The Lovers

by Catherine Rey

  The list of my guests? Certainly, you’ll get it tomorrow… That’s your number, right? I’ll fax it first thing in the morning. I remain at your service. Naturally, I’ll call at once if Lucie gets in touch with me, or if I remember any helpful details. Let me walk you back to your car. It’s my pleasure… And do promise you’ll come back in springtime, the garden looks like paradise.

  Mathilde Sergent

  Chemin des Dames

  Pointilly

  France

  Sorry, whom am I speaking to? Inspecteur Agnelli of the Missing Person Department. And you’re calling from Poitiers? My sister Lucie has disappeared? Yes, I know, I’ve already been contacted. I’ve also answered a few questions. The Australian Federal Police found my name in my sister’s address book. First name on her list. I guess my sister remembers me when it suits her.

  You really want to know what I think, Inspecteur Agnelli? I’m not at all surprised. One day Lucie is here, the next, whoosh, gone. When life gets tough, Lucie packs up and bails. Bye-bye. She’s been doing it her whole life. She’s changed cities. She’s changed jobs. She’s changed men. She’s let her friends down. She’s let her family down. As soon as she isn’t happy with what she’s got, she runs away instead of trying to solve her problems, or at least trying to understand what’s wrong. Better hit the road and blame the whole world, including me, for her stuff-ups. Let me tell you one thing, Inspecteur Agnelli, I’m not going to worry myself sick over her.

  No, I don’t mince my words. But you can be sure that in a few weeks, she’ll surface. I know it. What’s wrong with her, you ask me, what’s wrong? Everything, if you want to know! Clearly, you’ve never met Lucie. She suffers from a terrible illness called delusions of grandeur. At thirteen she pictured herself touring the world as a concert pianist. At fifteen she fancied becoming a writer. She studied and graduated in literature. That’s how she ended up thinking she was better, smarter than everyone else. As if. Miss Know-It-All. She looked down on her family. Going to Australia, but what for? Why? Why do you have to go to Australia to give meaning to your life, honestly. Happiness is right under your nose, if you look hard enough for it. For God’s sake, Australia! What a stupid idea… But let me tell you: if something serious happened to her, she probably asked for it. You see, Lucie is a carbon copy of our mother. She likes to play with fire and cries for help when she gets burnt. She acts impulsively and then, ouch! Too late…

  That’s right, I’m fourteen years older than Lucie and my sister Sylvia is ten years older than her. In a way, we grew up apart. Lucie was still playing with dolls when Sylvia and I were finishing high school. Lucie was different, withdrawn, read a lot, didn’t speak much. I married early, at nineteen, and a year later I fell pregnant.

  Pardon? What sort of relationship did Lucie have with my mother? Oh my! They were constantly battling it out. Mind you, my mother was a domineering woman and we all had to be at her beck and call. She manipulated everyone, including my father. Lucie ran away from home when she was underage. My parents had to send the police after her. She kept blaming us for what was wrong in her life… Truly, I can’t understand her… She was well looked after, I can assure you. She had no reason to complain. My uncle, that is my father’s brother, and my aunt took her in. They were besotted. They had no children. Lucie spent every single weekend with them, not counting summer and winter holidays. My parents didn’t have the time to take us on holidays. They were too busy working… Yes, she was very well looked after, I would say. Our uncle was a teacher of literature and our aunt, who was also her godmother, a piano teacher. That’s how she got her taste for books and music.

  When she turned nineteen Lucie started to go out. She loved men and men loved her. She was pretty. I wouldn’t say she was gorgeous, no, but she was pretty. And she knew it was an asset. My mother said she was a bitch on heat and she was right. She had affairs with married men, weirdos, slackers… I always wondered why she couldn’t find herself a normal guy. No one was good enough for her. Is it so hard? She could have found herself an accountant or a teacher, had children, gone for bicycle rides on Sundays, and had holidays on the Atlantic seashore, like everyone else. No, too banal for her. Each time she had to dish up one of these weirdos. There’s nothing wrong with a regular guy, is there? See, my sister Sylvia, she married a teacher and she is very happy with him. What’s wrong with that?

  Lucie’s always been conceited, selfish and arrogant. She hasn’t grown out of it. She unfailingly scorns our views. As a teenager, she was unruly, in rebellion against the family, against society, against what she called the petits bourgeois. But what’s wrong with being a petit bourgeois? Our grandparents were shopkeepers who worked day and night, made good money, and helped their children get established. They weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth. They tried hard to climb their way up the social ladder. What’s wrong with that?

  When was the last time we spoke to each other? Hmm… It could have been last year. She came with him, the partner. Arnold? Albert? No, sorry, I don’t remember his name… Ernest! Thank you, yes, Ernest. It would have been September last year… Since then? No, as I’ve told you, we haven’t been in touch since then… I organised a lunch here for Lucie and her partner. My sister Sylvia, her husband and two sons came along. Also present, of course, were my three children and their spouses. We were happy to see Lucie. Very glad. Glad, but sad too because our mother wasn’t amongst us. She had passed away five months before. In May… Lucie didn’t make the funeral.

  As for him, the partner, I found him to be quite eccentric… a man that age with hair to his shoulders. A real cowboy with his leather hat and leather pants. After they left, my husband christened him John Wayne. That’s what the whole family calls him now… If you want my opinion, I found him annoying. Nothing was grand enough for him, neither the amount of food, nor the car they’d hired. As he doesn’t speak a word of French, we didn’t get to talk much. Lucie tried to translate, but we quickly got tired of it and we carried on in French. I say, if you come to France, make an effort to speak our language, otherwise, don’t complain… Lucie was proud of her John Wayne. She handed around the photos of their house, well, I should say, his house.

  Honestly, I was staggered by her appearance that day. She seemed like someone else. She’d been to the hairdresser. She wore a silk dress, leather shoes – her wardrobe was typically limited to jeans and worn-out jumpers. She looked like a milady. I reckon she was trying hard to make an impression on me, but I wasn’t impressed… I have a good husband and three wonderful children. My son is a pharmacist. He is thirty-five now and I’ll be a grandmother again soon. My fourth grandchild. My youngest daughter is a veterinarian and the eldest is an international lawyer. She graduated at twenty-four. Twenty-four! That’s unheard of. No need to prove anything… I married the man I met when I was eighteen, we’ve been together for thirty-eight years. We’ve never thought of divorce, wouldn’t dream of it. With three children, our duty is to stick together. We support each other, as well as our family. My sister Sylvia is like me. She’s happy with who she is. She lives in Poitiers and she didn’t have to run away to Australia to find meaning to her life… I don’t know if you understand, Inspecteur Agnelli, even though we are sisters, Lucie and I are like chalk and cheese. This happens sometimes in families…

  Anyway, straight after lunch, Lucie and her partner drove off to Bordeaux. They could have stayed. They were very welcome. The most comfortable bedroom was ready upstairs. But they turned down my invitation. I couldn’t understand why. My husband doesn’t like Lucie. He never liked her… After they left he said that she finally got it right. She’s not going to wind up like your mother, poor as a church mouse. At least we’re off the hook and now John Wayne can look after her… I myself wasn’t so sure if we were off the hook. Lucie thinks she’s won the lottery with her five-star life and her famous artist, but I wonder how long it will last. My husband laughed. She thinks she’s different, he said, but unfortunately she’s like
everyone else. He carried on, saying that when you don’t want to conform to the norm, it’s alright, as long as you have the financial or intellectual means to be different. But your sister Lucie, she isn’t Rockefeller’s daughter, and she hasn’t got Einstein’s brain. And that’s why she’s mad at the world. And when you are neither Rockefeller nor Einstein, you blend in and follow the flock like everyone else… He’s so right. He knows life, my husband.

  Yes, they drove here from Saintes. They hired a car at the train station; it’s just a forty-five-minute drive to Pointilly. It is so beautiful here, hilly, green, we’re surrounded by vineyards, and in autumn there is every shade of yellow and red. I immediately loved the place. A seventeenth-century manor house on twenty hectares of land… But, you know, we bought when all those run-down country houses were still affordable. No one wanted them. Too much work. Would you believe that the English and Dutch now buy them for a fortune? Back then the place was a ruin. An absolute ruin! Oh yes, Pointilly is beautiful and I am fond of it, even though it’s a bit too far from the ocean for my taste. I adore the ocean. I would have loved a Tudor style mansion facing the sea. Just like in Biarritz. Oh well, one day maybe… I thought we should have a pool. All our neighbours have a pool. I told my husband, we’ve got to have one too. Come on, now we belong to the fiefdom of Grande Champagne, we’ve got to keep up! So, we had a pool built…

  Huh? What happened to my mother? Oh, that’s a sad story… See, she was a smart woman, but too ambitious. She ran a large real estate agency. She was very successful. Then her fortune dwindled away to nothing through bad investments and her own greed. Yes, she lost her mansion and the properties she inherited from both sides of the family. She sold everything down to her last ring. That was very sad indeed… My father? What can I say about him? He was a ghost, completely indifferent to the world. He watched the disaster unfold and, honestly, I don’t think he gave a fig.

  But don’t get me wrong, we are a close-knit family. We meet up every year at Christmas, New Year and Easter, and when my mother was alive, she was invited to Pointilly, along with her new partner. Naturally, after my father’s death, she got herself a new man… No, there are no outcasts in our family. Everyone gets a seat at my table. We are always glad to see each other. But when Lucie came back last September – supposedly to interview a musician, she was writing some book or article, don’t ask me, I didn’t get the full story – she really came back just to flash her John Wayne.

  Lucie has always been jealous of me… As a matter of fact, I should say both my sisters have been jealous of me. Why? Because I did better than them. Do you know what they say behind my back, what they’d never say to my face? They say that I married money… Look, I met my husband when I was eighteen, as if I cared about money back then. He was good-looking and I liked him. One day he told me completely out of the blue that his father owned a vineyard in Grande Champagne. I was blown away. Grande Champagne! Gosh, the prized heart of the Cognac region. When his father died, my husband, an only child, inherited the house, the farm, the distillery and a fifty-hectare vineyard. We sold the house to buy a bigger one in Pointilly. My husband quit his job as an architect and converted to viticulture. No good to have people working for you if you aren’t around… you’ve got to keep an eye on your business.

  I’ve been lucky, so what? Why feel ashamed to be well off? Is it a sin to be rich? Let me tell you the truth, I feel no guilt living in a mansion. None. Oh yes, Lucie came here to play milady at the millionaire’s arm, as if to say, see, this time, I’m not doing too badly… But I wasn’t impressed with that Ernest. This time, I reckon, she’s done a fine job at getting into trouble.

  My gut feeling, to get back to where we started, is that nothing serious has happened to Lucie. I know my sister. She’s more conniving than she appears. She’s like my mother. She will reappear soon enough. Give her two to three months, and she’ll call you from Mexico or Santiago…

  Nicole Letourneau

  Petersham

  Sydney

  New South Wales

  Last time I saw Lucie was the Sunday before last, at the party. Did I notice anything? I certainly did. Lucie wasn’t her usual self. I asked her if something was up. She shrugged. She said she’d been busy cleaning, she’d not had time to go to the hairdresser. I laughed: you don’t need the hairdresser to look gorgeous, my mignonne. She sighed and said she’d been up since five… The catering staff had not shown up until the last minute. Yes, I think she was exhausted.

  Ernest? Well, something wasn’t right… The few times I came up to Lucie, he would spring out of nowhere. I got the feeling that he didn’t like us talking to each other… Anyway, Lucie was busy with the guests, in and out of the kitchen, serving drinks, serving food, making sure everyone was happy. The waiters Ernest had hired lacked experience. They couldn’t hack it. No, Lucie wasn’t herself… Still she put up a good show, smiled a lot…

  At one point, someone asked her to play and she sat down at the piano. She’s usually much too self-effacing to perform to an audience. But there she was playing Chopin, Schubert, Mozart. Everyone was in awe of her virtuosity and beauty… in awe of this woman in a black evening gown… her hair tied up in a chignon… But I never got to find out what bothered her. I did notice that she was blunt with Ernest and on one occasion he scoffed: you’re always right, honey, there is no point talking things over, you’re such a smart one… I found him irritating.

  How did I meet Lucie? By chance really, last January, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Lucie overheard me speaking French to my daughter June. She looked at me and asked if I’d been a student at Poitiers University. Not even close, I said. I’m from Paris, the Batignolles area. And I’ve never been to university… We laughed… Oh, the Batignolles, she replied, I remember a good bookshop on Avenue de Villiers. You look a lot like someone I know, she added. We talked for a while and swapped phone numbers. That’s how we became friends.

  I often call on her in Longland. Ernest doesn’t let her drive his car, a vintage Chevrolet that costs a fortune to maintain. Lucie isn’t used to driving on the other side of the road. That’s what Ernest says, anyway. He drives her everywhere. Lucie is fed up with being constantly chaperoned. The train doesn’t stop near Longland, so if you don’t have a car, you are marooned in the valley. The closest train station is five kilometres up the road, at Watooga, and it is a very steep road. You wouldn’t want to have to carry a suitcase up there… Each time I want to see her, I drive… Yes, I’ve spent a few weekends down there. Lucie has been lonely. Besides we’re always glad to have a chance to speak French. Our community isn’t large in New South Wales.

  Uh-huh, that’s correct, I didn’t go to Ernest’s party on my own… Rosy Barth drove me and my little girl June. Rosy? Well, I met Rosy in Kings Cross recently. She runs an art gallery. She sells Aboriginal art and I was looking for a dot painting for my mother’s birthday. I found one at Rosy’s, a small one, the only one I could actually afford. We realised that we’d both been invited to Ernest’s party. We were spun out. It was a strange coincidence. We decided to go in one car. June insisted on coming with me to Longland. I wasn’t keen but she cried so much that I gave in.

  How was the party? Ooh… It was really over the top and outlandish, like in a movie. Around sixty people. Mostly artists. Misfits. Crazies. Borderlines. Yes, a truly different crew. They’re fun. They don’t freak me out. I’m used to being around eccentric people. My father is an artist. He lives in Paris. The old artists’ studios in Montparnasse. Next to the cemetery. That’s where Alberto Giacometti and Marcel Duchamp worked. I met Christian Boltanski there… Quite an amazing encounter… Oh yes, the party panned out very well. Great music, good food, lots of booze.

  Huh? Let me think… Yes, actually… Something happened. Late in the evening… Ernest had an argument with some stuck-up guy in a white tuxedo. They were talking art. Ernest only talks about art and he’s always right. The snob called him a pornographer. It could have been funny,
just a bad joke, but it got out of control. Ernest took it the wrong way and threatened to punch his lights out… I found it so embarrassing that I walked away. I didn’t want to be a witness. Angry drunks make me feel uncomfortable and Ernest was very drunk and angry… Yes, Ernest runs on heavy fuel. Whisky, vodka, gin, anything he can get his hands on, he sculls… and when he’s gone round the bend it can get messy.

  Violent? Have I ever seen him be violent? No, I wouldn’t say so… Acting stupid, yes, acting wild, yes. But, you know, I don’t live with Ernest. And Lucie doesn’t tell me everything…

  From the sitting-room I heard the guy yell pornographer several times… You call yourself an artist, but you’re no better than a pornographer! Ernest shouted back, you can stick pornography up your arse! People giggled. I had the feeling that everyone had been waiting for Ernest’s outburst. The highlight of their week. Definitely something to talk about.

  When I was about to leave Lucie invited us stay the night, but I said I’d go back with Rosy. June was asleep upstairs. We were the last guests to leave… Oh, could have been four, four-thirty. Yes, four-thirty… Did I see anyone else around? No, as I said, we were the last. I said goodbye to Lucie. I said goodbye to Ernest. He was as drunk as a lord. I don’t even know how he managed to get up the stairs to his bedroom.

  What do I think of Ernest? Hmm… Hard to say… Ernest is a great artist and a Casanova. His whole life revolves around women. Women and sex. The minute he saw me, he looked me straight in the eye. You have a very interesting face, he said. Would you like to sit for me? I looked straight back at him and replied, why not. I’ve posed many times for my father and his friends. When she was young my mother was a model in Paris, so I am no stranger to that world. And I was glad to make some extra money.