CHAPTER NINETY

Entrance Hall, 2

THE RIGHT-HAND SECTION of the building’s entrance hall. In the background, the first flight of the staircase; in the foreground, to the right, the door to the Marcias’ flat. In the middle distance, below a large mirror in a surround of gilded mouldings which imperfectly reflects the silhouette of Ursula Sobieski’s back as she stands in front of the concierge’s office, is a large wooden chest with a padded lid upholstered in yellow velvet, serving as a bench. Three women are seated on it: Madame Lafuente, Madame Albin, and Gertrude, Madame Moreau’s former cook.

The first, that is to say the one on the extreme right from our point of view, is Madame Lafuente: though it is nearly eight in the evening, Madame de Beaumont’s domestic help has not yet finished her day’s work. She was about to leave when the piano-tuner turned up: Mademoiselle Anne was at gym, Mademoiselle Béatrice was upstairs, and Madame was having a rest before dinner. So Madame Lafuente had to show the tuner in herself, and also send his grandson out onto the landing with his comic to prevent any repetition of the stupid way he had behaved last time. Then Madame Lafuente had opened the fridge and realised that all that was left for dinner were three Bulgarian-flavour low-calorie yoghurts, since Mademoiselle Anne had raided the fruit and the roast beef and chicken leftovers that were intended to be the main ingredients of the meal; despite the lateness of the hour, and even though most of the local shops were closed on Mondays, in particular all the stores she prefers to give her custom to, she hurried down to get in some eggs, sliced ham, and two pounds of cherries at the Parisienne in Rue de Chazelles. On returning with the shopping in her net, she found Madame Albin, on her way home from her daily visit to her late husband’s grave, deep in conversation with Gertrude in the entrance hall, and since she hadn’t seen Gertrude for several months, she stopped to say hello. For Gertrude, who for ten years was Madame Moreau’s awesome cook, the one who cooked her monochrome meals and whom all Paris envied, had ended up yielding to the offer she had been made, and Madame Moreau, who had given up her grand dinner parties for good, let her go. Gertrude now has a position in England. Her employer, Lord Ashtray, made his fortune in recycling nonferrous metal and nowadays spends his great wealth by leading the lavish life of a great lord on his enormous estate, Hammer Hall, near London.

Gossip writers and visitors gape before his Regency rosewood furniture, his leather settees which shine with a patina made by eight generations of authentically aristocratic backsides, his cloisonné floors, his 97 lackeys in canary-yellow liveries, and his sectioned ceilings repeating in profusion the emblem which he has associated with his activities all his life: a red cordiform apple pierced right through by a long worm, and surrounded by little flames.

The most disturbing statistics are given about this character. People say he has forty-three full-time gardeners, that he has so many windows, glazed doors, and mirrors in his property that he employs four servants solely for their maintenance, and that since he couldn’t get enough replacement glass to keep up with repairs he solved the problem by simply buying the nearest glassworks.

According to some people he owns eleven thousand ties and eight hundred and thirteen walking sticks, subscribes to every English-language newspaper in the world, not to read them – his eight archivists look after that – but to do the crosswords, a pastime of which he is so inordinately fond that his bedroom is entirely repapered once a week with grids designed especially for him by his favourite cruciverbist, Barton O’Brien, of the Auckland Gazette and Hemisphere. He is also a keen rugby fan and has built up a private team that he has had in training for months in the hope of seeing it successfully challenge the next victor of the Five Nations tournament.

According to others, the collections and crazes are just camouflage, designed to hide the three true passions of Lord Ashtray: boxing (Melzack Wall, the contender for the world flyweight title, is supposed to be in training at Hammer Hall); three-dimensional geography: he is said to have been funding for the last twenty years a professor researching polyhedrons, who still has twenty-five volumes to write; and, especially, Indian horsecloths: he is alleged to have collected two hundred and eighteen of them, all belonging to the best warriors from the best tribes: White-Man-Runs-Him and Rain-in-the-Face, of the Crows; Hooker Jim, of the Mohawks; Looking-Glass, Yason, and Alikut, of the Nez Percé Indians; Chief Winnemucca and Ouray-the-Arrow, of the Payute; Black Beaver and White Horse, of the Kiowas; Cochise, the great Apache chief; Geronimo and Ka-e-ten-a, of the Chiricachuas; Sleeping Rabbit, Left Hand, and Dull Knife, of the Cheyennes; Restroom Bomber, of the Saratogas; Big Mike, of the Kachinas; Crazy Turnpike, of the Fudges; Satch Mouth, of the Grooves; and several dozen Sioux cloths, including ones owned by Sitting Bull and his two wives, Seen-by-Her-Nation and Four Times, and those of Old-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse, Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horse, Crazy Horse, American Horse, Iron Horse, Big Mouth, Long Hair, Roman Nose, Lone Horn, and Packs-His-Drum.

One might have expected such a character to impress Gertrude. But Madame Moreau’s robust cook had seen plenty before and didn’t have Burgundian blood in her veins for nothing. After three days in service, and in spite of the very strict regulations Lord Ashtray’s head secretary had handed her on arrival, she went to see her new employer. He was in the music room, listening to one of the final rehearsals of the opera he intended to have performed for the next week’s guests, a lost work by Monpou (Hippolyte) entitled Ahasverus. Esther and five choristers, inexplicably dressed as mountain climbers, were just starting on the chorus which closes Act II

When Israel went out of Egypt

when Gertrude burst in. Without noticing the disturbance she had caused, she threw her apron in Lord Ashtray’s face and told him the ingredients she was supplied with were revolting, and there was no question of her doing the cooking with them.

Lord Ashtray was especially keen to keep his cook as he had almost not tasted her cooking. To retain her, he accepted without demur that she should do her buying herself, wherever she wanted to.

That is why Gertrude now comes once a week, on Wednesdays, to Rue Legendre and fills a small truck with butter, fresh-laid eggs, milk, fresh cream, green vegetables, fowl, and various spices; she takes the opportunity, if she has any spare time, to visit her former mistress and to have a cup of tea with Madame Trévins.

She has come to France today not for shopping – in any case she would not have been able to do it on a Monday – but to go to Bordeaux for her granddaughter’s wedding; she is to marry an assistant inspector of weights and measures.

Gertrude is seated between her two former neighbours. She is a woman of about fifty, plump, red-faced, with chubby hands; she wears a black moiré silk top and a matching green tweed jacket and skirt which don’t suit her at all. On her left lapel she has pinned a cameo representing a virginal young lady with a delicate profile. It was a present from the Soviet vice-minister for foreign trade, in thanks for a red meal invented especially for him:

Salmon Roes

Cold Borshch

Crayfish Cocktail

Fillet of Beef Carpaccio

Verona Salad

Steamed Edam

Salad of Three Red Fruits

Blackcurrant Charlotte

Pepper Vodka

Bouzy Rouge