Marguerite, page 16
‘Don’t thank me. A pay rise was due. I used to hate spending money but what’s the point in hoarding it all away now? What am I going to do with it? Buy another radio? A new set of bed linen, a mobility seat? A spanking new pair of pyjamas? Anyway, you’ve earned it. Mind you, don’t let it go to your head. You’re not so very special.’
He smiled, feeling relaxed and expansive, she could see, and she felt then that it was all odious, what was going on in here, and in the kitchen where the men would have re-congregated, and in the whole house.
‘Like a bunch of bloody schoolboys seeing their teacher,’ she heard as she took his tray down the corridor. She stopped, waited. ‘Why do we act like that? Why don’t we tell him to put his fist up his own arse?’
‘Thibault, it wasn’t that bad.’
‘It was. Games. Power and games. It’s not even him I’m pissed off at anyway, it’s us, sitting there with our dicks tucked between our legs like . . .’
He didn’t finish; she heard them lapse into silence. She walked quietly back down the corridor, laying the tray outside Jérôme’s door, and then she climbed the stairs to go and close herself away in her dark room.
* * *
• • •
She left the house quietly, leaving from the front door for the first time. Her legs felt bruised from the run she’d taken yesterday; it was good to walk them out, to work warmth through them as she took the road down to the village. She jumped lightly a few times to try to loosen out her bunched calves, but she liked the ache really, it reminded her of athletics at school as a girl, the lovely milky blur her thoughts took on by the second lap, when her parents and the sick blight of what she’d done to Cassandre could stop existing for almost an hour at a time. The warm rubbery smell rising from the asphalt, the tight belt of her abdomen, the constriction of her chest, the silence but for a pat pat pat of her feet as they pushed off the track.
It became hot as she walked, but there was the heady smell of pine, the whisper of cool from the forest on either side. She brushed a small spider from her arm with a little shiver, and as she did she thought about Thibault’s glances, his surely clear messaging of sexual interest, and wondered how long it had been since she’d last had physical contact with a man who wasn’t a patient she was nursing or examining. Not since before Picardy. There were all the nameless, virtually faceless young men she’d encountered at parties, their young thin strong bodies in dancing crowds. There was Robert before that, the boyfriend who had been kind to her, who’d seemed to understand her pain without trying to probe into it, who’d let her be silent. And then the time she’d seen him parodying a ‘spastic’ to their friends, the grotesque accuracy of his impression. The look on his face when she caught him had shown that he knew about Cassandre.
She became distant from him, as she did from the friends of hers who became maudlin when they were drunk or high and talked about all the pain in their lives, which in most cases amounted to the divorce of their parents and not much else. ‘Putain, it’s all a fucking farce, I can see my mother’s eyes are swollen from crying and yet she puts on this fucking bourgeois bullshit show of being happy’; ‘I used to hear him, crawling home at 3 a.m. and her shouting about where he’d been.’ She understood that they saw glamour in pain, and that they clung to the dissolution of their parents’ shoddy marriages and their affairs as if all of that were anywhere near the full extent of tragedy. For her, all those divorces were just another layer of the banal grimness of life, of relationships, of faulty people trying to share faulty lives. And in any case, tragedy wasn’t glamorous. It was grimy, sordid, exhausting.
She dreamt often about sex: vivid, pleasurable dreams. But the impulse behind them was physical, surely nothing more. When she actually considered touching another person, merging and melding into their space and they into hers, it felt almost laughably impossible. A rupture to her long-held status quo, of almost mythical implausibility. No, she didn’t want anything with Thibault, surely: she didn’t like his darting glances and his swagger. She wouldn’t have anything with anyone. She’d made that decision; it was okay.
* * *
• • •
Suki’s face cracked into a look of absolute pleasure when she opened her front door. She held a hand up in front of her mouth.
‘I’m going to die of shock,’ she said, laughing. ‘Come in, come in.’ She gestured Marguerite down the hall, waiting for her to pass so that she could close the door behind them both herself, as if she didn’t believe Marguerite would stay if she weren’t marshalled in.
She cleared an empty space on the sofa.
‘Let me fix us a tea,’ she said. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
And she bustled out, leaving Marguerite to sit in the cluttered salon. When she came back with the tea, there was a flash of red on her lips that hadn’t been there before.
‘Sit, sit,’ she said, though Marguerite was already sitting, ‘make yourself comfortable.’
She laid down the beautiful tray with the matching teapot and glasses. She lit a cigarette quickly, inhaled deeply and blew it from one side of her mouth as she took a saucer of madeleines off the tray and handed it to Marguerite.
‘Delicious. Thank you.’
Suki sat down. ‘I was just thinking about you yesterday,’ she said, lifting her feet up onto the seat so she was hugging her knees. Her feet were small and pretty. ‘And now you’re here, visiting me as I have enjoined you many a time to do.’ She tilted her face as she spoke, sing-song. ‘A silent apparition at my door.’
Marguerite laughed too. ‘Am I such a ghost?’
‘No, no, nothing ghost-like about you.’ She blew a long jet of smoke, smiled. ‘I’m teasing. I just didn’t think you’d ever actually come over without me forcing you to. It’s nice, it’s a nice surprise. Now tea, it’ll be ready.’ She leant forward to pour the tea into glasses and Marguerite remembered her telling her to pour the water into a cafetière from a height. She thought that Cassandre would have liked that. She loved to learn a grown-up trick, perform it like a solemn and scientific ritual.
‘It’s jasmine tea. Great for cholesterol.’ Smooth amber water, dark buds unfurling. ‘You should give some to Jérôme. How is the old boy?’
‘Not bad actually,’ said Marguerite.
‘Well let me give you my news. Philippe’s away on business, which is always quite nice. I stay up late watching telly and reading and it’s divine. No snoring to keep me awake once I get to bed.’ She closed her eyes luxuriously, opened them with a flick. ‘Oh, and I was invited over to Edgar’s house in the woods for dinner last week. Edgar DuChamp. He’s gay, a poet, and hilarious. Did I already tell you about him? Well, I was telling him about you. You two have to meet.’
Marguerite nodded, but she struggled to imagine Suki telling anyone about her. She could have had nothing to say.
‘You don’t believe me.’ Suki laughed. ‘You’re very transparent for such a private person. But I did; I was telling him about the Lanviers. He didn’t really know anything about them. He arrived in Saint-Sulpice long after their great fiefdom had ended.’
‘Were they really so fief-like?’
‘Yes. A lot more money than everyone else. Rossignol was thought of virtually as a château. The boys were handsome, well, two of them anyway, very superior and just different. Everyone was terrified of Jérôme, like they still are, really. When his sons each left for Paris, it was very apparent that they thought Saint-Sulpice was just a dump. They never hid that.’ She put out her cigarette lighting another immediately. ‘They were right, of course. I personally never minded them. I’m sure we would have got on well if we’d had the chance, though we never really got to know each other. They’d hardly be Philippe’s idea of fun, or vice versa. I told Edgar that he would have loved them. We’re all urbanites at heart, trapped in the sticks. Like you.’
‘I don’t know whether that makes anyone superior to anyone else.’
‘I think it does. It’s about culture. These bumpkins here have no culture. They’re ignorant.’
‘I don’t have culture.’
‘Oh, you do,’ said Suki. ‘You just don’t realise it.’
Marguerite took a sip from her tea. It was too much effort, to keep disagreeing. ‘It’s funny you mention his sons,’ she said. ‘They’ve come to visit.’
Suki’s eyes widened; she put her glass down. ‘What!’
‘They arrived a few days ago.’
‘Why haven’t I heard about this already! I always hear about this kind of thing. A few days ago?’ Her posture had changed; she perched on the edge of her chair, one foot tip-toed on the other. ‘And? What are your impressions?’
‘They’re . . .’ She paused, wondering how much to say. ‘I suppose they’re quite like you say.’
‘In what way?’ Suki leant forward, rested her chin on her palm.
‘Their accents are fully Parisian, for example. I wouldn’t have thought they were from these parts if I didn’t know.’
Suki looked bored. ‘What else?’
‘And they’re quite snooty. Quite superior, as you say. Not Marc – he seems fine.’
‘I bet they love having a pretty young lady around.’
She hated comments like that, felt an urgent sense of duty to deflect them.
‘I don’t think so. That’s partly why I’m here, actually,’ she said. ‘To delay going back to the house.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s just, it’s full. I don’t want to intrude.’
‘So they make you feel like you’re intruding.’
Marguerite squirmed. ‘Not exactly. It’s just, it’s awkward. I have my routine there, and it’s a big adjustment having a lot of people around.’
Again, Suki was bored by her response. And why was she being so guarded? Who would Suki tell?
‘I feel uncomfortable around them.’
‘Yes, they do that. They make people feel uncomfortable. Mind you, you must be used to it with Jérôme.’
Marguerite laughed. ‘True.’
Suki leant back then, looked at the bookshelves for a moment in silence.
‘So the prodigal sons have returned,’ she said. ‘I wonder why.’ She looked at Marguerite. ‘How ill is he? Is it a case – dare I ask – of vultures, circling?’
Marguerite wouldn’t talk about Jérôme’s health; Suki should have known that. She caught herself frowning.
‘Don’t answer that,’ said Suki. But something had shifted; Marguerite felt uncomfortable, realised she should get back.
‘I need to get back to him now,’ she said. ‘I was just popping by to say a quick hello.’
To her surprise, Suki didn’t protest.
‘Of course.’
They stood, Suki bending to grind her cigarette out into the ashtray and then rising to follow Marguerite out of the room. ‘Thank you so much for the visit. Please come again, even just for a few minutes. It’s the loveliest surprise.’
‘Thank you for the tea.’
Suki smiled, swiped her thanks away with one hand. ‘I’ve scared you away again.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I thought of you yesterday.’ She leant against the wall as Marguerite stood in the open doorway, squinting a little into the light. ‘There was a little black cat in my garden,’ she said. ‘Tiny. Very cute. So I went out with a little saucer of milk for it, I was very quiet, I didn’t approach it too fast. But scoot, it was off.’ She held up a fist, exploded it into a star. ‘Gone. Just like you.’
Marguerite grimaced. ‘I’m sorry you feel I’m like that.’
‘Don’t be sorry. That’s just you.’
* * *
• • •
When she got back to the house, the men were playing football on the grass in the sun. They waved to her as she came around from the driveway and ducked into the kitchen. As she was unloading her backpack onto the kitchen table, Marc came in.
‘Do you need some help with that? We could have given you a lift.’
‘It’s no bother at all,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘It definitely makes sense for you to have a car,’ he said, and he opened the fridge, leaning in to take out a can of Coke. They’d taken their shirts off to play football, and she saw that he had a bit of a gut on him, folding into soft layers, fleeced with dark curly hair. His temples and back were wet with sweat. When he straightened up, she noticed him sucking his stomach in. He gestured his can at her, and she shook her head.
‘No, thank you.’
He nodded and left, and when she had finished packing the shopping away she went to check on Jérôme. He was listening to the radio, looking grim.
‘Everything okay?’ she asked.
‘Fine. Just fine.’ He barely bothered to look up at her. ‘I can hear them outside,’ he said. ‘Shouting, hollering. Whooping. Are they drunk?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘They’re playing football.’
‘Playing football,’ he said, with derision. Then he turned to the wall. ‘Turn that thing off. I’m going to sleep.’
* * *
• • •
A kestrel was whooping, a high lonely ‘ooooo’, when Henri woke. He shivered; the sweat laced in the threads of his shirt had cooled.
He’d been working in the ferocity of the afternoon sun when he’d been struck by the unfamiliar, overwhelming urge to sleep. He’d had to come and lie down by the little old root cellar building, stretching out in the shady grass to close his eyes, to let the throbbing of his headache still. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in the day. He couldn’t get away with late nights any more, he thought, or excessive drinking. He was too old for it all.
He got up now and crossed the field, looking away from the old stable where Vanille had fallen to her side with a whump in the echo of the shot, and he imagined he could still smell her blood. He’d have a long glass of water, an early bath. With coffee he’d get through his paperwork, and then when evening came he’d have a quiet dinner with Brigitte, be kind to her. They’d go to bed early. He’d check back in with Thibault over the weekend, concentrate on work until then.
Brigitte, the phone tucked between her neck and shoulder, was washing her hands up to her elbows in the kitchen sink, and she looked up, cheeks flushed, when he came in.
‘One moment, Laure, one moment,’ she said. She dried one hand to hold the receiver, straightened and stretched out her neck; ‘Oh, Henri,’ she said. ‘Thibault Lanvier called.’ Then she tucked the receiver back into her shoulder and plunged her hands back into the water. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, well exactly.’
‘What about?’ asked Henri, but she didn’t answer. He stepped closer, said louder, ‘What did he say?’ but she frowned, mouthing, ‘I’m on the phone,’ and then ‘Yes, oh gosh, oh I’m so sorry to hear that, Laure,’ and continued. He felt a burst of fury.
‘Brigitte?’
‘Just wait,’ she mouthed, a pantomime whisper, and she pulled the plug out and watched the water level fall, nodding and yes-ing into the phone.
He left the room, slamming the door, but by the time he’d reached the top of the stairs his anger had dissolved. Thibault had called. Of course he had been imagining the derision and suspicion, the change between them. No, not the change – things had changed, they couldn’t have stayed the same – but it was just that: change, neither positive nor negative. Theirs was his oldest friendship, and Thibault’s oldest friendship too, and that meant something. Perhaps he’d go over again tonight; he wouldn’t get so drunk or be so quiet. He’d be himself, whatever the fuck that was.
* * *
• • •
The kitchen was empty when she went in to prepare Jérôme’s meal. She filled a glass with water, looking out of the window at Marc and Thibault in shorts and bare feet, still kicking their ball around in the falling light, each holding a beer bottle in one hand, chatting as they volleyed. Jean-Christophe was in a deckchair she hadn’t known existed, asleep. Thibault was nimble, a practised-looking player. Marc’s shoulders were soft and sloping, Thibault’s straight and proud. She realised that Thibault must work a little, a man in his late thirties or early forties, to keep his physique in that condition. His back and stomach were beautiful, all their muscles moving in subtle unison as he talked and walked and kicked. But she didn’t want to find him attractive. She went to get the quiche out of the fridge, along with some sad-looking green beans that would need topping and tailing.
And then he was in the room, and she felt his presence like a tightening of air.
‘Hi,’ he said, and he rested both hands on the back of a chair. ‘I was just getting some beers. Would you like one?’
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
She continued cutting, and he was silent for a moment. She heard him open his mouth to speak but exhale, as if unsure.
Then he said to her back, ‘We’re grateful to you.’ She looked at him, over her shoulder. ‘I mean it. God knows you don’t have an easy job.’ She turned to face him fully, and he smiled. His cheeks were flushed; he was a little tipsy, she thought. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’
She smiled back.
‘I’m sure—’
‘I’m glad he’s been good with you,’ he said, interrupting, looking down at the table with concentration, ‘and that he’s showing you approval.’ He looked up, looked at her steadily, solidly. ‘That probably sounds basic or patronising or something, but with him, it’s very rare.’ He gave a wry smile, his lip curling, and he couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘I didn’t even know he knew how to do that. Show approval. Of anything. Perhaps he’s actually learning some things in old age.
