Girl at the Lion D'Or (28 page)

Through the shutters of the study on the ground floor she could see a light. She raised her hand and knocked gently. There was no sound from within and the light was not shadowed or changed as it would have been had someone moved in front of it. She knocked again, a little more loudly. This time she saw the light darken for a moment, and she knew that someone inside the room had moved. She knocked again. She heard a hand on the bar of the shutters and she pulled away ready to run if it should be Christine. She heard his voice. She whispered back.

‘Go round to the scullery door.’ He sounded shocked.

He let her in, and she flung herself against him, holding on to him, sobbing and laughing in relief.

‘You’re soaked,’ he said. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘I – I,’ she gasped, but he put his finger over her lips, saying, ‘Ssh, we mustn’t wake Christine. Let me get you a towel.’

‘No!’ She grabbed his arm as he moved away. ‘Please, don’t go.’

She looked up at him, holding his arm. ‘I was in the bar tonight and they were all talking about Roussel.’

Hartmann nodded.

Anne said, ‘And then they talked about what had happened here. I felt . . . I don’t know.’

‘Felt what?’

‘I felt . . . I felt you needed me.’

‘My dear girl.’ He smiled and held her to him.

He made her some coffee and they sat on the bench in the corner of the scullery. At first she was worried about the damage to the house, but when Hartmann had reassured her that it was no more than a nuisance, she seemed satisfied. She thought so little of Mattlin that she didn’t think it worth telling Hartmann what he had been saying in the bar. Hartmann talked to her, but Anne said nothing as she sipped from her cup, resting her body against him. She seemed to withdraw into a contented calm, and slowly a thin, remote smile spread across her face, as if she were transported. Gradually he spoke less and less. He assured her he was all right, and that she had no need to worry on his account. He told her he didn’t mind her having come to the house, even though it had been an appalling risk. Then gradually he too fell silent.

‘It was lucky I decided to do some work,’ he said at last. ‘Normally I would have gone to bed by this time.’

She nodded. He lifted a damp strand of hair from her forehead and kissed the skin where it had lain. She wrapped her arm across his chest, feeling the dry warmth of his shirt beneath her hand. She allowed her eyes to wander slowly round the room, dwelling on the arrangements that had been made to press the scullery into service in place of the kitchen. For some minutes she imagined what she would have done with this room and the whole house if she had been mistress of it. She seemed disinclined to talk at all and when she had been there for half an hour or so Hartmann told her she must leave.

‘I’d like you to stay,’ he said. ‘But you understand.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind now. Not now I’ve seen you and know you’re all right. You did need me, didn’t you?’

He looked at her big eyes fixed on him. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, I think I did.’

Anne looked through the window where the rain still fell, and pouted in distaste. Hartmann laughed and went to find her something to keep out the wet.

When he had said goodbye, she retrieved Roland’s bicycle from the bushes, and, with an old waterproof of Christine’s on her shoulders and with the imprint of Hartmann’s lips still on her own, set off for the town.

The rain had eased a little, and she rode more slowly on the way back. She deposited the bicycle in the back yard and prepared to fulfil her side of the bargain by polishing all the boots. It would take her an hour or more, but she felt it had been worth it.

It was past midnight, and there was only one light on in the hotel, on the second floor at the back, above the servants’ quarters. Just as Anne was about to let herself in by the side entrance she saw a woman with long hair sitting down beneath the light, framed by the window. She was wearing a white, frilled night-gown, and began to brush the waist-length hair with long, even strokes. She was obviously looking into a mirror that wasn’t visible from where Anne stood. The woman kept up the brushing for some time before carefully massaging her face with cream. Her fingers moved deftly down and outwards from beneath her eyes in a motion of pampering gentleness. Suddenly Anne saw something familiar in the colour of the long hair released from the prison of its bun, and she recognised with a pang that the woman was Mme Bouin.

With the shutters closed to the rainy night, Mme Bouin prepared for bed. She arranged her hair over her shoulders, the way she had done every night since, at the age of fourteen, she had first been considered old enough to grow it, and then made sure her door was locked. She folded back the bedclothes in a careful V-shape and placed the striped bolster in the cupboard. Then she knelt down to say her prayers, the knotting of her finger joints exaggerated by the intertwining of her hands.

Her prayers were mostly incantations, well-known phrases repeated for their solemnity and the sense of continuation they gave her. She believed in everything she said – the ever-present nature of sin, the need for vigilance, the death of Christ which had made redemption possible for all sinners, even for herself.

She liked to pray for not less than fifteen minutes, but as she grew older she permitted herself to steal occasional glances at the small clock which was positioned on her bedside table where she could see it by opening her stronger eye for just a moment. She remembered all those who had died and all the saints they had been named after; she prayed to the Virgin Mary and then allowed some of the staff of the hotel into her thoughts. She didn’t consider them individually worth praying for, but she asked for a blessing on the place and on its work. Secretly she worried about the boy, Roland, and the girl, Anne. She thought they were too interested in the cinema which had recently opened, to say nothing of the other rumours that had reached her. She worried for the head waiter Pierre also, thinking that at his age he should be married. The Patron was an absolute authority to her who did not need either her prayers or her solicitude. She had been shocked when she heard Bruno laughing about him once, saying he was a coward.

When the hands of the clock signalled her release, Mme Bouin stood up and fetched her book from the dressing-table. It was a novel that one of the guests had left behind, and although she had opened it with trepidation she now found herself enjoying it. It was a frivolous story, but so far she had found no real harm in it.

After one chapter she laid it aside to prepare for sleep. She checked that her clothes were ready for the morning and that the alarm was set, then she went to the dressing-table and picked up a picture frame which held a photograph of her son. He had a long thin face and a somewhat vacant expression. He looked to be no more than fourteen or fifteen, but had in fact been eighteen when despatched to the front. She had had only one letter from him, posted from Verdun. Some months later she had received official notice of his death, but not until the end of the war did she learn how he had died, when the mother of another soldier wrote to her. The two boys had been friends and were found together in a wall of French dead where they had lain for twelve days before the bodies could be moved. He was, she learned, one of almost a million men who died in a mere ten-month siege, and she was only one more mother to be informed.

She lifted the photograph, touched the glass once with her hand, then turned off the light and climbed back into bed.

6

T
WO NIGHTS LATER
Hartmann went to visit Anne in her rooms. He parked his car near the station and set off on the short walk to the rue des Acacias. At the end of the street he saw a faintly familiar figure buying a newspaper. He was a short man in a thick coat and a black hat; his trousers finished two or three inches above his ankles. He was standing on the pavement, apparently unsure what to do next.

Hartmann went up to him. ‘Monsieur?’

The other man looked at him. There was no recognition in his eyes.

‘You don’t remember me, do you, monsieur?’

The older man took off his hat and rubbed his bald head vigorously. ‘I can’t say I do.’

Hartmann said, ‘The Lion d’Or, yes?’

‘Yes, I know it.’

‘But you’re the Patron, are you not, monsieur?’

‘Yes indeed. Yes, I am.’

Hartmann introduced himself.

‘Good God, I do remember now. I remember your father. He used to come to the hotel. That was years ago. Before the war, I think.’

Hartmann smiled. ‘You remember him?’

‘Oh yes. Quite well.’ The Patron frowned a little. ‘Quite well.’ He seemed less certain this time.

‘I used to come in myself when I was young. Sometimes I had to run errands or pick things up from someone there. It was a good meeting point for us, you see – half way towards where we lived.’

‘Absolutely. It’s still a good meeting place for people.’

‘That’s how I recognised you,’ said Hartmann. ‘I remembered your face from when I was a boy.’

The Patron looked increasingly confused.

‘But I never see you in the hotel now,’ said Hartmann.

‘Good God, no. That woman, she runs the place. I have my other – other interests.’

‘Of course.’

Hartmann wasn’t sure if he was embarrassing the Patron; perhaps he too was on his way to some illicit rendezvous. He tried once more to see if he remembered anything about Hartmann’s father, but the old man looked perplexed and began clenching his newspaper.

‘Here,’ he said, thrusting it towards Hartmann. ‘Did you see this?’

The headline read:
SALENGRO CLEARED
. The Chamber had debated the result of General Gamelin’s court of honour inquiry and had cleared the minister of any suspicion of desertion by the margin of 427 votes to 103.

‘That’s excellent news,’ said Hartmann.

‘I suppose so. I don’t follow half of what’s happening, though. I don’t know whose side I’m supposed to be on.’

‘I know. It’s confusing. Would you like to come and have a glass of beer with me? There’s a café just nearby.’

‘No. I mean, thank you, but I must get back. I don’t go out much, you see. I just thought I’d try a little walk today, but I want to go back now.’

‘Of course. One thing, monsieur. There’s a waitress on your staff. She’s called Anne. You let her go away for a few days. She was very pleased by it and I know she wanted to thank you.’

‘Anne?’

‘Yes, she hasn’t been there long. She took over from a girl called Sophie.’

‘I remember. She came and saw me in my study. I thought she wanted more money. That’s what it’s usually all about.’

‘It was very kind of you to let her go.’

‘I thought I had to! I thought it was the law nowadays.’

‘But even so.’

‘Hmm.’ The Patron began to fiddle with his newspaper again. ‘Probably get pregnant before the year’s out. They usually do. Bring them in from the little villages, teach them to speak so they can be understood – not all that dialect – and by the time they’re able to do the job some local boy’s seduced them.’

‘Well. Let’s hope for the best.’

‘Absolutely. Now then . . .’ He seemed to be searching for a name. ‘Hartmann,’ he said firmly. ‘I must be off.’

‘Of course, monsieur. Goodbye.’

They shook hands and the Patron shuffled off down the boulevard. Hartmann bought a paper, stuffed it in his pocket, and hurried on.

It had grown cold, and Zozo the cat no longer prowled the perimeter wall but lay curled beneath the gas-ring in the recess of the stairs. Hartmann’s breath left cumbersome trails on the frosty air as he crossed the courtyard. He knew as if by telepathy exactly the effect that the sound of his footsteps was producing in the waiting girl.

While Anne went next door to return some sewing things she had borrowed from Mlle Calmette, he glanced around the little sitting-room which was full of objects whose provenance Anne had at one time or another explained to him. On the mantelpiece was a china figure that Louvet had given her for her sixteenth birthday. On a low shelf by the fireside was a pallid doll which was all that remained of her rustic childhood. He had seen in her bedroom the photograph of her mother. The view of Parisian roofs, painted in a shaky watercolour, had been bought, she had told him, from savings she had made from working at her first job in Paris when she and Louvet lived in Vaugirard. On her dressing-table was a china box that had belonged to her mother, in which Anne kept pins and slides. She made coffee in an enamel pot given to her by Delphine, her fellow-waitress at Montparnasse, when she left Paris. On a table by itself, proudly displayed, was the gramophone, with half a dozen heavy black records in brown paper sleeves beside it.

Each object was charged with meaning; their combined significance made up her life. He thought of the profusion of his unknown possessions in the Manor: their number and anonymity gave him refuge, but these few things, each with its treasured reference, laid Anne naked.

She returned, flushed and smiling, Hartmann took a half bottle of brandy from his coat pocket and poured two glasses. There was a silent tension between them, as if each expected the other to move first.

She gazed at him, looking into the eyes beneath their black brows, focusing on the narrow gleam of light that shone there. He looked back at her, seeing her own eyes glowing against the pale white of her skin, the handful of freckles visible beneath them.

After a moment Anne went to her bedroom and took a small box from the top drawer of the dressing-table.

‘Charles,’ she said, returning to the sitting-room, ‘I’ve got a present for you.’

‘For me? Why?’

‘It’s just something I saw,’ she lied. ‘Something I thought you’d like.’

‘You’re wicked, Anne. You shouldn’t be buying me presents. I’m not at all pleased.’