The Reinvention of Love (17 page)

Madame Vacquerie puts her arm around my waist.

“There is nothing worse than this day,” she says. “I have
cried so many tears that I feel hollowed out.”

“They were happy. Weren’t they?”

“Yes, they were very happy.”

We have reached the door to the library. The heavy oak door is open and I can see, in the dim interior – for there are no windows in this room – a white shape beached on a dark table.

Madame Vacquerie slides her arm from about my waist.

“I will leave you here,” she says. “And I will wait in the drawing room for your return.”

I don’t want her to go. I don’t want to have to enter that room and see my dead child. I don’t feel able to make the journey by myself.

But Madame Vacquerie has already gone. She has sidled away, and I am left standing alone on the threshold.

Léopoldine is covered in a white shift. Her long black hair has been brushed out. Both my girls are dark like me. They resemble each other, and myself as a child. The boys take more after Victor.

I touch her hair. It’s soft and dry. Funny, but I had expected it still to be wet, as though she would be preserved in the exact moment of her death, as though she had just been pulled from beneath the waves.

I touch her face. I touch her lips. Her eyes are closed. Her skin is cold and her skull feels hard and fast as rock.

“Sweetheart,” I say. “My treasure. My little one.”

My tears fall on her from above, like rain.

She seems like a statue of herself, but not herself at all. The girl who was Léopoldine seems utterly and entirely gone. I touch the stiff curl of her fingers. I touch the curve of her hip, the flat of her stomach through the shift. Her baby, no bigger than a stone, is dead as well.

I bend over my daughter as though I were tucking her in at night.

I touch her shoulders, her long, graceful neck.

“My little swan,” I say.

I put a crucifix around her neck. I cut a lock of her hair with the small sewing scissors I have brought with me specifically for this purpose.

The room is dark. There are several candles flickering on the mantle, but their light is spilled close to them. Where Léopoldine lies is in shadow. In the soft darkness, with the candles nearby, and her white shift, my daughter looks like a moth. Her body looks like the body of a moth, wingless and still.

It would have been dark under water. As dark as this room. There would have been no sounds. She could not have cried out.

Madame Vacquerie is suddenly beside me.

“Come and have some supper,” she says. “You must be hungry after your journey.”

“I’m not hungry. And I don’t want to leave my child. I just got here.”

“You’ve been in here for three hours.” Madame Vacquerie helps me to my feet. I’ve been crouching on the floor beside the library table. I can barely stand.

“Have I really?” It seems only a moment ago that I first saw Léopoldine, that I touched her face. But my body is sore from being curled up. My face is wet from crying.

I allow myself to be led from the room.

“How are you able to be so strong?” I ask Madame Vacquerie as she guides me back through the drawing room.

“I have had three days to grow accustomed to my grief,” she says. “And I’m not strong at all. But I know how you are feeling right now. I know exactly.”

“Thank you.” It seems an entirely inadequate thing to be saying, but I say it again anyway. “Thank you.”

We eat downstairs in the kitchen. We are served by the cook and sit at the servants’ table in the middle of the kitchen, beside each other as though we were children.

I am unbelievably hungry. I eat the food the moment it hits my plate, although after I’ve eaten it, I can’t even remember what it was I was served.

“Where is everyone?” It suddenly strikes me that we are alone, that Madame Vacquerie’s husband and her other children are nowhere to be seen.

“I sent them all away,” she says. “Just for tonight. They will be back tomorrow for the burial, and we will have a reception afterwards. But for tonight I thought it would be easier for you if you could be alone with me, and if we could be alone with our children.”

“I would like to see Charles,” I say.

“Yes.”

The cook comes over with a slab of cake and cream. She places it carefully in front of me. “I’m sorry, Madame Hugo,” she says. “I’m truly sorry.”

Her kindness sets me crying again. I drench the cake with my tears, then I gulp it down.

Charles is dressed only in a long white shirt. His skin is as pale as Léopoldine’s. His fair curly hair is as soft as a baby’s.

“Are they pale from being under water?” I ask Madame Vacquerie. We are standing on opposite sides of the dining-room table where her son lies.

“I think so. And the water has made their flesh a little swollen.” She gestures towards Charles’s feet and I see that they are puffy. They look soft. I cannot see the bones in them.

“He is so beautiful,” I say.

“My most beautiful child.” Madame Vacquerie’s voice catches.

“I had a child before Léopoldine,” I say. “A boy. He died in infancy. We had called him Léopold, after Victor’s father. It seemed natural to call the next child after that first one, but I wonder if it was right to name my daughter after a child who died.”

Madame Vacquerie is stroking her son’s hair. “We couldn’t have done anything to prevent this,” she says. “Even on the day it happened, I waved them off. They were only going for a sail. The weather was fair. The wind was low. Charles was a good sailor, and they were with his cousin, Arthus, and his Uncle Pierre who was a retired sea-captain and excellent on the water.”

“They died as well?”

“Yes, they all died.”

“What happened?”

“My husband thinks the boat was top-heavy with sails. It was a racing boat, had just won first prize in the Honfleur regatta. It was a fast boat. But the conditions were ideal. I don’t know. The river is very wide there and those on shore couldn’t get to them fast enough after the boat capsized. Your daughter’s heavy skirts pulled her down into the water and caused her to drown.”

I am quiet for a moment as I imagine Léopoldine struggling in a tangle of wet petticoats. Dresses do up so snugly at the back. It would have been impossible to wriggle out of one under water.

It is too painful to think of the moment of my daughter’s death. Every time my mind goes there, I move it forwards or backwards and away from the event itself.

“Léopoldine would have felt very confident, going out on the water with such good sailors.”

“Yes. She was looking forward to the afternoon.”

Madame Vacquerie puts her hand on her son’s forehead.

“Charles didn’t die,” she says.

“What?”

“He didn’t drown. He surfaced. The rescue boat was close enough to see this. He was always a good swimmer. We live so close to the water that we made sure all our children could swim. People saw him surface, look around for his wife and call her name, and when he realized she was probably dead, he dived down to find her. He was found with his arms around her. They pulled them both from the water in a fisherman’s net. He chose to drown with her rather than to live without her.”

Charles’s face is empty of feeling. He looks more serene, more calm than Léopoldine, but perhaps I do not know him so well. I do not know what his face is supposed to look like.

“Foolish, foolish boy,” says Madame Vacquerie. “How was he to know that we grow out of that romance. An older man would never have chosen to drown.”

My Charles would die for me, I think, and I realize that this is the first time I’ve thought about Charles since I got here, and that it feels wrong to think about him now.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, because it is one thing to know that your child died in an accident and quite another to know that he chose to kill himself in the name of love. I would not have wanted that for Léopoldine. Her death, terrible as it is, will be easier to bear over time. Madame Vacquerie will forever question her son’s decision.

“I wish your son had not made that choice,” I say. “I wish he had loved my daughter less.”

“You don’t mean that,” says Madame Vacquerie. “But thank you. It is kind of you to say it.”

I don’t mean it. I’m glad my child knew love if she was to leave this earth so soon. I’m glad she was married to a man who loved her, and who proved it in such a dramatic fashion. It can never be doubted. From this moment forward, it can never be doubted that Léopoldine was beloved.

“When should we have the service tomorrow?” asks Madame Vacquerie. “What time are you expecting your husband to arrive?”

At last the question I have been dreading.

“He’s on a walking holiday in Spain,” I say. “He won’t be able to get here in time. We will go on without him.”

I do not know where Victor is. He said that he was tired, that he had been working too hard and needed a change. So he left for a walking holiday in Spain. Usually, when he goes off by himself, I am relieved at his absence and have no reason to contact him while he is away. But when I tried to find him this time, at the hotel where he was meant to be staying, they said that he’d never checked in, that they had no reservation for him. It seems he is not walking in Spain. God knows where he is, but the lie means he is probably with his mistress, Juliette Drouet. He is with his mistress somewhere and he has no idea that his eldest daughter has died so tragically.

Léopoldine was always her father’s favourite. He was more affectionate with her than with the other children. He thought her the most brilliant child of the four.

“It can’t be helped,” I say. “He will just have to miss the burial.”

There’s no response from Madame Vacquerie, and when I look over at her, I see that she is weeping. She is holding on to her son’s hand and her head is bowed over his body. I back slowly out of the room without her noticing.

Léopoldine is as I left her, lying on the library table, still dead. It seems absurd that she should still be dead. I don’t want her to be dead any more. I want her to get up, to move about, to become herself again. I want her to climb up out of the water and burst into the sunlight, opening her mouth to breathe in the sweet afternoon air. I want her husband to find her there,
and to keep her afloat until the fishing boat arrives to rescue them both. I want them to have their child. I want it to be a girl. I want them to name her after Charles’s mother. I want their married happiness to continue. I want there to be other children. I want to die with my eldest daughter as a woman in middle years, sitting at my bedside, holding my hand.

The candles gutter on the mantle, sputtering and flailing. The room grows darker and darker still.

It is awkward, but I manage to climb onto the library table. I lie down beside my daughter and pull her into my arms. She is stiff and cold. It is as if I am embracing the sea itself.

Did she cry out? Was she afraid? Did she know what was happening?

This was my girl, my first living child, who was talented and beautiful, who could paint and draw and write poetry to rival her father’s, who had all the social graces, who was mischievous and kind and full of light, who had married for love. This was my child, this corpse, this heavy fish, this mermaid.

The day of the funeral dawns bright and clear. My bedroom is at the back of the house. Mercifully, Madame Vacquerie saw fit not to put me in a room that overlooks the river. My room looks down onto the gardens and the tops of the fruit trees in the small orchard at the back.

I had laid out my mourning dress the night before. A maid comes with a basin and some water. I wash. I dress. I see to my hair. I go downstairs.

Madame Vacquerie’s family have returned. I don’t know where she sent them, but it couldn’t have been far. When I go downstairs, they are all in the foyer. The men bow to me. Monsieur Vacquerie says some words that I forget the moment he utters them. Charles’s brother Augustus, one of Victor’s most ardent disciples, asks repeatedly after my husband.

“He’s not coming,” I say, with more anger than I mean. Augustus nods and backs away from me.

I have slept later than I wanted. It is mid-morning. The bodies of Charles and Léopoldine were taken away late last night, to be placed in their coffins, to be readied for their burial today at noon.

Monsieur Vacquerie ushers me into the dining room for breakfast. The table that just yesterday held the body of his son, now holds cups and saucers, plates of rolls and steaming jugs of coffee.

Madame Vacquerie is seated at one end of the table. She nods to me as I enter the room.

“Madame Hugo.”

“Madame Vacquerie.”

She is formal with me. She is closed to me now. I can see it in her face. Her family have returned and her grief now belongs to them. Her husband passes behind her, places a hand on her shoulder. She puts a hand up to cover his, and the gesture makes me so lonely.

I eat more than I want to at breakfast, but again I am ravenous and can’t help myself. Death has made me a glutton. Madame Vacquerie, on the other hand, barely touches her food.

Augustus tries to engage me in conversation about Victor, but I ignore him. When I have the opportunity, I take my leave and slink from the room, go back into the library and stand by the table where Léopoldine used to lie, sobbing until a maid comes to find me to tell me that my carriage is ready.

The words are said. The coffins are wheeled out to the open graves. The wind suddenly whips up when we are standing there, and the priest’s vestments fill with air and make him look like a chess piece.

The words are said. The bodies are lowered. The words are
said. The dirt hits the wooden coffin lids, like rain lashing at the window on a winter’s night. The words are said. The wreaths are placed. The hands are clasped. The wind subsides.

I stand at my daughter’s grave to the end, after everyone else has left to go back to the house.

It seems impossible that Léopoldine is in this box, in this hole in the ground, and that I will have to leave her here, cold and alone, for all eternity. I can’t believe it. I do believe it. I can’t believe it. And it is hard not to think that this is punishment, that I am being punished by God for my sin of adultery, that Léopoldine was sacrificed because I am a sinner. It is hard not to believe this is my fault.