The Janeites (16 page)

Joséphine was reading
Persuasion
which she said she’d found ‘at home’, to the accompaniment of some doubt ‘how it had got there’. Her claim that Geoffrey had never opened a book in his life was certainly an exaggeration: the cliché of hard-riding claret-swilling wooden-headed barons is one she likes to promote. Raymond’s acquaintance among barons is not large. He supposed there would be more like the Marquis, immensely civilized, widely read; as many no doubt with no great taste for the printed page. Given a guess he would suppose that by and large a country gentleman living in an ancestral château thinks of the library as an essential attribute of his home even when he spends more of his time in the gunroom. At the least there’d be collections of classics, calf bound, in the major European languages. Didn’t the women read? Of course they did, and does one have to say ‘also’? All over north-eastern France you find ruins, where the battlefields of ’14–18 left quite often no stone standing above ground of these country châteaux, just as, throughout central Europe, you hear fearful stories of Russians burning all the books to keep themselves warm; of drunken Americans wreaking equal havoc: châteaux had also well-stocked cellars. Favoured billets for the licentious conquerors. And under all régimes widespread pillaging was the rule. However, Joséphine’s home has not been attacked since the seventeenth century. You would have to go back to ‘Les Suédois’ – in Alsace legendary figures of dread – to find this sort of destruction. Both French and German troops were generally kept in better order. It is true that the famous library of Strasbourg burned during the siege of 1870; true too that the Kaiser was horrified to hear of this, and ordered all the universities of Germany to do what they could to make good Christendom’s appalling loss. One way or another there isn’t anything extraordinary
about finding quite a nice little edition of Jane Austen – lacking to be sure modern critical apparatus and commentary by the likes of Dr Chapman – in the library of a European country baron. Some grandmother or great-aunt of Joséphine has left pressed country flowers between the pages as a bookmark.

She is enjoying
Persuasion
– now this is ‘adult art’. Vague school-girl recollections of Mr Bennet being witty about that ludicrous Mr Collins had left no real mark. But Anne Elliot is nearly thirty. The bloom is off. In fact she is described as thin, nigh haggard, and slightly faded: now who does that remind Joséphine of?

Doctor Valdez is catching up on recent medical literature. The room, which is always full of books, lying about everywhere as well as in shelves up to the ceiling, has a pleasant literary feel of peace and quietude. Two people reading, and not much conversation to break a blessèd silence. In the silence, a small noise, definable as a chuckle.

“You’re enjoying that… It was my friend Mr Kipling’s favourite… I don’t think I’ve ever read it.”

“It was the last she wrote; seems generally acknowledged the best. There’s a very dramatic Happening, as near as Jane will allow herself to get to
Violence
.” Yes, Joséphine is also ripe to enter the Society of Janeites (playing a bigger role in Raymond’s recent life than the Society of Jesus).

“What’s that?” Bored anyhow with Americans being extremely earnest about diabetes.

“Stupid Louisa acting the goat, falls off the step of the pier, hits her silly nut and they all think she’s DEAD.”

“Like me tumbling into the ravine.” Raymond is carrying a fine collection of half-healed cuts and bruises. “Good God. But she isn’t…”

“Of course not. But makes I can tell you one hell of a stir.”

We speak of a kindly silence. Generally, I think, we mean that our hearing is not – for a blessed moment – assaulted by the bawling of the world. There is another sort; the silence that obtains between two people in kindness with each other.

This was interrupted by Raymond yawning, at first imperceptibly but gathering momentum as is the way of yawns until it splits one.

“Is that a dog outside?” asked Joséphine, “or is the lighthouse sending fog signals?” It was nowhere near so late but

“One, two, three; Time, time.”

It might have been three; far into the night; when the phone rang. Since Doctor Valdez is not in general practice this is a rarity. And probably a wrong number but he still has to get out of bed (having it next door one only encourages the thing).

“Yes, Valdez,” and then he listened for a long time but Joséphine has woken, has even switched a light on. To help him listen? Or to watch his face. Sometimes it can be like a burglar alarm ringing in some office.

“You have to tell me, you know.” He looks constrained, not to say embarrassed. He had said very little.

“You’re not in any way hurt?… That will be my affair… I’ll be along. Do nothing before then.” He sighed and said, “I have to get dressed. Hazard of this business.”

“I’m waiting.”

“It was William. Someone seems to have put a bomb. No very great damage.”

“Then what are you doing?” At that, a flash of sarcasm.

“I’m going to sit on the café terrace, drink Pernod and listen to the band.” A Bogart line and rather a good one.

“Exactly,” getting out of bed. “Order one for me.” Ray looking for his shoes and wondering what to say. Whatever – it would be of no use.

Joséphine, equally, appears concentrated upon not getting her trousers on back to front.

“Darling there’s no possible point. This may take me some time.”

“I haven’t bothered with a clean shirt. I’d better have a jacket, seems it might be chilly out.”

One faces the music, as they say. Likewise, firing squads. Marshal Ney, it’s said, took off his hat, said “Soldiers!” – hadn’t time for more. Raymond has much too much time.

“I don’t think this is the moment for discussion. Where are the car keys, bonjour?”

“There isn’t going to be any discussion.”

Now Leonora, facing Pizarro who had already raised the arm with the knife, says simply, ‘I am his wife.’ It’s quite all right on the stage. That is what operas are for: to be dramatic. Nobody suggests that Leonora when dressed up as the executioner’s assistant cuts an unconvincing figure. But why is Raymond’s mind running upon midnight assassinations? Baron Scarpia turning to claim the reward of lechery, gets the knife straight up his midriff into the big nerve centre. ‘Here is the kiss of Tosca.’ Follows that heart-wrenching moment – the terrible line ‘And all Rome trembled before you’. The candles on each side of the body; the prayer, kneeling, for a wicked man; the colossal slow exit. The curtain – we’ve had time for the pulse to come down into the low hundreds.

The Beetle is in no hurry to start. Battery rather flat; Wah-wah-wah in a nasty expiring-threatening way before lurching to life.

Leonora’s line turns Pizarro to stone, cues that tremendous trumpet call. Hm, a lot of people have thought that a mistake. Big fluster – ‘The Minister has arrived’ – Pizarro yelling that he’d be there this very second – sad contrivances these. It should end upon those bleak monosyllables. ‘I am his wife.’

Looking at ‘the bombsite’; the house from across the courtyard; Raymond was horrified, stayed so until a long-buried comic memory restored his balance: William was all right and this really was not all that bad.

A harmless old gentleman had the habit of watercolour painting in the open air; set up his easel in the ‘park’: when there was a brief thunder shower the old boy scampered. After it cleared students gathered to discuss ‘whether it was better art than before’.

The bits which had been dry – trees and stuff around the building portrayed – were merely blurry. But the architecture, fresh and still damp, had slid in peculiar ways. Trickled? Tumbled even; whole areas of window and masonry, slate and gutter, had disassembled. Dislimmed is the word. The result (which greatly pleased the students) was very much the sight which now met his eye.

“Superficial really. No very Great harm done.”

Joséphine’s eye, as it were dryer and less romantic, centred upon Dust. Homely household objects like the vacuum-cleaner. Dustbins
full of broken glass. Dare one say it? hideously prosaic – dustpan-and-brush. Her concierge in Paris, a grey soul in a grey overall, fond of remarking what good friends she was with her broom. One didn’t have to be Corsican to know that bombs are part of existence, really. A well-built house hadn’t suffered – much – structurally. The essential is that William is unharmed, a bit unkempt but looking on the whole quite chipper.

William was standing there in a formal attitude of welcome, pale in a clean white shirt, upright, face expressionless.

“Not in any pain right now?”

“Not so’s I notice. I might find a symptom or two in an hour’s time.” Joséphine, apparently, didn’t find anything to say; stood looking about her as though she had been here before but couldn’t remember when.

“The police have been?”

“They’ve only just left. That smell of cigars is our local gendarmerie, amiable and helpful as always. They’ll be back in the morning, bustling about with measuring tapes and things, taking photographs. They aren’t greatly impressed with my bomber, who seems incompetent. Mainly interested in where that gas tank came from.”

“William, what the hell is all this about?”

“They think, and I agree, it was more to give me a fright than anything else.”

“Revenge? For something you did?”

“Ray – remember me? Paid-up luminary of SPHP – sorry, acronym for the Service of Protection of High Personalities. That’s largely a matter of being seen but not heard. Before that, some few years a working PJ officer. In either role, main preoccupation is to stay off the shit list. But in the Kripo you get heard as well as seen. You might have to arrest people, get confronted with them, maybe give evidence in front of a tribunal. They might go to prison. It’s been known they feel a grievance, brood on it, have some idea of getting even when they come out. Which might be years later. D’you mind if we sit down? I’m beginning to feel tired.”

And you’re talking too much, thought Dr Valdez. That’s all right, let him have his head, he’s out of practice with violence, feels a scrap of delayed shock, he’ll quieten down and then I’ll take a peek at him.

“This is nothing. I’ll get the police in the local office to look at it. My friend Bernadette Martin has sound advice on this theme – never make complaint. Just like a civil lawyer whose counsel is – if he’s honest – never under any circumstances litigate. Working magistrate, she ought to know! Stay clear of what they call justice, and sit very loose to the world.

“You’re a pretty good friend too, Ray. Came along with your Janeite stuff, I’ve learned a bit about that. Easier for me after years with the Marquis. He had a game too. Called it his Proust game, not that I ever read the stuff but listen to him and I know how Swann said the kitchen maid was like a Bellini picture. All the people he met with were like portraits in fiction. My role was to keep silent, listen, learn.

‘“I had the Marquis to thank, too, for meeting you. You spun me this long tale, about the soldiers in the ’14 war. Chances of survival extremely small, statistical likelihood of getting chopped pretty immediate. Me, only more so. So they played this game. Jane’s world is the base for defiance, platform for enjoying their life minute by minute. I could see the point. Got this cancer, dodgy kind of thing, my age, pretty good way of looking at it. We were trained of course, your number can come up any time but that’s mechanical, what’s the doctor’s word? – functional. You told me, the way to handle a cancer is in my mind. I got into this Janeite world.

“Sink right into that, one does; marvellous stuff. Thought myself observant, I had. See the funny side now, the way Marky did. All true, to our own time just as much. Cruel though, huh? – this perception of what our lives ought to be. Not much use at finding the words, am I? – no, never was. Codes, very sharp, exact definition, no ambiguity, no blurred outline.

“Know all about codes, learned a lot of them by heart, civil code, crimi code, code of procedure. Bernadette knows stacks more screeds of legislative juridical bullshit. Get tapped for the Protection
Service, code of behaviour, personal honour. What Jane calls delicacy, anticipate, respect for the man, he’s everything, you’re nothing, his function in society. As a human being he might be worthless, you’re still bound, pay him his full due.

“Getting tired, I’d like a cup of coffee, don’t want any goddam green tea.”

“I’ll get it,” said Joséphine. “I know where things are kept.”

“Coffee, Ray, and cigars, all the things you told me to lay off. Shook me a bit, this bastard with his bomb, for all that. Pain too, bugger it, here we go again, bloody crab, tickle me up, never really letting go. Thought of ringing you up, my old miracle worker, sorry about it being middle of the fucking night, knew you wouldn’t let me down.”

Dying down, thought Dr Valdez. Quite soon, give him a push and he’ll fall over. Needs a good sleep and then we’ll see. Remarkable recuperation he has. Joséphine’s cigarettes were on the table and William reached over and took one. She brought a tray with three cups, went back for the pot. Needs no telling, knows how much sugar we take, how we like it.

“Thanks, Josie, exactly what I need. And hallo, where do you spring from? Stupid remark; I know. You’re living with my friend Ray, very good idea, better man than I am. Didn’t mind your living in Paris. Screwing the Marquis, no harm in that, old swine but he gave something too, all the women he ever slept with, I’m the one who knows, right? I knew him better than anyone. The great enigma false to all and everyone; to me also but he told me things he’d never said to any living man or woman. I won’t tell, that’s my code, and he trusted me. Keep faith with yourself.

“Didn’t like your friends much, riffraff they were. You’ll do better with Ray. I like it too, you’re coming to tell me. That’s honourable. Courage you always had.

“So here the three of us are, like a thing of La Fontaine, the miller and his son, one of those. The husband, the wife, and the lover. Not like something out of Jane. But are we all three the Janeites? We ought to know, what to do, how to behave, how to be true, ourselves and one another. We’re three friends. Got to rely on each other,” clanking the coffeecup heavily back in the saucer.