Follow the Route de Colmar out past the Meinau, and the tentacular suburbs of South Strasbourg seem to stretch on forever along a narrow congested road blocked with traffic lights every thirty seconds. The boring twin burgs of Illkirch-Graffenstaden have long given up the pretence of being villages. The housing promoters who have snapped up the last fields are lyrical about greenery and country air at ‘less than fifteen minutes’, means of transport unspecified, from the town centre. Very like the naked girls on television, ecstatic about the new shampoo they’ve just discovered.
Arlette could not understand it at all. ‘Isn’t it from this direction that the revolution will come?’ she asked Arthur hopefully. ‘How can they go on and on and on swallowing ever bigger and more blatant lies? Is the public so stunned, so brutalized and anaesthetized it simply does not notice? What is the limit of gullibility? How can anybody, ever, vote for any political party whatsoever? Who is it that sits starry-eyed sucking up the goo? The threshold of credibility has long ago been passed.’
Arthur smiled kindly. Dear girl! He got a smack for that: no male superiority here please.
‘Poor France. They’re even selling them cornflakes now.’
‘Kindly answer the question.’
‘There are seventeen answers, all interlocking. The market is continually renewed: the young simpletons replacing the cynical old. People are not more educated; they’re if anything less so. Children look at publicity because it’s more fun, they think rightly, than what goes on the rest of the time. More imaginative, technically more inventive, catchier rhymes and tunes. The copywriters don’t expect to be taken seriously. They want only that you will remember the name of the product as you totter glassily along the supermarket shelf, and pop it in your basket. Politicians are there because of a void nothing else fills. Having once proclaimed that the people is sovereign and decides things they can sit back, knowing perfectly that the people which has been prevented from deciding anything whatever all these years isn’t going to begin now. What more was there? Like everyone else, before reaching the end I’ve forgotten the beginning. What are you asking me for, anyhow? Your thoughts are as good as mine.’
Halfway down that long long road Arlette turned to the right, dodged about to avoid two more suburbs begging her to come and live in them, squeezed through an autoroute underpass and popped out in exurbia, otherwise known as Geispolsheim.
There are two. This was Geispolsheim-Gare, a commuter railway station around which has grown up a settlement of coyly rustic villas. Once you get out of this, with some difficulty, there is a quite countrified little road where you can see real fields, and there are crab-apple trees along the verges, of which motorists complain. Two kilometres farther is the village of Geispolsheim. Only a few years ago quiet and pleasant, with farmyard muckheaps and a steeple with a stork on it. The fields are filling fast with bungalows, and the airport looms disquietingly, and loudly. But there are still fields, and a tatty gate, and a notice needing repainting which says Taglang Horticultural Enterprises. A jumble of small old dirty glasshouses; a shiny new large glasshouse; a big rectangle of concrete with rusty sort of pillars sticking out of it, announcing one even bigger. The Enterprises were making plenty of money.
She had overshot: reversed, entered where it helpfully said Entrance, and came to rest on a boggy patch made muddier by several cars. If they’re making that much money they could well invest in a few truckloads of gravel, thought Arlette, changing her shoes.
A high hedge, neatly clipped, and trees, and a fingerpost saying Office, through-here, and she turned the corner and found a bungalow, very large and super and stinkingly nouveau riche, with the New England clapboard bit tacked on to the California-Spanish bit, swimming-pool, patio, terrace, orange trees in gay wooden tubs and lemon trees in massive earthenware, Biot style. Lots of money being made. All this in the middle of the humble fields of Geispolsheim, and a V6 Jaguar, and a silver Porsche Carrera, and by gum a Maserati too, in Italian racing red. She felt hit on the head.
The office was the old part of the bungalow, now long outgrown, the former kitchen and living-room now tarted up with lavish Italian tiles and terrazzo, with many plants in pots. A girl with several telephones bade her good morning and said she’d try and find Mr Taglang.
He was a rumpled, friendly man in his forties; sports jacket, check shirt, flannels and cowboy boots, with an easy-going manner. She gave a rambling tale about business relations with Mr Demazis, said she’d learned of his sudden death with a shock – left a couple of loose ends.
‘Left a couple here too,’ making a lip. ‘I’m the technician – he ran the financial end. Pretty snarled up, without him, but we’re getting straight. What brought you out here then?’
‘Oh, just vulgar curiosity, I guess. Was seeing somebody off at the airport.’ Hands in pockets, legs crossed, casual; she hoped she wasn’t overdoing it. The simple truth wouldn’t do here. Lying was unsimple, and she must try not to embroider.
‘What you in, then?’ No suspicion. Like her, just vulgar curiosity.
‘Oh, house property. You know. And any business is interesting, isn’t it? One always takes a look. You’re doing pretty well – I say with admiration.’
‘Got to know how to find the right corner, specialize in the right thing,’ with an attractive enthusiasm. ‘Like to take a look?’
‘Very much indeed.’
‘I don’t try to do the garden-centre thing. Matter of fact I don’t do outside stuff at all, hardly. Always was interested in indoor plants. Got to have a gift for them. This market’s hardly scratched. Should see the stuff they have in Holland: ten times the varieties we have here. But we’re catching up. Take a couple of basics, and work on ornamental varieties. Azaleas say, or hibiscus. Fella down the road has half the poinsettia market in Europe. The ecology kick helps us. Grow your own thing huh, even in a little flat. Coffee bean, pineapple top, avocado stone. People living in ghastly conditions, want something natural, something beautiful. Dies, as it nearly always does, they can replace it. Cheap.’
‘Well of course. I do it myself, I understand perfectly. Bloody good luck, I say – you couldn’t do better.’
Lightning tour, down a glassed passage, into a hothouse, out and into another. Some coolish, dry, others hot and humid. Close stifling smells of greenery. Quantities of turf mould and special soils, piles of little pots. Three or four earnest bearded young men doing the little, careful, handcraft chores with minute seedlings that were bathed in special light and heat, cosseted with automatic sprinklers, potioned with magic mixtures, flipped inside six weeks into sweet little bushes thick with flowers, all forced with skilful artifice. Frightful disappointment waiting. Three weeks later the darling thing blew its mind, languished and died. Well so what? You went back and bought another. They weren’t dear. Cheaper than cut flowers.
‘Fascinating,’ she said, meaning it. ‘Mail order, almost.’
‘Not quite, because they’re so fragile. But we deliver with the truck, all over. Germany, Switzerland, anywhere you like. Damn complicated. That was what Albert was so good at. We’ll have to be getting a computer, ha.’
‘How are you managing?’ asked Arlette sympathetically.
‘Ah, my wife used to do it,’ said Mr Taglang. ‘She laid off a few years ago – to have a family, you know. Got the main threads in her head still. Full-time job, though.’ He seemed to enjoy talking to her.
Why not? People liked her, showed her confidence. Not just that she was a good listener. She was a happy person, said Arthur, and it showed. And a good person, he added. People feel this goodness. They feel they can rely upon you.
Pooh, good. What’s that? Good as gold, people say. Gold will buy a lot? Won’t lose its value? Is nice to work with? Ductile, a good conductor? Heavy, nice to touch and agreeable to wear? Warm, and solid? A golden mediocrity, that’s me.
You have innocence, said Arthur.
I’m ready to believe good of people. I hope I don’t lose that. Why always believe the worst, of everyone? Why always show suspicion and mistrust?
Mr Taglang was a nice person. People who are genuine enthusiasts always are. A man sunk in his work, loving it. These plants are more to him than a means of making money. The way he speaks of them: you can tell at once.
‘What are these?’
‘Camellias. They’re resting. Mustn’t bring them on too soon. Lovely things,’ caressing the foliage. ‘See them in bloom – come back in January. You see, that’s when people need them most; in February when things are gloomiest. And these the azaleas. Ponticas and japonicas.’
‘I never can tell the difference.’
‘One is deciduous – look, just coming into leaf.’
‘Most places this month are obsessed by those horrible chrysanthemums.’
‘Yes of course, to put on graves for All Saints. Being marketed now – the work is finished. No, they’re not horrible. I don’t touch them though. One can’t do everything. Some people do bulbous plants, lilies say. Roses, carnations. There’s room for everybody.’
‘The little lemons are sweet.’
‘One of my main interests. Slow, and difficult. I’m working with some success on accelerating them, and on miniaturization. A full size orange tree is too much for people mostly. You can have a little mandarin though, fifty centimetres high in full fruit. Do the same with lemons – even grapefruit. Why not?’
And make lots of money doing so. Why not? Nothing wrong with that.
‘All this glass – must be expensive. Big investment. Risk Capital.’
‘Yes indeed,’ seeming pleased. ‘Costs a fortune. Got to take the risk though.’
‘Bank take a pretty favourable view?’
‘M’yes.’ Perhaps it was the one question too many, too nosy. Or he didn’t like to think of the mortgage the bank had on him.
‘I’d love to buy one of those.’
‘Not those though. Too immature. Die if you took it out now. Find you a natural one if you like. Won’t bloom for you till spring though. Too long to wait?’
‘No, I enjoy the waiting and the wondering.’
‘Most people are too impatient. Want it all now.’ They had come back to the outside of the office. ‘This lot’s been outdoors all summer. Ready to move in, now.’ A dark brown woman, wearing a becoming shade of pink, could be seen through the glass, telling the girl off by the gestures made. A camellia in bloom. Pretty. That would be the wife.
‘How about this? Quite a pretty shape.’
‘Lovely,’ feeling for her purse.
‘Twenty francs. Ach – you were a friend of poor old Albert’s. Make you a present.’
‘That’s really kind. You’ll miss him.’
‘Yes indeed. The technical side – they’re tricky you know, like animals, they need constant care and attention – just about swallows me. My wife looks after the packing and shipping. All that indispensable voyaging about, Albert used to do all that. I’ll just get you a piece of paper for that.’
The woman was standing, looking at Arlette with curiosity. Couldn’t see much of her through the glass. Another man was standing too, farther back; she couldn’t make out the features. Taglang crossed, carrying green tissue, a sheet of florists’ wrapping paper, stopped for a few words. Came out with the pot wrapped.
‘You are kind,’ gratefully.
‘’S nothing. Bring it to the car for you.’
‘Wouldn’t have thought there’d be so much voyaging.’ Just to be saying something.
‘Christ, yes. Holland, England. Stuff doesn’t come up with the rations. And the other way, the distribution. Frontier taxes and so on. This yours? Pretty. I like these Lancias.’
‘But you prefer a Jaguar,’ laughing.
‘No no,’ laughing, ‘that’s my wife’s. English taste! Mine’s the Porsche. You know what they say; that’s not a car, it’s a way of life.’
‘And that gorgeous thing – a Ferrari is it?’
‘Maserati. Belongs to a friend. Associate,’ abruptly. ‘That’s okay lying. Don’t stand it up. Branches are fragile; let it fall and you’ll spoil the shape. Okay? Glad to have met you.’
‘It was fascinating. And I’ll come in January. For a camellia.’
‘You do that. Bye, now.’
Arlette drove back into town, thoughtful.