English Correspondence (17 page)

‘I've been looking at dates.' He disengaged the laces logically, no tugging.

‘And?' She said this encouragingly, not aggressively.

He didn't look up. ‘Can you remember what we did last time Christmas was on a Monday?'

‘Was Eve still alive?' said Sylvie.

‘I don't know. I'd have to work it out. Five years ago was it, with leap years, something like that? Was she alive at Christmas five years ago?'

‘No. She didn't quite make it.'

‘I'm sorry. I don't know. Does it matter?' He had pulled his shoes off, but he didn't get up. He straightened his back and undid his shirt cuffs.

‘It doesn't, particularly. I'm just trying to think when it might have been. If I can think of some of the main things that were going on I can sort of narrow it down,' Sylvie said.

‘But you don't need to do that.' He felt at his neck for his top button, struggled a bit, then absentmindedly unfastened the rest.

‘I do. I can't remember otherwise. It all runs together.' She paused. Then she said, ‘When you hardly know someone you remember everything, whole chunks of conversation, the different looks on their face. Even if you aren't in love with them. Though maybe you are, maybe that's a definition of it.'

‘What's this got to do with anything?'

‘I'm saying. At first it's all quite distinct but afterwards, I don't know when exactly, it all starts to run together and, unless you can think of markers, you can't get back.'

‘Have you any idea what I was talking about?'

‘I thought I had. Obviously.'

‘I was asking you for your help.'

‘I know. I was trying to remember.'

‘Sylvie, I was trying to involve you.'

Sylvie was silent.

‘I need to make decisions and I would like your help.'

‘I'd like to help.'

‘So. You go on about whether your mother was alive and how things run together.'

She took a deep breath. She must have missed something. He wanted them to make a decision. She needed her wits about her and they weren't there. She stared at him to see if she could find the connection she'd lost. He had stopped undressing and had put his hands on his knees and bent over, looking at the space between his feet. The familiarity and falseness that had comforted her in their embrace created fog in her head. Now he stood up and was undoing his belt. He was struggling with the fastening.

‘Fuck. I've broken a nail. Where are the scissors? I must have put on weight again. Do I look as if I have?'

‘Not particularly. You look fine. Nice.' She wasn't sure he did, but she said it.

‘Have you got them?'

‘What?'

‘The scissors.'

‘No. Was I supposed to have them?'

‘Well, I just asked you for them.'

‘Did you? Sorry. They're usually on the shelf in the bathroom. In the stripey pot.'

‘Thanks.'

He didn't move. Neither did Sylvie. He unzipped his trousers and pulled them down, stepped out of them. He did this every night, whatever the circumstances, however inopportune the moment. Sylvie thought, I wish I were married to a man who, when he was angry, stayed fully clothed. He would run out of the house or go and sit and
sulk in another room. She wouldn't have minded which. Paul always carried on getting ready for bed. Past a certain point, it's no good sleeping with someone, actually sleeping, you just see how babyish they are. She'd forgotten how well the mixture worked, amorousness and going to sleep; the other head so close by in the dark. She couldn't understand how she'd managed to forget the feelings. But the sleep was stronger, earlier.

She pulled herself from daydreaming. ‘Do you want to go back to talking about Christmases?' she asked.

‘This Christmas, not Christmases. Not especially. I'd say the subject was dead. Though it would have been useful to discuss it with you.'

She was sure he had been talking about the past. Now he was saying he hadn't been.

She took her shoes off by wedging one foot against the other for leverage. She was still standing up. Then she put them back on.

‘It seems very hot in here. Do you think something's gone wrong with the thermostat?'

He didn't reply.

‘I thought, before I went away, that the pipes were making different noises, as though they were just heating and heating up,' she said.

‘It's turned colder.'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Get someone to come in and look if you think something's the matter.'

Paul was undressed now and in his pyjamas. He went into the bathroom leaving the door open. She heard him pee and flush the toilet, turn the tap on, brush his teeth, spit, turn the tap off. He came out again. He evidently wasn't bothering to wash.

‘Aren't you going to get ready for bed?' he said.

‘Soon. I'm being slow for some reason. Sorry.'

‘Do you want to know what I was talking about?'

‘Of course. I said so.'

‘Christmas is on a Monday. So Saturday and Sunday are a problem. They need some thought. The working week, leading up to them, won't be any trouble.'

Sylvie could see it. The lack of trouble. The place decked out: a lighted tree in the hall, a real one that smelled of the forest and needed sweeping up after twice a day, Chinese lanterns and berries in every vase, red candles on each table, the brass and the glassware made to shine. Felix and the other young ones wanting to party and taking time off. Lucien, overtired at school, catching something. Respectable sounding office dinners catered for. Other clients given seasonal adult meals, neither ceremonial nor symbolic.

‘No, we're used to that,' she said.

‘It's the weekend,' he said. ‘Three days in a row. Saturday. Christmas Eve. Christmas. The guests who are staying are booked into all three of them. I've only just realised that's how it works out. It's usually you who spots things like that.'

‘I see what you mean. It's not natural like Easter,' Sylvie said.

‘Easter?'

‘A three day event. Isn't it?'

‘What's that got to do with it?'

‘It takes three days. Though, I agree, there's a lull in the middle between Good Friday and Easter Day. No one bothers about the descent into hell. Going to the garden centre or the races doesn't count, I wouldn't have thought.'

‘Sylvie.'

‘We could try something different?' she said.

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. A pianist, a string quartet, theme nights. Christmas 1914, for the theme night.'

‘There's no need to be flippant.'

‘I didn't mean to be. I was just trying to think of something. Everyone could exchange cigarettes.'

‘It wasn't a serious suggestion, though, was it? You weren't actually being helpful. You never like that type of thing at the best of times, certainly not at present.'

‘At present,' she repeated.

‘In your present frame of mind.'

Sylvie let this go. She thought, what would Maude say. Maude would say that the variations should be culinary, that this would give scope to Paul's creativity. She would discuss with him where his ideas came from, until he had one. She would follow each through to completion, asking supportive questions about staying power and appearance. She would look entirely sincere and neither of them would smile. This wasn't a solution, it was normality warmed up. The clients would pay a bit more than usual and the colour palette would be festive. If this was the solution, then there had never been a problem. Sylvie couldn't say what Maude would have said.

‘Will your parents come over on all three days?' she asked.

‘I've no idea. What's that got to do with it?'

‘I don't know. I just wondered.'

‘I imagine they'll come on Christmas Day. I haven't heard that this year's any different from usual. They'll cater for my brother on Christmas Eve. They might like to come on the Saturday too, to give them a break.'

She took her watch off and put it down on the bedside table. Half past midnight. Yvette and Gilles, no Yvette and Gilles, Yvette and Gilles. Paul got into his side of the bed and switched off his light, lay with his face towards the room, away from where she would be once she got in. No more conversation. The other lights were a reproach so Sylvie turned them off. There was enough brightness from the bathroom for her to see by and she already saw too much. Perhaps she could say what Maude would have said. She must make an effort. But her memory was of something grotesque and exaggerated, not a particular script. She doubted that she had used real words to herself a few moments ago. She would have to find new ones.

‘Paul. Are you asleep?'

‘No.'

‘Do you want to talk some more about planning Christmas.'

‘Not particularly.'

‘You've done it so many times.' This wasn't what she'd meant to say.

Paul didn't say anything.

‘You have to find a way of making it different. That you can get excited about. You're good at that.' This was more like Maude.

‘Thanks.'

Sylvie said nothing.

‘So are you,' Paul said.

‘What?'

‘Good at making things different. You make them utterly bizarre.'

‘I don't know what you mean.'

Paul rolled half a turn and stared at the ceiling. ‘I talk to you in a perfectly straightforward way and you talk complete crap back.' He turned on his side again. ‘Oh, for Christ's sake, let me sleep. I try to talk to you like an adult and give you good advice. You don't take it.'

‘What advice do you give me?'

‘You know what I'm talking about.'

She didn't. He might have felt as if he was giving her good advice, but he wasn't.

‘I did take it,' she said.

Paul stayed silent.

‘I went to see Joyce.'

Paul rolled on his back again and half sat up, resting on his elbows.

‘Who the hell is Joyce?'

Sylvie said nothing.

‘Well?'

‘I didn't mean to say anything. It was a stupid thing to say. Forget it.'

‘Sylvie. Who is Joyce?'

‘A medium. A spiritualist.' She paused. ‘You said, go and see a fucking medium, then.'

Paul drew in his breath and collapsed onto his back. ‘Sylvie,
I need to sleep. I'm not going to be able to get to sleep. But I'm going to try.' He turned on his side again, away from her. ‘And sometime soon, maybe tomorrow, we're going to have to have a serious talk about Lucien.'

‘Lucien?'

‘I said I don't want to talk anymore.'

‘But you can't suddenly say that and not expect to say any more. Is something the matter with him?'

Paul shifted deeper into the bed.

‘Paul. You can't do this. I'm his mother.'

‘Quite.'

‘Is he worried about something. Paul, you have to tell me.'

‘Sylvie, shut up. Of course he's worried about something. We're all fucking worried about something. You go away. You do nothing. Sorry, you don't do nothing, you go and see Joyce. You come back. You don't say, hullo, I'm back. You say nothing. That's how you want it. All right. Now shut up.'

‘What about Maude?'

Paul pulled his knees up under the duvet, his rounded form underneath, cocooned and exculpated as a foetus.

Sylvie went across the room and turned the bathroom light off. She shouldn't have let the nights come one after another like this. There should be an extra twelve hours of daylight, or an honorary night, a sort of white tent of bedclothes with no thoughts in it. She should have stopped off at a hotel by the motorway, drunk a bottle of wine and stuck her head under the pillow.

She pretended that's what she had done, though she was entirely sober. She took her clothes off one by one, making a neat pile of them on the hotel chair.

THE NEXT MORNING
Sylvie didn't get up. Paul went in the bathroom without speaking. He came out again and left the room. She heard Lucien's voice quite close on the other side of the door but he didn't come in. She heard the noise of the vacuum cleaner in the distance, then nearer, going backwards and forwards, bumping against the skirting boards, then away again. She heard Lucien and Natalie talking. After that it was quiet.

Later Paul came in and sat on the bed. She knew he was there but she didn't open her eyes to look at him. He talked to her but she didn't listen. He carried on talking and rested his hand over hers though it was under the bedclothes.

Some time afterwards she wondered what he had said. The door was shut and he had gone. She wished she'd spoken to him. If he'd sat beside her first thing she'd have liked it. That would have been the best moment for him to be there. She might have been able to get up and the day might have been ordinary. Then she stopped wondering.

Sylvie opened her eyes. The curtains were drawn open and she could see the pale blank squares of window. The room was full of pasty winter afternoon light. She stretched out for her watch. It said ten past two. She pulled herself up and sat on the edge of the bed. There was a full cup of tea on the table next to her. She dipped a finger in it. Then she lay back and slept again.

The next time she opened her eyes it was dark. Her watch said five to five. She got up and went and stood over the bathroom basin. She saw her face flannel. She filled the basin
with hot water, immersed the flannel in it and wrung it until no more drops came out of it. She rubbed it over her face, as if it wasn't her own face she was touching and the sensation was warm and rough, hardly damp at all. She dried herself with a towel. Her clothes were in a pile on the chair but, as she picked them up to put on, she realised they were yesterday's clothes. She shut the curtains without looking out, turned the light on and got clean things out of the cupboard. Her dressing was slow and deliberate and she was aware of the touch of each garment as she put it on, and the difference of one from another, and the order they came in. When she'd finished she slipped her shoes on. They felt odd, so she looked down to check they were hers, then she left the bedroom. Having taken a few steps along the passage, she remembered that she hadn't brushed her hair. She went back and found her hairbrush, pulled it through her hair without looking in the mirror; first the back, then the right side then the left. She went out for the second time and this time she reached the internal door that separated their apartment from the restaurant. She found it hard to make progress, but her legs moved perfectly. She walked along until she got to the bend and continued past four closed doors. The colours and shapes in the hall seemed shockingly clear after the dimly lit corridor. A man and a woman were standing in front of the fire.