Barbour. Doctor Barbour. What is this doctorate? Not, it’s thought, medicine. Literature, music? Law is likeliest. An alumnus of somewhere quite grand; Amhurst or Dartmouth. Jokes, and suppositions, have never brought one much further: PermRep he remains. Dr Smethwyck Barbour; would his friends call him Bill? Cronies, in the State Department, are said to call him Smithy. The sheen upon him is of privilege, power, old money. He’s probably S.B.III or even IV. Eleanor his wife calls him ‘Dear’ in public, speaks of him as ‘the Chief’ and it’s not seriously supposed she says Woofums in bed. There are no children known of.
A nice old house has been acquired for him, and pretty grand; spacious is the word for the reception rooms; suitable. Quite nicely furnished; Eleanor frequents antique dealers and has been known to buy pieces. There’s a garden, there are offices, and there are a couple of aides and a secretary, ensconced. It’s smooth here, and it’s cool. Quite as grand as the Secretary-General and a lot more formal.
He is known to dislike and possibly to despise Strasbourg, but perhaps he also looks down on Brussels: it doesn’t do to let those people at the Commission think one is at their beck and call. A nice striker of balances, he has a little plane and pops across a lot, up to Bonn (annoyed at the move to Berlin), over to Paris, to München (a lot more congenial). He has plenty of seniority, and even more discretion. Most of these people are heavy-handed, let you know they stand here for the Superpower. He can’t abide the French but mustn’t let it show. Brits are no better – sly, selfish and secretive.
To be truly discreet is a difficulty. Government’s man in a sensitive listening post – these little towns are all eyes and ears; Bonn no better, or Brussels either. But neither is Washington his ideal.
This total conviction, that everyone bar ourselves is unspeakable, isn’t of course confined to Washington.
There are diplomatic jokes on the subject. Often given the shape of a question-answer sequence.
‘What is the difference between God and the French?’
‘God does not believe himself to be French.’
‘How would this apply to Brits?’
‘They used to be quite keen on God. Sufficient unto themselves, no need of God nowadays.’
‘So what about Poles?’
‘They hardly need God, since the Virgin will always get them out of trouble.’
‘And Italians?’
‘God can be relied upon to be patriotic when really needed.’ Some indeed were sceptical of this ‘caricatural presentation’ of Dr Barbour.
“I’m not believing this; he can’t be that awful.”
One can only describe people the way one sees and hears them. Or of them, mostly, which is going to be a bit spiteful. The Marquis, who being Foreign Minister knew everybody, said he was going to fix the little plane; wouldn’t gather quite enough speed and crash at the end of the runway, goodness how sad.
Discretion is a state of mind. Dr Barbour had known Congressmen, and even Senators, lamed and sometimes permanently, by indiscretions. Avoid even the appearance of – but the bow cannot stay forever bent. He plays bridge, in quite a competitive way. Likes a spot of tennis but it’s only doubles these days. A little night-music, sometimes.
Mrs Barbour, dear Eleanor, knows how to behave in public; runs the house well, good with servants, caterers, ‘the help’. Hardly a satisfactory helpmeet. He has thought of a divorce, but her relatives are influential, could damage a career heading, if all goes well, for Under-secretaryship. He has been too long out here in the backwoods.
He had heard of Madame Bénédicte’s discreet ways. No prostitutes; quite so. She had introduced Crystal; now there was a nice girl. He had to admit that he had formed an attachment. Warmth; exactly what was missing in his life.
He had not liked a facile expression, but – getting under his skin; how else would one put it? He wanted to feel that she was a private, an exclusive possession. He had been upset, to say the least, to learn that this was not so. Silly girl, had also ‘formed an attachment’.
He knew nothing of the man; what he could learn he did not like. Bohemian sort of man, happy-go-lucky type, which somehow made matters worse. What could be done about this? Who could he take into confidence? Not, of course, any of his own people. The realization, disagreeable, that Madame B. was already in his confidence put him out further.
The man worked in some research institute, was said even to be a doctor. Could he be discredited, compromised? This was not enough. Means had to be found for detaching Crystal from this undesirable friendship: she’d got much too familiar with the fellow.
Oddly enough, Dr Barbour disliked violence, much as Dr Valdez does; they have that much in common.
He went in the end, making the best of a bad job, to Madame Bénédicte in search of a suggestion. What he learned there ended by reassuring him.
Intimidation. Familiar word, quite frequent in the mouth, without, perhaps, one’s having explored the full extent of its meaning. Sarcasms, the cutting phrase. In debate a skill he makes use of; the suggestion that an opponent is ill-prepared, ill-briefed; his assumptions are laughable, opinions untenable, his grasp of the subject pitiable. The word has an intellectual cast. Even as a schoolboy (a tall, robust schoolboy) it would never have occurred to him to say, Give me that desirable object or I’ll beat you up. In early years he had discovered the power of the snub, the glacial put-down. Physical intimidation, the large fist, the nailed boot, had never entered his world. Madame Bénédicte had a different viewpoint. One would not wish to enquire into where – or how – learned.
“You need know nothing about it. For payment made, value received.”
“I don’t want Crystal hurt.”
“No no. That will be quite unnecessary. She’ll get the message.”
It had indeed been impeccable, in the sense of quiet, professional, anonymous, efficient. But there had been a sequel. This was disquieting, because it threatened indiscretions.
He had not been given the name of ‘Monsieur Philippe’. Thought had shown him that his own way wouldn’t do. An innuendo campaign – charlatans, drug addicts – could too easily be traced. The direct – the physical approach: nobody would think of him. Out of character.
Raymond had had an abrupt phone call.
“Doctor Valdez, I have to tell you that Monsieur le Marquis died.” Yes, Patricia was the secretary’s name. “This was sudden. It was peaceful. In bed, perhaps asleep, we can’t be sure.”
“I don’t think he’d want any comments.”
“There’ll be an announcement this evening. It’s not known yet. I’m ringing a few people I thought should hear.”
“Like William? I’ll save you the trouble.”
“That would be kind. The funeral, you know – pomp and circumstance.” And on top of this – William himself.
“Ray? Sorry to bother you. I’m not feeling too chipper. Rather a lot of pain.”
“Ah? All right, loosen up, don’t take any pills and I’ll be with you soon’s I get the car out.”
So goes the world.
“Now – once we’ve got you comfortable – I want you letting go of everything. Exercise in complete quiet, with everything done for you – grand-hotel style.’
It hadn’t been difficult to organize. Just the one detail at the end, while getting the man to sleep – writing a prescription for the nurse – telling where to find the door keys: yes, the Marquis.
“Poor old boy,” said William. “I owed him a lot.” And after a moment “High time, I suppose. He’d outlived his world. So nineteenth century. But I loved him.”
“I wonder” – the injection was taking hold – “whether there was a woman in bed with him: I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Not the sort of detail they’ll make public.”
He had still one call to make.
“Joséphine? – Ray Valdez.”
“I suppose you’ve heard the news.”
“Yes, but it has only precipitated me.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“You free this evening?”
“What can you be implying? Whoever was in bed with the old boy it wasn’t me.”
“No such imputation nor insinuation.”
“I see. An ulterior motive. Shall we be funereal together?”
“That’s the idea. I can catch the evening shuttle.”
“We going out or staying in? Pick me up here.”
“On wings.”
Thoughts on the plane were brief and simple. A moment of sleep would do him good, for it had been a busy day. Just the one though and that quite good theology.
Nothing gets wasted.
A lovely little kip, that. Ringing Joséphine’s doorbell mightily refreshed. She was in a training-suit, as though just in from a basketball game.
“I can be changed in five minutes. You appear quite informal yourself,” glancing at his little shoulder-bag.
“I left in a hurry. Evening dress is at the cleaners.”
“There now. And I sent my crinoline to have the waist taken in. Well then – we’ve time for a beer.”
“If you’ll allow me to take a shower I do have a clean shirt.”
“What’s with all this mad haste? You’re never thinking of going back tonight.”
“No, tomorrow. I’ve also a toothbrush.”
“So where are you thinking of spending the night?”
“With you of course, what a silly question.” There, he’d got it said. He was grateful to her for making it easy.
“You’re burning to be in bed with me?”
“Since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“Good, because I’ve been burning myself.”
She wondered about this, between small sips, drinking out of the bottle like a boy. He choked suddenly, the giggle burning the inside of his nose. A Belgian beer, and its name is ‘Sudden Death’. She watched gravely while he mopped streaming eyes and blew his nose.
“So this is serious.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Raymond. “I know only that I’ve been unserious for a longish time. I know the time has come for me to be very – very – serious.” Since she couldn’t possibly have known, pointing to the label on the beer bottle. She appreciated, with the shadow of a smile.
“The time has come to be very very brave – isn’t that what they were supposed to say when they called you for the guillotine?”
“I would hardly need telling. They gave you, I believe, a clean shirt. With the collar ready to rip.” You made, first your peace with God, but this thought he did not speak.
Her smile was getting broader.
“Speaking of clean shirts…” One had to stand up, however shaky the legs.
“Is your shower wide enough for two?”
“This is adultery.”
“One reason for being very serious. There are more.”
“I wished you to know only that I am also a serious woman.”
“Let’s dress and go out, don’t you think? I’ve hunger pangs all over.”
“I agree. While looking forward to being back.”
“Oh just the neighbourhood pub. Because of all the Ministries round here, fairly quiet of an evening. But quite Smart. Not suggesting a place with green mould growing all over it.”
Lots of old tat, rather dusty, at which Raymond looked with approval.
“That’s why I brought you. Tourists look, and flee. At lunchtime it’s full of Chefs de Cabinet, conspiring.” The carte was in harmony, classic and antiquated. Tête de veau en tortue. Sweetbread with crayfish. Grilled turbot on its bone.
“They’ve lovely fresh vegetables. And outstanding cheese. Not very romantic.”
“I don’t think we wanted to be all that romantic. Just a little.” He stretched his hand across the table. She put hers in it.
“One thing I can tell you – that I won’t be coming here again. Except with you.’” The wine was ‘Les Bonnes Mares’ of a year not ordinarily thought outstanding.
“Joséphine.”
“I’m listening,” wide awake.
“I have to be at work tomorrow.”
“Which is today, and you’re not looking forward to that ghastly plane.”
“Nor to more of the same.”
“No my poor ass, I’m coming with you.” Doctor Valdez sat bolt upright in bed, heaving heard ‘a funny noise’. “Ssh. Don’t clutch me like that, you’re hurting me. Geoffrey will not be pleased but will jolly well have to put a good face on it. That’s my home you know. Were you frightened I would want to be your live-in shack job?”
“Let’s get this clear,” switching on the light to show he meant it, at which she gave way to the ‘silent laugh’ he is learning to enjoy. “I have no shackjob. It’s perfectly true and I’ll admit that there was one. She disappeared – some time ago. I didn’t give her the sack, it’s a complicated story which I didn’t grasp then, don’t understand now, and is certainly better left untold. I think she gave me the sack, but I’ve no idea why. Vanity to think I had anything to do with it. Likeliest is that she found a better man and didn’t tell me; some idiotic idea of not wanting to hurt me.” Whatever William’s doings, about which he has some suspicions, he’s not going to mention these to William’s wife.
With whom I am in bed this witching three-in-the-morning. “Are there any cigarettes?”
“No. I stopped. It probably won’t last long. I do these silly things.” Now she was sitting up too, crying, shouting, wishing she had a cigarette, Dio merda, all at the same time. “And I’ll be true to you for as long as you want me, filthy bastard that you are.”
Old-fashioned novelists tended to clear their throat at such moments, perhaps with a coy disclaimer about the life of the emotions being too difficult for them: ripping aside curtains of intimacy, stuff like that. Jane Austen had the sense never to start. “You remind me of a phrase,” said Joséphine, “which the Marquis used to quote; amused him. Something about Lowells talk only to Cabots and Cabots talk only to God? You’re like that, really. You’ll only be faithful to God in the long run.”
He got up, slipping sideways not to disturb her sleep, walked into the living room, sat his bare skin on a chair, looked at the tall windows of the seventh arrondissement. Shutters were closed and doubtless booby-trapped (cat burglars have been known), a window hygienically open (the Sainte-Anne family brought up doubtless by an English nanny). There would be traffic still on the avenue but in these exclusive streets stillness. Rue de Grenelle, Rue St Dominique, Rue de l’Université. Palaces.
Stendhal had lodgings here, when he first came to Paris. In the house of the elder Monsieur Daru, who showed him so much kindness, spoke to him as ‘Monsieur’ and ‘Mon Cousin’ which nobody ever had before. But of him the old man said, ‘the boy’s barmy, or else he’s a moron’. Ray feels much sympathy with both parties.
Moonlight comes in tall narrow streaks through the piercings of the shutters, falls crookedly upon a fine carpet. Moonlight of a similar sort but dirtier, less distinguished, had shone through his windows in Strasbourg. On the bare deal boards Janine had danced, naked, in slow, formal movements. They had watched an old gangster movie on late-night television, the young Jewish girl in the early years of the century in Brooklyn, who dances like that. Ray had found the music she dances to, on an old Artie Shaw record, the bottom register of the clarinet played slow. Very Emotional.
‘Am-a-pol-a –
My pretty little pop-py –
My heart is wrapped around you –’
It wasn’t, but he hadn’t known that. The illusion had been perfect and he surrendered to it. Amapola, his little opium poppy. It hadn’t been long ago, and it seemed as far as from the Rue de Bellechasse to Prohibition New York. He had never said a proper goodbye to her. Now he had to make a formal declaration of his gratitude for her kindness. Goodness also. False little bitch she might have been but he preferred to remember her as good.
He had got quite chilled before sliding back in with a warm, sleeping Joséphine.
Ruthlessly – she would be ruthless in large things too – she called him very early. “To be at work,” uncompromising. “I’ve got you booked on the early shuttle. You’ve time for coffee.” She was showered, dressed, had been out for bread… Not ‘packed’.
“I’m not going on that awful plane. And you never know who’s on it. It won’t do to be seen together there. The Jesuit, plus mistress. I have my little car. I’ll drive down. You’ll see me this evening. Some palaver, with that fool Geoffrey.” There is no mention of William. “Have I your home number?” A kiss, a kiss amazing in beauty.
The concierge was mopping the marble floor of the hallway, looked keenly at him. A polite Good Morning. She’d known him again. Out into Paris, his favourite, sparkling early-morning Paris, the workers hosing down the roads, whistling. No sour-faced men and women yet, trudging into Ministries, a quick ‘petit noir’ first in the corner café to give courage for the grind, a quick glance at the headlines. Whizz on to the train with him, whizz past the Invalides, glance at his watch, compare with clock, yes, he’d make it, he travels fastest who travels alone. There’d be people going to early Mass in Sainte Clotilde. Businessmen lurching on to the plane, all still asleep.
Silvia was apologetic in a cagy way, not sure she hadn’t made a muddle.
“I got on to something called the English Speaking Community. A Mrs Merryweather, isn’t that a nice name, she was helpful and understanding. Long and short” hastily “there’s a woman here now to see you.”
“I’m broad awake,” said Dr Valdez peaceably. “Good morning, won’t you please sit down. Have you any idea what all this is about?”
“Thank you, er, not very. Mrs, er, Frau Bontempi said you wanted somebody to read aloud. I don’t know why they thought of me except I used to be an actress. Er, Mrs Grey but call me Dolores.”
“That’s quite right. Er –” it was catching – “Dolores, this is for a patient of mine, uh, a therapeutic act, the thing is to know whether you are free, an hour a day, say the afternoons, have you got a car?”
“Oh yes, quite free, you mean husband, children? Yes I’ve a car – you mean it’s some way out?”
“All right, let me explain, I want this man during that time to enter an entirely different world. That of Jane Austen. We’ll pay you of course, exactly like a nurse.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult. Sounds rather fun. He speaks English I suppose? Oh well, Jane’s vocabulary isn’t all that difficult, she’s rather modern. I think I get the point, I hope I’m not too stupid for that. Which one should it be, to start with?”
“I’m not all that familiar with them; suppose you choose.”
“Perhaps Emma, it’s full of gaiety, is that the right word?”
“We’ll take it as settled. Here’s the address. I’ll drop in the first time, not to interfere of course but just in case of any difficulty. You put him on a long chair, feet up, tell him to shut his eyes and unwind, you’re the psychoanalyst in fact, the rest is up to you.”
“Oh I don’t think I’ll be alarmed.”
“Good, you leave your phone number and whatever with my lovely Frau Bontempi and tell her your best time, she’ll coordinate.”
“I think I’ll enjoy it, it could be useful.”
“I’m counting on you,” said Raymond, with the winning smile.
He walked in softly; the door was on the latch. She’d found it all right; little Opel parked outside. But he only had to follow the voice, in afternoon stillness. A nice speaking voice, he thought, clear and matter-of-fact; not actressy mannerisms. They’d only just started, some preliminary explanation no doubt. He sat down quietly. William, sprawled on the sofa, didn’t even notice. Good. She sat sensibly, upright, her legs crossed and the book on her lap; reading glasses. She noticed, but only fluttered eyelashes to show she had seen him. Her voice stayed level.
“‘These were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments.’”
“What’s alloy?” There had plainly been an agreement that he would interrupt only if necessary.
“Literally a metal which you mix with gold or silver. Here, I think, to mix in the sense of lessening, diluting.”
“Good. Sorry.” William did not again interrupt until – ‘having been a valetudinarian all his life’ …”
“A valley-what?”
“Somebody old who fusses a great deal about his own health. Listen – ‘without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years’ – okay?” She went on smoothly to the end of the chapter. “‘Depend upon it, a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself.’ I think that’ll do for the first time, I don’t want to tire you.”
“Thank you, I’m fine,” sitting up. “Hallo Ray, are you there? I rather like your experiment. Mr Woodhouse is splendid. Knightley sounds pompous – okay, I didn’t frequent the Marquis all that time without meeting more of these people.”
“Oh good,” said Dolores. “The English isn’t hard – bound to say, you speak it well.”
“Bright lad, our William,” agreed Raymond. “I seem to recall that Mr Elton is the most frightful shit.”
“Hush,” said Dolores reprovingly, “you’ll spoil it”.
“I look forward”, William, polite, “To knowing what happens.”
“Oh good. I’ll pop off then.”
“Have some tea. Green tea!”
“Thank you but I’ve got to pick up a child from school.” Diplomacy all round.
“I’d rather Jane to green tea.”
“You’ll get accustomed to both and addicted in a week. Woman make a good job of your dinner?”
“Marky used to quote Stendhal. ‘Spinach and Saint-Simon have been my mainstay.’ A couple more goes with your massage woman and I’ll be a permanent sex-maniac.”
“Perfect,” said Raymond, abrim with self-congratulation.
About a fortnight later they were in Radiology together, where William has gone for a control. Dr Valdez has borrowed a consulting room and has a row of prints pinned up on the viewing screen, wheeling the Professor’s chair about and enjoying himself, pleased because “Can’t speak of a real regression but she agrees that in technical terms these are looking good”.
“I’m certainly feeling less daunted,” agreed William. “Mr Woodhouse likes ‘a nice basin of gruel’ late at night. Ol’ Dolores is a bit vague about this – some sort of porridge? Let me recommend you a very small soft-boiled egg. I don’t think it could disagree with you. I’m getting exactly like this.”
“How astonished they’d all have been at a machine which sees through you.”
“Or that tunnel which booms and mutters at one, saying there’s an enemy submarine out there somewhere. Jane seems to have lived through the whole of the war paying no attention to it whatever. So sensible, really. But they aren’t at all far from London.”
“I suppose not,” said Raymond who can’t really remember.” You know, all this is doing you a lot of good.”
“Yes, I’m beginning to take an interest. Thinking of doing some work on the garden. Getting quite addicted to Jane. I mean Harriet Smith’s girlish confusion over who she’s in love with, it couldn’t be more boring but I don’t fall asleep, I still want to know what happens next.”
“Because it’s real. The world we live in, all the noise that’s made about it is profoundly unreal, we look and we say ok, what the hell. The ethical problems are the same; who one’s going to marry, is he the right social level and has he enough money. The man in the Kipling story says ‘They’re all on the make in a quiet way.’ We’re no different.”
“I’m getting more energy. Don’t have much pain either.”
“We’ll slack off on a few things and keep on with others.” Knowing the Crab’s little tricks, one’s not going to make any foolish prognostics. That – as Raymond does recall – got Emma Woodhouse into a good deal of trouble. False hopes will lead to sad humiliations.
Monsieur Philippe had every reason – well, nearly every reason – to feel pretty satisfied about affairs. Business is looking up; there’s lots of money about. That dodgy strong-arm operation, he hadn’t liked that, and he’d got panicked into saying and doing foolish things, but there’d been no real fall-out. Threats had been made but he was pretty sure they were bluff: he reckoned he knew bluff when he saw it. Large part of his own stock in trade.
His man at arms, whom he’d picked for the job of bashing that doctor… no trouble there. Long-distance truck-driver who did a bit (more than a bit) of contraband; he had plenty of leverage on the fellow, and let him know it: he’d keep his mouth shut. Like all such folk, the more money they made the more they were thirsty for. The payment had been right, neither too much nor too little. The Doctor had been well and truly intimidated; gone to hospital and (one had got to hear) undergone a nice bit of facial surgery. They’d got the message all right; girl well choked-off; an efficient piece of work.
Everybody’s been paid. The Principal (one wasn’t supposed to know but he did) had jolly-well-coughed-up. Bénédicte would have told him straight that suchlike things are costly: good jewellery doesn’t grow on trees. He himself had been paid, no messing: she’s a good business woman. Cow would have taken a healthy commission. And so had he. Nothing wrong anywhere: there’s a big difference between what the farmer gets for his cow and what you pay for meat in the shop. There are green pastures in that diplomatic world.
Still, there was a loose end, worrying like having a bad tooth and he’d need to have it out. He had to restore the balance, and better. One must never let people think they’ve got away with it. Retribution isn’t always swift but it has to come.
He had to stay clear of the girl – Mireille, Janine, whatever she’s called; she is Not discreet. While old mother Bénédicte who is very discreet had told him to stay out of her sight. From the lassie-Iñez he’s got a garbled tale of a man – Parisian-sounding man – who had strolled around and scared the knickers off Mireille, in all respects fitting the description of the bastard who’d strolled so cheekily into his own shop. Who was this man? Had that little bitch given him away?
He’d only the one pointer to guide him; the connection with that doctor.
Now if that bad man came from Paris the chances of identifying him were thin. He was there himself quite often, and has a widish circle of acquaintance, but – on the other hand the bad man had shown – no? – a measure of familiarity with the town here. Checking on the doctor’s ways would be a great expense. He is spending his own money! But if there’s something to be learned… One is forced to the conclusion that he isn’t spending enough of it.
Following the doctor’s movements is both easy and difficult. Easy because this is an absent-minded man, whose eyes are unobservant; he drives about (going to work mostly he bicycles) without looking. Difficult because Monsieur Philippe has to use his own car, which is not obtrusive nor even conspicuous, but a good car is necessary to his own position in the world, and his is a Saab; one doesn’t see all that many of them. If it were to pop up frequently in the field of vision even an absentminded man will notice. He had to ration his shadowings.
But then there was a piece of luck: there generally is, if one perseveres, and in a cause this good Philippe is patient. A woman came, to that dump in the old-town where no one came. Rather a striking-looking woman. And familiar with the dump; she had a key to the house and was toting a shopping-bag. When she came out suddenly, and climbed in to an open car with the top down – easy to follow – he obeyed an impulse. She led him a long way, out of the town; he was getting discouraged when… A village, up towards the foothills of the wine country – but she went straight through, turned at the top and in at the gate of a manor house, a ‘château’, quite a grand one, and here too her manner showed a familiarity with the place. One would make a few enquiries in the village. Oh yes: Sainte-Anne; he knows the name. There was a Baron de Sainte-Anne, an occasional customer (not a good one, for small pieces of jewellery: cheap sort of fellow (for someone with plenty of money). He went into the village baker; one could always use a cake or something. Did the ‘thought-I-saw-someone-I-knew’; bakers’ wives are all gossips. Sure, that’s Miss Josie. Uh? The Honourable Alexandra if you prefer. Oh yes, of course.
A garage man. Saab might need a bit of tuning; d’you think the plugs need changing? No, I’ve plenty of time. One can gossip even better in a village garage – they’ve always time to chat. The thing about worms is they keep on worming, and shift quite large stones.
Sure thing; Miss Josie’d been away a good while, in Paris yes, come home – been in to have the car serviced. She married but it didn’t take; some fellow, know him by sight but one doesn’t see him here, lives in a house away yonder up the other end of the vines. That was something, house built specially, must have cost a packet and she never wanted to live there. Thought so, these plugs are the trouble all right. Nice woman, Miss Josie, always a smile and a word. Not at all stuck-up. Good tip, too. But the man there, typical Parisian, country people aren’t too keen on those folk, give themselves too many airs. Nobody knew much about him; kept to himself. Got a Porsche; won’t see that brought in here for a tune!
Now that seemed worth following up.
Monsieur Philippe felt wary about the woman; she looked too sharp. Carting rather fast in the little car; baronial disregard for speed limits. One would take a look, but definitely, at the house ‘up yonder’: found with some difficulty. Isolated too, one couldn’t hang about up here. Nice house all right. Very much barred and barricaded; that would be the loneliness, off the beaten track. Somebody lived there – car outside. Little Opel, a woman’s car. There might be a Porsche and it might be in that underground garage. This façade hadn’t any face, told him nothing and better not hang about. Stick to the other end, see if the woman turned up again.
She did, oh yes, and this is lovely – she stayed the night. Better, and it got better still, because the Doctor dragged his car out (likely to try and get into someone else’s dirty old VW, wondering why his key doesn’t fit), so he risked following that, and where d’you think it led him? Curiouser and curiouser. This would build into something and he’d have to think about it. Can’t stay in ambush on this damn path which doesn’t lead anywhere.
A nice thing about Joséphine; she doesn’t ask silly questions. Especially not that one about are you happy? Ray whose life is the asking of questions also avoids this one. One knows the answer; there isn’t any, and if there were, one would prefer not to know it. Like that other, of who hit him on the nose and why? William had wanted to ask that, and it hadn’t done any good. Something to do with Janine’s disappearance: let her worry about it.
Happier than before? Happier than he ought to be? About as happy as one ever can be; look, one just gets on with living, okay? There isn’t any vaccine against misery. Nobody can slip a needle under your skin and there now, you’re immunized. The Research Institute thinks about the physical world. We don’t hunt madly for new antibiotics, or old pals staph and strep showing themselves so naughtily immune to all those in current use. Other people do that. We get a bit metaphysical about living and dying. Sure. Violence, or getting married, or the tango – all of them metaphysical subjects.
Joséphine complains about the flat. Yes, it is squalid.
He’s not getting away with that! A tirade develops; this awful building is due to be knocked down anyhow. Move before somebody demolishes it over your head. Nasty little spaces. That electric wiring is a perfect menace. Suddenly the fast ball.
“That revolting alleyway is dangerous. You could just as easily have lost your life.”
“Po po po. Old stories, long forgotten.” She just looks at him, more devastating than words. As though she knew all about it. Perhaps she does. Perhaps she has talked to William; he wouldn’t know. She hasn’t said so (and neither has William) but she doesn’t pretend that William doesn’t exist.
“I might get a cancer. So might you!”
“And then we do whatever we find possible,” said Ray peaceably.
She is not one for beautiful phrases, for the garden of lovely thoughts: she finds these in the births-and-deaths column of Le Monde.
“It’s all right to die on the street when not on purpose – who said that?”
“Stendhal. He did too.” She is still worrying about him.
Joséphine loves eating. After laughing heartily at his antique gas stove she has taken with enthusiasm to cooking on it.
“Well made. They didn’t cut corners then, look at the thickness of this metal. And properly designed.”
“Yes but one can’t get spare parts any more, so that when it wears out, which it will…” she has got reconciled to Arab ways. ‘Modern equipment’ would mean a new set of cables, a new meter. The electricity company would have a fit. There’ll be a ghastly fire one of these days.
“This living as though you were poor is pure hypocrisy.”
“I suppose it is, yes.” She never has been poor. But she loves his spaghetti; introduces variations of her own. There’s this advantage to living in the old town; the little shops (where Arabs go) which have fresh vegetables, proper fruit. Supermarket once a week, a suburban couple pushing the trolley, ferrying large packets up the stairs. The butcher is a mortification.
“But surely you knew about that from before?”
“True. Geoffrey has a man in the country, trained to hang meat.” She has moved in, is now used to the oddities – the pull-and-let-go in the lavatory.
She held up a round of bread with a bite out of it, took another and said, “Look, a map of France”, with her mouth full.
“Very bad manners,” said Raymond austerely.
“Yes, we did this as children. That’s Bretagne. German bread, good for our teeth. Got tremendously beaten.”
“For bad manners?” Hers are terrible…
“Of course. But still more, because bread is a symbol. The greatest there is. The body of Christ. You ought to know that.”
“I do… It’s the same in Poland.”
“We must never cut bread, once it was sliced. Break it before buttering – and if we dropped it, get down and ask forgiveness.” Taking another large bite … “Look – Pyrenées.”
Yes. This is ‘the upper classes’. She has never made any other reference to his ‘being a Jesuit’. Adultery is for the poor. Arabs have scruples about it. Are very strict about it. Exact blood for it.
‘Aristocracy.’ He had noticed these habits in the Marquis. Amazingly scrupulous in all sorts of small ways, and no manners at all. Utterly ruthless.
William to be sure had lived with the old man for many years.
Raymond now understands William better.
William’s grand life-style has been lowered, but the reader’s maintained: as Raymond remarked, ‘We’d never get that past the Social Security office anyhow’. Dolores herself said she likes to finish what she began. Admits to enjoying herself.
“It’s totally different to reading it by oneself.”
This peaceful countryside, which she doesn’t even describe. The social fabric – of which she says nothing. Mr Knightley has farms and works at them, but where does the Woodhouse money come from? Are they landowners? Never a word about the ordinary people, who must have been bitterly poor. You wonder about the price of food, about taxes, oh, all the things that we worry about. Never mentioned, any more than war, or Napoleon, or the world outside.
“That’s the point,” said William, serious. “It seems deathly dull, and then I’m drawn in, and it becomes exciting and I’m listening with all my nerve-ends.”
“But why?” asked Dolores. “I suppose because leaving all that out she concentrates one upon the real essentials.”
“Which are what?” asked Raymond. Wasn’t this exactly what he was after.
“Well, not just who loves who, and who’s going to marry who.” Dolores a little defensive, nervous of sounding ridiculous.
“Things everyone cared about. Miss Bates too, and the workers even if we never hear about them. Pride, and honour, and pain.”
“She wrote about what she knew. ‘Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.’”
It’s a Valdez hobbyhorse. The world is like William, in total disharmony with itself. What the woman called the social fabric was more closely knit. They were in harmony with themselves and one another, and the land they lived on. They had friends. Look at today; nobody even knows their neighbour.
They died of course – but I’ll make you a bet, not of cancers and not of heart diseases. In the cities of course, tuberculosis, typhus, dirt, malnutrition. Plague to be sure, since the rats were always with us; cholera. You notice nowadays that the plagues take a subtler form, attack the nervous system, where the immunity has broken down. Rather well suited to peoples who have forgotten their own purpose. Television, or the internet – these are plague-epidemics.
Ray’s colleagues listen indulgently. You’ve got to remember, Valdez is a bloody Jesuit when all is said – sees God all over the shop.
“What did you think”, William had asked, “about having your head bashed in?”
“I didn’t think at all. Things like that can happen to anyone, and frequently do.”
William is a great deal better. Proof, if you like, is that he’s going to school to learn carpentry. Craftsmanship. As for the technical details, Dr Valdez takes no credit. Internal cancers have been known to stop, even to go away. The patient’s own interior resources are the key. As for Jane – he’s taken to reading them himself. Why shouldn’t it work for me too?
Living with Joséphine has a good rich texture. Coarse now and then, gritty. She was eating Serrano ham on her bread and butter.
“What happens to the rest of the pig? Why can’t we get Serrano sowbelly?”
“Have you ever read Emma which he is working at?”
“Of course I have; I was well brought up. Mr Woodhouse could never believe that anyone would think differently to himself. My brother Geoffrey’s exactly like that. But a kindhearted polite old man while Geoffrey is so conspicuously neither. That and the appalling vulgarity of Mrs Elton. This seems to be all I can remember.”
“A searching analysis,” lovingly.
“There’s a great deal of irony,” with just a small flash of lightning, “and a lot about elegance and delicacy. Soeur Marie-Thérèse came down heavily on both, since the great aim was to turn out well-bred girls even with nothing at all between their ears.”
Joséphine has had a number of jobs. Doesn’t believe in them much, unsurprisingly: the girls at that convent would have felt sorry for poor Jane Fairfax obliged to go out and earn her living as a governess. Well-bred young ladies – elegant – were sometimes persuaded into secretarial work for politicians. With a little seasoning, press attachée to a publishing house. Worlds which William got to know.
“Politics! Just the thing for crooks like Geoffrey.” When young she’d wanted to be a sculptress, in rather a clean overall. After, that is, her National Velvet years. “The extremely severe discipline of a racing stable isn’t that different to life among the holy nuns. Adolescent female sexual desires thoroughly well channelled.” Or perhaps a poet… Not having a job is so much more elegant; didn’t go much on up at seven and shaving clean at a quarter past. Working for Médecins-sans-frontières was all right – and of course unpaid; the paperwork is simply shocking. Being able to read and write is an advantage since so very few can.
A Jesuit education, thought Raymond, has its points: you progress from grammar to syntax, and long hours of the dirtiest work uncomplaining. Joséphine scrubs a floor as though her life depended on it.
As we were taught, mankind is different to beasts. At some point in development this was borne in upon us; that we laugh and can inhibit defecation. That we have a soul had also to be learned. (Poor George Orwell’s lasting experience of the civil war in Spain was that his pathetically primitive boys walked out and had a shit absolutely anywhere.) History… he’d had a good professor, fond of really sadistic illustrations from the dreadful fourteenth century – ‘that’s yesterday’. The condition of the poor. Meanwhile, learning absolutely nothing from Crécy, Poitiers, nor even Agincourt the landowning aristocracy of France, with a vanity and imbecility you’d scarcely credit, got itself slaughtered. And serve it right. While the poor suffered, here is where you learn about the basic economy of the countryside, and how taxation pays for the rich. The rich! (warming to his theme). They are only to be stopped with a scythe to the hamstrings or a bellyful of buckshot.
Those knights – deserving all the man said of them – had very likely included forebears of Joséphine’s. Had they learned anything at all in the few hundred years between? Vanity, disregarding all else, still characterizes their behaviour. The ruling caste, be it military (Dien Bien Phu was Crécy all over again), medical (the mandarinat; of elderly professors), bureaucratic or intellectual (never do anything simple when you can make it complicated) – all of it the utter ruin of an endlessly abused and plundered people of great worth and merit.
Not at all surprisingly Joséphine got cross and there was a huge blazing row. He learned something then which touched him. This woman who had been taught so much nonsense in childhood had also been taught a dogma. Never let the sun go down upon your anger. Like a child she came and said that she was sorry, and put her arms round him. “I was in the wrong and I know it.”
Given a lesson, Raymond was ashamed of himself.
Dr Valdez is tired, edgy, ragged; short of ideas; no fun to be with. Needs a holiday.
“Yes indeed. We’ll fly to Miami, preferably in the Concorde, and get carried by cruise liner to glamorous places in the tropics never before glimpsed.” Especially in August.
Joséphine has been thinking.
“I might be able to borrow the Land Rover, Geoffrey is greatly taken up with his vines.”
“Why do we want it?”
“Because there’s no other good way of getting there. As children we rode but there are rough places where we had to get off and lead our horses.” Recognizing that she has got it back to front –
“We have a cottage, officially a shooting lodge, high in the hills. I don’t think anyone’s been up there for years. The local forester, from time to time. It’s highly ruritanian, earth closet and all. Nothing but trees for miles. Be fearfully musty, I shouldn’t wonder. No electricity. But when the sun shines, which very often it doesn’t…” Dr Valdez is an instant convert.
“I’ve had leisure to regret this. I packed enough for a bus load, had to throw half of it out. Geoffrey said I was insane, the fraidycat.” Roads, increasingly potholed, led to a village – “there’s a shop, there”, gave way to woodcutters’ tracks and the ‘Maison Forestière’; the intoxicating Vosges smell which he has never experienced, of a stone-built house, a flagged kitchen and wood fires. The Verderer’s wife, amused, gave them coffee, glasses of ferocious schnapps, a bunch of keys, adding ominously, “You can always telephone from here if anything goes amiss.”
“The worst is to come,” said Joséphine with relish. “The valley goes up steep. I hope I can find the way…” The track hereabout was overgrown with moss and the fluid mountain grass. Twice they had to pull aside broken trunks, rotted and fallen across. Obscure streams made for boggy patches. Quite large stones abounded. Until they reached a plateau and a space cleared for a cottage surprisingly large if only a log cabin of one storey.
“Stable,” she said welcoming it as one does something long lost. “Haybarn, woodshed. Gamekeeper lived here in my grandfather’s day. It’ll be almighty damp so the first thing is to bring in logs.” The housekeeper took command. The airing of mattresses, the punching at the kitchen stove, ‘grille’s a bit rusty’, the opening of sticking windows. “I don’t know what birds there are now but I hope there will be owls.”
The well filled him with joy. The source underground filled a stone trough, lipped over a worn flag, lost itself in red sand. The water was cold, rich as a white wine, tasting of black earth, dead leaves.
Fire on the hearth burned well; old silvered beech logs. Mattresses steamed happily until he had to turn them. Then he could open quite a nice Côtes de Nuits. Watch her cooking.
“Lara,” he said after searching for the name. “She lives with Doctor Thingummy in an isba with icicles all over it.”
“I can only remember the tune, unspeakably sentimental. It was in all the music boxes which used to play ‘Für Elise’. I had one – greatly cherished. What do you suppose they ate – Russian porridge?” There are two rings on the kitchen stove, and a little oven below. The top is rusty, but will shine with a bit of emery paper. She draws water to clean the table, hangs a kettle above the big fire on the notched bar the French call ‘la crémaillère’. “For the washing-up,” sternly. “Your turn tomorrow.” Romantic, is it? It’s only risotto. Of course there is no fridge, but there is a larder, delighting him, with stone shelves and mosquito-wire on the window. A high point was reached when she put a zinc tub of water on the stove, and from the outhouse dragged in a hipbath. ‘To this my father was greatly addicted.’ Romance centres upon Joséphine’s shell-pink – Aphrodite-pink – behind; lessens when he has the awkward job of ferrying the damn thing out without spilling to be emptied in distant bushes; mounts when he comes back puffing to find her in a long white nightie wielding a hairbrush. It’s an illustration from Dickens – ‘The lovely lady has her fortune told.’ But the mattresses are dry by now, and unexpectedly comfortable. He can be romantic then, if a bit damped by ‘Wait till you have to empty the earth closet and you’ll see how they grew wonderful vegetables here.’
Still, the morning was all he had hoped for, outdoing imagination built upon ‘You’ve never smelt an August dawn’. With this go two astonishing visuals. One is the filigree silver magic woven by more spiders than he knew existed. The other is the August harebell. That there is also a light grey drizzle cannot bedraggle the spirit, cannot alter nor dilute the flavour. Has he never before tasted the true juice? Once or twice (since medical conferences are very insistent upon creature-comforts) he has been handed a glass of ‘good’ champagne. Far outdone as he has been assured by the stuff which costs a thousand francs a bottle. And outdoing that by just as far is the glass of water kindly handed to him here by the Djinn. The difficulty with djinns is known: you can’t get them back into the bottle.
Reaction set in around midmorning. He had explored the long neglected garden, in hopes of perhaps-a-few potatoes; maybe a vegetable marrow (hostile animals have left nothing for mere humans). One must also learn the patterns of grisly trenches where the shit-bucket is disposed of: Humus is more than composting dead leaves. A facetious American word attacks him; he is discombobulated. Depersonalized, dissassociated, decomposed. Like the compost which had gone to the making of the vegetable patch. Reality had disintegrated. He trails back to Joséphine who is peeling potatoes on the stoop: the rain has lifted and perhaps this afternoon there might be a glimpse of sun.
“I know,” she says with the maturity he has not expected in a young woman: his experience is so small. “For a start, there’ll be plenty of work. Any number of things forgotten which we’ll have to go down the hill to find. There are no guns up here. The forester will lend you one, but we’ll have to buy cartridges.” He wasn’t listening.
“Food for worms,” he said. “Bury me in the compost heap. Bacteriological nuclear pile. Have me down to bones in no time at all.”
“I know,” she said again. “It’s not romantic up here a bit. No sunset, no cascade, no blue lagoon. It’s violent.”
“It’s good.” He sat down beside her. “I’m glad you brought me here. I’m overtired and hadn’t realized it.”
“Sometimes in Paris I thought about this place. Where I had been happy.” She dropped the last potato in the pot, threw the peeler in after it. “Sitting with friends at a café table. After being at the cinema, maybe. People who are secure and comfortable and who prate about violence. Namby-pamby and niminy-piminy. Idiots.” He can feel thunder building up inside her. She wants to talk. “For years I… I knew nothing. I thought it was great. This is the life, this is where it’s at, they know everything here. Sex all the time, sex all day, it got like it was something that walked around with you, sat at the table, applauded at pop concerts, you couldn’t shake it off. I got so when I heard the word I went cold and clammy. Up till now.” She turned and put her arms round him. “Thank God for you. Sex is you.”
“Let’s go for a walk while it’s fine.” Narrow shafts of sunlight came filtering through the trees, bundles of arrows hitting the bracken and the moss and the needle-fine clumps of mountain grass. “Comes on to rain we’ll whip back to the cabin and make love and play cards and drink a lot of coffee.”
She showed him how it had been well thought out, and cleverly made. They were at the very edge of a steep valley. That is the gully down which they throw dirty water. Along the flank of the hill is the path along which they had come, mounting to the plateau where the stumps had been cleared for the house and the garden. This was ‘Camp Five’, for above them the height rose steep and rough to the summit, looking so smooth and easy from a plane; fierce afoot. “We could climb it in mountain boots. I’ve only once been all the way up.”
Animals, by the score. You’d want to go out early in the morning the way we did sometimes. I doubt there being any rabbits – fox would get them. Predators; pine marten, there was a polecat once, they like buildings. Lynx? “The forester tried, I think, but you know how peasants are, never happy till they’ve shot it.” Hawks, wild cats.
“What do they prey on?”
“Mice, voles, shrews; they abound, or would if it weren’t for the bloodthirsty. Deer the forester has to shoot to keep the numbers down. You might try for a few pigeons – think of pigeon pie. There isn’t any live and let live up here. My grandfather claimed he’d seen blackcock, had fantasies about pheasants; I don’t think that lasted long.”
Yes: it didn’t do, to upset the natural balance.
“There’s a brutalist school in biology, popular with your friends in Paris, believes everything revolves round sex. Some of these people try to claim that the entire development of human behaviour is explainable by predatory sexual instinct. Rape is natural, justifiable, desirable.”
“Oh yes, I’ve met a few of those.”
“A depressingly simplistic viewpoint. The strongest and most successful genes, surviving and evolving from the stone age, are those of the most vigorous rapists. The whole structure of society is of no further interest. A sort of nihilism. You the woman make yourself attractive to be available to the biggest dick, which is the greediest dick, and help me first.”
“It sounds familiar. I thought like this for a while. Do you want to try to get to the top?”
“No, I’ve blisters on my heels already; wait until these boots are properly broken in.”
“Don’t sit down there, that’s an ants’ nest.”
“I wouldn’t have got far, would I, in stone age circles? Get stamped out, pretty smartish.”
“Gains ground, this theory.”
“Sure it does. Natural resources are running short. Water. Top-soil. Good places to go on holiday – the unspoilt beaches. So grab. Brutalist logic – the successful grabbers are the rich.”
“I like you the way you are.”
“A shrinking minority. God. Civilization. Iphigenia. Antigone. They were due for the chop. So are we.”
“What did Antigone do?”
“She went out at night to pay the last rites of religion to her dead brother, against the king’s express order. He caught her and had her buried alive.”
“She knew, and she did it.”
“Yes. That is the Spirit.”
“Would you?”
“I don’t know, you see, and I’m very much afraid of being asked to find out.”
This thin sandy ground dries out quickly, which is an advantage when walking home in one’s socks.
“The Volk,” she said, making coffee. “Give it a jig or a tale of bawdry and it’s happy.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Mustn’t hate it, or it would be A la lanterne with me, pretty quick. But I feel something pretty close to contempt. Harlotry is the only thing that sells. The rapists – yobs one and all.”
“Yes, it isn’t so much they’re being unchristian that offends me but the Ignorance. No letters and no history, no art and no manners, and above all no humour – what am I getting Heated for?”
“Bernard of Clairvaux scourging the infidel,” bringing him his cup. “You see? – you can laugh. We’re on holiday. We love each other.”
Yes, that’s what worries him, but he keeps quiet about that.
“I keep thinking about pigeon pie,” Joséphine went on. “I must have a word with the forester, see if he can get us some.”
William’s day begins, alone in this house built for more people, with green tea. This brew was like Jane; for some time you were unsure, before discovering that you couldn’t do without it. Odd. His little teapot holds three cups (but two will do, the third’s a bit stewed). Disconcerting is perhaps a good word.
His whole life, he couldn’t start without three cups of coffee – the last after a shower, shaving – sliding over clean teeth.
One day in England, accompanying the Marquis on a call upon his opposite number there – Downing Street, an extraordinary rabbit-warren; we know about Number Ten but what are all the others – he had been peeled off by a deft soft-voiced secretary and given a taste of their amused hospitality together with tea; the ‘real thing’. ‘Milk and sugar?’ they enquired blandly. ‘The way you have it’ – not to be outfoxed in diplomacy. Much merry laughter when he tasted it.
‘Now picture yourself’, said his charming host, ‘crouched on some draughty airfield, in a flying-saucer helmet and a nest of sandbags getting strafed by the Luftwaffe, they dug you out of the débris, handed you a mug of this and instantly you grew a new arm and a new leg. Inside there it’s tinkle-tinkle with the Wedgwood and something disgusting like Earl Grey but yours is the real thing – made by the police sergeant, you’re a man now, my son.’ Even the gentleman in question permitted himself a small superior smile.
“You’re looking a whole lot better,” said Bernadette. “Odd job mine,” economically finishing a halfcup of stonecold coffee “see that written on a piece of paper, what do you make of it? Nothing at all. But Orally… a whole lot, a whole lot, or a whole lot better, Madame the judge might be let to draw three different conclusions, pity the poor woman, who knows that all three are lying.”
“All three are telling the truth,” said William.
“That’s this dotty doctor of yours?”
“Haven’t seen him for a while. Away, I think. Don’t want any doctors.” Even the massage sessions were down to twice a week. Only Dolores still, determined to get to the bottom of Emma Woodhouse (not long to go now). He doesn’t know how to explain that. Uh, broadminded woman. Intelligent, experienced woman. A good and true friend. There’d be nobody he’d rather confide in. But dammit, a judge; nothing bleaker than a Judge of Instruction when it comes to that impenetrable maze and quicksand bog which is human behaviour. What words would one adopt? ‘It’s a very select society and you’ve got to be a Janeite in your heart or you won’t have any success.’ She’d think it was a Sect. Judges have a great distaste for sects, which are suspected of preaching subversion, of disobedience to the laws and the rules of the Republic. Bernadette isn’t a candidate for the Janeites: he’s not even sure he’s one himself.
Police training, for one thing. Years in the Marquisate – yes and before that; the private lives of Ministers, and Presidents too, have little enough to do with the official face shown to the world, and their private thinking not very presentable on television either – have loosened and shaken a lot of shibboleths thought of as being as fixed in their orbits as the planets. But in the PJ, when you are a rising young man and they begin to think of picking you for the exacting training that will lead to special duties, they like to be sure that your thinking is sound. It isn’t only medicals and workouts in the gym. There are the political indoctrination classes too. Total loyalty, absolute obedience. (William’s conventions about thinking and doing have interested Ray Valdez.)
The Republic doesn’t like sects. Dotty American groups – all claiming liberty of conscience, tax exemption. And the right to bear arms, under various articles of the Constitution embedded in jurisprudence and frequently upheld by the Supreme Court – are held up as horrible examples: we won’t allow any of this in France. These fixed beliefs of ours go back to Jacobin tenets on which the Hexagon was built. Long before the Republic.
Police instructors lectured bored young men who had forgotten the history lessons they had yawned over at school. You go back before Louis Quatorze, yes even before Cardinal Richelieu, to the times when kings could scarcely call Paris their own, royal authority kicked about by Dukes of Burgundy, of Brittany, of Berry (places one can scarcely find on the map…) Piecing the Hexagon together had been a lengthy, difficult and blood-boltered affair and you had better believe it. Look at Corsica, will you – know how to find that on the map, do you? Nobody wants it and we can’t get rid of it. Forever blowing themselves up – and us too, given half a chance. Independence my foot; can’t you see that this would simply encourage more of those bastards in odd corners who steal explosives from quarries and don’t want to speak French.
William’s was a receptive ear; it all sank in and stayed there. It’s only a step from there to people who put up a statue of the Guru ten metres high on the mountainside. From there, my friends, to Theosophists and Soroptimists and the whole gang of them. The slightest laxity and they’ve the bit between those long yellow teeth – preaching Civil Disobedience. The lesson you’ll all learn, before tomorrow morning, is you don’t give these people an inch.
Yes but the whole point about Janeites is that they couldn’t care less about Corsica. He can’t remember even the fussy ones, like Mr John Knightley who lives in London, as much as mentioning the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. Hell, they don’t even mention the Duke of Wellington. Jane’s people live their lives in this marvellous indifference to anything outside. Is that shocking or is it splendid? It’s all inside him; he can’t talk about it.
“I really wanted to ask Albert’s advice about the garden.”
“He’s outside there now. Deep in thought about a vegetable marrow. You might ask him whether there are any beans left and if so to bring them in because I’d like them for lunch.”
Turning things around in his mind, thought Bernadette. Whatever it is, doesn’t want to talk about it. Nor am I going to push him. I’m not in the office now.
A woman, possibly. Our William (for she is very fond of him) wouldn’t have any problems about Sex. If it were only that! Big tall old boy, not exactly ‘good-looking’ but definitely handsome. Riding around in that ridiculous Porsche; the girls would be falling over one another trying to climb into his pocket. There can’t ever have been a shortage. Kept tight in a special compartment because of all those conscientious ideas about Duty: you couldn’t get married there in the lifeguard brigade, it wasn’t fair on the wife. Getting knocked over flat, there by the Honourable Alexandra (whom Bernadette has never met but knows a good deal about) – that was shocking bad luck. He’d had his years of great responsibility and unending strain, before marking time there with that extremely lordly Foreign-Minister, who obviously had great pull in the circles of the mighty, to keep anyone as senior as William.
This tale had been told her. William held officer rank, and lifeguards of that calibre can look forward to a nice desk job; you won’t have to punch a time card. The girl had plenty of money. Building that lovely house, William all set for a cosy sinecure, perhaps the Interpol office (no shortage of these grandiose institutions in Strasbourg and all of them basking in money, while a poor lousy investigating magistrate can’t even get proper office equipment) – and the bitch walks out on him. In Madame Martin’s book, the crimes listed in the Penal Code can each and everyone be attended by files-full of circumstance, explanatory if not extenuating, you don’t seek to excuse but you do seek to balance. But this isn’t penal: it’s sure as hell in the Moral Code though. Bernadette Martin isn’t a moral theologian, and glad of it. These are the structural, load-bearing foundations of society. ‘This is something one just does not do. In this she can’t find any matter for debate or discussion.’ Albert can, or says he can. Very sorry but there are some things she cannot give way on.
From the kitchen window they are visible, heads together and deep in talk. There are things men mull over together – not all of them mechanical contrivances – and a woman ‘putting her oar in’ is seen as a source of confusion. Was that the source of this homely phrase? A woman does not row in the same rhythm. She hears a different drummer. Quite a few of Madame Martin’s discussions with lawyers, prosecutors, tribunal-judges, meet with the same fundamental variance in standpoint. If she were ever to meet the Honourable Alexandra the girl would get given a piece of her mind.
Albert was deep in contemplation of the compost heap.
“Right, William, getting out into the garden, put a bit of colour in your face. Apart from being too pale you’re looking fine, you know.”
“It’s about tackling the garden I want your views. Sick of looking at it. Want to make a start, but don’t quite know how my energies will hold out.”
“Be a job, all right. Single-handed, boo, even if in perfect health. That garden firm which did the original layout, why not get them to come and put it in shape? You could go on from there. Expensive, I realize.”
“Yes. I was sort-of keeping that idea in reserve. In case it got too much. I was thinking, maybe that weedy jungle isn’t as bad as it looks. Thought of asking perhaps would you come over, cast an eye, tell me what you made of it.”
Foolish at the start, William thought himself; should he be saying from the start? The garden firm had offered a maintenance contract. Frank or Fred comes round every six months with a workman. Clean and refresh, prune and repair, spray against pests, sell him a few new goodies. He’d economized – foolishly – in the reaction after spending too much. And at that time he’d been wanting to do everything himself. On top of the world. The feeling of having won the Lotto, of the good life awaiting him. Joséphine saying she didn’t want a baby ‘just yet’, making jokes about Victorian phrases like ‘filling the nursery’. There was plenty of time.
The potty adventures, of former days. The conquests, idiot echo of the Marquis’ way with girls: ‘notorious philanderer’ was another Victorian in-joke. The bargain-basement time; since they’re that cheap have as many as you like. The trouble with that: one is so damn cheap oneself. Whatever one said (one said and thought plenty) about the ‘Honourable Alexandra’ – she was not cheap.
The Baroness, with her ladylike ways. That upright carriage, that clear-boned face. A – a – purity about it. Hardly the right word? No but the only one he had found.
Let’s not get sentimental, laddy. He won’t let himself think about it, now or ever. He’d made this huge mistake. No, she said, the mistake was hers – as though it were a cake that they could cut in half and share. She’d taken a ruthless path out of this mortal tangle. Married and not-married. He’d given in. Foolishly? This kind of thing happens, nobody knows why. People find it doesn’t work, they get divorced. He doesn’t like it, but if there’s no other way…? Joséphine had simply refused, wouldn’t speak of it.
The furthest she’d go had been ‘I won’t discuss it. I’ll think about it in a year’s time.’ To that, better say nothing. Better do nothing? He’d taken that problem to the Marquis, who disconcertingly agreed with her. ‘Reach for the lawyer, will you? The six-shooter is no way to handle a woman of that quality, you shoot yourself in the foot. Spend a great deal of money, gets you nowhere. Wait and see.’
He’d waited but all he’d seen was an upset stomach that went chronic and to which doctors, damn them, pinned a nasty name. So he’d given in his resignation, on all this, exactly the way he’d shoved the job; there’s no going back.
What did he have left? This beeyoutiful house. She took nothing but the few oddments she’s brought with her. No wedding presents, nowt. What about the house then? ‘Treat it as yours.’ Not nastily – nothing cutting or contemptuous: factual. He’s never heard anything from Geoffrey; the two men had barely exchanged a word after she left. He never heard anything from the tax people. What did he have? A wife which was no wife. Himself, a man that is now a no-man.
Feel like having a girl? Not going to run to la mère Bénédicte. Who wants callgirls anyhow? Somewhere out there, he’d thought, he might get a second chance at living. Meanwhile what does he have? Emma Woodhouse!
What’s that phrase which Ray Valdez likes to quote?
‘Believe me, Brother, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.’
What between the feeling better and ordinary curiosity – Ray’s phone didn’t answer. He’d tried the secretary at that Institute.
‘Away,’ she said indifferently. How long for? ‘Sorry, don’t know.’