The Avignon Quintet (164 page)

She had never replied to this but just walked out of the room; but she had tears in her eyes and he noticed this and his heart stirred with conflicting confusions.

But the gruff” comment of Sutcliffe was also apposite to the matter. “Crude antithetical thinking”, he said, “is the mark of the second-rate mind. It would be fatal to behave as if we had something special to expiate – that would be mere pretension. If you had ever seen a Kashmiri merchant or a Bengali
bunia
or a Hindu business man you would realise that the West has no monopoly in materialism and ego-worship. So there!”

It was true, of course, and Blanford knew it in his heart of minds. His version was too pat. He put aside the latter for the moment. There were more important things afoot. He managed to get the girl aside the next day while Sylvie was having her siesta, a chemical sleep, to say: “You have been up to Tu Duc, and yet you have said nothing about it. I don’t even know if it’s still standing. I hardly dare to ask.” She flushed, overwhelmed by a sudden pudicity. She realised that the whole matter of Sylvie’s presence had begun to overcloud the question of them all returning to the
status quo ante
: could he bear to live with her under the same roof? It was unpardonable, what she had forced upon him, and she knew it. Suddenly contrite, she took his arm with all the old affection and said, “Darling Aubrey, yes, it’s all there and still in good repair thanks to the new couple Blaise left behind when they went north to a better job with less work. It is all as it was.”

Aubrey gazed at her curiously and almost tenderly. “And is It still there-you know what I mean?” Yes, she knew; he meant the old motheaten sofa of Freud, the analytic couch which Sutcliffe had rescued from Vienna a thousand years ago. “Yes, very much so! There is one little mousehole where the stuffing threatens to come out, but I can easily darn it.” There was a long silence and then came the question she had been expecting and somewhat dreading. “Are we all going to live together, and if so how?” She herself felt somewhat reluctant to answer it immediately, abruptly, without a preamble of excuse – there had been so much suppressed emotion in his voice. “I thought of giving her Livia’s room for the moment. She seems to have fallen in love with it; and she has asked if she might have the couch in it, now she knows its history. She seems to have fallen in love with that too. Aubrey, these are stabilising factors, I am sure you will understand and help. Please say you will.”

He gazed at her and nodded slowly. “I shall have to see if I can stand life with you – it’s provisional for the moment. But, darling, I can’t take up any definite position, I love you too much for that. But the whole thing has been such a shock. And I suppose Cade will have Sam’s old room?” She nodded: “If you wish.”

“Galen won’t want to let us go; he simply has to be surrounded by people or he gets alarmed and lonely!”

“I know. But soon he will have Felix and the Prince to compensate for us. Aubrey, I hope you can face it and be patient.” He said, “So do I!” but his tone carried little conviction; nor was there really any alternative, for he was not rich enough to make other arrangements. In his inner mind he swore and ranted at this turn of fate: all the more painful in that she had elected to undertake his treatment, including massage and yoga and electrotherapy. They sat in helpless frustrated silence for a while, staring at each other. She wondered whether or not to carry the story forward and tell him more about this dramatically unreal attachment which had come as much of a surprise to her as to anyone else. But she hesitated. The dilemma was even graver than superficial appearances suggested – professional considerations were inextricably mixed in with them. So it was perhaps inevitable that she should direct her steps towards the lunatic asylum at Montfavet where so much had come to pass during the war years and where her friend Jourdain the doctor still reigned. She had phoned to say she was coming, and it was with smiling deference to her (for he had always loved her but been too shy (unusual in a Frenchman) to tell her so) that he sported his ancient college blazer to remind the world that he was also an MD Edinburgh. Nor was there any insincerity in his exclamation of delight at finding her younger and more beautiful than ever. “Flatterer!” she said, but he shook his head, and then pointed to his own greying hair. Yes, he had aged quite a bit, and was much thinner than when she had last seen him. “Sit down, tell me everything that has happened since last I saw you,” he said. And then, realising how impossible a task that would be, added, smiling, “Preferably in one word!” This fell most aptly; she was able to echo his smiling and relaxed mood though what she said was actually laden with sorrow. “That I can,” she said, “and the word is … Sylvie. I have committed a fearful mistake, and a professional misdemeanour of size. I am in a fix. I want your advice, I need it!”

“Where is she?” he said. “With you?”

“Yes. But as lover, not patient.” The sob in her voice startled him and he leaned forward to take her hands as he stared into her eyes with astonishment and commiseration. He whistled softly. “But after all the precautions? India? Really, I thought …” She shook her head and said, “I must explain it all in order – even though I can’t excuse this terrible and quite astonishing aberration. Where to begin, though?”

Where indeed?

How humiliating too after so many years to come back here, not for treatment, but for moral advice – to what Schwartz always called the “dingy
baisodrome
of French psychiatry”! Talk of being made to swallow toads! She laughed ruefully. “But what went wrong?” he said, his amazement quite unabated. “After all, when first the situation developed we all behaved with impeccable professional zeal. You were alleged to have gone to India and I took your place. Then she was transferred by you to Geneva and the care of Schwarz. Then what?”

“It worked reasonably well until the day when Schwartz elected to commit suicide and I had to take over his dossier in default of anyone better. I returned from India, so to speak, and came once more face to face with her. I experienced the most dramatic and irresistible countertransfer you can think of. The base must have been some slumbering and neglected homosexual predisposition, but the motor which set it off was, inexplicably enough, the death of Schwartz, who was a dear and long-time friend and colleague though nothing more. Inexplicable! Inexplicable!”

“Love is!” said Jourdain, ruefully gazing at her downcast blonde head and lowered eyes so full of chagrin. “It wasn’t love but infatuation – though what matter our silly qualifications? It’s just because I feel guilty and ashamed – I should never have succumbed, yet I did.”

“And now?”

“But there is worse to come,” she said, “for another strange experience awaited me. I had been locked into this experience with such a savage intensity that I think I must have been a little bit out of my mind. I could not breathe without her, could not sleep, read, work … Yes, but all this (I see the despairing faces of my friends) – all this melted like an icecap just when we crossed over the border into France. It was as if I had crossed into a territory policed by the part of myself which still belonged to Sam – an older self, apparently long since dead and done with. But no. I realised with a sudden jolt that I was not a homosexual at all but a woman – a man’s woman. And the shock spread right through my nervous system so that I think that for a brief moment I may well have passed out. I loved just as intensely, but as a friend; the whole of the sexual component, as uncle Freud would so chastely say, flew out of the window. I was suddenly completely anaesthetic to feminine caresses. They were so light, so insubstantial, trivial as feathers. I suddenly knew I belonged to the hairy race of men. But there, Aubrey has always said that I am a bit of a slowcoach and am afraid to make love without a
garde-feu
. But do you see my dilemma now? O God!” She was pale with fury.

“But why did you come back here?” he asked.

“I had several reasons, among them some quite unfinished business with myself – I wanted to find out a little more about my sister Livia, her death and so on. Then I felt in a vague sort of way that psychologically it might be good to move her back into an old context which must certainly be familiar – though I haven’t yet dared to bring her back here to see you. Yet she knows I am here, and even hesitated about sending you a message, so that she still remembers you … But now it’s me who is in a mess, for I simply do not dare to tell her about my state of mind. I have to sham an affection which I no longer feel for fear of upsetting the precarious applecart of her mind again! It would be ridiculous if it were not both painful and humiliating. You see, she is valuable, valuable to us all, her talent, her genius even. We haven’t a right to put that at risk – or at least I don’t dare. On the other hand I feel like a suburban housewife who has fallen in love with the milk roundsman but does not dare to risk being divorced for it! Sutcliffe was right to laugh when I told him; instead of sympathy he said, ‘I think your policemen are simply wonderful!’ Like the historic American in London. I suppose he was right.”

“But I don’t see how your
ménage
is going to work out without stress at some point.”

“I know.”

“Menage
or
manège
! That is the question.”

“Help!”

“How can I? You must live it out.”

“I know.” She stood up, glancing at her watch. “I must go back. But you see? Already I feel better for having ventilated the matter, even though I knew no solution would be forthcoming – how could it? It’s my own mess and I must accept the fact. On the other hand I cannot see this situation prolonging itself indefinitely. I am simply marking time now.”

“My poor colleague,” he said drily, but with all sincerity. There was no trace of irony in his tone – for he felt the same sharp pang which touched the heart of Blanford whenever he caught sight of her downcast head and averted eyes. But he at least was not abreast of the developments which she had outlined for the benefit of Jourdain. It is difficult to know what he would have thought of them – elation, sympathy, horror? The repertoire of the human heart is a vast one, a veritable broom-cupboard. She had left the car in the little square with its silent trees and small white church which enshrined so many memories of the past. Jourdain had extracted a firm promise that she would dine with him soon in his rooms.

She stood for a while letting the atmosphere of the little square seep into her, seep through her mind.

How long life seemed when one thought of the past – especially of all those sadly wasted years of war and its distresses. Her friend Nancy Quiminal used also to visit the little church. During
the fétes votives
she brought posies of flowers to offer on behalf of an old aunt who had been born in the village of Montfavet, and had attended catechism classes in the church, which hadn’t changed a jot. Constance tried the door.

She sat there in a pew for a long moment, counting her quiet heart beats, almost without drawing breath. The immense weariness of the war years had not yet quite dissipated, while the present with its problems seemed hopelessly lacklustre. Had they come back too soon to recapture some of the é
lan
and optimism of the past – had they made a fatal miscalculation? It was true perhaps that one should never try to go back to retrace one’s steps to a place where one has once been happy.

A wave of depression came over her, and for a moment she was almost tempted to say a prayer of abject self-commiseration, pagan though she was. She smiled at the impulse, but compromised by crossing herself as she stood before the watchers in the painting. Who knows? It was gipsy country and the piety might work like a
grigri
… Then she resumed her little borrowed car and set off back to collect Sutcliffe whom she had left in town to do some shopping with Blanford.

But when she found her way back to the little tavern by the river which was their point of rendezvous she was furious to find them both drunk – not “dead” drunk but in an advanced state of over-elaboration. Blanford could be most irritating when he became slightly incoherent while Sutcliffe became simply cryptic. They had been absorbing that deleterious brew known to the peasantry as
riquiqui
, a firewater compounded of several toxins. “O God!” she said in dismay. “You are both drunk!” At which they protested energetically though with a slight incoherence which gave the show away.
“Au contraire
, my dear,” said Blanford, “this is the way my world ends, not with a bang but a Werther. First time I’ve tasted this stuff. It’s plebeian but very consoling.
Vive, les enfants du godmichet\”
Sutcliffe at once said, “I echo that toast in all solemnity. Did you know that for several centuries the city kept its renown because twelve churches preserved the authentic foreskin of Jesus as a holy relic? Twelve different foreskins, but each one the true and authentic …” They had set aside the pack of cards with which they had proposed to kill the time waiting for her. “A smegma culture,” said Blanford gravely, thoughtfully, and his friend said, “When I hear the word I reach for the safety catch of my hair-spray. Levels of nonentity rise with a rising population. Who is going to do our dying for us? I once knew a parson who found he could not stand the sight of a freshly opened grave; he had a serious nervous breakdown. His doctor said soothingly, ‘For a congenital worrier there is nothing more worrying than having nothing to worry about.’ The poor parson jumped into the river.” Blanford fiddled with his purchases and said, “When I killed you in the novel I intended to leave some ambiguity about the matter. Your body and the horse were washed up in Aries. But the police were to find that the dental imprints on your washed-up body did not coincide with the records of your London dentist. A pretty mystery!”