One Damn Thing After Another (14 page)

“My – my brother walked out on it. I thought he was stupid, and I hated him for being so, well, obvious and noisy about it. And now – it sounds so silly, but I want him back. My mother puts on that exaggerated social act, and I could see you hated that. Lot of snobs, you were thinking. She's – just not able to put it into words. Neither am I, I suppose. One gets frozen up. I've been, well, call it in a wider circle. I know how they hate us.” Air of sophistication, at nineteen. Which was touching. And despite the whining, self-pitying voice there would be much that was good, no doubt. And of course that terrible little Foreign Office clique was pathetic, and when a crack appeared in the protective varnish it was painful for them. But what on earth could she do? Xavier was a wet, and this lot was much more wet, and she was tired, and she'd had enough of it all, and in general Oh, Knickers, as Arthur said when exasperated. She stabbed her cigarette out with a notion of wanting, on the whole, to be ruthless about pinching this off.

“I can't, I'm afraid, see my way to changing my mind.” Stood up. Got a concentrated look of cold hatred.

“You're obtuse, and you're no goddamed good to anybody, and I'm just sorry I came.” At the door she turned round again. “I'm sorry I said that.” The look had melted from the desolate eyes.

“I deserve it, often. But do I now? Ask yourself objectively – what in cold reality could I usefully do? Not now: sleep on it, ask yourself then.”

Arlette slept on it and a lot more, restlessly, woke early. Got up, made herself a cup of coffee. Went for a shower, made it hot, very hot, turned it very cold, a frightful James Bond act she had steeled herself to over the years. Good for the morale,
the skin, the bloodstream. Take a whack at middle-aged cellulitis. Good for tit into the bargain. She wasn't too disappointed in hers, at well over fifty: they weren't that bolstercase known as a Bosom, and they weren't too sad and flabby either. Not subject to rude jokes by Arthur about Silicone-Seekers.

She buttoned her bra in the swift movement that delights the male pig, at once ridiculous and marvellously skilful, like a clown falling down. Drawing the curtains, she was struck by a phenomenon of light.

Day was dawning in a murky sky of a nasty purplish black. One could not see what mixture of haze, cloud or smog this was, nor how it simultaneously masked, reflected and diffused the sunrise, visible only as a lurid and sinister red spreading from the east. The effect was horrid and frightening, strongly suggestive of apocalypse-imminent. Arlette stood rooted while it got redder and took on fireball incandescence.

Arthur, the pedantic etymologist, would have said that the word ‘ominous' merely announces an omen. Why does the adjective connote bad and alarming omens? Renouncing superstition she went for more coffee.

“Arthur, get up; coffee's ready.”

“Muh.”

“Arthur, get up, there's an extraordinary sky.”

“Meuh.”

Looking again she was thunderstruck. The risen sun was flooding the whole sky with a brilliant colour neither pink nor red, not to be called scarlet.

“Arthur, come quick. Such a gaudy dawn – coral.”

“It sounds,” grumbled the gentleman scratching his pyjama jacket, “like a bad Travis McGee book … Woo,” taken back short.

“What does the shepherd say to that?”

“Such sights,” standing on the balcony reckless of what the neighbour's wife said or thought, “belong in the lonely immensity of the Pacific, sailing towards the Marquesas, on a schooner” – afterthought – “Gorblimey.”

“What's it an omen of?”

“That the whole of Bayer Leverkusen has gone up in smoke. That the Russians are coming.”

The first, thought Arlette, was desirable but improbable. The second, perhaps slightly more probable, was somewhat less desirable, and both were on the whole unsatisfactory. Surely it means that something extraordinary is going to happen.

The poetry of the phenomenon lasted only a very few minutes, and by the time she had poured out two cups of coffee, it was again an ordinary autumnal day beginning over Strasbourg in brightish steely-grey tints, neither startling nor objectionable.

Weekend, and market day, and no cleaning woman, nor Spanish lessons, but domestic preoccupations, the weekend supplement to
Monde
and Arthur hanging about in a dressing-gown reading it instead of washing.

On the tape, more outpourings from the young woman, as yet unaborted, of the day before. Arlette rang up and explained at some length that today was market-day and another day would have to do, besides making no great difference to the problem in hand, which was still within legal limits.

Coming back from the market, she picked up the mail. Printed matter, and a letter asking for advice and help in dealing with an insurance company. Reading this in the kitchen she could see two quick solutions: do nothing, or put a heavy charge of plastic explosive under the insurance company. She left it on her table to think about on Monday. This wasn't, surely, what was meant by an omen.

Getting on for lunchtime appeared Xavier, in fair repair but his face looking like Joseph's coat of many colours; apologetic, talkative, much bewildered, full of questions and speculations. She didn't know any answers; gave him a drink and got rid of him. Seeing him reminded her, not very pleasantly, of that strong and nasty feeling of being watched, of that nastily-loony telephone call. She hoped this had nothing to do with the omen: it was something else that she didn't want to think about before Monday. The car very badly needed cleaning, tidying, and in general ‘uitmesten'; a good Dutch word meaning literally muck out with the dungfork, highly applicable to car after the holidays, mud-masked without and pigsty within.
No use counting on Arthur to do this. Where was Arthur? – she hadn't seen him for a long time and dinner was ready. She had a small drink, and looked through the printed-matter.

Arthur appeared, dirty, surrounded by a huge unmistakeable halo of virtue, carrying a bag of discarded clothing, tatty maps and sunhats. He had cleaned the car. She made many loud and heartfelt exclamations of gratitude. He was rather short, in dire need of a drink and dinner, in quick time.

Was this the omen? That the husband can be tiresome all week long, but a quiet piece of unselfishness more than makes up for it?

Halfway through dinner the phone rang in characteristic imbecile fashion and Arthur took it, still being nice because usually he refused utterly.

“Davidson … Mrs van der Valk? … Well, I'll tell you what you can do. She's not available at the moment, but rebook it in half an hour: she'll be there then. Yes, this number will do.” Her eyebrows were up very high.

“The operator,” returning to the table with heavy plod. “With a long, involved tale about finding your office phone on record and doing a great deal of detective work before ringing this one. Interminable and tedious.”

“Why can't they say what they want on the tape? What the hell do they think the recorder's for?”

“She says, she says, that she has a long-distance person to person call for you. Mustard, please.”

“What can that be? One of the boys, presumably – no; they wouldn't ring the office phone.”

“California, offering you a movie contract,” closing his mouth upon a large forkful and refusing to say more. Arlette ruminated, but could think of nothing but that it was too early in the day for California. Anyhow, she knew nobody in California. But she could not stop herself getting wound up with suspense. Perhaps this was what the gaudy coral dawn had come to announce.

“Yes, this is Madame van der Valk. All right, put him on.”

An oddly clear line: something to do with sunspots, or satellites, or both. A highly polished clear voice. Directly she heard, “Consulat de France,” she had understood. Not eight in the morning in California, but nine at night in the Far East. And a great pest either way. No movie contract, either.

Arthur, thoughtfully, provided an ashtray and a lighted cigarette.

“I have, however, refused this, twice. Why do you think I would reverse my decision now? There are other people: there must be people on the spot.”

“I am not trying to be overbearing. This is not a tactic for bringing pressure. It is a personal appeal. I understand your refusal. I grasp at least some of your motives for it. I supplicate you nonetheless to reverse it. To answer your second question, you are there ideally placed, if you will agree, to be put in possession of the facts.”

“I don't feel convinced, I'm sorry to say.”

“You will, though, listen to me? You're not going to cut me off.”

“It's your call …”

“This, Madame, is an attempt at a rescue. That of a young man, and possibly his health. It is not too far-fetched to say possibly even his life. An attempt, furthermore, to rescue a family, a marriage, and may I say even, in the simplest words, a man's own self-respect. A question of conscience.” Wasn't it in those words, or something very like them, that she had interpreted the decisions of Sergeant Subleyras?

“But if I may interrupt, surely you are much better placed than I am.”

“If I say that my wife, that various family relations, that even those close friends I could feel I count upon, that all are excluded for urgent and overriding personal reasons, would you be inclined to believe me?”

“I take your word, naturally. But you yourself …”

“That I hold, you mean, an official position of some importance. That by virtue of this there are pressures I can bring to bear, relations I could use, even certain manipulations or manoeuvres within my powers?”

“Well … more or less.”

“You must take my word for it, most solemnly given, that for professional as well as personal reasons any such course of action is formally excluded.”

“I'm very sorry naturally to hear it, but –”

“May I, in my turn, interrupt you? Such information as I hold about you, and all that I am led to believe of you, tells me that the human, and, if I may use the word, ethical values I was speaking of just now are foremost in your considerations. You confirm that?”

“Well, I should hope I'm not going to deny it.”

“Then why do you hold back, in face of the appeal made to you by both the mother and the father of this young man? And as I even understand, his sister?”

She was a bit bereft of speech, hereabouts.

“Have you yourself overriding personal reasons for a refusal to visit Argentina? Or, if I may use the phrase, ethical scruples?”

“No.”

“There are material considerations? I am formally proposing to you that your expenses, whatever they are, will be totally covered, that your time be remunerated at the rate you think fit, that a proper proportion of your estimate, fifty per cent or whatever, be made over to you in advance. I do not know whether you are recording this conversation.”

“No.”

“I guarantee my personal and family resources and will confirm that in writing.”

What was she to say?

“You could, no doubt, arrange your professional obligations so as to free yourself for a certain number of days? Speaking conditionally, that could be done at seven days' notice?”

“Possibly, but I ask you not to be over-confident.”

“Confident of your acceptance? I do not believe that you would knowingly refuse your aid to those in need. Of your competence, I have no doubt. Of your ability to do as I ask? The future holds no certainties, but faced with the variations upon what is possible, I seek to place the probabilities upon my side.”

“What exactly is it that you are asking of me?”

“That you agree to aid my family to the limits of your capacity. The problem in human terms cannot be measured. It can be defined within certain parameters.”

“One of which is being in full possession of the facts.”

“My wife, I will promise you, will give you her entire confidence, in full detail, of every relevant factor. Nothing will be held back.”

“I must think this over.”

“Madame, forgive my insistence, but the arguments for refusal haven't a leg to stand on.”

“Except that I may have considerations too, which may be like yours – personal; family.”

“Madame, je vous en conjure.”

“I don't say yes or no on the telephone, and that's flat. I think it over during the weekend, and get in touch with your wife on Monday.”

“But you don't say no.”

“Of course I don't say no. I'll do what I can.”

“That's all I ask, Madame, and you have my profound thanks.”

Would one say yes to the movie contract from California? What one did was not say no.

The drawback to telephones – among others – is that people ring up from California and are extremely pressing, and full of
cajolements. The moment you don't say no, in their view you've said yes.

Arthur, plus post-prandial cigar, was looking out of the window with his hands in his pockets, his whole attitude saying that this was all exceedingly odtaa.

Arlette sat foolishly and said nothing. After a little while she tried “Suppose we went out to the country for the weekend,” timidly.

“Come,” he said, “that's the best idea you've had for a long time.”

They got in the car, and nobody seemed to be watching them.

Arlette drove. Arthur appeared blind to all around him. Lengthily, much handicapped by safety belts and the vast number of pockets in a man's clothes, he searched for and at last found a pair of nail scissors. Having at last found them, he started using them to clean his pipe. In this way twenty-five kilometres passed without anybody speaking, through fairly dense traffic imposing concentration upon the driver. The westerly road from Strasbourg towards the Vosges, following the valley of the Bruche, is at all times much encumbered: on a Saturday afternoon, saturated. They were past Molsheim before Arthur at length spoke.