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A Man in Uniform - Hardcover

Taylor, Kate

 
9780307885197: A Man in Uniform
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307885194 ISBN 13: 9780307885197
Verlag: THREE RIVERS PR, 2011

Inhaltsangabe

Enjoying a well-ordered life at the height of the Belle Epoque in France, bourgeois lawyer François Dubon finds his peace shattered when a widow entreats him to rescue an army captain who has been wrongly convicted of spying. By the award-winning author of Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

KATE TAYLOR is an award-winning novelist and journalist. The child of a Canadian diplomat, she was born in France and raised in Ottawa. Her debut novel, Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first book (Canada/Caribbean region) and the Toronto Book Award, among others. She also writes about culture for Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail, where she served as theater critic from 1995 to 2003. Kate Taylor lives in Toronto.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

Maitre Dubon lifted his gaze from Madeleine's right breast, which was peeking out tantalizingly from under a crisp white sheet, and let it travel slowly down the bed, admiring as he did so how the draped cotton clung to her body in some places and obscured it in others. He glanced across the room and let his eye come to rest, ever so casually, on the ornate gilt clock that sat atop the dresser. It was twenty minutes before the hour.

"Well, perhaps it's time we get dressed." Still leaning back against the pillows, he waited a long moment before he made up his mind to move, and then took the plunge, pulling the sheet off his own body, swinging his feet to the floor and standing.

Beside him, Madeleine stirred and stretched an arm languidly across the bed toward an armchair. Dubon crossed over to it, picked up the peignoir that was lying there, and held it open for her. As she rose to her feet, she slipped her arms into it, drawing the fluttering layers of its wide lace collar over her shoulders and around her neck. He moved to his clothes, pulling on his undershirt, shirt, pants, and waistcoat, buttoning buttons as he did so, methodically but with no apparent haste. He turned to a full-length mirror that stood in one corner of the room and straightened his tie approvingly. Though only of average height, he had a big head, and a finely shaped nose, straight but for the sharp break that formed a little shelf at the bridge, and his features gave him presence. His hair was still good and thick, he always noted with pleasure, and the occasional strand of silver that now appeared at the temples added an air of distinction.

He picked up his jacket. "See you tomorrow, my dear."

"Until tomorrow," she replied. He kissed her affectionately on one cheek, gently patted the other, and left her padding about her small apartment in her peignoir and little satin slippers as he stepped calmly into the street. It was fifteen minutes to the hour.



Maitre Dubon's day was a well-ordered thing. Its final goal, which the lawyer achieved without fail, was a seven-thirty dinner hour during which he shared a light meal with his wife, Genevieve, and his son, Andre. He also breakfasted with them at seven, and most days joined them for a large lunch at eleven, for he thought of himself as a family man and considered it his duty to eat three meals a day in the company of his wife and son, a duty he executed with affection.

From the breakfast table, he proceeded to the office, a pleasant walk, if the weather was fine, along the river and across the place de la Concorde to the rue Saint-Honore, and so to his clients, who would visit him before lunch. They were prosperous burghers and people of society, and he drafted their wills and their contracts with diligence if no particular enthusiasm. The practice he had inherited from his father represented a limited set of legal permutations that he had long since mastered. The thrusts and parries of the courtroom, on the other hand, he left to others, simply passing on to a colleague the occasional unfortunate case that was headed in that direction. Returning home for lunch, he tried not to dally at the table and allowed himself only a single glass of wine, because after a few more hours in the office preparing documents and reviewing files, he would proceed to an engagement rather different from the dinner hour but to which he was equally faithful.

Between five and seven, Maitre Dubon visited Mademoiselle Madeleine Marteau in her apartment off the boulevard des Italiens. He had been visiting her there five days a week for the past eleven years, ever since he had rented the apartment for her in the seventh year of his marriage, when Andre had just turned three. He had met Mademoiselle Marteau, or Mazou as he called her, a few years previously; he had been introduced to her by a legal colleague with bohemian connections. In those days, she worked as a seamstress with a leading fashion house and had received many different visitors in a second-floor studio in Montparnasse. His attendance at her little gatherings and the occasional tete-a-tete had ceased briefly when Genevieve presented him with the joyous news of her pregnancy, but he had resumed the acquaintance soon after Andre's birth. Labor had strained Genevieve, and two things had become clear to him then. One was that his relations with his wife, while always cordial, were unlikely to become physical again anytime soon; the other was that if he wished to enjoy Madeleine's company, he needed to regularize their situation. And so, he rented the apartment off the boulevard des Italiens and attended her there faithfully Monday through Friday, arriving with the occasional box of chocolates or new handbag to augment the check he paid into her bank account every month.

His relationship with Genevieve, meanwhile, remained happy enough. She was thirty-nine now; he was forty-three, and friends and relations had stopped dropping hints about the joys of big families. It was sad, but there it was: Andre would never have, could never have, a brother or sister. Although Dubon slept beside his wife each night, their sexual relations were less than infrequent.

If it was important that he arrive home by seven, it was no less important that he present himself at Madeleine's door by five, for he considered himself, both at home and abroad, to be a gentleman and here too there were delicate social negotiations to be entered into before they could move to Madeleine's bedroom. Perhaps there was a new dress to admire or a recent concert to discuss over a cup of tea or a glass of wine. Maitre Dubon may have visited Madeleine's bed more than two thousand times, but their relations remained enjoyably fresh thanks not only to Madeleine's sense of invention but also to his lack of presumption--or at least his pretense of a lack of presumption.

Yes, it was important to arrive no later than five, but Maitre Dubon often liked to be there earlier or even make Madeleine a surprise visit on a Saturday morning after he had spent an hour or two in his office. His mistress was a highly attractive woman almost ten years his junior and it would be unwise to take her for granted.

So he was particularly annoyed when, on the following afternoon shortly before five on a day that was already running late, a sharp whistle sounded. As he lifted the speaking tube off the edge of his desk and put it to his ear, the clerk Roberge could be heard mumbling something about a visitor to see him. Roberge had never mastered the gadget, always blowing the warning whistle too loudly but then speaking too softly into the tube to be heard.

Dubon blamed the interruption on Lebrun's mother's cat. Lebrun was his regular clerk and knew that afternoon visitors were rare and certainly not permitted after 4:00 p.m., but his aged mother had fallen over her cat the week before and broken some bone, the location of which, being a delicate man, Lebrun would not name. He had craved Dubon's understanding--and a few days' credit from his annual holiday to attend to his relative. He had called in, as his temporary replacement, Roberge, a downtrodden character who floated around the quartier picking up work in various law offices when his weak health would permit. And so, on that day, it was the less-than-satisfactory Roberge who ushered a lady into the lawyer's office at an inconvenient hour.

The woman, a widow, entered the room with a firm but quiet step. Dubon guessed her husband must be six months' gone now: she was dressed head to toe in black, but not veiled. Instead, she wore a tidy little hat. Her hair was carefully pinned up out of sight, and the little that showed around her forehead was dark but not quite black, hinting that the unseen mane was a luxurious brown or perhaps a rich chestnut color. She wore no ornament of any kind, not even a...

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Verlag
THREE RIVERS PR
Erscheinungsdatum
2011
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307885194
ISBN 13 
9780307885197
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
330
Kontakt zum Hersteller
CROWN
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