Touch (2 page)

The smell of the cake frightened him. A smell like hot fried aubergines. He hung up his coat and dropped his briefcase. A smell he'd missed for so long it felt wrong. He'd imagined a restoration. One day. That things would come right. Full circle. Things being what they were. Out of true. After the electric shocks. After the hospital sheets folded like white platinum. After Annik's shaven head. But Serge had never imagined a cake, the smell of baking, or that it should pull a fine thread of fear from his belly like this.

Annik was sitting at the kitchen table. All the lights were off and a white candle burned in a blue pottery candleholder in front of her. There was the low hum of the fan oven, its lit glass door, the top of the cake crowning like a baby's head. The candle swayed in the draught of his entry. It threw a shadow up from Annik's chin onto her mouth. She was wearing a long black dress and twirling a wine glass in her fingers. In the glass was a single flower head: a red carnation.

Serge closed the door. The shadow over her mouth trembled. Silver studs gleamed in her ears as she turned her head.

‘Annik?'

No reply. Just that dipping of her neck. The nothing game.

‘Are you alright?'

Why ask when he knew she wasn't? Even he could follow that logic. It was nonsense. But he'd learned to stop looking for sense. He was looking for her. She came and went. Pure mystery. Like a childhood scar that a cold day makes visible. Something that has stopped hurting and has become elusive. The reminder of a past hurt. A part of himself. He looked for her on days like that. Clear days branded with frost where everything seemed sharply etched, super real. Days like those in his childhood when icicles had dripped from under the eaves and there had been skaters writing on the pond with steel blades. Days that had probably never existed.

‘Annik?'

She looked up dreamily. She would see him as a configuration of light and dark. Colour. Movement. She'd see him smiling, holding out the paper-wrapped box he'd taken from his coat pocket. He put it on the table in front of her. Annik turned her head away, showing her pale neck again above the dress.

‘Go on. It's for you.'

She smiled like a child and the candlelight misted her frizzy hair that was the colour of brass wire.

 
Annik put a finger against her lips then turned to look at the oven. It was lit like a little shrine in the dark kitchen. She touched a hand to the stem of the candle.

‘It's alright. I've made a cake for them.'

‘For who?'

‘For the children, of course!'

He tuned in to the steady hum of the oven, letting it calm him, then tuned out again. These days everything seemed to have to make a noise or to be lit by pilot lights. There was no stillness any more.

‘Oh yes, the children. How are they?'

‘They're well.'

She smiled again, touching the glass to her face.

‘They're very well I think.'

He didn't reply. Didn't need to. Instead he stood next to her and pressed his face into her hair. It smelled of lemons. Then, faintly, of vinegar. She'd been cleaning the windows again with handfuls of brown paper. To let the light in, she always said. To let it fall.

 
Annik pushed the glass away and yawned, tilting her head back from the candle.

‘Aren't you going to open it?'

She stared at the parcel.

‘It's for me?'

‘Of course.'

Her delighted smile clouded suddenly with doubt.

‘For me, for me, for me, for me!'

She sang the words like rhyming couplets. Like a spell to ward off something. Which he knew it was. Serge went to the sink and ran the tap until the water was cold. He held a glass underneath then held the glass to his mouth and drank. He needed a proper drink.

‘I'm going to the cellar.'

Silence. The gleam of her pale skin, her face downcast. Serge went out of the kitchen and unlatched the cellar door. The cold air soothed his face at once. He switched on the light and went down the steps. He took a bottle of red wine from the rack and ran his finger over the label. Médoc. A decent wine he'd got from Fabier's shop in the marketplace.

 
Back in the kitchen, the oven hummed. Annik had still not opened the parcel. Nor had she prepared any food. Some days she did; others she simply forgot. You could never tell. Serge broke a piece from a baguette and cut a wedge of cheese. He poured black olives into a bowl and sliced some tomatoes which he sprinkled with fresh basil and olive oil. He pulled the cork from the bottle and placed it on the table next to Annik's glass. He imagined racks full of bottles of red carnations, their petals pressed against dusty glass.

‘Hungry?'

Annik shook her head and then her lower lip trembled.

‘Oh I haven't...'

She trailed off and Serge was behind her touching her neck with his fingers.

‘It's alright, I'm not hungry tonight. Anyway, you've made a cake. Remember?'

He poured some wine for himself and sat down at the table opposite his wife. The bread tasted dry and bland. When he was a child they'd still used the communal oven in the village every year on Bastille Day and the rye loaves had tasted of wood smoke. His mother used to bring them home in a long basket and he and his sisters had been allowed to break off bits of the hot crust. Delicious. Serge took an olive and bit into the flesh, leaving the stone carefully on the side of his plate. Annik was watching him with her head tilted to one side. She began to sob, her tears glinting in the candlelight.

Serge took a hasty gulp of the wine. He leant across the table and gathered Annik's hand.

‘Don't cry, darling.'

‘I can't help it, Serge, I can't.'

‘I know, but they'll love it.'

‘Love it?'

‘The cake.'

She looked at him blankly, the tears suddenly stayed.

‘The children, I mean.'

Annik's face cleared, she leaned back in the chair and sighed.

‘They shan't have it if they've been naughty!'

‘Have they been naughty?'

That old game again. Annik didn't answer. She giggled then frowned, then leaned forwards with her elbows on the table.

‘Sometimes they are; they're so naughty!'

Serge drank, watching the wine cover Annik's face as it tilted in the glass. It burned in his belly, reminding him he was hungry. He took a slice of Cantal and balanced it on the bread. Cheese cost a fortune here, not like in the Auvergne. Things were still reasonable, there. That was city life for you.

 
He remembered his father shaking his head when the letter came saying that he, Serge Durand, had been accepted into the Civil Service. He'd blown a sigh through the gap in his front teeth, propping his hayfork against the barn.

‘City life, boy! That's shit!'

That's all he'd said before spitting on the barn door and going in for his breakfast with the farm dog slinking after him. Serge had stood there as the valley emerged into the light. Mist thinned out above the trees and the sound of cowbells tinkled like a thousand churches calling them to mass. His mother had wept quietly, saying simply, ‘You'll need a suit now.'

City life. His parents had come to their wedding like shrinking things. Cities were places they'd read about in books. They'd gone back home in the old black Citroën after one night in the hotel. Serge had been terrified that his father would embarrass him by belching at mealtimes or pissing in the street as was the habit of the men at home. He was thankful when they'd gone.

Two years later, when Annik was pregnant, they'd gone home for a visit. Sleeping in the huge mahogany bed his parents had abandoned for single beds. Nestling into the soft mattress and bolster. Even making love, though she was over three months gone. They'd slept like children until the milk wagon woke them at six o'clock, then dozed again until they'd heard his father calling the dogs.

The day before they were due to return he'd walked Annik up to the plateau to show her where the gentians and mountain violets grew. Two of the village dogs had followed them, a golden retriever and a black lurcher. The retriever bitch belonged to the squire's teenage son and the lurcher to the local postman. It had amused Serge to think of the litter of mongrels they'd produce. They'd been like a comic duo, plunging into horse troughs to cool off from the heat, bounding through the fields, startling the red Salers cattle. They'd stopped at the auberge for a glass of Avèze, a bitter-sweet liqueur made from gentian roots. Annik had screwed up her face at it and the men around the bar had laughed and slapped Serge on the back. He'd felt happy for some reason. The dogs had hung about outside the bar, then followed them all the way home. That night she'd woken with a temperature and there had been blood on the sheets. They'd had to telephone for the doctor.

 
Serge pushed his plate away. Funny how you could trace things back to one night. As if all sorrow went back to some point that might have been different, or avoided. Annik was watching him. The sound of their breathing was broken by the buzzer ringing on the oven. Annik smiled and rose from the chair. She was a tall woman. Half a head taller than him. Which had puzzled his father.

‘It's ready. What a surprise!'

Serge watched her take up the oven gloves and put them on luxuriously like gorgeous fur mittens.

‘Be careful!'

She laughed gaily.

‘Careful! I've made a thousand cakes and never burnt myself once!'

Annik opened the oven and stood back to let the hot air gush into the kitchen. The light of the oven reddened her hair as she bent down to take out the cake and place it to cool. When she switched the oven off the kitchen fell silent.

Serge remembered how the wasps had swarmed in the Russian vine under their window on the morning of the walk. The wall had hummed like a tremendous electrical current circling them.

Annik stood uncertainly for a moment then shook off the oven mitts and sat back down. She took the carnation from her glass and wiped her finger inside the rim, making a faint squeak.

‘Wine please!'

Serge poured an inch of wine into her glass. He'd spent the day answering emails and processing planning applications. He was dog-tired. And his father had been right, in his way. He'd been right about a few things. Annik put her hand on his wrist, covering the face of his wristwatch. Then she touched the wine to her lips, which parted for a second and closed again, merely breathing across the surface.

‘What a surprise!'

She clapped her hands and shook back her hair.

‘What a wonderful surprise!'

‘But you haven't opened your present.'

‘Haven't I? Haven't I?'

Her eyes were wide with happiness. Annik took the pack-age and opened one end. A little jeweller's box slid out. She tilted her head.

‘Is it something nice?'

‘It might be.'

He tried to be jolly.

‘Go on, open it!'

‘Ok.'

She said it with a tinkling, silvery tone. Not a word, but a droplet of pure sound spilled from her throat. It made him afraid again, that little thread beginning to unravel and tug him into the unknown. He took another mouthful of wine and topped up his glass.

‘Go on.'

Annik took the box and flipped it open. Serge toyed with the ring of olive stones on his plate. His present was a necklace of amber beads. Annik pulled them from the box and draped them on her neck. She was trying to fasten the clasp.

‘Oh, I'm so clumsy, Serge. Come on, help me!'

He helped her to fasten the clasp, squinting without his glasses. Annik rose from her chair and kissed him softly on the cheek.

‘It's lovely. I'm sure it's lovely. I'm going to look!'

She left the kitchen and Serge heard her running upstairs to the mirror. He poured more wine. The bottle was almost empty. Annik's glass was still untouched. He downed that too and sat back in the chair, rubbing at his eyes. Thank God tomorrow was Saturday. Footsteps scuffled in their bedroom upstairs, then silence.

 
Serge waited. He began to roam around the kitchen, touching things. The working surfaces, the steel sink, a Mexican plate hung on the wall. Annik had made a sponge cake with almonds arranged into a smiling face on top. He could smell cinnamon and lemon zest. Serge pushed the cake from its tin and peeled off the greaseproof paper. It had risen perfectly. How odd to find perfection here, in a cake. He sat down again and waited, sipping at the wine until the glass was empty and then the bottle was empty. He could hear Annik's footsteps on the stairs, then in the corridor.

When she stepped from the shadows into the candlelit room Serge felt the tug of fear again. Annik was still wearing the necklace. In front of the bathroom mirror she had slashed her face with lipstick, drawing it down over her cheeks like tribal scars.

‘Serge?'

It was as if she couldn't see him, even though he was there. Even though he was sitting there. Her voice trembled as she said his name.

‘Serge?'

He couldn't answer. He was crushed by tiredness.

‘Serge, darling, am I beautiful?'

He said nothing. There was nothing to say...

‘Am I?'

She began to sway in front of him unbuttoning the black dress.

‘Stop it, Annik! For Christ's sake stop it.'

He was shouting. Annik stepped back, clutching her arms across her chest.

‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!'

He crouched on the kitchen floor, pressing his head against the table leg. There was silence, Annik frantically buttoning her dress. She knelt down next to him and took his head in her arms, stroking his hair.

‘It's alright, it's alright. I'm here.'

She sat down next to him and rocked him in her arms. Soothed him against her breast, pressing her hair against his face. The candle went out, leaving the kitchen dark except for faint lights from the neighbours' houses. Somewhere a dog barked and there was an answering yelp. Somebody went out of their house, spoke to the dog, coughed. A door slammed shut. Then a small motorcycle buzzed past. Like that day when the wasps had swarmed in the vine.