Adam Gould by Julia O'Faolain Page A

called to the porter – but did the man take this in? – that the key to this gate was from now on to be kept in his desk drawer. In his study. Understood? Only the vicomte should be let in. The doctor then sank back in his carriage and, as it clattered down the rue Berton, could be imagined drawing a happy sigh. He had delegated duties which were getting onerous for a man of seventy-two.
    Adam locked the gate and put the key in the desk, but not until the vicomte’s plight grew alarming would anyone remember this arrangement. Seeing to everything in a household, as François Tassart had done for Maupassant, might be feasible when working for one man. Here the chain of command was as prone to fray as a piece of bright cord kept for playing with a kitten. The trouble was that Adam’s role had expanded. Blanche was visibly aging and fading, and the other doctors were not always available. So Adam did the practical things: organized washerwomen and ordered supplies, kept accounts and was turning into a male Martha without whom all might founder. Tacitly, it was understood that he might, when need be, play doctor.
***
    ‘More trouble, Monsieur!’ The servant who had called for his help earlier was here again. With the glum relish of a man reporting trouble for which he cannot be blamed, he murmured, ‘Those ladies ...’
    ‘The ones with the vicomte?’
    ‘That’s just it. It seems that they’re
not
with him – or only one is. He says he never set eyes on the other until you got him down from the gate and he found her in the carriage talking to his niece. He thought she must be a nurse here.’
    ‘You mean that she just stepped into the carriage while it was held up?’
    The man shrugged.
    An intruder! And Adam had as good as escorted her in! How
could
he have been so careless? And now, said the servant, Monsieur Maupassant’s man, Tassart, was beside himself and almost in tears!
    ‘You see, Monsieur, he blames himself.’
    ‘For what? What happened?’
    ‘Well it seems he asked one of the ladies who she was – confronted her like, and while he did, the other ...’
    ‘What? Spit it out, man!’
    The servant sighed. The fat was in the fire. ‘She slipped into Monsieur de Maupassant’s room and started carrying on. Wept! Tried to coax and cajole him. Threw herself at him! Fell or maybe was pushed off, and the upshot was that the patient began to have a fit. He gets these now, and they terrify him. The doctors say it’s a false epilepsy, which is neither here nor there because
his
great fear is that if he gets agitated his brain will melt and flow away through his nose. Anyway
he
was yelling that he needed to stay calm, and
she
was wailing that he should think of her children’s future – she said they were
his
children – so in the end Baron rushed in and had to shove her out the door. Bodily! He says she fought like a cat. And even while she fought, she was shouting that she loved Monsieur Guy. She was scratching at Baron’s hands and calling, ‘Guy, do you remember when you took me driving by moonlight? In the mountains. Do you remember what you said?’
    The man began to snigger, stopped and, as though struck by something in Adam’s face, said kindly, ‘It’s all in the day’s work here, Monsieur. You have to harden your heart.’
***
    The voice coming from Maupassant’s room could have been filtered through wet wool. It breathed panic and wheezed. ‘Quick,’ it quavered. ‘Get this woman out. I’m done with women. I know what Mademoiselle Litzelmann wants, but it’s not up to me to let her have it. My poor mother ...’ – here the voice strangled – ‘has had enough troubles. Why should she have to put up with entanglements like this at the end of her life? My lawyer has made provision for Mademoiselle Litzelmann’s children. They won’t starve. Is that not enough for her? Then get her out! Out!
Foutez-la dehors
! Don’t come back, Joséphine.’ There followed a resonant and repeated