Too Close to the Edge Read online

  She asked herself if it might be an idea to undertake a commando mission to the supermarket in Montélimar today, rather than await the inevitable trolley gridlock at the end of the week. Without much deliberation, she told herself it would not. Her solitary way of life had made her overly wary of approaching a town of more than eighty inhabitants. But there was nothing in her fridge or cupboards that two couples and their children might want to eat after a long journey. One way or another she would have to make the trip, today or tomorrow.

  It was only four o’clock, and it was no longer raining. Éliette decided to grin and bear it and went up to her room to change. She was ashamed at the sight of herself in the mirror of her wardrobe: shapeless woollen cardigan, baggy-kneed leggings, thick socks and grubby clogs. This was what country life looked like: a far cry from a Fragonard shepherdess frolicking on a swing in a flouncy dress. While nature was blossoming in a riot of colours and scents, she was slowly turning into a hideous caricature of the frumpiest pages of the La Redoute catalogue. While she had never been a slave to fashion, Éliette had always made an effort with her appearance. But with nobody to look nice for …

  ‘You’re letting yourself go, old girl. Take a look at yourself: you’re like something off the compost heap!’

  Earlier in the week, Rose had been extolling the benefits of the disgusting nylon overalls she wore day in, day out. ‘They’re just so practical! You wash them and half an hour later they’re dry again. And even if you put a bit of weight on, they’re so roomy!’

  If her body had not rebelled in the face of such an outrage, Éliette could almost have been convinced. Stripped down to her bra and knickers, she began emptying her wardrobe in search of something decent to wear, holding various dresses, jumpers and blouses against her body, but all she saw reflected in the mirror was the sad face of a glove puppet poking out from behind a curtain. Tears welled in her eyes. One last shirt fell to the floor to join the pile of sloughed-off skins, each more tired and outdated than the last.

  She cupped her breasts, turned sideways on and posed like a toreador, fluffing up her hair. Her chest was still firm, her stomach flat. Plenty of women half her age would envy a figure like hers. But what use was it to her, with no one around to touch it? Her body had become as pathetic as a bouquet of flowers left to wilt on a station platform by a jilted lover.

  Even Rose, bulging out of her vile overalls like a saucisson d’Arles, was a thousand times more alluring than she was. Paul was a red-blooded man; they probably did ‘it’ every night … How long had it been since Éliette had made love? Since the beginning of Charles’s illness. What was the point in still being slim and attractive and faithful to the memory of a man reduced to a stinking pile of bones at the bottom of a pit? What had she been trying to prove since becoming a widow? That it was possible to survive without sex? Who was she trying to fool?

  A few weeks earlier, Paul had helped her put up a curtain pole in her bedroom. She had been standing on the stepladder hanging the curtain when her foot had slipped. Paul caught her by the waist and gently lowered her to the floor. For a few seconds, his hands had remained on her hips and their eyes had locked bizarrely. She could not help but feel a little unsettled when she recalled that moment, as she had done several times.

  It was like a fist inside her belly. Cursing that fat cow Rose and the rude health of her husband under her breath, she pulled on a black jumper, black trousers and a pair of flats the same colour.

  Putting aside the storms of the last two days, spring had come remarkably early this year. Even at the beginning of the month, summer had been in the air. Éliette had rarely found nature so sensual: the merest blade of grass seemed swollen with sap, leaves undulated on the breeze, and every shrub appeared to quiver with a frenzy of animals mating in its midst, setting Éliette’s senses firing. She was buzzing all the way to the supermarket, and on her arrival went straight to the freezer section. She kept her head down, convinced that every man in the shop was staring at her.

  In the vegetable aisle, she blushed as it dawned on her she had filled her trolley with courgettes, aubergines, carrots, cucumbers and even an enormous long white turnip weighing nearly 300 grams, which she struggled to make herself see in a culinary light. It was stronger than she was; a kind of inflammation of her mind was slowly turning the supermarket into a sex shop. She found herself getting drunk on the potent cocktail of shame and desire. Having finished her food shopping, she was drawn to the clothing section where she picked up the sexiest underwear set Continent could offer, along with a pair of skinny jeans and two low-cut tops that even the boldest fashionistas in Montélimar would have deemed too risqué to wear.

  As she unloaded her trolley, she avoided the gaze of the woman on the checkout, pulling her blonde hair over her forehead so that no one would see the word SEX branded across it. She stumbled weak-kneed out of the shop as if emerging from an orgy, piled the shameful evidence of her countless vices into the back of the microcar, and breathlessly set off home.

  ‘You’re totally loopy, you poor old thing! Totally loopy!’

  She had never driven this fast before. She couldn’t wait to get home, put all this food away in the fridge and find a home in the bottom of a cupboard for these clothes she would never wear.

  So she had suffered a bit of an ‘episode’; there was no need to make a drama out of it. She would laugh to herself about it later while finishing the leftover jardinière, having taken a Mogadon to overcome the ache in the small of her back, strangely pleasant though it was. She came off the main road at Meysse and took the little road along the River Lavezon. The river water was the colour of milky coffee. The poplars were bowing dangerously low and the sky was puffing out cheeks newly refilled with soot. In ten minutes the storm would break. She had just crossed the little bridge when the Aixam swerved, made a curious fart noise, zigzagged across the road and ended up on the verge.

  ‘Shit! Shit! Double shit!’

  It had never crossed her mind that she might get a puncture. Yet that was exactly what had happened to her front left wheel, barely two kilometres from home. Panicking, she got out and circled the vehicle, giving the tyres little kicks as mechanics do when trying to diagnose a problem. All this achieved was to make the little car quiver on the spot like a stubborn ass refusing to walk on. The first raindrop fell on her forehead as she was calling the heavens to come to her aid. The manual she retrieved from the glove compartment, hitherto untouched, was incomprehensible double-Dutch covered in pictures which bore no relation to anything she could recognise. Yes, she knew the jack and the spare wheel came into it somehow, but they were so well hidden!

  It didn’t occur to her to run back to the house, call Paul and ask him to give her a hand. Instead she contemplated suicide, for example by throwing herself into the muddy waters of the Lavezon. It was at that moment she saw him coming. A man, but not from round here. A man in a three-piece suit, jacket slung over his shoulder, briefcase in hand. A man who seemed to have come a long way judging by his heavy, steady gait and the hair slicked to his forehead. It was like a scene out of a Western: beneath a low sky, a stranger walks calmly towards his widescreen destiny.

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘I’ve got a flat … I don’t know how to use … all this.’

  The smile he shot her opened a hole inside her head.

  ‘Mind if I take a look?’

  He appeared to be in his forties, not very tall, not especially thickset, with a baby face. His shoes and trouser bottoms were covered in mud. As he set to work on the wheel, the rain began to drop like a portcullis. Éliette could not tear her eyes from his muscular back, which showed through his sodden shirt. He was finished in under ten minutes.

  ‘There you go. Done.’

  Standing face-to-face, streaming with water like two freshly landed fish, they burst out laughing. The sky no longer existed.

  ‘Thanks. Can I give you a lift somewhere?’

  ‘That would be great. I broke do
wn myself, a few kilometres away. I was trying to find a phone.’

  ‘I live just up the road. Hop in, quick.’

  The windscreen wipers struggled to give some definition to the muted watercolour landscape. The Aixam skidded as it climbed the muddy track. Back at the house, after several trips back and forth to unload the boot, they stood breathless in the kitchen, droplets of water fringing their eyelashes.

  ‘I’ll get some towels. Goodness me, I need wringing out!’

  They towelled their hair dry and took in the sight of one another: all fluffy and dishevelled, like chicks emerging from their shells. They cracked up again. Outside, thunder was rolling above the roof.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’

  ‘Please.’

  Éliette was cack-handed, or all fingers and thumbs: she couldn’t think where the cups lived, almost tipped over the kettle and banged into a chair while vainly trying to think of something witty to say.

  ‘It’s been pouring down like this for two solid days! It’s because the last month has been so hot.’

  ‘Probably.’

  The water was taking an eternity to come to the boil. Everything was too slow, and yet she would have liked this moment to go on and on. Every now and then she threw a glance at the man sitting at the table, discovering him bit by bit as though piecing together a puzzle: the nervous long-fingered hands, the blue vein pulsating in his neck, the blond cowlick on his forehead, the brown eyes that seemed to be searching for something on the ceiling …

  ‘Are you from round here?’

  ‘No … I’m from Paris.’

  … nice mouth, but bad teeth …

  ‘So your car broke down too?’

  ‘Um … yes. Must be something in the air today.’

  … a deep voice which hesitated over every word, as if they all started with a capital letter. A little boy in a man’s body, two opposites inhabiting the same skin. The kettle began to whistle.

  ‘Here we are. It’s ready!’

  They drank their tea without saying a word. The patter of the rain filled the silence. From time to time their eyes met, they smiled shyly at one another and looked away.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’

  ‘Yes, I like it. But it took an awful lot of time and effort to do it up. When we bought it, thirty years ago, it was a wreck. We were living in Paris at the time, in Boulogne. All our holidays were spent cementing, plastering … We wanted to retire here. Sadly my husband died two years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I decided to come and live here on my own. I have pictures of what it used to look like—’

  Before Éliette could finish her sentence, the phone rang.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Why oh why had she ever had children? It could only be Marc. She went into the living room and answered the phone with irritation in her voice.

  ‘Yes? Oh, it’s you, Paul … Yes, no. What’s going on? … What? … Patrick! … Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry … and Rose? … Of course … of course … I’ll come right now, Paul … Yes, see you very soon.’

  Éliette returned to the kitchen, ashen.

  The man noticed and instinctively rose from his chair.

  ‘Bad news?’

  ‘That was my neighbours. Their son has just been killed in a car accident … I have to go round.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll go …’

  ‘No, don’t. It’s still raining and the next village is eight kilometres away. The phone’s in the living room and there’s a phone book underneath it. But I doubt you’ll get anyone to come out at this time. Anyway, make yourself at home. There’s wood by the fire if you want to dry off.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you … I don’t know what to say …’

  ‘What about “See you later”?’

  ‘See you later.’

  The truth was that beyond feeling sorry for Rose and Paul, Éliette was not especially upset to hear Patrick had died. She had never liked the kid. Even as a little boy he had been a nasty piece of work. Sylvie and Marc had hated him because he was always throwing stones at dogs, cats, chickens, people in general and especially his brother, despite being the younger by four years. Serge, unlike Patrick, was the very model of sweetness and sensitivity. He had left the farm as soon as he could and was now a teacher living somewhere near Grenoble. His family seldom saw him. It was Patrick who was the apple of his parents’ eyes, despite the fact he openly despised them. But he was a good-looking lad with the gift of the gab, and had just passed his exams at the agricultural college in Pradel with flying colours. He would one day inherit the farm, since his brother wanted nothing to do with it.

  Old Bob pulled half-heartedly at his chain and bared time-worn canines as Éliette parked outside the house. Paul opened the door to her. He had the face of a zombie, his eyes were red, and the breath from his wet mouth was thick with pastis.

  ‘Ah, Éliette, Éliette …’

  For the first time in the history of their friendship, he put his arms around her. He smelt of the sweat of misfortune. She felt as if she were falling from the ladder again, only this time he was the one leaning on her, and that changed everything. It took a little effort to extricate herself from the embrace.

  ‘It’s awful, awful … We don’t understand …’

  ‘Oh, Paul. You poor thing … Where’s Rose?’

  ‘In the kitchen. I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry for dragging you out in this weather.’

  ‘Please, don’t mention it. What are friends for, after all?’

  Éliette had apologised to everyone when Charles died too. People are always ashamed of the misery that has befallen them, as though it were an act of divine retribution for a long-forgotten sin of theirs. Walking unsteadily, Paul led her into the kitchen where Rose seemed to be dozing, rocking back and forth in her chair near the stove. When Éliette put her arms around her, Rose turned to show a face wrecked by tears, washed of all expression. Her flabby skin fell in folds, as trickles of wax on a candle stump.

  ‘It’s not even as if he was coming back from a knees-up! … He wasn’t even drunk! … In broad daylight!’

  ‘You let those tears out, Rosie. It’ll do you good. I know how you feel, you know …’

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘I brought you something to take. Have this and put yourself to bed. Tomorrow, things will be a bit clearer. There’s nothing else you can do.’

  ‘Yes. We need to look after Paul. He’s in pieces …’

  ‘Of course. Don’t you worry.’

  Paul sat slumped, shoulders hunched, elbows on the Formica table top, a bottle of pastis in front of him, despite the fact he usually barely touched the stuff. Éliette filled a glass with water from the tap and handed Rose a tablet.

  ‘I’ll take her up to bed and I’ll be right back down, OK, Paul? Paul?’

  ‘Huh? Yes, yes.’

  Rose let herself be guided up to the bedroom, which was decorated in the most ghastly brown and orange flowery wallpaper. The blue satin quilt gave a kind of sigh when Rose fell onto it. A piece of boxwood fell off the crucifix above her head and went spinning onto the carpet.

  ‘He did whatever he wanted. He came top in everything … It’s not fair, no, not fair … Have to look after Paul. We’re old … We’ve become old all of a sudden.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m here. You need to sleep.’

  ‘I’ll never sleep again.’

  ‘You will. Just let yourself go.’

  In the mirrored wardrobe door, Éliette could see herself holding Rose’s hand. Her neighbour’s face was hidden behind her round belly; in the foreground was one bare foot and another with an old slipper hanging off the toes. The scene was dimly lit from above. This was where they made love, where the couple’s children had been conceived … The wedding photo on the bedside table seemed to come from another age, from a time when children died not in car accidents but in wars, or crushed between the jaws of some
agricultural machine.

  Rose was extremely house-proud. There was not a speck of dust or the merest cobweb to be seen, whereas Éliette collected them like the works of old masters. How did they have sex? From the front? From behind? It was ridiculous, but it was all she could think about. She tried to rid herself of these visions of copulation – all the more obscene in the circumstances – to bat them away like persistent flies. She felt Rose’s hand go limp. She was asleep, mouth open and nostrils pinched. Éliette wriggled her hand free and tiptoed out of the room.

  Paul had not moved an inch. He seemed to have become permanently embedded in the table edge and was staring straight ahead.

  ‘She’s asleep. It’ll do her good. You should do the same, Paul.’

  ‘Huh? Yes, yes.’

  Éliette smelt something burning. The remains of a stew were turning to charcoal on the hob. She turned the heat off under the pan and came to sit across the table from Paul.

  ‘How did it happen? Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Happened around midday, the gendarmes say. They found him at two o’clock down the bottom of a ravine off the little road at Le Coiron – you know the one. Nice views but it’s so narrow and wiggly. Someone had left a car parked on the road, right before a bend. Maybe Patrick was going too fast, but what was that driver thinking, leaving his motor in a place like that? The road’s tight enough as it is! Even if he’d run out of petrol, even on a hill … I don’t know … You’d push it or something, you’d get it off the road! He was trying to get round it … He died instantly … When we heard, I tried to call you, but you weren’t in.’

  ‘No, I was out shopping in Montélimar. Have you told Serge?’

  ‘Yes, he’ll be here tomorrow. What do we do now?’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do except go to bed and sleep next to Rose. She mustn’t be left alone. You need to look after one another. All these dark thoughts going round in your head, they’re not getting you anywhere.’