The Widow (13 page)

‘I can't go the whole way with you on that; I'm sorry. The girl is vulnerable, and deserves consideration. I didn't come here to fight a battle, but to find common ground. Your hostility is misplaced.'

‘There is no hostility. To speak plainly, I don't know what an “advice bureau” is. When the advice consists of abetting a foolish girl in rebellion against her parent and legal guardian, I am free to interpret that as an effort to turn this situation to your profit.'

‘I'm not looking for money, Monsieur Siegel.' Arlette had wanted to smile and say it lightly, but found herself too tightly strung. Her hand was trembling a little, on the straps of her bag.

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

‘Marie-Line told me that you threatened her with a suggestion I found hard to credit. I thought that if you had said such a thing it must have been in anger, and felt sure you would agree that anger had passed.'

‘For the last time I will not discuss it. Now will you have the kindness to tell me where my daughter is to be found?'

She got up, opened her handbag, and found a card. She put it on the desk and said, ‘This is where I live.' She started to walk towards the door. Siegel did not move but shot a finger out.

‘One moment. Are you attempting to show me defiance? You will answer for it.'

Native obstinacy helped her.

‘I had hoped to hear you contradict that quite shocking notion of denying her liberty. She asked me for shelter and that I give her.' Siegel had recovered himself.

‘This looks to me uncommonly like arbitrary sequestration. A criminal offence.'

‘I'm not at all sure that doesn't apply to what you propose.' She did not know why she should feel frightened going out, but she did. Nobody chased her, but she felt better once she got home.

The chess game had finished: nobody said who had won. Arthur was lying horizontal with his pipe and his feet up; Marie-Line sat straight and well brought up with her knees together, and they were listening to Count Basie.

The dictionary gives ‘divers' as sundry, several, more than one, with the forbidding note ‘archaic or jocular'. This is the meaning all right of the French phrase ‘faits divers' which comprise the small change in a local newspaper, but not the sense. The behaviour of the population is to be sure very often both archaic and jocular. So at least said Arthur, the kind of person whose curiosity leads him to consult the Concise Oxford at the breakfast table: goes well with Coopers Marmalade.

‘And “diverse”?' asked Arlette.

‘Unlike in nature or qualities; varied or changeful. Dictionaries, as the French say, leave one upon one's hunger,' turning cheerfully to the toaster. ‘People go on doing the same silly things,' with a crunching noise. Since
Monde
only arrived with the postman it was the
Derniéres Nouvelles d'Alsace
which divides handily into sections suitable for breakfast reading. Marie-Line still in bed?'

‘Let her lie. What are we to do with her?'

‘To a large degree, I think you've made your point. This dentist may be still grinding his teeth – ho, apposite – this morning, but he'll simmer down. He'll realize that his fell design wouldn't work very well, because the fact that we know about it means that some unpleasant publicity could be created. He wouldn't want to find himself a diverse deed in this,' generously pushing across ‘Strasbourg and Environs' slightly smeared with butter.

‘I thought of trying the woman at the Préfecture: the girl gets on quite well with her. One has to get the tension out of the situation: the child must go back to school – a day makes no odds but she can't stay. I'll see what I can cook up. One must avoid litigation. Everyone having been rigid can afford to give way a little.'

‘You should be on the Israeli frontier, wearing a white helmet,' cheerfully. ‘I'm off to work, but if you need a peace emissary, give me a buzz.'

‘Okay,' she said, picking up the paper. What were the diverse deeds this morning in dear old Strasbourg? “Fatal Imprudence” ran the headline.

“Around nine-thirty to ten last night an inhabitant of Neudorf committed the grave imprudence of walking along the metalled way of the S.N.C.F. main line between France and Germany, apparently with the purpose of exercising his dog. In, it is surmised, an effort to control the dog alarmed or excited by the approach of a train, he stepped onto the rails and was fatally injured by the locomotive.” Really, as Arthur said, people go on doing the same imbecilic things.

‘Black Spot.'

‘We must recall that in this same area, close to the bridge crossing the Rue de Soultz, a child while playing met a similar tragic end some few months ago. A spokesman for the S.N.C.F. at the time, it will be remembered, denounced the indifference of the public. ‘
It is impossible'
he then stated ‘
to protect the entire length of this sector. While emphasizing our total refusal to accept responsibility under these circumstances we again address an appeal to the populace as a whole to exercise some collective discipline.'
Fat hope you have, mate.

‘Alarm raised by dog.'

‘The alert was sounded as we learn by the dog, a German shepherd, whining and barking at the apartment entrance. The wife of the unhappy victim, since named as Albert Demazis –' Suddenly she found herself trembling violently. She put out a hand for a cigarette. There weren't any. She got up and hunted for one. Good God.

‘… forty-three, described as an accountant, of an address in the Rue de Labaroche, alarmed at this behaviour, called the police. After a fruitless search of the streets of the quarter, enquiry was directed to the railway line, where the unfortunate victim was found, atrociously mutilated. The hypothesis of the dog's escape from control was supported by the pathetic fact of Monsieur Demazis clutching still in his hand the dog's lead. This, and his health which was normal in every respect, seems to rule out giddiness or cardiac collapse, but it was pointed out that yesterday's rain may have made the rails and sleepers, treacherously slippery, and a stumble with fatal consequence would seem only too easy.

‘Once more, this newspaper underlines the extreme danger of such practices.'

Even in the laughable prose of the local paper, she got the message.

At this moment Marie-Line appeared in pyjamas, cheerful, and Arlette had to bottle up shock. It was just as well, she told herself. One can't go flying off the handle. Odd expression,
Arthur would say. Presumably an axe or hammer-head. Who do you risk most damage to – yourself or all the admiring bystanders?

They are familiar to everyone, these days: evil-eye days. From the tiny, petty frustrations; the zip that sticks, the thread that snaps; in crescendo everything goes wrong. Oneself is stricken by impenetrable stupidity: why else does the milk boil over, why else a fingernail break and a new pair of tights ladder for no reason? What is this stain upon fabric that would just have to be both pale-coloured and delicate? You look at yourself in the glass, and are greatly depressed by what you see.

To the well known malignance of inanimate objects, upon which any comedian can rouse a guffaw, is added the obtuseness of the human race: the world is peopled by cheerful imbeciles. In the post is a letter from the Minister of Finance, nasty in tone. And everywhere, hanging in the air like an acrid smell, is brutishness, the Barbarian, a pleasure taken in suffering inflicted.

The girl hung around irritatingly, occupying the bathroom for an age. Why have I this tiresome old-fashioned flat? Everybody else has two bathrooms: it is the minimum for civilized living.

The Préfecture of Strasbourg has two faces. One is the Préfecture itself, an ugly building on the Place de la République where there is never room to park one's car, full of governmental instances from automobile registrations to permits for aliens. Everyone there has the extreme unwillingness proper to bureaucrats ever to do any business. They're always trying to persuade you to go up several flights and try Room 304. You are always in the wrong. You never have enough photostats of documents or photographs of your beautiful self, without which the State cannot function, and you cannot get out again without buying many fiscal stamps for odd, arbitrary, large sums of money. This is the face shown to the public.

The private face is back across the False Rampart in the old
town: the Quai Lezay-Marnesia next door to the Opera. This is the Hôtel du Préfet, eighteenth-century palace in a pretty garden. Not for the public. Policemen loiter at the gate to stop you; the sort of bemedalled chevronned policeman with an elderly weary Corsican face whose great age and infirmity has ensured that he will never again do any work, though he is still capable of stopping other people doing any. This majestic pest is an obstacle. Arlette was viewed with suspicion and practically stripped on the spot to make sure she had no bombs about her. This kind of policeman is always very tired, but a well of cynicism. Slipping them a bottle of Chivas Regal is kind of crude.

She was aware of having fallen into a small neat trap. Madame Pelletier, on the telephone, when one finally got her, had been bored and perfunctory.

‘Oh yes,' vaguely. ‘Well … come and see me at the office, why don't you.' Arlette was kept kicking her heels a good deal. The machinery of government is quiet hereabouts, and very leisurely. One supposes important things behind the padded doors, private lines direct to the Ministry of the Interior, but everybody seemed to be reading the
Canard Enchainé
and making private jokes of exquisitely honed venom. Damn it, this Pelletier was only in the Service of Statistics.

There is a sub-préfecture down in Colmar where some farmer, told to wait while a functionary finished the crossword, just wandered off, and was eventually discovered peacefully having a bath in the Sub-Prefect's private suite. Arlette thought of this with pleasure.

Cathy-Rose Pelletier, run to earth, was pretty, neatly coiffed and dressed, smelt nice, appeared bright, and behaved amiably. She did not make faces at Arlette's introducing herself, she did not frown at mention of Marie-Line. But one did not get hold of her. She was polished to glassy slipperiness like the ballroom floor, and one saw only one's own reflection.

‘Yes. You mustn't believe everything Marie-Line says, you know.'

‘Of course not. Lazy, insolent, full of affectations and
comedies. A great nuisance, probably. Weren't we too, at that age?'

‘I have great affection for her which she treats with contempt. Bossy you know, and schoolmarm. Finding fault with all around her.'

‘I can imagine. It's the usual adolescent girl, isn't it? And she wants attention, and goes to great lengths to get it. And without pretending to any insight, her father is a rigid person, impatient and perfectionist, who is conscious of inadequacies, and wants to be proud of his daughter, and gets very angry when he feels she lets him down. I know this must be superficial, and I'd be glad to hear I was wrong.'

‘I can't say, you know. I don't want to discuss personalities. I'm in a special position: I don't know whether Marie-Line has been voluble on the subject. She doesn't of course approve of me at all.'

‘No. She said she liked you. That's all.'

‘Her father is a good and fine man.'

‘I don't doubt it for an instant. Please believe me; I want to see her go home and lose no time over it. And I'll do all in my power to persuade her. But she surely needs to feel less isolated. Not of course pretending to be young and girlish, but the understanding that comes from sympathy. You must agree that the notion of putting her in a clinic is outrageous.'

‘You know that Marie-Line drinks a lot?'

‘I wouldn't be surprised to hear there's a problem there.'

‘And has been caught taking drugs? In justice to her not, as we believe, anything as yet really dangerous. But smoking certainly, when they get it. And what they call popping pills. And one thing slides, imperceptibly, into another?'

‘Again, I'd loathe to come out with glib little bits of psychology, but isn't that all the same – a bad feeling of being disapproved of and even disliked? She's a warm-hearted thing, and reads a lot of rubbish in school texts, and thinks of herself as rejected, and builds that up into a dramatization.'

‘I dare say there's truth in what you say. I'll do what I can for Marie-Line, and I'm glad to have met you, for it must be
good for her to find in you a sympathetic audience. Perhaps I might go as far as giving you a friendly – well no, we won't use the word warning. A little signal? Her father's not a man that brooks anything he sees as interference. I rather doubt if in the end this sympathetic interest you're taking – or thinking of taking – would really go far towards helping her, you know? I've already said too much. I know him quite well, you see? You've, shall I say, made your point? But having made it – well, you must make your own mind up. Marie-Line imagines things vividly. You know, I do have rather a lot to catch up on: I know you'll forgive me. I'm so pleased to have met you. Can you find your way in this labyrinth, or shall I come with you?'

Marie-Line was missing when she got home. That whisky-bottle too had been fuller this morning, she felt sure. For the tenth time she wondered if she hadn't been a little over-spontaneous.

She ran the tape.

‘Oh this
is
Françoise. Sorry Madame, I just wanted to say is Marie-Line with you? I'm supposing she is, because she wasn't at class this morning, and that's a lot of absences and the Censor is muttering and asked very sharply where she was: little note'll be going off to Pa, I'd guess. If you see her, perhaps you'd tell her better not show herself at home awhile because I saw the old man's face this morning and stormy weather! That's all I suppose, but I'll be
Chez Mauricette
if you or she want to get in touch…