The Janeites

by Nicolas Freeling

  And you’re talking too much, thought Dr Valdez. That’s all right, let him have his head, he’s out of practice with violence, feels a scrap of delayed shock, he’ll quieten down and then I’ll take a peek at him.

  “This is nothing. I’ll get the police in the local office to look at it. My friend Bernadette Martin has sound advice on this theme – never make complaint. Just like a civil lawyer whose counsel is – if he’s honest – never under any circumstances litigate. Working magistrate, she ought to know! Stay clear of what they call justice, and sit very loose to the world.

  “You’re a pretty good friend too, Ray. Came along with your Janeite stuff, I’ve learned a bit about that. Easier for me after years with the Marquis. He had a game too. Called it his Proust game, not that I ever read the stuff but listen to him and I know how Swann said the kitchen maid was like a Bellini picture. All the people he met with were like portraits in fiction. My role was to keep silent, listen, learn.

  ‘“I had the Marquis to thank, too, for meeting you. You spun me this long tale, about the soldiers in the ’14 war. Chances of survival extremely small, statistical likelihood of getting chopped pretty immediate. Me, only more so. So they played this game. Jane’s world is the base for defiance, platform for enjoying their life minute by minute. I could see the point. Got this cancer, dodgy kind of thing, my age, pretty good way of looking at it. We were trained of course, your number can come up any time but that’s mechanical, what’s the doctor’s word? – functional. You told me, the way to handle a cancer is in my mind. I got into this Janeite world.

  “Sink right into that, one does; marvellous stuff. Thought myself observant, I had. See the funny side now, the way Marky did. All true, to our own time just as much. Cruel though, huh? – this perception of what our lives ought to be. Not much use at finding the words, am I? – no, never was. Codes, very sharp, exact definition, no ambiguity, no blurred outline.

  “Know all about codes, learned a lot of them by heart, civil code, crimi code, code of procedure. Bernadette knows stacks more screeds of legislative juridical bullshit. Get tapped for the Protection Service, code of behaviour, personal honour. What Jane calls delicacy, anticipate, respect for the man, he’s everything, you’re nothing, his function in society. As a human being he might be worthless, you’re still bound, pay him his full due.

  “Getting tired, I’d like a cup of coffee, don’t want any goddam green tea.”

  “I’ll get it,” said Joséphine. “I know where things are kept.”

  “Coffee, Ray, and cigars, all the things you told me to lay off. Shook me a bit, this bastard with his bomb, for all that. Pain too, bugger it, here we go again, bloody crab, tickle me up, never really letting go. Thought of ringing you up, my old miracle worker, sorry about it being middle of the fucking night, knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

  Dying down, thought Dr Valdez. Quite soon, give him a push and he’ll fall over. Needs a good sleep and then we’ll see. Remarkable recuperation he has. Joséphine’s cigarettes were on the table and William reached over and took one. She brought a tray with three cups, went back for the pot. Needs no telling, knows how much sugar we take, how we like it.

  “Thanks, Josie, exactly what I need. And hallo, where do you spring from? Stupid remark; I know. You’re living with my friend Ray, very good idea, better man than I am. Didn’t mind your living in Paris. Screwing the Marquis, no harm in that, old swine but he gave something too, all the women he ever slept with, I’m the one who knows, right? I knew him better than anyone. The great enigma false to all and everyone; to me also but he told me things he’d never said to any living man or woman. I won’t tell, that’s my code, and he trusted me. Keep faith with yourself.

  “Didn’t like your friends much, riffraff they were. You’ll do better with Ray. I like it too, you’re coming to tell me. That’s honourable. Courage you always had.

  “So here the three of us are, like a thing of La Fontaine, the miller and his son, one of those. The husband, the wife, and the lover. Not like something out of Jane. But are we all three the Janeites? We ought to know, what to do, how to behave, how to be true, ourselves and one another. We’re three friends. Got to rely on each other,” clanking the coffeecup heavily back in the saucer.

  “You’ve made a hell of a long speech,” said Joséphine quite tartly. “Better shut up now. Push you off into bed, but you better listen to me first. Make an effort. Won’t take long.” She was at once aware of sounding rough and impatient.

  “Quite right, I’m your wife, this is my lover. Made you a promise, be true to you. Broke it. Lost my honour. That’s what it’s about – honour. You’ve understood it, it’s not a game, Jane.” Steadying her voice, making herself breathe slowly.

  “Captain Wentworth served eight years for Anne Elliot, never saying, never complaining. All that time, she holds fast, she doesn’t pity herself. She loves him and she allows herself to be over-persuaded, she’s told that he’s not good enough. Comic it all sounds, doesn’t it? She’s made a grave fault and she pays for it. Keeps her honour. Which I didn’t, and you never reproached me. Thought yourself not good enough: there’s your honour.

  “While I played the whore. Until I met you,” swinging her gun barrel to point at Ray. “I met you. Come to see me on account of him, he’s ill, and what’s the matter with me, then, that I don’t stand true?

  “God I’m hating this. . Need the biggest pastis ever known.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” said Raymond. “Have it.”

  “No. Do this cold turkey. Sure sound like one, look like one.” Aiming her gun, the slow assassin, taking her time.

  “God – I love you so. And to you I promised – when one is gone what’s another’s promise worth? The more I love you the more worthless I become. But if I’ve no honour left I must not destroy yours. I know you. Your promise was to God and you won’t break that. You’ll try to. You’ll seem to. You’d tell yourself you’ll leave everything to keep me. To keep you I’ll steal, I’ll whore, I’ll kill. I have already – all that’s left is to kill you; I’m on the way to that.

  “So I must ask you to free me from my promise. Send me back where I belong. If he’ll have me.” Like a child ashamed of itself she had put her hands before her eyes.

  “Have you?” said William, puzzled. “What’s that mean, have you? You never went away. I can’t give you away. You give yourself.”

  “The way I give you a cancer, yes?”

  “Oh, as to that,” said Raymond, “speaking as a doctor, I can’t be sure of taking it away. You can, though. For love’s sake, you can do anything.” She looked at him steadily.

  “It’s because I love you, I do this.”

  “You are free,” he said. “And with the blessing of God.”

  Into this unpleasantly charged silence Raymond brought something he has often been grateful for; isn’t a sense of the ridiculous in horrible moments a precious gift? Joséphine has the consolidation of crying and William is wondering where the next pain is going to come from and Doctor Valdez wishes to jump off the Pont Mirabeau into the Seine.

  “I am reminded of the Greek girl who went to the theatre to see Medea and didn’t like the tragic ending, so she said she’d write another, and instead of all the bloodshed they’d go for the day to the seaside.”

  In those enormous black cumulus clouds the fearsome build-up of electric current goes crack and discharges itself into the patient earth. Joséphine remembered that one can control oneself. One can stop crying. To hic and snuffle is below dignity. William regained the impassive face which is taught to the Protection Service in public at moments of anxiety such as when the President is shaking hands in a crowd.

  “Might be a good idea,” she said, “if we all had breakfast.”

  Part Five

  And now on the road, rolling along, driving the Volkswagen towards home – ‘home’ is good – there isn’t anything to be funny about here. Cringe, buddy-boy, because you are bloody well under th
e lash. Use all the clichés imaginable. It will be like Queen Victoria’s Diary, a great many words underlined and a Plethora – there’s a good word – of Capital Letters. He wanted to lie on the floor and howl; well you can’t, not in traffic. In abject desolation it tends to take the form of literary allusions.

  Like ‘She loved thee, cruel Moor’. Rather too grand; he’s not up to that. ‘I have another sword within this chamber’ – but not in the Beetle. You are smaller in scale. Play your little pan-pipe. That’s more like it. Each man kills the thing he loves. This lasted some time, before he got another fragment of another quatrain. There is no chapel on the day on which they hang a man. It’s Wilde, not bad either. Who has been abject and is now learning dignity. Nota bene, you are still stunned; the pain’s nothing to what it’ll be in an hour’s time.

  There in the flat are her clothes lying about – untidy girl. Her toothbrush hangs on the wall; last twist of the knife. Persuasion where she left it, by the bed. .

  Or ‘Give me a doctor, partridge-plump’ – and that’s Auden –

  ‘Who with a twinkle in his eye

  Will tell me that I’ve got to die’ – something Doctor Valdez has had to do upon occasion. Thought quite good at it. Doctors are often sloppy in their accounting. Forget, and put things in their pocket. Analgesics or whatever. There’s probably some morphia hanging about here.

  He won’t you know. He is one of the Company; a bad one but we don’t do that. Our training is that we don’t give in to despair. There is also a simple exercise, about Sleep and his brother. When, as a boy, you laid-you-down, the Company discouraged sentiments about angels and good-night-sweet-prince. You were asked to recall that death is no different: Be ready.

  He wonders if he is; he never has been. The flat smells of her. He has drunk too much coffee and is not likely to sleep. Sit in an armchair and read Persuasion.

  He picked up the telephone.

  “Silvia, I’m sorry, I won’t be in this morning. No – I’m all right, just that I was up all night and don’t propose to be disciplined. I beg your pardon for being troublesome, make excuses where apologies are called for. I’ll be in this afternoon.”

  It seems a bit pathetic that of the three Janeites he – the initiator – should be the feeble-minded one. Well, it was time to find out for himself. ‘Believe me, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a hard place.’

  Silvia, comfortable rounded woman, is better than competent. Very well, so she ought to be; she’s highly paid. But so is he; what excuse has he for being this walking disaster?

  “I have a number of cheques for you to endorse. If you’ll kindly do that I can pay them in.” She looks after bills, she has a little book for reminders, and she chases villains who pretend they’d forgotten. She’ll be changing his nappy one of these fine days.

  “I have to go and see the bank anyhow.” There’s an earnest man there forever wanting to ‘build up a portfolio’, who does not show vexation at Raymond’s unbusinesslike behaviour but has a sorrowful way of conveying disapproval.

  “Silvia, I’m thinking of changing flats.”

  “High time. You need a proper consulting room. People come here and are disconcerted. That reminds me, there’s a man who refuses pointblank to come here. You have to see him at his home and this is tiresome too because he’s paranoiac about discretion. An important diplomatic somebody, Head of Mission so please you, better wear your Sunday suit.” The door has been opened to a general attack. “And you’ll have to change that awful car. I can ring a few house agents, that should be relatively easy, you’ve pots of unused money and the bank will give great sighs of relief. And so shall I. But there’s nothing I can do about your clothes. Or that car?” Crushingly.

  “Next thing we’ll be opening a branch in California.” It is not really an adequate reply.

  The grandest part of Strasbourg abuts on a pleasant public garden called the Orangery, laid out in the nineteenth century in the ‘English’ style of rustic-romantic then fashionable. At the far corner is the passably ugly and silly building housing the European Parliament, now crowded by newer, uglier and sillier buildings devoted to kindred bureaucracies. You can’t go any further without tumbling into the canal, originally designed to join the Rhine to the Marne: over the bridge is the Robertsau.

  This is just the diplomatic quarter, and in the large pompous villas lining the park are housed a good few of the Missions in which a lot of countries maintain representations to the Strasbourg Parliament together with the Court of Human Rights and a good deal of und-so-weiter (since much of all this in the public eye tends to read Blahblahblah.)

  In the park is a pavilion with a terrace where the orange-trees are displayed, a lake with ducks walking round it and a halfhearted cascade: the focal point nowadays is an extremely grand and much starred restaurant where the diplomats come to eat, one suspects at our expense. The comic aspect of this is that it used to be a humble café in thatched-cottage style where one could drink a glass of wine under the trees: it is still called the Burehiesel which is Alsacien for Little-farmhouse, and speculators have made this into a snobbish watering-hole. The Orangerie is still a place where commoners with small children can walk around the lake, to the disgust of the ducks, but all about is a stifling feel of Holy Ground. Raymond Valdez, in his Sunday suit, wouldn’t come here on the bicycle, leaves the Beetle a long way back. Here at night a security guard might easily shine a torch on you and ask what you think you’re doing. The PermRep residence has a high gate, some nice trees lovingly kept, and a speak-your-business machine.

  Everything was pitch dark but when he went through the movements the gate clicked, a porch light came on and electricity gave the front door just enough of a push to allow him into a marble-tiled hallway where a tall, erect, middle-aged man in slightly gruesome informal clothes looked him over carefully; carrying a doctor bag but doesn’t look much like a doctor. Satisfied that he was, in a couple of quick question-and-answers, the tall man led the way past empty offices. “We’ll go into my study.” Here he turned on lights, invited Raymond to sit down, and began complicated explanations. Ray thought he had seen this man before – perhaps it was a photograph in some paper. The man sat at a big empty desk, shaded his forehead with his hand, did things to give himself more countenance. Man with the habit of command, but people talking to a doctor will slip into a simpler mode after a minute or two. Man complains of a number of odd ailments, which might or might not be linked: he has some papers too, and mentions Dr Roger Pilkington, with whom Raymond is acquainted. There was talk too of what his doctor ‘at home’ had said or thought when last consulted, which seemed some time ago.

  One looks, mostly. One listens. One makes a few tactful remarks. ‘That all sounds reasonable.’ ‘Perhaps we could have a little more light.’ ‘I’d like you to take your shirt off.’ ‘The divan there will do nicely.’ And so forth.

  “I think we can go some way towards clearing up these questions.” One will rarely go further than that, first time off.

  PermRep was also wondering whether he’d seen this man before, and if so where. Since he wants to keep all this matter as discreet as may be he doesn’t make a lot of enquiry. Normally, before doing any business with anyone, he’d have his staff find out whatever there was to be known.

  On, he would call it, the social level, he hardly needed listening posts. He stands here for the greatest power on earth; it’s emblematic and it’s also very real. He can pick up an echo on anything that interests him, have it put on the screen and read off. Hard to think of an exception, outside this sensitive area: he doesn’t want a word anywhere which might start speculation that his health was worrying him. Vulnerable point; keep a close guard on that.

  Dr Barbour is confident in his own eye, kept sharp by intelligence, trained by experience. This man has unconventional approaches but there’s no scent of the charlatan about him. One or two good references, without going into detail. A goodish professional manner. It can do
no harm to go a little further here. Man wants another set of laboratory tests; well… At home he’d be hearing the same song.

  The Permanent Representative – he’s aware of the nickname; it doesn’t bother him – does not think of himself as arrogant or overbearing. It is his position, and that must be safeguarded. He cannot, for instance, allow any breath of scandal. One needs some relaxation from time to time. Nobody cares much about that here; degenerate lot, the French. However, there are people here on mission from most of the world’s countries, and some governments are puritanical. Not to speak of one’s own. A cathouse may be dressed up fancy, remains the cathouse, but in Bonn he had heard a whisper about Mrs Ben, a person said to be dependable: one paid of course the price for that. Understands the meaning of the word tact, and an interview can be arranged. He had been favourably impressed. A call-girl string is one thing; a girl who simply needs a bit of help with the garage and the phonebill is something else. Mireille, said Mrs Ben, is a simple affectionate girl.

  He’d have to say, got on comfortably enough with Mrs Ben. Apart from that awful asphyxiating perfume so many elderly women are given to. (A very well preserved sixty, that’s hardly elderly; that’s virtually his own age.) He didn’t like the name Mireille; too frenchified. Have her ‘rechristened’ – word amused him in the context. Crystal – she has an openness, yes, a transparency he found attractive. Refreshing girl. With her, he didn’t have to be wary all the time.

  Something of an Idyll. He’d got really fond of her; had been in fact taken aback to find himself… heated. Didn’t quite know what word was applicable. Possessive? Not ‘jealous’ surely? Irritable? With a character like that one should never be surprised, surely, at her naïveté? She simply… hadn’t really understood. She got quite cross, even. “But you don’t own me, do you? You help me with a lot of expenses and I’m really grateful – I try to show you I’m grateful, too. I only want to be fair.” He hadn’t liked to admit even to himself that … hell, the damned girl has a boyfriend. Some riffraff chap, bohemian of sorts; she doesn’t take kindly to any probing and he doesn’t want her thinking she has any hold on him. He doesn’t know who it is. Doesn’t want to know. She’s popping in and out there over-often; two or three times not-here-when-wanted. Well; she’s not a sort of slave. He can’t claim exclusivity But she seems extremely placid about share and share about, and this is getting up his nose.