L'Affaire (25 page)

‘Someone was protecting her,
elle avait une protectrice,
’ remarked the nurse, embracing Kip.

‘I think so too,’ said the lovely Victoire.

‘When can she talk? When can I talk to her?’ He dried his eyes and got his breath.

‘You can talk to her now. She cannot talk back.’

‘Can she understand?’

‘Yes, they say so,’ Victoire told him, pleased to see the boy’s happiness. ‘They will have to take out the tubes before she can talk to you. In a day or two.’

Kip plunked himself down on one of the chairs, his ski boots dripping with melting snow, suddenly tired. He ought to talk to Kerry, even if she couldn’t talk to him, and tell her Harry was okay. He began the monologue so familiar to him, the things he’d been saying all week, Harry okay, everything okay.

‘Poor woman,’ whispered the nurses. ‘She doesn’t know her husband has been taken away to Angleterre.’

‘How long before she will be able to sit up and talk?’ asked Victoire of the nurse, Nurse Bénédicte. ‘How interesting it is to see someone come back to life, but music has that effect, as we know from the story of Orpheus, Apollo
aussi
and his connection to Aesculapius.’ She pulled up a chair and sat down beside Kerry. Kerry tried to turn her head slightly to watch Victoire, as if she
wanted to see things and hear words spoken, grounding her in the here, wherever they were.

‘She might never remember, people don’t ever remember the blow that stuns them, only the moments before it, leading up to it, or sometimes the memory is gone about everything that happened for much longer before. Depends on the severity of the blow,’ said the nurse.

26

Robin Crumley was relieved to be back at the hotel, after an afternoon that had in every way reinforced his mistrust of snow. His emotions were in turmoil. To find himself entranced with the beautiful, rich American young woman! How regrettable that this had come so late in his life. People normally felt this in their teens. He was at such a disadvantage! How he regretted his rather asexual, donnish, even narcissistic single life until now, with its consequent relative lack of experience, not much happening with either sex, only an odd dash from time to time… And it was even worse that the infatuation had struck while he was in France, a land ignorant of his poetry and in general dismissive of the mighty literature of his nation – a people content to hear Shakespeare in translation, Mark Antony saying to Julius Caesar, ‘
Bonjour, monsieur,’
instead of ‘Hail, Caesar,’ and other such absurdities. A people who bestowed their Légion d’Honneur on English romance novelists, a people for whom Barbara Cartland was as good as Elizabeth Bowen, or Jerry Lewis as good as Olivier.

The American, Amy, however, showed such a fresh intelligence, she would surely profit from a more comprehensive exposure to literature. She was woefully ignorant. The young English girl, Posy, knew much more about literature – a commentary on American education.
On hotel stationery he wrote down from memory, hesitating over a line or so, two of his poems, intending to present them to Amy later in the bar. She would read them tonight and they would furnish a conversation tomorrow, when he would explain some of the poetical principles involved, the tradition of terza rima – he wasn’t sure where American education stopped vis-à-vis poetry, some of the ideas might lead naturally into the erotic or anyway romantic. As an afterthought he decided to ask the desk to make another copy and he would give one to the intelligent Frenchman Emile, who appeared to be interested in poetry and might value a fair copy in the poet’s own hand.

He went to the window to close the shutters where the cold leaked through the wooden window frames and icy glass. Outside, the lights glittered in the village and the falling snow was pink in the neon glow of the ice rink sign. He noticed Amy herself, only now back, getting out of a car driven by the German real-estate agent – it must have been he who had picked her up earlier at the scene of the bus accident. The man was lifting her skis off the roof of his car. Amy, watching him, stamped her feet in the cold. They were laughing. Then, strange beyond belief, as Robin watched, the man rested her skis against the fender of his car and began to kiss her. Her hat fell off. She retrieved it and turned again to him. They resumed a brief kiss. Quickly, heart beating, Robin banged his shutters closed. He looked at his watch. She was only now getting home, an hour and a half after him, could have been doing anything in the meantime.

*

When Rupert reached the hotel, there was the little red light blinking on his phone. News from London, or maybe something on the whereabouts of Kip. He had been reassuring himself that the ski patrol had been told to look for the boy. He deliberately waited until he had got out of his wet ski clothes before dialing the operator as instructed. Christian Jaffe at the desk answered.

‘You have
un message,
’ said Christian Jaffe. ‘You are to call Mr Osworthy in London at this number.’ Eagerly and in dread, Rupert wrote down the number and asked Jaffe to dial it.

‘Oh, Rupert,’ said Osworthy immediately, ‘I have bad news, I’m afraid.’

‘He didn’t make it,’ Rupert said.

‘I’m sorry to tell you. He made it to London, for that matter,’ Osworthy said, ‘but he died soon after we arrived at the Brompton. His brain – I’m sorry, this is rather shocking – his brain began to swell, and there is apparently no remedy for that, all is over.’

‘I see,’ said Rupert, shocked even though he had been more than prepared, these last few days, for the probability of this outcome. ‘I’ll tell Posy. Will you speak to my mother?’

‘I have spoken to her. I have asked her what she wants to do.’

‘Hardly up to her, is it?’

‘The present Mrs Venn is not in a condition to make decisions. I believe, in fact, you children must decide, and your mother has said she has no views.’

‘Yes, well, let me take this in, Mr Osworthy. Where is he now?’

‘I assume that is a practical and not a metaphysical question. In the morgue at the Brompton awaiting removal to the mortuary.’

‘There’s a storm at the moment, we can’t start for London tonight. We’ll hope to get a start tomorrow morning and be back in London tomorrow afternoon,’ Rupert said, part of him feeling tears beginning, part of him relieved not to be setting out into the snowy darkness, it not mattering now.

‘Notify the French chap, you have his number, I assume?’ suggested Osworthy.

‘Monsieur Delamer, yes.’

‘I’ll call you later, Rupert, with some other matters, I know you want to be alone now,’ said Osworthy, and rang off.

Rupert sat in the chair in his room for a while, then went off to find Posy. He passed Emile Abboud in the hall – a right chap after all, had dug snow valiantly along with everyone else and talked wittily about it at the same time. He supposed he should tell Abboud about Father, so he could himself tell his wife; but for Victoire to know before Posy did seemed disloyal to Posy somehow.

Posy was in her room, eyes teary, face streaked with eye gunk, as if she had heard the news already. Maybe Osworthy had called her. It was strange when she seemed not to have heard.

‘What?’ she said crossly at finding it was Rupert at the door.

‘You’ve heard?’

‘No, what?’

‘Father died.’

Posy’s face cleared, assumed an expression of skepticism. ‘How could he die, hooked up to all those machines? What do you mean?’

‘Osworthy called. He said his brain swelled. Can I come in?’

‘Oh, no, yes, sorry. Gosh.’ Posy’s tears were starting again. What had she been crying about if not Father? ‘Gosh, I didn’t expect that. Did you? After all this time. I mean I guess it was only a week, but it seemed – I thought he was going to make it.’ She wedged her fist into her eyes. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t surprised. I guess the longer it went on the less I thought he was going to survive.’

‘Does Mother know?’

‘Yes, but I haven’t talked to her.’

‘Oh, what can one say? Bloody hell. Poor Father.’

‘I know,’ said Rupert. They sat awhile sighing desultory sighs and exchanging an occasional word, waiting for the full force of grief to declare itself, as it surely would.

‘We’ll go in the morning. Does Mother want us tonight?’

‘I haven’t talked to her.’

‘Right.’

‘I suppose we should tell Victoire.’

‘I don’t know if I can face having dinner with them,’ Posy said. ‘If I can’t, I’ll just have something in my room.’

‘Be there,’ said Rupert firmly.

Posy had been crying in her room because she had been unexpectedly embraced by Emile, animating all the
emotion she had kept at cheerful arm’s length all afternoon. When they had returned to the hotel, wet and wool-smelling from their bus accident, he had come down the hall with her, stepped inside her bedroom door, and kissed her ardently. Kissed her ardently, looked long and regretfully into her eyes, covered her breasts with his hands as if memorizing them. She pushed his hands away and began to cry. At this, his manner became one of gentlemanly concern – what was the matter? How could he help?

‘It’s just that I’m sorry to leave,’ she apologized, pulling herself together, not wishing to repel him with her drippy tears. ‘It’s better not to have good experiences, this hotel, our little times together – everything seems so much worse now, not even counting poor Father. What’s happening to Father just symbolizes the disappointments of my life.’ Aware that this sounded selfish and melodramatic, she could not keep from saying it.

‘How old are you, Posy?’ asked Emile. ‘Twenty-one or two?’

‘Twenty-two,’ she admitted. ‘But old for my age, and gifted with foresight, and I foresee I am never to have anything I want. Is it even worth it being alive?’ This stuck her as such a bitter question, her tears flowed again.

‘How do we know what we want? Remember the old caution, I believe it was an Englishman – Oscar Wilde? – who said there are two tragedies in life – not to get what you want, and to get it, of which getting it is worse.’

‘I don’t want much, I only want something interesting to do – nothing more than anyone would want. And love, I guess.’

‘Love and interest are so much more than anyone has, probably.’ Emile now seemed interested less in her state of mind than in the philosophical question, old as it was. ‘Of course I love you, Posy. One must always love to make love, lovemaking must
mean
something.’

Posy sensed a translation problem,
love
as in ‘
J’aime Coca-Cola,’
or ‘
J’aime ma VW ...,’
a word having a mysteriously different weight in French, lighter. ‘I know we don’t know each other well enough for love. I know I can’t say I want you without scaring you.’ She sighed, regretting the gloppy feel of her heavy English words. There was indeed a trace of inquietude in his expression as Emile kissed her again and left, saying they would see each other at dinner. Making no response to her sad little confession.

Baron Otto went with Amy to her room, walking in plain view through the lobby and into the elevator. Perhaps, as a person well known in the hotel, no one noticed his movements; or perhaps he was hoping to be reported to Fennie. He took the key from her, opened the door, and came inside.

Amy, who had skied forty kilometers, sweating inside her ski suit, and was soaked to her pores in the tobacco smoke that clung even to nonsmokers after being in a French restaurant or bar, said she’d have a shower.

‘No, no,’ the baron protested. ‘
“Ne te lave pas.”’

‘What?’

‘As Napoleon wrote to Josephine. His most famous phrase.’ He moved to embrace her.

‘I guess you’ll have to explain,’ Amy said.

‘He wrote her, when he was away campaigning, when
he was coming home, not to bathe. He must have liked – have liked…’

‘Oh,’ agreed Amy, supposing generally whatever was suggested by old Anna Magnani movies, sweat-soaked women going into Italian barns with farmhands, earthiness generally not appreciated in Palo Alto, nor, would she have thought, in Germany, also not a Latin culture.

The baron himself smelled delightfully of some cologne, and had a large pink body, with an enthusiastic member springing from a nest of golden hair. Amy’s own enthusiasms were stirred by the sight. Things foreign and unsettling could be reduced to cheering familiarity by taking off your clothes. It made her realize she had been homesick or something, and that this was more than just being nice to the baron.

He was a man in the grip of passion, whether inspired by Amy’s naked form or the resolve to affront his wife, Amy was not sure. Probably both. How reassuring to find that she could understand a few things about international human nature after all. She undid her braid and let her hair fall down.

If there was disappointment about actually doing it with the baron, it was only that there was nothing specifically baronial or Austrian about it. The ingredients were familiar – disrobing, kisses, foreplay, contraceptive reassurance, the act, the climax (her, then him, as if they’d had years of practice), the whole rather short lived but satisfactory. It was even sort of extra exciting to find herself under such a large, that is to say almost heavy, man, something solid and Mitteleuropean about that. He would look great in a black leather raincoat, or the ruffled shirt
worn by the lordly aristocrat in the porn film. These mental pictures had made her come sooner than she might have. She was comfortable with the fact that people didn’t have to apologize for or disclose their sexual fantasies.

Afterward, they showered and had champagne from the minibar. It was already almost nine. This had been a long day. ‘We could get some room service,’ Amy said. ‘But I suppose you are expected home?’

‘
Nein
. No, no. The room-service menu is rather limited, and besides, they are having a special carp from Lac Leman in the dining room tonight. I will stay to dinner and woo you as I would a client. No one will think it odd.’ To her surprise, Amy felt some disappointment in this, would have liked just a sandwich in the room, but gamely brushed her hair and prepared to go down to dinner, watched at her toilette by the admiring baron.