by A. P.
The mare the Marquis had lent me was fast and willing and knew the route by heart, so we were among the first to reach the clearing and I was granted a ringside view of everything that followed. I watched the whippers-in struggle with the hounds, trying to leash the bossier and more obstreperous first so as not to lose control of the rest and spoil the huntsman’s timing. I watched the stag, sealed off from the world already by his fear, stand in the shallow water that had betrayed him and observe incuriously his fate approach. I watched the huntsman board a tiny flat-bottomed coracle, armed with a knife and a gun that he kept switching from hand to hand as if undecided about which to use. Or which to use first. I watched him, after a few vain attempts to lasso the stag by the antlers, settle for the gun. Then, with his weapon at the ready, I watched him glance at the Marquis, who nodded, as much as to say, Yes, we are all assembled, go ahead, and I watched the huntsman nod in reply, take aim and fire, and I watched the stag start and buckle and sink into the water with barely another sound.
I felt nothing all this time – why should I, a hunt veteran like myself? No dismay, no repugnance, nothing save the awareness of an empty space inside me – a new space which one day feeling might occupy. Almost as if the stag had snagged my heart with his wide antlers when he fell and made it larger. I was relieved, but in a conventional way, because good marksmanship was a thing to admire and bungling a thing to deprecate, that the huntsman had wielded his gun better than the rope. As yet it went no further than that.
Or did it? The kill signalled a pause, a shift in group behaviour. From silent spectators everyone turned chattery. People dismounted, cigarettes were lit, and backs were courteously turned on the next part of the proceedings: the retrieval and dismemberment of the carcass. Every back, that is, except mine. I don’t know why but I went on watching, still in this vacant-minded spirit: no emotion, just a moral question mark or a row of moral dots. I watched the flaying of this prey that had cost us zero skill and effort to capture, and I watched the dismemberment and I watched the dressing. I saw the skin and head and antlers being severed from the body, and the hooves, or slots as they’re called in hunting jargon, being struck off neatly at the bone but with little strips of skin left floating, ready for plaiting into trophies later; and I saw the meat parts being removed and piled into the wagon. Then I watched as the offal and leftovers were heaped into a steaming pile and covered with the carpet of the skin, to which the head and antlers remained attached, giving the impression there was another animal – an ugly lumpish one of human manufacture – in place of the graceful natural creature that had stood there so shortly before.
Obscenity is a function of culture – a function in the mathematical sense, I mean, its value changing with that of the variables on which it depends. Once the covering up of the entrails was completed the audience swung round again, almost of one accord, and took up its attentive stance. Cigarettes were stamped out, conversations halted, horses remounted. Butchery was something to avert the eyes from but the next item on the programme was evidently not. It was ceremony again, it was a time-honoured part of the show.
(But does time honour things? Sabine would teach me to ask. How? Why? And if it does, ought it to go on doing so? And for how long?)
The huntsman stepped proudly forward, straddling the stag’s neck, or where its neck would have been had it still had one in its clumsy new version, and blew his spit-free horn. The horn blast touched something inside me, some old-fangled switch responsive to its old-fangled sound, and I felt right again. Then, putting away his horn, the huntsman seized the antlers with both hands and whisked the skin aside to reveal the glistening pile of offal. At the very same moment the whippers-in slipped the hounds they had been restraining, and the whole pack surged forward and plunged onto the booty in a tugging, growling, slurping, yelping, struggling, slavering mass.
Fragments of the hounds’ meal and the deer’s earlier meal flew everywhere. The Marquise, who was standing close by me, prudently replaced her goggles. But not before I’d caught a look of most unladylike relish cross her face: three parts Schadenfreude, one part greed. She gave a slight start when she saw I was observing her and hastily hitched her mouth into a far politer type of smile. Mademoiselle, she confided to me with frosty archness, I shouldn’t go spoiling my husband’s surprise, but unless I am mistaken I think there is a great honour in store for you in just a little moment. When the trophies are distributed, vous savez. (No, I didn’t savvy anything, but I bet Aimée did; I bet Sabine was right and she and the Marquis had arranged the whole thing beforehand. That was why she was so keen I should take part in the chasse.) If I were you I would dismount now and let my groom here hold your horse for you. Like that you will be free to cross over on foot – she pointed knowledgeably to a knoll on the far side of the canine banqueting floor, where the Marquis and the huntsman were now standing together, sorting through various choice pieces of deer anatomy – to receive your prize. Horses are so silly that way. It’s the smell, you know, they don’t like it.
Don’t they really, Madame, well, à chacun son goût. My prize, my prize. My trophy. I’ve still got it somewhere: a hoof, a slot, much smaller and daintier than you’d expect from such a large animal, mounted vertically on a narrow wooden base, up which runs the plait of skin with a nail on the top, and then underneath, on a dull brass plate: Equipage de Vibrey, Hiver 1958. I don’t recall who was responsible for its curing in the end, but anyway it has lasted well. It bears no exact date, but for those most closely concerned none is needed: for the stag it was his death day and for me the birthday of my love for Sabine. I’m sorry for the stag about this conjunction but that’s the way it was.
VII
Free-falling
You’d think I’d never be a romantic again, not after what happened and with the life I lead now. You’d think cynicism would be part of my survival kit. But it’s not so. I believe in Cupid’s darts and Aristophanes’ apples and in Once-in-a-lifetime and Till-death-do-us-part and the whole darn caboosh, because that is the bittersweet fruit of my experience.
I’ve had other passions since, other affections, other ties, other people who’ve touched my heart and even those who’ve messed around with it – I’m human in that respect, we all are, despite the image – but I’ve never had another love. A child might have filled this empty space, which is why I never had one. No one else to really love, ever, after Sabine.
She was there in the château, sitting in the half-light of the salon correcting homework, when I got back from the hunt, trophy still dangling from my hand. To tell the truth I was at a slight loss as to what to do with this trophy affair. Aimée said there was no taxidermist locally and we’d have to wait until someone going back to Paris was willing to take it for me. The de Vallemberts maybe, or else the Marquis himself: he was always helpful where the needs of a jolie jeune fille were concerned. But meanwhile I was stuck with the thing. I felt impeded and ashamed, like a chicken-killing dog whose victim has been hung round its neck as a deterrent to further raids.
So? Sabine said, scarcely bothering to look up from her work. (That fearsome alors: capable of acting as goad, gibe or growl, depending. Now it was a growl.) Enjoy yourself, scampering through the woods with all the beau monde?
The volume of my ‘no’ made her check a little and she raised her head and looked at me square.
No?
No.
And that was it more or less. The space of three nos. I looked back every inch as square, and this was when it happened. It was the first occasion, since the start of Christopher’s dare, that our eyes had held each other’s gaze for any length of time. Up till then it had been grandmother’s footsteps: a long hard stare to make the other one look, and when she did – or when I did – a quick turning away before we were caught. Probably we had known all along the effect that prolonged eye contact would have, and probably that was why we had shunned it. Shyness, fear of the thing that would grow into being between us. No, not grow, that woul
d burst into being between us. Because that’s what love is, take note all you parched old fogeys with your evolution theories and your gardening theories and your painstaking Lego constructions, block on piddling little block, that’s what love is and that’s how it’s born: fully grown like Minerva. First sight, maybe not, but first look, first real deep look.
And anguish and happiness are born along with it – quite different from the wishy-washy namesakes you have felt before. You suffer a sky change. Your world switches solar systems, a different sun rises on it, shedding a different light: warmer, brighter, more intense. The rose-pink of tradition, no, that’s songwriters’ shorthand, but neither was it la vie en gris any more: it was the dawn of my brief vie en or. I had a much loved pet rabbit when I was little to which I gave the most splendid name I could think of: Goldie. Forbearing smile from my father at this childish choice, but I stuck by it and still do: gold is tops and gold is the colour I will for ever associate with Sabine. Gold hairs on her skin, on her arms and the back of her neck, gold streaks in her hair, gold flecks in those true tortoiseshell eyes of hers that could never lie, never conceal anything, not even with the lids shut. And gold light on everything from that moment on. And all the darker the darkness when the light went out.
I had no time to appreciate these great astronomical developments, however, because at this point, to the surprise of us both, Sabine suddenly snatched the hoof from me and lashed its ribbons of skin across my face.
Hey! That hurt! Why did you do that?
I don’t know. My hand did it for me. Why did you take part in that absurd masquerade ? Why did you let Aimée talk you into it? She does it every year – gets one of her pupils to fill the part, wear the costume, act all simpery with the Marquis: ‘Moi? Oh, merci, Monsieur.’ ‘But not at all, Mademoiselle, you deserve it: so plucky, so capable.’ And all for this … this miserable piece of deer flesh that’d have been better left where it was. I bet he called you his belle amazone anglaise, eh? That’s his usual line. And he generally says it with a leer, too, and a look that goes through all that velvet like it was fishnet. Oh, he gives me the creeps, that man, with his hand-kissing and his phoney Maurice Chevalier smile: Zank Heavens for Leetle Girls. Lucky the son wasn’t there today, or he’d probably have invited you to …
Jealousy. Oh, jealousy in a partner is wonderful. It wraps round you like a fur coat, warm and protective. And all the time our eyes are having quite a different conversation from the one we speak aloud. Will the two eventually blend? Will we have the guts to blend them? I can’t help laughing. Happiness is bubbling up in the bottom of my stomach; it’ll come out eventually, like a belch – I shan’t be able to control it. She is so fierce, so stern; will she take it amiss?
The son? I ask. I didn’t know there was a son. Have we met him yet? Is he one of the snogging group?
You’d know right enough if he was. I’m not sure he isn’t worse than the father. Worse because not so bad, if you know what I mean, not so obvious, subtler. Roland. Roland de Vibrey. Everything going for him, everything on a plate since the moment he was born: looks, brains, charm, smarm, the lot. And money like it shouldn’t flow with aristocrats. Fountains of the stuff. Waterfalls. I am poor, you know that.
Is it possible that I pay attention only to the last part of what Sabine says? Is it possible that that name passes me by like any other, I who pride myself on my receptive antennae? I’m afraid it is. I hardly hear it, I go straight to the money question.
I am rich. My father is rich. What does that mean?
Nothing. It means you’re freer, that’s all. I don’t object to money, I just object to aristocrats having it, because with them it’s been purified by time. The stink’s gone off it. They think it’s theirs by right. They forget what their ancestors had to do to get it – how many people they bled and pushed around.
That’s a pretty grim view. Maybe they earned it.
Yeah. Maybe they won it in a medieval lottery. You’ve got a lot to learn, little amazone anglaise.
OK, Sabine, I think to myself. Grumpy, gold-dusted Sabine who for some weird reason seems to have taken charge of my heart. You’re the teacher, no? Go ahead and teach.
You’re not one of them, though, are you? she goes on. To begin with I thought you were. Despite the hunt and everything, and those clothes you’re wearing and that idiotic boat affair you’ve got on your head, you’re not one of them.
Not one of what?
Not a prisoner. Not a puppet. Not one of those who dance when the dancing master says ‘Dance,’ and stops when he says ‘Stop.’ To the music he chooses. Always the same tune, always the same steps. What do you want from life, Viola?
I don’t know.
And it is true, I don’t. I suddenly realise I haven’t a clue. My father wants me to marry. Marry well. With him it is a self-evident goal. The stink-free money that Sabine has just mentioned is the very thing he wants for me. Not so much out of snobbery or greed; it is more that this quick route to power and status fires his romantic imagination. So far I have unquestioningly gone along with this view, but now I know that I don’t share it and never have done. So? Where does that leave me? What roads are open to me? Which, if any, beckon? Total fog. I have no road map, no one has ever thought to hand me one.
Sabine’s face brightens. You don’t know. That’s good. That’s still more proof you’re not one of them. If you were, you would know, you’d have it all clear in your head: success, money, children, friends, luck, health, happiness, comfort, a nice home, a nice car, a clear conscience on the top of it. All the bourgeois idols – all the pretty little porcelain knick-knacks to set out on your shelf. I’ve got that, I’ve got that, now all I need is that. And when you’ve got them …
I wouldn’t mind being healthy and happy, I tell her, and having lots of friends.
Hah, she scoffs. Nor would I. But there’s more to it than that. We should want everything, is my theory, everything there is on offer. Knowledge, knowledge above all of course, but then that’s how you get it. By tasting everything, cramming everything into you that you come across. Pain, longing, suffering, fury, humiliation – we’ve got to learn about these things too, or we seal ourselves off from the rest of humanity in a soap bubble – a perfumed soap bubble. Which is going to burst anyway in the end, so what’s the point? You can’t grow properly in a soap bubble. You can’t breathe. You stay small and damp and stunted and wheezy, and you’re so scared of breaking it yourself you hardly dare move. That’s not the way to make friends, ma mignonne. Nor the way to stay happy and healthy either, nor …
Learn about them or experience them?
What?
These things you mentioned. Pain, longing, suffering. Learn about them, or experience them?
Tiens, you have a finicky mind, Viola, you could study law with a mind like that. At university too, with proper teachers, instead of just fiddling around like you’re doing now …
Which: learn about or experience?
She shrugs. I don’t know. Whichever it takes, whichever it takes to stay out of the suffocating bourgeois bubble – out of the gas chamber of the soul.
Heavens, she’s earnest. And so different from me it makes me boggle. Love is that as well, I was forgetting: it is taking a huge gamble, staking your all on a single improbable throw, jumping off a cliff and trusting an unknown person to catch you before you hit the ground. Myself, I long to live in a bourgeois bubble. With Sabine, and puff cigars if need be and crop my hair and raise Alsatians – there is nothing I’d like better, but I can’t tell her that yet. Nor can I tell her that she’s all I’ll ever want in the way of a teacher. All I can do is go and have my Omy bath and macerate in my good fortune. I’m hurtling downwards fast but so is she: nothing to fear, we’ll do a double catch act and sweep each other up in our arms to mutual safety well before we crash.
I have often wondered if any of my skin particles came off during that lashing? I wonder if any are still attached to the stag’s, clinging to th
e plait after all these years? The impact was sharp, it’s quite probable a few cells changed places: deer to me, and vice versa. I like this thought: in the end we are all one – prey, predator, victim, aggressor, all one huge jam roll of matter. So it doesn’t matter, Viola, doesn’t matter …
VIII
The Christmas Break
At Christmas we went back to England – all except for Matty who spent the fortnight in Paris with her parents.
I don’t remember whether we trained it or flew, or whether we went all four together or separate. I travelled like an object – a fragile object in a packing case, insulated in the wadding of my love. If the others were with me they took care not to interfere with the wrappings. Young people respect each other that way far more than older ones do: it must have been fairly obvious there was what Aimée called du tendre between me and Sabine – we neither of us took steps to hide it, why should we? – but there had been no more talk of lesbians in my hearing. Nor had I taken any further part in the smooching sessions, but no one seemed to pay particular attention to this or even notice. Except for Tessa, who was quick to nab my winkle-pickers, seeing as I didn’t need them for sitting home reading with Sabine, and Aimée, who viewed this sudden bookish turn of mine with her usual weird relish for all things innocent. Charmant to see two young girls bent over their studies. The de Reblochon boys would miss us, they had arranged a firework display, but there, culture must come before fireworks. Now, look after the cat, please, let it in if it wants, and into the Peugeot with the rest … (Let the cat in? Old hoodwinker, she knew darn well it couldn’t come back till she did. Or could it? That was one little detail I never really fully worked out.) In fascist Italy, said Sabine in a musing voice as the car drove off, they used to have travelling brothels. Wonder if that’s where she got the idea from?
