‘No, Maman’s fine. She’s ordering around a regiment of Germans who want to learn conversation from an authentic Parisian intellectual. Don’t worry about her.’
Father and son fell silent, united by the memory of how Lirabelle Bernier used to explain to Perdu as a schoolboy over breakfast the distancing elegance of the German subjunctive compared with the emotional nature of the French subjonctif. She spoke with a raised forefinger, whose gold-polished tip lent extra emphasis to her words.
‘The subjonctif is the heart speaking.’
Lirabelle Bernier. His father now addressed her by her maiden name, after having first called her Mrs Mischief and then Madame Perdu.
‘And what message did she send you with this time?’ Joaquin Perdu asked his son.
‘That you should go to see a urologist.’
‘Tell her I’m going. She doesn’t have to remind me every six months.’
They had married when they were twenty-one to annoy their parents. She, the intellectual from a household of philosophers and economists, who met an ironworker – dégo?tant, disgusting. He, the working-class son of a police constable father and a devout factory seamstress mother, getting together with an upper-class girl – class traitor.
‘Anything else?’ asked Joaquin, and took the bottle of muscatel wine from the bag Perdu had set down in front of him.
‘She needs a new second-hand car. She wants you to look for one, but not some weird colour like the last one.’
‘Weird? It was white. Your mother. I ask you—’
‘So will you?’
‘Of course. The car salesman wouldn’t speak to her again?’
‘No. He always asks for her husband. It drives her nuts.’
‘I know, Jeanno. Coco’s a good friend of mine. He plays in our three-man pétanque team – he throws well.’
Joaquin grinned.
‘Can your nice new girlfriend cook, Maman asks, or are you going to eat at hers on 14 July?’
‘You can tell your mother that my so-called nice new girlfriend is an excellent cook, but our minds are on other matters when we meet.’
‘I think you’d better tell Maman yourself, Papa.’
‘I can tell Mademoiselle Bernier on 14 July. She does cook well. Surely brains with tongue.’
Joaquin almost split his sides laughing.
Ever since his parents’ early divorce, Jean Perdu had visited his father every Saturday with some muscatel wine and various questions from his mother. Then every Sunday he would visit his mother to convey her ex-husband’s answers along with an edited report on his father’s health and relationship status.
‘My dear son, when you’re a woman and you get married, you enter irreversibly into a supervisory position. You have to keep an eye on everything – what your husband does and how he is. And later, when children arrive, on them too. You’re a watchdog, a servant and a diplomat rolled into one. And something as trivial as divorce doesn’t end that. Oh no – love may come and go, but the caring goes on.’
Perdu and his father strolled along the canal a little way. Joaquin, the shorter of the two, had an upright, broad-shouldered gait in his purple-and-white-checked shirt, and cast longing glances at every single girl they passed. The sun danced in the blond hairs on Joaquin’s ironworker’s arms. He was in his midseventies but acted as if he were in his mid-twenties, whistling hit tunes and drinking to his heart’s content.
Beside him, Monsieur Perdu stared at the ground.
‘So, Jeanno,’ his father said abruptly, ‘what’s her name?’
‘Sorry? What do you mean? Does it always have to be a woman, Papa?’
‘It’s always a woman, Jeanno. Nothing else can really knock a man out of sorts. And you look seriously out of sorts.’
‘In your case that might be down to a woman – and usually not just the one.’
Joaquin beamed. ‘I like women,’ he said and drew a cigarette packet from his shirt pocket. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do, kind of …’
‘Kind of? Like elephants: nice to look at but you wouldn’t want to own one? Or are you a man’s man?’
‘Oh, come on. I’m not gay. Let’s talk about horses.’
‘All right, son, if you want to. Women and horses have a lot in common. Would you like to know what?’
‘No.’
‘Fine. Well, if a horse refuses, you’ve phrased your question wrongly. It’s the same with women. Don’t ask them: “Shall we go out to dinner?” Ask: “What can I cook for you?” Can she say no to that? No, she can’t.’
Perdu felt as if he were back in short trousers. His father was actually teaching him about women now.
So what shall I cook for Catherine this evening?
‘Instead of whispering instructions to them like you would to a horse – lie down, woman, put your harness on – you should listen to them. Listen to what they want. In fact, they want to be free and to sail across the sky.’
Catherine must have had enough of riders who want to train her and consign her to the cavalry reserves.