Consolation (3 page)

‘I don’t know . . . predictable. Cash-oriented. I get out my credit card and only then am I entitled to a tender gesture. Well, tender . . . A gesture, at any rate. How . . . so what’s the going rate for a kiss from you at the moment, anyway?’

I opened my wallet and checked the receipt from Gibert’s. ‘Fifty-five euros and sixty cents. Right.’

Silence.

Tossed the receipt into the gutter.

‘You know it’s not just a question of money really, I was happy to give them to you, but . . . I really wish you could have said hello earlier on when I came in, I was so –’

‘I
did
say hello.’

I pulled on her sleeve so she’d look at me, then I lifted my hand to imitate her limp-fingered greeting. Or the limpness of her intention . . .

She pulled her arm away abruptly.

‘And it’s not just with me, anyway,’ I went on, ‘I know it’s like this with your mum, too. Every time I call her, even though I’m far away and I might like a little . . . That’s all she talks about. Your attitude. Your rows. This sort of ongoing blackmail . . . A little bit of kindness for a little bit of cash. All the time. All the time. And –’

I stopped in my tracks and took hold of her again.

‘Answer me. How did it get like this between us? What did we do? What did we do
to you
to deserve this? I know . . . Some might say it’s adolescence, the awkward age, the dark tunnel and all that rubbish, but you – You, Mathilde. I thought you were more intelligent than the others, I didn’t think it would affect you like them. I thought you were far too clever to get caught up in their statistics –’

‘Well you were wrong.’

‘So I see.’

She’d been so hard to get close to
. Why had this ridiculous pluperfect sprung to mind above my coffee cup earlier on? Simply because she’d taken the trouble – the immense trouble – to push a capsule into the coffee machine and press the little green button?

Hey. I’m a bit obtuse myself, at times.

And yet, when I think back –

She was – how old, at the time? Seven, maybe eight, and she’d just lost in the finals at the gymkhana. I can still see her flinging her riding cap into the ditch, lowering her head and ploughing into me without warning. Bam. A battering ram. I even had to grab hold of a post to keep from falling over.

I was dazed, moved, breathless, my hands all tied in knots and in the end I’d managed to pull the flaps of my coat around her
while
she spilled tears and snot and horse dung all over my shirt, with her arms squeezed round my girth as tight as could be.

Could you call this gesture ‘taking someone in your arms’? Yes, I decided; yes. And it was the first time.

The first time . . . and when I say she was eight, I’m almost certainly wrong. I’m hopeless with ages. Perhaps it was even later. Good Lord, it took years, then, didn’t it?

But then she was there, really there. Her entire little self fitted inside the lining of my raincoat and I let it last as long as I could, despite my frozen feet and my aching legs, soon to be stuck at the edge of that bloody riding ring in Normandy, and I hid her from the world, with a silly smile on my face.

Afterwards, in the car, she curled up in a ball on the rear seat, and I said, ‘What was your pony’s name again? Pistachio?’

No reply.

‘Caramel?’

Missed again.

‘Wait, I’ve got it! Popcorn.’

Silence from the rear.

‘Hey, what could you expect from such an ugly stupid pony, with a name like Popcorn to boot . . . huh? Honestly. That was the first and last time he’ll ever make it to the finals, that fat Popcorn of yours, let me tell you!’

I was useless. I was overdoing it and I wasn’t even sure of the animal’s name. Come to think of it, I seem to recall it was Peanut . . .

Well, in any case she’d turned away.

I straightened the rear view mirror and clenched my teeth.

We had got up at dawn. I was exhausted, and cold, and I was scrambling to keep up and had to stop off at the agency that very evening for yet another all-nighter. And I’d always been afraid of horses. Even little ones. Especially little ones. Dear God . . . all of this did not bode well when you were stuck in a traffic jam. Not at all . . . And while I was at it, churning my thoughts round and round, irritated and tense and ready to burst, suddenly there came these words:

‘Sometimes I wish you were my father.’

I didn’t say anything, afraid I might spoil it all. I’m not your
father
, or I’m like your father, or I’m better than your father, or no, what I mean is, I am . . . Phew . . . My silence, it seemed, would say all that much better than I ever could.

But today? Now that life has become so . . . so what? So laborious, so
inflammable
in our one hundred and ten square metres. Now that we almost never made love any more, Laurence and I; now that I was losing my illusions at the rate of one a day, and a year of my life per construction site, and I found myself rambling away to Snoopy T-shirt while saying nothing, and I was obliged to key in my PIN code just to feel loved, I regretted not heeding those distress signals.

I should have seen them that time, obviously.

I should have pulled over onto the emergency lay-by, so aptly named, should have got out into the night and opened her door and pulled her out by the feet and gently smothered her in turn.

What would it have cost me? Not a thing.

Not a thing, because there wouldn’t have been any other words to say . . . Or at least, that’s how I imagine it, the botched scene: silent, and effective. Because words, for Christ’s sake, words – they’re not something I’ve ever been good at. I’ve never had the kit.

Never.

And now that I’m turning towards her, there outside the gate of the School of Medicine, and I can see her face, hard and set and almost ugly, because of one little question, and here am I who never asks questions, I tell myself I’d have done better to keep my mouth shut this time round, too.

She was walking ahead of me, taking long strides, head down.

‘Anyouinkbetter?’ I heard her mumble.

‘Excuse me?’

She spun around.

‘And you? Do you think you’re any better?’

She was furious.

‘You think you’re any better, you guys? Huh? You think you’re any better? You guys think you’re not predictable?’

‘You guys who?’

‘Who, who do you think? Well, the two of you! You guys! You and Mum! I really wonder what sort of statistic you two belong in! Maybe the crap couple category, the ones who . . .’

Silence.

‘Who what?’ I ventured, idiot that I am.

‘You know what I mean,’ she murmured.

Yes, that I knew. And that is the reason why we both stubbornly stood there not speaking.

Lucky kid with headphones: here was I, with nothing but my own inner turmoil to listen to.

My own negative feedback and a moth-eaten raincoat.

When we reached the Rue de Sèvres, opposite the posh department store that was already making me feel discouraged, I veered off in the direction of a café.

‘Do you mind? I need a coffee before the battle.’

She followed, making a face.

I burned my lips while she fiddled with her gadgets again.

‘Charles?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can you tell me what he’s singing, here? ’Cause I get some of it but not all . . .’

‘No problem.’

So we shared the sound again. She got the Dolby, I got the stereo. One ear each.

But the opening chords of the piano were quickly drowned by the noise of the espresso machine.

‘Wait –’

She dragged me down to the other end of the counter.

‘Ready?’

I nodded.

Another man’s voice. Warmer.

And I began my simultaneous translation for her, into French, ‘
If you were the road, I would go
. . . Wait . . . Because this could be either road or path in French, it depends on the context. Do you want the poetry or word for word?’

‘Oh,’ she moaned, cutting off the sound, ‘you fuck everything up. I don’t want an English lesson, I just want you to tell me what he’s saying!’

‘Right,’ I said impatiently, ‘let me listen to the whole thing once through on my own, and then I’ll tell you.’

I took her little thingammies and covered my ears with both hands while she looked at me out of the corner of her eye, febrile.

I was blown away. More than I would have imagined. More than I would have liked. I was . . . simply blown away.

Bloody love songs. The way they sneak up on you . . . Enough to make you surrender, in less than four minutes. Bloody banderillas planted in hearts already riddled with statistics.

I handed the earpiece back to her with a sigh.

‘Good stuff, isn’t it?’

‘Who is it?’

‘Neil Hannon. An Irish singer. Right, the whole thing through, now?’

‘The whole thing.’

‘And no stopping, right?’

‘
Don’t worry sweetie, it’s gonna be all right
,’ I drawled, best cowboy fashion.

She smiled again. Well done, Charley, well done.

So I picked up the road where I’d left it, because it was surely a road that was meant, no doubt about that.

If you were the road/ I’d go all the way . . . If you were the night/ I’d sleep in the day . . . If you were the day/ I’d cry in the night
. . . She was sticking right by me now, not to lose a single word . . . ’
Cause you are the way, the truth and the light./

If you were a tree/ I could put my arms around you . . ./ And . . . you . . . you could not complain/ If you were a tree . . ./ I could carve my name into your side/ and you would not cry,/ ’Cos trees don’t cry
. . . (there I took some liberties with the French to translate, ‘’Cos trees don’t cry’, okay, right, Neil, you’ll forgive me, won’t you? I’ve got this teenager on my back at the other end of the wire)
If you were a man/ I would still love you . . ./ If you were a drink/ I’d drink my fill of you . . ./ If you were attacked,/ I would kill for you . . ./ If your name was Jack/ I’d change mine to Jill for you . . ./ If you were a horse,/ I’d clean the crap out of your stable/ and never once complain . . ./ If you were a horse/ I could ride you through the fields at dawn . . ./ Through the day until the day was gone
(uh . . . no time to polish that) . . .
I could sing about you in my songs
(not brilliant either) . . . (She didn’t care and I could feel her hair against my cheek.) (And smell her scent, too. Her Body Shop Tea Tree Oil, a whiff of young teenager with rips in her sleeve.)
If you were my little girl/ I would find it hard to let
you
go . . ./ If you were my sister
uh, ‘find it doubly’ oh, let’s just take a stab,/
I would find it doubly so./ If you were a dog,/ I’d feed you scraps from off the table
(sorry)
Though my wife complains . . ./ If you were my dog
(and now his voice is rising)
I am sure you’d like it better./ Then you’d be my loyal four-legged friend,/ You’d
(almost shouting now)
never have to think again
(now he was really yelling but in a sad sort of way)/
And we could be together till the end
(Right to the
eeeeeennnddd
in fact, but you could tell the affair was hardly in the bag either . . . not a sure thing at all . . .).

I handed her property back without a word and ordered a second coffee that I really didn’t want at all to give her the time to let the credits roll by. The time to get used to the light and shake herself down.

‘I love this song,’ she sighed.

‘Why?’

‘Dunno. Because . . . because trees don’t cry.’

‘Are you in love?’ I ventured cautiously, walking on eggshells.

A slight pout.

‘No,’ she confessed, ‘no. When you’re in love you don’t need to listen to this sort of lyric, I don’t suppose, like duh.’

After a few minutes during which I scraped conscientiously at the treacle in the bottom of the cup, she said, ‘To get back to what you were saying . . .’

She directed her gaze over there, towards the question I’d asked earlier.

I didn’t budge.

‘The dark tunnel and all that. Well, um, I think that . . . we should just leave things as they stand . . . Like not get too greedy with each other, know what I mean?’

‘Uh, not exactly, no . . .’

‘Well, you can count on me to help you find a present for Mum, and I can count on you to translate the songs I like, and . . . and that’s it.’

‘That’s it?’ I protested mildly. ‘That’s
all
you have to offer?’

She’d put her hood back up.

‘Yes. For the time being, yes. But, yeah it’s quite a lot, in fact. It’s . . . like . . . it’s a lot.’

I stared at her.

‘Why are you smiling like an idiot now?’

‘Because,’ I replied, holding the door for her, ‘because if you were my dog, I could sneak you the scraps and you’d be my loyal friend at last.’

‘Ha, ha. Very clever.’

And while we stood motionless at the edge of the pavement, watching the stream of cars, she lifted her leg and pretended to piss against my trouser leg.

She’d been very honest with me, and on the escalator I decided to pay her back in her own coin.

‘You know, Mathilde . . .’

‘What?’ (in a tone of,
now
what?)

‘We are all cash-oriented.’

‘I know,’ she replied, without hesitating.

The ease with which she’d put me in my place left me pensive. It seemed to me we were a more generous lot, back in Cohen’s time . . .

Or perhaps we simply weren’t as clever?

She took a step away from me.

‘Hey, then, let’s drop these mega-boring conversations, right?’

‘Right.’

‘And so what shall we get for Mum?’

‘Whatever you like,’ I replied.

A shadow passed over.

‘I’ve already got my present,’ she said, clenching her teeth, ‘it’s
yours
we’re talking about.’

‘Sure, sure,’ I said with forced cheerfulness, ‘give me time to think, let’s see . . .’

So that’s what it meant, to be fourteen years old in this day and age? To be lucid enough to know that everything has its price here on earth and, at the same time, stay naïve and tender enough to want to go on giving your hands to the adults on either side of you, and stay with them, right between them, maybe not skipping any more but squeezing their hands hard, keeping a firm grip, to keep them
together
in spite of everything.