Talking It Over (29 page)

I comfort myself sometimes with the thought that Oliver is a failure. What’s he done in the last ten years except steal someone’s wife and give up smoking? He’s clever, I’ve never denied that, but not clever enough to see that you have to be more than clever. It’s not sufficient just to know things and be amusing. Oliver’s life strategy has always gone a bit like this: he’s pleased with being himself, and he reckons that if he hangs around long enough someone will come by and give him money just to carry on being himself. Like they do with those performance artists. Except that no-one’s done this yet, and frankly the chances of someone happening on this little village and making him a proposition are pretty slim. So what do we have in the meantime? An expatriate Englishman in his middle thirties, scraping along in provincial France with a wife and baby. They’re out of the London property market now, and believe me, once you’re out you never get back in. (That’s why I bought Gillian’s share of the house. I’ll have somewhere to come back to.) I can see Oliver in years to come, one of those old semi-hippy types who hang around bars bumming drinks off Englishmen and asking if there are still big red buses back in London, and have you finished with your copy of the
Daily Telegraph
by the way?

And I’ll tell you something. Gillian isn’t going to stand for it. Not year in, year out. Basically, she’s a very practical, efficient person who likes to know what’s happening and hates mess. Oliver is a mess. Perhaps she ought to go out to work and leave him at home with the kids. Except that he’d put the casserole in the pram and cook the baby by mistake. The fact
of the matter is, she’s much better suited to me than she is to Oliver.

Oh shit.
Shit
. I said I wouldn’t ever think that again. Shit, I … look, give me a moment will you? No, it’s all right. No, just leave me alone. I can tell exactly how long this moment lasts. Exactly how long. I’m practised enough, for God’s sake.

Aaah. Fffff. Aaah. Fffff. Aah.

All right.

OK.

OK.

One of the good things about the States is that you can get anything you want at any time of the night or day. Quite a few times I’d be lonely and a bit drunk and I’d order Gill some flowers. International flowers by telephone. You just give them your credit-card number and they do the rest and the good thing is you don’t have time to change your mind.

‘Message, sir?’

‘No message.’

‘Ah-ha, secret surprise?’

Yes it’s a secret surprise. Except that she’ll know. And maybe she’ll feel guilty. I wouldn’t mind that. It’s the least she could do for me.

As I say, I’m not in the business of being liked any more.

Oliver
I was out in the garden assisting one or two maladjusted scarlet runners. They grow with the necessary twist in them but they’re as blind as kittens to begin with and set off in the wrong direction. So you take this delicate twirly
stem and guide it gently round the cane and feel it take hold. Like watching the infant Sal grip the bamboo of my middle finger.

Isn’t this the life?

Gill’s been a bit grouchy the last few days. Post-partural, pre-menstrual, mid-lactatory, hard to tell the difference nowadays. The
tiercé
of the temperament, and Ollie loses. Ollie fails to entertain once more, Part Fifteen. Perhaps I should hie me to the
pharmacie
and seek out a febrifuge.

But you still find me fun, don’t you? Just a little? Go on, admit it. Crack us a smile! Corners up!

Love and money: that was a mistaken analogy. As if Gill were some publicly listed company and I’d put in an offer for her. Listen, Gill runs the whole goddam market, always has. Women do. Sometimes not in the short term, but always in the long term.

Gillian
He’s in the hotel across the street. He can see our house, our car, our life. When I’m outside in the morning with my broom, sweeping the pavement, I think I can see a shape at one of the hotel windows.

Now what I probably would have done in the old days is this. I’d have gone across to the hotel, asked for him, and suggested we talk things over in a sensible manner. But I can’t do that. Not after the way I’ve hurt him.

So I must wait for him. Assuming he knows what it is he wants to do, or wants to say. And he’s been there days now. What if he doesn’t know what he wants?

If he doesn’t know, then I have to give him something,
show him something. What? What can I give him?

Mme Rives
Paul did the trout with almonds, his usual way. The Englishman said he liked it, which is the first comment he has made so far on the hotel, the room, the breakfast, the lunch or the dinner. Then he said something I didn’t understand at first. His French isn’t very good, he has a thick accent, so I asked him to repeat it.

‘I eat this once with my wife. In the north. In the north of the France.’

‘She is not with you, your wife? She remains in Canada?’

He did not reply. He just said that he wanted a
crème caramel
and afterwards coffee.

Gillian
I’ve got an idea. It’s scarcely a plan, not yet. But the main thing about it is that I can’t, I mustn’t tell Oliver. There are two reasons for this. The first is that I can’t trust him to do the right thing unless it’s
real
. If I ask him to do something, he’ll mess it up, he’ll turn it into a performance and it’s got to be real. The second reason is that I’ve got to do it, arrange it, fix it. It’s something
I
owe. Do you understand?

Stuart
I stand at the window. I watch and wait. I watch and wait.

Oliver
The courgettes are romping away at the moment. I grow a variety called
rond de Nice
. I doubt you have them in England, where you prefer those long bonky ones suitable only for seaside postcards. ‘Just admiring your vegetable marrow, Mister Blenkinsop!’ Har bloody har.
Rond de Nice
are, as their name implies, spherical. Pick them when larger than a golf ball yet smaller than a tennis ball, lightly steam, slice in half, a gout of butter, black pepper, then
wallow
.

Last night Gillian started quizzing me about one of the girls at the School. Talk about wide of the mark. Might as well accuse Pelléas of leg-over with Mélisande. (Though I suppose they must have done it, mustn’t they?) Anyway, Gillian just started dog-and-boning it. Did I fancy Mlle Whatsername – Simone? Was I seeing her? Is that why the noble Peugeot had another fainting-fit last week? Eventually, seeking to defuse, I murmured, ‘My dear, she’s not
half
pretty enough’ – an uncoded allusion, as you will appreciate, to one of Oscar’s ripostes at his trial. Unwise, unwise! For Ollie, as for Oscar, wit merely landed him in the slammer. And by the end of the evening, Reading Gaol would have felt like the George V. What is it with Gill at the moment? Can
you
tell?

If there’s one thing that bitches me off, it’s being accused of venery when my palms haven’t even broken sweat.

Gillian
It’s unfair? What’s fair? When did
fair
have much to do with the way we run our lives? There’s no time to think about that. I just have to get on with it. Arrange things for Stuart. I owe him this.

Stuart
She comes out every morning after Oliver has left and sweeps the pavement. Then she does a bit of the road as well, like the other village women. What do they do it for? To help save on the municipal cleaning bill? Search me. She puts the baby in a high-chair just inside the doorway. I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl and I don’t want to find out either. She puts it in the shade, where it can’t lose sight of her and won’t get dust in its face. Then she sweeps, and from time to time she looks over to the baby and I can see her lips opening as she says something. And she sweeps, then she goes inside again with her baby and her broom.

I can’t bear it. That used to be my future.

Gillian
It might work. It might be what Stuart needs. And in any case it’s the best I can come up with. It’s horrible to think of him sitting in his room over the road and brooding.

I started last night, and I’ll go on some more this evening. Tomorrow morning is the time to try it. I know that Stuart watches Oliver drive off – I’ve seen him at the window. And Oliver does get grouchy if he’s had to get up in the night and change Sophie. I normally stay out of his way when it’s been his turn, but not tomorrow.

With most people, it’s like this: if they’ve done something they shouldn’t, they get angry when they’re accused of it. Guilt expresses itself as outrage. That’s normal, isn’t it? Well, Oliver’s back to front. If you accuse him of doing something he shouldn’t and he has done it, he’s sort of half-amused, he almost congratulates you for finding him out. What really irritates him is to be accused of doing something he hasn’t
done. It’s as if he thinks, God, I
could
have done that after all. As long as I’m being suspected of it, I might as well have done it, or at least tried to. So he’s cross because he’s missed his chance, partly.

This is why I chose Simone. One of those very serious-minded French girls with a slight frown on their foreheads all the time. The sort of girl who wouldn’t see the point of Oliver. I remember at the
vin d’honneur
she was pointed out to me because apparently she’d once tried to correct Oliver’s English in class. He wouldn’t have liked that at all.

So I’ve settled on her. It seems to be working.

Just out of interest, do you think Oliver’s been faithful to me since we were married? Sorry, that’s neither here nor there.

There are various problems with what I’m doing. The first is, if it works, we’ll probably have to leave the village. Well, that can be arranged. The second is, do I tell Oliver afterwards? Or ever? Would he understand what I’ve done, or would he merely distrust me the more? If he knew it was all planned he might never trust me again.

There’s another risk as well. No, I’m sure I’ll be able to get us back to where we were before. I can manage things, that’s what I’m good at. And after it’s over we’ll be free of Stuart and Stuart will be free of us.

I don’t think I’m going to sleep much tonight. But I’m not going to let Oliver off his turn changing Sophie.

I hate doing this, you know. But if I stopped to think more I might hate it so much that it wouldn’t get done.

Stuart
I’m stuck. I’m completely stuck. Paralysed.

When their lights go out, which is normally between 11.45 and 11.58, I take a walk. But otherwise I stand at the window.

I watch. I watch, and I think, that used to be my future.

Gillian
I do have this fear. Is that the right word? Perhaps I mean premonition. No, I don’t. I mean fear. And the fear is this: that what I’m showing Stuart turns out to be real.

Oliver
You know what I think? I think they ought to put up road-signs on the Highway of Life. CHUTE DE PIERRES. CHAUSSÉE DEFORMÉE. ROUTE INONDABLE. Yes, that’s the one. ROUTE INONDABLE. DANGER: ROAD LIABLE TO FLOODING. They should put that up at every corner.

Stuart
I go out walking. After Midnight.

And as the skies turn gloomy

Nightbirds whisper to me …

Gillian
When I was little, my father used to say, ‘Don’t pull a face, or the wind might change.’ What if the wind changes now?

Oliver
Jesus. Jesus.

OK, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. It won’t happen again. I’m not really like that.

Christ, on the other mitt I’ve got a bloody good idea to barrel on straight past Toulouse and never come back. Everything they say about women’s true, isn’t it? Sooner or later, it
all
turns out to be true.

She’s been on my back for days. It was just like … oh, fill in your own fucking opera reference for a change. I’m fed up doing all the work.

She’s tired, I’m tired, all right? Who’s been on junior bedpan duty every night this week? Who spends hours every day on the A61? The last thing I need to get home to is the Spanish Inquisition.

It went like this. La Gillian didn’t exactly seem nipple-puckeringly pleased to see me when I returned last night. So I decamp to the garden and start burning some foliar detritus. Why am I doing this? Of course, she immediately concludes, in order to cover up the incriminating whiff of my presumed mistress’s Chanel Numéro Soixante-Neuf. I ask you.

And so on. Most of the evening continued thus. Went to bed exhausted. Usual padlocks on the night-dress, not that I tried to pick them. Three a.m. latrine duty. Apparently the faecal pong gets even more eye-watering after the little thing’s finally on solids. This part’s a breeze, I am reliably informed. Rosewater and fresh primroses in comparison to later on.

Alarm-clock goes off with the gentleness of a cattle prod. Then it all starts up again. Over
breakfast
. I’ve never seen her like this before, winding me up as if she’d been doing it for years. Knowing just where to prick. The Acupuncture of
Quarrel. I looked at her face, that face I fell in love with on the day she married the wrong person. It was scrubbed with anger. Her hair had scorned the brush as her face had disdained the matin’s lotion. Her mouth opened and shut and I tried not to listen and couldn’t help myself thinking that maybe starting off trying not to look like an unkempt harridan might be a better way of persuading your husband not to have that affair which in any case he wasn’t having. I mean, really surreal. Mega-surreal.

And then she started pursuing me about the house. And you have to decide that either she’s sick or she isn’t, and though she was behaving sick I couldn’t convince myself that she was. Which meant that I was screaming back at her. And then I started to leave for work and she accused me of running away and going off to see my girlfriend, and we were just screaming at each other as I made it to the front door.

Then it went on. And on. She followed me out to the car, screeching like a crow. In the middle of the main street. Top of her voice, accusations of, as they say, a personal and professional nature,
mit
everyone looking. Screeching. Carrying Sal in her arms for some reason I couldn’t fathom, and coming at me, just coming at me as I fiddled with the lock on the Peugeot. I was jumping, jumping, buzzing. And the fucking lock wouldn’t open. And then she’s right on top of me with her mad accusations. So I just hit her, hit her across the face with the keys in my hand and her face got cut, and I thought I was going to break and I looked at her as if to say, surely this isn’t real, is it? Stop the film. Punch the rewind button, it’s only a tape, isn’t it? And she just carried on screaming with madness
and hate in her face. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Shut up,’ ‘Shut up,’ ‘Shut up,’ I shouted and when she didn’t I hit her again. Then I jemmied the car door open, jumped in and drove off.