The Swimming Pool Season (35 page)

Nadia wipes her eyes with her sleeve and gulps her drink. Larry watches her, nodding silently, and feels the only way to blanket his own grief is to give her as much as he can in the way of comfort, to let his understanding touch her, stroke her, caress her, calm her. We're like a little tribe of two, he thinks. The jungle savages us. We lick each others' wounds.

“Come here, Nadia,” he says softly. And he opens his arms to her. She looks up in surprise, but she doesn't pause to question what he's asking. Wiping the smudged blue mascara from her eyes, she moves to the bed and lies down and feels Larry's warmth and his arms bring her to a kind of shelter.

“My bean,” she says with laughter. “You are so wonderful!”

The following morning, Sunday, Mallélou dresses himself with the shutters closed on a damp, misty day and shivers as he thinks of the journey to come and the courtroom and the lawyers' jargon designed to confuse the likes of him and the terrible future lurking in the city for his son. He fumbles with the stiff buttonholes of his fly. All this agony seems to lie there, in his balls, this one, vulnerable part of him taking the pain of the whole. And why can't he ever get warm these days? Stupidly, he envies the Maréchal his body's fever. His own bones are as freezing as railway iron.

Klaus and Xavier are tired. After the nightly ritual of Gervaise's hot drinks, they stayed at the table and the “sentimental” schnaps was poured on Xavier's heart and he was forced to be content with this and with Klaus's kitchen-wisdom because this was all, on this night of betrayal, there was to cling to. They talked till one or two in the morning. Upstairs, the Maréchal coughed and wheezed. Klaus said there was often more learning in the actions of others than in our own
bêtises
. Watching these, you became a better judge of character. “Next time, Xavier, you'll see what a girl wants of you when you screw her. You'll see it in her eyes.”

“I don't want any more girls,” Xavier said bleakly. “I can't love the others.”

There was no real comfort in the talk, but it helped Xavier through the night. He snatched at sleep, afraid to dream of his lost girl. Now, it's the morning of departure and he knows that Pomerac will go from his life yet again, only taking him back in some distant, obscure future. “It's over,” he says silently as he stares at the cold, shrouded day. “It's over.” This time, Pomerac was Agnès. His love. He tells Gervaise as they sit down to breakfast: “Even if they let me off, Maman, I'm not coming back.”

“Not for Christmas?” she asks.

“No, Maman. I can't this year. I can't.”

“Well,” she says sadly, “we'll miss you.”

He wants to say goodbye to the Maréchal, but the old man is sleeping when he goes in. Xavier stands at the door and stares at him. La Comedie Humaine, Larry Kendal calls him. In his parchment cheeks is the faint dimpling of a smile. Dead bodies smile, someone told him during a game of Babyfoot; it's the fixing of the facial muscles. But the Maréchal isn't gone yet. His ancient chest rises and falls. The white stubble on his chin is as lively as mustard-seed.

“Wish me luck, old man,” Xavier mutters, “and if your luck holds, then lend us the fine.”

He chooses to see in the Maréchal's tranquil-seeming sleep a hopeful sign. He was a prisoner-of-war. He survived.

Gervaise with her peasant's pride, with a strange reserve, has never chosen to make a fuss over departures. Time and nature take things, animals, people from you. If you learn nothing else from the seasons, you learn about change. Though she's planned her Christmas dinner and this year saw, in her mind's eye, Xavier on one side of her, Klaus on the other, she lets her son go with two light kisses, saying only, as he picks up the tied-together suitcase, “God be with you, Xavier.” He will never, in the days to come, be far from her thoughts. But he knows this. She doesn't have to tell him. If he needed proof of her love, it's in the sending of Klaus, her big golden angel, to watch over him. And when her thin arms go round Klaus's neck to kiss him goodbye, she whispers urgently to him, “Pray for him, Klaus.”

With breakfast over and Xavier's suitcase packed, there's no point in lingering. Mallélou says to Xavier, “You drive the car, boy. It's too far for me.” And the tired man climbs into the back of the
fourgon
and sits on his bony arse among the chaff. He wears his ancient railwayman's winter coat. Xavier and Klaus get in. Gervaise stands at the yard gate, with her chickens pecking near her legs, and takes out her handkerchief and waves bravely, cheering them away.

It's in the course of this day – while Miriam's cable lies on the mat by Nadia's front door and in England flowers are arriving for Leni's funeral – that Nadia and Larry make the long drive back to Pomerac.

They arrive after dark, Nadia so filled with her memories of Claude and with the sweet comforts of the night that followed her visit to Rouigny, she feels that days and days have passed since she left her flat. She almost expects to find dust on all the surfaces and mould on the tangerines in their glass bowl.

As they take the Pomerac lane, Nadia reaches out and touches Larry's face. “I like if you spend one night in my flat, my darling. You want?”

“Yes, I want,” says Larry.

His loving of Nadia has distanced him from his miseries. He feels strong today and at peace. He acknowledges a peculiar gratitude towards Claude.

Nadia picks up the letters on her mat and puts them down on her table while she switches on her fire, draws the curtains, searches her fridge and her cupboard for the ingredients of a little meal.

“I have a small jar of salmon eggs. You like this, my dear? And then I can make some omelette. Okay for you?”

“Excellent, Nadia.”

“Now, where is the vodka you are bringing the other night? I think we drink to our friendship which is a little altered. No?”

It's while searching for the vodka that she notices the blue cablegram. She considers, for the briefest second, just to make sure Larry stays with her tonight, hiding it, letting tomorrow take care of it, but she doesn't do this. She passes it to him in silence. He stares at his name on it in disbelief, then with mingled fear and hope.

“So,” Nadia says quietly, “Miriam sends you at last.”

He opens it quickly, not wanting to give the moment too much reverence. Joltingly, he reads:
Leni died last night. Have been trying to telephone. Please come at once. I love you and need you. Miriam
.

Nadia stares at him, holding her breath. Last night she thought as she lay with him in the funfair flickering light, at last someone comes to me. At last I'm not alone. Now, as Larry looks up from the cable, his face slightly flushed, she knows he's about to be taken from her.

“It's Miriam coming back, my dear?”

“No. Leni's dead. She wants me to go to England.”

Not tonight, not tonight, my dear bean, thinks Nadia . . .

“You won't go tonight?”

“Of course not. Tomorrow or Tuesday.”

“Well . . . I'm so happy for you, my darling. What an upturn! At last she's pushing up the sod, this fucking woman. But how silly, you know. Yesterday, we were at Boulogne. You could have took the ferry and now be with Miriam.”

“Yes, it is strange. The way things occur is often peculiar.”

“Can I read your cable?”

“Of course.”

Larry hands Nadia the torn blue paper.

The words
I love you
stare out at her, yet her mind is still warmed, soothed with Larry's tendernesses towards herself. Her life has in it, she decides, the cruelties of Eden.

“So she is loving you again, Larry. You deserve this. How you deserve! Let me kiss you, my darling, because I think you are so kind a man, so helping and redeeming of Nadia. Whatever happen, I will be grateful. You know?”

“I've done nothing, Nadia. Only what I wanted to do. You're lovely.”

She sits on his knee and he presses a long kiss on her fine little mouth. In bed, she's like a doll, a painting, so round and smooth and small. But even as he holds her and feels her tongue come probing his, he's remembering the big bony body of his wife. Miriam, Miriam, say these gestures of love, says the hardening of his cock under Nadia's perky bottom, Miriam wait for me!

On Tuesday afternoon, near to the time that Larry's boarding the Bordeaux flight to London, Mme. de la Brosse walks up the lane to his house and knocks on his door. Getting no reply, she picks her way round to the back and stands still as a ghost looking down at the swimming pool.

No, she thinks, no, no, no. The effrontery. The presumption. To live in Pomerac, you must obey its old ways, not invent new. “The English,” she mutters: “No taste.” She's a strong Gaullist. She liked the way de Gaulle kept humiliating Wilson. “
Non, alors non
,” she repeats.

She's heard the Maréchal is ill. Her sense of herself as “head” of the village dictates that she visit him. She goes round to Gervaise's gate and calls above the noise of the birds, “Madame Mallélou!”

Gervaise is in her kitchen, resting by sitting still in a straight-backed chair, waiting for one more day to pass, waiting for news of Xavier and for the return of Klaus. Hearing the call, she straightens her apron and goes out into her yard.

“Ah,” says Mme. de la Brosse, “I was told our poor Maréchal is with you. I wanted to call. I've brought him a little Turkish Delight – from my bonbonnier in Paris – for when he's well.”

“Come in, Madame” says Gervaise, “and please forgive my untidiness. My family have gone to Bordeaux.”

“Oh yes? And it seems Mr. Kendal's away too, is he?”

“Yes. Today, he went. His wife's mother's passed on. I don't know when they'll be back.”

“Ah. I see.”

“Have you seen the pool, Madame?”

“Yes, I have.”

“So courageous, we think he is.”

“Courageous, you think?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that's a point of view. Now let's see our old soldier and give him these sweets.”

Gervaise feels anxious as she goes in front of Mme. de la Brosse up the stairs, hating the smell of perfume at her back. Outside the Maréchal's door, she says firmly, “Let me go in first, Madame. He likes me to tidy him up before visitors see him.”

“Oh naturally. I'll wait outside.”

He's asleep and dreaming of Eulalie. She squats in a mustard field, her plaited hair loose and starting out strangely from her head. She smiles and waves a pale hand at the acres of nodding yellow flowers. “Piss!” she announces. “Fields of piss.” She's young. In his dreams and in his wandering mind, Eulalie gets younger and younger. “I am her bridegroom,” he sometimes says out loud.

Gervaise bends over him. Since the early morning, his temperature has been high. His face on the pillows is falling back, sucked inwards towards the skull, and Gervaise blames herself for this sudden deterioration: too much of her strength has fled to Bordeaux with Xavier and Klaus; the little that's left may not be enough to keep the old man alive.

Snoring there, he looks so deeply asleep she doesn't want to wake him. Not for Mme. de la Brosse and her futile sweets. Yet gently, she does. Obedience to Pomerac's hierarchy comes as easily, as naturally to Gervaise as the opening phrase of the
Our Father
. She puts out a hand to the Maréchal's face and says: “Forgive me, Maréchal. Forgive me this once for waking you . . .”

But he's glad to leave his peculiar dream of Eulalie in the mustard field, to see Gervaise and the calm white walls of the room.

“
Mon dieu
 . . .” he says.

“Let's sit you up a little.”

“They torment you, dreams.”

“Come on,
mon vieux
, let's sit you up.”

“What's happened, Gervaise?”

“Nothing. Madame de la Brosse has come to see you. She's brought you something.”

The stretched face collapses into a smile. “Not a pencil box!”

“No, no . . .”

“That's what they used to give – books and pencil boxes.”

“I know, Maréchal.”

“But I never had much learning. Not me.”

“All right, are you? Shall I show her in?”

“My breath stinks, Gervaise. That's death for you.”

“Ssh . . .”

“You stay, Gervaise.”

“No. She wants to talk to you.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. I don't ask.”

She doesn't stay very long. When Gervaise goes up to the room again, the gift-wrapped box of candy has been placed on his feet. He's staring at it, moving it up and down like a little pink boat.

“Why's the house so quiet, Gervaise?”

“Well, Klaus and Mallélou aren't back.”

“Something's happening, Gervaise. I don't trust this quiet.”

“Nothing's happening here, Maréchal. And Xavier –”

“Keep a watch out, Gervaise.”

“What?”

“I feel it.”

“You must sleep, Maréchal. I'm sorry to have woken you.”

“Don't blame me, Gervaise.”

“
Blame
you?”

“If something happens. Don't think I caused it.”

“You're safe here. Quite safe.”

“It's not me I'm afraid for.”

She removes the sweet box from his feet and sets it by him on a table. At this moment Xavier could be riding to prison with the police light turning.

“Is it . . .” she asks as she straightens the Maréchal's blankets, “is it Xavier?”