The List of My Desires Read online

  For the girl sitting on the car;

  yes, she was there.

  the list

  of my

  desires

  Grégoire Delacourt

  Translated from the

  French by Anthea Bell

  Weidenfeld & Nicolson

  LONDON

  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Acknowledgements

  Reading Group Notes

  A Note from Grégoire Delacourt on The List of my Desires

  For Discussion

  10 Lottery Facts

  About the Author

  More on W&N

  Copyright

  Sorrow is allowed, sorrow is advised; all we have to do is let go, all we have to do is love.

  Le Futur intérieur, Françoise Leroy

  We’re always telling ourselves lies.

  For instance, I know I’m not pretty. I don’t have blue eyes, the kind in which men gaze at their own reflection, eyes in which they want to drown so that I’ll dive in to rescue them. I don’t have the figure of a model, I’m more the cuddly sort – well . . . plump. The sort who takes up a seat and a half. A man of medium height won’t be able to get his arms all the way round me. I don’t move with the grace of a woman to whom men whisper sweet nothings, punctuated by sighs . . . no, not me. I get brief, forthright comments. The bare bones of desire, nothing to embellish them, no comfortable padding.

  I know all that.

  All the same, when Jo isn’t home I sometimes go up to our bedroom and stand in front of the long mirror in our wardrobe – I must remind Jo to fix it to the wall before it squashes me flat one of these days while I’m in the midst of my contemplation.

  Then I close my eyes and I undress, gently, the way no one has ever undressed me. I always feel a little cold; I shiver. When I’m entirely naked, I wait a little while before opening my eyes. I enjoy that moment. My mind wanders. I dream. I imagine the beautiful paintings of languid bodies in the art books that used to lie around my parents’ house, and later I think of the more graphic bodies you see pictured in magazines.

  Then I gently open my eyes, as if lifting the lids in slow motion.

  I look at my body, my black eyes, my small breasts, my plump spare tyre, my forest of black hair, I think I look beautiful, and I swear that, in that moment, I really am beautiful, very beautiful even.

  My beauty makes me profoundly happy. Tremendously strong.

  It makes me forget unpleasant things. The haberdashery shop, which is quite boring.

  The chit-chat of Danièle and Françoise, the twins who run the Coiff’Esthétique hair salon next door to my shop, and their obsession with playing the lottery. My beauty makes me forget the things that always stay the same. Like an uneventful life. Like this dreary town, no airport, a grey place – there’s no escape from it and no one ever comes here, no heart-throb, no white knight on his white horse.

  Arras. Population 42,000, 4 hypermarkets, 11 supermarkets, 4 fast-food outlets, a few medieval streets, a plaque in the Rue du Miroir-de-Venise telling passers-by and anyone who may have forgotten that Eugène-François Vidocq, an early private eye, was born here on 24 July 1775. And then there’s my haberdashery shop.

  Naked and beautiful in front of the mirror, I feel as if I’d only have to beat my arms in the air and I could fly away, light and graceful. As if my body might join the bodies in the art books lying about my childhood home. And then it would be as beautiful as them. Definitely.

  But I never dare try.

  The sound of Jo downstairs always takes me by surprise. It tears the silk of my dream. I get dressed again double quick. Shadows cover the clarity of my skin. I know about the wonderful beauty beneath my clothes, but Jo never sees it.

  He did once tell me I was beautiful. That was over twenty years ago, when I was little more than twenty. I was wearing a pretty blue dress with a gilt belt, a fake touch of Dior about it; he wanted to sleep with me. He complimented me on my nice clothes.

  So you see, we always tell ourselves lies.

  Because love would never stand up to the truth.

  Jo is Jocelyn. My husband for the last twenty-one years.

  He looks like Venantino Venantini, the handsome actor who played Mickey with the stammer in The Sucker and Pascal the hitman in Crooks in Clover. A firm jaw, piercing eyes, an Italian accent that would have you fainting with pleasure, suntanned skin, dulcet tones that would give a girl goosebumps, except that my own Jocelyno Jocelyni weighs ten kilos more than the film star and has an accent that’s a long way from turning a girl’s head.

  He’s been working for Häagen-Dazs since they opened their factory here in 1990. He earns two thousand four hundred euros a month. He dreams of a flat-screen TV instead of our old Radiola set. And a Porsche Cayenne. And a nice fireplace in the living room. A complete set of James Bond films on DVD. A Seiko watch. And a younger, prettier wife, but he doesn’t tell me that bit.

  We have two children. Well, three, in fact. A boy, a girl and a corpse.

  Romain was conceived on the evening when Jo told me I was beautiful, and on account of that lie I lost my head, my clothes and my virginity. There was one chance in thousands that I’d fall pregnant the very first time, and it happened to me. Nadine arrived two years later, and after that I never returned to my ideal weight. I stayed large, a sort of empty pregnant woman, a balloon full of nothing.

  An air bubble.

  Jo stopped thinking I was beautiful, he stopped touching me. He hung out in front of the Radiola in the evenings, while eating the ice cream they gave him at the factory and drinking Export 33 beers. And I got into the habit of falling asleep on my own.

  One night he woke me. He had a hard-on. He was drunk, and he was crying. So I took him inside me, and that night Nadège made her way into my belly and drowned in my flesh and my sorrow. When she came out eight months later she was blue. Her heart was silent. But she had beautiful fingernails and long, long eyelashes, and although I never saw the colour of her eyes, I’m sure she was pretty.

  On the day of Nadège’s birth, which was also the day of her death, Jo laid off the beers. He broke things in our kitchen. He shouted. He said life was lousy, life was shit, fucking shit. He hit his chest, his forehead, his heart, the walls. He said life was too short. It wasn’t fair. You want to rescue what you can from all the shit
because time is not on your side. My baby, he added, meaning Nadège, my little girl, where are you? Where are you, poppet? Romain and Nadine were scared and went to their room, and that evening Jo began dreaming of the nice things that would make life sweeter and blunt the pain. A flat-screen TV. A Porsche Cayenne. James Bond. And a pretty woman. He was sad.

  My parents called me Jocelyne. There was one chance in millions that I’d marry a Jocelyn, and that one chance came my way. Jocelyn and Jocelyne. Martin and Martine. Louis and Louise. Laurent and Laurence. Raphaël and Raphaëlle. Paul and Paule. Michel, Michèle. One chance in millions.

  And it happened to me.

  I took over the haberdashery shop the year I married Jo.

  I’d already been working there for two years when the owner swallowed a button as she was biting it to make sure it was genuine ivory. The button went down the wrong way, it slipped over her moist tongue, got into her laryngopharynx, hit a cricothyroid ligament and stuck in her aorta, so Madame Pillard didn’t hear herself choking to death, and I didn’t hear her either, because the button stifled any sound.

  It was the noise of her fall that alerted me.

  As her body collapsed, it brought down the button boxes with it, eight thousand buttons rolling round the little shop, and the first thing that occurred to me when I saw the scene of devastation was: how many days and nights would I be spending down on all fours, sorting out those eight thousand buttons? Fancy buttons, metal buttons, wooden buttons, buttons for children’s clothes, fashionable buttons.

  Madame Pillard’s adopted son came from Marseille for the funeral, suggested I might like to take over the shop, the bank agreed and on 12 March 1990 an artistic sign painter came to inscribe the words Jo’s Haberdashery, formerly Maison Pillard above the display window and on the door of the little shop. Jo was proud. Jo’s Haberdashery, he said, puffing himself up like a man whose chest is covered with medals, I’m Jo, that’s my name!

  I looked at him, and I thought how handsome he was, and I decided I was lucky to have him for a husband.

  That first year of our marriage was brilliant. The haberdashery shop. Jo’s new job at the factory. And waiting for the birth of Romain.

  But so far the haberdashery shop has not done very well. I have to compete with 4 hypermarkets, 11 supermarkets, the sinfully low prices of the dressmaking stall at the Saturday market, the economic crisis making people scared and mean and the laziness of the ladies of Arras, who prefer the ease of ready-to-wear to the creativity of making your own clothes.

  In September, customers come to order nametapes to be sewn or ironed on to school uniforms, and they buy a few zip fasteners and needles and thread when they want to mend last year’s clothes instead of buying new ones.

  Christmas is fancy-dress time. The princess costume remains top of the pops, followed by the strawberry and pumpkin costumes. For boys, pirates are a good bet, and last year saw a craze for sumo wrestlers.

  Then everything calms down until spring. I sell a few workboxes, two or three sewing machines and fabric by the metre. While I wait for a miracle, I knit. The items I knit sell quite well, especially the blankets for newborn babies, and the scarves and pullovers made of cotton crochet thread.

  I close the shop between twelve and two and go home to have lunch on my own. Or sometimes, if it’s fine, Danièle and Françoise and I have a sandwich at a table outside L’Estaminet or Café Leffe on the Place des Héros.

  The twins are pretty. Of course I know they exploit me to set off their small waists, long legs and clear, doe-like, deliciously startled eyes. They smile at men lunching on their own or with their partners, they simper, they sometimes coo. Their bodies cast out messages, their sighs are bottles thrown into the sea, and sometimes a man picks up one of those bottles and there’s just time for a cup of coffee, a whispered promise, disillusionment – men have so little imagination. After that, we go back to reopen our shops. It’s always then, on the way back, that our lies rise to the surface once more. I’m sick and tired of this town, I feel like I’m living inside a tourist leaflet, oh, I’m suffocating! says Danièle. This time next year I’ll be far away in the sun, I’ll have a breast job. If I had money, adds Françoise, I’d give up all this overnight, just like that.

  What would you do, Jo?

  I’d be beautiful and slender and no one would lie to me, I wouldn’t even lie to myself. But I don’t say anything, I simply smile at the pretty twins. I simply lie.

  When none of us has any customers, they’re always offering me a manicure or a blow-dry or a facial or a nice chat, as they call it. Meanwhile I knit them berets and gloves that they never wear. Thanks to them, I may be plump but I’m also well groomed and manicured; I’m up to date with who’s sleeping with whom, the problems Denise from the Maison du Tablier is having with her consumption of that treacherous substance Loos gin, 49° proof, and the various problems of the girl who does the retouching at Charlet-Fournie and who has put on twenty kilos since her husband fell for the shampoo girl at Chez Jean-Jac, and all three of us have the impression that we are the most important people in the world.

  Well, in Arras.

  In our street, anyway.

  So there it is. I’m forty-seven years old.

  Our children have left home. Romain is in Grenoble, in his second year on a business studies course. Nadine is in England, babysitting for people and making camcorder films. One of her films was screened at a festival where she won a prize, and after that we lost her.

  The last time we saw her was at Christmas.

  When her father asked what she was doing, she took a little camera out of her bag and connected it up to the Radiola TV set. Nadine doesn’t like words. She’s said very little ever since she learnt to talk. She never said: Maman, I feel hungry, for instance. She just got up and helped herself to something to eat. She never said: Get me to recite my poem, my lesson, my multiplication tables. She kept words safe inside her, as if they were a rare commodity. We conjugated silence, she and I: glances, gestures, sighs instead of subjects, verbs, complements.

  Black and white pictures came up on the screen: trains, railway tracks, points. At first it was all very slow, then it gradually speeded up, images were superimposed on each other, the rhythm of it all was spellbinding, fascinating; Jo got up to fetch a non-alcoholic beer from the fridge, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. I took my daughter’s hand, subject, waves went through my body, verb, Nadine smiled, complement. Jo was yawning. I was crying.

  When the film was over Jo said: In colour on a flat screen and with sound, your film wouldn’t be at all bad, my girl, and I said, Thank you, Nadine, thank you, I don’t know what you were saying in your film but I really did feel something. She disconnected the little camera from the Radiola and whispered, looking at me: I was writing Ravel’s Bolero in pictures, Maman, so that deaf people could hear it.

  Then I hugged my daughter, I hugged her to my flabby flesh and I let my tears flow, because even if I didn’t entirely understand, I guessed that she was living in a world where there were no lies.

  And while that hug lasted I was a happy mother.

  Romain arrived later in the day, in time for the Yule log and the presents. He had a girlfriend with him. He drank low-alcohol Tourtel beers with his father and complained about them. This stuff is gnat’s piss, he said, and Jo shut him up by saying nastily: Oh yeah? You go and ask Nadège what cheap plonk does to you, she’ll tell you, you bloody idiot. The girlfriend yawned, and Christmas was spoilt. Nadine didn’t say goodbye, she just went off into the cold, vanished into thin air. Romain finished the Yule log; he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he licked his fingers and I wondered what was the point of all those years spent teaching him how to behave, to keep his elbows off the table, say thank you: all those lies. Before he left, he told us he was dropping out of his studies and going to work as a waiter, along with the girlfriend, at the Palais Breton, a crêperie in Uriage, the spa town ten minutes from Grenoble. I looked at my
Jo; my eyes were telling him to do something, stop him, don’t let him do this, but he just waved his bottle at our son the way men sometimes do in American films, wished him luck and that was that.

  So there it is. I’m forty-seven years old.

  Our children are living their own lives now. Jo hasn’t left me for a younger, thinner, more beautiful woman yet. He works hard at the factory; they gave him a bonus last month, and if he does a training course, he’s been told, he could be a foreman one day; being a foreman would bring him closer to his dreams.

  His Cayenne, his flat-screen TV, his watch.

  My own dreams have fled.

  When I was ten and in Class CM2 at middle school, I dreamed of kissing Fabien Derôme, but it was Juliette Bocquet he kissed.

  When I was thirteen, I danced to ‘Indian Summer’, and I prayed that my partner would put his hand on my brand-new breasts, but he didn’t dare. After we finished the slow dance, I saw him laughing with his mates.

  On my seventeenth birthday I dreamed that my mother would get up from the pavement where she’d fallen down all of a sudden, opening her mouth to utter a cry that never came. I dreamed that it wasn’t true, not true, not true; that there wasn’t a wet place between her legs all of a sudden, leaving a shameful damp patch on her dress. At seventeen I dreamed that my mother was immortal, would be able to help me make my wedding dress some day, advise me on the choice of my bouquet, the flavour of the wedding cake, the pale colour of the sugared almonds.

  At twenty I dreamed of being a fashion designer, of going to Paris to train at the Studio Berçot or Esmod, but my father was already ill, so I took the job at Madame Pillard’s haberdashery shop. At that age I dreamed in secret of Solal, of Prince Charming, of Johnny Depp and Kevin Costner before he had hair implants, but it was Jocelyn Guerbette, my stout Venantino Venantini, comfortably chubby and a charmer, who came along.

  We first met in the haberdashery shop when he came in to buy something for his mother, thirty centimetres of Valenciennes lace, a bobbin lace made with continuous thread, very fine, with motifs worked into it: a miracle. You’re the miracle, he told me. I blushed. My heart rose. He smiled. Men know the damage a few words can do to girls’ hearts, and, idiots that we are, we swoon away and fall into the trap, excited because at last a man has set one for us.