The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) by Anna Jaquiery

Author:Anna Jaquiery
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781447244424
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2014-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-ONE

Marie Latour had a list of grievances as long as the Amazon. She could list them if anyone asked. Before she opened her eyes in the morning she would hear the neighbour’s front door slam and wonder what sort of person makes a point of letting the world know they are off to work. The rubbish truck came rumbling down her street and once she heard the men calling to each other in the pre-dawn stillness, in a language she didn’t recognize. It made her wonder why, with so many unemployed, they needed to bring foreigners all the way here to do the job. Whenever she left Maisons-Laffitte to go into Paris, which wasn’t often these days, she found herself frazzled. Dog shit on the footpaths, people of all shades jostling for space in a city she now barely knew. Everything moved too fast.

Though she didn’t dare tell her to her face, she thought the suburb where her daughter lived – and in which she was currently residing – particularly vile. If she hadn’t been meeting Guy, she might perhaps have never ventured out.

‘How dreadful Paris has become,’ she told Guy. Ever since her husband’s death three years ago, Marie made a point of meeting once a week the man who had been Hector’s best friend for thirty-five years. Guy was alone too, and their friendship with its enduring loyalty brought them both a great deal of comfort. They agreed on most things. For instance that the country they lived in today might as well be Morocco, with all the foreigners that lived here.

‘Of course they want to live here, who can blame them? Coming from those dreadful places. But enough is enough,’ Guy said, and Marie could only concur.

She had not told her daughter that she was going out. But what harm could it do, after all? She was just meeting her old friend and would head straight back afterwards.

Now they stood together before a painting by Matisse, whose work Marie secretly admired; but she would wait to see what Guy said before pronouncing herself. Matisse had painted this work during his stay in Morocco and there were things that she knew Guy would disapprove of. Take, for example, the portrait of the young dark-skinned boy. She felt embarrassed looking at it, with Guy by her side. It was all too – well, physical.

Still, it was her admiration for Matisse that had made her suggest that she and Guy meet at the Arab World Institute, a rectangular and modern building on Rue des Fosses Saint-Bernard, in the fifth arrondissement. She arrived early, and as she waited for Guy she gazed for a while at the structure. The sun was high in the sky. She watched the play of light and shadow against the building’s glass and metal facade and wondered what she thought about it. Sometimes it was hard to tell what one’s true feelings were. Especially with something so foreign.

As usual, Guy was happy to impart some of his encyclopaedic knowledge and to help Marie form an opinion.

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