Loving Amélie (24 page)

“Will you say anything?” she asked,
her head bent, as though in shame.

He parted his lips to speak:
she was doll-like in the light of the bedside lamps, her collar and hip bones a
little more prominent than he remembered; her nipples dark and fiercely erect,
and brought into beautiful artistic symmetry by the triangle of hair at her
thighs. He crawled forward to examine her more closely, curious in spite of
himself. He slid his fingers along the scar on her abdomen: a neat pink zip
above her pubic hairline.

“Is it terrible, and scary?” she
asked.

“It’s what we did to you,” he
replied, with a nod to the baby’s cot. “The two of us. We don’t love you any
less for it.”

“I don’t hate it.” She knelt up
onto the counterpane, her legs apart, and spread her hands around the mark. He
felt a surge of lust. “I think my mother thought it was the worst part for me,
but it wasn’t. At all.”

“I love you. So much,” he said.
He leaned to kiss her breasts and take her nipple into his mouth. She held his
head in her hands.

“Let me love you a little,” she
said meekly. “But I am not ready for everything.”

                                                           
*

The baby slept soundly until
morning; and her parents watched her still sleeping with pride, and the
gratitude of those who had enjoyed a full night’s rest.

Chris woke with his nose in
Amélie’s hair, her smooth, firm body encircled by his own, like one small
teacup cradled inside another. He was intensely happy. His first sensation was
complete physical comfort; his first thought, oddly, was his brother Peter.

He phoned him from the hotel
landline:

“Are you OK? Did Linda get back
safe and sound?”

“Of course,” Peter replied,
abruptly. “Make sure
you
do. Give Papa Bénoit hell. Got to go.”

Claude Auguste Bénoit arrived
punctually, for coffee and croissants that Paul’s staff had laid out on the patio
table, beyond the tall French windows of the breakfast room.

Amélie had not seen her father
for over a year.

He had a tall and broadly
imposing physique, not unlike his brother Pierre; but was decidedly less
handsome. The flesh of his cheeks descended into his neck without definition,
and were speckled red under his suntan, as though the long evenings of brandy
and cigars had made their mark. He was denied his younger brother’s sharp
hairline, too, as Claude’s was receding; and a thin quiff sat on top of his
crown like a mass of dark spun sugar.

He wore a crisp, perfectly
laundered pink striped shirt and cufflinks: no doubt laid out by a solicitous
Adrienne that morning, determined that her husband should not turn up in a suit
and tie.

The men shook hands and
exchanged pleasantries, as Chris and Amé had agreed they should; and then she
joined them, with his granddaughter.

“Ah,
ma petite,
” he said, raising the baby
into the air and nestling her close to his chest. He put his free arm around
his daughter. “You are thin; why are you thin?”

He didn’t seem to expect or
want a reply.

“I do not mean to be thin,”
said his daughter, pouring the coffee. “I won’t
stay
thin.”

“I am pleased with baby Amélie:
I like that you have given her your name,” her father continued, remarkably at
ease with the child on his knee. “I wanted it for your sister; but your mother
had her choice.”

“Good,” said Amé. “It should be
the mother’s choice!”

The men shared glances of good
humour, each grateful to be afforded some common ground.

“Chris, my daughter was rude
never to introduce us earlier. You are a good man; a good businessman. And a
good father,”

Chris felt his life had been
assessed and summarised – not altogether accurately – in one brief
statement. Amélie listened without emotion, tending to her child like she might
have tended to her doll years before, while her father spoke. Whether it was
his patient family, or a jury, his process was no doubt similar; and
successful.

He touched the arm of an
attendant waitress with a brief instruction; and she returned with three small
glass tumblers of pastis and a jug of water.

“I don’t want any,” said Amé
simply: her words hanging like a general criticism as her father prepared his
little cocktail and pervaded the breakfast air with a strong scent of aniseed.

“How are Angé and the boys?”
she asked him.

“She asks after you,” said her
father. “The boys are in school; doing very very well.”

“Of course,” said his daughter.
“They will be handsome little law men in no time. I can see them with their
matching suits and haircuts!”

She directed this to Chris,
with a smile; who felt uncomfortable.

“Ah, perhaps,” said her father.
He stirred his coffee and struck the edge of his cup with the spoon, like an
admonishment. “I am sure they will be whatever they want to be.”

Amélie made a little snorting
sound, but said no more.

“She hopes to be invited to
meet her niece very soon,” Claude continued. “I am sure you will soon be back
to normal. When do you return to work?”

“I am not expected back until
next year, Papa; you must know that.”

“I don’t know everything,” he
replied, in a conciliatory tone, but, nonetheless, sounding as if he expected
the company to find this surprising. “I am sure you can make arrangements to go
back whenever you please.”

“You mean
you
can…”

“Don’t be argumentative with
me, Amélie,” she was like a child on the doorstep struggling with her laces;
and he the father who was starting to lose patience with her. “I think it may
be very good for you to have your work to focus on.”

“And what about the baby?”

“You can get care for the baby,
he said. He cast Chris a swift, inclusive glance. “You can find yourselves a
nanny and both get back to work. Voila.”

“Just like that?” said Amélie.
Her lips twitched with a sad, sarcastic smile.

“I would like to know why you
cannot consider it,” said her father, after a reviving sip of pastis. “Sitting
around at home isn’t going to help you. What do you think, Chris? Perhaps you
have a sister who has had children; what does
she
do?”

“I don’t,” said Chris, a little
alarmed at the sudden entry of his own voice into the conversation. The thought
of the sister that he had never met flashed through his brain like a hot,
insane incentive to dislike this man even more than he did already. “I have a
brother: but he has no children.”

A breeze passed them by,
lifting the corners of their linen tablecloth and rustling the leaves of Paul
Bénard’s trees, standing in their midst in tall, serene splendour.

“Are you still painting?”

It occurred to Chris that this
might have been an attempt at a kind question, rather than a veiled criticism.
Amélie was similarly unsure: she hung her head for a few moments and said:

“Yes, of course. I have done
some drawings of Amélie: I sent one back with
maman.
”

“I shall look forward to seeing
it,” he replied. She looked at Chris; her eyes were weary, plangent:

“I have one for Jean and Roy,
too.”

He was touched that, even
during her more difficult moments, she had been continuing with her art; and
that she had thought of his parents when sketching their daughter. It was a
difficult irony for him, however, that he knew Jean and Roy would evaluate the
sketch with the kind of bland praise they had extended to both him and Peter
when they came home from school with anything artistic: they would, no doubt,
prefer “a nice photograph”.

Despite this, he felt that if
he were sitting opposite Roy now instead of Claude Bénoit, he would be in the
company of a better man: humble, honest and disinclined to ever make a
judgement against another soul. He would not even register that Amélie’s father
was a man of conceit: simply that he was a man wearing, of all things, a pink
shirt.

Paul Bénard appeared, to offer
fresh coffee.

“I have been here before,” said
Bénoit to him, all at once, like an accusation.

“
Bien sur
,” replied the hotelier, gaily.
“It is an experience you don’t forget.” He winked at Amélie; and was gone
again, with his clinking tray.

“Will you be staying?” Amélie
asked her father, fairly certain of his likely response; and without enthusiasm
or encouragement. The thought of enduring his company for much longer was
making her wilt like an unwatered plant.

“No. But I am happy to see you.
Both,” he nodded to Chris. “It remains my intention to help you out
financially; and your Uncle Pierre has instructions in London. All you have to
do is get in touch.”

“About that,” said Chris,
fearing her father was about to leave imminently. “I’m not sure it’s the right
thing to do.”

“You’re not?”

“I think it’s Amélie’s money;
not mine…”

“It’s
my
money, not Amélie’s,” the Frenchman
replied, quickly, his nostrils flaring like his brother’s.

Chris was ill at ease: he felt
he was in no position to argue with this man, Amé’s father. She watched them
dispassionately; and bent to pick up her baby who was making humming, gnashing
music with her gums.

“I can split it in two, if you
prefer,” said Claude, with a shrug. He stood up and reached down to shake
Chris’s hand; and Paul Bénard was suddenly back at the table.

“I am perplexed,” said Claude,
wiping his mouth with a napkin and dropping it onto the table.

“I am sorry,” said Bénard. “Was
the coffee not to your liking? We grind the beans ourselves.”

“
Non, non
,
monsieur
, the coffee was just fine.”
Amélie’s father surveyed the beautiful garden; the lake dappled with generous
splashes of sunlight.

“
Regardez! L’héron!”
said Amé suddenly,
as she spied the elegant bird take flight from the wooden jetty on the water.
The little group watched in various states of interest and awe: Chris amused by
Claude’s blatant incredulity that he must once have stayed at this lowly
establishment.

“Has this always been a hotel?
It was never a doctor’s surgery?”

“Never a doctor’s surgery,”
said Bénard, brightly. He touched the older man’s shirt sleeve. “Let me walk
you around the lake, Monsieur Bénoit. You will then no doubt remember the
charms of the Hotel Bénard.”

“He is insufferable,” said
Amélie, resting her chin on her hand; as her father began a promenade around
the lake, steered by the arm of Paul Bénard.

“He is quite something,” said Chris;
and he reached under the table and grasped her knee.

They watched as the loquacious
hotelier continued to enlighten his guest out of their earshot, and Claude
Bénoit’s footsteps almost tripped to a standstill at the memory of his last
visit. He turned and marched briskly off the premises.

Chapter Twenty Six

“I think perhaps my father is
right,” said Amélie, later that day.

They had taken a bateau-mouche
on the Seine: wearing headsets that she had insisted gave instruction in French
so she could test his comprehension when the tour was over. He had given in:
glad of her sense of fun.

“Oh dear. What about?”

“About me. I have allowed
myself to fail.”

“I won’t listen to that sort of
nonsense,” said Chris, curtly. “He is a bully who is used to getting his own
way.”

They had eaten a late lunch;
and were happily ensconced on Paul Bénard’s patio again that evening, with
blankets round their shoulders, sharing a plate of cheeses. The baby slept
soundly in their room.

“But he is a strong person. I
have been weak: I have hurt you, and my family; and my child.”

She spoke with clarity, not
self-pity; but he felt it was intolerable:

“
You
have been hurting, Amé, yourself. I
can see that; and I’m sure Adrienne sees that, too. As for the baby, she has
not suffered at all: everyone can see she is thriving.”

Amé considered this with a sigh
that made her small breast heave.

“Not to mention
your
family…”

He took her face in his hands
and saw her eyes were glassy with tears.

“
Mon Dieu,
” she said. “What are we to
do?”

“I have been thinking,” he
said, now securing her hands tightly in his. “I need to stop fighting him, in
my head.”

“Who, my father?”

“Yes. I have all this righteous
rage about his money,” he said. “But what’s money for, if not to make people
happy. Let’s get happy.”

She gave him a quizzical grin:
the sort that made him fizz inside: