Iain Pears - The Last Judgement

Then there was the library itself, a haven of popular learning. The trouble was that it was the intellectual equivalent of a fast-food outlet. It was the reverence Argyll missed. Just another consumer temple, offering information instead of clothes or food. Take your pick; Socrates or Chanel, Aristotle or Asterix, they all become of equal value in the Beaubourg.

Listen to me, he thought as eventually he made his way to a vacant plastic desk with a pile of reference books. Worse than my grandfather. I don’t know what’s coming over me.

But at least it had some of the books he needed, so he tried to take his mind off the surroundings, and concentrate instead on the reason he was there. Rouxel, he said to himself. Find out, then get out. He worked his way through the material to find out about Jean-Xavier-Marie Rouxel. From a good Catholic family, he thought to himself, with brilliant insight.

Born 1919, the French Who’s Who assured him, which made him around about seventy-four. No chicken he. Hobbies: tennis, collecting medieval manuscripts, time with his family, poetry and duck-breeding. So, a well-preserved all-rounder. Address: 19 Boulevard de la Saussaye, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and Château de la Jonquille in Normandy. A rich well-preserved all-rounder. Married Jeanne Marie de la Richemont-Maupense, 1945. Oh, ho, he thought, going up in the world, eh? Daughter of the aristocracy. Bet that helped the career. One daughter, born 1945, quick work. Wife dies 1950, daughter dies 1963. École Polytechnique, graduating 1944, in the middle of the war. Board member of Elf-Aquitaine, the French oil company. Then chairman of Banque du Nord. Then Axmund Frères stock-brokers; Services Financiers du Midi; Assurances Générales de Toulouse; no end to it. Still on the board of some. Deputy in the Assembly, 1958 to 1977. Minister of the Interior, 1967. A high-flyer, thought Argyll. Didn’t agree with him though. No more politics after that. Legion d’Honneur, 1947. Croix de Guerre, 1945. Hmm. High-ranking war-hero type. I wonder when he fitted that in. Must have joined up at the Liberation. Member of war-crimes tribunal 1945. Private practice for a few years thereafter before the leap into industry and politics. Then a list of clubs, publications, jobs held, honours given. Standard stuff. A model citizen. Even lends his pictures for exhibitions, although after this experience I doubt if he’ll do it again.

Other volumes fleshed out the picture but added few new facts. Rouxel was not a very successful politician, it seemed. He had been popular with colleagues but somehow or other had got up de Gaulle’s nose. He was given a trial run for only eighteen months in government then was chucked out and never succeeded in attracting attention again. Or maybe it was the other way round and he didn’t like high office; perhaps the pay wasn’t good enough or he was more of a backroom man than a fast-talking minister type. Whatever, he still did the odd job — committees here, advisory boards there, governing bodies all over the place. One of the great and the good, the old regulars who pop up time and again in every country, serving the public and keeping their well-manicured hands firmly, if discreetly, on the reins of power in the process. Doing well by doing good; reading between the lines, Rouxel did not come from a wealthy family. He had certainly made it now.

Unfair, thought Argyll as he left. Mere jealousy because you will never be asked to do anything like that. Or just because you’re in a bad mood from that library. Such were his thoughts as he marched boldly along the Rue de Francs-Bourgeois to his rendezvous with what he gloomily expected would been spinsterish, twittering type of personal assistant; the sort who was good at writing letters but not exactly a live wire. Didn’t even know if her employer had been burgled. He might well have to spend an entire evening doing his best to be charming and gallant to this woman and would get nothing useful out of it at all. Had he been consulted, he would have pleaded a previous engagement and held out to see Rouxel himself. But he was stuck with it now, he thought morosely as he rounded the corner at last into the Place des Vosges. Might as well get on with it.

So with scarcely a pause to admire the scenery — which showed what a bad mood he was getting into, it being his favourite bit of the city — he surveyed the crowd inside the restaurant. Little elderly lady, sitting on your own — where are you?

No luck. No such person. Typical. So incompetent she couldn’t even show up on time. He checked his watch.

‘M’sieur?’ said a waiter sliding up alongside. Odd about Parisian waiters, how much they can squeeze into one word. Their most simple greeting can exude so much contempt and loathing it can quite put you off your food, and inspire foreigners with terrors of cultural inferiority. In this case, what the waiter meant was ‘Listen, if you’re just a gawping tourist, clear off and stop blocking the way. If you want to sit down and eat, say so, but get a move on, we’re busy and I don’t have time to waste.’

Argyll explained he was meant to be meeting someone.

‘Is your name Argyll?’ said the waiter, with a passable stab at wrapping his tongue round the surname.

Argyll admitted it.

‘This way. I was asked to show you to madame’s table.’

Oh-ho. Must be a regular, he thought as he followed. Then his thoughts stopped in their tracks as the waiter pulled out a chair at a table opposite a woman sitting quietly smoking a cigarette.

Jeanne Armand was not little, she was not old, she was not spinsterish and, though technically she might have had nephews and nieces, she was not in the slightest bit auntie-ish either. And if Argyll spent the rest of the evening doing his best to be charming and gallant, his efforts were not forced; he couldn’t help it.

Some people are blessed — or cursed, depending on how you look at it — with being beautiful beyond the ordinary. Flavia, now, had very definite opinions on this. She was very attractive herself, even though she put little real effort into it. But not devastating in the way that can cut off conversation and reduce grown and articulate men to gibbering wrecks. She counted this as good fortune; people instinctively liked her because of her appearance, but they did not ruin her life because they could not take their eyes off her. Even in Italy, she could get people to listen to what she said. Except, of course, Fabriano, but this was a basic defect in his make-up.

Jeanne Armand, however, was one of those who makes even the well-balanced and mature type act a bit oddly. Women often make very sneering comments about male responses in this area, but it is most unfair. Many men are, for the most part, quite good at keeping control and conducting themselves with decorum in strained circumstances. But sometimes, in very exceptional cases, there is nothing to be done; it is as simple as that. A sort of hormonal autopilot takes over which causes hot flushes, trembling hands and a tendency to stare with all the intelligence and sophistication of a rabbit hypnotized by car headlights.

This woman, or more particularly her Raphael face, her beautiful brown hair, delicate hands, perfect figure, soft smile, green eyes, exquisitely chosen clothes — and so on, and so on — was one of those people who triggers such a reaction that the continuance of even moderately civilized behaviour is an almost superhuman triumph of the will, for which those who manage it should be complimented for their strength rather than criticized for their weakness. Somehow or other she managed to combine a gentle tranquillity with just a hint of wildness. Madonna and Magdalen all in one, gift-wrapped in Yves Saint-Laurent. Potent stuff.

The element that pushed him over the edge was that the woman spoke to him in English, having discerned instantly that his French, while serviceable, was hardly up to the Racine level of eloquence. It was the accent; the woman even sounded beautiful.