A Fool's Alphabet
‘Fait chaud, n’est-ce pas?’ said Patrick’s nephew, as he shot past.
At midday, an hour after they had finished the descent, they found their hands still shaking with exertion as they began their second demi-pression in the square at Bédoin. At the same time some sense of achievement began to seep through them. Pietro put his feet up on a spare chair as he engaged one of the team in conversation; Harry put on his sunglasses and rolled his head back to catch the sun.
After the picnic and the wine the standard of riding had declined. Every hundred yards or so there would be someone lying by the track with a bleeding knee. This helped slow down the overall speed of the party, though it did not deter the riders themselves, who thought each cut and graze a sign of endeavour. They had taken the wrong route and, when collapse was near, had had to climb for ten arduous minutes. At last, as they navigated a dense patch of wood, there came the sudden sight of tarmac. They released the brakes and freewheeled on the flat road for a mile into the village.
Most of them hurried off from the square, pausing only for a single drink and a slice of pizza from the lorry. Pietro and Harry, who felt inclined to discuss their triumph, found themselves with only two people left to tell. Eventually they too shambled off, with hand-shaking and promises of next year.
‘We’re due in Uzès at one,’ said Harry.
‘OK.’ Pietro left some coins in the plastic saucer and grimaced as he stood up. ‘I think they’re called the adductor muscles,’ he said, putting his hand on his groin. ‘I had the same thing after I’d ridden a horse once.’
Now the car was on fire. The seats burned the backs of their thighs and the steering wheel was too hot to hold. They headed off for Carpentras with the windows down and the fan blowing cold. They had rented a house outside Avignon but had driven east the night before to be near Bédoin for the early start. Patrick was the brother of the man from whom they had rented the place; he had arrived one evening to see how they were, and after a glass of pastis had told them they were expected for the ride down Mont Ventoux: there had been no invitation and no description of what was entailed, just an assumption that they would be there.
They pulled up outside the Café Univers in Carpentras to ask the way. Something like a Sunday morning passeggiata was happening, with a number of exactly dressed young women and men ambling through the crowded tables on the terrace.
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Pietro. ‘What do you think?’
Harry looked at his watch. ‘Better not. Not with the children.’ He shrugged.
‘That it should come to this.’
‘I know,’ said Harry.
They had difficult finding the restaurant in the old part of town. Eventually the sound of Mary’s crying guided them down a narrow alley to a courtyard where Hannah and Martha were pacifying three children. Mary was banging her fork repeatedly on the table, Anton was whimpering and grabbing at his mother’s arm; Jonathan, Harry and Martha’s fretful two-year-old, was moaning softly in a shaded pushchair.
Pietro felt so dazed by the exercise he and Harry had taken that the noise, which might have been intolerable in their house in London, was barely noticeable. No one else was outside, so there was no embarrassment about annoying the neighbours. Pietro took Anton on to his knee so Hannah could relax in the sun; Harry rocked the pushchair hopefully. The waiter brought water and a basket of bread.
Hannah began to explain to Martha and Harry how she and Pietro spent their time in London. She exaggerated elements of their day into something which would amuse them, usually at Pietro’s expense. He liked it when she talked. He watched her with half an eye through his sunglasses as he whispered to Anton and bounced him up and down on his lap.
Hannah still had the commanding manner that had aroused him when he first met her; there was a bourgeois seriousness over matters of family coupled with an impatience with him if he seemed dilatory. There was also, however, a low humour which saw the pretensions in both of them, and was not above pointing out the ridiculous qualities of their closest relatives or friends. Her fringe hung girlishly over her forehead, shading the calm brown eyes which spoke of something more womanly and serene. She had well-shaped hands with long fingers that she spread when she spoke or explained; Pietro liked to watch them, contrasting in his mind their slender elegance with the comfortable shape of her hips.
‘When Pietro proposed to me,’ she was saying, ‘he pointed out how dull Belgium was. “The most bourgeois people in the world” was one phrase he used. Wasn’t it, darling? All that was going to be so different in London. Oh yes! All the theatres and the cinemas and the parties. I was rather frightened about coming. I didn’t think I’d have the stamina to keep up with Pietro’s social life and all the culture of the big city. Antwerp, after all, was just a little inland trading town – is that what you called it? Of course, some of the bars do stay open till four in the morning, but Pietro told me that was nothing.’
Pietro rolled his eyes and Hannah smiled. ‘When was the last time we went to the theatre?’ she said. ‘It must have been when John Gielgud was young enough to play Hamlet. I’m not saying we’re not cultured. We must have watched more programmes about nature and current affairs than anyone in London.’
‘I never watch television,’ said Pietro, ‘except the Open University.’
‘Why is there so much applause during the Open University?’ said Hannah. ‘Who is that man with the Australian accent saying “England need another fifty to win”?’
Pietro shook his head and closed his eyes. ‘Quite untrue.’
‘One thing I don’t quite understand,’ Martha said to him. ‘With all this watching television and not changing nappies and not taking Hannah to the theatre, I don’t quite see where you find time to fit in any work.’
‘Yes, it’s curious, isn’t it? She manages to describe a life of torture and injustice at my hands without once mentioning that I spend most of the day in an office.’
‘Do you like being back with your own company?’
‘I prefer it to working for Coleman.’
‘What happened to him? Did he go out of business?’
‘I doubt it. He had too many irons in the fire. But the project I was on had a lot wrong with it. He spent several thousand pounds on a Japanese version of a London A–Z before he realised it would be quite useless.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the street signs are not written in Japanese.’
‘Didn’t you stop him?’
‘No. That wasn’t my part of the project. I was doing maps and design, supervising photographs and colour origination. It was the printers who finally noticed. The other language versions sold very well.’
Martha laughed. ‘What a ridiculous man.’
Pietro looked at her. ‘Yes, he was.’
‘And is that why you left? Because the Japanese project was going to fail.’
‘No, not really.’
‘Harry told me you had a row with him.’
‘Did he? Well Harry shouldn’t tell tales.’
‘Really!’ said Hannah. ‘Martha was only asking.’
‘Listen,’ said Pietro, ‘I do not want to talk about Coleman.’ He had sat up in his chair, looking flushed and angry. ‘We haven’t come on holiday to talk about people like him. Now let’s order.’
Harry raised his head quizzically and wondered what Pietro was concealing.
Pietro silenced Hannah’s budding remonstrance with a look that promised later explanation.
‘Where’s Mary?’ said Hannah, putting down her empty coffee cup.
‘I thought she was over there with you,’ said Pietro. ‘She’s probably gone inside. I’ll have a look and pay the bill at the same time.’ He stood up and flinched at the stiffness in his legs and back. The cool, dark restaurant was empty except for a waiter sweeping up at the back by the small maroon door saying ‘Toilettes’. While he added up the bill Pietro went through the door to see if Mary had locked herself in. There was a single washba
sin and two doors, marked ‘Hommes’ and ‘Femmes’. There was no sign of her in either.
‘We’d better have a look round the square,’ he said when he rejoined the others. He felt that if he refused to accept there was any sort of crisis then none would develop. Hannah looked alarmed already. She grabbed her bag from beside her chair and looked at him accusingly.
‘I’ll help,’ said Harry. He turned to Martha. ‘You stay and look after the boys.’
They went up the alley into the square, an open area of yellowish stone with arched cloisters at one side and a cathedral or solid church visible on another. Two people were eating ice cream under a red parasol with the sound of music from a tired radio in the background; an old man moved through the exit at one corner. Otherwise the heat had completely emptied the area. Its blank, well-preserved walls yielded nothing to their searching eyes.
Hannah looked at Pietro imploringly.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘She can’t have gone far.’ Why not? he asked himself. ‘Let’s spread out. You go that way. Harry, you go that way, and I’ll go through there.’
He went down a narrow street with baskets full of lavender for sale. He began to call Mary’s name.
Now that he was alone, without the need to be calm, he felt the tightening of panic. He was surprised by how quickly he became unable to control the feeling. The concern he felt on her behalf was more acute than anything he had ever felt for himself.
He asked the owner of a shop if he had seen a small girl with fair hair. The man shook his head. ‘Je suis désolé, monsieur.’
Désolé, desolate. No, no, it was he who was desolate. The tension had given an unreal quality to the surroundings. What only a few minutes before had seemed a charmed holiday town was quite changed. The luminous green cross in the chemist’s, the red pole on the tabac, the spindly white writing on the glass window of the food shop, were no longer small auguries of pleasure but signs of a suddenly comfortless world.
He remembered that he had not agreed where or when to rejoin the others. What if Hannah had already found Mary and his search, and his anguish, were unnecessary? By now he had emerged from the small network of back streets out on to the main circular road that ringed the town. It was flanked on either side by cafés and shops. Round it drove the inessential traffic of a Sunday afternoon – buzzing two-stroke mopeds, laden Citroën Deux Chevaux with their roofs rolled back, family cars with heavy bumpers and sleepy children in the back, light open-backed delivery trucks with fizzy drinks or barrels of butane.
Pietro began to swear and pray, cursing his bad luck, refusing yet to believe that this should happen to him, but asking also to be spared. Part of him knew that only by confronting what was going on could he deal with it; part of him just turned away. In the heightened clarity with which he saw his surroundings and in the way that the passage of time had slowed, he was aware that his existence was pitched at some unwanted new level of intensity.
He saw Mary’s face clearly in his mind and he saw the whole of her short life squeezed before his eyes, from the moment her head had emerged into the world, blue and bloody, face down on to the white hospital mat between Hannah’s legs. He remembered the soaring of his heart when the midwife turned her over and he had finally let go of his emotions, sobbing on to Hannah’s shoulder. Mary had barely yet lived except as an extension of him and Hannah, the subject of their speculation, their love and their impatience. They had constructed a character for her in their teasing but she had not yet developed her own, except as something, someone in whose safety all his happiness now lay. From the moment she had finally appeared, whole and breathing, he had seen her as an independent being, had known that no love or influence he might try to exert could finally change her; and he had respected, admired almost, that serene quality of otherness that was visible even in her baby’s cries, had wondered at the innocent confidence with which she had confronted the world, another being, another attempt, undaunted, unworn-down, oblivious to the millions who had preceded her.
He found he was running through the hot Provençal town: rue Gambetta, Place de la République, names that would never be the same again. His pain was making him so mad that he wanted it to be over one way or the other, even if it meant the worst.
He paused by the edge of the road, watching the heavy traffic. He decided to seek comfort in Hannah, not to be alone, and turned back towards the centre of the town. At the end of a narrow street, just before the place became a pedestrian zone, he saw a small group of people gathered next to a lorry. He ran towards them and saw that they were looking over the body of a girl which lay on the pavement. Pushing them aside he bent down over her. It was Mary. ‘C’est ma fils,’ he said, wrongly. ‘She’s mine.’ He was so relieved to see her that in some way he was not frightened by her stillness. He picked up Mary’s body and kissed her face.
‘Le camion . . .’ muttered someone.
Pietro felt consoling hands on his shoulders. He held Mary close to him, burying his face in her neck, as he had often done before. Her body did not feel broken or limp. A nervous shiver ran along the lids of her closed eyes. He kissed her cheek and murmured her name several times. He felt her arms reach out for him. Her eyes opened.
He held Mary to him tightly, the tears of relief running from his squeezed eyes. He was shocked by how quickly he had adjusted to the idea of her death and then to her regiven life.
‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘Does it hurt?’ He looked down at her and gently tested her thin arms and legs to see if the bones were broken. There was a long graze over her left shoulder and down the side of her back. Where her dress was torn he could see a purple swelling at the side of the ribs.
‘No, it doesn’t hurt.’ She shook her head. She looked dazed.
Pietro thanked the people who had gathered round and set off quickly with Mary in his arms so he could find and reassure Hannah as soon as possible.
When he got back to the restaurant, Martha was sitting with the children. He left Mary cradled on Martha’s lap and went running off to find Hannah.
He saw her wandering distracted at the end of the street with the lavender baskets. He shouted and waved and ran to her with his arms held up in the air. ‘It’s all right! It’s all right!’ he called, as he drew closer.
‘What happened?’ said Hannah.
‘She was knocked down by a lorry. But she’s all right. Well, she looks all right. We must take her to a hospital and have her examined.’
Hannah seemed too frozen to show her relief. ‘That girl. What are we going to do with her? I would die if something happened to her, I would just die.’ She gripped Pietro’s arms. ‘Do you know, I feel angry with her. I feel really, blindly angry. I want to beat her until she screams, until she understands.’
‘There now, it’s all right.’ Pietro folded his arms round her shoulders and pulled her to him.
VLADIMIRCI
YUGOSLAVIA 1986
IT WAS SLASHING with rain when they emerged from the terminal at Belgrade airport.
‘Where’s this car, then?’ said Coleman, holding his raincoat over his head.
‘Must be over there, where the Hertz sign is,’ said Pietro. ‘Let’s run.’
‘Jesus,’ said Coleman, as they pulled out of the airport complex. ‘What a country.’
The car crawled through the suburbs of Belgrade where withering bursts of rain rebounded from the pavements and obscured the grey tower blocks that ringed the city. Coleman struggled with the heating control in an effort to force hot air on to the windscreen, which was clouded by their breath.
‘How far is this bloody place?’ he said, as a dry blast came into their eyes. He lit a cigarette.
‘It’s no distance at all,’ said Pietro. ‘You want to look out for signs to Sarajevo.’
Pietro had begun to tire of Coleman and his company. He felt as though he had lost some freedom of his own and gone backwards in his life to a position of submission and servility. For the sake of Hannah and
their two children he had decided to stick with it for the duration of the contract, though there were days when his body would barely carry him down to the tube station to take the train to work.
Coleman’s offices were in Clerkenwell in a Victorian building that had been modernised in the Sixties. Five other companies shared the building and could never agree on what renovations needed to be done. The central heating came on during the first week in October and could not be adjusted until April without bonuses to the maintenance staff who otherwise refused to go into the basement and wrestle with the pre-war boiler that grumbled and muttered, fatly swathed in lagging, for a humid six months. The substantial plumbing was visible as it climbed the walls that flanked the stairwell, with its metal banisters and steel-tipped linoleum steps. Two lifts operated from beside the front door, though their tendency to jam a few feet beneath each floor or to sink like a miner’s cage discouraged people from using them.
A yellow reception desk, dense with styrofoam coffee cups, was manned by a chain-smoking commissionaire called Bob. Visitors were offered a book and a ballpoint pen attached to the spine by string and wound round so many times with Sellotape that it was fatter than Bob’s orange finger that stabbed the page under ‘Name’, ‘Time In’ or ‘Company’.
‘There’s a Mister . . .’ Bob would pause, telephone to his shoulder, and swivel the book round so he could peer at the page curling under ballpoint pressure ‘. . . Smitt’ or ‘Brawn’ he would improbably deduce, ‘to see you, Mr Coleman . . . Right. Take a seat, please.’
Never having worked in an office before, Pietro was surprised by how little work was actually done. He arrived at 9.15, as requested, in time for the main meeting of the day at 9.30. Most of the secretaries and staff didn’t get in before ten, and regarded the first hour as dead time, given over to traffic or television post-mortems or to speculation about the surprisingly numerous office romances. Coleman had about forty employees, though shared lavatories and canteens meant that gossip could draw on the staff of the other companies as well. Lunchtime saw the doors open and a flow of mostly young women erupt like starlings from the doorway, some to the park with their lunch in hand, some to the pubs and sandwich bars in neighbouring streets. The in-house canteen was serviced by a youngish man with greasy hair and a concentrated growth of stubble on the edges of his chin. When he bent down to pick up a catering tin of marmalade or beans from the floor, the blue-check chef’s trousers sank low enough to reveal the puckered white cleft of his buttocks. His manner varied between the abusive and the merely truculent, depending on what he imagined to be the status of the customer. The sandwich fillings lay in rectangular plastic containers, illuminated by a strip light behind the glass. The mashed sardine and tuna mayonnaise glistened with a bluish sheen; the ham looked reconstructed, the winking green eyes at the joint of lean and gristle acting as rivets. On the blackboard the hot dishes of the day were abbreviated: lamb and roast pots, chilli con c, B and b pudd. The canteen, however, was the place where the best information changed hands, and experienced employees still ventured in, but bought only sealed cartons of yoghurt or thick-skinned oranges.