Monsieur (16 page)

Eyes closed, Estelle had moved away from the cupboard, jaw clenched, stomach tight. All afternoon on the couch, she could feel the pernicious call of temptation vibrating inside her, beckoning her. She'd thrown herself recklessly into games with little Charles. At eight o'clock, he'd begun to cry and, for half an hour, Estelle held him to her breasts, full of milk, without taking her eyes off him, smiling mechanically. Once he was sated, the baby had let go of her nipple and she had held him tight against her chest.

Charles burped quietly, and Estelle wiped his lips with her sleeve. It was almost nine and she still hadn't dressed or combed her hair. Her makeup kit had been lying on the kitchen table since the telephone call. She should have prepared dinner, but the idea of setting a saucepan full of water to boil on the stove was too tiring.

Monsieur's keys turn in the lock. Estelle's heart is beating wildly. Charles's eyes are round and questioning as he sits on her knees.

‘Here's your daddy,' she says to him, and the baby appears to understand her.

The door opens and this man she finds so beautiful appears, dressed in his grey suit, holding his briefcase, the weariness of a long day's work drawn across his smiling face. The thought of another woman hanging on to the scented flesh of his neck appals her. She composes her features into a semblance of neutrality as Monsieur takes Charles, who has instantly recognized him. However tired he is, he has always enough strength to hold his baby. And Estelle realizes that, watching the two similar faces smile at each other, her husband's lips kissing the child's tiny nose, she is incapable of not loving Monsieur. There is no way she can ever love her son without worshipping the man he takes after. Monsieur never complains when he has to get up in the middle of the night when Charles has colic. Monsieur never hesitates when the child wishes to be held in the air like an aeroplane, even if it ends up with Charles giggling until he's sick over Monsieur's suit. Such a beautiful spectacle, it always breaks Estelle's heart.

‘How are you, darling?' he asks, before tenderly kissing her.

He holds the baby against himself with his large masculine hands, in love with the trio they form. But Estelle can't find the energy to lie. ‘Not good.'

‘What's the matter?' Monsieur asks.

She'd thought it would take her hours to find the right words, but it all comes out quickly. ‘You have a mistress.'

Monsieur opens his eyes wide, as if rehearsing some theatrical monologue, but Estelle sharply interrupts him: ‘Please, don't say anything. Don't start lying.'

She feels like screaming. Her throat tightens and she brings her hands to her mouth, closing her eyes, the lashes already full of tears. She loves Monsieur so much. So much.

‘Don't start lying to me because I know you lie so well that I'll want to believe you.'

Monsieur takes the baby to his play-pen, by the entrance to their room. When he returns, he seems sad, his tall silhouette bending under the weight of what Estelle assumes is guilt or remorse.

‘Darling . . .' he begins.

‘I had a phone call today. A woman who wanted to speak to Dr S.'

‘Many of my patients have this number,' Monsieur explains. ‘If it's urgent, they can reach me at home. You know that.'

‘When I said I was your wife, she hung up immediately,' Estelle continues, burning with shame. ‘No real patient would do that. Anyway, no patient has ever called you here. So, please,
please
, don't lie to me. Not to me. I'm not one of those girls. I am your wife.'

‘Listen, darling, I don't understand,' Monsieur says, shaking his head, looking so confused she can feel herself weaken.

Part of her, so much of her, wants to accept any excuses he might come up with so they can go on as usual. Estelle recognizes the innate talent her mother always had for closing her eyes to any problem likely to disrupt the peace of the family life. But out of pride she can't agree to be blind and cowardly.

Like a machine, Monsieur keeps on talking: ‘I don't understand.'

‘Well, you're the only one,' Estelle answers, louder than she wants to. ‘Stop lying to me.'

‘She didn't give her name?'

‘If she had, I wouldn't be so upset.'

‘What did she sound like?'

Her nerves on edge, Estelle bursts into tears. ‘If you're cheating on me, fine, as long as you don't rub my nose in it! But it hurts when you lie to me.'

In the play-pen the baby is shrieking.

‘Please, don't cry. You're frightening Charles.'

‘That's what all this is about. The baby and me. I'm only asking for one thing. Don't make me ashamed to be your wife.'

Monsieur is reduced to silence, his eyes darting around the room.

‘I don't want to blush with embarrassment when I tell people I'm Madame S, and I don't want Charles asking me one day who all these women are when he answers the phone. And when you lie to me and an unknown woman hangs up on me when she learns you're married, I'm ashamed of you and of myself. I'm ashamed of you and it hurts because I love you. So don't do this to me. If you love me, if you have ever loved me, tell me the truth. Tell me you're fucking another girl and she's the one who called you. Or I'll go mad.'

Monsieur's grey eyes stare back at her. He is horribly aware of the sheer chaos a few wrong words would trigger. The pain he would inflict on Estelle, whom he loves so much. Without looking away from her, he says: ‘There's this girl, at the hospital, a patient, who came to see me back in March with a bad deviation of her septum. I had to operate and she came back on several occasions for check-ups. Most of the time I looked after her. We got on fine and I gave her our home number in case of unexpected pain. She fell in love with me, or so she told me the last time she visited me. I immediately took her off my list of patients and referred her to someone else.'

Estelle listens to her husband; she will never know if his story is true or a fabrication. The tears on her face dry, turning her cheeks into a mask. Charles stops crying and the random sounds from his play-pen soften.

‘I hadn't told you about it because it wasn't worth it. She's obsessed. Now she has our phone number, there's not much I can do, apart from change it. I'll call her tomorrow, get rid of her. Darling . . .'

He touches her cheek. As if stung by a wasp, Estelle jumps back.

‘Did you fuck her?'

‘No,' Monsieur answers, not batting an eyelid.

She feels almost ashamed as the weight lifts from her chest. ‘Why should I believe you?' she asks.

‘You
must
believe me. I have no proof, but you must believe me. Good God, the woman's over fifty!'

And Estelle vaguely remembers the grainy, frayed voice, a smoker's or an older woman's. But how can she untangle the false from the true? How can she know he hadn't planned it, an experienced womanizer, familiar with amorous intrigue? Monsieur loves women. And, for a man like him, wouldn't a fifty-year-old prove a delicious trophy? As he leans towards her to take her in his arms, Estelle leaps up.

‘Leave me alone. If you touch me now, I think I'll scream.'

‘Believe me, please,' he says, his hands seeking her.

‘
Leave me alone!
'

‘I can't allow that woman to harm us. I'll get the cops on to her!' Monsieur shouts, with an impulsiveness she has seldom seen in him.

‘Why? It's
your
fault.
You
gave her our phone number. No judge, no cop can do anything about it,' Estelle says calmly.

She goes to fetch Charles, holds him tight, heavy with love as she smells her husband's scent on the small downy head.

‘I'm going to put him to bed,' she says, her voice white and cold. ‘If you're hungry, there's some of yesterday's pasta in the fridge. You can warm it up.'

And, baby in her arms, she turns round, no longer stuck to the same spot, cooing into the tiny uncomprehending ears, trying not to hear Monsieur calling Estelle Estelle Estelle brokenly. She walks into their bedroom as if facing the gallows.

A few hours later, in the dark, Monsieur finds her lying on the still made-up bed, her eyes dry and closed. In his cot, their child breathes softly, like a satisfied little bear. Before she can say or do anything, his long body spoons against hers, overlaps, holds her tight, taking away any thought of resistance. She is overwhelmed by unexpected tenderness, and tears spring to her eyes.

‘I love you so much,' Monsieur sobs, into the hollow of her neck. ‘Believe me, darling, I love you so much. I could never hurt you.'

His words hurt Estelle so much more than the image of him thrusting between the legs of another woman. She is aware that he has unknowingly confessed everything, and she turns towards him (
dear God, this is what pain is about
) and holds him tight against her. ‘Don't give our number to patients again. I thought I was going mad.'

‘I swear I won't,' he answers.

The ghost of the other woman floats across their bedroom, and Monsieur whispers: ‘Tell me how I can make you happy. I don't want to see you sad because of me.'

She closes her eyes tight, wraps her hard thighs around his back as he moves above her, dries her eyelashes against the soft material of his suit through which his scent lingers. ‘I want to make love.'

It's the only solution the instinct for survival dares suggest, that she should open herself to this man, own him, body and soul. And Monsieur, who is quite incapable of watching or touching his young wife without wanting her badly, gets rock hard in her embrace. Maybe he wasn't yet the relentless explorer I know him to be, always inventing new perversions, reaching for more extreme limits; tonight, at any rate, all he wants is to give her pleasure. Between his fingers he feels the hard nipples, and reckons they're the only part of Estelle's body to retain some hint of anger. The rest of her is compliant, willing. The extra curves gained during her pregnancy are still beautifully present. Estelle is on offer, has lowered all her defences. He's never looked at her as a mother: for him she will always be the young girl who awoke his desire in the South of France. He still gets as hard for her as he did on their first nights together. Sometimes all it takes is for her to move slightly in her sleep and he wants her with a vengeance. This woman is magical. This love is magical.

‘You're so beautiful,' he says to her, inhaling her smell.

And Estelle groans, ‘I want you inside me, darling.'

Monsieur is so hard he fears he might hurt her. He penetrates her slowly, amazed as ever at how tight she always feels. With other women, frantic arousal results in a form of passive openness, while Estelle contracts and convulses repeatedly. Monsieur takes comfort in their togetherness against all the odds. She bites his arm to stop herself howling and waking the baby, and her cunt sucks his cock like a leech. Estelle kicks beneath him. She whimpers, ‘Fuck me,' and he has to hold her still with his hand firmly against her chest, touched to tears by his deep need of her, but he is already facing the abyss and Estelle is impaling herself on his cock, fucking herself, drawing his thrusts towards the cushioned pit of her stomach. As she does so, she shamelessly touches her clit, her fingers racing against the hard nub, making Monsieur feel even crazier (she is the one who taught him how women caress themselves and initiated his fascination with it; she never asked for his approval, just did it of her own accord). What man would be able to hold back more than a few seconds, trapped within her small warm box, the only landscape in his sights the hypnotic panorama of a woman's fingers teasing a tiny pink excrescence of flesh? Of course, he's studied anatomy and knows all the technical words for this area of the body, but as a man he remains fascinated by the clitoris. Estelle, on the other hand, is just wanking, a word few medical tomes list.

‘Let me fuck you,' Monsieur then says, launching himself towards her depths, holding her thighs apart like the pages of an art book.

While Charles is lost in infant dreams, Estelle and Monsieur almost come at the same time, the surgeon's large, clever hands lost in his wife's mane, just their clenched toes emerging from the cocoon of the bed. Monsieur's powerful body is heavy on hers. As long as Estelle's nails are digging into his arse, he will not retreat from her. He will never retreat even though he has already filled her to the brim, even though her cries are muted now, dying on the waves of satisfaction.

‘I love you,' Monsieur says.

‘I love you,' she answers.

As Estelle slips into sleep, she once again remembers the love and fear she had witnessed earlier in her husband's eyes. These are things only she can trigger.

It's all so pathetic and beautiful, a scene involving Estelle and Monsieur.

Book II

Today I have no idea where Monsieur is. It's three months since I've had any news from him, a few weeks since I ceased the drip-drip of our communications. Where are you? Sitting at the wheel of a car, leaning over that thick folder titled with a word that belongs to all men but only means you? Locked inside your office in an attempt to escape the unceasing stream of patients, leafing through the pages of our story? Do you hide in the toilets, late at night, away from Estelle and the children, as soon as their backs are turned? Or are you holding
Monsieur
casually, your fingers dripping with sun cream? Are my corners already turned down, pages covered with the sand your kids have thrown as they played with their beach ball? Have I somehow managed to infiltrate your family holiday?

Are you afraid? How much hate is there among all the possibly contradictory emotions I evoke (posthumously?) inside you?