Eighteen months of marriage. No euphoria or bliss, that had certainly never even been expected by him; and, if he'd troubled to ask, possibly her too. Just convenient. Useful. Cut the right image for the electorate. They looked good together, and he had become increasingly aware that as he approached his mid-forties and still wasn't married, questions were beginning to get asked.
She'd been working in his offices almost fifteen months before he really noticed her and started asking about her; before he'd been too pre-occupied with his problems with Chapeau to think about anything else. Her application file also helped provide some background: Betina Canadet. Thirty-two years old. Single. Studied and gained a degree in social economics from the Sorbonne. Worked mainly in civic offices in Rouen where her family originally lived. Joined the RPR in 1976 and applied to the Limoges party offices in late 1979 when her family moved to the area.
The rest he discovered from one of his main aides, Thierry: 'What, the ice maiden?' Duclos was intrigued. Thierry was a mine of information on office gossip and politics. Two people in the office had already tried their luck and struck out. Thierry covered the obvious quickly: No, she wasn't a lesbian, and certainly one of the men she'd liked. 'Went out with him for three months before coming clean with her problem.' She just didn't like sex. Tragic case: victim of a date rape in her early twenties, it was many years afterwards before she could even bear to be in the company of men, let alone start feeling comfortable with them or, God forbid, actually touching them. Had to give her time; be gentle with her. The relationship only lasted another six weeks. 'Who has time to spend as an emotional counsellor in the hope that after a year or so she might, just might come in from the cold. Maybe she never will. Who knows?'
Duclos started dating her a month later. 'What is this, the ultimate challenge?' Thierry teased him. 'It's not enough just to swing the electorate, now the challenge is the ice maiden. See if you can succeed where all others have failed?'
Duclos' droll smile in return hinted that the North Pole had already been conquered. 'All it took was the right man to hit the defrost button. Some have it, some don't.'
In reality, it was a relationship built almost entirely on her veneration of his political stature and power and his patience with her sexual and emotional instability. She had never met anyone so patient and understanding.
He looked across at her now and she gave him a tight little smile. She'd hardly changed in the two years: somewhere between Twiggy and Piaf, with large blue eyes that pleaded ‘help me, save me, I'm frail’.
It was far from love. It had been like taking some frightened little deer in from the forest, making her feel comfortable and secure. He'd become her protection from the world outside, from all those nasty, grabbing men and their demands. Yet she carried guilt too, was worried that she wasn't pleasing him the way she should, despite his countless reassurances: he didn't see her like that. She shouldn't worry. He loved her for her soul, her character, her kindness and vulnerability — the sex was far less important. When she was ready, it was okay with him.
She would literally be tearful at his patience, his understanding. And between her summoning the effort, the work that made him tired or him pleading that he felt uncomfortable because he sensed she was forcing herself just for him — they made love at best once every other month. He could manage that, and from certain angles she even had a slight boyish quality. Perhaps that was what had made him first notice her. And, to cap it all, his work colleagues were slightly in awe at his sexual prowess in melting the 'ice maiden', succeeding where they had failed, bringing out the woman in her.
His only worry was that one day she would thaw out. She would look at him with those big eyes suddenly brimming with passion rather than vulnerability and uncertainty. That as she became more insistent and demanding and he was still reluctant, making excuses, she would finally guess his secret. The lie would be out.
He shook off a faint shiver. That wasn't now or even in the near future; hopefully never. And he'd had three years now out of the shadow of Chapeau. No calls or demands in the dead of night, the constant bleeding him dry, Chapeau's goading smile and sly humour.
Three years? It felt as if ankle chains and a yoke had suddenly been removed. He'd never known such freedom. Or happiness. He looked back towards his wife and smiled.
Muffled sounds of the city. Faint drone of traffic, the occasional car horn beeping. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailing. Dominic was more intent on the words on the tape that drifted through the half open door into the hallway.
'… Madame Arnand usually gives me some pan chocolat, if her husband isn't there.'
'How many times a week do you call by there?'
'Maybe two or three times. But sometimes he's there, and she doesn't give me any. Just winks when he's not looking as if to say, 'next time' and nods sideways. Madame Arnand explained once that he was too mean, she'd get into trouble if she gave it away while he was there. He'd rather feed it to the chickens or let it rot.'
'And the boulangerie is on your way from school to the farm?'
'Yes. It's only a few hundred metres from the school. I have to walk almost another half kilometre to the farm. But usually I have a friend with me.'
Monique was two-thirds of the way through listening to the tape sent by Calvan. Dominic had played it twice as soon as it arrived at the station, then replayed some selected segments. Except for the main, obvious details, little of it meant anything to him — and it struck him, listening to the tape, how little he'd really known about Christian. He'd dealt with the investigation, typed up endless reports about the attack and murder — had eaten, slept and dreamt little but the case for months. But really, at heart, he had known little or nothing about the boy. He'd been dealing with his death, not his life.
Christian's life had taken up ten whole years of his wife's existence — from her mid-teens to mid-twenties — and as he became immersed in the voice on the tape, he realized how little he knew about those ten years. Ridiculous, pathetic. Married to the same woman for thirty years and yet whole segments of her life were still strange to him.
And through the years, he'd never asked. Always thought it would be too painful, too awkward, something to be swept away and relegated to the past, to history, where it belonged. Yet this ten year old boy — this boy whose last hours on earth he knew everything about, every last shocking, gory detail, yet whose life was a complete void to him, a tome of blank pages — had always been with them. At the birth of their first son, Yves. At Gerome's birth. At the two christenings. At the moments they might drive past a field and Monique would survey the shifting wheat thoughtfully. At her gaze across a candle-lit dinner table, when she would suddenly focus on the flickering flame and he would be lost beyond it. Her eyes would water and he knew in that moment that the memory had drifted back.
Each time it showed in her eyes as the years were stripped away. A look burdened with pain and anguish, yet with just a dash of joy and irony — a thick emotional soup sieved through misty veils of time. Then finally serenity, acceptance mellowing the sorrow. A look that said: Of course I remember. How could I forget? Sad, lost memories. The few pathetic tokens remaining of the love that was.