English Correspondence (8 page)

‘Did you see my message? I left it on the desk for you.'

Sylvie jumped.

‘You were miles away, weren't you? Did you see it?' Paul said.

‘Yes. That was fine. Thank you.'

‘It's good to see you reading again. You must be feeling more yourself.'

‘Maybe.'
Feeling it and inflicting it,
Sylvie thought. What she read haphazardly made more sense than what he said to her. In a different century she would have been one of those women who stuck a pin in the Bible to find out what to do next.

‘Is it one of your father's old books? Or have you reverted to French?'

She considered for a moment. ‘No. I found it in the dining room. The Englishman, who was here, left it behind. He must have been reading it.'

‘You were deep in it. It's obviously your sort of thing.'

Sylvie shrugged. ‘I don't know really. I've only just opened it. In the middle.'

‘I thought I'd call the hospital and find out about Maurice. It would be a good thing to do, wouldn't it?' he said.

‘If you want to. I wouldn't.'

‘Why not? Why wouldn't you?'

‘Seems a bit funny. Nosy. We'll hear soon enough. Why do we need to know?'

‘It's courteous, isn't it, to show an interest? If he's definitely died we can send flowers.'

‘His wife left her flowers behind yesterday. I put them in a bucket of water and left them by the back door.'

‘What's that got to do with anything?'

‘Nothing. I just thought I'd mention it. You said flowers and I thought of it.'

‘You didn't think we could send them, did you? If he's died.'

‘No, of course not.'

‘I never know with you.'

‘Thanks.'

‘I'm sorry I interrupted you. I won't call the hospital if it's such a crass thing to do. You make yourself quite clear you know.'

Sylvie didn't say anything. She couldn't understand this fascination with the boundary, whether Maurice had crossed or re-crossed it. Was this what Paul and the others hoped for themselves? A permeable layer at the end of their lives where they could be dragged to and fro. Maurice couldn't have looked as he did and come back.

‘I'll let you get on with your English studies. They demolished the cheese yesterday. You'll have to put in an early order.'

‘I might send it to him. That might be best.'

‘What?'

‘The book.'

‘To Maurice?'

‘No, of course not. To the man who left it behind.'

‘You don't know where to send it.'

‘I can find out.'

‘What was his name?'

‘George Meredith. No, sorry. That's the name of the writer. I'll find out. It will be on file.'

‘I wouldn't go to the trouble. He won't miss it.'

‘I'll see. People like their books back.'

‘Please yourself. What's it about anyway, that you were so fascinated by it?'

She wondered for a moment whether to read aloud selectively to him.
And she has a thirst for the use of the tongue.
The translation would be difficult to get right.
On his knees in the dew to the morning milkmaid.
That would be more
straightforward once she remembered the word for milkmaid in French. Something stopped her. From time to time, Paul read books that contained precise physiological sex, but he resisted suggestion, particularly, it seemed, if she was doing the suggesting. Not that she'd tried for a while. She looked at the passages in these books without being moved; they were like attempts to describe a piece of music by writing about the movements of the leader's bowing arm.

‘The bit I was reading was about a bachelor. I don't know about the rest.'

‘That figures.'

‘Sorry?'

‘It's what he would read about. A lone Englishman. He's probably a pederast.'

‘Probably.'

SYLVIE WASN'T A
strategist. Although reserved she acted on impulse. So that afternoon, when her mother-in-law spoke to her on the telephone and said she had an hour or two free and was about to come over, Sylvie said that Paul was out, she didn't know where he was, and that she would rather Yvette didn't, as she needed some time to herself. But, darling, Yvette said, it's you I want to see too, you know, I like seeing you on your own. Brooding is so destructive. You need to get out of yourself. What do you need this time alone
for
? What good does it do? You need company.

She came over.

She and Gilles lived about forty-five minutes' drive away; near enough for them never under any circumstances to have to stay. The second half of Yvette's second glass of wine always remained complacently on the table. They were proprietorial about the restaurant, having put up the money, though not excessively so, as they realised this was bad manners. Apart from casual visits they came for special dinners at Paul's invitation; anniversaries, birthdays, mothers' days, name days. The year was full of them and, by a fluke, they were evenly spaced, so that it wasn't possible for Sylvie to recoup in an off season. Yvette saw it differently. There was always something to look forward to. At the end of these occasions they swept off in their car. Not for them the anonymity of the hotel bedroom that George had had to put up with.

Sylvie suggested that the two of them went for a walk. Natalie could be in charge for an hour. She knew from
experience that this would be easier than sitting cosy at home. If the conversation got tricky she could always draw attention to the surroundings; the scene in motion, the smell of the pines. It was less blatant than changing the subject. Yvette picked up on that.

‘Which way shall we go then, darling?'

‘You choose,' Sylvie said. ‘Forest? If your shoes are all right. It could be muddy.'

She wasn't up to shepherding Yvette along the main road. They set off. The track was wide, made of compacted earth and decades of needles, the trees either side densely packed. There was order here, though Sylvie had no key to it. Every felled tree had a number attached to it. When she looked up there was plenty of sky.

‘My feet are fine,' said Yvette. ‘Where does it go to?'

‘Go to?'

‘The path.'

‘I don't know really. I've brought you here before, haven't I? It seems to go on. The tracks don't have signposts. It's not done up for hikers. The foresters know their way around. I suppose if you keep going you come out at a road or a village. But I've never done it. The mist has cleared now. We should be able to see where we're going.'

‘I thought there might be a view, or a place to sit down. It's nice to have something to aim for and then you know when to turn round.'

Sylvie thought, why does that sort of comment annoy me so much? It was the certainty not the triteness that bothered her. She wanted to say, I much prefer going round in wide circles, and, on a good day, I might even get lost. It didn't need effort. Getting lost just happened. It all looked the same.

‘If we had gone on the other walk there would have been an end point,' she said.

‘What's that, darling?'

‘Maude's house.'

Yvette blinked and smiled, switched off the smile as soon
as it had begun. Sylvie knew she shouldn't have said it, but sometimes she liked to disconcert her. Perhaps they should have gone that way. Paul's car parked outside. It probably wasn't, but it might have been. With Yvette there. Almost worth doing.

‘Are you going back to London?' Yvette said.

Sylvie realised that the other subject was now out of bounds. It might not have been. She might have got a pep talk on resentment or rivalry, though probably not named as such. The words were too forceful. Certainly not jealousy; that was too sexual. Yvette considered herself a woman of the world, up for tackling most subjects. But nothing head on and not that one. Because she, Sylvie, had got in first, she had stopped it at source. Perhaps she was a strategist after all, though not a conscious one.

She replied, ‘I haven't made plans to.'

‘It would do you good to have a project.'

She means more children, Sylvie thought. As if one thing were ever a substitute for another. In the days of heaven, they'd have been up there together, the ones who'd gone and the ones who were waiting to come down. Yvette made it clear that one baby was inadequate, scarcely more than none. Though, at the other end, more than three were too many. She herself had had two, Paul and his brother. The ideal number – though the brother had turned out less satisfactory than Paul. She had quizzed her daughter-in-law in the past about Eve's unproductiveness and her delay in production. It was a way of getting at Sylvie. Her reply that her parents had been happy, without anyone extra, had seemed whimsical.

‘I don't really see going to London as a project. Is it?' she said.

‘No, of course not, not like that. I'm sorry, I'm a few steps ahead, as usual. I've been thinking about how you might make life more interesting. You seem to look sad a lot of the time. We're worried about you.'

‘Thank you.'

Her few steps ahead were an understatement. Yvette believed in short cuts. She always wanted to be there and back before she'd even set out.

‘You might not take to the idea. It's only an idea. But let me try it out on you.'

She paused, as if Sylvie would find this enticing. Sylvie said nothing. Some phrases turned her off. This was one of them.

‘You'll need to do something with the money from George's flat. There's no point leaving it sitting in a bank account.'

Sylvie saw herself, not the cash, in one of George's armchairs, trying to get comfortable; something had happened to the upholstery. He hadn't bothered about such things. She and the chair were in the middle of a banking hall with people walking round her. They seemed not to notice her, but she was still in the way.

‘So, how does that strike you, darling?'

‘How does what strike me?'

‘Sylvie, weren't you listening? I've been talking about the new annexe.'

‘They aren't that old; just uncomfortable.'

‘Old? Who's old, darling?'

Sylvie realised she had said it aloud. She hadn't meant to. She hadn't been listening either.

Yvette said, ‘I was saying that conference facilities, even on a small scale, would give you and Paul such a boost.'

‘You think so?'

‘I really do.'

‘It might take more than that.'

Yvette ignored this and said brightly, ‘That's where the money is now.'

Sylvie considered. She didn't want to talk about this sort of thing out of doors. It made a false ceiling and took away the pleasure of being in the open. She could say that she already had enough to cope with. Lucien, Paul, Natalie, Maude, Felix, the guests who came and left. Keeping everyone calm
but flowing was as much as she could manage. The idea of men and women in suits, with their names pinned on them, carrying packs like party bags, walking down a new long corridor, was oppressive to her. She could smell the fresh paint and the chip board. She could hear their footsteps and voices coming towards her. She stopped and listened. She wasn't prepared to let them come closer. There was a path off to the left. From deep in it, beyond the point where it disappeared into the forest, she heard the whine of a saw.

‘It isn't for sale, George's flat,' she said.

‘I thought Paul said your father had left everything to you.'

Sylvie paused. She could invent another beneficiary – a woman for George. One who had lived with him. It was tempting. A few sentences and there she would be, useful for ever. A strong woman with a name. She would think of one in a moment, before they got to the next stack of timber. Like a dog with convincing teeth she would guard the flat in her absence. George could easily have met her in the last five years. It wouldn't have to be complicated, one of those relapses or revivals, depending how you told it. Nothing that detracted from Eve. People did just meet, didn't they? She warmed to the idea. Lies were usually denials; where I wasn't, who didn't exist, what hadn't happened. This was parsimonious – they were potentially more constructive. Children made things up from scratch. They didn't even need to be cornered. But this other woman was no more visible to her than George was. Sylvie could have put words together, nothing more. They wouldn't have been persuasive. Her mother, now that was different. She saw her leaning on the table looking George in the eye, argumentative but appreciative. She liked to engage with him. No one would ever have told Eve she needed a project. Her life was a project and George the best part of that.

‘I don't want to talk about her,' she said.

‘I understand,' said Yvette calmly.

‘Paul's never said anything about building on. I thought
we'd had our share of that when we first came here,' Sylvie said.

‘He dreams dreams,' said his mother.

‘Perhaps we should turn round,' Sylvie said.

‘It's something you could do together,' said Yvette. ‘And it's something you could do for Paul.'

Sylvie ignored both parts of this sentence, not able to deal with either of them. She hadn't given any thought to what to do with the flat. The week in London had had her father's funeral in it; that had been enough. She had supposed she would sell it later when she was in a different frame of mind but that was as far as she'd got. It was something troublesome that had to be done, not an opportunity. She thought it strange how one thing could turn into another. Money had this inconsequentiality, this frivolous ability to bed down anywhere; it could pretend it was under your nose when it was really in Switzerland or a vault under the pavement. There was her father's inoffensive ground-floor flat with its foundations in London clay and its ceilings providing a floor for the person upstairs, the one who paced about in the early evening and occasionally played Mahler late at night. It was innocent of the designs on it; the metamorphosis into conference facilities.