Hector and the Secrets of Love. Francois Lelord

felt a pang of jealousy. He glanced at Clara but, amazingly, she seemed indifferent to Gunther’s performance; in fact she looked a little annoyed, which made Hector love her all the more.

      When he had finished, everybody applauded, even Hector, who regretted his pang of jealousy and who, with Clara’s career in mind, didn’t want to give a bad impression.

      ‘Thank you, my friends,’ said Gunther. ‘I’m sorry, I still don’t know any love poems in French, but next time you can depend on me! And now you, dear Dr Hector, what do you think about love?’

       HECTOR TALKS ABOUT LOVE

      HECTOR was embarrassed. He agreed with both François and Ethel. Depending on the day – and who he had listened to during the day – he could have sung an ode to love or, on the contrary, wished someone would hurry up and invent a vaccine against it. But in a meeting it isn’t exactly impressive just to say you agree with what has already been said, because meetings are also occasions for showing off. And so Hector thought for a moment, and began.

      ‘I think what both my colleagues have said about love is very true. Love is the source of our greatest joys and love is the cause of our deepest misfortunes.’

      Hector noticed Clara was watching him, and was surprised to see she looked a little sad. Had François’s song affected her to that extent? He went on.

      ‘But, listening to my patients, I often say to myself that the main difficulty with love is that it is involuntary. We fall in love or stay in love with people who are unsuitable or who no longer love us and, conversely, we feel no love towards people who would be very suitable. Love is involuntary, that’s the problem. Our personal histories prepare us to be attracted to people who unconsciously evoke emotions from our childhood or adolescence. I love you because unwittingly you provoke the same feelings in me as Mummy or Daddy, or my little brother or sister, or the opposite feelings, for that matter. And then there are the circumstances of our meeting. We all know that people fall in love more easily when they are already troubled by another emotion – surprise, or even fear or compassion’ – an image flashed through his mind of tears streaming from pretty almond-shaped eyes, one evening in a taxi – ‘because we know that any intense emotional state greatly increases the risk of falling in love. And we could also speak of the role music plays in the early stages of love, only I don’t sing nearly as well as François, so I am not likely to move you to tears!’

      They all laughed, which was good, because, although it wasn’t obvious on the surface, François’s speech had upset everyone a little.

      ‘But I can recite a few verses,’ Hector went on. ‘Phaedra is about to marry Theseus; everything is wonderful until her future son-in-law Hippolytus, Theseus’s son, turns up and disaster ensues!

       ‘I blushed and went pale when first I saw him,

       My mind was troubled, my eyes grew dim,

       Love-struck I was unable to draw breath,

       My body burned, I felt close to death.

      ‘And, like poor Phaedra, we fall in love not with who we want to fall in love with, but with who moves us, and sometimes it is the last person we should fall in love with. Our involuntary choice is not always the right one, and sometimes it is actually the worst one, hence our suffering. And then, of course, there is the completely different situation of the loving couple where, over the years, the love they once felt for each other fades and they can’t go on. They feel their love dying, but are unable to bring it back to life.’

      As he spoke, Hector noticed that Gunther and his colleague were watching him with special interest, which made him shudder, because he thought they looked a bit like cats sizing up a particularly appetising mouse. Suddenly he was certain these two had plans concerning him, and he wondered whether Clara knew.

       HECTOR IS WORRIED

      JUST after lunch, Hector and Clara went for a walk on the beach under the still cloudy sky.

      ‘You looked sad just now,’ said Hector.

      ‘No, I wasn’t sad,’ said Clara. ‘Or maybe I was, seeing your elderly colleague. I found what he said moving.’

      ‘Yes, so did I.’

      They had come to a small family of crabs. The struggle continued: fighting, mounting each other, fighting.

      ‘We should show him these crabs. That would confirm his opinion: love, what misery!’

      ‘Let’s keep going,’ Clara said, with a shudder.

      They walked for a while in silence. Hector was worried; he sensed Clara wasn’t her usual self.

      ‘Is everything okay?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes, of course!’

      Hector realised this wasn’t the time to interrogate Clara, but he tried asking a different question.

      ‘I had the feeling Gunther and Marie-Claire were looking at me in a funny way. As if they had something planned for me.’

      Clara stopped and stared at him. She looked angry. ‘And you think I wouldn’t tell you if I knew?’

      ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I’m telling you what I felt.’

      Clara pulled herself together. She thought it over then let out a sigh. ‘It’s possible. I was wondering the same thing.’

      ‘Anyway, if I’m right, we’ll soon find out. I’ll try to be a credit to you.’

      Clara smiled, but Hector thought he glimpsed traces of the sadness she had displayed earlier.

      ‘Is everything okay?’

      ‘Yes, yes. Oh, look, a weird crab.’

      It was true: one crab was bigger than the others and was moving very slowly, pausing from time to time, as though observing the others scuffling around him. But he didn’t try to fight, or mount any females. It looked as if he were watching, and then he moved off again with his slow, rather sad gait.

      ‘It’s your old colleague,’ said Clara.

      They both laughed because it was true, the old crab did look like François. Hector thought that life with Clara was wonderful for many reasons and one of them was because he and Clara laughed at the same things.

      As a result, they began looking for Ethel among the other crabs, and they found her: a lively little female who kept scuttling from one crab to another.

      Then Hector noticed a formidable-looking male with two huge pincers that the other crabs didn’t even attempt to attack when he mounted a female.

      ‘That’s Gunther,’ said Hector.

      Clara smiled, but she still looked sad, Hector was sure of it. Suddenly he wondered whether he, too, wasn’t about to become very unhappy because of love.

       HECTOR ACCEPTS A MISSION

      AT the end of dinner, Gunther put down his cigar and leaned over to Hector. ‘I’d like to have a quiet word with you,’ he said.

      ‘Whenever you like,’ said Hector.

      ‘We’ll wait until the others have gone,’ said Gunther.

      Everyone seemed quite cheerful at dinner; they had the healthy glow of people who have been swimming in the sea and begun to get a tan, and even old François seemed very jaunty. He was chatting to a young employee of the company and making her