Читать книгу The President's Hat - Antoine Laurain - Страница 17

‘You’re perfectly happy with the situation. You’ll never leave your wife, I know you won’t,’ she’d once said angrily.

‘That’s not true,’ he had objected. ‘I love you and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life with my wife, I just can’t do it. We’ve stopped making love. There’s nothing between us any more.’

‘Well, leave her then!’

Édouard had shaken his head, looking stricken, and uttered his favourite phrase: ‘You need to give me time.’

Fanny had fallen back onto the pillows and stared up at the ceiling of the hotel room. This is going nowhere, it occurred to her, looking at him – and not for the first time. The history we share is a chance meeting on a train, our life together now is confined to a hotel room, and we have no future.

Fanny was right. It was difficult to go anywhere but the bedroom with Édouard. There was no way they could walk down the street holding hands or go round the shops together. The one time they spent a whole weekend in Trouville, Édouard had convinced himself that everyone he knew was going to appear as if by chance at any moment. A work colleague, a friend of his, or worse, a friend of his wife’s might be having a day out in the Norman fishing village. What if someone saw them? It was the same with restaurants. They had never ventured beyond the confines of Batignolles, where Édouard knew no one. But even there, the idea that some acquaintance might decide to dine at the same place made him turn round every time the door opened.

When they were together in Paris, Édouard would tell his wife he was on a business trip to another part of the country or abroad. This meant swotting up on train timetables, airport strikes and any local festivals he might be expected to know about, having supposedly been in town for them. Fanny understood that the pressure to stay on his toes was a burden on him; she, on the other hand, answered to no one. There was no one waiting up for her but her Minitel screen, on which she and Édouard planned dates and sometimes exchanged messages during the night. It was as if the machine had been invented with illicit lovers in mind.

It was impossible to call Édouard at home and difficult to get hold of him at the office, so they met by dialling 3615 Aline. Their aliases popped up a few times a month among the names listed in flickering columns on the left of the Minitel’s black screen. Édouard was ‘Alpha75’ and Fanny ‘Sweetiepie’.

Whenever Édouard found a gap in his diary, he would leave a message for Sweetiepie. Free 22nd–23rd, how about you? to which Sweetiepie would reply, I’ll be there, same time, same place. Less often, they would meet virtually during the night. Édouard would creep out of the marital bed (taking great care to avoid creaky floorboards), turn on the screen, wait for the dial-up tone and meet Sweetiepie at the agreed time. They would exchange sweet nothings and promises. ‘You have a message,’ it would flash at the top of the screen.

Sometimes, Sweetiepie found her correspondent wasn’t Alpha75 after all but someone making obscene proposals she chose not to take up. As for Alpha75, he was occasionally contacted by men asking if he was free that night and up for real-life action or just a chat. Romance found a way through the murky new world of electronic connections.

Fanny had been sucked into a bittersweet ‘relationship’ which revolved around seeing her loved one for a quickie a few times a month. She wished she could find the courage to end it with Édouard the next time she saw him, but she knew she didn’t have it in her. This was not the first time she had felt so unsure, both of the situation and herself. If nothing changed between them, it could carry on like this for years.

She could find nothing to write in her pink notebook, so Fanny put the lid back on her pen and dozed off. Two hours later, she opened her eyes. She would soon be in Paris and the rain was lashing against the window. She sighed, remembering she had not brought an umbrella, when her gaze fell on a black hat on the luggage rack. She looked around. There were only five passengers left on this late train, all of them sitting a good distance away from her. The felt hat could not belong to any of them. Fanny stood up as the train braked, took down the hat and put it on. She looked at her reflection in the darkened window. The hat suited her, and it would be just the thing to keep the rain off her hair.