This is Life (12 page)

Dominique Gravoir slumped on to his side, but his eyes stayed open, fixed on the water as he waited for the bird to surface. A man had appeared, walking in their direction along the quay.
‘Hey, you,’ called Léandre Martin, defying his mother’s instruction not to speak to strangers. ‘Come here.’ The man saw the collapsed child and rushed over.
‘Make him breathe,’ said Léandre Martin.

The man tried to force a finger into the boy’s mouth, but it was clamped shut. Dominique Gravoir shoved the man away, and was still again, looking out at the water. The man assumed he was
having some kind of fit, and he called to a woman who had appeared on the deck of a boat that was moored some way along the quay. The woman could see that something was wrong, and she called out to
them, saying she would radio for an ambulance.

Dominique Gravoir kept on looking out across the water, his eyes now wide open. And then something happened to them. They were still wide open, but there was a glassiness to them. Léandre
Martin could tell that his friend was no longer looking for the cormorant. He was still.

The bird had beaten them.

The man didn’t know what to do. He pumped the boy’s chest, and tried to breathe into his lungs, but his mouth remained clamped shut. Léandre Martin shouted for his friend to
wake up, to start breathing again. He was frantic, and he was crushed by guilt. This had been
his
game,
his
idea, and Dominique Gravoir had been holding his breath for the two of
them.

Minutes later the paramedics arrived, and Dominique Gravoir was at last surrounded by people in uniform who knew what they were doing, and who tried their very best for him. Léandre
Martin went with them to the hospital in the back of the ambulance.

Later that day, Dominique Gravoir’s mother wept as she was told by a doctor that her son had
symptoms consistent with asphyxiation
. At this point they had no idea
whether or not he would regain consciousness.

He never would.

Léandre Martin never looked for a friend to replace him.

And he never found out what had become of the bird.

A
t eight thirty in the morning, Aurélie Renard sat on a bench in the garden at the centre of the Place des Vosges. She had not slept
well.

It had been almost midnight by the time she and Herbert had got back to her apartment the night before. As they headed home from the bus stop, Aurélie had stopped to buy a kebab. This was
something she did every once in a while, and normally she thought nothing of it, but it hadn’t seemed quite right having a baby with her as she waited alongside the motley collection of
late-night customers for her pitta bread to rise.

When they had at last made it home, it had taken her a long time to get the baby settled. She realised he didn’t have pyjamas, so after she had put him in a fresh nappy and brushed his
teeth, procedures he yielded to with nonchalance, she dressed him in his new Eiffel Tower top and Mona Lisa trousers. Their fabric was soft, and she hoped he would be comfortable.

He was wide awake, and showed no sign of wanting to go to sleep. She hummed fragments of lullabies to him, she read him passages from inappropriate books, and she cuddled him, but nothing would
wind him down. He seemed hell bent on staying up for an all-nighter. She didn’t like the idea of him sleeping on the floor, and had decided to have him by her side in bed. Hoping to inspire
him to become at least a little bit tired, she turned off the main light, leaving only the kitchen spotlight on, with the door open so she could just about see. She tucked him under the duvet, and
he lay there staring at her.

This was the first time they had spent time together without there being some kind of immediate drama about the situation. It was nice, but even so it was time to sleep. It had been an extremely
long day. She took a close look at him. The bruise hadn’t got any bigger, which was a relief. She closed her eyes, and hoped this would encourage him to start thinking about drifting off. It
didn’t work. He rolled towards her, and kept patting her face. She took his hands in hers, and not for the first time she marvelled at the difference in size. Then she closed her eyes again,
and once again he patted her face until they re-opened. His eyes were open wide in the near darkness, and he looked beautiful.

‘You are a handsome boy, Herbert,’ she said. She knew it made no sense, but she felt proud of him. He pulled a face and made some noises in return. Some of them almost sounded like
words.

She wondered what on earth his mother was doing, handing over her beautiful boy to a complete stranger for a week, no matter how kind that stranger’s face. She must have been having a
breakdown. She had certainly been acting strangely, her mood shifting every few seconds. If that was the case, Aurélie told herself, then she was doing valuable social work, taking the
pressure off a stressed mother, allowing her some breathing space. Maybe the call she had made had been to her therapist, who had told her that handing the baby over to a stranger who had just
thrown a stone at his face was a terrific idea, that it would give her just the opportunity she needed to relax. She hoped that when the week was up and the time had come to hand him back, she
would find her fully refreshed and ready to take care of her son again.

It was half past one by the time he finally fell asleep, and Aurélie at last began to drift off. She was jolted awake by the sound of her phone’s ringtone. She had recently changed
it, and realised now that she hadn’t made a good choice. It was an ear-shattering sequence of apparently unrelated beeps. As she leaned over the side of the bed and fumbled to find the phone
in her bag, she heard a gurgle. Herbert had been woken by the noise, and was rubbing his eyes and looking around in the darkness. Aurélie found the phone, but it had already stopped ringing
and had gone to voice mail. She checked it.

It was Sylvie. She had remembered the piece of child-rearing advice she had once heard, and was calling to pass it on:
Sleep whenever the baby sleeps, because when they’re awake you
won’t have a chance
.

‘Thanks for that,’ croaked Aurélie, into the unlistening phone. ‘Goodnight.’

She turned the phone to silent, and looked at the baby.

‘Go back to sleep, Herbert,’ she said gently. She rubbed his tummy. ‘Go back to sleep.’

And that is just what Herbert did, an hour and twenty minutes later.

Aurélie had managed three and a half hours’ sleep when she was woken by a tiny hand on her face. It took her a while to realise what was going on, and when the
events of the day before replayed in her mind she felt a knot in her stomach. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. For the first time that day, and it would by no means be the last, she
wondered what she had got herself into.

‘Hello, Herbert,’ she said. ‘And how are you this morning?’

He didn’t have to answer. She could tell by looking at him that he was very well indeed. There was a big smile across his face, and he was ready for the day. All she had to do was get him
through it. She recalled that on the bus home the night before she had written a list of the important things to keep on top of when taking care of an approximately nine-month-old baby. They
were:

She had bought a spare baby bottle at the supermarket and, still coming to, she left Herbert on the bed as she got it ready. She boiled some water in a pan and dropped the bottle in, sterilising
it just in case, and she put an egg in beside it for herself. Once the bottle had cooled down a bit she filled it with his special milk. She took it through to him, and he latched on to it quite
happily.

While he was getting on with that, she got his breakfast ready: a jar of puréed fruit and rice. She dipped her finger in and tried a bit, to see if it tasted as revolting as it looked. It
was a lot nicer than she had anticipated, and she needed to exercise a surprising amount of self-control to keep from taking a big scoop for herself.

She propped Herbert into a sitting position, and fed him. He finished the lot with gusto. Then he took the bottle again, and when he had had enough he dropped it on to the bed. She found his
toothbrush, and cleaned his teeth, and then she changed his nappy, which was heavy after his night’s sleep.

She had done everything on the list. Looking after a baby was a lot easier than she had ever thought it would be, and she wondered why people made such a fuss about it.

Feeling a little self-conscious with Herbert watching her from the bed, she undressed and attempted the world’s fastest shower. She stepped under the water, shampooed her hair, rinsed it,
and had begun to rub shower gel over her body when from the bedroom came a loud thump, followed by a horrible, yet familiar, silence.

By the time Aurélie had made it through to the bedroom Herbert was crying his heart out, face down on the floor beside the bed. Frantic, she scooped him up and tried to
console him. His makeshift pyjamas got wet as she pressed him to her body. She checked him for signs of bruising. There didn’t seem to be any new marks on his head or face, which was a
relief. She hoped he hadn’t broken any bones. She would have to wait and see. She held him close, and whispered to him, and told him she was sorry, and that it was all her fault.

It took a long while for his wails to turn to sobs, and the sobs to mild grizzling and his mild grizzling to a sullen demeanour. She checked his bones by running her fingers along his arms and
legs and pressing on various parts of his body. He seemed OK. She built him a nest of pillows on the bed, hoping it would stop him from rolling off again, then she jumped back into the shower,
which had been running all this time, to rinse off the shower gel. She dried herself, and pulled on some clothes. At last, Herbert was smiling again. He was fine. She lay down beside him, and
looked at him, and he looked at her.

And then something inevitable happened: there was a knock at the door.

Aurélie had managed to get Herbert upstairs twice and downstairs once without passing anybody. Their isolation from the neighbours had been a small miracle, but now the
miracle was over. The knocking continued. ‘Open up, I know you’re in there.’ Aurélie recognised the voice of the woman from across the hall, strident for someone who must
have been at least ninety years old. It was Old Widow Peypouquet.

Like everybody else in the building, Aurélie had no idea that Old Widow Peypouquet had never lost a husband. She had never even married, but even so everything about her screamed
widow
. On the day she had moved in, it had not entered the concierge’s mind that she could be anything other than a widow. On being asked about the new neighbour by existing tenants,
he had casually referred to her as Old Widow Peypouquet
,
and because of the way she dressed and carried herself, nobody had thought for a moment that this was in any way far-fetched, and so
that was what she had been known as ever since. She was unaware that this had been going on for the preceding two decades; as far as she knew, to them she was merely Madame Peypouquet, as this was
how they addressed her to her face.

The people who lived there were decent folk by and large, and none of them wanted to intrude on a widow’s sorrow. Beyond showing her everyday politeness, they left her alone.
Hello,
Madame Peypouquet
, they would respectfully say as they passed her on the stairs. They rarely engaged her in further conversation but she wasn’t to know that this was because they had no
idea what else they could possibly say to her. All the words they thought of seemed somehow inappropriate for one who was evidently in such deep mourning, and they stopped themselves before they
came out. No matter how they phrased their questions in their minds, in essence they were all the same:
Hello, Madame Peypouquet. How are you coping now that your husband is in the ground?
They chose instead to make no enquiries, hoping their smiles and gentle greetings would be enough to provide her with at least a little warmth to help her through her bleak, empty days.

Even the few people who passed through the building who could not be counted as decent folk gave her no trouble. After all, it was never good luck to get on a widow’s bad side –
nobody wants to be tormented by the protective ghost of a dead husband. And so she had lived there, year in and year out, with nobody really getting to know her.

Aurélie had been the same as everyone else. She had greeted her on the occasions when their paths had crossed, and sometimes they had gone as far as exchanging comments on the weather,
but that was all. Aurélie had no idea that Old Widow Peypouquet had taken quite an interest in the girl from the apartment across the landing.

The knocking continued. There was no escape.

‘I’m coming, Madame Peypouquet,’ she said. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’

She opened the door just a crack. ‘Hello, Madame Peypou-quet,’ she said. ‘How are you today?’ At once Aurélie regretted the question. Every day
must have been a living hell for Old Widow Peypouquet as she lamented the loss of her husband, and to enquire after her wellbeing had been tactless.

‘I’m the same as always.’

‘Good. I mean . . . at least you’re not any worse than usual.’

Old Widow Peypouquet stared at her.

‘So how can I help you this morning, Madame Peypou-quet?’

‘Do you have a baby in there?’

She might have been old, but she wasn’t deaf.

‘A baby? No. There’s no baby here.’ She opened the door and swept her arm around, indicating the entire apartment in a single gesture. She had folded the buggy and put it in
the shower, and put all the other incriminating evidence on the bed and thrown the duvet over it. There was no sign of a baby.

‘Ah. Then the sound must be coming from somewhere else.’

‘Yes. Now, you have a good day, Madame Peypouquet. I think it’s going to be sunny.’

‘Yes. Well, it’s got off to a clear start. I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mademoiselle Renard, but I could have sworn I heard a baby’s cries coming from your apartment,
and I’ve been wondering what was going on, that’s all. You will forgive an old woman’s curiosity.’