English Correspondence (7 page)

Someone practical came forward, right into the middle; a woman with medical training, a course in the past, long or short. It was enough to give her confidence to deal with Maurice. Sylvie spoke to her briefly and let her attend to him. She turned and cleared the plates away quietly, brushed the crumbs from the tablecloth. The evening was too far on to be cleansed, but she tried. The minutes were long, which was dangerous for Maurice, but for everyone else a remission. Some of them talked in low voices; just phrases exchanged, not sustained conversation. The three on the distant tables were silent. Their appetite was gone. They abandoned their food and stared at their plates. They weren't voyeuristic. Sylvie respected their restraint. She wouldn't disturb it. Outside it was peaceful.

‘It's here.' It was Maude who announced this, hurrying in from the hall, on her high heels. They already knew. The siren – in the distance – then growing louder, the wheels and the motor, the tyres on the gravel, the jarring of doors sliding and slamming, ambulance doors, the same the world
over. The paramedics came in with the draught, a man and a woman. They smelled of fresh air and canvas and rubber. Their colour was green; cold and practical, in the warmth of the room. Nothing else was green, only the stems and the scent of the lilies. They set to. Incredibly quick they were, wielding equipment, kitting him out. They left with the bulky form on the stretcher. Maude took Maurice's wife by the elbow, guided her. In spite of Maude, she was flustered and seemed to take a long time to get to the door.

Once the outside sounds died away, the party round the table changed shape. The space in the middle gaped, but at either end people shifted, pushed back their chairs or huddled together, flexed their shoulders, stretched their legs, started to talk.

‘Have a fag.'

‘I could use one.'

‘Shit. This lighter's buggered.'

‘Use the candle.'

‘Cheers.'

‘Christ. What an evening.'

‘Poor sod.'

‘Poor old Maurice.'

‘He didn't deserve this.'

‘Not this way.'

Sylvie hung back from the table. They didn't want her. They needed to pretend that the restaurant had vanished and they were back in the office.

‘Didn't look too clever, did he?'

‘What are his chances?'

‘Not great. Can't be, can they?'

‘Gone already, I thought.'

‘You can tell from the colour.'

‘It was too much for him.'

‘The strain of the evening.'

‘The thought of retiring.'

‘He didn't want to.'

‘Looks like he won't have to.'

‘How old
was
he?'

‘Must have been seventy.'

‘Over, surely.'

‘He got overwrought.'

‘Very emotional.'

‘Heavy on the drink.'

‘I noticed that.'

‘Bad business.'

‘Bad for his wife.'

‘I can't believe it, I just can't believe it.'

‘He just keeled over.'

‘Pissed himself.'

‘Did he?'

‘Here comes the coffee.'

Paul had come in looking oddly patrician, Maude in his wake with a tray. He spoke to a few of them, as he went round the table: well-chosen words, fairly grave. He didn't say drinks on the house, but this was implied. He took orders for spirits. They were all takers.

They relaxed, talked about different things, started to laugh. There was no music, but they all heard it playing, rhythmic and steady, faintly suggestive.

It was half past one when they left. Maude and the boy who helped in the kitchen had already gone home. Sylvie found coats and helped people into them. One or two bungled it. A heavy man tried to get into a thin woman's coat. Too short in the arm; that's how he knew. Sylvie held her breath as they reversed in the car park, but it turned out all right. Paul usually idled around the kitchen, checking the knives and listening to the radio; music from earlier decades, nothing anyone remembered, B movie stuff, interrupted by histrionic news. Tonight when Sylvie went to find him, the place was dark. Sylvie and Felix opened the windows in the dining room, got out the mop and the bucket. It didn't take them long. Felix had thrown up in the
toilet a few hours before, then felt better. He was young. She saw him off on his bike, watched him freewheeling down the hill. She locked up, shut the windows, turned the lights off.

THE ENGLISHMAN, WHO
had dined alone, came down for breakfast at eight o'clock. He sat down at a corner table, the only client in the room. The scene was different – tidy, silent, slightly chilly, lit by daylight. Sylvie, glancing in the mirror, saw that she looked tired. She said she hoped he hadn't been disturbed by the noise of the party leaving; it had all gone on much later than she had expected. He said he'd slept through it. He sounded definite about it. She saw him there sleeping. He had conjured himself up. It disturbed her. She remembered that she had thought about him before falling asleep herself. He couldn't possibly know that. She was sure he couldn't. Yet he was capable of thinking, she could tell, in a way that most people weren't. She'd seen that last night. He'd sat through the drama with restraint. He wouldn't dine out on it, make it into an anecdote. George could put on a voice for a certain type of Englishman. God, what an evening, in the middle of nowhere, back of beyond, bunch of provincials. One of them pegged it. Ruined my dinner.

He had got up from his table soon after they had taken Maurice away. The birthday couple had stayed on a little longer. Sylvie had gone across to him to say she was sorry, though this wasn't quite appropriate, and to wish him good night, which didn't seem right either. He had accepted both decently, aware of her difficulties, somehow conveying that. She had been grateful. She hadn't expected such consideration. She had watched him climb the first few stairs then turned away.

When she got to her own room at the end of the evening
the light was off. She undressed in the dark, lay down on the bed. The slight disturbance must have woken Paul. She could see his eyes; they weren't shut. He asked her what she was doing on top of the covers, it was winter wasn't it? He gathered her under, said she felt cold, which she was. He felt hard against her. She registered pleasure and anticipation, but couldn't stop herself thinking that this was unusual, a throwback. They didn't make love at night any more. The kitchen wilted him. It hadn't in the past, but she couldn't put a date on it. She thought, the disaster's revived him; death on the premises. George's hadn't done anything for him. The thinking took seconds, and was over dramatic. The moment passed. Timing was everything these days. He rolled over away from her, fell asleep instantly. She lay on her side, her face pressed on her arm. She was so tired she hardly noticed her flesh was her own. It was then that she thought of him; the solitary man at the table. Her thoughts weren't particular.

She poured him more coffee; it was the least she could do. He had only booked in for one night, so he would be gone in three hours. They asked clients to leave by eleven. It was written on the form on the backs of the doors. She had filled in the numbers herself, the times for breakfast and leaving, in her French school handwriting, so different from George's. She didn't say any more, or ask him questions about himself, or where he was going. It seemed impertinent. And, in a sense, she didn't want to know. That wasn't the sort of conversation she wanted. She had trouble with questions. Such a high level of intrusion for a banal response. She didn't like them, so it didn't seem right to inflict them on other people.

The couple came down and sat by the window, commented on the rain on the hedge and the state of the sky. They were hungry. Sylvie wasn't surprised. They hadn't finished their dinners. She sliced up more bread and brought it across to them. She stopped and chatted to them. They were easy to talk to and she suddenly wanted to. When she moved away
she saw that the Englishman had left the room. She hadn't noticed him going. She looked across at his table, the plate with a smear of butter on the edge, the empty cup. It could wait. She didn't feel able to clear it away.

Paul was by her desk when the man came to check out. He'd driven Lucien to school. There and back took about half an hour. He moved his hand slightly, indicating that Sylvie could sort out the bill. She got on with doing it but ignored the gesture. It was strange that this was possible. It required concentration and made her feel feverish.

‘Come and stay here again when there's less going on.' Paul took up a position that almost obscured her. ‘It's normally pleasantly dull here. Relaxing.' He smiled. ‘We like our guests to concentrate on the food. That's what we're here for.' He glanced across at the dining room door, wide open and letting light into the hall. ‘They were unusually difficult circumstances. I hope my wife looked after you.'

The man nodded, not looking at either of them.

‘We don't know the outcome,' said Paul. ‘Whether the resuscitation succeeded.'

Sylvie kept her head down. He never even asked, she thought, he wouldn't, why should he? She remembered that George had once written to her and said that if he were ever taken to hospital he wanted DNR tied to the bed. They only understand acronyms, he wrote, so don't bother to spell it out, though, in case you don't know, it means, do not resuscitate. Don't dwell on it though, I just wanted to mention it. It hadn't been necessary.

‘Have you got far to drive?' Paul asked

‘Calais, then London.'

‘It's not a bad day. Drying up. The couple who were also staying last night, the others who got caught up in this, they're leaving too. They haven't got far to go, over towards Metz.'

The man nodded. Sylvie handed him his bill. He read it and paid it, looked briefly at her.

‘Have a good journey,' Paul said. ‘I hope we'll see you again. We'll make sure it's more cheerful next time.'

‘I'll go and clear up,' Sylvie said.

She came round from her side of the desk, walked across the room and through into the dining room without turning her head. She felt the cold damp air come in, as the Englishman opened the front door and went out. The telephone rang. She was glad. She didn't want to hear the sound of his car starting up, going away. She had, for half a second, wondered how she was going to shut it out.

‘'Phone, Sylvie,' Paul called from the hall.

‘Can't you answer it?'

She could hear him muttering. But he was standing right next to it. Why couldn't he answer it?

‘It will be for you, Sylvie.'

‘Let it ring then.' For as long as it takes for the car to go, she thought.

‘You're bloody rude.' But he picked it up. She hoped. All she could hear was Paul's voice. No sounds from outside. That was all right.

She was methodical in her tidying. She followed a routine that left her otherwise free. The last thing to be done was to shake out the clean linen, square it up on the tables, smooth it flat. She usually liked this moment, creating expanses of smoothness, but today she didn't stop for it. She walked away quickly. Before she got to the door she turned and looked down the length of the room. She saw it as it was, empty and everyday, but in the middle of the long table was the place where Maurice had slumped in his chair. He had gone to a position of weakness that was death and people had straightaway taken advantage of it. First his colleagues, then Paul. It seemed to restore them to talk about it and because they weren't close to him they felt no pain. It was like taking a drug with no side effects. There must be side effects, Sylvie thought, though she couldn't at the moment work out why no one was suffering from them. She closed
her eyes. When she opened them she was careful not to look back in that direction. She stared instead at the corner where the Englishman had been sitting. There was a book on the floor.

Paul had gone. He had left a message on the desk with many underlinings. Everything was underlined, she now saw. This was to show that she should have taken the call. It was a booking: her affair. She sat down, switched the computer on, waited, typed in the entry, a week on Friday, dinner for four and two double rooms. She looked at the screen, but felt the book on her lap.

She had never read it, though the title was familiar. George might have mentioned it. She couldn't ask him about it now, whether he thought it worth reading. She would read it anyway. She wanted to. She picked it up, glanced inside the front cover. It was blank. There was some sort of bookmark. She opened it cautiously, not wanting to lose his place. It was an envelope, a blue one. She turned it over. There were lines of writing, not entirely even, slanting downwards, the ink was blue-black, old-fashioned, real ink. The writer was old, probably female. The stamp was first class and the postmark was smudged. She examined it carefully, trying to disregard the fact that there in front of her were the Englishman's name and address.

She put the envelope to one side by her right elbow and opened the book at the page that he'd got to.