A Dream Life by Claire Messud

Author:Claire Messud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tablo Publishing
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

So the Leclercs came on the Wednesday morning, early, two small people with two small overnight bags. They came directly to the side door, and knocked, and when Alice opened she saw Madame in the foreground, in her blouse and skirt and stockings, and Monsieur lurking behind. Right away, Alice did not like the look of Hubert Leclerc. He was livid of skin, for one thing, and she suspected him of tempers or of alcoholism or of both; and he seemed to her somehow shifty, unwilling to meet her gaze, flinching under frank scrutiny.

That said, Madame Leclerc was a marvellous housekeeper. She zipped around Chateau Deeds as though its cleanliness were her long-awaited heart’s desire. She finished the rooms on the ground floor by lunchtime (when Alice, taking a shortcut down the back stairs, could hear the television going in the flat, concrete proof of the idleness of Monsieur, and could smell, in the stairwell, the nutty seeping odour of his cigarettes), then not only prepared a lovely platter of salads and cheeses for Alice’s noon meal (taking some, Alice noted, on a tray up to her husband, as though he were an invalid), but proceeded to bake a batch of shortbread biscuits for the girls’ afternoon tea.

Alice was overwhelmed by how much Muriel Leclerc managed to pack into the two days – carpet beating and floor waxing and all manner of chores (the polishing of the damned Deeds silver among them) that Alice had been putting off for months. But she also felt there was something rather sinister about this, as though Madame Leclerc, so efficient, so deferential, were a performing seal, and her sullen husband, locked away with the Van Gogh sunflowers, his cigarettes and the television set, were the animal trainer from the circus. Alice imagined that when Madame Leclerc retreated to the flat, her husband goaded and browbeat her, setting her ever more complicated tasks (“Repair the vacuum cleaner!” she imagined him barking. “Turn all the mattresses in all of the bedrooms!”) which she then felt obliged to try, at least, to carry out. No, for all the words of praise Teddy heaped on Madame Leclerc’s lentil and sausage supper, Alice was not convinced.

“There’s something wrong between them. As a couple, I mean. It’s not a healthy dynamic. He’s, I don’t know, he carries a threat of violence, somehow. He —”

“Come on, Al, don’t you think you’re exaggerating a bit? The guy can’t be taller than five foot five, and he probably weighs about a hundred and thirty pounds, if that.”

“Yes, but she’s tiny. Everything’s relative, isn’t it?”

Teddy shrugged. “She’s a mighty good cook. And everything is spick-and-span all right – even I can tell the difference.”

“But Sadie’s afraid of him.”

“What are you talking about?”

Alice was only embroidering a little: Sadie had in fact asked why the man’s skin was such a funny colour and why he looked so grumpy. “His anger frightens her. She told me so.”

Teddy sighed. “Well, that’s that, then. Sayonara to these tasty meals, I guess.

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