The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

She shook her head.

  “One of fate’s crueller tricks. Do you believe in God?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you a Catholic? I’ve never asked.”

  “No. I took the religion of my father. And you?”

  “If God exists he should be ashamed of himself; or hand over to somebody younger and retire gracefully.”

  “You say such funny things.”

  “It’s one of the least funny things I can think of. I can see nothing amusing in this bloody awful world.”

  “You carry it all on your shoulders.”

  “At least you do something about it. Writers can only stand and watch, thankful that there will always be someone fetching the water to put out the fire. Afterwards we will write about it. Six million annihilated and what is it? Grist to our mill. We can only be grateful that there are those who are doctors, who serve on committees, fight our wars.”

  “Think of the pleasure you give to readers all over the world.”

  “One bowl of rice in India would do more good than the million words I shall write before I die.”

  “I think you take life too seriously, my Oscar.”

  “Is it not serious?”

  “You cannot put the world to rights single-handed.”

  “I know. I just feel that I should.”

  Marie-Céleste put her arms round him and kissed him on the lips.

  “What was that for?”

  “To stop you feeling sorry for yourself.”

  “I like it. Do it again.”

  It was a long while since he had had arms flung spontaneously round his shoulders, a mouth pressed uninvited and enthusiastically to his. True, he did not come home daily from the office like traditional husbands to their wives but in recent years it had been no more than a peck on the cheek from Karen before she grabbed her apron or the oven cloth after work, talking and asking simultaneously about whether they had delivered the oil or if Rosy had remembered to take her tap shoes to dancing.

  “I feel better now, Doctor!” he said when they had disengaged. “Is it a treatment you prescribe frequently?”

  “Every day. And it works for all but the most serious complaints.”

  “If I consulted you would you prescribe it for me?”

  “Of course.” She grinned. “But I should send the district nurse.”

  The Blue Bar at Cannes bore as much resemblance to La Palette at St Paul as a pink hibiscus to a plastic palm. After lunch they returned with Marie-Claire to the flat. Marie-Céleste went into the bedroom to telephone Ernest about the arrangements for the following day. Oscar listened miserably to her saying yes she had a wonderful time, felt very rested (ha!) and did he want a word with Marie-Claire? (proof of alibi).

  Marie-Claire took the phone and Marie-Céleste said: “He’s meeting me at the airport.”

  “Sending the car?”

  “Personally. He’s cancelled his meeting.”

  “Silly twit! Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. Today is a strain.”

  “Shall I go for a walk while you natter with your aunt?”

  “That would be tactful.”

  “Shall you tell her about…?”

  “I tell her everything…well almost everything…certainly that.”

  Driving back to Villefranche Oscar said: “What did she say when you told her?”

  “She said she guessed. As soon as she saw me the other day. I believe her.”

  “I wonder if that’s what she meant when she said goodbye to me last time. She came out of the lift, remember? She kissed me and said ‘I hope everything will come right, Oscar; everything!’ It was the way she added ‘everything’. Yes, I think she knew.”

  “She never had any children. For her it will be like a grandchild. She is excited.”

  “Bully for her!”

  “Oscar.”

  “I’m sorry. I just want that child, everything about you to be mine. I’m jealous, possessive, you must have realized…” He swerved suddenly towards the cliff as a tiny Simca overtook them on the bend.

  “Silly bastard. We’ll probably find him upside down in five minutes. I remember when I used first to drive through France on the old RN7, before they built the Autoroute du Sud, you saw more crashes than road signs. The bloody petrol lorries used to play games on the narrow roads, particularly if you had English number plates. Kept to the centre of the road not letting you overtake without danger to life and limb, mile after mile after mile…or should I say kilometre. Now you just die of boredom between the tolls and the Jacques Borels. Next time we’ll drive down, you and I. Haven’t done it in years without Rosy wanting to wee every five minutes or Daisy feeling sick or both of them squabbling over some triviality on the back seat and Karen saying stop it the two of you Daddy’s trying to concentrate on driving and it’s a very dangerous road…by God! There he is!”

  In front of them was the grey Simca, not upside down as Oscar had predicted but squashed like a concertina against the giant bonnet of a heavy lorry.

  Oscar was about to drive on but Marie-Céleste said: “Stop.”

  He pulled in by the side of the road.

  The lorry driver, blue-overalled, stood stunned by the door of his cab reiterating the same phrase.

  “What is he saying?” Oscar said.

  “To put it politely the Simca took the bend on the wrong side of the road and drove straight into him.”

  “I believe him. There were two people in there. I saw them.”

  “Give me my make-up bag.”

  He wondered what she was going to do with it and at the note of authority he had not heard before which had crept into her voice.

  As if nothing had happened cars were driving by in both directions, edging their way past the wreckage.

  In the driver’s seat of the Simca, a young man, blood streaming down his face, was screaming. The other door was open and a girl of about eighteen was lying quite still with her feet in the car and her head on the road. Against his better judgement, he wasn’t good at this sort of thing, Oscar went to her. She looked up at him, her blonde hair in a fan on the tarmac, her blue eyes imploring. He did not know where to touch her.

  “You’ll be all right,” he said, then realized her was speaking in English. “The ambulance will be here soon.” He had no idea who would send for it. He knelt down beside her. She was quite pretty. A young girl on an afternoon spree.

  Marie-Céleste appeared beside him. She knelt beside the girl and took her wrist in her own fingers. She was totally absorbed.

  “She must have knocked herself out,” Oscar said.

  “She’s dead. Give me a hand.”

  They lifted her out of the car and laid her on the road.

  Marie-Céleste closed the imploring eyes. Oscar prodded her tanned arm, not believing.

  “There’s nothing you can do. Come and help me with the driver.”

  The young man sat upright in his seat, screaming what seemed to be an unending torrent of abuse.

  Marie-Céleste spoke softly to him and opened the crocodile make-up which went everywhere with her. She wiped the blood, which was streaming into his eyes from a cut on his head, with tissues.

  “He wants to be got out,” Oscar said superfluously.

  He felt sick at the sight of the blood but made a supreme effort to control himself.

  “Oscar, look!”

  He looked in the direction in which Marie-Céleste was pointing. The bonnet of the car was wrapped tightly round the young man’s leg like a travelling rug.

  “My God!”

  She squatted in the road and took a phial from her make-up bag and a syringe in a plastic package. Then, talking all the time to the driver, she inverted the phial, stuck the needle into it and drew back the plunger.

  The lorry driver shuffled a few dazed steps towards them.

  “What are you doing, Madame?”

  “I am a doctor.”

  “I swear on my mother’s grave he was on the wrong side of th
e road. There was a girl. Where is the girl?”

  “She is dead.”

  He turned to vomit by the roadside.

  “Can you roll up his sleeve?”

  Oscar did so, getting blood on his hands. “What are you giving him?”

  “Morphia. Not too much. He may have some internal injuries. We can’t leave him like this.”

  Oscar looked away as the needle went in. The young man appeared not to notice, the screams continuing. It seemed to Oscar that he must sit in the car to eternity or leave his legs behind.

  Marie-Céleste went to throw the syringe into the bushes. He heard her say something to the lorry driver who was shrugging and throwing up his hands. She made him sit down and returned to her make-up bag where she found a piece of paper, a pen and a safety pin.

  Oscar was still foolishly holding on to the man’s sleeve.

  He watched her writing. “What’s that for?”

  “To let whoever looks after him know that he’s had morphia and how much.”

  She pinned the scrap of paper to the blue denim shirt beneath the gold crucifix.

  “It hasn’t worked.”

  “It takes a while.” She leaned into the car, put an arm round the man and spoke to him gently.

  In the distance they heard the sound of sirens. Within moments there were police on motorbikes, ambulances, fire appliances. Oscar went to sit in the car. He felt exhausted; could not believe the sun was still shining as if there was no carnage, no young girl dead, no young man, at the best mutilated. He switched on the radio. It exhorted him to buy a chocolate drink soluble in cold milk before going into a husky love song. Through the windscreen he could see Marie-Céleste in her bloodspattered white dress arguing with a black-booted policeman. He saw the English side of her as a thin overlay as she gesticulated and tossed her head, obviously giving as good as she got. It was a lengthy battle which she appeared to win. He eventually took out his notebook in which he wrote assiduously, Marie-Céleste nodding from time to time.

  The scene had changed. Another policeman, gun in holster, was now directing traffic. Machinery had been brought from the fire appliance. Half a dozen pompiers were swarming like bees over the crushed Simca, two ambulance men had put the girl on a stretcher and covered her body with a blanket.

  Marie-Céleste shook hands with the policeman and picked up her make-up bag. The policeman took it from her and accompanied her back to the car.

  Toujours la politesse.

  He opened the door for Marie-Céleste, handed her her bag and saluted Oscar, saying something too rapid for him to understand. Oscar nodded in agreement and the agent returned to the scene.

  “They wanted us to go to the police station and make statements,” Marie-Céleste said. “I had to convince him that we did not witness the accident.”

  “We could have said what a lunatic driver he was.”

  “That’s beside the point. Anyway you do not understand. This is France. Had I agreed we would not only have spent the rest of today in the police station but tomorrow as well. We might also have had to return when the case comes up and could be involved until goodness knows when. I wouldn’t mind if it were of the slightest practical value.”

  “You talked your way out of it beautifully.”

  “It wouldn’t have helped either of those kids.”

  “Will they get him out?”

  “With a bit of luck. Those cars are made of tin. They pack sardines better. Let’s go.”

  Oscar started the engine. The agent saluted and held the opposing traffic up for them to pass. He smiled at Marie-Céleste.

  “You seem to have made quite a hit. I’ve never seen you at work; I’m impressed. I didn’t know you carried morphia in your make-up case.”

  “There’s quite a bit you don’t know about me.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Just a few drugs. My father insisted I was on the medical register in France as well as England in case I ever wanted to return.”

  “I don’t like accidents. Not even dogs run over.”

  “In England I probably shouldn’t have stopped. There are always too many busybodies and an ambulance within seconds. In France you could lie dying on the pavement and people would walk round you. Generally there’s not much one can do anyway outside a hospital so it’s better not to interfere. One just looks stupid.”

  At the Welcome the patron stared at Marie-Céleste’s stained dress but did not comment.

  In the bedroom she removed it and ran the shower.

  Oscar lay on the bed. “It has not been a nice day.”

  “No.”

  “Nothing is going well.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “I have a sense of foreboding.”

  “Wait while I shower and I’ll dispel it for you.”

  He waited, unable to get the sight of the dead girl with her staring eyes out of his mind. In his head he heard the driver screaming, the sounds of vomiting.

  They made love but for the first time it was not good. They were both irritable.

  Later Oscar wanted to go back to Cannes, have dinner and see if he could recoup his holiday expenses at the blackjack table. Marie-Céleste was tired and preferred to dine in the hotel.

  “It’s my last chance.”

  “You’ll have to go by yourself, then.”

  She spoke sharply. He sat up. It was the nearest they had come to a quarrel.

  Afterwards she apologised for snapping at him.

  “I suppose I should be making allowances,” he said. “Things can’t go right all the time.”

  “Why not?”

  “They just don’t. It isn’t the end of the world.”

  At dinner, which they ate in the hotel, they hardly spoke except for platitudes about the butter and the wine. Marie-Céleste seemed sulky. Oscar tried to dismiss the thought from his head that she was just like other women, all women, not special. He was angry with her. He had not believed he could be. It had to do with her competence of the afternoon making him feel stupid, rather than her refusal to go to Cannes. He knew and did not know that the prevailing atmosphere had been engineered by himself. He blamed it on Marie-Céleste – she was tired, frustrated, pregnant, bitchy. He refused both cheese and sweet. He had drunk most of the wine himself and had two double brandies. When she suggested a walk since it was their last evening he said he was going to bed. He watched her lips tighten. Tears come to her eyes. Bloody women. They were all the same when you got to know them.

  “I think I’ll go for a stroll then. I could do with some fresh air.”

  He gave her the room key. “Don’t wake me up.”

  “I shan’t be long.”

  “No hurry.”

  He watched her leave the dining-room and ordered another brandy which he took upstairs with him in the lift.

  He put it next to the bed, undressed and left his clothes on the floor. He got into bed without washing, drank the brandy and fell asleep.

  The headache woke him up. He moved his eyes without moving his head. Through the shutters he could see the sun was up. Beside him Marie-Céleste slept on her stomach. Her red hair spread over the pillow. There was a sinking sensation in his lower abdomen and the events of the previous day came flooding back. He analyzed them carefully.

  The pregnancy; that was the major issue. He was not prepared to accept that the child was Ernest’s. He knew, just knew, that the foetus within Marie-Céleste was of his creation. She’d said, for the first time, that she loved him. It was good to be loved; he liked it, needed it more than anything else in the world when he was so useless, wrote such utter crap. The dead girl; upside down in the road; her eyes still looked at him reproachfully. Now that he came to think of it he had never seen anybody dead. There seemed no change; she could just as well have blinked, moaned about the pain…it wasn’t her fault, out for the afternoon with her boyfriend…all the years her parents had spent bringing her up, the trials and tribulations… for what? It was intolerable. Marie-
Céleste cool and efficient; putting the car driver out of some of his pain, arguing with the policeman, seemingly unaffected by it all. His own churlishness, the unsatisfactory act of love, his rudeness and deliberate drunkenness; yesterday had not been good. He had taken the holiday and spoiled it, mucked it up as he mucked up everything and this was their last day; half day really. Flight BE077 left at 14.45 hours.

  He looked at Marie-Céleste sleeping still, and gently drew the sheet from her. Her skin was white, dappled by the light through the shutters. He started to love her, gently tenderly, silently. She sighed and smiled, not opening her eyes as if she were having some beautiful dream, growing more and more responsive beneath his caresses. He kissed her hair in both places, washed her ears with his tongue, felt the projection of her hip bones in his own too copious flesh. It was a long and beautiful climax for both of them, he wanting to tell her he was sorry through the act of his love, she half doused still with sleep. When it was over she opened her eyes and looked into his. He knew she had accepted his action as apology for his behaviour of the previous night. Today would be all right.

  They had the breakfast tray on the bed, spilling coffee and jam, not caring. They left it as long as possible before getting up to pack.

  For Oscar, lifting down his suitcase from the top of the cupboard, it spelled the end of the fantasy, the beginning of reality. He hoped he was not going to get depressed.

  Beneath the thick sweater he had no need of, he found the box of After Eights. It was as if Karen was standing in the room. He stared at them wondering what to do. Marie-Céleste was in the bath. He opened the bedroom door. In the corridor the chambermaid, black-haired with gold tooth, bunch of keys round her waist, was sorting linen.

  He held out the chocolates.

  “Pour vous!”

  A smile irradiated her face.

  “Merci, Monsieur…” There was a lot more too fast for him to understand but he gathered the gift was appreciated. He closed the bedroom door softly.

  They walked round the quayside hand in hand, in their travelling clothes. By the time they returned it was lunchtime but neither felt hungry. They ordered a croque monsieur and coffee. When it came they drank only the coffee. A distressed waiter offered to get them something else.