And now on the road, rolling along, driving the Volkswagen towards home – ‘home’ is good – there isn’t anything to be funny about here. Cringe, buddy-boy, because you are bloody well under the lash. Use all the clichés imaginable. It will be like Queen Victoria’s Diary, a great many words underlined and a Plethora – there’s a good word – of Capital Letters. He wanted to lie on the floor and howl; well you can’t, not in traffic. In abject desolation it tends to take the form of literary allusions.
Like ‘She loved thee, cruel Moor’. Rather too grand; he’s not up to that. ‘I have another sword within this chamber’ – but not in the Beetle. You are smaller in scale. Play your little pan-pipe. That’s more like it. Each man kills the thing he loves. This lasted some time, before he got another fragment of another quatrain. There is no chapel on the day on which they hang a man. It’s Wilde, not bad either. Who has been abject and is now learning dignity. Nota bene, you are still stunned; the pain’s nothing to what it’ll be in an hour’s time.
There in the flat are her clothes lying about – untidy girl. Her toothbrush hangs on the wall; last twist of the knife. Persuasion where she left it, by the bed. .
Or ‘Give me a doctor, partridge-plump’ – and that’s Auden –
‘Who with a twinkle in his eye
Will tell me that I’ve got to die’ – something Doctor Valdez has had to do upon occasion. Thought quite good at it. Doctors are often sloppy in their accounting. Forget, and put things in their pocket. Analgesics or whatever. There’s probably some morphia hanging about here.
He won’t you know. He is one of the Company; a bad one but we don’t do that. Our training is that we don’t give in to despair. There is also a simple exercise, about Sleep and his brother. When, as a boy, you laid-you-down, the Company discouraged sentiments about angels and good-night-sweet-prince. You were asked to recall that death is no different: Be ready.
He wonders if he is; he never has been. The flat smells of her. He has drunk too much coffee and is not likely to sleep. Sit in an armchair and read Persuasion.
He picked up the telephone.
“Silvia, I’m sorry, I won’t be in this morning. No – I’m all right, just that I was up all night and don’t propose to be disciplined. I beg your pardon for being troublesome, make excuses where apologies are called for. I’ll be in this afternoon.”
It seems a bit pathetic that of the three Janeites he – the initiator – should be the feeble-minded one. Well, it was time to find out for himself. ‘Believe me, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a hard place.’
Silvia, comfortable rounded woman, is better than competent. Very well, so she ought to be; she’s highly paid. But so is he; what excuse has he for being this walking disaster?
“I have a number of cheques for you to endorse. If you’ll kindly do that I can pay them in.” She looks after bills, she has a little book for reminders, and she chases villains who pretend they’d forgotten. She’ll be changing his nappy one of these fine days.
“I have to go and see the bank anyhow.” There’s an earnest man there forever wanting to ‘build up a portfolio’, who does not show vexation at Raymond’s unbusinesslike behaviour but has a sorrowful way of conveying disapproval.
“Silvia, I’m thinking of changing flats.”
“High time. You need a proper consulting room. People come here and are disconcerted. That reminds me, there’s a man who refuses pointblank to come here. You have to see him at his home and this is tiresome too because he’s paranoiac about discretion. An important diplomatic somebody, Head of Mission so please you, better wear your Sunday suit.” The door has been opened to a general attack. “And you’ll have to change that awful car. I can ring a few house agents, that should be relatively easy, you’ve pots of unused money and the bank will give great sighs of relief. And so shall I. But there’s nothing I can do about your clothes. Or that car?” Crushingly.
“Next thing we’ll be opening a branch in California.” It is not really an adequate reply.
The grandest part of Strasbourg abuts on a pleasant public garden called the Orangery, laid out in the nineteenth century in the ‘English’ style of rustic-romantic then fashionable. At the far corner is the passably ugly and silly building housing the European Parliament, now crowded by newer, uglier and sillier buildings devoted to kindred bureaucracies. You can’t go any further without tumbling into the canal, originally designed to join the Rhine to the Marne: over the bridge is the Robertsau.
This is just the diplomatic quarter, and in the large pompous villas lining the park are housed a good few of the Missions in which a lot of countries maintain representations to the Strasbourg Parliament together with the Court of Human Rights and a good deal of und-so-weiter (since much of all this in the public eye tends to read Blahblahblah.)
In the park is a pavilion with a terrace where the orange-trees are displayed, a lake with ducks walking round it and a halfhearted cascade: the focal point nowadays is an extremely grand and much starred restaurant where the diplomats come to eat, one suspects at our expense. The comic aspect of this is that it used to be a humble café in thatched-cottage style where one could drink a glass of wine under the trees: it is still called the Burehiesel which is Alsacien for Little-farmhouse, and speculators have made this into a snobbish watering-hole. The Orangerie is still a place where commoners with small children can walk around the lake, to the disgust of the ducks, but all about is a stifling feel of Holy Ground. Raymond Valdez, in his Sunday suit, wouldn’t come here on the bicycle, leaves the Beetle a long way back. Here at night a security guard might easily shine a torch on you and ask what you think you’re doing. The PermRep residence has a high gate, some nice trees lovingly kept, and a speak-your-business machine.
Everything was pitch dark but when he went through the movements the gate clicked, a porch light came on and electricity gave the front door just enough of a push to allow him into a marble-tiled hallway where a tall, erect, middle-aged man in slightly gruesome informal clothes looked him over carefully; carrying a doctor bag but doesn’t look much like a doctor. Satisfied that he was, in a couple of quick question-and-answers, the tall man led the way past empty offices. “We’ll go into my study.” Here he turned on lights, invited Raymond to sit down, and began complicated explanations. Ray thought he had seen this man before – perhaps it was a photograph in some paper. The man sat at a big empty desk, shaded his forehead with his hand, did things to give himself more countenance. Man with the habit of command, but people talking to a doctor will slip into a simpler mode after a minute or two. Man complains of a number of odd ailments, which might or might not be linked: he has some papers too, and mentions Dr Roger Pilkington, with whom Raymond is acquainted. There was talk too of what his doctor ‘at home’ had said or thought when last consulted, which seemed some time ago.
One looks, mostly. One listens. One makes a few tactful remarks. ‘That all sounds reasonable.’ ‘Perhaps we could have a little more light.’ ‘I’d like you to take your shirt off.’ ‘The divan there will do nicely.’ And so forth.
“I think we can go some way towards clearing up these questions.” One will rarely go further than that, first time off.
PermRep was also wondering whether he’d seen this man before, and if so where. Since he wants to keep all this matter as discreet as may be he doesn’t make a lot of enquiry. Normally, before doing any business with anyone, he’d have his staff find out whatever there was to be known.
On, he would call it, the social level, he hardly needed listening posts. He stands here for the greatest power on earth; it’s emblematic and it’s also very real. He can pick up an echo on anything that interests him, have it put on the screen and read off. Hard to think of an exception, outside this sensitive area: he doesn’t want a word anywhere which might start speculation that his health was worrying him. Vulnerable point; keep a close guard on that.
Dr Barbour is confident in his own eye, kept sharp by intelligence, trained by experience. This man has unconventional approaches but there’s no scent of the charlatan about him. One or two good references, without going into detail. A goodish professional manner. It can do no harm to go a little further here. Man wants another set of laboratory tests; well… At home he’d be hearing the same song.
The Permanent Representative – he’s aware of the nickname; it doesn’t bother him – does not think of himself as arrogant or overbearing. It is his position, and that must be safeguarded. He cannot, for instance, allow any breath of scandal. One needs some relaxation from time to time. Nobody cares much about that here; degenerate lot, the French. However, there are people here on mission from most of the world’s countries, and some governments are puritanical. Not to speak of one’s own. A cathouse may be dressed up fancy, remains the cathouse, but in Bonn he had heard a whisper about Mrs Ben, a person said to be dependable: one paid of course the price for that. Understands the meaning of the word tact, and an interview can be arranged. He had been favourably impressed. A call-girl string is one thing; a girl who simply needs a bit of help with the garage and the phonebill is something else. Mireille, said Mrs Ben, is a simple affectionate girl.
He’d have to say, got on comfortably enough with Mrs Ben. Apart from that awful asphyxiating perfume so many elderly women are given to. (A very well preserved sixty, that’s hardly elderly; that’s virtually his own age.) He didn’t like the name Mireille; too frenchified. Have her ‘rechristened’ – word amused him in the context. Crystal – she has an openness, yes, a transparency he found attractive. Refreshing girl. With her, he didn’t have to be wary all the time.
Something of an Idyll. He’d got really fond of her; had been in fact taken aback to find himself… heated. Didn’t quite know what word was applicable. Possessive? Not ‘jealous’ surely? Irritable? With a character like that one should never be surprised, surely, at her naïveté? She simply… hadn’t really understood. She got quite cross, even. “But you don’t own me, do you? You help me with a lot of expenses and I’m really grateful – I try to show you I’m grateful, too. I only want to be fair.” He hadn’t liked to admit even to himself that … hell, the damned girl has a boyfriend. Some riffraff chap, bohemian of sorts; she doesn’t take kindly to any probing and he doesn’t want her thinking she has any hold on him. He doesn’t know who it is. Doesn’t want to know. She’s popping in and out there over-often; two or three times not-here-when-wanted. Well; she’s not a sort of slave. He can’t claim exclusivity But she seems extremely placid about share and share about, and this is getting up his nose.
Cut her off? There, though, he’s ‘unwilling to admit’. He doesn’t like thinking about it, because his thinking is far from clear. He just doesn’t like it.
For sure it hadn’t been clever to take this minor irritation to a harridan like Mrs Ben. A distinct relief to find the woman so professional about it: so unsurprised. Like something on his skin, a growth of sorts he’d once had; unsightly, it worried him. ‘What’s that a sign of?’. The dermatologist had a thin, icy smile. ‘Nothing at all.’ A quick puff of anaesthetic spray, the smallest nick of the razor. ‘There; you never even felt it.’
“We’ll have her detached. It’ll be quite simple. You need know nothing about it. It costs a little; there are people who will need payment. Leave it to me. It’s preferable that you stay out of whatever is decided. I’ll bill you; that’s all. You have there a perfect security.”
“You propose a sort of intimidation?”
“My dear man – whatever I propose you’re unaware of it.”
One evening Crystal had been crying a good deal; red-eyed. Sign of upset, a sullenness. It’s nothing. Girl’s got her period. The next morning he was busy; ‘reading the papers’. He combs through these, it’s one of the jobs. Looking for little signs – upturn, downturn. Not so much ‘economic’; Bonn have people for that. There are other ways of perceiving confidence, prosperity – or a certain slackening. His private line buzzed; something he had absolutely forbidden to Crystal.
“That was absolutely vile,” a hysterical tone. “You have to promise me you had nothing to do with that.” He could be freezing while remaining perfectly sincere.
“I know nothing whatsoever about it. This is a private line.”
“Have I your word of honour?” Idiotic remark, very French, that.
“I don’t intend to repeat myself.” Killing it, glancing across at his secretary, who was assiduously marking a FAZ article. A Company boy but pretty junior. There was no need of any remark. Once had been enough, when the lad was posted to him.
‘It’s a comfortable little job. Undemanding except of an absolute discretion. You understand that word? Bear in mind: a breath in Bonn and you’re counting those subversive penguins on Kerguelen Island.’
The old woman had demanded an immoderate amount of money but knew better than to ever mention the matter.
Raymond Valdez never had any notion at all that Janine moved in diplomatic circles: it’s not the sort of thing he was curious about. She knew lots of people, had lots of friends. She is an artist. When one works in that sort of business, and more still when one hunts work, any acquaintance may turn out useful. She is warmhearted, talkative, flirtatious – she has to be. She could be over-blatant. He had known anger, even sudden rage. One couldn’t expect a round-the-clock humble devotion.
There is when one comes to think of it a well-known and pertinent parallel. The Marquis would have been reminded of this and would have chuckled over it. Raymond has never bothered reading Proust; takes too long and is too much trouble; no doubt one would, if the circumstances were right; if sent, for example, to study the penguin population on Kerguelen. William hasn’t either; had no real need to … since during the years with the Marquis extrapolations had been fairly frequent. Robert de Saint Loup has a tiresome girlfriend somewhat like Janine; known always to Marcel as ‘Rachel-quand-du-Seigneur’ from her imagined resemblance to the girl in an opera popular in those years. Marcel, jealous soul and can be catty, can’t stand her and is forever dropping nasty hints to Robert: gold-digging little bitch and the world’s worst actress into the bargain. Robert, upright and generous nobleman, won’t hear a word against her. She is shy, timid, over-sensitive, and Marcel frightens her.
It isn’t really a parallel but an approximation, of a sort frequent enough; men when comfortable with young mistress are indulgent (a row every so often livens things up), don’t ask too many questions; comfort is secured by vanity. Rachel can be horribly spiteful – and so can Marcel – and are we any better?
There’s no great harm in Janine; there’s plenty in Madame Bénédicte.
Old Mother Riley had a daughter Kitty, but La Mère Béné as the police call her is mother to nothing but her own evil thoughts. She’ll slip up one day and they’ll get her. They aren’t in fact in a great hurry: there will always be people like this, another might be still worse, and politically speaking, in these diplomatic circles nobody wants a noisy scandal, so don’t rock the boat. She sells sea shells, says William’s friend Xavier who is busy learning English.
The old woman doesn’t blackmail people much, likes it to be believed that she could if she would; knows a great deal about turpitudes, including those of police officers and important municipal functionaries; keeps a firm grip on the girls, and also on a few people who do dirty jobs; she has plenty of leverage on ‘Monsieur Philippe’. Since she never does anything herself she needs them, but they couldn’t denounce her without exposing themselves to pursuits they prefer to avoid.
Rebellious girls, obstreperous girls, might often get a bit beaten up but no harm is to come to Mireille, harmless and at present the treasure of an important personage. Frightening her a bit won’t come amiss; just knock off the boyfriend. Knock him off how? Bit of violence, mean to say? I don’t want to know, that’s no concern of mine, I only want her scared off. How you do it’s your affair.
Monsieur Philippe doesn’t go in himself for violence; not his thing. He’s adept at weaving webs, but that will be complicated, will take time, will be expensive. It seems simpler to arrange that the boyfriend gets given a smack, and let the girl know obliquely that here’s a thing happens when she’s over-affectionate in the wrong direction. He knows a fellow to whom strong-arm comes pretty naturally at the best of times: Terry the Trucker is a strong-arm pin-head. He has plenty on that idiot, whose long hauler is mostly laced with contraband out of Istanbul.
He invested a bit of time and trouble; old-mother Benny is very hot on the expense account and he will have to justify every penny in looking up the boyfriend. An easy target; scientist chap, biologist in one of the Research Institutes, absentminded type, Professor Sunflower on a bicycle, lives bohemian-style in the city centre, scruffy place full of Arabs, down a handy narrow alley, this is pure jam. So easy in fact he doesn’t bother learning any more. Terry gets told to lurk-in-the-shadows, give the bugger a black eye, and ticketyboo. Terry’s heavy hand is pricy but he never asks questions. Mother-Benny never pays one; remembers you in her will, tells you what stock to buy, stuff like that. The Council-of-Europe people have plenty of ways of doing her big favours. She doesn’t send in a bill. Some people want a taxfree Mercedes, others dabble in Corsican cows; others again import something, have it relabelled as of Community origin, sell it in Taiwan. Juice enough for all and a bit over for Monsieur Philippe.
Janine, an innocent girl, childishly so where her emotions were involved, learned – obliquely – that if you make a bit of money on the side, rather too easily, sooner or later the bill does get sent in.
Quite abruptly Dr Barbour asked, “What happened to your face?”
“Road accident,” said Ray, hoping to make it sound more peaceable than it had been.
“Nasty things,” conveying some disapproval; the French have far too many of them.
“Yes indeed. Superficial – looked worse than they are when half healed.” Should have seen me when I got mugged in the alley, but he didn’t say so. PermRep thought about it, and not wishing to sound aggressive added, “Could happen to anybody.” A doctor might perfectly well refuse to see anyone before bruises healed.
“And did,” sitting to write the jargon abbreviations for the lab tests he wanted.
“Worse things can happen,” taking the piece of paper. “I’ll be in touch.” Raymond produced the Research Institute’s card.
“Better early than late.”
“Let me show you the way out,” remembering his manners.
William is thinking. Why is there never time to think things out properly? Of Bernadette Martin’s ‘sound advice’ – to do nothing. Of solitude. It was another of her remarks ‘let fall’.
‘On est tout seul, tu sais.’ It covered the physical aloneness which he’d had time to get used to, here in this house. Joséphine was back? Really? She might suddenly disappear again? One would echo the great joyous shout of excitement and delight in the Jacques Brel song – ‘Mathilde est revenu’ – the wonderful ending ‘Since you are there, since you are there, since you are there…’ The singer does not wish to enquire further, could not bear to think beyond this moment of now, and here.
It covered responsibility. What you do, you do alone, decide alone. Nobody else is to blame.
William thought, briefly, of his youth. Early days in the police. His brother whom he admired was already a soldier, doing well. They shared an idea, that service was honourable; you do something for your country, you volunteer, it’s professional, you give of your best. Even then, he’d followed his own path. It had to be ‘the best’. Me and Paris: the country boy frightened, feeling the challenge, welcoming it. That was all right; tall boy well set up, smart appearance, alert; it hadn’t taken long for him to be picked for a team. He’d not been good, really, at team work – oh, he got on all right, the others accepted him but only just. They’d always felt some instinctive reservation. Kind of an apartheid. Something mocking in the camaraderie: ol’William thinks himself too good for us. His Commissaire thought him bright but didn’t like him. That boy – I don’t know, gets on my nerves somehow.
Better, in a Kripo service. They like them bright there, allow for a bit of eccentricity; you’re more of an individual. Good marks for being dogged, conscientious, thorough. Tell that boy to do something you don’t find him goofing off in a corner. Solitude – was it his enemy?
A bright, ambitious, vicious chief – himself young, pushing for higher rank; first in and last out; took a fancy to him – I like this boy, he’s not sloppy.
Physically he’d been good; lots of fast, nice coordination, basketball. He’d thought of getting tapped for the Protection Service, liked the idea. When it came he didn’t hesitate. Plenty of the colleagues said Fuck That. Our time off is bad enough; those poor bastards never have any time off at all. Sure it’s more moneys and it’s a promotion, but shit, where’s your private life? Can’t call your soul your own, over there.
It seemed to him, he’d never had any proper private life, anyhow. He’d been brought up hard. He liked discipline. Five-thirty in the morning – out there with you. Here you were in perpetual training, the physical fitness is the first thing of all. He loved it; this was satisfaction. That smart appearance, properly polished shoes. He liked the lessons, was good at them. This is the boy for us.
On these teams, instant success. Back-up boy, point boy, bag boy (there are several purely technical angles to close protection). Put him on with a few difficult ones; the Chief Rabbi, the Spanish Ambassador, the Environment Minister (tricky; would the hunting crowd like to see him with egg on his face!). Hostile crowd meeting and election rallies; dockers and schoolteachers – and school children too, with highly imaginative ideas about covering the Minister in scarlet paint.
He’d become a star. Chef d’Equipe, and the man they all asked for. He’d reached the top of his profession; the man who walks behind the President. He’d understood the most important thing of all: the total discretion. Whatever you see, hear, sense, you know without knowing. Around the President, the turnover is pretty rapid as a rule; he’d stayed much longer than most. And when your Chief comes to think, from the confidential notes, the medical reports, that you are slowing or slackening even that microsecond, there are cosier berths. The Marquis had asked for him, got him. The old man had colossal pull (been in every senior ministry untold years, since de Gaulle’s day). Kept him. He’d been happy; here he was happiest. You learned so much, here most of all. The high personalities of the Republic gave astonishing amounts of confidence – he got to know the Marquis as nobody did, ever had. The old boy prized his reputation as the Great Enigma; didn’t care what he said to William.
Oh well, he’d known everyone; the Pope and Citizen Kane: ‘to bed with Marlene and to breakfast with the Kennedys’. At one of his parties William had first laid eyes on Joséphine; tall and elegant, not giving a damn; grey frock and very little jewellery. Gone head over ears; only the cliché will do, here. His job by then was to stand in the shadow, immobile unless something were to happen, watching. He had neglected his job, for the first time he could remember, because he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She had known. Complex things happen in astonishingly simple fashion. William had been to bed with girls he had told himself he was ‘in love with’. What’s this word love? The most famous word in the language and what does it mean?
A cook asked a famous cook for a job. He’d prepared his answers to every possible question, brought along his CV carefully written out in every step. The great man asked only one question: ‘Tu bandes pour ce métier?’ The translation is not as simple as it seems. ‘You’ve a hard on for your trade?’ But it means, ‘Does your passion overmaster you?’ To the exclusion of everything else? The boy said ‘Yes’ and got the job. An art; you don’t think – you’ve no time – about anything outside.
Getting married? That’s another complex affair and he couldn’t remember anything about it but the Marquis insisting on being his witness, very beautifully dressed. He’d given them a pair of silver candlesticks, extremely fine, eighteenth century; William is looking at them. Joséphine didn’t seem to have said much when asked.
‘You’re the vertical man. One doesn’t meet with them often.’ as though he were some kind of rare butterfly.
Resigning everything – he remembered that better, the Marquis saying, ‘Can’t have this, can we? – Joséphine married to the security man!’ ‘Benedick the married man’ – who the hell was Benedick?
Well, one didn’t lose just-like-that more than twelve years of the trade; seniority, experience, value; the job he knows and is good at. They never left you very long anyhow, you weren’t allowed to get mouldy in the Protection Service, you’d get Napoleon quoted at you – ‘After thirty man loses the aptitude for war’. You remain a crimbrig officer with a good rank, diploma’d up to here and high-class confidential notes; most of us can look forward to staff jobs. You can go to commissaires-school, Saint Cyr au Mont d’Or just outside Lyon, you’ll sail through that.
He went to see his chef, Place Beauvau, Ministry of the Interior – a man only a year or two older than himself.
“Married! Oh well – it happens. You’re living in Paris? I’ve an instructor’s job for you, out in Vincennes. You’d be good at that; I’d like you to take it. So you can, too… howsoever… The Marquis has been in.” Damn him, what’s he meddling with now? “The old man – as you know – still a great deal of pull in various quarters and I’ll be frank with you, I don’t want the old bastard being occult in my back. You’ve been with him a long time. He tells me that your wife…” He’s not going to tell me that Joséphine has been manoeuvring…? “No no no. But Strasbourg, it’s not at the present open but it will be when the Schengen agreement… now that would be pretty good and you’ve the profile if we adjust a bit here or there; I’d subscribe to that one. Political, you’ve pretty good English. These Germans in Frankfurt, you go in high up and you’re answerable to the Premier Ministre. So you think about it and if you want to talk about it with your wife…” That was a nasty daggerthrust to take home with him.
They were living in the ‘family’ flat in the septième, Ministries all around one; he didn’t like it at all. Joséphine didn’t either.
Out by the Bois de Vincennes one could find a nice apartment – the twentieth arrondissement is a bit East End when you’ve been accustomed to the seventh, but it’s not so much that as – Instructing is a very good job in police books; well paid, secure, easy hours. The ‘cadets’, boy and girl trainees for the Protection Service. He’d be good at it too, could grow to like it. He knew most of the colleagues, got on well with them; they had a pretty good life. But this police world, where conversation revolves around the television programme of the night before: can you seriously see Joséphine in this milieu?
He knew about her plans, for Strasbourg. Her brother-the-Baron was giving them some land and she had her house sketched out. The job? – like all these political deals it was a lollipop, with some luscious perks. You aren’t taking the tram to go to work there, my boy. But whose pocket are you living in? His Ministerial years had taught him a good deal about the politician’s arts.
But he’d taken it, hadn’t he! He’d asked the advice of friends; none had hesitated. He didn’t have a lot of women friends. Most of his girl-adventures had run aground within a day or so, on the rocks of those impossible hours: he just hadn’t enough time for what they wanted. He hadn’t known anyone like Bernadette Martin then. He’d started to compromise, and he wasn’t good at that. It had been many months later that he began to feel those odd twinges of pain. The two facts might be linked but where was the evidence to support theories?
He had ‘no family’. This was surely sentimentalism. A PJ. group is quite fond of referring to itself as ‘the family’. Or – absurd the Marquis’ household; that strangely tight-knit cluster, the world seen from the kitchen of the marvellous house in the Rue de l’Université – the cook and the secretary; driver, housemaid, and yes, even ‘Madame de Maintenon’. We knew each other’s birthdays and bought flowers for them and Charlotte would have baked a cake. Ridiculous? Bernadette Martin didn’t think so. ‘Oh yes, that’s a family’ Adding a remark William remembered. ‘Without a family a man trembles with the cold.’ But the nucleus is a man and a woman, isn’t it? ‘And why then, do you think, they should want so to have a child?’ This very morning he’d said as much to Joséphine.
“Are you going to give me a child? Of my own?” fiddling with the temperature of the shower – she likes it a bit hotter than he does – “I’m going to have a damn good try.” Sentimental, is it? The woman he had known well enough to raise the point were oddly biased in favour of monogamy. One day over the coffee cups – ‘You ever been married, Charlotte?’
‘Was once. Not any more. Buggered off, so he did. Oh well, learn to do without. Not such a great drama as they’d have you believe.’ Or Patricia, a woman still young, fresh, attractive. Warm, a laugher, you couldn’t possibly call her a priss. A friend.
‘You ever sleep with other men, do you, Lavigne? Have the odd bit on the side?’
‘People do sometimes very kindly offer.’ And then, seriously – ‘That’s a terrible trap, you know. I’ve tottered on the brink, once or twice. What would I say, to my children?’ She has two little girls. ‘Think of it as normal, what one hears,’ he suggested.
‘What you hear. What they hear too, yes. But that’s not what they know. Not what they expect from me, either.’ Or Bernadette, judge of instruction with twenty years’ experience.
‘Statistics are crap. You must know this, from your police years – crime, from the misdemeanour right up to the Assize Court, begins ninety-nine times in the hundred with a miserable story of a broken marriage. Anything else they tell you is just so much toasted marshmallow.’
Feminist talk. Women get very hot indeed under the collar. ‘What collar?’ Ray Valdez would have asked. ‘Are we talking about horses?’ They’ll embark upon a tirade, talk your ear off; about the men going off as cool as you like, shrugging and saying it wasn’t important, they’d had a few drinks, they’d been very tired at the time, no need to make such a fuss, it’s meaningless really. Not like the days when a girl might get stuck with a baby. This, the women will say, is quite typical. Men are exactly like a child who breaks a toy, says he never meant to and it was no good anyhow. The woman will always be left to carry the can.
William had asked Albert, on a stinking hot summer day which had made Albert’s gardening unusually intensive. ‘You’d think I was a stoker on the flaming Titanic.’ Sitting with a quiet beer in the arbour, down at the end where vines had been trained to go over the top, and a rusty old table underneath.
‘You ever commit adultery, Albert?’ Wonderful line, Ray Valdez would have called that. But beside friendship, and being in the shade after burning sunlight, and that incomparable first shot of a cool beer, this is a man who likes the direct, factual, concrete question, answers it the same way.
‘Yes. Not a good experience. Not recalled with any pride or satisfaction.’
‘Bernadette know?’
‘Women always get to find out.’
‘Did. Said. Nothing whatsoever. Left me stew in it. Plenty written on her face.’ Took another long drink of beer. ‘Not going to talk about it.’
No. That advice he’d had already, in bits and pieces at various times. Regarding Joséphine, say nothing, do nothing: it won’t help.
Albert went off for a long blissful shower. Bernadette home from work, already showered, in shorts and a band round her hair, was making mayonnaise in the kitchen, invited him to stay to supper.
‘I’ve made too much. Never mind, it’ll keep.’ The judge quite often talked about her work; it interested her that his professional background would often shed a bit of extra light, perhaps fortify her in a decision she had made but not yet pronounced, wanting still to ‘think about it overnight’.
On this, but on many other occasions of the sort, he had got to know her mind; Albert’s too, though by character he’s a lot less articulate. This judge doesn’t like cut’n’dried formulae, accepted wisdom, pat answers; is ready to go back and think again. Do we ‘have a view’ upon whatever? Sometimes. One might have come up against philosophic groundrock. But we know so little. Do we have a view, say, about divorce? Not really. It’s one of our modern plagues: two hundred years ago we were more dogmatic. (Yes; as in Jane.) Only for the very rich then, who could afford to defy society. What d’you want to do – legislate against it? Like Americans with what they call liquor? It’s bad so forbid it? Sure it’s bad. It kills people, like the cholera, and we’ve not found the vaccine. Ravages; you’ve only to look at the children’s faces.
‘But just because adultery is a sought-after commodity on account of being fashionable, doesn’t mean you have to invest in the shares.’
Yes, police work is just the same: the well-worn lecture gets delivered over and over; Sisyphus rolling his stone.
‘Help me peel these,’ shooting a pile of langoustines on the table, sadly clutching claws and pathetic little antennae.
‘So you’ve got to try to get each and every individual to accept where the responsibility lies. Since there’s no rule any more, no ukase from society, no brakes on the cart. Two in a marriage; if there’s two to get behind the stone, does make the road a bit less steep. I’ll push if you’ll heave.’ Albert came in still mopping at his wet hair.
‘Sounds like something the bishop said to the actress… Ooh, langoustines, goody.’
‘You shut up,’ said Bernadette who was skinning tomatoes, ‘or I’ll plunge you in the boiling water.’
Monsieur le Baron, Joséphine was told, was in the gunroom. Joséphine likes the gunroom, albeit with a small shudder; in her childhood, when they had been really naughty, they got sent here to be beaten. It’s very manor-house here: tall mahogany presses with fishing-rods and cute little drawers for flies and lures, which might be looked at but never played with. And a mahogany table, with Geoffrey and several guns, and the paraphernalia of pullthrough and soft flannel, and the wonderful intoxicating smell of gun oil. This is a religious rite; Geoffrey loves his guns. There are two rifles, the ‘big’ Mauser, guaranteed to stop a charging boar, and the ‘little’ Remington; the twelve-bore shotgun, an English-made side by side, a terrific treasure: his little one for blackbirds and thrushes, naughty greedy beasts which tear at the vines. Her own sixteen-bore must be here somewhere: bouh, it’s a collection for John Wayne (Geoffrey has a Winchester-repeater for repelling boarders, Pancho Villa and the like). Roundabout is a lot of plumage showily mounted, cock-pheasants and things, now a bit dingy. He looked up and nodded, rubbing away at imaginary flecks of rust. She perched her bottom on the table and watched in silence.
“So you’ve gone back to your husband… Good…”
“Why is it good?”
“I don’t know… Family counts for something.” She knew that at the back of his mind was his own wife, Liliane, who is like her name, a thin pale blonde, alarmingly ladylike. Joséphine had never liked her much, had been heard to say that just as Geoffrey belonged in his gunroom, so Liliane belonged in ‘the flower room’ along the passage, where she keeps her gardening tools, always meticulously clean. But it’s not her fault: she is childless and it’s a great sorrow to them both.
“In this house,” grunting and sighting down a barrel,” we don’t believe in divorce.”
“Well don’t point that thing at me; I don’t either.”
“Don’t be silly. Inoffensive as a clock. As you know very well I only meant… in this house our family has lived a long time. We’ve obligations. Traditions.”
“We’ve never done anything.”
“Not much!” Nettled, glaring. Why is it that I’m always tempted into irritating him? “We’ve held fast and we’ve held our own.” All set to launch into his history lesson, which is as well worn as Bernadette Martin’s lecture on adultery. “Back in the old times we survived the Bishops – greedy pigs they were – the Emperor, the ghastly Duc de Bourgogne.” Banging the table; he really means it. “Turenne… The Bourbons.” The series of splendid engravings, showing the Joyous Entry of Louis XV into his good city of Strasbourg, hangs in the passage which is rather dark; they aren’t in very good condition.
“The Revolution.” Shucks; fleeing to Baden-Baden. “Bismarck. The Hohenzollerns. Finding ourselves German again.”
“We bent with the wind.”
“When I think of that unspeakable Hitler,” wrathfully picking up another gun.
“Our father successfully claimed his heart was bad. Much surprise when he found that to be the truth.”
“He was genuinely pleased to be flying the Tricolour again from the tower. Monstrous bonfire for the village. You and I weren’t even born. I don’t mind being French, myself, it doesn’t seem to me all that important.”
“They try to make it important. Remember the radioactive cloud when the power station blew up? It stopped dead in the exact middle of the Rhine because it didn’t dare invade the territory of the Republic.” Geoffrey didn’t suppress a grin and it was unpompously that he said, “Being patriotic means being true to this house and this village.”
He is proud of his vines. He inherited a lot of rubbish, now produces beautiful wine, some outstanding. The Rieslings have never been more than ‘honest’ but the two Pinots, the white and the grey, get recommended by the most snobbish of sommeliers. (She remembers with amusement that the Marquis had some in his cellar and produced them with a flourish; her ‘password’ to those elegant invitations.) Competing with the vineyard world is Geoffrey’s life work. He is right to feel pride.
“I’ve just brought off rather a good deal with the Brits.”
“Brits!” Joséphine does not carry the English next to her heart.
“With no doubt a lot of condescension on their part.” Mimicking – “‘To marry a foreigner is a sure sign of failure.’”
“I’m not marrying them; I only want to make them drunk.”
They both laughed; they are ‘friends again’.
“That imaginary superiority they cart about is their great handicap and they can’t see it.”
Pleased with her peace-treaty Joséphine moved on to the library next door, a place where Geoffrey never set foot. Their father, who neglected his vines (‘good enough for the pubs in Strasbourg’) had been an omnivorous reader and an enthusiastic book-collector. Joséphine likes this room, where Liliane never came either but where she as a teenager had spent hours of content. Papa’s Anglophilia, so characteristic of French country gentlemen, meant wonderful things like The Bridge of San Luis Rey, or Death comes for the Archbishop. How disappointed she had been to be told that The Story of San Michele was all nonsense.
She feels she’s had enough of Jane for the moment; wants something romantic – fruitier, more like a Gewurztraminer; lights on Robert Louis Stevenson (enjoyed in childhood, wasn’t sure she’d recapture that now). The Ebbtide and St Ives and Kidnapped. Alan Breck the ‘bonny fighter’; she’d played at that in the orchard. Took it down now, hesitant: the old binding opened on the last page.
‘Whatever befell them, it was not dishonour, and whatever failed them, they were not found wanting to themselves.’ A bonny cadence, a bonny writer.
Joséphine surprised herself by sitting down and having a cry.
Silvia thought Doctor Valdez looking still ‘simply awful’. It is not her job to say so. She isn’t anyhow the kind of secretary who supplies aspirins and Alka Seltzer for the hungover business men. Brisk, but the maternal is kept for her own family. Doctors are supposed to be able to look after themselves. This one can; highly disciplined. Compartmented; the ‘Jesuit’ stuff is not apparent. Here in the Research Institute they come all sorts. This one is sloppy, eccentric, forgetful; nearly always polite, generally kind, mostly considerate: anyhow he’s a good doctor and she’s proud of him. For a longish while now he’s been dabbling in private practice and he could be building up something of a real reputation as a good man to consult. People ringing her up for appointments, it’s impossible in a place like this. She disapproved greatly of that awful scruffy flat. One has to cut one’s coat according to the tailor one can afford. She wants him in a proper suit and not as in that phrase of his – ‘freshly deloused by the Salvation Army’. A consultant must go to a good shop and be seen to be wearing money. She has conventional ideas of what this should look like. He’s off again to America in a day or so and she wants to be proud of him.
“I’ve found a place straight off, for you, which was a stroke of luck. The Beethovenstrasse, that’s very suitable.” The ‘Musicians’ Quarter’ is at the flossy end of bourgeois Strasbourg; of nineteenth-century Germanic facture, pompous but of solid worth and weight. Well regarded by the medical profession, which is really why there is an instant barrage of objection and complaint, perturbing Silvia not at all.
“This will go like the hot-cross-buns so I’ve accepted and I don’t want you putting in a veto.” Raymond gave her a bloodshot look: bossyboots woman, one shouldn’t allow this. So she gave the nail a tap with her hammer.
“I’ve looked it over, very nice consulting space, came up suddenly, was a cardiologist who suddenly dropped dead.”
“The way they do.”
“Quite so, it’s in tiptop condition and you can keep the cleaning-woman and everything.”
“And the large doses of nitroglycerine.” He’s well aware of being jockeyed.
“Nice little apartment at the back, just right for you on your own. Love-nest, probably.” That might have been going too far, but he only stared glassily. Oh yes, that WAS an inducement.
“Good soundproof old building,” went on Silvia hurriedly, “sunny behind. Insurance at street level, a gynaecologist on the floor above, it’s a snip. I must clinch it before midday, everyone’s after it.”
“Far too expensive,” said Raymond feebly.
“Stop talking bloody nonsense. Money comes to money. You’ve a patient next week referred by Dr Vincent in Nancy – you must realize, you’re on your way.” And because it is the moment to change the subject – “There’s a flood of e-mail from the people in Oakland about the symposium; oh yes and a new rat joke.”
“Oh all right, make the call then, and lets’ see the new joke.”
Rat jokes – they are in fact lawyer-jokes – have been around a long time. Originally it had been noticed that ‘rats and lawyers have much in common. Dishonesty, treachery, and uncontrolled proliferation.’ The corridors of the Internet swarm with hordes of lawyers looking like rats – ‘Watch out; they gnaw the cables’. In the Research Institutes of the world the standard joke, from which the others flow, had been, ‘Why do laboratories use lawyers for experiment?’ There are three standard answers: ‘There are more lawyers; the lab assistant doesn’t get fond of them; there are some things which a rat will simply refuse to do…’ There is no sign of this slackening, especially after a lawyer has sent in his little bill.
‘Dear Colleague, it has for long been known that metamorphosis techniques are freely used: masquerading lawyers indistinguishable from real rats. Metempsychosis now flourishes; the souls of our lawyers’ granddams no longer inhabit birds.
‘It has recently been signalled that a group of lawyers in the Vatican practises religious discrimination, headed by a gifted swifty, known as Cardinal-Rat. They hand out certificates of conformity, guaranteeing the holder to be a genuine Catholic rat in good standing, backed by the threat that all rats of other persuasions are to be cast out of the community.
‘You should place all rats in your laboratory under close surveillance, to determine whether infection is present, not only the familiar phenomenon of rats fluent in legal terminology. Pay particular attention to those with a claim to be orthodox Christian rats (present concern is not so much with Muslim or Jewish rats), especially those wearing ostentatious insignia, showing signs of zealous observance, or otherwise recognizable as engaged in this crusade to eliminate all but true believers. The Cardinal Rat, recognizable by extreme attachment to legal formulae, is said to be active in the Federal Republic, and if seen should be placed in strict isolation.’
“I don’t get it,” said Silvia. Raymond did though – grinning. His Distinguished Eminence, Cardinal Ratzinger, has been voluble lately about the True Church: Protestants need not apply. As a Jesuit Raymond is always suspect in scientific circles; we have a bad name for legalistic hair-splitting. The bare word ‘jesuitical’ is automatically pejorative. Too many of us are over-pally with the extreme right wing of clerical reaction, Opus Dei and the like – some indeed downright fascist. Going to America for the symposium, Doctor Valdez is going to get a lot of humour, some of it edgy, fired at him. Respected colleagues, some of them close friends, intensely sensitive about the death penalty or putting icecubes in the cognac, are looking to draw blood elsewhere.
Raymond’s research work, involving many rats and likely to involve a good many company lawyers, has been relatively peaceable, on the lines of chemical additives to food – a subject that attracts lawyers. Of recent months, a bit more Iatrogenic in quality: a witch-word this, with which medical jargon makes play, confident nobody will understand it. Roughly, there are medical treatments which, of course quite unintentionally, can contribute to the very affliction they are thought to help prevent. He’s aware of being on thin ice here. There are as many cancer-jokes, in the trade, as there are lawyer-jokes.
After sharing it with the immediate colleagues – ‘Watch out for any rats wearing Lourdes medals or who tend to get in a corner to recite their rosary’ – he went to see Paul the historian, his Companion in Jesus.
“Paul, where is it you get these marvellous cigars?”
“Well my dear, if I told you they are a personal tribute from Fidel you’d not believe me, though we’re friends come to that; much abused man, great deal of good in him. I’ll give you an anecdote instead of the ’14 war, on which as you know I’m thought an authority; the before-and-after are both of great interest. I believe it was in Ypres that a group of English soldiers living in great misery found themselves surrounded and their officer handed round a parcel of very good cigars he’d saved for a rainy day. When the Germans lined them up outside they were smoking these wonderful things, to the edification of all present. My own attitude is comparable. It’s raining outside, I believe,” pretending to look. “You wouldn’t come to see me unless you were contemplating surrender.” So that Raymond told him about the Janeites and their wartime origins.
“Very good,” said Paul. “Like all good jokes, true at the core, compare these lawyers of yours, especially the Pious lawyers, who go to Mass daily.
“I’m going to give you a telling-off, because you’re a good doctor even when you behave like an imbecile, puffed up as you are with vanity and floundering about like a – but that’s what we all are, pas vrai? – dolphins, and we get caught and strangled in those abominable nets. Thrashing about, trying hard, knowing ourselves doomed. I don’t know your Jane. English humour saves us pretty often. Did it work, d’you think, with your man?”
“To some extent. Who can say more? Early days as yet. We had a friend in common, old French politician we greatly liked, corrupt old man, very clever, immensely amusing. Strong on literature and that gave me the idea. Here we have a disciplined man, highly trained, magnificent physique, remarkable qualities, and just as in 1917 – what a waste! In my story the only survivor is a big strong chap who’s been shell-shocked into half-witted numbness and the only reality he can catch hold of is Jane, the little old woman who’d written a few books a hundred years before. Extraordinary books – she discards everything bar the moral essentials which now appear trivial. The group builds them into a standing joke, not altogether cynical because they all know they’ll be killed. Only this is worth holding to.”
Paul is a good, quiet listener.
“Who is it that has let everyone down? – it’s myself. I fell in love with this man’s wife. And she with me, I’m afraid. But she has gathered the courage and the honour to cut me off. And this has left me in despair.”
“Back to her man; where else would she go?” crossly. “This trap has sharp teeth. Lord, Thou hast made this world but the shadow of a dream.” Paul took the ash off his cigar.
“This self-loathing that has overcome you is an unattractive trait. To indulge in anguish and contempt for yourself is consequent upon your contempt of the world, and that’s indefensible, as you well know. That the world frightens, appals or revolts is common form. Since the Lord you’re making free with gave himself trouble and suffering to redeem it, we must not have the insolence to despise it; that’s bad theology. As a doctor you are called upon to combat pain and misery: you swore, I believe, an oath to that effect. To hate the world is to increase misery; that shows you bad at your job.
“Your private life is no concern of mine – help yourself to some whisky my dear, forgive my negligence – but I can’t have you doing your job badly; that’s pride as well as vanity. Your pettifogging adulteries are of no interest at all but they make you suffer. You shot the albatross and now you have it round your neck. It was a living thing of great beauty and now it’s a horrible carcass stinking of bad fish. Your job is to heal wounds, not to make more. From what you tell me your young woman has defied the world and nobly. You may be called upon to do something more, I cannot know, before the albatross is finished with.
“Mustn’t feel contempt. Don’t belittle your skills. Even if it’s only prolonging a life, making an existence tolerable, restoring hope, increasing comfort. And then of course the man you heal goes out and steals from the poor, but that’s no concern of yours.”
“Fuck you, Paul.”
“Have some more whisky.”
Monsieur Philippe wasn’t happy at all. Gone to a lot of trouble for a good satisfying vengeance, and it fizzles, and now where are you? Even the local paper had been discouragingly meagre. Where he had counted on a gaudy headline, much rhetorical flourish, excitable speculation, outrage; a dry little five-line account headed ‘Explosives Attempt’ and having the mayor shout about ‘cowardly, stupid and irresponsible’ – he said exactly the same about boys throwing stones: a poor show. ‘Considerable damage to the building exterior’ is meaningless. Corsicans busting a rural tax-office get a much better outcry. (He hadn’t realized that the local mayor was Geoffrey de Saint-Anne, who had ‘had a word’ with the editor.) No better than a tickle.
As is the way with a tickle one has to scratch it in the end. Monsieur Philippe was not able to resist going to see for himself. Prudently holding to the top of the slope and peeking across; an overcast night, too, but there wasn’t much to see. That fancy stairway to the balcony was gone; some sagging masonry supported by builders’ jacks and the windows boarded up; garage door demolished – yes and no Porsche inside neither; had that gone? A result, but he’d hoped for much better. Bitched, really. Most of the blast had gone outward and been wasted.
It had been Geoffrey’s suggestion to have a dog ‘in case of prowlers’. William is not dog-minded: ‘They bark for nothing at all.’ Nor is Joséphine doggy: vague memory of Sherlock Holmes. ‘They do nothing in the night-time as is well known.’ However, Geoffrey produced the dog. Sleeping at the back (dog in the kitchen). William noticed nothing until she poked him.
“It’s growling.” So it was; and walking about; and bristling. One couldn’t see much, out of those front windows. No movement, or if there was it was gone now. He got a torch and had a tour: nothing. Dog had quietened now anyway.
Still, in the morning when he let the dog out he went out with it. Ingrained habit of observation. Well maybe, or maybe not, but security types have the verification habit too, so he went back for a camera and a measuring tape. Didn’t amount to much but there had been enough of a shower yesterday to tell fresh from old. And the dog had growled in the night-time. It would do no harm to verify a bit further. Most of cop-instinct is experience.
“Ho,” said Xavier. “You again. Retired, but now a rent-a-cop.” Scrabbling among his papers. “We’ve had a gendarmerie report… ‘Affair of stolen gas-tank’ – I love that. ‘The village supply is held in the shed. Large impressive padlock but easily opened.’ Mm, interrogation. Long confused tale about a half-empty one.”
“There’s a big hire-deposit charge on those cylinders.”
“Right; that’s how the shopkeeper noticed. Fella took it by mistake?”
“Would account for the damage being minor, maybe.”
Reading from his page – “‘The inbreaker knew his way about the village but it is suggested, no longer lives there’ – Their conclusion.”
“Village people know a full cylinder by the weight. Townspeople might not – My conclusion.”
“Now just supposing this geezer you fancy… we’ll have a go at these photos, might well tell us the type of car.”
“Turning out to be the widest-sold Renault on the market.”
“Nor is it evidence one could bring in to court: photos could have been made at any time.”
“I’m dubious about this theory anyhow. He wouldn’t know about the village, wouldn’t know where to look. He’d know how to open a lock but I don’t see him up there at all.”
“He may have an accomplice. Like who bashed your friend Doctor Valdez. We never saw the jeweller for that. But supposing we postulate someone familiar with that village and who got that gas-tank for him?”
“And knew it was half empty?”
“And thought maybe, fella won’t know the difference.”
Monsieur Philippe was also fishing. One has to persevere. A dud at one end of the pool; try the other. There was something to be made of these people. They were behaving in a funny way. Here in the town one didn’t see the woman around: certainty she was no longer living with the doctor, and he too had changed his habits. New car – rather sharp: nice little BMW. Didn’t go with the life style. And yes, seems to be planning a move; pricy building in the Musicians’ Quarter. What was going on? Hadn’t changed jobs; still that old bicycle to go to the research place.
Mr Cleverdick Barton – even knowing his name still thought of as Le Parisien, and a slyboots – was an enigma. One couldn’t follow him about: nothing absent-minded about that one. A cop undoubtedly; evident since that unpleasantly jarring encounter. Never seemed to go to work; had been ill judging by the doctor’s visits, but now? The village gossip was that the Sainte-Anne woman had been married to him and ho, had gone back to live with him afresh, by all accounts. What now was the story with the doctor?
The explosion had been a flash in the pan. He’d seen as much: windows broken, a few shutters torn off, builders busy with those steps. Chewed the place up a bit, but not good enough. The tormenting taste of salt in the mouth was still there and would stay, until he got this account levelled.
How to get at the slippery bastard? Monsieur Philippe has lost faith in direct action. He preferred to arrange for people to trip themselves up. How about a letter? A technique he has used in business; you plant a few suggestions, which work in the mind. And the fellow might well do something silly. ‘Do you think of that doctor as a friend of yours? Or your wife? They are still screwing on the sly. You ought to wake up.’ On those lines. Three or four of those, the cat’s in with the pigeons. Complaisant husbands are not infrequent but if the fellow gets the idea he’s being made a fool of… One wants the bastard to squirm.
I’ve brought this on myself, thought William. A ‘corbeau’. Poison-pen letters in France come from a crow; a cunning bird. Sharp-eyed and slippery; easy to think of it busy writing this sort of stuff. It was of course the same man. He had ridiculed, humiliated that man in his own place. He knew he’d made a bad mistake, overplaying. He’d been angered, and had surrendered to anger. That man had been behind a sneaking attack on my friend, who had been badly hurt. The mechanisms by which this came about weren’t of great interest; in the past he’d known other nasty stories with the same kind of motive: the simpleton Janine was at the bottom of it, playing the call-girl. Think herself lucky if punishment hadn’t come her way. He’d known girls thrown out of moving cars for overstepping the bounds allowed them: she had some protector, no doubt.
This little man was still trying to get at him, and now through Joséphine; had been spying about, keyholing, it was obvious. Ray was at risk too – but he had to control himself, to protect two people he loved… with any luck at all, Xavier would tie this sneak up, and with a ribbon round it. Pah, though; it had spoilt his day. A crow, winking and grinning, and writing little notes.
In the course of a hunt for a telephone number that she was quite sure she had written on the back of an envelope which had disappeared, Joséphine was head down in the wastepaper bucket; simple as that, all among this week’s promotions for the supermarket and the impassioned invitations to subscribe to things: poor postman, trudging under the weight of so much Passion. First she sat up, then stood up. William wouldn’t be bothered burning such things, or hiding them from her. Wouldn’t be framing them to hang on the wall, either: in with the rest of the junk mail. Whoever did that would be careful with fingerprints, or even those handy fragments of DNA we’re always told about. Saliva under the stamp, or the lick of the envelope? It didn’t have enough importance, even as a piece of evidence to put on a courtroom table.
True, she said “Oh, Shit” but that is not an Impassioned sort of expletive.
If people say I’m a whore, does that make me one? If people think of me as a whore, it’s no worse than I deserve. I want to be a woman: it’s high time, I have wasted a lot of years. The world is full of women. Some are whores, some are squaws, being Helpmeet to Hubby. Lots trudge after the donkey with a load on their head: their man is riding the donkey, smoking a cigarette and wearing new shoes. Some are power-hungry, go to work and keep slaves. Around here, nearly all are doing jobs, mostly pretty menial; often at half the money a man would be getting. They carry, a great many, an impossible burden; a day’s work and then rush, to do the shopping and pick the brats up from the crèche and even then they aren’t through: cooking and housekeeping and making a Home for the man and the children. I’ll do that if it’s what it takes to have self-respect and a straight back. Of these many get abandoned, divorced, pushed out to cope for themselves. Then you have to set up as a single parent, or go lez, along with some other poor cow, it’s to be hoped they find some comfort in one another.
But since I’m a woman I have to Be a woman, make a proper job of it. Too many years have gone, lost in being an object.
I hope, thought Joséphine, I have a daughter. Teaching her I’ll learn; we’ll learn about being women together. a life-time’s work, that. Fucking Hard work. And since it’s my work get on with it then, stop chatting about it.
Medicine – using the word loosely – proliferates. By a sort of Parkinson Law; there are a lot of inventions, clever mechanical tools, aids to diagnosis or in pointing out a likely treatment. Hospitals yell for more scanners, expensive toys of the sort, because everybody wants to be scanned. Doctors get into the habit of ordering tests; it pleases the patient, who has a comforting feeling of being looked after. You might anyhow find out something you hadn’t known before. One of the most frequent tools is the analysis laboratory, since haematologists find more, and more complex questions to ask of a drop of blood. The lab is like a shop on the main road, where everyone pops in to buy a bunch of flowers, so that the one on the Allée de la Robertsau does a roaring trade. Most of the work is boring counts of the banal levels in your blood like cholesterol, but the waiting-room is full of apathetic folk looking for the vampire-girls to call their name and fill the little bottle; rows and rows of these with enough of the stuff to Paint the Town Red.
The Permanent Representative wasn’t happy; all much too public for his liking. Nobody knew or cared who he was; neither the paperwork girl at the counter, shuffling her forms, nor the technician with her bright smile and roll-up-your-sleeve. She doesn’t even look at your face, sees only your elbow; make a fist then, so that the vein is apparent. But he’s always sensitive; however banal the intervention it’s an invasion of his privacy, and how can one be sure there’s nobody around who might recognize him. He had insisted on Crystal coming with him. It wasn’t a smokescreen, nor a comfort; it was a little treat for immediately afterwards. These damn blood tests are always before breakfast, so that he had planned to have her drive him across to the Hilton or wherever, have her pour out the coffee; order a good American breakfast which he never got at home.
Crystal didn’t care. She liked this role; it was being a sort of confidante rather than a playmate. She liked soothing him, pouring out the coffee, liked the idea of being posh too; cinnamon toast or something, yum.
Doctor Valdez, sorry sorry, was in a mighty hurry. Off to the farflung today, and cross because he hasn’t a direct flight out of Strasbourg; It’s Frankfurt OR Paris OR Zürich, hellholes all three. AND a change in Atlanta; why couldn’t we have gone to Miami? – yes yes but we’ve Been to Miami.
Hurry because of being conscientious: he has to give a phonecall to a colleague about a patient’s tests and the lab is always slow with the results, so he is going to whip in, pick them up, leaving the car doubleparked and Too Bad. And there on the pavement in front is Dr Barbour. That is all right. A professional discretion obtains, and they won’t even nod to each other. But there, holding his arm in a maternal manner is a woman – and that is Janine. He hasn’t laid eyes on her since – but oh dear, Janine who has never kept her lip buttoned since the day she was born.
“Ray!” she screamed, delighted.
“Hallo Janine. Look, forgive, I’m dashing, can’t stop.” She wasn’t listening; she never had.
“But Ray, how lovely! You’re looking splendid.”
“Good to see you, sorry, the police will be giving me a ticket.” She was standing there staring after him, puzzled…
Dr Barbour is much too self-controlled to make a scene in public. ‘In public’ – right there on the main road, what a setting for a scandal.
“Get in the car,” he said softly. Hers, the little red one, smallest car he’d ever got his legs into. “Drive home…”
“Make coffee.” Not the breakfast he’d been looking forward to. Interrogation. Soft-voiced and lawyerly. A clumsy liar.
“But nobody could possibly have seen…”
Somebody in fact had. Monsieur Philippe simply delighted. And all free, all without effort. He’d been going about his own business, had simply stopped for the red light. A chocolate with a cherry inside. Luscious that little passage on the pavement which one couldn’t hear but the body-language told all. Valdez’ car there blocking the traffic, and that little old thing of Mireille, Italian racing red. This would work nicely, would make for a valuable bit of leverage. That tall figure was unmistakable, the smooth silver hair, it set off the oddly bleached look of the face – and the way he took her by the arm… rubbing it and you could see the words ‘You’re hurting’… it was the piece in the puzzle he’d never been sure of; that the Permanent Representative had not known who Dr Valdez was, had never identified his girlfriend’s former playmate. It would be typical of old-mother-Ben to pretend she didn’t know. While knowing perfectly well and blandly instructing himself to get out there and find out. That was how she worked, staying away from anything likely to be troublesome. Yo – this was a handy thing to know.
Dr Barbour sat at his desk. The house was quiet. The staff had gone home; Eleanor was out playing bridge; the houseman had the day off. He would drive himself, later, to – whatever it was, it would be in the diary. He likes this quiet hour before going up to change. By the door the little telltale told him that the security was on. He’d have said, up to yesterday, that his own was reliable. Anonymous letters, such as everyone in official positions must get from time to time, would never interfere, he had supposed, with the ability to think clearly. In a lawyerlike manner.
He put his finger inside the triggerguard and twirled the gun on the desk. It pointed towards him. No. Try again. It pointed towards the door.
It lived in his desk, which nobody touches. Of European make but said to be good, a stopper, powerful. It is our constitutional right, to bear arms. He had never taken it out but it was there, carefully kept oiled, with the charger separate to avoid weakening the spring. The armourer had explained; light enough for him but efficient, an automatic known here as a seven-six-five. He knew how to snap it in, to arm the action, feeling for the safety but now it was loaded, a fer-de-lance ready to strike.
He had got the story out of Crystal with no trouble at all; a stupid confusion of names. Calling herself Mireille and her real name was Janine. Harmless, a thing actors did. But this doctor made nonsense of safeguards. The man had been here in this room, questioning him, examining him. Prescribed for him. He had inner uncertainties, which now were known to this man, who was due – away at some conference, in the States – to come back with the result of those lab tests, and discuss a possible treatment… it doesn’t bear thinking of. It is like a bullet, lodged in the centre of his own bodily defences. A lawyer is a man. His blood is red.
It is true, one thinks of lawyers as cold, implacable, unmoved; Mr Tulkinghorn at his desk with the two bits of sealing-wax and the broken glass stopper. Men can be overwhelmed by pain and by a pressure suddenly unbearable. They can run amok; the head no longer controls the heart, the limbs, the armed hand. But not, one would say, lawyers: still less those who represent their country on diplomatic missions, clothed as it were in the Advocate-General’s red robe. People like this shouldn’t have loaded pistols on the table.
But it would be very foolish to think of somebody like Dr Barbour in an over-simplified, caricatural way. He is imbued with a sense of his importance? He is pompous, rigid, humourless? Authoritarian, a bully, a good deal of an old fascist? One would still know pitifully little about him. Raymond Valdez is thinking about how one will get to know more, and maybe, enough to be of some use. This will take time, effort, concentration, sympathy. The PermRep is a lot of boilerplate: there is much more to him. He is to a large degree a creature of systems and attitudes and the conventions of his class and upbringing. He is also – as he is telling himself – red-blooded. He lives and he breathes, and he loves. He is making indeed a great effort to be a man. Not to be mechanical, materialist. The pistol is a well-made ingenious mechanism but it means death. It is not a piece of sealing-wax. The Permanent Representative took it to pieces again and put it back in the drawer, after ejecting the loaded cartridge. It left a smell of mineral oil on his hands, so that he went to wash before going up to change. Not Spaniards – New Zealand. Mutton probably, or apples.
This evening the catering is by the Bénédicte firm. She does none of the big parties, boumboum affairs with hundreds of plates and glasses, but is in much demand for a more intimate affray. She has an excellent maître d’hôtel and two inventive cooks, and the secret is to have a personal eye upon the lay-out. Dr Barbour filtered through the convives.
“Two words with you.”
“With pleasure,” one eye on a waitress. “Careful dear, those are delicate.” She doesn’t disdain what cooks call the chicken-and-ham circuit but they aren’t sausage rolls: Canapé MacMahon is a short-crust tartlet with scalloped chicken livers, mushrooms and marrow; a madeira demiglace.
“I’ve had a piece of insolence from an employee of yours.”
“You may rely on me to deal with it.”
The phonecall had said nothing beyond ‘I want to see you’ but Monsieur Philippe doesn’t loiter, pausing only downstairs where there is a nice smell of fresh pastry and a gamy flavour from the kitchen beyond. The old horror’s office was upstairs. She doesn’t say Good Morning, she doesn’t ask him to sit down, she’s plainly in a nasty frame of mind.
“You were employed some months ago on an errand for a valued customer. It now appears that you have exceeded your instructions: a complaint has come in. You’ve pestered him, you’ve been indiscreet. Trying to make yourself a corner in the affairs of others. I won’t have it.” Reading him off as though he’d dropped a tray of glasses but he will bide his time. “You need not speak, I won’t listen. You need only understand me – you haven’t heard the last of this.”
“I don’t allow you to make threats.”
“I never make threats. I dislike complaints, they’re bad for business. I know how to put a stop to them, get that well fixed in your mind. Off you trot; I’m wanted downstairs.”
Talking to me like that – that you’ll regret, old bitch. Not the moment to say so and it needs quiet, collected thought. Now he had to go down the stairs in front of her, as though pushed…
She was buttonholed in the hallway by a distraught waitress.
“Oh Madame, James says the delivery has gone wrong.” She bullocked on through without a backward glance and Monsieur Philippe had a sudden inspiration, whipped back up the stairs three at a time. Anything, anything at all – a paper, a tape cassette? The desk was bare, the drawers all locked – cow. Only on the window-sill, a cigarbox. To offer favoured customers or might it hold a recorder? Well Glory Be. It held a small pistol. He slipped back down silent as the draught from an open door, ready to say Sorry, forgotten my glasses, but there was nobody at all. He didn’t know what one could make of this but something – something.
At home he examined the booty. A woman’s thing yes, but trust old Benny, no Mickey Mouse. A small but solid, shapely job, revolver loaded all round with .22 magnums…
It might be some time before she missed it. It might not be such an obvious guess who had found it. She wouldn’t do anything at once. She had, no error, leverage on him, but he, if she pushed too far, could find a few damaging suggestions. Neither party would be enthusiastic for a shakedown. Say nothing, keep it safe.
He had no gun, himself, since that damned impudent Barton had taken his, chucked it in the river. He’d been meaning to replace it but hadn’t found the right opening.
It was at this moment that he found the germ – the faintest shadow – of what looked like a bright idea. A wild plan, but simple. ‘Doctor Valdez’ he told himself sarcastically, would be part of this. The weak link, the way in. The more he thought, the thirstier he got.
But Valdez seemed to have vanished; no sign of him at either address. He rang up the secretary, an earnest enquirer, quite humble and prepared to wait upon the convenience of almost anyone but he did want, you see. Oh, he was away? But he’d be back on Friday? Oh yes, I see, the timeshift from the States. I wouldn’t want to bother him, it would be better to wait until Monday perhaps.
He had what he wanted, the plane timetable.
Yawning exaggeratedly, waiting for his ears to clear, Raymond doesn’t object to the tropic climes now and then but he does like to get home to where it rains, or might, outside; oh god why do these places stink so and why is my suitcase always the last one off? Caribbean islands fade to postcard size, mercifully cleansed of insects, air conditioners and penetrating American voices. And now dozy is the word and he has a horrible longing for soup. Pea soup and no bananas. Where the buggery is one to find soup? Minestrone.
It is needlessly dozy to be looking in the car park for an old Volkswagen. He has a smart new car and a magic thingy to pop the doors, if one could find it… The man next door is hunting for his key which isn’t in his pocket and might be in the briefcase, well one knows the feeling. Throwing his bag in the back he was suddenly crowded.
“Stay very still, there’s a pistol pointing at you. Now I get in, just behind you. No use staring about, those cars are all empty, gone to Paris for the day. Now if you turn your head slowly you’ll see it. Small but efficient. The target would be the back of your neck and you’re dead.
“Now you drive out slowly, careful not to hit anything. Got the money, have you, to make the gate open and get us out of here?”
Supposing I haven’t any money, thought Raymond, the gate won’t open. Only this is airport desert, everyone else is gone, even the taxi-drivers are miles away sunk in a doze; lift your eyes from the crossword, boys. No, I’m stuck here with a maniac just behind me and what does he want, what the hell is the point? Why hijack me? Why hijack anyone? Is he escaping from somewhere? Or he’s done a holdup and I’m a hostage. Where are the bloody police, are they all inside drinking coffee? It was only a feeder flight. Big plane there coming in and lots of people, no good to me and I don’t Want to get shot in the neck.
“Right, now I’ll tell you, you drive on out to Barton’s house. You know the way well. Where you left your woman, right?”
Light is beginning to dawn and it doesn’t help. Being dozy and being frightened together is just making you sweaty. Is this – this must be the man who has some vengeance to take upon William. Who put the bomb outside William’s house. Not a very efficient man because it didn’t work well, but he might be better with guns than he was with bombs. This is not a good forecast. What can I do, dio merda? Tip the car in the ditch, like Joséphine did? Alack, there are country roads hereabout, stretches of woodland, farmland – ditches. But these lands are much too tame, orderly, ditches much too neat and small. Crash the car into something? There are villages with awkward turns, red lights, cars parked. This would be possible. He doesn’t think he can do it; too paralysed by fear. You are not that smart, Ray, and you are not that heroic. As he got into the car the first thing the man had done was to make a sudden lunge forward over my shoulder, to twist the reversing mirror up and out of sight-line; didn’t want to be seen. That would have been the moment for the unarmed combat; take the loony in the octopus-like grip. I didn’t; I did nothing.
Looking backward is of no interest, thought Ray. More anxious to know what is in front. The fiend is just behind me and it’s enough to know he’s there. ‘The fiend is at my elbow’ said… said… Lancelot Gobbo… that’s me, the clown. This feeling of total impotence is wretched. “Watch your road” snapped the man. “Don’t waver. Don’t try anything funny.”
He could bash the car into a tree. Would that leave them all trapped in airbags? – he doesn’t even know how the damn things work. Are there some at the back? And if he fired his pistol into them, wouldn’t they collapse?
Sweat is running down his neck, his chest, his back: his trousers were sticking to his legs. He could pee in his pants it wouldn’t make much odds. Raymond has practised dying – many times – but he hadn’t known it would be like this. And now they were climbing the steep slope, up to the house.
“Easy does it. Nice and slow. At the top you just glide down into the dip. You stop there, in front of the house. And you sound your horn. You go toot-toot. You don’t move. And he’ll hear that, and he’ll come out to see. Think there’s something wrong with you. There is, too. He’ll come to look, and I’ve got him, the bastard.”
It was all too likely. It was logical. William would think no harm. The one hope – that William, the professionally suspicious man, would think something amiss. He has weaponry, but how to alert him to the need for it? It was all true – William would simply come out wondering what the matter was. Joséphine – she might be there; she might come out too. The loony would not leave an inconvenient witness. They would all die.
“Toot again,” said the voice. “Pip-pip, here he comes.”
The car was angled towards the house. The back window was sliding down. Raymond slumped. He didn’t think he’d be able to see the others die. In the story, after the bombardment, the simple-Simon says ‘I was the only Janeite left’. But it won’t be that way. We’ll all be gone, with nothing to show. There is no one here and this man is going to get clear away with it. He heard the hissing breath drawn in and held as William started to come towards them.
A different voice, barking, wanting to sound gruff, authoritative and wishing very strongly to be obeyed, said loudly,
“Drop the gun.”
Of several startled people Monsieur Philippe was the most startled – William, who could see behind Raymond’s car, could see the other car which had stopped at the top of the dip, wasn’t startled. It meant that Xavier had been as good as his word and put a PJ man sticking to that idiot’s footsteps, and just as bloody well because the fucker’d turned dangerous. He caught hold of Joséphine’s arm and swung her violently, himself making a complicated sort of plunging swerve. He hoped that boy knew what he was doing.
Melodrama is never far from farce. Raymond with his eyes shut wasn’t sure whether he was in this world or the next. Whichever it was, that was a classic line.
Humphrey Bogart always said the line never existed, but that drunks in bars, anxious to show who really was the tough guy around here, were forever coming up to him making like they were George Raft, saying ‘Drop the gun, Louey.’
The boy from the PJ – he was not much more – was frightened by the situation and startled at his own voice. There he’d been stuck for hours on end, at that frigging airport, wondering what the hell the bugger was up to – practically since the beginning of his shift. Recognizing Dr Valdez he’d woken up. Followed from fairly far back. They’d gone quite slow. When they stopped he’d known something was up. Training took over then. He’d made quick time while angling out a bit. Because of Valdez in front. If you have to use your piece you try to make sure it doesn’t go on through and hit a bystander.
But Monsieur Philippe was very badly startled because it never had occurred to him to look behind him. The window down; he had the little pistol nicely braced, cocked, on single action.
At that wild Indian yell panic struck him. He swung the little gun in that direction and it went off (found afterwards to have a light pull, nothing unusual) and before he knew how to stop fired two more on double action.
The boy had his big standard-issue .357 revolver. There has been a lot of debate about police arms. The thing is dangerously powerful. Most PJ men of more experience have gone back to automatics, for the modern automatic is much more reliable than it used to be. The boy had been trained that if you do have to use your piece (after, it’s insisted upon, your call of warning) you shoot at the legs. Nobody’d ever shown him how you’re supposed to aim at some geezer sitting down in a car whom you can’t even see properly. No matter anyhow, these big guns kick up in the inexperienced hand. One shot but it fair tore the fellow in two and went out the far side. Jeesus-eff-christ, he thought, scared out of his wits. William didn’t need a second glance to see what had happened. He took the big revolver away from the boy, who put his hands up over his eyes, and said, “That’s all right, son, get your breath back.” The boy began to cry from nerves. He’d never fired the gun at anyone and now he’d killed a man. Stopped at once; it was only the scare.
“The ol’man’ll tear my head off for this. There’ll be an inquiry, I’ll be suspended.”
“No he won’t. Happens I know him, pretty well; he’ll take my word. You don’t touch any of this. You go back to your car, and call him. You let him shout, and then you tell him Mr Barton will be your witness.”
Raymond was still sitting there behind the wheel, clutching it. Joséphine reached in and took both hands.
“Come on. Upsidaisy.” He got out, took a look, and said
“Oh dear. My good car.” Insane laughter.
“The mirror cracked from side to side. Your insurance company is going to do its nut.”
“Not sure I haven’t peed my pants.”
“Would make two of us. Take a look at William, he’s in his element.” Raymond tried walking, with partial success.
Joséphine is especially fond of Ray’s quickness to laugh at himself.
William joined them.
“I had a quick word with Xavier. He’ll send the wagon and he’ll be out himself for a look before they take – that – away. The boy stays, to be sure no one touches it. I think he’d like a cup of coffee, Joséphine, if you’d manage that. What I’d suggest, we go in, and perhaps we all have some apple pie.”
So there they are, the three Janeites.
“Aren’t we perfect fools, to imagine we can push violence out of the way? The harder we push, the more it clings.”
“Like Captain Haddock” (Joséphine is a strong Tintin fan) “trying to get rid of the sticking-plaster.”
“But Haddock’s violence is entirely innocent.”
“That’s what children like so much: they can feel total confidence in him.”
“Do you think,” said William, “that the jeweller was any good at his job?” The other two have had it explained to them, who the little sneak was.
“Oddly enough,” said Joséphine, “I can answer that. I’ve been in that little shop on the quays. Geoffrey was buying a wedding anniversary present for Liliane. Yes he was. Very good indeed. They aren’t all sitting up there in the Place Vendôme, you know. He had a passion for gold. Not that shit stuff – pink, grey, white. The real thing, high carat. You wear that on your skin, it takes a beautiful patina. He learned that, he said, in India. The inside – where it touches you, there is the heart and the soul of it. He did the most wonderful enamels on it. Isn’t that beautiful? Why was he such a horrible little shit?”
The PJ chief could be heard outside, brisk, rallying his troops. Xavier came in, said, “What’s that you’re drinking? I’ll have some… You all right, all of you?”
“We’ve a technical question for you.”
“Good, this. Polish, is it? I can give you the police answer, if William hasn’t already.”
“No, I haven’t the details.”
“I had a man on him, as you know. Just a tag, wasn’t getting anywhere much with it – interested in the Doctor,” nodding at Ray.
“Old bitch Bénédicte came in to see me, bold as brass.
“Her good pistol, which Of Course is legally registered, and was, so please you, mislaid while cleaning, got pilfered. An Insane thing to do, Commissaire, which she feels Obliged to make known to me, think of it, fellow running round with a Grievance.
“Sure; insanity’s what they all plead; something came over me donchaknow. No more insane than you are.” The three looked at each other. Barking bonkers the lot of us. “Thing is, it’s perfectly true, pretty well anybody will do something insane at a given moment, press the sore point hard enough and fellow isn’t reasoning clearly. Likely enough, this was the moment, incapable of calculation, pick up the breadknife you’ve a homicide. This little fellow had been practising his vengeance a long time, sure, tasting it and loving it; seeing the gun there he takes leave of his senses. Afterwards, no no, it wasn’t him; was the Third Man. Bit late perhaps for the victim. William, old son, just as well, huh, having that boy there, bit dozy but didn’t quite drop all his marbles. All right, mustn’t stand here gossiping, thanks for the drink, I better get to work, lot of forms to fill in.”
Outside, they were towing away Doctor Valdez’ good new car. Raymond helped himself to another socking glassful of apple pie.
“I fell asleep on the plane,” he told them. “Girl gives you a pillow but it’s probable my head was in a bad position. There’s a lot we don’t understand about nightmare; it’s interesting that it’s called Alptraum in German.
“I was driving at night. Maybe I was on an English road, over on the wrong side, because bang, there are headlights blazing right in my face, there was nothing I could do but think This is It. The other driver swerved at the last possible second, I remember hearing him scrape along the bodywork and I still couldn’t react – there was another set of lights bearing down on me. I woke, then.
“It was like there in the car; I was in a lather, I rang the bell, sent the girl for a big drink. I’m saying that if it was premonition how do I get it there, in the middle of the ocean?”
The others were saying nothing, looking at him. I’m getting drunk, thought Raymond.
There had been papers lying about: he had picked one up, to obliterate the nasty moment. There was a picture of a piece of sculpture, a big one, monumental. Interview with the artist. Basque, interesting man, said something striking. He wanted to tell the others but his throat was stuck.
‘Wouldn’t art be the consequence of a necessity to try to do something we don’t know how to do?’ Indeed; a beautiful, a delicate necessity…
It’s this apple-pie. He was a student again, arguing with the others; pavement café in Poland. A million years ago, a million miles away. Magali put that record on again. They all played it, all the time; it had become an obsession, there in the heat, the dust.
Not Poland at all. Africa; these hundreds and thousands of black people all looking for help, and we had so little help to give. Magali, the nurse who worked with him; he can see her, a fall of dark hair held in an elastic band. He has cut all his own off; sand gets in it. Magali has a gramophone in the tent.
They all like to sing it, overworked and overtired as they all were. Bass drum, jarring like the springs of the jeep on the iron-hard piste, jouncing them. A prowling rhythm, easy to sing. Magali would begin, and he would join in.
‘You’ll never know how much I love you.
Never know how much I care…’
He was singing it now; didn’t care how drunk he was.
Bang went that deep drum. Magali screamed out ‘Fever!’ That was what it was all about. That was the obsession. ‘You get the fever that’s so hard to bear…’ He ought to teach it to these two, who are laughing at him because he’s drunk.
Bang went Magali’s fist on the table, in time with the drummer. He used to dance with her – a thin, bony thing. Good nurse, though.
He would make these two sing, and dance, along with him.
‘Everybody gets the fever.’
Grandfontaine, Christmas 2000