There was a similarity in some ways, Posy was thinking, between Father and Napoleon. They were probably the same height, and Father had had a rather Napoleonic optimism, daring and restless. Maybe that sort of character wasn’t such a bad thing. She felt a surge of forgiveness for Father, a feeling of love, along with the realization that she took after him. Had they cremated Napoleon or was he actually buried here? She thought idly of how suitable it would be to sprinkle Father’s ashes here, on Napoleon’s tomb, if only she hadn’t left them for Rupert.
Amy, lost in thought, was also making her way to the Musée de l’Armée. Having decided to go back to California, she felt an urgent need to see all the things she should, as if they were to be denied her forever, and she had arranged to meet a friend of Géraldine’s for a special guided visit through the historic cannons, and the Thursday lecture on Austerlitz.
Paradoxically, her new interest in French history had been animated by a rising interest in American history. It was as if, having decided to go home, something told her she’d better learn where it was she was going. She had gone to see the grave of Lafayette, and the small version of the Statue of Liberty, for she had never seen the big one in New York. She had gone to two American museums, and gazed at rather limp displays of tarnished Revolutionary uniforms, three-cornered hats, small purses worn by the ladies of Jefferson’s time, battered flags, and canteens carried by the soldiers of the First World War. These items didn’t stir her very much, but she did feel a surge of patriotism that such a mighty country should have bloomed from such meager ingredients.
‘Bunjer,’ said someone next to her as she stopped at the corner at a red light.
She looked over to see embarrassingly dressed people, their fat bodies, plaid pants, and sneakers marking them unmistakably as Americans. But the strange iteration, bunjer, might be some other language altogether.
‘Bunjer. Bunjer Bunjer.’ They were looking at her. Why? She resolutely refused eye contact in case they were Americans after all. When they had moved on, she heard the woman say, ‘See, they are so arrogant and rude, she can’t be bothered. It’s like everybody says. They hate Americans, as if they didn’t have a stupid little socialist country here where lots of people don’t even have cars.’
Shame shot through her. Oh, my God, Amy thought, they are talking to me, they are saying bonjour. They think I’m French and that I’ve been a typical rude French person! ‘Oh, excuse me,’ she ran after them to say. It wouldn’t be fair to let them think ill of the French on account of her own behavior! ‘I was just so lost in thought, I didn’t hear you speak to me.’
They stared, embarrassed in their turn to have been overheard by this French person who obviously spoke English perfectly well, almost like an American, and who – it was dawning on them – actually was another American.
‘Can I help you?’ Amy asked. ‘I live around here…’
When they had chatted a few minutes and she had oriented them, Amy went on her way, only by chance seeing Emile Abboud stepping into a taxi outside the Invalides. He saw her see him, and gave a little wave. Her heart lurched. Probably he had observed the whole encounter and thought these fat people were her best friends. One’s countrymen are always a humiliation for the traveler, whatever the country, but this was especially bad. It appeared there was to be no end to her mortifications. If only she knew what her crime had been. Ah, but that was American for sure, not to know your crime.
She was used to the fact that tourists in Paris, congregating at a handful of monuments, are apt to run into each other, so she was not too surprised to find herself facing Robin Crumley and Posy Venn across the round pit where the poor emperor was entombed, like her gazing down on his nested coffins. She was somewhat surprised, though, to see them together. Like Emile, they waved, and after a few minutes she walked around to where they were. They had been holding hands, she noted, but unlaced their hands and embraced her joyfully, and asked for an account of her week.
‘We’ve been in Normandy. I’m sorry I didn’t go to the party at Victoire’s mother’s, but I didn’t feel like it,’ Posy said. ‘Wasn’t feeling well, I mean.’
‘It was very nice, of course,’ Amy said. ‘Lots of French people, but since I can’t speak a word, practically…’ They agreed on the charm of being Anglo-Saxons with no French people present, the three of them now chattering on in English with no feeling of shame.
Posy’s eyes fell on the book Amy carried. She carried it everywhere, to read on buses. ‘I see you are reading The Red and the Black,’ said Posy. ‘It’s so unbelievably French, don’t you think? Even reading it in English. An absolute celebration of hypocrisy.’
‘I was always afraid it was an American specialty,’ Amy admitted. She was above feeling stung by Posy’s noticing she wasn’t reading in French.
Amy noticed that Posy and Robin seemed on very good terms. Posy tugged on Robin’s arm and looked up at him to affirm this or that statement. They all exchanged cell phone numbers.
When Robin and Posy had gone, Amy stayed awhile to meditate at the tomb of Napoleon on the themes of history, and whether it was wise to be too mindful of it. Were you indeed condemned to repeat horrible mistakes if you didn’t keep history in mind? At the moment, she felt that whatever her country was involved in now, and her ancestors had done back then, made no difference, for they had no power to lighten her feeling of isolation and self pity, emotions so new to her that she had no reflexes for dealing with them – unlike people who were used to them, and might take brisk walks. Though both Napoleon’s own history and the apparent conjunction of Robin and Posy pointed to fortune’s tendency to change rapidly, either for the good or the bad, Amy derived no intimation from the inert bronzes entombing forever the once vital emperor, that hers would change any further and that she would not remain forever just shy of personal happiness.
Robin and Posy were invited to the de Ditraisons’ for a cocktail buffet. Madame de Ditraison had mentioned to Robin how pleased they would all be if he read a few of his poems aloud before dinner, preferably some of his translations from the French. Robin was accustomed, as he said, to singing for his supper, and would be happy to oblige. He was no more unwilling than any other poet to read aloud.
Now, in the drawing room, all gilt and white paint – rather overdone, in her view – Posy listened, her mood a confusion of affection, admiration for Robin, and a deep wish to escape, though there would be no escape, there would be dinner.
She was oppressed by how patronizingly the French ladies had praised her flowered dress, saying, ‘How English!’ ‘How like a garden!’ ‘J’adore Laura Ashley,’ ‘How original,’ and several other such comments.
She was also oppressed by the poem Robin was reading, a translation from Beaudelaire to do with seeing a female corpse by the side of the road being picked at by crows. No doubt it was a meditation on mortality, but still, like mortality, it was revolting:
‘Yes, such shall you be, O queen of heavenly grace,
Beyond the last sacrament,
When through your bones the flowers and sucking grass
Weave their rank cerement,’
intoned Robin to the attentive, well-dressed people standing around with glasses of champagne.
Well, ugh, thought Posy, but it was wonderful how Robin’s light voice had picked up authority and sonorance as he read. The French people nodded with solemn concentration, determined to discern the Frenchness of the old poem in its new guise of clumsy English words.
‘How delicious,’ said Madame de Ditraison as he finished, ‘and now, some dinner!’
Posy could only dart imploring glances at Robin during dinner, as she was seated between two Frenchmen who twinkled at her in turn in the friendliest way, but gave up after their first moments of gallantly speaking English to her. She tried to think of a French phrase or two to bring herself back in, but lines of French poetry were all that came to her.
‘Où sont les neiges d’antan?’ she said to Monsieur Br
ikel on her right, hoping he would take it as bringing up the subject of Villon. But he simply looked astonished and turned to the French lady on his other side.
‘Ah, nos amis les Anglais,’ said Monsieur Requart on the other side.
Perhaps Robin, too, felt, even if for the first time, this sense of estrangement with his amis the French, for as they walked home, he said, ‘Posy, we should think of the future.’ Posy agreed without reflection, and later, upon reflecting, found that everything she thought about the future was better than it had been.
Kip was permitted to visit a parent figure until eleven P.M. two nights a week, so tonight Amy had invited him to go to a movie and have dinner. Though they spoke often on the phone, she wanted to reassure him in person that she was not blaming him for the behavior of his sister, and she also just sort of wanted to see him, a familiar face, a companionable American, though young.
He still had the reserved air he had worn since Géraldine’s party, owing, Amy now understood, to Kerry’s lawsuit, which still embarrassed him. Amy planned to bring it up, to reassure him, saying she wasn’t worrying about it, her lawyers were confident, and so on. All this was true. Whatever Kerry’s case against the hospitals, it was weak against Amy. She also had to tell him she was leaving Paris for California, soon. She worried about this, because Kip depended on her, and seemed to be fond of her, hardly surprising with the poor boy so alone in the world.
‘What do you want? Croque-madame? That’s what you usually have. Something different?’
‘Croque-madame,’ Kip agreed.
‘We need to talk about what will happen to you. I’m going back to California soon. Do you want to come back with me, and go to your old school next semester? Do you want to stay here? You’d have to learn French and the whole bit if you stayed.’
‘Why are you going? I thought you were staying for a while, you’ve got an apartment and everything.’
‘Oh, I think it’s time for me to move on, and get on with my life.’ Amy smoothed her napkin (serviette).
‘It’s Kerry’s lawsuit, isn’t it? That is so fucked.’
‘Not your fault! Anyhow, that’s not why I’m going. It’s because, I don’t know, I’m an American, so that’s where I ought to live. And I have my foundation, I want to get started with that…’ She couldn’t tell him the other reason – why burden a person of his age with an intimation of erotic and intellectual setbacks to come?
‘It isn’t Kerry so much as her lawyers,’ Kip said. ‘They’re making her do it.’
‘I know,’ said Amy, though she wondered why Kerry had gotten new lawyers when after all she had Mr Osworthy; and who were the new lawyers? Sigrid knew.
‘I don’t think they should have had a service for Adrian without Kerry,’ Kip said.
‘Did they? I don’t actually know. Just the cremation, probably. Wouldn’t they be waiting till your sister was well enough?’
‘Kerry wanted to talk at it, but they did it without her. I would have talked too. About how he was. Adrian was nice. He was nice to me. I feel really sad for him.’
‘Mmm, I’m sure he was nice.’
‘He was funny, he made you laugh. He made French dishes – cassoulet and some kind of French pot roast. Kerry can’t cook worth um – anything. I wish you wouldn’t go!’
‘I know. I have mixed feelings,’ Amy admitted.
‘What I wish is you would buy the fucking château, Amy. You’re supposed to have all this money, why wouldn’t you like a nice French château? That’s what rich people are supposed to buy.’
‘Right, just what I need, a French château.’ Amy laughed, shocked that he should know she was – well off, though of course she was.
‘Anyway, it’d be cool. I could come there at Christmas, you know, summers. You could have a horse.’
‘I don’t want a horse.’
‘What’s it like to be rich, anyhow?’ Kip wondered.
Amy thought about it. She didn’t know. She hadn’t really faced her mixed feelings of guilt and pleasure or the duties she saw were coming. She had been trying to behave as though everything was the same. Running away to Europe had been part of her escape. She quickly changed the subject – they caught up with Kip’s news as if Amy were family. How was Harry? How was Kerry’s recovery? She was sorry to learn that Kerry would never walk correctly.
‘You should go see her, Amy. No one goes but me. Rupert and Posy haven’t been out there at all, or anyone but Mr Osworthy. Mademoiselle Walther has gone back to Valméri – there’s some new nurse, Farad, and Harry misses Mademoiselle Walther. He’d be glad to see you too. Harry has feelings like everybody else.’
‘You don’t always need to lecture me, I’ll go,’ Amy said. ‘I know I should.’
In the night, she had one of those moments of dream clarity that rise to consciousness as you are waking up. The complete plan occurred to her as if she had thought of it herself, a solution so perfectly in accord with her inner wishes and social principles, a textbook example of mutual aid so obvious, that she wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her sooner, and to everyone. Well, it had occurred to Kip. It was he who had suggested she should buy the château. Well, depending on the price. This would accomplish a number of ends: she would let Rupert run his press, and Victoire do whatever she wanted to do there, and Posy would get her share of the money, and little Harry could scamper in the grounds and corridors, not that she knew if it would have corridors.
Further advantages swirled in her head: the publishing business, a huge tax write-off. With luck the publishing business could pay the overhead, though a profit was unlikely – she’d look at the books – so there would be no ongoing expense… Kerry – it would be stipulated – would withdraw her lawsuit against her, which didn’t have much chance of succeeding anyhow, in return for this haven for her child.
The château, at a couple of million euros, was miles cheaper than many, if not most, houses in Palo Alto, California, it was even grotesquely cheap – and who has not dreamed of a château? The idea was archetypically alluring. She would take a tower suite for herself, for when she visited – she hoped there would be towers, perhaps a moat. Of course she would go down to see it, but her mind, she knew, was fixed in advance, there was almost no need to. Then, they could market some products, maybe a line of cosmetics made from grapes, or dishes with a crest. She would visit from time to time, an annual write-off trip to France, the prospect of which sweetened the idea of going back home, and almost lightened the anguish of her silly crush on Emile Abboud, and her general feeling of having been defeated by France, two subjects somehow connected.
38
The Clinique Marianne occupied a couple of hectares of the forest between Saint-Cloud and Versailles, in an imposing nineteenth-century house and stables, with a circular drive and very secure hedges to confine those of its inmates who needed confinement. Halfway between a madhouse and a luxurious spa, it had served the drying out, the breaking down, the tired, at a price, for a hundred and fifty years. Amy took a taxi from the end of the RER line, with some feeling of trepidation at finally meeting Kerry Venn under awkward circumstances. She reproached herself that if she had been normally, responsibly, civil and gone to see Kerry in the beginning, she might have headed off this lawsuit. Now it was too late to pretend to be paying a concerned call on her countrywoman as she should in decency have already done.
Evidently it was not madness that accounted for Kerry’s long stay here, for the woman at the desk in the foyer indicated that Kerry would be found in the garden with her baby, through that door, unconfined and no doubt pleased to receive visitors. Amy wandered out into an extensive garden, somewhat shabby at this season, with some new pansies just put in, and the gardener’s implements stacked on the steps.
At the bottom of the garden, across a stretch of the bare, impacted earth that Amy had learned was included in the French idea of a garden, she saw a thin, tallish woman with a toddler – Harry, if she was not mistaken – pushing a wheeled
toy. The woman, Kerry, was strangely lopsided, one shoulder higher than the other, and her legs twisted oddly. How horrible! On the train she had been sitting down, so Amy had not noticed this. Had she always been handicapped? But no, she’d been out skiing.
She approached, thinking maybe she should just pretend she hadn’t heard about the lawsuit yet. ‘Hello!’ Amy had learned that her own person was nonthreatening, benign, and was usually met with smiles, so she was surprised when Kerry looked unwelcoming and dour. ‘I’m Amy Hawkins. We met on the train? I’m very late in paying you a visit, I’m afraid. I hope Kip has given you my good wishes? He is such a nice boy, we’ve become friends…’
‘Yes, he’s mentioned you.’
‘Harry too,’ feeling thankful that Harry had seen her and was running over to her with a big smile and his little arms outstretched. She bent over to give him a kiss, genuinely thrilled that he seemed happy to see her, though she knew it was probably because all his experiences with her had been food-related. Amy’s affection for Harry didn’t erase the expression of hostility on Kerry’s face. Now Amy saw that Kerry was bandaged around the middle under her loose blouse, and one of her legs was stiffish, so that when she moved to pick Harry up, she listed to the side, and she seemed to be in pain.
‘Do you have someone to help with him while you’re getting better?’ She picked him up.
‘Yes, there’s a woman who comes in.’
‘How long do they say…?’
‘They say I’ll always walk like this. Unless I have some operations in the future.’
‘Do you have enough’ – Amy thought of things Kerry might need – ‘books, things to read? I can go the English bookshop. Tell me what you’d like.’
L'Affaire Page 33
