The Death of Corinne

AT LONG LAST.

Eleanor experienced a sick feeling at the pit of her stomach. She gasped. She was overcome with dizziness – the circus wheel sensation again – and for a moment feared she might pass out. No, she mustn’t – not when she was so close to her goal! She leant forward and pressed her forehead against the glass wall.

Then, recovering, she once more raised the binoculars to her eyes. Corinne Coreille – from that distance at least – looked exactly as she had in the myriads of photographs she had seen of her on those old vinyls she had found in Griff’s room – as she had looked at the Palais de Congres concert she and Griff had watched together seven years before. Not a day older. Exactly the same – younger, if that were possible. A fifty-five-year-old woman, looking like a young girl – like a blushing bride – like a virginal bride. It was scandalous – uncanny – wrong – obscene! How dared she remain the same, untouched by time, while – while all that was left of Griff was a handful of grey ashes?

‘Whore… bitch… witch,’ Eleanor whispered. ‘Witch… Yes. That’s what you get when you cross a whore and a bitch. Shameless… evil… sold her soul… sleeping with Satan…’

Eleanor pulled her scarf around her shoulders tightly. It was a Hermes scarf. She had spent some time in London looking for a Hermes scarf. No other scarf would have done. Hermes, after all, was the divinity that conducted the souls of the dead to Hades. Hades… That was where Corinne was going.

‘If only I had a sniper,’ Eleanor said.

Encompassed as the three women were within the french windows, Eleanor had the strange feeling that once more she was watching a television screen – an old-fashioned variety programme, with Corinne Coreille appearing between two eccentric elderly comediennes, one owlish, fat and jolly, not unlike the late Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, the other hideous, severe, displaying the camp stateliness of a drag queen… At one point Maitre Maginot and Corinne made exactly the same gesture – as though the whole thing had been choreographed and rehearsed! Eleanor nearly expected Corinne to break into song – something outrageous and indescribably silly – something ambiguous and suggestive – ‘J’ai Deux Amours’? ‘Ladies of Lisbon’? And of course the two elder women would join in – this would be followed by the three of them linking arms and doing the cancan -

(Ou finit le theatre? Ou commence la vie?)

Eleanor started giggling – her hands clutched at her stomach – she couldn’t help herself.