image in my memory, but something always escaped me.
The menu and the wine list, as I had remembered, were handwritten. I looked around over the crisp white napkins stiffened into bishops’ mitres and the array of wine glasses lined up for battle. The waiter removed our plates. Then I noticed that we had come in through a back door, a secret entrance. Behind me was the front of the restaurant with a reception desk and a couple of men in a refrigerated glass box, opening oysters and arranging shellfish on huge tiered platters banked with crushed ice and sliced lemons. Roehm was decrypting the menu. I couldn’t understand the handwriting.
‘Want any help?’ He looked up.
‘Yes, I do. You can tell me what all this means. But I also want to know how you met my mother.’ This came out more sharply than I had intended, as if I was the juge d’instruction beginning my inquiry. Roehm laughed.
‘I bought one of her pictures. And I liked it so much that I went back to the gallery and bought another. And then another.’
I listened, open-mouthed. He owned somewhere with walls. He became more and more corporeal before my eyes. Something that had stood, solid and messy in my mother’s studio, had been translated into an object on his walls. The thing had undergone a double metamorphosis. To us it had become money, and then, on Roehm’s walls, it had become art. He had purchased her work and therefore wanted to meet the artist. This was a twist I had never considered.
‘Which ones?’ I asked, amazed.
‘Do you remember her white paintings? The ice monoliths. Different textures of white. Huge things, uncanny, vast.’ His rings flickered as he drew the paintings in the air. I followed the glowing line of the cigarette. ‘Well, I bought eight of those.’
I thought, he must own chateaux, castles with great halls and wide staircases. I didn’t say anything, but Roehm added,
‘You need a lot of high spaces to show them off.’
‘She’s doing some more. They sold very well in Germany.’
‘I know. That’s where I bought them.’
‘Oh,’ I paused, stared at the menu, ‘and you came to find her just because you liked her paintings?’
‘That’s almost right. I thought I had recognized her in her paintings.’
This was beyond me. How could he recognize someone he had never met? Something was wrong. ‘This is Roehm. We’ve known each other since God knows when.’ When? The waiter arrived. Roehm ordered snails for both of us, followed by salade aux anchois, rôti de porc , a 1992 burgundy, un grand Badoit, et un cendrier. ‘J’ai le droit de fumer ici? Merci .’ I faltered along behind him. He spoke flawless French with no accent whatsoever.
‘How many languages do you speak?’
My interrogation began again. I decided that I was not going to be battered into submission quite so easily.
‘As many as you do. And the same ones. My Italian is very rudimentary.’
Roehm then began to ask me about my studies and my reading. We still studied literature at my school. But it was considered an extravagance and was under perpetual threat from the Cuts. I was wary of Roehm’s questions. He was very interested in what I had read. But why? At first I was careful, guarded, even monosyllabic. I had learned not to admit to the possession of too much knowledge. It was safer to be ignorant, belligerent and philistine. But Roehm’s manner was gentle and encouraging and the wine untied my tongue. He had already read everything I mentioned. His grey eyes and white face appeared to shift and soften. I had been reading Camus. The other students in my A-level French class were all girls, who had disliked L’Étranger for its chilly racism and misogyny. They had written angry essays, which got good marks. I went home and read all his other books. I dared not confess to this at school. Only pooftahs liked reading. And so my cautiously held opinions poured out for the first time. I had just read Camus’s Le Premier Homme .
The menu and the wine list, as I had remembered, were handwritten. I looked around over the crisp white napkins stiffened into bishops’ mitres and the array of wine glasses lined up for battle. The waiter removed our plates. Then I noticed that we had come in through a back door, a secret entrance. Behind me was the front of the restaurant with a reception desk and a couple of men in a refrigerated glass box, opening oysters and arranging shellfish on huge tiered platters banked with crushed ice and sliced lemons. Roehm was decrypting the menu. I couldn’t understand the handwriting.
‘Want any help?’ He looked up.
‘Yes, I do. You can tell me what all this means. But I also want to know how you met my mother.’ This came out more sharply than I had intended, as if I was the juge d’instruction beginning my inquiry. Roehm laughed.
‘I bought one of her pictures. And I liked it so much that I went back to the gallery and bought another. And then another.’
I listened, open-mouthed. He owned somewhere with walls. He became more and more corporeal before my eyes. Something that had stood, solid and messy in my mother’s studio, had been translated into an object on his walls. The thing had undergone a double metamorphosis. To us it had become money, and then, on Roehm’s walls, it had become art. He had purchased her work and therefore wanted to meet the artist. This was a twist I had never considered.
‘Which ones?’ I asked, amazed.
‘Do you remember her white paintings? The ice monoliths. Different textures of white. Huge things, uncanny, vast.’ His rings flickered as he drew the paintings in the air. I followed the glowing line of the cigarette. ‘Well, I bought eight of those.’
I thought, he must own chateaux, castles with great halls and wide staircases. I didn’t say anything, but Roehm added,
‘You need a lot of high spaces to show them off.’
‘She’s doing some more. They sold very well in Germany.’
‘I know. That’s where I bought them.’
‘Oh,’ I paused, stared at the menu, ‘and you came to find her just because you liked her paintings?’
‘That’s almost right. I thought I had recognized her in her paintings.’
This was beyond me. How could he recognize someone he had never met? Something was wrong. ‘This is Roehm. We’ve known each other since God knows when.’ When? The waiter arrived. Roehm ordered snails for both of us, followed by salade aux anchois, rôti de porc , a 1992 burgundy, un grand Badoit, et un cendrier. ‘J’ai le droit de fumer ici? Merci .’ I faltered along behind him. He spoke flawless French with no accent whatsoever.
‘How many languages do you speak?’
My interrogation began again. I decided that I was not going to be battered into submission quite so easily.
‘As many as you do. And the same ones. My Italian is very rudimentary.’
Roehm then began to ask me about my studies and my reading. We still studied literature at my school. But it was considered an extravagance and was under perpetual threat from the Cuts. I was wary of Roehm’s questions. He was very interested in what I had read. But why? At first I was careful, guarded, even monosyllabic. I had learned not to admit to the possession of too much knowledge. It was safer to be ignorant, belligerent and philistine. But Roehm’s manner was gentle and encouraging and the wine untied my tongue. He had already read everything I mentioned. His grey eyes and white face appeared to shift and soften. I had been reading Camus. The other students in my A-level French class were all girls, who had disliked L’Étranger for its chilly racism and misogyny. They had written angry essays, which got good marks. I went home and read all his other books. I dared not confess to this at school. Only pooftahs liked reading. And so my cautiously held opinions poured out for the first time. I had just read Camus’s Le Premier Homme .
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