Remember Me... (29 page)

‘You have spent too much time with him,' Louis said, and patted her hand once again. ‘My wife said that it would be a great strain for you. She was worried for you and now I see her point of view. So you must stop now, Natasha; you and Joseph have done more than I could have hoped for. François must not spoil your life or your marriage.'

‘I loved being with François. I was happy with him. It was a pleasure.'

‘I understand.'

‘Please. Papa. Let him go his own way.'

‘He will. But only when he has passed all the examinations. Then he will go his own way.'

‘Please.'

‘No more. I am very grateful to you . . . Do you see the gate over there?'

‘Yes.'

‘That is where I turn back. But we must step out.'

Joe roved under a bright half-moon. The grounds were picked out almost as clearly as they had been on the dawn hunting trips. Now he was alone, walking, smoking, rather cold, having ignored Isabel's advice to wear a coat, wanting in some macho way to impress her, needing to
be alone to let in the dislocating largeness of all that was happening to him. Film stars left grand parties and strolled in such grounds with a reflective cigarette, he thought, though usually in a dinner jacket. He had just turned twenty-three but he felt himself in that celluloid tradition of the evening strolling grandee. His sense of the specialness that had been thrust upon him was accentuated by the unremitting attention Gilbert had paid to his wardrobe . . . the clerical grey suit bought for him by his mother and father more than five years ago, his sartorial camouflage for his journey into the interior of Oxford University, had been ironed and brushed and somehow rejuvenated; the clean white shirt had been pressed flawless, as had the college tie – and the shoes glittered, pacing before him, shining black mirrors, reflecting the moonlight.

He tried to impose order and occupy himself by picking out features in the moonscape, measuring them, filing them for later use; but his heart was not in it. The general flux of the life in this borrowed palace, the crystal, the candelabra, the paintings of French victories and French luminaries on the walls, the ancient and studied luxuriance of style unearthed him.

There was a ballooning in his mind and in his body. It was as if both were ready to burst open simply with the fullness of what was happening. The mixture of reality and fantasy, the smiling eyes of Natasha whenever he sought them out, the compliments of Isabel, the gratitude of Véronique, it was as if he had been turned into a different person. He had no idea what he should or could do about it. He had to force himself back into the Chateau.

Natasha was in the chair nearest the bed, smoking, reading. At Joe's suggestion she had begun
The Cossacks
but he could tell, as soon as he came in, pink-faced from the cold air, that she wanted to talk.

‘It was fantastic out there!' he said. ‘I wish you had been with me.'

‘You went so quickly,' she said. ‘Sometimes you do. You move from impulse to act with nothing in between.'

‘Is that bad?'

‘Sometimes.'

Her tone was flat, unusually so, without any of that resonance which made her so alive for him.

He sat down opposite her. He would have liked another drink but to go downstairs in search of alcohol was unthinkable.

‘I didn't leave when I shouldn't, did I?'

‘No.'

‘Nor say anything wrong?'

‘They think you are perfect, Joseph. You have parachuted out of the sky like a saviour.'

‘Please.' He could not read her in this mood and always feared the worst. ‘Don't say things like that.'

‘It is true.'

‘It can't be true,' he said, firmly, as he thought, drawing a line under it.

‘I'm sorry, Joseph,' she said, ‘this is very bad of me. I apologise in advance – but I read the letter you have written to Sam and Ellen.'

It was always a little rub against the grain when she uttered his parents' Christian names. But it declared an independence in her that he admired.

‘Well?'

He remembered how lovingly he had written of her and waited for the appreciation.

‘Joseph.' She took a deep drag on the cigarette. ‘You must not send this letter. And you must not say these things. Not to anyone. Please. You must not.'

‘What things?'

‘Sam and Ellen will not know what to say to me. It will be too much for them. And I like them: I like them to know me as I am, not through
this!'

‘What?' he asked, but he knew the answer.

‘Joseph! The boasting. The meaningless title and confiscated property and all of it! I hate it, Joseph! Don't you understand that? How can you not understand that? How can you not? How can you know me and not understand that I abandoned all that many years ago? I am here now because of François and because I see how much you love it and I
want to be near my father when he is so benevolent, but I left all this, Joseph. I could not live in this air, I left it to live a life of my own, whatever came of it, of my own, don't you see? I cannot carry all this past with me. I will not. I will not! You must not put it back around my neck!'

‘Why do you say that?' He felt a chill from her accusation.

‘Because it is true.'

‘I'm not a snob.'

‘It's easy to be influenced by all this, Joseph. Especially . . .'

‘As I'm a peasant.'

‘You can see what they have done to François and therefore what they did to me.'

‘You told me your father was a teacher. He isn't. You said he was ill. He isn't. You said Véronique was the wicked witch. She doesn't seem like that to me.'

‘You have taken me off their hands.' Natasha's tone was bitter. ‘They think, they hope, that everything has changed. But my past has not changed.'

‘So I'm just somebody who did them a favour.'

‘. . . Not for my father, no. I can see that he admires you. And Véronique is grateful for François, although she has learned nothing.' She paused and, for the first time in the conversation, she looked at him without anger. ‘Poor Joseph. You are so miserable now when you were so happy a moment ago.'

‘I'm perfectly OK.'

‘It is better not to mix these things. We shall be on our own, tabula rasa, both, somewhere anonymous, with one or two friends, writing together and reading and talking together. That is all we need.'

‘Why do you think I wrote that letter?'

‘Because you were proud: of me, and of this borrowed splendour and of yourself.'

‘I knew none of this when I met you. You were just lonely and unhappy.'

‘And you rescued me!' She smiled, her good humour entirely restored. Joseph's crestfallen expression was too young to bear any more chastisement.

‘I didn't set out to rescue you.'

‘But you have done.' She stood up and came across to him and pulled him to his feet. ‘Don't sulk, Joseph.' She put her arm around his neck and stayed until he felt forced to look at her. And her smile, the sweet, intelligent softness of love in her eyes, the clarity of her as always abashed and seduced him.

‘It is a very big bed.'

He looked: the canopy, the curtains, the luxury so inappropriate for them, he thought.

‘I liked that single bed in Oxford better.'

‘That is inverse snobbery, Joseph.'

‘No,' he said, ‘it was better.'

Over the next two, the last two days, Natasha was as loving to him as she had ever been. It was noted by Isabel with relief and approval, by Véronique with scepticism, and by the younger children with ribaldry as Natasha declared public tendernesses. But the waters did not quite close over.

On the last afternoon they – ‘the children' – went for a walk into the town and then back to the house by the most meandering route they could find. Natasha and François soon dropped behind. Joe liked being left alone with the younger ones. Natasha was not there to tease him and they appreciated his adequate French, indeed they seemed rather astonished by it, that of all people an Englishman had mastered their precious tongue. Joe revelled in these inherited siblings. He had no responsibility for them; he was as occasional as a shooting star and they revered him as the English husband of their artistic and rebellious sister. It was easy to show off and there seemed no harm in it. Joe found genuine happiness in his time with the children. There seemed to be no way to lose, no penalties. He fed them opinions, banalities, elementary historical facts, curiosities from English life and they leaped up like young dolphins, taking the fish every time. In their company Joe felt rejoined to the family from which Natasha's censure had threatened to sever him.

Natasha and François fell behind and in the extensive grounds they lost contact with the others and made their own way. François was sad and the weight of his sadness pressed down on her.

‘You can always come back to see us in London.'

‘Maman says no. Enough.' His right hand made a chopping gesture. ‘Anyway, you are going to the North now.'

‘The BBC is like the army,' said Natasha. ‘Now Joseph has to go to the Roman Wall for a few months.'

‘I will be near the exams then.' François did not look at her. She felt she was abandoning him and it was insupportable. ‘They will be even less inclined to let me go.'

‘I'll come over to Paris,' said Natasha, ‘I'll come every month.'

‘No.' François let his cigarette fall and ground it out. ‘They will not like that.'

‘Who cares?'

His smile was a reproach. He took her arm.

‘Do you remember Papa telling us about the Pétomanes? The men who farted tunes? He told us that his father took him to see them in a circus.'

‘Yes?'

‘I always thought he was making it up. But it is true! I saw a little film of them. Five of them. Five fat types bending over and farting in tune. They even did the Marseillaise.' He looked at her rather dreamily. ‘It was magnificent.'

Joe stood at the head of the grand stone staircase which swept up to the main doors. He felt proprietorial. But when he caught sight of François and Natasha there was a pass of anxiety. They walked together so closely, holding tight to each other, meandering, talking so intensely, so confidentially, so excludingly. They did not look up or look ahead. He was unnoticed. In the twilight they could seem to be clinging together as if each needed the other, just to go forward.

‘Come in and close the door, pet,' he said, ‘it's cold outside.' Natasha hesitated. The wind whipped off the River Tyne, whistled in from the north-east and bit through her coat. The unrelenting dourness of the terraced, dark-brick cottages which opened onto the narrow pavement made her apprehensive. The poverty and pinched faces she had seen in the streets which tumbled down from the castled city to the river had moved her but reinforced her sense of being a total outsider. Yet the old man's knobbly face, his smile enriched by the gleaming false teeth, the warmth of tone and the strange reassurance in the word ‘pet' drew her across the threshold and straight into what appeared to be both a kitchen and a living area, the two striking features of which were the black fireplace, polished like an exhibit, Natasha thought, and on a table next to it, a television set.

‘Sit down, pet,' he said, ‘you can have my chair by the fire. Just prod the dog. I'll put the kettle on.'

He disappeared into what Natasha recognised, from her holiday in Caldbeck, as the back kitchen and after prodding the dog which slid off the armchair sinuously as a snake, she sat down; it was very comfortable. She would like a dog, she thought, suddenly back in her childhood when her dog had been her only friend; she would like a dog for company while Joseph strode out to this work of his which took so much, too much, from so many of their days.

‘Aa haven't made it too strong,' he said, ‘that's an acquired taste. The biscuits were fresh baked yesterday. I've put some toast on. It's starvation out there.'

As far as Natasha was concerned she might have been in a cave in the middle of a mountain somewhere in the weirdness of Eastern Europe.
Yet she felt safe. Even in that short time she was aware of the practice of kindness.

‘When me sister lost her man she had a bad turn,' he explained. ‘Well, she took it bad, put it that way, pet. She was always bothered with her nerves, that's why myself and the wife (she's doin' her afternoon stint, she'll be sorry to have missed you), that's why we were pleased when she moved in next door particularly since they couldn't have bairns. That seemed to prey on her, you know.'

The lilt and pattern of speech, and occasional words that she did not recognise, wove a spell. His face, she now saw, was lumped by scars, decorated with thin black lines, she noticed, and wanted to ask him about it. This must have been what Joseph had experienced, she thought, this daily, hourly, percolation of affection just in the warmth of the words, this comfort: how lucky Joseph had been, she thought, probably for the first time, how lucky if he had this. She felt unnerved by the instant warmth and by his immediate confession.

‘The upshot is she's had to go away. Well, pet, truth to tell, she's been put away.' The scarred face seemed close to instant tears and then the moment passed. ‘So we decided to let the house, three months maximum.'

‘Three months is all we need.'

‘It's the spit of this place but I'll take you round when you've finished your tea. Where you from?'

‘France.'

‘A long walk home, then.'

Natasha laughed.

‘I like it here.'

‘Your sentence is only three months, pet.' He smiled broadly, a smile was never far from his lips. ‘Most of us up here are lifers. Aa've allus fancied Gay Paree, ooh la la, and French champagne.'

Next door was indeed the twin. After a tender farewell, Natasha, now warm as the toast, spent an hour or so alongside the Tyne, intrigued by the network of steep steps and small houses, the shops and the pubs, the painterly possibilities of the ill-lit streets, the boats in the river, the ceaseless background surging sound of that warm-throated, long-rubbed guttural dialect. She could wander around and sketch. She could get a dog. People on the street, strangers, greeted her already, a
stranger. After a few weeks she would walk in the security of kindly acquaintanceships, she thought, and be part of this quayside world.