The Janeites (21 page)

True, she said “Oh, Shit” but that is not an Impassioned sort of expletive.

If people say I’m a whore, does that make me one? If people think of me as a whore, it’s no worse than I deserve. I want to be a woman: it’s high time, I have wasted a lot of years. The world is full of women. Some are whores, some are squaws, being Helpmeet to Hubby. Lots trudge after the donkey with a load on their head: their man is riding the donkey, smoking a cigarette and wearing new shoes. Some are power-hungry, go to work and keep slaves. Around here, nearly all are doing jobs, mostly pretty menial; often at half the money a man would be getting. They carry, a great many, an impossible burden; a day’s work and then rush, to do the shopping and pick the brats up from the crèche and even then they aren’t through: cooking and housekeeping and making a Home for the man and the children. I’ll do that if it’s what it takes to have self-respect and a straight back. Of these many get abandoned, divorced, pushed out to cope for themselves. Then you have to set up as a single parent, or go lez, along with some other poor cow, it’s to be hoped they find some comfort in one another.

But since I’m a woman I have to Be a woman, make a proper job of it. Too many years have gone, lost in being an object.

I hope, thought Joséphine, I have a daughter. Teaching her I’ll learn; we’ll learn about being women together. a life-time’s work, that. Fucking Hard work. And since it’s my work get on with it then, stop chatting about it.

Medicine – using the word loosely – proliferates. By a sort of Parkinson Law; there are a lot of inventions, clever mechanical tools, aids to diagnosis or in pointing out a likely treatment. Hospitals yell for more scanners, expensive toys of the sort, because everybody wants to be scanned. Doctors get into the habit of ordering tests; it pleases the patient, who has a comforting feeling of being looked after. You might anyhow find out something you hadn’t known before. One of the most frequent tools is the analysis laboratory, since haematologists find more, and more complex questions to ask of a drop of blood. The lab is like a shop on the main road, where everyone pops in to buy a bunch of flowers, so that the one on the Allée de la Robertsau does a roaring trade. Most of the work is boring counts of the banal levels in your blood like cholesterol, but the waiting-room is full of apathetic folk looking for the vampire-girls to call their name and fill the little bottle; rows and rows of these with enough of the stuff to Paint the Town Red.

The Permanent Representative wasn’t happy; all much too public for his liking. Nobody knew or cared who he was; neither the paperwork girl at the counter, shuffling her forms, nor the technician with her bright smile and roll-up-your-sleeve. She doesn’t even look at your face, sees only your elbow; make a fist then, so that the vein is apparent. But he’s always sensitive; however banal the intervention it’s an invasion of his privacy, and how can one be sure there’s nobody around who might recognize him. He had insisted on Crystal coming with him. It wasn’t a smokescreen, nor a comfort; it was a little treat for immediately afterwards. These damn blood tests are always before breakfast, so that he had planned to have her drive him across to the Hilton or wherever, have her pour out the coffee; order a good American breakfast which he never got at home.

Crystal didn’t care. She liked this role; it was being a sort of confidante rather than a playmate. She liked soothing him, pouring out the coffee, liked the idea of being posh too; cinnamon toast or something, yum.

Doctor Valdez, sorry sorry, was in a mighty hurry. Off to the farflung today, and cross because he hasn’t a direct flight out of Strasbourg; It’s Frankfurt OR Paris OR Zürich, hellholes all three. AND a change in Atlanta; why couldn’t we have gone to Miami? – yes yes but we’ve Been to Miami.

Hurry because of being conscientious: he has to give a phonecall to a colleague about a patient’s tests and the lab is always slow with the results, so he is going to whip in, pick them up, leaving the car doubleparked and Too Bad. And there on the pavement in front is Dr Barbour. That is all right. A professional discretion obtains, and they won’t even nod to each other. But there, holding his arm in a maternal manner is a woman – and that is Janine. He hasn’t laid eyes on her since – but oh dear, Janine who has never kept her lip buttoned since the day she was born.

“Ray!” she screamed, delighted.

“Hallo Janine. Look, forgive, I’m dashing, can’t stop.” She wasn’t listening; she never had.

“But Ray, how lovely! You’re looking splendid.”

“Good to see you, sorry, the police will be giving me a ticket.” She was standing there staring after him, puzzled…

Dr Barbour is much too self-controlled to make a scene in public. ‘In public’ – right there on the main road, what a setting for a scandal.

“Get in the car,” he said softly. Hers, the little red one, smallest car he’d ever got his legs into. “Drive home…”

“Make coffee.” Not the breakfast he’d been looking forward to. Interrogation. Soft-voiced and lawyerly. A clumsy liar.

“But nobody could possibly have seen…”

Somebody in fact had. Monsieur Philippe simply delighted. And all free, all without effort. He’d been going about his own business, had simply stopped for the red light. A chocolate with a cherry inside. Luscious that little passage on the pavement which one
couldn’t hear but the body-language told all. Valdez’ car there blocking the traffic, and that little old thing of Mireille, Italian racing red. This would work nicely, would make for a valuable bit of leverage. That tall figure was unmistakable, the smooth silver hair, it set off the oddly bleached look of the face – and the way he took her by the arm… rubbing it and you could see the words ‘You’re hurting’… it was the piece in the puzzle he’d never been sure of; that the Permanent Representative had not known who Dr Valdez was, had never identified his girlfriend’s former playmate. It would be typical of old-mother-Ben to pretend she didn’t know. While knowing perfectly well and blandly instructing himself to get out there and find out. That was how she worked, staying away from anything likely to be troublesome. Yo – this was a handy thing to know.

Dr Barbour sat at his desk. The house was quiet. The staff had gone home; Eleanor was out playing bridge; the houseman had the day off. He would drive himself, later, to – whatever it was, it would be in the diary. He likes this quiet hour before going up to change. By the door the little telltale told him that the security was on. He’d have said, up to yesterday, that his own was reliable. Anonymous letters, such as everyone in official positions must get from time to time, would never interfere, he had supposed, with the ability to think clearly. In a lawyerlike manner.

He put his finger inside the triggerguard and twirled the gun on the desk. It pointed towards him. No. Try again. It pointed towards the door.

It lived in his desk, which nobody touches. Of European make but said to be good, a stopper, powerful. It is our constitutional right, to bear arms. He had never taken it out but it was there, carefully kept oiled, with the charger separate to avoid weakening the spring. The armourer had explained; light enough for him but efficient, an automatic known here as a seven-six-five. He knew how to snap it in, to arm the action, feeling for the safety but now it was loaded, a fer-de-lance ready to strike.

He had got the story out of Crystal with no trouble at all; a stupid confusion of names. Calling herself Mireille and her real name was Janine. Harmless, a thing actors did. But this doctor made nonsense
of safeguards. The man had been here in this room, questioning him, examining him. Prescribed for him. He had inner uncertainties, which now were known to this man, who was due – away at some conference, in the States – to come back with the result of those lab tests, and discuss a possible treatment… it doesn’t bear thinking of. It is like a bullet, lodged in the centre of his own bodily defences. A lawyer is a man. His blood is red.

It is true, one thinks of lawyers as cold, implacable, unmoved; Mr Tulkinghorn at his desk with the two bits of sealing-wax and the broken glass stopper. Men can be overwhelmed by pain and by a pressure suddenly unbearable. They can run amok; the head no longer controls the heart, the limbs, the armed hand. But not, one would say, lawyers: still less those who represent their country on diplomatic missions, clothed as it were in the Advocate-General’s red robe. People like this shouldn’t have loaded pistols on the table.

But it would be very foolish to think of somebody like Dr Barbour in an over-simplified, caricatural way. He is imbued with a sense of his importance? He is pompous, rigid, humourless? Authoritarian, a bully, a good deal of an old fascist? One would still know pitifully little about him. Raymond Valdez is thinking about how one will get to know more, and maybe, enough to be of some use. This will take time, effort, concentration, sympathy. The PermRep is a lot of boilerplate: there is much more to him. He is to a large degree a creature of systems and attitudes and the conventions of his class and upbringing. He is also – as he is telling himself – red-blooded. He lives and he breathes, and he loves. He is making indeed a great effort to be a man. Not to be mechanical, materialist. The pistol is a well-made ingenious mechanism but it means death. It is not a piece of sealing-wax. The Permanent Representative took it to pieces again and put it back in the drawer, after ejecting the loaded cartridge. It left a smell of mineral oil on his hands, so that he went to wash before going up to change. Not Spaniards – New Zealand. Mutton probably, or apples.

This evening the catering is by the Bénédicte firm. She does none of the big parties, boumboum affairs with hundreds of plates and glasses, but is in much demand for a more intimate affray. She has an
excellent maître d’hôtel and two inventive cooks, and the secret is to have a personal eye upon the lay-out. Dr Barbour filtered through the
convives.

“Two words with you.”

“With pleasure,” one eye on a waitress. “Careful dear, those are delicate.” She doesn’t disdain what cooks call the chicken-and-ham circuit but they aren’t sausage rolls: Canapé MacMahon is a short-crust tartlet with scalloped chicken livers, mushrooms and marrow; a madeira demiglace.

“I’ve had a piece of insolence from an employee of yours.”

“You may rely on me to deal with it.”

The phonecall had said nothing beyond ‘I want to see you’ but Monsieur Philippe doesn’t loiter, pausing only downstairs where there is a nice smell of fresh pastry and a gamy flavour from the kitchen beyond. The old horror’s office was upstairs. She doesn’t say Good Morning, she doesn’t ask him to sit down, she’s plainly in a nasty frame of mind.

“You were employed some months ago on an errand for a valued customer. It now appears that you have exceeded your instructions: a complaint has come in. You’ve pestered him, you’ve been indiscreet. Trying to make yourself a corner in the affairs of others. I won’t have it.” Reading him off as though he’d dropped a tray of glasses but he will bide his time. “You need not speak, I won’t listen. You need only understand me – you haven’t heard the last of this.”

“I don’t allow you to make threats.”

“I never make threats. I dislike complaints, they’re bad for business. I know how to put a stop to them, get that well fixed in your mind. Off you trot; I’m wanted downstairs.”

Talking to me like that – that you’ll regret, old bitch. Not the moment to say so and it needs quiet, collected thought. Now he had to go down the stairs in front of her, as though pushed…

She was buttonholed in the hallway by a distraught waitress.

“Oh Madame, James says the delivery has gone wrong.” She bullocked on through without a backward glance and Monsieur Philippe had a sudden inspiration, whipped back up the stairs three
at a time. Anything, anything at all – a paper, a tape cassette? The desk was bare, the drawers all locked – cow. Only on the window-sill, a cigarbox. To offer favoured customers or might it hold a recorder? Well Glory Be. It held a small pistol. He slipped back down silent as the draught from an open door, ready to say Sorry, forgotten my glasses, but there was nobody at all. He didn’t know what one could make of this but something – something.

At home he examined the booty. A woman’s thing yes, but trust old Benny, no Mickey Mouse. A small but solid, shapely job, revolver loaded all round with .22 magnums…

It might be some time before she missed it. It might not be such an obvious guess who had found it. She wouldn’t do anything at once. She had, no error, leverage on him, but he, if she pushed too far, could find a few damaging suggestions. Neither party would be enthusiastic for a shakedown. Say nothing, keep it safe.

He had no gun, himself, since that damned impudent Barton had taken his, chucked it in the river. He’d been meaning to replace it but hadn’t found the right opening.

It was at this moment that he found the germ – the faintest shadow – of what looked like a bright idea. A wild plan, but simple. ‘Doctor Valdez’ he told himself sarcastically, would be part of this. The weak link, the way in. The more he thought, the thirstier he got.

But Valdez seemed to have vanished; no sign of him at either address. He rang up the secretary, an earnest enquirer, quite humble and prepared to wait upon the convenience of almost anyone but he did want, you see. Oh, he was away? But he’d be back on Friday? Oh yes, I see, the timeshift from the States. I wouldn’t want to bother him, it would be better to wait until Monday perhaps.

He had what he wanted, the plane timetable.

Yawning exaggeratedly, waiting for his ears to clear, Raymond doesn’t object to the tropic climes now and then but he does like to get home to where it rains, or might, outside; oh god why do these places stink so and why is my suitcase always the last one off? Caribbean islands fade to postcard size, mercifully cleansed of insects, air conditioners and penetrating American voices. And now
dozy is the word and he has a horrible longing for soup. Pea soup and no bananas. Where the buggery is one to find soup? Minestrone.

It is needlessly dozy to be looking in the car park for an old Volkswagen. He has a smart new car and a magic thingy to pop the doors, if one could find it… The man next door is hunting for his key which isn’t in his pocket and might be in the briefcase, well one knows the feeling. Throwing his bag in the back he was suddenly crowded.