The Janeites (2 page)

People think mostly of the Seine’s right bank as the ‘grand’ side of Paris, because of the Etoile and the vista up the Champs Elysées; the Louvre and expensive shops; pompous squares and immense avenues. Older people have a hazy notion that the left bank means students, and artists y’know, since here is the Sorbonne and what used to be the Latin Quarter. Here though runs – through the sixth and seventh districts – what Proust knew as the Faubourg Saint-Germain: here were the historic town houses of the dukes and princes.

Nobody ever designed better architecture; the happiest mix of formal balance and intimate gaiety: the courtyards are especially delectable. Few now remain undivided, with their original furniture, pictures, panelling. They’ve been made into Ministries – swallowed by banks, monstrous finance corporations, with bits sublet to the enormously wealthy. There might still be a duke or so hidden away
côté
jar
din
;
and there is a Marquis – with whom William is here concerned. His is one of the oldest names of royal France. Proust-readers remember that they’re all related; my cousin-This and my aunt-That: Monsieur le Marquis does this too. It is typical of him that he lives in the historic ‘Hôtel’ of his ancestors, and that he is extremely rich.

Equally typical are many ramifications and relations in other worlds than that of dukes. Politics for example: he is old now, retired from ‘affairs’, seldom seen in public. But it is ‘remembered’ (memory is short in politics) that he has been a Minister of Foreign
Affairs, had a stretch at The Interior. Under an earlier Republic he’d certainly have been Premier: the Duc de Broglie comes to mind, or (much better comparison) M. de Talleyrand.

William is not intimidated by these surroundings; they are familiar to him. The concierge, a rude man (his wife is worse and they are known as
les
Cerbères),
looked up and nodded. He crossed the courtyard noticing everything from old habit; the usual cars in their places and the Rolls too. Nothing changed here; the secretary was where he expected. Patricia (notable for independence of mind; she even refuses to eat here), a quiet, compact woman in her forties, smiled, they’d always got on well.

“Hallo – what brings you here?”

“Hoping for a word with the old man, what are my chances?”

“Good, I should say. He’s in the library, be pleased to see you. No one at present, I should go on up. As well though to clear with Edith, just to be tactful.” Everything here is very Old-France, the boiseries and the marvellous stucco, the Beauvais upholstery, and furniture (he had learned) by Oeben, by Weisweiler. Fresh flowers everywhere, Edith’s work. She is the
gouvernante,
rules the household, the companion and betimes the nurse, certainly an ex-mistress (but there’s no evidence). Nobody makes jokes about Mrs Danvers. A strong personality. Her office is a pretty, sunny morning-room but she isn’t there. He picked up the house phone to call the kitchen.

Charlotte answered, another strong character, insists upon her Sundays, goes to Mass at Sainte Clotilde, is from La Rochelle and has an earthy pattern of speech, enjoyed by the Master. Also a glorious cook – he used to eat in the kitchen with her and Léon the chauffeur and Jacqueline the Belgian housemaid. She squawked on hearing his voice.

“Are you back?”

“Just dropped in I’m afraid. Edith’s not there?”

“Was, a second ago, I’ll tell her if I see her. Come in for a cup of coffee, before you go.” They’d all been a happy family.

He put the phone down feeling the presence: Edith was behind him. Neither smiling nor glacial; exactly as when she saw him daily.

“Good morning William. You want to see him? Good, that’ll cheer him up – you know the way.” She never has been hostile; she knows that fidelity, here, is of long standing, thoroughly tested. He had been, for unusually long, the head of security here, the chief bodyguard. Others came and went but he had grown to be the old man’s intimate, and shadow. Between Monsieur le Marquis and himself came to be understanding and affection. Indeed when he left, the old man rang the Minister. ‘Don’t bother to send me more guards – I don’t want any.’

One didn’t knock on doors here. He was sitting at the map table.

“William! Agreeable surprise.” Always good manners, stands up at once, gives the old affectionate pinch to the forearm.

“Make yourself comfortable. You’re looking well. Kind of you to think of passing.” In the six-month interval the old man had aged; something of a shock. The temperature was kept low in this house ‘because of the furniture’ (Patricia is always chilly), really because he hates it hot. Air-conditioning was another grievance. (When in Washington, two sources of complaint.) Now he has a cashmere shawl across the shoulders. Hair cut short, greyer and thinner. The fair-haired sixfooter has shrunk. No more jokes about Visigoths or Gaston Phoebus – ‘ancestor of mine’.

Edith brought in the pretty coffee service with the forget-me-nots – he dislikes the Sèvres ‘bleu du Roi’.

“Thank you. None for me. But what brings you to Paris? This can’t be just for me.”

“Joséphine.”

“Ah, of course. A mightier inducement.” That the Marquis had slept with her was certain. Well known for climbing into bed with every woman he comes across. No pretences are needed, no hints or allusions will ever be made. A thing he does. A thing Joséphine does? William’s wife was a complicated woman but this was all ancient history. The old man had never complained at his leaving; getting married was a thing people did. Some very good silver as a wedding present.

“The truth is,” said William, “I want your advice”.

“Quite right, I give good advice. Nobody takes it, a grave mistake. Think it can’t be disinterested. Think it harsh. But sweet words butter no parsnips.” Proud of his English, which he speaks well. “Sounds wrong that, somehow; I beg your pardon – you were saying?”

“They tell me I’ve got a cancer.”

“They do? Where?”

“Something internal. They act vague, I suspect deliberately.”

“Mm yes. Liver, sweetbread, so good to eat when it’s veal; when it’s ourselves we prefer not to dwell. Frightened you, mm?”

“Yes.” In William’s trade they know all about fear, live with it and learn to handle it. This is something else. “At my age.”

“Exactly. I know somebody good. Wasn’t a great deal he could do for me but he has remarkable talent – name escapes me for the moment. Leave this with me, William. My own small pains, not a great deal to be done bar the pilgrimage to Lourdes, mm, wouldn’t the journalists love that. Well, I’ve had a busy life. But you, my son… not going to have this, are we? You may rely upon me.” And William knows that to be the truth. “Apropos, have you mentioned this to your wife?”

“Would it interest her?”

“I think my advice would be don’t, not just for the present; having to be sorry won’t be much use to either of you. It’s in your hands but we’re going to pull you through this, you know… Leave me now, before I get captious and petulant. Look in on Charlotte, that’ll make her day. Stay to lunch, come to that. Pooh, what I eat is off a tray.” He was already on the phone. “Patricia – I have a little detective work for you.” Waving an adieu.

His kindness is genuine. People discount it, saying it’s a trap, a ploy, a red herring. They say he’s utterly dishonest, through and through. Total bastard. Even if genuine it’ll be turned to his advantage. Even if you found the thread you’d never get it untangled. But William, a simple man, knows this complex man better than that.

“Hal-lo,” said Charlotte. “Dear boy, as Father says. Drop of white wine? Sit ye down then. Catch Edith? Making the voice ever so small
and sweet she were this morning, a little fella got such a bollocking his teeth were loose in’s jaw.” True, Edith
governs.
‘Not though in My Kitchen’.

“I bet Father was happy,” she went on. “But he’s not well, at all – you saw? How long do we have, I wonder. What will we do, William, what will we do?”

“Do like him, pay no attention. What happens, happens.” It was, he thought, the advice he had just received.

Dr Valdez at ‘the office’, Institute ponderously named for a dead-and-gone begetter, Doctor Gustave-Adolph Rietschmieder, asks for tea. Silvia, the secretary shared with two more (she isn’t fat-gross, she’s fat-comfortable) makes good tea. There is also a web-site and much computerized machinery; one can talk to people, across the world but Ray likes to see and speak with faces, bodies, fingers in the room with him.

All over the world the Crab shows up on screens: a great many people observe it, puzzle over it, try to measure it. Major event right now, noticed by all: there’s a lot more of it. It is about to tickle half the western world, say the statistics, which is double the figure of a couple of years back. Ray dislikes all these abstractions. It makes points of light on screens, zigs and zags on graph models, forms odd and stangely pretty patterns. To Ray it has a voice to which he listens; a dialogue might result, inconsistent and unexpected and dare one say amusing?

The public, as well as a lot of doctors, would dearly love there to be plain guidelines – preferably pleasant: Eat wholemeal bread. Drink red wine. The Crab laughs at this and so does Ray; they snigger at biochemists and astrologers (friendly though with either). How would he describe himself? A sort of parapsychologist? – after a few glasses of red wine. He’s a Dotty; there are many dotties: they have inexplicable successes – he talks to the Crab and sometimes persuades it to go away: credit should go to the Patient. It can pop off and pop back; misbegotten sense of humour, much like God’s. There are letters which run together in acronyms, and can signify complex chemical compounds: one (Jesuit slogan) is AMDG. The
Crab understands Latin, needs no telling that Cancer is also to-the-greater-glory-of-God.

Ad
majorem
–
well, upon occasion –
Dei
gloriam
is likewise this still youngish man; fair-haired (mud colour), thin, sallow; a slovenly look, poorly finished, with mad pale eyes; a portrait by Otto Dix, foreseeably a favourite painter of his – ‘lovely man,
durch
Mitleid
wissend
’
.
Here in Strasbourg as elsewhere Jesuits can be found doing anything. They had a big house here before the Revolution (next to the Cathedral, handsome façade now rather dirty, the Lycée Fustel de Coulanges; another local notable). The Observatory was also theirs, and is still here in a peaceful garden with a dome for the telescopes. You wouldn’t see much now in the way of stars, the Rhine valley being sorely polluted; they measure earthquakes and the like, while people like Ray have electronic microscopes, and compose dirty limericks for the edification of colleagues in Berkeley or Ann Arbor. The office has links with the University, antique and respectable seat of learning; mostly with the Faculty of Medicine. It’s a European city; long humanist tradition. Dürer worked here, and Baldung Grien – two of Otto Dix’s major prophets: heaps more saints. As a young scholastic Raymond has been in England, in Poland, Italy… now he’s here: who knows what the Jesuits get up to?

He likes his research job, is liked there too; the dottiness is appreciated. He doesn’t much like lab work. Too much filtered air and the chimaeras bombinating in a vacuum; too much that is shut away from his realities. He has a taste for raw meat, and so has the Crab. Oncology is boring unless ontological. ‘No I don’t want everybody to live for ever, but I’d like them to make more of what they have. Happiness is more than a sound prostate. No, I don’t suppose the results are much better than roulette.’ For the Crab keeps a casino where few win, but Ray has his successes.

His phone rang and Silvia’s voice said, “I think you’ll want this one.”

“Doctor Valdez, could you hold just a second? Monsieur le Marquis would like a word if that’s convenient.” Fascinating old man. Extremely attractive. A failure he hadn’t been willing to admit.
They had liked each other. A long life of falsehood, of dishonesty? It was too easy, to put the failure down to that.

“Raymond dear boy, I have something to interest you. A good man, whom I much value as it happens, is in some trouble with these doctors; lives down your way. Of course I’ve no right to ask personal favours. I think don’t you know you’d find him worth the pains.” It would never occur to him that I’d tell him no; and if I did he’d find a way of twisting my arm without seeming to.

“I can look into it. Who’s been treating him, do you know?”

“Bend you to my will, can I? A man Rupprecht I do believe.” Ray suppressed a giggle in his nose, ‘the man’ being an eminent professor and the old devil certainly aware of it.

“So you’ll let Patricia know, will you? I rely upon you. Thank you, I’m as well as you would expect, perhaps a little more. I’ll be interested to hear further about this.”

And there’ll be something behind it. With that old man there always is.

“Silvia can you get me Professor Rupprecht’s secretary?… Thank you… Annie, good morning. Tell me, have you a man Barton on your book? Yes, as in Bordeaux, and probably within the last few months. The Professor’s in the theatre is he? With his permission I’d like you to pull that dossier for me.”

And now they are in the pub together. A consultation.

“Is this,” asked William, “the line in the old Bogart movie, the start of a beautiful friendship?”

“There’s another I like even better; Bogart lying on the boat roof and Robinson sneaking out of the cabin. ‘I’m coming out now, soldier, I ain’t got no gun.”’ Pleased with William’s guffaw.

“Ray, that’s a nice watch. Crocodile and all. Patek Philippe?”

“Present from a grateful patient. I take bribes too.”

“Wear it like that, some boy’ll rip it right off you.”

“I was getting attached to it, too. Worse – I was getting proud of it. You’re quite right.”

“No, I’m a cop.”

“Tell me about this, it interests me. Let’s just decide first what we’re eating and drinking.”

The police are mostly pretty dim. Brutal thugs, a good few. Or corrupt, racist – you name it. Poorly trained too. But if the odd one shows signs of being intelligent and alert as well as having a good physique, a reasonable background, a good school record – and there are some – then you might get fingered for special training and this is intensive, because being a guard to someone like a Minister is a very delicate job. High failure rate. As I know because I was a starred number. I’ve shadowed the President, and the Premier, and I ended up Chief, for the Marquis, and there I stayed, a number of years, where most get rotated fairly often.