L'Affaire

by Diane Johnson

  ‘It’s just that I’m sorry to leave,’ she apologized, pulling herself together, not wishing to repel him with her drippy tears. ‘It’s better not to have good experiences, this hotel, our little times together – everything seems so much worse now, not even counting poor Father. What’s happening to Father just symbolizes the disappointments of my life.’ Aware that this sounded selfish and melodramatic, she could not keep from saying it.

  ‘How old are you, Posy?’ asked Emile. ‘Twenty-one or two?’

  ‘Twenty-two,’ she admitted. ‘But old for my age, and gifted with foresight, and I foresee I am never to have anything I want. Is it even worth it being alive?’ This stuck her as such a bitter question, her tears flowed again.

  ‘How do we know what we want? Remember the old caution, I believe it was an Englishman – Oscar Wilde? – who said there are two tragedies in life – not to get what you want, and to get it, of which getting it is worse.’

  ‘I don’t want much, I only want something interesting to do – nothing more than anyone would want. And love, I guess.’

  ‘Love and interest are so much more than anyone has, probably.’ Emile now seemed interested less in her state of mind than in the philosophical question, old as it was. ‘Of course I love you, Posy. One must always love to make love, lovemaking must mean something.’

  Posy sensed a translation problem, love as in ‘J’aime Coca-Cola,’ or ‘J’aime ma VW ...,’ a word having a mysteriously different weight in French, lighter. ‘I know we don’t know each other well enough for love. I know I can’t say I want you without scaring you.’ She sighed, regretting the gloppy feel of her heavy English words. There was indeed a trace of inquietude in his expression as Emile kissed her again and left, saying they would see each other at dinner. Making no response to her sad little confession.

  Baron Otto went with Amy to her room, walking in plain view through the lobby and into the elevator. Perhaps, as a person well known in the hotel, no one noticed his movements; or perhaps he was hoping to be reported to Fennie. He took the key from her, opened the door, and came inside.

  Amy, who had skied forty kilometers, sweating inside her ski suit, and was soaked to her pores in the tobacco smoke that clung even to nonsmokers after being in a French restaurant or bar, said she’d have a shower.

  ‘No, no,’ the baron protested. ‘“Ne te lave pas.”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘As Napoleon wrote to Josephine. His most famous phrase.’ He moved to embrace her.

  ‘I guess you’ll have to explain,’ Amy said.

  ‘He wrote her, when he was away campaigning, when he was coming home, not to bathe. He must have liked – have liked…’

  ‘Oh,’ agreed Amy, supposing generally whatever was suggested by old Anna Magnani movies, sweat-soaked women going into Italian barns with farmhands, earthiness generally not appreciated in Palo Alto, nor, would she have thought, in Germany, also not a Latin culture.

  The baron himself smelled delightfully of some cologne, and had a large pink body, with an enthusiastic member springing from a nest of golden hair. Amy’s own enthusiasms were stirred by the sight. Things foreign and unsettling could be reduced to cheering familiarity by taking off your clothes. It made her realize she had been homesick or something, and that this was more than just being nice to the baron.

  He was a man in the grip of passion, whether inspired by Amy’s naked form or the resolve to affront his wife, Amy was not sure. Probably both. How reassuring to find that she could understand a few things about international human nature after all. She undid her braid and let her hair fall down.

  If there was disappointment about actually doing it with the baron, it was only that there was nothing specifically baronial or Austrian about it. The ingredients were familiar – disrobing, kisses, foreplay, contraceptive reassurance, the act, the climax (her, then him, as if they’d had years of practice), the whole rather short lived but satisfactory. It was even sort of extra exciting to find herself under such a large, that is to say almost heavy, man, something solid and Mitteleuropean about that. He would look great in a black leather raincoat, or the ruffled shirt worn by the lordly aristocrat in the porn film. These mental pictures had made her come sooner than she might have. She was comfortable with the fact that people didn’t have to apologize for or disclose their sexual fantasies.

  Afterward, they showered and had champagne from the minibar. It was already almost nine. This had been a long day. ‘We could get some room service,’ Amy said. ‘But I suppose you are expected home?’

  ‘Nein. No, no. The room-service menu is rather limited, and besides, they are having a special carp from Lac Leman in the dining room tonight. I will stay to dinner and woo you as I would a client. No one will think it odd.’ To her surprise, Amy felt some disappointment in this, would have liked just a sandwich in the room, but gamely brushed her hair and prepared to go down to dinner, watched at her toilette by the admiring baron.

  Victoire had spent the day at the hospital, but came back to the hotel in time for dinner, which she and Emile had arranged that morning to eat with her Venn siblings at eight-thirty. She was elated, and trod as lightly as a sprite, despite a day in the depressing precincts of needles and serums. Her tendencies to happiness had been animated by Kerry coming to life, despite the sad condition of her new papa. In their room, speaking through the bathroom door to Emile in the shower, she gave him a glowing account of Kerry’s miraculous awakening, Kip’s joy, the prospects for a good recovery.

  ‘Surely not miraculous, in that she has all along been expected to wake. “Fortuitous” better say.’ Emile’s tone critical, as usual, of her hyperbole.

  ‘Though she will be sad to find her husband has been sent off to Londres. Tomorrow she will speak to us. She cannot yet speak, she has those hoses down her throat.’

  Only to be cast into sadness to hear from Rupert and Posy, in the lounge before dinner, the triste news from London about her papa.

  ‘We have some bad news, Victoire.’ Of course she could read their faces.

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘“Didn’t make it” was how Mr Osworthy put it,’ Rupert told them. The opposite of hyperbole. Didn’t make it. It had begun to sound like a moral failing of Venn’s own.

  Victoire’s impulse was to go find little Harry – now, like her he would never know his father. But Harry would be in bed by now. The four sat in a corner of the bar, waiting for dinner and drinking whiskey, a little at cross-purposes, with Posy and Rupert not wanting to talk about Father, sunk in their sadness and regrets, Victoire wanting to hear all about him, Emile somewhat bored with the subject of Father, although not saying so, and hardly surprised at his death.

  ‘He never actually spoke a word to me in my life,’ sighed Victoire, bemused by this mischance. ‘He never saw me, really.’ It was a blessing that she had come down to Valméri at all, according to some grand design, she was sure – perhaps the greater meaning had been all along to put her in touch with her two new half-siblings, who were reminiscing about her papa; she listened attentively.

  ‘Father was all right when we were little,’ Posy was saying, ‘but he was very self-centered. He had his toys, and he wanted all his toys and wanted to play with them all the time. Boats, horses, new cars all the time, and Pam just had this Morris Minor with us jammed in the backseat. She had that car for fifteen years.’

  ‘Many, many pretty young women working in his office, high turnover,’ said Rupert.

  ‘We’re not to speak ill of him,’ Posy said ‘But it’s hard.’

  ‘He was never mean about money, even with Pam after the divorce, if something came up.’

  ‘I am told he was a publishing genius. My mother says that, she has followed his activities in publishing,’ said Victoire.

  ‘He was interested in cooking. He was a wonderful cook,’ said Posy. ‘He was a wonderful eater, and he knew everything about wine.’

  ‘I never even knew he could ski,’ said Rupert. �
�Our family never went on skiing holidays. It may have been something to do with Kerry. Her brother is a fine skier.’

  ‘Who is going to tell her, poor woman?’ said Victoire. ‘Do you know, she woke up today.’ Here was one piece of good news at least.

  ‘They probably haven’t heard about Father at the hospital, unless Mr Osworthy called them, but why would he?’

  ‘Let her get a little stronger,’ Rupert advised. ‘The doctor should decide what to tell her.’ They all agreed with that. They themselves would stop in to say goodbye to Kerry and tell the doctor about Father’s death, tomorrow morning as they left for England, though perhaps by then Mr Osworthy would have already telephoned Dr Lamm.

  ‘Oh, no, London tomorrow, horrible Mr Osworthy, horrible aftermath, funeral, horrible everything,’ cried Posy, not caring if she seemed to Emile a discontented, bad person, what difference did it make, they would never see each other again. She knew she shouldn’t be thinking about Emile when she should be thinking about Father. She couldn’t help looking at him, either, and once caught him looking at her. He was sitting next to Victoire with a particular expression of uxorious detachment or resignation.

  Posy could imagine being married to Emile, who she knew would be a whole lot of trouble, between infidelity and expensive hobbies – could he be a bit like Father? But it wouldn’t matter, because instead of being a credit manager for a chain of boutiques, she would be the wife of a French intellectual and live in Paris. To occupy that enviable position, she would put up with a lot, but as Victoire (her own sister!) occupied the role of Emile’s wife already, it seemed that all possible paths for her imagination to travel were blocked by some irrefutable reality. Even her mind couldn’t meander without impediment. She knew self-pity was a base emotion, especially unseemly in light of poor Father, but it engulfed her all the same.

  And now her personal misery was compounded by remorse at having gone with the others to lunch instead of waiting at the hospital to see Father off in the plane, at least to have looked in his face one more time. Instead, he’d been bundled off like so much cargo, trustfully confided to others, out of mind. It was true that she had been gazing into his gray, vacant face for days, but that didn’t compensate for her inattention at the crucial moment of his final departure. They ought not to have sent him; perhaps it was being airborne that brought on the swelling. She and Rupert should have defied Mr Osworthy and his avatar, the meddlesome American Amy. How credulous of them to believe that the Brompton held out hope. The French doctor had been right all along… they shouldn’t have accepted the American’s offer of help.

  Thus her emotions raged. How inconsequential is love beside death. Father dead! Had he known he was dying, had a last moment of awareness, had he been aware all along? If so, perhaps he was comforted that she, Posy, had sat all week by his bedside. She grasped at the hope that he had somehow been aware of her devotion.

  27

  Finding some solace in each other, Posy and Rupert sat together at the table awhile over dessert. Emile excused himself, saying he would leave them to their private grief. Victoire stayed with her two new siblings, perfectly tactful, not pretending she had known Father, but saddened in the appropriate degree.

  ‘At least he has brought us together. He would have wanted that, I am sure. I am sure he was a man who would have wanted to die in an active, manly way, as has happened. He would not have wanted to linger, comatose, perhaps his brain damaged – the doctor said they could not rule out brain damage.’ She thought of other consolations.

  Rupert had skied and was tired, but he stayed, partly out of consideration for Posy, partly because he didn’t want to be alone. It was understandable that Posy’s grief was stronger than his, in proportion to her anger, which had been greater and more painful than his own. His own grief was milder, personal, hard to explain even to himself. He had a sense of loss, sorrow for the past few years when they hadn’t been close. At least they hadn’t been estranged the way the more explosive Posy had been, after one particular scene.

  But Posy’s sadness now seemed all encompassing. She seemed to mourn some basic disorder in the world, some cosmic misalignment affecting her personally.

  There was another subject of worry. They were all conscious of but had not brought up the dreaded subject of the will, or spoken of the fact that, as he had died in London, Father’s fortune, whatever it proved, would go to Kerry and Harry according to his will instead of to any of them according to Napolean’s notion of social order.

  They noticed Amy Hawkins and a stout pink man come in, later than was her habit, to eat dinner, seeming untroubled, even happy, unknowing of their own pain.

  In itself they thought the late dining hour would not be remarked. Amy had begun eating at nine or even nine-thirty some nights, in part because Harry would by then be in bed, but mostly because people in California, getting to their offices at nine or ten A.M. in California, tended to call her at seven P.M. in the Alps. Therefore, sometimes until Alpine nine (vingt-et-une heures) she was on the phone discussing the affairs of their late company, which was leaving more loose ends than anyone had imagined, managing her personal financial affairs, talking to her parents, touching base with the realtor who was supposed to be selling her condo, or catching up on the local news.

  Half the dining room had finished when they came in. Amy didn’t see Kip, which continued to worry her. Perhaps he had come into dinner early? Another strange thing – Rupert and Posy, so friendly all day and at lunch, now seemed surly and glum, and barely nodded to her as she and the baron came in.

  Though she had noticed that sexual intercourse usually had the opposite effect on men, it had driven the baron into a pitch of vivacity; he fed her a snail from his fork with a show of intimacy that flooded her cheeks with an embarrassed flush to think that everyone could notice. She had already begun to feel she had made a dreadful mistake.

  Rupert had just reached his room after dinner, dreading the solitude and the thoughts of Father that were bound to crowd in, so he leapt up eagerly at the tap on his door. It was Kip, safe and sound. This was a huge relief, even though Victoire had mentioned seeing him at the hospital.

  ‘I hope it’s not too late,’ Kip said. ‘I just wanted to tell you that my sister woke up today. I skied down there this afternoon, and they were all excited. Her eyes were open, she could squeeze my hand and everything.’

  ‘Victoire told us,’ Rupert said. ‘Great news, of course. Does Mr Osworthy know?

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is she out of the woods?’

  ‘I guess so. Everybody seems really happy, but she can’t talk yet, she has a tube in her throat.’

  ‘You heard that my father died on the way to London?’

  Kip blinked. ‘Nobody said that,’ he said. ‘At the hospital, nobody knew.’

  ‘Maybe nobody told them,’ Rupert said.

  ‘That’s tough,’ Kip said, thinking what bad luck that was for old Adrian, who had been pretty nice. Poor Kerry. Somebody would have to tell her. He thought about how horrible it would be for her to wake up to news like that.

  ‘I’ll call Mr Osworthy in the morning and give him the good news about your sister.’

  ‘Did you get back from that village okay? I looked for Amy but she wasn’t in her room.’

  ‘We were obliged to ride home in a van,’ admitted Rupert.

  ‘Does Amy know about Adrian?’

  ‘I don’t suppose she does.’

  ‘Maybe she’s back now, I’ll tell her,’ Kip said. He hoped she wouldn’t chew him out, but the whole lunch had pissed him off, everyone ignoring Amy or being rude to her, and then letting her pay for the whole thing, and Paul-Louis, who was a good skier but not that great a monitor as far as he could see, and no one mentioning Kerry or Adrian hardly at all.

  Amy finally bade Otto good-night in the lobby and saw him off, his expression grimly settling into one of determination to work on innocent explanations for his lateness that would satis
fy his wife. For her part, Amy strove for an uncomplicated way of saying good-night that would imply that she would make no claim on his further attentions, a friendly and worldly parting, as in French movies. As they were in full view of everyone in the lobby, they shook hands. Once in her room, she sank, frankly tired, which was unusual for her, but she could forgive it in that she had skied for some hours, been in a bus accident, beheld a family quarrel, made love to a baron, and eaten a rich dinner. Tomorrow she would weigh whether these activities, mostly frivolous, could constitute a Life, as she had always understood people to be responsible for making for themselves – making their beds and lying on them, finding ways to be useful and involved, constructing a meaningful and satisfying existence from the raw materials one was handed. Her tablecloths, an imposing pile folded on the luggage rack, invited reflection.

  Tonight, however, she would get a good sleep. When she crawled into the bed, which had been remade while she was at dinner, little chocolates laid on the pillow, only then did she notice the red light on her telephone pulsing imperatively. Given the time of day, it was probably a call from California. Briefly she imagined it was Sigrid calling to say the markets had collapsed and she had no more money, a sort of retribution for having so enjoyed the day. But it was Mr Osworthy calling from London to tell her that the heroic rescue effort today had been to no avail, and that Mr Venn, once in London, had irreversibly died.

  Amy was not given to gratuitous self-reproach, but she did regret her part in the matter and even wondered if it weren’t her punishment for being here in self-indulgent luxury, or for stepping into the Venns’ affairs. She would have to master this tendency to feel guilty about pleasure and indolence. Of course Mr Venn’s death was not her punishment! She had acted out of trustful good nature to help Kip and his sister. How sad for them all, also the English brother and sister and the French daughter married to the odious Emile. She would tell them of her regrets tomorrow.