Strike Out Where Not Applicable (15 page)

‘The girl Janine does it because she wants to be somebody after being nobody, presumably. It would be interesting to talk to her husband.

‘Arlette does it for the sheer enjoyment of being able to indulge in an expensive pleasure. She would never admit it but she has a snobbish streak as well. So nice to be no longer poor. Secretly, perhaps, she has that in common with Janine.

‘And Bernhard – what did he see? Seems a sudden transition from drinking and gossiping with the butchers and market-gardeners, the circle with which by all accounts he was always content. Why did he want all of a sudden to get on closer terms with the horsy crowd? There is a slight smell of blackmail about that move.'

Suddenly he thought he saw the light; it happened with a jerk, as though a pin had been stuck in his bottom. The good silver-mounted ballpoint escaped from his fingers, fell out of the window, and landed with a crash on the worn brick pavement twelve metres below. He looked out of the window, horrified.

He realized then that he was delighted to be rid of it. He wasn't going down for it himself. And he certainly wasn't going to pick the phone up and say, ‘I'm afraid I've dropped my pen out of the window …!' He was rid of it and it was a weight off his heart.

Hadn't he been just the same as Mrs Sawdust or whatever her name was, the one Arlette disliked, with the three diamond rings? He didn't ride horses – but he dressed up as though he did. He had adopted silly clothes and a silly voice, because he felt ashamed of not being able to walk properly any more, because he missed running downstairs.… He was a pretentious phony, and that made it impossible to understand these people.

He banged out to the lavatory, where he gazed at himself in a cheap and nasty wash-basin mirror, lit by an odious daylight-neon tube.

He had been born in the Ferdinand Bol Straat. His father had been a cabinet-maker. No, he had been a carpenter. He hadn't been an artist; he had made good unmechanical reproductions of period furniture, but a good half of his business had been fixing the legs of rickety chairs for the neighbours, and he hadn't been above it, either.

He had grown up, himself, in the depression. Natural enough to
insist now on having no margarine in the house – not that he ran much risk of that with Arlette. He had been like that always, even when he was a struggling, harassed little inspector of police. It was his character. But it wasn't his character to pretend he had been born in a country house, like Marion, or Francis.

Hadn't he turned into exactly the kind of policeman he had watched with contempt his whole life, the kind that keeps his fingers clean in a nice office, that prefers to talk about breeding dogs to doing work on Diners Club cards?

Credit cards were the curse of Europe these days, offices had had to buy electronic machines to come up in time with the right answer on current credit rating for Freddy Weiss from Milwaukee. Van der Valk washed his face, undid his tie, and walked out into the office, where the duty inspector sat gloomily typing.

‘You've got the description of this fellow. He'll have moved on – they don't try the trick twice in a town this size. I'm not having any leg work. Their head office is in Paris – details of card on telex to them, description, number of card and photostat of signature to Central Recherche; they'll handle Jewellers' Protection Company. Note for co-ordination and file copy to archive. I want somebody to go out and buy me a packet of Gitanes with no filter.' What was it Arlette said – ‘The day you become bourgeois is the day you switch from Gauloises to Gitanes.' Everybody was looking at him in a bemused way.

‘The tobacco-shop on the corner doesn't have them; try the one in the market-place. I've no money, but just show your credit card. Willy, you come in here with me, I want you to get the man in the car by this evening – the one who offers people lifts. Type a minute to Mr Mije asking for four women agents whom we'll disguise as hitch-hikers – you know, rucksack, tennis shoes and woolly socks. I might have work for you tomorrow, so get a move on.' The telephone rang. ‘It's about the working permits for those Swedes – the Consulate is on the line – oh, it's you, sir: I'm sorry to have bothered you.' ‘I'll talk to them – put it through to my office.' As he went back in he heard the brigadier on ‘reception' say to Willy, ‘Must have had himself psychoanalysed.'

He arrived home in a horrid jolly mood that Arlette recognized as remorse for being nasty this morning about eggs.

‘Haven't we still some of that Spanish Pernod left?'

‘Afraid not – just ordinary boring French.' It was an improvement
at least on the gloomy-gus act, and she did not make a fuss about his drinking, as well as smoking, at midday.

‘Make two tomatoes, there's a good girl.' Feeling fussed, she made two Pernods with a drop of grenadine in, a drink thought highly of in the Department of the Var which normally he condemned as revolting.

‘What's come over you to be obstreperous?'

‘I want to be nostalgic for sunshine. I want to be smitten with an April blindness. I thought I'd give you pleasure. And I think I know why I've been making such a balls of this riding-school nonsense. That's a tiny bit too pink – my god, what a revolting colour it is.'

‘You don't notice though when the sun is shining.'

‘I don't care – it makes a change from Vittel water. Were you thinking of going riding this afternoon?'

‘I hadn't thought. There's nothing stopping me, I suppose.'

‘Ring up Janine – I'm thinking of coming with you and I'd like to meet her.'

‘Didn't you say you'd met her?'

‘I did – alarmed her rather. This time she's going to meet a different person and I'll be interested in her reactions.'

‘I'll give her a ring.'

‘Ask if her husband's at home this afternoon but don't say why. I want to see him.'

‘You want to take the little duck then, on to the coast?'

‘No, I'll get her to give me a lift. I intend to seduce her.'

‘You're going to regret drinking that stuff,' with disapproval.

‘What's for dinner?'

‘Risotto.'

‘Goody. In that case no.'

‘What no?'

‘No I'm not going to regret drinking it,' blandly.

‘Where's your stick?'

‘I left it in the office. I'm going to try going without it for a few days. Doesn't do to have a stick. Like having a sword between you and your wife in bed, like that imbecile Lohengrin.' He is certainly slightly drunk, thought Arlette, secretly pleased. He had seemed to her to have become so very ponderous sometimes since being promoted that she had thought rather sadly that the wound had abolished all frivolity as well as activity. Seducing
Janine now – some hope – better not ask what that is in aid of.

The rice had left-over ham and chicken in it, enlivened with smoked eel.

‘Why no prawns?' with his mouth full.

‘Prawns as well as eel is too expensive. Anyway they're deepfreeze – all colour and no flavour.'

‘Remember that one last year on the coast – the one you put the langouste in.'

‘I remember the langouste vividly – the beast cost thirty francs the kilo.' She poured Vittel water into a glass and pushed it across to him. Women! he thought, drinking it obediently. The incredible strength of women. She had made no remarks about his clothes, which were things he hadn't had on for two years: a suède jacket with a knitted collar, an orange shirt.… He was both irritated and pleased at her silence. She had understood. Women …

He drove the deux-chevaux, which was hers, but she disliked driving when with him: it made her nervous, she said. Women …

He was surprised at how expert Arlette was with a horse. He had thought vaguely that she would be a chronic faller-off and felt obscurely humiliated by her controlling the monstrous brute: now he would have approached it with great caution and protective clothing – perhaps an asbestos suit, with a little window to look through. Nasty dangerous radio-active beasts, horses.

She went out into the fields, he following at a respectful distance, and started jumping over obstacles, which made her rather sweaty and dishevelled, with hair falling all over the place. He glanced about apprehensively to see whether any mocking eyes were taking in these antics, since she was plainly showing off.

‘It looks extremely high.'

‘Are you sure you're not showing off?'

‘My god, woman, I don't want you with a broken collarbone.'

This series of squeaking noises made her furious, not unnaturally.

‘Keep quiet, you bloody old nannygoat, there's no more risk than diving off a one-metre springboard.' Mortified, he looked round again but there was no audience. Most of the riding-school adepts were staid souls, less given to tittuping about. His own presence was unremarkable. Anyone in the house, to be sure, might be studying his demeanour at leisure with a pair of binoculars.

Arlette did eleven jumps without falling off.

‘There's Janine,' she said suddenly. A horse was being galloped the other side of the field by a girl with blonde hair, in breeches and a sweater like Arlette's but both black, which made a dramatic impression. He had noticed this the day before, but this time he was amused by it. Arlette, in a dark yellow sweater and ordinary fawn breeches, made a conventional figure by contrast. She was quietening the horse to stillness by talking to it in a private jargon: she was quite evidently seeking to impress him. She stood up in the stirrups, waved, and went ‘Yoohoo'; Zorro came cantering towards them.

‘Does she always wear black?'

‘Always – rather sweet, don't you think?'

Janine pulled the horse in, but the animal caracoled about in a twitchy way, making Van der Valk keep prudently behind his wife. He could see that the horse was a splendid animal, a bright chestnut this one, now shiny with sweat. Mm, he felt quite ready to believe in Bernhard Fischer having been massacred without any human being called on to lend a hand. That was just the point – he was a city boy, who had seen the horses used to pull brewers' wagons, and those used by the mounted police. He looked at these animals with much the kind of eye people in the eighteen-nineties had had for motor-cars. Whereas Fischer had been a country lad … Maartens was quite right; you did not get injured by a horse unless you were afraid of it.

Both women got off, and shook hands in a sloppy French way. The two abominable beasts twitched their ears, sidled nervously towards each other, pretending to bite, and stamped their huge iron feet in a most menacing fashion …

‘Quiet,' said Arlette, giving hers a resounding smack upon its great moist flank. The horse obeyed instantly; he had to laugh at himself a little …

‘You haven't met my husband, Nine. He came out with me today to admire.'

‘Salut,' she said in a rough way, as though extremely shy. Then she looked at him sharply, as though not quite believing what she saw. ‘Did I meet you yesterday? Or am I wrong?' He was enchanted; she was quite as surprised as he hoped, and being so obvious about it.

‘We didn't really see each other.'

‘You had a stick.'

‘That is when I march about on parade,' imitating a colonel inspecting a guard of honour. She laughed, plainly relieved – he was human after all.

‘I don't think I'd have recognized you.'

‘We only met for a second, and I was being polite and formal with Francis.' She approved of this too, he was glad to see.

‘I hate it rather when people are polite and formal – they're generally being toffee-nosed. Arlette never is and that's what I like about her. Are you, duck?' Her French was really music-hall, sounding like a butcher's wife in Marcinelle. He had a quick look to see how his wife reacted to being called duck, and found her quite unperturbed.

‘Warm, isn't it, for all it's cloudy? Napoleon got into a sweat.'

‘We'll walk them back. You can't just let them stand about like a car,' added Arlette to her humble escort. ‘They get chilled and you have to keep moving.'

‘Oh.'

Janine was accustomed to being familiar and easy with his wife, but was made uneasy by his presence. She kept wanting to talk and deciding against it, glancing at him, unsure how he might take the sort of conversation the women had being all girls together. She was not yet reassured: he might turn back into the orderly officer and say ‘Any complaints?' from one minute to the next. He decided to be vulgar since that looked the way to put her at her ease and she had not hesitated to call him toffee-nose to his face …

‘First time I've seen this jumping. I'm most interested but it looks a damaging business. Don't you get kind of bruised around the crutch?' He was rewarded with a small happy scream.

‘My crutch, as you so charmingly call it,' began Arlette balefully, ‘is well protected, thank you for your concern. Inside my breeches I have padding and woolly knickers, so you may feel at ease; it risks no damage.' She had not yet caught on. ‘Ask Janine how she is padded – she'll be delighted to explain in detail.'

‘Wretch!' Explosion of giggles. ‘I've nylon pants but I'm padded too – I'm too bony!'

‘Black ones?' – the jovial customer, making familiar jokes with the butcher's wife across the dog's dinner.

‘Always black ones,' playing up. Arlette knew him too well to be taken in for long, and shot him a sharp look which Janine
caught and promptly misinterpreted. ‘We must abandon this fascinating subject – I want to stay friends with your wife.' The coquetry was stupid but nice – she was perhaps too innocent to be anything but nice. Had not Arlette remarked how vulnerable the girl was?

‘I'd be interested in meeting your husband.'

‘Well, that's easy enough.'

‘How about this afternoon?' She was taken aback.