The Widow (34 page)

The other side of this is Human Sciences, where Arthur had a little niche appropriate to a visitor, not all that distinguished a one. It is a series of drearily rectangular blocks joined by glassed-in catwalks, looking extremely like a jail and covered in slogans of unimaginative rancour about FASCHISTS. Nobody in a Human Sciences faculty ever knows how to spell.

Cross a parking lot and you step down on the Rue de Rome, where students buy books and supermarket food, and occasionally send their clothes to the cleaners. Philippe lived just the far side.

The party was what she had expected, but Arlette enjoyed herself. Students were better-mannered than those of her generation, or even her sons. Much more ignorant, while about as incurious. But kinder surely, gentler, less aggressive. Or was it just that Philippe, being nice, had nice friends? Ruth's friends, only two or three years ago, had seemed so much shriller and less washed, and much more brutally egoist. Was it that she herself was becoming just a bit nicer?

There was the usual conversation.

‘It's always said to be a cliché to say that history helps one understand the present, but is it?'

‘What is a cliché is to put it the other way round and say the present is the only way of understanding the past.'

‘There isn't any present. There's an immediate future. And
a past which immediately becomes very far away and small because of no perspective – talking about the present at all is a cliché.'

Arlette came under fire.

‘Now Arlette, what's all this do-good lark?'

‘I try to overcome solitude.'

‘Exactly like the people who hold talk sessions all about their innermost it sounds like.'

‘Except they don't have to bawl it all out in public. I don't make them take their clothes off either.'

‘She steps in where all the priests are now scared to. A modern confessional. Do you talk to them about Jesus?'

‘No, but if you'll shut up a moment, I'll tell you what I do do. Then you can come tomorrow.'

‘What do you charge them?'

‘I don't charge them anything at all unless they feel that I've done something valuable. What word would you use? – Positive? Tangible? Since I'm not a shrink, nor a lawyer, nor a detective. Nor an introduction bureau. I find out what I'm not, bit by bit.'

There were the usual drinks too; things you give somebody else to drink.

‘What's wrong with your hand?'

‘I caught it in the door. It's rather swollen and sore, that's all.'

Arthur rescued her before she got too silly.

‘You had a nice time: surrounded by girls.'

‘Well you seemed to have virile young men in sufficient number. Let's take the other way, it's prettier.' He meant simply the next alleyway down, the other side of the Law Faculty. It has no name. It is narrower and has older trees. ‘Take my arm. You're not scared are you?'

‘With you, of course not. A little chilled. They always turn their central heating too high.'

‘If anything this is even better lit.' The lamp standards were the same here as in a street; high ones given a graceful curve, like tulips.

The plane trees, clinging to the last of their leaves, cast a pretty shadow. This was the edge of the campus; the tall residential blocks of the Avenue de l'Esplanade gazed blindly down. They passed the children's playground: Arlette liked the sandpit with its big irregular blocks of the soft red local stone. The Place d'Athénes in front of the Law Faculty, boasting an unseemly piece of sculpture, nominally Athena: she'd never win any golden apples. They were at the level of the Chemistry School, only two minutes from home, stepping out now, no longer chilled.

A man came out of the bushes three metres away. Low down by his side the blade of a knife, looking very large, shone in the light. He was tall and wore a hat. His face was a blur; there might be a stocking over it.

There was a second's stillness in which Arlette's intake of breath made a trembly sound.

Arthur wished he had a stick. He had a collection of sticks, and generally walked with one. Not only in the country; they were useful in crossing the road and helped, he believed, to deter unpleasant youths. It hadn't seemed worth the trouble, to go only as far as-Philippe's.

Without a stick, there seemed very little one could do. He was fairly light on his feet and took exercise. But his reactions would be slow, far too slow. He concluded drearily that this was the end of him. He hoped it wouldn't hurt too much. Knives, he rather thought, did hurt, badly.

Arlette had a frock, and high-heeled shoes. Not very suitable garments these. She was trying to think of things Corinne had taught her about nasty youths with knives. She
knew they all involved her right hand, and she didn't have any right hand, only a limp thing in a limp glove.

She did have her pistol, rather guiltily brought along. The Lord knew what good it was supposed to be. She couldn't fire it with her left hand. One could squib it off perhaps, but that all needed lots of time. It was in her handbag, and that was tucked under her left armpit, and she was all out of time.

If they had made the mistake of clinging together… Antique instinct of mutual protection, or safety in numbers, or perhaps, most pitiful of all, the male putting himself in front of the little woman.

They had obeyed an instinct much older and separated, moving sideways away from one another. Wolves, contrary to a shocking amount of myth, virtually never attack men. If a man seems to behave aggressively, and the male is with his mate, and she on heat, they will both attack. They will do so in coordination: one going for the arm, the other for the leg. A man who knew a lot about wolves once forgot this. He got badly bitten. He said, ‘That was entirely my fault.'

The man with the knife hesitated a second. He wanted the woman. He wanted the man too. His only mistake was in being greedy, and wondering for just too long which he wanted first.

Arthur didn't know anything at all about combat, or men with knives. His military days were long behind him and had been a great bore, with occasional intervals of being alarmed and wondering why one was not much more alarmed. But he had once been to an English school. He had made up his mind in the second of hesitation. There was nothing for this but an effort at a rugby tackle. If you went at somebody head first, that surely decreased the target. And wasn't it barely possible that if you plunged at someone the knife might miss you?

He didn't have a scrumhalf build, unhappily. He lurched forward clumsily at the same time as the man made a horrible low pass with the knife. A short right hook, very nasty indeed, at his genital apparatus, which he valued. He tried to swerve to his own right, which spoilt his aim. He got hold of one leg.
He felt the knife sting him like a nettle. He fell on his face on the hard ground, and let the leg go again. It wasn't in any way a nice leg. He had a sad feeling of failure. He always did seem to fail things and this would be one time too many.

The man had been taken off his balance, and his knife had got mixed up with Arthur's raincoat. At this moment Arlette hit him with her handbag with the gun inside it, with all her force, and launched as ferocious a kick as her skirt would allow at his crutch.

Neither effort was really good. She'd wanted the gun to catch him on the temple and it didn't: it hit him on the ear and only made him madder. The silk skirt tore with the kick, which didn't have enough force in it. Even quite a small kick in the crutch with a high-heeled shoe will put paid to your evil-minded inclinations for a long time but it hadn't been accurate enough: it only jarred his hipbone. Arlette fell on the hard ground, hurting her knee which she didn't notice, and her sore hand which she did: she uttered a howl of consternation and pain, and couldn't get up.

The man went staggering. He wasn't in the least hurt. He was bumped, and banged, and unbalanced, and anger exploded inside him, making him powerless for a moment. He reeled back three or four paces, his legs wide apart and one of them not quite answering properly. He still had his knife, though he'd missed with it twice. Now they were on the ground, and that would be the end of them. Two sitting ducks, who had flapped their wings and spoilt his aim, but he'd clipped them and they were swimming feebly on the water and now would put paid to both, these two silly, struggling objects. He caught his breath back and got his feet together. Arlette, on the floor, watched and waited to die. The knife was a big one, with a curve to it. A Catalan knife. A thing more evil than any gun.

As she watched the man's legs were taken out from under him as though by a jerked lasso. The four pistol shots came very close together, so that she heard only one enormous noise. Unable to move at all with a stunned leg and a stunned arm
and waves of pain making her sick she sat and gawked. The man's head hit the floor with a bump and the knife fell out of his hand. She wasn't going to die on the street. Like Piet.

A man was running, fast and furiously, in an apish kind of way, with speedy tough legs and long arms that hung by his sides. Stupidly, she recognized Divisional Inspector Papi. He went for the man on the floor with controlled concentration: he caught the man's head by the hair and jerked it up, but it was limp. Very fast, he dropped the gun he was holding, snapped the man's hands behind his back and handcuffed them. He came running over to Arthur, who was lying on his front getting his breath back from a kick in the chest he hadn't even known about.

Simultaneously Arlette felt hands under her armpits. Something warm and female put her face against her own and Corinne's voice said, ‘Are you all right, oh are you all right,' breathless and panting.

Papi was lifting Arthur, and then let him go again. Arlette wondered why. What was he doing? He let Arthur go and fumbled at his gunbelt. His shirt came out. He ripped at it with big apey hands. It tore away in a strip. While tearing more strips he raised his head and bawled, ‘Samu' at someone unseen. He said, ‘Keep still,' and heaved Arthur's raincoat up out of the way. He wound strips round Arthur's thigh and twisted at them

Arlette was on her feet, heaved up, limping, running, she was down again on her knees by Arthur. Corinne's arms took her gently by the body and the warm jerky voice, like blood flowing from a cut artery, said, ‘All right, all right, don't touch, he's doing the right thing.'

‘All right,' said Papi in his Corsican accent. ‘It's not the big artery, he'll be all right.' They kept saying all right; it was maddening. Say something else.

She took his head between her hands. His mouth was open and she suddenly saw his teeth, in a rather expensive couturier colour-scheme under the bright street-lamp. From dark brown to an elegant pale ivory, with contrasting bits of navy blue and
discreet gold trappings. Arthur was grinning at her. ‘I'm fine,' he was saying. ‘Did it touch you?'

‘No, I hurt my stupid knee. I'm fine, I'm fine and so are you.' They were hauling her up on her feet again. ‘They got him,' she said.

‘As nearly as possible didn't,' said Papi bitterly. ‘I couldn't get a clear shot: you were in my light all the time.'

‘I had to run sideways,' said Corinne, ‘My hand was shaking; I had to brace to be sure of getting him.'

‘You got him all right girl. Knee and calf. He won't be running away anywhere.'

Corinne holding Arlette up bent and felt her knee. ‘That's just a bit of skin. And your tights bust. And your skirt bust. You gave him a good one. You know, that was what gave me time.'

‘He'd have had you both,' said Papi. ‘I couldn't shoot for fear of hitting you, and then I fell over in the fucking bushes. Your man did exactly the right thing. In the thigh can be bad but it glanced along the inside. If he hadn't dived he'd have had it in the belly. Samu'll be here any sec.' It is a nice acronym. Service ambulance medical urgency.

What with the shooting and the shouting a good few windows and shutters had opened along the big white wall of flats. It was like being in a theatre. Arlette felt she ought to be Maria Callas.

‘White Fang,' said Papi picking up the knife. ‘Catalan, that,' examining the S-shaped horn handle and the simple locking mechanism. ‘Far worse wound than a gun shot. Stick you with that it's for real. If he'd got you tha boss would have had my balls.'

‘I don't have any,' said Arlette, ‘but I know just what you mean.'

The fast van took all three of them to emergency-out-patients, Corinne and Papi following in the police car.

‘My,' said the nurse, ‘you've been in the wars,' looking at her hand, ‘but it's nothing; just lie quiet a bit.'

‘My husband – his thigh was cut.'

‘Haemostatic – no I won't be technical. We had to put clamps, and it'll have to be sutured but it's nothing at all to worry about. The inspector did a good job with the first aid. Of course, if a cop can't do that what bloody use is he? Your man's in surgery but he'll be out in half an hour and you'll be over the shock by then. Just lie quiet and rest.'

‘And the other?'

‘His knee joint's in a horrible mess and cops are hanging over him like vultures. We had to clear them all away. One doesn't have to feel very sorry for him, I gather. Just that they were in the way. Now don't talk; I've given you a sedative.'

She went to sleep a little, she thought. She woke up as one does at a quiet movement, when one would sleep through the professional banging and shouting of nurses. A slim, grey, middle-aged man had come into her cubicle and was smiling at her. He had an academic look like a sociology professor. Oh well, not far out. She knew him very slightly by sight. He was the second-in-command of the Police Judiciaire, the sous-chef as he was called. He had beautiful manners. He said, ‘May I sit down?' and then, ‘I felt some explanations were due to you. If you feel up to that already.'