May We Borrow Your Husband? (18 page)

Technically, of course, it was murder – death arising from an illegal assault – but the courts after about six months absolved the six men. ‘But there's a greater court,' my father would always end his story, ‘and in that court the sin of murder never goes unrequited. You begin with a secret,' and he would look at me as though he knew my pockets were stuffed with them, as indeed they were, including the note I intended to pass the next day at school to the yellow-haired girl in the second row, ‘and you end with every sin in the calendar.' He began to recount them over again for my benefit. ‘Lies, drunkenness, fornication, scandal-bearing, murder, the subornation of authority.'

‘Subornation of authority?'

‘Yes,' he said and fixed me with his glittering eye. I think he had Frau Puckler and the Superintendent in mind. He rose towards his climax. ‘Men in women's clothes – the terrible sin of Sodom.'

‘And what's that?' I asked with excited expectation.

‘At your age,' my father said, ‘some things must remain secret.'

TWO GENTLE PEOPLE

T
HEY
sat on a bench in the Parc Monceau for a long time without speaking to one another. It was a hopeful day of early summer with a spray of white clouds lapping across the sky in front of a small breeze: at any moment the wind might drop and the sky become empty and entirely blue, but it was too late now – the sun would have set first.

In younger people it might have been a day for a chance encounter – secret behind the long barrier of perambulators with only babies and nurses in sight. But they were both of them middle-aged, and neither was inclined to cherish an illusion of possessing a lost youth, though he was better looking than he believed, with his silky old-world moustache like a badge of good behaviour, and she was prettier than the looking-glass ever told her. Modesty and disillusion gave them something in common; though they were separated by five feet of green metal they could have been a married couple who had grown to resemble each other. Pigeons like old grey tennis balls rolled unnoticed around their feet. They each occasionally looked at a watch, though never at one another. For both of them this period of solitude and peace was limited.

The man was tall and thin. He had what are called sensitive features, and the cliché fitted him; his face was comfortably, though handsomely, banal – there would be no ugly surprises when he spoke, for a man may be sensitive without imagination. He had carried with him an umbrella which suggested caution. In her case one noticed first the long and lovely legs as unsensual as those in a society portrait. From her expression she found the summer day sad, yet she was reluctant to obey the command of her watch and go – somewhere – inside.

They would never have spoken to each other if two teenaged louts had not passed by, one with a blaring radio slung over his shoulder, the other kicking out at the pre-occupied pigeons. One of his kicks found a random mark, and on they went in a din of pop, leaving the pigeon lurching on the path.

The man rose, grasping his umbrella like a riding-whip. ‘Infernal young scoundrels,' he exclaimed, and the phrase sounded more Edwardian because of the faint American intonation – Henry James might surely have employed it.

‘The poor bird,' the woman said. The bird struggled upon the gravel, scattering little stones. One wing hung slack and a leg must have been broken too, for the pigeon swivelled round in circles unable to rise. The other pigeons moved away, with disinterest, searching the gravel for crumbs.

‘If you would look away for just a minute,' the man said. He laid his umbrella down again and walked rapidly to the bird where it thrashed around; then he picked it up, and quickly and expertly he wrung its neck – it was a kind of skill anyone of breeding ought to possess. He looked round for a refuse bin in which he tidily deposited the body.

‘There was nothing else to do,' he remarked apologetically when he returned.

‘I could not myself have done it,' the woman said, carefully grammatical in a foreign tongue.

‘Taking life is
our
privilege,' he replied with irony rather than pride.

When he sat down the distance between them had narrowed; they were able to speak freely about the weather and the first real day of summer. The last week had been unseasonably cold, and even today. . . . He admired the way in which she spoke English and apologized for his own lack of French, but she reassured him: it was no ingrained talent. She had been ‘finished' at an English school at Margate.

‘That's a seaside resort, isn't it?'

‘The sea always seemed very grey,' she told him, and for a while they lapsed into separate silences. Then perhaps thinking of the dead pigeon she asked him if he had been in the army. ‘No, I was nearly forty when the war came,' he said. ‘I served on a government mission, in India. I became very fond of India.' He began to describe to her Agra, Lucknow, the old city of Delhi, his eyes alight with memories. The new Delhi he did not like, built by a Britisher – Lut-Lut-Lut? No matter. It reminded him of Washington.

‘Then you do not like Washington?'

‘To tell you the truth,' he said, ‘I am not very happy in my own country. You see, I like old things. I found myself more at home – can you believe it? – in India, even with the British. And now in France I find it's the same. My grandfather was British Consul in Nice.'

‘The Promenade des Anglais was very new then,' she said.

‘Yes, but it aged. What we Americans build never ages beautifully. The Chrysler Building, Hilton hotels . . .'

‘Are you married? she asked. He hesitated a moment before replying, ‘Yes,' as though he wished to be quite quite accurate. He put out his hand and felt for his umbrella – it gave him confidence in this surprising situation of talking so openly to a stranger.

‘I ought not to have asked you,' she said, still careful with her grammar.

‘Why not?' He excused her awkwardly.

‘I was interested in what you said.' She gave him a little smile. ‘The question came. It was
imprévu
.'

‘Are
you
married?' he asked, but only to put her at her ease, for he could see her ring.

‘Yes.'

By this time they seemed to know a great deal about each other, and he felt it was churlish not to surrender his identity. He said, ‘My name is Greaves. Henry C. Greaves.'

‘Mine is Marie-Claire. Marie-Claire Duval.'

‘What a lovely afternoon it has been,' the man called Greaves said.

‘But it gets a little cold when the sun sinks.' They escaped from each other again with regret.

‘A beautiful umbrella you have,' she said, and it was quite true – the gold band was distinguished, and even from a few feet away one could see there was a monogram engraved there – an H certainly, entwined perhaps with a B or a P.

‘A present,' he said without pleasure.

‘I admired so much the way you acted with the pigeon. As for me I am
lâche
.'

‘That I am quite sure is not true,' he said kindly.

‘Oh, it is. It is.'

‘Only in the sense that we are all cowards about something.'

‘You are not,' she said, remembering the pigeon with gratitude.

‘Oh yes, I am,' he replied, ‘in one whole area of life.' He seemed on the brink of a personal revelation, and she clung to his coat-tail to pull him back; she literally clung to it, for lifting the edge of his jacket she exclaimed, ‘You have been touching some wet paint.' The ruse succeeded; he became solicitous about her dress, but examining the bench they both agreed the source was not there. ‘They have been painting on my staircase,' he said.

‘You have a house here?'

‘No, an apartment on the fourth floor.'

‘With an
ascenseur
?'

‘Unfortunately not,' he said sadly. ‘It's a very old house in the
dix-septième
.'

The door of his unknown life had opened a crack, and she wanted to give something of her own life in return, but not too much. A bring would give her vertigo. She said, ‘My apartment is only too depressingly new. In the
huitième
. The door opens electrically without being touched. Like in an airport.'

A strong current of revelation carried them along. He learned how she always bought her cheeses in the Place de la Madeleine – it was quite an expedition from her side of the
huitième
, near the Avenue George V, and once she had been rewarded by finding Tante Yvonne, the General's wife, at her elbow choosing a Brie. He on the other hand bought his cheeses in the Rue de Tocqueville, only round the corner from his apartment.

‘You yourself?'

‘Yes, I do the marketing,' he said in a voice suddenly abrupt.

She said, ‘It's a little cold now. I think we should go.'

‘Do you come to the Parc often?'

‘It's the first time.'

‘What a strange coincidence,' he said. ‘It's the first time for me too. Even though I live close by.'

‘And I live quite far away.'

They looked at one another with a certain awe, aware of the mysteries of providence. He said, ‘I don't suppose you would be free to have a little dinner with me.'

Excitement made her lapse into French. ‘
Je suis libre, mais vous . . . votre femme
 . . . ?'

‘She is dining elsewhere,' he said. ‘And your husband?'

‘He will not be back before eleven.'

He suggested the Brasserie Lorraine, which was only a few minutes' walk away, and she was glad that he had not chosen something more chic or more flamboyant. The heavy bourgeois atmosphere of the
brasserie
gave her confidence, and, though she had small appetite herself, she was glad to watch the comfortable military progress down the ranks of the sauerkraut trolley. The menu too was long enough to give them time to readjust to the startling intimacy of dining together. When the order had been given, they both began to speak at once. ‘I never expected . . .'

‘It's funny the way things happen,' he added, laying unintentionally a heavy inscribed monument over that conversation.

‘Tell me about your grandfather, the consul.'

‘I never knew him,' he said. It was much more difficult to talk on a restaurant sofa than on a park bench.

‘Why did your father go to America?'

‘The spirit of adventure perhaps,' he said. ‘And I suppose it was the spirit of adventure which brought me back to live in Europe. America didn't mean Coca-Cola and
Time-Life
when my father was young.'

‘And have you found adventure? How stupid of me to ask. Of course you married here?'

‘I brought my wife with me,' he said. ‘Poor Patience.'

‘Poor?'

‘She is fond of Coca-Cola.'

‘You can get it here,' she said, this time with intentional stupidity.

‘Yes.'

The wine-waiter came and he ordered a Sancerre. ‘If that will suit you?'

‘I know so little about wine,' she said.

‘I thought all French people . . .'

‘We leave it to our husbands,' she said, and in his turn he felt an obscure hurt. The sofa was shared by a husband now as well as a wife, and for a while the
sole meunière
gave them an excuse not to talk. And yet silence was not a genuine escape. In the silence the two ghosts would have become more firmly planted, if the woman had not found the courage to speak.

‘Have you any children?' she asked.

‘No. Have you?'

‘No.'

‘Are you sorry?'

She said, ‘I suppose one is always sorry to have missed something.'

‘I'm glad at least I did not miss the Parc Monceau today.'

‘Yes, I am glad too.'

The silence after that was a comfortable silence: the two ghosts went away and left them alone. Once their fingers touched over the sugar-castor (they had chosen strawberries). Neither of them had any desire for further questions; they seemed to know each other more completely than they knew anyone else. It was like a happy marriage; the stage of discovery was over – they had passed the test of jealousy, and now they were tranquil in their middle age. Time and death remained the only enemies, and coffee was like the warning of old age. After that it was necessary to hold sadness at bay with a brandy, though not successfully. It was as though they had experienced a lifetime, which as with butterflies was measured in hours.

He remarked of the passing head waiter, ‘He looks like an undertaker.'

‘Yes,' she said. So he paid the bill and they went outside. It was a death-agony they were too gentle to resist for long. He asked, ‘Can I see you home?'

‘I would rather not. Really not. You live so close.'

‘We could have another drink on the
terrasse
?' he suggested with half a sad heart.

‘It would do nothing more for us,' she said. ‘The evening was perfect.
Tu es vraiment gentil.'
She noticed too late that she had used
‘tu'
and she hoped his French was bad enough for him not to have noticed. They did not exchange addresses or telephone numbers, for neither of them dared to suggest it: the hour had come too late in both their lives. He found her a taxi and she drove away towards the great illuminated Arc, and he walked home by the Rue Jouffroy, slowly. What is cowardice in the young is wisdom in the old, but all the same one can be ashamed of wisdom.

Marie-Claire walked through the self-opening doors and thought, as she always did, of airports and escapes. On the sixth floor she let herself into the flat. An abstract painting in cruel tones of scarlet and yellow faced the door and treated her like a stranger.