Read English Correspondence Online
Authors: Janet Davey
English Correspondence
Contents
Janet Davey was born in 1953. She lives in London.
To Charlotte Chesney
Janet Davey
1
WHAT SYLVIE MISSED
most when her father died were his letters. She hoped there might be one more. Post from England to France took about three days, sometimes longer, so there was always a gap between his dropping the envelope in the London post box and her picking it out from the pile of bills and flyers that landed on her desk. His death fell into this gap. She was certain of it. And when she was on the English side of the Channel, away from home, sorting out the funeral and other dispositions, she called her husband every afternoon and asked if the letter had arrived. This was all she asked. The telephone calls became briefer and the silence at either end recorded two quite different types of disappointment.
The hoping for something that didn't happen skewed the process of grief and her father remained adrift, lost in the mail. It was five years since her mother had died in the Clinique Saint Livier. She too had gone missing for a time, as Sylvie forgot her expressions and mannerisms, even the look of her face in repose. But after three days she had come back, not tentatively, completely, and Sylvie had recovered her way of walking, smiling, looking to the left when she didn't want to reply and a selection of coats, scarves, shoes and brooches which she had never expected to see again. This was normal. There were precedents. Lazarus four days, Jesus, three. She had asked other people and they said the same. The interval was similar. After that her mother stayed with her, not all the time, that would have been intolerable, as trying as it had been when she came to stay, but retrievable in waking life and cropping up in dreams. Eve hadn't lived to see her
grandson who was born six weeks after the day of her death. Her friends said she was willing herself to keep alive for that, but there are limits to will power. And, after she'd gone, they said, what a pity she hadn't managed to hang on.
Returning home in the inactive part of the day, Sylvie felt like a client. She walked through the low white gates that were always open and up the gravel path. The frames for the menus, to the side of the main door, were empty. She went in and put down the suitcase she'd been carrying. The lamp on the desk, in the hallway, was lit, guarding the essence of evening and dinnertime, marking time until they came round again. Outside it was bright and the illusion depressed her. She waited. No one was there to confirm her reservation or hand her a key. She knew she could stay here. It was more than a restaurant, though not quite a hotel. The food was what counted. She was resigned to standing there while her mind climbed the stairs and entered a bedroom, clean and silent, shaded by curtains. The pillows lay smooth and pale. Nobody's room.
From being almost asleep, Sylvie suddenly felt agitated. Why was there no one to help her? They didn't deserve business if they kept people waiting like this. She couldn't stand here all day. She needed to lie down; it was compelling. She knew she wouldn't even be able to wait to pull back the cover. She looked impatiently at the high-backed chair and realised it was she who should have been sitting in it.
âI didn't know you were back. How long have you been here?'
Sylvie looked round. It was her husband addressing her.
âHow long have you been here?'
She had been slow to reply.
âNot long. It seems quiet, doesn't it? Isn't anyone here?'
âNo.'
âYou mean they've gone out for the day? Or there just isn't anyone?'
âIt's Monday, Sylvie.'
âI suppose it is. I'd forgotten. I don't really know what day it is. Where's Lucien? Isn't he here?'
âMy mother took him home with her for the weekend. Natalie was managing but it's nice for him to have a change of scene. He likes the attention.'
Sylvie said nothing.
âWas your journey all right?'
âNot bad. There wasn't much traffic.'
âWhat time did you set off from London then?'
âAbout half past seven.'
âYou stopped for lunch somewhere?'
âI stopped but I didn't need to eat. I had a cup of coffee.'
âI'll get you something, shall I? You shouldn't drive all that way without eating.'
âI've done it now. No, I don't want anything. Thanks.' She paused. âWhat have you been doing?'
âNothing out of the ordinary. It's been quiet. You were right. Even Saturday. It's looking a bit busier towards the end of the week. But you're not to do anything. Take it easy for another few days. I've asked Maude to hang on until Sunday.'
âAnother few days. What did you mean by that?'
âWhat I said. What's funny about it?'
âYou didn't say, for a few days, you said, for another few days.'
He was silent. Then he said, âI'm sorry, Sylvie, I'm just not with you.'
âI wasn't doing nothing.'
âWhen?'
âWhile I was away. I wasn't doing nothing.'
âI know you weren't doing nothing. I didn't say you were, did I?'
âYou said another few days. Don't you understand? Oh, let's leave it.'
She bent down and picked up the suitcase that she had put on the floor when she came in.
âI'll take that for you. Here, give it to me.'
She put it back down again and looked at him. He moved nearer to pick it up and she shook her head. âWe haven't actually said hullo to each other, have we?' she said.
He stepped forward and put his arms round her. She seemed to struggle slightly and then went still. She rested her forehead on his shoulder. They stayed there, then she shook herself free. âI think I'd better go to bed.'
He looked at her face as if he were trying to find something. Then his eyes went blank and she could tell that he had remembered that it was pointless to look there.
She didn't go to bed. She stood at the window of the bedroom, in the part of the building they lived in. It was an implausible extension. From the outside, a leg to a body that didn't need a leg; from the inside, one of those surprises you find in dreams, an extra you are disturbed to come across and for which, when you wake with a start between five twenty and five twenty-five, you can't find a function. She tried to keep it separate from the restaurant and the guest rooms but she wasn't entirely successful. Things found their way across: white towels, the false damask counterpane on their bed, embossed plates from the dining room. She would have had to be a different sort of person to require strict demarcation, more assertive, more materialistic. She knew it would have been better to be like that, but she didn't care enough. Lucien's room was his own, a tidy child's room. He didn't spill out. He liked sorting his things and finding the best possible place for them. Natalie, the chambermaid, helped to look after him. She was young, more like an older sister. She had total recall of the register from her early school years. She recited it to him; alphabetic and nonsensical. Lucien asked her questions about the children as if they were his contemporaries. He wasn't interested in what had become of them since. Their lives had been uneventful; troubled only by minor illnesses and accidents. What Natalie couldn't remember she made
up. She gave him unavoidable kisses and made his bed to hotel standards.
Sylvie unpacked her case. The black skirt and jacket neatly folded in tissue paper, the jeans, shirts, socks, tights, knickers and bras, crumpled, needing to be washed. Here, she had to be formal every day. It was part of the life, like the flowers on each table, chosen for their uprightness and staying power. She was at the hairdresser in the nearby town twice a week. She quite liked walking in there. The outside of the building blackened and ancient, the interior cool, white, noisy with music. The feeling of invigoration didn't go much past the threshold. Once she sat down in front of the mirror and Jean-Guy pulled his fingers speculatively through her hair, she simply felt mildly old.
She knew about bereavement. She had had it before. The feeling of not being quite well, like the after effects of flu. She stopped her unpacking. She had got to the assortment of things at the bottom, which all needed putting away but didn't have particular places to go. She couldn't cope with making so many small decisions. The quarter-read paperback, which she hadn't taken in, should it go on the shelf, or wait by the side of the bed for a second attempt? It was all like that.
Her mother had been ill for a long time before dying; her father had been old, not very old, but old enough for it to have made sense. And they were her parents. She wondered how it would be to lose someone you fiercely loved, whom you'd hungered after. She tried her heart for sharpness to test whether she knew what it might be like, but nothing happened. She had forgotten her son for a moment, then she remembered him, and felt sorry for forgetting him. But she had meant something different.
George de Mora had been English, whatever his name. What was left of the Portuguese had been in his eyes, sorrowful and sober in a way that the English didn't run to. So she had been Sylvie de Mora before the ceremony at the Mairie and other people's expectations took the last part away in
marriage. She kept the âde', however, as her husband made use of one. Delacour, all one word.
George had fallen in love in France, married, fathered one child and stayed for over forty years. He seemed, in every obvious way, settled. But when his wife, Sylvie's mother, died, he went back to England. He came to see his daughter and her family, three, maybe four times in the years he had left, but both he and Sylvie felt diminished by the visits and took time to recover. He slept in the main building along with the clients, stuck with the fire regulations and the Gideon Bible, daily new linen and bleach in the basin. At least the bed wasn't turned down every evening. They weren't grand enough for that â just a place in the country. Unless it was Monday he ate in the restaurant. He tried eating early with Lucien, in his daughter's apartment, but it seemed to cause too much trouble, so he stopped it. Natalie got harassed by the extra preparation and was self conscious about cooking for an adult. Paul's minor creations were served up to him in the dining room, decent wine poured by the waiter and placed out of reach. No giggling or talking. Sylvie hated looking across at him, alone at his table, and George wished himself back home with something chunkier and less delicious; bread on a board and a bottle from Oddbins. The difficulties of it all came between them and it was only after exchanging the second lot of letters after each return that they felt easy. The first lot were no good. Too much thanking.
Over nearly five years they wrote two hundred letters, something like that. One hundred apiece, shared between the weeks. They acknowledged each other's preoccupations but mostly they wrote about themselves and their own lives. Sylvie sent the first letter, writing to the rented London flat that George had found soon after her mother's death. He was determined to go. Sylvie was concerned for him and bemused that he'd gone back to England. Later he bought somewhere of his own and changed his address, but by then the correspondence had started. What was on the envelope didn't matter. When Lucien was old enough, he was included.
His grandfather put in a separate sheet with slightly larger, less irregular handwriting than usual, but Lucien couldn't decipher a word of it. Sylvie was sorry not to be near enough to be of more use, but she felt the letters were a kind of lifeline; they kept him going. He also sent her books. She kept the current one in a drawer in her desk. They were like the letters, separate from the rest of her life. There were stretches of the day, when there was no one much about, that she could have filled with what Paul called administration. She was the administrator. It didn't have the same ring to it as chef; both boss and artist. She preferred to read.
