by A. P.
At four o’clock, the great arrival. Aimée, chiefly through the agency of Mme Goujon, I suspect, had somehow in the meantime got her housewifely asparagus bundled up again and fastened with a hasty cordon. The guest bedroom had been made up tidily, with books and flowers on the bedside table, and on the bed, embroidered linen sheets in only the palest shade of off-white. Inpensable, she warbled at me as she added the final touches, to send my father to a hotel. With Christopher’s parents it was different, they were flying out together and would be staying the night at the Lion d’Or, but a man alone – tout seul comme ça …
So Christopher’s mother and father were arriving too. It was the first I had heard of this. A veritable epidemic of anxiety seemed to have broken out among our parents. Well, that accounted for the sudden upswing on the housekeeping front: Aimée was aiming to placate her clientele. The salon was dust-free for a change, or almost, the gilt spots on the screen glinting brightly in the zebra-crossing strips of daylight, the Aubusson carpet exhibiting – although again, only where the tongues of light struck it – hitherto unsuspected traces of green and pink. Tea was set out in the dining room on a lavish scale by Aimée’s standards: biscuits, squares of local chocolate, crystallised fruits, sticky little petits fours on silver platters that had only faint shadowings of tarnish mixed with polish in the embossments. All the foodstuffs my father most disliked, but it was the thought process that counted, and that had not been stinted. Aimée’s hair sported a dash of pink too when you observed it closely: presumably the excitement of a male house-guest had sent her rushing to the henna pot.
Look who’s talking: I had made a grudging effort myself, at least to the extent of changing out of my much criticised fisherman’s jersey. I had always liked meeting my father when we had been separated for a while, always looked forward to it, even when I was officially at odds with him. Always looked forward to showing him off to people who didn’t know him, catching their little starts of surprise and pleasure: he was so much taller than I, so much thinner and more elegant, it threw them. Those who did know him were fun to watch too – particularly the nuns when he used to come and fetch me from the convent. Nuns are not supposed to be flirty, but his presence set them fluttering like so many cooped-up chickens with a fox in the offing. The Reverend Mother, who in her Irishness shared his enthusiasm for the turf, once even greeted him by his nickname – although from her horror-struck expression afterwards I think it must have shot out by mistake. Not Michael, which would have been daring enough, but Mickey. This, just to show his appeal – how strong it was, and how it winged in on such varied targets, taking effect more or less right across the whole female board. Only my mother seemed to have eluded its range, but at prohibitive cost.
Aimée was ravie – that was her word for it, repeated endlessly over the next half-hour as, in the role of hostess, she greeted her guest, bustled him inside, plied him with food, showered him with compliments, showed him to his room and generally made an elaborate French fuss of him. Ravished, transported, enraptured, carried away. My own feeling of happiness was more down to earth: not a carrying away but a carrying towards. The moment I heard the wheels of the car on the gravel I rushed outside and, hardly waiting for my father to get out of the car, flew into his arms and buried my face in the folds of his beautiful cream silk shirt. A bit hot from the drive, but he smelt so nice, so familiar, so safe. These arms had shielded me before from a host of dangers – intrusive strangers, jealous dogs, stroppy yearlings, once even a furious plover whose nest I had trodden on by mistake – and just as surely they would shield me now.
When Aimée finally left us alone together I plumped myself down on the edge of the bed while he did his unpacking. It was amazing the amount of stuff he’d brought with him: even a dinner jacket, even his smart patent-leather evening shoes. And at his, Off you go then, my poor baba, tell me exactly what the trouble is, I went through the entire chronicle of my woes from start to finish.
He didn’t comment except to frown a bit when I described Aimée’s Peeping Puss habits during the soirées, didn’t interrupt, didn’t laugh, didn’t do anything except go on quietly with his unpacking and let me talk.
When I’d finished, i.e. when the telling and reality intersected one another on the crux of the present moment – So that’s what we’re up against, you see. Three of them, if not four, if not more – he sat down beside me and took me into his arms and rocked me for a while, to and fro in very small excursions. An inch each way, if that.
My poor baba, my poor overwrought baba, what a lot goes through this busy old noddle.
A lot of nonsense is what you mean, I said, half-laughing, half-crying, still keeping my face turned inward, towards his chest.
His arms tightened around me. No, no, I never said that. I’m not going to disbelieve you, my love. Never, never, never. I can see you’re serious, can see you have worked yourself up into a big, big state about this poor sick friend of yours. On the other hand – and the hug grew just a fraction slacker so that I knew some kind of disavowal was coming – I’m not going to believe you either, not outright, not straight away, because you wouldn’t really respect my judgement much if I did. Isn’t that so? Well, isn’t it? Be honest, isn’t it?
I nodded, but more to please him than out of any conviction. What I would have preferred to see him do was what vampire-slayers did in films: whip out a hawthorn stake from his suitcase and brandish it in the air shouting, ‘Tremble, vile creatures of the night!’ But then, on reflection, perhaps not; perhaps a balanced approach was in the end more reassuring.
Good. That’s more like my bottle. Now, listen, what I’m going to do is this: I’m going to act as if I believe you – all along the line. Right? Anything you want me to do – within reason. I’m not going round sticking wooden stakes into people at the drop of a hat, obviously not, but anything reasonable that you want me to do to make you feel protected against these fears of yours, real or imaginary, I will do. You want me to sit up all night outside the house of … what’s her name again? … Sabine, and make sure no vampires climb up the drainpipe and no bats fly in her window? Fine, I will sit up. With my bat-swatter. You want me to try and persuade her mother to let her come and stay with us in England? No problem, I will do that too. You want me to stay on here with you till you feel safe about travelling? I brought the car for that very purpose. No ties, no tickets, we can leave when you are ready to do so and not before. Is that a bargain?
Yes, I said, and then corrected myself quickly. No, it wasn’t, not yet, not until I heard my bargain part. He would do all this for me, and I loved him for it and was deeply, deeply grateful, but what did he want me to do in return?
Nothing, he said, just to be quiet and reasonable and stop letting my imagination run away with me. And not to do anything dotty in public to disgrace him, like panicking or screaming or throwing garlic round the shop or making wild accusations. He had been invited to the party at the de Vibreys’ that evening, apparently. Now, the Marquis, vampire or not, was a friend, or at least a close acquaintance – he was in fact more of a friend of Teddy’s but it came to much the same thing – and he was also stuffed to the gills with lovely foreign lolly, so the plan was to flog him a share in this colt he and Teddy had recently bought together. Colts were so expensive to keep in training. Like boys. Much better to have bottles. Provided they kept their heads and didn’t go to pieces at the sight of a dusty cat and some old newspaper cuttings. So, the bargain was this: I was to come along with him to the party on my best behaviour – yes, right into the vampire stronghold, if that was the way I wanted to put it. The son was bound to be there, so we needn’t have any worries on that account, in fact it meant we could keep a closer eye on him – on the lot of them for that matter. And afterwards we would drive to Sabine’s, if it would put my mind at rest, and spend the whole night there if necessary, sitting in the car, guarding the place against intruders.
I was almost reassured by this plan but not quite.
Viola, my love, I have lived a long, long time, much longer than you have. Do you trust your old dad, or don’t you? Who took you to see those X-rated films when you were under age and gave you a cigarette to hold so that the girl at the box office would let you in? I did. Who watched while you hid your eyes in your hands, and told you what was going on? I did. Test me if you don’t believe me. Tell me a procedure for tackling vampires that I don’t know already. Go on, try me.
I was silent, running through the list of methods in my head. I could remember only four, all of them – except for the rice, which I had already mentioned – extremely well known, even to someone as vague on the subject as my father.
You see? You can’t. I’ll tell you one though which may make you laugh: they live so bloody long they can be killed by boredom.
XVIII
Homecoming
If I think of that evening – force myself to think of it, because no way can it float casually into my mind like other thoughts: the barrier is far too thick – I see the forecourt of the Château de Vibrey again, emptier and darker than it was on the day of the hunt, but still quite full, although of cars this time, and still quite bright, even in its nocturnal dress. I see the light of lantern flames licking against the yews, turning the foliage a thick dark bronze that I have only encountered before on ballet shoes, never on leaves.
I see two liveried footmen on either side of the curved stairway that leads to the entrance, looking as if they have stepped from an illustrated fairy tale and are dead ashamed of the fact, each holding another lantern on a pole. I see light of a different metallic hue, yellower, brassier, streaming from the doors and windows and falling in colder, almost moon-coloured, geometrical patterns on the flagstones. As we cross them I see the shine of my father’s patent-leather party slippers, hear them emit a tiny squeak as he walks, and feel the dry warmth of his hand in mine. His hands are never sticky, not even on a torrid night like this one; his nails, though nicotiney, are always clean; he smells of scent and soap and tobacco smoke. The rich, solid, comforting, bourgeois smell of someone who knows how to tame a savage world and harness it to his advantage.
We are entering a dangerous place, an arena full of predators, maybe even a trap, but my trust in him is complete. As we mount the stairs, he and I in front, Christopher following with his parents (who look drab in comparison and out of place, having had no time to change), and Aimée in sequins twittering along behind, I think to myself that if he were to die, if my father were to die, I would feel as if there were no floor beneath my feet, no ground, no supporting surface at all; I would stagger and I would fall for ever. Quite apart from this rescue mission, which is hopefully a one-off, who would undo life’s lesser knots for me when they snarled? Particularly the red-taped ones which scare me almost as badly. Who would check my bank statements? Who would know what debentures were? Who would speak to solicitors and lawyers? What if I get into debt and need to raise a mortgage? How on earth do you raise a mortgage and what do you do with it once it is risen? Last time I saw him, my heart full of Sabine, I thought I could do without him, but I see now I was wrong. The opposite is the case: without him I would lose everything, Sabine included.
I squeeze his hand and he squeezes mine back and whispers: What did the earwig say when he went over the cliff? (He loves daft jokes like that. A mean old Count. My enema the douche. Nicholas II was bizarre.)
Earwigo, I reply, all dutiful and conniving again, as if I had never been otherwise.
Earwigo, then.
And we step through the portals of the Vampires’ Castle, under the noses of a second pair of unhappy torch-bearers – no, halberd-bearers in this instance – and into the fray.
Polanski’s film with the famous ball scene came out years later, so I can’t have been reminded of it then, but my mind now serves me up a false and vivid impression that I was. There were no mirrors to betray us, all wall-space being given over to those ubiquitous gory Gobelin hangings of the chase – a galerie de chasses and not de glaces – and yet I remember clearly, or think I do, that my first act on entering was to look round for one in terror, convinced that, as it was for Polanski’s hapless vampire-hunters, it would be the medium of our downfall. Why this pastiche? Why this confusion? Simple, because in common with the film’s characters – no matter how much later on I saw it – I had that same feeling of nakedness, of exposure, of being part of a tiny camouflaged minority whose cover may at any moment be blown. ‘All eyes turned to look at us’ would be a slipshod way of putting it; eyes don’t turn anyway, heads do, but as our little group joined the fringe of the assembly, there was a discernible swivelling of attention in our direction. I caught several haughty looks, disparaging but curious all the same. What-has-the-cat-brought-in looks, I am tempted to call them, seeing that it was Aimée who effectively ushered us into the room, only now there is no more time for word games, we are drawing too close to the quick.
Rapid assessment of numbers was not as then my forte. It was not a big gathering though, that much I could tell – thirty-five, forty people, fifty at the outside. Their ages? Well, of course that’s a difficult one to establish, always, but I would say, trying to look back without the interference of hindsight, that what struck me even then was the middling nature of the age factor: no old people and, apart from Christopher and myself and the de Vibrey offspring, very few young either.
Middling, too, was almost every other aspect of their appearance. I’d been keyed up for the Grand Vampire Jamboree, and was still hanging on to my father’s hand on that account, much as if, like Theseus with his ball of string, my safe delivery from danger depended on this link alone, but after a few seconds’ observation I found myself shaking free quite spontaneously in order not to look foolish in his eyes. Or anyone else’s for that matter. What had I expected? Exactly what my film-fed imagination had led me to expect: i.e. first and foremost glamour, style, no matter how crummy such details as hemlines and fingernails might turn out to be on close inspection. I had pictured to myself reds, purples, silks, velvets, boas, shawls, the works. Colours in superabundance: long amber cigarette holders resting on vermilion lips, wings of peacock-blue eyeshadow over black-rimmed bloodshot eyes. That was the hallmark of the vampire community, surely? Their dash, their campness, their love of the baroque.
Here, instead, was provincial comme il faut France. A parcel of trim cocktail-dressed women, sleek and black and uniform as starlings, interspersed with, rather on the poultry side, a sprinkling of dowdy Mme de Vallemberts in beige brocade plus pearls. The male contingent even drabber. Dr la Forge and two dozen or so replicas of same – professionals, notaries, notables – hardly noticeable at all in their dark crocheted ties and grey pinstripe suits. Monochrome were it not for, on this or that sober lapel, the minute red button of the Légion d’Honneur bleeping its discreet signal of distinction. True, Aimée’s sequins added a bit of glitter, and the Marquis was wearing a velvet smoking jacket, but it was matt and mole-coloured and gave off not a spark of panache until you got close enough to see the material. And even that looked too new for real elegance.
The Marquis clasped my father in a politician’s bear hug, empty and showy (or so it seemed to me), making urgent signals with his eyebrows to the Marquise over my father’s shoulder. Le cher Miqui, le cher Miqui. Enfin, ici, chez nous. I could well imagine both husband and wife referring to him in private as a parvenu. When, after greeting Christopher’s parents and granting another half-hug to Aimée, who nearly climaxed in consequence, he turned his attention to me, I bowed my head in apparent modesty, but in fact in order to avoid another nose-tap. An
ything but that, you old smoothie, I thought, even my jugular but not that.
We are so delighted to have you all with us on this … this … ah, well, I’ll save my oratory till we come to the toasts – this very special evening. Is that not so, my dear?
The Marquise, who had joined us with a rapid glide after the semaphore business with the eyebrows, nodded and bared a set of regular and pretty teeth that didn’t deceive me for an instant. To be that rude and that polite together must take, literally, centuries of practice. She extended fingertips all round, blowing a tiny long-distance kiss to my father when she came to him; it was a wonder it didn’t freeze his cheek.
