Marguerite, page 13
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s eleven o’clock.’
‘So where are they? Why didn’t you wake me and show them in?’
‘They’re not here yet.’
His head jerked back a little; he looked away, focusing on the door. He moved his mouth, he breathed in and deeply out. When he spoke again, he didn’t look at her.
‘Take me out of these stupid clothes.’
‘Okay.’
‘And get me out of this chair. It’s uncomfortable, I despise it.’
She lifted him and he leant all his weight into her as she did. She felt as if she might tear his arms from their sockets. They made slow progress to the bed. Then she pulled the jumper over his head and with some difficulty took his arms out, one by one. She unbuttoned the shirt from the top to the bottom. She unpeeled the vest he’d worn underneath, lifting it gently over his head, brushing her hand against the woolly white hair at the back.
‘You always smell rather nice,’ he said quietly, and she heard something horribly sad in his voice.
‘Really?’ she asked. ‘Of what?’
‘Oh don’t ask me what of. It’s just quite nice.’
The tight fists of his spine were red, rubbed by his position in the chair. She got some cream and he sucked in when she applied it.
‘Cold,’ he whispered.
‘Sorry.’
She buttoned him into a clean pyjama shirt and gave him a pill and let him piss into the pan. It was a slow, reluctant trickle. Coffee brown. She laid him down and he turned over in his bed to face the wall.
‘Goodnight,’ she said, but he didn’t answer.
* * *
• • •
She cooked while she waited for his sons to arrive and it felt strange and pleasant to be cooking so late at night, somehow illicit. She took out stumpy sweet potatoes and a bowl of firm, quivering stock from the fridge. A few tiny green chillies, a sprig of browning thyme, a bunch of smart baby tomatoes, bouncing from the vine.
While the vegetables were cooking she opened one of the windows above the sink and leant forward to listen to the night. A very loud toad or frog was burping – it must have been his mating call. It sounded proud, as if it might have its chest thrust out, sizing up the competition. She thought then of Cassandre. These were things she might have told her to make her laugh.
But only when she was little. Not after the illness. Even though in many ways she became younger with her injuries – that spider’s web of injuries that had amassed and spread and colonised her, gossamer fine but immoveable – she didn’t revert to the young mind, fearsomely discerning and delightful and quick, that she had had as a child. She became a child, yes, but a different one. The new child was passive and slow and pubescent. A child who gained weight and became spotty because of medication and lack of mobility, but also because of the hormonal havoc wreaked by her injury – because beauty, too, is governed by the brain.
She heard the distant sound of gravel prickling under tyres and the humming whoosh of a good engine before it switched off. Silence, and then doors slamming. She wondered where to stand when they arrived. Greeting them at the door would be servile, as if she should curtsey and take their bags and coats. She turned to the hob instead, busied herself with the stew.
There were voices and a quick knock on the glass and the door opened, and she turned.
Jean-Christophe came in first – shorter and chubbier than he’d seemed to her in Paris, where he’d been impatient and remote, squeezing her interview in between meetings. The other two were dark where he was fair: one very tall, almost bear-like; the second black-haired with a sharper face, wide cheekbones, dark eyes.
‘Hello,’ they said in echoes of each other. They threw down bags; the tallest closed the door behind him. No one came forward to greet her but they each held hands up in a perfunctory sort of wave.
‘I hope you haven’t waited up?’ asked Jean-Christophe, but didn’t wait for her answer. ‘Such a long drive. I suppose the old man’s asleep?’
‘Yes, he’s asleep now,’ she said, and she noted the relief on their faces. They removed jackets, threw them onto the low sofa to the left of the door, which she never used. Jean- Christophe sat down right there, letting out a loud sigh as he did. Another – they still hadn’t introduced themselves – trampled over to a cupboard, took a glass, went to the sink and filled it up and drank it down. The other sat at the table, leaning back, looking around. She remembered as she saw them do these things that they knew this place, it was their place.
‘We’d been hoping to get here sooner but we got caught up on the way,’ said the tallest.
‘Was the journey all right?’
‘Yes, fine. I’m Marc,’ he said then, reaching a hand forward to shake hers. ‘You’ve met Jean-Christophe. And this is Thibault.’ He gestured towards the son at the table, who smiled stiffly but didn’t move.
‘Nice to meet you,’ she said, and felt stupid. She couldn’t think when she had last spoken in front of more than one person.
‘Nothing’s changed, hey?’ said Jean-Christophe, addressing his brothers. He rubbed his hands over his face and blinked, looking round. They were small hands, not like Jérôme’s. She could see nothing of Jérôme in him: rosy, healthy-looking cheeks, a small chin. Soft shoulders and plump soft neck, pale eyes and eyebrows. ‘Drink?’ he said.
Marc and Thibault grunted, and Marc walked through to the pantry; she heard cupboards open and close, bottles clink. ‘There’s a very old-looking whisky,’ he called out.
‘Bring it through,’ said Thibault.
‘I’m shattered. It’s a long time to be on the road,’ said Jean-Christophe. He took out his phone, a shiny BlackBerry, and scrolled. ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ he said. ‘The office is already after me. I’ve told them not to bother me but this always happens. They can’t help it.’ He spoke fondly, as if of a friend.
‘That’s because you’re just so important JC,’ said Thibault, and Marc laughed as he came through with the bottle, ducking his head instinctively in the doorway. Marguerite turned back to the hob.
‘There’s some stew here, in case you’re hungry,’ she said, turning to look at them.
Jean-Christophe was typing busily, muttering with a frown about the poor mobile reception; Thibault leant back and stretched his arms out, a taut golden stomach showing as his T-shirt lifted. ‘I’m fine,’ he said.
Marc grunted, pouring whisky into three glasses. ‘Me too. Thanks very much,’ he said, looking away awkwardly, and she realised he didn’t know her name. She hadn’t introduced herself, and now it felt too late.
Jean-Christophe looked up, finally, and blinked.
‘That’s incredibly kind but I’m actually stuffed, we ended up stopping by a friend’s for dinner along the way. That’s why we’re a bit later than we’d hoped, I’m afraid.’
She thought of Jérôme waiting up for them in his smart clothes, falling asleep with the knobs of his spine grinding into the chair, and she felt her toes clench in her shoes.
‘Erm . . .’ said Marc, looking at her. ‘Would you like a drink too?’
‘I’m fine. Thank you.’
He looked relieved.
‘Santé,’ they said to one another, raising their glasses.
‘Home sweet fucking home,’ said Thibault, looking sideways at Marguerite. She turned back to the hob and switched off the gas and put the lid back on the stew.
‘I’m going to go up,’ she said, and they all looked at her.
‘Yes of course,’ said Jean-Christophe. ‘I do hope you didn’t wait up for us.’
‘No, I was up anyway.’ But she wouldn’t have been.
‘Goodnight,’ said Marc, and Thibault nodded and raised his glass.
‘We can catch up properly tomorrow on what’s been going on,’ said Jean-Christophe, cheeks becoming neat and round as he smiled, like a marionette. Then he looked back down at his screen.
They’d said Friday and arrived three days early, she thought as she cleaned her teeth. They’d said eight thirty, and arrived close to midnight. She wondered, spitting into the sink and rinsing her mouth, splashing her face and drying it roughly, whether this was all manipulation – whether, like their father, they simply intended to pull her around on strings.
II
9
She woke very early, sensed that Jérôme was awake too. She lay there for a moment, listening. It was a particularly silent morning, she thought, a beautiful thin white sky following dawn. She struggled to open the window; it was stiff and groaned as she struggled with it. But then it gave, and a panoply of smells tumbled in: wet, fresh, herby like tarragon. Her new room looked over the other side of the house from the kitchen, adjacent to the driveway. If she looked to the side of the cypress she could make out, just over the tops of the trees and hedges that cut the house off from the world outside, the hint of distant hills, each layer less blue than the one before until they disappeared as if into smoke.
She dressed more carefully than usual: trousers instead of jeans, clean blue sweater. She brushed her hair, noticing in the mirror that it was getting too long. It would need a cut, God knew where.
She walked down the landing and stairs carefully, loath to wake their intruders. She opened the door to Jérôme’s room quietly in case he was asleep, but he was just as she’d known he would be, awake, eyes wide to greet hers.
‘Good morning,’ she whispered.
‘Morning.’
‘Are you okay? Did you sleep?’
‘Mostly.’ He was whispering too. ‘Did you?’
She was embarrassed by the question; he had never asked it. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m going to go and make some coffee and then I’ll come back.’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
She hated the big, rusty cafetière, the unwashable grime in its filter, and so she used a percolator to make coffee here, something she’d had to learn at the beginning of this job. She remembered swearing at the various parts, trying to work out how smooth coffee came out of them. They had winked smugly at her, unwilling to share their knowledge. Now she loved the ritual of it, unscrewing the top from the base and taking out the filter, pulling away the parts like a matryoshka. And the smell when the water started to rise up through the filter, like magic. She took hers black but she heated milk to add to Jérôme’s. Then she took them through, with some buttered toast with jam.
‘Delicious,’ he said. He looked up. ‘You can stay here while you drink your coffee.’
‘Okay,’ she said. He’d never invited her to do that before. Sometimes she just did, so she could wait for him to finish eating and then get straight on with his medication. But she’d never been invited.
‘They’re here now,’ she said, sitting down, and he flapped his hand and scowled.
‘Oh, don’t talk to me about them.’ He took a bite of his bread, and looked at her. ‘You know what I’d really like?’
‘What?’
‘A croissant. But a fresh croissant, straight from the boulangerie.’ He wiped the corner of his mouth. ‘Really buttery. I’m not asking you to go and get me one,’ he added. ‘But I suppose that’s the shame in not having a car here, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like a croissant too.’
‘Perhaps we’ll think about getting you a car.’ He frowned then. ‘Nothing special, I mean. We could just see if someone in the village has an old one they’re not using, someone who wants to make a few euros. There’s always someone willing to sell what they’ve got, especially in this place.’
He ate the rest of his toast in silence, staring fixedly into nothing. When she took the empty plate from him he said, ‘I don’t want any visitors this morning. I need to rest.’
‘You mean—’
‘Yes, I mean I don’t want those louts to come in. You’re allowed, of course,’ he said. ‘But no one else. Oh yes, I may be stuck in bed but it doesn’t mean they can just swan in and out as they please.’
She took his blood pressure, his temperature and heart rate, made a note. He was doing okay.
‘What should I tell them?’ she asked then, and he didn’t answer right away.
‘Just tell them I’ll see them later,’ he said. ‘If I feel up to it.’
* * *
• • •
Jean-Christophe was the first to wake, joining her in the kitchen as she cleaned.
‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Sleep well?’
‘I did, thank you. And you?’
‘Like a baby.’ Clean and fresh with his neat wet hair, she thought how just like a baby he looked. ‘Any instant coffee or do I have to grapple with this thing?’ He nudged the percolator, peered inside it. ‘There’s only dregs left in there.’
‘There’s a cafetière.’ She turned from him to rinse out her cup and looked at their three whisky glasses in the sink, unwashed. He sighed, loudly, and she heard him patter through to the larder and rummage around.
‘I’m going to have to pop out to the village to get a newspaper and some breakfast things,’ he said when he came back in. ‘There’s only old sliced bread here.’
‘I find I can’t get it fresh each morning.’
‘Quite.’ He sank down into the sofa where he’d sat the night before, next to the jacket he’d thrown there and hadn’t yet moved. ‘Strange not to have Grenouille here.’ He gestured at the space beside him, and she must have looked blank. ‘Our dog. He used to spend his life curled up right there. Someone took him when Mum passed away. Dad said he couldn’t bear the sight of him any more.’
Marc came in then, his face crumpled with pillow lines, and he raised a hand at Marguerite. ‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning.’
‘Any coffee?’ he asked Jean-Christophe, and there was a little silence.
‘You can make some, I can’t be bothered. And there’s absolutely nothing to eat. We’ll have to go into the village to get everything.’
‘Well, that’s to be expected,’ he said, and nodded at Marguerite. ‘How’s the old man?’
‘He’s okay.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Jean-Christophe. He turned to Marguerite. ‘Will Dad be up when we get back, do you think? Does he usually sleep in this late?’
‘He’s been awake since dawn,’ she said, and she thought for the first time that Jean-Christophe looked uncomfortable. ‘I was just going to go and check on him.’
‘Don’t check on him on our account,’ said Marc. ‘We’ll head into the village now and say hello to him when we’re back.’
‘Okay.’
She watched them leave, the absent way they pulled the latch and swung the door to, muscle memory. She leant back against the hob. She didn’t know where to go – the garden was no longer hers, the kitchen certainly wasn’t. She went to check in on Jérôme; he was asleep now, as she’d thought he would be. And so she left the house and walked through the driveway and out of the gate, turning left for a change rather than right towards the village. And she broke into a jog, surprising herself, and then again she started to run faster. She felt her calves spring in that old, familiar way, let the balls of her feet propel her from the ground, her concentration fastening onto the rhythm of her breath. Her core was locked into position; her cheeks started to burn; the whoosh of passing air felt good against her temples. These were all things she used to love.
* * *
• • •
The door to her room – Thibault’s room – was still closed when she got back to the house, and she was quiet as she moved around the small new room and across the landing to the bathroom. She filled the bath halfway with tepid water – she had imagined wanting it to be ice cold, but it was too much to bear – and lay back in it, letting her face throb against the cool that rushed to surround it. She felt her heart rate slow, her breath regulate. She wondered why she hadn’t done this before.
When she came out of the bathroom in her towel, Thibault’s door was open and he walked out, eyes skimming over her quickly as he pulled a T-shirt over his head. She realised she’d known that this was what would happen.
‘Morning,’ he said, lazily, and she murmured back, trying not to look as if she were hurrying back to her room. She shut the door behind her and sat on her bed, feeling compromised, somehow tricked.
* * *
• • •
Jérôme was watchful and wide-eyed. When he was in one of these moods he was like a vole, listening out for predators, ears flexed, whiskers quiveringly alert.
‘So they’re all here? What are they doing with themselves? Have they asked to see me?’
‘Yes I said you were resting.’
‘Don’t say I’m resting! Say I’m not ready to see them yet.’
‘Okay.’ She rolled up his sleeve, pulled Velcro from Velcro, wrapped his arm in the blood-pressure cuff, pumped. ‘They think they can just swan in and out,’ he said. ‘Just as they wish. No warning. Arriving late. Are they even awake?’
‘Yes,’ she said, letting the pump go with a soft whoosh. ‘Mouth.’
He opened it, let her slot the thermometer under his tongue, closed his mouth around it. He watched her as she moved about the room, rinsing his glass and filling it, taking his pills from the cabinet, selecting them one by one, laying them in the little saucer.
The thermometer beeped and he took it out himself.
‘Normal.’
‘Good.’
She took it from him, made notes.
‘I’ll listen to the radio,’ he said. ‘You can tell them I’m wide awake, listening to the radio. And I’ll have some lunch soon please. I’m ravenous.’
