Incidents in the Rue Laugier (29 page)

I
N THE YEAR FOLLOWING MY FATHER’S DEATH I BOTH LEFT
Cambridge and broke off my engagement. (I am Maffy, called Mary by my friends.) I went home to be with my mother, although it was doubtful whether she found my presence a help. She was quite calm, but her air of inwardness, of preoccupation, increased. She remained tender but reticent, and when she urged me to find a flat of my own I could see that what she really wanted was a life without interference or communication. Although this worried me at first, I thought her wishes should be respected. She never struck me as being in any sort of danger, and I knew that she had a strong character; I never saw her in tears or out of temper. I found a flat quite nearby, so it was easy for me to keep an eye on her, although as far as I could see she was not in need. She missed my father, of course, and she grew very thin, but I could see no immediate cause for concern. Her mind was as lucid as ever. Later on her
reticence became more noticeable, so that in my presence she was polite but absent-minded. Again I did not attempt to distract her, merely sat with her, asked her what she was reading. Very occasionally her hand would steal out and take mine.

I believe that certain deaths are a form of suicide. That is how I explain my father’s neglect of his illness, and my mother’s slow descent into sleep, or into a state almost indistinguishable from sleep. My father’s death was the greater shock, although my relations with him were not altogether straight-forward. I loved him, but I was aware that he loved me more, and that embarrassed me. He felt the same way towards my mother, from whom I must have inherited my attitude. Sometimes he must have felt unhappy: in fact I am sure that he did. In a way it was a blessing that he died first, for without my mother I think he would have found it difficult to carry on with his life. I always got the impression that this life was something of a burden to him, and that, although he was devoted to my mother, he had no confidence that his devotion made her happy. Let us say that he had a romantic disposition. I have noticed that this preserves one; my father always struck me as a young man, but of course he was still quite young when he died, in his early fifties. I mean that he looked young, with his hair still dark, and also that he was impulsive and brooding, in strong contrast to my mother, who was always equable.

Her death, which overtook her by almost imperceptible stages, was caused by inanition. She ate little, went out less, then finally not at all. I let myself in with my key one Sunday morning, and found her on the sofa, her reading lamp still on. She looked very peaceful, so peaceful that it did not occur to me to grieve for her. When the formalities had been completed I telephoned my grandmother in Dijon (my other grandmother was in a nursing home on the south coast: Parkinson’s
Disease). She urged me to go to her in France, meaning to live with her permanently. But when I replied that I could not leave the shop, which I took over when my father died, she made me promise to spend my summer holidays with her and I agreed. I am very fond of her, and I know that she is lonely. Her grief over my mother’s death has been protracted, and has aged her considerably. I think she feels something like guilt, although as far as I know my mother was always on good terms with her. It was not an effusive relationship: in fact there was a great deal of formality, but also a certain respect, exactly what I felt for my own mother, and what I hope my children, if I ever have any, will feel for me.

I sold the flat, my parents’ flat, exactly as it stood, with the contents. I found that my mother had already disposed of my father’s clothes, and indeed of most of her own. Her few pieces of jewellery, her birth and marriage certificates, a silk kimono, and a tiny notebook I put into a suitcase, which went into the back of one of my cupboards. I did not open the notebook until some time later, when I could bear to dispose of the pitiful relics she had left behind. What was particularly pitiful about the notebook was that all the pages except the first were empty, as if there were nothing to record. Only those few notations—
‘Dames Blanches. La Gaillarderie. Place des Ternes. Sang. Edward’
—around which I have constructed this fantasy, wishing to give my mother more substance than she left behind.

And it is a fantasy: I have no idea what any of it means. I recognise La Gaillarderie, because I have stayed there with my grandmother: a pretty house, resounding with the noise of Xavier’s grandchildren. The two old ladies sit on the terrace, reconciled at last, while I walk and read. There is nothing mysterious about the place, no ghosts, no emanations.
‘Dames Blanches’
is particularly baffling. When I went to stay with my
grandmother she was living in the rue Alphonse Ballu. If there is a rue des Dames Blanches in Dijon I have never found it.
‘Dames Blanches’
might also refer to a convent, which is more likely. My Larousse states that a
Dame Blanche
, in the singular, is a sort of diligence.
Dame Blanche
is also a comic opera by Boieldieu, and an order of chivalry
‘pour la défense des dames et des demoiselles nobles’
, founded in 1399. On the other hand I have it in mind that a
Dame Blanche
is an ice cream confection, which would fit well enough; my mother had a sweet tooth, and might have remembered such a treat from her girlhood, if this is indeed a record of her life.

‘Edward’
is of course my father. All I know about the Place des Ternes is that it is in Paris, in the seventeenth
arrondissement
. And
‘Sang’
quite defeats me. It is my own perversity, and not only perversity, a desire to bring my dead back to life, that has made me link them together. All life is good, even if it is fictitious. And the lives of those we love must hold some meaning for us, and if that meaning is withheld, who can blame the survivor for his or her curiosity, even if that curiosity holds as much mourning as celebration?

I may sell the shop next year, when Cook retires. He is still quite young, but he says he wants to go round the world while he is fit and active. He will be quite comfortably off: I have seen to that. He tells me that my father always wanted to travel, although he never did; the circumstances were never quite right. If I sell the shop I may travel myself, or I might move out of London and start again. But in fact I shall go to Dijon and keep my grandmother company until she dies, and not decide until then. Women now are so free that it seems ungrateful not to enjoy that freedom. In my bag I keep my mother’s notebook, with its mystifying code. Codes are meant to conceal secret information, of course. I think it entirely fitting that my mother, who may or may not have had secrets,
should have declined to explain herself. There is no virtue in confession, although it is said to be good for the soul. I am inclined to favour indirection, which has its own power. If I labour the point it is because I am still in search of that hidden life, those hidden lives. The past, as Proust makes clear, and at considerable length, is always with us. In that sense nothing is lost.

But it is also true that most lives are incomplete, that death precludes explanations. How then can one not be intrigued by the unfinished story? I too read the obituaries in the
Figaro
these days, and find myself nodding in agreement with the pious platitudes and humble evocations.
‘Le soir venu, Jésus leur dit, “Passons sur l’autre rive.” ’
I too like to think of the dead as being comforted. For my own part I am fairly tough. But that notebook serves as a reminder. Its lesson—that any notation, any record, is better than none—tells me that life is brief, and also that it is memorable, that the trace it leaves behind is indelible. And if the trace is inscrutable, this too may be appropriate. The dead, perhaps even more than the living, have a right to their mysteries. And who knows? We, the survivors, may be called upon to explain them, if only to ourselves.