The Cleaner of Chartres (24 page)

Chartres

Madame Beck had been most put out to receive that Saturday morning a letter from Mother Véronique. The letter was written in violet ink on notepaper embellished with a quotation from St Thérèse of Lisieux. Below the saint’s maxim about following the example of ‘the poor in spirit’ Madame Beck read these words.

‘I have been thinking and praying’ – ‘praying’ was underlined three times – ‘and, with God’s help, I have reached the conclusion that I was at fault in sending you the press cuttings. Nothing was ever found to connect Agnès with the terrible event described there.’

Madame Beck, frowning, took a disbelieving sip of coffee.

‘I sent them to you to give you a better idea of what the poor girl has been through,’ the violet ink continued, ‘but I fear now I have been precipitate and unwise. I would ask you, dear Madame, to destroy the copies and not to repeat their contents or to let the story fall into the wrong hands.’

This kind of reversal, had Madame Beck known it, was typical of Mother Véronique, who drove the Sisters of Mercy almost crazy with her inability to stick to one line.

Madame Beck was, as a consequence, not in the best of moods when she opened the door a little later to Madame Picot. ‘I must say you might have rung first, Jeanette.’

‘I’m sorry, my dear, but I have something on my conscience. I felt it could not wait.’

This potentially enlivening prospect did not somehow sound well to Madame Beck’s ear. ‘Yes?’

‘May I sit down, dear?’

‘Don’t be silly, Jeanette.’

‘It’s about your china dolly. The little coloured girl.’

‘Lulu?’

‘Lulu, yes. The truth is, you see, well, the truth is, dear, I took her. I broke her, you see, and wanted to get her mended and then you became so angry about it all I felt abashed. But it was wrong of me to let the blame fall on Agnès.’

The news of this perfidy from a friend almost succeeded in dumbfounding Madame Beck. ‘
You
took Lulu?’

‘I brought her back, though, all mended. She’s tucked away at the bottom of your bed. I’m surprised you haven’t found her but I suppose without Agnès here you haven’t had the strength to turn the mattress.’

Madame Picot found to her surprise that she was enjoying this revelation. Rather than remorse, or fear, she seemed to be feeling unusually blithe. After all, what could Louise do to her but drop the friendship? And that prospect no longer seemed so very dreadful.

‘Frankly, I’m speechless, Jeanette.’

‘Well, dear, there it is. We all make mistakes. If you go and look . . .’ But Madame Beck had already flown to her bedroom and was scrabbling like a terrier at the foot of the bed.

‘It’s just that,’ said Madame Picot blandly when her friend returned, inspecting the recovered doll in her hand, ‘I felt you should let the Abbé Paul know that you’ve been mistaken and Agnès is not a thief. Of course, the dear little baby boy is another matter, but I do hope it turns out to be another mistake. She seems such a nice woman, Agnès. I was thinking I might ask her to clean for me. Now, dear, take a look at Lulu’s neck and tell me if you can see the join.’

•   •   •

Philippe said, ‘Brigitte, what train did you catch last Sunday?’

‘How do you expect me to remember that?’

‘You remembered when you spoke to the doctor.’

‘So?’

‘Only Agnès apparently said you got back at nine and you told the doctor it was seven.’

‘You’re not going to believe her?’

‘I can’t see why Agnès would lie about it.’

‘She would, wouldn’t she?’

‘Why’s that, Brigitte?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I don’t, in fact,’ said Philippe, who knew perfectly well and hoped to be able to control himself enough not to slap his sister. ‘You see, I was thinking that if, as you told Agnès, the train was cancelled and that was checked, and it turned out that it wasn’t cancelled after all, wouldn’t that show you up as rather unreliable? And you might not wish to come across as unreliable in the circumstances. You see, what’s bothering me is you’ve tried that trick about trains on me before.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying that you might need some help, Brigitte. I’m saying that I doubt Agnès did this terrible thing to Max. Brigitte?’

Her strained white face stared up at him, and he thought – hoped – that perhaps she might turn to him, embrace him, maybe, and even cry. For a fraction of a moment her lips trembled and then the past superseded the possibilities of the present and they became hideously distorted. ‘You’ve always had it just the way you wanted it, haven’t you, mother’s little darling?’

‘Brigitte, you need help. You can’t punish Max because he reminds you of me.’

‘Get out, get out of here, mother’s little queer boy.’

‘Thank you, Brigitte, you’ve just managed to convince me of Agnès’ innocence. And if you don’t mind I shan’t be leaving my own apartment.’

Chartres

Alain had not forgotten his promise to Agnès over the silver chain. He had borrowed a wetsuit for the purpose from a colleague who liked to scuba dive and had already spent a morning trawling the river by the watermill where the body of Father Bernard had been found. Saturday also being his day off, he reinstated the search.

It had been his hope that the chain with the earring on it was not too light to have been washed away. But it was a hope which was waning as he sifted through another clump of waterweed and dead sycamore leaves.

A gang of children, old enough to be out alone but too young still for café life, had congregated on the bridge to observe this operation and pass whispered insults among themselves. After some giggling one of them questioned him. ‘What you doing there, mister?’

‘Searching for treasure. Want to help?’

‘What we looking for?’

As Alain explained the face of one of the girls turned knowing. ‘Is there a reward?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘How much?’

The girl’s expression became more arch. Alain did a swift calculation and decided it was best to pitch the reward high. ‘Fifty euros.’

The crowd made approving noises indicating that they were impressed. The girl fiddled in her pocket and produced something. ‘This it?’

‘My dear child. What is your name?’

‘Chantal.’

‘Chantal, you have just performed a miracle. Let me get this damned frog suit off and fifty euros is yours before the sun goes down.’

Later that afternoon, the astonished Chantal having been paid her dues, Alain called round at the Deanery.

Agnès had retired again to bed and the Abbé Paul was ironing. ‘I don’t know why people complain about doing this. I find it soothing.’

‘I wouldn’t know, I never iron.’

‘People like their clergy ironed.’

‘How is Agnès?’

‘Better, I think. She’s resting. My own view is that we must back her up in simple denial.’

(‘How will I cope?’ she had asked him and he had answered, ‘Do as Maddy advised. Stick to your denial. It worked before . . .’)

‘I don’t want to disturb her. I came to give her this. She gave it to Father Bernard and a child found it in a grate by the river. It must have fallen out of his gown when they pulled him from the river. Poor old boy.’

‘Yes,’ said the Abbé Paul, who was missing his dead friend and aware that in time he would come to miss him more. ‘Thank you. I’ll give it to her. And I’m sure she’ll want to see you, so do, please, call again later.’

•   •   •

The enthusiasm in the Abbé Paul’s voice as he issued this invitation was not, in truth, squarely matched in his heart. He could hardly fail to notice that the young man had a more than ordinary fondness for Agnès. The Abbé Paul was not the jealous sort but had he been he might have been experiencing some discomfort.

The young woman with her lithe form and expressive eyes, even before she had made her brave revelation, had come, he had been recognizing, to inspire in him a new and quite delightful emotion. And that she had chosen him to confide in seemed to affirm the rightness of this feeling. Unlike the Abbé Bernard, the Abbé Paul had not lost his faith, but he had grown in the belief that fidelity to God might bear a larger, more human, interpretation than he had once supposed.

He had not embraced celibacy as many of his colleagues had: as a refuge from heterosexual uncertainty, disinclination or downright distaste or dislike. He had undertaken the state because as an ardent youth he had felt that loving any mortal woman might stand between him and his love of God. It was a belief that over the years he had come to find callow. Mistaken. Even possibly damaging.

He had therefore braced himself to meet, with sufficient warmth, when he answered the door again early that evening, the tanned face of his new young acquaintance and was startled to encounter instead the pallid face of Madame Beck beneath her grotesque bonnet of hennaed hair.

‘Good evening, Madame.’

‘I have something I must discuss with you, Father.’

‘It is not,’ said the Abbé Paul, ‘terribly convenient.’ Accustomed as he was to the practice of ready accessibility, he surprised himself at the bluntness of this statement.

But it took more than a departure from established form to deter the zeal of Madame Beck. ‘Just a brief word, Father, if you please.’

‘As you wish, Madame. Come in.’

The tenderness that Agnès had inspired in the Abbé Paul had been expressing itself in his cleaning of her recovered treasures. He had polished the chain with the cloth bought by Agnès for the candlesticks, and when the doorbell rang he had been busy with the decorative silver surround in which the single turquoise earring was set. Having had it in his hand when, expecting Alain, he went to the door, he now laid it carefully on the coffee table in his receiving room.

Madame Beck had not come with any intention of retracting her revelation of Agnès’ past. The discovery of Madame Picot’s treachery had awakened in her a desire to get back in with the Abbé Paul. She had come on the pretext of discussing Mother Véronique’s letter and to ask the Abbé, with no intention of taking his advice, what she should ‘morally’ do about it.

But before she could broach this subject her eye was caught by the turquoise drop.

‘How did that get here?’

‘What is “that”, Madame?’

‘My earring. There. On your table.’

‘That? That is not yours, Madame.’

Madame Beck started up from the blue chaise-longue, slightly disarranging her wig. But some swift instinct in the Abbé Paul led him to pre-empt her. He rose from his chair and retrieved the earring.

‘Father, be so good as to give that to me.’

The Abbé Paul had a tendency to stoop but when he straightened himself he was an unusually tall man. He positively loomed now over Madame Beck. ‘Why should I do that, Madame?’

She looked up at him, her bloodless face gleaming with righteous ire. ‘I must insist, Father. That is one of a pair of earrings given me by my late husband. The silver work is quite distinctive. I lost one of the pair in Evreux but I . . .’

‘Madame Beck, stop a moment –’

But she was not to be stopped.

‘. . . have always treasured this remaining one because I too, Father, am the sole survivor of a pair.’

The Abbé Paul looked down into his visitor’s livid little eyes and with a sinking heart observed in them a most acute and horrible distress. For half a second, and maybe for the first time in their acquaintance, his heart was wrung for her. She was a sad old woman, maybe once attractive but clearly going bald – a part of the Abbé Paul longed to straighten the crooked wig – who had found nothing better to do with her considerable intelligence than sow rumour, discord and strife. It was, he allowed himself to reflect, an appalling fate.

But the general manqué in the Abbé Paul was never wholly mute and dictated where his higher duty lay. With what might have been construed as a gesture of menace, he placed a hand on Madame Beck’s shoulder.

‘Madame Beck, I’m afraid you have made a mistake. I assure you, indeed’ – he directed his straightest look at her flinching eyes – ‘I take my oath as a priest of your Church, Madame, that this is not your earring.’

Chartres

When Alain turned up half an hour later, the Abbé Paul made no mention of his encounter with Madame Beck. Instead, when Agnès came down from her room, he let Alain give her the cleaned necklace with its little turquoise drop, only remarking, as he poured his guests wine, that such things were providential and it looked as if it was Agnès’ lucky day.

The three of them ate a rather awkward supper at which conversation did not flow smoothly and when the meal was finished the Abbé Paul insisted on doing the washing up. He left his guests together in his study.

Alain said, ‘So now, we’ve recovered your necklace. As Paul says, that’s a sign. You’re going to be all right, Agnès.’

‘Am I?’

‘I think so. People, the police, are not daft.’

‘No?’

‘Sometimes they are. But over all not. People by and large know the truth of things even if they don’t always admit it.’

‘Do they?’

‘I think so. Who do you think did this thing to Max?’

She waited a little before saying, ‘Brigitte, I suppose.’

‘And she’ll be the first police suspect. If she is responsible, believe me, it will come out. You must simply stick to your story.’

At which, to his pleased surprise, she laughed. ‘I can do that.’

‘The truth is consistent, you see.’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you feel up to walking to the cathedral, Agnès?’

‘If you like.’

‘Get your coat, then – it’s cold. I’ll tell Paul.’

The Abbé Paul was mopping the floor when Alain looked into the kitchen. ‘Good Lord, Paul, you
are
a domestic bird. You’d make someone a good wife.’

‘Really?’

‘Agnès and I are going out for a brief stroll.’

‘Fine.’

Oh dear, Alain thought, as he collected Agnès from the hall. I must have offended him.

The cathedral, though dark, was lit well enough by the light of the lamps outside filtering through the windows. Alain said, ‘Let’s visit the Blue Virgin.’

They climbed and this time she went first. Up on the scaffolding Alain switched on his lantern torch.

‘Look at her. She won’t let you come to any harm.’

‘But you don’t believe in her.’

‘No. I do believe in her. I just don’t believe she’s the Mother of God.’

‘Then who is she?’

‘The image of the spirit of all mothers – of motherhood. That which holds us when we’re hurt or angry or afraid. She’s a cosmic pair of breasts – there’s a lovely window with her breastfeeding, have you seen it in the South Clerestory? – and a great wide lap in which I for one have sat many times and been comforted. You can be too.’

‘Maybe because I never knew my mother –’

‘I know. That makes it harder. But you have her earring back. And, see, it’s blue, like the Virgin. Maybe that’s why she left it with you.’

‘It would be nice to think so.’

‘Listen. We found the necklace and the earring. When this is over – all this foul business about Max – you’ll have unwedded yourself to misfortune. Luck is a strange phenomenon.’

‘I don’t know that I will ever be lucky.’

‘To be lucky all you need is to believe you are lucky. I was lucky in a mother who, simple soul as she is, believes in luck. Even when her man, my dad, died she went on believing she was lucky. And she made me feel so too.’

‘I don’t know – is being lucky something you can learn?’

‘With help, I think so. And one way to be helped is to be around a lucky person. Like me, for example.’

A hush fell. Somewhere in the depths of the cathedral she heard the faint cheep of a bird. Then she said, ‘I’m not sure what you’re saying.’

‘I’m saying come live with me and be my love.’

‘I’m older than you.’

‘Only by a year. And I like older women. They know more about love.’

‘I’m not very good at love.’

‘You haven’t tried.’

‘I don’t even like sex much.’

‘You will with me. I’m a terrific lover.’

At which she laughed. ‘How you have the nerve, Alain Fleury?’

‘It’s true. How many lovers have you had?’

‘No one you could call a proper lover. I tried it with a few people. I didn’t like it much with any of them.’

‘Was Robert one? Don’t answer that. And listen, I’ve had more lovers than I can count and I promise you they were all very happy with me. Merry as midsummer larks. Until I left them.’

‘But then you might leave me.’

‘I might. But I doubt it. I like you, I admire you and I fancy you like anything. In short, I’m in love with you.’ And all in an instant Alain understood that that was what had been eating the Abbé Paul. ‘Poor Paul,’ he said aloud.

‘Why?’

‘Never mind.’

Behind them, the Blue Virgin sat in enigmatic witness of their conversation. Somewhere below, the cloistered bird had found a companion. ‘Sparrows,’ Alain said. ‘They’re in the choir. I guess it’s the right place for birds.’

‘They used to drive poor Father Bernard wild.’

‘Well, he’s saved from that, at least, wherever he is now.’

‘Maybe with his mother. Though she sounded as if she was more of a weight on him.’

‘You must wonder about your mother.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your father?’

‘You know, I don’t bother my head about him. I always feel, even though she abandoned me in that way, that it was my mother who loved me.’

‘Well, there you are, then. That’s not a bad start.’ The wind outside whined, wrapping itself round the cathedral, and he pulled her towards him. ‘Remember how the gods come in through the door of winter? The door that lets in the light.’

‘Alain.’

‘I’m here.’

‘I want to tell you something. Or, I don’t want to at all, but it’s that, it’s that –’ How could she say it? But how could she not say? It would be there for ever waiting to destroy her all over again if she did not say it now. She looked across at the Virgin, flanked on each side by angels brandishing swords. ‘It’s like this. I can’t come with you until I tell you. And when I tell you, you may not want me.’

‘Try me.’

She got up and went over, apparently to examine the angels’ swords.

‘I tried to kill someone.’

‘Ah.’

‘I didn’t kill them but that was just luck. I wanted to and I might have done.’

‘What happened?’

‘They ended up in hospital very badly hurt.’

‘No, I mean why did you do it?’

‘I thought this woman had my baby. I was wrong. It was another baby and she was just the nanny anyway.’

‘You’d lost your child?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you thought she had it –“it” – sorry – boy or girl?’

‘A boy. Gabriel. Yes.’

‘And?’

‘They took him from me. They thought I was too young.’

‘Of course losing your child made you murderous. Who’s “they”?’

‘The nuns. You don’t mind?’

‘Come here.’ She turned back to him, hesitating. ‘Come and sit down. Please.’

She slowly went over and knelt beside him and he put both arms round her shoulders. ‘Listen to me. I did the same once.’

‘What?’

‘Tried to kill someone and like you by good fortune I didn’t succeed. We’re two of a kind. It’s probably why I fell in love with you.’

‘You’re making this up.’

‘I’m not making anything up. In my case, it was a drunken British lout trying to carve an obscenity on a beautiful ancient column in a poorly supervised site. I tried to knock his block off with a bit of scaffolding. He had a hard British lout’s skull and recovered, otherwise I’d have probably been incarcerated in a Turkish jail.’

‘It doesn’t sound –’

‘Agnès, if you never listen to me again listen now. Everyone has a murderer in them. That’s the point of the Ten Commandments. But that doesn’t make them murderers for all time.’

‘But I don’t –’

‘Shut up, will you. This is something I know about. You are not going to murder me because I am going to give you a baby and not take one away from you, and you, as far as I can judge, are unlikely to try to deface an ancient monument. So I think we’re both safe. Hey, darling, don’t cry. Or rather do.’

She did cry until Alain said, ‘Now you’re going to stop crying, or go on if you like, but we are going to start on that baby because we mustn’t waste any time and I’m going to show you what it’s like to be made love to before the eyes of the Mother of God.’

•   •   •

The Virgin’s expression looked no less serene when, sometime later, they eased their bodies up from Jean Dupère’s old coat, which Alain had spread out on the wooden platform.

‘Was I right?’

She laughed, shaking her head, but not in denial.

‘Go on admit it. That was the best lay ever, wasn’t it?’

‘There wasn’t much competition.’

‘That’s another reason for loving you. You’re droll. As well as wise.’

Agnès said, ‘I remember you calling me a savant. I thought you were laughing at me.’

‘I would never do that. Shall we visit the Minotaur’s lair?’

Down in the body of the nave the lights illuminating the Western Front were making darkly brilliant sapphires of the great rose window. Agnès squatted down, peering at the floor.

‘What are you doing?’

‘There’s gum here.’

‘Dear God. I tell the woman I’m in love with her and want to spend a lifetime with her and she’s worrying about chewing gum. Where is it?’

‘There.’

He bent down and scraped with his knife at the centre of the open rose. ‘It’s probably another reason for loving you. You’re like me – obsessional.’

‘Am I?’

‘Fastidious, is maybe what I mean. All I know is that we’re two of a kind. Where shall I put the gum?’

She took out a tissue. ‘Here.’

‘I suppose you’ll always be a cleaner at heart.’

‘Yes.’

‘Me too, I expect. Agnès?’

‘Yes?’

‘The Minotaur is dead.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Yes. It’s dead.’

She smiled up at him. ‘But you’re not Theseus?’

‘But I don’t mind being Dionysos. And since you may have the makings of our baby inside you, I think I shall carry you off.’

Picking her up in his arms, he carried her out of the cathedral and down the southern steps before the bleak gaze of Madame Beck, standing sentinel and alone in her watchtower.