A Period of Adjustment (21 page)

‘Real good. Experienced, right?' she said softly.

‘I was. So are you.'

She raised herself on an elbow. ‘What a big fellow you are. Sturdy friend. Play it again one day?'

‘Play it again. One day. Untie me now?'

‘I'm looking at him. He's still so gorgeously tumid. It's wild … you want to go again, huh?' I shook my head violently. Begged to be untied, to get the vodka quickly and she, prudent girl, untied my feet,
then
my aching wrists. ‘Remember,' she said sliding off the bed, ‘this was for
lust.
Just lust. There was no
shred
of love or affection anywhere. Right? None.'

‘I can believe that.'

‘Men don't believe that really. Don't believe that women can have wild desires too, fantasies, mad as hell. Well …' She leant down to kiss my thighs lightly, sweetly. ‘Well … they do. We just aren't allowed to say anything. Show it. Except that
I
have. I got used like a bloody inflatable doll just too often, no one ever asked if
I
had had an orgasm, never. Just pulled out and went to grab a shower. Well …' She patted my still erect cock. ‘Well … I've changed the rules of the game. Okay?'

‘Okay. Fine by me.' I began to rub the weals on my wrists. ‘Never played it quite like that, but if it's the way
you
play it, fine. Just whistle.'

She had started to wind the red scarf round her head. ‘It's called “male-rape”. I just
love
it.' She tucked the ends of the scarf in neatly. ‘I got married twice. Both of them rich-rich like I wanted. But, sagging butts, flabby bellies, bad breath. They had to do it that way to get things going. Only
I
was always the target, it was always little old me trussed up like some goddamned hen. And then I thought, get me some great looking
young
guy! Take my revenge. Change places?' She slid her hands across her thighs still slippery from the oil. ‘So I got me one or two. You pay, you get. But they get shit scared. They all did, or else pissed or puked or spent too soon. Hated to lose their manhood or something. So
unnatural.'

She was standing quite still, arms at her sides. Slender,
shining, ageless in the filtered light. She grinned the cat grin again. ‘Then I saw you that afternoon. Just had a hunch. And
you
saw me. We locked in, right?' She stooped to pick up the two glasses on the carpet. Her breasts juddered slightly as she rose, the glasses in one hand. ‘Still rubbing away? They'll go … You okay?'

‘I'm fine, really fine. Just glad that I was older and wiser. It really was a great “lunch”.'

She stood silent, rattled the glasses in her hand lightly like castanets, cocked her head to one side. ‘Hey,' she said. ‘Did I ever get to have dessert?' She walked slowly towards me smiling.

I'd opened up the house and put on the coffee. Giles was still mucking around in the bathroom. I always got up first to avoid the stumbling sleep-bleary shape of my son blundering about, near sightless, hands groping for his toothbrush. Clotilde had not yet arrived to start her day.

It was the part of the morning which I particularly enjoyed. Alone. The calm and serenity just before the normal, ordinary routine of daily life commenced. There was still a light dew under the fig tree where the early sun had not yet thrust its laser beams among the tall grasses, a sweet freshness in the air which the attendant heat of the day had not yet been summoned to disperse.

Behind Jericho rose the great cliffs, riven, just behind the house, by the narrow gorge through which the infant river Yves tumbled and shouldered round, and over, water-polished boulders. The cliffs were deeply scarred at this hour in the morning by the first light, which threw the crags and pinnacles into harsh relief against the brilliant cliff faces. By noon the whole massif would be a dazzling glare of sun-washed limestone, burning the eyes; only the clumps of live oak, broom and myrtle would stand sentinel in their meagre puddles of black shade. By late afternoon the
westering sun would gild those same crags and pinnacles, tip them with flame and gold and rearrange the shadows from indigo to bottle blue to black, as the orange globe suddenly slid, with astonishing rapidity, over the rim of the cliffs, dragging with it the last vestiges of day, throwing the valley and plain below into deep shade, while swallows soared and swooped into the darkening sky, and finally, as the fireflies drifted about under the figs, it would be night.

But for
this
moment, this brief pause before the sun arced upwards into the sky, exploding over the land with light, for this moment I cherished absolute solitude. Stood alone in the dusty potager wondering if my brother, James, had experienced the same feeling of peace and intense delight. It was strange, humbling even, to stand there on the earth, a silent pygmy below that wild panorama of vibrant, changing colour. Had he seen it as I did? Had it hit
him
in the gut? Found
his
soul? He had attempted to set it all down on his canvases. But had it reached
more
than just his eyes? Why should I think that I saw it differently from him because I tried to use words, and he used paint and brush?

But however he or I perceived it all, there could be no doubt whatsoever that the rearing cliffs of Jericho, with the ruined hamlet high up on the rim of their jagged lips, had the most profound effect on the observer. Soul or no soul. How one chose to interpret the emotions which that colossal sight engendered in one's mind and heart was a personal matter. One did it the way one knew best. By pen or brush, sometimes in music, often only by silence. It was the one moment of the day which I chose not to share. I stood healing in the stillness of the morning. Which one might consider very appropriate after the utter madness of the day before, but it was more a spiritual healing than a physical one. Only shattered suddenly by Giles bawling from the terrace that the coffee was boiling over.

‘Then turn it off!'

‘I have. It's a mess! The stove thing.' He was wandering down the path between furrows I had ploughed up, his shadow falling tall beside him in the rising sun. He saw it and waved his arms like a windmill. ‘Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I'm a helicopter!' Then he stopped before me. ‘Gosh! Terrible scratches. Do they hurt?'

I had imprudently left my shirt open like a jacket. He looked vaguely curious.

‘No, they don't hurt. Nothing really. I was … um … up in the orchard yesterday, by the cane-break, you know? All that tangled bramble, and that prickly stuff? With the strimmer.' I began to button up. Slowly. Not quickly: no need to arouse his curiosity further.

‘Terrific bruise too. On your bosom.'

I laughed a light laugh. Or hoped it might appear to be that sort of laugh. ‘My
what?'
'

‘Your
boooosum.
You fall over as well?'

‘Yes. As a matter of fact I did. Tripped over a big log, a pile of them under the brambles. It bloody well hurt too.'

He thankfully suddenly lost interest and turned to look back towards the house and the cliffs. ‘I'd like to go up there. To that ruined village. You did say we could one day?'

‘One day, sure. We'll have to go up by car, but it's on the edge of the range, the military range. Red flags everywhere. It can be dangerous. Grenades, shells, bullets winging about.'

His eyes were wide with pleasure. ‘Wow! Like a war?'

‘Just like a war. They are all practising, you see.'

He had completely forgotten my cuts and abrasions. Lulu's legacy. I made a decision to remain covered for a day or two. We had started up the path to the house as Clotilde came bouncing up past the mossy pillar and pushed her Mobylette through the little iron gate. We all waved.

Giles said suddenly, ‘You never really took down the Jericho sign,
or
the gate, did you?'

‘No, I never did. I put it back. Remember? Well, people do seem to wander about here. Clotilde's little friend for example.'

‘Mon-Ami? Oh, he's all right. Anyway, it didn't stop him, did it? And if we had some peacocks or something, we'd
have
to have a gate, wouldn't we?' He was scuffing pebbles on the path up to the terrace.

‘Peacocks? Why peacocks, for God's sake?'

‘Well, we could. Frederick has two, a cock and a hen, only she's a bit boring. He said the hens were, but they lay the eggs. He's got two little monkeys, marmosets. They wouldn't need a gate, just a smallish aviary, and they aren't expensive – easy to feed. They are really ace. He got them from a shop in Nice. Can we go there one day?'

Clotilde had hurried past us and was tying her apron when we got into the kitchen.

‘No peacocks, mate, no monkeys. This is supposed to be a holiday, we aren't absolutely settled yet. Let's take things gradually, okay?'

He slid into his chair and watched Clotilde spreading his tartine thickly with jam, and we heard the blast of a horn, three short bursts.

‘Postman! Three honks. That means a packet or something. I'll go.' He ran off down the path to the gate.

‘The post?' said Clotilde. Giles had been speaking in English. ‘Ah! He's such a timid one, that Jacob. Won't walk an inch if he thinks there is a dog anywhere.'

‘But we haven't got a dog.'

‘Does he know this yet? You have only been here a little time. Maybe you have bought a dog? How does he know?' She set the coffee pot back on the stove on a low gas. ‘And they say there is rabies at Saint-Rémy! A German tourist was bitten by a pony at the Club des Vacances there. Ma foi! Rabies! So you can't blame Jacob for being cautious.'

I watched Giles coming up the path, a clutch of envelopes in one hand, a small package in the other. ‘I'll put out a sign on the gate saying “
No
dog!
No
rabies”! Do you think that would work?'

Clotilde just shrugged indifferently and went into the Long Room. Her French logic was being questioned.

‘What have you got?'

Giles spread the letters on the table like a hand of cards. ‘All for me! Look, two letters and a postcard. Two for you. Postcard is from Mum. Amazing! “Lots of fun here. Miss you heaps. Love. Mum.” It's one of the Casino in Cannes.'

I picked up my letters. One from Andrews and Fry with nothing to say of importance, the other from my bank, equally dull. The packet was very like the one which James had sent me so long ago containing the key to this house. ‘I send you the key because it is now yours, I no longer have need of it …' A strange, sad, kind of faux-will. Jericho was mine. He had left it to me. For three years anyway. But what oddity did
this
little buff envelope contain? Postmark Nice-Centre, address typed. No outward clue and nothing slid about or rattled.

Giles suddenly gave a whoop of pleasure. ‘Everyone is coming! They are coming to my party on the second! Wow! Brilliant. Listen “Mr and Mrs Arthur Theobald are very pleased to accept Giles Caldicott's kind invitation to supper on July second at eight o'clock.” See! They have replied right away.'

I took the card, saw Arthur's neat, schoolmaster's handwriting. ‘And the other one? Who's that from?'

He pushed it across the table. ‘Madame Prideaux! She's coming
too.'

Sidonie Prideaux had, indeed, accepted. Had accepted in French (I had insisted that Giles wrote his cards in French) and was happy to accept the invitation to supper on behalf of herself and Madame James Caldicott and noted that no
gifts were to be expected. This was something I had written at the bottom of each invitation. ‘Please, no gifts.' It made Giles ill with anger for at least three hours.

‘That all? Nothing from the Terrehautes yet?'

Giles was looking dreamily, in rapture, at his acceptances. ‘No. Nothing. But I told Frederick yesterday, and he said he was pretty sure it was okay but he didn't know if his mother had got the invite. And anyway, she was away all day yesterday, in Monte Carlo, wouldn't be back till after dinner. What's in that? The packet?'

I spilled it on to the table between the bowl of sugar and the pot of raspberry jam. A slim, gold watch. A Piaget. James's watch. Attached to it a card. ‘I managed to trace the owner and got it back for you. A souvenir for you to keep.' It was signed simply ‘S. Aronovich'.

It was rather a lot to take at the breakfast table. Two gifts, in a way. One, which caused me the most intense pleasure, was the acceptance from Sidonie Prideaux indicating, perfectly clearly, that things must be well with Florence. At least as far as I could judge. Her mother had no idea precisely
why
Florence had gone to Marseilles. It was highly improbable that the true reason was ever mentioned in that smug little house in rue Émile Zola. So, unless she was concealing anything, it would appear that all was clear. And on that assumption I felt my whole body metaphorically sag with relief. Subconscious stress tenses the whole range of one's muscles. All unaware, one is none the less as taut as a drumskin.

Although I had, deep down inside, felt that there could not possibly be any cause for alarm as far as Florence was concerned, or Thomas for that matter, how the hell could I be certain? As she herself had said, I was not ‘holding the candle' in this little house during those fearful months. In any case, I knew so little about the disease: how long one could be HIV positive, or when everything could suddenly
blow up into what was known as full-blown AIDS. The very vaguest thought that Florence could perhaps have ended as James had done was unthinkable. I had buried it deep in the blackest recesses of my mind, never to let a spark of light fall across it. So that now, sitting at the table, my son eating his tartine, reading and re-reading his letters, the coffee pot drifting sweet vapour into the morning, the glint of gold on the Piaget watch rescued by Aronovich, the name ‘Madame Caldicott' in her mother's looped handwriting, surely that was proof that all was well? I was suddenly suffused with well-being and, to his astonishment, lightly kissed Giles on the top of his head as I got up and went out on to the terrace.