“I can help the boy’s future better than anyone. If you are reasonable with me, then I will be reasonable with you. If you will hear me out, I will explain my intentions.”
I had her attention. She perhaps imagined the potential of a bribe: a way of them both departing safely with some financial reward. I suggested we stop for refreshment at a teahouse to which she agreed after some hesitation, though I could see her eyes darting around, as if looking for an exit if she needed one.
We were seated near the window overlooking the street, and she examined the fine china we were given and the street with passersby. I told her briefly that the building was two hundred years old, and she analyzed the dark wooden table and intricate white lace with a mixture of awe and curiosity. I must admit her naivety and vulnerability were intoxicating. In the blink of an eye, she could go from someone strong and determined to someone that one might seek to own.
After some more light conversation about history and the merits of my company, she seemed to grow impatient, perhaps thinking of Rudy back at the manor.
“What is it that you can do for Samuel? And why should I trust you?”
It was interesting that she continued to assume she had the position of power here. But I feigned a certain amount of acquiescence. My final hand was yet to be played.
“Firstly,” I said, “I must know. Are you here for you, or for recognition of Samuel?”
“Well, of course for Samuel! He needs to know his family.”
“Is that what Edgar told you?”
“No, of course not. He was killed before he knew I carried his child. But I know it is what he would have wanted.” I felt that a small part of what she said was genuine. As a lawyer I had been used to liars also. And this no doubt would be a contest as to how well she played a part versus how well I applied my craft.
“What we discuss here must not be spoken about to Rudy,” I told her.
“Why not?”
“For various reasons, which I will get to, that you will understand shortly. But you are probably clever enough to realize that Rudy is incredibly gullible and too infatuated to search deeply for the truth. And as the older brother, I must protect him.”
She smiled at this.
“You find it amusing.”
“I do not believe your good intentions about your brother. The two of you are not close at all.”
“Ah, but you must surely understand that no matter what, blood will always protect blood. Our history shows that we have killed to protect and preserve our family name, irrespective of sibling differences. I am not sure how close you were to your family, but I imagine you know exactly what I am saying.”
Two small frown lines appeared between her brows. It was clear that I had reached deeper into her conscience.
“And Mother, though sweet to the boy, will protect her good name better than anyone. If it is not in the best interests of both Rudy and myself, she could look away from the truth even if it stood boldly in front of her. She has spent years to rectify the damage our father did to our standing.”
Mariette was listening intently. There were no more casual glances outside.
“To obtain what you want, which I feel is recognition for Samuel, you need to tell me everything.”
“There is little else that you need to know,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know . . . I would have thought that Edgar’s mental illness was important.”
She opened her mouth to say something but found no words. I had pulled some of her assurance away.
“I was there, you seem to forget. Do you not think that a brother would inquire of his brother only battlefields apart? That I would not be notified if my brother was in hospital?”
She shook her head and stared at her hands.
“You can’t mention . . . He couldn’t . . .”
“He couldn’t what? What couldn’t he do?”
“The truth would destroy your mother and Rudy.”
“Which is exactly why I’ve said nothing so far.”
I witnessed genuine fear in her gaze as she waited and watched my lips that might deliver more of the truth she feared.
“If you know something else, you need to tell me,” I said.
She shook her head. “He went back to fight, and then he went missing.”
“Might he have deserted perhaps? Germans were not kind to deserters, even English ones, as you might be aware.”
“Of course not!” she said.
“There was much talk about those with illnesses of the mind. He is not the only one to have gone missing, presumed dead. And many of those put others they fought alongside in danger.”
“In my heart, I know he is dead.”
“Poor Edgar!” I said. Though she did not buy my sympathy, for she narrowed her eyes slightly. She was planning to fight whatever else I might say. “Well, I must tell Mother the truth about his illness. I don’t know why I didn’t earlier,” I said, feigning a slight naivety of the consequences of such an action.
“Edgar would not want that.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“No.”
“Then it shouldn’t matter.”
She was silent. She had been prepared to face the others, their questions. But not even my brother Edgar knew how I would react, what I would say.
“He’s alive, isn’t he?” I felt a pang of fear this might be true. And if she held the truth, then I had to get rid of the evidence. It was more important to me that the truth remained buried.
“No!” Though she could not look at me. Her normally olive skin had paled. “What a thing to say!”
“I think you are lying about Edgar.”
“This talk is ridiculous!” She stood up. “Please take me back home immediately!”
“I know my brother well enough that he would never want his secret known. A secret he left in your care.”
She looked down at her skirt.
“Sit down, please,” I said in a paternal tone.
She eased back down in the chair. There were other truths behind her guardedness. I felt certain of it.
She raised her chin. “You obviously want something in return for you to stay silent about his illness. Is it me?”
I laughed at that, and she looked suddenly embarrassed. “Forgive me for that outburst. If you are talking about last night, it is quite in my nature to take an opportunity when and if one arises. But no, my dear, something temporary perhaps at the time, but the moment is gone.”
She touched her throat.
“Not that you aren’t desirable of course.”
She turned away. I was playing with her. Sometimes such games got the better of me.
“I’m sorry for last night, and you are quite right. In return for my silence, I want you gone from here.”
She sighed. She did not appear surprised.
“Rudy wishes to marry me.”
“He will get over it in time.” He had moved quicker than I thought, which made it all the more important to hurry this along. I imagined Rudy would be devastated no doubt. He was weak that way.
“I will think about it,” she said.
This angered me slightly, that she was delaying a response. Though I had to remain calm.
“As you wish.”
I finished my tea, then stood up and extended my hand. She stood and took it, and we walked to the car. Once both of us were inside, I sat there without starting the engine. I could not let her arrive home flustered, which might draw questions from Rudy.
“Mariette, I know that you are thinking about the boy. That is why you are here. And trust me, I believe you that Samuel is Edgar’s son. But I’m not sure that either Mother or Rudy truly do or ever will. Rudy loves you and may keep the boy because of it, but in his heart he will always be wondering if you have been truthful.”
She turned her head to look at me.
“The boy deserves to be here,” she said.
“Of that I have no doubt.” I paused.
I started the car, but I could tell she was thinking about my words all the way back to the house. I had put doubt in there. There were two things I felt were true, though neither could I prove: whether he was still alive, Edgar had lived at least beyond the end of the war and the boy was his. But Mariette’s part in this I wasn’t sure about, and it was the uncertainty about her and her designs on Rudy that were the reasons she couldn’t stay.
She did not come out of her room that night to join us for dinner, much to Rudy’s chagrin. I was glad at least that our conversation had had the desired effect.
In the morning, Rudy looked weary. He was clearly bereaved that he had not shared the last night with Mariette he’d been hoping for. Mariette did not come out of her room for an early breakfast. I saw Rudy’s fearful face as he departed, leaving me behind with the woman he had fallen in love with.
The child wandered into the kitchen, where I was preparing some tea late that morning, escaping the confines of his room. He seemed pleased to have company. I had no experience with children, though I knew enough about people that if you want the right answers, you have to ask the right questions.
“Do you want a piece of cake for breakfast?”
He nodded and eagerly climbed on top of the stool at the large preparation table.
I found the tin that held Peggy’s cakes. She had not changed her hiding spot in twenty years. I cut him a piece, and he took it greedily, licking the jam glaze thickly spread between two sponge cakes.
“Do you miss France?”
He shook his head and frowned, slightly confused. Perhaps, I thought, geography was not his strong point.
“No?”
He bit his lip. “It isn’t called France.”
“Oh! What do you call it then?”
He shook his head. I could not tell if he didn’t know or had been prepped for questions.
“I used to love it there,” I said. “I left some very special people there whom I miss very dearly.”
“I don’t miss it at all.”
“What a pity! Was it terrible?”
He nodded. “Sometimes there were bad men.”
“Oh dear! Not anyone you know, I hope.”
“Not my uncle but other men. My uncle told me they were bad men who might find him. My uncle took me across the sea when I was small.”
“Is he expecting you back?”
He shrugged.
I went and retrieved a small service photograph of Edgar to show to Samuel.
“Is this your uncle?”
He looked carefully at the image and then looked me in the eyes and shrugged. “He doesn’t wear those clothes.”
I felt a sense of hatred. Hatred for Edgar for deceiving us, for being weak, and hatred for Rudy who had dismissed me, who had not looked up to me as he had done with Edgar. And Mother, too, for being too careless with her preferences. There is no doubt she loved me, but she had put us in a certain order within her heart. And in the moments after, I wondered whether Rudy had questioned the boy also. Though it was doubtful. Mother had said nothing, and they both were likely to dismiss the imaginative ramblings of a child if indeed they’d bothered to question him.
Bert came in moments later and said he was going to one of the farms to help with the last of the sowing and discussed the recent yield. Bert may have had a preference for Rudy, who loved to work alongside him, but he still had respect for those in charge and was honest at least to report that things were bad. Mariette appeared wan in the doorway and acknowledged us. She asked Samuel if he had eaten.
“I have made sure of it,” I answered for him, and gave the child a wink. She looked at the empty plate on the table in front of him, licked clean of crumbs.
“Does the boy want to come with me?” Bert asked Mariette.
She didn’t look at me as I translated Bert’s words for the boy. Though the sudden eagerness in Samuel’s expression suggested he partly understood.
“No, I don’t think he should today,” she said uneasily.
The boy looked solemn and crossed his arms, his chin on his chest.
“Oh, what a sad face!” I said to the boy, then turned to Mariette. “Surely it would be good for the boy in this sunshine. The sunshine won’t last. It’s better that he make the most of it.”
Bert was watching Mariette carefully. Her tension was obvious.
“Please, Maman!” said Samuel, jumping off the seat, and bouncing up and down while grabbing her skirt. She bit her lip in thought.
“Very well,” she said, and turned to Bert.
“Perhaps you would like to come also, miss?” said Bert, glancing briefly in my direction.
She paused before she answered. She was torn, though she knew as well as I that we had unfinished business.
“No, thank you. I will stay. How long will you be?”
“I’ll be back just on nightfall, I expect,” said Bert, perhaps to comfort her. “I’ve packed plenty of food and drinks, so he won’t go hungry. And the farmers will no doubt spoil him silly.”
They left, and Mariette watched them from the door, while I helped myself to a slice of pie that Peggy had made for us.
“Would you like some?”
“No, thank you,” she said, and left me quickly before I had time to question her.
I ate in the kitchen. It was a cold, dreary place with a stale odor of burnt fat. I remembered the times as a small boy I’d sat in the kitchen with the help, wondering why I couldn’t be at the table with Edgar and Mother and Father. It seemed like a punishment having to sit in there with Rudy.
On the top floor in the library, I stared at the photographs of us as boys. It brought no sense of nostalgia. The best times were when we were sailing. Or when I would go hunting with Father and Edgar. There were some good moments, though even back then I was planning something grander. Even back then I imagined being in charge of the manor. Though now it wasn’t the building or the ownership but the money that it sat on that would bring me satisfaction.
I was becoming a little impatient and poured myself a whiskey in the drawing room. The longer I sat, the more I wanted Mariette gone. And soon! I stood to find her when she entered the room. Her cheeks were pink, eyes swollen, it seemed, from crying.
“I will leave as you request, but I have left a letter to Rudy to at least put him at rest that nothing bad has happened to me.” I agreed, knowing that I would likely have to destroy it.
“You have made the right decision for all.”
“We will leave as soon as Samuel returns, if you would kindly drive us to the station.”
“Us?” I queried.
She narrowed her eyes.
“I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear,” I said. “It is only you who must leave.”
It was important to separate her from Rudy. Together they were a greater threat.
“Then you are as big an ass as Edgar described.”
Perhaps it was the mention of Edgar, but something turned within me. She was wild and perhaps more difficult to predict than most. I would have to take a greater gamble.
“I know that Edgar is alive. And if he ever comes back here, he will be imprisoned or likely hanged.”
“He is no deserter!”
“The boy identified him from a photograph,” I said.
“He recognizes him only because he knows him from another one.”
“He said that he saw him before he left. As ‘Uncle Fabien.’”
“He is imaginative,” she said. “He is only a boy, and it is more a wish that his father be alive.”
I laughed. She was even craftier under pressure. She had no doubt been used to a different sort of life, the kind where one must fight hard to survive.
“Mariette! If you don’t leave now, I can assure you things will become very uncomfortable for you here.”
“You have no right to speak to me like that! You have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I can tell you now that I will get to the bottom of it,” I said. “Yo
u think you can turn up on our doorstep and turn our world upside down?”
“Edgar said you only look after yourself.”
I could feel him close by, almost listening in. It gave me more reason to fight.
“Au contraire! I will look after the boy, make sure he is a ward of the estate and raise him as if he is my very own.”
He remained a threat as long as she held on to him. Out of her control, his fate was up to me.
“I cannot leave him,” she said.
“I can tell you that if you don’t,” I said in a tone that had turned threatening, “I will expose to the family that Edgar was mentally unfit to be a soldier, but also I will advise the authorities that Edgar was a deserter. Perhaps it might also be that Edgar has plans for you to marry Rudy, which is no doubt against the law if you are already married, with hopes that you will send him money. And you will be seen as the seductress of Edgar’s brother to lay hands on the estate. Polygamy comes with some penalty. Or perhaps you are acting alone, and the boy is an imposter and actor also. Either way, it looks very bad for you. And with you in prison, the boy would have to be sent to an orphanage. I can tell you that Rudy might be thinking to champion you, but after I had explained my case, he would think to question the boy also, and once he does, and if he thought for one second that Edgar might be alive, he would drop you in a heartbeat. He is more loyal to Edgar than probably you are.”
“Perhaps you are wrong about Rudy,” she said, her words less confident, her hopes and plans fading.
“I have had years more to understand my brother. I understand him well enough. Regardless, Mariette, you can’t fight the truth of the situation. You do not belong here.”
Strangely, that seemed to reach her more than anything else I’d said. The look she had was that of someone who has come to some realization, which perhaps had been in front of them all the time.
“Is the boy yours?” I asked.
She hesitated before answering. “I can assure you that he is Edgar’s, and I am the only mother he knows.”
I let the question rest. She had answered it well enough. She had no cause to be here.
“I will give you money as well. It is in our mutual interest, Mariette,” I said, resuming my former charm. “You obviously care about the boy, and no harm will come to him. The boy is most certainly Edgar’s. He will be here in his rightful position, and you will return to yours. Wherever that may be.”
In a Field of Blue Page 33
