L'Affaire

by Diane Johnson

  Baron Otto had welcomed the call soliciting volunteers in private autos with chains to rescue stranded bus passengers and hotel guests. He had just weathered a scene with his peppery wife, Fennie, who was American by passport, though raised in Germany in a military family, and had an American directness. He had always believed that cultural disconnection accounted for her chronic discontent and jealousy. Feeling slightly mystified by both the American and the German sensibilities, she tended to misconstrue almost everything he did, and now had misunderstood his list of Paris errands, beginning with ‘Géraldine C, 10:00,’ taking it as a record of his assignations, an unreasonable interpretation given that it would have taken the stamina of a bisexual stallion, as he thought resentfully (‘Antoine de Persand, 14:00’) to work through the whole register of names. But Fennie had held to the belief that Paris was iniquity and men were wanderers.

  Amy was conscious and rather gratified that the baron Otto made a point of attending to her, though also to two chambermaids whom they deposited quite soon at a hotel down the road. He took considerable time affixing her skis to the roof rack of his Mercedes station wagon, and installed her in the front seat next to him.

  ‘Miss Hawkins, you must be tired. Your ordeal –’

  ‘Not really. We only skied to Saint-Jean-de-Belleville. Then we had a long lunch.’

  ‘The accident not too stressful?’ He thought her dimples adorable.

  Oh, Baron Otto, I’m not that fragile, she wanted to protest. He always thought the worst of her, perhaps of Americans in general – people who ignore warning signs, cause avalanches, speak only English, and are easily tired. She couldn’t explain to herself why she wanted the good opinion of this slightly portly Austrian with the pale Alpine eyes of a husky. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘No one was hurt.’

  ‘It would be possible – we are just near – I would very much like to show you our chalet – a real mountain chalet, if you would consent to a small detour?’

  Amy, in the spirit of adventure that had borne her along thus far through the day, suspended any theory about what this could portend. ‘I’d love to see a chalet,’ she said.

  The baron drove a few more minutes, then parked by a towering snowbank, alongside which a path was just visible in the late afternoon darkness. ‘We’ll have to walk up the drive, it isn’t yet plowed.’

  Getting out, Amy slipped in her ski boots. He took her arm, and she stumped clumsily alongside him toward a distant light shining on the stone porch of a chalet whose architectural charm could only be inferred – steep-pitched roof, gingerbread eaves, barrels on the porch to be planted in geraniums in summer, a modern expanse of glass updating the classic details, a massive door, opened with one of the keys on his massive key ring. What about the size of a man’s key ring? Amy saw she must be tired after all: Her thoughts were getting silly.

  ‘My wife must be at her class.’

  This development, no wife around, was classic enough to alert Amy but not to alarm. She hadn’t been especially expecting a wife.

  ‘Here we are,’ said the baron, touching light switches that silently illuminated the room. Rustic sofas, a mezzanine across one end, bright wall hangings, gave a luxurious, if routinely mountainlike, atmosphere, rather like a condo in Aspen or Vail. An ancient butter churn had been made into a lamp, and a sled into a coffee table. Antlers. Was this Americanization of the Alps or had Americans borrowed this kitschy but authentic decor? She was learning that she didn’t have to judge.

  ‘Of course you can get no idea of the view at this time of day,’ he said, touching another button that drew back the curtains from across the massive windows. ‘This is one of the larger units, but even the smallest have all the luxury features. Sit down, sit down!’

  ‘Oh, I’m kind of wet,’ she said, but sat down anyway.

  ‘Drink? We can have our apéritif here. I expect you would like to see the kitchen and so on.’

  Amy had little interest in kitchens, but knew them to be part of her program and that she had better develop an interest in learning what you would need to cook, say, a lobster, or things au gratin. ‘Yes, indeed!’ she said, getting up again. The baron led the way through a door at the back beneath the mezannine.

  ‘What will you drink?’

  ‘Do you have any gennepi ?’ she said, remembering the name of the delightful local liqueur they had drunk in Saint-Jean-de-Belleville. She saw at once from the baron’s expression this was not something in his cupboard, or maybe you didn’t drink it at this time of day? The more you knew, the more the possibilities for social miscalculations extended themselves, still, it shouldn’t be a serious faux pas to have asked for the wrong liqueur.

  ‘Campari, or perhaps martini? Gin?’

  ‘Gin, please,’ accepting the most familiar.

  ‘All units have the American Amana refrigator, the Miele stovetop and dishwasher, German, all state of the art,’ said the baron, opening the refrigerator.

  Amy was about to frame a perceptive question on stovetops when they both became aware of someone coming into the kitchen. They turned. A woman of the baron’s age in trousers and turtleneck stood there, a pretty woman if she hadn’t been scowling.

  ‘Oh, my God, Otto, isn’t this a bit blatant? I see I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, I’ve goaded you into bringing them home.’ An American accent with the slightly foreign intonations Amy had heard in the speech of other Americans long resident in Europe, like Princesse Mawlesky.

  ‘Yes, you have,’ agreed Otto, grimly. ‘But I don’t think we have to continue our conversation in front of Miss Hawkins.’

  ‘Miss Hawkins. Where did you find Miss Hawkins?’ as if Amy weren’t there. ‘Never mind, I definitely don’t want to know.’

  ‘Miss Hawkins, my wife Fennie.’

  Amy, embarrassed by the discomfort of the baron and the anger of his wife, gave him a sympathetic glance and smiled placatingly at Fennie.

  ‘My class was cancelled, which you didn’t bargain on,’ went on Fennie.

  ‘I was bringing Miss Hawkins to meet you. She’s your countrywoman, from…’

  ‘You thought I wouldn’t be home till eight o’clock.’

  ‘…Excitement around here, Fennie, today – people stranded, accidents. Miss Hawkins was in an accident in the St Croix van.’

  ‘Luckily she’s come through fine, it looks to me.’

  ‘Probably I should be getting back,’ said Amy. ‘Thank you for showing me the lovely unit.’

  The angry Fennie now turned a strained smile on Amy. The baron, looking uncomfortable, said that they must finish their drink. ‘Fennie, what will you have?’

  Amy had imagined the baron in Palo Alto, or more like Woodside, where it was horsier, in boots and jodhpurs, which he would look good in, a burly, strong-looking man. Summer in Woodside, winter here in his chalet, with lots of skiing and European company. This was a more promising fantasy than any involving the serious, responsible Paul-Louis. Too bad about this wife. Her eyes met the baron’s. As he read her thoughts, she read his: embarrassment and desire, and she realized it was in her power to cheer him up a lot. Fennie perched tensely on a chair and accepted a gin and ice. She seemed all too intuitive and continued her needling as they drank.

  Embarrassed by his outburst at lunch, Kip had left the others and taken the gondola, which was still optimistically sending its little eggs up into the face of the blizzard; but at the top he judged the visibility too bad, and wended his way down the most visible pistes toward Méribel. Here the intervalley jitneys and buses assembled for the skiers coming off the slopes, and he took the one that went direct to Moutiers. He came into the hospital upon the scene of excitement surrounding Kerry’s awakening. Kerry had been on his mind all day, and now he saw that it had been ESP, because there must have been a further change in her condition. At first he feared it was a change for the worst, and he drew nearer with a sick feeling. But the expressions on the faces of the nurses and the doctor reassured him.

  ‘Is
she waking up?’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’

  ‘Is she okay now?’

  ‘She is doing so well!’ agreed one of the nurses.

  Much to his embarrassment, Kip burst into tears. He couldn’t control these babyish sobs, he could be Harry. He stood at Kerry’s bed sobbing and laughing at the same time.

  ‘Right on, Kerry. Hey, hey, Kerry,’ sobbing and laughing. Victoire was there, and smiled at him.

  ‘Someone was protecting her, elle avait une protectrice,’ remarked the nurse, embracing Kip.

  ‘I think so too,’ said the lovely Victoire.

  ‘When can she talk? When can I talk to her?’ He dried his eyes and got his breath.

  ‘You can talk to her now. She cannot talk back.’

  ‘Can she understand?’

  ‘Yes, they say so,’ Victoire told him, pleased to see the boy’s happiness. ‘They will have to take out the tubes before she can talk to you. In a day or two.’

  Kip plunked himself down on one of the chairs, his ski boots dripping with melting snow, suddenly tired. He ought to talk to Kerry, even if she couldn’t talk to him, and tell her Harry was okay. He began the monologue so familiar to him, the things he’d been saying all week, Harry okay, everything okay.

  ‘Poor woman,’ whispered the nurses. ‘She doesn’t know her husband has been taken away to Angleterre.’

  ‘How long before she will be able to sit up and talk?’ asked Victoire of the nurse, Nurse Bénédicte. ‘How interesting it is to see someone come back to life, but music has that effect, as we know from the story of Orpheus, Apollo aussi and his connection to Aesculapius.’ She pulled up a chair and sat down beside Kerry. Kerry tried to turn her head slightly to watch Victoire, as if she wanted to see things and hear words spoken, grounding her in the here, wherever they were.

  ‘She might never remember, people don’t ever remember the blow that stuns them, only the moments before it, leading up to it, or sometimes the memory is gone about everything that happened for much longer before. Depends on the severity of the blow,’ said the nurse.

  26

  Robin Crumley was relieved to be back at the hotel, after an afternoon that had in every way reinforced his mistrust of snow. His emotions were in turmoil. To find himself entranced with the beautiful, rich American young woman! How regrettable that this had come so late in his life. People normally felt this in their teens. He was at such a disadvantage! How he regretted his rather asexual, donnish, even narcissistic single life until now, with its consequent relative lack of experience, not much happening with either sex, only an odd dash from time to time… And it was even worse that the infatuation had struck while he was in France, a land ignorant of his poetry and in general dismissive of the mighty literature of his nation – a people content to hear Shakespeare in translation, Mark Antony saying to Julius Caesar, ‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ instead of ‘Hail, Caesar,’ and other such absurdities. A people who bestowed their Légion d’Honneur on English romance novelists, a people for whom Barbara Cartland was as good as Elizabeth Bowen, or Jerry Lewis as good as Olivier.

  The American, Amy, however, showed such a fresh intelligence, she would surely profit from a more comprehensive exposure to literature. She was woefully ignorant. The young English girl, Posy, knew much more about literature – a commentary on American education. On hotel stationery he wrote down from memory, hesitating over a line or so, two of his poems, intending to present them to Amy later in the bar. She would read them tonight and they would furnish a conversation tomorrow, when he would explain some of the poetical principles involved, the tradition of terza rima – he wasn’t sure where American education stopped vis-à-vis poetry, some of the ideas might lead naturally into the erotic or anyway romantic. As an afterthought he decided to ask the desk to make another copy and he would give one to the intelligent Frenchman Emile, who appeared to be interested in poetry and might value a fair copy in the poet’s own hand.

  He went to the window to close the shutters where the cold leaked through the wooden window frames and icy glass. Outside, the lights glittered in the village and the falling snow was pink in the neon glow of the ice rink sign. He noticed Amy herself, only now back, getting out of a car driven by the German real-estate agent – it must have been he who had picked her up earlier at the scene of the bus accident. The man was lifting her skis off the roof of his car. Amy, watching him, stamped her feet in the cold. They were laughing. Then, strange beyond belief, as Robin watched, the man rested her skis against the fender of his car and began to kiss her. Her hat fell off. She retrieved it and turned again to him. They resumed a brief kiss. Quickly, heart beating, Robin banged his shutters closed. He looked at his watch. She was only now getting home, an hour and a half after him, could have been doing anything in the meantime.

  *

  When Rupert reached the hotel, there was the little red light blinking on his phone. News from London, or maybe something on the whereabouts of Kip. He had been reassuring himself that the ski patrol had been told to look for the boy. He deliberately waited until he had got out of his wet ski clothes before dialing the operator as instructed. Christian Jaffe at the desk answered.

  ‘You have un message,’ said Christian Jaffe. ‘You are to call Mr Osworthy in London at this number.’ Eagerly and in dread, Rupert wrote down the number and asked Jaffe to dial it.

  ‘Oh, Rupert,’ said Osworthy immediately, ‘I have bad news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He didn’t make it,’ Rupert said.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you. He made it to London, for that matter,’ Osworthy said, ‘but he died soon after we arrived at the Brompton. His brain – I’m sorry, this is rather shocking – his brain began to swell, and there is apparently no remedy for that, all is over.’

  ‘I see,’ said Rupert, shocked even though he had been more than prepared, these last few days, for the probability of this outcome. ‘I’ll tell Posy. Will you speak to my mother?’

  ‘I have spoken to her. I have asked her what she wants to do.’

  ‘Hardly up to her, is it?’

  ‘The present Mrs Venn is not in a condition to make decisions. I believe, in fact, you children must decide, and your mother has said she has no views.’

  ‘Yes, well, let me take this in, Mr Osworthy. Where is he now?’

  ‘I assume that is a practical and not a metaphysical question. In the morgue at the Brompton awaiting removal to the mortuary.’

  ‘There’s a storm at the moment, we can’t start for London tonight. We’ll hope to get a start tomorrow morning and be back in London tomorrow afternoon,’ Rupert said, part of him feeling tears beginning, part of him relieved not to be setting out into the snowy darkness, it not mattering now.

  ‘Notify the French chap, you have his number, I assume?’ suggested Osworthy.

  ‘Monsieur Delamer, yes.’

  ‘I’ll call you later, Rupert, with some other matters, I know you want to be alone now,’ said Osworthy, and rang off.

  Rupert sat in the chair in his room for a while, then went off to find Posy. He passed Emile Abboud in the hall – a right chap after all, had dug snow valiantly along with everyone else and talked wittily about it at the same time. He supposed he should tell Abboud about Father, so he could himself tell his wife; but for Victoire to know before Posy did seemed disloyal to Posy somehow.

  Posy was in her room, eyes teary, face streaked with eye gunk, as if she had heard the news already. Maybe Osworthy had called her. It was strange when she seemed not to have heard.

  ‘What?’ she said crossly at finding it was Rupert at the door.

  ‘You’ve heard?’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘Father died.’

  Posy’s face cleared, assumed an expression of skepticism. ‘How could he die, hooked up to all those machines? What do you mean?’

  ‘Osworthy called. He said his brain swelled. Can I come in?’

  ‘Oh, no, yes, sorry. Gosh.’ Posy’s tears were starting again.
What had she been crying about if not Father? ‘Gosh, I didn’t expect that. Did you? After all this time. I mean I guess it was only a week, but it seemed – I thought he was going to make it.’ She wedged her fist into her eyes. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t surprised. I guess the longer it went on the less I thought he was going to survive.’

  ‘Does Mother know?’

  ‘Yes, but I haven’t talked to her.’

  ‘Oh, what can one say? Bloody hell. Poor Father.’

  ‘I know,’ said Rupert. They sat awhile sighing desultory sighs and exchanging an occasional word, waiting for the full force of grief to declare itself, as it surely would.

  ‘We’ll go in the morning. Does Mother want us tonight?’

  ‘I haven’t talked to her.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I suppose we should tell Victoire.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can face having dinner with them,’ Posy said. ‘If I can’t, I’ll just have something in my room.’

  ‘Be there,’ said Rupert firmly.

  Posy had been crying in her room because she had been unexpectedly embraced by Emile, animating all the emotion she had kept at cheerful arm’s length all afternoon. When they had returned to the hotel, wet and wool-smelling from their bus accident, he had come down the hall with her, stepped inside her bedroom door, and kissed her ardently. Kissed her ardently, looked long and regretfully into her eyes, covered her breasts with his hands as if memorizing them. She pushed his hands away and began to cry. At this, his manner became one of gentlemanly concern – what was the matter? How could he help?