The Girl at the Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks
‘It’s only ten minutes. You don’t have to go.’
‘I must. But I’ll come and visit you again if you like. One day next week, perhaps.’
‘Oh yes, please. I’ll make you dinner. I can take an evening off. What would you like?’
‘Anything you can do easily. A stew or coq au vin or something like that. I don’t mind at all.’ He didn’t want her to spend too much money.
‘Could you come on Sunday?’
‘All right. I’ll bring some wine, so don’t bother about that.’
5
IT WAS HIGH summer and the sun shone full on to the small courtyard overlooked by Anne’s sitting-room. On her first Sunday morning there she sat in the window-seat barefoot with her arms around her legs, her hands clasped together in front of her, and looked down. There were, as usual, two cats asleep. One, called Zozo by Mlle Calmette, was lying on the half-roof that jutted out over the inner porch by the door to the street. Anne could quite clearly see his grey flanks inflating as he dreamed another impossible dream of his daring. He was a fantasist of a ridiculous nature who, Anne thought, had not been destined for domestic cathood. He would prowl through the patchy grass at the edges of the courtyard in pursuit of a sparrow that was pecking at the gravel, concentrating fiercely on his long, skating steps, seemingly under the impression that the handfuls of intermittent weed gave him the protection of a lush savannah. The bird would always see him coming but continue to peck until it was ready to go. Before Zozo had even reached the stage of preparing himself to spring, the sparrow would be off with a faint, derisive chirp to continue feeding at its leisure elsewhere in the courtyard. After two or three such failed attempts, the cat would leap up on to the high inner wall and patrol the perimeter of the courtyard with a strutting air to recover his dignity. This would last either until he grew tired and curled up to sleep, or until someone came in from the street, when he would hurry round the wall and adopt a waiting position, coiled in as close a resemblance to a spring as he was ever likely to manage. On Anne’s first day she had screamed in terror when what felt like a heavy hand, with the fingers slowly spreading, had landed on her shoulder as she walked to her front door. Zozo leaped off and threw himself in her path, lying on his back and waiting for her to stroke him. In this odd dog-like position he demanded the attention of all those who crossed his domain. What strange feline fantasy he was living out as he sailed through the night air to land on her shoulder Anne could never guess, but she had felt guilty at her scream, which must have alarmed the cat, and ever since, like all the other residents, she crossed the courtyard with her eyes turned warily skyward.
Anne turned her gaze back to the sitting-room. What decoration there was had been effected in a style which pleased her, with thick fabrics and solid furniture, the impression homely but not cluttered. It was the first time in her life she had lived alone, and she loved the feeling of pulling the door shut behind her at night and knowing she couldn’t be disturbed. She liked the feel of the plain china plates in her hand, of the rough sheets on her face and the alternating wood and rug on her bare feet in the morning; not because there was anything unusual about them, but because they were hers alone.
She pushed back the window and heard the sound of church bells close at hand. She had intended to go that morning, since church was a good place to meet people, and when one was alone one had to risk such irreligious thoughts. Now she couldn’t be bothered, but sat gazing out instead on the sun-struck cobbles where the second cat, an awful, brindled creature, was dozing. This cat had no name as far as she knew and was not owned by anyone nearby. Its face was gouged and partly bare from a life of fighting over fishheads, and its mangy fur grew in irregular clumps along its spine. However, it exercised sleeping rights over the courtyard without fear of contradiction, least of all from Zozo who, at the sight of the other, would absent himself on urgent business, bustling off over the rooftops, dislodging stray tiles in his hurry to be elsewhere.
Anne had no work to do that Sunday, and in the evening Hartmann was coming for supper. ‘Just something simple’ had been his instruction; but she also remembered his mentioning coq au vin, and she wanted to please him. He probably had no idea of the difficulty such a dish caused; it needed long, slow cooking in an oven, and all she had was a single ring of uncontrollable temperature. She had made some soup late the previous night and had bought two kinds of cheese so that, if the chicken went wrong, they would not go hungry.
Meanwhile the day seemed to spread before her like a flat, tree-lined road, winding into sunshine beneath a sky of hammered and immutable blue. She rested her cheek against her knee, gazed down at the sun-filled courtyard and heard the steady clanging of the church bell beyond.
Mme Bouin had not been pleased when Anne told her she would no longer be living at the Lion d’Or.
‘I’ve never heard anything like it in my life,’ she said.
‘I suppose it is unusual, isn’t it? I just –’
‘Unusual! It’s unheard of. I don’t think Monsieur the Patron is going to like it if his staff are not on hand when they may be needed.’
‘But I won’t be late for work, I promise. It’s only ten minutes’ walk.’
‘It is the principle, mademoiselle. People will talk. They will want to know where this money comes from. It is not good, not good at all.’
‘It was a piece of luck. I’ve told you.’ Anne couldn’t bring herself to tell a lie in quite the way Hartmann had suggested. ‘A friend has organised it. There was some money in the family. An agreement. They were friends with Mlle Calmette. I can have no money myself by this arrangement, but this plan was worked out so I would get some advantages.’
Mme Bouin looked hard at her before taking up her knitting. Her hands were hidden beneath the desk, so from where Anne stood it seemed as though the metallic clicking was coming from the energetic movement of Mme Bouin’s finger joints. ‘The Calmette family was never any good anyway,’ said the old woman at last. ‘The grandmother was in prison, you know.’
‘What for?’
‘Adultery.’
‘But that must have been ages ago! You can’t go to prison for something like that nowadays.’
‘If you call two generations an age. There’s bad blood in the family, the same weakness from one generation to the next. Her sister was the same.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She used to work at old M. Hartmann’s house. “Secretary”, they called it.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘He was old, but he was a wicked man. An atheist and proud of it, too. Even in his eighties he would have women go out there to clean or do other work for him, but everyone knew what it was for.’
‘Perhaps he was lonely.’
‘That Calmette woman, the sister. She knew what it was all about. And this isn’t going to look good at all, your lodging there, not good at all.’
Anne was perturbed at the news of Hartmann’s father. Perhaps it was well known that going to work at the Manor was merely a pretext for something else. Perhaps everyone in Janvilliers was already laughing at her and saying how Hartmann had a way with him, just like his old father. On the other hand, she had decided to trust him; she had to trust someone in her life. And it could be that Mme Bouin herself had tangled with this woman, Mlle Calmette’s sister; perhaps when they were younger . . . but no, she found it impossible to imagine Mme Bouin battling for a man’s affection. Presumably there must have been a M. Bouin, too. What can he have been like? she wondered. She saw him as short and plump with a round bald head, a silver watch-chain and a gruff, aggressive manner which he would have cultivated to keep his wife at bay.
Mme Bouin resumed her more normal manner. ‘I shall be speaking to Monsieur the Patron later today and will let you know what he has to say on the matter. Now I’m sure the head waiter has some work for you, mademoiselle.’
‘Thank you, madame.’
The same night André Mattlin came into the town b
He lit a cigarette. ‘I’ve got more work than I can handle, that’s the problem. When you’ve had experience of working on major projects in Paris everyone in a little place like this wants to hire you.’
‘I don’t know why you don’t go back to Paris,’ said Anne, pouring a glass of beer for another customer.
‘Paris is finished. It was fine in the twenties, and till a few years ago perhaps, but not any more. People are scared, there’s not enough money, and they’re obsessed by the Germans.’
‘But aren’t we all?’
‘I suppose so. I don’t suppose there’s much we can do about it. If they want to invade us they will. They’ll just walk in.’
‘They won’t walk in, surely? We’ll fight.’
‘No. Never again.’ Mattlin swirled his drink around the glass.
‘Why did you leave your job in Paris?’
‘I’ve told you.’ Mattlin puffed on his cigarette. ‘The place was finished. And the company I worked for, they – I – it was ridiculous. I was the only competent young architect there. All the older ones just wanted to build like latter-day Haussmanns, all that monumental stuff, and I was the only one with any idea of the modern movements. So I had to do all the hard work while some of these other time-servers became partners.’
‘So you resigned?’
‘I – yes.’ Mattlin nodded energetically, the curls on his head wobbling slightly as he did so. He had narrow greyish eyes, underscored with a darker grey after too many nights’ excess, a long nose which started to hook about an inch before the end, and an upper lip on which the brownness of the pigmentation was blurred into the skin above at certain points, giving rise to doubts about what was lip and what was face and, in the more general sense, what was the difference. His cheeks were slightly concave and, though the chin was firm, there was a suspicion of a second beneath it when he lowered his head, as he often did, to take up a drink or cigarette. Despite these flaws he was a good-looking man, the features somehow fitting together to make a whole that was more impressive than its parts. Perhaps the high bony forehead gave it dignity, or perhaps it was a triumph of proportion over detail, like a building by the despised Haussmann.
‘What’s this I hear,’ he said to Anne, ‘about your living in lodgings with that Calmette woman?’
Anne was taken by surprise. ‘How did you know?’
Mattlin smiled. ‘Everyone knows. And I couldn’t tell you where I’d heard it. It’s true, isn’t it?’
‘It’s not definite. Monsieur the Patron has got to approve it.’
‘Who’s paying for these rooms?’
‘It’s none of your business, monsieur, if you don’t mind my saying.’
Mattlin smiled, ‘I thought as much.’
Anne blushed, then, feeling ashamed at herself for showing guilt where there was none, blushed even more, so her eyes stung with the burning. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, fumbling with some glasses below the bar.
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Anne,’ said Mattlin.
‘Of course it’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ she said, straightening up and furiously addressing herself to him.
Mattlin smiled. ‘Of course.’
Anne took a tray and hurried round the bar to gather any empty glasses she could find. Mattlin watched her as she leaned across the tables. He had no idea who was paying for her rooms and had been surprised when his random shot went home: clearly there was something going on or Anne wouldn’t have looked so guilty, but he didn’t believe that Hartmann had made her his mistress. Hartmann, to Mattlin’s relief, had ceased to be a competitor for the affections of the women they knew, and Mattlin doubted that he would have changed his mind now. If he had, then there were ways of making sure his suit would be unsuccessful. In the meantime it did no harm for Anne to believe that he thought Hartmann was keeping her as a mistress, and it would serve his purposes if confusion on the issue were spread as far as possible.
Anne felt indignant as she loaded her tray, but she knew she lacked even the consolation of having been honest. There was nothing dishonourable in what she was doing, she was sure, yet she was forced to conceal the facts of it with half-lies, and her reputation would suffer in this small town just as much as if the rumours were true.
Before he left, Mattlin made her agree to go out with him the following night. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but she could see that if she refused it would only make him more suspicious.
That had been three days ago and now, as she set about tidying the apartment for Hartmann’s visit, Anne had still heard no word from Mme Bouin, so she presumed the Patron had made no objection to her staying there. Or perhaps he had been too busy even to see his manageress.
The butcher who sold her the chicken had also given her an old bacon knuckle, which she had added to the pot, and some beef bones which she had boiled to make stock for the soup. As she went about her rooms, dusting the mantelpiece, straightening the chairs, she had to sniff continuously to make sure the chicken had not boiled over and quenched the flame beneath it, thus leaving the gas to leak freely on to the landing. Usually when she went to check she found that the flame had sunk so low that the liquid in the pot wasn’t even gently simmering. The only position in which the gas-ring worked properly was fully open, when it let out a fierce and continuous blast; at lower temperatures it flared and died capriciously, as dictated by the clogged inlets from the pipe to which it was connected.
Anne went to change her clothes. There was not a great selection from which to choose and, after a moment’s thought, she chose a wine-coloured dress which was striking but demurely cut. She spent more time going through a box of combs and slides and earrings. In the end, after some minutes in front of the mirror, she was satisfied.
As she changed, Anne reflected that she had spent all the day preparing and waiting. Hartmann, no doubt, had had other things to do. There was his job and those boxes full of papers he had to read for it; there was his wife, and the large house to look after and the workmen to supervise; then there were his friends to see and play tennis and chess with: there was Jean-Philippe, whom she liked best, and his brother Jacques, the jolly one; and the persevering Mattlin; and the other people in Paris to whom he had made vague reference. All day Hartmann would have been occupied with these things while she had had nothing to do but think about him. Since he had last seen her and made the appointment for this evening he had probably not thought about her once, while she, who was so dependent on his bidding, had had to wait and hope that perhaps he might look into the Lion d’Or; that he might send one of his scribbled notes or might request an earlier meeting; might even contact her to confirm that he was coming. Perhaps, she thought, that is why I have reached this pitch of feeling so soon, when I hardly know him, because I have nothing else to think about, no way of my own of influencing events; while he, once he has decided what shall happen next, can merely turn his mind to other things. She felt a rush of resentment as she lifted the lid and peered once more at the now perversely bubbling chicken; but she could think of worse ways of passing a day than in this gentle simmer of anticipation.
Hartmann had in fact divided his day between despatching telegrams to Paris and discussing at some length with Jean-Philippe Gilbert, in whom he had confided, his position with regard to Anne.
Jean-Philippe viewed Hartmann’s dilemma with detached amusement. He warned him to be very careful in his visits but couldn’t otherwise see why Hartmann was perplexed. ‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘Almost every married man in this town has a mistress. So long as it’s kept private, nobody minds. So long as it doesn’t cause your standard of living to fall – which distresses the wives – the system works well. Keep up appearances, that’s all that matters. To do what you’re doing – to worry when you haven’t yet done anything wrong – is
Hartmann laughed. ‘I suppose you’re right. Here, you must try some of this wine. I don’t know what it is, because the labels were washed off when my father’s cellar caved in, but this bottle’s very good. Go on, give me your glass.’
‘You never used to be like this, you know. You never used to have these scruples.’
‘I know. I’m getting older. I thought you stopped changing when you reached a certain age, but you don’t. Your good health.’ For fear of talking too much about himself, Hartmann made inquiries about Jean-Philippe’s life. They forgot the problems of Hartmann’s lust and conscience until Jean-Philippe was leaving, when he agreed to tell Christine, if it should be necessary, that Hartmann had spent the evening with him.
At about the time Anne was changing, Hartmann put on an old jacket and went for a walk along the side of the lake and out towards the sea. As he thrust his hands deep into the pockets he felt a crumpled letter and pulled it out. It was the one from Etienne Beauvais, his friend near Bordeaux, inviting him for a weekend. He read again the hearty conclusion: ‘Bring yourself a companion. All is discretion here! Do come, Charles; it will be a jolly party and we haven’t seen you for a long time.’ He looked at the date on top of the letter: it was nearly a month old and he had quite forgotten about it.
An hour later he drove his car at high speed through the pine forest and out into the sandy unwelcoming plain with its smaller cluster of houses round which children were playing. On the seat next to him was a bottle of the same unidentified wine he and Jean-Philippe had been drinking earlier and a bunch of flowers he had gathered on his walk through the woods and stored furtively in the boot before re-entering the house. As he accelerated uphill and back into the pines, he felt the exhilaration of the schoolboy who is breaking bounds. For several moments he enjoyed the feeling along with the rush of air over the windscreen. Then he thought: why should I feel this when I’ve done nothing wrong? What bounds have I broken? As he slowed the car at the approach to the crossroads on the edge of town, he felt once more the stirrings of conscience. Then he looked again at his feeling and found in it nothing but pleasure and kindness and an eagerness to please. He swung up into the long boulevard with its stripped trees and powered the car on up to the Place de la Victoire.