L'Affaire (7 page)

The dashing Emile had more or less deserted Vee and the children, though they were not officially separated. He rarely dropped by. Well embarked on his career as a public, telegenic intellectual, a career that, however, didn’t bring in much money, he was exploring connections to Islam despite his Christian upbringing – he and Victoire had been married in the church of St Roche – and had even recently been quoted as saying he was looking into the issue of four wives. He had made this pronouncement on TF 1, people told her, with his charming smile that said he didn’t mean it. Sometimes, when he was home, he was irascible, and kept reminding Victoire that she was lucky he had not yet pronounced the words ‘I divorce thee.’ This tried Vee’s cheerful nature but didn’t surmount it. She knew he couldn’t help saying dazzling, outrageous things, his mind hurtling along over steeple and minaret without descending to connection and explanation. His cleverness, and his dark curls, made him fascinating to most people. When she thought of him, her heart surged toward him, and when she thought of their lovemaking, her blood stirred as though a magnet passed across her skin.

Sometimes when he did drop by, it was during the day, when the children were at school, and he wanted a quick fuck. She was always happy for an hour or two afterward, and sang around the house. Such was the case today.

Emile was there when she had to leave the house to go pick up the children; he was dressed and drinking a cup of tea when Victoire’s mother, Géraldine, called with the
amazing news that Victoire’s father was near death in an Alpine accident, meaning, apparently, not Eric Chastine but someone else altogether, someone Emile had never heard of. Emile waited till Victoire got home with the children to tell her the amazing news, a biological father he had never heard she had, near death.

Victoire didn’t seem much interested or distressed.

‘You never told me your mother had “been with” a man when she was not married,’ Emile said, his note of self-parody striking her. She never knew whether he believed, or was mocking, some religious idea.

‘Probably they were married,’ she said, quite amazed at this reappearance of a father who had barely before been mentioned. ‘It is not the kind of thing I could ask.’

‘Your mother thinks you should go there while he is still alive, to say “farewell,”’ said Emile, who always seemed to put words into quotation marks, to emphasize his scorn or dissent, or amused reservation. ‘To say “adieu.”’

‘I’ve never seen him yet, why would I now?’ said Vee. ‘If Maman wanted me to meet him, why didn’t she say so years ago?’

‘He is your father, “apparently.”’

‘I’m completely indifferent – sorry for him, of course,’ she added. ‘An avalanche, how horrible. But I’m not a hypocrite to show up at someone’s bedside at the end when I never went before.’

‘To oblige your mother? It is she probably who would like things put to rest, made final. Like to think her daughter has “seen her father,” that he has seen his beautiful child, that certain “memories renascent”…’

‘Oh,
s’il vous plâit
, Emile,’ laughed Vee, whom Emile always made laugh. ‘You’ll stay with the children, of course, while I dash down to the ski slopes.’

Emile frowned at this practical side of it. ‘Your mother would stay with them.’

Géraldine had suggested to Emile on the telephone that Vee should go to say a last word to her father. Later, when Vee brought the children over for their regular Tuesday-afternoon visit and Géraldine had embraced the darlings, her mind having stayed on the news she had transmitted to Emile, the moribund state of Venn, she again broached the idea that Vee should meet this phantom parent while there was time.

‘It’s unthinkable, Maman. How could I feel an interest in someone who never saw me and had no interest in me, technically my father or not? He was never part of my life, and I’m not going to be part of his death. Think how hurt Papa would be. Eric – my real papa.’

Of course Vee had always known that Eric was not her biological father, but this had never been important, so completely had Eric been a wonderful parent to Vee, Vee to him a devoted, bonded daughter, the two passing through all the appropriate and healthy stages of a daughter-father relation leading in time to Vee’s appropriate transfer of love to her husband, etc. (Eric had been less pleased than Géraldine with Vee’s choice of Emile Abboud as a husband. Géraldine could at least see his powerful charms.) Géraldine also understood that loyalty was big on Vee’s list of virtues, these days especially because of her problems with Emile. Vee didn’t
discuss her marital problems with her mother, her pride wouldn’t let her, but she clearly thought that loyalty was a virtue above all others and rewarded eventually from Above.

‘You’ll be sorry one day, not to have said goodbye. Not to have ever laid eyes on him,’ Géraldine insisted. ‘Eric doesn’t mind. He thinks you should go. And the girls should meet their grandfather.’

‘I hope all
my
illegitimate children will rally round my deathbed,’ said Eric, coming into the room. He had been half listening to the conversation. But Vee didn’t think this was funny. Her face assumed the expression of angelic blankness she always wore when her mind was resolved or resolving. She had the fair ringlets and wide blue eyes of
putti
in paintings, and the same manner of looking away from the central subject at something else outside the frame.

‘Anyway, the children. And the play group, and I’m playing for a Rameau festival. And how could I be someone called “Vee Venn,” it sounds like an herbal tea. Anyway, I have no wish to torment myself with sadness at the deathbed of a perfect stranger. And aren’t there real children? Think how they would feel with me intruding into their grief.’

‘I think there are real children. They would be your half-brothers and sisters. The more reason you should meet them.’ She could be talking about a stranger she had never met. Vee was struck, as she had been by other women her mother’s age, at the detachment they seemed to feel from their own biological histories, as if they
couldn’t remember being in bed with vanished figures, couldn’t remember giving birth.

‘Non, Maman, pourquoi?’
said Vee, in a definitive tone of voice. When Vee had gone, Géraldine telephoned Emile at his office – she didn’t know where he was staying these days. Luckily, he was there. She was fond of Emile, they got along and understood each other. She urged him to go to Valméri and look into the situation, and he, with surprising graciousness, said he would.

9

When he woke on Tuesday, Kip remembered his dream. He had been dreaming of their parents, of a time in his childhood when they had scolded Kerry for something he had done. In the dream it was a red stain on a rug, like spilled wine, and he dreamed of his mother’s face glaring at him as Dad said, ‘All the same, Kerry, you should have watched.’ He should have watched her – was that the message of the dream? Kip was a good athlete, was on the snowboarding team at his school, and longed someday to compete in the Olympics, and so hadn’t been poking along with Kerry and Adrian, at the stately pace they skied. Now he saw he should have stuck with them. He would have spotted the avalanche, and said ‘Look out.’ He pictured them standing frozen in terror as the beast rolled at them, himself urging them to safety.

When he opened his eyes, he had felt a moment of relief that the dream was not real, then a rush of sick dread when he remembered that the reality was worse. It was morning. Harry was not in his crib. Kip bolted from the sofa, but almost immediately heard noise in the bathroom, and rushed in there. The chambermaid, an Australian named Tamara, was holding Harry’s bottom over the washbasin cleaning him, his fat little legs churning.

‘Didn’t you even hear him? He was shrieking up a storm,’ she said. ‘So I came in.’

‘God, no, I didn’t hear him.’

‘Yeah, well, plain you’re not his mum. Everyone else could.’

Tamara rather crossly helped him get Harry ready – diaper, little terry-cloth suit, little shoes you had to shove on his feet – and they went in to breakfast. He could see that it was going to be easier to deal with Harry at mealtimes than other times. Stuck in his high chair, with stuff to smoosh around on his plate, he was a cheery, cute baby, drawing smiles. No one spoke to Kip this morning about Kerry’s state, but people looked at them as they had last night, with sympathy and admiration.

There ought to be a phone number he could call this morning, or some word from Christian Jaffe. The normalcy of things made Kip uneasy, dining room full of people in ski clothes ordering their coffee and piling their plates from the breakfast buffet. He filled his plate with ham and some yogurt, stuff both he and Harry could eat, and got two glasses of orange juice. He decided they would finish breakfast before trying to find out anything about Kerry. If she were worse, they would have told him, or wakened him in the night. But he couldn’t shake a feeling of sick dread.

When they had spent as much time as possible over breakfast, Kip lifted Harry out of his high chair and they walked into the lobby. Kip was hoping to see his new friend Amy, perhaps with the baby-sitter she had suggested. Even from the dining room they could hear stout voices asking questions in English in the foyer in demanding tones. New bags were piled by the front desk. A tall, handsome couple stood by the sofa, evidently
waiting for their room to be ready, and Christian Jaffe was coming toward Kip waving his hand toward these new people.

‘Mr Canby, here are Monsieur and Mademoiselle Venn. This is Mr Canby, Mrs Venn’s brother.’

Hearing their names, these Venns looked at Kip and especially at Harry. They mustered polite smiles, and the young man explained that they were Adrian Venn’s children. The term seemed to exclude Harry.

‘So nice to meet you,’ they said vaguely, with reflex courtesy. ‘Is that the baby?’ asked the man. Kip felt a momentary hope that these people were here to help with Harry.

‘Our little brother!’ said the woman in a slightly acid tone. She was a bit scary, Kip thought, big, solidly beautiful, with scornful eyes. When Kip led Harry over to them, their unconscious first response was to shrink away, peering with distaste at the cute little child, symbol of Father’s betrayal.

‘I’m sorry, you are who, actually?’ said the man to Kip.

‘Kerry’s brother.’ Now Kip could see they were in a state of high agitation, not meaning to be rude. Posy’s objections to some transaction with the desk rose and swirled around Christian Jaffe – why couldn’t they get into their rooms? They had driven all night. They were still in shock from the sight of their father, down there in the terrible little hospital, no more than a corpse, how had it happened? Christian Jaffe murmured reassurances, rooms had been prepared or would be, all would be well.

‘Do you know how my sister is this morning?’ Kip
ventured to ask them, but the highly intimidating Posy didn’t know, hadn’t noticed her, hadn’t been told.

Could she be dead? But they would know that, would have been told.

Posy looked theatrically around, saying with a wail, ‘This is all so unbelievable. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.’

The Venns turned to their luggage – Christian Jaffe himself bore it away – apparently finished with Kip. In her room, Posy unpacked her valise and carefully put things in the drawers, like someone planning a long visit. At first she had thought they should be staying nearer the hospital, but now she was glad to be in this cosier ambiance, with an optimistic, smiling woman at the desk, and the sound downstairs of healthful stamping of snow off boots, the rattle of skis being donned outside, skiers returning joyfully to the slopes. They would get Father sorted out.

She was tired. They’d driven all night, taking turns at the wheel, having to change over to the wrong side of the road at Boulogne. French roads were so straight, the same defect as the French character, revealing a Gallic lack of imagination, a repellent literalness. She and Rupert had been quarreling over what was probably going to happen next. Father would or wouldn’t be awake, he would or wouldn’t be glad to see them, the new girl-wife would be there (of Posy’s own age), and the famous and embarrassing baby. They touched on one especially delicate matter: If Father should die, would he have already changed his will to include the baby, or made it totally in the baby’s favor and that of the new wife? But
they were embarrassed talking about such things, and guiltily dropped the matter almost as soon as it came up.

They had gone directly to the hospital before coming to the hotel, so they already knew the reality, Father in a coma with no prospect of recognizing them, at least not very soon, and the teenaged boy the only person looking after the baby, and the girl-wife in a coma of her own. Posy saw it would be up to her and Rupert to decide what must be done, but she felt this as an imposition. She struggled against anger. Her father had had no compunctions about going off with the American bird and putting them all out of his life, and now he needed them back in it. Of course they would do the right thing.

Of Pamela’s two children, Posy had been the more censorious about Father, the more rebellious, and the more irritating to him. Perhaps this made her sadder and more frightened now. She had never been able to please him, while he had completely approved of Rupert, for instance of his present job in the City selling bonds. ‘A good thing to have a practical money person in the family,’ he had said, expressing surprise that it was Rupert, and thereby conveying that he had expected it would be Posy who would have such a soulless, mercenary career. Rupert had read history and philosophy, and had seemed headed for a donnish life, tutoring or writing, except he was rather fond of parties and London life too. Pamela had been worried at one point that he might be gay, but Adrian had scoffed and said he himself had been just like Rupert at that age. All the same, they were relieved when Rupert for a time was seeing something of Henrietta Shaw and some other nice girls.

Now, they none of them quite understood what Rupert did, but it involved bonds, and sitting at the computer all day. He hated it, really, should have gone on to read law, should have gone to Australia to work on a sheep ranch, or signed onto a freighter. Pamela had said that a strong, active young man like Rupert ought to be outdoors, and when asked by his father what he saw himself doing – this was when he had been seventeen or so – he had been unable to think of anything whatsoever. Venn had laughed and said that probably meant that Rupert would write a novel, but Rupert had no literary aspirations either. Posy could imagine writing a novel, but she knew that Father, the great publisher, would never take it seriously.