‘Spoilsport. Where’s your heart? Where’s your romantic spirit?’
‘Dead.’
‘Liar.’ Daisy snorts. ‘If it was that easy to switch off our emotions, we’d all do it. Sadly, we can’t, we can only pretend we have. Some people do a pretty good job of seeming inhuman, but their heart is always still beating in there somewhere, however faint.’
‘Humph,’ Viola says, thinking of Jacques. ‘Maybe.’
They fall into silence again, watching the film, until the ring of a phone startles them both.
‘Who’s that?’ Daisy asks, then brightens. ‘Maybe it’s Mat-e-ou.’
‘How would I know,’ Viola says, ‘I’m not psychic.’
‘Well, it’s not for me,’ Daisy says, as Viola stands to locate the phone. ‘No one I know would call on Christmas Day.’
‘Hello?’ Viola says.
‘Happy Christmas, Vi,’ Henri says.
‘Not really. I bet it is for you, though.’
‘How do you know?’ Henri asks. ‘Perhaps I didn’t win.’
‘Oh, I’ll bet you did,’ Viola says. ‘Didn’t you?’
A pause. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You’re very unwelcome.’
Henri laughs. ‘You’re not feigning anything, I respect that.’
‘Well, you hardly won fair and square now, did you?’
‘I agree,’ Henri says. ‘Though it wasn’t my fault. I’d have much preferred to have beaten you fair and square.’
‘Oh, touché,’ Viola says. ‘Touché.’
‘Jacques is a dick,’ Henri says. ‘What he did was very uncool. I tried to talk him out of it but his mind was set.’
‘Dick,’ Viola says, with feeling. ‘Total dick.’
‘Which is why I’m calling.’
Viola laughs. ‘Please, don’t tell me you’re making a … booty call on Christmas Day. That’s a new low, even for you.’
‘No!’ Henri exclaims. ‘I mean, I’m calling because Jacques is a dick, not because I’ve got a big one.’
Viola rolls her eyes.
‘Sorry, couldn’t resist,’ Henri says. ‘Anyway, I’m calling to offer you a job.’
Viola frowns. ‘Jacques is letting you choose your own chefs?’
‘Are you kidding me?’ Now Henri laughs. ‘No, of course not.’
‘Then I don’t understand.’
‘I won the competition,’ Henri says. ‘But I didn’t take the job.’
‘What?!’ Viola’s shriek is so sharp that Daisy looks up. Feeling her mother’s concern, Viola throws her a glance to reassure her, then returns to the phone. ‘But-but why on earth not? Why would you go through all that preparation, everything you did to win, if you were never going to take the job?’
Viola can picture him, his casual shrug, as if it’s all of no consequence at all. ‘To prove I could, of course,’ he says.
‘My, God, you really are an arrogant prick, aren’t you?’ Viola says.
‘Naturally,’ Henri says, unoffended. ‘To excel at anything, but especially in this business, one needs to be – don’t you think?’
‘I’d rather hoped not,’ Viola says. ‘But if you’re anything to go by, then yes I suppose so.’
Henri laughs again.
‘OK, so I’m curious,’ Viola says. ‘If you didn’t take that job, then I know you must have taken a better one.’
Now she can hear his smile. ‘And that’s why I’m calling.’
‘To gloat?’
‘No, you silly girl. To offer you a job.’
Chapter Fifty-Three
But what to do with Gertie? Jude can’t tell her, since it’s too likely that Gertie will insist on coming and Jude can’t have that. However, the alternative is to leave Gertie alone in Gatsby’s while she hurries off to the hospital – an option she’s obliged to reject on both moral and legal grounds. So, what will she do? Jude realises, for the first time, that she doesn’t have a backup plan. If she’s not there, Gertie has nowhere to go. Jude doesn’t have any friends, neighbours, babysitters.
What if, God forbid, something happens to her? Jude realises then she needs to find some extra people, who will love Gertie and – in the event of the unthinkable – would care for her. However, since Jude can’t conjure up such magnificent friends within the hour, she still has to find a solution for tonight. Unless, of course, she doesn’t go at all. Unless she lets her father slip into the darkness alone.
As they eat dinner then get ready for bed, Jude finds that she’s making the decision by default. She’s not saying anything to Gertie and she’s not planning on slipping out onto the streets in the dead of night. Which means she won’t be going at all. This choice, unsurprisingly, gives Jude a great sense of relief – relief so powerfully palpable that it’s almost untainted by the lick of guilt that singes its edges.
Jude glances at the globe that now sits beside her bed. It’s the last thing, excepting her niece, that she looks at before closing her eyes. And Jude wonders how her exquisite talisman, with its intricate carvings, its delicate hand-painted countries and continents, might answer her wish.
‘Goodnight, Gertie.’
‘Goodnight, Aunt Jude.’
And she switches off the light.
At just past three o’clock in the morning, Gertie wakes her aunt. Jude blinks into the unexpected light.
‘What is it?’ She sits up, blinking. ‘Are you OK? Is everything OK?’
Gertie shakes her head, clutching the silver hummingbird in her left hand and laying her right on Jude’s leg.
‘What’s wrong, sweetheart?’
‘I had a nightmare and I can’t find it. I can’t find it.’
‘You can’t find what, sweetheart?’
‘The—’ She eyes Jude, as if not sure she can trust her with the truth.
‘What is it? You can tell me.’
‘You promise you won’t get upset?’
‘Yes, of course, I promise,’ Jude says.
‘The … thing, the talisman, for Granddad. I need to find it before he dies and I can’t, I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t.’
Jude feels the tug in her heart. ‘Oh, sweetheart – but, why do you need to do that? Why do you need to give him a talisman?’
Gertie frowns. ‘I can’t … I don’t know, I just do. I just know I need to. OK? I know you hate him, but please understand, please …’
Jude takes a deep breath. Slowly, she nods.
Then Gertie bursts into tears, loud sobs that shake her slight body. Jude reaches out and pulls her niece into her chest. Gertie allows it, pressing her wet face into Jude’s breasts and poking the beak of the silver hummingbird into Jude’s ribs. Jude strokes Gertie’s long curls, until, eventually, Gertie pulls away.
‘I-I …’ she says, still sniffing, ‘I dreamt that Granddad has already died, that I didn’t do it, that he’ll die without it.’
Jude refrains from saying that it’s probably best for everyone that way, since such words wouldn’t be of any comfort to Gertie right now.
Wiping her fists across her cheeks, Gertie pulls herself up and stands.
‘Can we go? Can we go to the hospital? Please?’
Jude stares at her niece. ‘Now?’
Gertie nods.
‘But it’s the middle of the night.’ She glances at the clock newly hung on the wall. ‘It’s half past three.’
Gertie nods again. ‘I know, but he’s going to die soon, I know it, unless he is already. We have to go, we have to go now.’
‘But, why?’ Jude asks, feeling as if she’s having her own nightmare. ‘Why do you want to go? After last time … I don’t understand, I don’t …’
‘Come on, let’s go,’ she says, reaching out her hand. ‘It might be too late, we can’t wait any more.’
It’s the hand that does it. Jude can’t say no to the fingers held out in hope. Suppressing a sigh, she takes her niece’s hand and pushes her
self up off the floor. As they quickly dress, then hurry out of the bedroom, Jude feels a tingle at the back of her neck. She glances back at her globe, her gaze drawn to France.
‘Come on, Aunt Jude.’
Jude feels a sharp tug at her hand. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says. ‘I just …’
‘Come on,’ Gertie begs again.
‘Yes, OK.’ Jude turns back and lets her niece pull her through the open doorway. And, as they hurtle downstairs, Jude feels her stomach lurching and her limbs shivering at the thought that she’s making a huge, huge mistake.
The snow has fallen heavily overnight, collecting in great drifts and, as she peers out of the window, phone in hand, Jude has a momentary surge of hope that the taxis won’t be running tonight due to adverse weather conditions. Sadly, the first company she calls picks up immediately and assures her that the car will be there in fifteen minutes.
Gertie spends the final few minutes tumbling through Gatsby’s on her frantic search for her grandfather’s talisman. A horn honks outside and, as Jude opens the front door, Gertie stops, tapping her head with her hand and giving a delighted yelp.
‘Of course, I’ve got it!’
Gertie doesn’t let go of Jude’s hand during the journey. It’s the most extended physical contact Jude’s had with her niece since they met – can it have been less than a month? Jude can barely remember her life before her niece was in it. The thought of seeing her father again fills Jude with such dread that she wants to focus on absolutely anything else. And the second thought in the queue is, of course, of the globe. And what she saw.
Ten minutes later, they pull up outside the hospital entrance.
‘Twelve pound eighty,’ the taxi driver says in a lifeless tone.
Jude pays him, giving him a large Christmas tip. She steps out of the cab after Gertie scrambles out, almost unable to believe she is back at the hospital, that she hadn’t managed to extricate herself from this nightmare. Perhaps she’s dreaming. If so, she dearly hopes she’ll wake up before she actually has to see her father again.
They drift along the empty cocoons of the hospital corridors and, when they at last reach the intensive care unit, Jude thinks a final reprieve might come in the form of being turned away by exasperated nurses, since four o’clock in the morning is certainly not within the boundaries of acceptable visiting hours. Unfortunately, it’s Dr Ody who answers the intercom. Jude’s heart both sinks and lifts at the sound of him.
When they meet outside her father’s room, the doctor reaches out his hand.
‘Miss Simms, I’m so glad you made it,’ he says, as if her arrival is perfectly normal, as if it might be the middle of the afternoon instead of the middle of the night. ‘I think, I believe he’s in his final hours …’
Jude feels the squeeze of his hand, sending an inappropriate sensation of pleasure into her bones. Gertie looks from her aunt to the doctor and then back again.
‘Shouldn’t we go now, then?’ Gertie says, impatient.
‘Yes, of course.’ Dr Ody glances down at their hands, still intertwined, and lets go. Then he opens the door and steps inside.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Mathieu and Hugo sit on the sofa with Love Actually muted on the screen in front of them and the leftovers of a roasted goose on a plate between them.
‘Uncle François,’ Hugo says, addressing a prostrate figure on the carpet beneath their feet. ‘You’ve rolled onto the remote. I can’t hear the film.’
‘Dieu merci pour ça,’ François moans. ‘It’s frightful.’
‘Where’s your Christmas spirit?’ Mathieu teases.
‘I left it in Paris,’ François retorts, ‘in the safekeeping of this rather delicious Santa’s little helper I’m currently fuc—’
‘Fran!’ Mathieu interjects.
‘Oops, sorry, forgot about present company, my—’
‘I know what you’re talking about.’ Hugo says, sliding off the sofa. ‘I’m not a kid any more.’
‘Yes, you are,’ Mathieu says. ‘You most certainly are.’
‘Yeah, so?’ Hugo yanks the remote control out from under his uncle’s back. ‘I still know that you’re fucking your girlfriend—’
‘Hugo!’ Mathieu yelps. ‘What the hell?’
François sits up. ‘Girlfriend?’
‘She’s a salope.’
‘Hugo!’ Mathieu shouts again. ‘If you use that word again, I’m going to garrotte you!’ His voice drops. ‘You don’t have to like Viola. I understand that, of course, but you do have to respect her.’
Hugo slumps in front of the television, eyes now glued to the screen, grunts his assent.
‘Vraiment? A salope?’ François grins. ‘I like the sound of that.’ He eyes Mathieu. ‘Have you been holding out on me, mon petit frère?’
‘Oh, stop being so puerile,’ Mathieu says. ‘Anyway, I’d have thought you had quite enough sensation in your own dating life that you didn’t need to muddy the waters with mine.’
François raises an eyebrow. ‘Dating? Don’t tell me you’ve actually seen this woman more than once?’ He claps. ‘Matt, this is marvellous. C’est fantastique! Frankly, I was beginning to think you were a lost cause, that you’d never love again. That you’d die alone surrounded by cats.’
Mathieu gives his brother a cold look. ‘You’re lecturing me about love? You, who’ve never spent more than a single night – if that – with a woman. If you’ve ever even had a relationship, you’ve certainly never mentioned it to me.’
‘Apples and oranges, Matt. We’re different beasts, you and I,’ François says. ‘You need to be loved. You need deep and meaningful. All I need is—’
‘Fran,’ Mathieu warns, nodding at Hugo, who’s pointedly ignoring them both and focusing on the film. ‘We know very well what you need, so let’s not put it into words, OK?’
François shrugs. ‘Just thought I could give you a vicarious thrill, since I’m guessing you’re not getting many of your own yet. Let me guess, you’re still plucking up the courage to kiss her?’
‘Piss off,’ Mathieu says. ‘I’m not twelve. We’ve already … In fact, the other night I took her to a posh hotel for the night.’
Grinning, François sits up a little straighter. ‘Oh, brother, I didn’t think you had it in you any more. Do tell.’
‘That’s an inappropriate request for so many reasons,’ Mathieu says. ‘Most of all because I’m a gentleman and—’
‘A spoilsport,’ François offers. ‘Fair enough.’ He makes a show of stretching out like a cat to lay on the floor once more. ‘If you’re going to be boring, then I’m going to go back to my dreams. At least I know I’m sure to have some ungentlemanly entertainment there.’ He closes his eyes with a sigh. ‘I might even dream about you and your salope in that hotel room, so—’
‘Shut up,’ Mathieu snaps. ‘You are truly disgusting.’
‘Oh, I do hope so,’ François mumbles. A few seconds later he’s snoring.
Mathieu returns to the television, where that bloke whose name he can’t remember, who played Mr Darcy in that BBC adaptation of that Jane Austen novel he can’t remember, is standing in a restaurant and proposing in mangled Portuguese to a waitress. He glances over at Hugo, who’s now no longer fixed to the film as an act of protest but is actually absorbed in the story. Mathieu watches his son, wishing that he was still the little boy who once thought his father was Superman, whose eyes lit up whenever he stepped into a room, even if he’d only been gone a few minutes. Mathieu longs for such uncomplicated times. Even with the sleep-deprived nights, the ragged hours of colicky screaming, the foggy stumbling through exploding nappies and projectile vomiting and endless streaming noses, still Mathieu wishes he could have frozen his son in time as a perpetual three-year-old.
Mathieu sighs. And, since Hugo is so absorbed, he takes a chance. Slowly, he inches across the sofa until he’s side by side with Hugo, then he leans back at an angle, his head propped up on the armrest. Soon, Mathieu’s watching the film
, which, to his surprise, is rather engaging. At one point, he’s even forced to brush something from his eye. And then, Mathieu is given his Christmas miracle: when the film ends, Hugo leans back against the sofa. When he finds that he’s leaning against his father instead, he doesn’t pull away but stays, nestling into Mathieu’s chest and falling asleep.
Chapter Fifty-Five
As Jude follows Dr Ody into the room, Gertie tripping at her heels, she thinks her father has already gone. The room is so empty, so still, as if not a single breath has been taken in quite some time.
‘He’s awake,’ Dr Ody says. ‘He’s in and out, but he’s lucid.’
Before Jude can stop her, Gertie breaks away, sprinting across the room to her grandfather’s bedside. Reluctantly, Jude follows, as Dr Ody steps out.
The man she sees in the bed looks little like her father and, for a moment, Jude’s struck with a stab of longing – but for what, for whom? Perhaps for the imagined, ideal father she hoped her real father might one day turn into. And now that he’s about to die, that dream will finally die too.
‘I brought you something, Granddad,’ Gertie is saying. ‘Something to help you go to heaven.’
A smile flits onto Arthur Simms’ face. A tiny, strained, self-deprecating smile. ‘I … I’m afraid it’s too late for heaven, little girl.’
Jude watches her father’s face. Are those really tears? As she leans forward, Jude can feel that all the fight has left him, as if his spirit is slowly seeping from his body, ready to leave the empty shell of his body behind. And, even though she’s always hated her father’s brutal strength, Jude can’t help but pity his weakness now.
Arthur Simms looks up at his daughter. ‘Right, Jude?’ His voice is a whisper on the air. ‘I think I’m headed straight for hell.’
To her surprise, Jude feels her eyes fill. Yes, she could say. Yes, you fucking well are. She would have said this yesterday. She would have said this an hour ago. But, somehow, the man lying before her now is not the same man she has hated all her life. The man she would have hurled straight through the gates of hell with her own bare hands if she had the power to do so. She wonders where he’s gone. What’s happened to him?
The Patron Saint of Lost Souls Page 18
