Talking It Over (27 page)

Every Wednesday morning at 9.00 the fish-van comes up from the coast and stops in the village square. We buy
dorade
and something called a
passard
which I’ve never been able to find the translation for. The square is a sort of wonky oblong and has a little central alley of brutally pollarded limes beneath
which the old men play
boules;
the women sometimes bring their rush-seated chairs to watch this activity from which they are always excluded. The men play in the evenings under floodlight; beyond their heads you can see the black tips of a distant row of conifers. Everyone knows what that means in a French village: the graveyard.

The
mairie
and the PTT are side by side, two halves of the same building. The first few times I went to buy a stamp I found myself in the
mairie
by mistake.

You’re not interested in this, are you? Not really. I’m boring you, I can tell. You want to hear about other things. Very well.

Stuart
Shall I tell you something I always slightly resented? This is probably going to sound incredibly petty, but it’s true.

At the weekends she used to have a lie-in. I’d be the first to get up. We always had a grapefruit, or at least, one of the mornings we did, either Saturday or Sunday. I’d be the one to decide. If I went down and felt like a grapefruit on Saturday, I’d take it out of the fridge, cut it in half and put each half in a bowl. Otherwise we’d have it on the Sunday. Now, when I’d eaten my half, I’d look at Gillian’s sitting in its bowl. I’d think, that’s hers, she’s going to eat that when she wakes up. And I’d carefully take out all the pips from her half, so she wouldn’t have to do it herself. Sometimes there were quite a lot.

Do you know, in all the time we were together, she never noticed this. Or if she did notice, she never mentioned it. No,
that wouldn’t have been like her. She simply can’t have noticed. I kept expecting her to cotton on, and each weekend I was just a tiny bit disappointed. I used to think, Perhaps she believes some new strain of seedless grapefruit has been invented. How does she think grapefruit reproduce?

Maybe she’s discovered the existence of pips by now. Which of them cuts the grapefruit? I can’t imagine Oliver … oh shit.

It’s not over. I don’t know how it’s not over, but it isn’t yet. Something’s got to be done, something’s got to be seen. I’ve gone away, they’ve gone away, but it’s not over.

Oliver
She’s stronger than me, you know. Woof! Woof, woof! And I like it. Bind me with silken cords,
please
.

Oh, I see I’ve said that before. No need to scowl so. The scowl and the sigh – they’re so un-life-enhancing, I find. Gillie does a little sigh sometimes when I’m being
troppo
entertaining. It can be a strain, you know, sensing the expectation out there in the hushed blackness. People are either performers or audience, aren’t they? And sometimes I do wish the audience would try it out on stage just for once.

I’ll tell you something you haven’t heard before.
Pravda
is Russian for truth. No, I guessed you knew that. What I’m going to tell you is this: there is no rhyme for
pravda
in Russian. Ponder and weigh this insufficiency. Doesn’t that just echo down the canyons of your mind?

Gillian
We came here because Oliver got a job at the school in Toulouse.

We came here because I heard there was a chance of work from the Musée des Augustins. There are also some private clients, and I was given a couple of introductions.

We came here because London is no longer a place to bring up children, and we want Sophie to be bilingual like Maman.

We came here because of the weather and the quality of life.

We came here because Stuart started sending me flowers. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine?

We talked it over beforehand. We talked about all these things except for the last one. How could Stuart do that? I couldn’t work out whether it was genuine – saying he was sorry – or some kind of sick revenge. Either way I couldn’t handle it.

Oliver
It was Gill’s decision. Well, of course we brown-nosed democracy, went through the hallowed process of consultation, but when
les frites
are down a marriage always consists of one moderate and one militant, don’t you find? From which statement you are not to truffle out some routine whine of the orchidectomised male. Rather, let us agree upon the following generality: that those who have inflicted marriage upon themselves assume such rival guises alternately. When I wooed her I was the single-issue hard-liner, she the quailing middle-of-the-roader. But when it came to exchanging the hot pong of stagnant London bus for the genteel waft of
herbes de Provence
, then it was Gillian’s migratory pulse which
resounded like the mighty dented gong of J. Arthur Rank. My own heart-flutter of expatriation could only be detected with auscultatory assistance.

Look, she found me the job. Discovered the mildewed quarterly in which might be discovered the whereabouts of honest employ
à l’étranger
. I was feasting upon London, given that the steatopygous one had taken his chubbiness off to another continent. But I could catch the anticipatory rustle of Gill’s wings; I could sense her sitting on the telephone wire at dusk, dreaming of the south. And if, as I once ventured to Stu-baby, money may be compared to love, then marriage is the bill. I jest. I half-jest, anyway.

Gillian
Of course Oliver, like most men, is fundamentally lazy. They make one big decision and think they they can spend the next few years sunning themselves like a lion on a hilltop. My father ran off with his schoolgirl and that was probably the last decision he took in the whole of his life. Now Oliver’s a bit the same. He makes a lot of noise but he doesn’t get much done. Don’t misunderstand me: I love Oliver. But I do know him.

It simply wasn’t realistic for us to go on in the same old way, except with Oliver slotted into my life in the exact position that Stuart had occupied. Even when I got pregnant it didn’t seem to concentrate Oliver’s thoughts. I tried to explain these things to him, and he just said, in a rather pained way, ‘But I’m happy, Gill, I’m so happy.’ I loved him of course, for that, and we kissed, and he stroked my tummy which was still as flat as a pancake, and made some silly joke about the
tadpole, and everything was fine for the rest of the evening. That’s the thing about Oliver: he’s very good at making things fine for the rest of the evening. But there is always the next morning. And on that next morning, I thought, I’m very glad he’s happy, I’m happy too, and this ought to be enough, but it isn’t, is it? You have to be happy and practical, that’s the truth.

Now, I don’t want my husband to rule the world – if I’d wanted that, I wouldn’t have married the two I did – but equally I don’t want him to bumble along without thought of the future. In all the time I’d known him, Oliver’s career, if that isn’t too grand a word for it, had made only a single movement, and that was downwards. He was sacked by the Shakespeare School and moved to Mr Tim’s. And anyone could see he was better than that. He needed pointing in the right direction, especially with me being pregnant. I didn’t want … Look, I know I’ve said this before, I said it about Stuart, but it’s true, and I’m not ashamed of it. I didn’t want Oliver to be disappointed.

I expect he’s mentioned Monsieur Lagisquet’s dog. There are two things he tells everyone about, the castle in the village, which with every retelling becomes a more and more important Crusader fortress or Cathar stronghold, and the dog. He’s a very friendly, russet-brown, shiny-coated dog called Poulidor, but he’s now got so old that he’s gone stone deaf. Both Oliver and I find this terribly sad, but not for the same reason. Oliver finds it sad because Poulidor can no longer hear his master’s friendly whistle as they walk across the fields, and he’s cut off in a world of silence. Whereas I find it sad because I know he’s going to be run over one day. He just comes bursting
out of Monsieur Lagisquet’s house all panting and hopeful, as if once he gets outside he’ll rediscover his hearing. Drivers don’t imagine dogs being deaf when they see them. I keep thinking about some young man, going a bit too fast through the village, seeing Poulidor lolloping along, and this impatient driver hooting, hooting again at the stupid dog, then swerving just too late. I see it all. And I told Monsieur Lagisquet he ought to tie the dog up, or put him on a long rope. He said he’d tried once and Poulidor had just moped all the time and wouldn’t eat, so he untied him. He said he wanted the dog to be happy. I said you can be happy but you have to be practical as well. And now the dog is going to get run over some time. I just know it.

Do you see what I mean?

Stuart
I had a lot of plans. One of the first ones was to pay a girl at that tacky school Oliver was reduced to teaching at to denounce him. Say he’d made advances to her. It would probably have been true anyway – if not that girl, it would have been true of another. Perhaps he’d have got the sack. Perhaps the police would have come in this time. But in any event Gill would have known the sort of man she’d left me for. It would always rankle, and she’d never have felt safe again. That was a good plan.

When I got to the States I had another plan. I was going to pretend to have killed myself. I wanted to hurt them a lot, you see. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do it. One idea was to write under another name to the old boys’ magazine, the
Edwardian
, and have them put in an obituary notice, and then
make sure it got sent on to Oliver. I also thought about getting some intermediary to pass on the news on a visit to London, casually somehow. ‘Sad about Stuart topping himself, wasn’t it? No, he never got over the break-up. Oh, you didn’t know …?’ Who would do it? Someone. Someone I’d pay.

I thought about that idea rather too much. It made me gloomy. It got a bit tempting, if you know what I mean. To do it really. To make it all true, and punish them. So I stopped.

But it’s not over. Oh, my marriage is over, I know that. But
it’s
not over, not until I feel it is. It’s not over till it stops hurting. There’s a long way to go. And I can’t get over the feeling that it wasn’t
fair
, what happened. I ought to be able to get over that, oughtn’t I?

Mme Wyatt and I write to one another. Guess what? She’s having an affair. Good for you, Mme Wyatt.

Oliver
This is probably not the right thing to say, but then I never made a career out of saying the right thing. There are times when I miss Stuart. Yeah, yeah, you don’t have to tell me. I know what I did. I have chewed guilt like an old Boer trekker with biltong between his teeth. And what makes it worse is that sometimes I think Stuart was the person who understood me best. I hope he’s all right. I hope he’s got a nice cuddly inamorata. I see them barbecuing over mesquite wood while the cardinal birds swoop low over the lawn and the cicadas thrum like the assembled strings of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I wish him everything, that Stuart: health, hearth, happiness and herpes. I would wish
him a hot tub if I didn’t think he’d keep tropical fish in it. Oh Lordie, just the thought of him makes me chuckle.

Do you know if he’s got a girl? I wonder if he’s got some crepuscular secret, some sexual hidey-hole. What could it be? Porn? Flashing? Erotic phone calls? Filthy faxes? No, I hope he’s making out. I hope life isn’t making him poo-scared. I wish him … reversibility.

Stuart
I’d like to put the record straight in one respect. You’ve probably forgotten, but Oliver used to have this joke with me. Well, not so much with me as at my expense. About how I thought a Mantra was a make of car. I let him get away with it at the time, but what I wanted to say was, ‘Actually, it’s a Manta, Oliver, not a Mantra.’ The Manta Ray, to be exact. Very powerful job, made by General Motors, based on the Corvette. I even toyed with buying one when I got over here. But it’s hardly my image. And it would have been giving in to the past a bit too much, don’t you agree?

Trust Oliver to get it wrong.

Mme Wyatt
Stuart writes. I send him news, what news there is. He can’t let go. He says he is making a new life for himself, but I feel that he is unable to let go.

The one thing that might help him let go I cannot bring myself to tell him. About the baby. He does not know they have a child. It is terrible to be in possession of a piece of information which you think can hurt somebody. And because I did not tell him at once this made it harder to tell him later.

You see, there was an afternoon they came to see me, and my daughter was out of the room, and Stuart was sitting there waiting to be examined, with his shoes all shiny and his hair brushed back, and he said to me, ‘We are going to have children, you know.’ And then he suddenly looked embarrassed, and said, ‘I mean, I do not mean now … I do not mean she is …’ And then there was a noise from the kitchen and he looked even more embarrassed, and said, ‘Gill does not know yet. I mean, we have not talked about it, but I am sure, I mean, oh dear …’ And he just ran out of words. I said, ‘It is all right, it is our secret,’ and he looked suddenly very relieved, and then I could see from his face that he could not wait for Gillian to come back into the room.

I kept remembering this when Oliver told me that Gillian was pregnant.

Sophie Anne Louise. It is a bit pretentious, do you not find? Maybe it is better in English. Sophie Anne Louise. No, it still sounds like one of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren.

Gillian
Oliver is a good teacher, I wouldn’t want you to think otherwise. There was a little
vin d’honneur
at the end of last term and the director made a point of telling me how good he was with the pupils and how they all appreciated him. Oliver pooh-poohed this afterwards. The line he takes is that teaching English ‘Conversation et Civilisation’ is a push-over, as you can say any weird thing that comes into your head and the pupils treat it as a priceless example of
le British sense of humour
. But he would say that. He’s got a lot of bravado, Oliver, but he hasn’t really got any self-confidence.