3
IT WAS FIVE days later, on her first afternoon off, that Anne walked up the boulevard and took the bending road to the left that led down to the public gardens on the river bank. Some people called it the main boulevard, which was misleading in that it implied there were others. Its claim to the title was in any case dubious since it didn’t offer the broad leafy sweep that people associate with the word. It did, admittedly, have trees on either side of it – plane trees chiefly, with one or two unaccountable cypresses – though their effect was less than majestic. The mayor at this time was a forester, a man bloated with civic pride as well as by the numberless municipal meals he ordered to be served in the formal dining-room of the town hall. The best way he could bring his woodland skill to the town, he thought, was by taking a special interest in the trees. The planes along the boulevard were thus, on his instructions, pollarded with a proud frequency. Their branches, naked against the grand houses behind, took on a pained, over-tended look, when the thin sandy pavements on either side and the slatted wooden benches needed something denser in the way of foliage if the road were really to aspire to the name of boulevard.
It had been built originally on top of an old wall that had marked the edge of a small village fortification and the houses set back on either side were the oldest and certainly the grandest – to those who liked that solid provincial architecture – that Janvilliers contained. Most had four storeys, wrought-iron balconies overlooking the boulevard and shady gardens behind them. Those on the west were considered slightly smarter, and it was not unknown for socially ambitious families to cross the street into an identical house on the other side when they felt they could afford it. There was no good reason for this preference unless it was that the gardens on the east side backed on to the rue des Ecoles, which could be noisy. Both rows of houses presented a monumental face with their double iron gates and frequent notices warning of hostile dogs.
The afternoon was freakishly hot for early spring and there was a game of tennis in progress at the far end of the public gardens. The court belonged to the town’s richest family who, in a dubious deal with the mayor, had bought a site for it in the park where they allowed selected friends to borrow it, at a price. Thus Janvilliers, so backward in most respects, could boast a touch of Deauville in its public gardens.
If the mayor had been over-zealous in his pruning of the plane trees along the boulevard he had gone for the opposite effect in this part of the otherwise trim park. When Anne spotted the court by chance through the small gate that broke the iron fence along the river bank, she felt as though she had found a clearing in a jungle.
Four men were playing vigorously, with the sound of their rubber-soled shoes pounding the dry, sandy surface and the gut ringing in the wooden ovals of their rackets. One of them was Mattlin who, catching her eye, waved and motioned her to a green bench beneath the tendrils of a willow.
Anne’s evening with him had passed off without difficulty. She found it strange that, having asked her to go with him, he then showed little interest in her, but talked of the people he knew in Paris. He smoked a good deal and glanced around the café; it seemed as if he were expecting a friend, or rather as if he were afraid of missing someone. This wasn’t flattering to Anne; but, she thought, if he has used me merely for display then so, in a way, have I used him to escape from the confines of the hotel and the presence of Mme Bouin, so I am in no position to complain. And nor did she, but drank her coffee and talked to Mattlin when his attention was on her.
Now, as the men paused to change ends he spoke briefly to her from the tennis court and called out inaudibly the names of his friends in introduction. With the social moment past, Anne settled into her solitary watching. It was hard to know how seriously they took themselves, panting and running after each ball, yet teasing each other between points. Mattlin, the tips of his curls dampened and stuck to his face and neck by sweat, played with great energy, his thin legs never resting as he scampered over the court. On the other side were two men referred to as Jacques, Jean-Jacques, J-P, and sometimes Gilbert. It was impossible to say which name applied to which; both were shortish, rather stocky, and starting to go bald. This, and their rapid familiarity with each other, dispensing with half sentences and whole words at a time, made Anne think they must be brothers.
When, from beneath the shade of the willow, she had watched them all and watched the ball fly, she found it was to the fourth man, Mattlin’s partner, that her eyes returned. She noticed at first his hands, which were curious. They were of great size, the right hand engulfing the handle of the tennis racket, but of startling articulation, with each joint visible under the skin and the knuckles thus slightly bent, as if over-assembled. At the tips, however, the fingers tapered into something like elegance, so that the hand attained a brutal delicacy. The wrist was inconsequently small, with a sharp little bone sticking out and a big blue vein pumping visibly, even from where Anne sat. His arm thickened from this point to the extent that it might have been called broad or muscular, though neither word was right because his arms, when not clenched by action, looked quite slender. Anne watched him as the players ran and hit the arcing ball and this man, though he sweated as much as the others and seemed to Anne no more skilled than they, appeared by turns angry and amused. He spoke less than the other three – perhaps, she thought, because he was unfamiliar with them. But his quietness was broken between games, when the players periodically changed ends. The atmosphere for a moment became awkward, neither ritual game nor ordinary social meeting, and it was he who filled the spaces until, with a louder jollity, the game was restarted by someone banging the ball over the tarred and shredding net.
Anne no longer made her eyes desist, but scanned the man’s body, from the white shoes and flannel trousers to the bare arms and neck, where the long sinew from collarbone to jawline also seemed to join opposite things – the thick base of neck and shoulder with, at its tautest stretch, the soft and vague underline of his face. Once, when he hurried back behind Mattlin after a ball that one of the brothers had sent looping high up towards the sun, he overran it and plunged into the back netting of the court, which he leant against, breathless, as the brothers taunted him. Anne watched his diaphragm contract beneath the shirt and puff out again, as he gasped for breath, the material of the shirt seeking out the sweat-dampened parts of him that had marked it with skeletal patterns like pale symmetrical ink-blots. He lowered the head of the racket to the court and leaned forward to rest on the up-ended handle before giving way to a squat, so that his hair flopped down on to his forehead. In a moment Anne could see in his large hands and the strength of his movements all the other ages of his life, as if his body were a palimpsest on which had successively been inscribed the stories of his childhood, adolescence and youth, none of them entirely effacing its forerunner, so that suddenly the contradictions of his bigness and delicacy became understandable and she found herself seeing through his manly self-possession to the ghost of his vulnerable boyhood.
In a dream of sympathy and excitement, she stared at him. She was convinced with a certainty that was both delightful and frustrating that she already knew him; that she knew him in fact better than these friends of his did, and that any slow acquaintance they might go through would be a waste of time because she had already seen into the heart of him. He stood up again and threw the ball back across the net, pantomiming exhaustion to Mattlin and indicating that it was he who should have run for the ball.
The game ended. Anne stood up as the players made their way to the gate in the corner of the court and round under the overhanging branches to her bench. Mattlin shook hands but seemed uncomfortable as he formally introduced the brothers, Jacques and Jean-Philippe Gilbert, and his partner, Charles Hartmann. Anne remembered the name from Mattlin’s tale of Hartmann’s meanness.
Jacques, the portlier of the two brothers, said, ‘What a welcome addition to the poor old Lion d’Or. We must all come and see you.’
Hartmann and the other brother, Jean-Philippe, murmured polite agreement.
‘Did you enjoy watching the game?’ said Jacques.
‘Yes, thank you. But you seemed to go on for such a long time.’
‘These brothers will never give up,’ said Hartmann. ‘They never know when they’re beaten.’
‘But, mademoiselle, I expect you play yourself,’ said Jacques. ‘You must join in.’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ said Anne, blushing. ‘We never saw a tennis court where we lived. It’s very expensive, isn’t it?’
Jacques tried to press her, but it was clearly pointless.
Mattlin threw his sweater over his shoulders and glanced at his watch. ‘Can you give me a lift back?’ he said to Hartmann.
In a rush Anne said, ‘But I could come along and pick up the balls. Or watch.’
She was aware of the four men looking at her – Mattlin with some embarrassment, Hartmann and Jean-Philippe with blank politeness. Then Hartmann said, ‘That would be delightful. André or I will let you know when we’re next going to play. We can make it coincide with your afternoon off.’
‘Come on,’ said Mattlin, still apparently restive. ‘I’ve got to get back.’
‘Why don’t we all go and have tea somewhere?’ said Jacques, looking towards Anne.
Anne smiled. ‘All right. Thank you.’ And Jacques took the opportunity of putting an apparently paternal hand on her arm to guide her through the dense undergrowth out on to the sandy paths and ordered flowerbeds of the main part of the garden.
Here Mattlin and Hartmann said goodbye, Mattlin adding to Anne, ‘I’ll call in later, probably.’ The two men walked off, sweaters over their shoulders, rackets swinging by their sides as they made their way to where Hartmann’s old black tourer was parked.
When they were out of earshot, Hartmann said, ‘Was that the girl you were talking about the other day?’
‘Yes. Don’t you think she’s charming?’
Hartmann shrugged.
‘Well, I certainly think so.’
‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Lay siege. She’ll come round before long.’
‘The Mattlin charm. Persistence.’
‘It has a good record.’
Hartmann opened the gate from the park and stood back to let Mattlin pass.