Loving Sylvie

by Elizabeth Smither

  Now he had totally dried up. He turned the book over and read a summary. He needed to go to a class where people gave books and other people opened them—one of those sessions where the participants swapped roles.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Thanks very much. I promise to read it.’ He thought it was very unlikely. A house and a reluctant professor. He wished he had never met the young woman opposite him. Then his gaze rested on the parting dividing her hair. Even in the steamy heat of the café, tendrils of hair were floating. The parting made wings that on a man would have been a moustache.

  A week later and he had still not opened The Professor’s House. On its top edge it was stamped Jason Books and he thought he knew the shop it had come from. He concentrated on his work; he half-admitted to himself that it might be the most certain thing in his life; he felt resolute and hollow at the same time. He turned his head to look at his colleagues, imagining their hair grey and lines deepening on their foreheads like the grey clerks in Dickens. Would Heidi still be wearing her pinstriped shirt with its choir-boy collar or Russell still affect a pencil behind his ear? The alder tree was shivering against the window, the very opposite of the neat and controlled trees airily parachuted onto plans for public squares. From time to time he got himself a coffee or went downstairs to breathe in the air from the street. A building further along Symonds Street had been closed because of Legionnaire’s disease. Ben’s preference was for slightly lower temperatures and sash windows.

  He scanned the opposite side of the street where the university buildings rose in clusters. He tried to imagine them as an estate, the holding of a single powerful family. They were not uniform enough for that. Paths ran between them, small insignificant areas of garden, but there was no grand design. There were bicycle racks and rubbish bins and a security booth with a yellow and black striped barrier.

  A few more days and he was ready to acknowledge his own misery. He had met a deadline by working late and coming downstairs when a street light was shining inside the alder tree. He thought of something Sylvie had said about the professor: that he had designed a house he did not want to move into. Eventually he found the book under a pile of folders. He opened it and read: The moving was over and done. Professor St. Peter was alone in the dismantled house where he had lived ever since his marriage, where he had worked out his career and brought up his two daughters. It was almost as ugly as it is possible for a house to be …

  Isobel had decided for the sake of future harmony or no harmony at all she must persist with Cora Taverner. Through the years Sylvie was growing up, alternately attending school or being expelled, Isobel had attempted to teach her to turn a situation about and play the opposite role. Only rarely had it worked and rarely, Isobel had to admit, did it work for herself.

  She could not tell if she would have liked another woman standing beside her on the jetty. A woman who might have pushed her into the lake. Ben Taverner had been goodhumouredly evasive about his mother but Isobel, covertly observing him during the day, thought he looked relieved. Still there must be pain; it would be unnatural if some words had not been exchanged. It was Sylvie she was concerned for, that she should not be undermined or defeated by stealth. It might take years, Isobel told herself, checking her appearance in the mirror, settling the largest pearl in her necklace in the hollow of her throat. She had swallowed a teaspoon of brandy before she phoned. A cold voice had answered, and when she issued her invitation it had said, ‘Why?’ ‘Why not?’ Isobel had replied but she had said it gaily. The voice had relented a little when Isobel suggested they could at least see one another, gain an impression. Even war criminals were enclosed behind glass.

  The conversation had not lasted very long. Isobel had proposed somewhere neutral and they had agreed on a hotel lobby where they could have coffee. There were bound to be little nests of chairs surrounding low tables. Both might have been thinking of the civilising presence of waiters bringing trays and extra hot water.

  Isobel had always loved hotels. When she and Kit stayed in one she often opened doors marked STAFF ONLY and pretended she was lost. She loved the exteriors, the foyers and dining rooms, the small and large conference rooms with their skirted tables for buffets, the huge food warmers and the staff behind them wielding tongs or solicitously carving a giant ham. She loved imagining someone on duty on the concierge’s desk or reception coming off, swinging through a door, panelled in dark wood on one side and plain and scuffed on the other, someone loosening a cap or undoing a silver uniform button as their feet sped over what a second before had been plush carpet and was now linoleum. If Isobel found herself in a kitchen she would ask for a glass of water. A headache was extremely useful and she crossed her fingers behind her back in case a real one should eventuate.

  Now, on the day they had agreed to meet, Isobel was there early, to foyer watch. A busload of tourists was being bowed through the big front doors and she thought the commissionaire was not bowing as low as usual or else his bows were graded: a group could not warrant the deference shown to an individual. A flat box of flowers was delivered and whisked up in the lift in gloved hands. Luggage carts with gleaming brass handles moved like small trains.

  Cora obviously felt she was being watched as she came through the door and up the stairs to the reception area. Isobel signalled by waving her fingers and then rose as the plump determined-looking woman approached. Her voice on the phone had suggested someone tall and stately, and for a moment Isobel was confused. She got half to her feet and then sank back in her chair, unwilling to use her height to advantage. For a moment she remembered the title of one of Kit’s books: The Art of War by Machiavelli.

  Only a few seconds had passed and Isobel saw the meeting was a mistake. She, who had called it, had no agenda beyond sitting together, sizing one another up, and rising at the end to a handshake or a touch on the shoulder. In unlikelier scenarios a hand touching the other’s waist, a peck of lips to a cheek. And then walking away, with or without a backward glance, already making an inventory: a blush on the neck or tearing a small cake to pieces as if it were bread.

  Cora sat forward so her legs were planted on the carpet, exactly in the centre of a heraldic shape that could have been a phoenix or a crown. Isobel hunched herself back into the overstuffed cushions. Nonetheless she tried to look expansive, as if she was taking her cue from the heavy chandelier or the claw-legged table with its absurdly large floral arrangement. But Cora’s look cut through all that: it seemed to be saying, ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’ And Isobel, who had vowed as she came through the big glass doors and received the commissionaire’s bow not to utter the word ‘sorry’ under any circumstance or any provocation, had begun with it. ‘I’m sorry not to have met you earlier.’

  There was no response other than a cool examining look. The waiter now arrived with the tea. It mightn’t have been the Japanese tea ceremony, Isobel thought, but there was still a good deal of lifting and placing. She wondered, wildly, what waiters, intruding at this moment when intimacy should have been established, heard. Then he was gone and she offered to pour.

  ‘Was there a reason for this?’ Cora said when sips were being taken with the solemnity of a tea-taster. Isobel half-expected her to signal the waiter for a spittoon.

  ‘None,’ Isobel replied. She set the clock again on the word ‘sorry’. ‘To meet, to see one another.’ To take your measure, to see what I must do in future, to see what I should expect.

  ‘I can’t ease your conscience,’ Cora replied, and now Isobel felt the tell-tale heat in her own neck. She put her cup down and it made a tiny sound like a bell.

  ‘My conscience over what?’ she asked, but there was no reply until another sip had been taken.

  ‘Why, your conscience over allowing it. Your granddaughter and my son. What were you thinking of?’

  ‘That I could have prevented it?’ Isobel asked. ‘That it was my doing?’ There seemed to be a pulse in her throat now. Despite the tea her mouth was hideously
dry.

  ‘I have played the role of Sylvie’s grandmother,’ Isobel said.

  The passion rising in her was shaking her. Perhaps treaties were composed in this rush of feeling, clause after clause going down the parchment with no loss of nobility, the language flowing to the pen. The evenings stroking Sylvie’s hair, the storms and the silences, the quiet hours, usually when Sylvie was not there, that were so hard-won and precious. Isobel’s relearning, if she needed to relearn, that beauty and effort were intricately connected. How changed she had been by it all. And then, on the jetty, fearful Kit would have a heart attack through not having a practice the day before, the cool breeze touching her spine through her light clothing, and the odd warmth of the bouquet she was holding to herself.

  ‘I hope the role may come to you,’ she continued, meeting the inimical gaze. ‘If it does, if you are fortunate enough to receive it, it will be through Sylvie. It will be through her agency.’

  Isobel, without making a proper farewell, walked fuming up the street. At first she hardly saw anything; bodies moved around her or she moved around them; she felt it was miraculous she didn’t collide with someone. But there was an old pattern at work and she flowed with it. Then she realised she was going in the wrong direction. It hardly mattered. When eventually she felt calmer she found a coffee shop and went in. She was not thirsty but she thought a second drink might take away the taste of the tea she had drunk at the hotel. Only half Isobel’s cup had been emptied before she understood the woman facing her was determined on enmity. Sylvie would not stand a chance. Instantly Isobel saw herself in armour, resuming her guard, scanning the horizon or looking at the sky or even the entrails of animals.

  That Isobel should have prevented the marriage! That her role should have been nothing more than a steady discouragement directed at Sylvie and Cora’s son; that even without a meeting they should have been in cahoots. No wonder Ben had been evasive about an introduction. She saw again his face as he appeared on the path, walking with his best man. Slightly dishevelled, flushed, but undoubtedly happy. Kit had had a friend from a poisonous family, a cold withdrawn father and a mother who had bound her son to her until he resisted. The years of resistance had been hideous; time and again Joaquin fell back into what he described as a bear trap. It was the presence in his life of Kit and their friendship from primary school that had enabled him to climb out. Kit was amazed and denied any credit. ‘I saw there was sanity,’ Joaquin said. ‘I saw I could choose it.’ It had meant a complete severance. Only years later had Kit been told; then he recollected years in which his friend had been particularly close, when he had stayed with their family at weekends and once even for Christmas.

  So it was possible, Isobel thought, as she pushed her chair back and got up. Ties could be cut, there could be choice—even savage choice—if there was enough will.

  ‘I was surprised you asked to meet,’ Cora had remarked. ‘What could you expect to achieve?’

  To this Isobel had not replied, concentrating on the golden stream that was issuing from the teapot. A little softness, she might have said. A little grace. Clearly she was dealing with a primitive. An egotist whose demands were paramount. Any graciousness would simply be for obedience.

  After her coffee Isobel felt re-energised. She couldn’t wait to get home and talk to Kit. She would talk about Joaquin as well; she knew he still wrote to Kit, long old-fashioned letters on monogrammed paper from his London club.

  The long walk restored her. At first, shocked and dismayed, she had almost limped, but now she strode and her breathing became calm. Kit would know what to do. Something that had rubbed off on Joaquin would rub off on her.

  After the wedding gift, it was several months before Sylvie heard again from Madeleine. That had been the pattern through her childhood. Carefully chosen postcards from a stand in a tabac: the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides. A line of tiny kisses, which Madeleine felt might cause offence, below her signature. For herself, she knew she would not have survived without the help of the Lévêque family.

  Her return to them when Sylvie was four had come at a time suitable to both parties. Madame Lévêque loved to cook, to reign over a household of which she was the centre. Monsieur Lévêque was anxious that the domestic arrangements which had kept him happy for over forty years should not be jeopardised, something there had been a hint of when their youngest daughter left home to study and then marry. Madeleine had arrived at just the right moment. Besides, she was sad and undernourished; Madame Lévêque could nurse her back to health. Genevieve Lévêque and Madeleine Lehmann had restored themselves together. After six months Madeleine took a job as a private secretary to an Englishman. A big florid man, he reminded her of the Scarlet Pimpernel. His cheeks would flush in the most un-French way; she could gauge not just his mood but the slightest shift in his feelings. It seemed a desirable quality.

  Arranging Hugo Brudenell-Bruce’s diary, remembering his wife’s birthday and ordering roses, Madeleine thought she had found her vocation. Like Genevieve Lévêque she loved to serve, to anticipate the smallest thing. In Madeleine’s case it was the arrangement of mail in piles of priority; in Genevieve’s the gleam on freshly polished brass. Hugo was an importer of fine English men’s suiting. As an advertisement he dressed in tweeds and fine wools; his large frame enabled him to carry off le style Anglais. Every lunch hour he went to the same restaurant, a small family affair, where porcelain roosters of every description formed the décor. Hugo was inordinately devoted to rugby. With the proprietor of La Cambuse he could endlessly discuss the merits of a prop from Toulouse or the roots of the English game in public schools.

  Madeleine found him perfect. Unlike the French men she met on the street, his eyes never appraised her figure or her clothes, the shoes and handbag that matched, the artful knotting of a scarf. She still visited the Lévêques occasionally for Sunday lunch. Best of all, emboldened by the protectiveness she felt Hugo would offer if she requested it, she had several love affairs.

  One, Laurent, she saw in the late afternoon before he went home to his family. She went to a small hotel, took the key from reception if it was not already gone, and climbed two flights of stairs. The lift, frequently broken, was too daunting. Laurent had taught her quickly and clinically to undress and lie on the bed; he made up for this by a repertoire of caresses and positions that were unfamiliar to her. Sometimes she thought of a French exercise book in which school children wrote letters inside tiny squares. Then she dressed again and hurried back to Hugo’s office for another two hours’ work. He had usually left by this time to take an apéritif or a single malt whisky with colleagues.

  On the walk back from seeing Laurent, Madeleine considered her position. She had a daughter and yet she was still dating, still searching. Only the search was false. If only she could combine Hugo with someone like Laurent. The lovely tweeds and Laurent’s knowledge of what to do in bed. Sometimes he kissed her hair and dabbed at her forehead with a corner of the sheet. He watched her dress, as if she was now rewarded for his indifference when she arrived. On the cobblestones Madeleine’s toes had learned to curl slightly. It was something Sylvie had shown her. The toes of children endlessly moved and felt their way across the ground.

  Isobel had never said to Madeleine that she could not manage Sylvie. But not saying a thing did not mean it was not felt. The bigger concern of Madeleine’s breakdown had pushed it aside. Some part of Isobel, whose own life felt uncertain at this stage, had welcomed the tiredness she knew would come with the demands of being older and caring for a child. She felt a need to impart something, though she had no idea what this might be. The day Sylvie had come to Isobel one of her closest friends, Ann Scott, had died, and one of her sharpest regrets was that she would never again be able to enter her friend’s house. It was in this house that Isobel had confided a good many secrets and had even slept for an afternoon in a small sunroom which Ann kept for guests. When she woke she looked out at the massive trees in the garden, their trunks smo
thered with ivy. A light breeze lifted some of the leaves and not others: a delicate singling out. She had watched for hours, wondering if there was a human analogy. Then Ann had appeared in the doorway with a cup of coffee.

  Still, if Isobel could have seen Madeleine as she worked for Hugo she might have been reassured. Here at least was a father figure with no hidden agenda. Or not until the day Madeleine caught sight of him under an arcade in a side street, pressing an envelope into the hands of a young man. She had walked on, without turning her head, hardly faltering. The next day she was as carefully dressed as ever and he was in his superlative tweeds. Luckily it was not his wife’s birthday—Madeleine did not think she could have managed that. And when it did come around, three months later, she ordered yellow roses as usual and he signed the card.

  By now Madeleine’s French was passable. Still with a trace of something foreign, but it was apparent to even the most casual listener that she had taken pains, and this was the most important thing. At first she was mortified when the response to one of her tentative sentences was a volley of words she had no hope of understanding. One lunch hour she had gone into a bookshop to thank an elderly man who had helped her the day before, coming out onto the pavement and pointing in the direction she should go. She had the first words ready, ‘Monsieur, je veux vous remercier pour l’aide que vous m’avez donnée hier …’ But then she faltered; the bookseller, peering at her through his half-spectacles, had clearly failed to recognise her. She had fled the shop, followed by the stares of other customers, some of whom were waiting impatiently by the till.

  Now, between seeing her married man—it was Laurent who suggested she use the term petite amie—and sheltering under the protection of Hugo, Madeleine hoped she might find someone who was free. The offices of Brudenell-Bruce were in the 6th arrondissement and Madeleine, avoiding the bookseller and hoping she did not see him in front of his shop, could imagine she was strolling among professors and scholars as gentle and protective as her father. But it was mainly students who moved around her, arguing and gesticulating, stepping into the gutters. They crowded into cafés and Madeleine marvelled at the way a debate continued even while the menu was being consulted. A long communal table would be commandeered and Madeleine, from her modest seat by the window, could observe the elaborate structure of a critique of a movie director or a politician, embellished by gestures and smoke rising from individual cigarettes. Outside was an important intersection, controlled by a traffic policeman. A girl on a bicycle with books in a wicker basket wobbled past, almost brushing the sides of cars. When her café crème had been lingered over for the requisite time, Madeleine got up and walked slowly towards the office. There had been no further sightings of Hugo under the arches and she banished the image from her mind. The young man might have been a beggar: the contrast between Hugo’s worsted and the other’s black shabby clothes was so great.