English Correspondence (23 page)

‘That sounds comforting,' she said.

‘I can't afford to do it up. That's the other explanation. So how's your place?'

‘You mean the look of it?' She knew he didn't want general remarks about refurbishment but she needed to know what he was getting at. She wouldn't launch herself into scene painting or restaurant publicity.

‘Well, put it another way. How do you spend your days?'

‘Starting from first thing in the morning?'

‘I meant the feel of it, really.'

She stared at him.

‘Don't look so worried,' he said. ‘It's only words.'

She waited, too tense to conjure up a description. Then she said, and she didn't know where the words came from, ‘I go from complete inactivity – I don't mean lying around in bed – though I have done that – I mean, living the days as if they were rooms I can't get out of – to making a dash for the door.'

He nodded. ‘I thought it was something like that.'

She was surprised. It hadn't seemed clear when she said it. She wondered whether to start to explain that she had
had her father's funeral to go to, that it hadn't all been escape.

‘Why do you go back?' he said, ‘I take it you do go back.'

‘Oh, yes. I go back.'

‘Well?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Take your time, next time,' he said. ‘Over leaving, I mean, not over going back. Do it slowly.'

She thought, it's all right for him to say that. Slowly comes easily to him.

‘How am I supposed to do that?' she said.

‘Smile inanely and keep shrugging your shoulders. A woman did it to me once. It was very effective. No. That's not fair. I don't know. It all happens between the door and the street.'

On the way back, Jacques fell asleep in the car. They had gone straight from the café to his sister's. He hadn't liked her idea of walking on the beach in the east wind. His sister had been friendly. She hadn't been curious about Sylvie, just got her children to say hullo, and cleared a space on the sofa for her to sit down among the multi-coloured clutter. The television was on and the children ran in and out with drinks that slopped onto the floor. Jacques and his sister talked and Sylvie listened to them. They had the same intonation, the same fairly rapid drawl. She joined in from time to time. It felt peaceful being there.

At the first set of traffic lights coming back into town Jacques woke up. She dropped him outside the bar. He said he wouldn't ask her in for a drink as they were queuing outside. She said she could see that. The road was deserted.

‘
WE SAW MAUDE
when we were out for a walk, did Lucien tell you?'

‘When was that?' Paul said.

‘The day before yesterday.'

Lucien was sitting on a high stool, having an early lunch in the restaurant kitchen. The two boys, who had come in to help for New Year's Eve, were working at the far end of the long counter, heads bent, wrists and forearms moving rapidly. Dried figs were cooking slowly in the oven in some sort of liquor, smelling good with the mustiness of old clothes. The smell didn't match the bright overhead lights or the efficient activity.

‘Do you want that cut up?' Paul said.

‘No,' said Lucien.

‘Aren't you going to say anything?' Sylvie said.

Lucien looked up quickly and saw she was talking to Paul. The oven emitted a low hum but none of the kitchen machines was running. The boys slapped pastry down and it made the right sort of sound, elastic, like flesh.

‘How was she?' he said. The boys didn't slow down.

‘She was well,' Sylvie said. ‘Extremely well. She said her brother had been over for Christmas and that his kids had gone down with flu. It didn't seem to have put them out too much. She said they were bored with their presents and that they had two kittens. I couldn't make out whether the kittens had been presents and they were bored with them too. She said things weren't going too well with them and the dog.'

‘They weren't presents,' said Lucien. ‘They just got them.'

‘They might have come from the farm,' Sylvie said. ‘They've always got spare kittens.'

‘I hope you're enjoying this, Sylvie,' Paul said. His voice wasn't loud but the boys, stamping out pastry, might have been able to hear what he said.

‘I am,' said Sylvie.

‘You've made your point. You can stop now,' he said.

‘But I haven't told you what Maude said yet.'

‘I think that had better wait.' He glanced at Lucien. ‘You've put yourself back in the right.'

She hadn't given any explanation about her day away with Jacques. She had parked the car and gone straight to her bedroom to change her clothes. Then she had gone to the kitchen to tell Paul she was home and that she would be on duty for the end of dinner. He had asked her where she'd been and she'd said, ‘Out,' and gone into the dining room. Felix was skating between, tables with coffee and bills and the last of the puddings. He had ignored her.

She had been tired driving home and had kept making small errors. She had been lucky that nothing worse had happened than being mouthed at by moon-faced drivers. Jacques had slept through it. Once she was back in the restaurant she kept thinking of George. She saw him go to the cupboard for a block of writing paper and sit down at the table to write to her, then get up, put on his coat, go out, lock the front door, walk to the post box, post the letter. This was the last action in the sequence, then she went back to the beginning, the cupboard, the writing paper, the table, the coat; so it continued.

She said, ‘Maude was telling me what had happened to George's letter.'

‘Which letter?' Paul said. He had gone back to his preparations and was turned away from her. Brushing quails with clarified butter.

‘The one I asked the postman about.'

‘Why was she talking about that?'

‘We hadn't got anything better to talk about.'

‘It was none of her business.'

‘I'm glad she did. It was neighbourly of her.'

‘You're not still bothered about it, are you?'

Sylvie thought, the letter has gone. When Maude said he had thrown it away, it broke free, but not George with it. He had spent the best part of one of the last hours in his life, writing it, maybe longer. He had expected her to get it. He had gone to the trouble of posting it. It had probably been raining. He would have taken his umbrella. She hadn't included that in her sequence.

She said, ‘I still think about it, yes.'

‘I thought we'd been through all this. I thought we were making some kind of progress. This is really depressing.'

He paused for a moment and poured hot water into a bowl of dried mushrooms, then he picked up the brush again.

‘It's a nuisance to you, isn't it? Death and everything about it.'

Paul didn't acknowledge that she had spoken. He walked away to the other side of the room. He stood over the boys, who were chopping leeks, separating the white from the green, and waited while they finished their task, then he gesticulated at the heavy-duty food processor and the clock on the wall with its large roman numerals. One of the boys switched it on. The machine stared to whirr. The noise was loud and serviceable. Paul walked back across the kitchen and stood right beside her.

‘Sylvie, I have no idea what you mean by that; these are just words you're using to be offensive. It is New Year's Eve. I cannot waste time.'

‘It would be nice to have the letter back, that's all. It makes for completeness. I've got all his others. He “bothered”, as you say to write to me. He expected me to get it. One day I'll sit down and read all his letters through. I read all
mine to him when I was in London. Did I tell you? They didn't make good reading. I'd no idea I was as small-minded as that. Small-minded and somehow pathetic. They jollied along like some updated nursery rhyme. You know those awful songs Lucien used to learn in nursery school. Not off the wall, like the traditional English ones, just banal and tiresome.'

‘Why did you say something about me? What songs are you talking about?' Lucien said.

‘I'll see if I can remember one later; they weren't very memorable,' Sylvie said.

‘I didn't sing them. I don't like singing.'

‘Sylvie.'

‘Yes, Paul?'

‘You must let it go. It doesn't exist. This isn't doing you any good.'

‘No?'

‘No.'

‘That's what you always say. You say it because you think you know what does and doesn't do me good. You're trying to be kind but it ends up as a kind of coercion because you take the choices away.'

She thought, I've never said this before, not as plainly. I've been like a child who bites or runs away when what she is offered as love feels like cruelty. She could see, too, from the expression on Paul's face, that saying it didn't make any difference. She had imagined that getting the words right and being brave enough to say them would be like guessing the magic name that would make the story end well and rapidly. But nothing happened. They were like Francesca's words floating on the water. She saw the swimming pool and the pieces of paper.

She said, ‘I want you to be there when I find it.'

‘Sylvie, stop this. You're not going to find it. Is this some stupid game you're playing?'

‘I am going to find it because Maude told me where it was.'

‘She can't have done. She's not a troublemaker, whatever you think of her. I'm not saying you're lying, but you must have misunderstood her.'

‘She said the letter came while I was away at George's funeral. In the post in the regular way. It was the only personal mail that day and she put it somewhere safe and then, with one thing and another, forgot about it. No doubt other things in her life distracted her.'

‘Sylvie, this won't do you any good.'

‘For a long time, I thought what was in George's letter would give me the answer. But that was stupid. You can't depend on other people to tell you things. Anyway, I know what he would have written. It will be interesting to see if it matches up.'

‘Sylvie, you're making yourself ridiculous. You really are. Stop it now and we can forget all about it.'

‘He won't tell me anything out of the way. He'll say ordinary things I'd expect him to say. He'll say don't rush into anything. He'll say he'll be there if I need him. Well, he wasn't to know he wouldn't be. He wouldn't have said always; he had more sense than that.'

‘Listen to me, Sylvie. You're harming yourself talking like this. Your father wouldn't have wanted it.'

‘Wouldn't he? Well, let's look for his letter first, shall we? There aren't many places it could be. What do you think? You can guess where Maude put it.'

‘I'm not joining in this. It's a charade; it's sick.'

‘Is it?'

She thought, I can remember playing games like this, the feeling of it. The preparation which was all going to end in explosion, grand but unspecified. Then after hours of effort there was nothing to show for it but a muddy concoction that had to be thrown down the sink, or the dolls dressed and lined up in a row.

‘This noise is getting me down. Come with me,' she said and took Paul's hand. ‘I won't be a minute Lucien. You carry on with your lunch.'

Paul didn't resist because the child was there; not understanding, but attentive. They went into the restaurant dining room together. The room was abandoned and waiting. Different from an unoccupied theatre or a concert hall because it reverted to something more like home; more dismal because of that. Clean sepulchral cloths, high-backed chairs squared up at the tables, Christmas greenery still hanging on with its evergreen staying power. Red anemones in the table vases for New Year's Eve. Otherwise bare; no glasses, no cutlery, no artificial light, no bottles, no food. It was what Sylvie saw every day between meals. She knew the rhythm of it. In a few hours' time it would come alive. But that made no difference to the desolation of how it was now. She looked round. For a moment, the way it used to look came back to her. The room under the old dispensation of the brother and sister. The odd pieces of carpet and home-made rugs, the runner, edged with tatting, tacked to the mantelpiece, the old hand sewing machine, pairs of binoculars, appliquéd pictures, things that harboured dust, hiding places.

‘Excuse me.'

They both turned. A woman was poised between the hall and the dining room. Her feet were holding back on the threshold but her head and upper body were leaning forward.

Paul let go of Sylvie's hand and walked towards the woman. She remained fixed in the doorway, wearing a short outdoor coat and holding a bag behind her legs. She waited until he was close.

‘My mother has special dietary requirements. She's brought her own food and we're wondering if we could put it in a fridge. I've been waiting in the lobby to ask someone but there doesn't seem to be anyone about.'

‘I shall be happy to make something special for your mpther, if you tell me what she can and can't eat,' Paul said, ‘but I'm afraid she won't be able to eat her own food in my restaurant.'

‘It won't be any trouble,' the woman said. ‘It's been prepared.'

‘It would be for us,' Sylvie said.

‘I said they might not like me going in their kitchen.'

‘You were quite right,' Sylvie said.

‘What am I supposed to do with it? It's all in the cool bag.'

‘If you give it to me,' Sylvie said, putting her hand out, ‘I'll see to it for you.'

‘What do you mean, see to it?'

‘Get rid of it,' Sylvie said. She saw the woman's expression. ‘The food, I mean, I'll give the bag straight back to you.'

‘No,' the woman said.

‘Well, if you'd prefer, I'll keep it for you until you leave. How long are you staying?'