Sabine

by A. P.

  She took it off when she saw me, and I noticed that behind it the tears were flowing just as copiously as if she hadn’t been wearing it at all. For a moment my reasoning stayed trustingly with the onions. Then, as I moved closer, I saw the colour of her eyes: deep olive, almost khaki, and in a flash my mind lurched forward into the terror zone. It was Sabine. I knew it was Sabine: she was worse again. Not much worse, or Ghislaine wouldn’t have been in the kitchen at all, she’d have been in the sickroom, but worse. Significantly worse.

  What’s happened, Ghislaine? For God’s sake, tell me quick. There’s been a relapse, hasn’t there?

  She nodded, and wiped the tears angrily away with the corner of a chequered dishcloth.

  It’s so stupid of me, forgive me, ma petite, but I can’t help it. It’s nothing serious, I’m sure, just a temporary setback. A fluctuation, like Dr la Forge says, in the normal course of the disease. Nothing to worry about. And I don’t worry, she went on quickly, flashing me a wild, unconvincing smile, I’m not worrying. It’s just that … Things were going so well, and now …

  Roland is back, isn’t he.

  It wasn’t a question, I didn’t ask it, I just said it.

  Her face lit up with a proper smile now, although only a thin, wistful one, and she took my hand and brushed it against her cheek: a soothing measure to counteract my jealousy.

  Oh, yes, thank goodness, he is back. He came last night, just before it happened. I would have preferred you, of course, my little English nurse who needs no instructions, but, tu vois, it was such a comfort to have someone with me.

  Tu vois, tu sais, tu comprends. Yes, I saw all right, and I knew and I understood – what had happened, what was happening and what was going to happen – but still I was powerless. And still without anything I could call a plan. Knowledge, a cheap cross and a plait of garlic – these were all I had at my disposal. The temptation to throw myself into Ghislaine’s arms and blurt out everything was so strong that I had to hold on to the edge of the table to stop myself. Clutch at it hard and bite the inside of my cheeks, too, until they hurt. If I faltered and unburdened myself on her kind, welcoming shoulder she would never let me near Sabine again. Motherly, yes, but she was Sabine’s mother, not mine, and I must remember this. She would listen to my rantings with a sampler of expressions on her face that would go from surprise to anger, passing through disbelief, irony, dismay and stupefaction on the way, and ending up, like as not, at sheer naked fright. Poor Viola, jealousy has affected her reason. She would call up Aimée, and Aimée would flap and telephone my father, and probably plunge me into a cold bath for good measure while she waited for the call to come through. Then she would summon Dr la Forge, and he would diagnose a crise de nerfs – a nervous breakdown due to stress – and prescribe rest and tonic and segregation, and I would be dragged away and sedated and put to bed in a darkened room and left there helpless while Aimée and her vampire cronies … I could see it all, clear as if it had already happened. No, I must resist, must combat that pathetic chick instinct to run to the hen-bird for protection in time of danger. My only hope now – our only hope now – lay with Sabine herself.

  Can I go up and see her?

  Of course you can, Viola, she would love it. Only go quietly. Don’t wake her if she’s sleeping. She needs sleep, this morning she looked so tired that I … Oh, I’m sorry, pay no attention – these wretched onions …

  The sickbed scene that followed was what Aimée would have called pénible – a word she used often, particularly in regard to the regrettable state of her most valued possessions such as the carpet, the piano, the screen, and the upholstery of the Peugeot. (That’s what comes of living so long, you old mutant, and being so tight with your money. Why not splash out on the first of each century? Be a devil. Should be easy when you’re half one already.) I knew it would be so – pénible, pathetic – but I had to play my part. I had at least to try.

  Sabine was not asleep, although I would have had no qualms about waking her if she had been: I had deliberately left Ghislaine’s request on this point unanswered. She was lying there motionless, propped up on the pillows in an artificial, ceremonious-looking fashion, as if arranged by some energy other than her own. Her hands stuck out stiffly like a doll’s, palms to the ceiling; her hair too had a doll-like quality about it: brushed tidily at the front but not at the back. Strands of it stuck to the pillowcase at odd angles to the head: by these dull gold rays against their white backdrop I was reminded of a monstrance.

  Perhaps this was one reason why I dropped down on my knees by her bedside. Another was in order to strew the garlic under the bed without her seeing. And the third was to beg her forgiveness before I started on my outlandish tale. What I had to do seemed so cruel. I already knew it would serve no purpose other than upsetting her and weakening her further. It wouldn’t even make her laugh, or not for long.

  Well? (Alors? Oh, that ductile word of hers, what was it now? So faint it was almost a sigh. How could he have done this to her? How could he, how could anyone?) Well, what is it, Viola? Can’t be that bad. Go on, vas-y, spit it out. My schedule for today is pretty empty, you can take all morning.

  I spat all right. I spewed. After a few initial stumbles, especially over the key term ‘vampire’, which I had to expel by force it rang so dotty, the words came spilling out of me like corn from a sack, abundant, unstoppable. And virtually impossible to stuff back into the sack again, although Sabine’s first reaction, when the last grains hit the floor, was, predictably, to make me try.

  What was all that? A comic turn to take my mind off things? Who do you think you are: foutu Fernandel?

  Yes, some of her remarks, like this one, I remember verbatim, but only very few. The others, the harsh ones, the scornful, lacerating ones that cost her such effort to deliver and me such pain to hear her deliver, are fortunately lost to my memory. Only the gist remains, the gist and the bitter, bitter flavour of defeat. The blight was back; it lay like a poisonous film between us, thin but impeding contact. Her body was there for me to see, her hand was mine to clasp, to press, to prise its fingers open with my own and grip it – tight, as tight as you would grip the hand of someone drowning or hanging from a precipice. Her neck was there for me to clasp the cross around; her head was there above it for me to lay my face against and hiss in desperation in her ear, Crois-moi, je te supplie. Wear this for my sake. What does it cost you? What does it cost you? Just a silly, tinny cross – but inside it she was his already.

  Do I have to spell it out to you, Viola? I’m knackered, can’t you see? I’ve had this frightful night – épouvantable. It’s all I need now, to have to give a lecture on teenage psychology. Look into yourself – you know perfectly well what the score is: you’re tired too, you’re worried, you hate him and you’re jealous. No, sorry, hate is wrong, and that’s where the knot is. But forgive me if I leave you to unravel it on your own. I’m just too tired, see? Too darn tired. And as for the other stuff – your phobia of penetration and whatnot, because, don’t kid yourself, that’s all the vampire symbol stands for – if you have any pity just cut it out and help save me the oxygen.

  That was more or less what she said to me. No, less, definitely, because I’ve omitted the swear words and some of the more scathing psycho-jargon regarding things like long incisors and rape fantasies and worse. I was jealous of Roland, jealous of her, jealous of their closeness, from which I stupidly saw myself as excluded. (Although I’d certainly get myself excluded if I went on like this, and pretty smartly too.) I was inhibited, I was raw and hysterical and immature and twisted, and all hung up about sex and the male. It was pathetic, the lengths I was prepared to go to in order not to face up to these few simple facts. It was unworthy of me; it was cruel and thoughtless and selfish. And it was so foutu boring, it made her scream. Or would do if she could find the breath. Please, Viola, please. I’d begged of her, now she was begging of me, would I come to my senses – now, this minute – and admit the whole thing had been a
stupid tasteless joke, or else just belt up and get out and leave her in peace.

  I had planted the garlic, and in her agitation Sabine seemed to have forgotten about the cross, which was still fastened round her neck. It was only the size of an acorn, hopefully she wouldn’t notice and would leave it there. Hopefully he would notice and, what with that and the aroma of hidden garlic, be foiled, at least for tonight. What else could I do now but obey her wishes and abandon her to her fate?

  Well, I could crouch outside the door in tears for one thing, but only until her voice reached me and told me not to.

  I know you’re still there. Do you recant, Viola? Do you take it all back?

  Like Galileo?

  Like Galileo, my foutu foot. You poor dope, you don’t even know what science is.

  Not bad, for the last spoken exchange between us. I doubt even Billy Wilder could have thought up a better. Shut up and deal, Viola. Nobody’s perfect. You don’t even know what science is.

  XVI

  The Rule of the Game

  Not yet belief or understanding, because what I blurted out to him was just a confused torrent of words, but sympathy and support – yes, these came in the end from where I least expected: my father.

  I rang him in the early afternoon when I arrived back at the château, still hungry but with no prospect of food because lunch was already over.

  When I was a child he had once spotted me from afar on the roof, walking the cornice for a dare. A school friend had put me up to it – a certain Imogen Black-Spinner whose name was the only thing my father liked about her. It was about a foot and a half wide, this cornice, and I was accompanied on the enterprise by my dog. Neither of us were greatly impressed or rattled by what we were doing – we had done it in parts several times before but never the whole way round.

  I remember my father’s spirit-level voice, hardly a raise in it at all, hardly an inflection, despite the distance it had to travel: I’d come down now, Viola, if I were you. No, don’t turn there, go on a little bit, that’s right, and turn … Yes, there, that’s right. And now go back, slowly, slowly – don’t mind about the dog, he’s got four legs, he’ll manage fine – slowly, slowly, back to the window you got out of, and then …

  He was like that now: the same voice, the same gentle precision perfectly masking the urgency that lay beneath. In answer to my garbled request that he come out immediately, to fetch me, help me, protect me – I wasn’t quite sure which, maybe all three; I just couldn’t hold out on my own any longer with these terrifying creatures hemming me in on every side – he made no objection at all.

  My sweet, don’t, don’t. There’s no need for you to try to explain anything. Especially not over this appalling line. Stay calm. I’m coming. I’ll be with you in – whatever it takes. At the latest by tomorrow evening. I’ll drop everything. No, no, how could it be too much trouble? You come first in my thoughts – always. My bottle of water is never trouble, you know that, don’t you? Trouble goes with strife, and that’s another story. No, no worries about sleeping arrangements either: we’ll find a hotel or something, we’ll work it out later. Just pass me over to Madame Whatshername a second … No? All right, all right, no. Whatever you say, my lovekin. But she’s there, right? You’re there? Fine, well, just stay there, stay put and wait until I come. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Tomorrow that ever is, I promise.

  It was like magic, like the steadying hand of our local blacksmith on the pastern of a nervy horse. I could almost hear myself blowing through my nostrils in relief as my muscles relaxed. My dad who loved me. In whose thoughts I came first. Here by my side. Tomorrow that ever was. Why, oh, why hadn’t I turned to him earlier? He knew my mind better than anyone; he knew I wasn’t mad; he would listen and he would sympathise, and in some way – leave it to him to find one – he would pluck me from this nightmare and bring me to safety.

  What about Sabine, though? Could he do the same for her? Ah, that was another matter and another question. I doubted that he could, not straight off: he had no authority where Sabine was concerned. And it was unlikely that Ghislaine, who did have the authority, or a certain amount of it, would allow her to travel in her present state. However, even here, in this darkest section of the tunnel, it at last seemed to me that I could see a glimmer of light. Obscured by a fog of ifs, but light all the same.

  My chain of reasoning went like this: if I could persuade my father to stay on here a few days (a fairly big if, once he knew the score: he was no coward, but physical courage was not his strong suit, he was even scared of moths); if I could persuade him to stay on, though, and if during that time the two of us together could successfully protect Sabine from Roland until she got her strength back, then (always depending if Sabine and Ghislaine were willing, and if Dr la Forge raised no opposition) we could whisk her away to England with us when we left. Home, to England and to safety.

  A plan at last, or a shred of one. But it too hinged on yet another if – the fifth: it might work, it could conceivably work, but only if I could shepherd Sabine through this last lonely night acting on my own resources.

  What were my chances here? Miserably slight. Two of my resources – the garlic and the cross – I had deployed already, leaving me with only my knowledge. My cruel, sterile knowledge, which, like a cancer specialist’s, enabled me to predict but not prevent. What other weapons had I, a girl of seventeen, against …?

  Oh yes, I know, but it took courage to acknowledge it: the answer was there, implicit in the question. Explicit, in fact, and too bad if it came accompanied by icy sweat and a wave of nausea. I was a girl and I was seventeen, and he’d batted his eyelashes at me the first time he saw me, and he’d asked me out on a date already. Just one more telephone call, Viola – you said there was a thread between you, no? Well, go on, give it a yank – and then back to the mirror with you, and to the scent bottle and the make-up box and all the tricks. Or to the butcher’s shop if you prefer. Mind you deck it out nicely, the meat, the bait, the decoy. Package it well: nice crisp wrappings, a sprig of rosemary, an eye-catching tag: ‘Prime English Cut, Last Day, Special Offer’.

  How difficult it is to tell this part of my story and how reluctant I am to tell it. Because to tell it entails drawing aside an even thicker set of curtains and reliving, in some cramped but still operative dimension, those shameful moments – in intention perhaps the only real act of heroism I have ever attempted, but in practice a queasy amalgam of brazenness and fright. My voice, which didn’t even sound like mine, so coy and teasing it came across, pronouncing his name, that loathsome name I never willingly uttered; sticking it in the same sentence as my own, so close they were almost touching: Roland? Roland, this is Viola. Yes, Viola. Yes, vraiment. I was ringing to ask you … I was wondering … er … I was wondering if the cinema offer was still valid. You know … that time you asked me to go with you to the cinema, remember? Because if it is, then maybe this eveni—It is} Oh, that’s … that’s terrific. Formidable. Mmm. Yeah. Great. See you at seven, then. A tout à l’heure.

  And that was only the start. What followed … Oh, I don’t know that I can bear to plunge again into such murky waters. Can I? Must I? And what is it exactly that this shame is caused by, its wound so deep it still smarts after all these years? By the fact that I dolled myself up like a siren? No, not that. By the fact that I was in effect aiming to steal my lover’s lover, albeit with the best intentions? No, not that either. By the despicable, unbidden frisson that his nearness gave me – similar to the one I’d had foisted on me by Dr la Forge’s forefinger and in roughly the same place? Not even, not even that. No, the cause of the shame is ignorance again – my deplorable, vulnerable ignorance. That is what riles me, that is what stings. Everyone knows, everyone knows but Viola.

  Anyway, if tell I must, let me get on with it. He came to fetch me. Punctually at seven. All lanky and laid-back and smiling, leaping out of the car to meet me and giving only the faintest of starts at my appearance, as if it happened to him every evening to go
out with a seventeen-year-old rookie whore. Good news, we’d struck lucky: by a fluke there was another Renoir film showing. Not the one he had wanted to see, a slightly older one, but well worth seeing none the less. La Règle du Jeu. Only we must hurry because it began at a quarter to eight.

  Aimée smiled approvingly at this, to her, totally meaningless piece of news as she consigned me into the predator’s hands. In fact she had smiled approvingly from the moment she had learned I was going out with him. (Esprit de corps – yes, I suppose you could call it that.) La Règle du Jeu, what a pretty title! Enjoy yourselves, now, the pair of you. You both deserve a little récréation. Drive carefully, Roland, won’t you, and come back immediately the film is finished. I’ll ask Madame Goujon to leave you out something to eat. I know Viola is safe with you – no one safer – but I shall sit up for her all the same.

  Or perhaps stand up was what she had in mind? Usher us into the salon with sandwiches and leave us there, and then stand outside in the darkness behind the window panes and hope for another live show? Well, if so, she was in for a disappointment. Whatever I found myself obliged to do in order to keep Roland occupied and away from Sabine, I certainly wouldn’t do it with Aimée looking on. Not any more. And if that cat should turn up I, who loved cats dearly, or most of them, would kick the lousy beast as far as Belgium.