Petite Mort (19 page)

Her head comes next to mine, too, dizzyingly close. ‘There’s the Duc de Guise,’ she murmurs, ‘two rows in front, the one with the weak chin. That’s the Duchesse next to him.’

A thoughtful pause. Then she says: ‘They say the Duchesse is actually a man, and is frightened to be seen in full light in case her stubble shows.’

‘Who says that?’ I ask.

‘The Duc de Guise’s mother, for one. She claims to have come upon her daughter-in-law during her music lesson, singing Berlioz in a pleasing baritone.’

I lift myself in my seat and peer over the tops of the audience’s heads till I can see the person: she has half turned to look up into the boxes, and it’s true, she is glancing around anxiously, with her shawl pulled up around her ears.

‘She does have quite a strong jaw,’ I say doubtfully, reporting my findings, and Luce turns back to sit staring at the stage, and laughs.

‘What?’

‘The Duchesse de Guise is one of my oldest friends. I’ll have to tell her she needs a better cosmetician.’

This isn’t funny any more. I am blinking back tears, turning my face away so she won’t see.

‘The Berlioz was a good touch,’ she says, and puts her hand on my forearm. The fingers don’t retreat.

The lights dim.

A diminutive man struts across the front of the orchestra
pit and, stepping up onto his podium, raises his arms in appreciation of our applause. He turns and raises his baton; I steal a glance at Luce. Her eyes gleam as she waits for it to fall.

A watchful bassoon, swelling to sweep away houses, joined by a clarinet. Dry leaves, lifting and rustling: the audience, whispering behind their hands; two people getting to their feet, threading their way out, with the flushed faces of early leavers. A ripple of laughter courses round the auditorium; the orchestra plays on, frowning with the concentration of sliding up the scales. I glance at Luce: her lips are slightly parted, caught halfway between a smirk and amazement.

When I had asked Luce, in a moment of boldness,
What should I expect, I’ve never been to a ballet before
, she hadn’t even looked up from her magazine. She had flipped the pages and said,
Tulle, expect lots of tulle
.

The curtain rolls back, revealing a stage full of people in costumes of coarse yellow and brown, against a painted backdrop, the swell of a hillside. Immediately behind me, a young rake says loudly: ‘It looks like an arse,’ and the laughter gets louder. Onstage, the dancers begin to whirl and stomp, throwing themselves into angular shapes: I look at Luce for reassurance – where are the pinks and the ivories, the chiffons and tutus? Someone shouts from a box: ‘Nijinsky has found his ballerinas in the asylum!’ But it isn’t an asylum they make me think of: rather, the animals in the fields at home; rhythmic, undulating, arching their backs. The elderly gentleman at the end of the row has half-risen from his seat, frowning, his tongue running over his gums. He shouts: ‘For shame! Filth!’ The cry is taken up further forward in the stalls, men and women swaying on their feet; someone else stands up and yells at his neighbour: ‘Sit down, imbecile!’ and suddenly a fist flies, a white streak, and two men are tussling in the aisle.

A woman next to me stands up, eyes alive with delight at the ruckus. Two more men pile into the fray, and now it seems the
whole audience are on their feet, screaming their insults. The orchestra plays on and I clamp my hands to my ears, jostled by the swaying of the crowd on either side. A knot of spectators is leaping the barrier to the orchestra pit and advancing on the conductor: the timpani boom a warning.

Luce’s hand touches mine. ‘Let’s go.’ A high sound may be a police whistle or a piccolo. Her glossy head has bobbed away and disappeared; she dips and surfaces, a flash of her frown, her face turned towards me, and she’s gone again. I am fighting my way towards the end of the row: there is no way out, just a mass of bodies, and real screams now, blocking my way.

I whip round to escape the other way and see Luce, standing firm against the people pushing against her – her hand extended to me – I reach for her fingertips, catch at them, and she brings her other arm around and hauls me by the waist towards her, until I am pressed up against her, the din whirling in our ears.

I am conscious of my heart hammering, and of how she must feel it; of her right hand in my hair and her left on my waist, their gentle pressure. The noise is all around us; she shifts and her thigh is against mine, and although we are standing in the same way we are not standing in the same way. I look up at her; her eyes are drowsy and speculative; she’s saying something.

‘What?’ I can’t hear her over the din.

She keeps looking down at me, lips pursed; then she turns, gripping my hand and pulling me after her as she fights her way towards the exit.

In the foyer, the theatre manager hovers, trying helplessly to staunch the flow of patrons flying out into the street. On the steps, a portly man in a top hat is saying to all who pass: ‘An abomination, I will personally bring this to the attention of Monsieur the Minister tomorrow. Assuming tomorrow comes.’

It has been raining; the cobbles are shining wet. Hubert is standing next to the car across the street, looking around in amazement; seeing us, he puts two fingers to his mouth and whistles.

In the car, she leans her head back against the seat and closes her eyes – but she still hasn’t let go of my hand.

When we reach the house, Hubert lets us out of the car and says goodnight, and we go inside. It is totally silent. The sky is curiously light: as if it is already anticipating the day ahead.

We walk up the stairs, our fingers laced together, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. At the first landing – her floor – we pause for a moment, the door to her room a hovering outline; she turns to look at me and I look back. Whatever it is she needs to see, she sees it; she turns the door handle, and we walk inside.

A double bed comes clear; thin silvery light through the window. I stand there drinking in all the things that up until now I’ve never seen: what is private and hers.

Now, as if taken by a sudden shyness, she walks away from me. She crosses to the window and looks out, holding her arms across her body, as if she’s cold.

She is standing there, looking out: just her silhouette, the slender, dizzying height of her. She’s further away from me than she has been before: and I know – seem to have known for a long time – what I have to do to bring her back.

It will be easier to say it like this, with her facing away.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ I say. ‘About your husband.’

It feels like a failure; an abomination. There is a humming in my ears.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticks away another second, and another.

She turns to face me. Pale and tall. ‘It doesn’t matter. Does it?’

I stand rigid where I am.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says again.

She walks across the room, slowly and deliberately and stands in front of me; centimetres away. Close enough to see her chest rise and fall in the half-light.

She puts her fingertips to my face and says my name.

Dawn: bruised light. Book spines, arranged on the mantel, came gradually clear; she lay on her side away from me, with her arm flung out.

As I watched her, she opened her eyes – sharply, as if she wasn’t sure who she expected to see – and turning, reached for me.

When the first household noises began, we tiptoed up the stairs, her little finger laced in mine, without speaking.

She walked me up to the third floor landing, and there we stopped and looked at each other.

‘I can make sure André doesn’t come to your room any more,’ she says. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘It’s what I want,’ I say.

Under her eyes, the shadows were violet. Standing there, she kissed me for a long time, until we heard the servants’ voices, very faint, downstairs.

I SLEPT FOR A FEW HOURS
. At half past ten I heard André’s cheerful shout hello, and then his footsteps going up to his study; and then nothing, just a long silence and the breeze in the trees.

At half past one I got up and went to her salon. She was sitting upright on the sofa, straight-backed, reading.

Her face softened.

Thomas’s footsteps, up and down the corridor.

She bent back over her novel; a high red spot on either cheekbone.

For distraction, I crossed to sit at the desk, arranged myself, picked up a letter.
I have never met you but I love you
, wrote a man from Normandy.

At four o’clock I went to my room. There was nothing to do but wait. I looked out of the window, at the high, white, unreal sky, and wondered how she would dissuade him. What she could be planning, and if it could work. We’d fallen out, André and I, but I was still living in his house: there for the taking.

I went down for dinner at eight. He was there, lounging in his seat, tanned from his trip, but otherwise the same. Looking at him, I wondered how I had ever mistaken his silken waistcoats for sincerity.

He looked up at me, a quick glance under his eyelids. ‘You look well.’

‘Do I?’

‘Very.’ He reached casually for bread. I folded my hands in my lap and stared at them. She hadn’t said anything yet, or the plan hadn’t worked.

Luce said: ‘So your trip—’

André tipped his chair back and laced his fingers behind his head, all his teeth on show. ‘You should have seen his workshop. He has an automaton so realistic it could be sitting where Adèle is right now. She could
be
the automaton.’

‘I think we’d recognise the real one.’

André lifted his wine glass and swirled it. Then he asked: ‘Anything exciting happen while I was gone?’

Luce took a sip of wine – the muscles of her throat moved as she swallowed – and shook her head.

At the end of the meal, André sat swilling the dregs in his glass, staring at the wall; she was perfectly composed, opposite him. Eventually she turned her gaze on me.

‘Goodnight,’ I said, getting to my feet.

As I left the room, she rose too. For a delirious moment I thought she was coming after me. But she followed me to the door and put her hand on the handle.

I stood in the hall, staring back at her.

‘Goodnight,’ she said. On her face was a fierce look I had not seen before. She pulled the door closed.

I went upstairs to my room and sat in my nightgown, propped up against the pillows, to wait.

I thought about the last time with André. I could hardly remember it: I just had the impression of conserved energies, and no noise, as if noise were an expense he didn’t want with me.

After a while I heard the dining-room door open and close.

Her softer steps and his quicker ones going up the stairs: no voices.

I heard him walk up the second flight, clearing his throat. A pause, and his footsteps kept on coming, up the last flight of stairs to my floor.

I pulled my knees up to my chin and shut my eyes; then I reached for the stem of the lamp beside my bed. I lifted it an inch, to test its weight.

The footsteps had stopped; I breathed, and listened harder.

There was a creak of floorboards just outside my door. He was shifting his weight onto his other leg.

We waited, on either side of the door, in silence, for more than a minute.

Abruptly, there was a squeak as he spun on his heel – and then his footsteps jogging back down the stairs.

I waited half an hour, letting the sweat on my body cool, then slipped out of my room and stole down the stairs.

At his floor I paused, but of course there was nobody there.

I continued to Luce’s floor. Stood for a moment outside her room; brushed the door with my knuckles.

There was no answer. I pushed it open.

The shutters were faint silvery outlines. I couldn’t hear breathing, so she was not asleep; and sure enough, after a few seconds, her shape came clear. She was sitting up in bed.

I walked to the bed. Still no sound.

I climbed onto the bed, knelt over her and kissed her.

Her lips were cold under mine; barely moving.

She let me push back the covers. Her nakedness: a white slender body. The nipples dark circles. I reached out for one—

She held my head in place, and put her hands in my hair.

She pulled my nightgown over my head. The air in the room was summery warm, a gentle draught from somewhere.

As I was bending to kiss her again, she put a hand up to stop
me; ran a finger down my jaw. The fingernail dug in.

She pushed me gently onto the bed and rolled towards me; put her hands on my thighs and spread them wide apart.

Looking at her expression, I understood that there was a price, after all.

‘He wasn’t even—’ I tried to tell her. ‘He never even—’

She covered my mouth with her hand; then, without checking whether I was ready, she pushed four fingers into me.

‘Am I anything like him?’

It hurt: a good pain, but shocking.

‘Did he do this? Or this?’

Each movement a separate sound from my mouth. Her eyes, half-shut, watching me.

I took her hand away from my mouth, rolled over and straddled her; took her wrist and pushed her further into me. Bent down and kissed her; told her that if this was how the account would be settled, I’d pay.

Much later, I woke to find her still asleep. Pale light was just beginning to show in the cracks of the shutters.

She slept with one arm curved above her head, protective. I watched her for a long time, then put my hand on her stomach.

Her eyes flew open. She stared at the ceiling; then at me.

‘What did you say to him?’ I asked. ‘To stop him?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

I went on watching her. Her nostrils flared.

She said: ‘He won’t come to your room any more. Isn’t that enough?’

She closed her eyes again. Her hand came crabbing over the coverlet and seized mine convulsively: gripping my fingers so tightly they turned red, then white, changing position every thirty seconds or so, finding a new hold.