Significance (10 page)

He kept picturing it in his head as he sat with her; this pretty little blonde in bed with her head thrown back, her legs wrapped around his back, moaning and grunting in rhythm with his thrusts. Her mouth tasting of cigarettes.

She sat there coolly pouring wine into her glass, catching his eye, then quickly looking away again. A part of his mind – the id according to Freud – continued to play out various pornographic scenarios even as he carefully smoothed out the three
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day
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old newspaper.

His words to her, about her following him and about fucking had been a challenge – to himself as much as to her. But he knew he wasn't really that kind of guy and that was why he stood up so abruptly to filch the paper. He was avoiding her response.

Then he'd sat it out, his imagination running riot, until he couldn't take it any longer and he'd walked away from her – a man still faithful to his wife – as long as one discounted thought.

‘Who's the girl?' Florian had asked Scott.

‘Oh, a friend of Marilyn's. Well, not a friend exactly. Acquaintance.'

Florian had craned his neck to get a better look at her. She was still there, tilting her head back to drain her glass, then tracing her thumb over the corner of her mouth, her lower lip.

‘Not bad,' Florian said. ‘She married? Got a boyfriend?'

Scott shrugged.

‘You gonna introduce me?' Florian half slid off his stool and stood holding his beer, ready to go out, to be set up, though Scott wasn't sure if he was teasing him. ‘What's her name?' Florian was resting one hand on Scott's shoulder, staring at him expectantly and grinning. That was when Scott saw her walk away.

‘Too late, my friend,' he said and he felt relieved.

Florian misunderstood. ‘You dog,' he said with a mixture of envy and pride at Scott's conquest. He took ‘too late' to mean that Scott had already marked that particular territory.

Scott did not disabuse him of the notion, except to say, ‘It's not like that.'

Suzette, who had been standing next to him during this exchange, understood Scott's final words on the subject to mean that it wasn't just lust, but that he had deeper feelings towards the young blonde woman, that he loved her, whoever she was. Which was in Suzette's opinion beautiful and tragic, as she knew that Scott was married and was, no doubt, an essentially good and loyal man.

As Suzette herself had, not so long ago, had a love affair with a married man, she thought she understood the complexities of the situation. Its inherent sadness and impossibilities.

Florian downed the last of his beer, banged his glass on the counter and called for more drinks. He turned to look at the blonde woman again, but she had gone, her chair was standing empty, pushed back at an angle from the table.

‘Drink?' Florian said to Scott when the barman came to take his order.

‘Yeah,' said Scott, ‘why not?'

Drowning his sorrows, Suzette thought, maybe the girl had ended the affair. Or given him an ultimatum – it's me or her? Choose. I can't go on like this. How can you say that you love two people? It isn't possible.

Suzette had rehearsed these words many times, but never found the courage to speak them. Her last lover, Bertrand Severin, had been a married policeman with three children. His wife's family was very well off. How can you make demands of such a man? You cannot, so you bite your lip and take such pleasure as you find.

The affair had ended seven months ago. He had been promoted and gone to live in a small town in the south. She did not even possess a photograph of him. In time she would forget his face, as he, no doubt, had already forgotten hers.

Florian offered Suzette a drink.

She accepted, and took off the long white apron she had been wearing, rolled it up into a ball and stuffed it into her bag.

Suzette had worked part
-
time at the bar for eight years and it was here that she'd first met Bertrand.

She turned to Scott, ‘Will it be snowing in Canada now?' she asked. A stupid question, but that was always how she pictured Canada, as a country of endless snow like Greenland.

Scott laughed. ‘Good God, I hope not, not at this time of the year. You know, last winter we had some of the worst blizzards for years,' and he involuntarily pictured himself as a teenager trapped inside his childhood home, his mother fretting about Aaron's medicine, the phone lines down. His father muttering darkly about the weight of snow on the roof. He'd been thirteen and he thought he'd go crazy if he couldn't get out and blow off some steam. He hadn't always had such a short fuse when he felt bored or trapped. Cabin fever was accurately named – that raging, restless, burning madness. No one else in the family seemed to suffer from it. As long as there was food – his mother's store cupboard could withstand many months before anyone starved. As long as the roof held out. As long as Aaron had his medicine.

‘At least we've got each other,' his mother used to be fond of saying. Then when the electricity failed, she'd get the storm lanterns and the board games out of the cupboard. His father would throw another log on the fire and suggest they toast marshmallows. Aaron would stand rocking from side to side staring at the wallpaper over by the door. Nothing changed for Aaron.

Why was it that at the age of six, at nine, at twelve even, Scott had actually enjoyed being snowed in with his family, but as soon as he hit thirteen it became some sort of exquisite and personal hell?

‘It's a big enough country, isn't it?' Suzette said. She wanted Scott to tell her stories about Canada, about snowstorms and bears and narrow escapes from wolves. About vast iced
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over lakes and soaring mountains. Or at least to keep talking.

‘Yeah, it's big,' he said. ‘Big and empty.'

He took a thoughtful sip of beer. Did not turn to look at Suzette, but gazed once more into the mirror behind the bar and the blue
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black sky and yellow street lights that were reflected in it.

Suzette had no more questions about Canada, or none that she wished to say aloud.

Florian looked at Suzette; three weeks ago she had invited him back to her flat. They had drunk tequila together, biting into oranges between shots instead of limes. He had not expected her to suddenly kiss him, but she did. And had wordlessly taken his hand and drawn him into her bedroom. But in the morning he'd had to get up early and was slightly hung
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over. She hadn't given him her number. He hadn't asked, nor given her his. It was his mother's birthday so he'd gone to dinner with her and his two aunts that evening, though he'd really wanted to see Suzette again. The night after that he'd gone to the bar to see her, but it was her day off. Then, for some reason or another, he couldn't get to the bar for another three days, and the next time he tried she was again not working. More than a week had passed before he finally saw her at the bar, but it was unusually busy and Jacques was in a foul temper. When Florian caught her eye Suzette barely looked at him. He took the hint and left after just one drink.

Then someone told him that Suzette was having an affair with a cop. Their information was slightly out of date, so they used the present tense. Florian had crossed paths with the law too many times to risk upsetting one of their number.

Suzette had expected to see Florian at the bar the night after they'd slept together but he didn't show. No one told her that he'd asked for her on two subsequent nights. Oh well, she thought, he really isn't interested. We were drunk. It was just a bit of fun for him, nothing more.

She felt hurt, but was determined not to show it.

Florian also felt hurt – he'd thought she'd really liked him, and now here was Suzette, the policeman's mistress, hanging around long after her shift had finished making a play for the Canadian guy.

He misunderstood her smiles and playful glances, could not understand why she kept catching his eye instead of Scott's. It was as though she was trying to wind him up or something.

For Suzette, Scott was only an excuse to stay and talk to Florian. She did not understand why Florian kept slapping Scott on the back, calling him a dog and winking. Even though, when talking about the blonde girl, Scott had said clearly ‘it's not like that', Florian was determined it was; that men were dogs and women were presumably bitches and there was no such thing as love.

And yet, she could not forget how tender Florian had been that warm night almost a month ago, the way he had kissed her, touched her, smiled and said her name.

They hadn't been that drunk. No, she remembered it all very well.

Scott got up and went to the toilets at the back of the bar.

‘Florian?' Suzette said. She had plucked up her courage, was about to ask him why he had avoided her, hadn't their night together meant anything to him? But as he turned to face her, the two last customers who'd been sitting outside came in. Jacques was at the other end of the bar polishing glasses with a cloth. The customers hovered at her side; the man with his worn and florid face, and Panama hat, the woman with her long white hair and overlarge bosom, her silver and turquoise jewellery, her sensible sandals.

‘Can we settle the bill?' the man said to Suzette, even though she had taken off
her apron and was obviously off duty.
They were holding hands, she noticed, and this touched her heart.

‘One moment,' she said, as she slipped from her stool and went around to the other side of the bar. She found their bill and took their money. The tip they left was exactly ten per cent. Her heart froze over again.

Scott came back from the toilet, drank the last of his beer and asked what time it was.

Florian looked at his watch and said, ‘Twelve
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fifteen,' then nodding at Scott's empty glass, added, ‘another?'

‘Well…' Scott said. He had been about to say that he should be on his way, that his wife was waiting up, but then he realised that it was his round and he should buy Florian a drink. In a curious tone of voice that overlapped reluctance with certainty, he said, ‘Yeah, but I'm buying.'

Florian put his hands up in mock defeat. ‘Fine by me,' he said. ‘I'll have a cognac.'

‘And you?' Scott asked Suzette.

‘Thanks, I'll have a cognac too.'

‘Three cognacs,' Scott said to Jacques, ‘and one for yourself?'

The four of them talked amiably, Jacques keeping to his side of the counter, smoking an aromatically scented Turkish cigar. Scott sat very upright on his stool, his back straight, his long legs bent at a sharp angle, his heels hooked over the cross bar of the stool. Suzette propped one elbow on the counter and sat in such a way that her leg touched Florian's. Without meaning to, and not really thinking about it, Florian rested his hand on Suzette's knee and as soon as he did, she put her hand on top of his. He turned his hand over so that their palms met, and their fingers, those on her right hand and those on his left, intertwined with one another and formed a knot.

Occasionally, when Jacques was careless with the direction of his exhaled cigar smoke, Scott drew back his head and waved a hand in front of his face. Suzette and Florian had grown very quiet. Jacques was talking rapidly about the latest corruption scandal to afflict a local politician, none of which meant anything to Scott.

He guessed that it was now almost one o'clock, and despite it being their annual vacation, the next morning at seven, if not before
,
Aaron would be awake and he would have to be persuaded into the bathroom, nagged into eating, wrestled into dressing, and Scott and Marilyn would at times gaze at each other hollow
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eyed and exhausted, each of them wondering what they were doing, whether it was worth the effort and for how many years this would go on?

Scott stood up, stretched and caught another face
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full of cigar smoke. Coughed and wafted it away. He paid and wished them all good night. They stayed there; all three of them, lazy, malingering, easy and relaxed with one another. Jacques was refilling their glasses with more cognac as Scott pulled the door shut behind him. He glanced back at the brightly lit café as he walked away and saw for one moment in his mind's eye a poster Marilyn had pinned to the wall of the tiny cold
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water flat she'd been living in when he first met her. It was a painting of a night café, empty streets, empty people. The same image had been on the cover of a book about loneliness he'd read at about the same time. The difference as he saw it now was that the people in the painting had been closed off from one another with no hope of reprieve or succour; while here in this café in a small town in France something else was going on. Something else altogether.

Changes

Lucy feels calm for the first time in many days. Or not just calm, but peaceful, as if the rest of the world had melted away and there was only this small café, with these clusters of men whom she had not trusted at first but now felt an obligation to. The obligation was, of course, only to sit there for a decent amount of time as she finished her brandy.