Jo Baker - A Country Road, a Tree

“If you would settle your bill in the morning, sir, and then vacate the premises.”

He doesn’t move.

The boy gives a little bow, and then turns abruptly and marches a few steps down the corridor, to the next room along.

He closes the door. He can hear the boy, the conversation he’s now having with the other guests, which follows much the same pattern as their own. The rumble of the man’s voice, the higher pitch of the boy’s. His lines sound surer now; by the end of the day he might even have convinced himself.

Suzanne says, “What shall we do?”

He says nothing. He still faces the door, his head bent. His hands in his pocket, he runs the coins through his fingers and his mouth twists.

“But what shall we do?” Suzanne asks. “Where shall we go?”

He still stands there, his gaze on the wood panels and brass fittings. If he could just stop. Give up. Have done with it all.

Suzanne lets go a long slow breath. He hears the springs creak as she heaves herself to her feet. “I’d better pack.” But then she doesn’t move any further; after all, there’s hardly any packing to be done.

He turns back to the room. He fishes up his boots and sits to drag them on.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

“Have to sort something out,” he says. “I’ll be back soon.”

—

It’s the act of a child, he knows it is; he’s reaching up to tug a sleeve, to slip a sticky little hand into his father’s hand.

Joyce, gaunt, his dark glasses on, rests his paws on the head of his cane, and turns to stare blankly for a waiter, and seems more in need of help than able to provide it. The Joyces, just like everybody else currently lodged in the hotels of Vichy, must move on. They must go back to the village, to village life, however unwelcome that must be. They do, though, have somewhere to go, and that is something.

“Get the boy’s attention, would you?”

When the waiter comes over, Joyce orders a pichet of the local white, and taps his fingers till it arrives. When it does he takes a mouthful, winces, then takes another sip.

“The old stomach trouble,” he says.

“You have had another attack?”

He tilts his head. “More a war of attrition. I find that white wine helps. That and Pernod; both are good.”

“Ah.”

“It’s my nerves,” he says. “It’s just a nervous disorder. I’ve had several doctors agree on that.”

He murmurs sympathy, but can only think how much he doesn’t want to ask what he has to ask.

“Well, it seems that we’re to be off,” Joyce says. “And in short order. So that’s that. No wonder my nerves are playing merry hell, faced with a return to that backwater.”

To the village where the dogs are not on leashes and they bark at the strange old blind man fumbling his way down the street, muttering to himself because there is nobody to talk to and throwing stones.

He wants to offer rather than ask. He wants to say, I’ll help you. I’ll come with you to Saint-Thingummy-Bob and spend the days correcting the whole of the Wake again for you. I’ll read out every comma, dash and full stop and you can sit and consider each and every one of them for days, and drink white wine, and think, and change your mind, and change it back again, and there will be time enough and more for all of it; that would be a life well spent, filling your glass, playing the piano or listening to you play and sing; throwing stones at dogs on your behalf.

“Then I suppose we shall try for Switzerland,” Joyce says.

“Ah, yes.”

Then the words come falling out of the old thin lips: “I think that’s the only choice that we have left now, because Switzerland was kind to us before, in the last war. Lucia could come to us there, the best treatment she could hope for is in Switzerland. And Giorgio would be out of the way of conscription. And whatever he is up to in Paris.”

“Good,” he says.

The old man drinks. His Adam’s apple rolls down and up, rearranging the soft folds of his throat.

“I hope you won’t mind me asking…,” he tries now.

The black glasses are shiny; they kick off light. He is being considered, head tilted. Peered at in peripheral vision.

“We are…,” he says, and clears his throat. The words are burrs, difficult to shift. “We find ourselves in some difficulty. It transpires my cheques are not acceptable here, and we are running very low on cash.”

“I don’t have any money,” Joyce says.

He swallows. “No, of course.”

“I have my family to think of, you know. Expenses.”

“I understand.”

He just wants this to be over. The embarrassment is acute. He’ll feel it for ever.

“Getting all of us to Switzerland will leave me overstretched.”

“Oh yes, indeed. Well, we shall manage…” Though he has no idea how. He scoops up his cigarettes, straightens his jacket, his face hot. What will he say to Suzanne?

Joyce turns his head, birdlike. “You’ll wear it out,” he says.

“What?”

“Love.”

“Love?”

“What’s left at the end, it’s threadbare, you can see right through it.”

The older man lifts his glass again, and his throat spasms as he drinks. He, though, leans away from the table and the glasses. He watches, suddenly clear, wondering how it happened. That the old man should be so diminished. That his gaze should have become so narrow. His skin comes out in gooseflesh as old Shem talks on, about the seat of love and where it lies, rather lower than the heart, and the failure of it always in the end, how it leaves him in disgust even to hear talk of it.

Shem is not what he was; he is not what he achieved. How could he be?

“Well,” he says eventually, “I had better go.”

“Eh?” Joyce raises his head. “Yes. I suppose so. So many departures, after all.”

He reaches into his pocket for coins that he can’t afford to part with. He feels light and empty and one step away from himself, almost elated. This sense of loss, the openness that is offered by it. He has not even been abandoned; he was never held that dear. The world is different and brilliant and empty.

Joyce drains his drink, and then sets his glass down and nods quietly, agreeing with his own thoughts.

He counts out his weightless coins.

“D’you know Larbaud?” Joyce says, out of nowhere.

He blinks. “Valéry Larbaud, the writer?”

“Yes, yes.”

“I know the work,” he says, nonplussed.

“Get the boy’s attention, would you? We must have another pichet. ”

“Oh, I’m not, no.”

“Nonsense, I insist.”

So he turns in his seat, catches an eye and gestures for more wine, while Joyce talks on.

“Larbaud’s an old friend of mine; he lives round here. You should go and see him. He might be able to help you out.”

“Do you think?”

A nod. “Larbaud is on the side of the angels. And he’s rich. Which is only sensible, if you must be a writer.”

A hand-me-down coat, a favour done by proxy. He drains his glass, and humiliation rinses through him, and it is cleansing.

“Yes, good,” Joyce says. “I’m glad I could be of help.”

—

Madame Larbaud greets him at the door; she is courteous, with a quietness about her that doesn’t invite conversation. This is welcome.

The house is dim and cool and lovely. She leads him through the lobby and the scent of lilacs and the sound of trickling water — in Vichy there is always water — and it is as much as he can do to put one foot in front of the other.

He carries a letter of introduction in his breast pocket, addressed in Joyce’s own hand. It lies there like a plaque over his heart. He doesn’t know what the letter says and he doesn’t want to know. The experience is mortifying enough already.