Consolation

  She was inspecting the refrigerator door.

  He must have looked like a halfwit, because she reached out to show him what a beer was.

  ‘You still here?’

  Then, when she realized that his silent confusion must not have anything to do with her own prosaic self, she found the logical explanation:

  ‘He’s paralysed in his hindquarters. He’s the only one who doesn’t have a name. We call him the Big Dog and he is the last gentleman in this house . . . Without him we would probably not even be here tonight . . . Well, at least I wouldn’t be here . . .’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Hey . . . Haven’t you had enough?’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of my little home-grown novellas?’

  ‘No.’

  And as she was busying herself at the sink, he picked up a chair and came over to her side.

  ‘Washing lettuce is something I do know how to do,’ he assured her. ‘Here . . . you sit down there. Take your beer and tell me your story.’

  She hesitated.

  The architect frowned and raised his index finger as if he were trying out a bit of dog training: ‘Sit!’ he barked, in English.

  So she sat down, pulled off her boots, arranged her dress over her lap, and leaned back.

  ‘Oh,’ she moaned, ‘this is the first time I’ve sat down since yesterday evening. I’ll never get up again . . .’

  ‘I cannot imagine,’ added Charles, ‘how you can cook for so many people with such an impractical sink. This isn’t even rustic design, it’s . . . it’s masochism! Or some kind of snobbery, perhaps?’

  With the neck of her bottle she pointed to a door next to the fireplace: ‘The rear pantry. There’s no kitchen maid, but you’ll find a huge sink and even a dishwasher if you look hard enough . . .’

  Then she burped, long and loud.

  As befits a Lady like herself.

  ‘Perfect . . . but, uh . . . never mind. I’ll stay here with you. I’ll manage.’

  He disappeared, came back, got busy, opened cupboards, found things, and made do with them.

  Before her bemused gaze.

  While he was struggling with the slugs, he added, ‘I’m still waiting for the next instalment.’

  She turned towards the window: ‘We got here in . . . October, I think it was . . . I’ll tell you the circumstances later on, I’m too hungry just now to start scrounging around in my subconscious . . . After we had been here a few weeks, and it was getting dark earlier and earlier, I began to be frightened . . . And that was something new for me, being frightened.

  ‘I was all alone with the little ones and every evening you could see headlights in the distance . . . First at the end of the lane, and then closer and closer . . . Nothing more than that. Just the lights of a stationary car . . . But that was the worst thing about it – this nothing happening. As if a pair of yellow eyes were watching us . . . I spoke to René about it. He gave me his father’s hunting rifle but uh . . . that didn’t get me very far. So one morning, after I’d dropped the kids off at school, I went to the animal shelter which is about twenty kilometres from here. It’s not a proper shelter, really, just a sort of animal refuge where they have scrap metal, too. A really, er, friendly place, with a fairly . . . picturesque sort of bloke running it. Now he’s a friend, who wouldn’t be, given all the wretched mutts he’s flogged us since then, but that day, believe me, my heart was in my mouth. I thought I was going to end up strangled and raped, and then they’d put me through the crushing machine.’

  She was laughing.

  ‘I said to myself, “Damn, who’ll pick up the kids at four o’clock, then?”

  ‘I’d got it wrong. His white eye, the hole in his head, missing fingers, crazy tattoos – that was all just . . . a look. I told him my problem, he was silent for a long time and then he waved to me to follow him. “With this one here, you won’t have no problems with no one buggin’ ya under your balcony, ya have my word on that.” I was absolutely terrified: in this cage that stank of shit was this sort of wolf that was hurling itself like a madman against the bars, trying to get at us. Then the bloke said, between two gobs of spit, “Have ya got a leash?”

  ‘“Uh . . .”’

  Charles, who had put down his lettuce hearts, turned around with a laugh, ‘Did you have a leash, Kate?’

  ‘Not only did I not have a leash, but above all I wondered how I’d ever get into the car with that thing. I’d be eaten alive, for sure! But anyway . . . I managed not to lose my cool . . . He took a strap, opened the cage, screaming at the beast, came back out with this monster foaming at the mouth, and then he handed him to me as if it were a radiator or a chrome wheel trim. “Usually I ask people to pay a little somethin’ just for the principle but I was gonna do this one in, anyhow . . . Well, uh, I’ll be off, then, I got work to do . . .” And he just left me there. Well, left me is a manner of speaking, because I got tugged away in no time. I ought to point out that in those days I was still somewhat feminine, I hadn’t yet morphed into Charles Ingalls!’

  Our Charles was having too much fun to even dream of contradicting her.

  ‘In the end I managed to manoeuvre the dog as far as the boot, and then . . .’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I chickened out.’

  ‘So you took him back to the bloke?’

  ‘No. I decided to walk home. I let him tug me along another hundred metres or so and then I ended up letting the crazy thing go. I told him, “Either you follow me and you’ll live the life of a pasha, and when you’re old, I’ll grind your meat up for you and carry you out into the yard every night, or you go back where you came from and you end up as a foot rug in some rotten Renault. Take your pick.” Of course, he headed straight for the fields and I thought I’d never see him again. Yeah, right. From time to time there he’d be . . . I saw him chasing the crows, and then he’d go into the undergrowth and run huge circles round me. Huge circles that started getting smaller and smaller . . . And three hours later, when we went through the village, he was following me quite peacefully, his tongue hanging out. I gave him some water and I wanted to put him in the kennels just long enough for René to take me back to the car on his moped, but then he started acting crazy again, so I just told him to wait there for us, and we left him.’

  She took a breath along with a big gulp of beer.

  ‘When we got back, I really had the willies . . .’

  ‘You thought he’d run away?’

  ‘No, that he’d eat the kids! I’ll never forget the scene . . . In those days, I still parked in the courtyard. I didn’t know that the bridge was collapsing . . . The dog was lying in front of the door, and he raised his head, I switched off the engine and turned round to face the kids: “We’ve got a new dog, he looks mean but I think it’s just an impression he gives. We’ll soon find out, okay?”

  ‘I got out first, took Hattie in my arms, and I went round to open for the other two. The dog had just got to his feet. I tried to walk towards him but Sam and Alice were clinging to my coat. He came towards us, growling, and I said, “Stop that, stupid, you can see these are my puppies, no . . .” and we went for a walk. I confess my legs were like jelly and the kids weren’t about to make a fuss, either . . . And then eventually they let go of me. We went over to the swing, and the big dog lay down in the lane. Then we went back to the house and had supper, and he went and found a spot by the fireplace . . . It was later that the problems started. He killed a sheep, then two sheep, three sheep . . . A hen, then a second hen, then ten hens . . . I would reimburse everyone but it started to become clear to me, from one of the little grumbling acts that René is so talented at, that the hunters were talking about the dog at the café, a lot. That they were getting up a battue . . . So one evening I went over to the dog and said, “If you carry on like this, they’re going to kill you, you know . . .”’

  Charles was fiddling with a salad spinner that must have dated from the early Beatles era.
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  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, he did his usual thing. He obeyed. It’s true that it was about then that we got a puppy and, I don’t know, perhaps he wanted to set a good example. Whatever the reason, he stopped his nonsense.

  ‘Before coming here I’d never had any animals and I used to think people were pathetic the way they’d go on with their little doggies, but this one here, you see . . .

  ‘He’s trained me well.

  ‘A real lord, as I was saying. Without him, I’d never have managed. He’s been my guardian angel, my nanny, my lifeguard, my confidant, my messenger, my antidepressant, my . . . a lot of things. If the children wandered out of sight, he’d round them up, and when I had the blues, he’d come up with some stupid prank to distract me. A little hen that was just happening by, a ball, the postman’s leg, the succulent Sunday roast . . . Oh, yes! He went to a lot of trouble to get me to keep my chin up! That’s why I . . . I’ll carry him into the yard to the end.’

  ‘And those evening visitors?’

  ‘The morning after I brought him here, the headlamps were there again. I was in my nightgown behind the kitchen window and I think that the dog felt my fear. He stood behind the door and began to bark like a thing possessed. No sooner had I opened the door than he was already at the end of the lane. I think he must have woken everyone for miles around . . . After that, I slept soundly. That night, and all the ones that followed.

  ‘In the beginning, people round here called me the wolf woman . . . Right,’ she said, stretching, ‘is it ready?’

  ‘Just doing the vinaigrette.’

  ‘Excellent. Thank you, Jeeves.’

  *

  ‘And this,’ she was saying, ‘is my garden.’

  They were on the other side of the house, and Charles had never seen so many flowers in his life.

  It was as wild and messy and astonishing as all the rest.

  There were no paths or rockeries, or flowerbeds, or lawn. Just flowers.

  Everywhere.

  ‘In the early days, it was magnificent. It was my mother who designed it but then . . . I don’t know . . . over the years, it’s gone all topsy-turvy . . . Well, to be honest, I don’t look after it a great deal. There’s not enough time. And every time my mother comes to visit she’s devastated and spends her entire holiday on her knees trying to find her little labels . . . From that point of view she’s far more English than my father . . . She’s a very, very serious gardener. She’s mad keen on Vita Sackville-West, she’s a member of the Royal Horticultural Society and the National Rose Society and the British Clematis Society, and . . . Well, you get the picture.’

  Charles thought that roses were curly flowers, generally pink, or white, or red, the sort of thing you’d ask the florist about when you needed a hand to charm an impressionable woman, so he was astonished to learn that all these bushes and creepers and large corollas, and those climbing things and these very simple little petals – all these were also roses.

  In the middle of the flowers there was a large table surrounded by chairs even more ill-matched than those in the kitchen, all set out beneath an arbour where anything that had leaves and liked to climb had taken hold. Kate cheerfully provided him with the inventory:

  ‘Wisteria . . . Clematis . . . Honeysuckle . . . Bignonia . . . Akebia . . . Jasmine . . . But it’s in August that it’s the most beautiful. When you sit here in August, at the end of the day, and you’re pleasantly tired and suddenly all the perfumes are there, on the breeze: it’s . . . wonderful.’

  On the tablecloth they set down their piles of plates, the basket full of charcuterie, four long loaves, a bottle of wine, napkins, jars of pickles, pitchers of water, a dozen mustard glasses, two wine glasses, and the big salad bowl.

  ‘Right. I think it’s time to ring the bell.’

  ‘You’ve got something on your mind,’ she said, once they were back in the house.

  ‘May I use your telephone?’

  Their eyes met.

  Kate lowered her head.

  She’d just seen some headlights in the distance.

  ‘Of . . . of course,’ she stammered, waving her hands around her in search of an invisible apron, ‘the . . . down there, at the end of the hallway.’

  But Charles didn’t move. He waited for her to come back to his senses.

  Which she did, with a little nibbled smile.

  ‘I have to notify the agency. About the car, you see . . .’

  She nodded nervously. In a way that said, No, I don’t want to know. And while he headed for Paris, she went out and crouched down by the pump.

  You knew it was a bad idea, she thought, cursing herself as she drowned herself beneath an ever colder stream of water.

  What were you thinking, you silly old fool – that he had come to take pictures of the bridges of Madison County?

  It was an old telephone, with a rotary dial. And it takes forever to dial a number on a rotary phone. So he began with Mathilde, to give himself courage.

  Voicemail.

  He sent her a kiss and assured her she could count on him on Monday morning.

  Then the agency.

  Answerphone.

  He said hello, explained the situation, said that he would understand if they charged him extra.

  And finally Laurence.

  He counted five rings, wondering what he would –

  Voicemail.

  What else?

  ‘Please be so kind as to leave me a message,’ she begged everyone, in a very haute couture voice.

  Kind? That, Charles was. He went into a muddled explanation, used the word ‘hitch’ and scarcely had the time to send his . . . before he was cut off by the beep.

  He put the receiver down.

  He noticed the traces of saltpetre and the cracks along the wall. He touched the leprous surface and stood for a long time flaking away into space.

  He joined Kate in the yard.

  She was sitting on the third step of a stone stairway, and had put her ballet flats back on, along with a thick jumper.

  ‘Come and watch the show!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ll do the voiceover.’

  He was hesitant to sit at her feet. She’d see his bald spot.

  Right . . . never mind.

  ‘Yacine will go first. Because he’s the greediest and because he’s never in the middle of doing anything . . . Yacine never takes part in any of the games. He’s fearful and clumsy . . . The others say it’s because his head is too heavy. He will be accompanied by Hideous and Ugly, our ravishing Thomson and Thompson of the canine order . . . Look . . . here they come . . . And then Nelson, accompanied by his mistress, followed by Nedra, who worships Alice to a similar degree . . .’

  The door to the studio opened a crack.

  ‘What did I say . . . Then it’s the teenagers . . . Ambulating stomachs who never hear a thing except the bell when it’s time for a meal. Three full shopping trolleys every fortnight, Charles . . . Three trolleys filled to overflowing! Not counting, of course, Ramon, Captain Haddock, and the goat, who always brings up the rear of the procession . . . All our little friends for the evening carrot. Yes, indeed, the carrot . . .’ she sighed, ‘we’re in a house full of silly rituals like that. It took me a while but I finally understood that silly rituals help you live . . .

  ‘And to conclude, a few odd dogs who are still roaming around here and there: the puppy I mentioned earlier and who is now a magnificent, uh, sort of basset hound, given the astonishing length of his ears . . . last but not least, our dear Freaky, who must have been Frankenstein’s muff in a former life – you see the one I mean?’

  ‘No,’ said Charles from his loge, with his hand to his forehead and his smile firmly in place, ‘I don’t think so . . .’

  ‘You’ll see, he’s the fat little dog covered in scars with one badly stitched ear and protruding eyes . . .’

  Silence.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘So many animals?’
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  ‘They help me.’

  She pointed towards the hill: ‘There they are, my God, there are even more of them than I thought there’d be . . . And all the way over there, by the fir trees, I don’t know if you can see them . . . Our fine horsewomen, Harriet and her friend Camille on their little ponies, riding flat out for once. Will there be any carrots left?’

  The major procession which ensued showed that she had been right in every respect. The courtyard was soon filled with cries, dust, and cackling.

  Kate followed her guest’s reactions out of the corner of her eye: ‘I’ve been trying to put myself in your shoes since you arrived,’ she eventually confessed, ‘and I say to myself, “What on earth will he be thinking about all this?” You must imagine you’ve landed in a houseful of nutters, no?’

  No. He was thinking about the contrast between the excitement in this house and his laborious rotary-dial goose chase down at the end of the corridor.

  Lately, he’d been getting the feeling that he spent his life talking to machines . . .

  ‘You haven’t answered.’

  ‘Don’t try to put yourself in my shoes,’ he jested, bittersweet, ‘it is much more . . .’

  ‘More what?’

  With the tip of his shoe he was tracing semi-circles in the gravel.

  ‘Less alive.’

  Suddenly he felt like talking to her about Anouk.

  ‘Time to eat!’ she cried, getting up.

  He took advantage of her departure to ask Yacine, ‘Tell me, what do you call a baby owl?’

  ‘A now-let’s-hoot.’ Alice smiled.

  Yacine looked troubled.

  ‘Hey! It doesn’t matter, if you don’t know,’ he said reassuringly.

  But it did.

  It mattered a lot.

  ‘I know you say “fledglings” for birds that aren’t adults yet, but as for owls, um . . .’

  ‘And baby camels?’ added Charles at random, to get him out of his sticky moment.

  Big smile.

  ‘Chameleons.’

  Sigh of relief.

  Well, sigh of relief, after a fashion . . . The boy went on about it for a good part of the dinner. Hatchling, gosling, yearling, duckling, fingerling, nestling, darling, spiderling, and crockling.