Marguerite, page 20
‘Here we go with what?’
‘You just—’ A sigh; remembering to be calm, she thought. ‘You don’t need to worry that you haven’t already made it clear that you think he’s better than me.’
‘I haven’t—’
‘Yes, you have. You were always very clear, Dad, more than clear enough, that you wished I’d been more like him.’
‘Well, you could have been. If only you’d applied yourself, if only you’d ever had an ounce of discipline.’
‘Ha! So I could become a farmer? That’s what discipline and application get you? I’d rather die than live Henri’s life.’
‘Oh, how very snooty you’ve become. I didn’t realise a good, honest job like farming was beneath you.’
‘Stuck in this dump, counting sheep. With a hideous wife. Thanks, but I’ll take my lot over that.’ Silence for a moment, and then, in a smiling voice: ‘And anyway, Dad, if you really want to know, I’m 99 per cent sure your precious Henri is a fag.’
Jérôme had snorted. ‘Of all the jealous, filth-slinging things to say, Thibault. How utterly ridiculous.’
‘Fine, fine.’ Thibault’s tone was as if amused, but there was no humour there. ‘But get the full picture before you start lamenting how you ended up with the wrong son and how much better it would be if I was like him. He’s buried alive, look at him.’
‘And look at you!’
‘Okay, okay. Let’s look at me.’
‘Yes. Let’s look at what you’ve become.’
‘What have I become, Dad?’ Still pretending to smile, but she could see the anger quivering in the set of his shoulders, his neck, his face.
‘You’ve become a smarmy little city boy.’
He laughed, harshly. ‘I’ll take that.’
‘Ha. Just like you take everything. Take, take, take. That’s all you’ve ever done.’
‘Fuck off,’ Thibault muttered, looking away.
‘What?’ Jérôme’s eyes were glittering. ‘At least be man enough to say it to my face, if you’re going to.’
‘I said fuck off, Dad, I don’t need to listen to this.’
‘Well, you will, because this might be the last conversation we ever have.’
Thibault had shaken his head. ‘And do you really want the last conversation we ever have to be like this?’
‘Of course I don’t want it to be like this. I didn’t ask for you to hate me.’
‘I didn’t say I hated you.’
‘What do you say, then? What’s your great grievance, Thibault? Come on, you bring it in here, you walk in here and look at me full of reproach, your shoulders visibly weighed down by it.’ Marguerite had stood, tried to leave. ‘Stay right there,’ said Jérôme. ‘I’m not afraid. Let him say it. Let him have his audience. What’s the accusation, Thibault? What’s Daddy done so terribly wrong? Fiddle you, did he?’
‘Dad!’
‘Well there you go then. He wasn’t a paedophile, he wasn’t a rapist. So what was he? Hey? Just a little bit too strict?’
Thibault had stared at him for a long time. His face was set; he was no longer trying to affect levity. She saw him weighing up the words.
‘Where do I start?’
‘Wherever you like.’
‘For one, you treated Mum like shit.’
‘Oh yes?’ Jérôme’s face came forward, his eyes wider. ‘And how would you treat a wife, if you had one? Hey? A nice, sweet, tolerant wife – would you be a nice, sweet, tolerant husband, Thibault? Bring her flowers, would you? Pay her compliments?’
‘No one said you had to bring Mum flowers. You just didn’t need to bully her, relentlessly. You didn’t need to humiliate her with your affairs.’
Jérôme barked out a little laugh, high in his throat. ‘And what’s the longest you’ve ever been faithful to a woman?’ Thibault stared at him. ‘Hm? At least man up and answer me, you pious cunt.’
Thibault closed his eyes then, his lips pulled tight together. When he opened his eyes, Marguerite could see tears shining in them.
‘We’re more similar than you think, matey.’ Jérôme smiled, grimly. ‘Except that I think you’re going to have a little weep.’
‘Yes,’ said Thibault, his voice breaking. ‘Yes, I’m going to have a little weep. But look at you, Dad. Are you happy? Your entire existence is based on how to make everyone around you feel small. You think I buy all this crap with Marguerite?’ He swiped his hand towards her. ‘You think I don’t see that you treat her like shit too? She’s your dream punching bag.’
Keep me out of this, thought Marguerite. She stood again, stealthily, but Jérôme looked up.
‘Stay here!’ he hissed, a ball of spit shooting out onto the sheets, and she sat back down, stared at the table. ‘I spend all my time making people feel small, hm? And what’s your existence based on, Thibault? Don’t you ever like making people feel a little small? Because for someone who claims not to do it, you’re pretty damn well practised.’
‘Fine, Dad, we’re more similar than I think. I’m just as bad as you. I get it, trust me. You’ve made your point.’ He’d wiped the tears away from his eyes, leant back in his chair. And then he came right forward, elbows on his knees. ‘But you don’t scare me any more, Dad. And yes, you know what, I do hate you. No, that’s not enough. I loathe you.’
‘There we go,’ hissed Jérôme, every muscle of his face alive, straining forward from the bed. ‘An honest word. Finally.’
‘No no,’ said Thibault, shaking his head. ‘You don’t get to absolve yourself of responsibility for this. I wanted to love you. I tried, and tried again. But you made it impossible.’
‘What a sentimental pile of crap. You’ve never loved anyone in your life apart from yourself.’
‘That’s bullshit. I loved Mum. I still love her.’
‘Stop bringing her into this.’
‘And you know what? I love Marc and JC too. They’re my brothers. They would miss me if I died. But you? You’ll have no one to miss you; no one will mourn. No one will even spare you a moment’s thought. No fond memories, no tears.’ He bit his lip. ‘That’s the honest truth, since you’re asking. The honest truth, Dad, is that not a single human on this great earth will miss Jérôme Lanvier.’
When he’d got up, standing in the doorway, he’d snorted in mock laughter. ‘Just the redemptive final goodbye I always hoped for.’
Jérôme had leant his head and neck back against the wall, a boxer strung out backwards across the ropes. She’d waited for a few minutes, her heart fast in her chest. He didn’t see her when she stood, then walked slowly and quietly out of the room.
III
13
Those days after the sons left began to feel endless. She’d longed for the house to resume its silence, to be able to reclaim the spaces of her kitchen, her previous bedroom. But it felt like Thibault’s bedroom now, and she still imagined their mess and noise filling the kitchen. Marc’s muscle memory as he ducked to enter the room, Jean-Christophe flinging his jacket on the sofa. It was theirs.
Jérôme was restless and lethargic; he barely spoke. She could only get him to eat when his pain became unbearable. Then he would eat some bread, just enough to take the pills. He lay in bed, eyes half open, listening to the radio.
The lawyer visited, as Jean-Christophe had arranged. A quiet, grey-looking man, he stayed in Jérôme’s room for almost two hours and then he left and took off in his small grey car, and the silence rushed back into the space he’d left like water. Jérôme was exhausted from the effort of sitting up and talking for so long, and she put him back in bed earlier than normal, cleared away the lunch he refused to touch.
She worried about him. His pain was much worse than normal. He was constipated, his lethargy was unsettling. He needed a lot more food than he was having. Withdrawn and passive, he was asking very little from her.
Taking out the rubbish, changing the bin liners in the kitchen, washing the sons’ sheets, set by set, sitting on the tiles outside the kitchen in the sun with a cup of coffee, watching the odd skinny little lizard flicker by; she began to feel that these things were all she’d ever do and know. Endlessly, on repeat.
She didn’t use the car when she went into Saint-Sulpice. She couldn’t bring herself to, yet. It would feel hubristic. Igniting the engine would feel like too large an affront to the surrounding stillness. She felt too small to break the silence.
* * *
• • •
On the fifth morning, Jérôme’s blood pressure was markedly higher.
‘This isn’t good,’ she said. She looked him in the eyes, tried to get something from him. She watched him brace himself against another spasm of pain, his lips white.
‘You’re hypertensive.’ she said when it had passed.
‘So what? Don’t you have pills for this kind of thing?’
‘You’re already on them.’
‘You’re the nurse. Sort it out.’
‘I can sort out your blood pressure, but my concern is what’s causing it.’
‘Let’s not worry about it.’
She stared at him, but he looked away.
‘I do worry about it.’
‘So do something!’ He flapped a limp hand at her. ‘Stop bothering me about it. You’re going to raise it even higher with all this fussing and whining.’ He tried to turn in the bed but he winced with pain again, squeezing his eyes shut.
‘I’m going to give you some of the strong pills. But I don’t want you being sick. You’ve got to eat.’
‘So I’ll eat.’
‘Can you tell me where the pain is?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘Specifically?’
‘Shoulders, back. Under my ribs. My stomach.’
‘You’re constipated.’
‘So I’d noticed.’
She got him to eat a little muesli, lumpen with milk. She watched it mulch through his teeth, some of it trickling down his chin. He didn’t seem to notice. He ate mechanically, his eyes staring into nothing, and then he belched, wetly, and pushed the spoon and bowl away.
‘No more,’ he said.
She cleared it away, wiped his chin clean, gave him his painkillers and laxatives and lowered him down into the bed.
‘I want you to try to get some sleep now,’ she said, taking his pressure again. ‘And I need you to try to relax. If you’re feeling stressed, or anxious, that will be raising your blood pressure too.’
‘I wonder why I’d be feeling stressed or anxious.’
She sighed.
‘Try not to think about negative things.’
He snorted as she left the room.
* * *
• • •
He didn’t eat lunch; he said he felt too nauseous. In the afternoon she had to give him more of the painkillers, the strongest she had. She stayed in his room, skim-reading one of their library books, as he slipped in and out of sleep, in and out of pain. His breath was shallow, particularly when he slept. His mouth caved open, rending a deep hollow between his cheekbones and jaw. Lying there with his hands curled like claws in front of his chest, he looked like the dead mouse she’d once found in the pantry.
By the evening the pain was back and with it his blood pressure began climbing again, steadily. He could no longer keep medication down, vomiting harshly into the bucket like a barking fox, and she saw that this wasn’t going to go away now, that he needed to be put on intravenous morphine. She began to feel sick with dread. She couldn’t get him to the car on her own, she didn’t think, but she wouldn’t call an ambulance. She knew that was irresponsible but she just wouldn’t risk that they might leave her behind, watching as they took him away.
He reached out one of his claws, wrapped them around her wrist.
‘What did he just say?’ His voice was thin.
‘Who?’
‘Thibault. What did he say?’
She paused, looked down at his face.
‘Something about the telephone,’ he said. ‘Oh, never mind. I thought he was saying something about the telephone.’
She went to the telephone, then, and took out Brigitte’s number.
‘I need someone to help me take him out,’ she said when she got through.
‘Henri will come right away.’
* * *
• • •
She packed a bag with his medical notes and medication, and heard the wheels on gravel within fifteen minutes.
‘Tell me what to do,’ Henri said when he appeared at the door, and followed her through to the bedroom.
Jérôme didn’t seem surprised that he was there.
‘You’re a bit early, old boy,’ he muttered. ‘Well, no matter.’
She maneouvred him into a sitting position, swivelled him round so his feet touched the floor. He smelt different. She tied him into shoes, his ankles emerging from them like onions. Henri took him under one arm, she took the other. They lifted him and she felt the cobbles of his back under her palm. He hung heavy onto them as they shuffled with him, step by step. Panting.
‘I could carry him,’ said Henri.
‘Let’s keep trying like this.’
They grunted as they moved, glacially slow.
‘Of course you’ll have to wake the others,’ said Jérôme. ‘Tell them we’ve only just got here.’
‘Yes, okay,’ she said, looking at Henri.
‘I’ve no idea what they’ve all been doing’ – he paused, panted – ‘upstairs. While we were gone. It’s no use leaving them all alone, in any case.’
‘Hm,’ said Henry, eyeing her. ‘No. But it’s nothing to worry about.’
He had parked his truck at the very closest edge of the driveway; they hauled Jérôme into the back seats and then stepped back, catching their breath. Then she sent Henri inside to get the bag she’d packed, so that she could climb straight into the back seat next to Jérôme. She leant her face over his to look at him. His eyes weren’t clear.
Henri returned, slammed the car door, started the engine.
‘Pain,’ Jérôme croaked as they drove, fast, down the lane to the village.
‘Where?’
He lifted one hand to his chest, tapped it once, weakly.
‘Here.’
Fuck, she thought.
‘Is it radiating to your back, or down your arm?’ she asked, but he closed his eyes, tight. ‘How far?’ she asked Henri.
‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Hurry,’ she said, even though she knew that they already were. He caught her eye in the rear-view mirror and accelerated a little more.
* * *
• • •
At the hospital, Henri stopped the truck and got out, slamming the door shut. ‘I’ll get someone.’
She watched the hospital doors slide open for him, swallow him up.
‘You okay?’ she asked Jérôme.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said weakly. His breath was more even.
‘Not long now.’
‘No, not long, if the trains are running. Did you manage to get through to Céline, too?’
She rubbed his arm, the thin mouse flesh under his shirt.
‘Yes.’
‘Everyone’s got the memo?’
‘Everything’s fine.’
They came out with a stretcher, a small team of them, and she gave his history to the paramedic in charge. And then they took him and she had to stride behind them, to keep up. She wouldn’t lose him.
* * *
• • •
She had to stay out of his room while two of them wired him up to an ECG, set up the IV and ran tests; it was too small for ‘non-personnel’. She sat on one of a chain of plastic chairs, fixed into the floor, and waited. It was a good, clean place. They seemed like they knew what they were doing. But she couldn’t stand not to be involved: sitting on the hard plastic just waiting, like all the relatives she’d seen when she was working. She knew very well the guileless, gormlessly anxious set of their faces. Occasionally she could see they were acting, that their concern wasn’t real – but mostly they looked as if they’d crawled right into a hidden part of themselves.
Just as she would have looked once, waiting for Cassandre. She’d sat holding Frances’s hand that first time, sinking her teeth into her own shoulder. Her father circling and circling, her mother tinier than ever, leaning back against the wall, pelvis forwards, the only time she’d ever seen her abandon her posture. Then, she’d imagined her little sister in a brightly lit room filled with shining metal, nurses and doctors milling around her supine body like silent, ingenious, blue-clad ghosts. She knew now that the reality would have been harsher, quicker, louder, messier. Now she knew exactly what it was like to see a young child drugged and dwarfed on a high hospital bed. Aged fifteen, she’d sat in the waiting room imagining only that Cassandre was struggling between life and death. She hadn’t understood then that those weren’t the only two possible outcomes.
She didn’t see Henri until he was standing in front of her. She noticed his boots first, sandy with dried mud, incongruous against the fridge-white linoleum. When she looked up and saw his face and heard his voice – ‘Is everything all right?’ – she realised she’d forgotten about him altogether, had simply left him with the truck and not given him another thought.
‘Fine. They’re just running some tests.’
He sat down, leaving an empty chair between them.
‘Then they need to get his pain under control.’ She felt ashamed that she hadn’t been able to.
‘I’m glad you called us.’
‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’
‘That’s what we’re here for.’
That’s not really what you’re there for, she thought.
