“And maybe when you go in it will be too late.”
“It’s always too late, Dermot.”
“Yes, the clock’s ticking. The bell tolls.”
18. Dermot & Nana the Troll
Dermot walking along the beach to Nana’s house. He saw her in the distance. Walking towards him. Swinging her hips, the peasant skirt swirling. Nana. The Swedish Troll. The consolation. The drug. The sexual narcosis. She ran the last few yards. He opened his arms and caught her. Instantaneous erection. They came together in a sudden frenzy. Like always. They devoured each other. His hands ran up her thighs. She fumbled for his fly. They stumbled over the high dune and collapsed in a hollow. All sand and sex. Afterwards, the let-down.
Later, in the house Nana interrupted his musing.
She said, “You’re very quiet. What are you thinking?”
“How nice it is to be free.”
“But you’re not free. You’re married.”
“It’s all over bar the shouting.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Yes. But this time it’s final.”
“Where will you live? In Paris? I hate the French.”
“Probably it’s reciprocated. I don’t know yet. It’s all so sudden.”
“Why don’t you go back to Ireland?”
“No shrimps there. No Troll.”
They’re eating shrimps on bread. Those small pink shrimps you get in Denmark. She’s buttering the bread and heaping them up. Holding them to him. He takes a bite; then she follows. Big mouth, evident enjoyment. Oral, voracious.
He loves watching her eating. She understands why. She looks at him. It’s a sex act. Often they play. Eating off each other. Laughing.
There are pictures everywhere. The drawing of her as a little girl. Done when they were living up at Arild in Skane. Her father had not yet joined the family ship-building business in Malmö. He was pretending to be an artist. Had talent. Her portrait in oils as a baby. With her mother, Lisa. Expressionist. Photographs. At seven on her grandfather’s yacht at Marstrand. At seventeen, on Capri. Stunning. Skiing at Zermatt. With Harry, her son, when he was at Le Rosey. Of her daughter. His favorite picture. A photograph of Nana, coming out of the sea at Arild, in a miniscule bikini. 1965. All red-gold, Rusty they called her in swinging London, in Annabel’s, all six-foot-two, freckled thighs, flat stomach and firm breasts. Provocative look. Every move an invitation. Green eyes. Wild, natural hair. Not by any means conventionally beautiful. Slightly crooked nose and twisted mouth, but bold, exuding sexuality.
Shameless. Wanton. An original. Everything about her was alive, challenging, full-blooded. Everyone looking at her. Every man envying him. Isn’t that what it’s about? Now, lying there with a light wrap exposing everything, she didn’t look any different from what she was like in 1964. He remembered taking the picture. And kissing her on the beach after. Sand all over her tummy and in her spun-gold pubic hair. Always laughing. Pretending shy.
“Don’t! People will see us!”
“Do you care?”
“No.”
Nana, nude on the dune at Skagen, cut to show only the long thighs and the line of the pubic bone. Abstract. A brown, speckled composition with three lines breaking it into equal horizontal sections and so over-exposed as to be almost monotone and unreadable. He took it, but no-one knows that. Or about the others, less abstract, which, together with an envelope of gold hair, he keeps locked away in Paris. The impressionist painting of her mother, Lisa, must have been when she was twenty and just before Nana was born. Nana, daughter of Lisa. Like mother, like daughter. Lisa. A delicate beauty. Too delicate to survive.
Nana, the Troll, pregnant at seventeen. Her son, Harry, born in the Hotel Beau Rivage at Ouchy, Lausanne, where all the smart girls went into hidden confinement. Living in a chalet at Gstaad, both husband and young wife unfaithful, she with a Greek shipping heir, and a one-eyed Spanish sherry type. Then, in company with other Scandinavian beauties, in Paris. Picked up on the Champs Elysées by a rich French industrialist. On his yacht to Greece, St. Tropez. Weekends in his house at Grasse when his wife was in Paris. Little trinkets, diamonds and suchlike, collected every weekend and stored in her safety-deposit box at Harrods in London. A squirrel hiding her nuts away against the winter ahead. The family business bankrupt. The trust limited and held for her children. In London, a brief fling, but long enough to produce another baby with guaranteed maintenance from a rich meat importer, grocer on a big scale, peer of the realm with his own motor yacht. Then, free and rich enough, ready to fall, non-conniving, without doing a Dun and Bradstreet on him, into the arms of Dermot McManus.
After, married to Alsen. Finding Hamburg insufferable. A house in La Napoule, a summer house in Gilleleje, an apartment in London.
Suddenly he became restive. Impatient to be away. It came to him in a flash. He had no grip. Ireland. Mouse was right. Of course she was. Why not? Maybe it’s time to go back to his roots. He had avoided the demons long enough. Just one fast trip some years ago.
He said, “Ireland’s a thought.”
Nana said, “Ireland? Oh, I’d love to go there!”
“Yes, well. It may be traumatic but I need to find my origins. I don’t think you’d like it.”
He knew she’d find it socially inadequate. A poor Irish cottage on a lonely hill with old Paddy cutting turf was no substitute for the King’s Bar at Porto Ercole with all those smart Roman playboys ogling her. She often protested that all she wanted was a cottage with roses round the door but the reality was to be an English country lady with a manor in Maidenhead.
“I see. You want to go alone. Well, go! Besides, you’ve been here a whole night and half a day. I don’t mind. I have to go to a party on Fyn tomorrow. With my husband. He’s coming up from Hamburg for it.”
Suddenly he was afraid of losing her. Then there would be nothing.
“Merde. A week at the most.”
“I may not be here when you come back.”
The mood swings again.
She stood and went into the bedroom, slamming the door after her. Well, you can understand it. He followed her into the bedroom and she was on the phone. She was speaking German so he didn’t know who she was calling. But she looked up at him in a dismissive way. It was gone. Again. It’s always like this. Post-coital anger. Normally, a few days later, the call. ‘I miss you.’ And the telephonic orgasm. But there was a limit. Let it not be reached this time, please. Please don’t take my comforter away, mummy. He didn’t like her. There were times when her selfishness and callous treatment made him hate her. He was constantly aware of how immoral she was. But he was addicted. Like to brandy in the old days. He hated it but he couldn’t leave it alone. Who was it said the best sex is with someone you hate? It was true. That was exactly it.
She drove him to Kastrup airport at Copenhagen. She accelerated away as soon as he took his small case out of the car.
He got a ticket to Paris. There was a half-hour to wait for the connection. Just before boarding he telephoned her. He had this need. To have someone. Not to be alone.
“Meet me in Paris?”
“What?”
“Yes. You can get a flight tomorrow morning. I’ll pick you up at Roissy. We’ll get the ferry from Le Havre Wednesday night and be in Ireland Thursday morning. But you have to move!”
“You’re mad.”
“Yes. Mad for you.”
But he knew this was the kind of thing she couldn’t resist. She’d find some excuse. She had a friend living in west Cork. She had friends everywhere. Convenient alibis. Kirstin is sick; I have to go to her. Josephine’s daughter has bulimia; I must go and help her. Nina’s boy-friend has left her; she’s in a mess.
“You may have to keep me if I come.”
“Fine.”
But it wouldn’t be fine at all. She was always trying it on. Wanting him to be prepared to give up everything for her. Not that she wanted to lose her millionaire husband.
He watch
ed the runway slip past, the breakwater, the whitecaps under the wings as they banked over the island of Anholm, the Swedish coast and the white sails of yachts beating up the Sound. The flats and the islands. They were flying low, just under the overcast. He read the coast at Rogbyhavn and the line of the bridge at Fordingborg. The bridge. The image slips again. The river, the body. The past is always with us. Fuck it.
Thursday
19. Armand Clings On
Maître Alain de Malherbe was in Aix at the Tribunal when he heard about the accident. He flew from Marseille airport at Marignane and arrived in Paris late on Wednesday. He drove up to Colonfay and was there by ten on Thursday morning.
He found Armand on the dining-room table, strapped down with his head held in place by sandbags. There was a woman doctor there and the housekeeper. It was obvious that his back and probably some ribs were broken and they were trying to persuade him to go where he could have proper X-rays and treatment. The doctor had given him an injection and he was not in pain. All his principal functions appeared to be in order, pulse slow but blood pressure, heart, etc. working.
“He won’t go until he sees you,” the doctor said. “I hope you can impress upon him the urgent need for hospital treatment.”
“I’ll try. Armand. Can you hear me?”
“Oui, Alain. You must listen to me. Get Dermot. Get Laure.”
He called the Paris number. No reply. He could do nothing until he tracked down Laure or Dermot.
He went out and sat under the cedar of Lebanon. The cracked branch was still hanging down and the ladder lying under it.
The killing tree.
He went back to the house. He called his secretary. He asked her to try and find out where Dermot was working. He knew he had an assignment in Cologne, with a tobacco company because Alain had looked over the contract for him. They would know his whereabouts.
Alain then called another friend in Paris, Hervé, a surgeon, who was a butterfly collector and a great admirer of Armand. He had operated on him when Armand broke the vertebrae a few years ago. He said he’d be up there as fast as his car could carry him. And he would probably get him taken to hospital or even to his clinic in Paris regardless of his obstinancy. He asked to talk to the doctor on the spot and gave certain instructions, saying he’d be there within three hours.
His assistant called back to say Dermot was on a photographic location job in Mexico and wasn’t expected back for a week. The last they heard from him was from the Hotel Villa Montana in Morelia and his assistant was one Madame Grover. Should he attempt to make contact with her there?
“No. Find the number and call me back.”
“I have it.”
He read it out while Alain took it down. It was only four o’clock in the morning in Morelia, but he decided to telephone.
Then he had an idea. He remembered that Laure had a habit of walking to the village of Lourmarin and having a coffee and tartine outside the Café de l’Ormeau. He telephoned and asked the patron whether Madame McManus was outside. He said yes and went to get her.
Alain was shocked when she vehemently refused to come up to see her dying father. He was still shocked when he called the Villa Montana in Morelia.
After an age, the hotel answered, and very reluctantly put him through to Mouse Glover. They said Mr. McManus had checked out and didn’t leave a forwarding address.
20. Mouse to the Rescue
I was in bed. Exhausted. Due to fly out at the crack of a sparrow’s fart. That was not yet.
I answered. “Yes, what bloody insomniac is this?”
“Alain de Malherbe. I’m a lawyer in Paris. I need to speak to Dermot McManus urgently.”
“So do I. So does his client. But none of us is likely to reach him. The bugger’s in Denmark. Or was yesterday.”
“Do you know where?”
“No, I don’t. Up a fjord of sorts. Ho, ho. But I do know he’s going on to Ireland. The only chance is if he calls me or if he calls his answering machine.”
“Will you tell him to call me if he calls you? His father-in-law has had an accident and may be dying. He wants to see Dermot and I’m sure Dermot would want to see him.”
“Of course I will. I shouldn’t be telling you this but there’s a marital crisis and he’s going off the rails.”
“I knew things were pretty strained.”
“Yes, maître. I don’t know why people go in for it. Lampedusa got it right. Fire for one month and ashes for twenty years. Oil and water, the two of them. Fire and ice.”
“Madame Grover, they would be lost without each other. They’re really alike. Me, I’ve been married three times and I can tell you, as you say in English, it’s better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Et la nuit, tous les chats sont gris.”
“Dermot’s as male chauvinist as you, maître. But less refined. He says, you don’t look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire.”
“Madame, I hope we meet some time. Thank you for your help. I’m sorry to have disturbed your sleep.”
“Goodbye, maître.”
So I called his Paris answering machine and left the message. Well, that did it. I knew what was coming next. A request to process the ads and tell the client he got sick in Mexico. Jaundice or Montezuma’s Revenge or some incapacitating disease. I needed Ireland myself. To get away from Cologne and Zurich and even Paris. To smell the river and the cowshit and talk to the real people and get a fast fix of humanity. I decided to go there first and let the photographer take the film to Paris.
21. Laure Rejects the Call
André left early and later Laure walked to the village of Lourmarin, down the field and through the wood. Aware of nature and her own awakened sexuality. Up by the château and to the Café de l’Ormeau. It was her ritual. An hour for coffee and a tartine and a chapter of whatever biography she happened to be reading. She ignored everyone, locals and tourists.
The mad woman looked down at her from her window in the flat above the notaire’s. The Witch. She reads Tarot cards. The old crow in black walked up the street, stopping every few steps. She leant on her stick, looking intently at her. Wondered. What’s she up to? Where’s her husband? That Irishman? The little village policeman nodded respectfully to her as he went up to the mairie.
The patron came out and called her to the telephone. Puzzled, she went in and took the receiver. She didn’t like telephones. The youths playing the pinball machine shouted, made animal noises. She could hardly hear.
She shouted, “Who? Alain? Yes. What? My father, an accident? No! No, I won’t come. Je ne peux pas. Je ne peux pas! I can’t. I can’t. Call Dermot.”
She replaced the instrument, walked out, put money on the table and left. She thought, is there no peace? Is there no escape from the tentacles of the family? Even when they die they blackmail you. ‘You owe me this at least.’ Tomorrow she must pay her debt to Tante Marie. Now she was expected to join the death watch for her father. She hated everything he stood for. She remembered every second of her lost childhood. No companions. An emptiness, deficiency. Isolation with the old fascists. False ideals. Racists.
Murderers. Leaving their stain on her. Indelible. Her life an endless penance for their acts.
She walked back down the rough track past the Renaissance château and sat on the little stone bridge over the stream, the Aigue Brun. Death and violence. And a heritage of guilt. The link between them. She thought of her grandfather, her great-uncle, her Uncle Didier. Her sore vagina. Her hatred of being touched there. Until André. And their victims. Especially Marcel.
Her first and only extra-marital affair. Non-sexual because it just didn’t work after the first time. Marcel, misshapen, even ugly, introspective, but charming and with a brain. Met at Sciences-Po and accidentally again at a lecture at the Louvre.
Never a thought of anything physical at first. But his encyclopedic knowledge of the Mannerist artists and his dedication to her education, plus his gentle, almost fearful care for her
eventually made her almost oblivious to his obvious physical defects. His friends the leading museum curators and art experts of the world. Flattering, flirting.
He wore her like a decoration, a sort of compensation for his homeliness. Proud to be seen with her, to have these august personages think she was his. Beauty and the Beast.
Marcel had been hidden by a family in the Dordogne during the war, literally in the back of a wardrobe. His entire family had been shipped off to Auschwitz and none came back. She lived in fear that he would discover the participation of her maternal grandfather in supporting that ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Foolishly, as a deliberate provocation or to establish her own affiliations, she had taken him to the family home, La Fontanelle, to meet her Uncle René. She had sworn it would be the last time she visited her mother’s home.
It was soon after the death of her daughter, Penelope. Dermot was away a lot and she suspected he had started seeing Nana again. A wall of indifference had descended between them. Antagonism. He was finding excitement elsewhere. She was resentful. He was sailing in Scandinavia at this time. Out of touch.
She went with Marcel to see the Ingres in Aix. Her Uncle René had asked her advice about a picture they always said might be a Raphael. Marcel was an an expert on that period of Italian art. So she took him up to La Fontanelle. He was driving a BMW car.
Her uncle met them at the bottom of the steps. He looked at Marcel. He looked at the car.
His first words were, “Une vraie voiture de proxénète!” A pimp’s car.
Secretly, she tended to agree with him. But he had already categorised Marcel. The name Ferdmann and Marcel’s very Jewish face immediately switched on his antipathy. He made it obvious.
He turned aside when Marcel offered to shake hands. When Marcel said he thought it was not a Raphael but was of the period, Uncle René shrugged as if to say, What can you expect of a Jew? He would buy it for a pittance and sell it later as a Raphael, just like that type at the Louvre who had bought a painting for practically nothing and immediately attributed it to Poussin. They were forced by the court to return it to the family who sold it for the proper price.
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