Arlette lived in the Rue de l’Observatoire, morning sun at the back and evening in front, no southerly aspect but worth it for the trees of the Botanic Garden. And the little Observatory, pleasing like all things with domes. What on earth did it observe, in the middle of smoggy ol’ Strasbourg – but it didn’t, she suspected. Measured earthquake waves or something. The Director, quite plainly, had one of those ideal jobs. Spent much time on his carrots-and-leeks there – the Observatory Garden is not strictly Botanic, but he borrowed their gardeners happily.
If one wanted to be Whimsical, which Arthur occasionally was, this was her observatory.
She found Arthur at the kitchen table, surrounded by crumbs, eating a Dutch sandwich she had taught him. Rye bread, bacon that has been cooked in pea-soup, slightly underdone celery-root ditto, plenty of Alsace mustard (which is mild). He was reading Newsweek, getting, by God, greasy thumbprints all over it which was revolting – piggy English habits Arthur did have. Pipe, and all the mess going with pipe, also on the table. Like a canary, Arthur couldn’t live without a circle of scatter of about a metre’s radius. He looked up, waved cheerfully, mumbled something through the mastication: it seemed to be a hospitable invitation to join in the piggery.
She’d only been married a month – scarcely – but had been fending Arthur off for two years.
‘Marry? – never. Think of it. Mrs Davidson, Madame son-et-lumière. Frau Davidson – I’m Jewish enough as it is from sheer refusal to eat pig all day – yoh, schrecklich – horreeble.’
‘Can’t understand,’ agreed Arthur placidly, ‘what all these Davidsons are doing in Scotland. There’s even a tartan, singularly hideous – sort of mustard.’
‘Who were the ancestors?’
‘Generals, thousands of them, in obscure things like the Royal Engineers. I don’t believe one of them ever heard a shot fired in anger, but let it pass.’ She couldn’t even remember where she’d met Arthur first. For someone supposedly with total recall this was bad. But equally typical of Arthur …
He drank some milk, put his pipe in his mouth, and buzzed off.
‘Sorry, lots of work. You can manage dinner, tonight? Oh good. I’m not in a properly cooking frame of mind.’ Nor was she, but no matter. She saw him out of the window, bicycling. Pipe, clips on trousers, in no hurry. The University quarter was two minutes off. He was not in the Faculty – on loan in mysterious ways; commissioned for sociological studies by the Council of Europe, financed by them, or the European Cultural Foundation – or somebody: he was vague on the subject.
The bicycle made recall total. Arthur had fallen off it, distended ligaments in the knee, come to her for physiotherapy.
‘How d’you come to do that?’ making a polite remark.
‘Not wearing clips, caught my trousers in the chain. Classic when you think of it; like catching one’s tit in the wringer.’ She’d laughed, at the correct, polite French, the English accent and the sudden colloquialism. Life was boring.
Four years she’d been in the Krutenau. A small three-room flat in a quiet solid house of the Art Déco period, with lianas and stylized flowers. Five stories high, which meant sun and air. The plumbing was 1900, but worked. Window boxes. The Rue de Zürich was wide at this point, and had plane trees. It was noisy and dreary, and unpicturesque. The Krutenau is picturesque – it is one of Strasbourg’s oldest quarters, largely a tumbledown medieval slum due for demolition. Arlette was not romantic, and did not yearn for the Street of the Preaching Fox or the Bridge of the Cats. Preferred rooms you could clean and plumbing that worked.
Four years, pestered by that boring menopause, with a tendency to sudden heatwaves and finding herself too fat for her skirts.
All over now. Ruth grown up. Fifty. The widow had fined down and become again handsome. Big streaks in the lion-coloured hair; heavily lined around the large fine eyes, but the upright walk and the high-bridged Phoenician features were unchanged. She had not been to bed with anyone. She had no man. She was amused by the appearance of Arthur in the role of beau, and even shteady. Ruth’s crude phrase: Ma’s got a shteady.
‘What kind of sociologist? Behavioural – I knew it. Thick as fleas around here, or is it thieves?’ He was funny, thought Arlette, but a fake. She felt touched, and grateful, but emotionally bankrupt. A man who appears on the doorstep, invites you out, makes exaggerated compliments, brings flowers … They’d gone round the corner to the Preaching Fox. Food in Strasbourg is just grub, but the white wine is dry and good. It was nice to find they had the same tastes. She drank a lot, enough to say unnecessarily she hadn’t any intention of going to bed with him.
‘Do you think this Calvados will be real, or just so-called?’ Arthur had sense, or sensibility, or just sociological experience enough to leave her alone.
‘Why bother at all?’ gratefully. ‘The local marc is good enough: why go in for folklore?’
‘I don’t want to go to bed with you,’ he said next time they met, ‘I do of course, very badly, but I want to marry you first.’ This went on for a longish time.
He did say that this Harriet Vane lark was very tiresome. She asked who this was, and got Lord Peter Wimsey books by return of post. She replied mildly that she hadn’t been saved from hanging and wasn’t afraid of being thought grateful.
‘If I didn’t think you had better arguments than that… as a prospective mistress, you’re about a thousand per cent frustration. None the less; Harriet has excellent arguments and is rather nice.’
‘Mm,’ said Arlette. ‘Nineteen-thirties intellectual females … bluestocking. Bobbed hair, shapeless skirts. You got them into bed and instantly they began worrying about the Spanish Civil War. Harriet with children … Incidentally I’m too old for childbearing.’
‘He neither considers himself, nor wishes to be considered, in that agricultural aspect.’
‘I’ve had enough of children. And teaching paraplegics to swim … A lot are teenagers you know: motorbikes …’
‘Heartbreaking.’
‘A professional doesn’t see it that way. I was in a swimsuit and a boy gripped me insolently by the tit. Rather encouraging – both ways.’
‘And what did you do?’ asked Arthur a little sourly.
‘Oh, held him under water a while.’
These two years were preposterous, Arthur was to say later. And hideous. Work had been difficult too; scrabbling about, lot of politics to have his grant renewed and Get Published. He’d tried to make things up with an estranged wife, who’d married again, divorced again. Fiendish woman.
‘You must have been out of your mind. And that was my fault?’ asked Arlette.
‘My doing entirely, where you’re concerned. Responsibility.’
‘That’s what it all boils down to, doesn’t it? Taking one’s responsibilities.’
‘Sociology is largely about people who fail to.’
The woman killed herself in the end. Arthur told her at last, spitting blood and mumbling, looking as if he’d just had all four wisdom teeth pulled.
‘Not your responsibility,’ said Arlette, very firmly.
They were in the village of Illhausern, thirty kilometres outside Strasbourg, but the food has three stars.
‘You must be filthily rich,’ said Arlette. ‘Or is there something special?’
‘Strasbourg is quite a good town, isn’t it? You know it fairly well by now.’
‘I’ve thought of moving, often enough. The food’s awful, and they’ve little sense of humour, poor dears. But where’s better?’
‘I’ve been offered quite a well-paid job here. I’m in two minds.’
‘What stops you taking it?’
‘You do, imbecile.’
‘If that’s all there is to it, I’ll accept. Or is it the well-paid job that’s an inducement?’
‘Stop that. You’ll agree?’
‘I’ll agree.’
‘Waiter, bring me the wine list please.’
‘Do by all means commit follies,’ said Arlette. ‘We have so few left.’
‘How nice to see you looking so happy,’ said the owner courteously, bringing a fantastic bottle and a waiter to open it.
‘Tell me all about it, then,’ she said, tasting.
‘Oh, the Council moves in mysterious ways you know, and several are sociological. Great deal of nonsense about pecking order. Bureaucrats are horribly touchy about their standing. Mine,’ said Arthur happily, ‘will be rather high. Too high, no doubt, for the Krutenau.’
‘My dear boy, there wouldn’t be room. And will there be room anywhere, for you and me together with all this standing?’
‘I’ve thought about this problem,’ said Arthur. ‘You don’t want to go to cocktail parties.’
‘Nor play bridge wearing a hat. Nor live in a Council-of-Europe flat. That rhymes. Must be the wine.’
‘Stop your nonsense. Get our own flat. You choose it. Used to getting your own way, huh? A Bull, of course.’
‘Indeed I am, alas. What are you?’
‘A Fish.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Arlette. ‘The combination is appalling. The very worst there is.’
‘Stop being superstitious and French.’
‘Stop your nonsense, stop being French, how much more of this is there going to be? Pull your pants down woman and put a pillow over your head.’
‘I’m being serious. A couple should be a real couple.’
‘Certainly. Axiom of the new sociology. None of this now, Wife, serve us the apéritif and run to your casserole.’
‘Absolutely. I can cook and wash dishes with anyone. You must have, indeed, a professional area of privacy and activity,’ said Arthur.
‘I do have a job.’
‘You’re not satisfied with it and neither am I. We should be able to find something better.’
‘Agreed,’ meekly. ‘I think I’d like some cheese.’
‘I ask that thought should be spent,’ said Arthur austerely.