A Period of Adjustment (25 page)

On the morning of his birthday Giles gave an extremely convincing impersonation of someone having a catatonic fit. He suffered a severe attack of cataplexy and just stood rooted to the floor of the Long Room after he had ripped the paper away from the large carton I had lugged from the Zoo-Pare of Futurama the day I had gone to alter my own image with too tight jeans and classy shirts.

The picture on the glossy box, like all pictures on glossy boxes, did not exactly match up to the contents. However, overlooking glittering shoals of brilliant fish, luxuriant water weeds, mermaids and chunks of unlikely coral, what he had before him was his long-desired aquarium. Not too large - a good beginner's size – plus oxygenator, lights and a handbook on ‘How to Maintain Your Underwater Magic-Land' in a frantic French translation from the Japanese. I felt compelled to help him open everything up, as he had
clearly gone into a temporary decline. I waved the handbook at him, to try and break the glassy-eyed stare.

‘This is what you wanted? Isn't it? You asked for it that day in the garden when Florence was here. Remember? Giles? Move!
Do
something.'

He brushed his hands over his face roughly. ‘I'm trying to. It's just brilliant! You remembered. Oh! It's brilliant! And it's really
quite
big.'

The spell had broken, and he was suddenly a small boy again, joyous and gay. ‘Wow! Wow! Oh, this is great. I'll have to get rocks, and sand, and weeds and – oh!
Wow!'

The morning was still cool, the sunlight had not yet probed through the denseness of the heavy vine, did not, as yet, play across the cool tiles of the floor, and the sweet air, fresh and clean, was suddenly warmed by the scent of coffee and hot croissants as Clotilde came in carrying a heavy tray which she set down on a small table.

‘Voilà! Bonjour! Félicitations, Gilles, et regarde! Des cadeaux, de la part de mon ami et moi-même.' And she handed him a tube-shaped package by a string handle. For a second it swung between them, Giles's eyes bright, hers sparkling with pleasure at his apprehensive delight. He ripped off the jazzy wrapping-paper to disclose four small goldfish nosing and gasping desperately up and down the sides of a screw top Nescafé jar. He started at the frantic little fish, set the jar carefully on the floor amidst the wreckage of the aquarium wrappings, and threw his arms tightly about her waist, his head beating lovingly against her breasts. ‘
Just
what I wanted! You
knew!
Thank you! Thank you! Look at my aquarium!' Clotilde detached herself gently, began setting out cups and saucers, the confiture and croissants. ‘From Monoprix, yesterday. So they will be good value. In a little plastic bag. I had to carry them on my moto. So pretty. Look at their little veils, like children at confirmation. Don't let this get cold.'

But breakfast was forgotten. He carried out the fish to put them in a bucket on the terrace. Clotilde cleared up the paper, murmuring and laughing, stuck it under her arm. ‘Oh la la! Such deceptions.' She had picked up the glittering, gaudy container. ‘It is like a picture in a magazine.'

I buttered a croissant. ‘Like the Great Barrier Reef.'

She dropped the carton, stooped to take up shreds of multi-coloured plastic ‘straw'.

‘I do not know this place, but I do know we live in the Var. Not where women have tails. Mais, quand même, he is happy?'

And he
was
happy, radiantly happy, and I was pleased with his show of unclouded delight. The fact that he had been able to embrace Clotilde so warmly, with so much confidence, gave me deep satisfaction. A sign of trust, of acceptance, a demonstration of affection. There hadn't been much of that in his life in his first decade. Perhaps now, almost certainly now, he was easing out of his strict British reserve. He was already freer, less introverted, than the child who had arrived in my life only a couple of months ago. He had been easy, to be sure, correct, apparently
almost
at ease with himself. But gradually the bricks which had restrained his true personality in a closed room of caution were being eased away and his true spirit was breaking out. He was beginning to trust. And show love.

This delighted me, it would do him no harm at all to be demonstrative, tactile, completely free with his emotions -with cautious but sensible restraint. Arthur and Dottie had been a tremendous help in this, Jericho had provided him with his frame of reference (anyway for the time being) and the presence of Clotilde and Mon-Ami within that frame, secure, uncomplicated, firm and affectionate, had started the healing of the subconscious bruises which he had sustained in an unsatisfactory existence in Simla Road, and,
frankly, up until the day he had arrived, bewildered but excited, at Nice airport, with a mother who was on the point of letting him slip his lead. (To put it more politely than she deserved – she was chucking him away. Probably unawares – but, equally probably, not altogether.) She had known, that day, exactly where
she
was going: off to join her chum in his ‘Harrods Antiqued' new villa in some suburban village. She hadn't really given much of a thought to what might happen to her son, beyond the fact that somehow ‘Daddy' would cope. Would have to cope.
Did
cope. Liked coping. It was my ‘birthday' today, as well as his. I felt pretty good about it. Before complete complacency overwhelmed me, and above the sound of water splashing into a bucket somewhere, I heard the three blasts of Jacob's signal that the mail had arrived (and that he was still being cautious about rabies).

The splashing stopped on the terrace, Giles shouted, ‘Bonjour! Bonjour!'

I went on to the terrace. Jacob was pulling his Mobylette on to its stand, began to unstrap a package from his carrier, waved to Giles who was hurrying down the path to meet him. Some letters were held up, the package handed over, heavy, requiring two hands to carry it; a brief exchange of conversation, a doffing of a cap and then Giles came slowly back up to the house.

‘Terribly heavy! What can it be? It's for me. It says
Master
Giles. Is that me?'

‘Must be. What else does it say? There's printing on the paper.'

‘Hédiard.
It says Hédiard, rue des Serbes, Cannes, AM.' He had reached the terrace, set the package down, ran curious hands over it. ‘It'll be from Mum, I bet.'

I said, ‘She was in Cannes, she's had this sent to you. Hédiard is a very famous luxury grocer's. She probably did it all by telephone, before she went off to Italy or wherever
she was going. But she remembered! She
did
remember, and on the right day!'

He had started to tear away the elegant logo-paper, discovered a stout cardboard box stuffed with more red and green plastic straw, which spilled and drifted across the terrace as he produced one ‘treasure' after another to his slightly startled gaze.

‘Everything's in French. All the labels. Look. Is this ginger?'

‘That's ginger. In syrup …'

‘And these? What are these? P-ê-c-h-e. That's peach, isn't it? Peaches in cognac?'

‘That's right. Don't chuck the straw stuff everywhere. It'll be hell if it flies into the roses and things. These are dried figs. Right?'

‘What are p-i-s-t-a-c-h-i-o nuts?'

‘Just that. Pistachio nuts, and those in your other hand are artichoke bottoms in salted water.'

‘Wow,' he said, without much enthusiasm, and rummaged about a bit more producing yet another jar, bottle or packet, all of which confounded him utterly until he recognized some cheese straws and, with a soft crow of pleasure, a small white bar studded with nuts, angelica and cherries.

‘Montélimar nougat!
That's
all right. A bit hard to chew really. But I can give it to Frederick, can't I?'

‘Your present. You do as you wish. Better start clearing the cellophane muck. Up! Come on.'

We scrabbled about on the terrace, brushing little piles of trembling plastic into handfuls. ‘Will I like these things? “Artichoke bottoms”? Quite rude really. I don't know what they are.'

‘I don't think, this time, that you
will
like them. Much. But you haven't found a card. There must be a card somewhere in this stuff.'

He found it after a bit of rooting about in the tumbled
box. Helen's generous, looping handwriting on a Hédiard business card. ‘Sweetie-one: now you are a real little Frenchman, grown up today, so here are some delicious goodies for your supper party tonight. I will seriously miss you, but think of you. Love you heaps and heaps. Enjoy!' It was signed with a huge looping ‘Mummy'. There were two kisses.

‘That's jolly good,' I said. ‘She remembered. I was certain she would …'

‘Yes, she did. That
was
good.' He was glumly satisfied.

I pushed on and asked him for the letters I'd seen Jacob give him. A card for him from Dottie and Arthur, neat, affectionate, a detail from a Manet of a faintly supercilious youth in a straw hat from
Luncheon in the Studio.
Arthur had written in his immaculate handwriting, ‘Happy Birthday! This could be you, Giles, the
next
time you are ten!'

Giles looked worried. ‘I already am ten. Today.'

‘That's what he means. Idiot. The
next
time you are ten again you'll be twenty. Understand?'

‘Awesome. Twenty? Oh yes. I see. Ten and ten. What age will you be then?'

‘Ah … umm. Fifty-six.'

He looked at me with thinly veiled pity.

‘Never mind,' he said and started repacking the jars and bottles.

One letter for me from the EDF, a bank statement, another from my editor in London suggesting a new photograph for the next dust-jacket. ‘We've been using the last one for two years. A change a good idea?'

A change was a very good idea. It was already taking place.

On the terrace of La Maison Blanche a tall youth dragged himself into his back-pack, his booted feet scraping about on the tiles. He had pronounced knee-caps, sloping shoulders
and round tin glasses. His friend, a thin, sallow girl with the same kind of glasses, corn white hair and battered khaki shorts, swigged the last of their Coke tin, crushed it, hitched straps and buckles on her pack, took up a folded map and muttered, ‘
Yah? Horstie?
and he nodded ‘
Yah, Schnoodie,'
and they clattered down the steps into the square. They were the last of the day-trippers and, as Eugène bitterly remarked, occupied a table, drank a Coke between two, changed their socks or removed their boots, rested a little and left. No money. No profit. And German - to add deeper insult to the trivia of their being there. He tidied up the table, his apron flapping in his haste to restore cleanliness and order for the evening arrivals. It was seven-fifteen: the hotel residents were about to descend from their rooms to take up their regular tables and order their Cinzanos or citron pressés from Claude.

However, this evening there would be less space than usual for them on account of the round table at the far end of the terrace, lavishly set for eight, chairs all around, a big jug of fat white garden roses in the centre, candles ready to be lit at strategic points. Giles's birthday feast.

Above me, as I sat beside the table, guarding it from thieving sparrows, and two white doves, the sky was fading to the pale blue of evening which would, in time, give way to the saffron yellow and pink of the setting sun. Across the square, beyond the church, a green neon light suddenly sparked on spelling out ‘Le Sporting', only the ‘o' was fusing, blinking now and again. A lewd wink. On, off. On, off.

High over the jumble of roofs and chimneys of the town the swallows swung and soared, spiralling upwards, a fluid, twisting comma in the fading sky. The church struck the quarter just as Arthur and Dottie drove slowly up the hill into the square and parked, with a wave, beside my yellow car. I went into the bar to get Giles away from the TV.

‘Your guests are arriving. Come on. Out.' and I pushed him on to the terrace. Dottie looked startlingly pretty as they walked towards us. She had very good legs, a neat figure which I had never really paid attention to, concealed as it always was in a swirl of denim skirts or old jeans. Tonight she was trim, slim, hair shining, tightly braided. A thin coral necklet, white shirt, a silk scarf slung over a shoulder, a good bag on her arm. Arthur was dressed for safari, in a jacket with huge pockets, a red spotted handkerchief at his throat. Coming up the steps, shaking hands, wondering if they were the first, and perhaps too early?

Moments later, as the clock clanged the hour, precisely and on the last beat, Florence and Sidonie Prideaux appeared at the end of the square from behind a flying buttress of the church, walking from their house. I saw them the instant they passed the little buttress, lost them for a moment as two elderly residents scraped into chairs and set down their drinks, caught them again as they came abreast of the hotel cut-out of the chef with his pink hand upraised, the menu pinned to the palm, and then they came up the steps, slowly, carefully – Madame Prideaux's first time, one knew.

I was on my feet to greet them, lugging Giles with me. I felt a surge of quiet elation at the sight of Florence. Slender, calm, smiling, easy. The same simple frock with little cuffs and the floral tie that she had worn to dinner the first time she had ever come to the hotel with me.

It was evident that Madame Prideaux was a little shy, which imposed a vague formality on her, but then she saw Dottie and Arthur, affectionately touched Giles on the head, and, moving uncertainly through the little tables, let herself be led to our large round one, where we all sat. There really was no alternative.

Full season at the hotel meant full tables: we had nowhere else to sit. But sitting, as we did, brought us all together. Even though we all knew each other, had passed time with
each other, there was still a slight feeling of the importance of the perfectly trivial event. A boy's tenth birthday: nothing more. However, at the crisp linen table, with the jug of white roses, the candles in their storm-glasses, the shining cutlery, the glasses – all these things combined to give an impression of an Event, until, with a loud sigh, Madame Prideaux relaxed, eased herself back into her rush-bottomed chair and placing her hands flat on the table declared herself content.