2

Her eyelashes fluttered but her eyelids wouldn’t open wide enough for her to see anything. At the same time, the pout disappeared from her lips and her hand, with a lazy, vague movement, brushed back her hair, which was covering almost her entire face, tickling her cheek.

Refusing to waken, she curled up, seeking the comfort of her own warmth, her smell, the blood flowing through her veins, the regular intake of breath in her nostrils, which narrowed with each inhalation.

Unwittingly she had adopted the foetal position, as if to offer less of a purchase, to form a closed entity, perfectly unified, unassailable.

She already knew many things that she did not really want to know and she was deliberately putting them out of her mind, into what was once called limbo.

As a child, she used to play an amusing, sometimes sensual game that helped her achieve that floating feeling, especially when confined to bed with flu or a slight fever.

Today, maintaining that state of quasi-innocence felt like a need, a vital necessity.

She had a headache, not too bad, not as bad as she might have expected, a dull pain, the intensity and nature of which she could alter by burrowing further into the pillow.

She was thirsty. Maybe there was some water on the bedside table, but to drink it she would have had to emerge from her torpor, open her eyes and face reality.

She preferred to stay thirsty. There was an aftertaste in her mouth that reminded her of the first time she gave birth, when she’d been so frightened and had been given injections to numb her. Now too, all her mucous membranes were sensitive, almost painful, and there were moments when she had the impression they were swelling, that her entire body was swelling, becoming so light that it was floating in space.

She’d been given an injection last night, she remembered very clearly.

‘You may leave us, Lucien.’

‘Are you sure you don’t need anything? Would you like me to send in the chambermaid?’

The room she was in hadn’t been aired for several days and it smelled fusty. Not the bland fustiness of a town, but the damp-hay smell of the countryside. When, a little earlier, the concierge and the porter had wanted to turn the lights on, the dark-haired woman had said:

‘No! She mustn’t have too much light. Leave me alone with her. Just open the communicating door into my room.’

The men’s footsteps had faded away. Betty was lying on a bed, on top of the covers. The woman had gone off into the adjoining room where, from the noises she made, it sounded as if she was making herself comfortable. Was she afraid that Betty might throw up over her dress or tear it, clutching on to her?

Betty had tried to cheat and open her eyes for a second. She hadn’t done so and perhaps, after all, she would have been incapable of it. The dark-haired woman came back, undressed her with expert hands, removing everything, her slip, her bra, her stockings and then, after hesitating, her skimpy sheer nylon panties.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the tap and, with the deftness of a nurse, ran a soapy washing mitt over Betty’s face and body, then rinsed it off with warm water and a splash of eau de Cologne.

She said nothing, didn’t talk to herself but, from time to time, she absent-mindedly hummed snatches of a tune that had been playing on the turntable most of the evening.

‘There you are, my dear!’ she sighed at last. ‘Now we’re going to try to rest and not think about anything.’

Without moving her, she managed to pull back the covers and slide Betty’s body between the fresh, lightly starched sheets.

Did she know that Betty was taking everything in and that she would remember? What was the expression on her face as the woman stared at her for a long while in the light from a single little lamp at the other end of the room?

Betty had not dreamed all that. Nor had she dreamed the words that came back into her head, with their precise intonation, the sounds and smells that went with them:

‘What do you think?’

‘I’ll take her with me.’

‘You?’

‘Why not?’

It was Mario, the owner of Le Trou, and the dark-haired woman who were talking. Betty had been struck by their familiar manner and how they didn’t need to spell things out to understand one another.

‘Are you in a fit state to drive?’

Mario was common, energetic, slightly cheeky. He exuded a quiet strength and, when he sat down at the customers’ tables, he seemed to be taking them under his wing. Had he not appeared at the exact moment when the doctor with his worms was becoming disagreeable and possibly dangerous?

He hadn’t grown angry, hadn’t raised his voice. Firmly, but without violence, he had rid the young woman of him. He’d gone to the trouble of driving him home.

‘Did you manage to get him into bed?’

‘His wife helped me.’

There was no irony in his voice, only a hint of amused mockery when he added:

‘He’s counting the rabbits that have invaded his room.’

Betty looked half-dead. She thought she’d plumbed the depths of despair and yet, at that moment, she wondered whether Mario was the dark-haired woman’s lover or just her friend.

Other images came back to her, clearer, more detailed than when she had seen them in real life, the blonde barmaid, for example, the one with the provocative breasts, who had a huge beauty spot on her cheek and was constantly smoothing her hands over her thighs as if to stop her girdle from riding up. She probably had one of those delicate, milky skins that showed red marks from the elastic and fasteners of her clothes when she undressed.

At one point, the light went out. There was just a faint glow in the room, because the communicating door was open and the dark-haired woman hadn’t switched her light off yet. She came and went, smoking. The smell of her cigarette was sharp, different from the usual odour. Water was running into a bathtub.

Betty was genuinely unwell. Her heart thumped irregularly and at times she feared it would not resume its normal rhythm. What would happen then? Would she die? Abruptly, from one moment to the next, before she could realize? She did not call out. She had made up her mind not to call out, to die alone if necessary, and she was glad to know that her body was clean at last. Not completely. Almost. The woman had even run the moist mitt between her toes.

Had she been lying there long? She groaned, was aware of groaning, despite herself, and hoped that it was quiet enough not to be heard.

Especially since the lady was asleep. It was pitch dark. Betty didn’t trust her senses any more. Did she really hear slippers gliding over the floor, the breathing of someone coming towards her. Did a warm hand seize her wrist? Did a voice, hers, say:

‘I’m scared …’

‘Shhh! … No need to fret, my dear …’

Someone was taking her pulse. She could tell that someone was taking her pulse. Not just once, but at least twice, perhaps three times, with intervals of stillness and silence, as at the bedsides of the very sick.

There were no sounds in the hotel, no sounds outside, other than the patter of rain on the louvred shutters, which rattled every so often in the wind. She didn’t dare ask for the lamp to be switched on.

A little later, there was some light, not in her room but next door where, for some mysterious reason, a spirit lamp was being lit. She recognized the smell. Her father used to sell methylated spirits. He was a hardware dealer. He was a redhead. He was full of life and would make fun of his customers, imitating them behind their backs. He invented cleaning products. A pity the Germans had shot him at the end of the war. No one had ever known why.

A hand drew back the blanket. Betty felt a needle prick her hip and a liquid seep slowly into her.

Like the first time she’d given birth. The second time, she’d refused. Perhaps it was the same substance. Almost immediately she felt a sense of well-being, a numbness that still left some regions of her brain alert.

Someone was holding her hand. Her pulse was taken again. She must be perspiring because she could hear the tap running and, a little later, a cold towel was placed on her forehead and over her eyes.

She would have liked to say thank you but, if her lips moved – and she wasn’t certain they did – no sound came out.

After that, there was nothing. Then, much later, again there was something that was maybe true and maybe not. It was impossible to decide, because she had a lot of dreams. Why, if it wasn’t true, would she have remembered just the one dream, retaining of the others only a painful feeling with no images?

It was towards morning. It must have been morning, because she could hear, in the corridor, the bellhop delivering breakfast to the rooms.

She could have sworn that she’d smelled the aroma of coffee and, when she had opened her eyes – if she had opened them – she’d seen strips of light between the curtains. The day was dawning, or had already dawned.

A noise she tried to identify reached her ears from the next room, whose door was still half-open, dramatic heavy breathing, and she rose to go and see. She had taken a few steps, her head suddenly aching, when, on a bed, she saw two naked bodies making love.

Was it possible that they hadn’t heard her, hadn’t noticed her, and that she could have tiptoed back to bed and gone back to sleep almost at once?

She couldn’t decide. In her mind, the man was Mario and he had a very hairy body. Had that been long ago? Was it already late in the day?

She didn’t want to think about it and she tried to sink back into her numbed state and oblivion. Two or three times she saw her father, in his paint-stained white overalls, in the backroom of his shop on Avenue de Versailles, which was cluttered with barrels and gas bottles and reeked of oil and acids.

She had spent her childhood surrounded by that smell, which rose up to their apartment on the first floor and clung to the folds of her father’s clothes and his flaming hair.

At school, when she was in her first year, the girl she sat next to, who had a lisp, had asked to move, saying:

‘She stinks.’

Her breath resumed a slower, more regular rhythm. Her lips parted over her small teeth, which her mother used to call mouse teeth. Her hand had gradually slid down her belly and, like when she was a little girl, almost without realizing it, she caressed herself, perhaps to put an even greater distance between herself and the outside world, so that there was nothing but the universe of her warm flesh and her sensations.

She had long since fallen asleep again when a creaking sound made her open her eyes and, this time, she didn’t ask herself if she should open them or not. Standing between the door and the bed, she saw the dark-haired woman, in her dressing-gown. She looked even taller than the previous evening.

Had Betty actually seen her standing up, the previous evening? She had just appeared and sat at her table and, later, Betty, her eyes closed, had been incapable of …

‘Did I wake you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I came to see if you needed anything. How are you feeling?’

‘Fine.’

It was true. Her headache had gone. She was weary, in a pleasant sort of way, with just an emptiness in her chest.

‘I think I’m hungry.’

‘What would you like to eat?’

She fancied eggs and bacon, perhaps because, whenever she stayed in a hotel, she had eggs and bacon for breakfast. She would never have thought of doing so at home. And besides, her husband …

She mustn’t think about him yet.

‘Do you think I can?’

‘Why not? I’ll call the bellhop.’

‘Have you had something to eat?’

‘Ages ago.’

‘Is it late?’

‘Four o’clock.’

‘In the afternoon?’

It was a stupid question.

‘How do you like your eggs? Well done?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tea? Coffee?’

‘Coffee.’

‘With milk?’

‘Black.’

The lady went to the door to give the order to the bellhop.

‘Would you like me to open the shutters?’

She drew the curtains and leaned forward to push open the shutters, and the rain could be seen falling on to the foliage.

‘You gave me an injection, didn’t you?’

‘Did you feel it? Don’t be afraid. My husband was a doctor and, during the twenty-eight years I spent with him, I often acted as his nurse.’

‘Last night I was convinced I was dying.’

She didn’t say that to make the woman feel sorry for her but because she suddenly remembered. It was true. She could have died. Then she would no longer have existed. They would have had to look for her identity card in her bag to find out her name and address. They’d have telephoned Guy. Would he have taken charge of the funeral in spite of everything, or would he have got his brother to deal with it? What would they have told Charlotte?

Instead of that, here she was lying in a plush room with pale blue walls and a bust of Marie-Antoinette on its white marble mantelpiece.

‘Would you like to have a bath before you eat? Knowing Jules, it will take him a good twenty minutes to bring your breakfast. Don’t get up right away. I’ll run your bath.’

She smoked, using a long cigarette holder which Betty hadn’t seen her with the previous night. Her dressing-gown was red velvet, like her slippers, her hair was done and she had her make-up on.

While the bathtub filled, she disappeared into her bedroom for a moment, and came back holding a glass.

‘May I? You won’t be disgusted if I drink in front of you?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘It’s the hour when I begin to crave it. I’m like poor Bernard with his hypodermic needles. The moment comes when we can’t do without.’

Betty wondered if she was talking like this to make her feel at ease, so that she wouldn’t be ashamed of what had happened the night before. She also wondered whether she’d dreamed the scene in the bed, and was increasingly certain that she hadn’t.

‘Your bath is ready. If it bothers you that—’

‘No …’

Hadn’t she undressed her and washed her? And yet, as she got out of bed, she felt a certain shame, because she had the impression that her body was giving off a masculine smell.

Her companion, standing by the window, didn’t look at her, didn’t follow her into the bathroom, spoke from a distance, like an actor on the stage speaking to the audience in general.

‘The water’s not too hot?’

‘Just right.’

‘You’re not feeling dizzy?’

‘A tiny bit.’

She wasn’t quite as in good shape as she’d thought. So long as she had lain still, she hadn’t felt any pain, but once on her feet, she’d felt giddy, as well as a sharp pain on one side of her head.

‘Do you need anything?’

‘No, thank you. I feel bad putting you to all this trouble.’

‘Not at all. I’m so …’

She had nearly said:

‘I’m so used to it …’

She preferred to leave those words unsaid. It was only a little later that she went on:

‘I’m so experienced! And with my husband, I saw it all. I hope you’re not falling asleep in the water?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve put a new toothbrush and toothpaste on the shelf. I always have some. Because, even though this is a hotel, it’s my second home. I’ve been living at the Carlton for three years now. Don’t worry about your underwear. I had Louisette, the chambermaid, wash it and she’ll bring it to you in a minute.’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Put the table here, Jules. And while you’re about it, bring me up a large bottle of Perrier.’

Betty wrapped herself in a towelling bathrobe, ran her hands through her hair and went barefoot into the bedroom.

‘Wait while I bring you a pair of slippers.’

She felt dizzy and, now that the eggs and bacon were in front of her, she wondered whether she would be able to stomach them.

‘Here, put your feet in these. They’re too big, but that doesn’t matter.’

‘Thank you. I feel awkward not knowing what to call you. It’s as if I’ve known you for a long time already. What’s your name?’

‘Laure. My name is Laure Lavancher. My husband was a professor at the Lyon School of Medicine. When he died, four years ago, I tried to live alone in our apartment and I thought I would soon go mad. I eventually came here, planning to have a rest for two or three weeks. And here I still am.’

‘I’m called Betty.’

‘Enjoy your breakfast, Betty.’

She tried to smile.

‘I’m not sure I’ve got an appetite. I thought I was hungry but now …’

‘Eat anyway. My husband wouldn’t have allowed you to have anything today, but I know from experience that the doctors …’

Betty overcame her revulsion, but even the coffee didn’t have the pleasant taste she had hoped for.

‘I was very drunk, wasn’t I?’

‘More to the point, you were unwell.’

‘No! I was dead drunk and I behaved outrageously.’

‘It’s obvious you don’t know Le Trou yet. If you think people even notice these incidents!’

The bellhop returned with the bottle of sparkling water and Laure went to fetch a decanter of whisky from her room.

‘Later, you’ll be allowed some too, as long as your pulse doesn’t start racing again.’

‘Was it fast?’

‘One hundred and forty-three.’

She said the number with a smile, as if in her view it was of no importance. She had given her name, simply, without vanity, more out of politeness and to put the young woman at ease. She had told her why she was there and explained as discreetly as possible her need to drink. On the other hand, she hadn’t asked Betty’s surname and hadn’t asked her any questions about herself yet.

Betty had a strange intuition. She could have sworn that it wasn’t from lack of curiosity that Laure acted in this way, but because she knew. Not the details, for sure, because she couldn’t know about her particular situation. But, all the same, she had understood.

And she avoided coddling her, pitying her, reassuring her.

‘If my cigarette makes you feel sick …’

‘It doesn’t bother me at all.’

‘Aren’t you eating any more?’

‘I can’t swallow another mouthful.’

‘Would you like me to leave you alone for a moment, to make a phone call maybe, or to write?’

‘No.’

‘Do your belongings need picking up from somewhere?’

How could she have thought of that? She hadn’t said her luggage, but her belongings, as if she’d guessed that this was permanent.

‘I’ll leave you on your own.’

Betty almost shouted:

‘No!’

And, at the same time, she thought she was going to be sick.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘I don’t feel too good.’

‘Nausea?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you’re like me, a sip of pure spirits will set you back to rights. Have you ever tried?’

She nodded.

‘Do you want some?’

Laure poured her a thimbleful of whisky, which she downed in one go, and it almost turned her stomach. She sat still, tense, ready to rush into the bathroom, while a warm glow gradually spread within her chest and relaxed her.

‘Do you feel better?’

She gave a long sigh.

‘Whew! I thought I wouldn’t even have time to get next door.’

‘Do you know where we are?’

‘In Versailles. At the Carlton.’

Laure didn’t ask her how she’d found out or what else she knew.

‘Do you want to stay for a few days and rest?’

‘I don’t want anything.’

It was true. Betty didn’t ask herself any questions. Before her, there was only a void, and she had no reason to be here rather than elsewhere.

‘Listen, Betty. May I call you that instead of saying “madame”?’

Betty glanced instinctively at her wedding ring, which she hadn’t thought to remove.

‘And you can call me Laure, like everyone else. Besides, at Le Trou, everyone is on first-name terms, and after a certain hour, there are no formalities.’

Was that her way of explaining why she and Mario had been so familiar with each other in the car when they were driving Betty to the hotel? Was she trying to imply that there was nothing between them?

Betty blushed to have had such thoughts, to have recalled the bed scene, real or imagined, that was so vivid in her mind’s eye.

‘I am open with you as I am with everyone. Last night, I could see you didn’t know where to turn and I brought you here because you needed a bed. Don’t say anything. Let me finish. For twenty-eight years, I was a happy woman, a respectable middle-class woman from Lyon, whose husband and home were her world. Had I been fortunate enough to have children, I wouldn’t be here.’

Betty had no idea how many drinks Laure had had. She spoke without getting carried away, without complacency, and with a conviction that was perhaps slightly over-emphatic, as she herself did after two or three whiskies.

‘Now, I consider that my life is over and I no longer exist. Either I’m mistaken about you, or you understand me. I could have shut myself up in my apartment with dignity and waited for it to be over.

‘I tried. I drank even more than here and, at one point, I almost lost my mind.

‘What I do now, what I experience, what happens to me, no longer matters. Tourists come and go in the hotel, couples hole up here for a few days, old people and convalescents come for a breath of country air and every afternoon they go for their routine little stroll in the grounds.

‘I don’t notice them any more. A few, seeing me again after several months, greet me as if they know me, or because they assume I’m a member of staff.

‘I rarely go down to the dining room and, if I have a drink at the bar to have a chat with Henri, it’s usually when there’s no one else there.

‘I had you put in the room next to mine because I thought you might need looking after—’

‘I did need looking after,’ broke in Betty timidly.

She was as intimidated as a schoolgirl in front of a new teacher.

‘I am not trying to persuade you either way. If you have to go somewhere else, then do go. If you want to stay another night, or a few more days, or longer, then stay without giving it a second thought and, if you’d prefer a different room …’

‘No.’

‘Tonight, like last night, like every other night, I’ll be going to Le Trou.’

A suspicion occurred to Betty: was Laure talking like this to stop her thinking about her own problems? Since she’d given her an injection, she had become in her eyes a sort of doctor, and doctors sometimes have tricks like that.

‘Was it your first time there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did anything strike you?’

‘In the condition I was in!’

She didn’t dare ask for another drink, although she wanted one. The effect of the whisky had worn off and she needed another boost.

‘When Mario talks about his customers, he often describes them as oddballs, and he’s not so wrong. Shall I tell you the story of Mario and Le Trou?’

She said yes, still thinking about the whisky she was keen to earn, and Laure thought of it too.

‘Do you need one?’

‘I think so.’

‘Right now?’

‘Do you think it will do me any harm?’

Laure refilled her glass.

‘You probably noticed that Mario acts the gangster, the tough guy, and a lot of the regulars imagine that he’s done several stints in prison. That idea excites them, especially the women.

‘The truth is that he was a bartender, then a taxi driver in Toulon. You mustn’t mention it, because he’ll be annoyed with me. He prefers to say that he was a sailor, like all the bad boys of the Riviera.

‘He looks like a brute, but actually he’s a softie at heart, and is even shy, strange as that might seem.

‘One day, in Toulon, years ago, he met a South American woman who was a passenger in his taxi. Her husband, who had just died of an embolism in Monte Carlo, had been a wealthy Colombian cocoa plantation owner.

‘Was she an oddball, as Mario claims? At any rate, she took him on as a chauffeur and manservant. For more than a year they drove around in a Rolls-Royce, spending time in Cannes and Deauville, Paris and Biarritz, Venice and Megève.

‘I’m not boring you?’

‘On the contrary.’

Betty could still picture the two bodies on the bed and now she was certain that it hadn’t been a dream. But wasn’t all of it a dream? The room with its pale-blue panelling and the bust of Marie-Antoinette on the mantelpiece. And, outside, the rain falling monotonously on the darkening leaves?

The light was fading. The lamps, in their little pleated-silk lampshades, grew brighter, and Betty hugged her naked body inside her damp bathrobe.

The dark-haired woman in front of her, too tall, even when sitting down, knew she lacked charm and did not try to pretend otherwise. She chain-smoked, occasionally taking a sip from her glass and jiggling one of the slippers dangling from her toes.

If there were other guests at the hotel and staff coming and going in the corridors, there was not the slightest sound of them.

‘The rest of the story is probably a mixture of hearsay and reality, and I can’t claim to be able to tell which is which. The Columbian lady was called Maria Urruti and was said to belong to one of the oldest families in her country. Since the death of her husband, this family had been urging her to return, bombarding her with letters and telegrams, threatening to cut off her resources until, one fine day, penniless, she found herself forced to make the voyage.

‘“They want me to go back there because they’re going to kill me!” she told Mario. “They hate me” – which she pronounced as ’ate – “It’s to kill me, or to lock me away in an asylum that they want me to return. Mario, you’re strong. You have to come with me to stop them from harming me.”

‘The pair of them left, by boat, because she was afraid of flying. The family lives in a city called Cali, at the foot of the Andes, on the Pacific side, and to get there you have to disembark at Buenaventura.’

Betty watched the treetops gradually being engulfed by fog, and stared between the branches at a distant light that looked like a star. She wasn’t thinking. She wasn’t listening. The words flowed smoothly into her, like running water.

‘Mario didn’t have the opportunity to use his strength. The ship had barely docked when several black-haired men, relatives of Maria Urruti, came on board, accompanied by police officers, and Maria was spirited away while the other passengers were still waiting to complete the disembarkation formalities.

‘As for him, he got off the boat a little later, stony broke, to find himself on a foreign quayside.

‘He claims he has practised every trade, and hints that some of them were highly illegal. He’ll show you the scar at the corner of his eye, which you might not have noticed.

‘It’s best to pretend to believe him. As far as I’m concerned, I wouldn’t be surprised if the family had paid him handsomely to be rid of him.

‘He roamed around Venezuela, Panama and Cuba for a while. When he returned to France, he had the idea of opening a bar close to the Allied Powers HQ, counting on a clientele of American officers.

‘That’s Le Trou, which you’ve seen. But apart from a few rare exceptions, the Americans haven’t come, perhaps because it’s too close to their base, or they prefer the air in Paris.

‘Those who have come, to Mario’s surprise, are people whose existence he’d never suspected, the ones you saw last night, the oddballs, as he calls them, foreigners or French people who live around Versailles and Saint-Germain, Marly, Louveciennes or Bougival. Some come from even further afield, the owners of big houses or estates, who often have a wife and children, and who …’

She tailed off mid-sentence to grab her glass, and seemed to be inviting Betty to do likewise.

‘Oddballs! Like me! People who no longer have …’

She began to drink, leaving her thought hanging between them, and Betty shivered, not just because of the damp bathrobe.