Алан Джадд - The Devil's Own Work

We walked round the bay and up the lane as when we had followed Tyrrel and Eudoxie all those years before, so we arrived at the front of the house without having seen into the garden. The door was answered by Eudoxie, wearing only a red towel. Her skin was darker than I had thought and for a moment we all three stared at each other. She was surprised and perhaps momentarily irritated; something crossed her face. However, it left no trace behind and she was immediately polite and welcoming. She paid more attention to Chantal than to me but that was not uncommon. She led us through the house and up to the balcony, calling out our arrival as we went. We reached the balcony in time to see Catherine covering her nakedness in a red towel like Eudoxie's. She had obviously been lying on it near to Edward who sat in a wicker chair reading a paper. His feet were bare and he wore khaki drill trousers, a white shirt unbuttoned to the waist and a khaki hat which shielded his eyes. The two women must have lain naked at his feet, sunbathing.

I think Chantal and I were too surprised to be embarrassed. We stared for a moment and then I said that we hadn't known Catherine would be there, and yielded to my English instinct for apology. I knew that both my talent for stating the obvious and my impulse to apologize irritated Chantal but I couldn't help it at that moment; I thought that that accounted for her taciturnity during the tea that ensued. Catherine said nothing and went inside to dress but Eudoxie remained, the towel wrapped precariously around her. She was spirited and friendly and, as always when she laughed, I could not help noticing how her small white teeth filled her mouth. They were so even and so many that it was as if they had been manufactured and assembled rather than grown. They were not unattractive, rather the reverse; I always wanted to touch them. Anyway, Chantal thawed under Eudoxie's attention and when Eudoxie took her by the hand and said she wanted to show her the wallflowers in the garden she laughed and got to her feet with something like youthful alacrity.

Edward had not put down his paper. He had smiled greetings and had unconcernedly let the chatter happen around him, like so much froth and foam around a rock. When we were alone he said: 'Your girls with the cousins?'

I nodded and he resumed reading. It was a companionable silence after all the fuss. There seemed to be nothing to say.

'Drop of whisky?' he asked after a while.

I offered to fetch it from downstairs. As I passed his and Eudoxie's bedroom I caught sight of Catherine dressing. She was wearing white knickers and bra and was pulling on a green skirt. Our eyes met before she looked down to fasten the skirt at her waist. Her glance was as unembarrassed as it was uninterested and it was only then that she at last became, for me, no longer Chantal's little sister but a part of the great half-known world of womanhood. Of course, it was years since she had been anything else so far as Chantal was concerned but I did not appreciate that at the time.

I found the whisky and was about to go back upstairs with it when I was attracted into Edward's darkened study by a green glow. I am not a very perceptive person and perhaps for that reason I feel I have to take an interest in everything. I am, to use the old word, nosy, and cannot pass an open door without looking in. I had not expected to see Catherine in Edward's bedroom but could not resist a glance to see what was there. Nor could I resist his study. The curtains were still drawn and the glow came from a computer screen. This was the first I knew of Edward's transition. It was an Amstrad, not a very sophisticated one even by the standards of the day but more than adequate for all that a novelist was likely to need. On the desk beside it was Tyrrel's manuscript, which was still unknown to me. My attention was anyway drawn to the screen. Reproduced there was the malignant gibberish which I later knew to be that of the manuscript, but at the time I thought that either there was something wrong with the software or that Edward did not know what he was doing.

I had been there only a moment when Eudoxie appeared. She stood in the doorway with an expression of intense concentration, staring at the screen. Then she looked at me.

'What are you doing?' she asked.

'I haven't touched anything. I saw the light and wondered what it was.'

She came over and stood close enough for her bare shoulder to touch my arm. She took no interest in me but simply stared at the screen. I felt that if her towel had fallen about her feet she would not have moved.

'It doesn't seem to make any sense,' I said.

She switched it off. 'The others are upstairs.'

After we had left, Chantal didn't say anything about Catherine. I knew that Catherine knew Edward and Eudoxie, of course, because she sometimes visited with Chantal, but I had no idea she saw them alone. Eventually I mentioned it.

'She's always thrown herself at him,' said Chantal. 'Are they having an affair?'

'I've no idea.'

Her tone was offhand, as if the subject were familiar to us both.

We — or rather, Chantal — saw more of Eudoxie after that. They became friends. Eudoxie would come over to Antibes and they would go shopping, or they would lunch, and some afternoons Chantal would go over to Cap Ferrat. Now and again Eudoxie would just drop in for coffee, bringing something for the children, whom she charmed. I don't know whether Catherine continued to visit Cap Ferrat; she ceased to feature in anyone's conversation. Later I discovered that she was having an affair with one of my married colleagues from the lycйe. When I told Chantal she nodded, as if we were both familiar with that, too.

'Yes, it's time she put a stop to that. It's been going on since she was seventeen. He's far too old and he'll never leave his wife. I've told her, Eudoxie's told her, but she doesn't listen. She'll have to find out the hard way.'

'She's in love with him, then?'

'She thinks she is.'

I do not pretend to understand these matters but I was pleased that Chantal was seeing more of Eudoxie because it appeared to cheer her. She had become tense and taciturn, particularly with me, and for no reason that she would vouchsafe. She would make such remarks as, 'The trouble with you is you don't want anything,' but when I tried to find out what it was I was supposed to want she would become annoyed. Living with someone who appears to bear a permanent grudge is hard, especially when your ignorance of the cause is held against you, and failure to understand the other party is a charge against which there is no possibility of defence. Indeed, it is hard not to give way to resentment when you feel that you, too, may be misunderstood, or that your wife understands herself no better than she thinks you do. Physical relations between us virtually ceased.

Of course, I had no idea what misery she was living in and, suspecting that ours was not an uncommon marital condition, I put it down to the approach of early menopause; my suspicions were increased rather than lessened by her enraged denials. As for myself, it is not always easy to describe one's feelings for someone one lives with day in and day out for years. When two people are so interpenetrated it is difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. Though worried by her unhappiness, I was not in myself unhappy; I jogged along, which was part of what she seemed to have against me.

But when she started seeing more of Eudoxie she became brighter and recovered a good deal of her humour. I assumed that Eudoxie supplied feminine companionship in place of Catherine, and I was half right. The four of us — Edward, Eudoxie, Chantal and myself — became more of a foursome than we had been and met more often. It seemed a good arrangement.

The incident with the word processor remained present to my mind partly because of Edward's next book, which was publicized as being the first he had written — actually, 'composed' was the word used — electronically. This was the book that established him as a literary writer of truly international status, a highbrow bestseller. No one since Thomas Mann, I would guess, not even Tyrrel, had so combined sales with intellectual repute. Yet to me that book represented a falling-off. It rambled and, for all its ingenuity, left an impression of inconsequentiality. At first I put it down to the word processor, delighted to confirm — as I thought — a prejudice. It is my belief that people who compose on word processors are beguiled by the medium and write longer, looser, less concentrated works. Then I was puzzled, though not shaken in my belief, to discover that Edward had not used the word processor after all. I had made some remark about it, preparatory to tactful criticism, and he said, 'Oh, that. No, I couldn't get on with it. I sent it back.'