Significance (26 page)

Vivier without doubt excelled at his chosen profession, but he was aloof, private, mysterious even. And so much of what he did seemed to be achieved in the space of his own head; give him the equation of two plus two plus two and he somehow came up with eleven, and eleven more often than not turned out be the correct answer. So it was hard to learn from him.

Vivier looked up and caught Lamy gazing at him and gave a look of mild surprise.

‘Ah, Lamy,' he said and began to riffle through the papers before him, ‘there was a report of something left outside the Café de Trois on the night in question, a white scarf or scrap of material? Something anyway, I want you to go there now and see if anything was found or if anyone saw anything unusual. The report may be unconnected, but it's worth looking into.'

Lamy nodded and waited. Vivier picked up a pen and began scribbling notes rapidly. Somehow Lamy had an idea that these notes had some relevance to this task, that Vivier was about to elaborate on Lamy's duties in this, so he continued to stand there watching Vivier's hand with its manicured nails and the immaculate crisp whiteness of his shirt cuff. Lamy did not move, but stood with his weight evenly balanced on both legs, his hands clasped behind his back, his head lifted slightly at the chin.

For a while Vivier seemed to have forgotten the younger man was standing there, then he suddenly looked up in puzzlement. He frowned. ‘That's all.' And immediately Lamy felt like a fool.

‘Sir.'

Lamy spun sharply on his heel, angry with himself. Then as he turned the meeting over in his mind, he became angry with Vivier.
As he left the station and made his way on foot to the Café de Trois he grew angry with his father for failing to encourage him at school, for having nothing better to do than fill himself up with cheap wine and to fill Lamy's mother and their overcrowded apartment with more and more babies.

But somehow once the café was within sight and Lamy could see two young waiters scurrying here and there in their long white aprons as they carried heavy trays of beer and food and coffee, his mood softened. While the customers lounged and clicked their fingers in the air demanding service, Lamy was able to console himself; to remember the authority his blue uniform bestowed on him. Lowly as his position was on the force, he was still a figure to be respected and feared by the population at large. He was a cop. And proud of it.

He strode up to the nearest waiter, a tall young man with a bored expression and a lazy slouch who was standing by a large table of tourists, pencil poised in mid air, order book in hand as one of the customers, a rat
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faced man in a Liverpool football shirt, attempted to communicate his order by speaking very loudly in English.

Ignoring the customers, Lamy ordered the waiter to take him to the proprietor. Without batting an eyelid (and he was probably glad of the opportunity) the young waiter turned his back on the tourist and walked into the main body of the restaurant, beckoning Lamy as he went.

The rat
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faced man who was busy jabbing his finger at the menu did not at first notice that the waiter had gone.

‘AND… FRENCH… FRIES…' Lamy heard loud and clear.

The proprietor was sitting at a table at the back of the restaurant eating; a tumbler of red wine within easy reach of his meaty fist. The proprietor invited Lamy to sit and offered him wine.

‘No, I'm on duty,' Lamy explained.

The proprietor bobbed his head and continued to eat his omelette. He used only a fork, breaking the omelette up, then skewering small pieces.

‘We had reports,' Lamy began, wondering if the man was really listening to him, ‘that an item was left somewhere here on the premises sometime last night. Have you or any of your staff found anything?'

The man's plate was almost empty; as he chewed, he scraped up the last bit of food, popping that into his mouth before he'd swallowed the last bit. He held his left hand in the air just above the wine glass. Holding back time, as if somehow time and policemen and questions didn't exist until the omelette was finished. He swallowed the last bit, then lifted his wine glass, drank deeply and ducked his head like a gannet forcing a large fish down its gullet. Finally he wiped his mouth on a linen napkin and pushed the plate to one side. All of it took perhaps a minute, maybe two, but it had felt longer to Lamy, who was not so sure of his authority in such a circumstance, and the man had not even asked his permission to finish his meal first, nor begged his pardon.

‘Now what is it?' the man at last said.

‘We had reports that something was left here last night, out the front. Have you or your staff found anything or seen anything?'

‘Like what?'

Lamy consulted his notebook. ‘The woman who lives on the top floor of the building reported that a…'

‘Oh her? She's crazy, a troublemaker. Fancies she can see into the future, can cast spells.' He twirled a finger wildly in the air near the side of his head to show the level of his tenant's insanity.

‘Yes, but we must look into what she claims, so please, sir, can you answer my question?'

‘Is this to do with that girl?'

‘I can't tell you that. Now please can you tell me if you or your staff found or saw anything?'

The man nodded morosely.

‘You did?'

‘What did she say? That crazy bitch, did she say I did something? That one of my staff did something?'

‘No, sir. Not at all.' Lamy looked at his notes again. ‘She reported that a man left an object, a white cloth, on your premises.'

The proprietor raised his eyebrows and picked up the linen napkin to show it to Lamy. ‘A white cloth? Like this?'

Lamy saw his point. In a restaurant where the staff wore white aprons, where the napkins and tablecloths were also white, finding a particular white cloth was somewhat futile and given the vagueness of the description, arbitrary.

‘It may have been a garment, a scarf or sweater perhaps? It was placed on the low hedge that borders your pavement seating area.'

‘I will ask my staff if something was found. We are particular about this, we have a store for lost property.' He took a mouthful of wine and seemed to warm to his topic. ‘Some years ago a lady who had visited this region and my establishment on a previous trip, happened to mention that…'

Lamy broke in, ‘Sir, if you don't mind.'

‘Ah, but of course.'

The proprietor stood up and reluctantly dropped the napkin onto the table. ‘One moment.'

Lamy watched the man head out of the front door and make his way to the nearest waiter. They conversed for a moment and then the waiter shook his head and shrugged. The proprietor moved to the left disappearing from view. Lamy gazed about the bar, noting the stack of crisp snowy linen in a press near the toilets and the clean white aprons hanging on a hook to the left of the door which led to the kitchens. A white cloth reportedly left here by a woman who was possibly mad, it was hardly an important mission, but it was not his job to question orders, merely to undertake them to the best of his ability.

He heard footsteps approaching rapidly and looked up to see the proprietor bearing down on him, a look of excited triumph on his face and behind him, confused and somewhat worried, a younger man in a long apron. He was baby
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faced with auburn hair tied back in a stub of a ponytail with a gold sleeper in one ear.

‘Christoph found something this morning. Not a cloth at all, but a cardigan. A ladies' white cardigan.'

Christoph stood in front of Lamy nervously, fiddling with his earring. ‘I forgot about it. I'm sorry. Is it important?' With the hand that wasn't twirling the earring, he indicated the place where he'd left the cardigan. ‘Was it the girl's?' He looked both frightened and sad, as if he had suddenly realised that he had touched death itself, but until that moment, he'd failed to recognise it. ‘Shall I get it?'

‘Yes, yes' the proprietor said. ‘Of course.'

Lamy nodded in agreement.

Minutes later Lamy headed back to the station, a soft pale nest of knitted wool in a paper bag in his hand. In his notebook names, dates, times and addresses.

If he had felt somewhat weary earlier, now he was transformed, energised. He picked up his pace, swung his right arm smartly, while his left, with its precious cargo, he kept perfectly still. It was as if this scrap of almost nebulous fabric had some unusual effect on gravity, transforming itself into lead and thus countering the effects of his brisk movements and the instinct to move both arms. A cardigan. A breakthrough. Lamy's find. He'd bagged it.

Bloodlines

Marilyn woke to darkness. She still had her blouse on, although it was unbuttoned to the waist and one breast had freed itself (or had been freed) from her bra. Her long skirt was twisted; it coiled itself about her like a winding sheet.

Scott, next to her; right next to her with an acre of empty mattress behind him and her precariously on the other edge. Between her legs a sticky wetness. She imagined blood. The blood that spelled the end of what was only just begun. The end of something she had not yet even mentioned to Scott, which she might now never tell him about. How to explain such a secret coming and going? He would not understand the loss; having never known or believed in this thing, this event, this future, it would be entirely without meaning. He could not mourn what had always been (she saw him thinking this) a figment of her imagination.

She wriggled to untwist herself and turned from her side onto her back. Scott, in his sleep, pressed closer.

‘Scott, move over. You're pushing me off the bed.' She put the flat of her palm against his shoulder, nudging him away without quite waking him.

He made a noise that signalled a sleep
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heavy protest, then rolled away, turning his face from her.

Marilyn lay on her back, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, looking at the soft grey of the long curtains and sent an exploratory hand to the wet place between her legs. Dipped her middle finger into the slick heat of herself then brought that same finger up to her nose. The sharp tang of sex and a faint, almost fungal yeastiness. Not blood then, though she could not quite be sure. Keeping the finger aloft she leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp, saw that what was there was colourless; was hardly even a gleam of moisture. She turned the light off again. Then breathed a sigh of relief and moved towards Scott again, fitting her belly in against his spine, drawing her knees into the back of his knees, tucking her feet into the smooth undersides of his. She threw her right arm around his waist and her fingers tidied themselves away between the soft swell of his belly and the bed beneath.

She lay there a moment enjoying the nearness of him, the simple fact of his body, the rise and fall of his shoulder. I am happy, she thinks. But no sooner has she thought this than she finds it falling to pieces. As if she had shaped the thought from wet river mud. Or the weighty, slightly gritty black soil from the lake at the bottom of her ex
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lover, Lawrence's garden. She had played with Lawrence's children there one summer, making mud pies that they set on rocks to dry in the sunshine. But once dry they crumbled and fell apart.

But she didn't quite feel unhappy either.

She felt, despite the proximity of their bodies, alone.

But then she was alone. Alone in the sense that he was there and not there.

And she had made herself more alone with her small dishonesty. Her secret. And it was not her only secret. She had two secrets. One dead, one alive. They were laid out in her mind side by side. Like twin babies in a shared cot. No pillow under their identical heads.

At the beginning, when she first started seeing Scott, she had also been sleeping with Lawrence. That was no sin. She forgave herself that, as this is what happens. Relationships have fuzzy edges. Grey zones of uncertainty. A dinner date with Scott on Tuesday, the theatre on Friday, then on Sunday a walk by the side of the Ottawa River, holding hands. Head tipped just so. Eyes turning coyly to look at the tall man by her side. That night brazenly telling him she wanted him to stay the night with her, because, so far, he'd been too much of a gentleman.

But on Wednesday there was the regular meeting of the poetry workshop group, and the usual drinks in the bar of the Metropolitan after. Which of course she didn't invite Scott to, because he wasn't a poet and because she'd only had one date with him. The one dry peck on the cheek he'd given her just before she'd stepped into the taxi on Tuesday night had left her thinking he didn't particularly desire her, and probably wouldn't ring again. So on Wednesday, with the usual gang in the bar of the Metropolitan, she found herself sitting next to Lawrence. In a booth that's meant to sit four, but accommodates, at a squeeze, six poets with another three on stools at the end of the table. The wine and words flow freely. Marilyn saying something about cocktails, about Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath; the moths that danced around a flame. Gregory responding sneeringly by saying something belittling to Marilyn, about women poets and their privileged self
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indulgent psyches and their strained verse which was littered with dull domestic banalities. Lawrence standing up for her, saying a clever thing that silenced Gregory. Then, under the table, Lawrence's hand curling around her knee. Comforting her. Then, surprisingly, the same hand – as he twists his head around to look at her, after he has asked ‘You alright?' and she has nodded – that same hand moves up her leg and kneads her thigh. Lawrence who is married to an actress and has three children. Lawrence whose first book of poetry was snapped up by one of the best publishers in Canada. Lawrence who also writes plays. Lawrence who has gallantly defended her against the awful Gregory, has his hand on her thigh and, as it happens, she is not wearing nylons, but knee
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high socks, and her Indian cotton skirt that still smells faintly of patchouli joss sticks and is constructed in such a way that it wraps around her waist and comes to just below her knees, falls open slightly when she sits. Just enough for one bare knee to poke out, which she might have been more careful about were it not for the booth they're sitting in, and the modesty the table affords.