The Mahé Circle (8 page)

‘What's for supper?'

Bottles of wine already started and labelled stood on the tablecloths, alongside the mineral water and an occasional pillbox or some other medicinal product.

The storm hadn't broken yet. Leaving her son and daughter with Mariette, already sitting at table, the doctor's wife came to the front door, standing aside to let Madame Harmoniaux go past.

‘I beg your pardon, madame.'

‘It's time for …'

‘It's my husband, he's late.'

And once outside:

‘François, come and have your dinner. It's not worth waiting for Alfred. He eats much faster than the children.'

Just at that moment, the storm broke out overhead, large drops of rain at last splashed on to the thick greenery and fell softly, puncturing the off-white floury dust of the road.

One could sense heads going up, and deep breaths being sighed:

‘At last!'

They had been waiting for this storm for a fortnight. All day, every day, the sky had been as heavy and leaden as skies in Africa, the dazzle from the sea hurt your eyes and gave you a headache after a while. As evening came, great violet clouds
piled up in the purpling sky. They swelled almost directly above the island, like tumours ready to burst. Whenever a slight breath of wind stirred the leaves and imperceptibly ruffled the burning hot dust on the ground, people had the same little thrill of emotion. Thunder rumbled in the
distance, but then, for two weeks on end, they had had the disappointment of seeing the rain pour down on the mainland, almost always at exactly the same point on the Maures mountain range that loomed on their horizon. From the jetty, or any other spot, people stood and watched grey veils of
rain falling in the distance, like a hosepipe's contents multiplied millions of times in size, before trudging heavily back to take their places at table, as charged with electricity as the cats and the insects.

But this time, the rain really had come. The Mahé family
had a table near the window, since it wasn't their first or their second year at Porquerolles, but already the third. Madame Harmoniaux herself,
who normally moved with the ponderousness of a castle on a chessboard, came to see if they wanted anything, and the doctor called the waitress familiarly by name:

‘Eva!'

And the plump girl in the white apron served them with a complicit smile.

He was eating in his shirtsleeves – sleeves which his wife had cut to elbow-length. Through the shirt's open collar, you could see the line between the white skin on his torso and his tanned neck.

The children were older now. Other children, whom they had met that first year, had grown bigger too. Some of the boys' voices had broken. There was an empty chair at their table and a place laid.

‘He must have taken shelter somewhere because of the storm,' Hélène said, as she served Michel's helping.

And, surprised to see her husband frowning and looking so impatient, she defended her nephew, since he was her elder sister's son, whom they had brought on holiday with them.

‘It's the first time he's ever been late.'

‘That's the point! Today of all days!'

‘You're not eating anything.'

‘Yes I am …'

He felt such acute anxiety that he wondered whether he wasn't going to go out, go up there, assure himself that … And to cap it all, Mémé was facing him, alone and quite
calm, seated at a
small table. He couldn't avoid seeing her. She was enormous, with her sun-baked skin, her sagging bosom and her grey hair. Even when she was clothed, he could see her as he had, many times, stark naked, brazenly, repulsively naked, lying on the sand in a small bay where she spent most
of the time.

Nobody knew how old she was. Over fifty, for sure. Sixty perhaps? She was Dutch or Belgian. She went off alone every morning and sunbathed naked in her bay.

Sometimes one of the boules players was late for the game in the square. The doctor played there now and again, these days. People knew him. Everyone called him ‘doctor'.

‘What kept you, Joseph?'

‘Just saying hullo to Mémé.'

Because she would pay them fifty francs a time. She had her handbag alongside her, with the money all ready. They went off to screw Mémé, just like that, in the bay, when they were short of fifty francs …

‘What are you thinking about?'

Alfred. Young Alfred, who had failed to return earlier, but was now rushing in through the rain, shaking himself in the corridor and calling across:

‘Be there in a minute …'

And the teenager took the stairs four at a time. Why? To change because he was soaked through? The doctor knew there was something else. He was on the point of going upstairs himself, but he stayed where he was, in the dining room, where Eva was
going to and fro, serving the dishes.

Fred was nineteen years old. Oddly enough, he didn't look like his mother, but more like Hélène, who was only his aunt. It was disturbing. Isn't it always disturbing to see a boy who looks like a
girl?

He had just finished his first year of law school.

It had made him so tired that there had been some question whether he should continue his studies. His mother was determined he should, because she had a little property and hoped eventually to be able to buy him a solicitor's practice.

In the mornings, he'd been tagging round after his uncle, full of goodwill and eager to be of service.

‘Here he is, he's coming down! See?'

Yes, he did see! He saw a certain awkwardness on the face of his nephew, as well as the sparkle of joy in his eyes, which wasn't caused by the thunderstorm. The boy sat down, stammering:

‘I'm so sorry …'

And turning to Eva: ‘No soup, thank you.'

Not only had he changed his clothes but he had washed his hands, you could smell the lavender soap. That was already a sign, because usually he didn't take such care.

And in fact when he met his uncle's eyes, he blinked two or three times, which clearly meant:

‘Yes! Mission accomplished!'

Then, the doctor's chest was as if paralysed. He felt almost unable to breathe. And yet he was obliged to smile, look approving. Luckily, everyone was much taken up with the thunderstorm, the lightning flashes in the sky, the pouring rain
which even splashed on to their table, and
Madame Harmoniaux eventually had to light the lamps, since it was getting too dark to see.

‘François, don't you feel well?'

‘I'm perfectly all right,' he said sharply.

‘But you're not eating anything.'

‘Oh, if that's what you want, I'll eat up!'

And he ate his food, angrily. He was almost at the point of forcing mouthfuls down his throat with his fingers.

It was disgusting. He was furious. He was ashamed. He asked himself, how could he have perpetrated such an action? It was so outrageous that he could still hardly believe it in spite of the evidence, and he would have to wait till he had Alfred
to himself.

Because of the rain, the guests were lingering in the dining room after their meal, apart from a few who ventured into the corridor or stood in the doorway watching the rain fall.

‘Are you staying down here?' Hélène asked, as she went upstairs with Mariette to put the children to bed.

Mariette too was a virgin, he was almost sure of that. She had a fiancé. Next year she wouldn't be coming with them.

‘I'll just go over to the Arche with Alfred.'

‘You'll get soaked!'

Too bad. They ran across. It was only a hundred metres to reach the shelter of the covered terrace of the Arche de Noé, which was crowded.

‘Yes!' Alfred confirmed as they ran.

And the poor boy, still trembling with emotion, had no idea that his uncle hated him.

How could the doctor have brought himself to act like this? They found seats in an almost dry place near the succulent plants edging the terrace. The doctor ordered spirits for himself, which he did only
rarely. His nephew, foolishly, said with a happy grin:

‘Me too! Just this once …'

He was anxious to tell all. He was still naïve. He wasn't used to talking about such things, especially with his uncle … But he had been given such encouragement.

‘Do you know, I actually saw you, as you went past and when you stood for few moments looking at the house. Actually, that nearly spoilt everything.'

‘How's that?' asked the doctor in a blank voice, looking away.

‘I don't know. She said: “Your uncle!” I think she's afraid of you. We were almost there and suddenly she didn't want to. We both watched you going away, and it was back to square one. Well, in the
end … !'

They were talking about Frans's daughter, and it was the doctor who had, in a manner of speaking, thrown her into the arms of his callow young nephew.

Why, oh Lord, why had he done it? He wanted to bang his head on the wall, because it felt like bursting, as he kept asking himself this stupid question.

Why?

It was certainly stupid. He had never once, himself, spoken to Elisabeth. Not once. He had never had the opportunity.

Already last year, she was much changed. She had still been wearing the red dress, as she was even this year, it
was as though the dress was growing with her. And she was still just as thin, but her breasts
had formed and now showed through the fabric.

But what was different, and already had been, last year, was her confident air, the impression she gave of being a woman. The doctor had heard the mayor-grocer's wife murmuring as the girl in red went past holding her little sister's
hand:

‘She's a proper little mother …'

The younger girl was clean, and well-kept. So was the house. You could tell from a distance. As for the boy, the young brother, he took the
Cormoran
every morning, a violin case under his arm, because a musician who had settled in
Hyères, a famous man apparently, had taken it into his head to teach him the violin.

But what had any of that to do with the doctor? Nothing. Nowadays he had been admitted among the islanders. He was no longer entirely considered a stranger. Several times, when his local colleague had been ill or away, he had been called upon to
treat patients.

People expected him to buy his round of drinks or join in a game of boules.

Every morning, his wife would join the procession, laden with swimming costumes, bathrobes, rubber balls for the children and sandwiches, making its slow way to Silver Beach. She came back at noon, at the same leisurely pace. And left again after
lunch. For some time now, the doctor had been accompanying her only rarely, or joining the family for an occasional quick dip.

He had regularly been out fishing with Gène or Polyte,
or some of the others. He drank with them in a little café where holidaymakers rarely went. From its doorway, he picked up all the island news.

‘The nuns have taken her in hand.'

Because Elisabeth took the youngest child every morning to the convent school. Then she did her shopping, holding herself very straight in her red dress. She returned home, where she saw to the housework. Her father's blue trousers were
clean and mended. Her brother was as well dressed as any other boy on the island.

‘People say he has a gift for the violin, that he could become a virtuoso.'

Some evenings, when Frans didn't come home, Elisabeth would walk down to the harbour and calmly go up to her father. The other men would nudge each other.

‘Watch! You must see this!'

And they did see. They saw Frans taking money out of one of his pockets and docilely giving it to his young daughter. She didn't let him fool her. She insisted. Without gesticulating or shouting. And Frans, shamefaced, would reach into
another pocket, where he had kept back some money.

So he never had any left to go off on a spree to Toulon.

‘If his wife, her that died, had acted like that, he'd have let her have it! Once, dunno what she said to him, probably something about money, he knocked her down and pulled her along by the hair. But with his daughter, he never lifts
a finger.'

He just tried to cheat. He must have managed it sometimes. They said that he hid money in cracks in the harbour wall, enough to allow him to get drunk once in a while.

He would be back after that, looking ashamed. For the next day or two, he wouldn't dare go up to the house but slept on any boat he could find, or on a public bench, like old Mouchi. And she would come
calmly down to find him.

And what in heaven's name did any of that have to do with the doctor? Was he in love? Absolutely not! He certainly couldn't have fallen in love with a little girl, hardly out of childhood, to whom the most he could have done was
prescribe her some fortifying medicine.

So why, when he had arrived on the island for the third time, with that lanky half-wit Alfred, a boy with a shadow of down on his upper lip, why had he taken him, as if by chance, up to the army huts?

Alfred painted in watercolours. He carried on his back a pretty varnished wooden box holding his paints, his portfolios and his brushes, and even loaded himself down with a portable easel and folding stool.

At first he had tried to paint the harbour and had taken up his position in the same place as all the visiting painters, with the local kids around him.

‘You'd be more peaceful up there.'

The doctor was still not aware of any ulterior motive. He had simply always been attracted by this corner of town, with its cactuses and Barbary figs. It was bad luck that nobody had ever been ill in Frans's household when the regular
doctor wasn't available!

Alfred had followed him.

‘Look! Those buildings against the umbrella pines.'

‘Difficult to paint.'

‘All the more reason! Have a go.'

He had sat down alongside Alfred, his eyes fixed on the door, still open, where he sometimes glimpsed a red dress going to and fro in the gloom. He dared not stay all the time. He would go for a stroll and come back.