Bloodstream, page 14
“That is acceptable.” Madame seemed relieved at her co-operation. “It’s one of your more flattering garments.”
Little did she know…
“Merci, Madame Vincente.”
She took a deep breath then regretted it. Ventilation was poor in that kitchen even with its side door ajar, while that early evening’s coolness had increased condensation within to blur the only window. Also, Pauline’s thinking.
*
Just then, Olivier Philippe Vincente arrived, using the front door as usual, avoiding the kitchen. He hefted an over-burdened briefcase, a sheaf of loose papers and a copy of France Soir with its latest news. He clearly didn’t want to add to the stress, which had, so far, made his day unbearable. As it was, the engineer Michel Benodet had threatened to instigate union action unless the ‘Chef’s’ settlement was double those other redundancies. His wife, due to give birth any day, and her two children from a previous marriage were proving more expensive by the hour. Both studying at the university of Strasbourg.
Benodet had him ‘sans impasse.’
The industrialist slammed the bedroom door behind him, shutting out that meal’s smell, to sit and stare at his declining looks between Gérard Louis’ sweet smile and the perfume pots. Less hair now, he noted, while weary eyes met his. Not as he’d remembered them… His small pen-pushing hands then began to shake…
If Hélène Husingen wasn’t forthcoming this time, they were doomed. Receivership, ‘faire faillite’- a rescue bid - wasn’t a realistic forecast for an ailing company in an area where if something was down, it usually died.
*
A plot of land. A house cow. All a man needed to survive, Olivier told himself while absentmindedly picking his nose. Look at Joseph Clissot. Year in, year out, like his father before him and fathers before that. Following the seasons with unfailing regularity. Nothing ventured, nothing changed, as with all the rest of them. Subsidised parasites, while he, ageing fool that he was, continued to provide employment, and for the short-term, a marketable product. The only surviving manufacturer within a radius of forty-five kilometres. And then, two years ago, he’d looked at his dead son’s wide-set eyes and those perfect little teeth. Shocking events beyond his control…
“Olivier!” His wife called out from below, snapping his morbidity like a sun-dried branch. “Le vin, s’il te plaȋt.”
He’d no need to change his clothes. Those other bipeds downstairs could take him as he was. The care-worn twin, older by twenty minutes, but feeling just then, as if more than twenty years divided them.
*
Minutes later, Miss Archibald and he emerged simultaneously on the landing. She wore the flounced, carmine skirt, of which she’d once had such fond memories. However, the waistband hung away from where it was meant to cling, and the whole effect was of an unfilled bagginess. Only her knees still showed any sign of form, and her meatless ankles above that synthetic froth of bedroom slippers, showed bruising around the bone. Olivier Vincente excused himself to lead the way downstairs in front of her, while his wife stared hard and disapprovingly at the fireside footwear coming behind him.
“What are those?” She queried, with less than a quarter of an hour to go. Panic raised her voice to new, unattractive heights.
“They’re mine!” Pauline answered, misconstruing the question.“Take them off at once!” That little face was sharp and pointed as the rose thorn.
“Non! I can’t wear anything else. I’ve already got cold feet and chilblains.” This fuss seemed unnecessary as she’d always been allowed to wear them at home. In fact, it was the rule to spare the orange and brown diamond-patterned pile of their hall carpet.
“This is not a ‘cabinet de consultation.’ You simply cannot keep them on. We have people coming for dinner!”
“Don’t I know it. It’s me who’s done all the slog!”
“Slog?” the Frenchwoman confused it with the hors d’oeuvre cheese log, and this hesitation finally allowed the English girl to pass her into the kitchen.
*
Monsieur Olivier Vincente meanwhile was already in the dining room, opening a bottle of Bordeaux blanc. His face strained red with each pressurised pull on the obstinate cork stopper, and so engrossed was he, that the marble infant reclining between two candlesticks from Outreménil escaped his attention. The broken edges didn’t show, for Solange had cunningly re-arranged her treasure with its best side forward.
“Mère de Dieu!” Her mother almost dropped the plates she was carrying.
“Take it away! Immédiatement!” Their guests were due at any moment. “That’s an order!”
“But Alexandre’s so lovely there, isn’t he, Papa?” And her father, after one of the worst days in his life, agreed without looking.
Just then, as if on cue, the door chime sounded, and Madame Vincente forgot everything except the presence of their two visitors whose voices suddenly filled the bare hallway. Everyone on impulse had much to say in those first crowded minutes, soon destined to become silence, while the crackling of wrapping paper told the children who’d been listening out for it, that Aunt Hélène hadn’t just brought herself.
*
Pauline Archibald, only a door’s thickness away, and finally setting the 18th century hat on to the burnt, brown limb, felt a tremor pass through her at the recognition of that lawyer’s voice. Her offering, much reduced from its original size, trembled on its dish before sliding to one side, threatening to slip overboard. She returned it to the safety of the oven, filled with the rest of her creative handiwork.
“L’Anglaise? Will you be ready to serve in half an hour?” An impressive request from Madame Vincente, answered tunelessly in song.
“…Here to serve in holiness, till He calls us to the portion…”
Pauline giggled at that last word, which somehow seemed so appropriate. “Which His saints in light possess…”
“Mademoiselle Archaunbault? Have you been drinking?” It was clear from the hostess’s tone that she’d rather be in the ‘salon’ with other company.
“Never. It’s hymn number 325 sung at the Eucharist, 11 a.m. on the dot at St. Paul’s Church, Chorlton-cum-Hardy. I’ve a good memory, don’t you think?”
This seemed to be assurance enough for the older woman to leave her alone with other half-remembered remnants of compulsory worship, summoned by only the slightest of associations.
Just then, Pauline suddenly recognised Jean-Marie Vincente’s laughter above the rest in that large side room, cutting a swathe through her uneventful childhood. They were enjoying Vermouth and pretzels, which Madame normally kept locked in the sideboard under Gérard Louis. Between sips of their aperitifs, the guests were clearly hoping for a good meal from that dedicated horticulturalist.
*
Meanwhile, Nicolas and Solange used this session of frivolous conversational foreplay to sit on the stairs inspecting their ‘beaux cadeaux.’ He’d been given an aeroplane kit which when assembled, would be able to fly with the aid of a small motor. His sister on the other hand, embodying the difference in her sex and therein the admission that the male of the species merited more purposeful activities, had a Parisian doll, complete with its own autumn collection of dresses and outer wear. A strip of green plastic was pinned under the mannequin’s tiny form. A simple catwalk for that unusual clothes horse.
“Just like what Papa used to watch.” She bumped those tiny, stilettoed feet along, pretending they were at the Savoy Hotel or the Singapore Hilton. All when she’d been small, and unlikely to be repeated.
Just then, her mother re-appeared more flushed than usual, to usher the family to their places in next door’s dining room.
“Mademoiselle Archaunbault!” Both drinks had clearly loosened her throat. “We’re ready!”
But the cook wasn’t. Instead, she was halfway through Psalm 104 Benedicama mea… “with oil to make him a cheerful countenance, and bread to strengthen the man’s heart….” These chants and litanies after years of regular church attendance squashed between her parents on a cold, hard pew, now flowed easily without any obstacle from her mind.
However, Madame Vincente’s expression was far from benign.
“They’re at the table now!” Her words spat out like hot fat for the girl still in another world. “What’s first? That cheese thing?”
*
The French woman hadn’t understood Miss Archibald’s intentions at all, and there’d been no time for an accurate translation of ‘log.’ No extra francs either, for this let-down.
“Where is it?” Her face in the oven’s heat matched that plum-coloured cocktail dress and moments later, her mouth dropped in dismay at what lay on her Sèvres platter. Last year’s Christmas gift from Hélène. With fingers dancing on the hot porcelain, those lifeless, lettuce edges were ripped away, and the core turned so that the least dehydrated side was shown. Then she cut it into unequal portions, suddenly reluctant to have such an imponderable item lodge in her insides.
“The trees of the Lord are also full of sap, even the cedars of Libanus which He hath planted….” Her voice rose almost an octave. “Wherein the birds make their nests, and ‘Les Sapins’ is a dwelling for The Crow. The high hills a refuge for the wild goats…”
This adulteration of the text was unheard by the French woman already apologising to those poised knives and forks, explaining how the situation in ‘Les Sapins’ had recently been extremely trying. This delay, together with curiosity about those disintegrating parcels of chives, cheese and eggs, had detracted from the other woman’s reaction to the marble figure resting over the fireplace. Disbelief sank unnoticed in a familial sea of unawareness, but not completely without trace. For her eyes so similar in shape and colour to those of her hostess, registered fear.
*
“What’s the matter, Aunt Hélène?” her niece sitting opposite with the new doll propped against her glass, thought she’d somehow caused that look of consternation.
In this assumption she was correct.
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” as tiny morsels of the hors-d’oeuvre met those thick, red lips at the end of a quivering fork. “Although I think you have a very strange ornament there, Solange. May I ask how you acquired it?”
With a formal tone concealing her real feelings, the teenager proceeded with caution.
“We were just out for a picnic. Papa had office work to do, and Mademoiselle Archaunbault came with us. It was very hot. She soon went to sleep.”
Nobody, least of all the lawyer, careful not to grant her latest concoction the freedom of his throat, showed any interest at mention of her name.
“Anyhow, it was Nicolas who found it.”
Attention had been skilfully diverted to that lean, sallow boy who’d also left his food untouched.
“Eat up please, mon fils.” His father pushed the sister-in-law’s query still further away. “I don’t like to see waste.” He looked unnecessarily stern. “In any form.”
But his wife still harboured Hélène’s questions in her head, despite the many distractions including that meal’s overpowering flavour.
“To be exact, they both wanted to bring it home.” She chewed between phrases with her mouth tightly pursed. “And if you’ve got children, you know how persistent they can be.”
Hélène Vincente answered coldly that she’d no idea how children could be, as of course, biologically such knowledge had been denied her.
*
Hands and mouths ceased all motion in the wake of such bitterness, and to relieve the tension, her sister-in-law, Renée Vincente got up, with cheeks still full, and began to clear away the plates. A simple task made difficult by those mountainous lumps of uneaten cheese.
“Pour some more Chablis, please Olivier,” she instructed him, and in leaving, passed close by Jean-Marie, more youthful and unlined despite his grey ‘calvitie.’ No longer an identical twin. As on previous occasions, she felt neither guilt nor regret. He’d never known that smooth-skinned boy, born before ‘the change,’ might have been his, and nothing she’d said or done, had allowed his blood brother to think this was true.
The brush of his silk-suited leg against hers failed to awaken anything of their lustful time amongst those nodding pupae. Her two-hour abandonment whilst a widow of ‘La Toile d’Or.’ But he smiled at her nevertheless and was noticed by his wife. Meanwhile, the hostess returned to her kitchen, and upon seeing those anthills of brown gel meant for the pastry wedges, decided to forgo the entrée. Instead, she focussed on the meat course, and the English girl’s efforts to balance its adornment. The disaster stood out, too boldly dark, highlighted by that ridiculous paper shape on the blackened knuckle. To augment its shrivelled proportions, she placed the cauliflower florets around it, thankful that at least something here was recognisable.
*
“…The lions roaring after their prey to seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth and they get them away together and lay them down in their dens…”
That deranged girl still mentally in that cool, old church, rocked backwards and forwards in her chair.
“Pull yourself together, Mademoiselle. I really must have some help!” She then wheeled in a flimsy gilt trolley with the roast on the bottom shelf so that at first it couldn’t be seen.
The girl stood up as though still in a trance, physically shrunken, mentally diminished and, fleshless robot that she was, began pushing that still-hot meal towards the assembled company. She thought of Frau Herrendorf probably being ushered along a tiled corridor in either a re-vamped shopping trolley, or even a pram.
That was it! She’d show Jean-Marie Vincente the pram…
*
“…and so shall my words please Him. My joy shall be in the Lord. As for sinners, they shall be consumed out of the earth…” Doom-laden words preceded Pauline Archibald’s entry amongst that gathering of diners, while Nicolas together with Solange unafflicted by anything other than the onset of puberty, laughed at this comical performance in bedroom slippers.
Sensing the warmth of their welcome, Pauline the comedienne, joined in their mirth. Her blue eyes wild with delusion.
“Do you want to see the pram?” she manoeuvred it in front of the father, hoping he’d gasp with excitement. But he turned away.
“It’s from Mothercare. I’ve always loved their corduroy ones, and inside, look, a soft shiny quilt and fluffy bunny blankets. Voilà!”
Silence.
The tanned philanderer still had nothing on his plate to distract him from either her outpourings or her equally strange appearance. Instead, he twisted his heavy signet ring round and round his fourth finger until it hurt.
“I’m Miss McKechnie, remember?” She persisted. “The assistante who came to see you!”
“She’s mad. Can’t you see?” His sotto voce words barely audible as he cast around for sympathy, but all other eyes were upon the meat that Renée Vincente had resurrected on to the table. Only his wife felt moved to comment.
“C’est la doméstique, n’est-ce pas?” Hélène Vincente could scarcely take her gaze from what she knew lay under that vivid sweep of crimson skirt.
“Mademoiselle Archibald? Oui.” Olivier Vincente seemed to be the only one who’d taken the trouble to learn her correct surname, and now he passed behind the diners’ heads as though nothing had happened.
29.
However, his wife, having quickly relieved the cook of her trolley, kept her face lowered. She served the lamb as discreetly as possible, adding vegetables to each charred portion. That girl must be raving, repeating again and again the last verse of the psalm, as she fiddled the small, crumpled hat back on to what was left of the leg.
“…As for the sinners, they shall be consumed out of the earth, and the ungodly shall come to an end.”
“Merci, Mademoiselle. That will be all.” Pauline’s employer with greasy hands escorted her to the door, where those shuffling carpet-slippered feet came to a sudden halt. “We can manage now.”
But the girl turned towards the bald crown of her lover’s grey head. Anger rising…
“I can manage too.” She stayed rooted to the spot, patting her stomach. “In fact, he’s doing fine, even though you’re pretending. I don’t need you or your money any more, and as for your name, forget it, because soon, there’ll be nothing left to want anything!”
Moments later, she flounced out of the door in a matador-like swirl of resolution and defiance. Somebody coughed tactfully to fill the embarrassed void, and both children drained of laughter, yet still sensitive to the situation, thanked Aunt Hélène again for her presents. In return, she delivered an empty, automatic smile, causing only a tight, reserved movement of her mouth. All the while keeping her bird-like eyes on the door.
*
After dinner, instead of seeking out that amusing teacher of English, or helping with the washing up, the youngest of the gathering left their elders for their respective bolt- holes, where they could play in peace with their new acquisitions.
Meanwhile, hymn singing was once more in progress, as Miss Archibald, still scarlet from her recent revelations, piled dirty dishes into the sink. What was done, was done, and a good job too. She felt better for it, and banged her stomach with a wet hand to tell the growing child inside that she’d just spoken with its father.
“…Then cleansed be every Christian breast and furnished for so great a guest. Yet let us in our hearts prepare for Christ to come and enter there…”
The same rubber glove that had slipped inside her, now scoured away the clinging stains and held each plate up to the shadeless light, checking all was clean. She was undergoing something of a revival. Energy suffused her whole being, raising her voice and activating her arms.
“Come labour on! No time to rest till glows the western sky…”
*
“Have you made any coffee?” Renée Vincente thought it best to treat the strange Anglaise as normally as possible, for fear of another outburst. She was now more than a little wary and if there was any truth in what that girl had said, then she, herself was no better than this poor ‘crane engourdi.’
