Ripley's Game (3 page)

Simone was at the stove, wearing an apron over her dress, wielding a long fork. ‘Hello, Jon. You’re a little late.’

Jonathan put an arm around her and kissed her cheek, then held up the paper box, swung it towards Georges who was sitting at the table, blond head bent, cutting out parts for a mobile from an empty box of cornflakes.

‘Ah, a cake! What kind?’ Georges asked.

‘Apple.’ Jonathan set the box on the table.

They had a small steak each, the delicious fried potatoes, a green salad.

‘Brezard is starting inventory,’ Simone said. ‘The summer stock comes in next week, so he wants to have a sale Friday and Saturday. I might be a little late tonight.’

She had warmed the apple tart on the asbestos plate. Jonathan waited impatiently for Georges to go in the living-room where a lot of his toys were, or out to the garden. When Georges left finally Jonathan said:

‘I had a funny letter today from Alan.’

‘Alan? Funny how?’

‘He wrote it just before he went to New York. It seems he’s heard —’ Should he show her Alan’s letter? She could read English well enough. Jonathan decided to go on. ‘He’s heard somewhere that I’m worse, due for a bad crisis – or something. Do you know anything about it?’ Jonathan watched her eyes.

Simone looked genuinely surprised. ‘Why no, Jon. How would I hear – except from you?’

‘I spoke with Dr Perrier just now. That’s why I was a bit late. Perrier says he doesn’t know of any change in the situation, but you know Perrier!’ Jonathan smiled, still watching Simone anxiously. ‘Well, here’s the letter,’ he said, pulling it from his back pocket. He translated the paragraph.

‘Mon dieu! –
Well, where did
he
hear it from?’

‘Yes, that’s the question. I’ll write him and ask. Don’t you think?’ Jonathan smiled again, a more genuine smile. He was sure Simone didn’t know anything about it.

Jonathan carried a second cup of coffee into the small square living-room where Georges was now sprawled on the floor with his cut-outs. Jonathan sat down at the writing desk, which always made him feel like a giant. It was a rather dainty French
écritoire,
a present from Simone’s family. Jonathan was careful not to put too much weight on the writing shelf. He addressed an air-letter to Alan McNear at the Hotel New Yorker, began the letter breezily enough, and wrote a second paragraph:

I don’t know quite what you mean in your letter about the news (about me) which shocked you. I feel all right, but this morning spoke with my doctor here to see if he was giving me the whole story. He disclaims any knowledge of a worse condition. So dear Alan, what does interest me is where did you hear it? Could you possibly drop me a line soon? It sounds like a misunderstanding, I’d be delighted to forget it, but I hope you can understand my curiosity as to where you heard it.

He dropped the letter in a yellow box
en route
to his shop. It would probably be a week before he heard from Alan.

That afternoon, Jonathan’s hand was as steady as ever as he pulled his razor knife down the edge of his steel ruler. He thought of his letter, making its progress to Orly airport, maybe by this evening, maybe by tomorrow morning. He thought of his age, thirty-four, and of how pitifully little he would have done if he were to die in another couple of months. He’d produced a son, and that was something, but hardly an achievement worthy of special praise. He would not leave Simone very secure. If anything, he had lowered her standard of living slightly. Her father was only a coal merchant, but somehow over the years her family had gathered a few conveniences of life around them, a car for instance, decent furniture. They vacationed in June or July down south in a villa which they rented, and last year they had paid a month’s rent so that Jonathan and Simone could go there with Georges. Jonathan had not done as well as his brother Philip, two years older than himself, though Philip had looked physically weaker, had been a dull, plodding type all his life. Now Philip was a professor of anthropology at Bristol University, not brilliant, Jonathan was sure, but a good solid man with a solid career, a wife and two children. Jonathan’s mother, a widow now, had a happy existence with her brother and sister-in-law in Oxfordshire, taking care of the big garden there and doing all the shopping and cooking. Jonathan felt himself the failure of his family, both physically and as to his work. He had first wanted to be an actor. At eighteen he’d gone to a drama school for two years. He’d not a bad face for an actor, he thought, not too handsome with a big nose and wide mouth, yet good-looking enough to play romantic roles, and at the same time heavy enough to play heavier roles in time. What pipe dreams! He’d hardly got two walk-on parts in the three years he’d hung around London and Manchester theatres – always supporting himself, of course, by odd jobs, including one as a veterinary’s assistant. ‘You take up a lot of space and you’re not even sure of yourself,’ a director once said to him. And then, working for an antique dealer in another of his odd jobs, Jonathan had thought he might like the antique business. He had learned all he could from his boss, Andrew Mott. Then the grand move to France with his chum Roy Johnson, who had also had enthusiasm, if not much knowledge, for starting an antique shop via the junk trade. Jonathan remembered his dreams of glory and adventure in a new country, France, dreams of freedom, of success. And instead of success, instead of a series of educational mistresses, instead of making friends with the bohemians, or with some stratum of French society which Jonathan had imagined existed but perhaps didn’t – instead of all this Jonathan had continued to limp along, no better off really than when he’d been trying to get jobs as an actor and had supported himself any old way.

The only successful thing in his whole life was his marriage to Simone, Jonathan thought. The news of his disease had come in the same month he had met Simone Foussadier. He’d begun to feel strangely weak and had romantically thought that it might be due to falling in love. But a little extra rest hadn’t shaken the weakness, he had fainted once in a street of Nemours, so he had gone to a doctor – Dr Perrier in Fontainebleau, who had suspected a blood condition and sent him to a Dr Moussu in Paris. The specialist Moussu, after two days of tests, had confirmed myeloid leukemia, and said that he might have from six to eight, with luck twelve years to live. There would be an enlargement of the spleen, which in fact Jonathan already had without having noticed it. Thus Jonathan’s proposal to Simone had been a declaration of love and death in the same awkward speech. It would have been enough to put most young women off, or to have made them say they needed time to think about it. Simone had said yes, she loved him too. ‘It is the love that is important, not the time,’ Simone had said. None of the calculations that Jonathan had associated with the French, and with Latins in general. Simone said she had already spoken to her family. And this after they had known each other only two weeks. Jonathan felt himself suddenly in a world more secure than any he had ever known. Love, in a real and not a merely romantic sense, love that he had no control over, had miraculously rescued him. In a way, he felt that it had rescued him from death, but he realized that he meant that love had taken the terror out of death. And here was death six years later, as Dr Moussu in Paris had predicted. Perhaps. Jonathan didn’t know what to believe.

He must make another visit to Moussu in Paris, he thought. Three years ago, Jonathan had had a complete change of blood under Dr Moussu’s supervision in a Paris hospital. The treatment was called Vincainestine, the idea or die hope being that the excess of white with accompanying yellow components would not return to the blood. But the yellow excess had reappeared in about eight months.

Before he made an appointment with Dr Moussu, however, Jonathan preferred to wait for a letter from Alan McNear. Alan would write at once, Jonathan felt sure. One could count on Alan.

Jonathan, before he left his shop, cast one desperate glance around its Dickensian interior. It wasn’t really dusty, it was just that the walls needed repainting. He wondered if he should make an effort to spruce the place up, start soaking his customers as so many picture framers did, sell lacquered brass items with big mark-ups? Jonathan winced. He wasn’t the type.

That day was Wednesday. On Friday, while bending over a stubborn screw-eye that had been in an oak frame for perhaps a hundred and fifty years and had no intention of yielding to his pliers, Jonathan had suddenly to drop the pliers and look for a seat. The seat was a wooden box against a wall. He got up almost at once and wet his face at the sink, bending as low as he could. In five minutes or so, the faintness passed, and by lunch-time he had forgotten about it. Such moments came every two or three months, and Jonathan was glad if they didn’t catch him on the street. On Tuesday, six days after he had posted his letter to Alan, he received a letter from the Hotel New Yorker.

Sat. March 25

Dear Jon,

Believe me, I’m glad you spoke with your doctor and that the news is good! The person who told me you were in a serious way was a little balding fellow with moustache and a glassy eye, early forties maybe. He seemed really concerned, and perhaps you shouldn’t hold it too much against him, as he may have heard it from someone else.

I’m enjoying this town and wish you and Simone were here, esp. as I’m on an expense account…

The man Alan meant was Pierre Gauthier, who had an art supply shop in the Rue Grande. He was not a friend of Jonathan’s, just an acquaintance. Gauthier often sent people to Jonathan to have their pictures framed. Gauthier had been at the house the night of Alan’s send-off party, Jonathan remembered distinctly, and must have spoken to Alan then. It was out of the question that Gauthier had spoken maliciously. Jonathan was only a little surprised that Gauthier even knew he had a blood ailment, though the word did get around, Jonathan realized. Jonathan thought the thing to do was speak to Gauthier and ask him where he’d heard the story.

It was 8.’0 a.m. Jonathan had waited for the post, as he had yesterday morning also. His impulse was to go straight to Gauthier’s, but he felt this would show unseemly anxiety, and that he’d better get his bearings by going to his shop and opening as usual.

Because of three or four customers, Jonathan hadn’t a break till 10.25 a.m. He left his clock card in the glass of his door indicating that he would be open again at 11 a.m.

When Jonathan entered the art supply shop, Gauthier was busy with two women customers. Jonathan pretended to browse among racks of paint brushes until Gauthier was free. Then he said:

‘M. Gauthier! How goes it?’ Jonathan extended a hand.

Gauthier clasped Jonathan’s hand in both his own and smiled. ‘And you, my friend?’

‘Well enough, thank you….
Ecoutez’
I don’t want to take your time – but there is something I would like to ask you.’

‘Yes? What’s that?’

Jonathan beckoned Gauthier farther away from the door which might open at any minute. There was not much standing room in the little shop. ‘I heard from a friend – my friend Alan, you remember? The Englishman. At the party at my house a few weeks ago.’

‘Yes! Your friend the Englishman. Alain.’ Gauthier remembered and looked attentive.

Jonathan tried to avoid even glancing at Gauthier’s false eye, but to concentrate on the other eye. ‘Well, it seems you told Alan that you’d heard I was very ill, maybe not going to live much longer.’

Gauthier’s soft face grew solemn. He nodded. ‘Yes, m’sieur, I did hear that. I hope it’s not true. I remember Alain, because you introduced him to me as your best friend. So I assumed he knew. Perhaps I should have said nothing. I am sorry, it was perhaps tactless. I thought you were – in the English style – putting on a brave face.’

‘It’s nothing serious, M. Gauthier, because as far as I know, it’s not true! I’ve just spoken with my doctor. But —’

‘
Ah, bon!
Ah well, that’s different! I’m delighted to hear that, M. Trevanny! Ha! Ha!’ Pierre Gauthier gave a clap of laughter as if a ghost had been laid, and he found not only Jonathan but himself back among the living.

‘But I’d like to know where you heard this. Who told you I was ill?’

‘Ah – yes!’ Gauthier pressed a finger to his lips, thinking. ‘Who? A man. Yes – of
course?
He had it, but he paused.

Jonathan waited.

‘But I remember he said he wasn’t sure. He’d heard it, he said. An incurable blood disease, he said.’

Jonathan felt warm with anxiety again, as he had felt several times in the past week. He wet his lips. ‘But who? How did he hear it? Didn’t he say?’

Gauthier again hesitated. ‘Since it isn’t true – shouldn’t we best forget it?’

‘Someone you know very well?’

‘No! Not at all well, I assure you.’

‘A customer.’

‘Yes. Yes, he is. A nice man, a gentleman. But since he
said
he wasn’t sure – Really,
m’sieur,
you shouldn’t bear a resentment, although I can understand how you could resent such a remark.’

‘Which leads to the interesting question how did the gentleman come to hear I was very ill,’ Jonathan went on, laughing now.

‘Yes. Exactly. Well, the point is, it isn’t true. Isn’t that the main thing?’

Jonathan saw in Gauthier a French politeness, and unwillingness to alienate a customer, and – which was to be expected – an aversion to the subject of death. ‘You’re right. That’s the main thing.’ Jonathan shook hands with Gauthier, both of them smiling now, and bade him adieu.

That very day at lunch, Simone asked Jonathan if he had heard from Alan. Jonathan said yes.

‘It was Gauthier who said something to Alan.’

‘Gauthier? The art shop man?’

‘Yes.’ Jonathan was lighting a cigarette over his coffee. Georges had gone out into the garden. ‘I went to see Gauthier this morning and I asked him where he’d heard it. He said from a customer. A man. – Funny, isn’t it? Gauthier wouldn’t tell me who, and I can’t really blame him. It’s some mistake, of course. Gauthier realizes that.’