by Adam Thorpe
There was someone running back and turning and throwing something and a fuzzy black wodge of CRS and then a bright amoeba thing that was an explosion and shadows jumping out of the way. It didn’t remind me at all of the riot I’d been in.
‘They call everyone comrade, at least,’ I said.
‘Yeah. Then they shoot you dead, chum.’
I saw Christophe after school, the day before we visited Carole. We cycled to our old secret place and watched the work going on. A crane was placing panels on the top of the metal skeleton, and builders were hammering inside. One end was now covered in scaffolding, and a brick wall was going up, hiding where the stairs zigzagged as well as the spot where I’d heard what was probably Mademoiselle Bolmont talking on Menie Grégoire. It did look almost like a block of flats, now.
We leaned on our bikes and watched, not saying much. Christophe had his transistor with him; Sylvie Vartan was singing Baby Capone and he imitated her. He was really tall, now – he seemed to be growing about two centimetres a day, while I was stuck down below. He didn’t ask me a single question about my adventure. I found I couldn’t talk about it. When I tried to begin, my thoughts sort of gurgled inside my head and I felt a bit like glass again. All he wanted to talk about was this girl he’d seen in the shop. His head was still spinning from it. It got boring, the way he went on about her. It made me think of Joce-lyne, and I realised I didn’t feel the same way about her. The Jocelyne I’d been mad on had sort of disappeared as completely as the old military hospital and its benches and pine-trees. The one that was left was just annoying.
‘I’m going to go in all guns firing,’ Christophe said. ‘I’m going to go straight up to her in the street and say how much I incredibly fancy her.’
‘Yeah, that’s a good idea,’ I said, nodding. ‘I bet that’ll work a treat, mate.’
My uncle announced, when I got back from school on Thursday, that we’d be visiting Carole this evening, even though she’d be fuzzy from her treatment. No one had seen her at the weekend, he said, and she was feeling neglected. It was weird, having three members of the family in separate types of hospitals. My uncle told me that there were moments in life like that, when everything hardened or got complicated – I knew what he was thinking of, from his expression.
He’d opened a bottle of cheap wine and the level was going down very fast. I couldn’t get the picture of the crossed-out face in the photograph out of my head; I’d crept up to his bedroom when no one was in, on the Wednesday, and had another look. You could just make out the face under the cross’s faded blue ink; it was definitely my uncle’s, looking a bit like me. The only one not in Heaven. On the back of the photograph there was the name and address of a photographer in St Ouen.
In the car, on the way to Châtillon, my uncle let out a big sigh and told me that the insurance bastards weren’t going to pay up one hundred per cent – no, not even thirty per cent – and that those Sunburst ponces were removing his franchise. Just as well he’d bought the tickets for the variety show before that news, because now he wouldn’t be able to afford it. I listened, nodding. I couldn’t imagine being without money. Somehow, I’d always felt safe from being really poor.
‘And there’s your Communion meal coming up. Ten per cent up front. And Emil’ll be stuffing his face with the tiered cake, you’ll see. A franc a profiterole and there must be all of a hundred in it. Don’t tell your mother, not in her state, but we’re in deep waters, Gilles. Very deep waters.’
I was picturing the huge wobbly tower of profiteroles with the plastic figure of me on the top, and Emil diving towards it with both hands. The tiered cake was the only bit of the day I was looking forward to.
‘How do you mean, exactly?’
‘I’ve got enemies. Apart from the insurance bastards and the bloody Americans and now these Commie layabouts screwing everything up. That’s all I’m going to say. A lot of jealous people in this world who want to get even with me just because.’
‘Just because what?’
‘Just because they’re jealous,’ he said. ‘Business runs on envy, chum.’
He flicked his cigarette out of the window. I thought of the man in the posh car who gave us a lift. We were coming into Châtillon now, in fact.
‘Do you know anyone who drives an Alfa-Romeo?’ I asked.
‘Alfa-Romeo? Yeah. Mademoiselle Bolmont’s rich bastard brother. Why?’
I shrugged, my heart thudding. ‘I like Alfa-Romeos, that’s all.’
‘Well you won’t be getting one just yet,’ he chuckled. ‘It’ll be donkey and cart, at this rate.’
‘Seriously, what’s going to happen to us, if we’re in deep waters?’
‘It’s OK, Gilles,’ he said, glancing at me. ‘I’m going to ask Carole for a helping hand. You can back me on this one. But it’s top secret, right?’
‘How can Carole help?’
He tapped the side of his nose and winked.
We stopped at a florist’s and bought flowers. The huge cellophane wrapping crackled as I held the flowers carefully on my lap. It reminded me of my mother going up and down the stairs at Jocelyne’s.
‘That’ll cheer her up,’ he grinned.
Twisting round to see behind as we lined up to park, he said, ‘Listen, you just sit there giving her encouragement. That’d be very helpful, chum. She wouldn’t like it if it was just me, you know that. I reckon what I’m going to ask her might aid her mental state, in any case. What she needs, to my mind, is the feeling that she’s doing something that’s a help to someone else. Makes you feel good about yourself, charity does.’
‘Charity?’
‘Charity, Gilles. Aiding another individual.’
‘It’s only meant for that other person, though, charity is. Not for you.’
He grunted, switching off the ignition. The car was full of the humid greeny smell of the florist’s, mixed up with wine. I wondered if Mademoiselle Bolmont’s brother would end up shooting my uncle.
‘Nothing in this world is selfless, chum. Even Jesus got something out of being nailed up. We’re apes, basically. Apes in a very thick jungle. Don’t mention your escapade with the gorillas and the orang-utans in Paris, by the way. It’ll upset her.’
Carole had forgotten we were coming. She was sitting in a wicker chair that crackled as loudly as the cellophane around the flowers. She seemed very sleepy, with watery eyes. I helped her unwrap the cellophane and then tried to roll it up into a ball in the wastepaper bin. The cellophane expanded again immediately, overflowing the bin and crackling all the time as if alive. She and a few other patients kept looking at it more than the flowers. She asked where Maman was twice, and twice we had to pretend she was down with a bad cold.
It was only seven-thirty, and still light enough to see outside, so we went for a ‘stroll’ through the garden. As usual, we talked about boring things to do with the house. My uncle didn’t seem to be bringing up the charity idea. The way he was talking reminded me of the way you could patter your prayers, without really thinking about them. Even the priests did it – especially the older ones.
Then we sat down on a bench, Carole and myself on either end. My uncle was a bit out of breath. He took out his cigarettes and offered one to Carole. I wasn’t sure she was supposed to smoke. She accepted one and he lit it for her. She coughed, as if she wasn’t used to it. Her hair had been cut quite short, almost like a boy’s, and it suited her.
My uncle started on about our financial problems, about low sales and the Americans squashing him with their franchise thing, but not mentioning the robbery and the insurance people. The sky was lighter where there were branches against it and there were horse chestnuts full of flowers in the leaves like the ones in the park at Sceaux. The flowers looked even more like candles here, because they stood out in the evening light. I only knew three types of tree, I thought: oak, horse chestnut and pine. The huge blue evergreen the other side of the shrubs was called a something of Lebanon. My mother had told me. My uncle
was mentioning a legacy and Carole was nodding. I guessed this was the same legacy that I’d been left by my father, too; it would be mine when I was twenty-one and it had been invested wisely and would be worth quite a lot. I never thought about it much because my twenty-first birthday seemed a long way away and I found money things boring. Of course, Carole’s twenty-first birthday was about to happen – it was two weeks after my Communion and my mother was hoping Carole could have a little party here, maybe in the garden, with just the immediate family and some patients. I felt a bit bad that my Solemn Communion was so much more important to everyone than Carole’s birthday.
‘Just to tide us over,’ my uncle was saying, pulling some sheets of printed paper from his jacket pocket and unfolding them. ‘Here’s the form. It only needs your signature. Then I can draw the money on your behalf. I can get a loan on the back of it, you see. Really, it’s just transferring it from one account to another, I don’t even need to touch it, Carole, it’s just to persuade them that I’m not completely one-hundred-per-cent skint. Otherwise we’re in very deep waters. Very deep waters indeed, Carole. The whole family – Gilles, Maman, you. We’ve got stuff on instalments. Maman’s car, for instance. The new dishwasher. I want to save her from that. Imagine her without her dishwasher.’
‘It’s my money.’
‘And it’s going to stay your money, Carole. It’ll be a loan and I’ll respect that loan. We’re a family, aren’t we? And listen, this place here is costing us. I’m not saying it’s your fault, but it is costing us. Wouldn’t matter in normal circumstances. Most of it’s getting reimbursed, of course, but not one hundred per cent. In normal circumstances it wouldn’t matter, Carole, don’t get me wrong. In no way is it your fault.’
My uncle was desperate, I realised. He was holding the sheets of paper in front of him and he had his mouth open, staring at Carole. He was just stuck like that, his batteries run out, looking really stupid.
‘You see?’ he whispered, as if a tiny bit of battery power was left.
Carole smiled to herself. She got up and shuffled around on the gravel in front of the bench. A bird pecked on the grass behind, then flew off. The way she shuffled, her cigarette smoking in her fingers, would have made her into an old woman if she hadn’t been wearing jeans and a poloneck sweater.
‘I’ll put a time limit on the loan,’ my uncle said. ‘Promise to return it on such-and-such a date.’
She carried on shuffling around. I wondered if she had metal feet, still. It didn’t look like it. I felt what my uncle was doing was stupid, but I also hoped she’d allow him to transfer the legacy if that would save us. I knew I couldn’t lend him my legacy, because no one could touch it until I was twenty-one.
‘Maman doesn’t know we’re this much in trouble,’ my uncle said, still holding out the papers. ‘It would make her very ill.’
‘Where is she?’ Carole demanded.
‘Bad cold,’ he said.
‘Bad cold,’ I repeated.
She looked at us, scowling, as if she didn’t believe us. She carried on shuffling up and down, obviously thinking hard. The sun came out below some dark clouds, very low down so that it only hit the leaves in the trees. They were all golden, and the flowers in the horse chestnuts were lit up like light-bulbs.
‘And there’s Nicolas,’ my uncle said, in an even deeper voice than usual.
‘Nicolas?’
‘He costs, too. What isn’t reimbursed. Just that little extra each month. Your mother’s trips to see him, as well. It all adds up, Carole.’
I glanced at my uncle. He was looking at Carole, with his head on one side and his bushy eyebrows up, talking to her as if it was her fault that Nicolas cost that little bit extra each month. She dropped her cigarette on the grass behind her and crushed it with her foot.
‘I don’t need all that money crap, anyway,’ she said at last, in her slurry voice, looking up into the leaves. ‘I don’t bloody want it. It’s tainted money. Money is crap.’
‘The root of all evil,’ my uncle said, smiling and then chuckling. ‘No, but Carole, you’re not giving it, you’re lending it. It’s a deal, just between the two – the three of us. Gilles is witness to that. It’s your voluntary decision to help us all out. I won’t call it charity, Carole, but that’s what you can see it as. A simple act of charity that’ll aid us all. You, too, of course. The whole family.’
She held out her hand for the papers. My uncle was feeling in his pockets.
‘A pen. Where’s my bloody pen? Christ, where’s it gone?’
‘You signed the cheque in the florist’s,’ I said.
‘Christ alive, so I did. Wait here. I’ve left it in the car. Carole, Gilles, don’t move a bloody finger. Don’t move a muscle. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes, OK?’
He trotted off, leaving the two of us alone in the nice evening sunlight. I felt I was guarding her. She might just decide to go back in, I thought, where it wasn’t private. I had to keep her talking. She’d stepped onto the grass the other side of the gravel.
‘I saw Van,’ I said, leaning forward on the bench. ‘Your friend.’
She was staring down at the grass, bent over a bit, her arms just dangling.
‘He said to send you his love,’ I lied. ‘He remembered me. The Minister of Propaganda.’
‘Bastard.’
She started dancing, on the grass. She kicked off her shoes and lifted her arms up and started dancing. There was the sun setting in the branches above her and the horse chestnut flowers and her bare feet on the grass and her movements were like the ballet dancers’ movements in the show or when she’d danced nude in the hospital. A breeze moved and shook the leaves behind her suddenly and then I felt it on my face, lovely and cool and smelling of grass. She was almost laughing but not really and once or twice she stumbled and then she did laugh, going back to the movements very quickly. She didn’t look nearly as light and floaty as the dancers in the show, perhaps because she was in jeans and a sweater, or was out of practice. I still thought it was beautiful, though. I didn’t even care if anyone saw her. I was just a bit worried that my uncle would come back and get annoyed, thinking I’d encouraged her. Then she twirled around and tried to reach right up, standing on tiptoes, right up – but sort of toppled down on the grass with a bump, swearing and rubbing her feet. Now I knew why she’d had her hair cut short.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I can’t do it now my feet aren’t metal,’ she panted, her voice much less slurred. ‘They took those away from me and now I can’t go on point. It’s too bloody painful. I can only do demi, now.’
‘On point?’
She sat with her legs stretched out and wiggled her big toes.
‘Look. See? They’re everything. Everything. These extra two centimetres of flesh and bone are everything, our teacher said. Maïa Manalova. Except that her real name was Monique Mana, she was only pretending to be Russian. You can float and glide and go lighter than air, because of those two centimetres of flesh and bone. It’s what I always wanted, to be lighter than air and float and glide, right? A dancing star. But they wouldn’t let you go on your tippy-toes until twelve years old. It’s bad for you when you’re little. Fonteyn could do it barefoot, I saw her doing it, but most of us normal people need point shoes. I don’t know why they changed my feet back to flesh. Perhaps I over-used them. Clumsy. They have to be very careful, you can’t blame them. I was stomping about and overused them and it’s rare metal from a meteorite. I only went on point when I was twelve. I only did a year, but I could go on point by the end. I could do it properly, OK? If I had point shoes I could do it again.’
‘I’ve got yours at home,’ I said, leaning right forward on the bench. I hadn’t heard her speak so clearly for ages. ‘Your ballet shoes. That was really good, what you did. I could bring you the shoes and you could go right up on your toes.’
She rubbed her bare toes, not listening. I now understood how the older dancers in the show (not much older than Joce
lyne, though) had floated and glided across the stage. It was like a secret I’d found out. Even Giuseppina Bozzacchi was on point, in the photograph from 1870. She was just standing there, on point, as if it was normal.
‘You need special shoes, if your feet aren’t meteorite metal,’ she said.
I got up and joined her on the grass, kneeling next to her. It was cool and a bit damp on my bare knees.
‘Look, I found yours at home,’ I said. ‘Your ballet slippers. They had a bit of rubber in them, in the toes. I wondered why they had this bit of rubber in each toe, in fact. It’s to help you go up on point, isn’t it?’
She stared at me, her mouth open.
‘Seriously? You’ve found them?’
‘Yeah.’
She hugged me to her, sitting there on the grass. My nose was squashed against her poloneck sweater. She felt very warm and I could smell the old smell of her bedroom. She released me and held my face.
‘Will you bring them, Gilles?’
‘Yeah. Next time. Secretly.’
‘Oh yes. Secretly. They don’t like me dancing again.’
‘Who?’
‘Maman and the others.’
‘Why?’
My heart was thudding. I could see my uncle through a gap in the bushes, coming back across the main lawn. She’d let go of my face, although the feel of her hands was still on my cheeks, like ghost hands.
‘Because.’
‘Because what?’
She pouted her lips.
‘Because nothing.’
‘Because of the – the wicked things you said?’
She looked at me and another breeze made the leaves sway about behind her. An ant crawled across her cheek and she brushed it off.
‘They weren’t wicked. They were true. He did watch me.’
‘Watch you?’
My uncle had stopped on the lawn to talk to a young nurse walking the other way. The nurse was smiling, with very white teeth and red lips.