A Gown of Thorns: A Gripping Novel of Romance, Intrigue and the Secrets of a Vintage Parisian Dress (27 page)

‘Your father, Pierre-Gaston, was the baby Audrey carried away to safety?’

‘The same.’

‘Who had the tower window blocked up?’

‘Isabelle. She inherited a share of the château from her father, and chose the part where the geese had been kept. Well, you know she has a quirky eye for design. She saw possibilities nobody else did. While she was having her apartment converted, she got the mason to block up the west-facing tower window. She said she never wanted to look out on the woods where her father had died.’

Shauna mused out loud, ‘No wonder Albert was agitated when Monty Watson came asking questions.’ She reached above her head, stroking the stone which was slick with dew. ‘“Casse-toi!”’
Get lost!

Laurent got stiffly to his feet, reaching to pull Shauna up. ‘There are five names on this stone.’

‘I’ll have Yvonne’s name added even if I have to carve it myself. Let’s get home and under a hot shower.’ Her lungs felt shrunken, her heart loaded with pity.

But Laurent lingered. ‘Something doesn’t add up. Why are Michel Paulin and Luc Roland’s names there at all? They weren’t at Chemignac on the night of the escape, nor in the tunnel with Henri. They couldn’t all have died in the same massacre.’

Shauna tried to answer, but her mind had run out of battery. As they plodded across the meadow and saw the château tower through the dawn, she muttered, ‘If Yvonne hadn’t put that dress on, Isabelle wouldn’t have flipped and pulled the picture down—’

‘And Yvonne wouldn’t have glimpsed the lamp in the woods that was returning Albert’s signal. They’d have been sleeping when the Germans came for them. Dragged from their beds and hurled into the backs of trucks, taken to interrogation centres, even the children. Raymond and Audrey would have been tortured along with the adults. In Audrey and Yvonne’s case, likely raped too. Don’t you see, Shauna? That night at least, the Gown of Thorns saved lives. It saved Chemignac.’

A
fter standing
under a steaming shower until the tank ran out of hot water, Shauna and Laurent drank coffee and ate their way through a mound of toast. They then parted.

He was anxious to get to the
chai
to test the temperatures of yesterday’s pressing. Shauna made her way up the tower. In the top room, she took out the Gown of Thorns. Holding it in front of her, she addressed it directly.

‘“Never forgive, never forget”, right? I don’t know if you are a force for evil or for good, or somewhere in between, but we need a resolution. Albert may be frail and old, but surely he should answer for what he did? Oh, and I want to marry Laurent, but I don’t intend to be another of Chemignac’s victims. Got that?’

She laid the dress on the bed. Nodded at it and went out, deliberately leaving the door open behind her.

T
he Cabernet Sauvignon
vines were picked clean in just under three days. All that was left now was a half-hectare of white Muscadelle and Semillon, hanging in the hope of a
vendange tardive
, a late ‘noble rot’ harvest. Chemignac’s 2003
vendange
was declared officially over.

The trestles were out in a long line in the meadow. It all looked to Shauna like a scene from a Thomas Hardy novel. Having first phoned Isabelle in Paris to ask permission, she’d raided the cupboards for table linen, choosing the embroidered napkins that Isabelle had been ironing the day she fell and knocked herself out. Each place setting had a spray of wild flowers, two glasses and a violet napkin folded like a yacht sail. The children had blown up pink and purple balloons – not very Hardyesque, admittedly – which bobbed on silver ribbons along the length of the tables. Seating was straw bales and a fire bowl had just been lit a safe distance off. Later, there would be dancing. Monty Watson had organised a local folk band to come and play.

Audrey and her neighbours had spent the day cooking and the buffet tables creaked under traditional fare. The brazier that had been Shauna’s idea spat and sizzled with hamburgers and chicken drumsticks. In a moment, the fly covers would be whipped off the food and thirty or so workers, neighbours and friends would dig in. All they were waiting for was their host and the
gerbeboade
, the wreath whose appearance marked a successful harvest-home. Laurent had woven it from the last vine of the last row, making a figure-of-eight of leaves and purple grape clusters. Every woman present had kissed him, and the men had slapped him on the back. Set on a pole, this pagan garland would preside over the feast.

Rachel was bringing it in the pony cart and the two oldest harvesters were riding with her – Madame Guilhem and Albert de Chemignac.

Rachel’s veiled threat of staging a competing feast had come to nothing. She’d mentioned it again on the last-but-one day of harvest, in Laurent’s hearing. In a teasing drawl that nevertheless carried a clear embargo, he’d said, ‘As you like, Rachel, but it’ll be like putting on a puppet show with the full Broadway cast of
Chicago
making a guest appearance in the next field. Of course, you may like eating sausages on your own…’

Rachel had laughed and said, ‘I was only kidding. Do I look like a woman who needs to impress people with her cooking?’

Shauna was watching for Laurent, wanting him at her side. She was regretting her one-sided conversation with the Gown of Thorns. Of course she didn’t believe in curses, or the raising of evil spirits, but she had no doubts now that human existence was more than the linear progression from A to B. It was more like a complex concerto, with many lines of music playing at the same time, all in slightly different time signatures. She and Laurent had discovered how to jump from line to line. They had melded minds with Henri and Yvonne. And if that could happen, then anything could happen.

She was anxious too because, with the harvest over, the clock was ticking. Nico and Olive were itching now to get back to Paris and, unless she had a meaningful invitation from Laurent to stay, she’d also have to go. No – who was she kidding about ‘meaningful invitations’? She wanted red roses and Laurent down on one knee. Either she took his name, the name of this place, and lived out the happiness stolen from Yvonne and Henri, or she quit. And if she quit, the next generation of lovers would have to mend Chemignac’s wounds. Last night, she’d dreamed again of Yvonne. Not the fiery beauty who had stolen Henri’s heart. A frail, wrinkled Yvonne whose face had swum up to hers and whose lips left these words in her ear:

‘Brave, aren’t you? A life for a life, that seems to be how it works. Henri gave his for me. What would
you
do?’

A cheer went up nearby. Someone shouted, ‘They’re coming,’

Shauna stood on tiptoe and saw Nico and Olive hurtling towards the
chai
. The cart would come that way and Raymond, who would not trespass on the meadows, not even for a feast, would hand over a pitcher of fresh-pressed juice. Just as Shauna thought she saw Laurent’s muscular outline, a glint of metal between the branches of the walnut avenue stole her attention. A silver saloon car was gliding up the drive. It looked like a Mercedes. Monty’s band, coming in style? Actually, it looked like the station taxi, the one she’d tried to get into the day she arrived.

It progressed slowly up the avenue before disappearing between the walls of the gatehouse. She forgot about it then because here was the cart, pulled by the faithful white pony. Someone had entwined flowers and vine leaves in the creature’s mane. Rachel sat on the driver’s seat, with Laurent walking alongside carrying the
gerbeboade
on its lance.

Rachel’s toffee-coloured arms were elegantly extended, the reins relaxed in her hands. Queen of the harvest, she was wearing the Gown of Thorns. Laurent was staring up her like a man smitten.

S
hauna’s world
tipped upside down. Adão came to stand beside her, and in broken English he said, ‘We are the left-behind ones. Each season, Laurent takes a new love and Rachel too. I am told that, whoever they use in the beginning, they always end up together.’

‘Who told you so?’ she rasped, but Adão’s insistent gaze was back on Rachel. The Delphos gown made the perfect foil for her shape, every proud inch of her exaggerated by its pleats.
Is it true?
Shauna wondered. Every year Laurent unceremoniously dumps his ‘harvest girl’ and returns to Rachel? Maybe this crowd had seen it a dozen times before.

People were gathering around the cart, helping down its elderly passengers. A throne had been made out of straw bales, decorated with garlands of greenery and purple balloons. The seat of honour was intended for Madame Guilhem, but Albert took it, folding his arms in defiance.

Madame Guilhem protested, ‘I’m the eldest. That is my place.’

Audrey added her voice. ‘That’s right. Monsieur de Chemignac, that seat is reserved for the oldest of the harvesters. That’s not you.’

‘Not for a few more years,’ Madame Guilhem agreed. ‘You can have it when I’m gone.’

But Albert stayed put. Shauna glanced at Laurent, who was surely the proper person to mediate. But he was helping Rachel down from the cart seat, and she was sliding into his arms like a knife returning to its sheath. Shauna would have run then, had she not been stayed by somebody who had approached unseen.

‘Gotcha!’

She was clasped from behind by arms clad in a bright cotton print. Instantly, she smelled a scent as familiar as childhood. Soapflakes and wool, talcum powder and cooking spices. Hair soft as angora tickled the nape of her neck and she shouted, ‘Mum! What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to find out if my runaway child is still alive.’ The arms relaxed and Shauna turned round with a cry. Bundled in unmatched layers, white curls piled up any-old-how, Elisabeth Vincent could have been air-dropped from her Sheffield kitchen. Unusually for her, she exuded an energy that seemed to electrify her to the tips of her crystal chip earrings. ‘So you’re now a
vendangeuse
, tried and true. And a little bird has been telling me you’ve fallen in love. Do I get to meet the poor sap?’

‘Oh, Mum.’ Shauna dissolved, hiding her sobs in Elisabeth’s hand-crocheted waistcoat. It made an effective tissue, but Elisabeth wasn’t inclined to indulge her daughter.

She pulled a silk square from a pocket and wiped away Shauna’s tears. ‘Whatever’s gone wrong, you had no business hiding away all this time. You’ve been like a ship, sending out an S.O.S. before vanishing into a fog bank. And your beloved has a question or two to answer. Fancy telling people you’ve gone away to loiter in Place Pigalle!’

‘Mum? You’re making no sense.’ Was this the Gown of Thorns’ doing – the loss of Laurent’s love, and now her mother apparently raving?

‘I’m not the only one who wants a frank talk with you and Comte Laurent de Chemignac.’ Elisabeth Vincent pointed. Shauna looked. Progressing across the meadow were two people she could never have imagined together outside a bizarre dream. Isabelle Duval, heavily reliant on her stick, and supporting her stronger side, Professor Mike Ladriss.

E
lisabeth couldn’t tell
Shauna what her university professor was doing here, other than that she’d overheard him at Garzenac station, asking directions to Chemignac. They’d shared the station taxi. However, Elisabeth did quickly explain how she came to be here.

A few days ago, she said, she’d taken a desperate phone call from Isabelle in Neuilly-sur-Seine, from the landing outside her daughter and son-in-law’s flat. Isabelle had just arrived home by taxi from the hospital where she’d spent hours sitting by Louette’s bed. Exhausted, she’d discovered her son-in-law had double-locked the door and she couldn’t get in. It was the third time that week it had happened.

With his wife ‘as well as could be expected’ but showing no signs of recovery, Hubert’s visits to the hospital had become fewer. He would drive Isabelle there in the morning, promising to pick her up at lunchtime, only to disappear all day, his phone switched off. ‘In the end,’ Elisabeth said, ‘Isabelle got it out of him that he’d gone back to work, but was too guilty about it to tell her. And he expected her to keep house for him too, cook and do the washing. Poor thing was at the end of her rope. She could hardly manage the steps from the apartment lobby to the street.’

Elisabeth had booked a flight to Paris straight away. ‘I didn’t ask Hubert’s permission to move in. I told him so, and I said, “I’m not sure which of you needs the carer the most, you or Isabelle.” He didn’t put up a fight. Then yesterday, Isabelle announced, ‘I want to sit down at Chemignac’s feast. I want to see my grandchildren, Laurent and Shauna too.’ So, we booked our travel and here we are!’

Isabelle and Mike had joined them by now. People swarmed forward to hug Isabelle and express their astonishment at her appearance. There was a presumption it must mean that Louette was recovered, and Shauna heard Isabelle dashing hopes, insisting that, sadly, her daughter was still in a coma. ‘She is stable. That’s all they say. Stable. Ah,
mes petits sauvages
!’ She opened her arms for her grandchildren. Mike, meanwhile, had spotted Shauna.

‘Well?’ he demanded. Shauna saw what her mother had meant about a ‘frank conversation.’ Mike Ladriss exuded frankness as he beetled at her through his thick-framed glasses. ‘I gave up messaging you, Shauna, so I thought I’d try and find you in person. That job with Cademus came free.’

‘Oh. I know.’ She closed her eyes as a wave of guilt broke over her.

‘You know?’

‘I only got your message a few days ago. Somebody found it on the fax machine, and instead of giving it to me, they . . . sort of lost it.’

‘What stopped you calling me when you
did
finally get the message?’

‘I don’t know.’ Pathetic answer! She was meant to be a career scientist on a trajectory to success. She should have phoned Mike the moment Rachel confessed what she’d done. The truth? Shauna didn’t want to go back to England and work in a sprawling corporation. She wanted to be here, only here. Shame burnt her cheeks. ‘I would have called you, once harvest was done.’

Mike looked mightily unconvinced. Elisabeth, who had re-joined them, appeared equally sceptical, saying, ‘You used to check your phone every three minutes at home. I’d hide the blessed thing in a drawer sometimes, just for some peace. Professor Ladriss showed me a message implying that you’d gone to Paris. To ‘hang out’. It wasn’t a pleasant thing for a mother to read, Shauna, but I told him it was a prank.’

‘Of course it was a prank. Mike?’

But Mike Ladriss was looking around for somebody. ‘The fellow who owns this place, the Comte de Chemignac. Is he here?’

Shauna pointed to the pony cart. Laurent and Rachel hadn’t moved. Two waxworks, melting into one another.

‘Right.’ Mike strode towards the cart, then walked right past. Shauna opened her mouth to say something, but in the end, just followed. Her mother came after her. Mike had positioned himself in front of the straw bale throne. He’d obviously misread her pointing finger.

‘Um, Mike, that’s not the Comte, that’s Albert —’ but he’d evidently sealed his ears to her now.

She heard him say, ‘Monsieur de Chemignac, what you did was utterly and absolutely unforgiveable.’ Soft-spoken, given to wry observation and quiet irony, Mike Ladriss exercised his anger-muscle only rarely. It was obvious to Shauna that he exercised his French even less. His syntax and grammar were all over the place. But the emotion was real. Shauna caught the giveaway tremor.

‘Utterly unforgiveable,’ Mike repeated. ‘A mean-spirited act that could have ruined a young woman’s life and destroyed her hopes.’

Shauna thought –
he’s about to accuse Albert of falsely accusing Yvonne of treachery
...
But how does Mike know?

People were shuffling forward, curious. Mike noticed them, and addressed them haltingly. ‘I don’t suppose this gentleman imagined I’d come all the way from England, stand in front of him and demand explanation of a nasty piece of slander. Well I’m here, and I’m not moving until I have his explanation.’ From his pocket, Mike pulled a sheet of paper which he waved at Albert. ‘Do you have the guts to apologise to the lady in question, Monsieur le Comte?’

Albert de Chemignac stared up at Mike Ladriss in absolute horror.

Mike turned to Shauna and asked in English. ‘Why isn’t he answering?’

‘Because he’s not the Comte de Chemignac.’ She took the paper. It was a fax with an August date. Sent by Mike to her, here. On university letterhead, it was informing her that the Cademus job was unexpectedly up for grabs, Allegra Boncasson having got a better offer. It urged Shauna to come home and it wasn’t one of the guarded, depersonalised missives a man of Mike’s status was supposed to send to a student. No, he’d let rip with some fruity comments about Allegra’s father and the financial chicanery that had secured Ms Boncasson the job in the first place. Had Shauna received it, she’d have laughed, and would probably have burnt it. But of course, she hadn’t seen it. Shauna read the handwritten lines at the bottom, and finally understood her mother’s reference to “Place Pigalle”.

Loitering … What she lacks in erotic technique, she makes up for in va-va-voom
.

Blanching, she searched for the signature. Laurent? No!

No.
‘Laurent de Chemignac did not write this, Mike. I can prove it. Look at the hand-writing.’

Mike took off his glasses to see better close-up. ‘I’m not sure… What are you saying?’

‘It’s not French cursive, which Laurent writes. It’s
English
handwriting. You can tell from the letter “r” in “erotic”. The French form their “Rs” completely differently to the way we do. An English person wrote this.’

Mike put his glasses back on and held the page further away. ‘I see what you’re saying.’

‘Besides,’ Shauna felt herself blush, ‘Laurent doesn’t use crass sexual metaphors like “va-va-voom”. He isn’t sexist.’ He
was
sexy, but that wasn’t for Mike to know. ‘And he wouldn’t sign himself that way. He doesn’t even have “Comte de Chemignac” on his cheque book.’

‘So who
is
he, this Comte de Chemignac?’ Mike demanded.

Shauna pointed to Laurent, but all Mike saw was an unshaven young man in Bermudas and T-shirt that could have come from a charity shop’s remainder bin. A young man standing with a girl in a stunning dress. They were locked as close as lovers in a telephone booth. He returned the fax to his pocket. ‘Is it possible that the lady in mauve wrote it?’ he said quietly. ‘Something about her strikes me as singularly obsessive.’

‘She loves a joke, so long as it’s at someone else’s expense.’ Unable to bear the sight of Rachel with Laurent, Shauna turned and saw Albert regarding her with loathing. She addressed him in French, ‘A good move, Monsieur, don’t you think? Punish your rivals, set them up. Whatever it takes.’

Albert de Chemignac twisted his lips. ‘
Casse-toi, rouquine
.’

Isabelle had hobbled up to them, and hearing that remark, she flashed anger at her uncle. ‘Don’t you dare! This girl has saved our skin this summer. A little more gratitude for the sacrifice of others might have made you a better man, Albert.’

Albert muttered something oblique in reply. Shauna felt certain that he was bitterly regretting stealing Madame Guilhem’s throne and would like to make his escape, but hadn’t the physical strength.

Audrey was urging everyone to the table. ‘Quick, come along, or the food will spoil.’ When she clapped her hands, the crowd responded, people heading to the tables. But not everybody. Laurent and Rachel were still lost in their bubble. Impatiently, Audrey chivvied the dawdlers. ‘We can’t start without you all. Monsieur Albert, Madame Duval? To table, please.’ She touched Elisabeth’s hand. ‘Welcome back, Madame.’

‘You recognise me?’ Elisabeth asked in astonishment.

‘The redheaded English girl who found true love at Chemignac? More silver now than red, but you are still a legend. Please, take your friend to the table.’

‘We’re not really friends,’ Elisabeth said, giving Mike Ladriss a long look. ‘More “things that go bump at the station”.’

‘Ah,
pardon
,’ Audrey said, frowning because she didn’t understand at all. ‘But take him to the table anyway.’

Shauna offered Isabelle her arm, though food was the last thing she wanted. Isabelle didn’t move, just stared at Albert. And he stared back, his pupils shifting. Mike’s impassioned reproach had badly frightened him, Shauna realised. Albert had really believed his transgressions were about to be recounted to his family and neighbours. He looked like a man finally facing his direst nightmare.

Laurent and Rachel emerged from their trance. They approached, like dancers, their footfall oddly weightless. Shauna rubbed her eyes. Then went cold as Isabelle uttered a mewling cry. It was not Laurent and Rachel coming towards them. It was Henri and Yvonne.

‘
I
t’s Papa
,’ Isabelle grasped Shauna’s hand, her grip transferring her disbelief and shock. Shauna put her arm round her and blinked, convinced she’d open her eyes and discover it was a trick of a sun low on the horizon. But she couldn’t deny it, the womanly shape under the Gown of Thorns was not Rachel’s. It was lithe, but not gym-sculpted. The arms and neck were pale, with a redhead’s freckling. The lips were smiling, the eyes deep green under a crown of copper hair. As for him – it was Laurent, with a hint of a rakish, thin moustache. Laurent, an older version. He caught her eye, reminding her wordlessly that she’d held both versions in her arms.

They stopped in front of Albert. ‘Tell her,’ Laurent–Henri commanded the old man. ‘Tell Isabelle the truth.’

‘I don’t…’ Albert started to cough. Softly, persistently, behind his hand. He flapped feebly at Rachel–Yvonne. ‘Why is she wearing that dress? Nobody is allowed to. It’s cursed.’

‘Tell Isabelle who betrayed the men of Chemignac and the English agents!’

‘She did!’ Albert pointed at the guilty one. He pointed at his niece. At Isabelle. ‘
She
revealed the English spy in the window. They were all in the tower room. My brother and the English whore were fornicating, but Isabelle de Chemignac gave them away. She pulled the blackout down from the window.’

‘I didn’t mean to,’ Isabelle said in a piteous voice. ‘It was a big, old picture. I held it and its wire broke.’

‘Ah, but there were Germans in the grounds, watching.’ Albert’s smile was pure malice. ‘They were crouched at the edge of the wood. They saw into that room, and saw the face of a wanted woman.’

Shauna felt a tremor passing down Isabelle’s spine.

‘It’s true,’ Isabelle quavered. ‘I betrayed my papa because I could see he was falling in love and I wanted her gone. I would have thrown Yvonne out of the window if I could! But never would I have hurt my papa.’

‘You did not betray anybody,
chérie
,’ Laurent said, though it was decisively Henri who spoke. ‘We were already sold to the enemy.’

‘Then she did it!’ Albert blazed at the figure in the Gown of Thorns. At Yvonne, because it was she he was seeing. Even as he accused, he strained away from her, as much as his straw throne would allow. When the Gown of Thorns threatened to touch him, he writhed as if his flesh were burning.

‘I was not the informant.’ Yvonne’s voice rippled with long-suppressed rage. ‘I was a fool, for sure. I fell in love when I should have been doing my job. When I finally got home to London, SOE wiped the floor with me. Thoroughly deserved. But you evaded judgement all your life, Albert, letting poor little Isabelle believe she killed her father. How cruel! And you traduced my name. I should have come back and got you by the neck…’ Her hand flashed out and Albert gave a strangled shout. ‘Now tell the truth. You were betraying us even before we arrived. You gave the co-ordinates of the landing field and the parachute drop to the
Milice
, didn’t you?’

‘Why would I?’

Henri took over. ‘You’d overheard me discussing the arrival of foreign agents with Luc. Always lurking outside windows and doors! You cycled into Garzenac on the pretence of an evening’s drinking, and passed the details on to your contact at the police prefecture.’

Albert said nothing.

‘The
Milice
did badly in that battle, losing more of their own than they shot of ours. The Germans liked to let the
Milice
take the casualties on those occasions. They were in no hurry to arrest me. Why risk a gun-fight within the château? Had you not warned them that it was full of dark corners and ambush points? They waited like cats at a hole in the skirting board, knowing sooner or later I must come out into the open. You decided to make their job easier.’

Albert shook his head.

‘When did you go first to the Gestapo at Bordeaux? Spring of ’43, or earlier? Maybe it was when the forced labour laws came in, and you wanted to be spared the call-up. You were in touch with Nazi informants in Garzenac. You practised signalling with lights. You showed your contacts where our secret tunnel lay. Do you deny it?’

Albert made no answer. But when a figure walked stiffly up to his throne and hurled a bouquet of faded roses at his feet, he made a sound of pure panic.