Girl at the Lion D'Or (7 page)

‘I can’t think who that was. M. Mattlin, perhaps?’

‘I think not. A friend of Mattlin’s, though.’

‘Oh, that man. Yes, what’s his name? I forget.’

‘Hartmann.’

‘Yes, that’s it. I remember now. Why? Do you know him?’

‘Oh well, one hears things.’

‘What sort of things?’

Pierre put the bottle he was holding down on the table and peered at her over the rim of his spectacles. ‘He used to live here as a child, but went away when his father travelled abroad. After the war he lived in Paris for a long time and then, when his father died, he came to live in the Manor. He’s a lawyer by profession, but I think he did other things in Paris as well. They’re a well-off family – Jewish blood, you know. The grandfather came from Austria. He made his money in some sort of business.’

‘But what about him? I mean, what do you know of him as a person?’

‘Anne?’

‘Yes?’

‘Is this wise?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Anne blushed. ‘I don’t – I – I only asked.’

‘All right,’ said Pierre. ‘We’ll say no more about it. Tell me about your family, then. What did your father do?’

‘He was a shopkeeper before the war. But we – there was difficulty in the family, and now we haven’t any money. Not that we were rich anyway.’

‘And what about your mother?’

‘What? Oh, Pierre, don’t ask me any more, please. I’m sorry, but it’s difficult, you see.’

‘Not if it’s upsetting you. I’m sorry.’

There was an embarrassed silence. Anne was familiar with the sequence of events. Often with someone she liked and wanted to befriend she had to repel intimacy at the moment it appeared to be offered. She watched Pierre who, for all his gentleness, looked a little affronted, and tried to win his trust again with unsuccessful small-talk.

She was glad for once to hear herself summoned from upstairs. ‘Goodbye, Pierre,’ she said, dashing up the steps to answer Mme Bouin’s call.

On Wednesday afternoon Anne borrowed Roland’s bicycle and made off on the south-west road out of town. She hadn’t told anyone at the hotel where she was going. If the job became hers and the visits regular, then she might tell Pierre, but she feared that if Mme Bouin knew about the work she would find a reason to forbid it. She told Roland she wanted to explore the coast and go for a walk along the beaches. He agreed readily enough, though he gave her, she thought, a strange, hungry look as he loosened the nut beneath the saddle to lower the seat for her.

The road bent between dense pine forests for a while, then opened up into a sparse and sandy-looking plain, in the middle of which was a small cluster of houses. As Anne cycled along, two or three men in fishermen’s overalls looked up from a table beneath a clump of trees and stared at her. The walls of the dozen or so houses were draped with drying nets, and a widow with a face that seemed to have been turned inside out like a dried fruit was splitting oysters over a metal bucket.

Anne pedalled on up the hill where the road once more entered the pines. She was wearing her plainest dress with thick stockings and had her hair pulled back beneath a scarf. She knew she must look businesslike if she was to impress Mme Hartmann, and for the moment would have to sacrifice any hints at femininity which, for other reasons, she might have preferred. She wore some lace-up walking shoes, bought specially from a barrow in the market.

The entrance to the Manor came abruptly and unsigned between a clump of budding rhododendrons and the interminable conifers. Anne braked and rose from the saddle as the bicycle juddered over the stony, pot-holed drive. Suddenly the dense trees on her right came to an end and she glimpsed a terrace with crumbling stone pots; soon she was passing the side wall of the house before the drive smoothed out a little and turned to the right, bringing her round to the front of the twin-towered house.

Anne leaned over, almost toppling, as she lowered her foot to the ground. She felt an acute nervousness as she stood in front of the old house. There was so much grey in it, so many rooms and big forbidding spaces foretold by the giant shutters and that long, voluminous roof. It was grander than any house she had entered – although its dilapidation was faintly reassuring. She wheeled her bicycle round to the side of the north tower to find a servants’ entrance and was met by a fat man in blue overalls pushing a wheelbarrow full of rubble. He muttered a greeting which was impeded by the cigarette between his lips.

‘Where can I find Mme Hartmann?’

The man gestured over his shoulder to Christine’s morning-room. Anne leaned her bicycle against the wall and went in through the kitchen door. The cracked tile floor was covered, in places, by sheets, and everywhere else by dust. From beneath her feet she could hear a dull banging, a pause, and then a long, parched cough.

She ventured through the kitchen and out into the small morning-room, calling, ‘Madame?’ There was no answer, so she glanced around her. The window in the front looked over the lake on which she could distantly see a rowing-boat crawl like a slow insect. There was some half-finished embroidery left in an armchair, down the side of which was stuffed a woman’s handkerchief.

She went through into the hall, a vast square area flagged with black and white marble, that separated the two parts of the house. Around its edge were assembled a number of unrelated objects – a fine walnut grandfather clock, a low piano with two ivory elephants and some photographs on top, an assortment of chairs, some obviously valuable and refined, others with torn rush seating. The walls were painted in blue rococo scrolls on a faded beige background. Anne peered in amazement at the chaotic elegance of the huge open area. There was enough in it to stare at for an hour or more, but she was frightened that Mme Hartmann might materialise at any moment. She called out again, but with the same result.

Near the front door in a pedestal was an iron vase filled with dried bulrushes and next to it a large terracotta pot, from which protruded fishing rods and nets and what looked to Anne like a hunting spear. The dominant feature of the hall, however, was an oak staircase that rose broadly from the marbled floor and zigzagged visibly back on itself before disappearing to a higher landing. Propped against the underside of the stairs was an old green bicycle.

Anne looked at the clock: five past two. She found that without meaning to she had set one foot on the big staircase. The spring of the wood beneath her foot and the broad sweep of the stairs in front of her made her feel like the lady of the manor, and with a sudden imperious movement she began to climb. It was satisfying to reach the half-landing and look down on the grandfather clock in the hall; and then to climb up to the first floor, feeling the carved banister beneath her hand. The landing was like an image from a dream: it had no logic or cohesion, and seemed half-finished. Corridors led off in all directions, through narrow doors with rattling handles. The main window was blocked by old, unpainted wooden shutters, while a smaller window gave a view of the terrace and the woods beyond. The polished oak wardrobe that stood grandly at the head of the stairs might have been rescued from a regal bedroom, but the dried pine chest and battered pewter jug seemed to have come from a village sale. There were thread-bare mats over the polished floorboards, and everywhere Anne looked there was neglect, with uncleaned oil pictures set against half-distempered walls. And as in dreams it was not the detail that was important, but the lingering impression of something real but unspecifiable that has come momentarily within one’s grasp.

Anne gazed around her, entranced at the thought of the people whose lives had been played out in these surroundings. It was only an ill-tended aggregation of wood and mineral, of uncertainly commanded space and broken furniture, but something in her heart was moved by it.

Reluctantly she went downstairs to look again for Mme Hartmann. She found her at last cutting some flowers in the woods beyond the terrace. Mme Hartmann seemed surprised when Anne explained who she was.

‘My husband said nothing about anyone coming today.’

‘I’m sorry. I was sure he said today.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s quite hard work. I don’t just want the ornaments dusted, you know. I already have Mme Monnier to do that. This way.’

The two women walked through the rooms that Anne had just gazed at alone, and Mme Hartmann explained what she wanted done. She watched Anne quizzically as she nodded her head in silent assent.

‘Of course this cellar is just a start. We’ll be doing up the rest of the house later.’

‘You won’t change it too much, will you?’ said Anne. ‘I mean, it’s so . . . unusual, so pretty as it is.’

‘It’s a mess. My father-in-law gave up caring towards the end of his life. Half the bedrooms are full of things that belonged to the previous owners, and
their
family was here for a hundred years.’

Anne was taken aback at the frank way Hartmann’s wife addressed her, a mere servant. She had expected her to be more distant and also, if she was strictly honest, more beautiful. She was rather forbidding, too, with small eyes that hardly seemed to blink as they travelled up and down Anne’s body, from the headscarf to the stout shoes.

‘Has my husband asked you about references?’

‘No. He didn’t mention anything.’

‘Oh well, it’s probably all right if you work at the hotel. I’ll give you a trial period of four weeks to see how you get on, and then if we’re both happy you can stay.’

‘Thank you, madame. Thank you very much indeed.’

Mme Hartmann led the way through the morning-room and out through the dusty kitchen. ‘Wretched workmen,’ she said, as she showed Anne where the cleaning things were kept. ‘They don’t do a stroke of work. And that silly little man Roussel, he’s always drawing up charts in coloured ink, but how he expects those oafs down there to understand I just don’t know. Anyway, mademoiselle, you can start now if you like. There’s no shortage of things to do.’

Mme Hartmann took up a wicker basket and returned to her gardening, leaving Anne to make her own choice of where to start work. After she had swept the scullery and scrubbed the steps, she moved into a small room which turned out to be Hartmann’s study. The floor was piled with books, and next to a desk was an open trunk of half-sorted documents. She allowed her eyes to linger on some papers on the desk. Some of the writing was angular and strong, some seemed rounder and less formed, but she recognised at once that they were different ages of the same hand.

She heard the back door slam and the sound of boots on the scullery floor. Instinctively, she made as if to be tidying a bookshelf. Hartmann had taken off his jacket, which he carried over his shoulder. For a moment he stood in the doorway, as if surprised by her presence.

She set about dusting, but found herself chattering nervously. ‘Madame made me promise not to touch any of the papers. I’ve been very careful.’

‘That’s all right.’ He picked up a book and sat down. She was working only a few feet from where he sat and for some minutes there was silence which Anne didn’t feel it was her prerogative to break. However, when he put down his book, sighed, and stared out of the window she took the chance to ask him what all the papers signified. From there it was quite easy to move on to the subjects of his work. She thought he might tell her to be quiet and get on with her cleaning, but he sat back in the chair and told her about being a lawyer in Paris. It seemed he had had to advise various newspapers on what the laws permitted them to print. ‘I don’t have a very high opinion of our press at the moment,’ he said.

He told her about the scandal involving a financier called Stavisky. Anne remembered reading about it, but couldn’t recall why so many important people had been worried when the man killed himself.

‘The government was very weak,’ said Hartmann. ‘It was frightened of what he might have revealed. That’s why some people say the police were involved in his death.’

Although Anne had been living in Paris at the time, the events had seemed remote to a waitress in a small café. ‘My boss, at the place where I used to work in Paris, he said we should have Marshal Pétain back.’

‘Did he? Isn’t Pétain a bit old?’

‘But he’s a hero, isn’t he? The people like him. Wouldn’t he be better than all these men we have now?’

Anne, who cared very little about politics was relieved when Hartmann didn’t laugh at her, but merely said, ‘You may be right.’

Although he was gentle when he talked to her, Anne was tense all the time with the fear that she would say something ignorant or foolish that would make him laugh. Against this fear she had to weigh the desire to know more about him.

‘Do you miss Paris?’ she said at last.

‘A little.’ Hartmann sighed again and stretched out his arms. ‘My father was a traveller who lived all his life in cities. As soon as I was old enough I went abroad, and then to Paris.’

‘Is that where your father came from?’

‘Yes, but his parents were from Vienna. His father was a banker. I went to stay with them once as a child and the thing I remember most vividly is the amount they ate. Every day they used to have at mid-morning what they called “second breakfast”, which my grandmother insisted everyone attend. There were plates of different meats – venison and cold pheasant, and eggs and dishes of sweetbreads with port and madeira. And they were expecting lunch two hours later. But the funny thing was that none of them seemed fat.’

‘But your father, he didn’t stay there?’

‘No, he was a great disappointment to my grandfather because he wasn’t religious. My grandfather was Jewish, you see, but my father was an atheist and rather proud of it.’

‘What about your mother?’

‘She was a good Catholic. She came from the Jura. They met at someone’s house in Reims. They lived in Paris for a while, but my mother had a hankering for the country and wanted to be near some water. It was she who found this house. She was a nervous woman and she liked to look out over the lake. She found it reassuring.’