2

So it was that some ten days later, on 22 March, Jonathan Trevanny, who lived in the Rue St Merry, Fontainebleau, received a curious letter from his good friend Alan McNear. Alan, a Paris representative of an English electronics firm, had written the letter just before leaving for New York on a business assignment, and oddly the day after he had visited the Trevannys in Fontainebleau. Jonathan had expected – or rather not expected – a sort of thank-you letter from Alan for the send-off party Jonathan and Simone had given him, and Alan did write a few words of appreciation, but the paragraph that puzzled Jonathan went:

Jon, I was shocked at the news in regard to the old blood ailment, and am even now hoping it isn’t so. I was told that you knew, but weren’t telling any of your friends. Very noble of you, but what are friends for? You needn’t think we’ll avoid you or that we’ll think you’ll become so melancholy that we won’t want to see you. Your friends (and I’m one) are here – always. But I can’t write anything I want to say, really. I’ll do better when I see you next, in a couple of months when I wangle myself a vacation, so forgive these inadequate words.

What was Alan talking about? Had his doctor, Dr Perrier, said something to his friends, something he wouldn’t tell him? Something about not living much longer? Dr Perrier hadn’t been to the party for Alan, but could Dr Perrier have said something to someone else?

Had Dr Perrier spoken to Simone? And was Simone keeping it from him, too?

As Jonathan thought of these possibilities, he was standing in his garden at 8.30 a.m., chilly under his sweater, his fingers smudged with earth. He’d best speak with Dr Perrier today. No use with Simone. She might put up an act. But darling, what’re you talking about? Jonathan wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell if she was putting up an act or not.

And Dr Perrier – could he trust him? Dr Perrier was always bouncing with optimism, which was fine if you had something minor – you felt fifty per cent better, even cured. But Jonathan knew he hadn’t anything minor. He had myeloid leukemia, characterized by an excess of yellow matter in the bone marrow. In the past five years, he’d had at least four blood transfusions per year. Every time he felt weak, he was supposed to get to his doctor, or to the Fontainebleau hospital for a transfusion. Dr Perrier had said (and so had a specialist in Paris) that there would come a time when the decline might be swift, when transfusions wouldn’t do the trick any longer. Jonathan had read enough about his ailment to know that himself. No doctor as yet had come up with a cure for myeloid leukemia. On the average, it killed after six to twelve years, or six to eight even. Jonathan was entering his sixth year with it.

Jonathan set his fork back in the little brick structure, formerly an outside toilet, that served as a tool shed, then walked to his back steps. He paused with one foot on the first step and drew the fresh morning air into his lungs, thinking, ‘How many weeks will I have to enjoy such mornings?’ He remembered thinking the same thing last spring, however. Buck up, he told himself, he’d known for six years that he might not live to see thirty-five. Jonathan mounted the eight iron steps with a firm tread, already thinking that it was 8.’2 a.m., and that he was due in his shop at 9 a.m. or a few minutes after.

Simone had gone off with Georges to the Ecole Maternelle, and the house was empty. Jonathan washed his hands at the sink and made use of the vegetable brush, which Simone would not have approved of, but he left the brush clean. The only other sink was in the bathroom on the top floor. There was no telephone in the house. He’d ring Dr Perrier from his shop the first thing.

Jonathan walked to the Rue de la Paroisse and turned left, then went on to the Rue des Sablons which crossed it. In his shop, Jonathan dialled Dr Perrier’s number, which he knew by heart.

The nurse said the doctor was booked up today, which Jonathan had expected.

‘But this is urgent. It’s something that won’t take long. Just a question really – but I must see him.’

‘You are feeling weak, M. Trevanny?’

‘Yes, I am,’ Jonathan said at once.

He got an appointment for twelve noon. The hour had a certain doom about it.

Jonathan was a picture framer. He cut mats and glass, made frames, chose frames from his stock for clients who were undecided, and once in a blue moon, in buying old frames at auctions and from junk dealers, he got a picture that was of some interest with the frame, a picture which he could clean and put in his window and sell. But it wasn’t a lucrative business. He scraped along. Seven years ago he’d had a partner, another Englishman, from Manchester, and they had started an antique shop in Fontainebleau, dealing mainly in junk which they refurbished and sold. This hadn’t paid enough for two, and Roy had pushed off and got a job as a garage mechanic somewhere near Paris. Shortly after that, a Paris doctor had said the same thing that a London doctor had told Jonathan: ‘You’re inclined to anaemia. You’d better have frequent check-ups, and it’s best if you don’t do any heavy work.’ So from handling armoires and sofas, Jonathan had turned to the lighter work of handling picture frames and glass. Before Jonathan had married Simone, he had told her that he might not live more than another six years, because just at the time he met Simone, he’d had it confirmed by two doctors that his periodic weakness was caused by myeloid leukemia.

Now, Jonathan thought as he calmly, very calmly began his day, Simone might remarry if he died. Simone worked five afternoons a week from 2.30 p.m. until 6.30 p.m. at a shoe shop in the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, which was within walking distance of their house, and this was only in the past year when Georges had been old enough to be put into the French equivalent of kindergarten. He and Simone needed the two hundred francs per week that Simone earned, but Jonathan was irked by the thought that Brezard, her boss, was a bit of a lecher, liked to pinch his employees’ behinds, and doubtless try his luck in the back room where the stock was. Simone was a married woman, as Brezard well knew, so there was a limit as to how far he could go, Jonathan supposed, but that never stopped his type from trying. Simone was not at all a flirt – she had a curious shyness, in fact, that suggested that she thought herself not attractive to men. It was a quality that endeared her to Jonathan. In Jonathan’s opinion, Simone was supercharged with sex appeal, though of the kind that might not be apparent to the average man, and it annoyed Jonathan especially that the cruising swine Brezard must have become aware of Simone’s very different kind of attractiveness, and that he wanted some of it for himself. Not that Simone talked much about Brezard. Only once had she mentioned that he tried it on with his women employees who were two besides Simone. For an instant that morning, as Jonathan presented a framed watercolour to a client, he imagined Simone, after a discreet interval, succumbing to the odious Brezard, who after all was a bachelor and financially better off than Jonathan. Absurd, Jonathan thought. Simone hated his type.

‘Oh, it’s lovely! Excellent!’ said the young woman in a bright red coat, holding the watercolour at arm’s length.

Jonathan’s long, serious face slowly smiled, as if a small and private sun had come out of clouds and begun to shine within him. She was so genuinely pleased! Jonathan didn’t know her, in fact she was picking up the picture that an older woman, perhaps her mother, had brought in. The price should have been twenty francs more than he had first estimated, because the frame was not the same as the older woman had chosen (Jonathan had not had enough in stock), but Jonathan didn’t mention this and accepted the eighty francs agreed upon.

Then Jonathan pushed a broom over his wooden floor, and feather-dusted the three or four pictures in his small front window. His shop was positively shabby, Jonathan thought that morning. No colour anywhere, frames of all sizes leaning against unpainted walls, samples of frame wood hanging from the ceiling, a counter with an order book, ruler, pencils. At the back of the shop stood a long wooden table where Jonathan worked with his mitre boxes, saws and glass cutters. Also on the big table were his carefully protected sheets of mat board, a great roll of brown paper, rolls of string, wire, pots of glue, boxes of variously sized nails, and above the table on the wall were racks of knives and hammers. In principle, Jonathan liked the nineteenth-century atmosphere, the lack of commercial frou-frou. He wanted his shop to look as if a good craftsman ran it, and in that he had succeeded, he thought. He never overcharged, did his work on time, or if he was going to be late, he notified his clients by postcard or a telephone call. People appreciated that, Jonathan had found.

At 11.35 a.m., having framed two small pictures and fixed their owners’ names to them, Jonathan washed his hands and face at the cold water tap in his sink, combed his hair, stood up straight and tried to brace himself for the worst. Dr Perrier’s office was not far away in the Rue Grande. Jonathan turned his door card to ouvert at 14.30, locked his front door, and set out.

Jonathan had to wait in Dr Perrier’s front room with its sickly, dusty rose laurel plant. The plant never flowered, it didn’t die, and never grew, never changed. Jonathan identified himself with the plant. Again and again his eyes were drawn to it, though he tried to think of other things. There were copies of Paris Match on the oval table, out of date and much thumbed, but Jonathan found them more depressing than the laurel plant. Dr Perrier also worked at the big Hôspital de Fontainebleau, Jonathan reminded himself, otherwise it would have seemed an absurdity to entrust one’s life, to believe an opinion of whether one lived or died, to a doctor who worked in such a wretched little place as this looked.

The nurse came out and beckoned.

‘Well, well, how’s the interesting patient, my most interesting patient?’ said Dr Perrier, rubbing his hands, then extending one to Jonathan.

Jonathan shook his hand. ‘I feel quite all right, thank you. But what is this about – I mean the tests of two months ago. I understand they are not so favourable?’

Dr Perrier looked blank, and Jonathan watched him intently. Then Dr Perrier smiled, showing yellowish teeth under his carelessly trimmed moustache.

‘What do you mean unfavourable? You saw the results.’

‘But – you know I’m not an expert in understanding them – perhaps.’

‘But I explained them to you – Now what is the matter? You’re feeling tired again?’

‘In fact no.’ Since Jonathan knew the doctor wanted to get away for lunch, he said hastily, ‘To tell the truth, a friend of mine has learned somewhere that – I’m due for a crisis. Maybe I haven’t long to live. Naturally, I thought this information must have come from you.’

Dr Perrier shook his head, then laughed, hopped about like a bird and came to rest with his skinny arms lightly outspread on the top of a glass-enclosed bookcase. ‘My dear sir – first of all, if it were true, I would not have said it to anybody. That is not ethical. Second, it is not true, as far as I know from the last test. – Do you want another test today? Late this afternoon at the hospital, maybe I —’

‘Not necessarily. What I really wanted to know is – is it true? You wouldn’t just not tell me?’ Jonathan said with a laugh. Just to make me feel better?’

‘What nonsense! Do you think I’m that kind of a doctor?’

Yes, Jonathan thought, looking Dr Perrier straight in the eye. And God bless him, maybe, in some cases, but Jonathan thought he deserved the facts, because he was the kind of man who could face the facts. Jonathan bit his underlip. He could go to the lab in Paris, he thought, insist on seeing the specialist Moussu again. Also he might get something out of Simone today at lunch-time.

Dr Perrier was patting his arm. ‘Your friend – and I won’t ask who he is! – is either mistaken or not a very nice friend, I think. Now then, you should tell me when and if you become tired, that is what counts…’

Twenty minutes later, Jonathan was climbing the front steps of his house, carrying an apple tart and a long loaf of bread. He let himself in with his key, and walked down the hall to the kitchen. He smelled frying potatoes, a mouthwatering smell always signifying lunch, not dinner, and Simone’s potatoes would be in long slender pieces, not short chunks like the chips in England. Why had he thought of English chips?

Simone was at the stove, wearing an apron over her dress, wielding a long fork. ‘Hello, Jon. You’re a little late.’

Jonathan put an arm around her and kissed her cheek, then held up the paper box, swung it towards Georges who was sitting at the table, blond head bent, cutting out parts for a mobile from an empty box of cornflakes.

‘Ah, a cake! What kind?’ Georges asked.

‘Apple.’ Jonathan set the box on the table.

They had a small steak each, the delicious fried potatoes, a green salad.

‘Brezard is starting inventory,’ Simone said. ‘The summer stock comes in next week, so he wants to have a sale Friday and Saturday. I might be a little late tonight.’

She had warmed the apple tart on the asbestos plate. Jonathan waited impatiently for Georges to go in the living-room where a lot of his toys were, or out to the garden. When Georges left finally Jonathan said:

‘I had a funny letter today from Alan.’

‘Alan? Funny how?’

‘He wrote it just before he went to New York. It seems he’s heard —’ Should he show her Alan’s letter? She could read English well enough. Jonathan decided to go on. ‘He’s heard somewhere that I’m worse, due for a bad crisis – or something. Do you know anything about it?’ Jonathan watched her eyes.

Simone looked genuinely surprised. ‘Why no, Jon. How would I hear – except from you?’

‘I spoke with Dr Perrier just now. That’s why I was a bit late. Perrier says he doesn’t know of any change in the situation, but you know Perrier!’ Jonathan smiled, still watching Simone anxiously. ‘Well, here’s the letter,’ he said, pulling it from his back pocket. He translated the paragraph.

‘Mon dieu! – Well, where did he hear it from?’

‘Yes, that’s the question. I’ll write him and ask. Don’t you think?’ Jonathan smiled again, a more genuine smile. He was sure Simone didn’t know anything about it.

Jonathan carried a second cup of coffee into the small square living-room where Georges was now sprawled on the floor with his cut-outs. Jonathan sat down at the writing desk, which always made him feel like a giant. It was a rather dainty French écritoire, a present from Simone’s family. Jonathan was careful not to put too much weight on the writing shelf. He addressed an air-letter to Alan McNear at the Hotel New Yorker, began the letter breezily enough, and wrote a second paragraph:

I don’t know quite what you mean in your letter about the news (about me) which shocked you. I feel all right, but this morning spoke with my doctor here to see if he was giving me the whole story. He disclaims any knowledge of a worse condition. So dear Alan, what does interest me is where did you hear it? Could you possibly drop me a line soon? It sounds like a misunderstanding, I’d be delighted to forget it, but I hope you can understand my curiosity as to where you heard it.

He dropped the letter in a yellow box en route to his shop. It would probably be a week before he heard from Alan.

That afternoon, Jonathan’s hand was as steady as ever as he pulled his razor knife down the edge of his steel ruler. He thought of his letter, making its progress to Orly airport, maybe by this evening, maybe by tomorrow morning. He thought of his age, thirty-four, and of how pitifully little he would have done if he were to die in another couple of months. He’d produced a son, and that was something, but hardly an achievement worthy of special praise. He would not leave Simone very secure. If anything, he had lowered her standard of living slightly. Her father was only a coal merchant, but somehow over the years her family had gathered a few conveniences of life around them, a car for instance, decent furniture. They vacationed in June or July down south in a villa which they rented, and last year they had paid a month’s rent so that Jonathan and Simone could go there with Georges. Jonathan had not done as well as his brother Philip, two years older than himself, though Philip had looked physically weaker, had been a dull, plodding type all his life. Now Philip was a professor of anthropology at Bristol University, not brilliant, Jonathan was sure, but a good solid man with a solid career, a wife and two children. Jonathan’s mother, a widow now, had a happy existence with her brother and sister-in-law in Oxfordshire, taking care of the big garden there and doing all the shopping and cooking. Jonathan felt himself the failure of his family, both physically and as to his work. He had first wanted to be an actor. At eighteen he’d gone to a drama school for two years. He’d not a bad face for an actor, he thought, not too handsome with a big nose and wide mouth, yet good-looking enough to play romantic roles, and at the same time heavy enough to play heavier roles in time. What pipe dreams! He’d hardly got two walk-on parts in the three years he’d hung around London and Manchester theatres – always supporting himself, of course, by odd jobs, including one as a veterinary’s assistant. ‘You take up a lot of space and you’re not even sure of yourself,’ a director once said to him. And then, working for an antique dealer in another of his odd jobs, Jonathan had thought he might like the antique business. He had learned all he could from his boss, Andrew Mott. Then the grand move to France with his chum Roy Johnson, who had also had enthusiasm, if not much knowledge, for starting an antique shop via the junk trade. Jonathan remembered his dreams of glory and adventure in a new country, France, dreams of freedom, of success. And instead of success, instead of a series of educational mistresses, instead of making friends with the bohemians, or with some stratum of French society which Jonathan had imagined existed but perhaps didn’t – instead of all this Jonathan had continued to limp along, no better off really than when he’d been trying to get jobs as an actor and had supported himself any old way.

The only successful thing in his whole life was his marriage to Simone, Jonathan thought. The news of his disease had come in the same month he had met Simone Foussadier. He’d begun to feel strangely weak and had romantically thought that it might be due to falling in love. But a little extra rest hadn’t shaken the weakness, he had fainted once in a street of Nemours, so he had gone to a doctor – Dr Perrier in Fontainebleau, who had suspected a blood condition and sent him to a Dr Moussu in Paris. The specialist Moussu, after two days of tests, had confirmed myeloid leukemia, and said that he might have from six to eight, with luck twelve years to live. There would be an enlargement of the spleen, which in fact Jonathan already had without having noticed it. Thus Jonathan’s proposal to Simone had been a declaration of love and death in the same awkward speech. It would have been enough to put most young women off, or to have made them say they needed time to think about it. Simone had said yes, she loved him too. ‘It is the love that is important, not the time,’ Simone had said. None of the calculations that Jonathan had associated with the French, and with Latins in general. Simone said she had already spoken to her family. And this after they had known each other only two weeks. Jonathan felt himself suddenly in a world more secure than any he had ever known. Love, in a real and not a merely romantic sense, love that he had no control over, had miraculously rescued him. In a way, he felt that it had rescued him from death, but he realized that he meant that love had taken the terror out of death. And here was death six years later, as Dr Moussu in Paris had predicted. Perhaps. Jonathan didn’t know what to believe.

He must make another visit to Moussu in Paris, he thought. Three years ago, Jonathan had had a complete change of blood under Dr Moussu’s supervision in a Paris hospital. The treatment was called Vincainestine, the idea or die hope being that the excess of white with accompanying yellow components would not return to the blood. But the yellow excess had reappeared in about eight months.

Before he made an appointment with Dr Moussu, however, Jonathan preferred to wait for a letter from Alan McNear. Alan would write at once, Jonathan felt sure. One could count on Alan.

Jonathan, before he left his shop, cast one desperate glance around its Dickensian interior. It wasn’t really dusty, it was just that the walls needed repainting. He wondered if he should make an effort to spruce the place up, start soaking his customers as so many picture framers did, sell lacquered brass items with big mark-ups? Jonathan winced. He wasn’t the type.

That day was Wednesday. On Friday, while bending over a stubborn screw-eye that had been in an oak frame for perhaps a hundred and fifty years and had no intention of yielding to his pliers, Jonathan had suddenly to drop the pliers and look for a seat. The seat was a wooden box against a wall. He got up almost at once and wet his face at the sink, bending as low as he could. In five minutes or so, the faintness passed, and by lunch-time he had forgotten about it. Such moments came every two or three months, and Jonathan was glad if they didn’t catch him on the street. On Tuesday, six days after he had posted his letter to Alan, he received a letter from the Hotel New Yorker.

Sat. March 25

Dear Jon,

Believe me, I’m glad you spoke with your doctor and that the news is good! The person who told me you were in a serious way was a little balding fellow with moustache and a glassy eye, early forties maybe. He seemed really concerned, and perhaps you shouldn’t hold it too much against him, as he may have heard it from someone else.

I’m enjoying this town and wish you and Simone were here, esp. as I’m on an expense account…

The man Alan meant was Pierre Gauthier, who had an art supply shop in the Rue Grande. He was not a friend of Jonathan’s, just an acquaintance. Gauthier often sent people to Jonathan to have their pictures framed. Gauthier had been at the house the night of Alan’s send-off party, Jonathan remembered distinctly, and must have spoken to Alan then. It was out of the question that Gauthier had spoken maliciously. Jonathan was only a little surprised that Gauthier even knew he had a blood ailment, though the word did get around, Jonathan realized. Jonathan thought the thing to do was speak to Gauthier and ask him where he’d heard the story.

It was 8.’0 a.m. Jonathan had waited for the post, as he had yesterday morning also. His impulse was to go straight to Gauthier’s, but he felt this would show unseemly anxiety, and that he’d better get his bearings by going to his shop and opening as usual.

Because of three or four customers, Jonathan hadn’t a break till 10.25 a.m. He left his clock card in the glass of his door indicating that he would be open again at 11 a.m.

When Jonathan entered the art supply shop, Gauthier was busy with two women customers. Jonathan pretended to browse among racks of paint brushes until Gauthier was free. Then he said:

‘M. Gauthier! How goes it?’ Jonathan extended a hand.

Gauthier clasped Jonathan’s hand in both his own and smiled. ‘And you, my friend?’

‘Well enough, thank you…. Ecoutez’ I don’t want to take your time – but there is something I would like to ask you.’

‘Yes? What’s that?’

Jonathan beckoned Gauthier farther away from the door which might open at any minute. There was not much standing room in the little shop. ‘I heard from a friend – my friend Alan, you remember? The Englishman. At the party at my house a few weeks ago.’

‘Yes! Your friend the Englishman. Alain.’ Gauthier remembered and looked attentive.

Jonathan tried to avoid even glancing at Gauthier’s false eye, but to concentrate on the other eye. ‘Well, it seems you told Alan that you’d heard I was very ill, maybe not going to live much longer.’

Gauthier’s soft face grew solemn. He nodded. ‘Yes, m’sieur, I did hear that. I hope it’s not true. I remember Alain, because you introduced him to me as your best friend. So I assumed he knew. Perhaps I should have said nothing. I am sorry, it was perhaps tactless. I thought you were – in the English style – putting on a brave face.’

‘It’s nothing serious, M. Gauthier, because as far as I know, it’s not true! I’ve just spoken with my doctor. But —’

‘Ah, bon! Ah well, that’s different! I’m delighted to hear that, M. Trevanny! Ha! Ha!’ Pierre Gauthier gave a clap of laughter as if a ghost had been laid, and he found not only Jonathan but himself back among the living.

‘But I’d like to know where you heard this. Who told you I was ill?’

‘Ah – yes!’ Gauthier pressed a finger to his lips, thinking. ‘Who? A man. Yes – of course? He had it, but he paused.

Jonathan waited.

‘But I remember he said he wasn’t sure. He’d heard it, he said. An incurable blood disease, he said.’

Jonathan felt warm with anxiety again, as he had felt several times in the past week. He wet his lips. ‘But who? How did he hear it? Didn’t he say?’

Gauthier again hesitated. ‘Since it isn’t true – shouldn’t we best forget it?’

‘Someone you know very well?’

‘No! Not at all well, I assure you.’

‘A customer.’

‘Yes. Yes, he is. A nice man, a gentleman. But since he said he wasn’t sure – Really, m’sieur, you shouldn’t bear a resentment, although I can understand how you could resent such a remark.’

‘Which leads to the interesting question how did the gentleman come to hear I was very ill,’ Jonathan went on, laughing now.

‘Yes. Exactly. Well, the point is, it isn’t true. Isn’t that the main thing?’

Jonathan saw in Gauthier a French politeness, and unwillingness to alienate a customer, and – which was to be expected – an aversion to the subject of death. ‘You’re right. That’s the main thing.’ Jonathan shook hands with Gauthier, both of them smiling now, and bade him adieu.

That very day at lunch, Simone asked Jonathan if he had heard from Alan. Jonathan said yes.

‘It was Gauthier who said something to Alan.’

‘Gauthier? The art shop man?’

‘Yes.’ Jonathan was lighting a cigarette over his coffee. Georges had gone out into the garden. ‘I went to see Gauthier this morning and I asked him where he’d heard it. He said from a customer. A man. – Funny, isn’t it? Gauthier wouldn’t tell me who, and I can’t really blame him. It’s some mistake, of course. Gauthier realizes that.’

‘But it’s a shocking thing,’ said Simone.

Jonathan smiled, knowing Simone wasn’t really shocked, since she knew Dr Perrier had given him rather good news. ‘As we say in English, one must not make a mountain out of a molehill.’

In the following week, Jonathan bumped into Dr Perrier in the Rue Grande, the doctor in a hurry to enter the Société Générale before it shut at twelve sharp. But he paused to ask how Jonathan was.

‘Quite well, thank you,’ said Jonathan, whose mind was on buying a plunger for the toilet from a shop a hundred yards away which also shut at noon.

‘M. Trevanny—’ Dr Perrier paused with one hand on the big knob of the bank’s door. He moved away from the door, closer to Jonathan. ‘In regard to what we were talking about the other day – no doctor can be sure, you know. In a situation like yours. I didn’t want you to think I’d given you a guarantee of perfect health, immunity for years. You know yourself—’

‘Oh, I didn’t assume that!’ Jonathan interrupted.

‘Then you understand,’ said Dr Perrier, smiling, and dashed at once into his bank.

Jonathan trotted on in quest of the plunger. It was the kitchen sink stopped up, not the toilet, he remembered, and Simone had lent a neighbour their plunger months ago and – Jonathan was thinking of what Dr Perrier had said. Did he know something, suspect something from the last test, something not sufficiently definite to warrant telling him about?

At the door of the droguerie, Jonathan encountered a smiling, dark-haired girl who was just locking up, removing the outside door handle.

‘I am sorry. It is five minutes past twelve,’ she said.