Sabine

by A. P.

  Viola, ma petite, could you spare a moment to help me with the vegetables? With the shopping? I have a light bulb to replace, could you come and hold the ladder for me while I …

  A shrug, a sullen look, which it pained me to give her, and I would go on sitting. Roland will help, I would say. He’s stronger. Ask Roland.

  I would stare at him hard, my enemy, during these moments, aware as I did so of various undercurrents of tension in the room, but principally the one strung, taut as a tripwire, between him and me. Was he stronger than I? He didn’t look it, not just now. He looked edgy, docile, brought to heel by his need. To Ghislaine that dog-out-courting look spelt wedding bells; I just heard alarm bells. Batteries running low, eh, little bloodsucker, little junkie? How long can you hold out without a fix? That’s right, smile and jump to your feet and run along to do as you are bid. No point in hurrying, I’ll still be here when you get back. We’ll see who can win at the waiting game.

  Oh, how I hated him. And I hated myself for hating him on account of this crazy, untellable reason which seemed only to bring us closer. I knew and he knew, and that made two of us; and if he knew that I knew – as I sometimes felt he did – then that meant that the two of us were linked. Bound together as fast as convicts on a chain gang.

  I dreamed of him, often. Complicated, shameful dreams that, on waking, made my head feel like a fusty old cinema hall: full of smoke and darkness and a flickering screen showing the tail shots of what you could tell had been a cheap, bad, sleazy movie. I was careful never to remember the film. The real-life Roland was quite enough to cope with, I could do without the subconscious versions.

  Once he even asked me out on a date, if you can imagine it. Right there in the bedroom, in front of Sabine, while she was asleep. Come to Tours with me this evening, Viola. There’s a good film on – Renoir, ça pourrait te plaire. He spoke so low that I could plausibly pretend I hadn’t heard him – which is what I did. But I regretted my cowardice immediately because the mere saying of the words did something, added another tiny ply to the thread that linked us, while at the same time severing one in my link to Sabine. If I hadn’t heard, then why did I look so uncomfortable all of a sudden? Why those flushed cheeks and fugitive eyes? Oh yes, they were flushed, ma gamine, oh yes, they were. And if I had heard, why did I not protest on Sabine’s account? She would have protested sure enough had she been in my position. Salaud, she would have said. Dirty two-timer, you can stuff your Renoir you know where. But Sabine was different, wasn’t she? And we were different, weren’t we, he and I? Weren’t we?

  How did I bear it all without cracking? The nursing, the guarding, the hoping, the fearing, the wild muddle in my head, the stress during the daytime and the added stress of the dream-filled nights? Well, there’s a short answer to this one too: I didn’t. I cracked, eventually I cracked and told everything – first to Serena, who knew it already of course but only in its spoof version, not as the terrifying truth; and then, in desperation, when Serena failed me, to Sabine herself. Every dotty thing, and may I be forgiven. But that was later on, when the dotty things had become so many and so out of hand that there was no more containing them. For the moment I was trapped, swinging between the horns of my dilemma, at liberty to impale myself on the one or on the other as the momentum took me. If I decided to consider the vampire theory as real, I could be sick with fear; if I decided to view it as just a silly game of my own devising, then I could be sick with jealousy instead.

  Not a happy predicament but better than Sabine’s: she had no choice at all, she was sick with illness and growing daily – nightly – sicker.

  XIII

  The Puzzle

  Sometimes I think that if he hadn’t loved her – if Roland hadn’t loved Sabine just that token rennet amount that starts the curdle – I wouldn’t have suffered so much. His hold over her, no matter what its nature, would have been easier to endure. And the outcome too. I did, as a matter of fact, speak to an analyst once about these things, many years ago now, when Sabine’s voice in my head was still sharp enough to spur me, and he told me one memorable thing: Love is never a problem, he said. Where there is love there is never a problem.

  What kind of love could the man possibly have been talking about? And in what world could he have done his training?

  I said at the beginning of this story that I had never until now lifted the curtain that guarded certain chambers of my mind, and that is true, I never did. But once the curtain was brusquely torn aside for me by circumstance.

  I was in New York, and a friend took me to a picture gallery there. We sauntered in a little aimlessly, the way you do in galleries where there are a lot of pictures on show but none you want to see in particular – and there it was. There he was: the man in the puzzle. Unchanged. Mocking, pitying, reading right into me the way he did then, the sleeves of his dark velvet suit crimped into the same folds, his lace-ruffled hand drumming lightly on his knee in the same world-weary fashion (no, not quite the same: he was more world-weary now; we both were), while behind him the plum-coloured swathe of silk hung in its old position as it had hung for centuries, defying the laws of gravity and aesthetics in one absurd, shimmering, knotted swoop.

  We meet again, Viola, he seemed to say. Last time we met was … let me think … Ah, yes, I remember now. It was in France, no? By the bedside of a sick girl? A girl you were very fond of, unless I am mistaken? That’s right, it’s coming back to me. You were holding one of my eyes in your hand, printed on a small piece of cardboard, and were looking for the right place in my face in which to insert it. Yes, yes, and you were smiling a triumphant little smile because you were sure, in that welter of pieces on the tray – there must have been thousands of them. Three thousand five hundred? What a good memory you have for numbers – you were sure that you had found the right piece at last. And you were smiling also because of the girl, because you thought she needed smiles around her, and there were so few occasions for wearing smiles that you wanted to make the most of this one – extract all the warmth that you could from it, maybe even get her to smile back.

  And then what happened? Tell me. The smile disappeared again very quickly, of that I am sure. But why? Was it something to do with the girl again? I have a feeling that it was. I have a feeling she stretched out her hand and snatched my eye from you on its little jagged piece of cardboard and threw it back on to the tray, confounding it with the other pieces. And I have a feeling she said as she did so, in a low, gruff bleat of a voice, ‘Let Roland do that bit. He wanted to do that bit. And the collar, leave that for him too. Do some background, if you must, do some sky.’

  Not a very weighty exchange this, regarding a little bit of cardboard and its placing. But I had the impression, Viola, that it was weighty for you; that it caused you a great deal of pain. Correct? I thought as much. My painted eyes see a lot, you know, even in a cheap reproduction, even upside down on a tray. Ah well, that was years ago now. And how, if it’s not indiscreet to ask, did it all turn out? Between the two of you, I mean? Or should I say, the three of you? Who won her in the end, that beautiful sick girl with the mane of golden hair? You, or the … the … the … What shall I call him? The …

  Exactly: the what? What was he, this Roland? What were they – he, his mother, Aimée, to name the threesome we had so far focused in our sights? Were they really (if you could use the word ‘really’ in this sentence and keep a straight face) vampires? If so, were they the only ones or were there more of them? The sisters, for example, the Mesdemoiselles de Vibrey – were they vampires too? And the Marquis, where did he stand? And what about the other hunt members? What about Mme Goujon, for that matter, with her lashings of beetroot soup? Perhaps it wasn’t beetroot at all? It was red enough, and sticky enough, and salty enough to the taste, perhaps it was …

  Yes, the game continued, but the more we played it, Serena and I, and the harder and better we played, the less of a game it became. Until that ghastly evening when we made the big discovery. When �
� for me, at least – it stopped being a game altogether, and Serena stopped being a sister, and …

  But my memories are roller-coasting again, I must chart things one at a time, as they happened; sum up our findings in the order in which we made them. ‘We’ meaning just me and Serena, because Christopher’s contribution to the sleuthing process was pretty well zero. Bored or not, embarrassed or not, it is just possible he might have helped a bit in the one task we had allotted him – for the sake of a few more pussy-quips, if nothing else; but that same evening of the list-making the cat disappeared from the château, never to be seen again, or not during our stay there.

  This in itself I found significant, though the others didn’t. I found Aimée’s lack of worry on the animal’s account significant too – Such a clever minette, it will take care of itself – when up till then she had fussed over its comings and goings during her absence considerably. Let it in, if I am not back; let it out; make sure Mme Goujon has given it its food.

  Yes, always instructions in absentia: hard though we tried that evening, none of us could remember ever seeing the two of them together, cat and Aimée. None of us had ever seen her stroke it, or seen it rub itself against her legs the way it did against ours, or seen them, pet and owner, make space/time contact at all. (The evening of Matty and the militaire? Christopher suggested. No, not even then. First there had been the cat peering in the window and licking its paws, then there had been Aimée, licking her lips. No overlapping ever.) I hated this idea for what it implied about the past: Sabine and I in our most private, cherished moments, lying there with an ancient voyeuse stuck between us in cat costume, listening to our every word. But once you accepted the crazy premise, the crazy conclusions followed; logic reigns even on the far side of the looking glass.

  And in true Lewis Carroll style – all that was missing was a walrus and a couple of flamingos – now came the business of the cards. At lunchtime the following day, by way of our first test, Serena pretended to trip on one of the many loose strands of the Aubusson carpet, spilling as she did so the entire contents of a box of cards right into Aimée’s path. They were old cards, knockabout cards, three whole packs of them, kept constantly in a muddle. If you wanted to play a proper game with them that wasn’t racing demon you always had to separate them first. What would a normal person have done in Aimée’s position? Well, lunch was practically on the table; I think a normal person would have told Serena to pick the cards up, maybe, for tidyness’ sake, and sort them later. Or perhaps not even sort them, just put them back in the box. But what did Aimée do? Believe it or not, she waved Serena aside with a Maladroite, flicking her fingers at her in that funny conjuror’s way she had, and then went down on her knees and gathered the flipping things together herself and counted them. Fifty-two times three, plus the six jokers.

  Christopher, still in his exuberant phase, bent down to help, making miaow noises right into Aimée’s ear, and then looking up at us two and spluttering. Serena had to cross her legs: in moments of dire amusement her bladder tended to play tricks.

  I don’t know what there is to laugh about, Aimée chided us in her usual mild, bemused fashion as, her card-counting accomplished, we moved into the dining room and sat down to table. (Our mirth was of the long-haul, contagious variety, and Christopher was now making things worse by asking Mme Goujon if she could please bring us some garlic for the salad.) I know they are nothing special, those cards, but they serve their purpose, no? And an incomplete pack is a useless pack. Or not? Why do you want garlic, Christopher? Young people of your age should never eat garlic, it taints the breath, it is si peu romantique.

  Oh my God. The counting and now the garlic. Aimée was right, there was nothing to laugh about, but we laughed ourselves purple all the same. While she sat there and watched us with that sweet, scatty smile, for which, on the other hand, there was justification galore. The young enjoying themselves – such a pretty sight. Let them laugh while they can. Gambol, little bunnies, gambol in the sunshine – pay no heed to the gathering storm clouds, the far-off baying of the wolves. Forewarned is not forearmed, it is foreshadowed. And plenty of time for shadows later. How graceful he is, that dear Christopher, when he hugs his knees like that and throws back his head in profile; I can’t think how he does it without falling off his chair. He ought not play around with the cutlery, of course, it is very bad manners in France to cross a knife and fork on the table, but this is not the moment to reprimand him. And Viola, such a joy to see her relaxing for a minute and forgetting that sad affair of la pauvre Sabine. Yes, laugh on, petits lapins, play on, laugh on …

  We did too. For a while. Imagine how it was for me: rocketing, plummeting, whizzing up and down like a yoyo, now high on mirth, now low on anguish. I defy anyone to keep a sane mind in the circumstances.

  Christopher came with me to see Sabine the next day, a Friday, and sat by the side of the bed opposite Roland, goggling and giggling at him the way he did at Aimée, only more blatantly, mickey-taking for all he was worth, and on that occasion I was high and low together, which almost split me. Perhaps it did. I can remember looking at their three different-coloured heads of hair – the bright champagne of Christopher’s, the corvine blot of Roland’s, and finally the bronze tumble of Sabine’s – a little matted and pillow-worn by now – and feeling the different-coloured emotions they aroused in me, which went from dizzy mirth to dull despair, and not knowing whether to laugh or scream or cry.

  I did mostly the first that day. We were a strangely merry quartet. Or merry trio, which was even better. Sabine rallied in Christopher’s and my company, as if the joint presence of bodyguard and jester gave her strength. She sat up, ate a huge chocolate sandwich – half a baguette with half a bar inside – then asked Christopher to do his imitation of M. Bosse and laughed so hard she had to lie down again. I had heard this piece too often to find it funny any more on its own account, but just seeing Sabine in this mood made my spirits soar. Roland laughed too, and my spirits soared even higher: it was a toady laugh, done to placate us, done to fit in with the group and Sabine knew it. When she got up to go to the bathroom she stretched her hand out instinctively for mine, ignoring his altogether. Then, in what seemed to me a deliberate gesture of defiance, she half-trailed, half-swept her dressing gown over the puzzle tray, and when a whole wedge of completed puzzle came away, having caught on the wool of her sleeve, she shook it off carelessly so that it fell to the floor, scattering into single pieces; then she pushed at them – almost viciously – with her toes.

  Never mind, said Roland in a carefully unruffled tone, stooping to retrieve those pieces that had slid under the bed, We can amuse ourselves, like Penelope, putting it together again. On peut s’amuser.

  You can, she fired back at him. Well, not fired, but at least there was a trace of the old bark coming back into her voice. You can, Penelope. We would rather do something else.

  We. Yes, we – beautiful, sumptuous royal plural. In fact Sabine was so tired when she returned to bed that we ended up doing nothing, but even with her dozing we were three against one that afternoon, and the one was increasingly subdued and out of countenance. He left earlier than usual, putting up no show of resistance: a kiss on the hand for Sabine, who wiped it off afterwards on the sheet, another for Ghislaine, and he was gone. A cur slinking off into the dusk. As Christopher and I bicycled back to the château along the darkening road, emptier of traffic at this time of evening, I can remember feeling almost peaceful inside for once. Sabine was better, and when she was better she was more herself, and when she was more herself she was more mine, and therefore I was better too. Not so jealous, not so mad. The anaemia, the injection marks, the game, the cards, the missing cat – all these things seemed to fit back tidily inside my head in the compartments they had always occupied, prior to my letting them loose. Crumpled puppets, stashed back into their box after the show.

  He counted those frigging pieces of puzzle he picked up, Viola. Did you notice? Under his breath he
was counting. That makes two of them – we’ve nailed two of them already. Les deux vampires, de pire en pire.

  This Christopher sang to the strains of Carmen: ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle…’, that bit. I joined him and we shouted the words into the rim of the forest as we sped past, and the forest sucked them up like blotting paper.

  XIV

  Breaking Up

  In theory the coffins were our next task. Where did our vampire suspects keep their coffins with all that special home-dug earth inside? Count Dracula was run to ground – quite literally – by his pursuers when they noticed the unusually large shipments of Transylvanian soil that preceded his transfer to London. Where did Aimée keep the coffin in which she potted herself out during vegetative phases? Where did Roland and the Marquise keep theirs?

  Well, just you try scuffling around the vaults of Château de Vibrey, uninvited, in the wee small hours, looking for empty coffins. Or in the daytime for that matter, looking for full ones. No, Christopher was already losing interest and had refused to accompany us, and on our own Serena and I just didn’t have the guts. The long bike ride down the arterial road was daunting enough, with the camions lumbering past practically grazing your legs, to say nothing of gaining access to the castle without being seen or carrying out the search itself.

  But what else could we do that would give us definite proof? Because proof was what I craved now. Proof, certainty, anything to put an end to this dreadful pendulum swing between the twin instruments of torture – fear to jealousy, rack to wheel, take your pick and start all over. Sabine was better, ever since eating the chocolate sandwich she had continued to improve steadily, but how long would the improvement last? And would it last? Dr la Forge was hopeful, Ghislaine said; he was sure now it was chlorosis, and the course of chlorosis was nearly always benign.