Remember Me... (28 page)

‘François had a good joke today,' Natasha said, as the clock indicated that the last cup of coffee was due before the reading in bed replaced the writing in the kitchen.

‘Not another dirty one.'

‘No. And they are not all dirty. They are Rabelaisian. I bought you Rabelais. You should read it.'

‘I have.' The stack of classics he had set himself to read in order to compensate for reading History instead of English Literature was substantial. ‘Well, I've dipped into it. Very rude. Very gross. Much farting.'

‘It was the diet. Like Aristophanes. Beans, my father said. But it's a classic so you don't object.'

‘I don't object to François's jokes either.'

‘You do!' She was delighted. ‘You can be a prude, Joseph, or is it a prune?'

‘Neither.'

‘Your denial is so feeble.'

‘Prune or prude?'

‘A man goes to a doctor. He is in pain. He taps his finger on his forehead. “Doctor,” he says, “it hurts here.” He taps his finger on his heart. “Doctor, it hurts here”; on his left knee, “and here”; on his right knee, “and here. What have I got?”' The sweetness of Natasha's smile inevitably elicited a like smile in Joe. ‘“You have a broken finger,” the doctor said.'

They laughed, though whether at the joke, or her awkward telling, at the happiness it had given to François to relate and Natasha to receive and retell, or whether just at the fact that they were there, the two of them, embarked on a life together. They could never know. Natasha watched him closely, and her heart opened: she really was in love, and she trusted him.

Eventually, he found a postcard in the small town which took its name from the Chateau. It was black and white and the Chateau looked rather gloomy but the mass of it, the splendour of the crescent, the French seventeenth-century power and style of it was unmistakable.

He went to a bar. It was empty. The town, ruled into a perfect grid, was desolate, it seemed, and silent, not in the least ‘Christmassy'. Joe had wandered away from the twilit fairy-tale Chateau, found himself at the great elaborate iron gates, pushed on, to explore the town, but found nothing of interest except the postcards. He bought two: one to keep, one for his parents.

The coffee, the waiter and even the Armagnac were scarcely festive. There was much grandeur about the Chateau to which Natasha's father, in his new position as Rector of the university, had the right of access as his official holiday residence, but it felt no more Christmassy than this leaden town. He had thought a Roman Catholic country would make more of the birth of Christ than a northern Protestant people, but not here, not deep in central France.

Joe decided he would not despoil the card. He bought envelopes and notepaper. He lit a Disque Bleu, sipped the brandy. A sudden shot of memory hit him from the time, years before, he had been sitting outside the Café Flore in Paris writing a letter to Rachel. He could still be disturbed by memories of Rachel. He let the memory pass by, not wanting to seize on it, not wanting to revisit a past best buried. This letter was for his father and mother. He had not written to them for some weeks and the guilt, reinforced by a nostalgia for ‘over there' which was in equilibrium to his sense of being overawed ‘over here', unbuttoned him.

He described the Chateau in detail, the grounds with their two small lakes and carefully ragged woodland in which he had twice gone deerstalking with the men who worked on the estate, expeditions that had ended in a savagely skilful butchering of the deer, the carcass hooked up and hung, preparing for its journey to the kitchens. The formal gardens which once competed with royalty were now, in academic hands, reduced but still resilient in neglect. There were caves in which the estate wine was stored. He told them of the size and number of the rooms and of their bedroom, more like a flat, he wrote, as big as the whole of their flat in Finchley, and they had their own bathroom in which there were sofas, heavy curtains and like everywhere else in the Chateau rich materials, antique furniture, the sense of almost-museum.

In Paris, he wrote, Véronique and Louis had held a cocktail party. André Malraux, the famous French hero-author, had arrived and shaken hands and chatted, though in unrelenting French. Others, probably equally renowned but off his radar, had made courteous overtures of good-mannered inclusion. Gilbert had been in full fig.

Gilbert had driven them down to the Chateau; Gilbert was the butler, valet, manservant, a Breton who had now served nine academic masters and never lost his sense of good fortune – ‘I was an orphan,' he would say, ‘now look.' François, Natasha and he were in the family car, the others followed in the much grander university vehicle. He told Sam and Ellen that he had introduced his wife and brother-in-law and Gilbert to the pleasures of ‘I Spy'. He had been annoyed when François and Natasha cheated. Gilbert played by the rules.

He described what Natasha was doing for François and how much he seemed to have improved while in England. François was to return to France now and finish his studies there. Natasha would miss him.

There followed a eulogy on Natasha. He wrote of her wonderful poetry, her effortless talent for drawing, her ideas for a novel; he wrote about how she made him understand that you could have a life you wanted and not a life that others wanted you to have. He wrote about how funny she could be, how cutting, but also how she appeared to examine everybody and every idea with such seriousness, just as she examined herself, just as she examined him.

She hated newspapers. She had become fond of the radio. He knew that she was not particularly well informed and yet she managed to sound informed or intelligent on everything their new London acquaintances discussed. She could be very direct and personal and even shocking in public. He had told her that her comments on his programmes and on his writing were overly critical, but she had asked him what else should she do? She said so much that made him think. For instance just this afternoon she said, ‘The idea of the Holy is gone; and I am glad. You miss it, though, Joseph, don't you? Never mind, there is still the Sacred.' And then she laughed.

Her father, he wrote, had told him some more about her. He had said that her mother's family had owned large properties near Trieste, confiscated by the Communists; that Natasha's title, of countess, came down the female line and that neither her mother nor Natasha had wished to acknowledge it; that the death of her mother, so young and Natasha still in arms, had devastated everyone in the family for years but Oxford and marriage had helped her. Louis, he wrote, gave him a pair of antique gold Venetian cufflinks and Natasha said that was significant.

Joe's letter, which became something of a despatch from the front, wound on to include Véronique, the children, Isabel and Alain who had come as guests, Pierre, the stout red-faced ‘keeper of the caves' on the estate who reminded him of Diddler, Gilbert and his unavoidable service, and his own research into who had lived at and visited the Chateau over the years, the statesmen, the men of letters and once, most cherished of all in the town, a royal prince, a Bourbon.

He was tired by the time he had finished. There were now more than half a dozen people in the bar. He put the letter in the envelope alongside the postcard but did not seal it. Having written in such terms about Natasha, he wanted to engineer that she read it. He paid and then hurried back, through the side gate, almost trotting up the great drive, guided by the solid band of ground-floor light in the Chateau, worried that he was late for dinner.

‘A house like this needs many more servants,' said Isabel.

‘
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!
' said Alain.

‘Not when you are cold and the food is cold, the rooms are cold and everything is fading away. Look at those curtains.' They were in their suite, a little whisky before bed.

‘I like decadence,' said Alain. ‘I prefer decomposition. If it were all new I would distrust it.'

‘Hypocrite!'

‘Speak of yourself. You adore the Chateau. I see your eyes. I see you nod, like this,' he nodded, ‘that means – I like it. I recognise this from shopping.'

‘It is too gloomy. But it has style. It was a great period for the French.'

‘Some of them.'

‘Us.'

‘Isabel! You are insupportable.'

‘Louis loves it,' she said. ‘Véronique is uncomfortable.'

‘Louis does not notice it. Véronique is always uncomfortable.'

‘Alain!' She held out her glass. ‘The merest touch,' she said, ‘and a single jet of soda.'

He waited on her, as he always did.

‘So what do you think?' she demanded.

‘Isabel! Not again! Every night – whisky and Natasha. Whisky and Joseph. They are still happy. Is that not enough of a miracle for any marriage?'

‘I want your analysis.'

‘I offered it to you last night. And the night before. Since then nothing has happened!'

‘Is she deeply happy?'

‘Chérie!
That is not a question for adults. You will now ask it again.'

‘But do you think she is really happy?'

‘I consider,' Alain raised his whisky glass and gazed on it enigmatically, ‘that Natasha is happier than I would ever have thought possible.'

‘Do you not see the nervousness still, and the sudden disappearance of her personality?'

‘Not more than usual. In fact I find Joseph more nervous than Natasha. There is a history to Joseph which he very courageously conceals.'

‘What history?'

‘I don't know. He conceals it.'

‘You talk nonsense.'

‘It is the only solution.' He raised his glass in a toast.

‘He is much more confident. He is so full of plans now. He wants to write novels, he wants to make films, he wants to conquer the world.'

‘You make it sound like a crime.'

‘Perhaps it is.'

‘Not in the young. And not in the honest heart.'

‘Are you sure he is honest? Honest! What does that matter? True. True to Natasha.'

‘We have only the moment to judge, my dear: and in this moment – yes. He is true to Natasha.'

‘She
is
stronger. Despite having to nurse François.'

‘That was a kindness,' said Alain. ‘Louis is grateful to her.'

‘It was an imposition!' said Isabel. ‘Louis and Véronique ought to be ashamed of themselves.'

‘François looks better.'

‘We'll see what happens when Natasha leaves him.'

‘Can we please talk about the cold dining room?'

‘No.'

‘The horrible wine? The good conversation?'

‘Monologue.'

‘About Malraux, and the war?'

‘No. I was never fond of André Malraux. I must take you to bed, Alain. You are tired.'

‘Not so very tired.'

‘We are old, Alain my sweet, and not at home.'

Louis walked alone for half an hour after breakfast and about three-quarters of an hour after lunch. He did not care much where he walked. The grounds of the Chateau were no more or less inviting than the Boulevard St Michel. He preferred familiar routes so that he could go onto automatic and think. Walking accompanied disturbed him.

Natasha knew this and felt a weight of apprehension when he asked her to join him after lunch. He went, as usual, directly and unseeingly through the formal gardens to the path by the nearest wood which he would follow for the allocated minutes and then turn a hundred and eighty degrees and retrace his steps.

He waited until the formal gardens were behind them. Then he took her arm and a surge of privilege warmed through Natasha, a feeling that she was being given her rightful place, a late but due blessing. It built on that afternoon in Oxford.

‘I want to thank you, Natasha,' he began, ‘for the care you have taken with François.' He patted her hand and paused and held it for a moment or two while he looked at her directly and she was for that moment healed. ‘He is so much more confident. He is calmer. The results are not marvellous but they are better than they were here in France.'

They moved on. Natasha realised that the conversation was over. He increased his pace.

Natasha had wanted to be the one who instigated this discussion. As the silence built up, not a worrying silence but certainly a determined silence, she regrouped. It was not the time for circumlocution.

‘I think it would be a mistake for him to go back to l'Ecole in Paris,' she said.

‘Why is that?' His eyes were now looking ahead.

‘He doesn't want to. He will never be engaged. He only worked hard in London because he wants you to be proud of him. He is not made for your type of work, Papa, and the sooner we let him leave it behind the better.'

‘But he has to finish. He has to pass all the examinations. There is no question.'

‘He will just get depressed again,' she said, ‘and I can't be in Paris.'

‘No, no. He is better now. He will take the examinations and then we will have a discussion.'

‘With him?'

‘Of course.'

‘What if he wants to give up all formal education for ever? What if he wants to do something wholly different?'

‘That is possible. What, for example?'

Natasha took a deep breath. She had not planned it to come out this bluntly.

‘Drive a lorry?'

‘That is very funny, Natasha. Good!' He looked at his watch.

‘Go in the navy.'

‘He will need examinations. And his sciences are not solid.'

‘Just travel, around Europe, for a year, to get his bearings.'

‘And then come back after a year to begin his education once again? That will be much more difficult for him.'

‘But he hates academic work.'

‘That can change.'

‘Why does he have to change? He is fine as he is. He is kind and gentle, he is helpful and he wants so little. Why does he have to change?'