No Telling

by Adam Thorpe

  ‘A bedroom,’ she said, looking shocked.

  ‘Was someone in there, then?’

  ‘No, but it’s a private bedroom. It’s private. How stupid of us. Of course the bedrooms will be on the top floor.’

  ‘There’s another floor up there,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Those are the servants’ quarters, dear,’ she said, starting to walk down the stairs.

  I followed her. The stairs here had a red carpet down the middle, it was very worn. There were some browny pictures on the wall, of pyramids and one of the Sphinx. The people in them had cloaks and hats like Molière’s. The ceiling above the stairs was wooden, like a lot of cupboard doors. The staircase went round the lift; you could lean over and see the shiny piston going all the way down to the bottom.

  ‘They were in Egypt, you know,’ she whispered, as we went down. ‘Geneviève’s parents. Then they were chucked out. Just two suitcases. That’s all they took with them.’

  ‘How can they be rich, then?’

  ‘Oh, they only lost their house and stuff in Egypt.’

  I didn’t like her whispering; I was sure someone was listening. The stairs were hard to use – you almost had to take a whole step to get to the next one down, but not quite. It made me feel as if I had a limp. My mother’s high heels meant that she looked drunk, or as if walking a tightrope. I was sure we were going to miss the show, now. It was coming up to a quarter to seven. Time seemed to be going very fast. Halfway down where the stairs curved there was a jockey in a red jacket and black cap, holding his arm out. He was made of wood, with a completely white face. The second floor was also full of doors, painted pale blue and white. The paint wasn’t shiny, though. A corner of the flowers’ cellophane had come unpinned and flapped about stupidly above my head.

  We were about to knock on the nearest door when I noticed Jocelyne’s mother standing on the landing below, looking up at us through the lift’s iron bars, past the shiny piston.

  ‘What are you doing up there?’ she cried.

  My mother jumped, because she hadn’t seen her. She couldn’t make out where Jocelyne’s mother was.

  ‘We went too far,’ I called down. My voice sounded high and pathetic, perhaps because my throat was sore.

  Jocelyne’s mother told us to come down straightaway and then disappeared. She sounded cross. My mother looked as if she was about to cry. Her wig was a bit crooked.

  ‘She might have made it clearer,’ she whispered, as we went down. ‘People are never clear—’

  ‘Shush, Maman.’

  A double door was half open on the first floor, showing posh old chairs and rugs and goldeny objects. We hesitated in front of it. I looked down over the banister at the ground floor; the outdoor light through the ironwork made me think of angles of incidence – we’d just drawn these at school. There was no sign of Jocelyne’s mother. My mother knocked gently.

  ‘Maybe we just go in,’ she murmured.

  ‘She is your second cousin,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but it’s not done just to burst in like that,’ she whispered back.

  We could hear talking from inside the room. A strong smell of wine and wax polish came out of it.

  ‘I’m sure we just go in,’ I murmured.

  I opened the door wider and stepped in. In fact, this room was another kind of hall, with funny little chairs and big tapestries and two huge mirrors with gold frames. It was quite dark. The mirrors had black spots all over the glass that got in the way of my reflection. I looked completely stupid in my smart clothes, holding the giant bunch of flowers with the cellophane flapping at the top.

  ‘That’s silk,’ said my mother, behind me, stroking one of the chairs. It was very worn, though – almost white.

  I could see Jocelyne’s mother standing and talking on the phone through the door into another room. That room was much brighter. We walked across the hall’s shiny floorboards as if we were creeping up on someone, although my mother’s high heels sounded like hoofs. Jocelyne’s mother looked up as we came in, but all we could see were her grey eyes because the receiver was hiding the rest of her face.

  ‘Very rude of us, Geneviève, traffic,’ said my mother in her silly sort of posh voice. ‘We’ve bought some nice flowers, though. A peace-offering—’ She giggled. She’d sounded out of breath.

  Jocelyne’s mother held her hand up – as if to shut us up, not to wave. She carried on as if we weren’t really there, nodding into the phone and then talking very quickly, as if it was urgent. She was wearing a white silky top and bright green slacks, with a red scarf around her neck that fell down over one shoulder. She didn’t have shoes on, which was weird: her toenails were painted the same red as the scarf and my own shirt. I hoped nothing had happened to Jocelyne: her mother sounded very worried.

  We stood inside the door, not moving any further in. My mother peeled off her gloves, smiling the whole time, her spectacles twitching. Because nothing was like what I’d expected, I had no idea what to do, and just looked. The room was very big, with tall windows and twirly plaster bits on the ceiling, like the grapes and so on in Carole’s home. The paint was peeling off in flakes in one spot, near the marble fireplace. There were old-fashioned comfy chairs and a sofa with one end missing and big cupboards with glass doors and shiny wooden tables around the side that reminded me of dark toffee. A statue of a naked boy smelling his foot, in stained-looking marble, stood next to a bookcase with a very thin dog on a stand on the other side. There was a big plant like a palm-tree and lots of magazines strewn about, mostly on a low glass table in the middle. Apart from a steel chair in the corner next to a bendy red lamp, the glass table was the only modern object in the room. It all looked a bit scruffy and posh at the same time. There was a big portrait of a soldier with plumes in his hat and some smaller pictures on the walls that were mostly made up of complicated gold frames, with just a dark patch in the middle – too dark to see what it was of. Two modern paintings showed yellow and blue squares and black lines, and one huge picture of a woman in the nude had been put on an easel, as if it had just been painted; her skin was orange and her bosoms blue and her hair was the same bright yellow as her tiny furry slip. It embarrassed me, but I couldn’t help looking at it. We must have been standing there about fifteen minutes, because the frilly gold clock on the fireplace chimed seven. I had to keep very still to stop the cellophane making a noise, and the flowers got heavier and heavier. The biggest ones, I realised, were exactly the same red as my shirt.

  Jocelyne’s mother put the receiver down and came towards us. She looked weird, in bare feet – especially compared to my mother in high heels.

  ‘Did you see anything on the way in? It’s terribly exciting. Raymond is terribly excited. Raymond is out there, I do hope he’s all right.’

  ‘Very rude of us, Geneviève,’ my mother said. She was almost panting. ‘Traffic. Terrible traffic. Friday evening. We’ve bought you some flowers—’

  ‘Goodness me, who’s died?’ Jocelyne’s mother asked, laughing. ‘His Holiness?’

  She took the flowers from me and kissed us as if she had a lemon in her mouth. She hadn’t said sorry for being on the phone so long. Her hair was even more wavy around her tiny face than I remembered, and her eyebrows seemed to arch right up into her forehead. She dropped the bunch of flowers down on one of the dark tables as if it was normal, being given something so nice.

  ‘Of course you came at exactly the wrong time,’ she said. ‘Why on earth don’t you sit? You came at exactly the wrong time.’

  My mother sat down on the edge of the sofa with the end missing, tugging her skirt over her knees. I sat down in a comfy chair and nearly disappeared into it. My legs just weren’t long enough to sit right back, so it was very uncomfortable and I had to sit up, leaning forward. A little hairy dog came in, like a long floor-mop, and wriggled around my shoes.

  ‘Sébastien! Out! Out at once!’ screamed Jocelyne’s mother.

  The dog carried on wriggling over my shoes and
then started yapping at me. She picked it up and left the room, telling it off as if it was a baby. I kept having to remind myself that I was in Jocelyne’s actual house. Jocelyne’s mother came back in again, sighing.

  ‘There was no need to be worried, Gilles, but I quite understand. He’s very sensitive. He picks up when somebody doesn’t like him.’

  I didn’t know what to say, because I wasn’t worried. I’d even tried to stroke him.

  ‘Well, you’ve come at exactly the wrong time, of course,’ she said again, sinking into the other comfy chair as if she was exhausted. ‘Isn’t it extraordinary? But at least you got through. I’d assumed you wouldn’t, actually. I’ve got nothing ready. But one never can tell. You must have been terribly cunning. Did you take a clever route through the backstreets?’

  ‘We just came the quickest way,’ said my mother. ‘Very straightforward. We left at five—’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ sighed Jocelyne’s mother. ‘One never knows. So much is exaggerated, of course.’

  My mother blinked at her, looking lost. I was near the painting of the soldier. Le Général R. Despierre, 1803 was written on a little gold plaque under it. My mother had said the famous general was a Chéronnet. Maybe she’d got the names muddled up. Despierre-Chéronnet. It sounded like a vintage car. I was thirsty. The air felt very dry in the room. There were long white candles on the mantelpiece, like the ones in church.

  ‘So much is exaggerated and we take it all in,’ sighed Jocelyne’s mother, with her hand behind her head.

  ‘Very rude of us, though,’ said my mother, blinking. ‘Have we come much too late, then?’

  ‘We take it all in.’

  ‘I hope we’re not too late.’

  ‘Too late? Too late for what?’

  ‘Oh. The ballet show.’

  ‘Oh, that thing,’ said Madame Despierre-Chéronnet, waving her hand about. Each of her words came out very stretched and with an accent that was a bit English. ‘That hardly seems terribly important now. Raymond’s always saying that the Revolution must come first, then we must see to the rest. The refrigerator, for instance.’ She gave a weird laugh. Her little brown face almost disappeared when she laughed. ‘But I believe it’s going ahead, the ballet thing. It’s not an exam, it’s only an end-of-term thing. It’s not the end of term, really, but they always do it now. I don’t suppose the excitement will extend beyond the Sorbonne area. Two-minute walk to get there.’

  ‘We came past the Sorbonne,’ said my mother, smiling. There was a spot of white, maybe powder, on the rim of her spectacles. I wished I could wipe it off.

  ‘God, right past? Are you sure? How wonderfully reckless! And what was it like?’

  ‘Traffic!’ said my mother, waving a hand in the air. ‘And a little noisy, wasn’t it, Gilles?’

  I nodded. It was as if she was asking me for help.

  ‘Yes, a little noisy,’ she went on in her false posh voice, turning to Jocelyne’s mother. ‘They always have to shout,’ she added, in a sort of whisper, bending forward as if it was a secret.

  Madame Despierre-Chéronnet stared at my mother for a moment and then started trembling. She put her hand to her mouth. She was having some sort of coughing attack. It turned into a scream of laughter that made us jump.

  ‘Oh, that’s delicious! Oh, good God! That’s too much!’

  We stared at her. I wondered if she was drunk.

  ‘Don’t say that in front of Raymond, whatever you do!’ A laugh burst out again, out of her tiny brown face. ‘Oh, that’s delicious! Oh! Oh! I can’t wait to tell him! Oh, dear dear! Do excuse me!’

  She recovered, wiping her eyes on a hankie tucked up her sleeve.

  ‘What was it? “Rather noisy?” I do always forget these things and they’re never as good. Like jokes. Oh dear. It’s good for your health to laugh, you know.’ She blew her nose. ‘Now,’ she went on, in a serious voice, ‘if we’re going to go to this wretched little show – she does far too much, you know, and she’s so difficult, she really is.’

  She’d got to her feet by now. I was hoping she’d get the aperitif, which I’d imagined coming in tall glasses full of ice, like it did in films. My mother had her head tilted, as if she was gazing up at the Cross in church.

  ‘Jocelyne, you mean?’

  ‘Far too brilliant for her own good. Top at school, just soaks everything up, a perfect angel in class. Absolutely impossible at home. Raymond adores her silly and can’t do a thing with her. She’s going to be something extraordinary, of course. We’re just waiting for the day she enters the Ecole Supérieure and meets her match but she wants to be a film star. Between you and me, she can’t dance and she can’t act. Thank God. Of course, that’s no barrier to being a film star. Quite the opposite. I mean, look at Brigitte Bardot. Have you heard that awful song she’s done with – who’s that fellow?’

  ‘Serge Gainsbourg,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, you are up on things, Gilles! Jocelyne is in quite another world, of course. She only listens to Mahler, of all people. I can’t bear his romantic gloominess, can you? I don’t mind the Beatles, actually. Raymond says they’re an opiate.’

  ‘Is Raymond not in, then?’ my mother asked. She had got to her feet, too, still holding her handbag. I stayed on the edge of the soft comfy chair, wishing we could get in the car and go straight back home.

  ‘Danielle, my darling, he’s fighting the Revolution. You’ve not been listening. He’s out there participating in the historical dialectic.’

  My mother gave a little laugh. I stood up, too.

  ‘That’s our Raymond,’ she said.

  ‘This time it’s for real,’ said Jocelyne’s mother, disappearing out of another door.

  My mother and I stood, in silence. The General had a missing arm, I noticed. His sleeve was pinned up. There were lots of cracks in the oil paint. He had very pale eyes exactly like Jocelyne’s mother.

  ‘That’s a chaise-longue,’ said my mother, nodding at the sofa with the end missing.

  ‘I wish we hadn’t come,’ I murmured.

  Jocelyne’s mother burst back in, making me blush.

  ‘It’s such a wretched nuisance, this ballet show, they really should have cancelled it,’ she said, as if she hadn’t gone out at all. She was dressed in a very smart coat of white leather and was pulling on a pair of creamy gloves. A strong smell of perfume filled the room, a bit like apples. ‘But you know what these private dance academies are like. The conservatoires are even worse, of course. If the nuclear bomb was to drop on Paris, they’d take no notice and carry on. Ours is the most forward-thinking in Paris. The dance academy, I mean. They’ve got this fellow from New York, worked with Martha Graham. Terribly homo but very handsome, and next month – guess who they’ve got coming to perform?’

  We waited.

  ‘The Living Theatre!’ She could make the funny th sound with her tongue, like real English people, as if there was something wrong with her mouth. ‘Can you imagine? The ones who do it all naked, making funny shapes with their bodies and calling it “The End of Capitalism” or whatever. Electronic music. Raymond adores electronic music, the kind that goes blip-blip and squeaks with someone screaming silly words into a microphone for hours and hours in a steel works and smashing lots of glasses. Terribly difficult to get in, actually. Children of actors and writers and thinkers and so on because it is so much more forward-thinking than the conservatoires. We’re all a bit against the conservatoires, you see. They’re so stuffy. Raymond can’t bear ballet at all, he says it’s exploitative. You know those fellows in top hats on the edge of the stage in all those Degas paintings? Of ballerinas, I mean?’

  She wriggled her gloved fingers to test them, looking at my mother.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Degas!’

  My mother looked sideways up at the ceiling, as people did at school when they were searching for an answer. I felt myself blush and my heart thudded. I had never heard of this person, either – but you could always pretend! There w
as a really horrible silence: it was a sort of long drawn-out scream, like someone falling off a cliff.

  ‘Is that the one who does very good likenesses?’ my mother said, at last.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ Jocelyne’s mother said, looking a bit embarrassed herself. ‘Raymond will tell you all about it one day.’

  She laughed. I was certain she was a bit drunk. She’d hardly opened her mouth at Mamie’s memorial lunch.

  ‘I don’t know. Ballet. I loved it, I’m afraid, when I was Jossi’s age. I was rather good. Strong legs. Then I did something silly to my knee. Anyway. Never mind. As Raymond says, one must be political in everything, one must see the back of it, like a clock. I wish he’d look at the back of my fridge. There really was no need to be pushed into it by Jossi, by the way. Into coming, I mean. She’s such a bully, you know. Really very selfish. I don’t know what to do about Raymond. There’ll be no one at home if—’

  At that moment there were footsteps in the hall and Jocelyne’s father walked into the room. He was holding a handkerchief to his forehead. We all stared at him. His handkerchief came away to show a patch of blood, as if it had been painted on.

  ‘Oh God,’ sighed Jocelyne’s mother. ‘I knew it.’

  The blood was just under where his hair swept back, but had dribbled onto his large hooked nose, getting caught on the way in his connecting eyebrows. He looked like someone in a horror film, especially as his forehead was so high.

  ‘It is the Revolution,’ he said, holding up his spectacles: a lens was cracked.

  ‘Sit down, darling. Before you fall over.’

  Jocelyne’s mother led him to a comfy chair, my mother sort of helping.

  ‘Please let me look, Raymond. How silly at your age, manning the barricades.’

  Raymond sat on the edge of the chair and tilted his head back. ‘The Versailleux shot you whatever your age.’