove them?’
Felony. A thrilling word.
Audrun wanted to remark how numberless, how diverse might be the crimes to which the word could apply. But there was something in the air, in her breath, in her lungs – a heaviness – which made speaking difficult on this late afternoon.
The surveyor surveyed her over his spectacles. (Another one who considered her mad, no doubt, told by Aramon that she couldn’t distinguish north from south, had no idea where one thing began and another ended.) She decided that now she would pour out the coffee, soured with earth, but she found that her arm just stayed where it was, by her side. The surveyor shook his head in an exasperated way, as though the coffee mixed with its little sugaring of compost might have been the thing that had brought him here and now he saw that he wasn’t going to get any.
The dogs kept up their whining, their yelping for liberty, for meat, for blood. And Audrun watched Monsieur Dalbert turn his head in the direction of these wild hounds and felt in him a sudden welling-up of anxiety. Yes, felt it. As though, for a particle of time, infinitely small, she’d left her own body to inhabit the air this
stranger was breathing . . .
. . . and this stepping away, this parting from her self, it was as familiar to her as the sound of her heart when she lay in her bed in the darkness. She knew that it signified something – something which wasn’t meant to happen any more, but which did happen never the less.
Never the less.
Words. Who knew when they were right ones? Who knew?
Now, he’s staring at her, terrified, the man whose name she’s already forgotten. He’s nothing but this terrified stare, very close to her, with his mouth moving, as though speaking or trying to speak, but all sound has vanished. And then it comes swooping down on Audrun: the void.
She woke on the floor of her sitting room, covered by her green eiderdown. Marianne Viala was kneeling by her, holding her hand. Somewhere, just out of sight, was another person, waiting, waiting for time to move on.
In a voice that sounded choked and small, Audrun whispered to Marianne: ‘Bernadette used to say that if you live in the south . . . so far south as this, where the mistral blows . . . then events just . . . they just . . .’
‘Hush,’ said Marianne.
‘She used to say . . . you don’t mould things to your will.’
‘Hush,’ said Marianne again. ‘Have a sip of water.’
Later, she woke in her bed. Her warm little bedside light was on, and this was a comforting thing for which she felt grateful. She knew that something had happened because she felt cold and weak. But what?
She looked around, above the bedclothes, to see whether she was alone. She felt something acrid come in through her nose, an air that was perfumed with some kind of alteration.
‘Well,’ said a voice, ‘you woke up at last.’
So, Aramon was there. Skinny arse on a hard chair. Cigarette in his hand.
‘What happened?’ she asked him.
‘What d’you think happened? You had one of your fits. You did it on purpose, this time. Didn’t you?’