Somebody Loves Us All (26 page)

He realised what this was like. It was like watching a silent movie. A
French
silent movie.

Paddy raised his hand and smiled. Hello, he mouthed. Finally she came towards the door, still looking. The man was talking to her but she was obviously telling him not to worry, she knew this figure at the window.

Camille opened the door. ‘Hello?’

‘Paddy Thompson,’ he said. ‘We met at the school thing today, yesterday.’

‘Yes? Hello.’

The man still waited by the counter. He made a gesture, checking with her that everything was all right before moving into the back room again.

‘I just looked in and saw you.’

‘I work here.’

Paddy looked inside the bakery. The glass cabinets were empty but there were handwritten signs fixed to plates. They were all in French. He must have passed the place before but he’d never been in. It was quite new. ‘Is that your husband?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s French?’

She seemed to agree with this. ‘Pierre,’ she said.

Pierre! ‘It’s an early start. Hard work, I imagine.’

‘Yes,’ she said. She was puzzled and wary.

‘Okay.’ He started to turn away, suddenly exhausted at having to do the work of talking to this woman.

She scrunched up her cap in her hand. At once she seemed
to have changed her mind about him. ‘Yes, when I was at the school and meeting you, I was just woken up. I was not so good. It was very early morning for me. Now I’m better. I’m alive, you know.’ She gave a little smile. ‘And then I had to go. I was taking Thierry to his friend’s. But what are you doing on the street? An emergency, I hope not.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I was at a bar with a friend. No emergency. You remember the violinist from the band?’

‘From this band at the school? Of course. I liked them.’

‘I’ll tell him. We were celebrating. It went on a bit longer than we were expecting. Sorry for interrupting your work.’

‘No because we don’t see many people, it’s a change.’

‘Not many of your friends drop by at three or four in the morning to say hello.’

‘You are the first.’

‘Maybe we could meet again some time.’

She studied him. ‘Sure. If I see you at the school maybe.’

‘It may sound strange,’ he said, ‘but I’d like you to meet my mother.’

‘Okay,’ she said. She took everything in complete earnestness. See the drunk person’s mother, why not.

Pierre came to the door with more boxes and they let him past. Camille then spoke to him very fast in French, explaining about Paddy. He shook Paddy’s hand, saying quite sternly, ‘Pleased to meet you.’ He was only a little taller than Camille, olive-skinned, stocky, with strong forearms. He smelled of sweat. They spoke together again, something about the boxes, Paddy thought, and then Pierre went back inside.

‘Attendez, wait. He wants to give you something to eat,’ said Camille.

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘No, but he will bring it. You can’t refuse. He’s from Bosnia first. Can’t refuse. You’re lucky he doesn’t want to give you something to drink. Do you know rakija?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’ She laughed and then he laughed.

‘Okay. Pierre doesn’t sound very Bosnian though, the name.’

‘When he comes to France, he changed it. When he
came
to France. Change the name to make things easy.’

‘When was that?’

‘After the war, you know.’

His mind was so bleary he couldn’t think for a moment which war Camille meant. The war with Serbia.

‘Who is your mother?’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘No, I mean, you want me to meet her?’

‘Yes! If you could, that would be great. It’s difficult to explain, sorry.’

Pierre was heading back their way, carrying a small square box. ‘For you,’ he said and gave Paddy the box.

‘That’s very kind! Merci!’

Pierre shook his head, it’s nothing. Paddy looked at the box. It was sealed with a simple fold of cardboard flaps. He wasn’t sure whether or not he should open it. The three of them looked at each other.

‘You can see,’ said Camille. ‘It’s fine.’

‘Yes?’ said Paddy. ‘Open?’

‘Open,’ said Pierre.

But Paddy could hardly move his fingers to lift the flaps. He felt shaky and uncertain, as if anything might happen to him outside the bakery of these near strangers. A huge wave moved through his entire body. It was a definite physical feeling starting at the backs of his ankles and passing along his legs, up his spine and ending at his ears—the sudden release that could come from massage. Lant’s point after all? But it was also more than that. Here was the emotion too, that he’d denied Lant and which shook him and which hadn’t been released even yet but was held, trapped, as if he’d just prevented himself from sneezing. Was this hidden from his companions by the half-dark? He fumbled with the lid. The box opened and there was a single pastry, a thing of obvious delicacy and skill, two different-sized
balls, the smallest one on top covered in a coffee-coloured icing. It was architecture, clever and witty, artistic even. He’d never had a sweet tooth. The thing was astonishingly pointless to him, and that was suddenly affecting too. All that effort.

‘It’s la réligieuse, you know it?’ said Camille.

He shook his head.

‘Also you can call it the nun. Here is the body and then the head.’ She pointed. ‘Oh. I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You have these—’

‘Tears!’ he said. ‘Yes. Strange person that I am.’

Pierre was staring at him, then at the pastry.

‘Sorry for this,’ said Paddy. He was holding the box and he couldn’t wipe his face. He was powerless to do a thing, his cheeks wet. He was half-blinded and he felt the box being carefully removed from his hands.

‘Come inside,’ said Camille.

‘No, no,’ Paddy told her, wiping at his eyes and at his nose. ‘I’ll be fine. I’m so sorry.’

Pierre spoke in French or Bosnian or something to Camille. ‘He says,’ she said, ‘maybe he could bring you something else, not this one. People are not so often upset with his baking.’

Paddy laughed. He was feeling better, less shaky. The immense rogue wave had crashed on his head and he was still standing upright. He gestured that Pierre could hand him back the box. Paddy was muttering something about work pressures and family issues. He tried to make a joke of it, telling them he wasn’t réligieux at all. Camille bent close to hear but he wasn’t making much sense. He thanked them again. He shook Pierre’s hand and said goodnight. ‘Bonne nuit,’ he said, not at all sure this was the correct French for the occasion. Maybe this what you said to a child who was going to bed? Sweet dreams. Camille took his offered hand and drew him down towards her. In his confusion he thought she wanted to say something to him and he turned his ear to her mouth. In the confusion she kissed him there, on his right ear. He had an image of Sam Covenay kissing his mother outside their apartment, the careful proffering of cheeks, the lightest touch of faces. Had he practised
this? Paddy had seen it and then he’d forgotten about it but it was remarkable. Better than this bungled thing. I need to see the Covenays again, he thought. More unfinished business. They have my picture after all. ‘Thanks,’ he said. He was walking off, full of blue liquid, carrying his box, his little building, his sculpture of sugar, his edifice of mainly air.

It was the morning of the review and still dark outside. Paddy was instantly awake. He lay in bed listening to the far-off rumble of the building. He’d been dreaming about being caught in a volcanic eruption. The noises in his dream were obviously connected with the building’s sound. It was all reasonably apocalyptic, with a German theme too, of explosions, wartime panic. Astrid L., the Norwegian head-injury and FAS pioneer, was involved somehow.

At the moment he’d seriously miscalculated his heroic move—to re-enter the threatened house, to find Helena’s laptop—the dream ended, or he made the dream end and he woke hot and alert, sweating from his stomach. He put his finger in his belly button. It was damp.

The Ministry was coming to Helena’s school. He concentrated on that fact as the volcanic eruption feeling gradually faded. One world slipped behind the other. He could hear Helena in the kitchen, banging the coffee grounds into the rubbish bin under the sink. There was a sharp guilt for Paddy in this sound, if not rebuke. The coffee machine was his domain, his responsibility. Who knew how such things developed within a household? Both of them understood the washing machine was hers. The dishwasher was jointly managed, as was the recycling. Anything involving a ladder—changing light bulbs, looking in high cupboards—was Helena’s, he didn’t know why. She possessed no cat-like qualities of climbing or balance. If anything she was a bit clumsy in her movements. Nevertheless, she commanded
the little stepladder, pulling it into position from wherever she’d stored it previously. There were other divisions. He cleaned the bathroom but she vacuumed. He took things to the post office but she managed their joint bank account, keeping an eye on the automatic payments and all other bills except those connected with their various insurances which were somehow his area despite the fact he’d overlooked a double payment on their car insurance for several months. This had all developed mysteriously, in some cases with a kind of illogic, and lying in bed, stunned by the dream he’d just had, it was nice to gather up a few domestic details.

He thought, though without any kind of criticism, how Helena was a rather casual, almost heedless, washer of clothes, ignoring instruction labels and seldom addressing problem items separately. She threw everything in together, crushing full loads into the small machine and closing the lid by dropping it from its full height. There was something punitive and unacknowledged here. This didn’t seem to affect the way she looked at all. She was an exceptionally good ironer of clothes, which may have saved her. Paddy had once tried to get to the machine first and she’d intercepted him, simply taking the washing basket from his hands. That was that. Probably he guarded the toilet cleaning with a similar and similarly strange sense of ownership. She’d told him that there was a good chance he was the only male anywhere on the planet, not remunerated directly for it, who cleaned the toilet. Yes, he said, and he’d also been the only male in his second-year Women’s Studies tutorial. Who says the liberal arts aren’t worthwhile, she said. To cap it off, he’d entered a profession dominated by women.

Listening to her bash around in the kitchen, Paddy knew he had to intervene but by the time he got there, the coffee pot was on the stove. Helena stood watching it. She was dressed for work. He was still in his pyjamas. He was filled with blue alcohol, though for now this seemed to pose few problems. The hot flush from his suicidal act in the dream of the volcano had gone. He felt all right. Perhaps the barman, notwithstanding
volcanoes, really was a kind of magician and not a poisoner.

‘You didn’t need to get up,’ she said.

‘Today’s the day,’ he said. ‘How did you sleep?’

‘It’s out of my hands now. There’s nothing more I can do. I had a good sleep, didn’t even hear you come in.’

‘I’m glad. Lant needed company.’

‘They were good, weren’t they, his band.’ She poured some milk into the pot—his pot—and put it on the stove. The coffee was only just starting to come through. She was getting to the milk earlier than he would have done. It irritated him this tiny detail. It horrified him that he registered such a measly emotion. He had to fight hard not to say anything. Today was the day. Someone was deciding his beloved’s future, someone who lacked any insight into her character. He loved Helena ferociously and he thought she was the best thing that had ever happened to him bar nothing. He thought, my sisters are right: she is a sane, grown-up person. He thought, she has a mind greater than your petty apparatus. She’d ruin the milk in front of him. They’d not made love in more than three weeks, going to bed at different times.

‘Let me,’ he said, trying to manoeuvre closer to the stove.

‘No, it’s all right,’ she said, holding the space she had. ‘Come any closer to the flame and we’ll all go up in smoke.’

‘Is it that bad?’ He sniffed his own sleeve. ‘We went to a bar, two bars.’ He apologised for not texting and she shrugged dissociatively. Her plate was full of bigger fish. But so was his.

‘Careful you don’t scald the milk,’ he said.

‘What?’

He gestured towards the pot.

‘Scalding is what we’re aiming for,’ she said. ‘Scalding is just heating. You mean scorching, which is burning.’ She gave it a glance.

Let’s not, he thought.

When she’d poured the coffee, he asked about Teresa, whether Helena had seen her last night after the school barbecue. She said she’d phoned her and spoken briefly, things seemed okay. Teresa
said she’d been sleeping and sleeping, as if she’d come back from some mammoth journey involving numerous time zone changes. She’d wake for a few minutes, feeling fine, knowing she had things to do, before being struck down again by the need to collapse into bed.

‘I told her that was all normal and good,’ said Helena, ‘the body’s way of telling her it was fighting a battle on her behalf and needed all the energy it could get.’

This general practitioner voice of reason was infuriating somehow. He asked about her accent.

‘The same.’

‘Perhaps after one of these sleeps she’ll wake up talking normally,’ he said, with strange flippancy.

‘That’s what she said to me. Crossing so many time zones, she said she’s bound to end up home again. She sounded quite jolly when she said it.’

The coffee tasted different but Paddy didn’t say anything. There was Helena’s laptop, on the table in front of them. He put his hand on it and it was warm. She’d already been working. The warmth made him remember again the crazy search during the eruption, the heat coming up through the floorboards of the house. In the dream he’d looked for the laptop in concealed or semi-concealed spots whereas maybe it had been out in the open all along. Dreams were engines of regret.

They talked about what would happen at her school. There were a few small matters to be addressed before the Ministry person arrived. Her name was Trish Gibbons and apparently she was new to the role, which could mean bad things, Helena said, if she was the sort looking to make a name for herself by coming down hard. Plus she was a woman. Or good things, he said, if she was the sort looking to prove her fairness and decency. Helena nodded automatically at this, then stood up abruptly.

‘What is it?’

‘Morning tea,’ she said. ‘What should I give Trish Gibbons for morning tea?’ She walked over to the bench and opened a cupboard. She seemed a bit mad.

‘Don’t bake her a cake, will you.’

‘A small cake, an orange cake.’ She looked at her watch. It was just before seven.

‘Don’t Helena.’

She was looking in the fruit bowl. She picked up two oranges. ‘It’s a quick cake.’

‘No cake. Buy the cake. Go to Moore Wilson’s on your way and get a cake.’

She hovered with the oranges. ‘Quick cake for Trish Gibbons. Yes or no?’

‘When did you last bake a cake?’

‘When?’

‘When? I’ve never had a cake that you’ve baked.’ That had the potential to sound whiny.

‘You?’

‘Never. So that’s three years of not baking a cake.’

She dropped the oranges back in the bowl. ‘Fuck, you’re right. I can’t bake, what was I thinking? Should have got Medbh to bake a cake!’ She turned to face him. ‘But what is the thing in the fridge, Paddy? We have a white box in the fridge.’

‘You can’t give that to Trish Gibbons. It’s my réligieuse.’ He told her quickly about meeting Camille at the school, then their later encounter. He didn’t say anything about how he’d responded to the gift. Helena was only half listening by this stage anyway as she tidied things up in the kitchen. He told her to stop doing that, he’d do it later.

‘What do you think this Camille will do for your mother though?’ she said. It was a dispiriting question, not unfair, but posed without her usual tenderness. Helena was firmly in her work sphere.

‘I don’t know.’

Ten minutes later she was ready to leave. He followed her to the door. ‘Probably this is exactly the wrong time and you’ve got it all sorted out but what about the Iyob and Dora situation? I mean from a Trisha Gibbons perspective.’

‘Sorted,’ she said.

‘Good. But how?’

‘Iyob had some leave owing.’

‘Okay.’

‘So that’s all good.’

‘So Iyob won’t show up.’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘He’s on leave.’

‘By which time things might have cooled off.’

‘After which time we review everything.’

Paddy heard his voice adopt a fake note of objectivity, as if he were interviewing her. ‘I see. Everything being?’

‘Everything related to the employment situation.’

‘Vis-à-vis Dora.’

‘Everything,’ she said, an edge to her voice. ‘Our lawyer’s on it.’

This was the time to pull back. ‘On what?’

‘The harassment et cetera, the things he said.’

Of course to provoke her, challenge her at this moment would clearly be a thoughtless act. He had no idea whether it was justice for Iyob he wanted or punishment for Dora. He heard himself begin again on the inquiry, sounding official. ‘Harassment? Okay, that’s new.’

‘Anyway, the things that he said.’

‘The things he said being part of a conversation, an exchange, also involving the things Dora said and did. Those being the two that it takes to tango.’

Helena took a short breath. She could have slapped him hard across the back of his head with her bag. ‘All that, yes. Paddy, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to buy my fucking cake.’

He hated when she swore. She had bursts of it and so did he, related usually in his case, and he guessed something similar in hers, to spending time with people who did so regularly, without hearing themselves. Tony Gorzo. Paddy had once worked as a consultant on a TV documentary. That world ran on a stream of it, with the natural force of dialect. For the first couple of days they actually struggled to understand what he was saying to them. He was visiting a foreign fucking country.

He could tell she was prepared not to kiss him goodbye. This was about as harsh as they got with each other. Up to now. He possessed an astonishing complacency to think they’d reached some immutable comfort zone. Yet he was also deeply attached to, and proud of, that very zone. He thought of it as the principle achievement of his adult life. They were civilised. He leaned forward, determined. It was will-power. The day was a significant one, requiring a show of male maturity, even one as shallow as this. They kissed and he wished her luck and told her he loved her and that she ran the best language school in the country if not the world. She looked at him as if to say, why do you sound so pro forma? He did sound pro forma, yet he meant every word. She knew this too. She was being frosty and fed up. The door closed but then she knocked on it almost immediately. In that moment before he saw her again, he imagined a scene of intense reunion.

She was bent down, fiddling with things in her bag. ‘Paddy, call me or text me if anything happens with your mother. I can come, you know. Trisha Gibbons means nothing to me.’

‘That’s not true but thanks.’

She stood up. They kissed again, she leading. She kissed him as though she meant something. It was emphatic, which slightly spoiled it. He was critiquing
this
now?

‘Soon,’ she said, ‘this will all be over and we can both be more human, sorry, my love.’ She slapped her forehead with her fingers as if she were in a movie. ‘God, I almost forgot. Your mother’s cousin rang last night. Pip.’

‘We were supposed to call her.’

‘Anyway, I filled her in. She’s going to call again today.’

‘Right.’

‘Then when I was talking to Pip, Tony Gorzo left a message. I saved it.’

‘A veritable tsunami of messages,’ he said.

They heard the lift doors opening down the corridor. ‘The other thing of course is they have a new minister.’

‘Who does?’

‘Education,’ she said. ‘So they’ll want to please the new minister.’ She was scattered to the winds, his normally together partner-for-life. Was there a chance things at the school could go wrong?

‘By showing him things aren’t all bad in the language school sector, that you don’t all drive black Mercedes, that there are still shining lights.’

‘Okay,’ she said, nodding. ‘Where’s your bike by the way?’

‘In the morgue,’ he said.

When he pressed the button to hear the message, Gorzo’s voice came on so loudly he had to put the phone away from his ear. Normally he didn’t speak at this volume. ‘Come all the way to my place and you don’t bowl a ball! On a bike! What’s happened to you? Car broke down? So anyway, this is a late late call. You know I walked around all week last week knowing I’d forgotten some fucking thing. Like a headache. Turns out it was you, Paddy! And I thought it was something serious. Nah, nah, I’m kidding. But listen, you gotta come to the party. My eternal mother! If I don’t die before then from organising a centenary. Like all week I think I’ve forgotten some huge obvious thing, something I had to do for the party I don’t know. Logistics. Logistics are coming out my ears. But it was you, Paddy. And don’t tell me about the new column, will you. I’m a bag of nerves just waiting to see what it is. The suspense is killing me. Ciao! And did I miss a fucking column, did I? Shit! Blame my family, blame—’ Then his message cut off.