by Adam Thorpe
On the third day, when I was feeling a little better and about five years older, and the stars weren’t rushing at me so much, my mother came in with a bowl of instant tea.
‘You look brighter, dear.’
‘Don’t think I am.’
‘Much brighter. Do you feel brighter? Can I open the shutter? The room needs airing. Very stuffy. Not your fault. I ought to open the window. Jocelyne Despierre-Chéronnet phoned, by the way.’
‘Who?’
She wound up the shutters halfway and opened the window a notch. I lifted the black sock just slightly. The light dazzled me but didn’t hurt.
‘Is that too much?’
‘It’s fine.’
‘The weather’s cheering up. About time.’
‘Who phoned?’
‘Jocelyne Despierre-Chéronnet, your second cousin once removed, or whatever she is. Raymond and Geneviève’s daughter. You sat next to her at Mamie’s meal.’
‘Jocelyne?’
‘I think you were a little bit keen on her, Gilles.’
‘She phoned?’
‘She wanted to talk to you. About a ballet performance. Now I know why you got that ballet book from the library!’
She seemed very relieved. I sat up and sipped my tea, pretending not to be interested, my heart thudding in my ears.
‘She wanted to invite you, dear. I’m sure there’ll be another time.’
‘What?’
‘She understood, of course. She sounds just like her mother on the phone. You can sound too confident, in my humble opinion.’
‘You told her I couldn’t go?’ I mumbled, trying to hide my panic.
‘She’s in it, I think,’ she said, not hearing. ‘I expect she’s in everything. Is that window open wide enough? It’s not too cold? I do think fresh air is the best medicine. I always said your sister should take up a sport, but there we are. Look at your desk. How do you do any work, dear? You’ve been doing this aeroplane for years. Look at the dust on it. Can’t we throw it away?’
‘No. Leave it. Did you tell her I couldn’t go?’
‘Of course. It’s on Friday.’
‘Today’s Tuesday.’
‘Wednesday, dear. You must finish things, Gilles. You must finish what you start. It’s a very important lesson in life.’
She was picking up the plane’s greaseproof blueprint as if it was sticky. The balsa-wood wing, that was pinned to it, slid off and some of the ribs came unstuck from the leading edge.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ I said. ‘Leave it.’
‘Have I broken it?’
‘Just leave it. Put those bits back on the paper. Those, there. Or it won’t fly. Why did you tell her I couldn’t go?’
‘Gilles,’ she said, coming over to the bed and sitting on it, ‘do be sensible.’
‘I’ll be better by Friday.’
‘Do you really think, after taking a week off school, you can go gallivanting in Paris!’
She seemed in a very good mood.
‘It wasn’t my fault I had to miss school.’
‘I didn’t say it was!’
‘The attack’s finished, Maman.’
‘It looks like it. You’re as white as a ghost, Gilles. And very thin.’
‘You just said I was looking much better.’
‘You don’t know how you were before! Will you please stop arguing, dear.’
I sat up. I had been feeling better for the last few hours, in fact. The black sock dropped from my face. It smelt a bit of sick and the eau-de-Cologne my mother had sprinkled on my forehead. I threw it on the floor. My face felt naked, as if I’d taken off a mask.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, through screwed-up eyes. ‘I’m going.’
‘Don’t be silly, Gilles.’
‘Yes, I am. I promised.’
‘Promised? When?’
I slumped back against the bolsters, feeling sick and empty, feeling I would never have the strength even to get out of bed and go downstairs. All I had eaten were dry biscottes. Hell was migraine. There were no pitchforks in Hell. Hell was migraine under a 200-watt Gestapo light with your eyelids sewn open, forever without end and forever. You didn’t even need cockroaches.
‘When did you promise her?’ my mother repeated. ‘At the lunch?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want to be ill again for your Solemn Communion, do you?’
‘I won’t be.’
‘You know it takes a good week and then it’s your Solemn Communion, dear.’
‘Someone could take me in the car. To the show. Then all I have to do is sit and watch.’
‘You’re not going to go gallivanting off—’
‘It’s not gallivanting,’ I snorted. ‘It’s only ballet.’
Arguing like this was already getting the iron ring bolted back on. I took a couple of deep breaths to relax it.
‘Then why are you so keen to go, dear?’
I could see her smiling at me sort of cunningly, as if she thought she knew.
‘A promise is a promise, Maman.’
‘I told her you had one of your migraines and were feeling nauseous. She quite understood. She didn’t mind at all, you not going.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Why, you’re not ashamed of getting migraine, are you? I hope not! You inherited it from Mamie, you know. It stopped when she was forty, just like that. She’d get one almost every Friday evening, and it would clear up on Sunday evening. Sick as a dog, she was. It was when she relaxed. That’s why we never took a holiday.’
My mother had put a hand on my arm and was now smoothing out the blanket over my lower legs, or maybe brushing off biscuit crumbs. I usually liked feeling her hand on my feet and legs through the covers. Now, though, I felt like kicking her off.
‘I mind not going, even if Jocelyne doesn’t,’ I murmured, with my eyes closed.
‘They’re coming to your Communion, the Despierre-Chéronnets.’
‘So what?’
‘Well, that’s only a week and a half, dear. I think you could last out that long before seeing their daughter.’
The thought of my parents knowing what I felt about Jocelyne, and talking about it with nudges and winks during the special day, filled me with total horror. I wasn’t even blushing.
‘I’m not interested in Jocelyne,’ I said, looking at her through a veil of eyelashes. ‘I don’t like her one bit. Stop thinking I do. I want to see the ballet.’
She snorted, but with a panicky look in her eyes.
‘Now don’t be ridiculous, Gilles. We know it’s because of Jocelyne.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘Papa and myself.’
‘He’s got nothing to do with it,’ I said.
‘He?’
‘The Man from Mars.’
‘Do you mind, Gilles?’
I felt the bed dip almost violently. Then she sighed and said she was sorry. Migraine allowed me to get away with a lot – it affected the mood chemically, beyond the victim’s control, the doctor had said. Like the shower of comets that came from your brain.
‘Papa’s on his way back,’ she said, ‘from a very important trip to Lille, right now as we talk. I heard on the radio that there’s a lot of traffic, being the first of May – everyone going out to the country who’s not going to that commie demonstration in Paris. I don’t know why they’ve allowed it again after all these years.’
‘Today’s the first of May?’
‘Yes, dear. You’d never catch Papa not working on the first of May. I worry about him travelling all the time, there are so many accidents. And he does get so tired.’
She bit the side of her nail, obviously needing a cigarette. I sipped the instant tea and said nothing. The steam made the inside of my nose feel damp.
‘She’s very pretty and well-off,’ my mother went on, ‘but I’m afraid she’s very vain, very pleased with herself.’
‘Who?’
‘Jocelyne.’
‘I agree,’ I murmured, staring into my tea.
‘She was quite rude to me at the lunch.’
‘What did she say?’
‘It wasn’t what she said, so much as how she said it, with her pretty nose stuck up in the air. She said hello to me, that’s all, but it was the way she said it. Very affected. You wouldn’t believe she was only twelve, or maybe just thirteen. Exactly like her mother already. These Parisians have such airs and graces. They’ve always thought of the Gobains as being – beneath them, you might say. Even on the phone she was very superior.’
‘Well, we are.’
‘We are what?’
‘Beneath them.’
‘Gilles! Don’t say that. We aren’t at all, not in the important ways. Not in what counts.’
She sat there with a cross look, blinking at me through her black spectacles.
‘I might tell you, as well,’ she said, ‘that her parents are full of these modern ideas, especially when it comes to the Church. Do you remember the abbot coming and warning us? That sermon, last year? Telling us how Latin would be banned completely, soon? Surely you remember, Gilles? It was a very important sermon. It was reported in one of the main papers.’
I nodded, although I didn’t remember.
‘Jocelyne’s father, Raymond, is very left-wing,’ she went on. ‘Pretends he’s a Catholic just to please Geneviève, who nearly became a nun, you know. When she was eighteen. I remember her then. Very old Catholic family. Not aristocracy, but lots of generals and an archbishop. There was a famous General de Chéronnet ages back – before Napoleon, I believe. You can ask Jocelyne. Heads of banks and so forth, these days. Lots of money. Raymond was very clever, catching her. He didn’t have a bean, did he? He was very good-looking, though. Back then. Just after the war, this is.’ She patted her hair, making it bounce. Her voice sounded posh and artificial. ‘We did have the odd evening out together, in the early days. It was very pleasant. I didn’t like Raymond’s friends, though. And he was rude to Henri, once. Her family were very shocked by Raymond, not at all a good match. What, this peasant?’ She gave a little giggle. I let her flow on. ‘But he was in the Resistance, of course, and that counted for a lot. Just after the war. And very clever, of course. Spent what money he had on books. Never worked in his life, I don’t think. No idea what he did in the Resistance, exactly. Blew railway lines up, I suppose. I expect he’ll be on that march today. It wouldn’t surprise me. Of course, if his beloved Communists did get in he’d lose all his money, wouldn’t he?’
‘Why?’
‘Because they don’t like anybody to have any more money than anybody else, dear.’
‘I know. And they hate Americans.’
‘Or perhaps he wouldn’t lose it, knowing Raymond. I’m sure Khrushchev is, in fact, a very rich man. Equal for some, I suppose. I knew a lot of Communists in my youth. Friends, I mean.’
‘Boyfriends?’
‘I didn’t say that, did I?’ She smiled, stroking her hand on my covers again. ‘Apparently, Raymond and Geneviève go to a church where the priest plays pop music on a record-player. At the start of Mass, I mean. Can you imagine? Instead of the Ite Missa they all have to shout “Hip hip hooray for Jesus the worker!” Or something of that sort. The priest’s one of these young Marxist types. Very dangerous. Thinks Jesus was like anybody else, and definitely a member of a union.’
The mattress was bouncing, now. It was nice being rocked like that. I told her that our catechist had brought in a record-player and played a Beatles song in one of the early classes.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Well, people do like to think they’re one of the people, I suppose. No problem for Raymond, of course. You can pretend to be anything when you have pots of money. They didn’t lift a finger to help me when Henri passed away, and Raymond’s my second cousin, as you know. They never seem to have any troubles themselves. Not that I want them to have any troubles, of course. But I do feel so raked up, sometimes. All emptied out.’
She was smoothing out her dress, now. I closed my eyes and felt her weight on the bed, the edge of the mattress pulled down. It was nice having her sitting there, now, chatting away as if she was telling me bedtime stories, making the bed move about under me. I felt pity for her, a sort of sadness. There were lines around her mouth and under her eyes which I hadn’t noticed before. I closed my eyes. It was hard to imagine her as young, going out in the evening with other young people in funny old-fashioned clothes. She knew nothing about the Mademoiselle Bolmont business, I was sure: this made her seem even sadder – almost pathetic. The woman’s voice on the actual programme hadn’t sounded like Mademoiselle Bolmont until I’d realised it was – and even then it had sounded too high. But that was because of the ‘filtering effect’ of the phone and then the radio; I’d read this in a magazine article on Menie Grégoire. The way the caller had used words – that was definitely Mademoiselle Bolmont.
The words ‘sexual difficulties’ came into my head, exactly as she’d said them. I shouldn’t have knowledge of this, I thought: it was sinful knowledge, even though I had no idea what it really meant. It felt smooth and greasy, this knowledge, like a great weight that could kill someone. Maybe it was a lie, but I felt so sorry for my mother that I wanted to hold her and tell her everything. Supposing I did tell her? About Mademoiselle Bolmont and all the women? Supposing I did?
‘Are you asleep, Gilles?’
‘No.’
‘You’re thinking.’
‘Yes.’
‘Just like Henri. Nice thoughts? Before my Communion I tried to turn all my thoughts towards God, imagining myself as a sunflower. I kept it to myself, though. We had a very stern old priest, we did. In the Ardennes. Before we came to Bagneux. Tiny and very bad breath, I remember! A very nice speaking voice, though. Very good French, dear.’
She was mentioning my father much more, recently. It annoyed me. I didn’t want to be like my father. My father was dead. ‘Henri’ was dead and buried, he was in his own little hole forever. She was looking at me, now, in a strange way; I’d opened my eyes and caught her looking at me.
She smiled, as if not worried about being caught.
‘I’m allowed to think,’ I said.
‘Of course you are.’
Through my half-open eyelids I saw my mother as a crouched shape, all dark and crouched. The shape lengthened, shaking the bed a bit.
‘We all have to think,’ she said.
I closed my eyes properly and laid my head to one side, to relieve the ache. My uncle’s favourite song started running through my head, over and over. Des p’tits trous, des p’tits trous toujours des p’tits trous. I couldn’t take the needle off, it just went round and round, all shiny and crackling with dust I couldn’t wipe away.
A few minutes later my mother left, rising so slowly from the bed that the mattress didn’t even bounce or shiver. I was a bit sorry she was leaving, in fact; I liked the movements felt through the mattress, because I couldn’t predict them. I liked someone else being there, close, keeping you from being alone with your own miserableness, from having nothing to rock you like a little boat on a lake. But I didn’t open my eyes or say anything.
The door closed softly. I was in half-darkness. The day after tomorrow I’d be better. Only a few comets were exploding, now. The last of the bunch. I’d go to the show, anyway, whatever my mother said. I had to. But the thought of getting up and putting clothes on and catching a bus and meeting Jocelyne and her parents was so exhausting that I started to cry, softly and quietly, with a few real tears breaking through my lashes – I couldn’t even begin to imagine actually watching the ballet. I’d never been in a proper theatre before, for a start.
My mother had lit one of her menthol cigarettes in her bedroom; I could smell it. I stopped crying and listened through the Serge Gainsbourg going round and round in my head. Between the cars in the road and the distant whining noise from the metal workshop, I could hear a kind of weird coughing from her bedroom. My mother was
crying, too. It was as if she knew I was dying and I didn’t. I had been wounded badly in an heroic battle against the Germans in 1870 and wouldn’t make it through. I lay there, with my bandages like a turban around my head, not realising. Jocelyne knew it, too, and was crying in her luxurious room in the middle of Paris, trying to get ready for the ballet show.
18
‘I’m going to knock the wall down, there,’ said my uncle, putting three sugars into his reheated coffee. ‘I was thinking about it on the way back from Lille in all that bloody awful traffic.’
‘You’ve suggested that before,’ said my mother.
‘So? I’m permitted to remind myself, aren’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘As long as you’re not suggesting I’m going bald and senile.’ His voice was hoarse and he tried to clear it, finishing with an angry tigery growl.
I was downstairs, having breakfast with them in my dressing-gown. I felt very tiny and white and smelly – white even on the inside. Because my uncle had made it back only after midnight, he had got up later than usual, and hadn’t yet shaved. He blew on his coffee to cool it, although my mother had been careful to reheat it to scalding, as usual. I was only reflecting on the strangeness of this, now, because I’d been ill. But then everything felt strange after being ill – even the house itself, as if I’d been away for months in some other land. With his rumpled face, that he hadn’t yet sorted out, my uncle looked old and ugly. He did look as if he was starting to go bald, in fact, without his fringe brushed forward.
‘Listen,’ he said, turning to me, ‘I’m going to take you on an outing. Father and son.’
‘Fishing?’
‘No, not bloody fishing.’ He chuckled. I knew he was remembering the time we bought the fish and pretended we’d caught it. ‘A night out,’ he said. ‘Just us two. A night out at the theatre. Variety.’
He pulled hard on his cigarette so that the tip crackled. He’d changed from Camel to Winston, which he said tasted a bit of honey, but its smoke made my throat tickle.
‘How about it, chum?’
‘Why?’
‘Why not?’