Rachael's Gift (19 page)

Francine drove us south-west along the Périphérique towards Chateau de La Roche Guilbeault in the direction of Versailles. From the rear window I looked back to see the sun cresting over the jagged skyline, dotted with 1960s apartment blocks.

Rachael sat in the back of the car, pensive. She had come out of the interview that morning remarkably poised and tight-lipped. Yes, it had gone well. No, they hadn’t given her any indication that they would accept her. Yes, they had liked her work. She’d looked secretly pleased with herself. She liked that. To hold something back. To make us wait.

‘But you feel confident, darling, don’t you?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, Camille.’

‘And you think we’ll find out in a few weeks?’

‘That’s what I told you.’

Francine peered at Rachael in the rear-view mirror. ‘I’ll call Michel next week for his feedback.’

An orange strip lay across the horizon, burning feebly, until it extinguished after a few seconds and the now-rural landscape took on a dark grey before pitching into darkness. Francine turned up the music and Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major filled the awkward silence.

I glanced at Francine’s profile, so carefully constructed, not a hair out of place. Her focus remained on the road. I couldn’t tell whether she was thinking about Rachael and the Beaux-Arts or if her thoughts had travelled elsewhere, to another time and place, and a similar situation with me.

*

We drove up a sweeping driveway and the shadow of the attic windows and the tall, thin chimneys of the old chateau were outlined against the night sky. A single strip of light shone between the drapes in one room and the rest of the house was unlit, except for a tiny outdoor lamp above the service entrance. Rachael poked me in the hip. ‘Holy shit!’ she mouthed.

I suppose I’d felt the same way when I’d first seen it. Baroque in style, the chateau was long and imposing with a grand domed centrepiece, flanked by two wings. Even in darkness, La Roche Guilbeault, with her manicured formal gardens, outhouses, church, crypt and forest, was impressive.

Francine took us through the service entrance. We left our overnight bags in the foyer. ‘They spend most of their time in the salon now,’ she said, referring to my grandparents. ‘Bring the ashes, Rachael. My mother will want them.’

We followed Francine down the drafty corridor. Rachael pulled on my arm, ‘You never told me they were this rich!’

‘Don’t get too excited. This is France, practically everyone has a chateau.’ I thought of Wolfe and how I’d never shared this part of my life with him either. What would he make of it all? He didn’t care for such things anyway – money didn’t matter to him.

Francine knocked quietly and then, without waiting for a response, entered the room. We were hit by a strong musty smell – the smell of old age and decay. Even before I saw her face, I felt a shiver. My grandmother, Marie, was a very cold woman.

We stood amongst an enormous amount of clutter: old furniture, books, tapestries and antiques; dusty manuscripts crippled the spindly legs of side tables; walls were covered with paintings; plaster had cracked and fallen away from the cornices; Persian rugs were laid one over the other, their corners ragged. In the centre was a large chaise longue where my grandfather slept. He was barely recognisable, his skin translucent and loose, a shrunken version of his former self. A small electric radiator heated the room.

Marie sat upright at a table, playing cards. Francine bent down to kiss her mother. She squinted up at us, shouting, ‘
Avez vous apporté les cendres?
’

The smell grew thicker. Up close, my grandmother’s red lipstick seeped into the cracks around her lips. It seemed she had dressed for the occasion, but then I remembered my grandmother dressed in order to receive guests at all times. Rachael was holding her sleeve underneath her nose. I nudged her and she raised the cedar box Francine had found for the ashes.

‘
Bon
,’ Marie grunted. ‘
Vous n’auriez jamais dû la faire incinérer
.’

‘I’m sorry . . .’ I began, understanding her, but replying in English.

Francine began to translate, but Marie stamped her foot. ‘
Pourquoi ne nous l’avez vous pas dit plus tôt?
’

‘Marie, it’s been over twenty years since we’ve had any contact with you. I made the decision on my own.’

Marie’s eyes had already widened before Francine opened her mouth to translate. ‘
Quelle insouciance
,’ she spat. ‘
Par la grâce de Dieu, le prêtre a décidé de procéder à un service commémoratif. Il est fixé pour dans trois semaines
.’ Marie returned to her cards. ‘
Dites-lui, que tout est arrangé
,’ she muttered to her daughter. ‘
Il est trop tard pour faire des changements
.’

‘She says it has all been arranged,’ Francine began.

‘I heard her.’

‘You really should have called us earlier,’ said Francine, as she took the ashes from Rachael’s hands. ‘We could have helped.’

‘Forty years earlier?’ I snapped, thinking of the struggle of a single mother.

Francine squeezed her lips together as if to prevent herself from speaking.

I looked at my sleeping grandfather and my chest hurt. It was hard to see him so changed. What an inspiring tutor he had been, so learned, so passionate. It was true he had barely noticed me, but even to be in his presence had been enough. It was a shame Rachael would only know him as this ghost. Francine hadn’t explained what was wrong with him.

Francine placed the ashes on the mantelpiece.

‘Could we open a window?’ Rachael said.

‘It’s not possible, they’re sealed shut.’

*

‘Rachelle, I’ve put you in Marguerite’s old room,’ Francine said as she ushered us out and gestured for us to follow her.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ I asked.

‘I told you it would be a shock. Unfortunately,’ she said matter of factly, ‘he has lost his mind. We see him, his body is there but
he
is not there at all.’

A great wave of sadness overcame me. That wonderful mind, all that work. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Francine, that is awful. When did it happen?’

‘For some time now. It gets progressively worse. But I think we are all used to it.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ But it was me I was feeling sorry for. Another one, gone.

We reached the landing and continued to follow Francine all the way down a long corridor, where she stopped outside a bedroom. The door clicked open, interrupting the solitude of an unlived-in room. My mother’s room as a young girl and then a young woman, before she had been sent away. It was exactly as it was when I’d stayed here, with silk curtains and a matching bedspread, covered by an array of pink and cream chenille pillows. Now it was Rachael’s turn. I peered out the window. Outside it was pitch black, of course, but I could picture from memory the manicured garden and the pretty courtyard with a beautiful fresco, a trompe-l’oeil of an exotic garden and a red rose.

Francine absently touched a silver-plated hairbrush lying on the dressing table and I pictured my mother sitting on the stool, brushing her blonde hair and dreaming the things that young women dreamt of, like falling in love and getting married. Had she really dreamt of such things? It was hard to imagine. I’d only known her as someone who didn’t believe in dreams.

‘We kept her jewellery box.’ Francine opened up the silver box next to the brush and pulled out a string of pearls. She held them up to Rachael’s neck, pulling my daughter’s hair back and watching her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. ‘They look lovely on your skin.’

Rachael draped the pearls over her head and looked at herself in the mirror.

‘Maman couldn’t bear to throw anything of hers away,’ Francine said. I had to stop my mouth from falling open; throwing away the daughter was fine but not her things.

She swung open the armoire. ‘We kept some of her clothes, too.’ Several gowns hung in plastic wrapping. ‘They might fit you,’ she said to Rachael.

Rachael parted the hangers, the silk shining through the plastic. ‘They’re beautiful.’ She touched them gently; here was a girl so different from the one who had torn through her Mémé’s wardrobe recently, declaring her drab. Rachael’s eyes were glazed. She was drifting from me. These people offered her something I never could.

A small black-and-white photo was tucked into the edge of the velvet-lined lid of the jewellery box. It was my mother and Francine. The date written on the back was February 1973. The year I was born. They were standing on a bridge, rugged up in coats, laughing.

The next morning, I crept out of my room and crawled into my mother’s old bed with Rachael. She was snuggled deep under the duvet. I put my arms around her, drawing her close. ‘Time to get up, sleepy head.’ She wriggled around and smiled at me with her eyes still sealed shut. Tiny blonde downy hairs grew along the tip of her ear. ‘Do I have to? It’s so cold.’

‘We can sneak a look at the house before anyone gets up.’

‘Hmm . . .’ She opened her eyes and studied my face. ‘You look tired.’

I pulled away from her, rubbing my face with my hands. ‘Gee, thanks. You’ll be old one day – remember that.’

‘Oh, don’t be like that . . . maybe I should paint you. Then you can be beautiful forever.’

‘Ha! No, thanks!’

She stared at the ceiling. ‘It’s so weird this used to be Mémé’s room. I can’t see her in here at all.’ She propped herself up on her elbow. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd they kept all her stuff? I mean, did they think she would come back?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. I’d spent years asking myself why they’d done what they had.

Rachael traced the vein on my temple with her finger. ‘Do you miss her?’

I brushed her hand away, suddenly not wanting to be touched, and nodded. ‘Of course I miss her. Like one day you will miss me.’

‘I don’t want to think about that day.’ She held my hand against her cheek. ‘Do you think Dad’s okay?’

‘Yes. Why?’ I replied, thinking it strange she should worry about him all of a sudden.

‘Oh, you know – the teacher stuff.’

I wondered what was going on with the investigation – I hadn’t told Rachael about it. ‘You should have come to me in the first instance.’

She looked as if she was about to cry so I changed gears, throwing the covers off and dragging her by the hand. ‘Come on, let’s snoop around.’

*

We slid from room to room along the parquet floors in our thick socks, the sunlight revealing the truth of the chateau’s shabby state: peeling paint; cracks in the walls and floors; broken windowpanes; mouldy bathrooms. Most of the rooms were shuttered, stripped of personal items and furniture, and what was left was covered in sheets. Rectangular outlines were left on walls where paintings had once hung. Half the house had been closed since I’d last been here. It had been full of life back then – artists cruising through, the kitchen hectic. The house was shrinking, reduced now to three or four rooms out of forty. Why didn’t they sell up and move somewhere more manageable? But Rachael saw something quite different. To her these bare rooms were full of character, forever stained with their previous inhabitants.

‘Don’t you see? Can’t you feel it?’ We stood in a room that would have once been someone’s bedroom but was now bare.

‘Okay – so there used to be a bed and a dresser and a wardrobe . . .’

Rachael stared sombrely into the corners and at water-stained wallpaper. ‘Someone once cried in here. Had sex. Gave birth. Breastfed. Was scared. And someone else thought about suicide. It’s all left behind. Can’t you feel it?’

I ran my hand along a crumbling windowsill and looked at the dirt on my finger. Yes, there it was, hundreds of years of dead skin cells on my finger. The room became colder, a draft from somewhere grew. I shivered. I looked at Rachael and she looked at me.

‘Boo!’ she cried. I squealed and we both burst out laughing.

The next bedroom had been turned into an office. Was this where they kept my grandfather’s notes and correspondence? But on closer inspection the files seemed to just be account records. I thought of the rows of books in the drawing room. Surely they didn’t keep my grandfather’s entire life’s work in there? All of his private letters? His archive and correspondence? How would it all fit? Where had they put their art collection? Had they sold it?

The door opened. ‘What are you doing?’ It was Francine. I felt myself grow hot, but Rachael spoke calmly, ‘We were just being a bit nosy. I’ve never been in a house like this before.’

‘Oh, I was going to show you around. Camille doesn’t know the history. Have you been out to the garden and studio yet?’

We shook our heads.

*

The garden had once been a source of comfort to me. Its manicured hedges, geometric gravel pathways, statues and moss-covered benches gave way to secret hideaways and daydreams. It was where I’d first seen Lucien. But now it was unrecognisable: hedges were overgrown and had been devoured by the predatory Japanese knotweed, gravel turned to mud, the small group of trees in the distance, originally an ornamental backdrop, now a thorn-covered impenetrable forest; bits of rubbish, plastic and paper, had blown in and been left to rot. I felt choked up. We came to a small clearing, a paved courtyard. The stone wall and the rusting gate where Lucien had painted the mural was shrouded in ivy. I ripped at the vines and they came away from the wall; underneath the stone crumbled, the mural patchy.

‘Rachael, this is one of Lucien’s early commissions.’

‘It’s flaking off,’ she said.

‘How could you let it get like this?’ I asked Francine.

‘We clear it all the time but it seems to grow back overnight. There simply aren’t the resources anymore.’

I asked Francine why she hadn’t arranged for my grandparents to move to a smaller, more manageable residence, but she explained that they would never consent to it. ‘Rupert offered to have the house fixed up but they’re too proud. This is their home. They fought hard for it. I couldn’t take that away.’

Fought hard for it? The words snagged; I guessed she meant they’d worked hard for it.