One Damn Thing After Another (11 page)

“A Peace offering,” she said in her nicest voice. “Because I pestered you.” She was carrying a large expensive bunch of flowers and a bottle of expensive malt whisky in a box with coats of arms and repoussé silver lettering in cute Celtic script. What was I supposed to do? asked Arthur plaintively. Tear it out of her tenacious little paws and slam the door in her face? This was indeed odtaa …

“You don't give up easily, do you?” said Arlette, kicking truedog in the ribs. Dog hated Miss Buckenburg, if possible even more than she did.

“Well, I thought, you see, that to make up for all this stupidity we could do you a really nice little interview.” From her bananabag she produced a little pocket recorder, all ready. Arlette looked at the flowers, which were really very pretty. At the whisky, which Arthur was eyeing appreciatively with a face exactly like Captain Haddock. No beard, admitted, but tiny shiny eyes. She sighed deeply.

“Go ahead, then.” The press, being utterly brazen, always did get its way in the end.

The American Beauty Rose went blahblahblah professionally into her mike, checked the thing swiftly for voice level, assumed the interviewer's tone and asked, “How actually do you see the job you're doing? Can you define it?”

Arlette thought; the little wheels turned; Arthur uncorked the bottle with a soft plop; what did it amount to, really? A tape.

“Things happen. To us all; today's no exception. Unexpected, disconcerting, perhaps tragic. Who is there, that might help, at the best do something, at the worst listen?

“One doesn't help them much. People have to help themselves.” There was a glass under her nose.

“I got a lesson today from my husband. You can't use that. But by being unafraid of humiliation or embarrassment he got rid of a thing that had been a thorn in their eye for years: it's worth the effort.

“People go to the police who say they can't intervene, to lawyers who do nothing, to doctors who give them a pill, or priests with consolations, another pill. They run to these Encounter places and end with a partner for the night; likewise a pill.

“Offices in general have the same handicap: rigidity. They run on fixed tramway lines. They may be interested and they may be experienced and they do good, but they see one facet, and most things are a heap of facets. A woman needs the Social Worker, the Housing Inspector, the Cruelty to Children man, the Battered Wives shelter, the Family Allowance office, the Employment bureau, the Rents Tribunal, and what about an abortion to be going on with. They're swamped. They're up to here with confusion, discouragement, frustration. And most people, as you know, aren't very articulate,” pausing for breath and a solid pull at the glass: what a day this had been.

“Often it's a matter of knowing which string to pull. Nobody tells them; I often can. Mr Thing, office two-o-three, phone extension four-o-seven; he's your man. All that's needed, often, is someone to give them the confidence to begin.”

“There's a living, in this?”

“I can spend a day, frigging about. Frustration all round. Nothing useful I can do and no payment I can ask. But a quarter of an hour can make a difference. A phonecall, a little good will, a small scrap of effort. A quarter of an hour first, just listening. A specialist consultation like any other. What would you give fifty francs for – say twenty-five marks? – and think it well spent?”

“Since we agree not to use today's episode, can you find a concrete example?”

“A simple one, and very difficult. From just before the holidays. And a German one.

“A house with four or five apartments. One of the tenants is a drunk, a psychopath. Unemployable. Pays no rent; never has. He's noisy, he pesters everyone, flashes a knife. Skilful mix of blackmail and bullying. He has a girl too, Jugoslav, a poor wretch, only seventeen. Illiterate, eight months pregnant, no job, no parents.

“Tenant came to me. Gentle, quiet person, young schoolteacher. What can we do? My wife's in terror; it's very bad for our small child. The owner does nothing, the police will do nothing, the prosecutor, the mayor, nobody. The fellow's antisocial, but there's no legal hold on him. Nobody will touch the problem, they sheer off it. A mixture of violence and cunning, and he has everybody by the balls.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Miss Buckenburg, grinning.

“Quite,” said Arlette tartly. “These people, like most young Germans, are pacifist and believe in non-violence. So do I. Nothing is ever gained by violence. But after looking at this problem, I could see cowardice everywhere. What do you do when you've exhausted non-violent means, or there just aren't any? Reason is useless. Sociopathic people, the line between reason and nonreason is indistinct. You have to find something they will understand. Which can only be violence. And there you are, on the horns of the dilemma. I found a way of putting him in fear and putting him to flight. I'm not saying how, because I'm not proud of it. I'm not proud of the result, either.”

“You put him to flight, and he turns up some place else.”

“Intact. More violent than ever. And the problem of the girl not touched. So I didn't do it. I did nothing. And I'm not proud of that either.”

“So what happens?”

“Nothing. They learn to live with the problem. Maybe it'll quieten down, maybe the girl and the child will lend him some stability. Not a chance in a hundred, to my mind. Sooner or later a drunk who plays with knives meets someone quicker with a knife than he is. The local police, conspicuous for apathy as well as cowardice, will then have bread on their plate. Somebody will go to jail for a week or so. And then the social-care services will say oh yes, there's a minor in peril, and a child in jeopardy. Until then, nothing.” She drank the glass of whisky off, and pushed it across the table for more.

“Short and sweet,” said Miss Buckenburg.

“Twenty-five marks please.”

“That'll make a very nice piece,” with profound insincerity as she switched the recorder off.

“You don't have to bother about them using a single word of that,” remarked Doctor Davidson after Miss Buckenburg had finally removed herself. “That one was strictly of no interest to the readership.”

“It was whisky talking, too,” said Arlette sadly.

“Mr Chamberlain acquired much odium for his behaviour at Munich. Conveniently forgotten is the praise he received at the time. Do you know that there was a member of the Commons who suggested there should be a statue to the preserver of world peace? It strikes you as fulsome? We have here a number of German men, including those in uniform, who when faced with this loud personage yelling that he'll see the colour of their tripes, hasten to offer sympathy and cups of tea. This I find poignant.”

“I just found it typical. Everyone pushed the odium on to someone else.”

“What, by the way, was the solution you discreetly censored?”

“Oh, that they should get together, take hold of the fellow and tip him in the canal. They weren't up to that, naturally. Then I found a Pole, in the village. Ex-foreign-legion type. You can imagine the kind of barbarian that is.”

“Yes, indeed,” laughing heartily.

“He saw no problem at all. ‘I wait outside pub. I say, you, nazi pig, take yourself bloody quick out everybody's sight. Otherwise I break quart beerbottle over ugly skull, shove splinters in your nasty face.' I had great difficulty stopping him.”

“It would have worked too.”

“That's right: you wouldn't have seen his heels for dust. These irrational people, they're ever so rational and ever so sensitive, when they smell smoke. But I – well, would you?”

“No,” said Arthur. “Cups of tea, rational and sympathetic consideration is my strength. Who am I, to go kicking Neville Chamberlain?”

“And it was such a lovely war. I'm utterly drained, let's go to bed.”

Day dawned, neither good nor bad. The sun did not shine, but it wasn't raining either. Arthur, the coffee-maker, made coffee. Discussion at breakfast was desultory.

“What was all that about Argentina?” asked Arthur, turning the pages of the local paper with languid distaste. “I know the subject was raised, but I must admit I wasn't listening very attentively.”

“People seemed to think I'd be thrilled at the prospect. As though it were next door, Frankfurt or somewhere. As though I could do the faintest good if I did go. Wave a magic wand or something. What am I supposed to do – walk in to see the general? Tell him sorry, I've lost a boy, d'you mind rounding him up for me? Weird thing about this sort of folk; take it for granted that any caprice they get in their head will be law to me.

“Only wanted to clear my mind,” alarmed at all this tirade.

“Set it at rest.”

After listening to her tape – there was nothing on it – she put her coat on and was painting her face in the hallway, when Arthur stumped through on his way to work.

“Try and have a quiet day, mm?”

“I'm only slipping over to Neudorf. Nobody battering the door down, for once.”

“What good d'you think you'll do there?”

“None, probably. I said I would, that's all. Be back to look after the dinner.”

The purlieues of Solange's flat smelt, as expected, of drains, dustbins and neglect: to wit, poverty. The flat, also as expected,
was spotless and smelt like it: her windows put Arlette to shame.

Solange beamed at seeing her, and offered all the hospitality of poor people; embarrassing because there is so much of it. Coffee, and I'll just-whip-out-to-the-baker: saying no, no, please don't bother, sounds both high-hat and ungrateful. It isn't a bother to them. You've given away that it would be a bother, if you had to do it.

“I've nothing much to bring you.” She wasn't going to mention Sergeant Subleyras. “There's a faint chance of digging up the police file, but I don't hold much hope out. If there were any irregularities in it, they'd be that much more determined to keep them covered up. There are legal means of getting it, but the advocate I've consulted doesn't like them. It's not that he's frightened – on the contrary, he's strongly left wing – but he doesn't like the grounds on which he'd have to plead. They lead rather towards that grudging award of the symbolic franc, don't you know. You could give the man a bad time in court, saddle him with high costs, but he doesn't see much point in being vindictive just to satisfy rancour, and I felt able to tell him that it wasn't the way I read your intentions either.”

“Two wrongs wouldn't make a right.”

“And they'd see to giving you as nasty a time as possible in court, and the costs – very likely no award, and however hard we try to keep them down, they're bound to be high.”

“I can't see any use in it.”

“Remains a human sort of approach to this man – would you let me try that?”

“I wrote him a letter. Never got any answer, of course. Was stupid of me; let off steam, 'n I must have sounded pretty spiteful.”

“All the same I can try.”

“Thibault, William Thibault. I wouldn't mind – but the world's full of it. How many more are there?” It wasn't too clearly put, but Arlette understood. “We're this whatsername, advanced society, they keep telling us. Liberal, and social justice for all, and we're supposed to feel so grateful. We're
not in Africa being massacred by a cannibal general, being starved to death like the Gambodges. Who're they all trying to kid? When everybody knows it isn't so. I know I'm ignorant and stupid and I'll always be poor because I don't deserve any better. So fair enough. I don't need that slimy bastard on the television in his beautiful suit and his big armchair telling me. Used always to be, there's good times just around the corner. We know that song. Now he keeps saying everything's lovely already. For the rich it is, sure. I'm not voting neither for that communist bastard laughing all the time at his own cleverness. Big a bullshitter as the other, don't care a fuck about the poor, wanting to get their own muzzle in the trough is all.”

And could Mrs Davidson put it any more succinctly? Could she see any further into the glorious rosy dawn? Did she feel any more satisfied with all those smiling well-fed faces?

“I have to trust you,” said Solange. “If there's no way out of this – tell me so straight.”

“I will; I promise.”

It was not market-day in the Boulevard de la Marne: she stopped in the Esplanade for one or two things, since she was ‘out anyway'. In the kitchen she thought a while about dinner, got a rather sluggish Spanish response to a request that the windows be cleaner; it was an hour before she got back to the office to think about Mr William Thibault.

On her tape were grunts and clicks indicative of people who'd got wrong numbers, or cold feet: quite a lot of people didn't like leaving recorded messages; it was as though they were afraid of giving themselves away. She could sympathize. Talking to somebody you could not see was bad enough; talking to recorders, computers, and such cattle was preferably left to the Japanese. Timed some way back was a message from Arthur saying “Arlette, ring me back, would you,” that sounded brusque.

“Doctor there?” Originally a joke, then a cliché, it had become campus-wide: even pompous professors from the Law Faculty rang up these days asking for Doctor.

“Oh, he flew out. Said if you rang it wasn't to worry about and see you at lunch.” All right then. She had heaved the
directory up on the table and was fluttering it when the thing rang in her ear.

“Van der Valk,” she said in a manner bespeaking irritation.

There was a pause, and a voice said, “Recorders, hey?”

“No, this is a direct line.”

“You mean, this is the lady speaking?”

“That's right; you can speak freely.”