This is Life (4 page)

‘I am. I’m really, really sorry.’

‘I think you might even mean it . . .’ She moved Aurélie’s head around a little more. ‘Yes. Yes, you do mean it. You are sorry. It was a stupid thing to have done,
really stupid, but anybody can make a mistake. It wouldn’t be right for me to judge you too harshly.’

Aurélie had never been more relieved. She had been convinced that she would be kicked out of college and sent to jail. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you so
much.’

‘You’re not from Paris, are you? I can tell from your accent.’

‘No. I’ve been here about a year and a half.’

‘So would it be safe to say that you’re a simple country girl with honest country ways?’

‘I, er . . .’ Aurélie had no idea what to say to this. She had never lived in the countryside, but the child’s mother was making her sound as if she had just stepped out
of a Raymond Depardon documentary; she felt she ought to be holding a shepherd’s crook, her cheeks ruddy after a lifetime in the wind. Her home town was certainly small compared to Paris,
though, and she told herself she was only lying a little bit when she said, ‘I hope so.’

The mother continued to stare at her, sizing her up.

‘If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you and the baby,’ said Aurélie, ‘just tell me.’

‘Anything? Really?’

Aurélie nodded, in so far as she was able with somebody else’s hand clamped to her chin. She truly wanted to make amends.

The woman seemed to be weighing up a big decision. At last, she let go of Aurélie’s face. ‘Do you know how one of these things works?’ she
asked, pointing.

‘The buggy? No, not really. I think I could push it along, but I wouldn’t know how to fold it, or get it down steps, or anything like that.’

‘I’m not talking about the buggy. I mean what’s in it. The thing you just threw the stone at: the baby.’

Aurélie shook her head. She had no idea how babies worked. She had occasionally had a small child lowered on to her lap for a photograph, then lifted off as soon as it had been taken, but
beyond that she had never held one. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not really.’

‘Never mind,’ said the mother. ‘They’re quite straightforward. Now, I want to show you something.’ She gestured for Aurélie to join her at the back of the
buggy. There was a big bag hanging off the back, in coordinated red fabric. ‘In here is everything he needs to get through the day. It goes everywhere with him whenever he leaves the house.
You need to be prepared for all eventualities.’

Aurélie nodded, wondering where this was going.

The mother continued. ‘It’ll be easy. I changed him about twenty minutes ago. All you have to do is keep him alive. Sterilise his bottle, don’t let him roll off the bed, all
that kind of thing. Just use your common sense and rustic intuition. Just imagine he’s one of your sheep.’

Aurélie had never so much as touched a sheep.

The mother went on. ‘He’s a good child. He won’t give you any trouble.’ She thought for a while. ‘Well, he has his moments, but I doubt he’ll give you
much
trouble. No more throwing stones at him, and I’ll see you back here exactly one week from now.’ She looked at her watch. ‘At nine twenty-two next Wednesday.’

The woman crouched, and said a brief goodbye to the boy, telling him that the nice lady who had given him the bruise was going to be his mummy for a week. She didn’t kiss him, or even
touch him. She stood up, and turned to leave.

‘But . . .’ Aurélie was dazed. She felt herself lose her balance, and she held on to the buggy for support.

The mother turned back, her eyes cold and narrow. ‘But what? Suddenly you don’t want to do your project? What happened to the you of a moment ago, the you who was such a dedicated
artist? Don’t tell me you’ve given up? Would you rather I called the police? Is that how you want your project to end, before a judge, being handed a conviction for assaulting an
infant? Would that be art? Would it?’ She took her phone from her pocket.

Aurélie had no idea whether or not it would be art, but she pictured herself in jail and was desperate not to end up behind bars. ‘No, I mean . . . But . . . what’s he
called?’

‘His name is Herbert.’

‘Herbert?’ Aurélie pronounced it the French way, with no
H
at the beginning and no
t
at the end:
Air-bear
.

‘No,’ snapped the mother. ‘Not
Air-bear
.
H
erber
t
. Repeat after me –
H
erber
t
.’

‘
Air-bear
.’

The mother closed her eyes, pinched the top of her nose and shook her head. She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a compact mirror. She held it in front of Aurélie’s
mouth and made the
H
sound.

Aurélie did as she was instructed, and made the sound.

‘See, there’s mist on the mirror. Now say his name.’

‘H-H-Hair-bear’

‘
H
erber
t
.
T-t-t
.’

‘T-t-t.’

‘After me:
H
erber
t
.’

Aurélie closed her eyes in concentration as she tried to get her tongue around these unfamiliar sounds. ‘
H
er-ber
t
,’ she said.

‘Close. Again, though.’

‘Her-bert. Her-bert. Herbert.’

‘Almost perfect. You’re a fast learner, I’ll give you that.’

‘Is he English?’

‘Does he look English to you?’

Aurélie scrutinised the child. She couldn’t tell.

‘Now don’t do anything stupid. I’ve got your DNA, remember?’ She patted the pocket where she had put the stone and the hair. ‘I’ll see you back here in one
week. Right there.’ She pointed at the bench where The Russian had been playing his hurdy-gurdy. Aurélie hadn’t noticed until that point that he had packed up and gone. The
mother walked away.

As she watched her go, Aurélie realised that all she knew about the baby was his name. She needed to know a little bit more about him. She called after her, ‘How old is
he?’

Without looking back, she replied, ‘He’s Aquarius.’

She called again. ‘One last thing . . .’

Herbert’s mother stopped, turned and glared at her. ‘What?’

Aurélie’s head swam with questions. After what seemed like an age, one of them rose to the surface. The woman was some way away, and she had to shout. ‘Where did you get your
scarf?’

‘La Foularderie. It’s one of those shops in Le Marais. You’ll find it.’

‘I really like it.’

‘Thank you. Me too.’

And with that she was gone.

The square was empty now, and quiet. Aurélie stood beside the buggy, and looked at the baby. His battered face was peeping out from under his hat. ‘Hello
Air-bear
,’ she said. She corrected herself. ‘I’m sorry. I mean hello . . .
H
er-ber
t
.
H
erber
t
. Herbert.’ She had to get his name right. She
owed him at least this. She knelt over him. ‘So . . . Herbert,’ she said. At last she felt able to rest her hand on his shoulder. She gave it a squeeze. ‘Do you think we can be
friends?’

He looked at her, then did something she hadn’t expected: he smiled. It was amazing. He seemed to smile with his whole face, and even his arms and legs joined in, flapping up and down and
side to side. He made a sound as well, a kind of squelchy giggle. She took that for a
yes
. She knew this ought to be a cue for her to grab her digital camera and take a photo, but she
didn’t. She just looked at him and smiled back. There would be plenty of time for photos.

She tried to work out what to do next. She took stock of the situation. It was a nice buggy, a sleek, bright red three-wheeler with a black frame. It looked expensive. She was pleased to see
that the buggy and the baby’s bag matched her new coat. She needed to cling to something, and she told herself that this colour coordination was a clear sign that this unexpected turn of
events was meant to be. As she crouched beside her new friend she lit her fifth cigarette of the morning, in the hope that it would help her think things over.

She put her used match back in the box, and made a point of blowing the smoke away from Herbert’s face. She had responsibilities now.

M
onsieur Eric Rousset, proprietor of Le Charmant Cinéma Érotique, had fallen on hard times. His establishment, situated on a narrow
backstreet just off the Boulevard de Clichy, had been opened in the late nineteen forties by his grandfather, another Monsieur Eric Rousset, who had handed it down to Monsieur Rousset’s
father, also Monsieur Eric Rousset, who in turn had the pleasure of steering it through its heyday of the sixties and seventies. The latest and last Monsieur Eric Rousset, though, had found to his
dismay that there was little he could do but oversee its decline.

It seemed to him that the precise moment he had taken the reins of the family business, the home video phenomenon had arrived to lure away row after row of his audience. Then came DVDs, their
picture so clear that it was possible to freeze each frame and make out beads of sweat, even individual hairs, and as if this wasn’t bad enough, televisions had become larger and larger until
they began to resemble cinema screens. Just as he had started to feel like a beleaguered ship’s captain saluting the flag as water lapped around his ankles, the Internet had caught on, the
driving force of this revolution in communications technology being its seemingly endless supply of free porn for all.

The changing world had siphoned his customers away until they were all but gone. He often sighed at the thought of how devalued the erotic movie had become, but knowing that there were few
sights more pathetic than that of a short, fat, middle-aged bald man sighing, he took care to do so only in private, and at all other times he maintained as cheery a facade as he could.

Monsieur Rousset did not want to close his cinema. As well as it being the only livelihood he had ever known, he was unable to escape a nagging loyalty to the memory of his father and
grandfather, and to his remaining clientele. He knew his regulars by sight, but not name; conversation was not expected in his business. Sometimes a familiar character would fail to show up for a
few weeks in a row, and he knew he would not be seeing them again, that they had been claimed by a nursing home, taken in by concerned relatives or bundled into a box and fed into an incinerator.
He was always saddened when this happened. Though many would have dismissed them as
dirty old men
, to him they were no better or worse than anybody else. Life had not been easy for them, and
they were making the best of what it had to offer. He saw no shame in them answering their body’s urges, but it always made him melancholy to see the loneliness in their eyes. As he turned a
deaf ear to the rustling, the heavy breathing and the throaty gasps that came out of the dark, he was thankful that he had Madame Rousset waiting for him in their apartment a few streets away.

He was not immune to the charms of the films he showed, but he had never once slipped into the stalls to entertain himself alongside his customers, or misbehaved in his office or a projection
room. He loved his wife, and always waited until he got home before giving in to his amorous urges. Just as short, plain, dumpy and middle-aged as her husband, Madame Rousset was well aware of the
genesis of his romantic tendencies, but she was happy to accept things the way they were. She couldn’t imagine there being a more regularly serviced wife in the whole of Paris, and theirs was
a happy marriage that had produced one child, a daughter named Élise who had recently qualified as a doctor and who for innumerable reasons, none of them prudish, had never had any interest
in taking over the family business.

Élise was proud of her parents, and to her father’s delight she would often turn up at the cinema unannounced, with a group of colleagues on a night out. She would introduce them
all, and he would shake their hands and usher them in for free, and they would take their pick of whatever happened to be showing. The last time they had dropped by he had been pleased when they
had chosen a revival of the 1973 Inuit classic
Cut Not a Circle in the Ice Tonight
. It was one of his all-time favourites; the cinematography was faultless, the haunting score, played on a
single chauyak, raised the hairs on the back of his neck, and the lesbian scene was up there with the best.

There was still a trickle of passing trade to bolster the dwindling numbers of regulars, but year on year this too was diminishing, which made him very downhearted, not only for himself and the
state of the business, but also because of the thought that there were so many people out there who had no idea what they were missing. He refused to show the kind of films that had come to be
associated with the genre, with their weak punning titles and lacklustre camera work. There had never been any question in his mind that his was the finest cinema of its kind in the city. He
personally vetted each film for quality, and in this age, where it seemed as if everybody was making their own sex tapes, he refused to let his standards slip and took pride in showing only work of
the highest order, sourced from the most committed film-makers from around the world. These were people who really cared about what they did, and he often told himself that if the films they made
weren’t art, then nothing was. His 35mm rule had kept him, aesthetically at least, streets ahead of rivals who had lazily resorted to video projectors, but he sometimes wondered whether his
customers noticed this, or cared.

Inevitably, the cinema had slid into a state of disrepair. What had once had the feel of an exclusive gentlemen’s club was becoming like any other sex flick fleapit: the deep red carpet
was worn down, and paths of grey ran from the box office to the screens; the once plush velvet-textured wallpaper had been rubbed smooth to shoulder height; and the handyman had not been called in
to replace fallen chandelier crystals.

In dark moments, Monsieur Rousset had thought about pulling down the shutters for the last time, putting the place out of its misery while it still had a shred of dignity left, but then he would
see one of his regulars shuffling in, avoiding eye contact with him and with the rest of the world, and every time his sentimentality got the better of him. He knew that to close would be to tear
the heart out of their lives. What else would they do? Where would they go? He knew he would struggle on, doing his best for them until the lights went out. He also knew, though, that this day
would not be far away.