One Damn Thing After Another (10 page)

“Dazzle? Rosy haze?”

“I'm not a shrink, you know,” said Arlette a little wearily. “I think the capacities of young girls for getting into a rosy haze are exaggerated by legend.” She shrugged. “After he left, perhaps she explained things to herself, and her premises weren't very accurate. She had to construct a picture of him, and of what happened, that would allow her to keep her self-respect. Over the years it's been polished and retouched, until it doesn't resemble the original much any more. Like a few old-master pictures … It's a good thing, no doubt, that those children get to know their father. But it would probably be a very bad thing if she were ever to meet him again.”

“She brought those two children up. Say the girl is aggressive and the boy a bit paralysed, she still didn't do too badly.”

“She did a normal thing; there's no need to sentimentalize,” said Arlette a little tartly. “Sorry, I'm rather tired.” Yawning. “You'll get a soft-boiled egg.”

“What was Jacky Karstens like?” she asked, tapping her egg.

“What you'd expect,” indistinctly through a mouthful of toast. “Handsome in a florid way, funny, good company, excellent raconteur. Quite intelligent, plenty of gifts, but of no real interest; there was a basic piece lacking, in the character. His great principle in life was never to get involved; then you never get stung. Learned that, perhaps, as a young hero on the Russian front. Boring, because a bit too like a real-life Basil Seal. He would find this episode hilarious. The thought of me having to take my pants off to prove I wasn't him would put him in stitches laughing.”

“It's funny for about thirty seconds, and you're the only person entitled to laugh.” Arlette had admired the simplicity with which he had solved the problem. Few people have simplicity. They tend to be too vain.

Arthur scraped his eggshell out and looked inside it accusingly. Why was it empty? A fraud there somewhere.

The pavement seemed oddly empty. No Germans. They had gone home, or they had gone into the town for a massive pot of sauerkraut, which is the Strasbourg cure to most ailments, and nearly all frustrations.

She had almost no distance to go. Two minutes' walk, to the corner of the Boulevard de la Victoire. The University is all around one here, and a week or so before the start of an academic year, there were students everywhere. Looking thoughtful: well they might.

Turn left; less than a minute to the busy crossroad of the Boulevard de la Marne, and the Esplanade. The ‘real' world, the ‘true' world of commerce, haste, greed. Cars streamed past glued to each other's tails, all in a hell of a hurry from where, towards where. When the lights changed she ran across quickly, knowing from experience one had better. People in cars don't like people afoot. What business has anyone being afoot? Such folk are layabouts, parasites, and whatever they're doing, they're up to no good. Another minute, along the peaceful backwater of the Rue Vauban, only leading to the Anvers bridge, and the Port du Rhin quarter; which one would prefer to avoid, on the whole.

There are two or three side-streets. It is an out-of-the-way corner of Strasbourg, and a dingy one. Most of the houses seem to be let in rooms to students, probably because nobody else would want to live there. And here lived, or rather perched, Xavier, whom she had promised to Think About, and she wondered what she was going to say to him. But …

Arlette was having an obscure, but surprisingly strong, feeling of being watched. She'd had it all the way. She was being
followed. Not at all far; true. Still, at every corner a compulsion to turn around and look carefully about her. All passers-by seemed to be pottering upon banal and innocent pursuits. Was this alarmingly sharp sensation thus irrational? It would appear so. In Arlette-logic, it should be given weight accordingly: she had learned to distrust reason and pay close heed to instinct.

Certainly reason was no help at all, because who the hell could have any use for following her? No Germans or press people. She reviewed in her mind all the people she'd met recently. The only person she could find that seemed remotely likely was Sergeant Subleyras, and that likelihood, based on the supposition that the police did sometimes follow people, and perhaps skilfully enough sometimes not to be clumsy and obvious, was surely precious remote. She had, though, learned a lot over the past year of how devious people can be. The world, which is as simple as E=mc
²
, is as complicated as Henry James could make it. A great pest, said Arthur, but this is what gives us a living.

The house was very dark, and the minuting of electricity so nicely adjusted that you were plunged into pitchy blackness as you opened the lift door, whereupon the light in the lift went out too, leaving you liable to be mugged, raped, and left in a huddled heap. Arlette searched crossly in her bag for a lighter. Since her bag as usual was stuffed with treasures which men – ha ha – called rubbish, and since a lighter, like a key, a pen, or anything else one wants in a hurry, is adept at hiding, she stayed in the dark long enough to get frightened. Suppose the follower were creeping soft-soled up the fire stairs … She cursed this idiotic performance, found the lighter; the lighter found her the electricity switch for the passage; the current lasted just long enough for her to find the number of Xavier's door and went out. It was that kind of building, She found the bell-push with her finger, and pressed it. Xavier opened the door, shed light on everything, and was confused at finding her looking put-out. His profuse apologies put her much further out: she swallowed her malcontent.

The ‘studio' was fairly large, which meant old: they have
shrunk steadily in size as the years have gone by. Light, because the window was large, even though the street was both dingy and narrow. Neat, although there was too much furniture; consequence of having had a much larger flat. Clean, because Xavier had made a special effort. He had learned, and doubtless painfully, the arts of living alone in a studio flat, and how very difficult it is to get fresh vegetables, after once eating cabbage three days running and still having to throw half away. He'd never had a broom in his hand, or known what eau-de-javel is used for. There is nothing more helpless than the bourgeois male deprived of that necessary adjunct, the bourgeois female, who is so much tougher than he is.

It was what Arlette had come to see. She felt heartened; Xavier had had that much resource. He was very stiff and pompous, and pathetically glad to see her.

She wanted to finish with him quickly. This was not only from unworthy motives of feeling unable to charge him anything: self-respect would make him insist on paying her for her time. Collecting lame ducks wasn't the thing: had she needed the lesson her years doing physiotherapy had taught her. She wasn't a psychiatrist; nor was she a soup-kitchen. In order to be helped, people must help themselves. He mustn't depend upon her: he'd be falling in love with her or something, which would be most unsuitable.

So drinking coffee, and not about to jump-up-to-help with cups and stuff, she did her best to be pithy.

“What did you say?” asked Arthur at suppertime that evening.

“If I'd been talking to you – English bourgeois man of literary leanings – I'd have said go read
Little Dorrit
– all about society.”

“Shaw said that after reading it, one could be nothing but a socialist; which is perfectly true.”

“He's in the same position as Arthur Clennam.”

“And if he doesn't meet a little Dorrit, who are after all sadly rare.”

“But he's likelier to meet the man who is so skilful with his hands, but know nothing of business or formfilling or administration – they're not so rare.”

“Daniel Doyce – well, you give him good advice. Will he be able to follow it? Flexible enough, enough sap in him? Will he bend, or break?”

“He's a classic, isn't he, and they're often a wet mess, and one can't tell. I suppose he's likely to remain a wet mess whatever happens and whatever I say. One has known so many like that. Monasteries are always full of them; they incline to religion. Or Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“There should be a Businessmen Anonymous. I think in Paris at least there is, existing to help bewildered ex-executives exist. To coin a phrase.”

“I've a nasty feeling I haven't heard the end of him. One should get them to go and read Carlos Castaneda – Don Juan has such very good advice for them. Too dangerous though; they're far too fatally inclined as it is to topple over into Transcendental Meditation.” She had cooked a large and successful supper, to make up for the soft-boiled egg at lunch, to make up for the cup of coffee Xavier had given her, and the rather small sympathy she'd given him. She felt a good deal better.

She had come home, in fact, much depressed. Luckily Arthur had felt that a half day's work was not better than none at all; was in fact rather worse; had come home early too; had done some shopping; was in a cookery mood. Why don't we both do it? – something nice and long and complex? Now while we're at it, why don't you tell about all these mysterious errands you've been upon?

“Such a boring story,” wailed Mrs Davidson. “Or rather, about ten boring stories. All those failures.”

“Now come on. You're supposed to be building up. Motivating yourself. Winding your spring. Whatever they call it.”

“I'm getting more and more frustrated. All these people and nothing whatever I can do about it. There was the little man who disappeared in the Rhine. That man over on the coast who did away with Rebecca – you were drunkenly facetious and I was very greatly vexed. Since we've been home, barely two days: that poor wretch I was too late to stop killing herself. The woman whose son was killed. These silly Germans and
that poor limp boy telling himself stories about his heroic father. This drink of water, Xavier.”

“Come on; you're not doing yourself justice. The girl who, the woman who, the drink-of-water who, you're talking as though they were all dead. Like actors one hears complaining about those awful fish faces in the front row: without them, they wouldn't be functioning at all; they wouldn't even be alive. Same with you. Without all these people, you wouldn't be getting anywhere with Xavier. You told him to act like a man for once in his life and that's excellent advice. Been plenty of times in my own life when I stood gravely in need of it. This is a lot of grit, no doubt, but you're like a hen's digestion, you don't work properly without grit. If you're going to be any use to Madame Bartholdi or Xavier, or Subleyras, you've got to accept a high percentage of failure.”

“Subleyras – marvellous man I thought then – beset by doubts, now.”

“If you weren't beset by doubt, you'd be another self-satisfied prick like our President.”

“I do realize,” still in a tearful tone, “but, it's all one thing after another.”

“Odtaa,” said Arthur comfortably, “good old English expression that. Title likewise of delightful book to which I am much attached – I wonder whether that would find a reader, now. Have a drink – those wretched Germans tired you.”

“I had much too much, already this morning.”

“Then have some more,” said Arthur sensibly, and went down to the cellar for a bottle of bulls' blood. One was in need of a transfusion, he said.

Arlette was looking desolately at the television. There was some governmental propaganda going on about Industrial Accidents. We must have Fewer: illustrated by white-faced woman being told that her man has just had an unhappy meeting with an overhead crane in the factory. She turned this off.

“Sociologically speaking, they should be asking for more, not less. Help get their unemployment figures down. There'll be the President, shortly. Ask him about – oh, take Vietnamese
drowning by the boatload. Again sociologically, you'd point out that it's perhaps less painful and certainly quicker than dying in heaps by starvation, which is the fate of a great many more. But what he'll say is Waw, we must sawtainly have a committee about this next month. He'll deliver a peroration abawt this pawblem. And with any luck at all, they'll all be dead by then.”

Arlette was brightening, whether at the Davidson patter or the bulls' blood didn't matter much.

He had bought, most extravagantly, a saddle of lamb. As he remarked, very forsytean. They didn't know how to cook it nor how to cut it, but doubtless it was a pretext for a lot of excellent claret. He did know how to cook it and how to cut it, but was no claret-lover. What did this prove?

He continued in this vein until she was herself again.

The washing-up was done. Peace reigned. Or a sort of comfortable content, which served the same purpose. Arthur installed himself with pomp in his chair, and started to clean a pipe, with a nice book –
The History of Anti-Semitism
by Monsieur Poliakoff, a majestic affair – to hand. Arlette read her Spanish newspaper, being a believer in Mr Maugham's dictum that this is the way to learn foreign languages. There was a sotto voce mutter when she did this. The French mouth does not adapt easily to other pronunciations. It wasn't that bothersome jota since many, many years ago she had had to learn Dutch, and the notorious Dutch g is just the same, but saying Baja de Vizcaya rapidly to oneself creates, thought Arthur, a comfortable small noise something between a cat and an open fire. The doorbell rang. Truedog barked in a purple indignation. Arlette did not look up, but consoled him with her free hand until the noise subsided into someone saying Baja de Vizcaya in a loud angry manner.

“Who on earth can that be this time of night?” said Arthur experimentally. Arlette still didn't look up. He shuffled off like a burdened donkey. He explained, afterwards, his shameful weakness by the double handicap of an empty pipe found in his hand, which he'd stuck in his mouth to get rid of it; and having one sock on and one slipper: the other slipper having
got stuck somehow under the chair. The reality was that Miss Buckenburg, disclosed being charming on the doorstep, was under his guard in a flash.