Читать книгу The President's Hat - Antoine Laurain - Страница 15

Less than a month later, Daniel, Véronique and Jérôme were back on the platform at Gare Saint-Lazare, this time waiting for train 06781 bound for Le Havre, first stop Rouen. Their five suitcases bulged; the furniture had been despatched in a removal van. Daniel, his black hat firmly on his head, gazed down the track, looking out for the train that would take them to their new life in a new place. Véronique squeezed his arm, and Jérôme sulked because he wouldn’t be seeing his friends from school again.

Throughout the journey, Daniel thought back over his Paris years on the third floor of the SOGETEC building. His colleagues had clubbed together to buy him a leaving gift: a year’s subscription to Canal +. For the past two years, the new pay TV channel had revolutionised office conversation. In the accounts department, Daniel couldn’t fail to notice the sudden irruption of ‘Canal’ into the collective consciousness. Canal was ‘un must’ as Florence, the communications manager, would say. Bernard Falgou and Michèle Carnavan swore by programmes that Daniel could only see as a hissing blur. The talk at the coffee machine was of feature films that had been in cinemas barely a year ago and were already on Canal. People who ‘had Canal’ could talk about them. The others could only listen in silence.

‘Didn’t you see it?’ the sect of set-top box subscribers would exclaim.

‘I haven’t got Canal +.’ The reply sounded like an admission of impotence, a fate to be endured.

Now, Daniel would have Canal +. He had received the channel’s welcome letter to new subscribers, with its letterhead emblazoned with the slogan ‘Canal +, c’est plus.’ All he had to do was visit one of their official distributors in Rouen, show them the letter and his subscriber number, and he would be presented with the hallowed decoder. From now on, at the coffee machine, Daniel would be able to talk to his new colleagues about last night’s programmes, or the 8.30 film. He might even allow himself the wicked pleasure of asking some of them, ‘You haven’t got Canal? Oh, you really should …’

From what he had been told, the new apartment had one room more than their old one in the fifteenth arrondissement, their home for the past twelve years. The landlord had protested at their sudden departure, as had Jérôme’s headmistress. Each time, Daniel had used the phrase: ‘I’m so sorry, but in life there are some circumstances …’ He took care to leave his words hanging, pregnant with meaning, a black hole absorbing any and all objections. What can you say to a man compelled by such mysterious, irresistible forces? Nothing, of course.

*

When they reached Rouen, the capital of Normandy, Daniel told the taxi driver their new address in the centre of town. After barely quarter of an hour in the car Véronique turned to him with that little frown that her husband was so fond of.

‘Where’s your hat?’ she asked.

Time stood still for Daniel.

A long, icy shiver ran down his spine, as if someone had just walked on his grave. With horrible clarity, he pictured the hat on the luggage rack on the train. Not the rack where they had put their suitcases, but the one opposite. The hat was on the rack. His hat. Mitterrand’s hat. In his haste to get off the train, Daniel, still unaccustomed to wearing a hat, had left it behind. He had just made the same mistake as the President of the Republic.

‘We’ll have to turn round,’ he said in shock. ‘Turn round immediately!’ he yelled, from the back seat of the taxi.

The Peugeot 305 did an about-turn and accelerated back towards the station. Daniel leapt from the car and ran. But it was no good. The train had left. No one had taken the hat to the lost property office.

Days, weeks, months went by. Daniel called the central SNCF lost property office. When he realised he knew the number by heart, he knew, too, that he would never see Mitterrand’s hat again.