This is Life (40 page)

‘Promise you won’t laugh.’

‘I promise. So what is it?’

‘I love you.’

Sylvie laughed. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘No. I just wanted you to know, in case you were wondering.’

‘Well, you’re in luck, because, if you must know, it just so happens that I love you too, you baby-shooting nutcase. Now get out of my car, I’ve got a living to make.’

They were back where they had started. Aurélie opened the door, and found a middle-aged German couple waiting to take her place. They had a happy black Labrador with them, and Aurélie
gave him a quick cuddle as they passed. She was used to having someone to put her arms around, and she was going to miss it. She let the dog go, and it jumped on to the back seat, and sat between
his owners. She watched them pull away. When they had vanished over the brow of the hill, she began her long walk home.

THE LAST DAY OF LIFE

A
urélie walked around the same hall where she had first met Sylvie at the college open day. Today it was filled with the second-year
students’ finished projects, and they were all there to see what everyone else had produced. She had been really impressed with everything she had seen: people had been working hard and
coming up with decent work. She stood in front of her favourite so far – one of the girls had painted what looked from across the room to be a quartet of giant penises, but on closer
inspection they turned out to be detailed physical maps of places that just happened to be penis-shaped: Manhattan Island, Sweden, the Republic of Benin and the Kintyre peninsula. They made her
smile, and reminded her, as if she needed reminding, that Léandre Martin would be bringing the curtain down on
Life
at seven o’clock that evening.

She had mixed feelings about that. It was going to be so strange seeing him again, and she had butterflies whenever she thought about it, which was most of the time. She didn’t know if they would ever be able to
recapture the magic of their first meeting; she mainly hoped it wouldn’t be too awkward.

She moved on from the maps. Another student was holding a free raffle every few minutes. Whoever held the winning ticket got to load up a small cannon with the fist-sized paint pellet of their
choice, and fire it at a giant canvas that was leaning against the wall. Aurélie won the round she entered, and she chose bottle green. She aimed and fired, and while she was relieved that
it had hit the canvas, it had splattered a long way from where she had been aiming. She decided there and then that her days of marksmanship were definitely over. She was given a round of applause,
and was pleased to see that her splatter looked pretty good among all the others. She wasn’t sure what he was going to do with the canvas once it was covered, but she told herself that one
day when she had a bigger place she would get him in to help decorate. She hadn’t expected there to be quite so much fun going on.

She walked on, past her own exhibit. She had been working on it almost non-stop since she had given the baby back, and she was relieved to feel she had done something that held its own alongside
her fellow students’ work. There was Olivier, crying his heart out, his enormous bruised face in charcoal on a sheet of incredibly expensive white paper, three metres square. She had captured
him. She thought back to her original idea, to simply draw some pictures of things she saw and felt like drawing, and was glad that she had changed it. It had been unpretentious, but she could see
now that it had also been unambitious, even timid, and she was glad she had pushed herself to do something different. The Russian was right, and so was Justine, and everybody else who had found out
about it: the stone idea had been really stupid. But if it hadn’t been for that she would never have made this work that she could be really proud of, and there were an awful lot of good
things in her life that wouldn’t have happened had it not been for her hopeless plan. She even felt a flash of gratitude to Sébastien for having daunted her with his lofty intention to
subvert the zeitgeist
. She still didn’t know what that meant, but she hadn’t spent a great deal of time trying to work it out.

She had drawn several versions of the piece, starting small and getting bigger and bigger before attempting the really big one. The last time she had gone round to babysit Olivier, she had
presented Aimée with the final trial version, one metre square, the one when she had known she had finally captured him. She saw them every couple of weeks, usually when Aimée was out
with her new boyfriend, trying her best to have something resembling a conventional date, free of nappy changes and screaming fits. She still caught herself calling the boy
Herbert
from time
to time. The two of them were getting along very well. He recognised her, and gave her a big smile whenever he saw her. He was walking now, and his wound had healed, leaving a narrow scar that
looked as though it would be there forever.

She didn’t want to spend too much time hanging around her own piece, so she moved on. Someone had drawn three circles in felt-tip pen, and coloured them in quite badly. It seemed so sloppy
alongside everyone else’s work. She couldn’t see any point to it, and tried to work out what was going on, to see if she could detect a redeeming quality in there somewhere. She
couldn’t find one. She rubbed the bump on her head; maybe she had concussion, and wasn’t seeing it properly.

Justine had returned the stone to her, and that morning she had punished herself by taking it to the park, throwing it as high as she could and letting it land on her head. It had hurt, she had
seen stars, and now she had a bump, but she was glad to have done it. Concussed or not, she still couldn’t find any worth to the circles, then she looked at the name of the student, and it
all made sense. Someone came and stood by her side.

‘It’s terrible, isn’t it?’

Aurélie turned to see who she was talking to, and it took a while before she recognised her. It was Sculpture Girl. She had never seen her smiling before.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘Well, actually I would. I was just being polite because he’s your boyfriend.’

‘Not any more!’ Even though weeks had passed since she had left him, she was still elated.

‘Well, in that case I don’t mind telling you I think it’s boring, lazy shit.’

Sculpture Girl laughed.

‘I don’t think I’ve seen him today,’ said Aurélie.

‘No, you wouldn’t have. He’s dropped out.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘He was called in by the assessment panel yesterday, and they told him he was going to have to repeat the year. They said the work he had submitted didn’t display any evidence of
technical ability, thought or effort.’

‘I can see where they’re coming from.’

‘I had him blubbing to me on the phone. Of course he’s convinced that they just can’t see his genius. He says his concepts are so far beyond their understanding that he feels
pity for them. He refused to repeat the year, so he’s out of here. He says he’s going to go to London, where he tells me they understand the value of artistic genius. I think by that he
means that there are a load of millionaires there who’ll buy any old shit. I think his work’s too pathetic even for London millionaires, though.’

‘You could be right. It’s fucking dreadful, isn’t it?’

Nobody had been given their marks yet, but those who hadn’t been called in could be confident that they had passed. Aurélie wasn’t worried. That morning, as she had wandered
through the corridors, she had met Professor Papavoine for the first time in a long while, and he had whispered to her that he had been very impressed with her piece, but he had thought it
judicious to keep a low profile during the assessment, and to go along with the consensus. He couldn’t resist telling her, in strict confidence, that his fellow assessors had been very
positive, and that she had nothing to worry about. He had asked after Herbert, and she told him that he was now called Olivier, and that she and he were great friends and she would be babysitting
him on the coming Sunday. He had invited the two of them round to their place for lunch. ‘Liliane’s been begging to see you again. Oh, and bring Léandre too, if he’s
around. He’s off duty from tonight, isn’t he?’ It had been impossible to escape the news. With
Life
winding up, the media had gone into overdrive, with news programmes
offering representations of the contents of the bottles in colour-coded computer graphics.

Aurélie had accepted the invitation, and told him she was looking forward to it, and he had scuttled away.

The members of the assessment panel weren’t the only ones to appreciate her work. ‘I love your giant crying baby,’ said Sculpture Girl. ‘I’ve always liked what you
do, but this is the best I’ve seen yet. You’ve really nailed it.’

‘Thanks. I’ve not got to yours yet, but . . . I’m sure I’ll like it too.’

She was relieved to find she did. She thought it was beautiful.

Everyone started drifting away, and Aurélie and Sculpture Girl, who she had discovered had a real name, Sandrine Gall, found themselves drifting away together, to share
a bottle of wine in a bar. Music was playing and a television flickered silently in the corner. Apparently President Bruni-Sarkozy was about to hold yet another press conference.

They ignored it, and carried on talking, about college, and Le Machine, and anything else that came along. A song came on.

‘Hey, I love this,’ said Sandrine. ‘It’s this new English band called
Air-bear
.’

‘I like it too,’ said Aurélie. The song was called ‘Such Ghastly Weather’, and she had first heard it at Aimée’s. Justine had sent it to her, along
with a note telling her that she had left the drummer, Rodney, and moved on to the bass player, Jean-Pascal, aka Clifford. Aimée considered this a promotion of sorts, and hoped it was a sign
that her sister was finally getting her act together. Aurélie had been hearing the song being played all over the place. It was a hit. Apparently nobody had yet discovered that they
weren’t quite as English as they appeared.

‘It’s funny – for such an unsophisticated nation, the English produce some pretty good music.’

Aurélie wasn’t going to be the one to blow their cover. They carried on talking. Aurélie liked Sandrine Gall. She was nice, and funny. She could tell they were going to be
friends.

The television flickered away behind them, and neither paid it the slightest attention.

T
he President’s media secretary hushed the assembled members of the world’s press. ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ he said,
‘pipe down.’ At this all the women started to make a racket in protest. He shook his head in dismay. ‘Ladies too.’ When at last he had quiet, he began. ‘You all know
the routine. In a moment’s time President Bruni-Sarkozy himself will emerge from the wings. He will sit in this very chair, whence he shall deliver a short statement, and then you will have
the chance to ask one or two relevant – that’s
relevant
– questions.’ There was a groan. ‘The President has asked me to forewarn you that he will not – I
repeat
not
– be announcing that he is going to invade Spain, and he will not be drawn on the subject.’

There was an even bigger groan, and everybody looked at Julio Gonzales from
El Pais
. ‘We’ll get you one day, Gonzales,’ hissed the economics editor of
Le
Monde
.

The media secretary gave a signal, and the lights went down. A laser shone on to a mirrorball, and the room filled with swirling light. They all wondered what the President would use as his
walk-on music. At his last press conference, when he had been announcing a series of drastic fiscal measures, he had chosen the twelve-inch remix of ‘Buffalo Stance’ by Neneh Cherry.
Everybody agreed that it was a great song, though given the circumstances it was somewhat overlong and inappropriate in tone: for seven minutes he had stalked the edge of the stage, waving at the
press, pulling shapes and high-fiving and fist-bumping the competition winners and specially invited fans in the front row. Most of all they just hoped it wasn’t going to be Tina Turner
singing ‘Simply The Best’; he had played that one to death, and they were all sick of it. Today, though, he had chosen a classical theme, and as the opening bars of Wagner’s
‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ drifted through the room, the assembled reporters turned to one another and nodded their approval. The President walked on stage, waving and punching the
air, and after little more than a minute of shape-pulling, high-fiving and fist-bumping, he took his place at the table and the music faded out. It appeared someone had had a word with him.

The President began. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the press,’ he said, ‘thank you all for coming. I am going to start with a very special announcement – today I shall be
joined on the podium by my third wife.’ The women sat stony-faced at this news, but the men fidgeted in anticipation. ‘Will you please welcome to the stage, the model turned actress
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy!’

The mirrorball came on again, and her walk-on music started. They had chosen Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je t’aime . . . moi non plus’. They faded it in halfway through the song,
just as Jane Birkin’s gasps were really getting going. Madame Bruni-Sarkozy emerged from the wings, resplendent in a really tight red dress with a slit up the side that gave a superb view of
a magnificent leg. The women sat stock still, and the men rocked back and forth in their seats. The First Lady walked over to her husband and whispered something in his ear. The music faded
out.

‘I do apologise,’ said President Bruni-Sarkozy. ‘I have a correction for you – my third wife is of course a model turned
singer
. I always get that wrong. But what about that Woody Allen film, my petal? Do you remember? I thought you were rather good.’

She dismissed this compliment with a coquettish bat of her hand.

‘To business, gentlemen.’ At this, the women raised a hubbub. ‘And, of course, ladies. Now, I have not brought you here today without reason. No, I am here to tell you that
yesterday Madame Bruni-Sarkozy dressed up as a man.’