What was he supposed to say? Again he did what he did best, which was to lie.
‘I haven’t read it yet.’
Nina punched his arm as hard as she could.
‘She was so nervous about you reading it she nearly crashed the car. With ME in it. She practically drove us both over the mountains. She had to summon all her courage to see you. She was SHAKING.’
‘Oh, God.’ Joe blew out his cheeks.
‘Why “Oh, GOD”? I thought you didn’t believe in God?’ his daughter snarled and turned her back on him.
He banged the table and it jumped.
‘Don’t EVER get into a car with Kitty Finch again. Do you understand?’
Nina thought she sort of understood but didn’t really know what it was she had agreed to understand. Was Kitty a bad driver or what? Her father looked furious.
‘I can’t stand THE DEPRESSED. It’s like a job, it’s the only thing they work hard at. Oh good my depression is very well today. Oh good today I have another mysterious symptom and I will have another one tomorrow. The DEPRESSED are full of hate and bile and when they are not having panic attacks they are writing poems. What do they want their poems to DO? Their depression is the most VITAL thing about them. Their poems are threats. ALWAYS threats. There is no sensation that is keener or more active than their pain. They give nothing back except their depression. It’s just another utility. Like electricity and water and gas and democracy. They could not survive without it. GOD, I’M SO THIRSTY. WHERE’S CLAUDE?’
Claude poked his head round the door. He was trying not to laugh but looked at Joe with slightly more respect than usual. In fact he was thinking about asking him in confidence if he might see his way to paying the tab Mitchell was running up in the café.
‘Please, Claude, bring me some water. Any water. A bottle will do. No. I’ll have another beer. A large one. Don’t you do pints in this country?’
Claude nodded and disappeared inside the café, where he had switched on the television to watch the football. Nina picked up the fishing net and waved it in her father’s face.
‘The whole point of this afternoon is we are going fishing, so stand up and start walking, because you are boring me shitless.’
Shitless was her newest word and she said it with relish.
‘I know I don’t bore you “shitless”,’ her father growled pathetically, his voice now hoarse.
Nina did not dare say it again because every time he took her out with the net and bucket she was always excited at the horrors he somehow managed to scoop up.
Claude brought out the beer, ‘a large one’, in a pint glass and explained to Nina that he was taking no more orders from her father because he was watching the semi between Sweden and Brazil.
‘Fair enough.’ Joe threw some money on the table and when Claude whispered something in his ear, he slapped a bundle of notes into his hand and told him he would pay for anything Mitchell ordered at the café but he must not know, the fat man must not be told that his endless pastries would be paid for with the royalties of the rich arsehole poet.
Claude tapped his nose. Their plan was safe with him. He glanced at Nina and then snapped a branch of the purple bougainvillea growing up the wall. He looped the flowers into a bracelet and offered it to her with a small bow. ‘For the beautiful daughter of the poet.’
Nina found herself brazenly holding out her arm so he could wrap the violet petals around it like a handcuff. Her pulse was going berserk as his fingertips touched her wrist.
‘Give me the net, Nina.’ Her father held out his arm. ‘I can use it to poke my eyes out. Actually I would like to watch the World Cup with Claude. You need to learn to be a bit kinder to your father.’
She bit her lip in what she hoped was an appealing manner and dared herself to glance at Claude, who shrugged helplessly. They both knew he would rather just watch her.
As they walked past the church to get to the road that Joe knew led to the gate that led to the field of snorting bulls that led to the path that led to the bridge that led to the river, he felt his daughter’s hand slip into his trouser pocket.
‘Nearly there,’ she said encouragingly.
‘Shut up,’ her father replied.
‘I think you get depressed. Don’t you, Dad?’
Joe stumbled on an uneven cobblestone.
‘As you said, “We are nearly there.”’
The Photograph
The group of Japanese tourists was happy. They had been smiling for what seemed an unnaturally long time. Isabel, who was sitting in the shade of a silver olive tree waiting for Laura, reckoned they had been smiling for about twenty minutes. They were taking photographs of each other outside the faded pink château of the Matisse Museum and their smiles were beginning to look pained and tormented.
The park was full of families picnicking under the olive trees. Four old men playing boules in the shade paused their game to talk about the heatwave that was ruining the vineyards in France. Laura was waving to her and did not realise she had walked straight into a photograph. The seven Japanese tourists standing with their arms draped around each other were still smiling, Laura in front of them, her arm raised in the air as the camera flashed.
Isabel had always been first in class to raise her hand at her grammar school in Cardiff. She had known the answers long before the other girls caught up, girls who, like her, all wore green blazers inscribed with the school motto, Let Knowledge Serve the World. Now she thought she would change the school motto to something that warned the girls that knowledge would not necessarily serve them, nor would it make them happy. There was a chance it would instead throw light on visions they did not want to see. The new motto would have to take into account the idea that knowledge was sometimes hard to live with and once the clever young girls of Cardiff had a taste for it they would never be able to put the genie back in the bottle.
The men had resumed their game of boules. Voices from a radio somewhere close by were discussing the air controllers’ strike. Flasks of coffee were being opened under the trees. Children fell off their bicycles. Families unpacked sandwiches and fruit. Isabel could see the sweep of white and blue belle époque hotels built on the hill and knew that somewhere nearby was the cemetery where Matisse was buried. Laura was holding a bottle of red wine in her left hand. Isabel called out to her, but Laura had seen her anyway. She was a fast walker, efficient and focused. Laura would have things to say about her inviting Kitty Finch to stay, but Isabel would insist she pay the entire summer’s rent for the villa herself. Laura and Mitchell must book themselves into a country hotel near Cannes she had read about in a guidebook. A yellow ochre Provençal manor that served fine wines and sea bass in a crust of salt. This would be the right place for Mitchell, who had been hoping for an epic gastronomic summer but instead found himself unwillingly sharing his holiday with a stranger who seemed to be starving herself. Laura and Mitchell thrived on order and structure. Mitchell made five-year plans for their business in Euston, flow charts describing tasks to be done, the logic of decisions, the outcomes desired. She admired their faith in the future: the belief that it delivered outcomes that could be organised to come out in the right shape.
Laura was smiling but she did not look happy. She sat down beside Isabel and took off her sandals. And then she pulled at tufts of the parched grass with her fingers and told her friend that the shop in Euston was closing down. She and Mitchell could no longer make ends meet. They could barely pay their mortgage. They had come to France with five credit cards between them and not very much cash. They could not even afford to buy petrol for the Mercedes Mitchell had foolishly hired at the airport. In fact Mitchell had run up debts she was only just beginning to get a grip on. He owed large sums of money all over the place. For months he had been saying something would turn up, but nothing had turned up. The shop would go into liquidation. When they returned to London they would have to sell their house.