Significance (44 page)

He nodded and murmured that it was a good idea.

Their conversation had not then gone on to consider other means of contraception, nor the realities and practicalities of being parents. Instead they had begun, for the second time that morning, to make love.

Now, as she remembered this, she realised that deep down she remained uncertain as to what Scott's meaning had been, what his wishes were. There had been stories in the news around that time linking the pill to cancer; perhaps that was what he'd been thinking of. But she had immediately stopped taking the pill, and they had made love as before, without condoms, without a diaphragm, or sponge or spermicide.

And so here was the source of the silence. The beginnings of her secret. Maybe she was delaying telling him not from fear of tempting fate; not because she wanted to protect him from possible disappointment if she lost it, but so that it would be too far advanced to be stopped.

Aaron was now standing perfectly still. Marilyn stepped toward him. ‘Time for bed, Aaron.'

Immediately he commenced the energetic pace of his side
-
to
-
side rocking. She backed away again.

He had never really frightened her before, but now she found her heart was racing and her knees felt weak and rubbery. She could not cope. It was all too much.

She tipped another of Aaron's pills onto her palm and offered it to him. Once more he snatched it up and threw it into his mouth hardly breaking the rhythm of his sideways swaying to do so.

Marilyn switched the kettle on, then she got her notebook from her purse, sat at the kitchen table and began to write. It was a way of escaping, of retreating from the present. Aaron rocked. He did it diligently, painstakingly, as if he were not swaying from side to side on the spot, but travelling in earnest along a lengthy and unforgiving road. As if at the journey's end he'd get his reward.

Par
t Four

TWILIGHT

 The French call dusk – “Entre chien et loup” (between the dog and the wolf). 

While I thought that I was learning to live, I have been learning how to die.

Leonardo da Vinci

Out of the Corner of your Eye

Two figures lay on the bed under a single limp white sheet. Except for the man's arm flung possessively around the woman's shoulders, their bodies sprawled away from one another while their heads lolled together as if each depended on the other's oxygen in order to breathe. The blinds were drawn but the afternoon light cut through at its edges sending forth bright shafts that illuminated certain objects. A bottle of amber
-
coloured perfume glowed as if lit from within. Opening her eyes, Suzette gazed at it, surprised by its sudden beauty.

Happiness can happen. It is possible even in this dying world. If happiness comes you should grab it with two hands, wrap your legs around it too, get rope and bind yourself to it.

This happiness which possessed her had a human form; a body and free will and a name – Florian.

It startled her to think that this feeling of happiness was somehow to do with love. It could not be love, it was far too soon. Lust then. Lust or passion which could, with time, develop into love. She began to consider these as algebraic sums; lust plus time equals love, lust plus sex plus talking multiplied by habit minus fear and distrust equals love.

Her sister, five years older than Suzette, had at the age of fourteen begun to waste hours in their shared room, lolling on her bed and filling out quizzes in
Cosmopolitan
magazine. Does he really love you? Are you his type of woman? How sexy are you?

Suzette, at nine, hated the stupid magazine because her sister no longer wanted to play with her, and she still hated it. She preferred
Paris Match
. But maybe this was why her sister had been happily married for the last twelve years (though the man she married had numerous affairs) while Suzette had only experienced three affairs with other women's husbands and quite a few one
-
night stands and brief relationships, but nothing lasting and nothing that was purely her own.

As a child nearly everything she got was secondhand; her clothes, many of her toys, her books and even comics
–
all hand
-
me
-
downs. There was no element of choice, everything had been selected to her sister's taste, so the clothes were inevitably pastel
-
coloured and had motifs of cute animals; kittens, puppies, baby elephants, or fussy bows and frills and flowers. And the toys were baby dolls, scaled
-
down ironing boards, irons and vacuum cleaners and nurses' sets.

Suzette had been told she must be grateful for what she was given and she should be ashamed for complaining because there were girls her age in the orphanages and the slums who had nothing.

Florian had fallen asleep with his arm across her chest, his hand loosely cupping her right shoulder. She was trapped and could not move without disturbing him. Suzette had never before felt herself to be so happily imprisoned.

Making sense of all these feelings was impossible.

Suzette closed her eyes, lay there (Florian's arm was heavy on the bones of her shoulder, sweat moistly gathered where their skin met) dreaming, thinking, feigning sleep for no audience except God (whom she hoped understood and forgave this mortal sin).

She did not hear any footfalls on the stairs, no shuffling of feet in the hallway outside her flat and, if she had, nothing would have changed. Only the neighbours passing by, only the sounds of an innocent day.

The knock at the door was a surprise.

Two knocks, the sort made delicately with fisted knuckles on the door panels. The echoing sound of living bone on dry wood.

One. Two.

Suzette tried to lift Florian's arm with her right hand, but he held her even tighter.

Two knocks sounded at the door again.

Suzette wriggled free by twisting herself down and under his arm.

She wriggled into her black slip, went to the door and opened it a little so that her partially dressed body and the room beyond were hidden behind it. She expected to see Madame Sardou from the flat downstairs, or possibly someone from the bar with a message for her to come into work earlier or later or not at all. It crossed her mind that it could be her mother paying a surprise visit and she would have to pretend that she was ill and not let her mother in. Not that her mother ever paid Suzette surprise visits. Her mother expected certain courtesies when she paid a call: Suzette should be demurely dressed, the flat cleaned and furniture polished, shop flowers arranged in clean vases should be set about the room, the pot
-
pourri should be fresh and not dusty. Her mother liked English tea served in cups and saucers with cream provided in a matching jug. Such affectations. None of which had existed until Suzette's father had died and her mother briefly dated a retired English stockbroker who had bought a timber framed Normandy farmhouse which he was renovating. He loved everything French, or so he said, which did not stop Suzette's mother from adopting these weird English tics. When he left her mother for a much younger woman the affectations seemed to increase in direct relationship to her self pity – as if she had lost him by not being English enough.

But it was not her mother at the door, or anyone from the bar, nor Madame Sardou. It was a man dressed in jeans, with a green polo shirt tucked in the waistband and dark patches of sweat under his armpits.

‘Florian?' he said, trying to peer beyond Suzette and into the room. ‘I'm looking for Florian.'

In an automatic gesture, Suzette turned in the direction the man was looking.

‘Florian?' she said.

Then suddenly she was brushed aside as the man pushed open the door and strode into the room.

Florian was awake and struggling to sit up.

Two more men followed quickly on the first man's heels.

Then one of them spoke, his voice harsh and threatening, ‘Florian Lebrun, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder.'

The voice was like one that comes out of a dream, or from a television set just at the point when, bored, you looked away from the screen, so she was uncertain which of the three had said it.

Florian looked bewildered, frightened, he was now sitting on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor, the sheet covering his groin.

‘No,' Suzette said and the sound of her voice surprised her; such a broken wail.

‘Get up!' the man ordered.

‘No,' Suzette said in her new strangely dramatic voice and she began to walk in Florian's direction. She took two steps and then one of the other men roughly grabbed her from behind and held her so that her arms were pinned against her body. She was aware of her vulnerability; the slip she was wearing barely covered her. Her mind skittered over the terrible things that might happen. The irreversible things –
Irreversible
like that film with the nine
-
minute rape scene – that film she wished she'd never seen.

Florian was now standing up; naked, exposed.

‘I've done nothing,' he was saying. ‘I'm clean!'

The word ‘clean' said at that moment seemed to merge with Florian's actual nakedness, as if one proved the truth of the other.

‘Get dressed,' the first man ordered. He had picked up Florian's trousers and now he threw them at him. Awkwardly Florian caught them and put them on, then his eyes searched the floor until he spotted his t
-
shirt. ‘My t
-
shirt,' he said and pointed to it. The policeman nodded and Florian picked it up and pulled it on over his head.

‘Florian!' Suzette said, her voice now pleading.

But Florian did not seem to hear her. He had found one of his shoes and pushed his foot into it.

‘Right, come on.'

‘My shoe,' Florian said, but the first man was behind him pulling his arms back and handcuffing him, then propelling him past Suzette towards the door.

‘Ring my mother,' Florian said, twisting around to look at Suzette, his eyes wild and pleading.

Suzette said his name again. The man who had been holding her now released his grip. Florian disappeared through the door, one foot bare. The other men followed and the door was slammed shut. Suzette was trembling, her heart pounding, adrenaline flooded her body; she thought she might throw up. She had to do something; help him, save him.

His shoe. It suddenly seemed important that she find his other shoe – that she should search for it and run after them with it. She scanned the floor, saw her own kicked
-
off shoes, her clothes from last night tossed here and there. She lifted items up, thinking the shoe might be under them. The flat was such a mess. Why was she such a slob? She searched with more urgency, blaming herself for the lost shoe, for the fact that Florian had been naked and vulnerable, for opening the door, for letting the man push past her, for being so weak. She picked a shirt up and threw it down, only to pick it up again a few seconds later.

Her hands trembled as she ripped the crumpled sheet from the bed. No shoe there, but a discarded tissue flew up in the air, borne on the flying sheet. She hated herself.

She hated herself because the seconds were ticking by and they would be down the stairs and onto the street and she couldn't find his shoe.

She walked around the bed in order to pick up the balled
-
up tissue, she wanted to get rid of it, to prove that like Florian she was clean. She bent to grab it and as she did, she saw, tucked in snugly next to the mattress, Florian's shoe. She picked it up and stood hugging it close to her chest. It seemed as if it was all she had of him now, all that remained.

She let out a wail of anguish, dropped onto the bed and cried in the fierce, painful way that was entirely unstoppable, and which completely immobilised her while she was in its grip.

Then slowly, in stops and starts, the crying abated and she was able to think more clearly, to replay everything in her head. She must ring his mother. Though she did not know her number or name, or where she lived.

And the other thing was a remembered word. The word dangled on the end of a curiously familiar sentence she'd heard or thought she'd heard. And the word was a terrible one. The worst.

Murder.

They had arrested him for murder?

Her Florian, her beautiful and gentle Florian?

It could not be.

And here was his shoe, damp and splashed with tears. The sobbing possessed her again. Its noise unbearable; someone would hear. She pressed her hand over her mouth, but to no avail.

She was helpless.

Killing me Softly

Marilyn could detect Aaron at the edge of her vision; a decelerating metronome, a mechanical tin toy. In the beginning she had pitied Aaron, had imagined how it must feel to be him, to be locked away inside himself, to have no real ability to communicate or express love. But that feeling had gradually diminished and this was a matter of shame for Marilyn.