The Widow Read Online Free Page A

full face. Not, certainly, a man to take lightly. Held himself upright: no sign of the characteristic dentist’s deformation.
    Arlette went on waiting, for Marie-Line, anxiously at first, till she remembered that lycée classes finish at a quarter past the hour. And the Gymnase Jean Sturm, where the scions of Protestant good families are still sent, is right in the centre of the old town.
    Twelve thirty-four. A Peugeot moped, Marie-Line’s face closed and indifferent between the wind-tossed corn blonde hair and a navy-blue double-breasted pilot jacket. Hopped athletically off the bike, felt in her pocket for keys, wheeled the bike just inside the gate and left it leaning against the wall. Strolled slowly across the gravel. Not bothered at being a little late for lunch. Would they have waited for her? Cathy might have taken a drink. Siegel didn’t look like a drinking man, and a dentist doesn’t allow his stomach to rumble. Unfold the napkin and head down at once, eating slowly and chewingthoroughly: proper digestion is more important than waiting five minutes for an eighteen-year-old daughter. A slight nod – mrh. Back to the leading article in
Monde
– no! A
Figaro
reader more like it. Solidly right-wing!
    Nothing left to see; she drove home at leisure, grinning, remembering one of her son’s disreputable but engaging girls. Flat-hunting in Paris; one has to buy
Figaro
for its classic ‘To Let’ page. Tear the page out indignantly: give the rest to the clochard at Saint André des Arts – keep his feet warm maybe; that was all the beastly thing was good for. The girl had made a comic anecdote, miming her ashamed look sneaked quickly round, even though all Paris knows why a left-wing student is buying a
Figaro
… Yoh – schrecklich, as they say in Alsace.

Chapter 4
The widow’s observatory
    Arlette lived in the Rue de l’Observatoire, morning sun at the back and evening in front, no southerly aspect but worth it for the trees of the Botanic Garden. And the little Observatory, pleasing like all things with domes. What on earth did it observe, in the middle of smoggy ol’ Strasbourg – but it didn’t, she suspected. Measured earthquake waves or something. The Director, quite plainly, had one of those ideal jobs. Spent much time on his carrots-and-leeks there – the Observatory Garden is not strictly Botanic, but he borrowed their gardeners happily.
    If one wanted to be Whimsical, which Arthur occasionally was, this was her observatory.
    She found Arthur at the kitchen table, surrounded by crumbs, eating a Dutch sandwich she had taught him. Rye bread, bacon that has been cooked in pea-soup, slightly underdone celery-root ditto, plenty of Alsace mustard (which is mild). He was reading
Newsweek
, getting, by God, greasythumbprints all over it which was revolting – piggy English habits Arthur did have. Pipe, and all the mess going with pipe, also on the table. Like a canary, Arthur couldn’t live without a circle of scatter of about a metre’s radius. He looked up, waved cheerfully, mumbled something through the mastication: it seemed to be a hospitable invitation to join in the piggery.
    She’d only been married a month – scarcely – but had been fending Arthur off for two years.
    â€˜Marry? – never. Think of it. Mrs Davidson, Madame son-et-lumière. Frau Davidson – I’m Jewish enough as it is from sheer refusal to eat pig all day – yoh, schrecklich – horreeble.’
    â€˜Can’t understand,’ agreed Arthur placidly, ‘what all these Davidsons are doing in Scotland. There’s even a tartan, singularly hideous – sort of mustard.’
    â€˜Who were the ancestors?’
    â€˜Generals, thousands of them, in obscure things like the Royal Engineers. I don’t believe one of them ever heard a shot fired in anger, but let it pass.’ She couldn’t even remember where