Faces of Fear Page 7

  “I can’t say that I am, no sir.”

  Marianne’s father snapped shut his spectacle case. “If that’s how you feel, then perhaps your acquaintanceship with my daughter should go no further. I am not a prudish man, but I believe in honour.”

  “Sir?”

  “Are you also deaf? I said you should stay away from her.”

  “Don’t you think that rather depends on her?”

  Marianne’s father looked up at Gerry for a very long time, his face marked with some deep, unspoken pain. “Unfortunately, yes. But I have the right to make my feelings plain.”

  “Nice to have met you,” said Gerry. He nodded to Marianne’s mother, turned on his heel and walked away. Marianne started to go after him, but her father gripped her wrist, and gave her a quick, imperious shake of his head.

  The next day was warm but heavily overcast, and when Gerry woke up the rain was pattering through his open window onto his freshly-printed report. Outside, the ivy was glistening with wet and there were puddles in the gravel verandah. All of the plastic chairs had little pools in their seats, too.

  He hadn’t seen Marianne again after that encounter with her parents. At about six o’clock he had seen all three of them leaving in a big silver Renault. As the car crossed the stone bridge over the Orne, Marianne had glanced back once, but that was all.

  He dressed and went across to the salle à manger for coffee and croissants and boiled eggs. The rain trickled hesitantly down the windows. He had brought his notepad with him to list his appointments, but he found that he kept doodling the name Marianne over and over again, and drawing pictures of apples with bites taken out of them, and wavelike designs that could have been orchids or could have been Marianne’s slightly-parted lips.

  After breakfast, Gerry went back to his room, took out his travel-bag and started to pack. He rang the office in Paris, and told his secretary Alexis to arrange a meeting with TransWestern’s lawyers, so that they could discuss terms with madame la patronne at the Moulin du Vey and two other hotels he was interested in. She took an age on the other line, and Gerry sat drumming his fingers impatiently on the desk. But the moment she got back to him, Gerry saw a figure in a yellow waterproof crossing the verandah below. It was a girl, and she was walking toward the hotel. He couldn’t see her face, but something made him lower the receiver and lean out of the window to make sure that she was coming up the steps.

  “Hallo?” Alexis demanded. “Monsieur Philips, are you there? I said, hallo!”

  Gerry replaced the receiver on its cradle without answering. He stood waiting, and he could feel his heart beating like a man punching a cushion. He heard footsteps outside his room, the rustling of a waterproof coat coming up the stairs. There was a moment’s pause, and then a knock.

  He went to the door and opened it. Marianne was standing outside, still wearing her dripping yellow waterproof, her hair stuck wetly to her forehead, but smiling.

  “You didn’t think you would see me again?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Why was he so breathless? He was suddenly conscious of his notepad, lying on his desk, covered in dozens of illuminated versions of her name. “Listen … why don’t you come in, and take off that coat? I was just packing.”

  She stepped into his room and he closed the door. She looked around, admiring the grey silky fabric on the walls, and the chateau-style furniture. “It’s very comfortable,” she said. “Personally I prefer modern things. Modern music, modern art, modern furniture. I like everything to be new and exciting.”

  “Take off your coat,” he suggested. “It won’t take me five minutes to pack. Then we can go share a bottle of champagne together, or something.” He smiled ruefully. “A little wet for walks in the orchard, I’m afraid.”

  He was clearing his brushes and his aftershave from the dressing-table when he heard her taking off her coat. He glanced in the mirror and what he saw made him drop everything with a clatter. In the pale, silvery glass, he could see that she was completely nude, except for black stockings and a black garter belt. He saw her walk toward him, and hold him from behind, her breasts squashed against his back.

  “How could I let you go?” she said, and he could feel the warmth of her breath through his shirt. “Whatever we begin, we have to finish, don’t we?”

  Gerry turned around, and took her into his arms. She was goosebumpy because of the rain, and her nipples were knurled and stiff. He kissed her wet face. He kissed her wet hair. He kissed her wet mouth. He squeezed and caressed her breasts and rolled her nipples between finger and thumb. He slipped one finger between her thighs and she was warm and juicy as an overripe apricot.

  She unbuttoned his shirt and unfastened his belt, and they climbed onto the bed together with even more eagerness than they had yesterday, in the orchard. Marianne pushed him gently onto his back, and sat astride him, her slippery stockinged thighs gripping his sides, her breasts dancing a complicated dance, her face flushed with secretive pleasure. Outside the open window, the rain continued to whisper in the ivy leaves, and the river slid endlessly over the weir.

  Afterward, they lay side by side and talked. She told him that she was twenty years old, and that her father was a magistrate in the Manche district. They had come to Clecy to visit her aunt and uncle. They came every summer. She told him that she was studying cello in Caen, and that she hoped to go to Paris eventually, and then to America. Unselfconsciously, she sat on the end of the bed, her thighs apart, playing an imaginary cello concerto for him. He watched her, and the way the grey Norman light turned her skin to pearly white and strained all the colour out of her hair, and he began to think that he might have begun to fall in love with her. Not just a matter of honour, but of love.

  She sang for him, a ridiculous falsetto song about a cat that fell in love with its own shadow. They lay back on the bed and laughed, and it never occurred to him why this had happened; or that it could ever end.

  She had borrowed her aunt’s bicycle to ride here – a large ungainly machine with a wide leather saddle and a basket in front. He walked with her to the end of the bridge, his coat-collar turned up against the rain. A tethered goat watched them with yellow eyes.

  “Will I see you later?” he asked her.

  She kissed him. Her lips were wet with rainwater. “I will come when you least expect it.”

  He held the bicycle for her while she climbed onto it. He glimpsed her plump furry vulva pressed against the saddle, pink flesh squashed against leather. Then she drew the skirts of her waterproof around herself, and cycled off slowly across the bridge. In the middle, she turned and waved. He waved back, and then he started to walk along the driveway toward the Moulin du Vey, filled with such elation that he could have skipped. Ever since he had graduated from Hartford, he had worked seven days a week to build his career, and it had never actually occurred to him that he might fall in love. He had dated Francoise, who had been superior and distant, and treated lovemaking as if it were a slightly messy minor hobby, like pottery; and Alexandra, a handsome but horsey blonde who had a poster of Giscard d’Estaing pinned over her bed.

  But Marianne was something completely different. Marianne was magical. She was pretty and she was funny and she would do anything he wanted in bed. Anything, lovingly and enthusiastically and without complaint, even when (once) he had brought tears to her eyes.

  He had almost reached the hotel when he heard the sound of a truck speeding down the hill from Vey. He didn’t know why, but he stopped, and half-turned, and listened.

  He heard the truck braking, with a huge echoing groan, like a rhinoceros in pain. He heard a dull echoing thump. Then a terribly familiar clatter.

  He said, “No” out loud, and started to run back to the bridge. He reached it just in time to see the truck driving away – a greasy green farm truck loaded with wet hay.

  He ran across the bridge, his feet slapping on the wet stone. He saw her when he was halfway across. She was lying face-down in the road, her yellow waterproof fl
apping, one pale arm at an awkward angle, her cheap wristwatch smashed. Her aunt’s bicycle was over fifty feet away, its front wheel bent double.

  He knelt down beside her in the roadway. Her black stockings were torn and there was blood and mud on her legs. Blood ran into the gutter from the side of her head, and mingled with the rainwater in the gutter.

  “Marianne,” he whimpered. He knew she was dead. Her blonde hair was thick with blood and clotted with something beige and jellyish which he realized with absolute horror were brains. The truck had knocked her off her bicycle and driven straight over her head.

  He stood up. He had to hold onto the road-sign beside the bridge to stop himself from toppling over. He felt as if his entire being had been gripped in a clamp of utter misery, as if he would never be able to breathe, or speak, or think, or even take one step in front of the other – as if he would have to stay here, in the summer rain, beside this spot for the rest of his life.

  A watery sun came out. A 2CV stopped nearby, and a farmworker in a flat cap climbed out, the burned-down butt of a cigarette between his lips. He came over and laid his hand on Gerry’s shoulder.

  Gerry looked at him with tears running down his cheeks.

  “Why her?” he asked. “Why did it have to be her?”

  The farmworker shook his head. “Je ne comprends pas, monsieur.”

  A month later he was in Rouen, sitting in a cafè opposite the cathedral, waiting for Carl to arrive. He had already eaten a ham baguette and drunk three cups of coffee and there was still no sign of him. The Gothic facade of the cathedral changed in the sunlight from austere grey to warm gold, in the same way it had in Monet’s paintings of the same facade.

  A woman sitting close to him was making a studied, pouting performance of painting her lips. On the radio, Vanessa Paradis was singing Joe Le Taxi. Gerry had a newspaper on the table next to him but he wasn’t reading it.

  At last Carl came bursting in through the café door with an overnight bag, a briefcase, a raincoat, and a shopping bag from Elegance. “My meeting overran,” he gasped. “Then I couldn’t find a cab. Jesus, what a morning! How about a beer?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Carl crammed all his bags onto the chair next to him. “You don’t look fine. You look worse than the last time I saw you.”

  “I’m fine, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Have you eaten already? You’ve lost weight. Henry thinks you’re overworking. You should take a few weeks’ vacation, go to Nice, or Menton maybe. A friend of mine has an apartment in Menton. Hey, monsieur, deux bieres, s’il vous plait”

  “I don’t want a beer,” Gerry told him.

  “You’ll have a beer and shut up. Listen your uncle Carl. Everybody thinks you’re doing a great job, but don’t let them see you cracking under the strain. Once you’ve cracked, there’s no way back.”

  “The work’s fine, I can handle the work.”

  “Oh, really?” Carl took a deep gulp of beer and ended up with a foam moustache. “You look like shit.”

  Gerry looked into his empty coffee-cup. “The truth is, Carl, I’m grieving.”

  “Grieving? You mean somebody died?”

  Gerry pressed his hand over his mouth. His eyes filled with tears and he could hardly speak.

  “Hey, come on, man,” said Carl, and took hold of his arm. “I didn’t realize. I’m sorry. Why didn’t you tell me? It wasn’t your old man, was it?”

  “No,” said Gerry, at last. “It was just somebody I met, that’s all.”

  “Somebody you met here in France?”

  “I didn’t even know them very well. It’s just that – well, there could have been a lot of possibilities. A whole lifetime of possibilities.”

  “We’re talking about a woman here, yes?”

  Gerry nodded.

  “Not Francoise? I didn’t really mean that, you know, about the legs.”

  “No, not Francoise.”

  “You can’t tell me who?”

  Gerry shrugged. “It doesn’t matter who. Not now.”

  They finished their beers in silence. At last Carl looked at his watch. “We’d better get across to Lapautre’s for that next meeting. Are you ready?”

  Gerry went up to the counter to pay. There was a large mirror behind it, stuck with advertisements for Maes Pils and Orangina and Citron Pressé. While the waitress was ringing up the register, Gerry looked into the mirror at the sunny street outside, the passing traffic and the front of the cathedral and the postcard stands.

  Just as the waitress said, “Merci, monsieur” and started to count his change into the palm of his hand, a red and cream bus drew up outside. Gerry glanced at it only casually at first, but then a movement of a hand caught his eye, and he looked again, and a dreadful creeping feeling went down his back. Sitting in the fifth or sixth window along was a pale, blonde girl in a yellow cotton anorak. She seemed to be staring directly at him, in the mirror.

  It was Marianne. He was sure it was Marianne.

  “Monsieur!”

  He scattered his change as he ran out of the café, colliding with the table where the lipstick woman was sitting, tipping over the chair on which Carl had crammed all his bags. He ran across the wide sidewalk, right up to the bus, and stared directly into the girl’s face. She stared back at him – not afraid, as a stranger might have been – but calm and composed and even faintly amused. But she was so pale she could have been dead.

  “Marianne!” he shouted at her. “Marianne, it’s me!”

  People turned in the street. The girl kept on staring at him for a while, but then she turned away. He slammed his hands on the side of the bus and yelled, “Marianne! For Christ’s sake, Marianne! It’s me, Gerry! Moulin du Vey! Don’t you remember?”

  He ran along to the front of the bus; but just as he reached the doors, they closed with a soft pneumatic hiss, and the bus began to pull away.

  Gerry hit the side of the bus again, and shouted, “Stop! Arretez!” But the driver ignored him and the bus continued to gather speed.

  He looked up and glimpsed the girl one more time. She was smiling at him. He stepped back, baffled, both hands bruised. He was about to turn away when he saw who was sitting in the very rear of the bus. A silver-haired man in rimless spectacles and a woman in a black hat with a bow. They were both grey-faced, like the girl, and their expressions were grim. Marianne’s parents. Or at least they looked like Marianne’s parents. Then, in a blue cloud of diesel, the bus was gone.

  Carl put his arm around his shoulder and led him back to the café.

  “What the hell was all that about?”

  Gerry sat down. Everybody in the café was staring at him unblinkingly. “I thought it was her. The girl who died.”

  “How could it have been, if she died? You’re right. You’re grieving. Grief plays funny tricks with your brain. Have another beer. It’ll do you good. Or how about a calvados?”

  “It was so much like her. I even thought I saw her parents, too.”

  “Anybody I know, pardon me for being so intrusive?”

  “I don’t know whether you’d remember her. It was that girl who kept flirting with me when we were having lunch at the Moulin du Vey.”

  “Her? How come you got to know her so well?”

  “I didn’t. I never knew much more than her name. But she was – well, she was very special.”

  “Maybe you thought she was dead and she wasn’t dead. What was she, ill or something?”

  “Road accident. I saw it myself. They took her in an ambulance and they covered her face up. She was dead.”

  Carl swallowed more beer. “That couldn’t have been her, then, on the bus?”

  “No. Logically, I guess it couldn’t.”

  “And, let’s put it this way, if it really was her, you wouldn’t be tempted to renew your acquaintanceship, would you?”

  “I don’t know. Do people come back from the dead, if you miss them badly enough?”

  Carl slapped him on the b
ack. “Come on, old buddy. We’ve got hotels to buy.”

  That night, back in his apartment in Paris, he dreamed about the thunder clamouring all around the Mont St-Michel. He dreamed of a thin wrist with a cheap gold wrist-watch on it, flailing in the air. A girl in a yellow dress was lying on the road with blood streaming from her. It began to rain, and the rain washed the blood away, but it washed the girl’s dress away, too, like sodden tissue, and then her white body began to melt, and run into the ditch.

  He could clearly read the brand name on the wristwatch. It was Pity me.

  Close to his ear, he heard a voice whisper the same thing, “Pity me.”

  He shouted out loud, and sat up in bed, knocking his glass of water across the carpet.

  Carl was right. He was still grieving, and his grief was giving him nightmares and hallucinations.

  Marianne was dead; and even if she had found a way of coming back to him – well, that was one embrace that he didn’t want to think about.

  He was crossing the courtyard in front of the Louvre when he saw a girl in a wide-brimmed straw hat pushing a bicycle. It was a hot, bright morning, and the reflection from the dusty white surface of the courtyard was dazzling, so that he could scarcely see her. She disappeared behind the glass pyramid, and for a moment he was tempted to forget about her, and carry on walking; but there had been something about the way she walked and the way she was dressed that gave him an unsettling feeling.

  He circled around the pyramid and there she was. Her bicycle was lying on its side on the ground, and she was kneeling down to lace up the thongs of one of her sandals. She wore a yellow blouse and a very short white pleated skirt. Her knees were brown, and the sun shone on the fine blonde hair which flowed out from underneath her hat.

  His shadow fell across her foot. She looked up at him, and her eyes were so grey that it looked as if his shadow had fallen into her eyes, too.

  “It’s you,” he said; and inside he felt as if he were sliding down a wall of melting ice. He had never been so frightened in his life, and it took all of his self-control to prevent himself from urinating.