Loving Amélie (19 page)

He saw him when the bell rang
for the end of lessons: Peter was red in the face and surrounded by a number of
his mates, energised by the tale he was recounting. The older boys scattered
briefly when the younger one approached: putting their conversations on hold;
seemingly ignorant of Chris’s cowardly involvement in Peter’s heroics.

“How did it go?” he asked.

Peter’s red face was a palette
of mirth and nervous tension; and pain. He looked carefully about himself
before bringing up his hand to show his brother: it was pierced through between
thumb and forefinger with a small bluish hole.

“He stabbed me with a compass,
the bastard,” he said, unable to fully express his suffering for laughter.

Chris stared down at the wound
in mute disbelief: his insides curdling with a misery he would never forget,
despite his brother wearing it for his friends for a time as a badge of honour
and then never mentioning it ever again.

                                                                       
*

“It’s not exactly a legally
binding document is it?” said Linda with a giggle, fingering the business card
of Pierre Auguste Bénoit. It had been badly crumpled in Chris’s pocket. She
basked, occasionally, in the knowledge that she was a seasoned business woman
with a businesslike heritage; unlike either of the boys. She curled her legs up
under her on the sofa.

Chris sat opposite his brother
and sister-in-law in their flat in Belsize Park: a welcome change for the three
of them to be socialising away from
Skinner’s
. Amélie busied herself on her back:
making tracks in the sheepskin rug and playing ball with a wooden apple.

Chris pondered the rise of
wooden fruit in bowls on the coffee tables of the
Habitat
shopper: this particular
specimen was a smooth, nicely made objet d’art; and Amélie was certainly
enjoying holding it to her watery mouth for as long as she could before it
rolled heavily away and needed retrieving for the exercise to begin over. But
it was
wooden
fruit
: a
concept beyond Chris’s ken.

“No,” he said, in response.
“But, as I understood it, Amé’s uncle is acting for her father and will be true
to his word. The payment will be honoured. He seems to think I am taking on the
main role as the baby’s carer and wants to pay me for my pains.”

“And the social worker?” said
Peter. He looked on benignly as his niece continued her game; and eventually
joined in by passing the errant apple back to Chris whenever it came his way.
“Isn’t she suggesting you shouldn’t be the main carer: in which case, your pop-in-law
is going to withdraw his kind offer?”

“I’m not sure the Bénoits are
types to worry themselves too much about social workers,” said Chris. He was
trapped between the moral incentives of both Amélie’s father and the righteous
Eileen. “And with some cash in the bank I could find a different place to live:
and make an investment for the baby’s future.
That
would make me a more than adequate
parent; if they need proof of it.”

“It’s nearly a
million
quid,” said Linda, passionately, sitting forward suddenly and taking up the
disrespected piece of card with renewed interest. “If they’re serious, this
gives you the chance of a lifetime.”

“I know,” said Chris.

“We
have
to talk to him about France,” she
went on, looking intently at the side of Peter’s head; which was held a little
distractedly in his hands. He was relaxing: drinking wine and eating good
quality takeaway Thai food, but he would be thinking about the bistro: Chris
was sure of it.

“What about France?” asked
Chris.

“We have talked about buying a
restaurant at the skiing resort we go to each year,” Linda continued over her
husband’s silence. “Managed from a distance, of course. We would still have our
jobs here. It would be something geared towards the English clientele.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Chris,
looking at his brother, who would still not be drawn. Peter took over as
Amélie’s ball boy.

“We’ve talked to my dad about
it, but, as you know, he put the cash up for
Skinner’s
and I think he’s a bit
reticent to invest again…”

“I think he’s thinking about
Vanessa and Nadine,” Peter interrupted. “Who
haven’t
had the benefit of any
investment.”

“Maybe,” said Linda, bridling,
but smiling openly at the two men: “But they haven’t been in a position to need
investment, unlike us. Ness is happy producing her horses and Nadine is
married
to
money. But that’s beside the point; or could be. With Chris’s help we could buy
a place
without
needing to borrow; and we could all reap the rewards. Baby Amélie
included.”

She concluded her rationale
with a decisive knock of her knuckles against the coffee table, which agitated
the wine in their glasses.

“This is the first Chris has
heard of the idea,” said Peter, with an edge of criticism.

“No matter,” said Chris. “I can
see why you wouldn’t have mentioned it.” He gave them both a nod of
encouragement: “And why you would now.”

Peter put the wooden apple back
in the fruit bowl, where the saliva stain made it stand out as darker than the
other apple, and the pear. He picked up the remote control to select a music
track on the hi-fi.

“It’s something for us to think
about, anyway,” said Linda, undeterred. She left the boys listening to
Parachutes
by
Coldplay while she went to look out the package of baby clothes sent by Nadine
who no longer needed for them her own daughters. They finished their lunch; and
Chris announced that he and Amélie should be heading home.

He was part way down Belsize
Lane when he realised he had left the baby items behind. The front door of
their ground floor flat was on the latch and he pushed it back open with a
‘helloo?’

His brother and sister-in-law
were in their kitchen clearing plates, and he was out of their hearing.

“It would help if you didn’t
always treat him like he was an idiot,” he heard Linda saying over the clash of
cutlery. “It’s no wonder he’s the way he is. Honestly.”

“I
don’t
treat him like an idiot,” Peter
replied in an even tone. “He’s my little brother.”

Chris picked up his forgotten
package, and his million pound business card, and withdrew hastily out of the
building.

Tomorrow, he had decided, he
was heading for Queen’s Gardens; and a reunion with his baby’s mother.

Chapter Nineteen

Adrienne Bénoit checked her
reflection in the mirror that hung in the hallway of her daughter’s apartment before
opening the communal front door. It was a reflex borne out of years of self
preservation rather than merely the act of vanity it might have appeared.

She was still a formidably
attractive woman in her fifies. She had married her husband Claude when she was
only twenty and pregnant with their first child. He was a law student at the
Postgraduate School of Magistrature, whom she had met at a party to celebrate
the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. She thought he shared her views on human
rights and wondered if he might be headed for a career representing the
disadvantaged: a reckless, if romantic, notion after a bottle of champagne.

She had intercourse with him on
her friend Mimi’s double bed and instantly regretted it. He lay on top of her
with his head buried in the pillow at her neck for a full five minutes
afterwards; before disappearing into the bathroom for a further ten. She was
sure she heard him sobbing: felt miserable with pity for him, and wanted to
creep to the other bathroom, have a quick shower and leave. But he found her
– looking as though he had composed himself – and insisted on
taking her home. They were married six months later.

She tried to love Claude with a
passion; but he was an unattractive, insensitive man who seemed to suffer a kind
of inner conflict with himself for adoring his wife on the one hand and yet
bitterly resenting the emotional hold she had over him on the other. It wasn’t
as though their predicament had forced them into marriage - she had quite made
up her mind to terminate the pregnancy – but he was hell bent on having
her, and, as she had hoped to have a child one day, it made sense to let it be
then. With him.

When the chaos of her
daughter’s birth had subsided, Adrienne adjusted meekly to the change in her
routine from working woman to that of wife and mother. She had been a
dressmaker, who now no longer needed to work, as her newly qualified husband
was well connected and immediately earning a good salary. He would never
approve of a working wife: but he was broadly impressed by the nursery box of
pretty outfits she made for baby Angélique, and, of course, by her own taste in
couture that she was encouraged to indulge at the fashion houses of Paris.

 
It was probably because she had too much time on her hands,
she admonished herself, that she found herself yearning for a different life.
Her brother and sister were not so fortunate: one a shopkeeper, the other a
bookkeeper, without the luxury of an apartment in the city and all the
trappings that went with it. Within a year of marriage, she was too ashamed to
keep inviting them to visit her, and they were too embarrassed, or envious, to
come.

She knew Claude’s feelings ran
deeply, and sensually, for her; and yet she could not make him excite her in
the bedroom. She read one or two books; and even confided in a close friend,
with whom she normally only discussed the weather, internal décor and
vacations.

She bought the prettiest
‘nuisette’ from her favourite boutique. The shop assistant shared her taste in
underwear as well as her vital statistics: and observed her in the mirror with
a look of almost indecent rapture:

“Oh, Madame, it becomes you,”
she had said.

“But will it work on
him
?” replied
Adrienne.

“
C’est pas, moi,
” said the assistant.
“But if it doesn’t, nothing will.”

It made him weep; as their
lovemaking had done on that first night when she conceived their daughter. But
he had been unable to perform, entirely, in a way that could satisfy them both.

“Please see someone,” she had
implored eventually, over breakfast, but taking care to remain out of the
earshot of the housekeeper who busied around them at that time of the day. “I
can’t bear it, Claude; and
you
can’t be happy with the prospect that you may never have a
son.”

It was, perhaps, these words
that induced him to visit a therapist in another arrondissement, who came
recommended by a fellow
magistrat
. Quite how her husband found the nerve to discuss his
marital tensions at work, she would never understand; but she was grateful for
the intervention.

Claude attended three
appointments; then declared the psychiatrist to be a charlatan who, he knew for
a fact, was telling most of
 
Paris
how they might better run their lives, whilst he,
himself,
was betraying his poor sick
wife with another of his wealthy clients.

In the meantime, however, he
succeeded in fully appreciating her new lingerie and impregnating her with
their second daughter, Amélie.

“You must be Chris,” she said,
as she opened the door to a dark haired younger man with a pushchair containing
her granddaughter. “And Amélie:
ma petite puce.
Come in, I will tell her you
are here.”

                                                                       
*

“You have cut your hair.”

It was all he managed to say,
as his body stiffened to remain in control of his unseated heart. He kept a
tight grip of the handle of Amélie’s pushchair, which he had convinced himself,
ahead of this moment, would hold him steady. Somehow, through the padded
upholstery and moulded metal, their baby girl would give him the strength he
needed for this encounter.

She put her hands up to her temples
a little self-consciously.

“Yes. I went to Sara’s
hairdresser.”

“Ah, the inimitable Tobias.”

It grazed her jaw bone, rather
than skimming her shoulders as he had remembered it – cut slightly higher
at the back. He imagined her sitting sullenly in Tobias’s salon as he
effervesced around her: fooling and flattering himself like a snake paying
court to a beautiful statue.

“I think it suits you,” he
said; meaning that she looked even more alluring than ever, barefoot, in a
black sweater and jeans. She bent down to release their daughter from her reins
and sweep her up into her arms.

“I have made a
navarin
for
lunch,” said Adrienne, at a delicate distance from Chris’s shoulder. “I shall
go out for bread.”

“Thank you,” he said. He
extended his hand to Amélie’s mother as she was departing, as though he
appreciated her leaving but willed her to stay at the same time. She emanated
Chanel
perfume,
and dignity. She left the small disjointed arm of her family to their reunion.