William Trevor - Cheating at Canasta

Still without communicating, the man who has come from the kitchen turns and goes away, leaving Wilby with the impression that he has been mistaken for someone else. He pours himself more wine and reads again. Wilby reads a lot, and drinks a lot.

He is a spare, sharp-faced man in his forties, clean-shaven, in a grey suit, with a striped blue-and-red tie almost but not quite striking a stylish note. He visits Paris once in a while to make the rounds of salerooms specializing in rare postage stamps, usually spinning out his time when he is there, since he can afford to. Three years ago he inherited his family’s wine business in County Westmeath, which he sold eighteen months later, planning to live on the proceeds while he indulged his interest in philately. He occupies, alone now, the house he inherited at that time also, creeper-clad, just outside the Westmeath town where he was born. Marriage failed him there, or he it, and he doubts that he will make another attemptin that direction.

His food is brought to him by a small, old waiter, a more presentable figure than the man who came and went. He is attentive, addressing Wilby in conventional waiter’s terms and supplying, when they are asked for, salt and pepper from another table. ‘ Voilaà, monsieur ,’ he murmurs, his tone apologetic.

Wilby eats his fish, wondering what fish it is. He knew when he ordered it but has since forgotten, and the taste doesn’t tell him much. The bread is the best part of his meal and he catches the waiter’s attention to ask for more. His book is a paperback he has read before, The Hand of Ethelberta .

He reads another page, orders more wine, finishes the pommes frites but not the fish. He likes quiet places, and doesn’t hurry. He orders coffee and—though not intending to—a calvados. He drinks too much, he tells himself, and restrains the inclination to have another when the coffee comes. He reads again, indulging the pleasure of being in Paris, in a brasserie where Muzak isn’t playing, at a small corner table, engrossed in a story that’s familiar yet has receded sufficiently to be blurred in places, like something good remembered. He never minds it when the food isn’t up to much; wine matters more, and peace. He’ll walk back to the Hôtel Merneuil; with luck he’ll be successful in the salerooms tomorrow.

He gestures for his bill, and pays. The old waiter has his overcoat ready for him at the door, and Wilby tips him a little for that. Outside, being late November, the night is chilly.

The man who came to look at him is there on the street, dressed as he was then. He stands still, not speaking. He might have come outside to have a cigarette, as waiters sometimes do. But there is no cigarette.

‘ Bonsoir ,’ Wilby says.

‘ Bonsoir .’

Saying that, quite suddenly the man is someone else. A resemblance flickers: the smooth black hair, the head like the rounded end of a bullet, the fringe that is not as once it was but is still a fringe, the dark eyes. There is a way of standing, without unease or agitation and yet awkward, hands lank, open.

‘What is all this?’ Even as he puts the question, Wilby’s choice of words sounds absurd to him. ‘Anthony?’ he says.

There is a movement, a hand’s half gesture, meaningless, hardly a response. Then the man turns away, entering the brasserie by another door.

‘Anthony,’ Wilby mutters again, but only to himself.

People have said that Anthony is dead.

The streets are emptier than they were, the bustle of the pavements gone. Obedient to pedestrian lights at rue de Babylone where there is fast-moving traffic again, Wilby waits with a woman in a pale waterproof coat, her legs slim beneath it, blonde hair brushed up. Not wanting to think about Anthony, he wonders if she’s a tart, since she has that look, and for a moment sees her pale coat thrown down in some small room, the glow of an electric fire, money placed on a dressing-table: now and again when he travels he has a woman. But this one doesn’t glance at him, and the red light changes to green.

It couldn’t possibly have been Anthony, of course it couldn’t. Even assuming that Anthony is alive, why would he be employed as a kitchen worker in Paris? ‘Yes, I’m afraid we fear the worst,’ his father said on the telephone, years ago now. ‘He sent a few belongings here, but that’s a good while back. A note to you, unfinished, was caught up in the pages of a book. Nothing in it, really. Your name, no more.’

In rue du Bac there is a window Wilby likes, with prints of the Revolution. The display has hardly changed since he was here last: the death of Marie Antoinette, the Girondists on their way to the guillotine, the storming of the Bastille, Danton’s death, Robespierre triumphant, Robespierre fallen from grace. Details aren’t easy to make out in the dim street-light. Prints he hasn’t seen before are indistinguishable at the back.

At a bar he has another calvados. He said himself when people asked him—a few had once—that he, too, imagined Anthony was dead. A disappearance so prolonged, with no reports of even a glimpse as the years advanced, did appear to confirm a conclusion that became less tentative, and in the end wasn’t tentative at all.

In rue Montalembert a couple ask for directions to the Métro. Wilby points it out, walking back a little way with them to do so, as grateful for this interruption as he was when the woman at the traffic crossing caught his interest.

‘ Bonne nuit, monsieur .’ In the hall of the Hôtel Merneuil the night porter holds open the lift doors. He closes them and the lift begins its smooth ascent. ‘The will to go on can fall away, you know,’ Anthony’s father said on the telephone again, in touch to find out if there was anything to report.

Monsieur Jothy shakes his head over the pay packet that hasn’t been picked up. It’s on the windowsill above the sinks, where others have been ignored too. He writes a message on it and props it against an empty bottle.

At this late hour Monsieur Jothy has the kitchen to himself, a time for assessing what needs to be ordered, for satisfying himself that, in general, the kitchen is managing. He picks up Jean-André’s note of what he particularly requires for tomorrow, and checks the shelves where the cleaning materials are kept. He has recently become suspicious of Jean-André, suspecting short-cuts.

His risotto, once an attraction on the menu, is scarcely ever ordered now; and with reason in Monsieur Jothy’s opinion, since it has lost the intensity of flavour that made it popular, and is often dry. But the kitchen at least is clean, and Monsieur Jothy, examining cutlery and plates, fails to find food clinging anywhere, or a rim left on a cup. Once he employed two dish-washers at the sinks, but now one does it on his own, and half the time forgets his wages. Anxious to keep him, Monsieur Jothy has wondered about finding somewhere for him to sleep on the premises instead of having the long journey to and from his room. But there isn’t even a corner of a pantry, and when he asked in the neighbourhood about accommodation near rue Piques he was also unsuccessful.

The dishcloths, washed and rinsed, are draped on the radiators and will be dry by the morning, the soup bowls are stacked; the glasses, in their rows, gleam on the side table. ‘ Très bon, très bon ,’ Monsieur Jothy murmurs before he turns the lights out and locks up.

Wilby does not sleep and cannot read, although he tries to.

‘A marvel, isn’t it?’ Miss Davally said, the memory vivid, as if she’d said it yesterday. You wouldn’t think apricots would so easily ripen in such a climate. Even on a wall lined with brick you wouldn’t think it. She pointed at the branches sprawled out along their wires, and you could see the fruit in little clusters. ‘Delphiniums,’ she said, pointing again, and one after another named the flowers they passed on their way through the garden. ‘And this is Anthony,’ she said in the house.