Too Close to the Edge (2 page)

Confinement breeds confinement. Though her isolation might at first have felt limiting, she soon realised she had no choice but to accept it, settle into it, even become comfortable with it, to the extent that the world beyond her four walls seemed like nothing but chores. Of course she loved her children and her children’s children just as she might love the sky, the trees, the mountains, life in general – but after two days in their company she could no longer stand the sight of them. It was probably exactly the same for them. Eight hundred kilometres was a long way to travel to see her for Whitsun, even without counting the cost of the journey. There was a degree of obligation on both sides, but if the family had not come, she would no doubt have missed them. It was paradoxical, but that was the way it was. It had taken
her a while to admit it to herself: she needed them, but after twenty-four hours couldn’t wait for them to leave.

Tonight it would be Marc’s turn to call and tell her which day he would be arriving, and tomorrow he would call again and say he would probably be later than expected, what with work … She would grumble a little for the sake of form, but the truth was she didn’t give two hoots.

All the minor irritations that had irked her for years now left her totally indifferent. What did it matter if there were nine people or five for dinner? She could always make an omelette, a salad … The only thing that now differentiated her children from anyone else was the pang of emotion in her chest when they said goodbye. After all, what is a child but a kite you fly and then let go, for it to reappear among the clouds? She had read somewhere that we were all the children of children.

The jardinière was divine. As she munched her way through it, she felt like a rabbit grazing a veg patch. The nap that followed was equally delectable. By the time she woke up, the rain had stopped. A baby-blue sky extended as far as the eye could see. There was a smell of washing powder in the air, of sheets drying on the breeze. In the garden the bay leaves were fringed with water, each droplet holding a ray of sunshine within it. All around, the mountains were steaming, streaked ochre and purple and foaming minty green to freshen the wind’s breath.

She asked herself if it might be an idea to undertake a commando mission to the supermarket in Montélimar today,
rather than await the inevitable trolley gridlock at the end of the week. Without much deliberation, she told herself it would not. Her solitary way of life had made her overly wary of approaching a town of more than eighty inhabitants. But there was nothing in her fridge or cupboards that two couples and their children might want to eat after a long journey. One way or another she would have to make the trip, today or tomorrow.

It was only four o’clock, and it was no longer raining. Éliette decided to grin and bear it and went up to her room to change. She was ashamed at the sight of herself in the mirror of her wardrobe: shapeless woollen cardigan, baggy-kneed leggings, thick socks and grubby clogs. This was what country life looked like: a far cry from a Fragonard shepherdess frolicking on a swing in a flouncy dress. While nature was blossoming in a riot of colours and scents, she was slowly turning into a hideous caricature of the frumpiest pages of the La Redoute catalogue. While she had never been a slave to fashion, Éliette had always made an effort with her appearance. But with nobody to look nice for …

‘You’re letting yourself go, old girl. Take a look at yourself: you’re like something off the compost heap!’

Earlier in the week, Rose had been extolling the benefits of the disgusting nylon overalls she wore day in, day out. ‘They’re just so practical! You wash them and half an hour later they’re dry again. And even if you put a bit of weight on, they’re so roomy!’

If her body had not rebelled in the face of such an outrage, Éliette could almost have been convinced. Stripped down
to her bra and knickers, she began emptying her wardrobe in search of something decent to wear, holding various dresses, jumpers and blouses against her body, but all she saw reflected in the mirror was the sad face of a glove puppet poking out from behind a curtain. Tears welled in her eyes. One last shirt fell to the floor to join the pile of sloughed-off skins, each more tired and outdated than the last.

She cupped her breasts, turned sideways on and posed like a toreador, fluffing up her hair. Her chest was still firm, her stomach flat. Plenty of women half her age would envy a figure like hers. But what use was it to her, with no one around to touch it? Her body had become as pathetic as a bouquet of flowers left to wilt on a station platform by a jilted lover.

Even Rose, bulging out of her vile overalls like a saucisson d’Arles, was a thousand times more alluring than she was. Paul was a red-blooded man; they probably did ‘it’ every night … How long had it been since Éliette had made love? Since the beginning of Charles’s illness. What was the point in still being slim and attractive and faithful to the memory of a man reduced to a stinking pile of bones at the bottom of a pit? What had she been trying to prove since becoming a widow? That it was possible to survive without sex? Who was she trying to fool?

A few weeks earlier, Paul had helped her put up a curtain pole in her bedroom. She had been standing on the stepladder hanging the curtain when her foot had slipped. Paul caught her by the waist and gently lowered her to the floor. For a few seconds, his hands had remained on her hips and their
eyes had locked bizarrely. She could not help but feel a little unsettled when she recalled that moment, as she had done several times.

It was like a fist inside her belly. Cursing that fat cow Rose and the rude health of her husband under her breath, she pulled on a black jumper, black trousers and a pair of flats the same colour.

Putting aside the storms of the last two days, spring had come remarkably early this year. Even at the beginning of the month, summer had been in the air. Éliette had rarely found nature so sensual: the merest blade of grass seemed swollen with sap, leaves undulated on the breeze, and every shrub appeared to quiver with a frenzy of animals mating in its midst, setting Éliette’s senses firing. She was buzzing all the way to the supermarket, and on her arrival went straight to the freezer section. She kept her head down, convinced that every man in the shop was staring at her.

In the vegetable aisle, she blushed as it dawned on her she had filled her trolley with courgettes, aubergines, carrots, cucumbers and even an enormous long white turnip weighing nearly 300 grams, which she struggled to make herself see in a culinary light. It was stronger than she was; a kind of inflammation of her mind was slowly turning the supermarket into a sex shop. She found herself getting drunk on the potent cocktail of shame and desire. Having finished her food shopping, she was drawn to the clothing section where she picked up the sexiest underwear set Continent could offer, along with a pair of skinny jeans and two low-cut tops that even the boldest fashionistas in Montélimar would have deemed too risqué to wear.

As she unloaded her trolley, she avoided the gaze of the
woman on the checkout, pulling her blonde hair over her forehead so that no one would see the word
SEX
branded across it. She stumbled weak-kneed out of the shop as if emerging from an orgy, piled the shameful evidence of her countless vices into the back of the microcar, and breathlessly set off home.

‘You’re totally loopy, you poor old thing! Totally loopy!’

She had never driven this fast before. She couldn’t wait to get home, put all this food away in the fridge and find a home in the bottom of a cupboard for these clothes she would never wear.

So she had suffered a bit of an ‘episode’; there was no need to make a drama out of it. She would laugh to herself about it later while finishing the leftover jardinière, having taken a Mogadon to overcome the ache in the small of her back, strangely pleasant though it was. She came off the main road at Meysse and took the little road along the River Lavezon. The river water was the colour of milky coffee. The poplars were bowing dangerously low and the sky was puffing out cheeks newly refilled with soot. In ten minutes the storm would break. She had just crossed the little bridge when the Aixam swerved, made a curious fart noise, zigzagged across the road and ended up on the verge.

‘Shit! Shit! Double shit!’

It had never crossed her mind that she might get a puncture. Yet that was exactly what had happened to her front left wheel, barely two kilometres from home. Panicking, she got out and circled the vehicle, giving the tyres little kicks
as mechanics do when trying to diagnose a problem. All this achieved was to make the little car quiver on the spot like a stubborn ass refusing to walk on. The first raindrop fell on her forehead as she was calling the heavens to come to her aid. The manual she retrieved from the glove compartment, hitherto untouched, was incomprehensible double-Dutch covered in pictures which bore no relation to anything she could recognise. Yes, she knew the jack and the spare wheel came into it somehow, but they were so well hidden!

It didn’t occur to her to run back to the house, call Paul and ask him to give her a hand. Instead she contemplated suicide, for example by throwing herself into the muddy waters of the Lavezon. It was at that moment she saw him coming. A man, but not from round here. A man in a three-piece suit, jacket slung over his shoulder, briefcase in hand. A man who seemed to have come a long way judging by his heavy, steady gait and the hair slicked to his forehead. It was like a scene out of a Western: beneath a low sky, a stranger walks calmly towards his widescreen destiny.

‘Problem?’

‘I’ve got a flat … I don’t know how to use … all this.’

The smile he shot her opened a hole inside her head.

‘Mind if I take a look?’

He appeared to be in his forties, not very tall, not especially thickset, with a baby face. His shoes and trouser bottoms were covered in mud. As he set to work on the wheel, the rain began to drop like a portcullis. Éliette could not tear her eyes from his muscular back, which showed through his sodden shirt. He was finished in under ten minutes.

‘There you go. Done.’

Standing face-to-face, streaming with water like two freshly landed fish, they burst out laughing. The sky no longer existed.

‘Thanks. Can I give you a lift somewhere?’

‘That would be great. I broke down myself, a few kilometres away. I was trying to find a phone.’

‘I live just up the road. Hop in, quick.’

The windscreen wipers struggled to give some definition to the muted watercolour landscape. The Aixam skidded as it climbed the muddy track. Back at the house, after several trips back and forth to unload the boot, they stood breathless in the kitchen, droplets of water fringing their eyelashes.

‘I’ll get some towels. Goodness me, I need wringing out!’

They towelled their hair dry and took in the sight of one another: all fluffy and dishevelled, like chicks emerging from their shells. They cracked up again. Outside, thunder was rolling above the roof.

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Please.’

Éliette was cack-handed, or all fingers and thumbs: she couldn’t think where the cups lived, almost tipped over the kettle and banged into a chair while vainly trying to think of something witty to say.

‘It’s been pouring down like this for two solid days! It’s because the last month has been so hot.’

‘Probably.’

The water was taking an eternity to come to the boil.
Everything was too slow, and yet she would have liked this moment to go on and on. Every now and then she threw a glance at the man sitting at the table, discovering him bit by bit as though piecing together a puzzle: the nervous long-fingered hands, the blue vein pulsating in his neck, the blond cowlick on his forehead, the brown eyes that seemed to be searching for something on the ceiling …

‘Are you from round here?’

‘No … I’m from Paris.’

… nice mouth, but bad teeth …

‘So your car broke down too?’

‘Um … yes. Must be something in the air today.’

… a deep voice which hesitated over every word, as if they all started with a capital letter. A little boy in a man’s body, two opposites inhabiting the same skin. The kettle began to whistle.

‘Here we are. It’s ready!’

They drank their tea without saying a word. The patter of the rain filled the silence. From time to time their eyes met, they smiled shyly at one another and looked away.

‘Nice place you’ve got here.’

‘Yes, I like it. But it took an awful lot of time and effort to do it up. When we bought it, thirty years ago, it was a wreck. We were living in Paris at the time, in Boulogne. All our holidays were spent cementing, plastering … We wanted to retire here. Sadly my husband died two years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I decided to come and live here on my own. I have pictures of what it used to look like—’

Before Éliette could finish her sentence, the phone rang.

‘Excuse me.’

‘Of course.’

Why oh why had she ever had children? It could only be Marc. She went into the living room and answered the phone with irritation in her voice.

‘Yes? Oh, it’s you, Paul … Yes, no. What’s going on? … What? … Patrick! … Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry … and Rose? … Of course … of course … I’ll come right now, Paul … Yes, see you very soon.’

Éliette returned to the kitchen, ashen.

The man noticed and instinctively rose from his chair.

‘Bad news?’

‘That was my neighbours. Their son has just been killed in a car accident … I have to go round.’

‘Of course. I’ll go …’

‘No, don’t. It’s still raining and the next village is eight kilometres away. The phone’s in the living room and there’s a phone book underneath it. But I doubt you’ll get anyone to come out at this time. Anyway, make yourself at home. There’s wood by the fire if you want to dry off.’

‘That’s very kind of you … I don’t know what to say …’

‘What about “See you later”?’

‘See you later.’