The Swimming Pool Season (7 page)

“He didn't kill, did he?”

“No, Maréchal.”

“Your boys wouldn't kill, would they?”

She shakes her head, her lips tight.
Mother-fuckers. Fagsuckers. Jewish shit. Kill the Commies
. She feels tears start.

“No. I don't think they would.”

“Then it's all right. You take the money. And don't you worry about it.”

“He robbed a woman.”

“Well. Jewels, was it?”

“No. Wine and potatoes.”

The Maréchal's face creases into a thousand laughter lines. “Potatoes! Potatoes! You tell him, just you tell him that's a waste of time. We've got plenty of potatoes here, eh Gervaise?”

Yes. Gervaise touches her eye, where the tears twitch. Yes. It's pathetic. Her sons are pathetic. Not like she wanted them to be. It's Mallélou's fault. It must be. In that sooty, overheated signal hut his blood and his semen grew too stale and hot.

Mallélou doesn't like it when Gervaise borrows from the Maréchal. In the days when he worked on the railways, he never borrowed and he has tried to teach his sons: never
owe
anyone. It humiliates him, in particular, to take money from a man who doesn't like him, who gives it to Gervaise because he's seen and known more of her life than anyone else. He's convinced himself that the Maréchal actually saw Gervaise born, was actually there, gawping at the mother's spread fanny when her little peasant head came pushing out. It's become the thing he resents most about the old man, this and the way he treats Klaus with contempt. Who does the old bugger think he is? Some tribal chief? Mallélou likes modern hierarchies, hates primitive ones.

So when Gervaise comes back with the three thousand francs, he quashes a momentary fear that the Maréchal wouldn't give it to her this time, and snatches it from her breasts without a word. Watching this, Klaus feels angry but says nothing.

Hervé Prière compares the touch and scent of his niece, Agnès, to the touch and scent of falling blossom. Everything he notices about her is light, gentle. Her voice, her straight shiny hair, her feet. She plays the Bechstein with a touch so light, she turns concertos to water music. “Play
Clair de Lune
”, Hervé asks.

And this piece of music enters his willowy soul and moves it. He sees rivers and minnows and stars. His shoulders relax. His restless fingers are still. If he could only hear this music in his dreams, instead of the things he does hear . . .

She's been there three days. She drives his car and he laughs: “You look like a kid behind the wheel of that car.” She's twenty. Small like her mother and sister, with the mother's English peachy skin. Her eyes are green, flecked with brown. She wears pale, soft clothes – little rabbity jerseys, grey skirts – and flat bright buds of shoes. She's neat in all her ways. When she cooks, she dabs and wipes as she goes. And she likes food to look pretty and neat. Under the baked egg dishes she fans gold maple leaves, she tosses mint flowers onto the potatoes, she arranges cheese on a criss-cross of washed twigs. Hervé is enchanted, captive to these careful ways. Then he starts to wonder about her. He wonders why, at twenty, she gives these things such attention. Like the blossom she reminded him of, falling from the old walled trees of his youth, she seems both old fashioned and somehow lacking in substance.

After dinner, when she's washed the plates and dishes, and put everything away, she arrives in the sitting room with a sad smile. This sadness, there now and then in her playing, is what moves him in her.
Mourning becomes her
. She doesn't see it. He understands why the music school rejected her. She doesn't. If you'd found that – that grave bit of you – and shown it, they would have accepted you. She may grow old not knowing, not really knowing this.

She mentions a boy called Luc. Her own age. Doing his two years in the army. She thinks they'll marry when he comes out. She shows a photograph: a smiling, thin-faced young man. Shiny buttons. Hervé nods, approves. “Do you love him, Agnès?”

“Yes.”

“Really love him?”

“We write every week. He's stationed at Lyon.”

“Could you die for him?”

“No, Uncle Hervé. I don't want to die. I think, its silly to die for other people. I think it's a silly question.”

“Do you? Yes, you're probably right.”

But he has his answer: she doesn't feel love. What she may never discover, however, is that she doesn't feel it, letting the substitute for ever – mercifully? – obscure the thing. He hands her back the photograph. He feels both jealous of and sorry for this boy, Luc. He remembers what it is to be twenty and in the army and writing letters to a girl. The girl he wrote to was called Denise. She had spotty twin brothers and an obese mother and he dreaded she would become ugly like them. In his letters, he warned her not to eat chocolate cakes or drink alcohol. All his life, he has feared the blemishes women acquire. He couldn't have married Denise and watched her grow old. He preferred to remember her as she was, with unlined satin skin and long straight eyelashes like brushes. He knows this fastidiousness has prevented him from feeling the kind of passion which, these days, is expressed in close-ups of pushing sweating limbs in the cinema. He knows his old age will probably be lonely, but better this than sleep with the bad breath of some loyal decaying woman, better this than go mad with the gross imperfections of the domestic world, like poor old Claude.

On the morning of Friday, Agnès's fifth day at Hervé's house, Larry's fifth day without Miriam, the Granada bounds up Hervé's drive, splattering gravel, and stops at Agnès's feet. The mist has gone and the sky is cloudless. Agnès has been picking flowers for the drawing room, late roses and Michaelmas daisies. Walking sedately to the front door with her bouquet, she looks like a bridesmaid in rehearsal for a smart wedding. When the car surprises her, she stops absolutely still, as if at some appointed station of the marriage procession, and stares sweetly at Larry. He tugs on the handbrake, his mouth dry. Though he has imagined the wet footprint of Agnès by his pool, he has never clearly enough imagined the girl. She's wearing a mauve angora jersey the colour of the daisies, her neck and face above this are pale in the bright September light; her feet, in brown pumps, stand neatly together. Larry's mind frames this picture of her, then he looks away, as if from a snapshot of loved people long dead. He fusses with the car interior, closing the ashtray, winding up the window, extracting the keys from the ignition. Agnès walks on into the house, carrying her flowers. Larry gets out of the Granada and stares at the place where she stood a moment ago. He remembers he's come with some apology to Hervé, but can't think now what it might be. Unless it's to apologise for being there at all, which feels right. He thinks of Miriam in Leni's Oxford house. Oddly, the picture he makes of these two older women is comforting. He doesn't know why. He reminds himself to telephone Miriam from Nadia's flat.

Hervé is in the bureau as usual. His legs are still in plaster, but crutches are now propped against the mantelpiece.

“She's making me walk, Larry.”

“Well, it's time you did. You're wearing your trousers out on the floor.”

“Miriam gone? You never brought me a watercolour.”

This was it. This was the apology. Larry smiles with relief.

“No. I asked her, Harve. In the upset about Leni, she forgot. There are one or two hanging in the house. You could have one of these.”

“But they're not recent?”

“No.”

“Agnès loves flowers. Bright colours.”

“Yes, I saw her.”

“Oh you saw her. Well I shall call her and introduce you to her.”

“No. Don't disturb her. I expect she's busy arranging those flowers.”

“But you must meet her. Stay to lunch. She's making a courgette soufflé.”

“My word, Harve . . .”

“Yes.” Then a whisper: “She's an extraordinary girl, Larry. She knows haute cuisine like a middle-aged chatelaine and she never seems to tire of the little domestic things: arranging this, shining that. I thought young people weren't meant to be like that any more. I don't know what's got into her.”

Arranging this. Shining that.
Exquisite
. A daughter of mine would have been that kind of person, Larry decides. The extreme opposite of Thomas with his obscene fabrications. Everything quiet and tidy and clean.

Then she comes in. She carries the flowers that were meant for the drawing room and sets them down on the balustrade table. In shadow now, the regimental names lie bedded in the box lid, just within reach of Hervé's fingers. He holds one hand a few inches above the box (a constant precaution) and with the other gestures Agnès round to the fireplace where she stands, demure and formal, in front of Larry.

“My niece, Agnès Prière. Agnès, this is my good friend, Larry Kendal, who is English. Larry's wife is the very fine artist I was telling you about.”

“Oh yes. Good morning.”

She holds out a hand that is still the firm, plump hand of a child. Larry takes it and presses it to his lips in the most un-English gesture he has ever made. It smells of the Michaelmas daisies, an almost bitter smell.

“Enchanté, Mademoiselle.”

Ridiculous. He sees the little tableau and himself in it as profoundly ridiculous, so he straightens up immediately from the kiss and lets go of the hand.

“Do you come on holiday to France, Mr. Kendal?”

“On holiday? No, no. I live here. In Pomerac. My wife is on a kind of holiday – in England.”

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. Her mother's ill.”

“Oh I'm desolated. I hope she will recover.”

Hervé moves his brittle legs. “Have a cassis, Larry. Agnès, get us both a cassis and you have whatever you want.”

Larry shakes his head. “I musn't. I'm trying not to drink.”

“Why?”

“Dunno really. Just feel I musn't while Miriam's away. Afraid I'll start feeling sorry for myself.”

“Well. Have one cassis.”

“No. No cassis. A glass of white wine . . .”

“Yes?” Agnès smiles. The smile is so clear and brimming, it chills Larry's heart. “Uncle Hervé has a nice Macon in the frigidaire. I'll get this.”

“Thank you.”

She goes out. Larry glances up to the mantelpiece. The photograph of Agnès and her sister has been replaced by one of Agnès alone wearing a long evening dress and holding a cello. There is something disconcerting in this picture. Larry can't yet see what it is but believes he will discover. A small silence hangs between him and Hervé. Hervé strokes the box.

“Well, what do you think of her?”

“I think you're very lucky, Harve.”

“Yes, I am. So fortunate the music academy didn't want her!”

“Is she upset about this?”

“I don't know. I would have been, at her age. This would have been her one chance of a career perhaps. Yet she doesn't seem to mind. I think she's very good-natured, like her mother. I like good-natured women. They age more slowly.”

Larry ponders this. If the reverse is also true and bad-natured women age rapidly, then Leni should look ninety by now. Yet she doesn't. She hardly looks her age. “How long will she stay?”

“Agnès? Well. Till I can walk at least. Then I might give her some little work to do for me at the surgery, if she's not homesick for Paris by then.”

“You're looking better already, Harve.”

“Am I? My blood pressure's still up. And I'm putting on weight with all this cooking Agnès does. Please stay for lunch and help me out with courgette soufflé, Larry. I'm not hungry.”

Grated, the courgettes look like plankton, Larry decides. This dish isn't as aesthetically pleasing as it might be, though the soufflé itself is light. They eat it in Hervé's dining room off fine plates on lace mats. The room smells of polish and musty fabric. Months have passed since Hervé Prière entertained in here. But Agnès says she likes the dining room. She likes the right rooms to be used for the right things. While her sister eats television suppers, she spreads her little meal on a table. Arrange this. Shine that. It's the precision of Bach that makes him her favourite composer, not his so-much-vaunted soul.

She isn't shy. She has quiet poise. She tells Larry how much she enjoys going to England. Her mother has relations who live in Chester Square. She loves cashmere. Once she was taken to Newmarket Races and saw the Queen come out of her box onto a flat roof. She was surprised that there was no railing round the roof to protect the Queen. In France, this wouldn't happen. The President wouldn't step out onto something unprotected.

She asks Larry about Oxford. She's never been there. Her sister, Dani, is studying hard, hoping to go there to study medicine. Medicine is in the family. Music isn't. She doesn't know where her talent for music comes from.

“I don't think talents do ‘come from anyone',” says Larry; “parents like to think their children get this or that directly from them – as long as what they get is good. But heredity is never the answer to genius.”

“Oh, genius?” says Agnès. “I don't think I'm talking about genius, in my case. I just have a small talent.”

“A ‘small talent' is wonderful,” says Larry. “I wish my son had a ‘small talent'.”

“Larry's son is a furniture-maker,” Hervé says.

“Oh yes? How interesting,” says Agnès.

“Could be,” says Larry, wiping his mouth on a lace napkin. “But it isn't. He makes rubbish.”