The Front Seat Passenger (3 page)

The alcohol was making him tearful. Memories of the happy times they had spent together kept surfacing like soap bubbles. Gradually self-pity gave way to anger.

‘At a stroke you’ve made me a widower and a cuckold. Nice one. Bravo! Do you know that down there in the street no one cares you’re dead? Yes! A widower and a cuckold! I don’t like that word. It’s not right for me. It’s a silly word like poo and wee-wee. But people like it. It’s a comic word, probably because it sounds rude. And at Le Petit Chez-Soi with a guy called Martial! Classy! What got into you, for God’s sake? Of course, now you’re not obliged to answer me. The dead get all the rights, especially the right to remain silent, like my father, like Charlotte … I was going to say you’d sent word round. That’s funny, since none of you actually speak. But I can make any jokes I like! I’m the one who’s been wronged; I have the choice of weapons! I’m free, you hear? FREE! I can stuff my face, vomit on the carpet, belch, fart, wank, spray come all over your ridiculous lace curtains! That’s right, keep saying nothing, but I can ruin your eternal peace by saying anything and everything. I can fill your goddamned nothingness with a torrent of words from morning to night! Oh, fuck it! Do what you like with your death. What do I care? … You’re free, I’m free, we’re all free …’

It was darkest night when he awoke face down on the carpet. It was so thick it was as if the pile had grown. He rolled onto his side. The bedroom light was on. For a fraction of a second he imagined Sylvie reading in bed, her cheek resting in the palm of her hand, her glasses perched on her nose. The image
disappeared as he retched. He staggered to the bathroom. Eggs, chorizo and whisky swirled down the basin plughole. Fabien leant back against the wall and let himself slide to the floor. His hand landed on a book. It was a book on gardens that Sylvie had been reading recently,
Secret Gardens
by Rosemary Verey. He opened it randomly at page 8: ‘Since his fall from grace, man has not stopped creating gardens, secret places to gather and exchange confidences and pledges, places of reminiscence. Although over the centuries the secret garden has taken on a different aspect, it still symbolises man’s inner secrets.’

The ringing of the telephone acted on him like an electric shock. He let it go on for a long time, but obviously the person on the other end was not going to give up. Fabien propelled himself towards the phone, banging his leg on the bedside table, and collapsed onto the bed.

‘Hello?’

‘Fabien? It’s Gilles. Are you OK?’

‘Yes, yes … I was asleep. How are you?’

‘Me? I’m fine, it’s you I’m worried about.’

‘I just banged my shin. It’s nothing.’

‘Fabien, I …don’t know what to say …Sylvie …’

‘What about Sylvie? She’s not here. She must have gone to the cinema with Laure.’

‘What are you saying? Stop pissing about. Your father rang me. He’s really concerned. Your phone call shook him up.’

‘My phone call?’

‘Yes, your phone call. Don’t you remember? You were dead drunk but he understood everything. I feel terrible for you … Do you want me to come round?’

‘What for?’

‘To be with you! I’m your friend.’

‘Thanks … but not now. Tomorrow morning if you want. I’m going to sleep, for a long time.’

‘OK, mate. You’re sure you won’t do anything stupid?’

‘Why would I do anything stupid?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘I’m just going to sleep. Come at about nine o’clock.’

‘OK, see you then. I’m really sorry. I’m here for you.’

‘Thanks, Gilles. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

So that was it. Once again he had blurted everything out to his father. But sooner or later, everyone would have to know. He would have preferred it to be later. The real penance was about to begin. He was going to have to tell the story ten times over, hundreds of times over, thank people, shake people’s moist hands, kiss their flaccid, damp cheeks, see distant provincial cousins. It all seemed beyond him. He told himself coffee would do him good. As he crossed the apartment he took in the damage wreaked by his one and only fit of jealousy: drawers emptied, furniture overturned, ashtrays spilt, and the contents of the wardrobe strewn about and soiled. Devastation as shameful as it was derisory. Who was going to clean up that bloody mess? Gilles? Laure? The best strategy would be to hide behind his new-found status as a betrayed widower floored by grief and to get everyone else to look after him. That wasn’t the noblest of stances but at least it had the merit of giving him time to work out what to do next.

Somewhat reassured, he fell asleep on the sitting-room sofa,
wrapped up in the large blue shawl he’d given Sylvie for her fortieth birthday. Just as his eyes were closing, the thought occurred to him that she had never worn it.

Laure and Gilles didn’t know that from the bathroom you could hear everything that was said in the kitchen.

Laure: ‘He can’t stay on his own. He’s never been able to manage on his own.’

Gilles: ‘The lucky bastard! He’s never had to worry about being on his own before … I would ask him to come and live with me at the house. Since Fanchon left, there’s plenty of room. I only have the kid every other weekend. And actually it would suit me to have someone help me with the rent … But will he want that? Hey, did you know about Sylvie?’

Laure: ‘No, she never mentioned anyone. I knew their relationship wasn’t great any more, but there was never any question of a lover. In fact she disapproved of that kind of thing. I often used to tell her to have an affair, to give her confidence,
nothing serious, but it didn’t seem to appeal to her. You think you know people, then it turns out …’

Gilles: ‘Fanchon and me, we told each other everything. But at the end of the day, the result was the same, except Fanchon isn’t dead.’

Laure: ‘Well, you know what I think about marriage. Here’s to being single! One boyfriend after another and no more than one night under the same roof.’

Gilles: ‘Yeah, right. You just can’t hold on to any of them, that’s all. You’d like nothing better than evenings in, drying nappies and cuddling up on the sofa. I don’t know anyone keener to settle down than you.’

Laure: ‘Me?’

Gilles: ‘Yes, you. But to avoid being disappointed, to preserve your ideal of married life, you only let yourself fall for passing Californians.’

Laure: ‘You’re talking crap, Gilles. Anyway, Helmut isn’t Californian.’

Gilles: ‘He is just passing through though.’

It was funny to hear them discussing him and chatting on the other side of the wall. Fabien felt as if he didn’t exist any more, as if Sylvie’s disappearance had caused him to disappear as well. Perhaps death was contagious. Or he was morphing into Peter Brady, from H. G. Wells’s
The Invisible Man
, Sylvie’s favourite hero. When they met she had told him that when she was little she had never missed an episode of that serial. That should have
put him on his guard. It was hard to compete with someone like that. She had some strange ideas, like her great regret that she had never managed to become an anaesthetist. He wondered if in fact she had succeeded, at least with him. It was odd, he had expected to see some mark on his face, a scar from Sylvie’s death, but there was nothing, not one new wrinkle, not the slightest redness in the middle of his forehead and yet, God knows, the light from the fluorescent strip over the basin was unforgiving. All that remained of Sylvie was things: pots of cream, lipsticks, mascara, a toothbrush, tweezers, nail files, brushes … What was he going to do with all that detritus? Nothing. He was going to do nothing with it. He wasn’t going to give them to the poor, or burn them; he wasn’t going to touch any of it. He could just disappear, close the door and go and take up residence somewhere else. They weren’t quite right, those two who were cleaning and sweeping in the kitchen: it wasn’t that he was incapable of living on his own, it was just that he could only contemplate solitude if someone else was with him.

He remembered Gilles and Fanchon’s apartment as a cosy, comfortable jumble of furniture lovingly selected from junk shops, souvenirs of exotic trips, rugs, atmospheric lamps, etc. Now all that remained were pale rectangular patches on the yellowing walls, a scant few pieces of furniture – a round table, three chairs, a telly and a sagging sofa on which Gilles sat cross-legged, a dressing gown round his shoulders. He was smoking weed and a thick cloud of smoke floated above his head. He looked as though he had been abandoned in the middle of an ice field with various toys – a giraffe, a big red lorry, wooden blocks, little dismembered figures, and some other more or less identifiable items.

‘The bailiffs or a burglary?’

‘Fanchon. Take a seat.’

Fabien sat down amidst the ruins of a devastated multicoloured Lego town.

‘It’s the lack of curtains that makes it look empty. Curtains are important in a room. But I kept the fridge, the cooker and the TV. How do you feel?’

‘I feel nothing. As if I’m on automatic pilot. I suppose that’s normal at the beginning. I hardly noticed this week go by; I just slept.’

‘You were right to come here. It’s not good to stay there all by yourself. Make yourself at home. Léo is a cool kid, you’ll see. I told him you were going to come and live with us. He was really pleased. He gets bored at his mum’s. Try some, it’s Colombian. It’s been years since I smoked anything this good. It’s better than Valium.’

The weed filled his mouth with a powerful peppery taste. Coils of smoke twirled in a ray of sunlight.

‘How did it go?’

‘What?’

‘The funeral.’

‘All right. Good weather. Laure and your father-in-law squabbled a bit; they both wanted to take charge of things. You know what they’re like.’

‘No one said anything? I mean about me not being there …’

‘Whisperings here and there. Nothing too bad. Given the circumstances, most people understood. Anyway, they couldn’t say anything in front of your father.’

‘How was he?’

‘Monolithic. He told me to look after you and that he was sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘I don’t know … Anyway, in the meantime you can sleep in Léo’s room. I’ve put his bed in my room. It will be fine like that for the weekend, and as you can see, there’s plenty of space for him to play in here. Guess what? Yesterday she came to take the TV away! Can you believe it? She earns twenty thousand francs a month and she wanted to take the telly from me! I was gutted. I haven’t even got enough to pay the rent. She’s crazy.’

‘She’s hurting.’

‘She’s hurting? What about me? I’m hurting and I’ve got no money!’

‘Shall we roll another one?’

An open space filled with toys and smoke. Fabien decided he liked the new décor. After half an hour neither of them were giving a thought to their pitiful status as abandoned males. They were on all fours on the carpet building a dream Lego city and arguing over the bricks.

‘No! You can’t have the chimney. I need all the chimneys! It’s for a reception area for Santa Clauses. Don’t you get it?’

‘OK, but pass me that red staircase; everything in the temple has to be red.’

Why did no one ever point out the delights of unemployment? Whilst everyone else was dashing about, coming and going, bent under the weight of their responsibilities and worries, two middle-aged mates, one widowed, the other divorced, were happily playing Lego at four o’clock on a weekday afternoon.

‘Gilles, can you hear animal scrabblings in the kitchen?’

‘That’s Casimir. The stupid bitch took the hamster cage without noticing that he wasn’t inside. I’ve bunged him in the oven in the meantime. Otherwise he eats everything.’

Something approaching life began to flow in Fabien’s veins.

For more than three weeks, Fabien had woken up each morning in a universe populated by little blue rabbits, musical boxes that churned out old-fashioned airs, soft toys in various stages of disintegration, Fisher Price toddler toys and felt-pen scribbles on the walls, which he did not let himself try, Champollion-like, to decipher. Fanchon was so taken up with her work that she left the child with them two, three and then four days a week. Which meant that the apartment pretty soon became one giant child’s bedroom. Gilles and Fabien were living in Léo’s playground. Their chief occupation consisted of leaning on the windowsill watching the world go by. Comfy dressing gowns and cigarettes for the grown-ups, an egg-spattered Babygro and whatever came to hand to suck for the boy. They counted the fire engines, the ambulances, the police cars. They whistled at girls, spat on passers-by. They lived the high life, all boys together.

‘Fabien, what shall we have for supper?’

‘Dunno … Rollmops? Nuggets? Something like that.’

‘OK. I’ll run down to the shops before they close. Can you bath him?’

Life rolled on, imperturbable, as if it was actually going somewhere. It dissolved in Léo’s bath where the yellow ducks and green fish floated.

Had he known it was possible to live like this, he would have married Gilles as soon as the kid was born. Fanchon sulked every time she came. She hadn’t anticipated a rival like Fabien. His widowed state still prevented her from attacking him directly, but she always found something to gripe about. It was never clean and tidy enough, Léo ate all the wrong things at all the wrong times, he used swear words. Gilles retorted that Léo was much happier here than he was with her, for one thing. And for another, she was perfectly happy to use them, rather than paying for a babysitter. This was inevitably followed by tortuous arguments about money which always ended in yelling and the slamming of the door.

But apart from these little storms which quickly became like a ritual that had to be gone through rather than genuine rows, everything was set fair like the weather. You could hear people in the street already talking about holidays, the sea, the beach. The most organised among them were planning who would look after their cat or their plants for the month. It was possible to stay longer by the window.