Betty, page 4
‘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.
3
‘How do you like the cannelloni, Betty?’
Mario’s voice was cheerful, familiar, comforting.
‘They’re very good,’ she replied with a grateful look.
‘Admit that it’s not bad here.’
‘It’s so nice that I feel as if I’m already a regular.’
At the beginning of the evening she had been daunted, because she felt like the newcomer and was convinced that, at the sight of her, everyone would remember her episode of the previous evening. Her embarrassment soon passed, especially when she realized that being in Laure’s company acted as a sort of guarantee, and they saw her as one of them.
One detail was proof enough. When a regular came and leaned over Laure to say a few words to her, as happened from time to time, he didn’t feel he had to lower his voice.
On the table between them was a huge dish of cannelloni and a carafe of Chianti. The red wine in the glasses was dark, almost black, with a lighter, pink patch in the centre. Outside, a cold wind lashed rain in the faces of the people alighting from cars, soaking their clothes, and when they wanted to leave, they found their vehicles stuck in the mud.
The buxom barmaid was at her post, and there were more people at the bar than the evening before but few in the restaurant, perhaps because it wasn’t as late.
Everything was as she remembered it, the red walls hung with etchings illustrating English hunting scenes. The previous night, despite her inebriated state, she had taken it all in, and now she had the confirmation and was amazed.
She had appeared to be totally wrapped up in herself, her drama, her self-disgust. On top of that, she had been so drunk that she’d fallen off her chair. Everything was shaky, in her life and around her, and yet she had noticed minor details like the postcards slipped inside the mirror frame behind the bottles at the bar. She was certain that one of them depicted the bay of Naples, another the temples of Angkor Wat.
The room seemed a little bigger today. She discovered that in fact there were two rooms and that the second one, which was also a restaurant, was darker than the first, illuminated with candles in bottles on the tables.
Was this section reserved for insiders, long-standing customers or lovers? Was Le Trou a haunt for real lovers?
‘How’s that stomach of yours behaving?’ inquired Laure.
‘Very well, for the time being.’
She ate heartily. Her eyes, she could feel, were shining, her expression lively and, at the slightest provocation, her lips parted in a smile that was barely hesitant.
She was like a convalescent, and it was enjoyable. She was aware that this sense of well-being was transient, superficial, that nothing had changed, that she was still the same, in fact, with all the problems she had accumulated and to which there was no solution.
Did Laure realize how precarious, how artificial, her mood was? Did she know that from one minute to the next it would all probably begin again, like the previous evening? A little alcohol kept her going, as did having dinner in the company of someone who was taking care of her. But the night before, too, sitting opposite the doctor, she had been similarly relaxed. It had only taken a couple of drinks.
There was no point worrying in advance. It was like being abroad, when, in a different clime and a foreign city, people forget their cares and lose their self-consciousness.
Laure knew her surname now. When they had gone down to the hotel lobby together, the receptionist had asked Betty:
‘Would you kindly fill in this form?’
And, on reading her details, the man had commented:
‘Étamble, like the general?’
‘I’m his daughter-in-law.’
She added:
‘Is it possible to have luggage collected from Paris?’
‘Just give your instructions to the concierge.’
Laure tactfully kept her distance. Betty explained to the liveried employee that there were a number of suitcases, perhaps a trunk, to be collected from 22A, Avenue de Wagram.
‘Do you know how many items?’
‘No.’
‘Do you think they will all fit into a car?’
‘Probably. I’m almost certain.’
‘It might be best if you wrote a note in case there’s a problem.’
She scribbled on a notepad:
Please give my belongings to the bearer of this note. Thank you.
This time, she signed ‘Betty’. It wasn’t an official document. She added nothing. She had nothing to add.
‘Can we go there this evening?’
‘I think so.’
‘Will there be someone at home?’
‘There’s always someone.’
How could there be no one in the apartment? The nanny at least would be there, since Anne-Marie was only nineteen months old.
She was back in Laure’s car and had recognized it from its smell, the rough feel of the seats. General Étamble had died in Lyon the year before. He had lived there for many years. His wife was from Lyon and belonged to the same social circle as Laure, and so it was likely that the two women knew each other.
Laure didn’t mention it, remained unruffled, capable of keeping quiet for a long time without the silence becoming awkward, then suddenly, for no apparent reason, launching into a long anecdote.
‘Did you recognize John?’ she asked while eating, perhaps to stop Betty’s mind from wandering.
And since Betty didn’t understand straight away:
‘The English lord I told you about yesterday. He’s sitting to the left of the bar in the company of a girl with mousey hair wearing a leopard-skin coat.’
It was the bald man, tall and burly, a little portly, with a painter’s brush moustache. He was sitting bolt upright on the banquette like a retired officer and looking straight ahead, without paying the slightest attention to his companion, who looked like some sort of starlet.
With his ruddy complexion and rosacea cheeks, he still cut a fine figure.
‘He’s going to sit there like that, without saying a word, for two or three hours. He doesn’t drink whisky but brandy. What’s going through his mind while the alcohol gradually soaks in, no one knows, and it is possible that he himself doesn’t either.
‘At one point, you’ll see him stand up and head over towards the door, with a barely faltering step. He realizes, to the minute, when he’s had enough and we have never seen him unsteady on his feet. The woman will follow him – today, the blonde, tomorrow or next week a different one, because they never last long.
‘His driver waits for him in his Bentley. Within a few minutes, he’ll be home at his estate in Louveciennes where he breeds Great Danes.
‘I learned from Jeanine, the barmaid with a hairy mole on her cheek, what happens next, because she went there one night when he didn’t have a companion, or rather, one night when his companion had become ill and they’d had to …’
She didn’t bite her tongue. But it came down to the same thing.
‘Like me, last night,’ said Betty quite cheerfully.
‘She was in a much worse state and she had to be taken to hospital. Jeanine stepped in, as it were, and I have reason to believe that at his place it’s always the same scenario.
‘First of all, in the hallway, he offered her a drink, like a man of the world being a dutiful host. Then he led her to his bedroom where he changed into a dressing-gown and sat in an armchair.
‘He didn’t say a word to Jeanine, who ended up taking her clothes off while he, seemingly satisfied, sat there watching her, like at the theatre.
‘He pointed to the bed and she got into it, waiting for something to happen, anything. Apparently, after a while, in the silence of the room and the house, she began to feel scared.
‘Still in his armchair, he stared at her the way he’s now staring at the face in front of him. Within reach, on a pedestal table, was a crystal decanter containing brandy. The only movement he made was to fill his glass, cup it in his palm to warm it and take the occasional sip.
‘Jeanine thought she was doing the right thing in trying to start a conversation. When she saw that this upset him and he looked annoyed, she kept quiet.
‘This went on for a long time, more than an hour, and, in the end, she saw that John was asleep, still holding his empty glass.’
Laure was not laughing. Nor was Betty.
‘People say that he married one of the most beautiful women in England. She still lives in her house in London and her country estate in Sussex. They’re not divorced or separated. They’re still good friends and see each other from time to time. When he found out he was impotent as the result of a war wound, he simply faded into the background, giving her her freedom. That was twenty years ago and, for the past twenty years, he has sat in his armchair, drink in hand, in front of a naked woman.’
Betty didn’t dare turn to look over towards the corner where the Englishman was sitting, and Laure concluded:
‘“An oddball”, as our friend Mario would say.’
At the bar, two women in their thirties, in slacks and jumpers, were fishing gherkin after gherkin out of a huge jar; the African, Louis, came over at almost regular intervals to show his laughing face as if in a comedy act, and Betty was beginning to wonder whether all this wasn’t rigged, if it wasn’t staged, whether the characters were genuine or not.
‘What became of Maria?’ she asked abruptly.
It was Laure’s turn to be bemused.
‘Maria?’
Betty was in the habit of asking this sort of question. When she was young, her family used to make fun of her, and one of her childhood phrases had become a private joke in the house in Avenue de Versailles. It was before the war, when her father was still alive.
‘What happened to the frog?’
Her parents had read a story from a picture book about a frog and other animals. When the story ended, her little voice had rung out in the silence:
‘What happened to the frog?’
Her father and mother had caught each other’s eye, not knowing what to reply. In the book, the story had ended. There was no reason to take any further interest in the frog.
After that, whenever she opened her mouth to ask a question, her father would interrupt her, laughing:
‘What happened to the frog?’
Was it not a bit like that with the South American woman?
‘Do you mean Maria Urruti?’
‘Yes. I wonder whether they locked her up.’
‘Mario never heard from her.’
‘How old was she?’
‘Around thirty. When he told me about her, I initially thought she was a mature older woman, especially since her husband was nearly seventy when he died in Monte-Carlo.’
Betty too looked around thirty. She said nothing, ate her cheese – brie – but with no appetite. She had to force herself not to look over at the Englishman’s corner and, catching sight of Jeanine who was joking with the two women in slacks, she pictured her on the bed, a four-poster bed in her imagination, lying still and silent under the fixed gaze of the man clutching his drink.
In Buenaventura, the family had boarded the boat, most likely brothers, brothers-in-law, cousins. She saw them as a compact, solid block. They had the authorities on their side.
‘How are you doing, ladies?’
‘Fine, Mario. We’re eating.’
‘That’s good. There aren’t many oddballs this evening. Anyone would think they’re afraid of getting wet.’
He glanced briefly at Betty, to check what state she was in, then, before walking off, pressed his hand on Laure’s shoulder for a moment in an almost marital gesture.
‘The fact is,’ said Laure, ‘he loves his customers, and when they don’t come, he’s not happy.’
But Betty had sensed for a few seconds that, for Mario, she wasn’t a customer like any other and that, sooner or later, there would be something else. Did Laure suspect it? Was she jealous? Was she content with what he gave her?
Betty had begun to float once more and was in search of a solid footing. She hadn’t drunk a lot. She was determined to stop in time, not wanting to be unwell and make a spectacle of herself again.
Even so, she felt a little nostalgic for the previous night, when, inert, she hadn’t needed to worry about herself and nothing had mattered any more.
What mattered right now? She had sent for her belongings. The concierge at the Carlton must have dispatched a driver, perhaps accompanied by a porter. Guy would be sitting in the drawing room with his mother, and probably his brother and sister-in-law too.
The two brothers, the two households, lived in the same apartment block, Guy on the third floor and Antoine on the fourth. Antoine was the eldest. He was thirty-eight and had gone into the military, following in his father’s footsteps. One day he would be a general. An artillery commander, seconded to the Ministry of Defence, he had an office in Rue Saint-Dominique.
His wife, Marcelle, was an officer’s daughter, the sister of officers. They had two boys, Paul and Henri, who were at the lycée.
Why, since Antoine was the eldest, did they all gather at Guy’s in the evenings? They had never made a conscious decision to do so. It had just happened of its own accord, and no one had questioned it.
Sometimes, Antoine would drop in alone, wearing a smoking jacket, and join Guy in his little study. Other times, Marcelle came down with him and Betty had to keep her company.
There was a log fire in winter, a big standard lamp with a cracked parchment lampshade. The children would be asleep, the two boys on the fourth floor and the girls on the third. At around ten o’clock, Elda, the governess, a Swiss woman from the Valais, would appear in the doorway and ask:
