English Correspondence (2 page)

Sylvie started off writing to George in French and he replied in English, nothing French about it. At home he and she had muddled up the languages, changing about in mid conversation, dropping alternative words in. Conversing with her mother had seemed, by comparison, not exactly boring, because Eve was excitable and asked a lot of questions, but elementary and domestic. George persisted with the English in his letter writing and she fell into step, sensing that was what he wanted. He told her stories from his early life that he had never mentioned when they were all at home together. He claimed that he associated England with the humdrum, though his letters were never dull. He said his own parents had done their best to make wartime London monotonous; the hours when bombs weren't actually falling, at any rate. He felt safe going back there. Sylvie took this to mean that living there required less courage than continuing alone in France without Eve. Eve had presided over his everyday life. Perfect and exotic, she had been. He had never lost that sense of her. He wrote, in his letters, a kind of diary of his new life of coping, mixed up with bits of his English past that came back to him. He rarely referred to the years in between, although Sylvie had been part of them; not to his marriage, nor to his time working in Eve's father's business.

Sylvie had seen that her mother's illness cut him down. He wouldn't have said so or admitted restrictions. He loved her
and willingly followed her into the narrower and narrower passage which pain and fear and the petty routines of hospital forced her into. He told her he loved her and talked of the nurses, their changes of shift, the way they washed and turned her, their skill with the drip and administering injections. Eve stopped asking about the weather outside and what he would have for his supper. Sylvie and George talked during her illness nothing but French. Even at the end when her mother couldn't utter, they used it to talk quietly over the bed.

In her time, Eve de Mora had been a great talker. She defined herself by the stories and anecdotes she gleaned and told. Although it would be more correct to put that the other way round. She gave you her news first and then paused momentarily and said, And what have you got to tell me, darling? Sylvie dreaded that pause. The stories came round and round, a cumulative oral history, the latest additions at the beginning. Sylvie knew she was part of it and wished there were a decent way of asking to be taken off the reel. Eve was a repeater. Nothing to do with old age or dementia, though it did seem to worsen. Sylvie wondered how to avoid it. Her own thoughts seemed to go in loops. They were unvoiced so they couldn't trouble other people, but the tendency was there. It worried her. Mondays, for instance, she always had the same thoughts on Mondays. On Sunday, Lucien usually stayed overnight with his grandparents and the staff were absent, so, for one day of the week, they weren't in a rush. Guests could stay overnight, but they weren't exactly welcome. Without dinner the place lost its point. She and Paul lay in a while and made love in the morning. The noises from outside got caught up with her thoughts. The milk tanker passing, school children's voices; the gate opposite clicked open, dragged across stones and clicked shut again. The inhabitants here led regular lives. Although she needed the rest, and kept drifting in and out of sleep, she missed Lucien and, in a way, the guests. The place felt empty.

Sylvie thought, today began differently, starting in England. There, she hadn't known which day it was. As soon as she got back to the restaurant, it had recaptured her, Monday, the first one of November, beginning at two o'clock.

‘
HOW DID IT
go?' said Maude.

Sylvie had heard her car pull up outside a few moments ago and now she was here, in the hall, her clean morning face on, at odds with her scent, which Sylvie associated with the evening. She stood a few paces away, on the far side of the desk, looking and sounding as if she cared only for Sylvie, though the words themselves were casual.

‘All right. You know what these things are like.'

‘I've never had to do it,' Maude said. ‘It's to come. My brother will probably do it, actually. He takes family stuff seriously. Always trying to get us all together. Organised games for the kids, races in the summer, treasure hunts, that sort of thing.'

Sylvie couldn't see how this would be good preparation for funerals.

Maude paused. ‘Paul said you were close to your father.'

‘Did he? When did he say that?'

‘Some time last week. While you were away. He didn't come to see you much, did he? I don't think I ever met him.'

‘No, probably not. He only came a few times. Not at all this year.'

‘He wasn't fit enough to travel?'

‘It wasn't that. He was fine, quite active really.'

‘Messy journey though. Even with the Tunnel. It would have been easier for you if he'd stayed nearby. Less hassle.'

Sylvie looked at the clock, though this wasn't necessary, as it had just struck nine noisily. They had to stop it at night and
start it again in the morning. It was a nuisance, but added to the atmosphere. Time marked in an old-fashioned manner.

‘You don't have to be here,' said Maude. ‘I'll sort things for the next few days, however long you want. Paul said so. It's not very busy.'

‘I haven't got anything else to do. I might just as well do some work.'

‘You could treat yourself.'

‘What sort of treat are you thinking of?'

‘Something fun. Get yourself a makeover, or go on the sun bed. Cheer yourself up.'

‘I don't think I'll bother. That kind of thing doesn't do much for me.'

‘No? Well, we're all different. You're looking pale though. It would do you good.'

Sylvie shrugged her shoulders. She looked towards the window. The post van was drawing up outside blocking the view of the farm gate and the field beyond.

‘There he is,' she said. ‘What did you do with the post while I was away?'

‘Dealt with it. It wasn't complicated.'

‘So there's nothing outstanding?'

‘No, I'd have told you, or asked Paul.'

‘Did you put the personal stuff somewhere different?'

‘There wasn't any. Are you expecting something?'

‘Possibly.'

‘Doesn't Paul mind? My husband would kill me. Only joking. I know that wasn't what you were talking about.' She paused. ‘Well, if you're sure you don't need me I'll push off. Call me if you change your mind. I'll come straight back.'

Sylvie listened to the sound of Maude's car revving up and going. She heard her brake casually at the main road and sweep to the right. The sound died away. She would drive through the village rather fast. There was nothing to stop for. Not even a baker's any more. At the far end where you might have expected the settlement to turn back into countryside
and, where it used to, until two years ago, there was a house made of new bricks standing on raised ground. The earth still looked raw, the grass was having trouble getting going. It was hard to see why. The rain was the same and, all around, grass grew lushly, covering fields and sprouting up between cracks in the concrete. This was where Maude lived. She could have walked it, but she didn't want to. At least Sylvie always knew when she left and arrived.

The postman came in through the front entrance. A bit of the past that wouldn't carry on for much longer. Personal service, but not so personal that the man didn't look startled when Sylvie asked him if he would like a cup of coffee. He glanced back through the open door as if hoping for a sudden change in the weather, a pretext, maybe a blizzard. The sky was grey and high. The winters had been mild for the last three years, uneventful. He waited in the hall while she went to the bar to fetch it. He didn't follow her. She was conscious of his standing there, waiting. An outside person, who had got caught indoors. He wouldn't sit down; she hadn't suggested it. He would be listening to the whistle and hiss of the machine through the wall. It seemed to take ages. She wished she was in a hotel at the end of a mountain valley, providing a refuge, making breakfast for everyone: the postman, the bus driver, the men with the snow plough. The last place of comfort and restoration. Here it was different. A restaurant with rooms perched on a slight hill in flat country in the department of the Meuse. The front of the building, the side where the entrance was, where the menus hung behind glass and the conifers were lined up in pots, faced the lane. Behind was a forest and beyond it, the plain, stretching for miles. That is how it was, but the position seemed arbitrary. Sylvie liked the idea of the valley; a mountain large and solid behind her, both safe and dangerous.

She came back into the hall, tried a smile and handed the man a small cup.

‘I think I'm missing a letter,' she said.

‘Where's it come from?'

He held the saucer at chest level and downed the drink in one. He opened his eyes wide and shuddered.

‘Sorry, I forgot to ask if you wanted sugar. England.'

‘That'll be it then. Foreign post. Anything could have happened to it. Probably at the other end.'

‘It's never happened before,' Sylvie said.

‘You've been lucky. Something special was it?'

‘Yes, it was, actually.' She looked straight at him.

‘I didn't take it.'

‘I didn't say you did. I just want to find it.'

‘What's the matter?' said Paul. He was wiping his feet on the doormat. He saw the postman with an empty cup in his hand and his wife.

‘Nothing,' she said. ‘Nothing's the matter.'

‘Thanks for the coffee.'

The man put the cup and saucer down on a shiny magazine, thought better of it and balanced them on a bowl of pot pourri. It looked pretty solid, but not really right. The cup slipped across the saucer and rolled into the petals. He hurried out of the door, slammed the gears on his van and was off.

‘Why did you do that, Sylvie?'

She was silent. She knew Paul knew why. It made her sad. It never occurred to him she was picking the man up. That made her sad too.

‘There wasn't a letter. We've already been through all this,' he said.

‘I know. I couldn't help it. I wanted to make sure.'

‘You mustn't involve other people like that. It's not fair on them. They don't know what it's all about.'

‘Do you?'

He shook his head slowly. It wasn't a negative.

‘And to be rational for a minute, Sylvie, even if your father
had
written to you it wouldn't have been conclusive.'

He began to flick through the pile of envelopes on the desk.

‘What do you mean?' she said.

‘I mean he wouldn't have said goodbye, would he? Just more of the same.'

He still had his back to her and seemed to have found what he wanted.

‘Why have you been talking to Maude about me?' she said.

‘I haven't. Why should I do that?'

‘I don't know. You tell me.'

‘What am I supposed to have said, for Christ's sake?'

‘If you can't remember there's no point in telling you.'

‘Oh, Sylvie, drop it. This isn't getting you anywhere. The bank has finally got round to replying to me. Let's hope they've remembered who I am this time.'

‘What's wrong with wanting more of the same. Just one more. What else is there?'

He went back out again. Sylvie took herself into the dining room. She couldn't sit still. She scanned the tables for faultlessness, straightened a knife and patted a table-cloth. The staff had left it neat at the end of Sunday evening, ready for Tuesday. She was relieved not to be faced with the litter of breakfast. The clients often weren't themselves in the morning. They scattered crumbs and knocked things over. Their nights upstairs seemed not to have rested them. Yet they often commented on the silence, so different from where they had come from. Sylvie always made an effort to treat them gently, providing the sort of calm they might find in a hospital after the day staff had come on duty. She remembered it from the Clinique St Livier. The fears of the night were over, the beds made smooth and the pillows reflated. No sign yet of doctors, causers of chaos. She thought she knew how the clients felt. It was the time they most wanted home easiness. They missed slopping about in their night clothes, not smelling too lovely, listening to the news or reading the paper. The day ahead would involve too much driving. Most people were on their way somewhere else; this wasn't a tourist destination and no one came for the weather. The worst off were couples travelling with other
couples. They felt honour bound to be cheerful. The women looked at each other's clothes with less forgiveness than in the evening. The best were the kids, noisy, not giving a damn, and covered in honey.

For the last week Sylvie had had breakfast in a café near George's flat. She had had to walk to get there, along the modest residential street and then out into a road, purposeful with buses and morning traffic. The fresh air had done her good after nights of inadequate sleep. She hadn't read, she couldn't concentrate, but she had liked being there, balanced on a stool and staring out at the street, or pressed into a space on the sofa between other people's open newspapers. She had taken a notebook and pen and written down what she had to do. There was a lot, but it had seemed more manageable turned into words. And her handwriting had looked almost dependable, on the French squared paper, slightly uneven, but not as bad as it might have been. It had been odd, indoors, in her father's flat. She recognised George's things, but not the place itself, or the way he'd organised it. She had only been there a few times, as it was hard to leave Lucien and the business. Paul had never gone with her; there was nowhere to sleep except on the sofa and he liked to be comfortable. She had made use of it again this time, avoiding George's bed. It was all right, provisional; it suited her mood. So there was none of the poignancy of the familiar. This is where he used to put his coat. None of that.