Claire hadn’t touched her food.
‘It’s going to get cold,’ he prompted.
‘Yeah. If you stay in your flat like a halfwit playing with biscuits, you can be sure something’s going to get cold.’
‘What else do you want me to do?’
‘You’re the project manager.’
‘You haven’t seen the project.’
She emptied her glass, reminded him that this meal was on her, checked the prices on the slate, and left the money on the table.
‘We’ve got to get going.’
‘Already?’
‘I don’t have my ticket.’
‘Why are you going this way?’ he asked.
‘To drop you off.’
‘And the car?’
‘I’ll leave it with you when you’ve put a travel bag and your notebooks in the back . . .’
‘Pardon?’
‘You’re too old, Charles. You’ve got to get a move on, now. You can’t start behaving with her the way you were with Anouk . . . You’re just . . . too old. Do you see what I mean?’
He didn’t see anything.
‘I can’t promise you it will work, you know, but . . . You remember when you made me go to Greece with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well . . . we each get our turn.’
He carried her case and went with her as far as her compartment.
‘And you, Claire?’
‘Me?’
‘You haven’t told me a thing about your love life.’
She made a dreadful face so that she wouldn’t have to answer him.
‘It’s too far away,’ he went on.
‘From where?’
‘From everything.’
‘That’s true. You’re right. Go back to Laurence, go on carrying a torch for Anouk, go crawling to Philippe, and tuck Mathilde in every night until she leaves home, that will be less of a hassle.’
She gave him a resounding kiss on the cheek before adding, ‘And feed the pigeons some bread while you’re at it . . .’
And she disappeared without turning round.
Charles stopped off at the Vieux Campeur shop, went by the agency, filled the boot with books and files, turned off his computer, his lamp, and left a long memo for Marc. He didn’t know when he’d be back, it would be hard to reach him on his mobile, he would call in, and he wished him good luck.
Then he made a detour by the Rue d’Anjou. There was a little shop there that would surely have what he was looking for.
9
A WHOLE SCENARIO in his head. Five hundred kilometres of trailers and almost as many different versions of the opening scene.
It was just like something out of a Lelouch film . . . There he’d be, and she’d turn round. He’d smile, she’d be petrified. He’d open his arms, she’d rush into them. He’d be in her hair, she’d be in his neck. He’d say, I can’t live without you, she’d be too full of emotion to reply. He’d lift her off the ground, she’d squeal with laughter. He’d carry her off towards . . . um . . .
Right. By now it was time for the second scene, and the set, no doubt, would be full of extras . . .
Five hundred kilometres, that made for a lot of celluloid. He’d imagined everything – and of course nothing happened as he’d foreseen.
It was nearly ten o’clock in the evening when he crossed the bridge. The house was empty. He could hear laughter and the sound of cultery and plates in the garden; he followed the light of the candles and, as on the previous occasion at the far end of the meadow, he saw many faces turning round before he saw hers.
Unfamiliar faces and figures, of adults he’d never seen. Shit . . . He was good for a long rewind.
Yacine rushed forward to greet him. As he leaned over to give him a hug, Charles saw Kate getting up in turn.
He had forgotten that she was as lovely as in his memories.
‘What a nice surprise,’ she said.
‘I’m not disturbing you?’
(Oh! The dialogue! The emotion! The intensity!)
‘No, of course not . . . I have some American friends visiting for a few days. Come on. I’ll introduce you.’
Cut! thought Charles, get all those guys off the set! Those fuckers shouldn’t be in this shot!
‘With pleasure.’
‘What’s all this?’ she asked, pointing to the stuff he had tucked under his arm.
‘Sleeping bag.’
And, just something out of a film by Charles Balanda, she turned round, smiled to him in the darkness, and lowered her head, which enabled him see her neck, then she placed her hand in the small of his back to show him the way.
Instinctively, our young leading man walked more slowly.
From where they are placed, the viewers probably don’t realize, but that palm, those five long fingers slightly spread, with their burden of an image of rural sacrifice and a young ephebe with a perfect slope of the hips, all pressing gently into the warm cotton of his shirt: that was something else . . .
Charles sat down at the end of the table, was offered a glass, a plate, knife and fork, some bread, a napkin, some Hi! Nice to meet you! greetings, kisses from the children, snuffles from the dogs, a smile from Nedra, a nice nod on the part of Sam of the Howdy gringo type, (you can go ahead and try to piss on my territory, but it’s huge and you’ll never aim far enough), the fragrance of flowers and mown grass, glow worms, a crescent moon, a conversation that went too quickly so he didn’t understand a thing, a chair whose left rear leg was slowly sinking into a mole’s living room, an enormous slice of pear tart, another bottle, a track made of crumbs in a dotted line from his plate to everyone else’s, altercations, questions, and moments of violent protest about a topic he hadn’t been following. The word ‘bush’ was often evoked but . . . um . . . were they referring to the man or the plant? And . . . In short, a sort of delicious floating sensation.
But there was also Kate, her arms rolled around her knees, her bare feet, her sudden mirth, her voice that wasn’t quite the same when she was speaking her own language, and her sidelong glances that he’d grab hold of between swallows and which seemed, each time, to say, ‘So . . . Is it true? You came back . . .’
He returned her smile and, as silent as ever, he got the feeling he’d never been this talkative with a woman.
And then they had coffee, and the kids put on some skits, and they had brandies, and the kids did some imitations, and bourbon, and more laughter, and more private jokes and even a little bit of architecture, as they were well-brought-up people . . .
Tom and Debbie were married, professors at Cornell, and the other man, Ken, a tall bloke with a lot of hair, was a researcher. It seemed to Charles that he was spending a lot of time around Kate. Well, it was hard to tell with these Americans, who were always hugging and patting for the least little thing. All sweetie and honey and hugs and gimme a kiss every which way . . .
Charles didn’t care. For the very first time in his life, he’d decided to let himself live.
Let. Himself. Live.
He didn’t even know if he’d be able to meet the challenge.
He was there on holiday. Happy and slightly drunk. Taking sugar cubes and building a temple to the mayflies that had died for the Light and that Nedra brought to him in beer capsule coffins. He answered Yes or Sure when necessary, or No when that was better, and concentrated on the tip of his knife to give a more Doric touch to his pillars.
There’d be time enough, later, for his urban development zones and land-use plan and other three-word headaches.
He glanced at his rival between two convoys of dead mayflies.
Anyway, long hair at that age was . . . pathetic.
And he had a huge chain bracelet just in case he couldn’t remember his name. And as for his name, well, it was downright Barbie.
All that was missing was the camper van.
But above all – and this was something the hairy monster in his Hawaiian shirt seemed to be totally unaware of – t
he model Charles had brought with him was Himalaya Light.
It cost a fortune, okay, but was filled with duck feathers treated with Teflon.
Hear that, Samson?
Teflon, mate, Teflon.
Which just goes to prove I am more durable than I seem . . .
Himalaya, maybe, but Light.
That was his programme for the summer.
When Charles set off towards the courtyard with his candle in his hand, Kate had tried to resuscitate the perfect housewife who lay dormant inside her by offering him the soba-fed, uh, the sofa-bed.
But frr . . . they were all too wasted to play at good manners.
‘Hey,’ she called, ‘don’t – don’t set the place on fire, okay?’
Charles raised his hand to gesture that he wasn’t that stupid, after all.
‘Already on fire, baby, already burning,’ he chuckled, stumbling through the gravel.
Oh, yes. He was as tanked as a Panzer.
He found his niche in the stables, had the worst time imaginable locating the opening of his bloody bivouac, and fell asleep on a mattress of dead flies.
Bliss . . .
10
NATURALLY, IT WAS Ken who went to fetch the croissants this time.
At a run . . .
With his handsome Nikes, his ponytail (!), and the sleeves of his T-shirt rolled up onto his (gleaming) shoulders. (Gleaming with sweat, that is.)
Right then.
Charles cleared his throat and put away his torrid scenarios.
If, at least, the guy had been an imbecile . . . But he wasn’t. He was a good-looking egghead. A very likeable sort. Fascinated and fascinating, and funny. As were his compatriots.
The tone had been set. The house would be filled with an atmosphere – give me five – of comradeship, Baden Powell with a dash of ten in the bed roll over roll over. Never mind. So much the better. The children were happy to have all those adults about all of a sudden, and Kate was happy to see the children happy.
Never had she looked so lovely . . . Even this morning, with her hangover hidden behind her big dark glasses . . .
Lovely as only a woman who knows by heart the price of solitude can be, when she is finally laying down her weapons.
She was on leave for a few days and, little by little, she distanced herself from them. She didn’t want to take any initiatives, she left them the house, the children, the animals, René’s interminable weather forecasts, and the meal roster.
She read, sunbathed, slept in the sun and didn’t even try to pretend to pitch in.
And that wasn’t all. She didn’t lay a hand on Charles. No more sidelong smiles or meaningful gazes. No more kidding me or teasing you. No more treasure troves in the hay or missionary dreams.
He suffered initially from this apparent coldness which manifested itself, painfully, as conviviality.
So that was the way things stood? However unexpected his presence, Charles was now relegated to playing his role as one of the gang. She never called him by his name, only addressed them all as ‘you guys’.
Shit.
Could it be she was hooked on that big lump of a bloke? Not necessarily . . .
She was hooked on herself.
She played, fooled about, disappeared with the children and set herself up to get told off with them.
As if she were one of them.
She blessed all the adults, raised her glass in a toast a dozen times during meals that lasted longer and longer, and took advantage of their presence to slip away from the Board of Guardians.
And, as a result, she was perfectly happy.
Charles, who – and this was unconscious on his part – could have, or should have been . . . how to put it . . . intimidated? hobbled? by those budding little wings beneath the strap of her bra, only loved her all the more for it.
But. He was careful not to show it. He had had his fair share of slaps in the face recently, and that bone, just there, which was supported by his spine in order to protect his heart, was in the process of healing, as it happens. This was not the time to be opening his arms any old which way.
No. She wasn’t a saint . . . She was a major idler who didn’t lift a finger, who could really knock it back with the best of them, was growing marijuana (oh, so that was her ‘comfort pharmacopoeia’ . . .), and she didn’t even hear the bell ring.
She had no sense of morality at all.
Phew.
This discovery was worth a bit of indifference.
Patience, little snail, patience.
What on earth was he doing that gave him the time to mull over all this besotted perpetual teenager nonsense?
He was sweeping up dead flies.
He wasn’t alone. He dragged along behind him both Yacine and Harriet who, obliged to relinquish their rooms to the star-spangled banner, decided to go into exile with him.
They drew straws for their rooms and spent two whole days swallowing cobwebs and wandering through the various barns as if they were in some dusty flea market of abandoned treasures. Commenting, patching, stripping and painting tables, chairs, mirrors and other relics nibbled by termites and capricorn beetles. (Yacine, somewhat annoyed by such inaccuracy in matters of worm holes, gave them a lecture: Holes, that’s capricorn beetles; and if it looks rotten and crumbly and brittle, that’s termites.)
They organized a little housewarming party and Kate, upon seeing his room – bare, stripped, whitened with pure bleach, austere, monastic, with all those files piled at the end of the bed, and his laptop and his books on the clever little desk he’d installed beneath an alcove – stood silent for a moment.
‘You came here to work?’
‘No. This is just to impress you.’
‘Oh?’
Everyone else was in Harriet’s room.
‘There’s something I would like to say,’ she added, leaning out of the window.
‘Yes?’
‘I . . . you . . . well . . . if I . . .’
Charles clung to the brass bedstead.
‘No. Nothing,’ she said, turning back, ‘you’ve made it very cosy here, haven’t you?’
In the three days that he’d been here, this was the first time he’d had her all to himself, so for two minutes he put aside his good cub scout badges: ‘Kate . . . talk to me . . .’
‘I . . . I’m like Yacine,’ she said abruptly.
Charles looked at her.
‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but I . . . never again will I take the slightest risk of suffering, ever.’
Charles didn’t know what to say.
‘Do you understand?’
He was silent.
‘It’s something Nathalie told me . . . A lot of foster children, when they sense there’s a change in the air, suddenly become unbearable and absolutely torment their host family. And do you know why they act like that? It’s a survival instinct. To prepare themselves mentally and physically for a new separation. They make themselves unbearable so that everyone will think their departure is a relief. To destroy the love . . . That . . . that hideous trap where they almost got caught, once again . . .’
Her finger traced the edge of the mirror.
‘And so I’m like them, you see. I don’t want to suffer any more.’
Charles was at a loss for words. One, two, three. More even, if he couldn’t make do with less, but words, for pity’s sake, some words . . .
‘You never say a thing,’ she sighed.
And, moving away towards the next room, ‘I don’t know a thing about you. I don’t even know who you are or why you came back, but there is one thing you have to know. I’ve had a lot of people to stay in this house and, it’s true, there is a Welcome sign on the doormat but . . .’
‘But?’
‘I will not give you the opportunity to abandon me.’
She peered back round the doorframe, made sure that the featherweight was well and truly knocked for six, and stopped counting: ‘To get back to more serious things, you kn
ow what’s missing here, darling?’
And as he was really almost out for the count, she added, ‘Une Mathilde.’
He spat out his gumshield and a few teeth along with it, and returned her smile before following her to the buffet.
And, while watching her laugh, raise her glass, and play darts with the others, he thought, well shit, she wasn’t going to rape him, so . . .
And then he remembered a joke Mathilde had told him: ‘D’you know why snails are so slow?’
‘Uh . . .’
‘Because drool is really sticky.’
So he stopped drooling.
11
WHAT FOLLOWS IS what is known as happiness, and happiness is a very awkward thing.
It can’t be told.
So they say.
So it is said.
Happiness is flat, soppy, boring, and always hard going.
Happiness bores readers.
Kills love.
If the author had even the slightest good sense, that author would immediately resort to an ellipsis.
Thought about it. Had a look in the dictionary:
ELLIPSIS. Suppression of words that would be necessary for the plenitude of the construction, where the words that are expressed convey the meaning clearly enough to avoid any obscurity or uncertainty.
What on earth?
Why do without words that would be necessary for the plenitude of the construction of a story that has been missing so many words already?
Why deprive oneself of the pleasure?
On the pretext that one is writing, simply write out, ‘Those three weeks he spent at Les Vesperies were the happiest of his entire life,’ and send him back to Paris?
It’s true. Those six words: the, happiest, of, his, entire, life, would convey neither obscurity nor uncertainty.