The Widow (3 page)

‘Going to pee down,' said Norma slapping the kettle on and looking out of the window. ‘Them brats are all right but the little one's out doing the shopping.'

‘All the way over to the supermarket?'

‘Naw – don't go there much. A few things that's cheaper but it's you know, that tender trap. Karen went to the Suma over in Cathérine. That big one's too far anyhow. Have a beer or a cup of coffee and you've lost all you'd won. Nev'mind. Lemme get this pot warm. Spend most of me time here, t'tell th'truth.' Norma made efforts sometimes to speak less broad,
but you could see her heart wasn't in it. What was the use of speaking posh? Arlette spoke posh, having had it explained that it meant port-out and starboard-home, an English conception of class structure she found typically subtle. Could one speak both posh and with a French accent?

Ting-ting at the door. ‘That's Karen.' The little one, with a big basket pathetically freighted with fish-fingers and instant mashed potato. Small and dark like the mother, with a fringe and brilliant eyes. ‘Hallo,' she said, friendly. ‘I'm Karen.'

‘And I'm Arlette.'

‘That's a nice name,' approvingly.

Arlette knew she'd been right to come. It built confidence. There was very little she could do for Norma. Technically nothing at all. But the half-hour yesterday, and again today of moral support – that was enough. It broke the isolation. Norma didn't even want help much. Her cry of anguish was borne of being all alone; but her toughness and her startling self-respect would see her a long way. She'd always be in trouble, spend her whole life falling down stairs, but would always pick herself up.

‘Geta train ticket out of that Consulate,' she was saying reflectively, picking a tealeaf off her lip. ‘'n even if I can't, can always hitch-hike. Not the first time, is it duck?'

‘No,' agreed the little girl sturdily, not knowing quite what she was talking about, but backing Mum up instinctively. Rain clattered suddenly on the windows and they all looked out. The smaller boy, carrying the football, came racing across the open space. The bigger one came walking rather slowly, nonchalant, hands in pockets. What's a bit of rain? They both came in with that tough delinquent shamble, more or less sideways, eyes downcast. Both said the same thing.

‘C'n a have a biscuit then, Mum?'

‘No way,' said Norma. ‘And let's have you smartened up a bit and say howdyedo to Mrs Davidson then.' They held their hands out in the French way they had learned to copy: these two children's hands, unexpectedly warm, dry and small,
touched Arlette oddly. The small girl had switched on a transistor radio, and was listening raptly to a German announcer giving the waterlevels on the Rhine.

‘Bingen. Zwei. Neun. Siebenundzwan –'

‘Let's have some fucking music then.'

‘Hey,' said Norma, not in the least pretending to be shocked; just restoring discipline. The boy grinned, winked at the fifty-year-old Arlette in so comic a way that she could hardly keep her face straight. Not exactly innocent, being indeed blatantly sexy, but the forthright childish openness was so attractive. She had never seen less self-conscious children. They moved in this hostile, suspicious French world with the ease and dignity of young wolves.

‘I'II be buzzing then,' when the rain slackened.

‘All right love,' said Norma. ‘I'll remember you.' She stood on tiptoe to give her a kiss. ‘Won't give no trouble. Slip out quietish, while Robert's at the pub.'

‘If you manage to send one of the children – I'll come and drive you.'

‘Nice of you – but won't have time. Got to choose the moment, like.'

Arlette knew she would not take money.

‘Come on,' she said to Karen, ‘you come with me, show me the way through back to Cathérine.' As she left she saw the door on the landing open again a crack.

Pretending to scrabble in her bag for the car keys she fished up a fifty-franc note. But even the tiny one showed strict upbringing: it pursed its mouth and shook its head.

‘Don't be daft,' said Arlette. ‘You have the right. Packet of crisps all round.' The child looked, made up its mind, grinned like Norma, crumpled the note in its paw, tongue-tied. She bent to give it a kiss but it was already racing away. She drove off soberly. She had to put the fan on a minute, to get the condensation off the windscreen. That tedious Robert would stand there gibbering and waving his shotgun, but Norma would see to a tactful quiet exit. And would bring up the baby like all the others. Abortion? No way.

She would be late for lunch anyhow. She had left a word in the electronic notebook on the kitchen table, and Arthur would cope. It was a long way round to the Meinau, and the midday rush was beginning. Quicker to go through the town centre now than round by the quays. Fortune with her turned on green lights all the way to the Hospital Gate, out of the old town and across the bridge to South Strasbourg; the Colmar road out as far as Suchard Chocolate, and turn left after the football stadium.

The Meinau. Rue du Général Offenstein. Large quiet bourgeois villas with trees in the walled gardens, sombre with closed shutters and locked gates. Nothing distinguished Siegel-the-Dentist's house from the others, but she had looked up the number in the phone book. Unostentatious, wellbred … Arlette parked down and across the road, where she could observe. The Lancia was not a conspicuous car, and certainly not around here.

Not that there was anything to observe. Just ‘the lie of the land'. Get a glimpse, if possible, of the protagonists. Everybody came home to lunch in this part of the world. Twelve-fifteen.

A small, shiny, dark blue Fiat with pale beige leather. Nice little car. Much like her own. Not as nice! But cleaner – very highly polished indeed, as though the cops that stood loitering all day by the side gate of the Préfecture had been rubbing it up. For this surely was step-ma Cathy. Small, neat blonde woman of that lean, hard, rather standard prettiness, in boots and a leopard-skin that might be nylon but wasn't. As highly polished as the car. She left it on the pavement, locked it, not looking anywhere, disdainfully, unlocked the gate, locked it again after her. Whisked into the house. Not about to snatch up the kitchen apron and go to work – be servants there, and lunch on the table at twelve-thirty on the dot. Career woman, Cathy Pelletier: the Prefect couldn't get on without her. But we work to a tight timetable here: twelve sharp he has an official ‘apéritif' known as a wine-of-honour with some chamber of commerce or other, and Cathy's off, to be in the
bosom of her family for two hours precisely. Twelve twenty-two.

A six-cylinder Jaguar stole silently down the street; lean, hard, elegant in a standard way like Cathy. Siegel's good taste. Dark burgundy colour like a ripe plum, very nice. Turned haughtily, stopped across the pavement in line with the gates; he wasn't leaving his car on the street, not even for lunch hour. His office building, on the river by the Pont Royal, has an interior courtyard.

Siegel got out to unlock the gates – they were very careful with their gates. There wasn't much to be seen of him; a dumpy man with a full padded profile and a slightly tip-tilted insolent nose – it was this that gave him away as Marie-Line's father: not much resemblance otherwise that she could see. Dark tight-fitting overcoat and Anthony Eden hat. He arranged the gates meticulously, got back into the Jaguar, which quivered slightly, like Cathy when he got on top of her in bed. Drove in, parked exactly in front of the door on the circle of gravel, came back to lock the gates. She got him full face then. Shrewd discreet eyes, full small mouth in the full face. Not, certainly, a man to take lightly. Held himself upright: no sign of the characteristic dentist's deformation.

Arlette went on waiting, for Marie-Line, anxiously at first, till she remembered that lycée classes finish at a quarter past the hour. And the Gymnase Jean Sturm, where the scions of Protestant good families are still sent, is right in the centre of the old town.

Twelve thirty-four. A Peugeot moped, Marie-Line's face closed and indifferent between the wind-tossed corn blonde hair and a navy-blue double-breasted pilot jacket. Hopped athletically off the bike, felt in her pocket for keys, wheeled the bike just inside the gate and left it leaning against the wall. Strolled slowly across the gravel. Not bothered at being a little late for lunch. Would they have waited for her? Cathy might have taken a drink. Siegel didn't look like a drinking man, and a dentist doesn't allow his stomach to rumble. Unfold the napkin and head down at once, eating slowly and chewing
thoroughly: proper digestion is more important than waiting five minutes for an eighteen-year-old daughter. A slight nod – mrh. Back to the leading article in
Monde
– no! A
Figaro
reader more like it. Solidly right-wing!

Nothing left to see; she drove home at leisure, grinning, remembering one of her son's disreputable but engaging girls. Flat-hunting in Paris; one has to buy
Figaro
for its classic ‘To Let' page. Tear the page out indignantly: give the rest to the clochard at Saint André des Arts – keep his feet warm maybe; that was all the beastly thing was good for. The girl had made a comic anecdote, miming her ashamed look sneaked quickly round, even though all Paris knows why a left-wing student is buying a
Figaro
… Yoh – schrecklich, as they say in Alsace.

Arlette lived in the Rue de l'Observatoire, morning sun at the back and evening in front, no southerly aspect but worth it for the trees of the Botanic Garden. And the little Observatory, pleasing like all things with domes. What on earth did it observe, in the middle of smoggy ol' Strasbourg – but it didn't, she suspected. Measured earthquake waves or something. The Director, quite plainly, had one of those ideal jobs. Spent much time on his carrots-and-leeks there – the Observatory Garden is not strictly Botanic, but he borrowed their gardeners happily.

If one wanted to be Whimsical, which Arthur occasionally was, this was her observatory.

She found Arthur at the kitchen table, surrounded by crumbs, eating a Dutch sandwich she had taught him. Rye bread, bacon that has been cooked in pea-soup, slightly underdone celery-root ditto, plenty of Alsace mustard (which is mild). He was reading
Newsweek
, getting, by God, greasy
thumbprints all over it which was revolting – piggy English habits Arthur did have. Pipe, and all the mess going with pipe, also on the table. Like a canary, Arthur couldn't live without a circle of scatter of about a metre's radius. He looked up, waved cheerfully, mumbled something through the mastication: it seemed to be a hospitable invitation to join in the piggery.

She'd only been married a month – scarcely – but had been fending Arthur off for two years.

‘Marry? – never. Think of it. Mrs Davidson, Madame son-et-lumière. Frau Davidson – I'm Jewish enough as it is from sheer refusal to eat pig all day – yoh, schrecklich – horreeble.'

‘Can't understand,' agreed Arthur placidly, ‘what all these Davidsons are doing in Scotland. There's even a tartan, singularly hideous – sort of mustard.'

‘Who were the ancestors?'

‘Generals, thousands of them, in obscure things like the Royal Engineers. I don't believe one of them ever heard a shot fired in anger, but let it pass.' She couldn't even remember where she'd met Arthur first. For someone supposedly with total recall this was bad. But equally typical of Arthur …

He drank some milk, put his pipe in his mouth, and buzzed off.

‘Sorry, lots of work. You can manage dinner, tonight? Oh good. I'm not in a properly cooking frame of mind.' Nor was she, but no matter. She saw him out of the window, bicycling. Pipe, clips on trousers, in no hurry. The University quarter was two minutes off. He was not in the Faculty – on loan in mysterious ways; commissioned for sociological studies by the Council of Europe, financed by them, or the European Cultural Foundation – or somebody: he was vague on the subject.

The bicycle made recall total. Arthur had fallen off it, distended ligaments in the knee, come to her for physiotherapy.

‘How d'you come to do that?' making a polite remark.

‘Not wearing clips, caught my trousers in the chain. Classic when you think of it; like catching one's tit in the wringer.' She'd laughed, at the correct, polite French, the English accent and the sudden colloquialism. Life was boring.

Four years she'd been in the Krutenau. A small three-room flat in a quiet solid house of the Art Déco period, with lianas and stylized flowers. Five stories high, which meant sun and air. The plumbing was 1900, but worked. Window boxes. The Rue de Zürich was wide at this point, and had plane trees. It was noisy and dreary, and unpicturesque. The Krutenau is picturesque – it is one of Strasbourg's oldest quarters, largely a tumbledown medieval slum due for demolition. Arlette was not romantic, and did not yearn for the Street of the Preaching Fox or the Bridge of the Cats. Preferred rooms you could clean and plumbing that worked.

Four years, pestered by that boring menopause, with a tendency to sudden heatwaves and finding herself too fat for her skirts.

All over now. Ruth grown up. Fifty. The widow had fined down and become again handsome. Big streaks in the lion-coloured hair; heavily lined around the large fine eyes, but the upright walk and the high-bridged Phoenician features were unchanged. She had not been to bed with anyone. She had no man. She was amused by the appearance of Arthur in the role of beau, and even shteady. Ruth's crude phrase: Ma's got a shteady.

‘
What
kind of sociologist? Behavioural – I knew it. Thick as fleas around here, or is it thieves?' He was funny, thought Arlette, but a fake. She felt touched, and grateful, but emotionally bankrupt. A man who appears on the doorstep, invites you out, makes exaggerated compliments, brings flowers … They'd gone round the corner to the
Preaching Fox
. Food in Strasbourg is just grub, but the white wine is dry and good. It was nice to find they had the same tastes. She drank a lot, enough to say unnecessarily she hadn't any intention of going to bed with him.