‘Careful, it’s hot! … Can I get under the duvet? I’m cold.’
‘If you like, but why don’t you just put a jumper on?’
‘The duvet’s better.’
She slid in like an eel, forcing me to the very edge of the bed.
‘Why are you all the way over there? You’ll fall out and break something.’
‘No, no. I’m fine. Ah, here we go, it’s starting.’
‘Better off here than getting soaked on the beach, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, but shush or you’ll have no idea what’s going on.’
‘Yeah, right! It’s always the same on Inspector Derrick. The murderer’s always the wife. She kills her husband because he’s been cheating on her with a younger woman. Just wait – he’ll explain it all at the end over a beer.’
‘Why do you bother watching it then, if you know what’s going to happen?’
‘Children only ever like one story. You’ve been writing them long enough, you should know. Why don’t you take your shoes off?’
‘Because this way, if there’s a fire, I’m ready to go. Now, are you going to let me watch it?’
‘OK, OK! Grumpy old fart …’
Nathalie’s asleep well before Derrick solves the crime. It was indeed the wife who did it. Nathalie’s head weighs more heavily on my shoulder than I’d imagined. Her hair smells clean and new. I daren’t move a muscle, for fear of waking her, waking myself. A delicious state of torpor. I remember those first dates at the cinema, the heat of the other person radiating in the darkness, your head spinning until you forgot where you were, the actors on screen doing exactly what you wished you were doing. Fingers edging closer together on the arm of the chair, millimetre by millimetre … Wait, what am I thinking? Slowly, slowly, I pull myself free, slide a pillow under her head where my shoulder had been, and tiptoe out of the room.
‘Oh, Hélène’s in a meeting, is she? … No, there’s no message. I’ll call back later. Thanks, bye.’
8
Richard always ate like a pig, but today he was really stuffing himself.
‘I was amazed to get your call. I had stopped believing I would ever get a cheque from you. I was angry, you know, but more about you standing me up in that bloody Printemps dome than about the money. You kept me hanging about with all those old bags and their grated carrot and Vichy water! You bastard!’
‘I’m sorry, it was the day my mother died.’
‘Never mind. So just like that you’re suddenly loaded?’
‘Well, a bit more comfortable, yes.’
‘So you’ve suddenly acquired some principles? You’re paying your debts. You’re weird. In your place, I’d have fucked off. Actually, you’ve always been a bit—’
‘A bit what?’
‘I don’t know, a bit like a Martian. Don’t you want your museau vinaigrette?’
‘No, go for it.’
‘Thanks, I love that stuff. Listen, your call was great timing. I don’t care about your cheque. But instead, you could do me a huge favour. I’ve promised to take Micheline and the kids to Deauville next weekend. But … but I’ve a new secretary, as appetising as a leg of lamb on a fresh tablecloth, if you get my meaning?’
Richard glanced at Louis, and his glance was not appetising; his eyes were yellowish and bloodshot.
‘You want me to be your alibi?’
‘You’ve got it! I can’t use the work crisis excuse again, I’ve used it too often. Micheline’s always had a soft spot for you. Losers, they always turn her on. Anyway, if you help me out, you won’t just be freeing me up, you’ll also make me look like a devoted old friend. I win on all counts. If you agree, I’ll tear up your cheque, OK?’
‘OK, but keep the cheque.’
Richard stopped chewing, his fork in the air.
‘I don’t get it; you’re even more bizarre than I thought. OK, whatever you want. I don’t care either way. So we’re agreed?’
Louis had woken up with a vile taste in his mouth that morning, and memories of a dream about Agnès, rape, blood, things that stuck in his mind like a morsel of veal stuck in a hollow tooth. He felt sticky with grime that no soap could wash away. It was because of that nausea that he had phoned Richard. Ever since he was a young child, Richard had always been his yardstick for disgust, a reference. At twelve, Richard was already a great big lecherous fool of a degenerate, who always dragged him into his sordid affairs from which he emerged humiliated and ashamed but curiously purified. These descents into sordidness were like a sort of redemption for him. Louis had ordered the same food as Richard. To eat like him was to start eating him.
‘You didn’t reply.’
‘Yes, yes, I’ll do it.’
All through the îles flottantes, Richard reeled off salacious stories about his clients, his mistresses, his friends’ wives. His world was one long gang bang, unending fornication. Louis wasn’t listening, he was watching, fascinated, as Richard’s lips twisted like two slugs as they greedily took in the food. There was something of the abyss about that mouth in action; it was like watching a mysterious black hole.
‘What about your son – is he still injecting?’
‘Yes, he still is, I think.’
‘You’re not saying much, don’t you care?’
‘There aren’t many opportunities for young people at the moment.’
‘Hmm … if one of my kids tried that, I’d put him back on track with a boot up the arse. But it’s not my business. So, shall we go? Leave it, I’ll pay.’
They were on the platform and just as the metro emerged from the tunnel, Louis thought of Richard’s children. A shove with his shoulder and Richard was no more than a signature at the bottom of a will. Louis was already far away down the corridor leading to another line when the crowd reacted. He smiled as he reflected that his cheque for five thousand francs would go to the children of the great fat pig, even if they didn’t need it.
9
Good riddance to that prick Richard. I can’t stand people I’m indebted to, and I had the urge to hurt somebody. I dashed off those last few pages in a bad-tempered scrawl but I feel no better for it. I need to get out.
‘Nathalie! Do you want to come with me to Trouville?’
‘Can we eat out?’
‘If you like, but we have to go now.’
Through the windscreen, the rain is turning the landscape into a child’s daubed painting, all the colours mixed up to make a pooey grey-brown. The horizon has gone, the sky’s dripping from top to bottom and the town is reduced to a puddle.
‘Drop me off at Prisu. I feel like buying myself something from the supermarket, any old thing.’
‘OK. Let’s meet at Les Vapeurs.’
The guy has rented me a little Canon, guaranteed to make very little noise, and so responsive you need only blow on the keys to get them working. The exact opposite of what I like – I’m going to really miss the Kalashnikov rat-a-tat of my old tank. I’ve been waiting at Les Vapeurs for half an hour. I’m not a fan of the place, but it’s a bit like a Paris bistro, and since Nathalie doesn’t like anywhere but Paris, she should approve. Here she is at last, beaming as if the tooth fairy’s just been.
‘What are you drinking? I’ll have the same.’
The bitter taste of the Picon bière gets the thumbs down from Nathalie. She rummages inside a plastic bag and pulls out a little pair of lacy knickers which she holds over the lower half of her face like an exotic dancer.
‘Cute, aren’t they? I got the bra to match.’
‘Put that away, Nathalie.’
‘Why, are you embarrassed?’
‘No. You’re being silly, trying to get a reaction.’
‘Fine! … Ugh. This Picon bière stuff really is foul.’
‘You should have ordered a grenadine. Where do you want to eat?’
‘Dunno, wherever’s most expensive. That place we went with Maman – you know, the up-its-own-arse one.’
Toile de Jouy on the walls, crushed velvet seats, seafood pla
tters and obsequious waiters to whom I find myself presenting Nathalie as my daughter. It’s the first time this has happened and it feels slightly humiliating. Nat wants wine and so that’s what we drink, and if she wanted to go and look around Honfleur, we’d do that too. The part of me that keeps the other part on a tight leash, the part that is aware of the appalling banality of the situation, gradually cuts it some slack, worn down by such stupidity. So, with my neck collared and eyes red, I trip over my lead, start talking about my book, how Louis eludes me, does things I wasn’t expecting, kills people his own age …
‘All this stuff about your book is going right over my head. If I ever get married, it’ll be to someone with a proper job.’
‘What’s a proper job then?’
‘I dunno … lumberjack, architect, plumber … Shall we get out of here?’
We head back to the car with a fishy aftertaste in our mouths and an incredible urge to giggle. The gingery moon looks like a cigarette burn in an orphan’s cape. The scent of escape hangs in the evening air. An English couple ask us the way to Ouistreham. I don’t think they understand my directions. By the time we get home, I’ve shaken off the leash completely. There’s the dregs of a bottle of white wine and half a bottle of Negrita. I’m determined to keep going until the small hours, but I proceed timorously, using Louis as my shield.
‘Do you have to keep going on about that loser? Why don’t you put some music on instead?’
My collection consists of a few old scratched records, the sound scarred, as if the tracks had been recorded in front of a wood fire. I pick the top one off the pile and place it on the turntable. I watch it spin, arms lolling by my sides like a village idiot.
‘Shall we dance?’
‘I can’t dance.’
‘It’s a slow number – it’s designed for people who can’t dance.’
I must look as stupid as a seagull prancing on sand. I say as much to Nathalie and she tells me to shut my gob. Without my gob, I’m nothing. I let myself go like a floppy puppet, feeling my ears turn as red as a tobacconist’s sign. The armful of youth I am holding against my body is bringing a flood of long-forgotten memories to the surface. I enjoy the moment all the more for knowing I’ll regret it bitterly tomorrow morning. A last-ditch burst of morality saves me just in the nick of time. I pull myself free, stagger over to the sink and run my head under the tap, which looms like the guillotine.
‘Right, Nathalie. I think it would be better if I went to bed.’
‘Better than what?’
‘It would just be better. Look, I may be pissed but come on, the spice, the snuggles, the frilly underwear, the slow dances … Don’t you think I can see it coming a mile off? If you’ve got a score to settle with your mother, just ring her.’
‘Oh, calm down! Leave my mother out of it.’
‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to do.’
‘Yeah, right! You’re too scared to sleep with me, that’s all.’
‘Nat, you’re really getting on my nerves. I’ll do what I want, thank you very much. Besides, I’ve got a beer belly, I stink of Negrita, and … and afterwards? Have you even stopped to think about the consequences?’
‘No, I’m sixteen. Anyway, for fuck’s sake, it’s not exactly complicated! What if I fancy guys with beer bellies who stink of Negrita? And what if—’
The telephone stops her short. It’s Christophe telling me Nane has died.
10
A little white Scottie had just run under the bench where Alice and Louis were sitting. It was a bench the little dog knew well; it was just the right height for scratching its back. A little further away, on the road, a woman of a certain age in the beige mourning of the modern woman called the dog in a deep voice, ‘Rimsky!’ Behind her were two ponds, two twinkling mirrors, only slightly wrinkled by the skimming flight of the ducks. Alice and Louis watched the little dog as it bounded off to join its mistress. Neither of them said so, but they were both thinking that this was just like three years ago when they had just met each other. There had followed three or four months of a happiness as round and smooth as a boiled egg, like the two ponds they often visited, that gave them the vertiginous impression of eternity. It was the beginning of summer. Alice’s children had been despatched to their grandparents. Louis had just spent an appalling winter living with his mother. Then the clouds had lifted. By a happy coincidence he had found himself acting as intermediary in a property transaction and had earned himself thirty thousand francs whilst barely lifting a finger. A very happy period, in which he had felt invincible.
‘I still don’t understand it! You disappear completely for six months. Then yesterday you call up as if nothing has happened!’
Louis tapped his shoes together to get the dust off. ‘It was never the right moment.’
‘The right moment? We’d lived together for three years! You just disappeared from one day to the next, as if you no longer existed, all your things still in the house, the children asking where you were … It was as if you were dead!’
‘My mother died; I had a lot to organise … It wasn’t the right time.’
‘But now, it’s the time to reappear? You come and go in people’s lives as you please.’
‘You told me to leave. Don’t you remember your little note?’
‘Oh, please, it’s not as if it was the first time. We row, we separate for a couple of days so that we can cool off and then … Well, anyway, what are you going to do now?’
‘I’ve written you a cheque.’
‘I don’t give a stuff about your cheque! It’s us I’m talking about.’
‘But you said you were in the shit at the moment.’
‘I’ve been in the shit for years and years as you well know. I don’t care!’
‘You’re wrong, it’s important – you should care.’
‘And that’s coming from you? Have you fallen on your head, Louis, or is it the inheritance from your mother that’s made you blow a fuse? The old bat is doing you as much harm dead as she did when she was alive.’
Louis got up from the bench and took a few steps towards the pond. There were ducks, moorhens, catfish, frogs and turtles. There didn’t use to be when they came before. The turtles were new. They climbed on top of each other, like mussels, then kept still, their heads up to the sun.
‘Are your parents in Kalymnos at the moment?’
Louis turned round but the reflection of the sun from the pool of mercury behind him prevented Alice from seeing his expression. Even when she put her hand up to shade her eyes, she could only see him as a dark shadow.
‘Yes, like every year, why?’
‘Oh, nothing. I was looking at the turtles; they reminded me of your parents.’
‘Thanks very much! Don’t stand on the edge of the water, it’s blinding me. I can’t see you – it’s like speaking to a ghost.’
Louis came back and sat down beside her. He could have asked her for news of the children, or complimented her on her new haircut, or reminisced about the time they used to come here, but he didn’t. All the sentences he prepared in his head seemed to him to ring hollow and died before they crossed his lips. It wasn’t just an impression; she was talking to a ghost haunting a well-known landscape. He wasn’t talking, he was reciting. A role learnt by heart, without conviction, and the more he became aware of this, the more he felt himself shrinking, fading, crumpling up like an old tissue. He didn’t dare look at her for fear of seeing two large tears forming on her lashes. Her face would be scrunched up, her mouth drawn down and her lower lip would be trembling almost imperceptibly. She would look ugly and a bit ridiculous, like everyone does when they cry. And there wasn’t anything else she could do other than cry.
A group of children charged down one of the paths, shrieking. It was like a bag of balls tipping over. Two teachers puffed after them like two seals. ‘No, don’t go so close to the edge!’
A dozen little round white tykes lined up in front of Alice and Louis. ‘Look at a
ll the tadpoles! And the swimming tortoise! M’sieur, come and see the tortoise swimming!’
The arrival of the children provided a distraction for Alice and Louis, allowing them to relax a little. Louis stood up, massaging his stiff neck. Alice sniffled, looking for a handkerchief in her bag. Her voice was croaky when she said, ‘There are turtles in the pond?’
‘Yup, loads of them.’
‘There didn’t use to be. Turtles live a long time, don’t they?’
‘Very.’
One of the children, flat on his stomach at the edge of the water, had just caught one. He got to his feet, brandishing it over his head, and ran off, chased by the other kids.
‘I caught one! I caught one!’
One of the teachers set off in pursuit.
‘Stéphane!!! Put that back in the water immediately!’
Just before the teacher reached him, the kid threw the turtle as hard as he could into the water, like a stone. For one moment there was a commotion in the reeds. The moorhens and ducks fled the turtle bomb in a flurry of wings. The teacher slapped Stéphane, the children dispersed and the water closed around the flying turtle. Very quickly, it was as if nothing had happened. There was dead calm.
‘Water is crazy; you can’t make holes in it. If you threw an atomic bomb in, quarter of an hour later, there would be nothing, barely a ripple.’
Louis wasn’t certain he had spoken out loud. He said, articulating clearly, ‘Strange day for that turtle.’
‘Not only for that turtle.’
He had anticipated that response as if everything had been preordained, like a moment ago, before the arrival of the children. It was exasperating, that feeling of being nothing but an interpreter of a scene that was taking place elsewhere. Alice rose, putting her bag over her shoulder.
‘Let’s go, Louis. I want to go home. I expected something else. I find this painful.’
Louis wanted to reply ‘Me too’, but it wouldn’t have been true. It was the absence of pain that worried him. From far off, they could have been mistaken for a couple of old people.
The Eskimo Solution Page 5
