Her Lover (8 page)

He smiled at her, and she shuddered and averted her eyes. Horrible, that toothless smile. Horrible, the words of love which had escaped from that vacant mouth. He advanced one step and she felt the danger come near. Don't cross him, say whatever he wants to hear, but O God make him go, let him be gone!

'Behold, I stand before you,' said he, 'I am come. I am old but await your miracle. Here am I, feeble and poor, white of beard, and of teeth I have but two, but no man will love you or know you as I love and know you, nor could another honour you with such love. Two teeth only, but I give them to you with my love. Will you receive this love of mine?'

'Rather,' she said and she moistened her dry lips and essayed a smile.

'Glory be to God,' said he, 'in truth glory, for here is she who redeemeth all women. Behold the first woman!'

He bent his knee before her, a gesture which made him look quite ridiculous, then stood up and came towards her, towards their first kiss, came with his dark smile that was the badge of old age, his hands reaching out to she who redeemed all women, the first woman, who suddenly recoiled, backed away with a coarse yelp, a yelp of fear and hate, collided with the bedside table, grabbed the empty tooth-glass and hurled it at that antique face. He raised his hand to his eye, wiped the blood away and stared at the blood on his hand. Then he laughed and stamped his foot.

'Turn away, you little fool!' said he.

She obeyed, turned round, stood still, alone with the fear that she was about to get a bullet in the back of her head. Meanwhile, he drew back the curtains, leaned out of the window, put two fingers to his lips and whistled. Then he rid himself of the old greatcoat and the fur hat, took off his false beard, removed the black tape which covered his teeth, and retrieved his riding-crop from behind the curtains.

'Turn round,' he ordered.

In the tall horseman with the wild, black hair and the sharp, smooth features, a dark, clean-cut diamond, she recognized the man her husband had from a distance whisperingly pointed out to her at the Brazilian reception.

'That's right, Solal, the height of bad taste,' he grinned toothsomely. 'Boots!', he said, pointing to them, and he thwacked his right leg for joy. 'And I have a horse waiting for me outside. There were two. The second, you poor fool, was for you, and we would have ridden away for ever side by side, young, with all our teeth, I have thirty-two, all perfect, you can check and count them, or you could have ridden pillion and I would have borne you off gloriously towards the happiness which is lacking in your life. But I don't feel like it now, and all of a sudden your nose is too big, and it shines like a lighthouse, and anyway it's just as well. I shall leave now. But first, female of the species, hear me! Female thou art and as a female shalt thou be done by. Vilely shall I seduce you as you deserve and as you want. When we meet again, and it shall be soon, in two hours I shall ravish you in ways that women love and cannot resist, foul and filthy ways, and you, love's great fool, shall be mine, and it is in this wise that I shall avenge the old and the ugly and all the poor innocents who could never fan your flame, and you will come away with me, in doe-eyed ecstasy. Meanwhile, stay here with Deume until it pleases me to whistle for you as I whisde for a dog!'

'I shall tell my husband everything,' she said. And she felt ashamed, foolish, shabby.

'Good idea,' he smiled. 'A duel. Pistols. Six paces so that he can't miss. Tell him he has nothing to fear. I'll fire in the air. But I know you. You won't say anything.' 

'I'll tell him everything and he'll kill you!'

'I simply love dying,' he said with a smile, and he wiped the blood from the eye she had cut. 'Next time, doe-eyed!' he said with another smile and he climbed out of the window.

'Bully!' she shouted, and again felt ashamed.

He landed in the soft earth beneath, then straddled the white thoroughbred which, held by the valet, stood pawing the ground. Spurred on, the horse pricked up its ears, reared up and then broke into a gallop, and its rider laughed, for he knew that she was watching from her window. He gave another laugh, dropped the reins, stood in his stirrups and held both arms out wide, a towering image of youth, laughing and wiping the blood from the eye which she had cut, the blood which fell in streaks like living benedictions across his bare torso, behold the Knight of the Bleeding Countenance, laughing and urging his steed forward and speaking words of love into its ear.

Quitting the window, she stamped on the remnants of the shattered glass, tore page after page out of the book by Bergson, hurled her little alarm clock against the wall, and then heaved on the neckline of her low-cut gown with both hands so that her right breast fell out of the long tear she had made. That's it, go and see Adrien, tell him everything and tomorrow they'll fight a duel. Tomorrow, see the swine made ghastly pale by her husband's pistol, see him fall mortally wounded. When she was decent again, she went across to the swing-mirror and spent some time examining her nose in her reflection.

CHAPTER 4

Swinging his heavy walking-stick with the ivory raven's-head handle, all too aware of his cream spats and yellow gloves, replete after the delicious lunch he had eaten at the Perle du Lac, he strode along self-importantly, charmed by the thought of the toxins that had been burned off during his long post-prandial perambulation.

When he arrived outside the Palais des Nations, he paused to drink it in. Throwing back his head and breathing deeply through his nostrils, he admired its power and the salaries it paid. An official, he was an official for goodness sake, and he worked in a palace, an immense palace which was brand-new, the latest thing in palace design, old man, every modern convenience! And no income tax, he murmured as he made for the entrance.

Ennobled by the dignity of high social service, he acknowledged the doorman's salute with a paternalistic nod and set off down the long corridor, breathing in the gorgeous smell of floor-polish and giving somewhat feminine greetings to any superior he encountered. Stepping into the lift, he glanced at himself in the mirror. Adrien Deume, international civil servant, he told his reflection, and he smiled. Oh yes, quite brilliant, it had come to him yesterday, to think of starting a literary society. It was just the thing for increasing his list of useful contacts. All the big noises from the Secretariat would be on the committee, he decided as he got out on the fourth floor. Yes, having contacts with the big noises in gatherings that had nothing to do with admin and were on the classy and artistic side was a terrific wheeze for getting to know the right people. Offer the chair to the big boss and he could have fruitful little talks with him. And later on, when he was really in, a spot of astute manoeuvring with a view to promotion to grade A!

'And that stinker Solal can be Vice-Chairman!' he sniggered as he opened his office door.

Once inside, his first glance, as always, was for his in-tray. O God! Four new files! With the twelve that came yesterday that made sixteen in all! And all for immediate action! Not a single one for information only! A charming welcome for someone just back from sick-leave. Fair enough, it had been a wangle, but VV didn't know that, he thought he'd really been ill. Really, no consideration! VV, what a bastard! (His boss, Jonkheer Vincent van Vries, Head of the Mandates Section, always signed his notes with his initials. Among themselves, his subordinates accordingly called him VV.)

'You swine!' he shouted at his boss.

Removing his peccary-skin gloves and his brown waisted overcoat, he sat down and at once began going through the four new arrivals in turn. Though the work that would subsequently have to be done was irksome, he enjoyed this first contact with a file. He liked tracing its fate and following its peregrinations in the comments scribbled on minute-sheets attached to the left inside cover where one colleague after another had noted brief views for each other. He liked rooting out the ironies, acrimonies and hostilities which lurked beneath the polite phrasing, and even, and this was a refinement of pleasure, detecting and savouring what he called Dirty Tricks or Stabs-in-the-Back. In a word, the arrival of a new batch of files, no sooner on his desk than avidly perused, brought him a whiff of the world outside and was always a stimulating event, a distraction, a diversion, which in a sense was not unlike the arrival of passing tourists who drop by on a jaded castaway on his desert island.

When he had finished reading file number four, he treated himself to the liberty of adding to the handwritten comment in the margin of the minute-sheet, next to a grammatical mistake perpetrated by an A-grade colleague, an anonymous and vengeful exclamation mark. He closed the file and sighed. That's the nice part over.

'To work!' he said when he had changed out of his outdoor jacket into an old one with shiny sleeves.

For the fun of it, he crunched a sugar lump with his front teeth. Then he took hold of his glasses by the crosspiece over his nose, whipped them off sharply to avoid damaging the legs, wiped the lenses with a piece of chamois leather which he kept in a tortoiseshell snuffbox, put them on again, picked up a folder without looking at the cover, and opened it. Ugh! Rotten luck: it was Syria (Jebel Druses), a file he definitely did not care for. Mental block on that one pro tern. Come back to it later. He closed it, stood up and, going across to Kanakis's office for a chat, swapped a few careful slanderous items with him on the subject of Pei, a Chinese who had just been made up to grade A.

When he returned some minutes later, he opened the Syria (Jebel Druses) file, rubbed his hands, and readied himself with some deep breathing. Right, to work! He marked his solemn decision by declaiming a snatch of Lamartine:

O holy law, which levies universal toil In this wise are thy ways set: That he who would fructify the soil First must water it with his sweat.

Like a wrestler making ready for the fray, he rolled up his sleeves, hunched his back over Syria (Jebel Druses), and then closed the file again. He didn't seem able to connect with this one. Get back to it later when in the proper frame of mind. He stuffed it into the bottom right-hand drawer, which he called Limbo or sometimes the Lazar House. It was his repository for nauseous files which he could deal with only when he felt really up to it.

'Next please! First come first served! No favouritism!' The second file, which he picked up at random, turned out to be N/600/300/42/4, Correspondence with the Association of Jewish Women in Palestine, which he had already glanced at last night. They were always whinging about the mandatory power! Hell of a cheek, really! After all, there was a world of difference between a group of sheeny women and His Britannic Majesty's government! Make them wait a month or two, that'll lam 'em. Better still, don't reply at all! There'd be no come-back: they're private not official. So off you go, get thee to the Boneyard! He pushed the file into the bottom left-hand drawer, which he kept for work which could be safely forgotten for ever.

He stretched and groaned, glanced smilingly at the wrist-watch he had bought last month but still fondly thought of as being brand-new. He examined the face and the back, rubbed the glass, and drooled at the thought that it was completely waterproof. Nine hundred Swiss francs, but it was worth it. It was even better than that snob Huxley's, he only said hello every other time you met him. Then his mind turned to his old Brussels chum, Vermeylen, poor sap, he had an arts degree and was currently teaching grammar to scruffy kids for starvation wages, something like five hundred Swiss francs a month.

'I say, Vermeylen, take a peep at my wrist-watch. It's a Patek Philippe, the best Swiss make, old man, a first-class time-keeper, old friend, guaranteed to keep perfect time, comes with a built-in alarm, see? if you want I'll set it off for you, and completely waterproof, you can have a bath without taking it off, you could even wash it in soap and water if you wanted, and none of your gold-plate, it's solid gold, eighteen carat, see the hallmark for yourself if you like, two thousand five hundred Swiss smackers, old bean!'

He snickered with pleasure and thought kindly of good old Vermeylen and his big steel pocket-watch. Poor Vermeylen, never had the breaks, a really good bloke, he liked him a lot. Tomorrow, he would send him a large box of the very best chocolates, the biggest size they had. Vermeylen would be delighted to sample them with his poor, sick, tubercular wife in their gloomy little kitchen. It was very nice to be nice. He rubbed his hands together at the thought of how pleased Vermeylen would be. Then he opened another file.

'Damn! Not the Cameroon Acknowledgement again!'

This Acknowledgement business was never-ending. He was fed up to the back teeth with acknowledging receipt of a French government report on this to-do about trypanosomiasis in the Cameroons! He couldn't care less about a lot of nig-nogs in the Cameroons and their sleeping-sickness! Still the Acknowledgement was urgent: there was a government involved. Absolutely must concoct something today. The bloody file had been toing and froing for weeks. It was VV's fault for sending it back to him so many times for amendment. And every time he had had to start from scratch. The last time was because of the insofar as. Ever since the Secretary-General's principal private secretary had told van Vries that he did not care for insofar as, VV had been on the lookout for insofar as. The mentality of a slave! What was it this time? He read his chief's memo: 'Dear Deume, Please modify the final paragraph of your draft. The word "you(r)" appears four times. What would the French government think of us? VV.' He reread the paragraph: 'I am most grateful to you. I hereby acknowledge receipt of your Report which, you may rest assured, will be forwarded as from you via the usual channels.'

'Oh, fair enough,' he admitted. 'Bloody Cameroon nig-nogs! Why don't they all just die of their sleeping-sickness and have done with it!

Listless and moodily surrendering to his thoughts, he rolled his eyes and let his head sag to one side over his desk. He opened and closed the malignant file several times, and each time he swore violently. Finally, he straightened up, reread the paragraph he had to rewrite, and groaned. Right. OK. He'd do it at once.