One Damn Thing After Another (6 page)

“With a gun?”

“Off duty I don't carry one; I'm bigger,” bleakly, “than I look.”

“Sorry I interrupted.”

“He doesn't resist. I tap his pockets, come up with a blade fifteen centimetres long. Ask what he's doing with that, he says it's for cleaning his nails with. I show it the girl and say See that? She just looks, shrugs her shoulders, says to me, quite indifferent, ‘Stick it in your tripes,' like that, turns round, walks off. As dry and as cool as yesterday's pizza. So? I tell Billyboy he made no attack, so I press no charge against him: he's carrying a prohibited weapon, sure, but in view of the young woman's attitude, I'll confiscate the blade and leave it at that. I go back to my car and leave him there laughing. He'll have bought a nice new blade,” reflectively, “next morning.”

“You'd have arrested him and so what? Tribunal would have let him go.”

“I see you know your penal code. That's right: there wasn't what the law calls commencement of execution. Loitering with intent is only a misdemeanour anyhow. I should have waited till he put the knife in her ribs. I wanted to spare her that – and got thanked for it. I don't know why I bothered to tell you. Any cop can tell ten better stories. I'd call this just average. People who say a cop's work should be preventive wouldn't believe me. Might say, like that woman did, I was being provocative. With a black – that much more so.”

“Except that my husband collects these stories. What does your wife say?”

“She doesn't,” smile getting narrower. “She's too fair to say choose between the job and me. She'd sure as hell like to. If your husband says to you he's telling them to take the job and stick it – what's your reaction?”

“A marriage comes first,” said Arlette, “up to a borderline and where is it? I think perhaps it's the difference between a job and a vocation. A profession is something you do: a vocation is what one's got to do. That's an opinion, for what it's worth. I wouldn't want to make it subjective – either to you or to me. I see what you mean – about it making no sense … Tell me – you're crime-squad? – on another subject altogether, does the name Bartholdi mean anything to you?”

Sergeant Subleyras drew his brows together.

“Seems to me that it does, but I'm not sure offhand what. Cue me.”

“A boy who got shot out in the country, breaking into a cottage.”

“I'm with you now.”

“His brother was kept some weeks in jug on suspicion.” A slow dark flush was climbing up a face pale from too much desk work.

“I'm aware of the case. Officially, I'd have no comment about that. If we're off the record still …?”

“As we've been throughout.”

“Then it was lamentable. Can I, without seeming to be excusing myself, say that it was not my work?”

“Naturally. To be straight with you, I know nothing about it. Madame Bartholdi, the boys' mother, came to see me, in considerable distress. I said I'd do what I could – you know, I think, that I don't interfere in anything touching police work?” Nod.

“So, I'm wondering why you bring the subject up. It's another example, certainly, of what I've been talking about. There are plenty more.”

“I'll tell you why. You come to your own decisions, and if I can contribute any light I'll be glad, because I'll feel rewarded.
So we don't owe one another anything. This much – if you decide for reasons of your own to leave the department, and if at that moment you think it right, communicate any information you have on that subject to me, and you'd be helping that woman, maybe. She's not happy, you see, that the charges against the man who shot her boy got dropped. As things stand, no one feels much enthusiasm about going to bat for her.”

“I'll bear what you tell me in mind. I'd rather pay you a consultancy fee, your usual way, than promise you a service I might not be able to make good. Okay?”

“Of course. Fifty francs, and no misunderstandings.”

“Because if anybody gives me a margin to be straight in,” writing neatly and carefully in a chequebook, “I try, and I don't mean acting like I was John Wayne.”

“This cheque,” said Arlette, “isn't signed John Wayne, not that I'd frame it if it was. And I don't see any drawing of an arrow either. We'll manage, Monsieur Subleyras, to trust one another.”

“I've been reaching the same conclusion,” standing up, “so I won't say goodbye and thanks, Madame, but I'll say I'll be in touch. And I'll look up that file,” not smilingly.

“Thanks to you – for coming. Or is that sentimental?”

“If it is I'm not quarrelling with it. Don't get up; I can find my way.”

She hadn't finished writing her notes up when the bell went again, and the telephone with it. Bonne Mère, grumbled Arlette, pressing buttons, scarcely even home and a day like this …

“Yes; this is Arlette van der Valk.”

A clipped, high woman's voice resonated haughtily.

“This is Madame Hervé Laboisserie. I've been wondering whether you'd care to call round, and we could discuss a matter, don't you know. This afternoon, preferably.” There were times when Arlette responded to this kind of remark by ‘Come to my office and we'll see', but the holiday had been expensive and house-calls not to be sneezed at.

“Very well; two-thirty,” which sounded either over-eager or over-scornful, but she didn't care that badly.

“Oh. Well, yes, I think that will be satisfactory.”

“What's the address?”

“Oh. Rue Ravel, number twenty-one. The Orangerie end.” Surprised that anybody needed telling. Why can't people carry essential information in their head? The voice showed symptoms of complaining about this.

“Excuse me will you? – I've somebody waiting.” She hated having people waiting, but if they would come without appointments … Making them wait on purpose was a puffy trick running counter to all she tried to live by. Nothing is more boring than the very-busy-clerk making believe that he is Managing something. She had begun her career by apologizing to people kept waiting. She then discovered that this made them more suspicious, as though there were a catch somewhere.

All she said now to the person studying the flower-prints with a little more attention than they merited was, “Will you come in?”

“Good those,” turning round with a connoisseur's air, “early nineteenth century.” Since this expertise was fairly easily acquired by anyone not suffering from myopia – the date was as usual printed at the bottom with the artist's and engraver's names – there was not much to say but, “They're supposed to make a wait less boring.”

A gentleman of forty. Soigné about the hair and fingernails, and aftershaved with elegant-smelling toiletries. An executive suit, a shimmering tie, fine, fragile Italian shoes, the air of his time being worth a great deal. Briefcase – all very Via dei Condotti. He snapped it shut, held out a card between his fingertips.

“Xavier Marchand.” Slight formal bow, assured easy manner. Impressive. Since she was fifty-two years old and experienced, she resolved to watch him on the way out, make sure a print didn't get slid in the briefcase. They were worth some money, if not much. Now he was busy inspecting her big marine landscape.

“Please sit down.”

“Sorry – splendid thing, that.”

“Forgive me just a moment.” To put the phone back to ‘record' since she loathed being interrupted by it, to write ‘14.30 Twenty-one, Rue Ravel. Mme Hervé Laboisserie'. Was that spelt right? – bourgeoisie! Out of the corner of her eye, she caught this bourgeois fiddling with a cigarette case and matching lighter. There are the lacquer ones from Dupont, the florentine ones from Cartier – part of the panoply, she thought with some irritation. She preferred Sergeant Subleyras. So turn a patient-bland, boiled eye upon the present interlocutor.

She was taken aback. He was staring out of the window with haggard concentration upon twigs and a patch of sky, oblivious to what she said or did. All the elaborate veneer had cracked across from side to side like the Lady of Shalott's looking-glass. She had been mistaken. It was understandable, because she did sometimes get the fast-paced, high-priced executives. Generally, they were trying to get out from under an adultery rap or cover some such turpitude that would make the pyramid more slippery still. Blackmail always in their minds, they were sensitive about the tape-recorder and hated anything in writing. This was not the same. She regretted her toffee-nosed reaction.

“Monsieur Marchand,” she said gently.

“I'm sorry. You're waiting for me to tell you what it's all about. I had a spiel prepared. Now I find there's no use for it. To the point – it's all said in one sentence really. My wife has left me.” The monosyllables held nothing but plain blank misery.

She took one of his cigarettes. He was there at once with the electronic thing: she preferred her pale-green plastic Cricket, but this was necessary.

“I'd better hear why, in your view.”

“Simple, I'm afraid. I was no longer good enough for her.”

“With someone else?”

“No – or I don't think so. Maybe. Not yet, perhaps.”

Simplest, and most difficult of all, the man who has to spit it out. He will spit it on a park bench, for he asks nothing but to be allowed to talk. To face Arlette he had screwed himself up: hence the façade.

The moment he realized he could talk and that she would listen, it flowed without a prompt. Business training kept him from rambling much: all to the point.

He'd lost his job out of the blue. Secure job, in which he felt content and competent; the right man. So he was, and well-thought-of by his company, which was large, prosperous, established. He was not given any sack. The thing was being streamlined and the job no longer existed. From no more than loyalty – you'd think – they'd find you another. Error. If the job no longer exists, from head office's standpoint, neither do you. Arlette, who had heard such tales before, was unsurprised at the heartlessness of it: a heart is a muscle, to be preserved from accidents or even twinges. These fates are the other face of the coin.

On this side is the high salary and the plummy perks; aeroplanes and restaurants, careful servility from juniors and golf-club familiarity from seniors; a slice of secrets and strategies, a promise of power. One day, though, a seed lodges in a vice-president's mind: on its label is written some euphemism about Structures. Something to do with Next Year's Model.

You have done nothing wrong, and are surprised. Your immediate superior, who has known you some years and in whose heart, it might be thought, is more than greed, fear, and effrontery, prevaricates at length, until you realize – at length – that it was his neck or yours. So, it's yours. No hard feelings about that, of course.

You'll say it to nobody else but yourself – this is upsetting. But you're unworried. You have a proven record of success, eminent titles to esteem, numerous valuable connections, and know all the ropes. You belong, and you're in.

You don't actually, and you aren't, but it takes some months
to find this out. By then your past, which was yesterday, has suddenly become remote. Let's see, old chap, your record was on last year's model: we're talking about this year's: you aren't really in on that, are you now? Next year's? Somehow the company has a new policy, which is not to hire anyone new over the age of thirty-five. We're stretching that of course, since it's for you. You're on the short list.

Quite gradually it becomes we're-keeping-you-in-mind, old chap, and do give my regards to your lovely wife. Your lovely wife has by this time found out.

You hadn't wanted to upset her, so you hadn't said anything about it. She is accustomed to reticence in matters of business. Some wives do gossip, and there have been leaks known. But now six months have gone by. You are living in more expensive fashion than before, because things the company paid for … there was not much saved and gratuities melt with horrid speed. You must keep up your subscriptions, buy new suits. Nobody must be allowed to perceive the smallest ripple in your customary ways, business manners, or leisure pursuits. Nothing in the community is so deadly as a loss of face. Let it once place you in the Russian sector – meaning in a low income bracket – and you're finished.

Xavier put it all well, thought Arlette. Quietly, without inflated language and with little self-pity. He had been struck by the plague; it is endemic in the community and nobody is ever quite immune. It was when he spoke of his wife that he became unbalanced and bitterness rose, a thick black smoke, to choke him.

The failure is in a lack of imagination? Businessmen are not paid to have imagination, and it is unfair to blame them for failure to escape from this world of rigid shibboleths and slogans in which they must believe in order to survive, into which they lock themselves.

Can they even be blamed for the male failure towards the woman, an even more glaring failure to imagine what it is like for her? In the business world all values are childish and only vanity can reign. Does one need more evidence than the toys and gadgets upon which they so rely? In this world the
woman is trapped. She too has to put out more flags. They come uncommon high in price for him; for her still higher. She must acquire a thicker defensive plating of boastfulness and arrogance, and women are not good at this. They become crude and shrill and hateful. The giver of life has been forced into a world to which she is not in the least suited. She hates her own hardness, and revenges herself upon the men. Her resentment is bitterer still when she does not perceive why she must degrade all within her and around her.

Why, wondered Arlette, does he come to me? Thinking that I would soften the conduct of this woman towards him, with understanding and explanations? He will have told his tale to men, who will have bought drinks, nodded wisely, shrugged helplessly, muttered ‘Women … just shows you, though …'