‘All right. Before dinner,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Let us say eight o’clock in the bar.’
‘I think I have time to walk into the village,’ she said suddenly. ‘It’s nice, walking in the snow.’ She had been seized with a feeling of confusion she couldn’t explain.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Robin Crumley said. ‘I need to get some postcards. Do come along, old fellow.’
‘I can’t just now,’ Emile said, with another look at his watch. ‘I have a rendezvous,’ and he hurried off.
21
While others were taking the cookery lesson, Kip had gone to the hospital, still in his ski clothes. Despite the storm, he had made a few runs in the morning. Not being able to see didn’t bother him, but when conditions grew too miserable even for him, he took the Biovil lift and skied down to the village, left his snowboard in the garde-ski, and caught a shuttle down to Moutiers to look in at Kerry. He had many more things to worry about than just her recovery: What was the hospital going to cost? Was Amy right that he might be made to pay? Was the baby-sitter, Mademoiselle Walther – a formal name for someone with a vague teen manner who was not much older than he – really being okay with Harry? What did it mean that the English people wanted to take Adrian to London but not Kerry? What would he do if she died, where would he live?
One worry overshadowed the others. He was thinking about how everyone believed that American planes had set off the avalanches, and he had realized that if the vibration of a plane could have done it, so, too, could he himself. The memory was acute. He’d been snowboarding on a slope above Adrian and Kerry, and had been almost alone on the snowboard course, with its jumps and dips. Ebullient with the pleasures of exercise and solitude, he had joyfully let out an enormous shout that had come back in echoes from the sides of the chute. Now he was thinking the unthinkable: probably he had set the avalanche off himself. People would eventually figure this out. Even if he didn’t go to prison, everyone would know he had killed his sister and her husband, and they wouldn’t give him any money, or let him have anything to do with Harry, or want him around.
‘Bonjour, Keep,’ said one of the nurses, the one that seemed to like him and be glad when he came in. He had perfected his ‘Bonjour’ and ‘À bientôt.’ So had his friend, Amy, and they said these words to each other when meeting at the hotel or on the slopes. Now he sat in the chair near the head of Kerry’s bed and began as usual to talk to her.
‘Hi, Kerry, it’s me, Kip. I’m here. Just came to tell you that Harry is fine. He’s a great little kid. He didn’t cry so much last night either. He ate some mashed carrots by himself. He feeds himself really well.’ He said all the things he could think of in this vein.
Posy Venn was sitting there as usual with her book, watching over her father. Kip thought Posy was incredibly foxy, as much of a fox as Amy though different, and had longed for her to seem to see him. Today she gave him a slight smile, some improvement from the usual. Today she looked softer and friendlier where she often looked fierce.
‘Uh – how’s Adrian today?’ Kip asked.
‘The same.’ Posy sighed. ‘There’s a chance of the plane late this afternoon, if the snow stops, or tomorrow morning. I don’t know why it matters if it snows. I thought they had instruments in planes.’
This seemed to Kip a subject to talk to Kerry about. ‘They might take Adrian to London,’ he said. ‘Would you like to go, Kerry? Want to go to London?’
Suddenly, it seemed to him Kerry was listening. There was a different quality to her comatose inertia, perhaps she had made a slight stir and blinked her eyes. She had understood and responded, he was sure. ‘Hey,’ he cried. ‘She answered me.’
Posy looked up from her book. ‘Really?’
‘Look. Hey, Kerry, want to go to London?’ But this time there was no response from Kerry.
‘Kerry! Kerry? Want to see Harry?’ Again it seemed that he saw a tiny acknowledgment, a flutter of response, as though her eyeballs moved beneath her closed lids. Excited, he ran to tell the nurse, who came and prodded her, and pulled open her eyelids. She saw nothing changed.
‘Rien. Desolée.’ But she began to hook up another instrument to Kerry’s arm.
But he’d seen it, he knew he had, and would tell Dr Lamm.
‘Posy, tell them. I saw it,’ Kip pleaded.
‘Yes, of course, but – oh, dear,’ Posy said, ‘I have to run, I’m late, I can’t believe the time.’ She had a stricken expression and fled without looking back. Kip knew she wasn’t really interested in whether Kerry came back to life. Kip pleaded with the nurses to call the doctor, and to try again to rouse Kerry. She had come back to life for an instant, he knew it, and he wanted to share his joy and relief.
*
Posy was late for her assignation with Emile – they had fixed upon a stolen hour before dinner when neither would be missed. She tapped discreetly on his door, he was there, embraced her, led her directly to bed, and with his ardor and expertise, the hour passed quickly. Up from the dreamy heat and carnal scents of the bedclothes, Posy rose, dressed, kissed Emile long, passionately, and cracked open his door to see if the corridor was clear.
‘I’ll get up eventually, and meet you in the bar before dinner,’ Emile said, stirring and propping himself up in bed, shaking off the agreeable postcoital torpor, admiring Posy’s full form and well-chosen pink sweater, for the moment forgetting about his upcoming rendezvous in the bar with the mistrusted American woman. He supposed Vee would not have worn that flowered skirt, but it looked nice on Posy. She laid her finger across her lips and slipped out the door.
As she walked with studied nonchalance across the lobby toward the staircase, she saw standing at the desk a woman who could only be Victoire. Dressed in dark jeans and a white turtleneck, she was a slightly smaller, more delicate, lighter-haired, thinner, and more ineffably French version of Posy herself – it was herself Posy recognized. Her first feeling was of happiness, but a chill of panic stopped her. The wife was going to throw open the bedroom door to find her husband concupiscently lolling in midafternoon in a waft of perfume and sex. Should she dart back and warn Emile? But it was too late – Christian Jaffe was coming around the desk and picking up Vee’s little suitcase, and Vee was preparing to follow him as he led the way past Posy toward the Abboud chamber. Options reeled through Posy’s mind: hide, stare straight ahead, stop and greet. She instinctively did the latter.
‘Excuse me, but could you possibly be Victoire?’ Victoire, looking startled, said she was. ‘Oui.’ Carefully remaining in French.
‘I’m Posy Venn. I’d be your half-sister. I’d been hoping we would meet.’
Vee looked at the tousled, flame-cheeked stranger. Yes, she could see something of herself, a more rounded, chestnut-haired, higher-colored version. She warmed, she laughed delightedly, and enfolded Posy with sisterly enthusiasm.
‘I didn’t want to come,’ she said, ‘but I am already glad. We must talk and talk. You must tell me everything about my father, about everything. Well, I will put my valise in the room and come right back.’ Christian Jaffe, carrying the suitcase, took a step toward the room. Posy could stall them no more. With luck, Emile was out of bed by now, maybe in the shower, or changing for dinner, though luck was something Posy never considered herself likely to have.
‘You and, um, your husband should join us before dinner and we’ll have dinner together. With Rupert and me. I’ll tell the dining room,’ suggested Posy. Their hands remained enlaced. Victoire gave her beautiful, musical laugh and agreed to all that.
Oh, bloody hell, thought the desperate Posy as she ran to her room, already smitten with Victoire as well as with Emile. Though her little brother, Harry, hadn’t inspired her interest, the idea of a sister did, and the real sister was thrillingly a sort of idealized self; they were both cast-off girl children, and Victoire had endearing defects – her nose was somewhat red from the cold, for instance, and she ought to wear more makeup.
At the hospi
tal, the evening rituals were beginning. Almost unremarked, Kerry Venn became aware that she was in a bed somewhere. She knew she was Kerry, and registered the footfalls of people in the room, their voices… she liked hearing the voices. They kept her from falling. It would be easy to slide off into the thing that lurked beneath her, but each footfall brought her back, not to her body, she had no sense of that, but to certain words that trailed across her brain, women’s voices, warm room. She was comfortable, she lacked for nothing, she was glad not to be part of the whispers and anxious laughter, the footsteps she was aware of beyond her. She was aware of someone quite near her saying ‘I think the boy was right!’ Le garçon avait raison.
Amy and Robin Crumley set their faces against the blowing snow and stamped across the ski slope between the hotel and the road, a shortcut to the village now rendered drifted and deep by the day’s snowfall. The Englishman had very inadequate boots and a thin-looking parka, more of a raincoat. Amy very nearly put out her hand to steady his progress but supposed he would not like being treated like an elderly gentleman. He had a sort of forced gaiety she respected, as she always respected people who set their faces to things and overcame difficulty. What his difficulty was she had no idea – money, probably. No doubt poets were underpaid. She would read his poems.
But just as she was enjoying the feeling of being the lone American in the Alps, she was surprised to see an American military vehicle – if she wasn’t mistaken – pulled up in front of the Produits Savoyard store, and two men in American uniforms coming out, carrying paper bags, followed by Joe Daggart. She waved at him, but he seemed not to recognize her, which was not surprising, since she was wearing parka, hat, muffler, and goggles against the blowing snow, and was indistinguishable from everybody else walking carefully along the icy sidewalks in the unabating storm. From closer up, the insignia on the jeep door could be seen to read USAF. The men dived into it, and the driver pulled away. She glimpsed them in the backseat, pulling sausages out of their bags. Joe Daggart didn’t get in. He hailed Amy and Robin as he came closer and recognized them, perhaps especially Crumley’s storky figure in its old green anorak.
‘Amy, Crumley. Did you ski in all this muck?’
‘We took the cooking lesson,’ Amy explained. ‘Is there an air base near here?’
‘What? Oh, some liaison people in Geneva, up here checking out this avalanche thing. Damage control.’
At the newsagent they were greeted by blazoned headlines about American denials of responsibility for the avalanche deaths. The infuriated European press gave all the details, especially the laughter of the press attaché. Amy bought the International Herald Tribune and the Financial Times, and tried to decipher the French and Italian papers arrayed on the racks, surrounded by people reading and shaking their heads. YANKS DENY VIBRATION DEATHS. Even the British papers went on about the regrettable American tendency to bluster and bully before the truth came out, as it always did. French government ministers were quoted as saying they would bring the matter up in The Hague, in Brussels, in Strasbourg. Amy thought this was most unfair, since she had seen for herself that Americans were investigating the claims. She was sure a good-faith effort was being made to find out whether the noise of an airplane could indeed set off a slide. Newspapers always rushed to judgment, she thought indignantly, and never apologized when they were proved wrong.
Robin Crumley browsed along the shelves of a section of books in English.
‘I thought I might find something of mine, to present to you,’ he said. ‘But no. The French are not keen on English poetry. We English, on the other hand, are very admiring of French poetry – Verlaine, Baudelaire, Villon. We have in all a more catholic approach to literature. They are so preoccupied by their language, limited as it is.’
‘Limited?’ said Amy, thinking that this presented a ray of hope, a finite end to her labors.
‘A relatively small vocabulary, so they have to use the same word for a number of things, another sort of problem.’
Standing in the long line of damp, bundled-up newspaper buyers, they reached the checkout stand.
‘What do you think you’ll do?’ asked the cashier, a woman, seeing their papers.
About what? Amy didn’t know. ‘Do?’
‘The people should be compensated at least,’ she remonstrated, shaking her head at the idea of human perfidy, Amy’s in particular. ‘You can’t just act like nothing happened.’
As at other times, Amy felt she was being made to stand for all Americans, and she hardly knew how to contain her outrage at this personal criticism. She had nothing to do with the avalanche, yet she was being made to take moral responsibility for it, for a whole category, a whole nation of people who also didn’t have anything to do with it. It was stereotyping, it was profiling. They said ‘you Americans’ as if a Californian were like someone from Mississippi. Didn’t they know how big America was, how disparate? Anyway, as if Americans had something to do with the snow conditions in the Alps! Not that she wasn’t an American, but she was she, herself, not just a representative specimen of her countrymen. She hadn’t even voted for the present president, certainly not.
At the same time, she knew she should rise above mere private resentments; since European criticisms were generic, they were not directed at her personally. They blamed all Americans.
And now she must face Mr Abboud and, no doubt, more criticism.
‘Won’t you come with me?’ she proposed to Crumley as they walked back to the hotel, their newspapers tucked under their parkas to protect them from the still-falling snow. ‘You seem to get along with Mr Abboud better than I do.’
22
Mr Abboud, waiting at the bar, had a changed air from their encounter on the stair after the cooking lesson. Now he seemed relaxed and subdued, and had an eye on the door. But he rose cordially enough when Amy came into the bar with Robin. Would they have a kir? A whiskey?
‘What exactly is your interest in sending the dying Mr Venn to England?’ he asked Amy, returning to this subject as soon as they were served. ‘Since it is counter to my own advantage, I still find myself wondering.’
‘Amy is just an angel, she does things out of goodness,’ cried Robin. ‘And of course the Brompton Hospital is world famous.’
‘Do I have to have an interest?’ asked Amy. ‘What a cynical view of life! Perhaps that’s very French.’ She was not sure why this provoking man was goading her to make insulting ethnic slurs, which was not like her.
‘People usually have an interest. Mine is in part selfish, in part an unselfish wish to see the rational laws of France prevail over English chaos,’ he said.
‘Now, really,’ said Robin Crumley. ‘What’s the legal difference, by the way?’
Abboud now assumed a rapt camera-ready expression and a certain preacherly tone as he launched into an explanation. ‘It’s a telling difference. When it comes to his will, an Englishman, having earned his fortune, can indulge any whim of his doddering mind – reward the housemaid, leave it all to a home for cats. He can punish any ungrateful or unsuccessful child of his by leaving it nothing.’
‘Quite right,’ said Crumley.
‘In France, who gets what is spelled out, children getting equal shares, a spouse only a small percentage – even parents inherit, rather than spouses, if there are no children. France has in view that property should remain in the family, children getting fair shares, no one generation impoverishing the next, ensuring the orderly progress of society. Which is the best system? The French, undoubtedly. More people are better off under a system of forced equity than when things are left to caprice.’
‘It sounds stifling,’ Amy objected. ‘Why does anyone bother to behave well to their parents if they’ll get the money anyway?’
‘I call that a cynical view of life. It’s a horrible view. People behave well to their parents out of natural good feeling, they love them.’ Though he loved his parents, at one stage Emile had been ashamed of them, brown, unfashionable Ma
ghrebites, his mother barely able to control her inclination to put on a headscarf.
‘Often they hate them, never see them, refuse to speak to them,’ Amy pointed out.
‘Not if they expect to get any money. In England – people jump through hoops. In France, we naturally revere our parents. When you can’t control your children by threatening to change your will, you can be assured their feelings are of spontaneous, natural affection when they are nice to you.’
These were matters Amy had never considered. Her parents were in good health and lived two hours from her, in Ukiah. She knew she should go and see them more often.
‘The triumph of French law is that it protects French people,’ Emile continued. ‘That is not true of all bodies of law. Some have been designed to oppress, some to enrich a small constituency –’ Suddenly Emile looked beyond them and abruptly stood up. ‘May I present my wife, Victoire,’ he said, as they were joined by a pretty, ethereal-looking blonde, presumably, if Amy had it figured out right, yet another offspring of the mysterious Venn.
‘Mais oui, you are a friend of Maman,’ said Victoire to Amy. ‘She said I must say hello to you. She tells me she has found you a wonderful apartment.’ This allowed Amy a few seconds finally to put the situation in place: Géraldine Chastine was Victoire’s mother, Victoire was something – half-sister – to the Venns. The man was married to Victoire. The world at that moment seemed deliciously small to Amy, to have, even, the reassuring dimensions of Silicon Valley. But how sad that Géraldine’s nice daughter was married to this most disagreeable, if handsome, man.
After the Abbouds went in to dinner, Amy had stayed in the bar a minute to glance through the Herald Tribune, noting further a curious item pertaining to the avalanches, that there had been a small demonstration outside the American State Department by a group – it didn’t quite say of scruffy ideologues – demanding accountability a nd transparency when it came to American airplanes in foreign places, possibly inflicting damage again, this time on valued allies. A spokesman had told the paper that the government was exposing innocent American tourists to risk by not telling them of developing enmity in formerly friendly places where America had caused damage and death. Amy wondered, but not seriously, if that could include Valméri?
L'Affaire Page 15
