Authors: Brian Moore
“He quoted Camus. It surprised me.”
“Camus on what? Religion?”
“No, on suicide.”
“What did Camus say about suicide?”
“That it’s perhaps the only important personal
question.”
“Camus was overrated.”
“Do you think so?”
“Don’t you know the only important personal
question?”
“What?”
“Us. How are you feeling today, by the way?”
“Better.”
“Feel up to talking?”
She shook her head.
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re right. I can’t keep putting things off.
But first I have to phone Kevin.”
A
clochard
in a filthy blue cotton smock
thrust himself in front of them, holding out a grimed hand, pink
palm upward. “
Dis donc, tu veux me donner des sous,
quoi
?”
Tom Lowry turned from the urgent hand, the
dust-smeared face, the dulled, angry eyes. “Come on,” he said and
propelled her past the intrusion. But the
clochard
,
running after them, muttering something unintelligible, pulled a
wine bottle from under his smock and, staggering along a few paces
to their rear, began to drink from it, red liquid, like watered
blood, dribbling down his chin and neck. “
Dis donc, toi
?”
Hurrying, they turned a corner, leaving him behind, coming out on
the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where, slackening pace, Tom put his
arm around her waist. “Tell me,” he said. “If you phone your
husband today, what will you say to him?”
“I don’t know. I promised to phone him, that’s
all.”
“But if he asks you to come home, what will you
say?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I can’t go back. Not now.”
“Then come to New York. Listen, I’ve worked it all
out. I told you my charter leaves on the twenty-eighth. Well,
yesterday, just on an impulse, I made a reservation for you on a
TWA flight that leaves the same evening. It would get you into New
York one hour after my flight arrives at Kennedy. I’d be waiting
there for you. There’s no problem about a tourist visa. We’ll have
plenty of time to get it. Usually, it seems, you can get it the
same day you apply.”
She stared at him. “You’ve already booked a ticket
for me?”
“Yes. You can always cancel it. I hope you won’t.
Come with me. You don’t have to marry me.”
“I’m not going to marry you, don’t you worry,” she
said, suddenly laughing.
“And if you get tired of the States—or of
me—there’ll be a thousand dollars in your name in a New York bank
account. And a return ticket. Is it a deal?”
“You really are a crazy Yank.”
“Say yes. It’s a no-strings-attached offer.”
“Well,” she said. “We seem to be having our talk
after all.”
“It’s not so hard, is it?”
Abruptly she put her head down. “I must phone home.
I
must
.”
“Okay, let’s find a phone.”
“No. You go and have a coffee and wait for me.
There’s a P.T.T. up the street. I’ll join you in a minute.”
He kissed her. “Okay, I’ll be in that café over
there.”
At the nearby Bureau de Postes, Téléphones et
Télégraphes, the telephone room was in the basement. There an
urgent collection of people, including African and Arab students,
German and English tourists, waited to call on the long-distance
circuit. Mrs. Redden gave her number to a blonde, pregnant
telephonist who sat at a desk at the end of the room. The
telephonist wrote the number in a school copybook in front of her
and told Mrs. Redden to sit down. On a bench, between an old man
who smelled of carbolic disinfectant and a black student whose
cheekbones bore the gray scars of tribal initiation, she waited,
watching the movement of people in and out of the telephone kiosks,
until the telephonist suddenly pointed to her and cried,
“
Madame? Cabine Six
!”
She went into the kiosk. The phone rang.
“
Parlez, Madame
!” the telephonist’s voice cried when she
picked up the receiver. Feeling like an actor in some foolish yet
frightening drama, she obeyed the shrill command and said
automatically, “Hello? Hello?”
“Who’s that?” A woman’s voice, far off, an Irish
accent.
“Is Dr. Redden in?”
“No. Who’s calling, please?”
“It’s Mrs. Redden. Who is that?”
“Oh, Mrs. Redden, is it you? I can hardly hear you.
This is Maureen. Dr. Redden is at the hospital. He said if you
called to give you this number. Are you ready?”
“Wait,” Mrs. Redden said, and then fumbled in her
bag for her little address book, with its tiny pencil, the point
almost worn to the wood. “All right, Maureen.”
“Four-five-four-seven-seven.”
“Four-five-four-seven-seven?”
“That’s right. How is Paris, Mrs. Redden?”
“Fine, Maureen. I’ll try that number now. Thank
you.”
And left the kiosk, going across to the
telephonist’s desk to queue, pay for her call, ask the telephonist
to try the new number, and wait again on the bench beside two small
Arab men who looked at her boldly, then eyed her legs with sidelong
glances until the telephonist again signaled to her, crying,
“
Madame
?” Again, in the booth, she picked up a ringing
phone. “
Parlez, Madame
!”
“Hello.”
“City Hospital surgical unit,” a man’s voice
said.
“This is Dr. Redden’s wife, calling from Paris. Is
he there?”
“Hold on, Mrs. Redden, I’ll see if I can get him,”
the voice said. And it was then, standing in a Paris telephone
booth, the air heavy with the smell of stale tobacco smoke, that
she faced the question at last. What would she say to him? What
could she say to him?
“Hello, Sheila?” He sounded falsely cheerful.
“Kevin.”
“How are you? I’m glad to hear from you. I was
hoping, maybe, you’d phone yesterday.”
“I said it would be a couple of days.”
“That’s right, I know you did. It’s just that I
haven’t been able to sleep much at night, thinking of all
this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t say that. I’m sure there’ve been mistakes
on both sides. By the way, did you get that money I sent you?”
“What money?”
“Do you remember I told you when you rang up from
Villefranche that I’d send you a hundred quid for shopping? Well, I
sent it on to Peg Conway’s address. Have you seen her?”
“Yes. But it isn’t here yet.”
“Well, it should have arrived by now.”
“I’ll ask Peg about it. Thank you. I’ll pay you
back.”
“Never mind that. Are you staying with Peg,
then?”
She did not answer.
“I’m just asking, because if neither you nor Peg are
at her flat, the money could be there waiting for you.”
“No, somebody’s there.”
“You’d never know it. I rang there the other night
and got no answer.”
“I took the phone off the hook.”
“So you’re there, then? At Peg’s?”
“Yes.”
“I see. And how are you? Or should I ask that?”
“I’m all right. How’s Danny?”
“Oh, he’s grand. I didn’t say anything to him, by
the way.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, I’m still hoping that he won’t have to know
about any of this.”
She did not speak.
“Look, Shee, would it do any good if I come over and
we could have a heart-to-heart chat? Maybe if we talk about this,
we can find out what it is that went wrong.”
“No.”
“Shee, people go through these crises. I was talking
to Owen the other night. He told me about your brother Ned. You
knew about Ned, didn’t you?”
Ned. Owen told him about Ned? Kitty said we were
never to say. “You were talking to Owen? About me?”
“Yes.”
“About this?”
“Well, I had to talk to somebody. I’m very worried
about you.”
“And what did Owen say?”
“Well, he mentioned Ned, he said Ned had a similar
experience three years ago and that it ended in a nervous
breakdown. He had to have electroshock, it seems.”
“Oh, my God, Kevin,” she said, suddenly furious.
“What does Owen mean, ‘a similar experience’? Ned was never
married, he once studied for the priesthood, remember? And then he
started courting some young girl and she wouldn’t have him. It’s as
different from this as day from night.”
“All right, all right, hold your horses. It was Owen
who mentioned the possible connection.”
“What possible connection?”
“Well, maybe you should talk to Owen about it.”
“I don’t want to talk to anybody.” She couldn’t just
tell him, it’s over, Kevin. There’s no sense talking. Not now. Not
today. “Look,” she said. “I still have to think about things. I’m
going to ring off now.”
“When will I hear from you?”
“I’ll call you on Saturday?”
“Not till then?”
“No.”
“Well, I suppose I’ll just have to wait. Is that
it?”
She did not answer.
“All right. Take care of yourself, will you?”
“Goodbye. Say hello to Danny for me.”
“I’ll do that. Poor kid, he’s still expecting you
next Monday. He’ll be very cut up if you’re late.”
“Goodbye,” she said again. As she replaced the
receiver, angry tears started in her eyes. Cut up! Danny, with his
rugby and his bike team, Danny who hardly knows if I’m in the house
or out, as long as his meals are on time.
She went upstairs and out onto the boulevard. The
sky was the color of slate and a wintry wind whipped the pavement
debris into a miniature sandstorm. As she put her hand up to shield
her face, Ned, wearing his white dentist’s coat, seemed to come
before her, tall and awkward, stooping to conceal his height. She
saw his sparse rusty hair, his long nose, sharp and red at the tip.
In his hand he held a thin steel instrument and grinned when she
pulled back, childishly, thinking it was a drill. “Come on, it’s
only a mirror,” he said, showing her a small circle tilted at the
instrument’s end. “Now, let’s just have a peek.”
Owen said that when he visited Ned that time in his
rooms in Leeson Street, he found him sitting in his dressing gown
at twelve o’clock in the day. He burst into tears when Owen spoke
to him. He was unable to stir out, unable to look after his
simplest needs. “He was suffering from malnutrition, if you’ll
believe it,” Owen said. But Ned was all right now. Eily saw him
last summer: when she went to Cork he took her out for a drive in
his car. They went down to Cobh and the sea. She said he was like
his old self, but quieter, not so much fun as he used to be.
We were never to tell anyone about Ned. Kitty made
that rule and we all agreed to it. I never even told Kevin. Because
I’d made a promise. Yet the other night Owen told him, just like
that.
•
“How did it go?” Tom Lowry said, rising to his feet
as she came to the table.
“All right.”
“You don’t look all right.”
“I’m all right.”
“Do you want some coffee? Or some lunch?”
“No,” she said. “You have something. And then let’s
go back to the flat.”
•
“
Il y a une lettre recommandée pour vous,
Madame
,” thé concierge said. “
Je l’ai mise en
haut
.”
The registered letter had been slipped under the
apartment door. It lay on the polished wooden floor beside a
circular and a newspaper. An English stamp, and her name and
address written in Kevin’s doctor’s squiggle. “This must be the
one,” she said. She opened it and pulled out a money order on
Barclays Bank, France, for one hundred pounds. Then found his note,
written on surgery paper.
KEVIN REDDEN, M.
B., F. R. C. S.
22 CLIFTON
STREET,
BELFAST
Dear Shee
Here’s the money
I mentioned when you
were in
Villefranche. Am very upset
but, understand
me, it’s
you
I worry
about. Please
think of us. Danny
sends
hellos.
Love
Kevin
She crumpled the note and stuck it in the mouth of
her purse. She put the envelope with the money order on the hall
table. “Tom?”
He came out of the kitchen. “Yes.”
“Feel like lying down?”
He laughed and caught her at the waist, lifting her
into the air.
“I’m too big, put me down.”
“No, you’re not.” Quickly he carried her into the
bedroom and dropped her on Peg’s bed. “Oh, God,” she called, as she
bounced on the mattress. “You’ll break it.”
“Shut up,” he said. “Strip!”
She stood up on the bed, running her panty hose as
she pulled them down. She took off the rest of her clothes and,
naked, stood above him as he bent over, his back to her, pulling
down his trousers. She waited until he was naked, then, unsteadily,
crossed the soft expanse of mattress and climbed onto him,
piggyback, as she had done with her father when a child. Laughing,
he caught her legs, holding his hands out like stirrups, and with
her arms around his neck, both of them naked, raced into the living
room, then, wheeling, ran down the corridor into the kitchen, as
she spurred him, her stallion, with her naked heels. “Back to bed!”
she cried. “Hup, there.”
The doorbell rang.