Her Lover (64 page)

Her room at the Hotel de Noailles. The waiter has just set down the tray of cold meats. Ham, chicken and roast beef. The basset in his chair is on his best behaviour, as grave and attentive as a parishioner in his pew, trying very hard to be good so that he will be rewarded with the luscious treats which he can smell and is ogling with churchgoing eyes. He looks from the bountiful lady to the viands and back again with respectful fervour, afraid that he is not quite a good doggy, but holding out his front paws and waving them mildly in a show of well-mannered but very real hunger. Look here, is she going to come across with the goods or is she not? If she doesn't want any, that's fine, that's her business, but if she's not going to give him some it's a bit thick, what with him being absolutely ravenous. He makes a diffident, begging gesture with his right paw, containing with some difficulty the urge to help himself, for he must make a good impression. At last! she's got the message, and about time too! He snatches the slice of ham she holds out to him and gulps it down quick as a flash. Ditto with three more slices of ham. This is getting a bit monotonous. The old girl has absolutely no imagination. He puts out one paw and then another, eyes glazed with the effort of trying to make her understand that he is ready to have a stab at the chicken and the beef She rings. The waiter comes and picks up the tray. Devastated, Boulinou looks at him beseechingly and does a little agitated jig. Hang on, what about the beef and especially the chicken, chicken is my favourite! You can't do this to me! What's got into the old girl? Never saw the like! But heigh-ho, so be it, she gives the orders around here. Now he looks at her and gives a discreet little whine. He has had something to eat, for which many thanks, but his soul still hungers. He would like to be stroked, life really isn't worth living if you don't get stroked. A dog cannot live on ham alone. He raises both front paws and leans them on the kind lady. She shies away. The only creature in the whole wide world who loves her is a dog. She shuts him in the bathroom.

She woke with a start, looked up at the ceiling-light which was still burning, and thought of the basset which she'd returned to the pet-shop the previous evening. Feeling woozy, she roused herself, sat on the edge of the bed, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, still dressed and with hat askew over one ear. Her watch on the bedside table said seven o'clock. She would stay in bed. Bed was pleasant, even when times were bad. Even so, she got up after a while and drew the curtains. Outside was life, out there were happy people. There was nothing attractive about the old hag in the mirror, with her slits of eyes, prominent cheek-bones, dry hair and overfilled teeth - there was even a bridge in the back of her mouth. That weekend at Ouchy. It was at the start of their affair. On the Sunday afternoon, after they'd walked together along the edge of the lake, she had even refused him a kiss and had run off laughing. And now, just a foolish
old woman alone in Marseilles who had fallen asleep still wearing her hat. 'Rotten old God,' she said aloud.

She took her hat off, sat at the table, folded a sheet of hotel notepaper in two and then in four, opened it out, took up her pen, and unscrewed the cap. She would leave a letter for him and say that he had nothing to blame himself for, that he wasn't responsible, that he was entitled to be happy. No, best not a letter, best not run any risk of compromising him. She opened the bottle of pills, counted them, picked up her pen, drew a cross which she turned into a diamond to which she added scalloped edges, and suddenly felt the lust for life return. Of course! The answer was to go back to Switzerland, rent a chalet in the mountains and live there quietly. She'd retrieve the basset, which would make pleasant company for her, and take a train to Geneva, though she wouldn't stay there any longer than she could help, to minimize the risk of meeting him, stay just long enough to get some cash from the bank. Then she'd go to Lausanne, where an estate agent would find her a chalet to rent. In Lausanne she'd buy books, records and a radio. Everything will work out fine, you'll see if it doesn't. A comfortable chalet, a nice little dog, books, pottering in the garden. Nothing more to do with love, good riddance, no more having to do something about those blue veins in her legs. And now have a bath, take a fresh hold on life. She upended the pill-bottle and yanked the lavatory chain.

Stepping out of the bath, she dried herself taking good care not to look at herself in the mirror, and rubbed herself down with eau-de-Cologne. It was pleasant to smell nice and feel clean. That too was another sign that life was returning. She put on her bathrobe, opened the window, stepped out on to the narrow balcony, put her elbows on the parapet, and suddenly he was there, tall, hatless, hair tousled, laughing as he tried to catch her, tried to catch her and snatch a kiss, and she leaned over; leaned over a little more so that he wouldn't catch her, and the top of the rail hurt her stomach and, hands reaching out, she screamed into the void where a black man watched and waited, and then there was another scream, and then there was the unyielding pavement just by the bespattered newspaper stand.

CHAPTER 51

Not wishing to leave anything to chance, she would first make rough copies, two or three and sometimes more. The latest version passing muster, she would wash her hands to avoid any risk of dirtying the writing-paper, a tinted parchment, wash them thoroughly, thrilled by the thought that she was a vestal purifying herself before performing a ritual.

Sitting at her table, or even kneeling on the floor, an inconvenient position but one which gave her a heady feeling, she would unscrew the top of her best pen, which had an angled nib and made her handwriting look faintly masculine. After a couple of florid but perfectly legible practice runs to get herself warmed up, she would rest her right hand on a sheet of blotting-paper to keep the fine parchment clean, and then begin her letter, poking out the tip of her tongue and wiggling it daintily in time to her thoughts. So intense was her search for perfection that it was not unusual for her to tear up a page which was almost finished because of one badly written word or a tiny smudge which she had just noticed. Or again she might decide to write out the same page two or three times so that she could choose the one which best pleased her eye. When, after much consulting of the dictionary, she was finally done, she would read the letter aloud to get the full effect, read it with mesmeric inflections of her voice, enhancing each especially well-chosen word or expression with dulcet emphasis, pausing at intervals to admire the style, indulging herself with encores of sentences which she thought particularly
well turned, imagining that she was him receiving her letter so that she would have a clear sense of the impression it would make on him.

Once she forced herself to write in a most uncomfortable position, stretched out on the sofa, so that she could enjoy beginning her letter I'm writing this lazily stretched out on our sofa', which had voluptuous connotations, shades of Madame Recamier. Another time she wrote him a note in his presence which he was on no account to read until he got home, and she'd deliberately refrained from licking the envelope with heir tongue, which would have been vulgar, but instead went through a most fetching rigmarole using her decorously moistened forefinger to wet the gum. She had been altogether less decorous on the sofa only minutes before.

When her lover was away on official business, she kept a rough copy of every letter she sent so that she could read it through on the day and at the exact time when she estimated he should have received it. In this way she had a sense of being with him and was thus able to appreciate the admiration which he must certainly be feeling for her. One evening, sensing that she was in touch with him, she was rereading the end of a letter which she considered particularly well turned ('I hold you close and feel our two hearts in counterpoint throb to a single beat'). She inhaled deeply, like a craftsman content with his handiwork. Awfully good that line about two hearts throbbing contrapuntally. His countess couldn't have come up with anything like that, not in a thousand years. Taken herself off back to Hungary, thank God. The order of the words hearts in counterpoint throb also had a definite ring to it. Suddenly, she bit her lip. It was all wrong, because it assumed that he was facing her! His heart, which is on the left, would obviously be opposite my right side, where my liver is, not my heart. For the image to work, his heart would have to be on his right since mine is on my left. That's ridiculous, he isn't a freak for goodness sake. What should she do? Correct it by telegram? No, that would make her sound weird. Oh, I'm always putting my foot in it! As an aid to reflection, she pushed the end of her nose up with her thumb and had a reassuring thought. Yes, of course, it could be maintained that he isn't standing exactly opposite me, that's it, he's facing me but well to the west, which gives left side against left side and therefore heart to heart, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility. Anyway, there's a case to be made for it. So let's not worry our heads. Noticing her teddy on his knees on the prayer-stool, she called him a psalm-singing Uttle bigot and moved him to an armchair. 'What! Sleep in the same bed as me? Oh no, darling, that's quite out of the question and has been ever since my gentleman started calling. I'd find it embarrassing, honestly I would. You're far better off in your armchair. Come along now, relax, good-night, sweet dreams.'

Three times a day, long before the post was due, she was out on the road waiting. When there was nothing from her traveller, she gave the postman a pleasant smile though there was death in her soul. When there was a letter, she opened it at once and scanned it quickly. A speedy once-over, just running her eyes over it. She stopped herself taking it in, for she had no wish to get the full gist. All she wanted was to be reassured that nothing terrible had happened, that he wasn't ill, that his return to Geneva had not been put back. A proper reading would come later, when she got indoors. Duly reassured, she would run back to the house and the proper reading, run with her breasts gently bouncing, biting her tongue as she ran to prevent herself from shouting her happiness out loud. 'Darling,' she would murmur to the letter. Or possibly to herself.

In her bedroom. The usual routine. Door locked, shutters closed, curtains drawn, earplugs to shut out noises off, all the not-love noises. Bedside lamp lit, she lay down and arranged her pillow. No, don't read it just yet, make it last to stretch out the pleasure. First, just a peep at the envelope. A nice, thick envelope, not one of those with a horrible lining inside. Fine. And he had stuck the stamp on very neatly, not upside down but straight, in exactly the right place, with love, also fine. Yes, proof positive that he loved her. She held the letter at arm's length and stared at it without reading it. That was how, when she was a little girl, she had used to look at Petit-beurre biscuits before eating them. No, don't read it yet, hang on a bit longer. It's ready and available, but wait until I'm positively bursting to read it. Let's just glance at the address. He thought about me when he wrote my name, and because he had to put Madame which sounds all very respectable and decent he might well have been thinking of me with no clothes on, looking beautiful, he's seen me like that from every possible angle. And now for a peek at the notepaper, the back, not the side with the writing on. Very nice, exquisite, could be Japanese vellum. No, the paper isn't perfumed. It smells wholesome, perfectly clean. Manly paper, that's what it is.

Suddenly she could contain herself no longer. There followed a very close, tortoise-paced reading, more a textual analysis really, with pauses for thought and for mental pictures, eyes closed and a smile part foolish part divine on her lips. To give the more tender and impassioned words their full impact, she would at moments cover the paper with both hands so that only the wondrous sentence was visible. She would hypnotize herself with the sentence. Then, to get the true feel of it, she would declaim it or maybe pick up a mirror and say it softly at herself. And if he wrote that he was miserable without her she was happy and laughed. 'He's miserable, he's miserable, and a good job too!' she would exclaim, and she would read his letter again, read and reread till she could no longer understand what it said and the words lost their meaning.

Most often she resisted the temptation, for she knew that reading a letter too often spoiled it and meant that you ceased to feel the effect. So she would fold it away and swear honour bright that she'd let it alone and wouldn't look at it again until tonight. Between now and then the sap would rise again in the letter and that would be her reward for waiting, and she'd read it cosily tucked up in bed. She would smile, day-dream, lift her skirt a few inches and look lovingly at her legs. 'Want to see any more, darling? It's all absolutely yours.' She lifted her skirt a little higher and looked.

One evening she decided that fingers weren't much good for hiding. She hopped out of bed, took a clean sheet of paper, cut a small rectangle in it with a pair of scissors, and resumed her reading. Yes, that worked heaps better. Only three or four words were visible through the little window at any given moment and the effect was even more fantastic, the words seemed so much more alive. When she got to 'the most beautiful woman', she leaped out of bed and made a dash for the full-length mirror so that she could see this beautiful woman. Yes, it was quite true. But her beauty was wasted since he wasn't there. She made ugly faces in the mirror to make up for the absence of the man she loved. Stop it, that was quite enough of pulling faces, it could harm the skin or even weaken the muscles underneath. To repair any possible damage, she smiled an angelic smile.

CHAPTER 52

O Youth, O ye of tousled mane and perfect teeth, disport yourselves on that shore where love is for ever, where love is never not for ever, where lovers laugh and are immortal, O ye the elect, who ride a quadriga whipped on by love, gather now rosebuds while ye may and be as joyful as once were Ariane and Solal, but have pity for the old, for old you soon will be, with a nose that drips and hands that shake, hands mapped with swollen, knotted veins, hands with russet mottled, the rueful russet of dead leaves.