Girl at the Lion D'Or (3 page)

Anne climbed the stairs after her bath, glad that she had not been interrupted by Mme Bouin hammering on the door. She pulled out the bolster from under the sheets and up-ended it behind the hanging curtain. She lay down in bed and found the ache of carrying heavy baggage, the noise of the train and the fear of newness were all forgotten as she clutched herself tight beneath the eiderdown, sailing out into sleep.

Frequently she dreamed, strange unpleasant dreams relating to the events of her childhood. She never told people about them. She had read in a magazine that it was bad manners to tell others what you dreamed at night. Things which seemed so real to you meant nothing to them. It was hard enough to show an interest in the actual events of other people’s lives without being bored by their night-time imaginings.

The trouble was that Anne’s dreams weren’t really fantasies or exotic figurations. They were prosaic, repetitive and based on fact. Her dream on that first night at the Lion d’Or held all the usual elements, though with the puzzling variation that much of it took place in an old-fashioned inn with straw on the floor, perhaps because Anne had fantasies about rustic inns which the Lion d’Or had not fulfilled.

The end came in what old Louvet termed the only misery, abandonment. She ran into a field and called out some word, some mysterious sound.

Then, that night anyway, she fell away into calmness.

2

O
N HER FIRST
evening Anne was sent to work in the town bar, which was on the other side of the hall from the main dining-room and had a door opening straight out on to the street behind. The position of the hotel made the bar a meeting place for people passing through and sometimes this gave it an agreeable air of bustle and change.

Two men stood with their feet on the rail of the bar and their elbows on the zinc counter, talking in voices which, although conspiratorial, were not in any way muted, so that as she went about her work Anne could hear everything they said.

‘Hartmann. Yes, I’ve known him since we were children,’ said one, a man in his middle thirties with unusually curly hair and a mellow speaking voice. There was something angelic about his head, but his hands were small and restless. He reminded Anne of a man she had seen in a film magazine.

The other man grinned. ‘I never thought he’d take on that leaky old manor when his father died. He’ll be needing a lot of work doing on it, I shouldn’t wonder. All good news for the workers.’

He was small and dark with a chirpy note in his voice that seemed to place him lower down the social scale than his companion. His name, it transpired, was Roussel.

‘If he can be persuaded to part with his money, of course.’

‘Is he mean, then?’

The film star rolled his eyes. ‘When we lived in Paris, Hartmann used to walk round to my apartment every night, though it was a long way away, so he could use my telephone because he was too tight-fisted to use his own.’

‘But I thought M. Hartmann was a friend of yours?’ said Roussel.

‘Yes, he is. My best friend.’

Roussel glanced down at the bar and moved his drink from hand to hand. ‘I suppose it’s the Jewish blood in him. Have you known him for a long time?’

‘We were at school together. I remember another time. Hartmann invited me to bring a girl – a young woman I had met at the opera – and come round to his apartment so we could all go to the theatre. He was to bring his floosie of the moment. Then we went out to dinner afterwards, a place he said he knew off the rue Saint Denis – all of this was to be a treat on him, you understand. And then suddenly at the end of dinner he says he’s left his money behind and has no means of paying. He presents me with the bill from the theatre and from the restaurant. He said he’d pay me back, but of course he never did.’

‘But that’s terrible,’ said Roussel, standing up on tip-toe in agitation. ‘Why didn’t you ask him for the money back? I mean, if he had agreed to it?’

‘There are certain things one cannot do. As a gentleman, you understand. I reminded him once, politely. That’s really all one can do.’

Roussel looked shame-faced, and swirled his cloudy drink round in his glass. Then his manner lightened as an idea seemed to strike him. ‘I suppose he’ll want a builder at the Manor, won’t he? You know my company has diversified. We do all sorts of different kinds of work now, it’s not just earth-shifting and that sort of thing.’

‘Yes, he may need someone. If you don’t mind a few delays with the payments.’

‘Well . . . things could be better in business at the moment. I mean, we’re doing well, but it’s the general feel of the times, isn’t it? And I thought that since you know him, you might be able to . . . put in a word. We could do it ever so cheap. Though I wouldn’t want to put you in a tricky position – you know, having to talk business with him, something that might damage your friendship.’

Covertly, Roussel motioned Anne to refill the film star’s drink, which she did, earning a conspiratorial wink from Roussel as he slipped some coins across the counter.

‘I’m rather tired of fixing things for Hartmann,’ said his friend. ‘I’ve just arranged some work for him. You know, the big negligence case when three men died last year in the accident at the marsh reclamation works. It’s coming on in Paris and Hartmann is acting for the company.’

‘You fixed that for him?’

‘I put in a word here and there. He told me he was looking for work and he hasn’t been in these parts for such a long time I think most people have forgotten who he is.’

Anne watched Roussel’s eyes widen. She was surprised at the way they talked so openly in front of her, as though she didn’t really exist, or as though being a waitress made her deaf or wholly discreet.

‘Have I shown you our new business card?’ said Roussel. He took one from his pocket. ‘We’re the first people to have them in this area. Here. Building, construction, decoration. We do anything really.’

‘Very nice.’

Roussel tried several more times to bring the conversation back to Hartmann and any work he might need doing, but the other man seemed to have lost interest. Eventually Roussel took his coat from behind the door and said goodnight.

When he had gone, the man with the curly hair turned slowly to face the bar. ‘It’s obvious from your accent,’ he said to Anne, ‘you’re not from anywhere round here.’

‘No, that’s right. I’m from Paris. I arrived yesterday.’

He silently appraised her face and she looked back at him. His eyes were narrow and his nose was hooked, but his face was boldly shaped and the overall effect was handsome in a striking if unusual way.

‘So you’ve replaced the girl – what’s her name, Sophie?’

‘Yes. Her mother was ill and she had to go back to Lyon.’

‘Do you know anyone here?’

‘No one at all.’

‘Now you do. André Mattlin.’ He held his hand out over the bar for her to shake. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘I’m not allowed to, monsieur.’

‘Not now. I meant when you’d finished here. What time is that?’

‘I think we close at eleven-thirty, but –’

‘That’s fine. I have my car outside and there’s a place I know near the station that stays open till quite late. I could take you there and show you something of the town.’

Knowing that she should say no, Anne agreed.

3

I
T WAS FIVE
days later, on her first afternoon off, that Anne walked up the boulevard and took the bending road to the left that led down to the public gardens on the river bank. Some people called it the main boulevard, which was misleading in that it implied there were others. Its claim to the title was in any case dubious since it didn’t offer the broad leafy sweep that people associate with the word. It did, admittedly, have trees on either side of it – plane trees chiefly, with one or two unaccountable cypresses – though their effect was less than majestic. The mayor at this time was a forester, a man bloated with civic pride as well as by the numberless municipal meals he ordered to be served in the formal dining-room of the town hall. The best way he could bring his woodland skill to the town, he thought, was by taking a special interest in the trees. The planes along the boulevard were thus, on his instructions, pollarded with a proud frequency. Their branches, naked against the grand houses behind, took on a pained, over-tended look, when the thin sandy pavements on either side and the slatted wooden benches needed something denser in the way of foliage if the road were really to aspire to the name of boulevard.

It had been built originally on top of an old wall that had marked the edge of a small village fortification and the houses set back on either side were the oldest and certainly the grandest – to those who liked that solid provincial architecture – that Janvilliers contained. Most had four storeys, wrought-iron balconies overlooking the boulevard and shady gardens behind them. Those on the west were considered slightly smarter, and it was not unknown for socially ambitious families to cross the street into an identical house on the other side when they felt they could afford it. There was no good reason for this preference unless it was that the gardens on the east side backed on to the rue des Ecoles, which could be noisy. Both rows of houses presented a monumental face with their double iron gates and frequent notices warning of hostile dogs.

The afternoon was freakishly hot for early spring and there was a game of tennis in progress at the far end of the public gardens. The court belonged to the town’s richest family who, in a dubious deal with the mayor, had bought a site for it in the park where they allowed selected friends to borrow it, at a price. Thus Janvilliers, so backward in most respects, could boast a touch of Deauville in its public gardens.

If the mayor had been over-zealous in his pruning of the plane trees along the boulevard he had gone for the opposite effect in this part of the otherwise trim park. When Anne spotted the court by chance through the small gate that broke the iron fence along the river bank, she felt as though she had found a clearing in a jungle.

Four men were playing vigorously, with the sound of their rubber-soled shoes pounding the dry, sandy surface and the gut ringing in the wooden ovals of their rackets. One of them was Mattlin who, catching her eye, waved and motioned her to a green bench beneath the tendrils of a willow.

Anne’s evening with him had passed off without difficulty. She found it strange that, having asked her to go with him, he then showed little interest in her, but talked of the people he knew in Paris. He smoked a good deal and glanced around the café; it seemed as if he were expecting a friend, or rather as if he were afraid of missing someone. This wasn’t flattering to Anne; but, she thought, if he has used me merely for display then so, in a way, have I used him to escape from the confines of the hotel and the presence of Mme Bouin, so I am in no position to complain. And nor did she, but drank her coffee and talked to Mattlin when his attention was on her.

Now, as the men paused to change ends he spoke briefly to her from the tennis court and called out inaudibly the names of his friends in introduction. With the social moment past, Anne settled into her solitary watching. It was hard to know how seriously they took themselves, panting and running after each ball, yet teasing each other between points. Mattlin, the tips of his curls dampened and stuck to his face and neck by sweat, played with great energy, his thin legs never resting as he scampered over the court. On the other side were two men referred to as Jacques, Jean-Jacques, J-P, and sometimes Gilbert. It was impossible to say which name applied to which; both were shortish, rather stocky, and starting to go bald. This, and their rapid familiarity with each other, dispensing with half sentences and whole words at a time, made Anne think they must be brothers.

When, from beneath the shade of the willow, she had watched them all and watched the ball fly, she found it was to the fourth man, Mattlin’s partner, that her eyes returned. She noticed at first his hands, which were curious. They were of great size, the right hand engulfing the handle of the tennis racket, but of startling articulation, with each joint visible under the skin and the knuckles thus slightly bent, as if over-assembled. At the tips, however, the fingers tapered into something like elegance, so that the hand attained a brutal delicacy. The wrist was inconsequently small, with a sharp little bone sticking out and a big blue vein pumping visibly, even from where Anne sat. His arm thickened from this point to the extent that it might have been called broad or muscular, though neither word was right because his arms, when not clenched by action, looked quite slender. Anne watched him as the players ran and hit the arcing ball and this man, though he sweated as much as the others and seemed to Anne no more skilled than they, appeared by turns angry and amused. He spoke less than the other three – perhaps, she thought, because he was unfamiliar with them. But his quietness was broken between games, when the players periodically changed ends. The atmosphere for a moment became awkward, neither ritual game nor ordinary social meeting, and it was he who filled the spaces until, with a louder jollity, the game was restarted by someone banging the ball over the tarred and shredding net.

Anne no longer made her eyes desist, but scanned the man’s body, from the white shoes and flannel trousers to the bare arms and neck, where the long sinew from collarbone to jawline also seemed to join opposite things – the thick base of neck and shoulder with, at its tautest stretch, the soft and vague underline of his face. Once, when he hurried back behind Mattlin after a ball that one of the brothers had sent looping high up towards the sun, he overran it and plunged into the back netting of the court, which he leant against, breathless, as the brothers taunted him. Anne watched his diaphragm contract beneath the shirt and puff out again, as he gasped for breath, the material of the shirt seeking out the sweat-dampened parts of him that had marked it with skeletal patterns like pale symmetrical ink-blots. He lowered the head of the racket to the court and leaned forward to rest on the up-ended handle before giving way to a squat, so that his hair flopped down on to his forehead. In a moment Anne could see in his large hands and the strength of his movements all the other ages of his life, as if his body were a palimpsest on which had successively been inscribed the stories of his childhood, adolescence and youth, none of them entirely effacing its forerunner, so that suddenly the contradictions of his bigness and delicacy became understandable and she found herself seeing through his manly self-possession to the ghost of his vulnerable boyhood.