This is Life (3 page)

She wasn’t quite beautiful, but she was really, really close. To him, her extreme prettiness combined with her rough edges to make her even more incredible to look at than if had she been
the conventionally beautiful, airbrushed type.

He realised he was no longer listening, and tuned back in. He heard the phrase
mixed media
, and immediately tuned back out. He was mesmerised. He wanted to . . . he wanted to do all sorts
of things with her.

Professor Boucher would have made fun of the feelings he was experiencing for Aurélie Renard. ‘When are we going to get a decent midlife crisis out of you?’ he had asked
Professor Papavoine with depressing frequency. ‘You’re in danger of leaving it too late – what are you? Fifty-what?’ He was fifty-seven. Professor Boucher habitually mocked
him for never having taken a mistress. There had never even been a fleeting clandestine romance, or a tortuous, humiliating episode of unrequited obsession. ‘And you are
definitely
French?’

‘There are rumours in my family that I had an English great-grandfather.’

‘Maybe that explains it. But even so, could you not just fuck a student every once in a while? For the faculty’s sake? This is an art college, after all – we have our
reputation to consider.’

Professor Papavoine liked to think he had a high threshold when it came to vulgarity, but he often found his colleague to be almost unbearable, and sometimes he wondered how they had ever become
such close friends. His working days would have passed so much more serenely if Professor Boucher had been a personal and professional adversary.

He was pleased to see that Aurélie Renard seemed to be looking a little unsure about the words she was saying, avoiding eye contact as she spoke about
making a statement
, and
the importance of social documentary
, and how she aimed to
capture the essence of somebody’s time, because, er, I suppose, er, everybody lives in their own time
. As with all the
ideas he had half-listened to that day, it didn’t seem to make much sense, and, as with all of them, it could go either way. It would be good, bad or, as was almost always the case, somewhere
in between. He had heard plans to
appropriate the now
, to
create tension between the artist and the work
, and one desperate case had even risen to his feet as he announced his plan to
subvert the zeitgeist
.

More often than not, he felt sorry for the students as they made their proposals. It was as if they really believed that their work wouldn’t count as art unless it had a paragraph of awful
words behind it. He longed for one of them to tell him that they were going to paint a picture, and work really hard to make it a good picture, and leave it at that. This never seemed to
happen.

At least Aurélie Renard’s proposal seemed, if he had understood any of the fragments to which he had paid attention, to be about something. So many of the concepts he heard were so
abstract as to be unintelligible. It struck him that she had stopped talking. It was his turn.

He said what he had said to the others: ‘That sounds fine. I wish you all the best with it. I look forward to seeing the result.’

‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I hope it’ll be interesting.’ Relieved at having made it through, her guard came down, and she smiled. ‘I suppose I just want to make
something beautiful.’ As soon as the words came out she felt she had made a mistake. That would have been the last thing the professor wanted to hear.

She rose to leave, but Professor Papavoine gestured for her to sit back down. He opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a card. It carried the university’s crest. He shook his head, put the
card back and pulled out another one. ‘I would like to hear how things are going. Any time you would like to talk about it, just call me.’ Knowing he was crossing a line, and trying not
to tremble, he handed it to her.

She took it, and looked at it. It was a personal card, with the professor’s home address and phone number on it, along with a personal email address. She had a pretty good idea that this
was unusual, and wondered whether or not she should start to become suspicious of his motives. She put it in her pocket. ‘Thank you, professor,’ she said.

He paused, looked straight into her eyes, and said, ‘Any time.’ He looked down at his hands, which were clutching the edge of the desk. ‘Day or night.’

‘Yes,’ she said, quietly. She looked sadly at the dull gold band on his ring finger. ‘Of course.’

He watched her go, and when the door had shut behind her he picked up the framed photograph that faced him throughout his every working day. It was a picture of his wife. He smiled. She would
have been about the same age as this Aurélie Renard when it was taken. She too was a little below average height, and slim, and very pretty, in a no-make-up kind of way. She was what
Professor Boucher would have called a
compact blonde
.

At last, he allowed himself a sigh.

W
eeks later, when she watched the footage, Aurélie Renard calculated that when the stone smashed into the baby’s face it would have
been travelling at somewhere between sixty-five and seventy kilometres per hour. The impact made little sound, just a dull smack that had been buried by the sound of the traffic and the hurdy-gurdy
before it could reach the built-in microphone. She found it strange that something so terrible had made so little noise.

People were still making their way through the square. Some of them glanced her way, having caught an unexpected flash of movement and noticed her video camera. Uninterested, and just wanting to
get out of the cold, they walked on. To her, they might as well have not been there. She saw only the baby, reclining in his buggy. There was a terrible stillness. Perhaps she had killed him.

She put her hand to her heart with relief when his little hands rose and clenched into fists. She hoped that this meant he was fine. She hadn’t spent a great deal of time with babies, and
had no idea that this moment of calm was usual when they are hurt, that it takes a while for the shock to subside and the pain to register. Three seconds after the event, the child’s face
crumpled in confusion and despair, and tears spilled from his eyes. His mouth opened wide, but there was still no sound. Then, on the seventh second, it came, a bottomless howl.

Aurélie lowered the video camera from her shoulder. She put a hand to her mouth as she shook with worry. The possibility of such an outcome had not crossed her mind, and she realised just
how stupid she had been. She had no idea what to do next, and it was only then that it occurred to her that the baby had not been making his own way across the square. He came as part of a package
with a mother, and she was leaning over him, dabbing his face with a cloth. Only when this was done did the mother turn away from the inconsolable child and give Aurélie a look of disgust
that she would never forget.

She knew she deserved it. She wanted to turn and run, to get out of there as quickly as she could, and try to convince herself that this had never happened. She couldn’t, though. She had
to say sorry, to the howling child and to his mother. Burning with shame, she made her way over to the scene she had created.

She stood silently, cringing as the mother made a point of ignoring her, choosing instead to lean over the buggy and apply a folded baby wipe as a compress to the child’s face. It
wasn’t until minutes later, when the baby had at last stopped crying, that she turned to Aurélie, gave her an ice-cold smile and said, softly, ‘You did a good job. Look . .
.’ She lifted the makeshift compress, and pointed to a red blotch on his face. ‘That’ll bruise nicely. Very nicely indeed. Another centimetre in this direction,’ she
pointed, ‘and you’d have put his eye out. Just imagine that! And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech – I want you to
really
imagine it.’

Aurélie pictured a shattered eyeball, and it was awful. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She and the baby’s mother were around the same age. She liked the way she was
dressed; perhaps under different circumstances they would have become friends. She had been on the lookout for a new scarf, and she could have asked her where she had bought hers. She liked it a
lot, and thought the turquoise complemented her colouring. She could have gone to the same shop and bought herself one, but in a different colour so it wouldn’t be copying. An image flashed
before her of the two of them in their scarves, drinking coffee and laughing as the baby looked on from his buggy. But instead she stood there feeling like a child as she accepted her scolding. She
wondered whether this was the right moment to explain herself and apologise.

The woman hadn’t finished. ‘Better luck next time.’ Her eyes narrowed. Her sarcasm exhausted, she exploded in anger. ‘You make me sick.’

Aurélie nodded. She made herself sick too.

‘What did you think when you got out of bed this morning?
I know – I’ve got a brilliant idea: I’ll go out into the street and throw a stone at a baby.
You’re
a genius. Round of applause!’ She clapped and clapped, and Aurélie stood still, looking at the ground as she accepted this bitter ovation. ‘Bravo!’ cried the baby’s
mother. ‘Bravo!’ Just when it seemed this would never end, she pulled her phone from her pocket. ‘And when the police come, what will you tell them? I can’t wait to hear . .
. One moment.’ The stone had fallen nearby, and she took out her handkerchief and gently picked it up between gloved fingers. ‘Fingerprints. In case you make a run for it.’

Aurélie nodded. She wasn’t going to make a run for it.

The baby’s mother seemed to be examining her. Then, in a single motion, she reached out and yanked a stray hair from Aurélie’s head. She held it up, and said,
‘DNA.’ She placed the hair next to the stone on the handkerchief, which she folded and put in her coat pocket.

‘So what will you tell them? Why did you do it?’

Aurélie rubbed the spot on her head where the hair had been plucked. She knew she owed her a full and honest explanation. She looked at the ground. ‘It’s an art
project,’ she said. ‘I’m at art college.’

‘Art!? Painting a picture, that’s art. Carving a statue, that’s art too. There’s a guy coming to town who thinks that shitting into a bottle is art. Maybe it is, I
don’t know. But this is the first time I’ve ever heard that attacking a baby can be a work of art. You know what? I think it might even catch on. You’ll get full marks for your
project. You’ll be rich. You’ll be just like Monet, only instead of painting lily ponds you’ll be hurting children. Here comes one now – quick, go and kick her in the
face.’

The square was no longer busy with commuters, and a toddler was nearby, holding her father’s hand. She looked as if she had only just learned to walk – her legs were stiff and wide
apart, her steps faltering. She was a picture of delight as she put her new-found skills to work. The last thing Aurélie wanted to do was kick her in the face.

‘I didn’t know I was going to hit a baby,’ she said. ‘I could have hit anyone.’

‘Oh, that makes it better. That makes it fine.’

‘I thought it would just land in front of someone, and they would stop and look at it. Or maybe it would bounce off their shoulder or their back without hurting them. People are wearing
quite thick clothes at the moment.’

‘And you gave no thought to it hitting someone’s head?’

She had done. She had worked out that it would be very unlikely, and had supposed that if it did hit someone on the head it would only give them a surprise and maybe sting a bit, but nothing
more. It was a small stone, after all, and she hadn’t thought for a moment that any of the people going past would be looking to the sky, like the baby.

‘And what was next? Once you had blinded a random passer-by, or given them brain damage? What was next for your art project?’

‘I was going to rush over to them and explain my idea.’

‘I’m sure they would have been dying to hear about it. In fact, why am I standing in the way of your assignment? Here he is. Here’s your random passer-by. Introduce yourself,
and tell him all about it.’ She pointed at the baby, who had calmed down and was sitting in his buggy looking melancholy. ‘Go on.’

Aurélie hesitated for a moment, then crouched to his level. She felt she owed him at least this much. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Aurélie. Aurélie
Renard. I’m the one who threw the stone at you. I’m really sorry about that.’ She reached out and tentatively touched the baby’s shoulder.

‘Don’t touch him.’

Aurélie withdrew her hand and lowered her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’ She addressed the baby again. ‘As I said, I’m sorry. With hindsight I
can see it was a mistake – I should have used a different random selection process. What I was supposed to do was make you my subject for one week. I was hoping you would grant me permission
to follow you around and take photos of you, and make short films and draw pictures of you. That sort of thing. It was going to be a depiction of everyday life.
Your
everyday life. The
randomness of throwing a stone into a crowd was going to stop it from being a premeditated selection, and retain the purity of the . . .’ She couldn’t go on. She sounded so stupid.
There was nothing good about this idea. She looked at the mark on the baby’s face, and fought tears as she thought of how sad her dad would be if he ever found out what she had done.

The child’s mother looked sidelong at Aurélie. Then she looked at the baby. She seemed to be thinking hard. ‘One week, you say?’ Her manner had softened.

‘Yes.’

‘Wait here.’ She walked over to a secluded part of the square, and pulled out her phone. She made a call. Aurélie couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the conversation
seemed to be making her happy. She hung up, and walked back to where they were.

‘Let me look at you.’ She gestured for Aurélie to stand up. She obeyed, and they stood nose to nose. The child’s mother turned a finger and thumb into a clamp, and
gripped Aurélie by the chin. Aurélie noticed how soft her gloves were. She liked them too. The mother moved her face left and right, then up and down and round and round, examining
her from a number of angles. ‘You have a kind face,’ she said. She flicked one of her ears. ‘This ear sticks out a bit more than the other one, but I can’t see that being
too much of a problem. And you do seem to be genuinely sorry.’