Colonfay

by O'Grady, Myles;

  Dermot sat at the desk. There was was a swan-neck table lamp. With trepidation, he unlocked the suitcase. Then he looked at the portfolio lying there propped against the wall. Being an artist, well, aspiring, he couldn’t resist the temptation of looking inside that first. He extracted the drawings, which were carefully protected by flimsy interleaves and mounted in hard cardboard with flaps.

  Dermot looked at the top one.

  He exclaimed, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!”

  He put everything back and tied up the portfolio.

  Finally he got to the letter he should have read first. The one given to him by Alain de Malherbe, the lawyer. There was a sheet written in Armand de Coucy’s small clear writing.

  Dear Dermot, The suitcase to which you have the key contains perhaps the key also to the happiness of Laure. The documents and newspaper cuttings are self-explanatory. I think that when you have explained and shown them to her she may forgive me. I hope so. I only did my duty. She had a fixation on her uncle, my brother-in-law, Didier, who was executed on my orders in 1945. She hated him, with good reason, which I did not appreciate at the time. She holds me responsible for his execution, rightly, even though she knows he deserved it. I could not have prevented it, at least not without sacrificing myself. I was playing a dangerous game and he suspected it. Perhaps I should have saved him, but I didn’t. I had responsibilities. He had none. He deserved to die but so did a lot of people who are still around here today. Laure also blames me for the death of her great-uncle, who was also shot in 1945, for collaboration with the Germans. That, too, I was powerless to prevent. You will see the evidence against both. Read carefully, please, the statement I have for your eyes only, and destroy it immediately after. There are some drawings which I wish you to have. They are in the portfolio in the cupboard in the office in the grenier. Alain de Malherbe has a notarized Certificate of Ownership and Gift to you personally, made out some years ago when you were married. There is also the history of the drawings and the recent provenance. This was the property of Max Farber. So far as I know, none of that family survived the war. I kept the drawings in case one of them should turn up. What you do with these drawings is entirely up to you but I make one condition by which I hope you will abide. You are not to allow them to be appropriated by the French Ministry of Culture and those disreputable curators of the Louvre. They are unknown and thus not part of the national patrimony. There’s a medal. I’d like Patrick to have it. I leave my main bequest, Laure, in your hands, in the hope that you will find a way to make her happy.

  Your affectionate father-in-law, Armand de Coucy

  He opened the suitcase. It contained various official documents. And newspaper and magazine articles.

  The top one showed a photograph of one ‘Didier de Montriveau,’ in a strange uniform, and the headline to the effect that he had been in charge of the police under Leguay in Paris and in charge of the Milice in the Department of Aisne in 1943 and was executed on January 25, 1945.

  It listed his crimes, which were considerable. Another feature article showed the face of her paternal grandfather, the industrialist, Marcel de Coucy, with Marshal Pétain, when he was in charge of press and publications for the ‘New Order.’ He died in 1944. There was a neat stack of the magazine L’Illustration, and a quick scan showed that this grandfather and her Uncle Didier had been prominent members of the Vichy élite.

  There was another envelope addressed to Dermot McManus, and sealed with sealing wax. It was marked, ‘Destroy after reading.’ He opened it. It was a statement, notarised and witnessed, in the form of an accusation, borne out by the witnesses, that Didier de Montriveau, the milicien, has been observed sexually abusing his nephew, Henri, who has died in hospital in Laon, and that he has also abused one Bernard Dupont, aged ten, whose father he shot when the latter attacked him. Due to his position, no charges were laid, and it is certain that anyone raising the issue would have disappeared. When accused by his brother, Armand, he had threatened to have him watched, as it was suspected (rightly) that Armand de Coucy was engaged in subversive activities.

  Attached to the statement was the note:

  ‘Dermot: I could not explain this to Laure. Her brother and her uncle. I didn’t have the heart for it.’

  Initialled by his father-in-law. Another mystery. Laure had another brother. She never talked about him. He did not destroy the document. He replaced it in the suitcase, which he locked. What a can of worms. The plot, as they say, had certainly thickened.

  He almost missed an envelope addressed to Armand. It contained a letter from the Présidence. It said, ‘Thank you, my dear de Coucy, for keeping the Resistance network, Guise, operating throughout, and for your constant supply of information in my ‘letter-box’ in the wood. It was invaluable and provided at enormous risk to yourself.’ It was signed, Charles de Gaulle.

  He carried everything downstairs and resolved not to let it out of his sight until Laure and Patrick had seen it and it was safely locked away. He decided to study the history of the drawings at his leisure. Alain and the doctor were in the drawing-room. The doctor was sleeping in the house and driving back to Paris in the morning. Now that he had talked to Dermot, the old man seemed resigned to being moved to the clinic in Paris where he was patched up after his accident the other year. An ambulance was booked and would arrive first thing in the morning.

  Dermot needed to get out of there. He asked Alain if he intended to drive back to Paris. He said yes.

  He decided to telephone Laure, and to leave with the lawyer. He would try to soften her up. The telephone was in a small room under the stairs. There was no reply in Provence. So he tried Paris. She answered, in a small, breathless voice, so slow he wondered whether she was all right.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Your ubiquitous husband, who misses you.”

  A silence, then, “What do you want?”

  “I’m in Colonfay.”

  More silence, then, “I know. Mouse told me.”

  “I was sent for by Maître de Malherbe. Apparently you refused to come.”

  “Oh, please, don’t start. (Pause) How is he?”

  “Almost certainly dying. He needs you.”

  “No!” she cried. “Je ne peux pas! Je ne peux pas! Leave me alone!”

  “Laure, I understand. Honest. I know you can’t do it. Only I promised to try. You will hate yourself afterwards. You can’t go on blaming him. You are totally wrong about him.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  She was breathing rapidly. Excited. Nervous.

  “Enough. I have the evidence.”

  “It’s none of your business. Has he been talking to you? He had no right.”

  “No, no. Can I come and see you? I’ll be in Paris tonight. Can Mouse sleep in the upstairs spare bedroom?”

  “No, yes. If you want. Dermot?”

  “Yes?”

  “I hope you’ll be understanding when you get here. Things have changed. Be nice.”

  “Yes, I will. Je vous aime.”

  “You don’t mean it. You never loved me. And it’s too late.”

  The lawyer was driving back to Paris and Dermot went with him, taking the suitcase. He decided not to speak to Laure that evening but to stay in the downstairs flat and call her first thing in the morning.

  Sunday

  31. Mouse, the Shrink

  Paris. I met Laure in the apartment in the Rue Madame.

  I said to her, “Laure, you can have lots of lovers but only one father.”

  She said, “That’s one too many.”

  “Well, too late now baby. You can’t put his sperm back in his balls.”

  She laughed. A good sign. Mouse, the therapist.

  “Oh, Mouse, how lucky you are! No men to worry about.”

  “Jaysus, girl, do you think women are easier? Now listen to me—”

  “Wait, Mouse. No lectures, please.”

  “No. Only this. Never mind being kind to your father. Be kind to yourself. When
he’s dead you don’t want to suffer the remorse. I don’t understand how an intelligent person can’t accept that parents should be judged in the context of their upbringing and their time. I’ve met Armand and I don’t believe he’s capable of doing anything nasty. Well, if he did slip one day, it was a sin of omission. He’s incapable of doing anything dirty.”

  “You think so? Have you any idea what he did? Allowed me to be violated.”

  “Oh, I think so, Laure. There’s very little in the behavior of the male animal that I don’t understand. Nothing much shocks me. And there always seems to me to be too big a song and dance about it.”

  “And Dermot?”

  “Ah, Dermot’s not bad. If he didn’t give you what you expected maybe you weren’t the most receptive wife? He too suffered from parental abuse, no, not sexual. Wrongheadedness by a father who was blocked in his time. He couldn’t help it either. Nobody’s blameless, Laure. And nobody should play God.”

  “Thanks, Mouse!”

  “Think nothing of it, Laure. Can I use your telephone? I must call Gwendoline, my better half. My stabilizer. I need to talk to someone who understands the essential truth.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing matters.”

  32. Laure & Dermot & Mouse

  It was noon on Sunday by the time Dermot decided to ask Laure to come down to him rather than to intrude on her space. He asked Mouse to go up and get her. Laure came in looking antagonistic, or perhaps defensive.

  First he had opened the portfolio and spread the drawings out on the floor. It was a good strategy. It defused what looked like an embarrassing meeting.

  The reaction was considerable.

  Mouse said, “Oh, good. We’re into pornography. But why all those unnecessary appendages?”

  Laure was stunned.

  Dermot said, “That should take your mind off things for a while.”

  She had recently been up the coupole of St. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma and had seen the Correggios close to. And two years before up the cupole of the Duomo. She has seen the Zeus as a cloud in the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna and almost all the other Correggios around the world. These are just drawings, and erotic, even pornographic, but what drawings.

  “Fakes? They must be. The unknown Correggios,” she said.

  “Right, of course. But maybe not fakes. You’re going to do a book about them if they’re real.”

  “Am I?”

  “Of course you are. Give us a chance to go to Emilia Romagna again. And why don’t we try to trace the paintings? Even the one that Farber’s grandfather owned. We know that it exists. Unless it was destroyed in the war. Here, read the story …”

  Dermot went to the desk and handed her the paper called The Unknown Correggios. It was dated and signed by Maximilian Farber, Dealer in Antiquarian Books and Old Master Drawings. It was a long and persuasive document and would be sure to interest Laure who would readily insert it into her own knowledge of Correggio and his time in Parma.

  There was the report from Armand de Coucy, showing how the portfolio of drawings came into his possession, and a ‘Bill of Sale,’ made out to him, in the amount of five hundred francs, for ‘Six Drawings in the style of the Parma Mannerists.’

  It did not make good reading but Laure would have to read it. He told her to sit down and handed her the report.

  Laure said, “How disgusting they were!”

  Dermot said, “Yes, the attitudes were deplorable. But your father did his best to protect the Farbers’ property. Had he tried to hide them he would have been for the high jump. I think if you read it properly you get a sense of the man’s innate decency. The influences of the period, the fear, the danger, made it quite impossible for him to do more. Not without compromising the entire family. You would have wound up in Auschwitz yourself.”

  “Maybe. I’ll reserve judgment.”

  “You do that.”

  “You certainly seem to have involved yourself in my family’s business.”

  “Most reluctantly. By your own default. It seems to have become my business. Alain dragged me across from Ireland. I didn’t want to come but Mouse insisted. I had enough trouble understanding my own father.”

  Mouse said, “I wouldn’t have insisted had I known I was going to be exposed to these drawings. The cult of the penis! Rampant males making like gods!”

  Dermot said to Laure, “Your father left me a rather delicate legacy. Care to look over these?”

  He handed her the documents.

  There was the evidence that her father had been playing a dangerous double game. A functionary of Vichy, and an informer for a Résistance network. The proof that Uncle Didier was not only on the side of the Nazis and responsible for the murder of thousands, but a sexual deviant as well.

  She sat there a long time.

  He went over and put his arm around her. She shook it off.

  Mouse said, “Lighten up, Laure.”

  She sat down. Read parts of the papers again. She broke down. It was the last straw. The bottled up emotions of years made the dam give way. She sobbed noisily. Mouse held her. She shook and shuddered and Dermot waited until she was all wept out.

  Dermot said, “Let it all out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why be sorry? For being human? I cry inwardly all the time. Come on.”

  She said, “It’s an over-reaction. All this talk of his Résistance work is unsubstantiated. It doesn’t compensate for his Vichy sins. And other things. More personal. I can’t forgive him.”

  “You must, Laure. He’s your father. You are very alike.”

  “Alike?”

  “Yes. I know you don’t think much of my powers of discernment but it has always been obvious to me. You are both locked in the de Coucy pride. Unable to let down your defenses. You decided long ago that he was inhuman. It’s not true. Any one of us could have behaved as he did. Not quite as well. He’s a war hero. Pretending to be a Pétainist while sabotaging the regime. He’s an honorable man. In order to defend your honor he would have had to sacrifice the entire family. So he denied that it happened. It was a heavy price to pay and he spent his life paying it. Do you think it would have been easy for him to allow his little daughter to be sexually assaulted by that monster, Didier, had he known the full extent of your suffering? And he loves you. He asks little except to see you once before he dies. You are not judge and jury after all. He had a few laspses. We are all full of sin. And we find out too late that we have done wrong.”

  “Are you speaking of yourself?”

  “Yes, I am. But I’m hoping it isn’t too late.”

  “I’m afraid it is. Maybe not. I can’t think straight.”

  She saw the hurt look on his face as he turned away. She touched his arm.

  He said quietly, “I didn’t know you had another brother, Henri.”

  She looked at him in abject desolation.

  She murmured, “I can’t talk about him. He was not all right. I thought he had been put in a special home for boys like him. Uncle Didier arranged it.”

  Laure looked again at the drawings and read the story of Farber’s arrest.

  She said, “These belong to Sarah.”

  He said, “Look. Suppose Sarah Farber is still alive. Aren’t we going to try and trace her? Isn’t that something worth doing?”

  Laure said, “Yes. It’s an obligation. I hope we find her.”

  Dermot said, “So do I. The glory of discovering the drawings is enough for us. And you will do the book.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He said, “Laure, you must forgive your father. In fact, you have nothing to forgive him for. He has things to forgive you for, depriving him of your love all these years. You must see him. You will never be able to live with it if you don’t. He did not know—all right, maybe he didn’t want to know—what happened to you.”

  “I’ll call him. Then we’ll see.”

  Dermot called Alain. He got the number of the priva
te room in the clinic in Paris and dialed it. He handed her the phone. The nurse answered.

  “It’s Laure, his daughter. Is my father still alive?”

  “Yes, Madame. But weaker.”

  “Can he talk?”

  “If I hold the phone near his ear, he can probably hear you. Wait.”

  “Papa? C’est Laure. I’m coming to see you. I understand everything. Oh, I’m so sorry. I will come and look after you. Je vous embrasse très tendrement”

  The nurse said, “He understood. He smiled. Please hurry, Madame.”

  “I’ll be there this afternoon.”

  And she collapsed again.

  33. Armand & Daughter

  Laure is with her father. He’s weak but smiling. The X-Rays show that he has broken again the vertebrae that were on the mend and added another three. His hip is broken, and his right thigh. At eighty, the shock to his system was severe. Only the fact that he’s lean and has climbed mountains and kept fit saved him. The doctor says he still hasn’t much chance. He lies there, flat on his back, immobile, strapped down. Laure holds his hand. The old man is half-doped, of course, but you could imagine that he was thinking, Better late than never. Now I can go on and join Oriane. Laure is crying.

  Armand whispers, “Don’t.”

  Laure says, “You must get better. We’ll look after you.”

  He squeezes her hand. Tears are in his eyes too.

  He croaks, “It’s difficult.”

  Laure says, “Impossible n’est pas français.”

  The old joke. Slightly threadbare now. She replaced his hand on top of the other one, arms crossed upon his chest, a smile of contentment on his ravaged face. She was going out the door to the ordered taxi when the nurse caught up with her.

  She went back.

  Dermot was talking to the studio in Zurich when Laure came in.

  She said, “My father died just after I left the clinic. The doctor said he died happy. As though he had completed his task on this earth.”