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- See more at: http://shalakopublishing.blogspot.ca/2015/04/speak-softly-my-love-chapter-eight.html#sthash.BcJNOFoH.dpuf
- See more at: http://shalakopublishing.blogspot.ca/2015/04/speak-softly-my-love-chapter-eight.html#sthash.BcJNOFoH.dpuf
- See more at: http://shalakopublishing.blogspot.ca/2015/04/speak-softly-my-love-chapter-eight.html#sthash.BcJNOFoH.dpuf
- See more at: http://shalakopublishing.blogspot.ca/2015/04/speak-softly-my-love-chapter-eight.html#sthash.BcJNOFoH.dpuf
Louis Shalako
Speak Softly My Love
Chapter Nine
He could hear her talking to the cat in there as he
fiddled with the key. The lock was getting old and worn and he really should
have that looked at.
Madame Lefebvre had been back for a couple of days and
yet events had ensured that they kept missing each other. Gilles had been
leaving at some ungodly hour in the mornings and she came in for days only. Her
day began at eight and ended at five-thirty.
They’d missed each other in the evenings as well.
The smell coming from the oven as he stepped out of
the hallway and into the kitchen was something else.
“Hello, Madame Lefebvre.”
“Hello.” Her bright and bristling countenance turned
to greet her employer.
He could never quite figure her out, but he thought
she might still be in her late forties. A study in domestic efficiency, and he
was grateful to have her.
Thump.
A lumpy, fur-covered body had dropped off a chair and
that was the sound of four paws hitting the floor under the table.
“Ah. There it is.”
Madame Lefebvre smiled indulgently, as she puttered by
the sink and the counter.
Sylvestre came over and tried to trip him up in the
usual fashion. Gilles gave a gentle nudge with the foot but it never did any
good. Not with that one. The damned thing kept coming back for more.
“Hello, hello.” He’d always stopped short of using her
first name, although he’d come awfully close sometimes.
This was one of those times, for whatever sentimental
reason. A lonely man, the fact was that Gilles lived alone and a good
housekeeper did a lot to make that bearable. He was only going to get so
attached to her.
“What’s for dinner?” Gilles was famished.
He’d had lunch at the usual time when court recessed.
Man did not live on sandwiches and milk alone.
“Ah.” Beaming at her hapless charge, she launched into
a full and unabbreviated explanation.
Whatever it was, it sounded good.
Pulling a chair back, he sat at the table. Sylvestre
clambered up into his lap. He watched her move around the kitchen getting his
plate ready for him. Her purse hung in its usual spot, and her coat and hat
were on a rack by the door. She habitually wore slippers around the place, her
own staid and sensible shoes placed just exactly so, on a rubber mat by the
door. Fifteen or twenty minutes and she would be gone for the day. It was
enough to half-listen and be appreciative. It was warm and dry and at least he
had a roof over his head.
The mail and the newspapers would be in a stack by his
armchair. It was a well-ordered existence in a precarious world. Some cynic had
described the body as the temple in which the god Stomach was worshiped.
Gilles would like to hope that he wasn’t quite that bad, but work was
demanding, life was exhausting and there was little doubt that he would have
let himself go without some moderating influences of the female variety.
Madame Lefebvre fulfilled a number of important
functions, and she did a wonderful job of doing so. As for the expense, he
could eat exclusively in restaurants. He did not really need a cat to survive,
and a simple maid service might have been a little cheaper. This obviously went
a little deeper than that, and yet originally she had been a total stranger.
Home at last. It was strange to think that Gilles
Maintenon was the centre of the cat’s little world, and for him, there was
essentially nothing else but this and the job.
It was the job that was important—not the man.
“When I find myself thinking of you, in the middle of
the day, that will be the time to hang it up.” The cat looked up with love in
his eyes and Gilles felt a moment of guilt.
Madame chuckled softly, doing the pots and the pans
and putting them in the rack to dry.
He scratched the wretched thing behind the ears, as if
to make up for lost time.
Maintenon supposed he really did love the thing. He
probably needed to—to love something.
We all got to have something,
as the Yanks would say.
If that thought didn’t humble a person, nothing would.
***
Madame Lefebvre had taken off.
After wrapping his belly around a second helping of
pork Provençale with leeks and olives, garlic mashed potatoes, crusty bread
thickly spread with somebody’s home-made butter…cheese, a bottle of wine and
you my love. His time was now his own.
Speak
softly my love, for the heart can never lie.
Speak
softly to me, and lover, please don’t cry.
Speak
softly my love, speak softly—
Speak
softly, my love…for our love shall never die.
The ghost that was Ann always hovered in the back of
his consciousness. The house was dead quiet now that Madame Lefebvre had
departed for her own home and what Gilles sort of assumed was a much brighter
existence. She had her own brood of adult children and consequently grandchildren,
nieces, nephews. They were all good Catholics. She had two sisters living in
town here and more in the place of her birth, Limoges. She seemed like a happy
person, and that was all he knew.
It was an assumption. After all, he might have been
wrong about it.
The chair squeaked under him. He really ought to get a
new one someday.
The cat was heavy in his lap and he lifted it off.
There was nothing much in the mail, the usual bills and one or two political
and religious tracts. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He got up with a grunt. Making old man noises when he
was alone was permitted whereas he would never do it at work.
He was in the mood for Vivaldi. The gramophone would
comfort him, provide background noise, and cognac would anesthetize him. A good
book, some peace and quiet and a good night’s sleep. He would sit, and think,
and smoke. He would have a nice, hot bath…
He’d be a new man in the morning.
A neighbour, barely an acquaintance, had accosted
Gilles in the street once. He was like a long-lost friend. He’d dropped a
number of vague hints, suggesting that Madame Lefebvre was an attractive woman.
He’d suggested that Gilles was no spring chicken and that he had needs. He’d
practically suggested that Gilles could do worse. It was none of their damn-fool
business, and yet he didn’t take it too personally. It was as much a fishing
expedition as anything. He’d seen a few of those in his time. It was a
technique he used himself from time to time. He’d just chuckled, and put him
off with a joke that wasn’t too grotesque. Gilles had wondered for a time, if
someone had put him up to it. If so, it would certainly never be Madame
Lefebvre herself. She really wasn’t that kind of person. After a while, he’d
put it out of his mind.
The thought returned from time to time, not that he
was particularly lonely at that exact moment, but.
But.
He had actually considered the thought. He’d even
wondered how he would feel if she rejected him. He’d wondered how one would go
about courting such a woman. If he had never employed her as a housekeeper,
they would never have met. In that sense it was an unnatural match, and what
did that say about the human condition? They were, after all, a man and a
woman. They also lived in two different worlds. Then there was the whole
question of what other people would think, what other people would say. That
was the most tiresome part of all, for surely it was none of their business.
The trouble was, as far as he could make out, that there
was nothing sexual there—and for him, even at his age, that was still important
somehow. It was a kind of romanticism. He wanted to fall in love again or
something completely mad like that. If he was going to go to all the trouble of
having a marriage, well. He would sure as hell,
like to have sex again before he died. Maybe even just once, so why get married
at all? Not that he had ever taken any logical steps. Otherwise it just didn’t seem worth it. As he recalled all
too clearly, it was work. That was what a marriage was, even the most happy and
successful ones. It required effort, and it needed a good match.
He needed something or wanted something, or yearned for something that was never
going to come this way again.
Gilles Maintenon would have killed to fall in love
again, as a faded smile crossed his face at the idea.
To fall in love again is to be young again. That`s how
he saw it. It would never happen now, of course.
One way or another, it all came down to motivation. He
had too many qualms, too many misgivings to overcome. It was like he never left
the house any more.
Once home, he generally stayed home.
The trouble was that in real life, things like that
never seemed to happen anymore.
There would be no staid and comfortable marriage of
convenience for Gilles Maintenon. This sort of implied that he would be alone
from now on—it was difficult to see it otherwise.
While Madame Lefebvre was a wonderful woman, and a
lady in every sense of the word, even in its most basic, schoolboy-chivalric
way, (i.e. she wore a dress and thought womanly thoughts, a member of an alien
species), she just didn’t turn his crank as the Yanks would say.
One day he’d called his solicitor. He made a new will,
leaving every one of his relations very small legacies. The rest went to feed hungry
children in China. On some level, there must have been some element of
self-regard. But for the most part, he just didn`t give a shit anymore. His
estate wouldn`t be enough to make even one
of the family rich, and so why do it?
That pretty much said it all.
END
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