The Memory Palace. Gill Alderman
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drop you in Auxerre,’ he offered.
‘I’d rather come with you!’
She had said it, condemning him. He felt his lust recognized and justified.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you are absolutely sure.’
‘Oh, absolutely!’
A little later, when they were paused at the tollbooth, the girl laughed softly and said, ‘My father is always telling me not to accept lifts from strangers.’ He gave his daughters the same advice.
‘What can I say to that,’ he asked her, ‘without being totally flippant?’
‘You could say – “Soon, I won’t be a stranger”!’ She laughed again.
They left the autoroute and took a lesser road which followed the course of the Yonne. The signposts said ‘Avallon’. While intelligence and education told him that the name must be derived from that of a long-dead Celt, the chieftain in these wooded lands, an older and intuitive sense recalled Avalon, the island vale Arthur was carried to in death. Dusk inhabited the roadsides and waited in the trees. They passed through Lucy-le-bois. He felt heavy with fatigue and unwanted symbolism.
In Avallon, he was pleased to see, the houses were tall with open shutters laid back against stone walls; trees in the squares, flowers in troughs. A civilized place. The town was quiet, as if its citizens had already retired to bed. No one about to witness the betrayal of his conscience. Yet he drove past the big Hotel d’Etoile and parked in a narrow street. The silence of the town invaded the car. He sat still and the girl beside him did not move.
While the car, as its expanded metals cooled, made the only noises to be heard, he unfastened his seat belt and twisted in his seat until he faced her. He felt that he should make some overture or heartfelt confession which would sanctify what he proposed.
But Alice’s unfathomed sensibilities moved faster.
‘Avallon,’ she said, pronouncing the word in the English fashion.
‘Av-eye-yon.’
‘I know.’
‘Or Arcadia?’ he asked her. ‘Paradise?’
‘Paradise? Not yet – look, there’s a hotel. At the end of the street.’
He held her face in both hands and kissed her, at once wanting all of her – but ‘wait’ his noisy conscience said and he released her. She laughed loudly and, putting on a new accent, said,
‘’Ow romantic!’ She laid her head against his chest and laughed again. They both laughed, rocking in their seats, releasing their tension into the stuffy air.
‘Come on, Miss Essex,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’
The dusty footpath was only wide enough for one. They walked in the road, hand-in-hand. He looked at his watch.
‘We’ll eat. First,’ he said.
The hotel restaurant was papered in red, and shabby. He read the menu quickly and, while Alice studied it, looked about him, embarrassed. He had erred. It looked the kind of place to which commercial travellers brought their pick-ups. The red paper made him think of hell, not paradise (though, conceptually, what was the difference, both asylums for different breeds of ecstatics?). The fires burned low for want of heretics and adulterers to incinerate. He peered into the gloom and made out a waitress lingering by the kitchen door. Near her, a bizarre group sat at dinner – French, a family – and he recognized the hotel proprietor who had booked them in. Perhaps the waitress was his wife? Who, then was the other middle-aged woman; who were the other women? Two sons and an idiot – correction, a boy with learning difficulties: three sons?
The waitress saw him staring and began ferociously to cut bread. She laid a long loaf on the board and brought down the guillotine blade, bang! bang! bang! He winced. She brought the bread to them and he watched it reforming its squashed self while he gave the order. Alice was mute. He chose a salad for her, lamb, pommes Lyonnaises; the wine. How bad would it be?
‘Monsieur,’ the waitress said, in mangled English. “As good flavour.’
‘“Taste”, Madame,’ he corrected stiffly.
Alice yelped and stuffed her table napkin in her mouth – but the food, despite the odd family, the wallpaper, the dust he could see griming the dado rail, after all was good. He poured a young Beaujolais. It waited in his glass, a toast to Fortune, Life and Youth. He lifted the glass. She was waiting, too, red-blooded adolescence, reciprocal sensation imprisoned in her pretty cage of flesh. She smiled at him and, from the tail of his eye, he saw the family file silently from the room.
‘Now we’re alone,’ said Alice.
‘Near enough.’
She drank.
‘Hello,’ she said.
The time came. They mounted the stairs. The same red wallpaper enhanced the gloom. A low-wattage bulb lighted the turning of the stair; they went higher and there, nearly opposite the lavatory, was their room: 18. The age of reason and responsibility.
‘How old are you?’ he said abruptly as he opened the door.
She affected not to hear. It was not a question he could repeat – not without seeming a total fool – and they passed into the room. The stark central light was on. Her rucksack stood beside his grip on a little luggage stand. The bed was turned down.
Alice spoke: ‘What a place! Wow!’ and ran to open the window.
‘It’s all right. The linen’s clean,’ he said, while realizing he had misinterpreted her words and actions. She was leaning out of the window. The light curtains billowed about her and a hot breeze shoved the musty air of the room aside.
‘We’re in the roof! It’s miles down to the street – I can see your car dozing there as if it was in its own comfy garage, not forced to spend the night outside the police station.’
‘At least no one will try to nick it.’
He too crossed the room; stood behind her. So close, he did not know what to make – of himself, nor her who continued to lean out and report on what she saw with the enthusiasm and fresh vision of minority. Questions marshalled in his mind: Why? Shall I leave – before it’s too late? Is this a legitimate adventure? A sordid romp? While he pondered, he caressed her shoulder, at last permitting his hand to journey down her supple back and gently touch her clefted buttocks in their absurdly thick tights – leggings. No pants. No bra. She must have removed those two surplus (for their purposes) garments when she went to the loo. Her breasts. Against the windowsill.
He could not think. He was entranced. But the girl left the window, brushing past him as if he was already old news. He watched her explore the room, the wardrobe with its extra blanket and pillows for those too soft to sleep comfortably on the French-style bolster, rolled in the end of the sheet; the curtained enclosure which hid the washbasin and eccentric plumbing; the two religious pictures. She undid her backpack; took out washbag, underclothes, a hairbrush, her book.
He hung his jacket on a chair and sat on the bed, his resolution fading; rolled over and looked in the bedside cabinet where, on a shelf above a chamber pot, he found a Gideon bible. That these expressions of human spirituality and grossness should be displayed in such close proximity amused him, and he laughed out loud.
‘What have you found?’
‘The bible and the pot de chambre.’
‘Is that funny?’
‘Only if we need either.’
‘I’m quite godless,’ she said, ‘and I bet you are too.’
‘I –’ he said, hesitating over the sentence (‘used to be a choirboy’? ‘was married in church’? ‘am married to a rather devout Christian’?) ‘I am undecided –’