Fascination Read Free Page B

Varengeville and post this letter for me?’ She would give him a hundred francs and tell him to have a
diabolo menthe
at the café in the square. ‘Explore,’ she would further enjoin, vaguely, waving her arms about. ‘Wander here and there. Wonderful countryside,beaches, trees. The freedom of the open road. Fill your lungs, my darling, fill your lungs.’
    And Oliver would wearily mount the big black bicycle and pedal off down the road to Varengeville, the letter tucked into his belt. He had a good idea what his mother and Lucien would be doing in his absence – he knew, in fact he was absolutely convinced, that it would involve a lot of kissing – and he was sure his father would not be pleased. He had discovered his mother and Lucien in a kiss on one occasion and had watched them silently, slightly disturbed at the violence, the audible suction with which their mouths fed on each other. Then they had broken apart and his mother had seen him watching. She took him at once into the next room and explained that Maman had been unhappy and Uncle Lucien was simply being kind and had been trying to cheer her up but that it would be best if he didn’t tell Papa. They were both instantly aware – Oliver’s eyes narrowing – that this explanation was laughably inept, that it did not even begin to undermine the blatant deceit. So she changed tactics and instead made him promise to her: she extracted one of her most severe and terrifying and implacable promises from him. Oliver knew he would never dare tell Papa.
    Lucien came two or three times a week, always in the afternoon. Once he came with some other friends on a Sunday for lunch accompanied by a nervy, febrile woman with strange coppery hair who was introduced as his wife. It was early August and Oliver was beginning doggedly to count the days before he would go back to school in England, to count the days before he would see his father again, conscious all the while that the summer was only half done and that there would be many more cycle trips into Varengeville.
    It was on his sixth or seventh journey into the village that he spotted the old painter. Oliver always took the same route: up the sloping drive to the gates, turning down the farm lane to the road; then there was an exhilarating swift downhill freewheel along the hedgerow to the D.75, then right along the cliff road towards Varengeville, withthe brilliant ocean, restless and refulgent, on his left, his eyes screwed up behind his spectacle lenses, half-blinded by the glare of the afternoon sun.
    It was the odd shape of the canvas that attracted his attention first: it was long and thin, almost like a short plank, screwed into a small easel. The old painter sat absolutely still on a collapsible canvas stool, his arms folded across his breast, staring out to sea, his brushes and paints resting on his knees. Oliver noticed his shock of completely white hair, neatly combed and, even though the man was sitting, he knew he must be tall and thin.
    In Varengeville he posted his mother’s letter and then went to the café for his
diabolo
. The café was always quiet in mid-afternoon and the surly young waiter, with a new downy moustache on his top lip, listened to his order, served him his drink, accepted his payment, tossed down the change, tore a corner off the receipt and wandered off, loudly straightening already straight chairs, without a word.
    Oliver looked out at the little square and thought about things: his mother and Lucien, for a start, then the scab that was hardening nicely on his elbow; his desire to have a pet of some sort, mammal or reptile, he couldn’t decide; the film that his father was making in London… Then he would observe, covertly but closely, the rare customers that came and went, and from time to time admire the perfect stolidity of his parked bicycle – canted over somewhat, but resolutely firm on its stand – and note how the slightly elliptical shadow version of it, angled flat