Consolation Read online

  What the hell did all this crap mean! What the hell was the point?

  And for what moments of tenderness?

  I cut myself and swept the lot into the wastebasket.

  ‘You know . . . I think I should make you a coffee, no?’

  Mathilde, her arms crossed, stood slouching on one leg in the door to the bathroom.

  ‘Good idea.’

  She was staring at the floor.

  ‘Oh . . . um . . . I knocked over a few things, you see . . . I’ll . . . don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Oh, no. I’m not worried. You do this every time.’

  ‘Oh?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Have a good week?’ she went on.

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘Right. A coffee, then.’

  Mathilde . . . As a little girl she’d been so hard to get close to . . . So hard . . . How she’d grown, good Lord.

  Fortunately we still had Snoopy, on her T-shirt.

  ‘Feeling better now?’

  ‘Yes,’ I went, blowing into my cup, ‘thanks. I get the feeling I’ve finally landed. No school today?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Laurence working all day?’

  ‘Yes. She’ll meet us at Granny’s. Oh, noooo. Don’t tell me you’d forgotten. You know perfectly well it’s her birthday party tonight.’

  I had forgotten. Not that it was Laurence’s birthday the next day, but that we were in for another charming little soirée. A proper family dinner, just the way I liked them. All I needed, truly.

  ‘I haven’t got a present.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I didn’t go and sleep over at Lea’s. I knew you’d need me.’

  Adolescence . . . What an exhausting yo-yo.

  ‘You know, Mathilde, you have a way of blowing hot and cold that will never cease to astound me . . .’

  I stood up to help myself to more coffee.

  ‘Well at least I’m astounding someone.’

  ‘Hey,’ I replied, placing my hand against her back, ‘enjoy.’

  She arched her back. Ever so slightly.

  The way her mum did.

  We decided to go on foot. After a few silent streets, where each of my questions seemed to pain her even more than the previous one, she began to fiddle with her iPod and wiggled the headphones into her ears.

  Very well then, looks like I ought to get myself a real dog, no? Someone who’d love me and would literally jump for joy whenever I got back from a trip . . . Even a stuffed one, why not? With big moist eyes and a little motor that would cause his tail to wag when I touched his head.

  Oh, I love him already . . .

  ‘You in a mood, now?’

  Because of her gadget she’d said the words more loudly than necessary and the woman on the crossing with us turned round.

  Mathilde sighed, closed her eyes, sighed again, removed her left earplug and stuck it into my right ear.

  ‘Here, I’ve got something for you that’s just your age group, it’ll perk you up.’

  And there in the midst of the noise and traffic, on the end of a very short wire that still connected me to a faraway childhood, a few guitar chords.

  A few notes and the perfect, hoarse, slightly drawling voice of Leonard Cohen, singing ‘Suzanne’.

  ‘Better now?’

  I nodded my head, just like a moody little boy.

  ‘Brilliant.’

  She was pleased.

  Spring was still a long way off but the sun was working on heating things up a bit, stretching lazily over the dome of the Panthéon. My-daughter-who-was-not-my-daughter-but-who-was-nothing-less-either gave me her arm so she wouldn’t lose the sound, and there we were in Paris, the most beautiful city in the world – I’d finally come round to admitting the fact by virtue of leaving it behind so often.

  Wandering through this quartier I loved so, turning our backs on the Great Men, just the two of us, little mortals who could astound no one, amidst the tranquil weekend crowd. Feeling relaxed, our guard down, to the very rhythm of for he’s touched our perfect bodies with his mind.

  ‘This is wild,’ I said, shaking my head, ‘and you still listen to this stuff?’

  ‘Looks that way . . .’

  ‘I must have come along this very street humming this, over thirty years ago . . . See that shop, there?’

  With my chin I pointed towards the shopfront of Dubois, the art supply place on the Rue Soufflot.

  ‘If you knew how many hours I spent drooling over their window . . . It all set me dreaming. Everything. The paper, the pens, the tubes of Rembrandt. One day I even saw Prouvé come out of there. Jean Prouvé, can you imagine! And, well, on that particular day I must have been waltzing along murmuring that Jesus was a sailor and all that stuff, I’ll bet you anything . . . Prouvé . . . when I think back . . .’

  ‘Who’s Prouvé?’

  ‘A genius. Well, not even. An inventor, a creator, an incredible bloke . . . you know, the designer and architect; I’ll show you some of the books. But, um, to get back to our cheery lad, there . . . My favourite was Famous Blue Raincoat, haven’t you got that one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jeez! What are they teaching you at school these days, anyway? I was mad about that song, absolutely crazy. I think I must have worn the cassette right through from rewinding it so many times.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t remember . . . I’d have to listen to it again, but as I recall, it’s the story of a guy who’s writing to one of his friends, a bloke who’d gone off with his wife at some point, and he was saying that he thought he’d forgiven him. There was something about a lock of hair, I remember, and for someone like me who was incapable of chatting up a single girl, I was such a great lump, awkward and so moody it was pathetic, well, I thought that sort of story was very very sexy. As if it were written for me, in a way . . .’

  I was laughing.

  ‘And listen to this. I even pestered my dad so he’d give me his old Burberry, and I tried to dye it blue and screwed up completely and utterly. It went this greenish-yellow colour. So ugly, you can’t begin to imagine.’

  She was laughing.

  ‘But do you think that stopped me? Not likely. I wrapped myself inside the thing, with the collar up and the belt undone, “my fists in my torn pockets” like Rimbaud’s Bohemian, and off I went . . .’

  I mimed the loser I must have been. Peter Sellers in his prime.

  ‘. . . taking these great long strides, right through the crowd, mysterious, elusive, ever so careful to avoid the gaze of all those people who weren’t even looking at me. Oh, he must have laughed, old Leonard off on his promontory among the great Zen masters, let me tell you!’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Well . . . he’s still alive, far as I know.’

  ‘Nah, the raincoat.’

  ‘Oh, that! Vanished, along with everything else. But you can ask Claire tonight if she remembers it.’

  ‘Okay . . . And I’ll download it.’

  I frowned.

  ‘Hey, that’s enough already! You’re not going to do your head in about all that again. He’s earned enough as it is.’

  ‘It’s not a question of money, you know that perfectly well. It’s more serious than that. It’s –’

  ‘Stop. I know. You’ve told me a million times. The day there are no artists left, we’ll all be dead and blah blah and all that.’

  ‘Exactly. We’ll still be alive but we’ll all be dead. Hey, look, speaking of which . . .’

  We were standing outside Gibert’s books and music store.

  ‘Come on in. I’ll buy it for you, my lovely sickly green raincoat.’

  I stood frowning hesitantly at the till. Three other CDs had miraculously appeared on the counter.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ she said, as if it were fate, ‘I had been planning on downloading those ones, too.’

  I paid and she grazed her cheek against mine. Just a touch.

  Once we’d rejoined th
e flow of people on the Boulevard Saint-Michel, I grew bolder. ‘Mathilde?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I ask you a delicate question?’

  ‘No.’

  Then a few metres farther along, she covered her face with her hands. ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘Why have things got this way between us? So . . .’

  Silence.

  ‘So what?’ asked her hood.

  ‘I don’t know . . . predictable. Cash-oriented. I get out my credit card and only then am I entitled to a tender gesture. Well, tender . . . A gesture, at any rate. How . . . so what’s the going rate for a kiss from you at the moment, anyway?’

  I opened my wallet and checked the receipt from Gibert’s. ‘Fifty-five euros and sixty cents. Right.’

  Silence.

  Tossed the receipt into the gutter.

  ‘You know it’s not just a question of money really, I was happy to give them to you, but . . . I really wish you could have said hello earlier on when I came in, I was so –’

  ‘I did say hello.’

  I pulled on her sleeve so she’d look at me, then I lifted my hand to imitate her limp-fingered greeting. Or the limpness of her intention . . .

  She pulled her arm away abruptly.

  ‘And it’s not just with me, anyway,’ I went on, ‘I know it’s like this with your mum, too. Every time I call her, even though I’m far away and I might like a little . . . That’s all she talks about. Your attitude. Your rows. This sort of ongoing blackmail . . . A little bit of kindness for a little bit of cash. All the time. All the time. And –’

  I stopped in my tracks and took hold of her again.

  ‘Answer me. How did it get like this between us? What did we do? What did we do to you to deserve this? I know . . . Some might say it’s adolescence, the awkward age, the dark tunnel and all that rubbish, but you – You, Mathilde. I thought you were more intelligent than the others, I didn’t think it would affect you like them. I thought you were far too clever to get caught up in their statistics –’

  ‘Well you were wrong.’

  ‘So I see.’

  She’d been so hard to get close to. Why had this ridiculous pluperfect sprung to mind above my coffee cup earlier on? Simply because she’d taken the trouble – the immense trouble – to push a capsule into the coffee machine and press the little green button?

  Hey. I’m a bit obtuse myself, at times.

  And yet, when I think back –

  She was – how old, at the time? Seven, maybe eight, and she’d just lost in the finals at the gymkhana. I can still see her flinging her riding cap into the ditch, lowering her head and ploughing into me without warning. Bam. A battering ram. I even had to grab hold of a post to keep from falling over.

  I was dazed, moved, breathless, my hands all tied in knots and in the end I’d managed to pull the flaps of my coat around her while she spilled tears and snot and horse dung all over my shirt, with her arms squeezed round my girth as tight as could be.

  Could you call this gesture ‘taking someone in your arms’? Yes, I decided; yes. And it was the first time.

  The first time . . . and when I say she was eight, I’m almost certainly wrong. I’m hopeless with ages. Perhaps it was even later. Good Lord, it took years, then, didn’t it?

  But then she was there, really there. Her entire little self fitted inside the lining of my raincoat and I let it last as long as I could, despite my frozen feet and my aching legs, soon to be stuck at the edge of that bloody riding ring in Normandy, and I hid her from the world, with a silly smile on my face.

  Afterwards, in the car, she curled up in a ball on the rear seat, and I said, ‘What was your pony’s name again? Pistachio?’

  No reply.

  ‘Caramel?’

  Missed again.

  ‘Wait, I’ve got it! Popcorn.’

  Silence from the rear.

  ‘Hey, what could you expect from such an ugly stupid pony, with a name like Popcorn to boot . . . huh? Honestly. That was the first and last time he’ll ever make it to the finals, that fat Popcorn of yours, let me tell you!’

  I was useless. I was overdoing it and I wasn’t even sure of the animal’s name. Come to think of it, I seem to recall it was Peanut . . .

  Well, in any case she’d turned away.

  I straightened the rear view mirror and clenched my teeth.

  We had got up at dawn. I was exhausted, and cold, and I was scrambling to keep up and had to stop off at the agency that very evening for yet another all-nighter. And I’d always been afraid of horses. Even little ones. Especially little ones. Dear God . . . all of this did not bode well when you were stuck in a traffic jam. Not at all . . . And while I was at it, churning my thoughts round and round, irritated and tense and ready to burst, suddenly there came these words:

  ‘Sometimes I wish you were my father.’

  I didn’t say anything, afraid I might spoil it all. I’m not your father, or I’m like your father, or I’m better than your father, or no, what I mean is, I am . . . Phew . . . My silence, it seemed, would say all that much better than I ever could.

  But today? Now that life has become so . . . so what? So laborious, so inflammable in our one hundred and ten square metres. Now that we almost never made love any more, Laurence and I; now that I was losing my illusions at the rate of one a day, and a year of my life per construction site, and I found myself rambling away to Snoopy T-shirt while saying nothing, and I was obliged to key in my PIN code just to feel loved, I regretted not heeding those distress signals.

  I should have seen them that time, obviously.

  I should have pulled over onto the emergency lay-by, so aptly named, should have got out into the night and opened her door and pulled her out by the feet and gently smothered her in turn.

  What would it have cost me? Not a thing.

  Not a thing, because there wouldn’t have been any other words to say . . . Or at least, that’s how I imagine it, the botched scene: silent, and effective. Because words, for Christ’s sake, words – they’re not something I’ve ever been good at. I’ve never had the kit.

  Never.

  And now that I’m turning towards her, there outside the gate of the School of Medicine, and I can see her face, hard and set and almost ugly, because of one little question, and here am I who never asks questions, I tell myself I’d have done better to keep my mouth shut this time round, too.

  She was walking ahead of me, taking long strides, head down.

  ‘Anyouinkbetter?’ I heard her mumble.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  She spun around.

  ‘And you? Do you think you’re any better?’

  She was furious.

  ‘You think you’re any better, you guys? Huh? You think you’re any better? You guys think you’re not predictable?’

  ‘You guys who?’

  ‘Who, who do you think? Well, the two of you! You guys! You and Mum! I really wonder what sort of statistic you two belong in! Maybe the crap couple category, the ones who . . .’

  Silence.

  ‘Who what?’ I ventured, idiot that I am.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she murmured.

  Yes, that I knew. And that is the reason why we both stubbornly stood there not speaking.

  Lucky kid with headphones: here was I, with nothing but my own inner turmoil to listen to.

  My own negative feedback and a moth-eaten raincoat.

  When we reached the Rue de Sèvres, opposite the posh department store that was already making me feel discouraged, I veered off in the direction of a café.

  ‘Do you mind? I need a coffee before the battle.’

  She followed, making a face.

  I burned my lips while she fiddled with her gadgets again.

  ‘Charles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me what he’s singing, here? ’Cause I get some of it but not all . . .’

  ‘No problem.’

  So we shared the sound again.
She got the Dolby, I got the stereo. One ear each.

  But the opening chords of the piano were quickly drowned by the noise of the espresso machine.

  ‘Wait –’

  She dragged me down to the other end of the counter.

  ‘Ready?’

  I nodded.

  Another man’s voice. Warmer.

  And I began my simultaneous translation for her, into French, ‘If you were the road, I would go . . . Wait . . . Because this could be either road or path in French, it depends on the context. Do you want the poetry or word for word?’

  ‘Oh,’ she moaned, cutting off the sound, ‘you fuck everything up. I don’t want an English lesson, I just want you to tell me what he’s saying!’

  ‘Right,’ I said impatiently, ‘let me listen to the whole thing once through on my own, and then I’ll tell you.’

  I took her little thingammies and covered my ears with both hands while she looked at me out of the corner of her eye, febrile.

  I was blown away. More than I would have imagined. More than I would have liked. I was . . . simply blown away.

  Bloody love songs. The way they sneak up on you . . . Enough to make you surrender, in less than four minutes. Bloody banderillas planted in hearts already riddled with statistics.

  I handed the earpiece back to her with a sigh.

  ‘Good stuff, isn’t it?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Neil Hannon. An Irish singer. Right, the whole thing through, now?’

  ‘The whole thing.’

  ‘And no stopping, right?’

  ‘Don’t worry sweetie, it’s gonna be all right,’ I drawled, best cowboy fashion.

  She smiled again. Well done, Charley, well done.

  So I picked up the road where I’d left it, because it was surely a road that was meant, no doubt about that.

  If you were the road/ I’d go all the way . . . If you were the night/ I’d sleep in the day . . . If you were the day/ I’d cry in the night . . . She was sticking right by me now, not to lose a single word . . . ’Cause you are the way, the truth and the light./

  If you were a tree/ I could put my arms around you . . ./ And . . . you . . . you could not complain/ If you were a tree . . ./ I could carve my name into your side/ and you would not cry,/ ’Cos trees don’t cry . . . (there I took some liberties with the French to translate, ‘’Cos trees don’t cry’, okay, right, Neil, you’ll forgive me, won’t you? I’ve got this teenager on my back at the other end of the wire) If you were a man/ I would still love you . . ./ If you were a drink/ I’d drink my fill of you . . ./ If you were attacked,/ I would kill for you . . ./ If your name was Jack/ I’d change mine to Jill for you . . ./ If you were a horse,/ I’d clean the crap out of your stable/ and never once complain . . ./ If you were a horse/ I could ride you through the fields at dawn . . ./ Through the day until the day was gone (uh . . . no time to polish that) . . . I could sing about you in my songs (not brilliant either) . . . (She didn’t care and I could feel her hair against my cheek.) (And smell her scent, too. Her Body Shop Tea Tree Oil, a whiff of young teenager with rips in her sleeve.) If you were my little girl/ I would find it hard to let you go . . ./ If you were my sister uh, ‘find it doubly’ oh, let’s just take a stab,/ I would find it doubly so./ If you were a dog,/ I’d feed you scraps from off the table (sorry) Though my wife complains . . ./ If you were my dog (and now his voice is rising) I am sure you’d like it better./ Then you’d be my loyal four-legged friend,/ You’d (almost shouting now) never have to think again (now he was really yelling but in a sad sort of way)/ And we could be together till the end (Right to the eeeeeennnddd in fact, but you could tell the affair was hardly in the bag either . . . not a sure thing at all . . .).