Charles adored that kid. If he’d had a boy, he would have chosen exactly the same model . . .
The next drawing is the only one that is not finished.
And there are tiny strands of hair all along the fold by the spine . . .
When Charles was about to put the notebook away in his briefcase, once he had packed everything, his initial reflex was to blow on the hairs to get rid of them but then, no, he closed the page on them, for ever.
Like a bookmark.
For the page he had turned.
He had spent the morning, and the entire previous day, with Yacine, obsessed with building a Spud Gun. He’d had to go back to FixitFreddy’s for the second time (no comment) because the PVC tubing wasn’t good enough. Now he wanted a metal one.
For a chemical Spud Gun . . . one that could send a piece of potato as far as Saturn, on condition that the reaction between the Coke and the Mentos Mints was properly calibrated (the one between bicarbonate of soda and vinegar only went as far as the moon, and that wasn’t nearly as much fun . . .)
God knows it had kept them busy, that thing . . . They had had to nick a few potatoes on the sly from René, and when they had returned Kate’s special vinegar from Modena they had got yelled at, even though the vinegar was completely useless; they had had to rush back to the bakery because those idiot girls had eaten all the Mentos, they had had to keep Sam from drinking the Coke, beg Freaky to spit out the valve he was chewing on, do a whole bunch of test runs, go back to the grocery to buy a can of Coke because the big bottles weren’t gassy enough, they had had to get everyone out of the way, run to the stream to rinse their hands because their fingers were too sticky to screw the top on, run a fourth time to the grocery – the woman who ran it was beginning to wonder (although . . . she’d had no illusions about the mental health of that household for a long time now) – because Diet Coke was supposed to work better than normal Coke and . . .
‘You know what, my dear little Yacine? I think it’s easier to build a shopping mall in Russia with Sergei Pavlovich,’ sighed Charles in the end.
Sheepishly, they came back to the house. They could have made ten kilos of chips with all the spuds they’d just wasted, and they needed to check one more thing on the Internet.
Kate was cutting Sam’s hair in the courtyard.
‘Yacine, you’re next.’
‘But . . . we haven’t finished the Spud Gun . . .’
‘Precisely,’ she said, standing up straight, ‘with all that hair gone, you’ll be able to think more clearly . . . And leave Charles alone for a change.’
He had smiled. He didn’t dare say so, but he was beginning to be potatotally fed up. He went to fetch his sketchbook and another chair, and sat down next to them to sketch them.
Yacine was scalped, the girls had a trim, or a cut, or layers, depending on their mood and the latest trend at Les Vesperies, and locks of hair of every size and colour fell into the dust.
‘You know how to do everything,’ said Charles, full of wonder.
‘Almost everything . . .’
When Nedra got up, the hairdresser shook out her big tea-towel cape and turned to the man with his pencil: ‘And you?’
‘What about me?’ he answered, without looking up.
‘Wouldn’t you like me to cut your hair, too?’
A sensitive topic. His pencil lead snapped.
‘You know, Charles,’ she continued, ‘I don’t have many principles or theories here on earth . . . Yes, you know as much . . . you’ve seen the way we live . . . And where men are concerned, even less, alas . . . But there is one thing about which I am absolutely certain.’
He was clicking on his propelling pencil like a lunatic.
‘The less hair a man has, the less hair he should have . . .’
‘What . . . what?’ he choked.
‘Shave it all!’ she laughed. ‘Get rid of the problem once and for all!’
‘You think so?’
‘I know so.’
‘And, uh . . . You know, that thing about virility . . . When Delilah shaves Samson, he loses all his strength, and I feel like I’m being scalped and . . .’
‘Come on, Charlie! You’ll be a thousand times sexier!’
‘All right . . . If you say so.’
Oh, woe. Twenty years he’d been nurturing his meagre little down like some mother hen, and now this upstart of a girl was going to ruin it all in the space of two minutes . . .
He was headed for the block when he heard the words uttered very surgically:
‘Sam, the clipper.’
Oh, woe.
‘Kate, let me turn my chair towards the statue of the faun . . . I’ll draw his pretty curls to console myself . . .’
Her associate came back with the little torture kit, and the children had a field day pulling out all the different size combs:
‘How short are you going to do him? A five?’
‘Nooo, that’s way too long. Do two . . .’
‘Don’t be daft, he’ll look like a skinhead! Take the number three comb, Kate . . .’
The condemned man kept mum, but had no trouble reproducing in his sketchbook the gentle sneer of the satyr facing him so proudly.
Then he drew the line of his neck, and went as far as the lichens on his . . . Closed his eyes.
He could feel her belly against his shoulder blades, leaned into her as discreetly as possible, lowered his chin while her fingers brushed his skin, then felt him, touched him, stroked him, dusted him off, smoothed him, pressed him. He was so troubled that he pulled his sketchbook higher up on his thighs and kept his eyes firmly shut without caring any more about the noise of the machine.
He wished his skull were endless, and was prepared to lose all the virility in the world, if only this delicious cramp could last forever.
She put the trimmer down and took her scissors to finish him off with a flourish. And while she was standing like this before him, concentrating on the length of his sideboards, and leaning over, giving him whiffs of her warmth, her smell, her perfume, he lifted his hand towards her hip . . .
‘Did I hurt you?’ she asked, concerned, stepping back.
He opened his eyes, realized that her audience was still there, or at least the little ones, waiting to see his reaction when he’d next look at his reflection, and he decided the time had come to ensure his snow anchor was firmly fixed before he tossed his last rope: ‘Kate?’
‘I’ve nearly finished, don’t worry.’
‘No. Don’t ever finish. Sorry, that’s not what I meant to say. I’ve been thinking about something, you see . . .’
She was behind him again, scraping the back of his neck with an open razor.
‘I’m listening.’
‘Uh . . . could you maybe stop, there, for a few minutes?’
‘Are you afraid I’ll cut your throat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh God. What is it you have to say?’
‘Well, I’ll be living on my own with Mathilde once school starts up, and I was thinking that . . .’
‘That what?’
‘That if Sam is really too unhappy at boarding school, I could take him in.’
The blade fell silent.
‘You know,’ he continued, ‘I’m lucky to live in a neighbourhood where there are any number of excellent lycées and –’
‘Why once school starts up?’
‘Because it’s . . . It’s the end of the story that is in the bottle of Port Ellen . . .’
The blade beginning, gently, to warm up again.
‘But do . . . do you have room for him?’
‘A very nice room with parquet floors, mouldings, and even a fireplace . . .’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you mentioned it to him?’
‘Of course.’
‘And what does he think about it?’
‘He likes the idea but he’s afraid to leave you on your own. Which I can understand, actually. But y
ou would see him –’
‘During the holidays?’
‘No . . . I was thinking of bringing him back here every weekend . . .’
The blade stopped again.
‘Sorry?’
‘I could pick him up at the end of the school day on Friday, take the train with him, and buy a little car that I could leave at the station in –’
‘But,’ she interrupted, ‘what about your own life?’
‘My life, my life,’ he said, pretending to be annoyed, ‘never mind about my life! You haven’t got a monopoly on self-sacrifice, you know. And then, this business about adopting Nedra, I don’t want to hurt you but you know it would be a lot easier for you to do it if you could show proof of some sort of . . . male presence here, even if it were feigned . . . I’m afraid that people working in administration are still rather . . . old-fashioned, so to speak . . . or even downright misogynistic . . .’
‘You think so?’ she said, pretending to be upset.
‘Alas.’
‘And you would do that, for her sake?’
‘For her. For Sam. For me . . .’
‘What, for you?’
‘Well . . . for the good of my soul, I suppose. To be sure of going to paradise with you.’
Kate went back to work in silence while Charles lowered his head still further, waiting for the verdict.
‘You . . .’ she eventually murmured, ‘you don’t say a lot, but when you do, it’s . . .’
‘Regrettable?’
‘No, I wouldn’t say that . . .’
‘What would you say?’
With the tip of her cloth she wiped his neck, blew gently and for a long time into the gap beneath his collar, giving him shivers all down his spine, and hairs all over his notebook, then she stood up straight and declared, ‘Go and get it, that bloody bottle. I’ll meet you over by the kennels.’
Charles walked away, disconcerted, while she went up into Alice’s room.
Mathilde and Sam were there, too.
‘Listen . . . I’m taking Charles to do a bit of botany. You look after the house, all right?’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘Until we find what we’re looking for.’
‘Find what?’
She was already tripping down the stairs four at a time to put together a survival basket.
And while she was busying herself with this chore, failing to remember where the kitchen was, opening, shutting, banging doors and drawers, Charles was blown away.
*
This was him, surely, but he didn’t recognize himself.
He looked older, younger, more virile, more feminine, gentler, perhaps, and yet beneath his palm he found a very rough self . . . He shook his head without having to worry which way his locks might fall, then lifted his hand in front of his face to give himself back a familiar point of scale, touched his temples, his eyelids, his lips, and tried to smile to help himself adjust.
He slipped the bottle into one jacket pocket (like Bogart in Sabrina) (but without the hair), and his notebook into the other.
He took the basket from her hands, placed an eighteen-year-old bottle into it, and looked where her index finger was pointing.
‘Do you see that tiny little grey spot down there?’ she asked.
‘I think so . . .’
‘It’s a lodge. A little house where the people who were slaving in the fields could go to rest . . . Well, that’s where I’m taking you.’
He was careful not to ask her what they would do there.
But she could not help elaborating. ‘It’s the ideal place to put together an adoption file, if you want my opinion . . .’
The last drawing.
The back of her neck.
The place where Anouk had touched her, so furtively, and where he, Charles, had just caressed her, for hours.
It was very early, she was still sleeping, stretched out on her stomach and, through the tiny arrow slit, a ray of light revealed all that he had rued not being able to see in the dark.
She was even more beautiful than anything his hand had led him to believe . . .
He pulled the blanket up over her shoulders and reached for his notebook. Gingerly, he parted her hair, and refrained from kissing her beauty spot yet again, for fear of waking her. And drew the highest point on earth.
The basket was tipped on its side, and the bottle was empty. He had told her, between embraces, how he had come to her. From the marbles games to Mistinguett, held tight to his chest between the pavement and the little bit of himself still faintly beating that morning . . .
As he was telling her about Anouk, his family, Laurence, his profession, Alexis, and Nana, he confessed he had loved her from the very first moment, round that big campfire, and he hadn’t taken his trousers to the cleaner’s because he wanted to keep, deep in his pockets, the wood dust she’d left in his hand that first time she’d held it.
And it wasn’t only about her, either. It was her children, too . . . And they were ‘her’ children, not just ‘the’ children, for no matter how she might protest to the contrary, however different they might be, they were all in her image. Absolutely, marvellously sparky.
At first he had thought he would be too overwhelmed, or too troubled, to make love to her the way he had fucked her in his dreams, but then there were her caresses, her confessions, her own words . . . The beneficial effects of the bottle and the notes of honey and citrus . . .
His life, his story, had all come out, and he loved her accordingly. Honestly, chronologically. First as an awkward teenager, then a conscientious student, an ambitious young architect, a creative engineer, and finally – and this was the best bit – a man who was all of forty-seven: rested, shorn, happy, who has attained a distant goal he’d never thought possible, let alone dared hope for; and with no flag to plant other than these thousands of kisses which, if strung together, would go to make the most precise of cookie cutters.
Her body. To be savoured crumb by crumb, nibbled, gobbled. That is how she would like it.
He felt her hand searching for his, so he closed his notebook and checked that he had not got the perspective wrong.
‘Kate?’
He had just opened the door.
‘Yes?’
‘They’re all here.’
‘Who, all?’
‘Your dogs.’
‘Bloody hell . . .’
‘And the llama.’
‘Ooooh,’ moaned the blankets.
‘Charles?’ she said, coming up behind him.
He was sitting in the grass, savouring a peach the colour of the sky.
‘Yes?’
‘It will always be like this, you know.’
‘No. It will be better.’
‘We’ll never have any peace and –’
She couldn’t finish her sentence, savouring lips that tasted of peach.
12
‘WELL? DID YOU find a four-leafed clover?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘No particular reason,’ laughed Mathilde.
She was perched on the windowsill.
‘So it seems we’re leaving tomorrow?’
‘I have to go back, but you can stay a few more days if you want to. Kate will take you to the station.’
‘No. I’ll come with you.’
‘And you . . . You haven’t changed your mind?’
‘About what?’
‘The arrangements for your room and board . . .’
‘No. We’ll see. I’ll get used to it. I think it’s my dad who’s going to be given the push, but, oh well, I’m not even sure he realizes . . . As for Mum, it will be good for us.’
Charles put his papers aside for a few minutes and turned to face her.
‘I never know when you’re serious and when you’re just putting on an act . . . I get the feeling you’re going through a lot at the moment so I find all this cheerfulness a little bit suspicious.’
‘What am I supposed to do?’
/>
‘I don’t know . . . be angry with us?’
‘But I am totally angry with you, I assure you! I think you’re useless and selfish and a big let-down. Typical adults, in other words. On top of that I’m jealous as hell . . . Now you’ve got a whole bunch of other kids besides me and you’re going to be off in the country all the time . . . Except there’s things that can’t be downloaded in life, y’know.’
‘And the fact that Sam’s coming with us . . . does that bother you?’
‘Nah. He’s cool. And I’m really curious to see what a bloke like him is going to be like at the lycée Jean-Paul Sartre . . .’
‘And if things don’t go well?’
‘Well then, you’re the one who’ll be pulling out your hair . . .’ Ha ha ha.
The entire household accompanied them as far as the ticket barrier and Kate didn’t have to run away to say goodbye: he would be coming back the following week to fetch his young boarder.
He got rid of the kids for a moment by giving them some change for the sweet machine, then grabbed his lover by the neck and –
A chorus of ‘houuuuuuuhh’ came from all around, so Charles closed his mouth to turn and tell them off, but Kate opened it again, gesturing with her middle finger just in case anyone had forgotten who was in charge.
‘They’re useless,’ muttered Yacine. ‘In the Guinness Book of Records there’s an American couple who snogged for thirty hours and fifty-nine minutes without stopping.’
‘Just you wait, Mr Potato Head. We’re going to practise.’
13
CHARLES WAS A huge hit with his shorn head. He was tanned, he’d put on weight and filled out; he got up early, worked effortlessly, made an offer to Marc to join the firm, took care of Samuel’s enrolment, bought beds and desks, gave the bedrooms to the kids and settled into the living room.
He was sleeping in a single bed and was mortified to have so much room.
He had a long conversation with Mathilde’s mother, who wished him luck and patience, and asked him when he would come and collect all his books.
‘So? I hear you’ve gone into intensive breeding?’
He didn’t know what to say. So he hung up.
He flew to Copenhagen and flew back via Lisbon. He was preparing the ground for a new career as advisor and consultant, instead of tenders and procedures and responsibilities. He sent illustrated letters to Kate every day, and taught her how to answer the telephone.