Marcel (7 page)

THE GRANDMOTHER AND I TOOK THE BACK LANE TO
the village, walking in the shade of the poplar trees. June was drawing to a close. The languid foliage presaged the monotony of the long school holidays. Miss Veegaete’s new dress had been carefully folded and wrapped by the grandmother.

The whole morning had been taken up with last-minute preparations. This had nothing to do with the dress, which was ready – it was the grandmother who had to prepare herself. Stella put curlers in her mistress’s hair, row upon row of them until she looked like an old-fashioned judge with a sausage wig. The grandmother sat unmoved on her chair by the window throughout, taking no notice of the bustle while she looked through the post and read the paper.

Stella covered the grandmother’s head with an elasticated cap made of white nylon; at the top it was joined to a flaccid tube that was connected with the vacuum cleaner.

The grandmother raised her hands briefly to feel whether the cap was properly in place and gave a little nod. Stella swaggered over to the vacuum cleaner and pressed the switch with a flourish, as if it were a new type of rocket she was launching.

The machine let out a roar. The nylon tube stiffened. The cap ballooned.

“Warm enough?” Stella shouted over the din. “Not too hot?”

The grandmother said no. She was like a cave painting, a prehistoric fertility goddess with a ceremonial headdress.

The vacuum cleaner roared non-stop for the next quarter of an hour. The grandmother’s head emerged from the dryer steaming like a freshly baked cake. Stella pulled out the rollers, dragged a hairbrush through the stiff curls, and misted the sculpted tresses in enough hairspray to glue the flies to the ceiling.

“Remember, now,” the grandmother admonished, “you must mind your manners. No more than two biscuits – if we are offered any, that is. Or just one piece of cake. And don’t go butting in when the grown-ups are talking. Understand?”

“OK!”

“OK, OK … why don’t you just say ‘yes’. All these newfangled words. What’s wrong with Flemish anyway? People even say ‘sorry’ nowadays, as if they’re English. Sorry indeed. I used to have a dog called Sorry.”

“Yes Grandma.”

She went off to put on her smartest outfit, for which she had chosen the material and cut with the greatest care. Needless to say it was less ostentatious than her creation for Miss Veegaete, which was lying in the parcel on the chest.

Miss Veegaete lived at the end of the village in an unassuming brick house on a street corner. On one side it adjoined the
school playground, on the other there was a drive with linden trees, a green tunnel that led to the gates of the castle.

“Well now, so it’s quite finished, is it?” trilled Miss Veegaete, seeing the parcel when she answered the door.

Miss Veegaete’s house did not have a hall, which always struck me as odd. A house without a hall was too eager, somehow, and there was an unseemly intimacy about it. Looking past Miss Veegaete’s ample shoulders you could see straight into her living room. The wallpaper was patterned with clouds of lilies and foliage bursting forth from curvaceous urns, which seemed intent on drawing the eye away from the framed still lifes with game. Fancy china, charming pendules, weather houses, almanacs and shepherdesses of fine biscuit porcelain cluttered every surface in sight. The whole mass of bric-a-brac was a twinkling avalanche gradually encroaching on the backs of the heavily patterned settees. Next to the piano stood a spindly wrought iron birdcage, from which a pair of parakeets raised a neurotic outcry at the intrusion.

Something moved in the background, and it was only then that I noticed Miss Veegaete’s brother. He was lounging on one of the settees watching television.

“Afternoon, afternoon,” he mumbled in a nasal voice, without taking his eyes off the screen.

“Our Norbert and his telly,” said Miss Veegaete. “It’s cycle racing from morning till night in this house.”

“It’s the Tour de France,” Norbert protested. “I can’t miss that.”

“I watch it myself, now and then,” said the grandmother.
“Not for the sport, really, but because the scenery is so pretty sometimes. The French certainly know how to attract tourists.”

Miss Veegaete took the parcel from the grandmother, laid it down on a chair and fumbled with the wrapping.

“Oh my dear Andrea,” she cried, pulling the dress up by the shoulders and holding it at arms’ length. “How very nice it looks! I’ll put it on later, but let’s have a little treat first. Our Louise has been baking.”

At that very moment Louise, Miss Veegaete’s elder sister, kicked the scullery door open and came in bearing an impressive pastry construction. It was a tall cylinder with icing on top sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts, and it seemed to me nigh on impossible that she could have made it herself. She made me think of a tree which had started out with the potential for shooting up tall and slender but which had since, being confined between two rocks, lost all sense of direction. Just above her hips her spine canted forward at an alarming angle, then arched back up to the shoulders, where it lurched forward again.

Louise seemed about to collapse on top of the table, cake and all. The cups shivered in their saucers.

“Ah, a proper
millefeuille
,” the grandmother said reverently. “You need a lot of patience for that sort of pastry. I seldom do it. All that rolling out, folding over, rolling again. Not my cup of tea.”

“Actually,” Louise squeaked, “I love keeping busy in my little kitchen.”

Her voice box had been invaded by a frightened bird which
had clipped its own wings. “And little Linda here has been a great help.”

I had failed to notice that Louise had not emerged from the scullery alone. Little Linda skipped across the tiles and around the table. She halted right under my nose. A wisp of a girl; fey, fair-haired, almost translucent. Her lace-trimmed frock looked as if it was made of spun sugar.

“
Dans ma pochette j’ai beaucoup d’argent Italien
,” little Linda shrilled. She threw me a saccharine smile, unaware that her tongue was sticking out. Her front teeth were missing.

“My niece,” explained Miss Veegaete, brimming with emotion.

“Her
Papa
and
Maman
are on holiday, which is why little Linda has come to stay with us. The country air will do her good. She often comes to take a cure
chez nous campagnards
, don’t you
ma petite
?”

Little Linda was too busy radiating self-satisfaction to reply.

The grandmother nudged me to shake hands with her.

I did not move a muscle.

Little Linda tapped my left shoulder with her forefinger and giggled with her tongue hanging out, “
Enchantée, campagnard
!”

“They’re ever so quick to learn, these modern youngsters,” Miss Veegaete said, laughing.

“Hullo,” I said gruffly.

Little Linda sauntered back to the table.

The
millefeuille
turned out to be a horrendously frustrating delicacy that crumbled into nothing under my fork. Fortunately Louise had spread a generous filling of
crème au 
beurre
halfway down the layers of flaky pastry.

Little Linda sat on a chair wedged in between her two aunts. She stared in front of her with a self-possessed air, not deigning to look at her plate.

“
Tu n’aimes pas
?” Miss Veegaete inquired anxiously. They conversed almost inaudibly, in little staccato squeaks. From somewhere in their heads they transmitted thought waves, which only they could receive, not I.

“
Non
,” mewed little Linda. She pouted, putting her hands on her stomach.

Silently Miss Veegaete reached for little Linda’s plate and tipped the slice of cake onto her own plate.

“Not yet six years old and already a real
Bruxelloise
, that child,” said Louise with thinly concealed disapproval. “Airs and graces
à volonté
.”

“She’s a bundle of nerves, poor lamb,” Miss Veegaete said quietly, so that little Linda would not hear. “Things are a bit strained over there.”

“I knew from the start,” said Louise. “That woman, with all her tricks, she’s not right for our Antoine. He likes the country. Drives the poor chap up the wall, being stuck in that flat in Brussels.”

“Damn …” said Miss Veegaete’s brother.

The television rumbled and choked as though fighting down a sneezing fit. The screen filled with wavy stripes.

“And just during the sprint, too,” he moaned. “Damn …”

“Norbert!” Miss Veegaete said sharply.

The television let out a dying wheeze, at which the picture changed to a snowstorm.

“Right, that just about finishes it,” growled Norbert.

He got up, flung his newspaper on the settee, switched the television off and came to sit at table with the rest of us.

“I might as well have a piece of that
gâteau
now.”

Louise cut him a slice.

“Indeed my lad,” said Miss Veegaete with a glance in my direction, “you’ll be in Master Norbert’s class soon. Just a few more days and it’ll be time for you and me to say goodbye.”

“Oh dear,” the grandmother replied, “he does so like his Miss.”

Little Linda gave a scornful chuckle. “
Pauvre petit
…”

“Did you hear that!” Miss Veegaete tittered. “So amusing!”

Master Norbert could very well have done with two chairs. The one he sat on struggled valiantly to support his rear, but was unable to suppress the occasional mild groan. Master Norbert’s torso seemed intent on annexing his head. It would not be long before there was barely a dent to separate the two.

“He’s a fine reader, this little chap,” said Miss Veegaete, “but his arithmetic isn’t as good as it should be.”

“’Rithmetic,” cried Master Norbert, “I’ll teach him ’rithmetic. Once I get my hands on him he’ll be doing sums like a cashier. Multiplication tables in the morning. Divisions in the afternoon. He’ll be up to his eyes in ’rithmetic.”

Master Norbert’s glasses were so heavily framed I could not tell if it was me he was looking at. I prayed it was not. The look in his eyes told of a fathomless lassitude, against which I rebelled quite spontaneously two months later. I became an expert in long division.

He was the monstrous antithesis of his sister. They had to be identical twins, that was it, and all the spite, all the loutishness had collected in him. I often saw his grey-coated figure shambling across the playground. On sunny days when the windows were open his dull cleric’s voice could be heard all over the school intoning, “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, amen,” with his pupils falling in after a two-syllable delay. His geography lessons consisted of indicating the different countries on the maps above the blackboard with a long pointer.

“’Rithmetic and the regions of Belgium, that’s good mental exercise … polders, coastal regions …”

This time I knew it was me he was looking at.

“There’s Haspengouw, where they grow juicy pears … and the Condroz, where the cattle are sleek and the girls as creamy as farm butter.”

He thought he was very witty. His laughter was an earthquake, with his navel marking the epicentre.

“And all of that together, that’s Belgium for you. Flemings and Walloons under one king and crown.” He dropped his hands wearily on the table. “Fat lot of good it did us,” he muttered.

There was still at least a quarter of the
millefeuille
left when Louise disappeared with it into the kitchen, leaving me not only with a hollow feeling in my stomach but also at the mercy of Master Norbert.

Miss Veegaete and the grandmother had gone upstairs, and little Linda had skipped along at their heels without any
objections being raised. I could hear them talking and thumping about overhead. Miss Veegaete would have slipped on her dress by now and be striking balletic poses in front of the mirror. What else could be setting the chandelier over the table so ecstatically atremble? I felt cruelly excluded. I had observed Miss Veegaete in her new dress just once, but at that stage the segments were still loosely stitched together, giving her a higgledy-piggledy, Frankenstein-like look.

Master Norbert inserted his thumb halfway into his mouth to scrape the back of his teeth, pulling a face like a gargoyle on the flying buttress of a Gothic church. His unshaven cheeks and moustache shrouded the bottom half of his face in darkness. His stomach gave out regular rumbles, as though the triumphant ingestion of all that cake and coffee were only now being celebrated.

I was awestruck. He would obliterate me, I was sure. Shatter everything that was mine. Wring the life out of me and smother me with his bulbous mass. I felt a blind rage well up inside me and longed desperately to turn to stone there and then, a solid rock of granite capable of withstanding the force of hammers, chisels and files.

Master Norbert collected the spittle in his mouth and pushed it out between his front teeth with the tip of his tongue. There was no trace of embarrassment. He was fossilised in his habits. He was a great big rock himself, one of those erratic boulders that found their way here when the ice cap melted millions of years ago. He had come inching southwards, inexorably, smugly, flattening everything in his path. I could picture him heaving into the classroom, and there was
no doubt in my mind that he would pull hairs out of his nostrils and lick up earwax from the ball of his thumb, which he’d hold under his nose first, of course, to smell the gobbets.

From the depths of his gut rose a bubble of gas. It burst in his throat with a dry pop followed by a burbling sound, like a barrel of cider being uncorked in the cellar.

It was not long before Louise returned from doing the dishes in the kitchen, for which I was deeply grateful. She was wearing an apron, and there were suds on her wrists.

Before taking her seat at the table she raised her fingers to her temples. It was only then that I noticed she wore a wig. She turned to address me.