Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  He stood there now in the rococo sitting room and twisted the lighter in his pocket.

  ‘Doctor Jardine, I’m so glad you were able to get here so quickly. I hope our telegram didn’t frighten you unduly. It’s just that Sylvie, Madame Jardine, was ill when she came back to us. Feverish. A little delirious. A post-natal infection I imagine.’

  Jacob’s mouth fell open.

  ‘No, no,’ the Consul rushed on. ‘Nothing serious. She’s much better now. And the baby, the baby is just fine. We hired in a nanny to look after her. But you can imagine, this is hardly the place for a mother and child.’

  The man smiled, waiting for Jacob to speak.

  An embarrassing silence while conflicting emotions played over Jacob’s face.

  ‘Of course,’ the Consul filled it, ‘it would have been better for the birth to have taken place in Paris. But your wife insisted on staying, insisted on visiting her parental home. Never mind. It’s all for the best. And the baby has been no trouble. A sweet little girl. Hardly ever cries.’

  Jacob tried a smile, murmured thanks. He was desperately trying to digest what the Consul was saying. He found himself ludicrously counting months as he followed the man up the stairs.

  ‘I shall leave you now,’ he said politely, as he knocked on a door. ‘Of course, you are welcome to stay here for a night or two.’

  Jacob took in the room, saw a grey-haired woman rocking an ornate cradle and humming; saw a frail Sylvie reclining on a sofa, her eyes fixed on empty space. He didn’t like that unseeing stare, didn’t like the memories it aroused in him of another room, many years ago, in the South, in Roussillon. He composed himself.

  ‘Sylvie,’ he took her cool, limp hand. ‘Sylvie, I’m here. I’ve come to take you home.’

  She turned her head, looked at him as from a great distance. But her eyes focussed on him. She gave him a watery smile. Nodded.

  Jacob relaxed, kissed her forehead.

  She gazed up at him. ‘I didn’t tell you. Thought you wouldn’t let me leave. But there’s a baby. It…’ she paused, a little confused, ‘She… she came just a little early.’ Sylvie stood up, walked slowly towards the cradle and picked up the tiny bundle. ‘Here,’ she turned to Jacob. ‘She’s yours. For you and Caroline.’ She stretched the bundle towards Jacob.

  Jacob took the baby, looked into the tiny face. Calm grey eyes stared at him as if they could see him. He smiled, held the bundle close.

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvie murmured. ‘I thought you would be pleased.

  Caroline will be pleased. I’ve named her Katherine.’

  Jacob averted his face. He couldn’t tell her, it wasn’t the moment to tell her, that Caroline had taken her own life the preceding month.

  PART THREE

  ∞

  Chapter

  Twelve

  __________

  ∞

  A biting November wind whipped through the canyon of the street and caught at Katherine’s coat depositing an array of candy wrappers and subway tickets at her feet. She clutched her school satchel more closely to her, holding it like a shield against the elements. One more block and she could hop onto the bus which would take her to Grand Central Station. No one had seen her. No one would, she promised herself. Only her friend Antonia knew where she was headed and she could be trusted to keep a secret.

  The bus appeared just as Katherine turned the corner and she leapt onto it confidently. Everything was working according to plan. She would be at the station just in time to catch the train. Her teacher wouldn’t worry, since she had alerted her that she was going to be away and promised to bring a note on her return. That meant she had a good eight hours start before anyone need even think about her absence. And by that time she would be safely in Boston. Katherine sat back in the warmth of her seat and watched Central Park give way to the shops and office towers of Midtown Manhattan.

  At the age of thirteen Katherine Jardine was an adept New Yorker. She could manoeuvre her way round streets and crowds and subway lines with the ease of a native. There was no trace of the foreign in her speech, except perhaps in the greater clarity with which she enunciated her sentences. She was also an adept liar. It was not something she liked to do or resorted to very often. But when she did, it was always performed with complete aplomb and without the slightest trace of hesitation or reddening of cheeks. She lied out of expediency. As she had done to her teacher yesterday. As she would do tomorrow, if she needed to, to realise her plans. And her plans now were very clearly set in her mind. She was running away from home. And she was determined not to return.

  Katherine queued at the ticket counter and proclaimed her destination in a distinct voice. The clerk looked at her oddly as she took her purse out of her school satchel and carefully counted out the exact money.

  ‘Isn’t Boston a long way for a kid like you to be going?’ he asked.

  She looked at him directly with her cool grey eyes. ‘I’m going to meet my family,’ she said quietly. ‘They’re waiting for me at the station.’

  The attendant was suspicious, but cowed. There was already something about Katherine’s face that made questions an imposition. Tall for her age, she held her shoulders straight, her head, with its abundant sheen of hair, high. She had a composure well beyond her years. And her beauty was already more than a promise. Of all this Katherine was only dimly aware. For beneath her apparent self-possession, there was a driving urgency. Over the last months, she had realised that she had to leave home or something terrible would happen. She couldn’t quite locate the nature of that terror; she didn’t know exactly what evil it was that would occur, but she felt it tangibly. It was there as soon as she passed through the doors of their east side brownstone. It circled round her as she moved through the house and sometimes it settled in the look of pure hatred that emanated from her mother’s eyes when they rested on her.

  Katherine sat back in the train’s cushioned seats and as it pulled away from the platform, she breathed a sigh of relief. The first part of her plan had been safely accomplished.

  She had tried to talk to her father about her fears. But Pappy who was always so willing to engage with her for hours and talk about school work or play chess, only patted her on the shoulder and fobbed her off with platitudes when the question of her mother came up. ‘Your mother is a little depressed at the moment. It will pass.’ Or, ‘Don’t worry Kat, it will all get better soon.’ Well, now that she was no longer there, he would have to pay attention; would know that she had been serious. Or would he? Katherine stirred nervously in her seat. He had been so absent-minded of late, so preoccupied with his work, his writing, the morality of being an expert witness. She still didn’t understand what he meant by all that, no matter how much he explained. All that she knew was that he was increasingly away from home, at meetings, at conferences. And that left her solely in her mother’s power.

  Katherine shivered and drew her coat more tightly round her. She tried to think of something more pleasant. The hills now, through which the train was winding its way, were pretty. Katherine rummaged in her satchel. She had brought almost nothing with her - two pairs of knickers, stockings, a toothbrush, two books. More would have made her flight obvious. She drew out a book. The photograph she always used as a bookmark fluttered out of it. She looked at the picture. Yes, that had been the happiest time of her life. The crossing. Pappy and a dark little girl who was herself leaning against a lifeboat.

  She was almost six then. Mother and Leo had been seasick for the duration of the crossing and had lain inert on deck chairs. Pappy and she, on the other hand, had had a whale of a time. She could still remember it all intensely: the swimming pool in which she had learnt to do a dog paddle; the ring game; the endless stretch of blue ocean; the vast liner as big as a city through which she and Pappy had erred endlessly. Then the excitement of the New York skyline seen from a distance, its jutting towers like a giant’s cardboard cut-outs poking into a blue sky. After that, it had all changed. She couldn’t r
emember the details, only the sense of confusion that everything was different - the language, the schools she had been sent to one after another. And Pappy was always busy. Still, there was Leo. They had grown very close. He had helped her. And then Leo had left for university. That was when the evil had grown.

  Katherine glanced at her small watch. Only a few hours and she would be with him again. Pappy had given her that watch. He had given her so many things, beautiful things, little surprising things when he came back from trips. Some of the most treasured had disappeared or been broken. That’s when she had begun to recognize the evil.

  She remembered the moment distinctly. She was ten. She had come home from school with Antonia. Thankfully, her mother wasn’t in and Doreen, the maid, had plied them with milk and biscuits. Then they had gone to Katherine’s room. Instantly Katherine had realised something was wrong. The doll, Angelina, her favourite Venetian doll, with the masked porcelain face and carnival gown, the one Pappy had brought her. She was gone. Katherine looked round the room. No, she was nowhere. She dashed out to Doreen and asked her about its whereabouts.

  ‘Ah, I’m sorry, honey. Angelina got broken. Your mother said she fell off the shelf and smashed. I picked up the pieces myself. I’m sorry honey.’ Doreen turned her broad kindly face away and busied herself with dinner preparations.

  ‘Where is she Doreen?’ Katherine asked in a low voice. ‘I’m sure I can fix her.’

  Doreen shook her head. ‘No you can’t honey. Your mom’s gone and thrown her down the incinerator. I told her you might want the pieces and the beautiful dress, but she just said you were too big for dolls anyway.’

  Katherine’s eyes filled with tears and she rushed to her room. ‘She hates me, Antonia. She hates me,’ she said in a steely voice.

  ‘Who? Doreen?’ Antonia asked incredulously.

  ‘No, my mother,’ Katherine said bluntly. She hid her face.

  Not that she could explain it in so many words, but Katherine had long since stopped trying to win her mother’s love. There had been too many occasions on which she had tried to please, hoped for hugs or even smiles, times when she had practised the piano and cleaned her room assiduously, only to be met by jibes, or slaps, or worse still, beatings. She went through phases when she felt intensely guilty, as if there were something that she couldn’t quite locate that she had done to provoke her mother’s wrath. At other times, she sensed that whatever she did, it made no difference. It was her very presence that was at fault. If her mother was intent on finding something wrong, she would. Then, the lashings would follow; the strap on her bottom; the ruler over her palms; the stinging slaps. Katherine bore it. She was trapped. If she told her father, then as soon as he was away, there would be a worse incident. Now she only hoped for her mother’s indifference. When she was home with her, Katherine walked softly, spoke almost not at all, kept to her room. Anything to prevent an incidence of temper. At dinner on the night when her doll had been broken, however, Katherine was too upset to pretend to be invisible.

  They were sitting as they always did when her father was home, in the large airy dining room which looked out on the stone patio where in the summer clematis bloomed white and purple. Katherine knew each of those stones, each of those flowers intimately - so often had she concentrated on them so as not to cry or react to her mother’s jibes. Tonight, as soon as they had sat down, Katherine said to her father, ‘Angelina is broken. She’s gone.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry Kat. How did it happen?’

  Katherine shrugged and looked directly at her mother. ‘She knows.’

  ‘So, you’re wailing to your father again. You never stop, do you?’ Sylvie spoke in French, as she normally continued to do in the house, and glared at her daughter.

  ‘Hush, Sylvie,’ Her father interjected. ‘I’ll get you another doll, Kat, next time I’m in Venice.’

  ‘She’s too old for dolls. And she’s got plenty left. You always spoil her. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.’ Sylvie was venomous.

  ‘You broke her, didn’t you. You did it on purpose. Because I loved her,’ Katherine leapt out of her chair and dashed from the room. Behind her, she heard her mother saying adamantly to her father, ‘Elle ment. She’s lying, as usual.’

  Then they rowed. She hated that. Her mother’s endless stream of accusations. ‘I should never have had that brat. You should never have brought me here. I hate this stinking, boring country. Hate it. Do you hear?’

  And then her father, his voice cold, steely. ‘That’s enough, Sylvie. You’re working yourself into a state. Calm yourself. Leave the child be.’

  ‘You’ve always preferred her to me. You…’

  Katherine shut her door quietly, blocking out the sounds.

  After such rows, her mother would sometimes stay in her room for days on end or trail round the house like a blind stranger, oblvious to Katherine’s existence. Sometimes, and Katherine didn’t know which was worse, she would stamp round and rail, flailing out at Katherine at the slightest opportunity. And so Katherine learned that it was better not to provide an opportunity for a row. She tried hard not to complain to her father.

  After the incident of the doll, at irregular intervals other objects precious to her had disappeared from her room or been broken in her absence. She pretended not to notice. But the sense of a malicious presence at work grew in her. Then, this autumn it had all gotten much worse. Katherine thought she knew the occasion that had sparked it. It was after her mother had come home from a solitary trip to Rome. The time without her in the house had been blissfully peaceful. Nothing, Katherine noted only to herself, had vanished from her room. And what with Leo home for a part of the holidays, life had been wonderful. The feeling of joy even persisted until two weeks after Sylvie’s return. Then Leo went back to Harvard.

  Katherine was into her third week of term. She had gone to school in the morning with a slight cough and a sniffle. By lunchtime she was distinctly unwell and the school nurse told her she had a temperature and sent her home. She had walked into the house and shouted her usual, ‘I’m back.’ An uncharacteristic silence answered her and Katherine assumed everyone, including Doreen, was out. She poured herself a glass of orange juice and carried it up the stairs to her room. When she got to the first landing, her mother’s bedroom door suddenly flew open and her mother burst out. ‘What are you doing here?’ she shouted.

  Katherine was so surprised she dropped her juice. Sylvie looked dishevelled. Behind her through the open door, Katherine saw a man she thought she recognized as the porter. But she didn’t have a chance to look for her mother’s hand struck like lightning across her face. ‘That’s for your spying. And now you’ll run and tell your father, won’t you?’ Sylvie struck her again with greater force so that Katherine knocked her shoulder hard against the edge of the bannister. ‘And that’s for carrying tales.’

  Her mother reeked of alcohol. Katherine held back the tears with difficulty. She had stopped crying when her mother hit her, partly out of pride, but partly out of spite because she always felt her tears gave her mother pleasure. ‘Nurse sent me home early because I’m ill,’ she said in a small voice and walked slowly up the stairs.

  That Sunday, Antonia was having a birthday party. The girls had been plotting it for a month in great excitement. Antonia had invited some boys. Katherine had even bought herself a new dress for the occasion out of her own pocket money topped up with a little from the bank account into which her own presents went. She hated the dresses her mother made her wear, sombre unattractive things in rough heavy wool or dull summer cotton; and she had asked Leo to go shopping with her and help her choose. They had selected a full-skirted velvet frock in a deep royal blue which set off her auburn hair. She had worn it twice, once when she had gone out for dinner with her father and Leo and on the night of Sylvie’s return from Italy. But when Katherine came to dress for the party, her dress was nowhere to be found in her wardrobe. Katherine’s heart skipped a beat. She charged off in searc
h of her mother.

  Both her parents were sitting in the living room reading.

  ‘Maman, have you seen my blue dress?’ Katherine asked

  in a quiet voice.

  ‘Mmmm?’ her mother pretended not to hear her.

  ‘My blue dress. I can’t find it.’

  Her father looked up. ‘She means that pretty velvet dress, Sylvie. The one she wore for your homecoming.’

  ‘Ah, yes that one. I gave it away when I was clearing up. It’s quite unsuitable for a young girl,’ her mother answered casually.

  Katherine’s face grew contorted. Jacob looked on helplessly. ‘I’ll buy you another. Tomorrow,’ he said softly.

  ‘But it’s Antonia’s party today.’ This time the tears trickled down Katherine’s cheeks.

  ‘You’ve plenty of other clothes,’ her mother’s tone was firm.

  Two days later at the bottom of Katherine’s wardrobe, she found a crumpled heap of blue. She lifted up her dress. Down the front of it there was a long slash. She imagined that slash through herself. That was when the terror had taken a grip on her. Her father was away. She trod carefully in the house, trying to keep out of her mother’s way. When he returned, bearing a brand new dress in a rich burgundy shade, she had shown him the blue one. She said nothing. Her eyes spoke for her.

  Jacob hugged her. ‘I’ll sort it out,’ he said in a tired tone.

  That evening she could hear raised voices emanating from her parents’ room. Loud, angry, hideous voices. She wanted to go and stop them. Instead, she buried her head under her pillow and cried.

  Then, the following week, the essay on Jane Eyre she had been working on for her English class disappeared from her desk. She had discussed it with her father just a few days back. She couldn’t understand why Rochester kept his wife in the attic. What kind of madness did she have? They had talked about it at length over dinner. Now the essay was gone. Katherine hugged herself in fear. That was when the plan of running away had begun to formulate itself in her mind.