Girl at the Lion D'Or (23 page)

Roussel, who was unused to such greetings from his social superiors, looked nonplussed.

‘The work you’re doing on the Hartmann’s house, you remember –’

‘Oh God, don’t mention that, M. Mattlin. It’s turned out badly. I can’t complain. It was all my fault, I priced it badly and I –’

‘Never mind about that. Do you remember the lady who recommended you?’

‘What? No, no . . . I just didn’t know it was going to cost so much. And the boy’s been ill again, coughing, and soon there’ll be a penalty clause for running late, even though M. Hartmann says he won’t enforce it –’

‘Just try and remember where she lived, the lady who recommended you. Mme Hartmann’s cousin.’

Roussel looked blank. He said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

‘Her first name was Marie-Thérèse. I don’t remember the second. She lived near here.’

Roussel looked at him. ‘You mean Mme Collinet? Roof work, I think it was. Renewing fillets and flashings. Some painting and –’

‘Thank you,’ said Mattlin, shaking Roussel’s hand again. ‘Collinet. That should be enough.’

Anne came back into the bar as Mattlin left, to find Roussel staring anxiously into space.

A young man showed Hartmann and Antoine into the minister’s office. It was a wood-panelled room with glass-fronted bookcases and a large polished desk with a small library lamp that threw a yellow circle of light on to the leather-bound blotter and some single sheets of paper. The dim afternoon was visible through the window behind his head. Beyond the wind-whipped slick of river they could see across to the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde. After shaking hands, he gestured to them to sit down on a small sofa.

Antoine was firm. He was some years older than the minister and seemed to take a more detached, political view of their visit than did the minister himself who, though dignified, was agitated.

‘Hartmann is going to find out how far advanced they are with this story,’ Antoine said. ‘He will then try to see what legal expedients we can draw on to forestall publication. And, failing that, what personal pressure can be applied.’

The minister nodded. As he did so, the stiff white collar of his shirt dug into the folds of his neck. He had the pallid complexion of a man who has spent too much of his life indoors. Although he was not yet forty, his flesh seemed to have died on him. His eyes looked tired from too much reading, and although he could, had he lived differently, have been a handsome man, his untended body seemed to hang on him like a rebuke.

Hartmann was uncomfortable. He felt corseted in his formal clothes, and he was sitting rather too close to Antoine on the small sofa. He watched the lowered eyes of the minister as he prepared to explain himself.

‘It’s probably not worth worrying about,’ the minister began. ‘Probably just a lot of inventions which you can put a stop to with no difficulty.’

‘I think not, minister,’ said Antoine. ‘We’ve had a report on the information they have. I sent you a private memo, which I think you have.’

‘Ah yes.’ The minister fumbled through some papers on his desk. ‘This thing.’

‘Yes. The documentation seems quite conclusive.’

‘But so it does with Salengro. Can they prove it? That’s the point.’

‘With respect, minister, that is
not
the point.’

‘I know Salengro well and the only court martial he had was for refusing to work for the Germans when they captured him.’

‘The point is not whether they are right or wrong in your case, minister. The point is, will they print it?’

The minister said nothing. He turned his chair and looked out of the window. Antoine persisted. ‘I’m sure you’re aware that your party has few friends in the press and –’

‘Yes, I am aware of that.’

‘Perhaps M. Hartmann had better see the memo and then you can tell him what the position is.’

The minister walked round the desk and handed Hartmann a piece of paper without looking at him. Hartmann read the memo, which was written in bland, legal terms and looked up.

‘Well?’ said the minister.

‘How much of this is true?’

The minister shrugged – a huge movement that seemed to ripple down his whole body. ‘I will tell you. I will satisfy your legal curiosity, monsieur, and you can give advice from the safety of your respectable position.’ He walked over to the window again and looked out on to the river.

Hartmann felt uneasy at the minister’s attitude and was about to speak when he felt Antoine’s restraining hand on his arm.

‘I was in Corsica last summer,’ said the minister, ‘as the memo correctly states. I was on holiday, which it does not state. It was the first holiday I had had for seven years. I had rented a house near a beach where I intended to read and to prepare for what I thought would be our inevitable victory at the polls the following year. I was alone. One morning I had gone to swim. I don’t sleep well, and I had been up since six, reading. On my way back I heard the sound of voices. I don’t know why, but I retreated behind a tree. I saw three girls run through the wood at the edge of the beach and out on to the jetty. They stood there laughing, and then they jumped in and swam. They were all naked. I don’t know what age they were, so don’t ask me. They were physically on the border of development, half-grown. Is this salacious enough?’ The minister sat down at his desk, so that his face was hidden by the lamp.

‘I followed them, and discovered they came from a little summer school on the island – I don’t know what its function was. In town that day I saw a dozen of them out for a walk with their schoolmistress. Later I fell into conversation with her in a café. She was a very upright woman and was impressed that I had known people like Poincaré and Briand. She asked me to dinner at their school, which was a brokendown building not far away, at the north side of the island, hidden by trees. We were waited on by the girls at dinner. They caught my eye. One thing the papers will never tell, one thing you cannot explain, is how these girls are not innocent. They have power. One of the girls who waited on me – a girl with long fair hair – was one of those I had seen that morning. I knew what her body looked like beneath that little dress. It was almost like a woman’s body – almost. She knew it and I knew it, but the schoolmistress thought she was a child, and when she served at table she looked like it. All that night I lay awake thinking of it.’

The minister looked up, and his face, which seemed to have grown paler than before, became visible from behind the lamp. ‘They were there again the next morning, and I watched them. Afterwards, when they lay down to dry in the sun, you could see that some innocence was missing from their movements. I walked on to the beach and they screamed and ran away, but one of them, the same fair-haired girl from the previous evening, stood for a moment and stared at me.

‘The next day they came to my house after their swim and I gave them tea and lemonade. They were dressed, of course, but not properly. One of them sat on the rocking chair on the wooden balcony and she wore nothing under her little skirt. She rocked backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards . . . They did it on purpose. Day after day they came to see me. Just for half an hour, and then they would say they had to go back for fear of being found out. There were three of them. The girl in the rocking chair, the blonde one who had stood and stared at me, and a taller one who looked half gipsy, with Moorish blood perhaps. They knew I was alone. It was obvious. But they also sensed something else. They seemed to sense I was . . . unfulfilled. They knew more than their teacher. She was impressed because I came from Paris and because I knew famous men. She thought that must be all a human being needed. She had heard my name and thought I had a reputation, which I suppose I did. But the girls were unimpressed. They never said it, but they knew.

‘All my life I’ve been dedicated to politics and to improving our poor country and trying to keep the peace. The papers say I’m ambitious, and I suppose it’s true. But I’m ambitious for France as well as for myself. I’d never been able to get on with women. I’ve never had time, and I’ve never taken the trouble to find out the best ways of getting on with them – like noticing what clothes they wear. Even these little girls could sense there was this gap in me.

‘Day after day they tormented me. One day they wanted to explore the house. In an upstairs room they found a trunk full of old clothes and they wanted to try them on. They called me in to see what they looked like. The gipsy girl was dressed up, but the girl from the rocking chair was naked. Soon they were all changing, and sometimes they had clothes on and sometimes they didn’t. They made me join in. They were all laughing and it seemed quite innocent in its way. So I deluded myself. They ran around upstairs, in and out of all the empty bedrooms, shouting and laughing. The girl from the rocking chair took my arm and led me to a box-room. Then she took my hand, and placed it beneath her skirt. I made love to her. It was over quickly. I can’t tell you what it was like. What does it matter? They came back again the next day, and she must have told her friends, because they all wanted to do the same thing – though I didn’t. But I let them do things to me, and each time I felt my life and all my work slipping away. With each weakness I undid everything I’d laboured for, but the pleasure was so intense that it hardly seemed to matter. To them, it meant nothing at all. For the one I made love to it was not even the first time. When they left, they were laughing.’

The minister stood up. ‘There, gentlemen, you have it all. Disgusting, depraved. I’m sorry if I’ve made your stomachs turn. There are many more details I could give you – extenuating circumstances, provocation, but I don’t think they’re relevant.’

There was a silence in the room. Then Hartmann said, ‘How did the story get out?’

‘I don’t know. One of the girls did tell her mother but they were both given money by an intermediary. They were perfectly happy with it. Certainly neither of them had any idea who I was. The mother, who was illiterate and doesn’t know the law, just thought the girl had been rather clever.’

‘And how did the reporter find out?’

‘I don’t know. But he’s got no proof. I’m sure of that.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘The girls didn’t know who I am. They were never introduced. I told them I was a writer and they believed me. It accounted for all the books and papers I had. I said I was writing a history of the island. They called me “the Professor”.’

Hartmann shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look very good to me, I’m afraid.’

‘What are you going to do?’ said the minister.

‘Speak to the editor. Find out exactly what they know, and see what pressure I can bring to bear. I suppose.’

‘You don’t seem very certain.’

‘I’m not. I’ll speak to Antoine, and he’ll let you know.’

‘There’s nothing else you need to know?’

‘Not at the moment. Well, one thing. Not a legal point, just a matter of curiosity.’ He paused. ‘Wasn’t there a moment when you could have stopped it happening?’

‘I don’t think I knew it
was
happening until it was already too late,’ said the minister. ‘There was no moment of decision, just a series of lost opportunities, moments when I could have resisted. I didn’t see it as a deed, an action, until it was too late.’

It had grown dark by the time Hartmannn and Antoine parted on the Quai Voltaire.

‘You look upset, Charles. It wasn’t an edifying story, was it?’

‘It’s not that, Antoine. It wasn’t pretty, but worse things have happened. I know what he means about those young girls, too. They’re not so innocent, and sometimes they don’t feel things at that age. Their emotions are not engaged, and so in a way it matters less.’

‘I wouldn’t mind betting that my minister has suffered a good deal more anguish than the girls.’

‘Probably,’ said Hartmann. ‘But there are things that people do as thoughtlessly as that which matter terribly, where the feeling goes on and on.’

‘Like what?’ said Antoine.

‘I don’t want to keep you in the cold.’

‘It’s all right. I’ve nothing left to do today.’

‘Walk along with me. I’ll buy you a grog or some coffee.’ He took his friend’s arm and steered him into the rue du Bac.

‘Do you remember once you took me to a concert? Beethoven, it was.’

‘I was always taking you to Beethoven.’

‘Yes, this was a particular one, though. It was a quartet, though I don’t remember what it was called, or what number it was.’

They went into a café and Hartmann ordered drinks. ‘When I heard it with you that night I was so moved by it I cried.’

‘Had that never happened to you before with music?’

‘Of course. You know I’m not an expert like you, but I’ve been moved by it. Only this was different. There was a feeling in the music greater than any emotion I had ever experienced, or even imagined. It was frightening. It wasn’t the sadness or the triumph of a symphony, or the exhilaration of something classical, it was colder and far greater.’

Antoine stirred his grog. ‘I’m glad I educated you just a little in all your years here.’

‘But you didn’t. That’s the point. I went back four times to hear that piece of music. And I couldn’t bear it. I listened to it again and again, because I was trying to get on top of it, to comprehend it, but I couldn’t. The power of the feeling in it was too great.’

‘You sound surprised.’

‘I
was
surprised. Until that time I’d thought that every feeling could be taken on and understood. I thought it was all a challenge – that any emotion could be assimilated if you tried hard enough. This was the first time I realised my mind was just not large enough to comprehend properly what some other people have felt.’

‘What has this to do with our minister?’

‘Not a great deal, I suppose,’ said Hartmann, looking out through the steamed windows of the café. ‘I think the connection is this – that I understand the temptation. When he said it seemed innocent when the girls were running around upstairs, I could feel your scepticism. But in a way he may have been right. There is a contradiction. How can such a powerful impulse, such a propulsion as he felt to perform a natural act, how can it be thought of as anything but innocent? When I was younger I would have been quite sure that there exists a ground of argument somewhere on which one can explain such things, and I would have been quite sure that I would eventually find it and so explain them to myself. Now when I think of the sublime but frightening feeling of that piece of music and what you might call the base but equally frightening feeling of the temptation your minister underwent, I can see no way in which to explain them. I can see no way in which they can be brought within my experience and reason, and I have to admit this. And so, instead of taking on every challenge and finding a way to assimilate it, you have to shy away, and say, “This is too disturbing. This is dangerous”.’