Ripley's Game (6 page)

Jonathan disliked the crunching sound of it, but found the slight pain quite bearable. This time, perhaps, he’d learn something. Jonathan could not refrain from saying, before he left, ‘I must know the truth, Dr Perrier. You don’t think, really, that the laboratory might not be giving us a proper summing up? Pm ready to believe their
figures
are correct —’

This summing up or prediction is what you can’t get, my dear young man!’

Jonathan then walked home. He had thought of telling Simone that he’d gone to see Perrier, that he again felt anxious, but Jonathan couldn’t: he’d put Simone through enough. What could she say, if he told her? She would only become a little more anxious herself, like him.

Georges was already in bed upstairs, and Simone was reading to him. Astérix again. Georges, propped against his pillows, and Simone on a low stool under the lamplight, were like a tableau vivant of domesticity, and the year might have been 1880, Jonathan thought, except for Simone’s slacks. Georges’ hair was as yellow as cornsilk under the light.

‘Le schvang gom?’
Georges asked, grinning.

Jonathan smiled and produced one packet. The other could wait for another occasion.

‘You were a long time,’ said Simone.

‘I had a beer at the café,’ Jonathan said.

The next afternoon between 4.30 and 5 p.m., as Dr Perrier had told him to do, Jonathan telephoned the Ebberle-Valent Laboratoires in Neuilly. He gave his name and spelt it and said he was a patient of Dr Perrier’s in Fontainebleau. Then he waited to be connected with the right department, while the telephone gave a
blup
every minute for the pay units. Jonathan had pen and paper ready. Could he spell his name again, please? Then a woman’s voice began to read the report, and Jonathan jotted figures down quickly. Hyperleucocytose 190,000. Wasn’t that bigger than before?

‘We shall of course send a written report to your doctor which he should receive by Tuesday.’

‘This report is less favourable than the last, is it not?’

‘I have not the previous report here,
m’sieur.
’

‘Is there a doctor there? Could I speak with a doctor, perhaps?’

‘
I
am a doctor,
m’sieur.’

‘Oh. Then this report – whether you have the old one or not there, is not a good one, is it?’

Like a textbook, she said, This is a potentially dangerous condition involving lowered resistance …’

Jonathan had telephoned from his shop. He had turned his sign to
FERME
and drawn his door curtain, though he had been visible through the window, and now as he went to remove the sign, he realized he hadn’t locked his door. Since no one eke was due to call for a picture that afternoon, Jonathan thought he could afford to close. It was 4.45 p.m.

He walked to Dr Perrier’s office, prepared to wait more than an hour if he had to. Saturday was a busy day, because most people didn’t work and were free to see the doctor. There were three people ahead of Jonathan, but the nurse spoke to him and asked if he would be long, Jonathan said no, and the nurse squeezed him in with an apology to the next patient. Had Dr Perrier spoken to his nurse about him, Jonathan wondered?

Dr Perrier raised his black eyebrows at Jonathan’s scribbled notes, and said, ‘But this is incomplete.’

‘I know, but it tells something, doesn’t it? It’s slightly worse – isn’t it?’

‘One would think you want to get worse!’ Dr Perrier said with his customary cheer, which now Jonathan mistrusted. ‘Frankly, yes, it is worse, but only a little worse. It is not crucial.’ ‘In percentage – ten per cent worse, would you say?’ ‘M. Trevanny – you are not an automobile! Now it is not reasonable for me to make a remark until I get the full report on Tuesday.’

Jonathan walked homeward rather slowly, walked through the Rue des Sablons just in case he saw someone who wanted to go into his shop. There wasn’t anyone. Only the launderette was doing a brisk business, and people with bundles of laundry were bumping into each other at the door. It was nearly 6 p.m. Simone would be quitting the shoe shop sometime after 7 p.m., later than usual, because her boss Brezard wanted to take in every franc possible before closing for Sunday and Monday. And Wister was still at l’Aigle Noir. Was he waiting only for him, waiting for him to change his mind and say yes? Wouldn’t it be funny if Dr Perrier was in conspiracy with Stephen Wister, if between them they might have fixed the Ebberle-Valent Laboratoires to give him a bad report? And if Gauthier were in on it, too, the little messenger of bad tidings? Like a nightmare in which the strangest elements join forces against – against the dreamer. But Jonathan knew he was not dreaming. He knew that Dr Perrier was not in the pay of Stephen Wister. Nor was Ebberle-Valent. And it was not a dream that his condition was worse, that death was a little closer, or sooner, than he had thought. True of everyone, however, who lived one more day, Jonathan reminded himself. Jonathan thought of death, and the process of ageing, as a decline, literally a downward path. Most people had a chance to take it slowly, starting at fifty-five or whenever they slowed up, descending until seventy or whatever year was their number. Jonathan realized that his death was going to be like falling over a cliff. When he tried to ‘prepare’ himself, his mind wavered and dodged. His attitude, or his spirit, was still thirty-four years old and wanted to live.

The Trevannys’ narrow house, blue-grey in the dusk, showed no lights. It was a rather sombre house, and that fact had amused Jonathan and Simone when they had bought it five years ago. ‘The Sherlock Holmes house’, Jonathan had used to call it, when they were debating this house versus another in Fontainebleau.
‘I
still prefer the Sherlock Holmes house,’ Jonathan remembered saying once. The house had an 1890 air, suggestive of gas lights and polished banisters, though none of the wood anywhere in the house had been polished when they had moved in. The house had looked as if it could be made into something with turn-of-the-century charm, however. The rooms were smallish but interestingly arranged, the garden a rectangular patch full of wildly overgrown rose bushes, but at least the rose bushes had been there, and all the garden had needed was a clearing out. And the scalloped glass portico over the back steps, its little glass enclosed porch, had made Jonathan think of Vuillard, and Bonnard. But now it struck Jonathan that five years of their occupancy hadn’t really defeated the gloom. New wallpaper would brighten the bedroom, yes, but that was only one room. The house wasn’t yet paid for: they had three more years to go on the mortgage. An apartment, such as they’d had in Fontainebleau in the first year of their marriage, would have been cheaper, but Simone was used to a house with a bit of garden – she’d had a garden all her life in Nemours – and as an Englishman, Jonathan liked a bit of garden too. Jonathan never regretted that the house took such a hunk of their income.

What Jonathan was thinking, as he climbed the front steps, was not so much of the remaining mortgage, but the fact that he was probably going to die in this house. More than likely, he would never know another, more cheerful house with Simone. He was thinking that the Sherlock Holmes house had been standing for decades before he had been born, and that it would stand for decades after his death. It had been his fate to choose this house, he felt. One day they would carry him out feet first, maybe still alive but dying, and he would never enter the house again.

To Jonathan’s surprise, Simone was in the kitchen, playing some kind of card game with Georges at the table. She looked up, smiling, then Jonathan saw her remember: he was to have rung the Paris laboratory this afternoon. But she couldn’t mention that in front of Georges.

The old creep closed early today,’ Simone said. ‘No business.9

‘Good!’ Jonathan said brightly. ‘What goes on in this gambling den?’

‘I’m winning!’ Georges said in French.

Simone got up and followed Jonathan into the hall as he hung his raincoat. She looked at him inquiringly.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ Jonathan said, but she beckoned him farther down the hall to the living-room. ‘It seems to be a trifle worse, but I don’t feel worse, so what the hell? I’m sick of it. Let’s have a Cinzano.’

‘You were worried because of that story, weren’t you, Jon?’

‘Yes. That’s true.’

‘I wish I knew who started that.’ Her eyes narrowed bitterly. ‘It’s a nasty story. Gauthier never told you who said it?’

‘No. As Gauthier said, it was some mistake somewhere, some kind of exaggeration.’ Jonathan was repeating what he had said to Simone before. But he knew it was no mistake, that it was a story quite calculated.

5

J
ONATHAN
stood at the first-floor bedroom window, watching Simone hang the wash on the garden line. There were pillowcases, Georges’ sleep suits, a dozen pairs of Georges’ and Jonathan’s socks, two white nightdresses, bras, Jonathan’s beige work trousers – everything except sheets, which Simone sent to the laundry, because well-ironed sheets were important to her. Simone wore tweed slacks and a thin red sweater that clung to her body. Her back looked strong and supple as she bent over the big oval basket, pegging out dishcloths now. It was a fine, sunny day with a hint of summer in the breeze.

Jonathan had wriggled out of going to Nemours to have lunch with Simone’s parents, the Foussadiers. He and Simone went every other Sunday as a rule. Unless Simone’s brother Gerard fetched them, they took the bus to Nemours. Then at the Foussadiers’ home, they had a big lunch with Gerard and his wife and two children, who also lived in Nemours. Simone’s parents always made a fuss over Georges, always had a present for him. Around 3 p.nu, Simone’s father Jean-Noel would turn on the TV. Jonathan was frequently bored, but he went with Simone because it was the correct thing to do, and because he respected the closeness of French families.

‘Do you feel all right?’ Simone had asked, when Jonathan had begged out.

‘Yes, darling. It’s just that I’m not in the mood today, and I’d also like to get that patch ready for the tomatoes. So why don’t you go with Georges?’

So Simone and Georges went on the bus at noon. Simone had put the remains of a
bœuf bourguignon
into a small red casserole on the stove, so all Jonathan had to do was heat it when he felt hungry.

Jonathan had wanted to be alone. He was thinking about the mysterious Stephen Wister and his proposal. Not that Jonathan meant to telephone Wister today at l’Aigle Noir, though Jonathan was very much aware that Wister was still there, not three hundred yards away. He had no intention of getting in touch with Wister, though the idea was curiously exciting and disturbing, a bolt from the blue, a shaft of colour in his uneventful existence, and Jonathan wanted to observe it, to enjoy it in a sense. Jonathan also had the feeling (it had been proven quite often) that Simone could read his thoughts, or at least knew when something was preoccupying him. If he appeared absent-minded that Sunday, he didn’t want Simone to notice it and ask him what was the matter. So Jonathan gardened with a will, and day-dreamed. He thought of forty thousand pounds, a sum which meant the mortgage paid off at once, a couple of hire-purchase items paid off, the interior of their house painted where it needed to be painted, a television set, a nest-egg put aside for Georges’ university, a few new clothes for Simone and himself- ah, mental ease! Simply freedom from anxiety! He thought of one, maybe two Mafia figures – burly, dark-haired thugs exploding in death, arms flailing, their bodies falling. What Jonathan was incapable of imagining, as his spade sank into the earth of his garden, was himself pulling a trigger, having aimed a gun at a man’s back, perhaps. More interesting, more mysterious, more dangerous, was how Wister had got hold of his name. There was a plot against him in Fontainebleau, and it had somehow got to Hamburg. Impossible that Wister had him mixed up with someone else, because even Wister had spoken of his illness, of his wife and small son. Someone, Jonathan thought, whom he considered a friend or at least a friendly acquaintance, was not friendly at all towards him.

Wister would probably leave Fontainebleau around 5 p.m. today, Jonathan thought. By 3 p.m., Jonathan had eaten his lunch, tidied up papers and old receipts in the catch-all drawer of the round table in the centre of the living-room. Then – he was happily aware that he was not tired at all – he tackled with broom and dustpan the exterior of the pipes and the floor around their
mazout
furnace.

A little after 5 p.m., as Jonathan was scrubbing soot from his hands at the kitchen sink, Simone arrived with Georges and her brother Gerard and his wife Yvonne, and they all had a drink in the kitchen. Georges had been presented by his grandparents with a round box of Easter goodies including an egg wrapped in gold foil, a chocolate rabbit, coloured gumdrops, all under yellow cellophane and as yet unopened, because Simone forbade him to open it, in view of the other sweets he had eaten in Nemours. Georges went with the Foussadier children into the garden.

‘Don’t step on the soft part, Georges!’ Jonathan shouted. He had raked the turned ground smooth, but left the pebbles for Georges to pick up. Georges would probably get his two chum& to help him fill the red wagon. Jonathan gave him fifty centimes for a wagonful of pebbles – not ever full, but full enough to cover the bottom.

It was starting to rain. Jonathan had taken the laundry in a few minutes ago.

The garden looks marvellous!’ Simone said. ‘Look, Gerard!’ She beckoned her brother on to the little back porch.

By now, Jonathan thought, Wister was probably on a train from Fontainebleau to Paris, or maybe he’d take a taxi from Fontainebleau to Orly, considering the money he seemed to have. Maybe he was already in the air,
en route
to Hamburg. Simone’s presence, the voices of Gerard and Yvonne, seemed to erase Wister from the Hôtel de l’Aigle Noir, at any rate, seemed to turn Wister almost into a quirk of Jonathan’s imagination. Jonathan felt also a mild triumph in the fact that he had not telephoned Wister, as if