Читать книгу The President's Hat - Antoine Laurain - Страница 8

The evening before, Daniel had stopped his Golf at the junction. He’d turned off the radio, cutting off Caroline Loeb as she droned on about liking cotton wool. The hit song with its slow, insistent refrain was now stuck in his head. He had massaged his aching shoulder, trying unsuccessfully to get the crick out of his neck. He hadn’t heard from his wife and son, who were in Normandy with his parents-in-law for the holidays. Perhaps there would be a message on the answering machine when he got home. The tape was starting to wear out and hadn’t been rewinding properly for the last few days. He really should buy a new machine. How did people manage before answering machines? wondered Daniel. The telephone rang and rang, no one answered it, and then they rang back later, that’s how.

The idea of shopping on his own then making supper for himself in the silent flat was unbearable. He had started fantasising about going to a restaurant – a really good brasserie, perhaps – at about four o’clock that afternoon as he was checking the last of the expenses slips submitted by the SOGETEC auditors. He hadn’t been to a really good brasserie for at least a year. The last time had been with Véronique and Jérôme. His son, only six at the time, had been very well-behaved. They had ordered the seafood platter royale, a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé, and a hamburger with mashed potato for Jérôme, who had declared, to his father’s great disappointment, that he didn’t want to try the oysters.

‘Not even one?’

‘No,’ said Jérôme, shaking his head.

Véronique had defended her son. ‘He’s got plenty of time.’

It was true. Jérôme had plenty of time.

It was eight o’clock now, and the early-winter cold was already gripping the city, muffling its sounds and the noise of the passing traffic. He had driven past this particular brasserie several times before. Now as he drove tentatively from the boulevard to the next street, he finally spotted it. That was definitely the one, with its big red awning, oyster bar outside, and waiters in spotless white aprons.

A meal all on his own, with no wife and no child, awaited him inside. The sort of meal he used to enjoy occasionally before he was married. Back then his salary hadn’t stretched to anywhere as smart as this. But even in the modest establishments he’d frequented, he had always eaten well and never felt the need of company as he savoured andouillette, a decent cut of beef, or a dish of whelks. The fading light held the promise of a bachelor evening. What a pleasing phrase.

‘A bachelor evening,’ he repeated, slamming the door of the Golf.

Daniel was experiencing the need ‘to find himself,’ as one of the guests had said on a recent programme on Antenne 2. The guest was a psychotherapist who’d written a book about stress at work and was on the programme to promote it. Daniel found the concept appealing. This gourmet interlude would allow him to get back in touch with his true self, to throw off the stress of the day, and to forget about accounts and figures and the recent tensions caused by the reorganisation of the finance department.

Jean Maltard had taken over as director, and Daniel, who was deputy director, couldn’t see anything good about the appointment. Nothing good at all, not for the department as a whole, nor for him personally. Crossing the boulevard, he was determined to put his worries right out of his mind. As soon as I open the brasserie door, he told himself, there will be no more Jean Maltard, no more SOGETEC, no more expenses slips, no more VAT. Just me and a seafood platter royale.