The Scapegoat (16 page)

I
did not, for the moment, mind about Jacques or any of the family here at the château, because presumably they had prepared themselves for the worst, and were merely surprised and relieved that they were able to believe the contrary. Here they could continue to live on the revenue from their land, or on their inherited income, the château becoming shabbier, the grounds more ill-kept, they themselves growing older and more discontented, blaming the outside world for everything that had happened. I minded, immediately, for the workmen I had seen at the
verrerie
this afternoon, stripped and sweating beside that furnace, and the others, working in the sheds at their separate skilled tasks, and above all for André, with his burnt, bandaged side, lying in bed in the cottage, and Julie, who had given me coffee and sugar from her small hoard. I minded that their eyes should change, that when I went back again to the foundry they would discover that the good news was not good news after all but bad, that I had lied to them, that the contract with Carvalet had not been renewed. Instead of that tolerant, indulgent smile of welcome they would look away, ignoring me, not even bothering to show contempt; and when Jacques explained to them that the whole thing had been a misunderstanding, and unfortunately, things being as they were, Monsieur le Comte could not afford to run his business at a loss, their faces would show – to a lesser degree, because they were not physically in pain – the same blank look of the burnt André. Something would have damaged them which they themselves were powerless to prevent, but which Monsieur le Comte could have foreseen and guarded against, had he only
cared. They would watch Paul and myself drive back to the château, and then, the machinery suddenly idle, the furnace quiet, and the heap upon heap of little bottles waiting to be packed, they would return to the line of cottages in the sandy lane, with the plaster peeling and the damp on the ceilings, and say to one another, ‘It doesn’t matter to him, but what about us? What happens to us now?’

The thing that puzzled me most was why I cared. The loyalty in Julie’s eyes, the patient acceptance in André’s, the swift change from hostility to something near admiration in Paul’s, and still more in Jacques’, the welcome camaraderie in the workmen’s, all this had not been given to me but to Jean de Gué. The scorn and disenchantment which must now follow would therefore go to him in the same way, and could not touch my inviolate self. This person who walked about wearing another’s clothes, parading his features, colouring and manners, was guiltless, he was merely a covering, a façade, as remote from its original as a violin-case from the instrument it protects. Emotion should have no part in this. I had never for one moment been so blind as to imagine that any show of warmth coming from these people was due to qualities of my own, springing suddenly to the surface and finding a response: they came alight for him and for him only, however misplaced the glow. What was happening, then, was that I wanted to preserve Jean de Gué from degradation. I could not bear to see him shamed. This man, who was not worth the saving, must be spared. Why? Because he looked like me?

I sat in the dressing-room, staring at the polite yet definite letter from Carvalet, and I wondered what had passed through the mind of Jean de Gué when he put it in the pocket of his valise. I knew I must come to a decision – either to tell Paul directly he returned to the château that I had lied about the contract, or to allow him to go on believing it had gone through. The first would bring recrimination, scorn, admission of the lie to all the workpeople, and the immediate closing down of
the foundry – which, I assumed, was what would have happened anyway had Jean de Gué returned. The second would bring even greater chaos: the manufacture and dispatch to Paris of goods which had not been ordered, and, when the first consignment arrived at the Carvalet works, astounded telephone calls demanding an explanation.

The present contract might have a few days or a few weeks to run. I did not know. Even if facts and figures were put before me, presumably they would make little sense. I knew nothing of business. My sole financial dealings were with the academic establishments which paid my modest fees, and with those editors and publishers who printed my articles and lectures. What, I asked myself, would be the procedure of the owner of a glass-foundry seeking to get in touch with the firm which bought his wares? No doubt, if the matter were urgent, the office telephone. I was not in an office. I was in the dressing-room of a château in the depths of the French countryside, and I did not even know where the telephone was kept.

I put Carvalet’s letter in the inside pocket of my coat and went downstairs. It was almost four o’clock. There was no one about, and a feeling of siesta brooded over the place. The aftermath of lunch still clung to the air, escaping from the kitchen quarters, where I had not yet penetrated, suggesting that the dishes had been washed and dried and yet something of their substance clung to dark walls and a low ceiling, and that vegetables, earthy from the kitchen-garden, awaited rinsing and shaking before the evening meal. I ventured to the door of the salon, half-ajar, and after listening a moment and hearing nothing I stepped across the threshold and saw that it was empty, except for Françoise, who was lying on the sofa asleep. I crept out again and went back to the hall. Renée was doubtless doing the same upstairs, whether to ease her migraine or to try on the gossamer gift I neither knew nor cared. Marie-Noel, forced into lessons through my abrupt departure to the
verrerie
, was perhaps in that bare, bleak bedroom with her aunt
Blanche, while outside the sun shone on the dovecot and the swing. I found the telephone. It could not have been worse placed, jammed between macintoshes in the dark, and the machine itself was an old-fashioned one, the mouthpiece fastened to the wall and the receiver hanging at one side. Pinned above, so that the eye must inevitably rest upon them, was further proof of Blanche’s care for souls: two martyred saints, decapitated, their splashing blood licked by ravenous hounds.

I unhooked the receiver and waited, and after a moment there was a buzz and a nasal voice intoned the fact,
‘J’écoute’
. I was not surprised when, fumbling with the local directory, I discovered that my number was St Gilles 2. Nothing could have been changed since installation. I asked for Paris and the number printed on Carvalet’s letter, and waited for what seemed eternity, crouched in my dark hole. When I was told at last that Carvalet were on the line I panicked, dropping both letter and receiver, thinking I heard footsteps on the stairs. The exchange repeated its information, the sing-song patter echoing from the dangling receiver, and, seizing Carvalet’s letter to decipher the sprawling signature at the bottom, I murmured into the mouthpiece my request for Monsieur Mercier. Who wanted him, came the question? The Comte de Gué, I replied. And suddenly the enormity of my deception appeared greater than ever, now that I could not actually be seen. I was told to wait, and in a few moments the Monsieur Mercier of the letter announced that he was at my disposal.

‘Monsieur,’ I said, ‘a thousand apologies for disturbing you without first warning you of my intention to do so; also for my discourtesy in not acknowledging your letter. I was obliged to return home very suddenly, owing to illness in my family, or I would have called upon you again to raise one or two points which were not quite clear. I have now seen my brother and gone over the points with him, and we are prepared to lower our figure and meet your demands.’

There was silence at the other end of the line, and then the
polite but exceedingly surprised voice answered, ‘But, Monsieur le Comte, the whole question was gone into very thoroughly between us last week. You made your position quite plain, which we appreciated. Do you mean to say you now want to re-open negotiations between your firm and ours?’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘My brother and I are prepared to make any personal sacrifice in order to keep the foundry working and our men employed.’

Another silence. Then, ‘Excuse me, Monsieur, but this is in complete contradiction to what you yourself gave us to understand.’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘but frankly I was acting without full consultation with my family. It is, you know, a family concern.’

‘Naturally, Monsieur, and because of this we have always given you every consideration. We greatly regretted that a revision of the contract should have become necessary, and above all that you would have to close down if we could not come to terms, which unfortunately turned out to be the case. I recollect your saying that your personal feelings were not involved, and that the
verrerie
had become a liability you could not afford.’

The smooth, cool voice ran on, and I had a vision of the speaker and Jean de Gué sitting confronting one another on leather chairs, exchanging shrugs and cigarettes, the whole concern dismissed from their minds as soon as the interview was over. Here was I, a stranger, making myself ridiculous in a lost cause because I did not want a handful of workmen, and a peasant woman, and her maimed relative to despise their employer, who would not know if they did, and would not care.

‘Everything you are saying is perfectly correct,’ I said. ‘What I am trying to tell you now is that I have changed my mind. I will agree to any proviso, if we can continue to keep the foundry working. Our production costs are my affair. I am asking you to renew your contract on your own terms, whatever they may be.’

A more prolonged silence. Then, swiftly, ‘Of course,
Monsieur, because of our long connexion with you and your family, we were upset that it should be severed, but there seemed to be no other solution. However, if you are now prepared to meet us over figures – obviously this cannot be agreed off hand over the telephone – I must again consult my fellow-directors. Then I see no reason why the ultimate result should not be satisfactory to us both?’

The query in his voice brought instant affirmation to my own. Letters were to be written, and the present contract could be renewed under different terms. We exchanged compliments, and I heard him hang up. I reached for my handkerchief – or rather Jean de Gué’s – and wiped the sweat off my forehead because it was not only hot in the small space amongst the macintoshes, but the effort I had made had been mentally exhausting. I had committed myself to something without having the slightest idea of how to carry it through. If the price Carvalet paid for the glass phials did not cover the cost of running the plant and paying the wages, which it assuredly could not – otherwise why the present crisis? – then the money would have to come from another source. It was at this moment that I heard someone breathing down the receiver, which I still held, unthinking, against my ear: the unmistakable sound of a person listening at an extension, waiting for further information. I did not do anything. I went on waiting, holding the receiver close. Presently the exchange cut in, asking if I had finished with Paris, and when I said yes, and the line went dead, I heard the breathing again, and then a gentle click, proving that whoever listened within the château had now hung up. I could not be sure, but I felt there was little doubt that my conversation with Paris had been overheard. By whom? Where was the extension? I hung up and went out into the hall. The footsteps I had fancied hearing on the stairs, when my call came through, may have been imagination and anxiety mixed. At any rate no one had come down, and all was still. The breathing into the telephone had not been imagination. I
went out on to the terrace, for it hardly mattered now if I were seen or not, and looked up at the château, but I could see only the main telephone wire, entering the château roof at a point between tower and wall. The tall chimneys, the turrets, even the gargoyle heads hid any other signs there might be of electricity and telephone, nor was I sufficiently knowledgeable about these things to guess what lead went where.

Discovery of the extension, and of the eavesdropper, were things that must wait. I felt it more immediately important to find out something about Jean de Gué’s personal finances. The half-finished cheque-book in the dressing-room upstairs, which I went to fetch, bore cryptic figures and initials but no balance, and its only worth-while information was the name of the bank and the branch address in a neighbouring town. There was no desk in the dressing-room. Somewhere in the château there must be a room where the owner wrote his letters and kept personal possessions. I remembered the library where the family had assembled for lunch. I went down again to the hall, and through the dining-room to the double doors of the library, now closed once more, and entering I found it in half darkness, someone having folded the shutters of the long windows at the end as protection against the sun. I opened them, and then saw what I was looking for – a desk in the corner. It was locked. The bunch of keys – part of Jean de Gué’s personal belongings, along with his change, and his wallet, and his cheque-book, and his driving licence, none of which I had found occasion to use until this moment – had been with me ever since I had worn his clothes. I tried them now, and one of them fitted. My burglar’s action did not worry me; I was playing spies again, and no one was being hurt.

The opened desk revealed the usual muddle and disorder of somebody else’s things (unlike my own meticulously kept papers at home), with bulging pigeon-holes, envelopes spilling their contents, letters, bills, receipts, all thrown in haphazard. The drawers, when I tried them, were no better. One half-inch open
and they jammed, choked with books and documents, papers and photographs, surely the life history of the man himself and the entire family of de Gué for generations. Their persistent refusal to emerge from the dusty drawers drove me to recklessness. I wanted bank statements and I could not find them, only the stubs of cheque-books long since used and put away. Baulked in my search, like a thief who cannot find the string of pearls he is seeking, I was determined to snatch at something, anything, to appease frustrated curiosity. Finally, a red leather cover catching my eye which might be a ledger, I tugged and squeezed it out of the reluctant drawer, only to reveal a game book, with list upon list of pheasants, partridges, hares, shot long before the war. The gap it left gave space for my wandering hands, and roaming past a revolver they found another bulky volume, smelling of mould, which showed itself to be an album full of photographs, most of them faded, stuck tightly into old-fashioned slots.