Jo Baker - A Country Road, a Tree

“A gorgonzola sandwich,” he says.

She nods keenly, as though this is a particularly insightful observation. After a moment, she says, “We are in real trouble now, you realize.”

“But what else could I do?”

She parts her lips, is going to speak, because there are a few valid responses to this. But then he starts to cough. And doesn’t stop. He heaves himself up, away from her, his legs swung over the side of the bed, and he is curled over like a C, his backbone a line of knuckles, his belly hollow and his chest heaving. His scar slides and strains over his ribs; it’s livid against his white skin. Suzanne fumbles him a handkerchief and shifts round next to him, her hand on his back. He clutches the handkerchief to his lips. Gradually the fit subsides and he manages a shaking breath. He wipes his eyes.

“Sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“I just need a cigarette.”

She rubs his back. “I know.” They don’t have any cigarettes. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Have we got any tea?”

“I think we’ve got a little left.”

“Thank you.”

“Rest.”

He eases himself back down as she gets up off the bed. She pads her way down to the tiny kitchen, and lifts tins from the cupboard, and puts the water on to heat. He lies and looks up at the ceiling, his breath raw.

The way it nails one to one’s body, this dearth. A battle to think about anything at all beyond the discomforts of the flesh, a battle to do anything more than attempt to deal with its demands. Which is, presumably, intentional. A canny weapon, hunger, the way it turns one in on oneself.

“It’ll get better,” Suzanne says. She hands him a cup of pale and milkless liquid. He shifts up on his pillows to take it from her.

“Shamrock tea,” he says.

“How’s that?”

“It’s got three leaves in it.”

She smiles.

“What you’re doing,” she says. “For the Léons. I am proud of you.”

He looks up at her. She strokes his shoulder, her hand cold over gooseflesh, her expression grave.

“But remember, you, yourself, you matter too.”

—

The plane leaves are starting to turn and so are the maples, and a leaf drifts down, because nobody has told the trees that the world has ended. The children’s Monday-afternoon voices twine into a thread as they walk in their shabby trails from school, ink-stained and bedraggled, their satchels swinging in the low September sun, because whatever children are used to is how things ought to be. Today, with its golden sun and its crisp air, brings thoughts of beginnings, of pencil shavings and new leather and ink on a fresh page, and this is cruel, because even if you could manage somehow not to notice, if you could skim over the posters and assure yourself they only advertise nightclubs and radio sets and soap, if you took off your glasses so that the boarded shop-fronts were just a blur, and the outrages daubed there were rendered soft and indistinct, and if you could step through the empty spaces in the street where there should be actual people, and do it without shivering, then all might seem almost to be well, and fresh, and hopeful. But the tumour’s already threaded into the flesh. It taints the blood, it poisons everything.

He taps lightly on the Pérons’ door.

“Alfy. Good afternoon.”

“What’s wrong?”

Where to start. He jerks his head. “Come for a drink?”

Alfy glances back into the apartment, calls out to his wife, “Back in a few instants, chérie, ” and a reply is heard, though the words are indistinct. Alfy grabs a jacket and ushers him out.

They walk briskly; they talk about the new academic year and some of the boys Alfy’s teaching, because of course Mathematics and French and Philosophy still go on, just as the leaves turn and fall and the earth spins round the sun. There are, of course, changes to the curriculum. Books are disappearing from the library. At the corner café they sit on the terrace. They lean in, heads together. The sun catches in their beer; it glows golden, cloudy.

“Do you know about Paul?”

Alfy glances round the nearby tables. An old lady in hat and fur coat on such a day is sipping crème de menthe, a small dog at her feet.

“Yes,” Alfy says. “I heard.”

“The idea of him. That civil, decent man. The very idea.”

“I know.”

“I wanted to find out. What I can do.”

“For Paul?” Alfy says. “Maybe an appeal, if he is unwell…Perhaps his wife…”

He sips. He places the glass back on the table. He resists the compulsion to down the beer in one go. The urge is for calories, not alcohol. His hand shakes with it.

He says, “Actually, I wondered what I can do at all. I thought you might be able to help me.”

Alfy lifts his glass, drinks, and sets the beer back down again. When he speaks next it is in a dimmer tone. “Why would you think that I would know?”

A bead of water runs through the condensation on his glass like a ladder in a stocking. “I had rather gathered…I was under the impression that you…” He wafts away the ineffectual words. “I’m just sitting on my hands here. Tell me how I can help.”

Alfy looks off along the street, then down at his glass.

“There’s someone you need to meet.”

Alfy waves to a waiter, gets out his wallet. “These are on me.”

He teases out a five-hundred-franc note and tucks it into the bill. His fingertips linger longer than necessary; he taps twice, drawing attention to the banknote and the red ink printed on it. Somebody has typed three words on to the note. They are clear and unequivocal, and as the note circulates the words will pass from hand to hand, day after day, for weeks and months to come. Reminding, reiterating, asserting, saying what simply must be said and yet cannot. The words are VIVE LA FRANCE.

He looks up, eyes widening. Alfy’s expression is more than usually innocent; he wears that disarming half-smile of his.

“Petty vandals.” He shrugs. “What can one do? One has to pass it on; one can’t simply throw five hundred francs away.”

A woman gazes at them with large catlike eyes, blinks. He nods at her, rifling for her name, for where he knows her from. That stocky fellow with a moustache: he’s also familiar. And that tall queenly woman. Germaine, he thinks, Hélène and Legrand. In fact, glancing round the knots of people as he moves through the lobby and the reception rooms of Mary’s house, he begins to suspect that he knows everybody here, more or less. All are friends, or friends of friends, have been nodded to in galleries and at concerts and at gatherings like this down the years. He hasn’t seen so many acquaintances in one place since before the Exode. If it were not for the making-do worn-shiny clothes, the gaunt faces, he could almost believe that this was a different September, an earlier light.

The drawing room is murmurous; there is music playing on the gramophone: Beethoven, glorious Beethoven, captured in time and preserved in lines and grooves on black shellac, only to have nonsense talked over him. The shutters are open on the garden side of the house; they allow the low evening light in along with the cool air and the moths, which flutter softly through the room and paste themselves to walls and kill themselves in candle flames.

“Why are you frowning?” Suzanne asks.

“I’m not frowning.”

“Stop it, though.”

He sucks his teeth.

Mary comes over to them, kisses first Suzanne then him, a waft of scent and her cheek near his cheek. He watches as, with her curious grace, she pours them drinks. Her hair is falling a little longer now, less sharply cut. The crystal decanter catches the light and kicks it off around the room. He knows now, more or less, what had been left unsaid the last time they met. That she was, already, actively engaged in this.