The Cleaner of Chartres

by Salley Vickers

  ‘I agree,’ said Denis, who didn’t at all. He loved his work and as a rule couldn’t wait to get back to it. It was holidays he disliked. Anne, of course, sensibly took her holidays alone – or with friends.

  Inès said she had booked a new restaurant that they should try, which was conveniently located just round the corner from his hotel. The suggestion raised some alarm in Denis, since he suspected that the restaurant’s proximity to his sleeping quarters might be part of a renewed plan of seduction on her part. He inwardly vowed to keep the conversation solely focused on work.

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t make much headway with Agnès last time I came here,’ he offered, once they had been seated and an overly tall menu had been consulted. Inès had ordered an hors d’oeuvre of sweetbreads followed by lobster, while he, in an effort to control the cost of the evening – which, he predicted, would once again be considerable – had ordered a simple endive-and-Roquefort salad and, to follow, a rabbit ragoût.

  Inès Nezat blew a cloud of considering smoke and stared hard at him. ‘You seem very wrapped up in Agnès.’

  Denis found himself blushing. ‘I feel badly about her. ’

  ‘As I don’t have to tell you, we must avoid an over-identification.’

  No, you don’t have to tell me, thought Denis Deman, who loathed psychological jargon. ‘But I failed her. We must be prepared to acknowledge our mistakes, surely.’

  ‘What was your mistake exactly?’ She was still staring at him with her rather hard-boiled eyes.

  Denis decided to volley a half-truth. ‘I encouraged her to take long walks. She should have been supervised but there never seemed to be any question of her doing anyone other than herself any harm.’

  ‘That was perhaps misguided,’ said Inès, frowning slightly.

  I’ve just said it was, haven’t I? thought Denis Deman and outwardly continued in his smoothest tone, ‘Somehow, having heard of the disaster, she developed the fantasy, as you know, that if she had not committed the crime at least that the child was hers. Had she been supervised better, this disaster could never have happened.’

  ‘And we know she didn’t do it?’

  ‘We know next to nothing,’ Denis Deman exclaimed, losing, for a moment, his self-command. ‘She didn’t mention the nanny at all when I was with her, then or now, but she insisted, and still maintains, the child was hers. But no evidence of her being there was ever discovered. And the girl was interrogated for days.’

  ‘You weren’t with her?’

  ‘The psychiatrist appointed by the court saw her. Her answers were, he felt, ambiguous. In any case, enough for him to recommend tighter supervision. And so –’

  ‘So she came to us. Well, she’s coping fairly well. Shall we order the wine?’

  Over the lobster, Inès Nezat, as he had feared, brought up his engagement. ‘How often does Anne come over?’

  ‘Oh, quite a bit,’ Denis said, forking rabbit ineptly into his mouth so that some of the gravy juice ran down his tie. ‘How’s your lobster?’

  ‘Very good. So you go to see her there? In the UK?’

  ‘A little less. Animals you know are less likely to have nervous breakdowns and demand emergency treatment.’

  The two scimitar eyebrows indicated that she found his attempt at humour slightly pathetic. ‘So when are you two booked to marry?’

  ‘Next year,’ said Denis, in some desperation. ‘In London.’

  ‘But you said she lived in Norfolk.’

  ‘Her parents live in London,’ said Denis Deman stoutly. He’d better decide where. Maybe Kensington, where Anne herself had lived before he moved her east. Keen to get away from the subject of his fictive fiancée, he said, more bluntly than he had planned, ‘I was wondering about Agnès. Would you have any objection if I took her to meet the old man who found her? He’s got cancer and is probably not long for this world. It might help Agnès to meet him. She’s become a bit of a fairytale child in his eyes.’

  Inès Nezat’s expression suggested that she had little truck with fairytales.

  By the end of the meal, however, a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, a very good claret and a large Armagnac for Inès Nezat, the deal seemed to have somehow or other been clinched. And, thank God, Denis Deman reflected, sponging his stained tie in the bathroom of his modest hotel room, he had not had to clinch Inès Nezat in return. She was a woman, he decided, who liked to take a crack at things but was blessedly free of resentment when she didn’t succeed. When she bade him good night, after a very matey kiss, she said, ‘Give Anne my regards if you speak to her. Say any time she’s over I’d love to meet her. You’re very loyal to her. She must be quite a girl.’

  He had wondered for a second if she was being arch but decided, giving the tie up as a bad job, it was simply that she was showing him that she was a good sport – or, at any rate, not a bad one.

  26

  Chartres

  Philippe Nevers often encountered Agnès on her way to clean the cathedral as he made his own way down from his apartment in the place du Cygne, to catch the early Paris train. If he was not running late – which he mostly was – he usually stopped for a bit of friendly banter with his old babysitter. He had defended her once and those we defend will tend to occupy a tender spot in our loyalties.

  Philippe managed a fashion boutique in Paris in the 16th arrondissement. For such an otherwise likeable young man he had made himself needlessly unpopular, as his friend Tan often told him, with women – especially the women of Chartres, who were cautious in their dress – with his bold sartorial suggestions. But he admired Agnès’ indifference to fashion, an indifference, as he explained to Tan, which is the basis of true style.

  However, that morning he had weightier things than fashion on his mind.

  ‘Good morning, Agnès. Listen, my sister – you remember, Brigitte? – is coming to stay with her new baby. Things aren’t going too well with her current man so she needs a place to hole up in while they decide what to do. I couldn’t say no.’

  Agnès, who remembered Brigitte, smiled.

  ‘You couldn’t do a couple of hours’ cleaning for me? She’s always been an obsessional, God knows, but with this kid she’s become totally neurotic. Or maybe it’s the break-up. Who can tell?’

  ‘When do you need it done by?’

  ‘Agnès, you’re an angel. Look, take the spare key. You know where I am, by the flower stall, first floor, over the estate agent’s. Any time before the weekend. I like that shade of red with the green, by the way.’

  • • •

  Agnès opened the inner door of the North Porch as quietly as the weight of the wood and the age of the hinges allowed. But Alain was there, apparently waiting for her on the altar dais.

  ‘Breakfast?’

  ‘Thanks, I’ve had some.’ She went to the kitchenette but when she returned, bucket and mop in hand, he was there still.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘In case you don’t know, your face is an open book. What’s up?’ he asked again. He peered at her and then said, quite nastily, ‘It’s that bloody old bitch, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll go and see her. Tell her I was merely picking you up from the floor. No hanky-panky, though what in God’s name it has to do with –’

  ‘It isn’t that,’ Agnès interrupted.

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘She thinks I took or broke something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A china doll.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘A little antique doll. She collects them. It’s missing and she thinks I took it, or broke it.’

  ‘So what if you did?’

  ‘She said she’ll report it to the police.’

  At which he threw his head back, laughing. ‘Don’t be an idiot. She probably broke it
herself in a fit of rage. My bones are good at clocking madness and they definitely dislike her. She’s deranged.’

  ‘That’s what Robert said.’

  ‘Who’s Robert?’

  ‘A painter. I sit for him.’

  ‘The hell you do.’

  ‘I’ve sat for him for years,’ Agnès said. ‘He’s harmless. He comes in here quite often to paint the stained glass.’

  ‘I’ve seen him. And his stuff. It’s vile.’

  ‘He has to make a living,’ Agnès said. ‘He’s been very kind to me. He got me work when I came here. And a room.’

  ‘Are you lovers?’

  She blushed. ‘Of course not.’

  Alain treated her to a long look. ‘It has been heard of. Anyway, Ma Beck can’t report you to the police for a doll. Tell her to go and boil her head.’

  But Agnès, having completed her work and chatted for five minutes with the Abbé Bernard, who was anxious to know if she believed in miracles – ‘But the Holy tunic, Agnès, you think it really did effect cures?’ – called by Madame Beck’s apartment with an envelope in which she had placed three twenty-euro notes. She posted the envelope through the letterbox without ringing the chiming bell, which did not prevent Madame Beck from hastening to the window when she heard the letterbox to observe her former cleaner as she hurried away down the rue aux Herbes to the safety of Professor Jones’s apartment.

  • • •

  The archiving at Professor Jones’s was coming on apace. The faded and discoloured wallpaper in the study was now almost completely hidden by a collection of skilfully-mounted photographs of his past. Professor Jones had been so animated by the recovery of his own history that he had begun to write his recollections of his childhood in Wales. He discussed these from time to time with Agnès as she tried to sort his lectures and his lecture notes, a harder task for her than the letters or photos.

  Seeing what she was doing, he said, ‘May I have a look at the article on Rheims?’

  Agnès stopped sorting. ‘Which?’

  Pointing vaguely he said, ‘That one on the floor beside you.’

  Agnès, who could recognize an R, passed him a paper.

  ‘No, not Rome, Rheims.’

  She looked up at him from her position on the floor and perhaps because of his recent plunge into childhood he understood that what he saw in her face was fear. ‘Agnès, you can read?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My God. And you’ve sorted all this for me. How?’

  She shrugged, ashamed.

  ‘One would almost say you didn’t need to read with guesswork like that.’

  ‘I wish I could, though.’

  ‘Would you like me to teach you?’

  ‘I can’t. They tried.’

  ‘Who tried?’

  ‘Sister Véronique.’

  ‘You have a sister?’

  At which she laughed aloud. ‘She was a nun. I was brought up by nuns.’

  ‘You’re Catholic, then?’

  ‘I was an orphan,’ Agnès said. ‘I had no choice.’

  It was many years since Professor Jones had felt any true concern about anyone but himself. Even his philanthropic interest in the beggars was, at heart, self-regarding. But the young woman with her brightly coloured clothes and her quiet presence had smoothed away some of the cares which had clogged his natural curiosity. The recovery of his childhood memories had restored something of the child’s keener perception. He took her hand. ‘How very horrid for you, my dear.’

  And Agnès, on her knees, also felt a novel sensation. One she had not experienced for many years. She felt she was going to cry.

  • • •

  Two hours later she let herself into Philippe Nevers’ apartment, as unlike Professor Jones’s as it was possible to be. The salon, which looked over the tree-filled square, was full of light, the minimal furniture all in the latest contemporary taste down to the kitchen utensils, which that year were being sold in apple-green. Did Philippe renew them each time the fashion changed, or was it just a lucky coincidence?

  There was a faint smell of cooking oil so she opened a kitchen window to air the place. Otherwise, it seemed spotless. The neurotic Brigitte could hardly find much to complain about.

  Nevertheless, Agnès found a tidily arranged cupboard of cleaning materials and set to work. As she wiped the frames of the pictures on Philippe’s walls, half wondering, but with no very burning curiosity, how his sister would react to these – for the most part they were images of naked men in startling erotic poses – she reflected on her strange morning with Professor Jones.

  An unusually determined Professor had sat Agnès down at his kitchen table, which thanks to her was no longer covered in a patina of ancient grease, where he insisted on giving her tea, for, despite his many years of living in France, the professor clung to his native belief in the remedial powers of strong tea. Then he had begun her reading lesson.

  Among the treasures of his past, revealed in the course of the ‘archiving’, were some of the professor’s childhood books: Treasure Island, Alice both In Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, a child’s version of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Doctor Dolittle, Biggles and the Just So Stories. None of these seemed to him quite the thing to engage a young, illiterate woman.

  Searching through a cardboard suitcase, retrieved from under a sagging divan bed (now relieved of its cover of papers) and stuffed with a motley collection of books, the professor found a copy of Little Black Sambo which he concealed hastily in a paper bag. He did not himself see what was wrong with Little Black Sambo but he was aware that this, any more than Doctor Dolittle or Biggles, was not quite the thing for Agnès to learn to read from.

  Further delvings into the suitcase revealed a paperback copy of The Secret Garden. Opening it, he read, on the title page in a round childish hand, ‘If this book should dare to roam/ Box its ears and send it home to/ Gwen Williams, Church House, Broad Street, Presteigne, Radnorshire, Wales, Great Britain, Europe, the Northern Hemisphere, The World, The Milky Way.’ Beneath these words was a picture of the sun, the moon, some planets and a shooting star. Each had a smiling face except the star, which was sticking out a contemptuous fiery tongue.

  How did The Secret Garden come to have roamed so far afield? He remembered Church House, the home of his maternal uncle and aunt, with fondness: a square, redbrick family home with two tall chimneys, which stood by the grassy graveyard of St Andrew’s Church, with its ‘holy’ spring and venerably twisted yew tree. He had had fine times there in the holidays, playing with his cousins in the roomy attic and immense cupboards, just made for games of Sardines and hide-and-seek.

  The story of Mary Lennox, the orphaned girl sent from India to Yorkshire, he now suddenly remembered, he had read to his cousin Gwen, the summer she had chickenpox so badly that her face had swelled and she couldn’t read. Was it merely one of those accidental thefts which had never been rectified or had he gone away with the book on purpose?

  He had been a little in love with Gwen, who had wild dark red hair, which she tossed from her face like a mountain pony, and a white, white skin – skin like the slivers of bark from the birch trees that had fascinated him too, and which he had enjoyed peeling off for his cousin to make into fairy slippers and other magical artefacts. Once he had kissed her, while they were playing Sardines and hiding in one of the Church House cupboards, and she had seemed not to mind.

  ‘I will translate this into French, simple French, and read you each chapter aloud first,’ he announced to Agnès, ‘so you will understand the story,’ and commenced translating at once. After half an hour, he announced with unusual firmness, ‘Now stop sorting and come here by me.’

  It was the first time, since the days of Sister Laurence, that Agnès had listened to a story (other than those she heard on the radio) and, for all Professor Jones’s odd acc
ent and sonorous reading style, within three pages she was entranced.

  27

  Evreux

  Agnès said very little on the drive with Denis Deman from the hospital in Le Mans to the outskirts of Evreux. She sat staring out of the passenger window, apparently absorbed in the sight of the passing countryside.

  From time to time, he glanced at her to see if she was all right, but any question was met with an inevitable, ‘Fine, thank you, Doctor.’

  What a strange undertaking he had embarked on. Inès Nezat was right to be suspicious – it was untoward to take such an interest in the girl. But, more and more, he was convinced that it was he himself who had precipitated this further tragedy of hers, as if her circumstances had not been quite tragic enough without his clumsy interference.

  The girl was illiterate. What in the world had induced him to suppose she had read her file? Sheer panic at his own foolhardiness in going to that address. And then he had compounded that idiotic error by writing the address in her file. And that error had led, by a ghastly chain of consequences, to the grosser error of his supposing that she had come to the conclusion at which he, so mistakenly, had arrived. What a complete and utter and ludicrous fool he had been.

  His hope now was that meeting Jean Dupère might help the girl towards a better sense of her own reality. The past that she had really lived and not the fantasy in which he had haplessly encouraged her to believe. The real past, of course, was starkly painful. No parents, no known relatives, no knowledge of her background, no child, or any she could see or care for, only this one – rather decent – human being whose connection with her was probably too tangential to provide any true sense of being held in another’s heart.

  As the Renault bumped down the now familiar track to the Dupère farm, Denis Deman felt a clawing apprehension. It was very likely another of his mad ideas, bringing these two together again. Jean Dupère would not recognize in the lumpen, spotty girl with the lank and greasy hair the pale, sylphlike creature he had last seen, lying comatose in her bed in the clinic. Now the poor child was comatose again, in an alien waking world, muffled in her mind by the drugs in which he had no confidence.