Arthur, wearing her apron, was cooking; looking pleased with himself.
‘Ho. There you are. Moist and delicious: nothing like a bit of rain to improve a woman. You may talk but not interrupt; this is going to be delectable.’ Only a half chicken that she had taken out of the freezer that afternoon, but she’d hoped it would stimulate his imagination.
‘I’m in business,’ said Arlette grinning. ‘Three all at once.’
‘How fine you manage to chop those onions.’ Having got the men into the kitchen, butter them up lavishly.
‘A question of having the knife sharp, which women never do. Now don’t stand there with your hands in your pockets: make the salad.’
‘Monsieur Dupont he called himself. It’ll do to go on with. I don’t have the right to say much about him. As a case marked X…’
‘Lemon juice please, not vinegar.’
‘…so either he’s pretty kinky or it’s an elaborate trap one can’t see the bottom of. Hardly for me; nobody knows me. So for whom? Why all the melodrama? Is your rice ready? – I’m starving.’
‘Your sense of mystery makes it rather elliptical and tiresome. A whole category of scary stories written by women. Shudders and shrieks in the shuttered house. The species was described by Jacques Barzun as “Everything is Rather Frightening”.’
‘What’s in this? Tomato and sherry I can recognize. Oh I see; grated orange peel, that’s very snazzy. The nervous trick of glancing about doesn’t mean he was frightened. I mean it’s commonplace. But he was frightened.’
‘A mythomaniac. You’d be well advised to leave it alone.’
‘What, my first day? No, no more rice; I mustn’t stuff. A myth for whose benefit? It might be police business; I made rather a fuss of warning him but he didn’t blink. I said come to the office and cough it all up. If he doesn’t then it’s myth. Now these other two girls I’d like your opinion on.’
‘Norma’s the classic lame dog and as I told you this morning, helping over stiles is one thing, collecting lame dogs and getting saddled with them – that’s rather an unhappy metaphor.’ But he was pleased with Marie-Line.
‘If you have a tame doctor, and of course he has plenty, nothing’s easier. It wasn’t the Russians who invented using the psychiatric clinic as a means of repression. I rather think we owe that one to Napoleon’s fertile invention.’
‘Can you think of anything more wicked? You need no brainwashing. You’re refusing a young girl control over her own body. It’s a rape.’
‘There I’m with you –’ Arthur pulled up crossly. ‘Manipulating young girls is indeed wicked.’
‘We’ll do the washing-up first,’ said Arlette firmly.
‘Exactly like porn photos: now open your legs dear, so Joe can get a good shot at your pussy. They do it, silly little things. But it’s a rape. They are profoundly humiliated and wounded even while telling themselves it’s of no consequence. And some shrinks sit there canting that porn is good for you.’
‘Male shrinks,’ bored at this labouring of the obvious.
‘You’ve only her word for it all though, Beware of these young girls – fearful little actresses.’
‘Of course. I have to make some contact with the parents. If I go to Hautepierre tomorrow I’ll make a detour, spy out the land a bit.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Arthur sentimentally. ‘Phil Marlowe the shopsoiled Galahad goes out tomorrow calling on General Sternwood. That marvellous house with the stained-glass window: the lady with no clothes on bound to the tree.’
‘In Hautepierre?’.
‘Yes, well who knows? Norma, I agree, bears no great resemblance to General Sternwood, but the Meinau is sinister. You might well find yourself among the pornographers on Laurel Canyon Drive. As long as Marie-Line doesn’t start behaving like Carmen Sternwood, biting her thumb and looking coy.’
‘Intensely funny,’ she said, getting cross. ‘Stop it.’
I’m at a crossroads, thought Arlette sleepily. She hitched her quilt to make herself comfortable.
‘You’re creating a draught,’ muttered Arthur. Men … turning round and round, like a dog …
If I can make some sense out of these three people, then I shall be able to … what? I don’t quite know yet: not just sociology. Be fair to Arthur. He’s trying to make sense of it all too. The whole structure of our civilization is on its last legs. Law, ethics; meaningless phrases. Professionals, clacking away about methodology. Helpless, and too stupid to know it. More and more techniques, complications, sophisticated tools. Simplify, simplify …
She was asleep.
Arthur brought her a cup of coffee in bed. Ignominiously, she fell asleep again over it, woke, rushed out in a panic. Arthur was gone to work. The cassette ‘pocket memo’ lay on the kitchen table.
‘Coffee,’ said Arthur’s voice. ‘And aluminium foil. It occurred to me, if you’re going to Hautepierre, you might stop at the Italian grocer.’ In the little Italian car, right. Sausage. Ham. Forty thousand types of sausage in Strasbourg and none that’s eatable. Arthur was good at housekeeping. Remember Piet, very old-fashioned and male, not to say old-woman Dutch fusspot. Couldn’t scramble an egg, but fond now and then of ‘pulling the women up about their household accounts’. Meaning complaints about the quantities of lavatory paper used for jobs like wiping out the omelette pan. Do I have to type it all out in triplicate?
While Arthur would thread a needle and sew his buttons back on. Sighing, sucking the thread heavily, holding it all up to the light to get it through the blasted loop. He took his glasses off for this job; she put hers on. Otherwise there was not much difference.
That wash-basin takes a long time emptying: must be hair blocking it. If Arthur can thread a needle I can unscrew a siphon. Need big pincers and where are the big pincers? Not in the broom cupboard where they ought to be. She found them in the electricity cupboard and thought herself a good detective. Wrote down light bulbs, 75 watt, screw and bayonet. Left some instructions on the tape for the cleaning woman. Whip out smartish to the Italian grocer.
‘Do you mean you leave your cleaning woman the KEYS!’ marvelled a silly bourgeois woman. ‘You’ll get everything pinched.’
‘There’s nothing worth pinching,’ said Arthur comfortably. They all worried so about burglars. Life was too short.
She walked as far as the Italian grocer. Not a hope of finding anywhere to park around here. The more roads they built the more they needed.
One could think, while cooking. Consommé is a long job. She got the bones out of the oven, drained the fat off, deglazed the pot and set it to simmer, turned the fan on to get rid of the smell of blackened onions, put in one clove and a quarter of a bay leaf. When it boiled she would turn the gas down, skim for ten minutes, add the onions and their skins, a carrot, a bit of celery, a few parsley stalks. Put the lid on and let it simmer till tonight. Tomorrow it would be cold; one would peel the fat off, strain the stock, and put it on again to clarify with minced beef and an eggwhite. Result, after another hour or so – consommé. If only her other jobs were that simple.
Norma was fixed, more or less. As long as she stuck to it, and really made a clean break. She’d made her own decision; Arlette hadn’t made it for her.
No problem then, there. Albert Demazis … That was several different kinds of problem and one had no idea what, nor how many. She didn’t intend to let it bother her. Whatever loony notion he’d had in his mind ringing her up, going through all the rigmarole, and then going back on it all – she probably would never set eyes on him again, and if she did she’d be rather cold and curt. The mystifications are not appreciated, and I’m not interested in the money either.
Marie-Line. Had worked herself up into a great stew, and quite likely that pop-eyed Françoise, enjoying all this rather, was making the most of it. A dose of cold water was needed, and perhaps a dose of castor oil too. She’d go see the parents. This evening; better waste no more time.
The pot with the bones, Arthur’s chicken carcase, some odds and ends found in the fridge had quietened to a gentle simmer, and so had she. Dinner was going to be simple; she’d bought big bicycle-tyre macaronis from the Italian shop, as well as ham that was not soaked in water to make it weigh heavier…
She went into the office, peaceful with the light beginning to fade and the big seascape looking kindly at her, its smoky blues getting deeper and smokier as the afternoon wore on. There was nothing on her tape.
Two days of work and it seemed to have frittered away again into the incoherent nonsenses that had been on the tape for a week. Nothing to show. No penny either. But no, she was not in the least discouraged. This was the way it went. You sat in the office. If anybody came it would be small and unimportant people with small unimportant stories. Like Norma. But that was exactly what she was here for.