The Janeites (14 page)

William’s was a receptive ear; it all sank in and stayed there. It’s only a step from there to people who put up a statue of the Guru ten metres high on the mountainside. From there, my friends, to Theosophists and Soroptimists and the whole gang of them. The slightest laxity and they’ve the bit between those long yellow teeth – preaching Civil Disobedience. The lesson you’ll all learn, before tomorrow morning, is you don’t give these people an inch.

Yes but the whole point about Janeites is that they couldn’t care less about Corsica. He can’t remember even the fussy ones, like Mr John Knightley who lives in London, as much as mentioning the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. Hell, they don’t even mention the Duke of Wellington. Jane’s people live their lives in this marvellous indifference to anything outside. Is that shocking or is it splendid? It’s all inside him; he can’t talk about it.

“I really wanted to ask Albert’s advice about the garden.”

“He’s outside there now. Deep in thought about a vegetable marrow. You might ask him whether there are any beans left and if so to bring them in because I’d like them for lunch.”

Turning things around in his mind, thought Bernadette. Whatever it is, doesn’t want to talk about it. Nor am I going to push him. I’m not in the office now.

A woman, possibly. Our William (for she is very fond of him) wouldn’t have any problems about Sex. If it were only that! Big tall
old boy, not exactly ‘good-looking’ but definitely handsome. Riding around in that ridiculous Porsche; the girls would be falling over one another trying to climb into his pocket. There can’t ever have been a shortage. Kept tight in a special compartment because of all those conscientious ideas about Duty: you couldn’t get married there in the lifeguard brigade, it wasn’t fair on the wife. Getting knocked over flat, there by the Honourable Alexandra (whom Bernadette has never met but knows a good deal about) – that was shocking bad luck. He’d had his years of great responsibility and unending strain, before marking time there with that extremely lordly Foreign-Minister, who obviously had great pull in the circles of the mighty, to keep anyone as senior as William.

This tale had been told her. William held officer rank, and lifeguards of that calibre can look forward to a nice desk job; you won’t have to punch a time card. The girl had plenty of money. Building that lovely house, William all set for a cosy sinecure, perhaps the Interpol office (no shortage of these grandiose institutions in Strasbourg and all of them basking in money, while a poor lousy investigating magistrate can’t even get proper office equipment) – and the bitch walks out on him. In Madame Martin’s book, the crimes listed in the Penal Code can each and everyone be attended by files-full of circumstance, explanatory if not extenuating, you don’t seek to excuse but you do seek to balance. But this isn’t penal: it’s sure as hell in the Moral Code though. Bernadette Martin isn’t a moral theologian, and glad of it. These are the structural, load-bearing foundations of society. ‘This is something one just does not do. In this she can’t find any matter for debate or discussion.’ Albert can, or says he can. Very sorry but there are some things she cannot give way on.

From the kitchen window they are visible, heads together and deep in talk. There are things men mull over together – not all of them mechanical contrivances – and a woman ‘putting her oar in’ is seen as a source of confusion. Was that the source of this homely phrase? A woman does not row in the same rhythm. She hears a different drummer. Quite a few of Madame Martin’s discussions with lawyers, prosecutors, tribunal-judges, meet with the same
fundamental variance in standpoint. If she were ever to meet the Honourable Alexandra the girl would get given a piece of her mind.

Albert was deep in contemplation of the compost heap.

“Right, William, getting out into the garden, put a bit of colour in your face. Apart from being too pale you’re looking fine, you know.”

“It’s about tackling the garden I want your views. Sick of looking at it. Want to make a start, but don’t quite know how my energies will hold out.”

“Be a job, all right. Single-handed, boo, even if in perfect health. That garden firm which did the original layout, why not get them to come and put it in shape? You could go on from there. Expensive, I realize.”

“Yes. I was sort-of keeping that idea in reserve. In case it got too much. I was thinking, maybe that weedy jungle isn’t as bad as it looks. Thought of asking perhaps would you come over, cast an eye, tell me what you made of it.”

Foolish at the start, William thought himself; should he be saying from the start? The garden firm had offered a maintenance contract. Frank or Fred comes round every six months with a workman. Clean and refresh, prune and repair, spray against pests, sell him a few new goodies. He’d economized – foolishly – in the reaction after spending too much. And at that time he’d been wanting to do everything himself. On top of the world. The feeling of having won the Lotto, of the good life awaiting him. Joséphine saying she didn’t want a baby ‘just yet’, making jokes about Victorian phrases like ‘filling the nursery’. There was plenty of time.

The potty adventures, of former days. The conquests, idiot echo of the Marquis’ way with girls: ‘notorious philanderer’ was another Victorian in-joke. The bargain-basement time; since they’re that cheap have as many as you like. The trouble with that: one is so damn cheap oneself. Whatever one said (one said and thought plenty) about the ‘Honourable Alexandra’ – she was not cheap.

The Baroness, with her ladylike ways. That upright carriage, that clear-boned face. A – a – purity about it. Hardly the right word? No but the only one he had found.

Let’s not get sentimental, laddy. He won’t let himself think about it, now or ever. He’d made this huge mistake. No, she said, the mistake was hers – as though it were a cake that they could cut in half and share. She’d taken a ruthless path out of this mortal tangle. Married and not-married. He’d given in. Foolishly? This kind of thing happens, nobody knows why. People find it doesn’t work, they get divorced. He doesn’t like it, but if there’s no other way…? Joséphine had simply refused, wouldn’t speak of it.

The furthest she’d go had been ‘I won’t discuss it. I’ll think about it in a year’s time.’ To that, better say nothing. Better do nothing? He’d taken that problem to the Marquis, who disconcertingly agreed with her. ‘Reach for the lawyer, will you? The six-shooter is no way to handle a woman of that quality, you shoot yourself in the foot. Spend a great deal of money, gets you nowhere. Wait and see.’

He’d waited but all he’d seen was an upset stomach that went chronic and to which doctors, damn them, pinned a nasty name. So he’d given in his resignation, on all this, exactly the way he’d shoved the job; there’s no going back.

What did he have left? This beeyoutiful house. She took nothing but the few oddments she’s brought with her. No wedding presents, nowt. What about the house then? ‘Treat it as yours.’ Not nastily – nothing cutting or contemptuous: factual. He’s never heard anything from Geoffrey; the two men had barely exchanged a word after she left. He never heard anything from the tax people. What did he have? A wife which was no wife. Himself, a man that is now a no-man.

Feel like having a girl? Not going to run to la mère Bénédicte. Who wants callgirls anyhow? Somewhere out there, he’d thought, he might get a second chance at living. Meanwhile what does he have? Emma Woodhouse!

What’s that phrase which Ray Valdez likes to quote?

‘Believe me, Brother, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.’

What between the feeling better and ordinary curiosity – Ray’s phone didn’t answer. He’d tried the secretary at that Institute.

‘Away,’ she said indifferently. How long for? ‘Sorry, don’t know.’

‘The staff’ sounds pretty grand; Dr Barbour speaks of ‘my people’ and every secretary is now a personal assistant: they speak of him and the word ‘parano’ is often used. These overblown expressions are a way of simplifying complicated structures. PermRep like all politicians lends himself to caricature but the reality is a bundle, complex and devious and tortuous, like most people. He’s stiff with employees, talks about precision, exactitude. ‘Don’t ever use a phrase like round-about-midnight, he’ll ask whether you mean ten to or a quarter past.’ He runs a tight ship; is rigid, fussy, suspicious, authoritarian. Paranoid is a silly word because it’s lazy.

Partly it would be his upbringing, and schooling. Fifty years ago he would have been given to Latin quotations, and still corrects the punctuation in written reports. Partly it’s an inheritance of moral principles and political certainties. He has an annoying way of always being in-the-right, and rubbing-it-in. Being without humour is no help. Recently he seems to have been unusually tetchy. He hasn’t been feeling very well, and hasn’t made up his mind what to do about it.

It would be useful to consult a doctor but there are difficulties. He hadn’t thought of it when last on leave and has at present no good reason nor even pretext for making the trip. In European medicine he has no great confidence; has heard of a good man in Heidelberg but there’s a language problem. In England they speak English of a sort, but he doesn’t like the fuss involved. To minimize the feeling that this is all too much ado he went to see a man locally, making the
appointment himself. Dr Roger (whom he has met socially) is well thought of in the Community and there’s no ice to break. A wide general-practice among the diplomatic crowd; an easy-smiling cheerful man and the great advantage is that he speaks English. He has a nice duplex in the Contades, is experienced with the Community’s little ailments (epidemics of laryngitis. Carpal-tunnel Syndrome), makes little jokes, gives good parties, plays a lot of golf and tennis: small wonder that though his name is Pilkington he’s always known as Blessington. But he’s a careful man too, and serious.

Listens to PermRep, examines, writes prescriptions, would rather like a blood test. Dr Barbour jibs a bit at that; rather too public in his view (Eleanor can be sent to the pharmacy). Dr Roger understands diplomats; he’s one himself. It is always good sense to have a second – a specialist – opinion. He suggests an eminent and excellent Professor in the Faculty. In this confidential consulting-room sphere his patient allows himself to pull a face; unenthusiastic. Dr Roger isn’t a fool by any account. Man shares a widespread view; that the French are brilliant but unreliable.

“I do know a man, speaks excellent English, regarded as good if unconventional; does a lot in close harmony with colleagues in the States: suppose I were to give you a note for him?”

This would be comic but for Dr Barbour’s obsession with never being indiscreet: the name Valdez means nothing to him. Crystal has spoken, too much and too often until she learned better, about her ‘onetime’ eccentric in the research institute. The name ‘Ray’ had been dropped, but not listened to. In community circles, for Strasbourg is a gossipy town, in this respect much like Bonn, Raymond’s reputation begins to be known to a few people, such as Dr Roger, but hasn’t reached the Permanent Representative, who allows himself to prefer a man in private practice to haughty specialists who speak a humiliating technical French and are arrogant, condescending…

Madame Bénédicte who never mentions a name if it can be avoided, and pretends not to know anyone’s occupation, did not go into details. ‘Young Mireille has been silly enough to form an emotional attachment.’ The permanent representative of a Power has
weight in Community circles and draws a lot of water in her book. If he expresses a violent dislike for anything within her sphere of activity, she does not ask whether this is rational behaviour; it so seldom is. Something will be done, and he has the right to know nothing about it: that’s what he pays for. Success in business depends upon getting other people to do the work for you. She wants a customer to feel comfortable.

It isn’t a coincidence either that Dr Valdez knows nothing about PermRep; a scrap or two of Community hearsay – this isn’t Brussels but it’s just as gossipy. Janine’s demeanours, maybe misdemeanours in the past had never interested him much: everyone has things in their life they prefer not to talk about. She had floated into his and at ‘the bottom of his heart’ (wherever that is) he had known that she would float out. Such things are painful when they happen. William had a notion that it was on her account someone took an acute dislike to his nose; a good job of surgery that had been – painful, very, but pain is not a punishment handed out for sleeping with Janine. You accept it. Pain is one of the world’s basic realities. William is an ex-security-guard and sees things under the bed. People use the most brutal violence to man, as to tree, earth or water, for the basest of motives. A man, a woman, a small child – such are the ways of the Crab. There’s nothing to say, beyond
Ad
Majorem
Dei
Gloriam
,
I beg your pardon for the kitchen Latin.

“
Felix
qui
potuit
,” said Raymond sententiously, putting Joséphine instantly on her mettle. School Latin.

“Happy is he – I hope I may be allowed to say she – who can, perhaps could? – understand the causes of things. Rather a trite remark, not? Who’s that, Aristotle?”

“Henri Fabre, a very great saint. Marvellous writer, wonderful scientist, the bastards in the Sorbonne wouldn’t give him a job, he spent his savings on a little cottage in Provence with a bare patch of ground, made the greatest entomological study ever known and while he was at it filled the garden with flowers and rare plants for his beasts to feed on.”

“You could do the same here.” August is the month of many many sorts of spiders and the house is full of them, giving pleasure.

“A century ago Provence was not polluted. Somebody in England looked in a rockpool at low tide, said never again will man see what I now see. We’re losing biological species a thousand a day. I can call spirits from the vast deep, though precious few of them will do as I say.” It has been raining hard for several days and there isn’t much to do but drink and talk.

Of the very essence of romanticism is the truth so often trivialized into cliché, that the adventure begun in sunlight ends in humid, chilly shadow. Marie has awakened the sleeping Manda in the field by the river by tickling him with a grassblade. He opens his eyes and her smiling face close to his own is haloed by the dazzle of the sunlight directly behind her. Jacques Becker’s film is well known to both because
Casque
d’Or
is a classic of the cinema and there is nothing in it that is not perfect, necessary: it walks the tightrope of talent stretched taut, flowers into miracle.

Those two have one weekend. As they come out of the dark little church where Marie has watched the comic, touching peasant marriage, the chill strikes her and she draws her shawl closer. Round the corner innocently wheeling his bicycle, is the traitor, and that evening, sitting on the doorstep of the little shack, Manda knows what he has to do, and that he has no choice in the matter. To die is nothing much but to renounce the easy path makes a man.

Neither Raymond nor Joséphine will speak of this. He has little experience of life, though much of death, but his instincts are fortified by the discipline he has chosen to follow, and –
allegro
vivace
– to disregard. She in a shortish time has known something of the world, but a woman is born to understanding. The hair’s breadth between pleasure and pain is her biology.

Nothing chillier than a chilly August. But the house is dry and warm; Ray has learned the art of a log fire. The last time down-the-hill Joséphine had bought beef, and to save this from going off had put it in a bowl with a bottle of wine poured over it. There are some bacon scraps, and one day they had picked a basket of mushrooms,
so that she has made a bourguignon stew, which has been all night in the oven and now it smells heavenly: the biggest potatoes had been put in the woodashes, and a field salad made of ‘the weed from the garden’. Here recollections of children’s botany are better than his, since he has none at all. She has promised him (‘is this mushroom an amanita?’) that ‘we won’t die poisoned’. Another bottle, an extravagant one, Brother Gorenflot’s favourite Romanée, is taking the air, not too close to the embers.

“‘
Als
ik
kan
’”
said Raymond watching the play of the little green and blue flames: “it was the motto of the painter Jan van Eyck.” Joséphine has less trouble with Flamand (she is Alsacienne born) than with Latin.

“When I can? If I can? As long as I am able?”

“It has to be stronger than that, I think. ‘To my limit’? ‘To my last limit’. Or perhaps it is humble. ‘Knowing my limit’.

“Ours is awful. ‘We keep faith’ – one wonders how often they did.”

“I had the Van Eyck picture once, cut out and pasted up. Chancellor Rollin praying to the Madonna. In every line of him a frightful crook but his prayer is utterly sincere.”

“Perhaps he says ‘I will always be faithful to you darling in my fashion’.”

“Yes, probably that’s the best we can do,” looking after her with love. “But you mustn’t be cynical, my darling. ‘To our utmost’ and we make that ours.”

“At school they went on no end about honour. There was an Irish girl called Honour. We used to tease her. She said it was quite a common name, there.”

“Not a bad one, either. I had a book once of American history – Indians.
A
Century
of
Dishonour
–
one of the best titles I know.

Joséphine is remembering.

“There were things for which we had to give ‘our word of honour’ and one had to think carefully, before one did so. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid.”

“It is what we lose. It can also be what we win back.” She stretched out her hand, and put it in his, as she had done in the restaurant, in Paris.

They’ve gone and modernized Gitanes! One of the last remaining symbols of la-belle-France… which should have been eternal, and a national monument like Guimard’s Métro entrances. Joséphine’s cigarette-packet was on the kitchen table; the petrol blue now a chaste Madonna colour, the neon-green lettering a slimmed and sobered white. The Gitana herself still danced the tarantella in her swirl of smoke, defiant as ever, but she seemed smaller, less robust; the famous black silhouette now a stage-lit sweetheart about to take a bow, as though knowing the performance is over. As a doctor Raymond is bound to disapprove of her but his affections remain intact. She is no pasty-faced Marianne smirking in the mayor’s office but the France which always somehow survives, loathed by all and still inspiring love.

Joséphine came in upon the wool-gatherer from outer space, picked up the packet, put a cigarette in her mouth in a challenging way (she’s not supposed to go over three a day but it was plainly his fault for standing staring) and said abruptly,

“How is William?”

“No means of knowing.”

“Dammit, you’re the doctor,” snapping the lighter like the lock of a pistol.

“Quite right. He’s a lot better. Beyond that, you may as well go to the casino, take a hand at blackjack. Give me a card, whoops it’s a deuce, another, it’s a trey, yay, one more I’ve got a five-and-under. Go for it and shit, it’s a knave and I’m busted. A cancer can go coy, playing footsie, now you see me now you don’t. Been known to turn back, don’t like it here, I’m going on holiday. But one never can say, Right, you, you’re paid off, goodbye.”

(Just the odd time, a year turns into ten, the ten into twenty, fellow goes out on the street and is blown up by a bomb. The Crab had lost interest, went to play with a little girl of nine.)

Joséphine has listened to Doctor-Valdez-playing-cards; one couldn’t for a moment guess whether she was interested.

“You remind me of Geoffrey saying ‘he calls the knaves jacks, this peasant’. Oh well, I’m a very old-fashioned girl myself. There was one the other day – she’s modern, you understand – got herself raped in an underground parking, said she wasn’t at all bothered
since her cunt
was
an underground parking. The more the merrier.”

Raymond, straightfaced: “My dick when fully erect measures twenty-two centimetres.” Joséphine has an acute sense of the ridiculous, bless her.

“My fan – the name of the rose is the Rose. Won’t be rose-like without the help of Monsieur Saint-Laurent. Fresh sea water any good? The Aphrodite Anadyomene did no better.” she sat down and started to peel potatoes… he could see her looking for a ‘tactful formula’. They aren’t any, but she tries to soothe – down, dog – her dreadful habit of being blunt. Can one put a thing like this on a rational footing?

“What’s it like, being a Jesuit?” It is like, he thinks, the clerihew about a well known French philosopher.

“It’s no different to being any other kind of man. Now and then it’s exceptionally disciplined, like being in the Foreign Legion. Betimes they tell you do some weird things. One they sent to Seven Hills, that’s somewhere near Adelaide. ‘Make wine’. He didn’t know a damn thing about it, makes now the best wine in Australia. But the Legion looks after its own you know, they have a home for the aged cripples. Meantime, can’t you tell? I’m like the one in the Piaf song. You smell good of sea water, I smell good, of the Hot Sand.” She bursts out laughing, lovingly.

“Mon Légionnaire…”

It went on raining, Phrases wore thin, wore out. Hung be the heavens with black gave way to never-seen-anything-like-it; the roof started to leak, so that one put buckets under drips, or one would have, if there were any buckets, and jokes about Sadie Thompson never had been that funny: when the battery of Joséphine’s little radio failed, the Let’s get the hell out of here became overmastering.
Down-the-hill might be a startling new inland lake but who knows? – maybe the sun is shining. Throw everything into the Land Rover and make a dash for it; nothing could be easier. What is going on in the world? This elemental violence appears excessive. Floods here and forest fires elsewhere. Tornados. The polar ice is melting. Krakatoa has erupted, very likely. Joséphine who is easily given to drama is working herself into a lather.