Read Online L'Affaire by Diane Johnson - Free Book Online

mother would stay with them.’
    Géraldine had suggested to Emile on the telephone that Vee should go to say a last word to her father. Later, when Vee brought the children over for their regular Tuesday-afternoon visit and Géraldine had embraced the darlings, her mind having stayed on the news she had transmitted to Emile, the moribund state of Venn, she again broached the idea that Vee should meet this phantom parent while there was time.
    ‘It’s unthinkable, Maman. How could I feel an interest in someone who never saw me and had no interest in me, technically my father or not? He was never part of my life, and I’m not going to be part of his death. Think how hurt Papa would be. Eric – my real papa.’
    Of course Vee had always known that Eric was not her biological father, but this had never been important, so completely had Eric been a wonderful parent to Vee, Vee to him a devoted, bonded daughter, the two passing through all the appropriate and healthy stages of a daughter-father relation leading in time to Vee’s appropriate transfer of love to her husband, etc. (Eric had been less pleased than Géraldine with Vee’s choice of Emile Abboud as a husband. Géraldine could at least see his powerful charms.) Géraldine also understood that loyalty was big on Vee’s list of virtues, these days especially because of her problems with Emile. Vee didn’tdiscuss her marital problems with her mother, her pride wouldn’t let her, but she clearly thought that loyalty was a virtue above all others and rewarded eventually from Above.
    ‘You’ll be sorry one day, not to have said goodbye. Not to have ever laid eyes on him,’ Géraldine insisted. ‘Eric doesn’t mind. He thinks you should go. And the girls should meet their grandfather.’
    ‘I hope all my illegitimate children will rally round my deathbed,’ said Eric, coming into the room. He had been half listening to the conversation. But Vee didn’t think this was funny. Her face assumed the expression of angelic blankness she always wore when her mind was resolved or resolving. She had the fair ringlets and wide blue eyes of putti in paintings, and the same manner of looking away from the central subject at something else outside the frame.
    ‘Anyway, the children. And the play group, and I’m playing for a Rameau festival. And how could I be someone called “Vee Venn,” it sounds like an herbal tea. Anyway, I have no wish to torment myself with sadness at the deathbed of a perfect stranger. And aren’t there real children? Think how they would feel with me intruding into their grief.’
    ‘I think there are real children. They would be your half-brothers and sisters. The more reason you should meet them.’ She could be talking about a stranger she had never met. Vee was struck, as she had been by other women her mother’s age, at the detachment they seemed to feel from their own biological histories, as if theycouldn’t remember being in bed with vanished figures, couldn’t remember giving birth.
    ‘Non, Maman, pourquoi?’ said Vee, in a definitive tone of voice. When Vee had gone, Géraldine telephoned Emile at his office – she didn’t know where he was staying these days. Luckily, he was there. She was fond of Emile, they got along and understood each other. She urged him to go to Valméri and look into the situation, and he, with surprising graciousness, said he would.

9
    When he woke on Tuesday, Kip remembered his dream. He had been dreaming of their parents, of a time in his childhood when they had scolded Kerry for something he had done. In the dream it was a red stain on a rug, like spilled wine, and he dreamed of his mother’s face glaring at him as Dad said, ‘All the same, Kerry, you should have watched.’ He should have watched her – was that the message of the dream? Kip was a good athlete, was on the snowboarding team at his school, and longed someday to compete in the Olympics, and so hadn’t been poking along with Kerry