Incidents in the Rue Laugier (2 page)

I never discovered whether she had ever loved him; I rather thought not. Yet she was a moral woman, and I should have thought her a stranger to any form of calculation. He, on the other hand, was often quite harsh, and yet I am left with the impression that he loved her, not in any idealistic or worshipful sense, but with the raw force of his rather frustrated nature. They were on an uneasy footing. Only my mother’s calm defused a potentially disturbing situation.

There were no arguments. There was no quarrel. And yet it always seemed to me that some gigantic quarrel must have taken place in the past, long before I knew either of them. All this is speculation, of course. Of my parents’ secret life I am the only manifestation. Yet something went on before, something that created attitudes which I have inherited. The known part of a life is often misleading, a disguise. I now wish that my mother had been happier, or had had a memory of
past happiness to sustain her. My impression is that she renounced her life long before it ended. Yet she kept the little notebook, with its inscrutable code, just as she kept the beautiful silk kimono, which she certainly never wore at home. I found to my surprise that as I contemplated this evidence my curiosity turned to sadness, for I realised that she was doomed to remain a stranger, had indeed elected to be a stranger, bequeathing me only little gestures, such as shading her eyes when she looked up from her book, as if the light of reality were too harsh, and those sighs, which I am told I utter without knowing.

I do not appear in the story that follows, or at least only inadvertently. It is a fabrication, one of those by which each of us lives, and as such an enormity, nothing to do with the truth. But perhaps the truth we tell ourselves is worth any number of facts, verifiable or not. This unrecorded story—unrecorded for a very good reason—is a gesture only, a gesture towards my mother, whom I have come to resemble, and who told me nothing either of what had happened, or what had failed to happen, and how she came to live with us, so far from home.

A
T THE TIME OF HER MARRIAGE MAUD GONTHIER HAD NOT
been much interested in matters of class, ancestry, or status, believing herself to be above such matters, or if not above, untouched by them. She had known little of the world beyond Dijon, and little of her reduced family beyond her mother and the dimming memory of a young father, who, in the middle of playing with her, would be shaken by a cough and would have to sit down with a handkerchief to his lips.

Pierre-Yves Gonthier, who died of tuberculosis, had been a conscientious boy from a poor background, who, by dint of hard work, application, and family piety, had obtained a post at the Prefecture and in time fulfilled his mother’s most cherished ambitions. He thus belonged to the most respected caste in France, the civil service, and although his work in the Bridges and Highways department was routine and undemanding he was always conscious of the dignity of office, as if he were the Prefect himself, was always impeccably turned out
in a grey suit and a white shirt laundered by his mother, and was accepted by his colleagues with mild affection but with little interest. He was grateful to the authorities who had appointed him for a more personal reason: without this badge of respectability he would have been unable to marry Nadine Debureau, whose father, a doctor and a tyrant, was conscious of such distinctions and would not have countenanced a son-in-law who worked in his mother’s shop, an unfortunately modest affair, far from the commercial centre of town, and doing a not very active trade in layettes and baby clothes.

Nadine, a handsome girl, longing to get away from her father, and from her elder sister, and resembling in fact her dead mother, was aware of Pierre-Yves’s admiration and was eager to encourage it. She therefore attended all those functions at the Prefecture to which her father, as a local worthy, was invited. Within six months the young man had made his request and had seen it accepted. The father thought it better to acquiesce; his idea was to clear his house of daughters as soon as he could—he had an acquaintance ready to take the elder girl, Germaine, off his hands—so that he could settle down to a bachelor existence, could be looked after by a housekeeper, could play bridge twice a week at the Café Riche, and drink as much as he liked. This he would achieve to his eventual satisfaction, although along the way the rewards were not as fulfilling as he had envisaged. Germaine, once married to an army doctor with the rank of colonel, and satisfactorily removed to a small manor house in the Brie region, was seen only on rare visits; the younger girl, Nadine, continued to live in Dijon. The doctor failed to take his own advice and slowly turned purple with incipient apoplexy. He consoled himself by arranging for the proceeds of his house to be divided between the two girls after his death. This, he thought, absolved him from any accusation of selfishness.

The young couple set up house in a flat in the rue des
Dames Blanches, a property which had belonged to Nadine’s mother and which had been rented out by the doctor to an elderly woman of some means. Shortly before the wedding this woman had announced her intention of going to live with her daughter in the south, and the doctor could hardly refuse to hand it over to the bride and bridegroom, although he had vaguely intended to occupy it himself when he retired. The flat was not in good order, as the elderly tenant, in the way of old people, had thought it would serve its turn until she went south: the kitchen was gloomy, the bathroom rudimentary, but the salon, with its red striped walls, was rather grand, and its windows looked out onto the street, a short quiet grey street, with, in the distance, the imposing bulk of the Musée des Beaux Arts.

It took them five years to decorate and furnish the flat to their satisfaction, by which time there was a small child. Pierre-Yves, with the heightened sensibility of the tubercular, would gaze at the child with tears in his eyes: already he looked back with longing to the early days of his marriage, when he and Nadine, whom he called Didine, would walk arm-in-arm around the Place Darcy and down the rue de la Liberté, nodding to acquaintances, and deciding that there was nothing in the shops that they wanted beyond what they already had. He would look back on those days as if centuries had passed, as if he were an old man, although he was young, and did not know of his illness. The child was almost too much happiness to bear; he at least did not think that he could bear it. His joy turned to discomfort, and then to constriction; somehow he managed to conceal this from colleagues, being less disastrously stimulated during the daytime, among the Bridges and Highways, than at night, when he grew hot and restless. It was his superior who saw to it that he enter a sanatorium in the Haute-Savoie: the case was not uncommon,
and there was a good chance of recovery. But he knew, as he waved goodbye to his wife and daughter, who saw him off at the station, that he would never see his home again, and from that moment slipped down quite rapidly towards his death.

At the funeral his mother and Nadine’s father, who barely acknowledged one another, seemed to lay a burden of accusation on the widow. The mother clearly believed that if he had not wasted himself in marital excess her son would be with her still; the father felt only contempt for a weakling with an impaired constitution. He himself was to die within the year, but succeeded in hiding from himself the undoubted dangers of his chosen way of life. The little gathering dispersed, leaving the cemetery to the sun and shadows of an ironically brilliant October day. There was little conversation.

In the rue des Dames Blanches wine was served, but no meal: there was disaffection in the air, and Nadine would have none of it. She had loved her husband, somewhat to her surprise, and although she resented his tragedy she was marked by it. In the curious excitement of his illness he had loved her more passionately than she had ever imagined possible, and she knew that she would never be loved like that again. ‘Not in this life anyway,’ she told herself bleakly, begrudging God His monopoly of the next. She was impressed by this love, although not altogether grateful for it: apart from the child, Maud, she had little enough to show for it, no money, apart from her husband’s pension, and the prospect of a year’s mourning. It was not until her father died, and she received her share of the proceedings from the sale of his property, that she was able to contemplate her life. As matters turned out she was in a position to give her daughter a first-class education at the most exclusive convent in town, and thus to ensure that she made useful friends. For the money would not last indefinitely, and before it ran out Maud would have to marry, and
to marry well. She calculated that this might happen when Maud would be eighteen or nineteen. After that she would live on the pension, which would be enough for one, but not for two.

‘Did you know the house was mortgaged?’ asked Germaine on the telephone.

‘No, of course not. You were closer to him than I was; he never confided in me.’

‘Nor, apparently, in me. There will be less money than we are entitled to expect. I believe there was a woman, too …’

‘I don’t want to hear any more.’

‘Will you be able to manage?’

‘I shall have to.’

‘Of course, there are only two of you.’

Whereas you still have your husband, thought Nadine, although she did not envy her sister that particular husband, who was stout and heavy and over-confident and unsympathetic.

‘Xavier is well?’ she enquired. ‘Robert is still in Germany, I suppose.’

‘I am expecting him back next month. Yes, Xavier is very well. And Maud?’

‘Maud is very well too.’

‘You’ll come to us in August?’

‘We shall look forward to it.’

‘You yourself are keeping well, I hope, Nadine?’

‘Oh yes. I am perfectly fine.’

‘You would let me know …’

‘Of course. Don’t worry, Germaine. And thank you. Goodbye.’

Although less favoured by their father, Nadine had always known that she was the prettier of the two sisters. But although she had married first she had not done so well for herself
in material terms. This she had not previously regretted. Yet there had been a note of patronage in that telephone conversation, and she knew that if illness struck or if she were to have any sort of accident she would have to rely on her sister’s generosity. This had never been much in evidence, but might seek now to advertise itself. Compressing her thin lips even more firmly, Nadine resolved never to have recourse to this particular form of charity. She would work in a shop, if necessary, she thought. But this of course was not a serious proposition. She had inherited her father’s contempt for trade, had discerned something timid, self-effacing and servile about her mother-in-law on the few occasions when she had been obliged to meet her; she herself was more combative. At the same time she felt bleak with the knowledge that no one would come to her rescue. For the moment they could manage, and, more important, keep up appearances. That meant meat every day, if only a small cutlet, so as not to let the shopkeepers know that money was short. That meant the dressmaker every eighteen months, to add something well-made to the small but careful wardrobe. That meant the services of the concierge, Mme Fernandez, twice a week, so as to maintain her status in the building. That meant that Maud must always be in a position to do the same as her friends, to join school parties to places of artistic or cultural interest, to go skiing in the winter, to accept invitations to the flat in Paris or the villa in Corsica of her best friend Julie. This, however, although there had been only two such invitations, was more problematic. Perhaps she might ask Germaine if Maud could bring a friend, when they went to stay, as they usually did, in August?

‘Oh, no,’ said Maud. ‘There is nothing to do there. Besides, they go to Corsica in the summer, and Julie wants me to go again.’

‘I’m afraid that will not be possible,’ said Nadine, compressing
her lips once again. ‘Your aunt would think it very rude.’ And I am reduced to using her as an excuse, she thought, because I cannot offer hospitality. She tried to think with disdain of Julie’s father, a vulgar cheerful man who owned the second-best restaurant in Dijon, and of his wife, equally vulgar, equally cheerful, and failed. They were kind: they offered nothing but kindness and wanted nothing in return. They thought that Julie should emulate Maud’s natural hauteur, which was modelled on that of her mother, but they did not envy Maud’s way of life or her circumstances, which they saw through with a clarity which was perhaps denied to the butcher, the dressmaker and the concierge. All of which Nadine knew. It stiffened her spine and merely added a further dignity to her deportment.

In the years following her husband’s death Nadine, no longer Didine, assumed an outward appearance of confidence and also of an austerity which was not becoming in a woman who was still young but who lacked admirers, perhaps because any man who was likely to approach her was also likely to be chilled by her unsmiling seriousness. She had always looked older than her age; now, at thirty-eight, conscious of her precarious situation and of the lack of anyone who might come to her rescue, she intimidated those who might have had rescue in mind. She could no longer regard any man objectively, seeing him only in terms of situation, wondering only whether he were sufficiently well placed to provide an answer to her problem. The problem became more acute as she grew older. This became known, without anything being said, among the few men of her acquaintance. And yet she was a good-looking woman, with her well-cut if severe features, her upright carriage, her dark golden hair and fine skin. She was beginning to put on weight, to become matronly; this was the only sign that her body was quiescent, that she was without a
man. There was something unrelenting in her steady progress down a street, her wariness, her consciousness of the dangers of her life. If only she would relax, said these men, who eyed her from a safe distance: there might be something there. She needs waking up. Some man could do it, they did not doubt. Yet none of them volunteered. Their wives felt sorry for her, not without a certain satisfaction, for she was still very handsome. In public they praised her courage. There is no more effective way of precluding a softer approach.