Girl at the Lion D'Or (26 page)

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Christine, feeling the advantage slip away from her. ‘But my husband is so ludicrous in the way he gives money to servants. Take that idiotic builder man, for instance.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Anne. ‘I like M. Roussel.’

‘We don’t want to talk about
him
.’

‘No, madame.’

There was a pause, and Anne shifted back a couple of steps towards the door. Christine looked up and caught her eye. She stayed quite still as she spoke. ‘So how do you pay for these rooms in town?’

‘I was left some money by . . .’ Anne couldn’t remember if it was supposed to be an aunt or a cousin ‘. . . someone in my family. Not very much, but the income is just enough.’

Christine noticed that Anne had not resisted the change from ‘room’ to ‘rooms’ and felt a tug of despair as Marie-Thérèse’s story seemed to be confirmed still further.

‘And do you like it here in our town?’

‘Yes, thank you, madame.’

‘Have you found it easy to make friends?’

‘I have one or two. Pierre, the head waiter at the hotel. And a girl called Mathilde. It isn’t easy because I spend so much time working.’

‘And you must have admirers? A pretty girl like you.’ Christine found the words easier to say than she had expected.

‘No, I . . . Not really, madame.’ Anne looked at the floor.

Christine stood up and walked over to a table on which was a pile of books. She picked up an old photograph album that lay on top and walked over to a small sofa. She had had no plan of how she would proceed, but she felt that the album could be put to some use.

‘Come and sit here, next to me,’ she said, arranging herself among the cushions.

Anne looked down at her dress, which was dirty from the work she had done, and at her apron, which was splashed.

‘I –’

‘Come on. It doesn’t matter if your dress is a bit dirty.’

Reluctantly Anne walked over and sat down where Christine indicated.

‘What do you want, madame? I have so much work left to do before I go.’

‘I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to have a little chat.’

Christine opened the photograph album and placed it on the sofa between them.

‘This book belonged to my husband’s father,’ she said. ‘He was a very distinguished man. He was quite an influence on my husband, as you can imagine.’

Anne said nothing, but looked at the brown pictures in the book as Christine turned the pages. ‘This is the Manor when his parents first moved in. You can see what a state it was in. But they soon restored it. Mind you, those were the days when servants and workmen knew their job.’

The pictures gave a history of the house from the time Hartmann’s father had first bought it. Family, friends and visiting relations were shown in front of it. Anne hated looking at the photographs in this way. She would have liked to have them explained to her by Hartmann, not shown by Christine who overlaid them with a glaze of bitterness. There was a page or two which seemed to have intruded from an earlier time.

‘This is Vienna . . . and this, I think, must be Rome.’

Anne looked away from the photographs, but Christine moved closer to her and opened the book wider, so that one half of it rested on Anne’s thigh where she was obliged to steady it with her hand. Free for once of the irritating eczema, the skin was soft and clear. She could smell Christine’s scent when her arm moved to turn the pages.

‘And here is my husband. This must be just before he left to join the army. Look at it. Doesn’t he look fine in his uniform? Go on, look at it.’

‘Yes, madame.’ Anne’s voice was barely audible.

There were more pictures of him, and one of a party outside the house with long tables laid on the terrace and beneath the trees. It looked like a marriage or a first communion. Anne felt her body tighten from the longing she had to be free of the room.

‘Ah, now look at these.’ This time there seemed to be a genuine note of enthusiasm in Christine’s voice. ‘The Arctic swans.’

Anne looked down at a blurred picture of two large birds in flight and a clearer one of them standing by some water’s edge.

‘They’re very rare, these birds,’ said Christine. ‘They come all the way from the Arctic during the winter to find somewhere warmer. These pictures were taken just here. Do you recognise the lake and the woods behind?’

‘No.’

‘Look carefully. There, you can see the edge of the dyke. Look, there.’ Christine’s short finger with its brightly varnished nail pointed at the old photograph.

‘Yes, I see.’

‘Do you know how far it is from the Arctic to this lake here?’

‘No, madame.’

‘Nor do I. Not exactly. But it’s a terrible journey. It takes them weeks, and many of them die on the way. They came here for three or four years, and then they stopped coming. They haven’t been for ten years now. So my husband says.’

Anne tried to move away, but felt Christine’s hand take her wrist.

‘Do you know why they do it, these birds?’

Anne shook her head without speaking. She felt the older woman’s grip tighten on her wrist.

‘Because they have no choice. That’s why.’

‘Please let me go, madame, I –’

‘Look at me!’

Anne raised her eyes to Christine’s. ‘Can you imagine what courage it must take?’ she said.

‘No. No, I can’t.’ Anne at last managed to wrench her arm from Christine’s grip and ran from the room.

That night the wind began to blow from the Atlantic. Anne heard a scratching at her window and found the cat, Zozo, trembling outside. She took him in, pretending that she was doing him a favour, but in fact glad of his company.

Hartmann had called in at the Lion d’Or on his way home and he and Anne had spoken in the guarded way they had now adopted in the vicinity of others. He left at ten o’clock and arrived back at the Manor to find Christine bolting the shutters in the lower rooms.

After greeting him she said, ‘Neither of the workmen came today. I think Roussel must have stopped paying them.’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Hartmann, sitting down and stretching out his legs against the fender in the sitting-room. He expected her to berate him further for placing too much trust in Roussel and had decided not to respond to her criticisms.

Christine prepared herself a tisane, and Hartmann drank some brandy.

She said, ‘I had an interesting conversation with whatshername, the servant girl, today.’

‘Anne. Did you?’

Hartmann’s voice registered only faint interest.

‘Yes, we talked about this and that. She seems a bright girl, really.’

‘Yes, I think so.’

Hartmann found the deadpan response he had prepared for dealing with Christine’s expected nagging about Roussel was useful too for this more delicate subject.

Christine placed her cup carefully on its saucer and folded her hands in her lap.

‘Sometimes you wonder what girls like that expect from their lives, don’t you?’ she said.

‘Do you?’

‘I mean all she must want to do is find a nice husband, don’t you think?’

‘I imagine so, yes. She has no money – as far as I know. So she must want to settle down with someone who’ll support her. And then she’ll want children.’

‘That’s right. Children. Lots of children.’ Christine paused. ‘That class of person – sometimes I think they have too many, don’t you?’

Hartmann shrugged, ‘Oh, I don’t know. We need the labour now, apart from anything else.’

He picked up a magazine from the table and thumbed through it as he sipped from his brandy glass.

Christine pursed her lips. ‘The girl – Anne – she’s good company for me, I think. It gets quite lonely out here sometimes.’

Hartmann laughed. ‘Really, Christine. After all you’ve been saying about the peasantry and the lower classes and their idleness and their breeding habits . . .’

‘But they’re not all like that, Charles. I’m not a snob, you know.’

‘No.’

‘All I was saying is that sometimes it’s nice for me to talk to someone during the day. It’s all right for you with your work, but this house can be quite bleak.’

‘I thought you liked it.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, I like it. I know how much it means to you and of course I can see that it’s very nice here with the lake and everything . . . .’ She tailed off, allowing another pause to develop.

‘Anyway,’ she said, picking up her sewing, ‘we had a nice little talk today. I showed her some photographs from your father’s album.’

‘What?’

‘I showed her some photographs from your father’s album.’

Hartmann put down the magazine. ‘What on earth for?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, we were just having a chat about this and that. Then I came across the album and thought she might like to see what the house looked like in the old days.’

‘But why?’

‘You’re not angry are you?’

‘No, I just want to know why,’ said Hartmann, taking his feet off the fender and swinging round to face her. ‘Why did you show Anne those photographs.’

‘I told you. We were just having a chat,’ said Christine, toying with Hartmann’s attention now that she had finally secured it.

He picked up his glass, trying to appear calm. It was difficult. ‘Mme Monnier and Marie – you don’t show them the photograph album, do you? You don’t spend the afternoon going through your jewellery with Marie and asking Mme Monnier to come and have a look round the cellar with you.’

‘Of course not, Charles. Poor old Mme Monnier! I don’t think she could even manage the stairs, let alone –’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Not really. Are you angry with me, Charles? Just for showing your father’s pictures to a servant girl?’

Hartmann who was trembling with an anger he couldn’t explain, said, ‘Yes, I am. You had no right to.’

‘But she enjoyed it. You’re the one who’s always saying I’m too dismissive of the servants and I think you’re right. She understood exactly what they were about.’

‘But of course.’

‘There was one of you in uniform, about to go off and fight.’

‘You showed her that?’ Hartmann stood up and walked to the window, still clutching the glass.

‘Yes, and there was one of those swans from the Arctic. And lots of your parents.’

‘Why do you have to be so cruel?’ said Hartmann.

‘Cruel?’

‘Yes. You were taunting her, weren’t you? Because she’s what you so subtly call a “servant girl”. You wanted to show her the things she couldn’t have.’

‘You mean the house?’

‘Yes, the house. And the money and the parties. And the family and – God, if you ever thought what lives some people might have lived.’

He could hear himself becoming incoherent, and so tailed off. There was something in the way Christine had said ‘your father’s pictures’ that implied an inadequacy in him. It had touched him on an area of weakness he hadn’t known existed but which she, in some strange way, had guessed at. He felt guilty towards Christine as much as towards Anne, though for reasons which barely seemed his fault.

Christine’s eyes were sparkling as if the sight of Hartmann’s anger thrilled her.

‘I’ve never seen you like this before. But really there was nothing wrong. It’s the way we’re supposed to be now. All equal, isn’t that it?’

‘You taunted her, Christine, you know it. You didn’t show her those photographs because you wanted a companion.’

He had begun to shout and when Christine saw his hand tighten on the glass as if to crush it in his fist, she lost her nerve. Unable to confront him with his infidelity, she finished peevishly, ‘What does it matter? She’s just a waitress. She’s strong and young enough to get over it.’

Hartmann banged the glass down on a table and left the room, slamming the door behind him. Christine leaned forward where she sat and held her face in her hands. She started to sob, thinking of the girl’s pretty eyes and of her own dry womb.

That night they lay on opposite sides of the bed, separated by a long expanse of linen and blankets. Christine had gone up early, her head aching with tears, and had curled herself into a small knot of self-pity. Hartmann had walked along by the lake for an hour or so, trying to calm himself. He was glad he had left the room when he did, before he had said anything he might have regretted.

He lay on his back, staring upwards into the darkness. He felt guilty towards Christine and for his part in her unhappiness. The reasons for it were clear enough, however, and it was a feeling which would pass. With Anne it was different. He felt for the first time he had seriously confronted the nature of his own past life, let alone that of another person. He thought once more of the small girl running into the field, and his heart ached for her. His inability to comprehend fully either the emotion itself or what implications Anne’s life might have for his understanding of greater patterns and meanings in the world made him clench the bedclothes in his fists as he screwed his eyes shut, trying to see backwards into darkness.

He knew Anne was robust – how else would she have survived? He knew she didn’t view her own life in a sentimental or obsessive way. But a sense of his own weakness, buried for so long by the layers of acquired experience and sophistication, had been tapped at a low level by Anne’s story, and now her pain ran through him as if it were his own.

5

I
N THE MIDDLE
of the night Hartmann was awoken by what sounded like a pistol shot. He sat up in bed.

‘Did you hear that?’ said Christine, taking his arm.

They listened for a few moments, but could hear only the wind coming in from the sea. Then there came a louder sound, more like a snapping oak tree than a pistol. Hartmann felt Christine’s fingers tighten on his arm.

He craned his head forward. Both sounds seemed to have come from within the house, from the direction of the north tower.