by Brian Moore
“Gosh, yes, that used to be great fun. Driving to Dublin, spending the night in Buswells Hotel, then all day Saturday at the races, and a grand meal before we drove home. But, he has no time now.”
“A person should make time.”
“It’s hard for him, though,” Mrs. Redden said. “I mean, with this group practice. And now he has an extra job as a surgical consultant to the British Army. They have him down to their H.Q. in Lisburn three or four times a week. It’s too much work for one man. And it hasn’t improved his disposition, I can tell you.”
Peg Conway was not listening; she was watching the door. All evening she had been hoping Ivo would show up, but now it seemed unlikely. She said, “Talking of Ville-franche, I spent a terrific, dirty weekend in the South of France recently.”
Mrs. Redden was embarrassed. “Oh?”
“His name is Ivo Radie. He’s a Yugoslav.”
“A Yugoslav,” Mrs. Redden said. So there was a new man.
“A refugee. He teaches English and German in a grotty little private school in the sixteenth arrondissement. At any rate, he’s an improvement on Carlo.”
“What happened to Carlo?”
“Don’t ask. That wife of his can keep him. Ivo is divorced, at least.”
“Ivo Radie,” Mrs. Redden said, as though trying out the name.
“I met him by the merest fluke,” Peg said. “Hugh Greer—you remember Hugh Greer?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Redden said. Hugh Greer, a Trinity prof. Peg’s big early love.
“Well, Hugh had this American student in Dublin, a boy called Tom Lowry. He asked Tom to look me up when he came to Paris this summer. So Tom did, and then he invited me around for a drink at his flat. And his roommate was Ivo. So, in an odd way, I met Ivo because of Hugh Greer.”
“You still keep in touch with Hugh, then?”
“Yes. Poor old Hugh. He has cancer, did you know?”
“Oh, God. What kind?”
“Lung.”
“How old is he?”
“About fifty. Listen, would you like to meet Ivo?”
Mrs. Redden thought: What could you say? “Yes, of course,” she said.
“Good. I’ll tell you what. We’ll finish here and go to a café called the Atrium for coffee. Ivo and Tom’s flat is just around the corner from there. I’ll ring now and see if Ivo can join us,” Peg said, getting up at once, very purposefully, to march off to the cabinet de toilette where the telephones were. Mrs. Redden watched her go, then, in her shy, furtive way, glanced at the people in the next booth, an aristocratic-looking old Frenchman and his young son, both eating Bélon oysters and sucking juice from the shells. She thought of the first time she had ever been in La Coupole, that summer she was a student at the Alliance Française. Her Uncle Dan showed up in Paris and took her to lunch here to meet a young man who was the Paris correspondent for the Irish Times. After lunch, they went on, all three of them, to a garden party at Fontainebleau, at the house of some Swedish countess who was a friend of Uncle Dan’s. Uncle Dan knew everybody. Cancer, he died of. Hugh Greer has it now. On the day of Uncle Dan’s funeral I traveled alone on the train to Dublin. Kevin had to stay behind to operate. Everybody who was anybody was at the funeral, the cardinal in his crimson silks, sitting in the episcopal chair at the side of the altar during the Mass, and at Glasnevin cemetery I saw De Valéra: he took his hat off and stood, holding it over his chest as the priest said the prayers for the dead. Lemass, the Prime Minister, was beside him and every other government minister as well, the whole of the diplomatic corps, everyone. When the Irish Army buglers sounded the Last Post after the prayers, I was sitting in a big rented Daimler with Aunt Meg. I wept, but she didn’t, she just sat watching it all, her cane rammed between her knees as though that was what was keeping her up straight, and as soon as the bugles were lowered, she said, “Fruitcake, I forgot them. I ordered seven from Bewley’s. Tell Mrs. O’Keefe to lay out five with the sherry and sandwiches. Sheila, are you listening?”
Mrs. Redden looked again at the old Frenchman and his son, who had now finished their oysters and were drinking Loire wine and mopping up the oyster shells with thin slices of buttered brown bread. She turned and saw Peg coming back through the huge room, giving a thumbs-up sign from afar. The Yugoslav must have said yes and so we’ll end up at this Atrium place, the three of us. Mrs. Redden smiled at Peg, but into her mind came Uncle Dan’s grave the last time she had visited it, alone, two years after his funeral, a stormy day with lightning and thunder, no cross on the grave, nothing about who he was, just a slab of gray Connemara marble laid flat like a door on the earth. His name: Daniel Deane. 1899-1966. She bought a few carnations in a shop beside the cemetery. Uncle Dan liked to wear a carnation. The cemetery attendant gave her a little blue glass vase. Red carnations in a blue glass vase, she left on his grave.
•
At the Atrium Peg chose a table with a good view of the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Mrs. Redden was again reminded of the French way of sitting, not really facing your table companions, but all of you turned around to watch the passersby. The Yugoslav had not yet shown up.
“I love just being here, just watching the people,” Mrs. Redden said, staring at the parade on the pavement outside.
“Most of this lot would be better off at home studying, than lallygagging around in fancy dress,” Peg said. “Next week is end-of-term exams at the Sorbonne. Thank God, I’m not a French parent.”
But Mrs. Redden wished she were. Here your children could go where they pleased, without your worrying about bombs, or their being stopped by an army patrol, or lifted in error by the police, or hit by a sniper’s bullet. If Danny lingered at a school friend’s house until after dark, usually he had to spend the night there.
The waiter came.
“Listen,” Peg said. “If we want a cognac, let’s order and pay for it before Ivo comes. Otherwise, poor lamb, he’ll insist on standing treat.”
“All right, but only if you’ll let me pay,” Mrs. Redden said. “Deux cognacs et deux cafés, s’il vous plaît.”
“Bien, Madame,” the waiter said.
Maybe it was the cognac, or maybe it was the prospect of Ivo’s joining them, but there was now a noticeable heightening of Peg’s spirits. “So, tomorrow night you’ll be in Villefranche in the same hotel you were in on your honeymoon. It means one thing. You liked it the first time.”
This annoyed Mrs. Redden, although she did not show it. At nearly forty years of age, you’d think Peg would have grown out of her schoolgirl mania for talking about sex all the time. But no fear.
“You’re blushing,” Peg said.
“Oh, stop it.”
“Listen, Sheila, I envy you. I suppose you’re one of the few people I know who’s still happily married. Certainly you’re the only one who’s going off on a second honeymoon—how many years later?”
“Sixteen.”
“God, is it that long?”
“Danny’s fifteen. We were married in 1958.”
“So, you’re what? Thirty-eight. You don’t look it.”
“I am thirty-seven until next November,” Mrs. Redden said, laughing.
“Ivo’s four years younger than me. I suppose that sounds really decadent.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Mrs. Redden said, but thought, I couldn’t do it, but then, I’m not Peg, she’s done all the things I never had the guts to try, going on to London for postgraduate work after getting her M.A., then the U.N. in New York with the Irish delegation, and now Paris, and this big money with the Americans. She lives like a man, free, having affairs, traveling, always in big cities, whereas, look at me, stuck all these years at home, my M.A. a waste. I don’t think I could even support myself any more. “You know,” she said to Peg, “it’s working and traveling that keep a person young. It’s sitting at home doing nothing that makes you middle-aged in your mind. I was just thinking about it the other day. It’s as if the only part of my life I look forward to now is my holidays. There’s s
omething terribly wrong about that.”
“I suppose,” Peg said, but Mrs. Redden noticed that she wasn’t really listening. Someone had come into the café and now Peg was signaling to him. Mrs. Redden stared at the newcomer: four years younger than her, who does she think she’s kidding? Ten years is more like it. The boy was very tall, with long dark hair and a pale, bony face. He wore a brown crew-neck sweater, brown corduroy trousers, and scuffed desert boots of the sort Mrs. Redden’s own son had bought last year. He smiled as he came up, throwing his head back to toss the long hair out of his eyes in a gesture once used only by girls.
“Hello, Tom,” Peg said.
So he was not the boy friend.
“Sheila, this is Tom Lowry. Sheila Redden.”
“Hi,” he said, then turned to Peg. “I’m the bringer of bad tidings, I’m afraid. Ivo’s put his back out again.”
“Oh no.”
He sat down, casually, his legs astride the café chair, his arms resting on the chair back. He stared at Mrs. Redden, then said to Peg, “He was on his way up here to join you, but, a moment after he went out the door, I heard him yell and found him in the courtyard all seized up.”
“He’ll blame me,” Peg said. “You’ll see.”
“No, no,” the boy said, but as he spoke he was no longer looking at Peg, he was staring again at Mrs. Redden, making her wonder if there was something wrong with her. She looked down at her skirt, but it was not that. It’s my face he’s looking at.
“So what should we do?” Peg asked.
“Why not come around to the flat? Ivo would like to see you and I could give you a drink.”
“I don’t know,” Peg said. “Well, maybe if we just pop in for a moment. Would that be all right with you, Sheila?”
“Yes, of course.” What else could she say? And, wouldn’t you know, the moment she agreed, Peg was up on her feet again, ignoring the cognacs, which were not even finished. “Wait,” Mrs. Redden said. “I have to pay.”
“Let me get it”—this Tom Lowry said.
“No, no.” And so, after a fuss, Mrs. Redden paid, and they found themselves going down a dark side street behind the Marché Saint-Germain, Peg in hell’s own hurry, forging on ahead, leaving her alone with the stranger. The first thing she thought about him was that he was taller than she, which was a relief, but still, from habit, she squinched down as she walked beside him. He seemed the quiet type. The Quiet American, by Graham Greene. But then she remembered that Quiet American was a sinister sort of character.
“You’re from the North?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought I recognized a touch of Ulster. Are you on a holiday?”
Other Yanks said “vacation.” He was different. “Yes.”
“You’re here alone?”
She glanced at him, under the light of the street lamp.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was just that Peg told me something about you coming with your husband.”
“Oh. He’s joining me at Villefranche tomorrow.”
“So you’re only in Paris for one night?”
She nodded, and he did not speak again until they reached his building, where Peg waited impatiently outside the locked street door. As he took out his key to open it, Mrs. Redden saw him glance at her again, much as she herself looked at people when she was curious but didn’t want them to see it.
“Wait till I get the light,” he said, ushering them into a pitch-black courtyard, fumbling somewhere, until a light came on, a dim French contraption which only stayed lit long enough to let them hurry across the courtyard to the ground-floor flat where he lived. As he put the key in his own door, the light went out again. He unlocked in darkness, then, entering, let them into a brightly lit hall.
Very small, was her first impression of the flat. There was a tiny neat kitchen on the right, a little bathroom, one small bedroom in the back. A man’s dark suit jacket was hung over the back of a chair in the hall, knife points of white handkerchief sticking up from its breast pocket. They went into the little sitting room where, lying on his back on the floor, was a very good-looking man formally dressed in dark suit trousers, white shirt, and red wool tie. Mrs. Redden thought of a dead person laid out for a funeral.
“Good evening.” The man on the floor had a deep foreign voice. “Excuse me, receiving you like this.”
“Oh, Ivo, dear,” Peg said, at once going down on one knee beside him, running her fingers through his graying hair. That is not a man who likes to have his hair tossed, Mrs. Redden decided, as the man on the floor turned his head away from Peg.
“This is my friend Sheila Redden. Ivo Radie.”
The handsome man smiled at her and said he was pleased to meet her. Tom Lowry came into the room with a bottle and four thimble glasses. “Ah,” said Ivo. “Slivovitz. May we offer you ladies a digestif?”
“Darling,” Peg said, “first let’s get you up and onto your bed.”
“I prefer the floor. It is therapy.”
“Surely you’d be more comfortable sitting up?”
“If I do not lie flat, I will not be able to teach tomorrow. And if I do not report for work, then le Docteur Laporte will again underpay me at the end of the month.”
“But you have a board in your bed. We’ll put you on the bed and we’ll all sit in the bedroom.”
The handsome man laughed, unamused. “Your friend,” he said to Mrs. Redden, “wants to run my life.”
“Ivo, please,” Peg said. “At least lie on the settee.”
“The settee is too soft,” Ivo said. He kept smiling at Mrs. Redden. “Did you have a pleasant journey from London, Madame?”
“I flew from Ireland, as a matter of fact.”
“Ah, Ireland.”
Tom Lowry began to hand around the thimble glasses. Peg had risen from her kneeling posture and still stared at the man on the floor, as though there were no other people in the room. “Are you trying to tell me something, darling?” she said. “Are you in a bad temper?”
“No, my dear, I am in a very good temper.”
“Well then, do get up.”
Tom Lowry, beckoning Mrs. Redden to a seat, smiled as though to reassure her not to heed this tiff.
“It’s Sheila’s one night in Paris,” Peg went on. “It can’t be much fun for her to sit here with you lying on the floor like that.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” Mrs. Redden said, unwisely, and looked again at the Yugoslav: he had dark eyes; he really was handsome, she decided, but at the same time he was one of those men she was afraid of, the kind who looked as though they might be cruel to you. He turned back to her now, smiling at her, ignoring Peg, holding up his thimble glass of liqueur in a toast. “Nasdrovie,” he said to Mrs. Redden. “And welcome to Paris.”
All watched as he tried the impossible: to bring the thimble glass to his lips and knock it back, without lifting his head from the carpet. At the last second, a little of the liquid trickled down the side of his mouth. Peg, who had retired to sit dejectedly by the small writing desk, rose up at once, opened her handbag, and took out a handkerchief, kneeling by him once more, dabbing at his chin.
“Please!” he said, turning his head away. But she insisted on finishing her task.
“How long have you had this flat?” Mrs. Redden asked Tom Lowry.
“Oh, it’s Ivo’s place, really. He just lets me sleep on the settee.”
“Well, I must say the pair of you are very tidy.”
“Ivo, get up!” Peg said suddenly.
Ivo smiled, but did not move.
“All right, then. If you can’t receive visitors properly, Sheila and I had better go home.”
Mrs. Redden looked at Ivo, saw the blood come up under his skin. Peg turned to her. “Ready, Sheila?”
Mrs. Redden stood, embarrassed.
“You are flying on to the Riviera tomorrow, Madame?” Ivo asked.
“Yes. To Nice.”
“Ah, the land of sunshine. I cannot say as m
uch for this city. Gray, gray every day. It is no wonder people here cannot keep their temper.”
“I am not in a bad temper,” Peg said. “But I’m going home. Good night, Tom.”
“Thanks for the drink,” Mrs. Redden said to both men.
“Not at all,” said the face on the floor, then turned, basilisk, to Peg. “I apologize. You are in a good temper. It just pleases you to spoil my evening and perhaps this lady’s evening as well.”
“Good night,” Peg said, turning and going out of the room. Mrs. Redden smiled awkwardly at the men and went to follow.
“I’ll show you out,” Tom Lowry said. “You’ll need help with the courtyard light.”
“Good night, Madame,” Ivo said. “Enjoy the sunshine.”
Light flooded the courtyard as though it were some huge fish tank, revealing Peg hurrying, halfway across the open space, impatient to be gone. They caught up with her by the locked street door. “Listen,” Tom said. “Why don’t you go back and have a word with him? I’ll take Sheila home.”
“No bloody fear. Sheila’s only night here, and that selfish bastard has to put on an act.”
“Peg, if you don’t make up now, it will drag on for weeks. Please, go back in there.”
The courtyard light went off. Tom Lowry disappeared to find the switch. When the light flashed on again, Mrs. Redden looked at Peg and saw she was wavering, so said, “Listen, go ahead. I’ll walk down to the Atrium and wait for you there.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind? Oh, he doesn’t mean to be such a pain in the neck. The bloody man can’t help himself. It’s some sort of Yugoslav machismo nonsense.”
“Of course I don’t mind. Go on.”
“I’ll go with Sheila,” Tom Lowry said. “That way you’ll have privacy. We’ll see you later at the Atrium.”
Peg smiled. “You’re both great.”
And so, minutes later, Mrs. Redden was walking down a Paris street with this boy she had just met, the pair of them beginning to laugh, helplessly.
“Ivo, get up!” Mrs. Redden cried.
“The land of sunshine!” he said, and they laughed. She turned to him, seeing him toss his long dark hair, his eyes shining, his walk eager, as though he and she were hurrying off to some exciting rendezvous. And at once she was back in Paris in her student days, as though none of the intervening years had happened, those years of cooking meals, and buying Danny’s school clothes, being nice to Kevin’s mother, and having other doctors and their wives in for dinner parties, all that laundry list of events that had been her life since she married Kevin.
