Consolation

  No. Sorry. Crocklet.

  Sitting across from them, she watched as he nodded conscientiously, and she was having a grand time.

  There were twelve of them under the arbour. Everybody was talking at once. The bread and the pickles went back and forth a great deal, and stories about country fairs were told.

  Who had won what, how the teacher’s son had cheated, and how many drinks it took for old man Jalet to slide from the counter at the drink stand.

  The big kids wanted to sleep out under the stars, and the little kids asserted that they too were big kids. With one hand Charles refilled Kate’s glass; with the other he pushed away the snout of something that was drooling on his shoulder, and she scolded, ‘For Christ’s sake! Stop feeding the dogs!’ while no one listened because she was speaking Chinese. Finally she sighed and fed slices smeared with rillettes to her Big Dog on the sly.

  For dessert they lit torches and candles. Samuel and his gang cleared the table and went to fetch all the unsold cakes. There was a bit of a fight; no one wanted to eat Madame Whosiwhatsit’s apple pie because Madame Whosiwhatsit smelled bad. The teenagers, polishing the screens of their mobiles with their sleeve all the while, talked about where the best fishing holes were, about calving problems, and about the Gagnoux’s new forage harvester. There was a lovely specimen wearing a white tank top, with a black dot printed right on her left nipple, next to an arrow which warned: ‘slap distributor’; the machine seemed to work rather well.

  Yacine wondered out loud if for a beaver you said a kitten or a pup, Nedra stared into the candle flame, and Charles stared at Nedra.

  A portrait Georges de la Tour might have painted . . .

  The hitchhikers had set off in search of a spot where they could get reception, and Alice was manufacturing ladybirds with candle wax and pepper grains from the salami.

  Between two bursts of conversation you could hear the wind in the trees, and the cries of the young people in the distance.

  Charles, attentive, was concentrating hard, for later.

  Their goofiness, their laughter, their faces.

  This harbour in the night.

  He didn’t want to forget a thing.

  She stopped him, placing her hand on his sleeve, ‘No, don’t get up. Let the children work for once. Would you like a coffee?’

  Alice said she would go and make it for him, Nedra brought the sugar, and the others unearthed a torch so that they could lead the animals back to the meadow.

  The mayflies were in attendance: it was a joyous, ephemeral dinner.

  8

  THEY WERE ALONE.

  Kate had picked up her glass and turned her chair to face the darkness. Charles came to sit in Alice’s place.

  He wanted to look at her little ladybirds . . .

  Then he lifted one hip, dug around for his cigarettes, and offered her one: ‘Shock horror,’ she moaned, ‘I’d love to join you but I had such trouble giving it up . . .’

  ‘Look, I only have two left. Let’s smoke these last two together and that will be it.’

  Kate looked worriedly all around her: ‘Are any of the kids around?’

  ‘I don’t see any.’

  ‘Okay . . . great.’

  She took a puff and closed her eyes.

  ‘I’d forgotten . . .’

  They smiled at each other and poisoned themselves religiously.

  ‘It’s because of Alice,’ she declared.

  She looked down and continued, lowering her voice, ‘I was in the kitchen. The kids had been asleep for a long time. I was chain-smoking and I . . . was drinking alone – to use Alexis’s mum’s expression . . .

  ‘Alice came into the room, crying. She had a stomach ache. It was at a time when we all had a stomach ache of sorts, I think . . . She wanted someone to hold her, some affection, words of comfort, all those things that I wasn’t able to give them any more . . . And she managed somehow to climb up on my lap.

  ‘She put her thumb in her mouth and no matter how I tried I couldn’t think of what to say to calm her down or help her to get back to sleep. I . . . never mind.

  ‘So instead, we watched the fire.

  ‘After a very long while, she asked, “What does ‘prematurely’ mean?”

  ‘“Earlier than expected,” I replied. She was silent for a moment and then she added, “Who’s going to look after us if you die prematurely?”

  ‘I leaned over her and saw that I’d left my Craven As on her lap.

  ‘And that she had just learned how to read . . .

  ‘How was I supposed to answer such a question?

  ‘“Toss it in the fire.”

  ‘I watched as the packet twisted and disappeared, and then I began to cry.

  ‘It really felt as if I’d just lost my last crutch . . . Much later, I carried her through to her bed and came back at a run. Why the rush? To rake through the ashes, what else!

  ‘I was already feeling very down, and going cold turkey like that made it even worse . . . At that point in time, I loathed this cold, sad house that had already taken everything from me, but I had to admit it did have one redeeming feature: the nearest tobacconist was six kilometres away and he closed at six in the evening . . .’

  She crushed the butt in the earth, then placed it on the table and poured herself a glass of water.

  Charles was silent.

  They had the night ahead of them.

  ‘They’re my sister’s ch—’ Her voice broke. ‘Sorry. My sister’s children and . . . oh,’ she said, cursing herself, ‘that’s why I didn’t want to invite you to dinner.’

  He was startled.

  ‘Because when you got here with Lucas last night I could see, even behind your injuries, or perhaps because of your injuries, I could see the way you were looking around you –’

  ‘And?’ he urged, somewhat anxiously.

  ‘And I knew what would happen. I knew that we’d have dinner around this table, that the children would run off, that I’d be here alone with you and that I’d tell you what I’ve never told a soul . . . I feel a bit sheepish to admit it, Mr Charles the Stranger, but I knew that you’d be the lucky one . . . That’s what I told you earlier on in the saddle room . . . There have been plenty of expeditions passing through here, but you are the first civilized man who’s ventured as far as the henhouse and, to be honest . . . I was no longer expecting you.’

  A rather botched attempt at a smile.

  Always the same old problem with words, damn it. Charles never had them available when he needed them. If at least the tablecloth had been made of paper, he could have sketched something for her. A vanishing line or a horizon, the idea of a perspective or even a question mark – but to speak, dear lord, what . . . What could you say with words?

  ‘You still have time to get up, you know!’ she added.

  This time the smile was a success.

  ‘Your sister,’ he murmured.

  ‘My sister was . . . Well, listen,’ she continued more cheerfully, ‘I may as well start crying straight away, that way it’s done.’

  She pulled on the sleeve of her jumper as if unfolding a hand-kerchief:

  ‘My sister, my only sister, was called Ellen. She was five years older than me and she was a . . . wonderful girl. Lovely, funny, radiant . . . I’m not just saying that because she was my sister; I’m saying it because of who she was. She was my friend, my only friend I think, and much more than that . . . She looked after me a lot when we were children. She wrote to me when I was at boarding school and even after she got married we’d ring each other nearly every day. Rarely for more than twenty seconds, because there was always an ocean or two continents between us, but twenty seconds, that we could manage.

  ‘And yet we were very different. Like in Jane Austen novels, you know . . . The sensible big sister and the sensitive little one . . . She was my Jane and my Elinor, she was calm, I was turbulent. She was sweet, I was a pain. She wanted a family, I wanted a mission. She was waiting to have children
while I was waiting for visas. She was generous, I was ambitious. She listened to people; I never did. Like with you, this evening . . . And because she was perfect, that gave me the right not to be . . . She was the pillar, and the pillar was solid, so I could go and gad about, the family would survive . . .

  ‘She always supported me, encouraged me, helped me and loved me. We had adorable parents, but they were utterly clueless, and she’s the one who brought me up.

  ‘Ellen . . .

  ‘I haven’t said her name out loud for so long . . .’

  Silence.

  ‘Cynical as I was at the time,’ she continued, ‘I did have to acknowledge that happy ends were not the exclusive domain of Victorian novels . . . She married her first love and her first love was worthy of her . . . Pierre Ravennes . . . A Frenchman. An adorable man. As generous as she was. Beau-frère came to mean a lot more than brother-in-law. I loved him dearly, and the law didn’t have anything to do with it. He was an only son and he’d suffered a lot as a result. In fact, he’d become an obstetrician . . . Yes, he was that type of man. Who knew what he wanted . . . I think he would have been delighted to see everyone round the table like we were this evening . . . He used to say he wanted seven children and you never knew if he was joking. Samuel was born; I’m his godmother. Then Alice, then Harriet. I didn’t see them very often but I was always surprised by the atmosphere at their place, it was . . . Did you ever read Roald Dahl?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I adore that man. At the end of Danny the Champion of the World, there’s a message addressed to the young reader which says, more or less, When you grow up, please do not forget that children want and deserve parents who are sparky.

  ‘I don’t know how you’d say that in French, sparky . . . It’s like . . . brilliant? Funny? Dazzling? Dynamite? Champagne, perhaps . . . But what I do know is that their home was . . . sparkyssimo. I was filled with wonder and also a bit confused, and I said to myself that I’d never know how to do that . . . I thought I didn’t have the generosity, or the cheerfulness, or the patience required to make children as happy as their children were . . .

  ‘I remember it very clearly, I used to say to myself, jokingly and at the same time to reassure myself, If ever I have kids some day, I’ll leave them with Ellen, she’ll look after them . . . And then.’

  A sad face.

  Charles would have liked to touch her shoulder, her arm.

  But he didn’t dare.

  ‘And there we are, now I’m the one reading them Roald Dahl stories . . .’

  He took her glass out of her hand, filled it, and handed it back.

  ‘Thanks.’

  A long silence.

  Laughter and the sounds of the guitar in the distance gave her the courage to continue.

  ‘One day, I came to visit, unexpectedly. For my godson’s birthday, actually. At the time I was living in the US, working a great deal, and I had never even seen their youngest . . . I had been with them for a few days when Pierre’s father arrived. The famous Louis, the one on the shirt . . . He was a mad sort, funny, larger than life. Pure concentrate of sparky, absolutely. He was a wine merchant who loved to drink, eat, laugh, toss the kids up to the ceiling then hang them upside down by their feet, and crush his loved ones against his big belly.

  ‘He was a widower, he adored Ellen and I think she married him as much as she married his son . . . You have to bear in mind that our own father was already an elderly gentleman when we were born. A professor of Latin and Greek, at university. Very kind, but fairly . . . vague. More at ease with Pliny the Elder than with his own daughters. When Louis heard that I was staying and that I could look after the kids, he begged Pierre and Ellen to go with him to visit a cellar or some such thing in Burgundy. Oh come on, he insisted, it will do you good. You haven’t been away for such a long time! Oh go on . . . We’ll be visiting a fine estate, we’ll have a grand feast, stay in a sublime hotel and tomorrow afternoon you’ll be home again. Pierre! For Ellen’s sake! Time to get her away from the baby bottles!

  ‘Ellen was hesitating. I think she really didn’t want to leave me . . . And that’s where life really is a bitch, Charles, because I’m the one who insisted she go. I got the feeling that this little outing would be such a treat for Pierre and his father . . . Go on, I told her, go and have a grand feast and sleep in a fourposter bed with a canopy, we’ll be fine.

  ‘She said, all right, but I knew she was forcing herself. That once again she was putting the others first, before herself.

  ‘It all happened very quickly. We had decided not to say anything to the children, who were in the middle of watching a cartoon, to avoid any risk of a pointless scene. When Mowgli got back to his village, Mummy would come home tomorrow and that was that.

  ‘Auntie Kate felt she was up to the task. Auntie Kate hadn’t even taken all the pressies out of her travel bag . . .’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s just that . . . Mummy never came home. Nor did Daddy. Or Grandpa.’

  ‘The phone rang during the night, a voice rolling his “r” s asking me whether I was related to Rrravennes Louis, Rrravennes Pierre, or Shay-rrrang-tonne Ay-lenn. I’m her sister, I replied, so they put someone else on the line, higher rank, and it’s this someone else who had to do the dirty work.

  ‘Had the driver drunk too much? Fallen asleep? The inquest would determine that, but what was certain was that he was driving far too fast, and the other driver, in a truck transporting farm equipment, should have pulled farther over to the side and switched on the hazard flashers before going off to take a piss.

  ‘By the time he buttoned his flies and turned around, there was nothing sparky left.’

  Kate had got up. She moved her chair over by her dog, took off her shoes, and slipped her bare feet under the dog’s unmoving body.

  Up to that point Charles had held up fairly well, but when he saw that huge animal, who could no longer even wag his tail, raise his eyes solemnly to look at her and convey the happiness he felt, to be of use to her still, Charles felt his surface cracking completely.

  And he was out of cigarettes.

  He placed his hand on his swollen cheek.

  Why was life so careless with those who served it most loyally?

  Why?

  Why those very people?

  He was lucky. It had taken him forty-seven years to understand what Anouk was celebrating when, on the pretext that she was alive, she said fuck-it to everything else.

  Fuck-it to parking tickets, bad marks, disconnected phones, broken down cars, hideous problems with money, and the insane state of the world.

  At the time, he’d found it all a bit too easy, cowardly even, as if one simple word could suffice to excuse all her failings.

  ‘Alive.’

  Of course. What else could they be?

  It was obvious.

  Besides, it didn’t even count.

  Frankly, she went on about it all too much.

  ‘Ellen and her father-in-law died instantly. Pierre, who was sitting in the rear, waited until he was in hospital in Dijon in order to bow out in the presence of his colleagues . . . I’ve often had the opportunity to . . .’ Here she winced: ‘relate the facts, as you might imagine. But in fact, I’ve never really said a thing . . .

  ‘Are you still there, Charles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I tell you?’

  He nodded. He was too upset to risk letting her hear his voice again.

  Several minutes went by. He thought she’d changed her mind.

  ‘In fact, you don’t believe it when people tell you, it makes no sense whatsoever, it’s all a bad dream. So you say, go back to bed.

  ‘Of course you can’t, and you spend the rest of the night in an absolute state, staring at the telephone while you wait for Captain Whatsit to call back and apologize. Look, there was an errrror in identifying the bodies . . . No. The earth keeps turning. The furniture in the living room is all where it belongs and a new day has a
rrived, ready to insult you.

  ‘It’s almost six o’clock and you tour the flat to gauge the extent of the tragedy. Samuel in a little blue room, he turned six just the day before, his forehead against his teddy bear and his palms wide open. Alice, in her little pink room, three and a half years old and already riveted to her thumb. And next to her parents’ bed, Harriet, eight months old, and she opens her big eyes when you lean over her cradle and you can tell she is already a bit disappointed to see your uncertain face rather than her mother’s.

  ‘You pick the baby up, and close the doors to the other rooms because she has started to babble and, to tell the truth, you’re not in a great hurry for them to wake up . . . You congratulate yourself for remembering how many spoonfuls of powder you have to put in the baby’s bottle, you settle into an armchair by the window because in any case you’re going to have to face this fucking new day, so you may as well do it lost in the eyes of a baby who’s feeding, and you . . . you don’t cry, you’re in a state of . . .’

  ‘Sideration,’ murmured Charles.

  ‘Right. Numb. You hold the baby against your shoulder for the burp and you actually hurt her, you’re clinging to her so hard, as if that little burp was the most important thing in the world. The last thing you think you can actually hang on to. Sorry, you say to her, sorry. And you lull yourself, against the back of her neck.

  ‘You suddenly remember that your flight is leaving the next day, that you’ve just been awarded the grant you’ve been waiting for for so long, and you have a fiancé who has just gone to sleep, thousands of kilometres from there, and you’d planned to go to the Millers’ garden party the following weekend, and your father is about to turn seventy-three, and your mother, that little birdlike creature, has never been able to look after herself, and . . . there’s no one on the horizon. But above all – and this is what you haven’t realized yet – you will never see Ellen again.

  ‘You know that you have to ring your parents, if only because someone has to go there. To answer questions, and wait while body bags are unzipped, and sign papers. You say to yourself, I cannot send Dad there, he is . . . unequipped for this type of situation, and as for Mummy . . . You look at people going by in the street with their great long strides and you are angry at them for their selfishness. Where do they think they’re going? Why are they acting as if nothing has happened? Then it is Alice who rouses you from your torpor, and the first thing she asks is, Did Mummy come back?