Chapter Thirteen #3
By this time, a black people carrier with tinted windows had arrived on the avenue outside.
Jules had disappeared after another over-demonstrative embrace of me, saying he would walk home, while Henri was in transports of wonder, declaring over and over again that he hadn’t been in a vehicle like this since his National Service in the Sudan in 1959.
As for Caroline, she simply commandeered the front seat, where she sat bolt upright, her face fixed in a rigid expression of forbearance as if she were Marie Antoinette in a tumbril on her way to the guillotine.
With Emma and Josh’s help, Luc eventually got Henri and Susan loaded, the taxi driver preferring to furiously smoke a Disque Bleu on the pavement.
Clearly not a man brimming with Christmas spirit.
Waving them off, I climbed the steps back into the now silent Villa Matisse, firmly closed the front door and surveyed the wreck of the salon.
Coffee cups, liqueur and brandy glasses and the remains of petit fours on every surface were joined by wads of wrapping paper which Alphonse, having broken out of the kitchen, was now heavily engaged in ripping to shreds.
Hauling him to his feet, he reluctantly agreed to be removed, pausing on his way past the Christmas tree, where he gave such a gigantic sneeze all the remaining needles fell off.
The dining table looked equally discouraging, a welter of B?che de Noel-sticky plates, napkins, cheese rinds, cracker remnants and smeared wine glasses.
Suppressing a sigh, I decided to get out of my hot dress before I did anything, only to find when I gained the kitchen that Alphonse had left a massive puddle of pee where he’d lifted his leg on a kitchen table leg. No wonder he was looking nervous.
‘It’s okay, mate,’ I murmured reassuringly to him as I wearily mopped away with kitchen towel. ‘None of us remembered to let you out.’
I did that next, opening the back door to shove him out into the garden in case he had something bigger in mind.
Well, it seemed he certainly did, the only problem then being what the hell to do with the great steaming pile bang in the middle of the garden path.
Oh, nuts to it. If I didn’t get out of the hot dress soon, I’d slit my throat.
Ironically, however, as I tore it off in my bedroom, I noticed it was actually surprisingly chilly in there. I felt the radiator. It was stone cold. I twiddled the thermostat knob. It came off in my hand. I kicked the radiator and then looked down at Alphonse, who was looking admiringly up at me.
‘Know anything about central heating?’ I asked him.
At seven o’clock that evening, I was roused from a semi-comatose state on one of the sofas in the salon – my room now being arctic – by the front door opening to admit Luc and Emma, neither of them looking what you might call full of good will to all men.
‘Oh, we left you with all the clearing up!’ cried Emma, flopping down on the sofa next to me. Luc chucked another log on the fire. Dusting off his hands, he caught sight of the naked Christmas tree now sitting in a positive ocean of pine needles.
‘What the devil’s happened to that?’ he said.
‘The dog sneezed next to it,’ I replied, at which they both looked less frigid. Luc even laughed.
‘Another good reason to rehome him,’ he said with satisfaction.
Emma sat up. ‘Dad, no. You’re not doing that. I’m having him. He’s mine. I’m going to look after him.’
‘And how, pray, are you going to do that when you go back to university?’
Emma glanced at me. ‘I’m not going back to university,’ she said.
‘Don’t be silly.’ Rootling around the mantlepiece, Luc found a glass still half full of cognac behind a Christmas card and downed it.
‘I mean it! I’ve decided! I was going to tell you later, but I might as well say it now.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I hate my course, I hate university and I’m not going back.’
Luc flicked his eyes at me. ‘Emma, can we discuss this later?’
‘Why?’ She jumped to her feet. ‘If you mean you want it to discuss it later when Alix is not here, then you’re wasting your breath. Alix knows all about it and one hundred per cent agrees with me.’
‘Now just a minute,’ I began.
‘You did! You did!’
Very slowly and carefully, Luc set down his empty glass on the coffee table carved chest, straightened up and turned his now gimlet-like eyes on me.
‘Is this true?’ he demanded.
‘No, not exactly.’ I hesitated, not quite knowing what to say that didn’t drop Emma in it. ‘That is,’ I ventured, ‘I simply pointed out—’
‘So Emma is lying?’
‘No, of course she isn’t. I’m not saying that. I simply—’
He cut across me again. ‘If you put her up to this, I suggest you’d do well to remember precisely whose daughter Emma is and precisely who you are working for.’
A deathly silence followed, broken by Emma suddenly bursting into floods of tears. I jumped to my feet. I wasn’t going to listen to this. Before anyone could say or do anything else, I left the room.
‘I can’t begin to apologise. I don’t know what came over me. I’m so very sorry.’
I looked up at Luc from where I was sitting on my icy-cold bed in my now icy-cold room. He must have rushed straight after me because it was less than a minute since I had left the salon.
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Yes, it bloody does! What I said was not just rude and nasty, it was unforgivable.’
‘Well, you were ambushed. Your daughter,’ I tried to explain, ‘she took you by surprise.’
‘She certainly did, but that’s absolutely no excuse for the way I spoke to you.’
I shook my head. ‘You only spoke the truth. She is your daughter and you are my employer.’ There was a pause. I looked up to where he was looming over me. ‘I should not in any way have got involved in your… situation.’
He ran his fingers through his hair in his characteristic exasperated sort of way and then looked at me.
‘I certainly find myself involved in a situation I never envisaged happening,’ he said.
‘So I also apologise, for invading your privacy.’
‘You know I didn’t mean that.’
‘Whatever.’ With a deliberately dismissive shrug, I fixed a bland smile on my face mainly because all at once I was terrified I was going to burst into tears as well, although I wasn’t quite sure why.
I knew I’d broken all the rules, allowed myself to cross barriers that should never have been crossed.
I’d abrogated my own private rule book, my ‘keep your distance, never get involved’ stricture.
I’d shat all over it, although I wasn’t quite sure how that had happened either.
Well, it wasn’t going to happen any longer.
‘Anyway, I must get on,’ I said briskly, patting and smoothing the duvet cover as if rolling pastry and making as if to rise, which was all I could do while he was continuing to stand bang in front of me.
The room was so constricted, if I stood up we’d be dancing the lambada.
Yet still he stared at me. Then abruptly he frowned and looked round the room.
‘Goodness, I’ve only just noticed but it’s bloody cold in here. Has the radiator been switched off?’
‘It… um… switched itself off,’ I said cautiously, in case he accused me of sabotaging his central heating. Marching over to the radiator, he seized the thermostat knob which promptly, as it had done with me, came off in his hand.
‘Oh, fuck!’ he screamed and, again as I had, kicked the radiator for good measure.
Once more we looked at each other, when suddenly – unexpectedly – he started laughing.
‘You can’t stay in here,’ he said. He glanced around the room once more.
‘It’s a horrible room anyway. We should never have put you in here.
You can move to one of the bedrooms upstairs.
Get your stuff together and I’ll take it up for you. ’
‘There’s really no need—’
‘Don’t oblige me to pull rank on you again.
’ Then, in a gentler voice, he continued, ‘It’s perishing in here, Alix.
I can’t have my chef freezing to death. So please, just do as I say.
’ Chucking the radiator knob on the bed, he walked to the door and paused there a second.
‘Funny, but I hate to think of you in here.’ He eyed the room with distaste.
‘I’ll be back in five minutes. Get your stuff together. ’ And he was gone.
In confusion, I sat very still on the very cold bed.
So much for my resolution to detach myself from the personal life of my employer.
So much for keeping my distance. Now it appeared I was to be moved even closer, promoted to the Mandeville private family quarters.
And I was completely helpless to do anything about it.
It was as though I was anchored by an invisible piece of elastic that pinged me back into line the moment I tried to escape.
I might have been standing on the edge of a maelstrom, clinging to the shifting sides as I was drawn powerlessly towards its whirling depths.