Shutterspeed (8 page)

‘He got Mariette from the café to fill him in on all the gossip for five hundred francs,’ said Aunt. ‘That chap’s as clairvoyant as a blind man with a glass eye …’

‘You can say what you like,’ said Uncle, refusing to let her dampen his spirits, ‘it’s still extraordinary.’

The clairvoyant concluded his show with a last supper of razor blades strung together, on which he pretended to gag as he retreated a few paces, clutching his bulging cheeks with both hands. A thread hung from his lips. He opened his mouth and amid mounting applause pulled the string of blades from his mouth.

‘So now we know what he needed all those razors for,’ said Aunt with a sigh.

The Italian emerged from the wings, followed by all the artistes. The purple girls turned somersaults, jets of water spurted from the clowns’ eyes, confetti fluttered down and the lights came on.

‘Well, that was well worth the effort,’ said Uncle. He stood up and adjusted the creases of his trousers.

Hélène Vuylsteke and the girl had gone. When we came
outside I saw the gamekeeper’s car pulling away. He must have been waiting in the road for the end of the show so he could drive them straight home afterwards.

In the garden the chap with the quiff crooned a golden oldie: ‘In the Forest Roam the Hunters’.

Uncle took her arm, saying: ‘What d’you say to a glass of beer, a nibble of your ear, a twirl around the floor and maybe something more? What about it, eh, Laura?’

‘Get away with you, silly …’

‘No, really, I mean it. How long has it been since we had a little dance, you and me?’

She hesitated.

‘It’s all right, I can get myself home,’ I said. ‘Got to be up early tomorrow anyhow.’

Several days ago Miss van Vooren had sent the canopy bearers a note, in the flowing but somewhat sterile hand so familiar to me from her shopping lists, telling everyone, in particular the new member, to be sure to present themselves at the sacristy at least half an hour ahead of time.

‘Come on, Laura, be a sport,’ Uncle Werner pleaded.

Finally she shrugged her shoulders and said: ‘Oh all right then, why not.’

They gave me the key to the front door.

The graves in the churchyard were still giving off heat. The hot air remained trapped between the headstones, and in the deep shadows beneath the linden trees I thought I heard a noise. It sounded like leaves rustling in
the wind, which was odd as there had not been a breath of wind for days.

I did not dare look sideways. I heard a match being struck.

‘Hey mate,’ a man’s voice spoke behind me. ‘Still up at this hour? You’d better get yourself to bed pronto.’ Someone tittered.

I quickened my step until I reached the road on the other side. I had heard Aunt complaining to Miss van Vooren about un-Catholic shenanigans in the churchyard.

‘You know what I mean …’ she had added with a nod in my direction, which I took to signify she was speaking of things for which my ears were yet too tender.

I slipped the key into the lock and let myself in. In the kitchen I filled a glass of water and drank it down. Outside, an electric guitar twanged ‘Roses for Sandra’ over the rooftops.

My bedroom was as hot as an oven. I got undressed and lay down on top of the bedclothes.

I heard footsteps out in the road, followed by the crunch of gravel. I heard someone moan ‘Ronnie, ooh Ronnie.’ I stood up and crossed to the window. Under one of the lindens I glimpsed something moving, hands fumbling under a checked skirt, a flash of bare thigh.

I brought my face up close to the window screen to get a better view, and immediately heard a gruff voice, the same one as before, calling out: ‘Back to bed with you, I said. Sleep tight, mind the bugs …’

I jumped into bed and switched off the bedside lamp. After a while I heard footsteps again, dying away over the cobbles, and around two in the morning I woke with a start to hear Uncle blundering up the stairs.

‘Seven carnations, seven roses, for you my sweet these posies …’ he slurred.

‘Shush, Werner,’ hissed Aunt.

‘… Roses and posies … for you.’

He bumped into something. Aunt gave a shriek. I wanted to leap out of bed to help, but then I heard her giggle, no doubt because he had seized her by the hips again.

The door of their room clicked shut behind them.

For as long as it took me to fall asleep I heard her intermittent squeals bouncing off the churchyard wall.

I HAVE ONLY ONE PHOTO OF THAT SUNDAY. UNCLE MAY WELL
have taken several, since he was hardly likely to have fetched out his camera from the cabinet purely because I had turned up for breakfast in the dazzling white shirt that Aunt had ironed so carefully. He must have had it all planned, and Aunt Laura was probably in on it too. He seldom took photographs, and never on a whim. Perhaps the rest of the pictures were distributed among other albums, gone to family relations, forgotten over time.

I remember Aunt making me wear knee socks, too, although you can’t see them here. I am way down in the bottom right-hand corner, you can see one of my arms resting on the table, and although Uncle photographed me from behind you can tell I am looking at Aunt. She is putting a blouse on over her bodice. It floats ethereally over her shoulders; a second or two later it will be buttoned up.

Behind her the window is a bleak rectangle of whiteness, a white that seems to leach into my shirtsleeves. It casts a wintry pall over the objects in the room, making
them appear both paler and darker than they presumably were. Aunt’s frame seems to be dissolving at the edges, suggesting auras hovering about her limbs.

I love that photo. For the newspaper on the table, which I am touching with my fingertips, for the disarray of cups and coffeepots and spoons, the unprepossessing luxury of breadcrumbs and used plates, but also for being the last one of its kind.

The light in the room is so bright that the reflection in Aunt’s eyes makes her pupils look like minute white saucers. In my memory that morning had a very different texture: warmer and more coppery toned. A feverish Sunday at the end of June, with a breeze fluttering the linden leaves like handkerchiefs.

I was only a few paces short of the sacristy facing on to the churchyard, where the others were already waiting. There were three of them, teenage boys slouching against the wall of the church and of an age to wear what they liked, how they liked, such as caps and long hair and trendy collarless shirts. The collar of my own shirt was worthy of a sailing ship. I looked like the kind of boy I’d want to avoid if I chanced upon him on a deserted street corner.

I tried to move close enough to the youths to make it look as if I sort of belonged, and yet not so close as to draw attention to myself. The tallest of the trio was telling jokes, at which I heard myself laugh too heartily.

When they started about girls, in particular one called Claudia and what they called her milk-wagons, I sensed
in their sniggers an urgency that was not yet mine. It gave me a feeling of superiority, which I thought best to dissemble.

The tallest one said he had done it three times already, but the others shook their heads disparagingly. Gusta Coremans did not count, not really. She went off with anyone who gave her stickers of pop stars.

I saw her in the shop sometimes. She was an only child. She and her mother, who was quite old, lived in an estate cottage sagging on the verge of collapse under the weight of its own roof tiles. She had frizzy hair which defied every hairbrush, and a slight squint.

Miss van Vooren said you could hardly blame the poor lamb for not knowing who her father was, but there was something decidedly odd about the Coremans twosome. When it was busy in the shop someone would always find a cause to mention that Gusta’s mother had been in service at the big house once upon a time. This was common knowledge, as was the fact that Gusta was illegitimate.

‘Gusta, Gusta,’ the other two boys chanted, to wind up the tallest. ‘Gusta Coremans!’ They held out their arms and staggered about as if they were about to fall.

‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ growled the tall boy, and I didn’t understand what he meant, because Gusta could have been my sweetheart, too.

It was because she had more balcony than the opera, as Uncle Werner remarked one day, that I felt a surge of pity whenever I saw her coming into the shop, half hidden
behind her gigantic shopping bag, big enough to take a whole calf.

When she reached the end of her shopping list came the moment I dreaded most of all. Her ma sometimes gave her five francs spending money.

On such occasions I usually called to Aunt in the kitchen for assistance. She was more persuasive than me, but if she was out I had no choice but to sort it myself.

Gusta took ages to make up her mind. Her indecision brought tears to my eyes. I think it was a question of not wanting to decide. She would spend an eternity drooling over the sweet jars, devouring the contents with her eyes, and then start asking about the pictures inside the chocolate wrappers – were they of pop stars? She must have known her measly five francs did not run to chocolate.

Usually I would mumble something about them all being of factories. I preferred to disillusion her than make her feel poor. In the end she was likely to settle for a string of sugar-pearls, which she would hang round her neck and begin to nibble as soon as she got on her bike.

Some said it was written all over her. She was a Van Callant and no mistake. Miss van Vooren thought so, too. At some point the poor kid must have got wind of what was being said behind her back. You could tell by the way she rode her bike: so hunched over that her back was practically parallel to the road surface and her head bent low over the grotesque shopping bag swinging from the handlebar.

When the bell finished striking nine there was a rattling sound on the other side of the sacristy door, and the boys stopped talking. The door opened and Miss van Vooren greeted us with ‘How nice, the disciples have arrived.’ She was trying to sound casual.

She wore her usual outfit for special occasions: navy blue coat and skirt, flat shoes, milky nylon stockings and a blouse with an enormous bow. She had clearly been to the hairdresser: her head looked twice its normal size.

For two days running she had told Aunt she was sorry but she couldn’t stop because she had an appointment at the salon, as though the sanctification of her tresses had to be undertaken in stages, or they would not stand erect as a finely meshed helmet of individually lacquered hairs.

Miss van Vooren let us into the sacristy. The priest was leaning against the wardrobe, practising his sermon. He nodded curtly, without taking further notice of us.

In a while he would be pontificating about the church being like a vessel tossed on an ocean of green meadows, a shipload of Christians on the high seas of time, and he would cite the apostles during the storm at the Sea of Galilee.

Not being an inventive preacher, he came out with the same sermon each year, but his dramatic delivery, complete with flailing elbows and shaking knees, was so convincing that half the congregation would be affected by seasickness.

Propped against the wall, between the clock and the
window, was the canopy: a square of white damask brocaded with gold thread, hanging slackly between carrying-poles of dark wood.

‘It’s not as difficult as it looks,’ Miss van Vooren assured me. ‘The main thing is to keep in step with the others, and to carry your pole at the same height … Right, I’ll get the clothes.’

She inspected the three wide drawers in the lower half of the sacristy closet. Lying in the bottom one were the white vestments with lace borders and a bunch of crimson cords that served as belts.

‘Arms up,’ ordered Miss van Vooren, turning to me. The others were left to put on their albs themselves, which they did with girlish enthusiasm. Miss van Vooren obviously thought I could not manage without her assistance.

‘Put your hands together …’ She had to stand up on tiptoe to pass the canvas sling over my shoulders, for I was already taller than her.

‘A wee bit too long for you,’ she remarked, eyeing my alb. ‘But we can make it shorter, like this.’ She tied one of the crimson cords round my waist.

‘Rosa …’ called the priest from the other end of the sacristy. ‘Can you spare me a moment? I’ve got my head stuck in the sleeves again.’ He was swaddled in fabric from the waist up.

‘Just a second,’ she replied, rolling up my sleeves. Then she turned away to help the priest.

It was some time before his head, flushed purple from exertion, emerged from his surplice.

The boys tried to stifle their sniggers.

‘Quite the glamour puss in that get-up, aren’t you,’ said the tall boy, confronting the shortest of the trio. ‘I might even fancy you myself …’

‘Look a bit of all right, do I?’ smirked the short boy, wiggling his hips and lifting his lacy hem between thumb and forefinger.

‘Confound all these trappings,’ grumbled the priest. ‘Imagine if Our Lord had been obliged to get all togged up every time he opened his mouth. He’d have stayed in Nazareth, I wager … Wouldn’t blame him, either. Spot of sawing, bit of joinery – good honest work.’

Out in the chancel the regular altar boys busied themselves with the liturgical vessels. Up in the rood loft the schoolmaster played the opening chords of
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God
.

‘Now boys! Stop that nonsense and go and sit in the stalls, over there,’ she said, indicating the far side of the high choir.

‘The youngest first,’ she called after us, ‘and in an orderly fashion, please.’

The church was filling up. Over half the seats were already taken, and still the door in the entrance kept creaking open and shut with new arrivals.

Over by the communion rail were the chairs upholstered in wine-red velour, the preserve of the gentry since time immemorial. I noted Hélène Vuylsteke seating
herself on one of them. She removed her hat, crossed herself, and knelt.

She was alone. Perhaps her charge was still asleep in bed. Perhaps the child simply didn’t fancy attending Mass. It had been years since a Van Callant occupied a seat in the premier section of this house of worship, where the sunbeams seeping through the stained-glass windows reassembled into the family coat of arms on the flagstones. The noble family had donated confession boxes, processional banners, incense burners and the occasional relic, they had contributed land to the almshouses and riches to the church treasury. Even the wainscoting at my back was carved with their old battle-cry ‘Groeninghe Velt! Groeninghe Velt!’

Above my head Saint Paul leaned heavily on his sword. On top of the choir stalls across the way stood Saint Peter, displaying the keys of heaven to the congregation while a ribbon of incense curled up round his feet. Two of the regular boys were blowing on the censer behind the high altar.

Uncle Werner and Aunt Laura, having opted as usual for a seat neither at the front nor at the back, were halfway down the nave, under the lee of the pulpit. Uncle waved at me, but I pretended not to see him.

It was half-past nine. Miss van Vooren pulled a handle next to the sacristy door; a bell tinkled across the chancel.

Up in the rood loft the choir launched into
God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet
. The priest emerged from the sacristy attended by his acolytes. They
gathered a few paces short of the high altar, genuflected, then moved up close to the tabernacle and genuflected again.

I slumped against the back of my seat. All around me the service was unfurling in a panoply of dance, a continuous choreography of outspread arms, bowed heads and incantations that had been going on since goodness knows when, in this very place. Well before the existence of the big house, that was certain, well before there had been battlements rising in the distance beyond the roofs of the village, according to Mr Snellaert.

This was to be the last time I was able to lose myself in historical musings at will, just as easily becoming someone else by wrapping myself in an old curtain from the
dressing-up
trunk in the attic – but I didn’t know that then.

The incense was getting to me, and I tried not to look too groggy. Miss van Vooren stood by the door to the sacristy throughout, watching our every move.

The choir sang
We have a strong city: salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks
. The altar boys escorted the priest to the pulpit. The congregation rose from their knees and sat down.

Hélène Vuylsteke exchanged her kneeler for one of the comfortable chairs, but not the tall one which was traditionally reserved for the lord of the manor.

From on high the priest announced to his flock that the contents of this week’s collection box would go to the Papal Mission Association. Then he embarked on his sermon, and within two minutes the nave of the church
was rolling amid green meadows, much as the disciples had done on the choppy Sea of Galilee when the Saviour walked on water to save them.

‘Now don’t expect me to do the same,’ concluded the priest, and beneath him lips curved into smiles, even though everyone had heard his little joke umpteen times.

A glow of satisfaction travelled down my spine. All was well. The minute hand of some great clock had shifted exactly in time with the measures of the world, everything fitted and all existence was simply there, running neither fast nor slow. I let myself drift along on the current of pre-ordained moves until the Communion was over and Miss van Vooren snapped her fingers.

The youths jumped to their feet. I trailed after them to the sacristy, where the canopy awaited us. It was heavier than I expected.

We carried it to the prearranged spot in the nave, just in front of the altar.

‘Just take a small step outwards now,’ said Miss van Vooren.

My fellow bearers did as they were told, causing the canopy to unfold overhead.

The priest descended the altar steps holding aloft the monstrance, in which the Sacred Host formed the centre of a sunburst surmounted by two putti bearing a crown.

‘Go for it. Not too fast now,’ the priest muttered, taking his position under the canopy.

From the aisles came the churchwardens holding candlesticks with lighted candles.

‘
He is my refuge and my fortress; my God
,’ sang the choir as they came down from the rood loft to wait for the others by the portal.