Incidents in the Rue Laugier Read online

  It did not displease Harrison to think along these lines, while waiting for an answer to his question about the rooms. Tyler, however, stood silent, head lowered, contemplating the yellow carpet. Finally, with an air of resolution, he took a crumpled handful of money from his pocket, turned to Harrison, and said, ‘We need supplies. Milk, bread, that sort of thing. Fresh stuff. I noted a shop on the corner. Could you be an angel? Maud and I will sort ourselves out here.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Have you decided where we are to sleep?’

  Tyler smiled. ‘Not yet. Off you go,’ he added gently. Take your time, was the implication. ‘There’s a string bag on the back of the kitchen door. Fruit,’ he added, pushing Harrison into the hall. Maud looked at him silently, her colour rising. He felt a slight distaste for her urgency, thinking it at odds with her superior expression. At the same time he acknowledged a stab of fellow feeling for her obvious lack of self-mastery, of any kind of mastery, for how could someone so transparent subdue a character like Tyler? He had it in him to pity Maud for the imminent breakdown of her entire personality. That haughty air would not serve her for much longer, he thought, unless she were strong enough to resist the temptation to become Tyler’s slave. He felt that he should warn her, should take her on one side, and tell her that as Tyler’s friend he felt it his duty to offer some advice, unacceptable though it might be: her best plan might be to catch the next train to Dijon, or to London—but if she were going to London that meant staying here until next Monday, and it was only Thursday morning …

  It also occurred to him that if Tyler turned ruthless, Maud might be in need of his protection. At the same time, he wanted not to be cast as the blameless character who would be called upon to defend a woman’s honour. He would prefer, if given the choice, that odd sensation of being drawn on by them, of literally following them around, of observing their gestures, watching their progress. The idea excited him. He told himself that this did not necessarily constitute a misdemeanour. Indeed it was largely innocent, part of the pattern, now repeating itself, of a contented childhood spent loitering in the wake of the adults, while thinking his own thoughts, amusing himself mildly by imitating their walk, or simply kicking a pebble along, his mind reduced to animal level while others did his thinking for him. Hence the degree of self-absorption which no doubt accounted for his not very active sex life: he liked women, but had difficulty in divorcing them from their sisterly status. He even liked Maud, or was prepared to like her, although he could not perceive her as a sister. Her heightened colour, now functioning as an automatic signal, alerted him to the fact that she was a sexual being still in the process of discovering the depths of her sexual nature. It was her imperviousness to himself that nettled him. Only the truly inexperienced can afford to neglect their manners in this respect. He felt irritated with Maud on several counts, not the least of which was the nagging thought that at some point someone was going to have to take charge of her, to wrest her from temptation, to put her on some train or other. Only then could he get together with Tyler and discuss more normal matters.

  He bought bread, milk, bananas, teabags, and, as an afterthought, a bottle of shampoo. When he got back to the flat he put his string bag down on the kitchen table without unpacking it and returned to Tyler in the salon, determined to discover where he was to spend the night. He was tired, somewhat disappointed to discover that he was not to be in anyone’s confidence. The complicity of the other two was beginning to annoy him. He had time to notice that the flat already smelt of coffee and cigarettes, like a café.

  ‘Where’s Maud?’ he asked.

  ‘Having a bath,’ said Tyler, lying full length on one of the navy blue sofas and easing several cushions under his head.

  ‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Tyler.’

  ‘What an extraordinary remark. As far as I’m concerned we’re all just staying here, enjoying the Vermeulens’ hospitality.’

  ‘They don’t know we’re here, do they?’

  ‘Not exactly. Not in detail. But they did say I could use the flat while they were away, if I happened to be passing through Paris. Which is what I’m doing. Your room’s upstairs, by the way, on the sixth floor.’

  ‘With the other servants,’ said Harrison bitterly.

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a bore. Here’s the key. I found it just inside the kitchen door. And don’t look like that. The room’s perfectly all right. I went up and had a look.’

  ‘Why can’t I …?’

  ‘Don’t even ask. Be your age, can’t you? Now if you want to come out with us be down here in half an hour. Otherwise please yourself. I’ve hired a car, by the way. I thought we might go out somewhere this afternoon, perhaps go out and have lunch in the country.’

  ‘Where were you thinking of?’ asked Harrison, with what he hoped was heavy irony. ‘A day trip to Versailles?’

  ‘Why not? Versailles is perfectly possible if you don’t go inside the building. What’s wrong with Versailles? Or Fontainebleau, come to that. Ermenonville. The Vallée de Chevreuse. Are you going to be clever about all of them?’

  ‘Deep down, Tyler, you are totally conventional.’

  ‘Dear Noddy. To think it’s taken you all this time to find out.’

  The arrival of Maud, flushed from her bath, and wearing one of her wide-skirted, and, he could now appreciate, thoroughly old-fashioned dresses, put an end to this exchange. Disgusted, he traipsed out to the sixth floor, thrust his key into a gaping lock, and threw his bag down on to the flowered coverlet of an iron bedstead. He was back with the wallpaper again, he noted, this time of blue garlands on a white ground, an unsteady bedside table, and a small washbasin with an unframed mirror above it. It would do, he supposed; at least it was light and quiet. It might even serve as a retreat if those two got tiresome, as they seemed bound to do. And of course there was nothing to stop him going home.

  Later that morning, in the back of the car, his temper cooled. He was in the company of adults, and it was enormously restful just to relax and let Paris take care of him. The sun was still strong enough to bring a prickle of sweat to the back of his neck, but now there was a brassy tinge to the light, as if it contained the threat of its own dissolution. Every now and then an edge of cloud approached the sun, not quite meeting it, and then dissolving, so that it was easy to believe that the fine days might last for a little while longer. For the moment the sun still produced a dazzle on the chrome of cars, but he noticed one woman carrying a precautionary umbrella. He lolled in the stuffy heat of the car and contemplated the two heads in front of him, Tyler’s almost black, Maud’s dark gold, the damp hair still curling from her bath. She was on her best behaviour, he noted, her hands in her lap, although he thought he could sense one longing to creep out to Tyler’s thigh.

  ‘We are going to Versailles,’ announced Tyler. ‘Only Harrison’s such a snob he won’t go inside the building.’

  ‘Oh, don’t keep on. I never said …’

  ‘It’s too hot, anyway. We’ll have lunch and walk in the park. That satisfy you?’

  He turned suddenly and flashed Harrison a white-toothed grin. Harrison thought he saw there an unsought-for but no less welcome complicity. This then was to be the tone: amiable bickering. He thought he could manage that. All he had to do was to keep on the right side of Tyler, whose favour it was always important to ensure. He breathed deeply, pleasurably, determined to declare a holiday, to ignore whatever manoeuvres the other two were up to. In this heat he could no more think of making love, of anyone making love, than of running a marathon. At the same time he could have kicked Maud for being so insistently there, though he had to admire her self-control. She might be any convent-educated girl out for the day with her brother. Except that to an expert eye he would be unerringly cast as the brother. With either one of them out of the way he might exercise his rights to full membership of the human race, instead of being slightly out of it, restful though the position promised to be. Without Maud he could get on to some ki
nd of footing with Tyler. On the other hand, without Tyler he might aspire to Maud. Not that he felt anything for her, he assured himself, but she had a certain appeal; he had to confess to himself that she intrigued him. It is a natural wish to have a hand in humbling the proud. So far she had paid him no attention whatsoever. He sensed rather than saw in her a mixture of pleading and hauteur. And he all but felt her left hand twitch in its desire to touch Tyler.

  At Versailles they ate lunch in an overblown tourist restaurant, which smelt faintly of urine from the swinging doors to the toilettes. Outside the plate-glass windows coaches shuddered to a halt in the parking space: ladies of a certain age adjusted cardigans and sunglasses; cameras even at this stage were readied. Maud excused herself for what seemed a long time. Tyler lit a cigarette and abstracted himself from any attempt at conversation. Harrison, enormously hungry, as he always seemed to be, ate bread, exhausting the supply on the table. ‘Aha!’ said Tyler, as the main dish was set before him, and Maud stole back into her seat. ‘Tough, but not unpalatable,’ he observed, his teeth sinking into his veal chop. Oil gleamed on his mouth. Maud was silent, eating daintily. Harrison thought he could observe the food sliding down her graceful throat. Even love could not disrupt a French girl’s appetite, he thought.

  For he had no doubt that she loved Tyler, although he had not so far fully acknowledged the fact. The thought struck a sudden chord of dismay which he did his best to analyse. He was to be, then, definitely on the sidelines, a position which he had once thought to cherish. He struggled to contain, even to suppress, a desire to be at the centre, to have something in his gift which another might cherish. Not to take it and pass on, as Tyler might, almost certainly would. Unless Tyler did the decent thing and succumbed to this pretty but enigmatic girl, with her prim expression and her juvenile clothes. He had something of an insight into her preparations for her holiday in her aunt’s house, of her boredom, then her expectation. Finally, of her coming alive, and the havoc it would cause, when she went home to that grim mother of hers and was obliged to say nothing of her adventure. He doubted whether she had ever lied before, although she gave the impression of someone who could keep her own counsel. But to be silent about one’s thoughts was a far more innocent procedure than to be silent about one’s actions. Maud would now have to keep doubly silent to evade her mother’s vigilance. Of that mother he had no great opinion. He saw a dangerous avidity there which might make Maud a victim. Between her mother and Tyler she would be entirely unprotected, was in fact entirely unprotected. He stole an uneasy look at her as she composedly drank her coffee. Tyler, tilting his chair back and lighting another cigarette, intercepted his look and smiled pleasantly.

  ‘You’ll get cancer,’ Edward said, for something to say.

  ‘You mean you wish I would,’ said Tyler, still pleasantly.

  They strolled out into the hot dusty street, past the coaches, past the ladies in cardigans, and the cameras, round the flank of the great portentous building, foursquare to all comers, past the gesticulating stone gods of the Apollo fountain, and into the park, whose green depths drew them on. They were silent until they were past the two Trianons, then by wordless consent they sat down on a stone bench and surrendered to the full heat of the day. Maud closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Tyler unbuttoned his shirt. Again their hands rested in their laps, quiescent, blameless. Whatever tension was in the air seemed to be the property of the air itself, in which heat could be felt to be accumulating until it chose to be dispelled by a storm, a showdown, some sort of resolution. Harrison felt the beginning of a slight headache and wandered off into the shade of a regulated stand of trees, densely geometric, peremptory. He was relieved to be alone, wondered if he might not, on the following day, make for the Louvre and his old habits. Then he contemplated the general unacceptability of being absent, of re-entry and its embarrassments, contemplated the power of Tyler, and his natural ability to impose his will. He would go along with whatever was ordained, he thought soberly, and again felt a twist of the excitement of the voyeur. When he strolled back to the bench Tyler and Maud were holding hands. He felt a sudden stab of desire, but for whom he could not have said.

  On the journey back his headache grew more insistent. He also felt slightly sick after the apple tart he had consumed with a further cup of coffee, the others waiting patiently until his appetite was assuaged. With this bodily discomfort went a more general malaise. Why was Tyler being so obvious? Why this trip to Versailles, why this holding of hands? Was this irony, or, more probably, mockery? Tyler was not averse to making fun of his victims, at least those to whom he was not entirely indifferent. Indifference suited him better, was most probably his most natural, his most reassuring state of mind. A breach in his defences, as seemed to be taking place here, resulted in a kind of willed unkindness, as if he resented having his emotional account overdrawn. Or, and this was a more puzzling alternative, was he genuinely affected by this very ordinary girl? If so, what was the nature of the hold she exerted over him? She was apparently unaware of his stage-managerial tendencies, which had decreed that they should be reduced to the status of tourists, like all the others who had tired themselves walking through the splendid formidable rooms or gasping at the complicated jets of water springing upwards into the hot heavy air. Why that ghastly restaurant, with its conflicting odours, and the food that was surely unsuitable in this weather? Even as Maud confidently placed her hand on Tyler’s thigh, Tyler himself seemed to have lost heart, to have become morose. Little was said. Harrison leaned his aching head back until the posture became unbearable. In the face of Tyler’s increasing broodiness, and his apparent incommunicability, Maud withdrew her hand.

  In the flat they trooped languidly into the yellow salon and collapsed on to the navy blue sofas. Harrison surveyed his dust-covered shoes, eased his finger round inside his collar.

  ‘Would you mind if I had a bath?’ he asked.

  Tyler shrugged. ‘Help yourself.’ He looked sulky, with less than his usual air of command.

  Boredom, decided Harrison. Tyler’s Doppelgänger.

  He slid into the cool water as into a bed. And bed was what was now on his mind, not theirs but his own. He could not face the thought of going out again to eat; in any case food was the last thing he wanted. What he wanted now was a return to some kind of normality, to innocence, to a state of simple companionship, in which the three of them would be equal, and equally sexless. This was not impossible, he reasoned: he at least could hold to that position, which had in effect been his all the time. He banished from his mind that memory of the scene in the summer house, himself forced both to witness and to compete. And yet he was normal, he puzzled, or at least he thought he was. Fortuitous encounters were simply not to his taste. But he knew that in reality he feared them, feared to let the genie out of the bottle. If he were innocent—so far—his thoughts were not. Somewhere inside him bloomed a desire to assert himself, to take over. To take control. As this urge was at war with his desire for innocence his state was decidedly uncomfortable. This in its turn made his headache worse.

  He opened the door of the bathroom to air it, smelt Tyler’s cigarette smoke, heard him say, ‘Hadn’t you better contact that friend of yours? Tell her when to expect you?’

  He lingered, heard Maud say, ‘I already have. I telephoned her this morning, when you were buying cigarettes. She knows I’m not coming. And I managed to get her to postpone her visit to Dijon. So I can stay here with you. Are you pleased? Say you are pleased, Tyler.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘I doubt if I need tell my mother anything.’

  ‘You mean?’

  ‘I think she knows I’m with you.’

  There was a silence, which Harrison, lurking inside the bathroom, could not bring himself to break.

  ‘I hope your mother is not getting the wrong idea,’ he heard.

  ‘If she is she no doubt thinks, or hopes, it is the right idea. My mother is a romantic at he
art.’

  ‘So are you, my dear.’

  The wryness of that last remark alerted Harrison to potential danger, so that with an elaborate clearing of the throat he was able to present himself in the doorway.

  ‘I’ll go upstairs, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a bit of a headache. I’ll see you in the morning, if that’s all right.’

  ‘We might do Fontainebleau some time,’ said Tyler.

  ‘Are you sure? It’s still pretty hot. There’ll be crowds of people …’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody ungrateful. I go to the trouble of hiring this car, I do all the driving, I don’t expect you to do anything but be pleasant …’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Tyler’s sudden changes of mood were well attested. He had once stormed out of a Cambridge party, at which Harrison had been present, when his hostess ciriticised something he had said or done, only to reappear half an hour later with his arm round another girl, who, to judge from her appearance, had definitely not been invited.

  ‘I’ll say goodnight, then.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Maud pleasantly.

  He lingered. ‘What will you do? Will you go out to dinner?’

  ‘I dare say we shall manage to occupy ourselves,’ said Tyler.

  Harrison left the flat with something like relief, a feeling which increased once he was lying on his bed in the hot stillness under the roof. As he lay, welcoming the silence, and even the friendly stuffiness, this relief gradually became tinged with curiosity. What exactly was the nature of this love affair? To this he could provide no answer that made sense. He had always known Tyler as one of those romantic seducers who arouse more envy in men than loyalty in women, who greet former lovers lightly, thus challenging them to bear him ill will. Harrison was prepared to bet that Tyler had a million girlfriends, all of whom were glad to engage in scurrilous gossip about him as soon as they were deprived of his company. But that was only because he had an effortless way with women: all, however critical, however resentful, could see that he was meant for a larger scale of action, that he had actually to lower his sights to engage in seduction, regretting that he was not on some field of glory or subduing rebellions. What his friends and enemies recognised was leadership, yet paradoxically he was not to be trusted. He won forgiveness, time and time again, on account of his very great physical ease, his height, the strength of his limbs, his sombre and melancholy blue gaze, the dark dense curly hair growing low on his forehead. Thus, by a form of primitive reasoning, others felt bound to defer to him, to forgive him misdemeanours which, in the light of later experience, were seen to be not so very serious after all.