The President's Hat (10 page)

ASLAN

Monsieur,

Please find enclosed the answer to your third request, the address of the brasserie where I lost the hat that means so much to you, along with details of the exact date and time of the loss. This now concludes our correspondence once and for all.

You will also find enclosed a bottle of my latest creation which you may offer to the woman of your choice. This letter requires no response.

Aslan

Bernard Lavallière slammed the door of his Peugeot 505. The dinner had gone badly and his wife had not said a word to him since their bust-up in the car. Pierre and Marie-Laure de Vaunoy had invited them to their apartment on the Champ-de-Mars, along with three other couples. It should have been like any other dinner party, when you expect at least to relish the conversation, if not what's on the menu.

The food is always terrible in town, especially amongst the aristocracy. The upper classes might get out the family china and crested silverware, but they very often take a perverse pleasure in serving food the cobbler or the concierge would turn their nose up at.

The only way to get a decent dinner is to eat with the people, Bernard liked to say; not that he had sat down to eat ‘with the people' for several decades, but he cherished childhood memories of the housekeeper's cooking at the family estate in Beaune – memories he had no one to share with and which from time to time, when the meal in front
of him was really too awful to stomach, he felt he could almost taste again.

Yet the evening's drama could not wholly be put down to the de Vaunoys' cooking. ‘It is worse than a crime, Sire, it's a mistake,' Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe had said to Napoleon on learning of the execution of the Duc d'Enghien in the moat at Vincennes. Bernard Lavallière hadn't put anyone in front of a firing squad, but his mistake had rung out like a gunshot in the middle of the meal.

It all began with a glass of champagne – just the one, and distinctly mediocre – served with dry crackers the hostess was eager to point out had been bought on the cheap from Félix Potin.

The guests had arrived punctually, a few at a time. They rang the doorbell to be greeted by cries of ‘Ah, here they are! Do come in!' or ‘Why, look who it is! Come in, we've been longing to see you …' – the usual over-
the-top
exclamations hammed up further by Marie-Laure de Vaunoy's apparent amazement at finding each invitee on her doorstep, as though it were by some incredible coincidence that they had turned up there.

The ladies left their shawls and handbags in the entrance hall before making their way to the living room where the men were shaking hands and complaining about how long it had taken to find a parking space. The husbands who had arrived before them sympathised with resigned, manly sighs.

In the car on the way there, Bernard had already begun
to dread that they would once again have to endure the de Vaunoys' chicken with apricots. After a starter of cucumber and cream, the Spanish girl serving the food brought out a large silver platter. The fowl took pride of place in the centre of the dish, but was covered in a dubious-looking sauce and surrounded by shrivelled apricots. Bernard had a breast which turned out to be so dry it made him thirsty for the rest of the night.

Luckily, the wine was within reach. He intended to employ a straightforward technique: keep offering the bottle around to his neighbours so he could top himself up as often as he liked. The conversation hummed around the topic of visits to the theatre, cinema and concerts.

‘We had dinner next to Esther Kerwitcz just last night,' said Charlotte Lavallière, certain of getting a reaction. She let the gasps die down before telling the story of visiting the splendid brasserie with a couple of friends and spotting the famous pianist just a few tables away, having dinner with her husband and son.

Marie-France Chastagnier was envious – what luck to have seen such a great artist close up! – and gushed as she recalled an Esther Kerwitcz concert at the Salle Pleyel three years earlier. Her husband made a face and declared he preferred Rubinstein, to which Marie-Laurence de Rochefort replied that Rubinstein didn't play Bach.

Jean-Patrick Le Baussier brought up the name Glenn Gould. Colonel Larnier stated matter-of-factly that all the great musicians were Jewish.

For his part, Gérard Peraunot pointed out that Esther
Kerwitcz was a very beautiful woman, earning him a furious glance from his wife, and then they moved on to talking about their children.

A variety of anecdotes about Scout and Brownie weekends ensued, and plans to make pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela were shared. Everyone sang the praises of Father Humbert, who was so good with the children and whom they described deferentially as a holy man. (No one had any inkling that the clergyman would be arrested sixteen years later as part of a huge police operation which would uncover no less than 87,000 indecent images of children on the hard drive of his computer.)

The upbringing of their offspring led them on to the topic of television, root of all evil, a devilish device which did little more than hold a mirror up to their decadent society.

The presenter Stéphane Collaro was singled out for particular scorn: not content with dulling the brains of the nation's youth, his programme
Cocoboy
was also guilty of tainting Saturday nights with ‘you know what' since it showed – or so they had been told – a girl performing a most risqué striptease.

The Larniers confessed to keeping their set solely for the purposes of watching
Apostrophes
. This weekly dose of culture left them with the impression that they had read every book discussed on the show. The colonel's wife thus felt quite entitled to give her opinion on any novel reviewed on
Apostrophes
, while adding that she had not actually got around to buying a copy. Serge Gainsbourg's appearance
on the show the previous December, tanked up on Pastis 51 and Gitanes and treating a fellow guest like a peasant, had outraged the Larniers. They had seriously considered getting rid of their television, but the reassuring sight of a respectable writer on the following week's programme put that rash idea out of their heads.

The mere mention of Michel Polac provoked a chorus of indignation from the guests, but – thank goodness – the new owner of channel TF1 had just rid France of the shouting match that was
Droit de réponse
. Hubert and Frédérique de la Tour were struggling to follow all this, but they weren't sorry; they prided themselves on not owning a television.

Their steadfast refusal to purchase a set meant one whole French family had never heard of Michel Drucker; a permanent chat-show fixture, he could have been a
fourth-century
Hindu mathematician for all they knew. They knew exactly who the Mourousis were: an old aristocratic Phanariot Greek family originally from Mourousa, near Trabzon – but they had no idea that one of their number was the presenter of the one o'clock news.

They never went to the cinema either, and lived happily in a world of stills somewhere between the eras of Niépce and Nadar. Pierre de Vaunoy, as master of the house, found the one way to put an end to all the talk of television:

‘What can I say? It's all down to the lefties …'

‘True,' chimed in Jean-Patrick Teraille, ‘but this won't be the end of it. Just you wait: I'll bet you anything Mittrand stands again.'

‘Can you please pronounce his name correctly.'

Bernard Lavallière spoke, then swallowed the last of his wine. By the time he put his glass down, silence had descended and everyone was staring at him.

‘Mittrand', that contraction favoured by old-school,
vieille France
right-wingers, which hinted at more extreme views. And yet this was not the first time he had heard the word used; the seventh, sixteenth and eighth formed the leading triumvirate of Paris
arrondissements
in which it was regularly uttered at dinner parties. Staunch Gaullists, solid UDF centrists, closet Front National supporters and proud royalists joined forces to mispronounce the head of state's name with the unspoken purpose of marking themselves out as members of the same club.

‘Mittrand' served as a password among them. This brotherhood of the right, ranging from the most respectable to the furthest fringes, delighted in breaking the rules of French pronunciation with their non-standard use of the silent ‘e'. Bernard's unexpected, abrupt correction had left the dining room several degrees cooler. The chicken, already cold, seemed colder, the apricots yet more shrivelled and the glasses frosted.

Not even Bernard could have explained what had made
him come out with such a thing. The sentence had spoken itself. Was it the memory of those childhood lunches coming back to him as he chewed the revolting fowl? Could it be the fact that, unlike him, Jean-Patrick Teraille still owned his ancestral home in Poitou? Had he simply drunk too much wine? … No, it really was inexplicable.

‘I've always called him Mittrand and I always will – if it's all the same to you, Bernard,' Jean-Patrick Teraille replied icily, while Colonel Larnier glared at him, clenching his jaw, as though presiding over a court martial for high treason.

‘You haven't gone leftie on us, have you, old chap?' Pierre Chastagnier asked slyly.

‘Batting for the other side now, are we?' chuckled Frédérique de la Tour.

Bernard felt something inside he could not put his finger on; a sensation of total peace and warmth was enveloping him, spreading all the way up his spine. It reached his neck, then his head, and a mysterious smile played on his lips.

‘What exactly do you have against Mitterrand?' he asked softly. ‘We're all sitting around this table the same way we did three years ago, six years ago, eight, ten, fifteen years ago. What difference has 10 May 1981 made to our lives?'

There was a long pause.

‘Think about it,' said Bernard, ‘it hasn't changed anything.'

‘What about the communist government ministers!' cried Pierre Chastagnier.

‘Indeed, what about them? The Communist Party is
dissolving like sugar in water. Mitterrand has achieved in the space of six years what the Right failed to do in thirty.'

‘You're just playing devil's advocate!'

‘Mitterrand is not the devil … but he is an advocate,' Bernard said with a smile.

The heel of a Céline stiletto is a weapon too often overlooked by the male of the species, and a violent kick in the shin made him look up to meet Charlotte's livid gaze.

‘He represents France to the rest of the world,' muttered Jean-Patrick Teraille, ‘and I can't abide it!'

‘What kind of image are we projecting with a socialist president?' threw in Hubert de la Tour.

‘What kind of image?' repeated Bernard in surprise. ‘Why, the very best,' he said, discreetly nursing his leg. ‘Mitterrand is well liked wherever he goes. And as a result he has forged stronger relationships with his counterparts, whether it's Helmut Kohl, President Reagan, Gorbachev or Margaret Thatcher. He's popular in France too, people love him.'

‘People? What people?!' fumed Hubert de la Tour.

‘The people …' replied Bernard, smiling.

‘He's Machiavellian,' complained Pierre de Vaunoy.

‘So he is,' said Bernard, grinning. ‘You should re-read
The Prince.'

‘The Prince?'

‘Machiavelli's
The Prince.
It's all in there.'

‘As if you've ever read it,' Charlotte shot back coldly.

Bernard blinked imperceptibly. ‘“I will only conclude that a prince must have the people on his side, otherwise he will not have support in adverse times.”'

‘How enlightening …'

Everyone turned to face Colonel Larnier, who had not slackened his jaw. He had just discovered in Bernard an object even more worthy of his wrath than the artist responsible for the reggae version of the ‘Marseillaise'.

‘Monsieur,' he went on, breathless with rage, ‘I refuse to sit here listening to you eulogising François Mitterrand. The manner in which you cut Monsieur Teraille off was unspeakable. Once upon a time such quarrels were fought to the death!'

The lady of the house tried to calm the colonel down as he carried on mumbling about the voice of France, General de Gaulle and damned usurpers. Then silence descended, and, after a brief lull, the good manners common to the very best households were restored.

When the time came to take their leave, Bernard thanked his hosts and went to say goodbye to the other guests, while unbeknownst to him his wife was apologising profusely to the hostess.

In the hallway he put on his Burberry coat, helped Charlotte with her shawl and placed his black felt hat on his head, without noticing that the initials embossed inside had skipped a few places up the alphabet.