The Scapegoat (36 page)

All sense of time was lost. I did not know how long I had walked in the woods. The day, disjointed from that first moment when Françoise had hammered on the dressing-room door to tell me the child was missing, had been one without minutes, without hours; and now, looking up at that gaping bedroom window and down to the trampled grass of the moat below, it might have been mid-day or afternoon. Marie-Noel asleep beneath the blankets belonged to an era past and gone. Nothing was certain but that disaster, swift and sudden, had come upon the château when it was empty.

The crooked finger of the woman who milked the cows
stabbed at the patch of grass as she turned first to me and then to Blanche, and her voice, unintelligible and shrill, repeated again and again the only words I understood, ‘I saw her fall … I saw her fall …’ The jabbing finger, the upturned eyes, the sudden sweeping gesture of her hand as she mimed the falling body, was terrible and vivid, the drama of a witch, and Charlotte, plucking at Blanche’s sleeve and babbling, ‘She was still breathing, Mademoiselle, I put a mirror to her lips,’ became her partner in the dreadful play.

The nightmare ride began again. Out of the drive, through the gateway, up the avenue and on to the road to Villars, in the wake of the ambulance that could only have preceded us by some twenty-five minutes. And still, despite the premonition that had now turned to certainty, Ernest, driving us in the lorry, was the only link between us.

‘I was in church,’ said Blanche, ‘I was in church, praying, when it happened.’

‘I saw no ambulance, Mademoiselle,’ said Ernest. ‘You must have come out of the church and met me with the lorry before the ambulance came.’

‘I should have gone back to the château,’ said Blanche. ‘I should have gone back and told them that the child was safe. I might have been in time.’

And a few minutes later, as always after disaster, the hopeless recapitulation of events to find how tragedy could have been avoided. ‘There was no need for everyone to join in the search. Some of us should have stayed. If one of us had stayed it would not have happened.’

And lastly, ‘The hospital in Villars may not be prepared for emergencies. They should have taken her to Le Mans.’

To the right, to the left, to the right, then straight ahead – the road that led to Villars was now so much part of my life that I felt I knew every twist and every turn. Here was the corner where yesterday evening Gaston had skidded. There was the puddle that early this morning had shone like gold. Villars,
new-washed and radiant at six, was full of dust and noise now. Men were drilling a side-road, cars were parked one behind the other, and the hospital building, which I had not noticed when Marie-Noel and I had walked the market-place, now seemed prominent and large and ugly because of my own fears. It was Blanche who entered first, Blanche who spoke rapidly to someone white-coated, young, standing in the passage, and Blanche who pushed me into the bare impersonal waiting-room while she disappeared after him through a further door beyond. The sister who returned with her was calm, impassive, trained like all her colleagues the world over to meet emotion, and her language was a universal language; it might have been taken from a phrase-book of any country.

‘I can’t tell you the extent of the injuries. The doctor is examining her now,’ she said to me as she led us from the waiting-room to a smaller private one.

Blanche did not sit down, although the sister drew forward a chair. She went and stood by the window, with her back to me. I think she was praying. Her head was bent, her hands clasped in front of her. I stared at a map of the region that was framed on the wall, and I saw that Villars was twenty kilometres from Mortagne, and from Mortagne a by-road led direct to the Abbey of la Grande-Trappe. On the desk was a calendar. A week ago tomorrow I had been driving to Le Mans … A week ago…. Everything I had said, everything I had done, had brought this family closer to disaster and to pain. Mine was the responsibility, mine the guilt. Jean de Gué, laughing before the mirror in that hotel bedroom, had left me to solve his problems as I chose. Each step I had taken during the past few days seemed now, in retrospect, to have caused suffering and harm. Folly, ignorance, bluff and blind conceit had brought about the moment that was passing now.

‘Monsieur le Comte?’ The man who entered, big, burly, would surely have given confidence to a waiting relative, but I had seen too many doctors’ expressions in the war not to
recognize finality. ‘I am Dr Moutier. I want to tell you that everything we can possibly do is being done. The injuries are extensive, and it would be wrong of me to express any great hope. The comtesse is, of course, unconscious. I understand neither of you was present when the accident occurred.’

Once again Blanche was the spokesman and the useless story repeated.

‘The windows are large,’ said Blanche. ‘She had been unwell. She must have gone to the window feeling faint and opened it too wide, and leaning out …’ She did not finish the sentence.

The doctor’s brief, ‘Naturally, naturally,’ was mechanical, and he added, ‘The comtesse was dressed. She was not in nightclothes. Presumably she was going to join you in the search for the child.’

I glanced at Blanche, but her eyes were fixed on the doctor. ‘She was not dressed when the rest of us left the château. She was in bed. None of us dreamt for a moment that she would get up.’

‘Mademoiselle, it is always the unforeseen that produces accidents. Excuse me.’ He turned from us to speak to the sister outside the door. The low, rapid conversation was inaudible to us inside the room, but I thought I caught the words ‘transfusion’ and ‘Le Mans’, and I could see from Blanche’s face that she had heard them too.

‘They are going to give a transfusion,’ she said. ‘I heard him say they were sending the blood from Le Mans.’

She was watching the door, and I wondered if she realized that these were the first words she had spoken to her brother for fifteen years. They came too late. They were no use. He was not there to hear them.

The doctor turned to us again. ‘You will excuse me, Monsieur, and you, Mademoiselle. Please wait here – it is more private than the other room. I will let you know as soon as there is anything definite to tell you.’

Blanche caught at his sleeve. ‘Forgive me, doctor. I could
not help overhearing something of what you were saying to the sister. You have sent to Le Mans for blood?’

‘Yes, Mademoiselle.’

‘Are you sure it wouldn’t save time if my brother gave his blood? Both he and my brother Paul belong to blood group O, which I understand can be given to anyone without danger?’

For a moment the doctor hesitated, glancing at me. Appalled at what might happen, at the inevitable worsening of disaster, I said swiftly, ‘I’m not group O. I only wish to God I were.’

Blanche looked at me, dumbfounded. ‘That’s not true. You are both universal donors, you and Paul. I remember Paul telling me only a few months ago.’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re mistaken. Paul, perhaps, not me. I belong to group A. It wouldn’t be any use.’

The doctor gestured. ‘Please don’t distress yourselves,’ he said. ‘It is preferable to use the blood straight from the laboratory. There will be very little delay. Everything necessary is on its way now to Villars from Le Mans.’

He paused, looking curiously from me to Blanche, and went out of the room.

For a few moments Blanche said nothing. Then oddly, terribly it seemed to me, her expression of concern and anguish changed. ‘She knows,’ I thought, ‘she knows at last. I’ve given myself away.’ But I was wrong. Slowly, as though she could not believe her own words, she said, ‘You don’t want to save her. You’re hoping she will die.’

I stared at her, aghast. Then she turned her back on me. She went and stood by the window once again. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do.

We went on waiting. Sometimes there were voices in the passage and sometimes footsteps passed. No one came in. The midday Angelus sounded from the cathedral church. I looked at the map once more and saw that it was forty-four kilometres from Le Mans to Villars. The distance could be covered in forty minutes. Could forty minutes make all the difference between
life and death? I did not know; I hadn’t the medical knowledge. All I knew was that Jean de Gué and I had different blood, that we were dissimilar in the only thing that mattered now. He might have saved his wife, but I could not. Height, breadth, colouring, features, voice, we had everything in common but that. The discovery seemed to me symbolic of all that had gone wrong. He was the human reality, I the shadow. I could not replace the living man.

As I stood there, eyes on the map, following the course of the
route nationale
, it appeared so small a stretch between two points; yet each curve meant a slackening of speed. There might be a diversion, men working on the road, a traffic block, a sudden smash. I would not even know when the car or ambulance arrived. It would go very probably to another entrance. I went out into the passage, hoping that if I stood there somebody might come. But it was empty, save for a woman with a mop cleaning the floor.

At one o’clock Paul and Renée appeared at the hospital entrance. I pointed to the room where Blanche was waiting. I did not want to talk to them; she could tell them everything we knew. Renée went straight in, but Paul, after a second’s hesitation, came to me.

‘Ernest is still outside with the lorry. Shall I tell him to go?’ he asked.

‘I will,’ I replied.

He paused. ‘How is she?’ he asked.

I shook my head, and went out of the hospital into the street, and told Ernest that he had better return to the
verrerie
. When he had climbed into the lorry and driven away, it was as though my contact with solidity and safety had gone. As with Gaston, with Julie, I sensed compassion in his eyes and in his voice, and I remembered what Julie had said about him, that he had young daughters. I wished I had not sent him away, but had climbed into the lorry and asked him about his wife, about his children. He might perhaps have given me strength
and courage, but in the silent hospital room I should find misunderstanding, silence, even accusation.

I went out across the Place and began walking without thought, without intention; yet half consciously, I suppose, I knew where I must go. I found myself before the closed door of ‘L’Antiquaire du Pont’. The glass was shuttered and there was a notice in the window saying
‘Fermé le lundi’
. I turned and went through the Porte de Ville, and stood by the footbridge looking up at the balcony and the windows of the house. They were closed too, the cage with the budgerigars was not on the balcony, and suddenly the house had no connexion with anything that had happened. The self who had crossed the bridge and stayed there through the night was someone else. The room within, with the grey wallpaper, the blue cushions, and the dahlias, was a figment of my imagination, as was the other room beyond, looking over the roof-tops. I had never passed the threshold, I had never seen the owner. Béla, with her warmth and her understanding, did not exist.

I retraced my steps through the Porte de Ville, glanced once more at the closed door, and went back to the hospital.

Paul was standing by the entrance. He said, ‘We’ve been looking for you.’

I knew then it had happened. He took my arm, an odd, half-protective gesture, and we walked together along the passage to the small room. Dr Moutier was there, with Blanche and Renée and the sister who had received us. He came to me at once and his voice was already changed. It was no longer brisk and professional, with the authority of one who must be about his business, but that of someone who was perhaps a husband and a father.

He said, ‘It’s all over. I’m so very sorry.’

They were all looking at me except Blanche, who turned away, and when I did not answer immediately Dr Moutier added, ‘She never recovered consciousness. She was in no pain. I can assure you of that.’

I said, ‘The blood transfusion – it was no good, then?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘There was just a faint chance but … she had sustained too great a shock …’ He gestured with his hands.

‘It came too late?’ I asked.

‘Too late?’ He repeated the words after me, puzzled.

‘The blood,’ I said, ‘the blood from Le Mans.’

‘Ah no,’ he said, ‘it was here in half an hour. We gave the transfusion at once. Everything that it was possible to do was done. Your wife did not die from any sort of neglect, Monsieur, please believe me. We did what was necessary to the very last moment. But alas, our efforts were in vain. We could not save her.’

The sister said, ‘You would like to see her,’ her words a plain statement of fact, not an interrogation, and she led me down the passage and into a small room. We stood together beside the bed, looking down on Françoise de Gué. There was no sign of injury. She might have been sleeping. She did not look like a person dead.

The sister said, ‘I always think the real personality appears on the face during the first hour after death. Sometimes it is a consolation to believe this.’

I was not sure. The Françoise lying dead looked peaceful, younger, happier, than the Françoise who had hammered on the dressing-room door that morning. The Françoise of the morning had been haggard, anxious, querulous. If this, the dead one, was true and the other false, then living had accomplished nothing: it had been a waste of time.

‘It is very hard for you to have lost them both,’ said the sister.

Both? I thought for one moment that she meant Marie-Noel, that she had heard the story of the missing child. Then I remembered.

‘There’s a daughter,’ I said, ‘eleven years old.’

‘Dr Moutier told me you would have had a son,’ she went on.

She withdrew to the door and stood there, her eyes lowered, believing, I supposed, that I wanted to be alone, to pray. I did not pray, but I tried to think if I had said anything to Françoise in the week that had been deliberately unkind. I could not remember. So much seemed to have happened. I was glad I had given her the miniature my first evening. She had been happy then, and pleased. There was nothing else, unless it was waiting on her on Friday night. The record was unimpressive. I wished I had done more. I turned, and went back to the others.