to the kitchen where I have given the chef instructions on your duties for the day.’
‘Thank you, madame.’
In the kitchen Bruno was sitting at the big wooden table, dipping some bread into a bowl of coffee.
‘Floors,’ he said. ‘Then the vegetables. And then if there’s time before lunch, the windows.’
‘But that’s Roland’s job.’
‘Shut up, woman. And don’t come whining to me this morning. My head’s made of wood.’
‘I see.’ It seemed the dentist’s half-bottle of wine was not all the alcohol Bruno had consumed. ‘Did you drink a lot?’
Bruno grunted and waved a fat wrist at Anne, who laughed.
‘Why do you do it, Bruno? You know it only makes you feel ill.’
‘Don’t ask me questions, you wretched girl, or I shall put you over my knee and spank you. Good and hard. I think that’s what you need – you and your Parisian manners.’
‘All right, not another word, I promise. Two bottles, was it?’
‘Good and hard, I tell you. I’d have that tight skirt off your bottom and your knickers down and –’
‘Bruno! You’re still drunk! I’m going, I’m going.’
She went quickly to the store cupboard by the back door where the mops and pails were kept. It was boring work and the constant jar of the wooden handle on the palm of her hand began to irritate the dormant eczema. This morning, however, she didn’t mind. She opened the back door and let through a thin breeze which was clear and cool after the previous night’s rain. She felt protected. It was as if Hartmann’s intervention had not only saved her job but had also insulated her from some of the tedium involved in performing it.
That night Christine Hartmann went to bed with a book she had taken from among the many that lay strewn around the Manor. From an early age she had developed the art of being alone and generally preferred her own company to anyone else’s. She read books at enormous speed and judged them entirely on their ability to remove her from her material surroundings. In almost all the unhappiest days of her life she had been able to escape from her own inner world by living temporarily in someone else’s, and on the two or three occasions that she had been too upset to concentrate she had been desolate.
Her husband had said he would be up late preparing some papers. He seemed to work late with increasing frequency these days. Christine registered the change but said nothing.
Hartmann sat at the desk in his study and stared blankly ahead of him, his pen abandoned on the papers.
All his life he had felt the implacable nagging of desire. The feeling was more of a frustration than a pleasure, because the relief was only ever momentary. Sometimes, in fact, the length of time between the relief and the first intimations of the next frustration seemed so brief as hardly to constitute an interuption in the continuous longing. He had been affected by a mood of frivolity that had been widespread in people of his class after the war. The sustained feeling of euphoria – even if it was shadowed by a suspicion that such a climate couldn’t last long – coincided with the period of his own greatest youthful vigour. After the sight of the wall of dead men in the mud, of severed limbs, of blown muscle and sinew; after the stench of decomposing flesh and field latrines, the landscape of blackened trees and gaping shell-holes; after the constant sense of fear and of life valued only by the day, and then the return to decimated villages, there had seemed no reason for self-restraint. The free embrace of womanhood, the touch and scent of femininity, were tokens of the peace.
For Hartmann and his friends in Paris there was serious work to be done in offices and banks and galleries, but there was also a parallel life of passion and sexual encounter. Hartmann and Mattlin, though they barely knew each other, were alike in one respect, that they each spent many hours wondering how to stave off the battering of desire.
‘Thank you, madame.’
In the kitchen Bruno was sitting at the big wooden table, dipping some bread into a bowl of coffee.
‘Floors,’ he said. ‘Then the vegetables. And then if there’s time before lunch, the windows.’
‘But that’s Roland’s job.’
‘Shut up, woman. And don’t come whining to me this morning. My head’s made of wood.’
‘I see.’ It seemed the dentist’s half-bottle of wine was not all the alcohol Bruno had consumed. ‘Did you drink a lot?’
Bruno grunted and waved a fat wrist at Anne, who laughed.
‘Why do you do it, Bruno? You know it only makes you feel ill.’
‘Don’t ask me questions, you wretched girl, or I shall put you over my knee and spank you. Good and hard. I think that’s what you need – you and your Parisian manners.’
‘All right, not another word, I promise. Two bottles, was it?’
‘Good and hard, I tell you. I’d have that tight skirt off your bottom and your knickers down and –’
‘Bruno! You’re still drunk! I’m going, I’m going.’
She went quickly to the store cupboard by the back door where the mops and pails were kept. It was boring work and the constant jar of the wooden handle on the palm of her hand began to irritate the dormant eczema. This morning, however, she didn’t mind. She opened the back door and let through a thin breeze which was clear and cool after the previous night’s rain. She felt protected. It was as if Hartmann’s intervention had not only saved her job but had also insulated her from some of the tedium involved in performing it.
That night Christine Hartmann went to bed with a book she had taken from among the many that lay strewn around the Manor. From an early age she had developed the art of being alone and generally preferred her own company to anyone else’s. She read books at enormous speed and judged them entirely on their ability to remove her from her material surroundings. In almost all the unhappiest days of her life she had been able to escape from her own inner world by living temporarily in someone else’s, and on the two or three occasions that she had been too upset to concentrate she had been desolate.
Her husband had said he would be up late preparing some papers. He seemed to work late with increasing frequency these days. Christine registered the change but said nothing.
Hartmann sat at the desk in his study and stared blankly ahead of him, his pen abandoned on the papers.
All his life he had felt the implacable nagging of desire. The feeling was more of a frustration than a pleasure, because the relief was only ever momentary. Sometimes, in fact, the length of time between the relief and the first intimations of the next frustration seemed so brief as hardly to constitute an interuption in the continuous longing. He had been affected by a mood of frivolity that had been widespread in people of his class after the war. The sustained feeling of euphoria – even if it was shadowed by a suspicion that such a climate couldn’t last long – coincided with the period of his own greatest youthful vigour. After the sight of the wall of dead men in the mud, of severed limbs, of blown muscle and sinew; after the stench of decomposing flesh and field latrines, the landscape of blackened trees and gaping shell-holes; after the constant sense of fear and of life valued only by the day, and then the return to decimated villages, there had seemed no reason for self-restraint. The free embrace of womanhood, the touch and scent of femininity, were tokens of the peace.
For Hartmann and his friends in Paris there was serious work to be done in offices and banks and galleries, but there was also a parallel life of passion and sexual encounter. Hartmann and Mattlin, though they barely knew each other, were alike in one respect, that they each spent many hours wondering how to stave off the battering of desire.
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