The Widow by Nicolas Freeling Read Free Book Online Page B

responsibility.’
    They had got as far as the Orangery, a pretty urban park in the romantic style of the early nineteenth century. They sat by the lake-side. Canada geese waddled about. A swan looked evilly at Arlette. Go away, she said, hateful beast.
    â€˜â€œThere was a young man from St John’s,”’ said Arthur lazily. ‘Irish poet at Cambridge University. “Who wanted to roger the swans. No no, said the porter, Make free with my daughter, But the swans are reserved for the dons.”’
    â€˜Being rogered by the swans is how I see it. I always did sympathize deeply with Leda.’
    â€˜You’ve a point there,’ said Arthur.
    There is a pretty pavilion in eighteenth-century style, supposedly built for the Empress Josephine. Orange trees are ranged along its terrace. Behind, a splendid lawn flows to a perspective of trees now ruined by the ugly silhouette of the new building for the European Parliament.
    â€˜Cars are absolutely forbidden in the park,’ said Arlette crossly, ‘and in they sail. I asked a cop once to intervene. He just grinned.’
    â€˜The bourgeois,’ said Arthur sententiously, ‘Are constitutionally incapable of getting out of a car to walk a hundred paces. It might, you see, diminish their self-importance. Responsibilities are evaded by the administration, in this case the Municipality of Strasbourg, which characteristically fails to enforce its own rule, for the convenience of a few parasites.’
    â€˜There’s the heart of the matter,’ angrily. ‘How can you blame the people, wretchedly educated and brought up to depend on the whims of their government for avoiding responsibility? Right up to the rather ugly Palace of the socalledElysée, that same appalling government lies, cheats, and thieves. As do all the others.’
    â€˜So we try,’ said Arthur tranquilly, ‘to rebuild. In a small, humble, individual, personal fashion. This is what we’ve been talking about for two hours.’
    â€˜A telephone, number? It’s really of very little use. Alcoholics Anonymous, SOS, the Battered Wives, the Sally Army. All more or less soup kitchens.’
    â€˜Yes. Anonymous and paternalistic. Old-fashioned. Reformed drunks who got religion. But a name? – followed up by a tiny office – perhaps in the Rue de l’Observatoire? A small advertisement in the local paper? It needs thought. Arlette Van der Valk, the Policeman’s Widow? Might be more fetching than your own maiden name. Bear it in mind; turn it round now and again.’
    â€˜Still sounds very old-fashioned,’ complained Arlette. ‘Philip Marlowe, the Warm-Hearted private eye.’
    â€˜There’s something,’ quite seriously, ‘in that notion too.’

Chapter 7
Redefinition of the private eye
    Arlette did not know, often, why she did things. Followed profoundly rooted instincts, and worked it out later. She had been quite certain – most decided about it – that she would not marry again. Now she’d changed her mind.
    Oh well, logic … Arthur was logical, with that neat Barbara-Celarent-Darii way of thinking. She wouldn’t be much of a sociologist.
    One decides suddenly to remarry, on Tuesday fortnight. That’s a long way away, practically never. But one inescapable piece of logic, even for her, is that suddenly it is tomorrow. At this moment she would have liked to run away. This was all very wearisome. But one didn’t bunk rather than facethe consequences of frivolous and probably drunken decisions.
    There’s been the wife of Policeman Van der Valk, a long apprenticeship. Making things hard for herself as usual. Storming off, declaring that France is and always has been the bitterest most obstinate enemy of tolerance, liberty and progress: who repealed the Edict of Nantes, hey? And where had Descartes gone, and all the Huguenots? Holland of course. She’d fallen topplingly