The Betrayal

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘Martel,’ she said and drew him quickly into the compartment.

  The sight of Martel in front of her, solid and unhurt, tore something loose inside her. She crushed him tight against her to keep him from the greedy fingers of Death.

  ‘Romaine, you’re drunk.’

  But his words weren’t an accusation. They weren’t angry or fierce. They were soft and quiet and cool as snow on her burning skin. His arms held her, kept her on her feet when the swaying of the train tried to topple her. She wanted to tell him she’d been sick with worry about him but the words were too slippery on her tongue, and so she just tucked her cheek against his neck. She felt his hand cradle the back of her head, as if he understood how heavy it was.

  ‘Who are you?’ she heard him ask Josephine. His tone was unfriendly and suspicious.

  She’s my friend. But the words remained locked inside Romy’s head.

  ‘I am Josephine. The lovely Romy and I have been passing the hours together. So you’re her boss, are you?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, monsieur, let me tell you that she has been fretting herself silly over whether the gendarmes got to you too. She wanted to come and find you but was frightened that the police or the carriage attendant might still be watching her. She didn’t want to lead them to you.’ The singer released one of her infectious laughs. ‘Mon dieu, don’t look like that. She has been tight-lipped as a clam. I know nothing about what the hell you two have been up to, though I admit I am mighty curious.’

  ‘I saw the police climb off the train without you,’ Martel told Romy. ‘But I didn’t risk coming here until now when the attendant left his seat in the corridor for a toilet break. Are you all right?’

  Romy nodded. It didn’t feel good. Her head had detached itself from her body. With his arm around her, Martel walked her gently to the bed. Josephine was sitting at one end with her dog, looking far fresher than she had any right to be, cards still in her hand, and at the other end of the bed was the spot where Romy had been seated. Beside it in an unruly pile lay a large number of franc banknotes. Josephine tucked Mimi under her arm and scooted off the bed, but as she squeezed past Martel to reach the door, she trailed her crimson fingernails along his arm.

  ‘Dammit,’ she purred, ‘she can outplay me at poker even when she’s drunk as a skunk. I do hope you are not a man to take advantage of a girl when she’s not at her best.’

  Martel eased Romy on to the bed as if she were made of glass.

  ‘No, madame.’ He was leaning over Romy and she could see his mouth pulled up on one side as if unable to suppress a smile. ‘I am not the kind of man who would jump on a woman in the middle of the night.’

  His smile spread, reminding Romy of her own words and she felt her cheeks flush scarlet. He laughed softly and kissed her forehead.

  ‘Sleep well. We’ll be in Paris in the morning.’

  ‘Why not, Martel?’ Romy mumbled, suddenly angry with him. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to jump on me? Am I too dirty for you?’

  ‘Don’t, Romaine.’

  She felt his hand on her head, the warmth of it finding its way between her curls.

  ‘Go away,’ she snapped. ‘Both of you, go away. Leave me alone.’ She put a hand over her face.

  ‘It’s the drink talking,’ Josephine said with an easy laugh. ‘Ignore it. She’ll be better in the morning.’

  Romy heard Martel sigh. ‘I don’t think she knows how to get better.’

  They left the couchette, switched off the light. She lay there in the dark, hating Martel and the bourbon. Hating the money that lay on the floor. Hating the dreams she knew would come.

  Hating herself.

  The sky was slate grey. Raindrops clung to the window and blurred the flat landscape outside as the train approached Paris. Romy sat in her crumpled black dress in her couchette nursing a blinding headache, a pot of black coffee brought by the steward and a fierce sense of rage. Rage at herself.

  What had possessed her? How could she possibly have thought that diving into a bottle of bourbon last night was the answer to anything?

  You’re drunk. Martel’s words. The look in his eyes when he said them wouldn’t go away. It sat there between her and the rest of the world. It made her feel as if she’d put her skin on inside out this morning, the raw and tender side exposed. She sat very still. Because even the air hurt her skin.

  Josephine Baker breezed in from enjoying breakfast in the dining car, looking stunning in a fitted jacket and harem trousers the colour of milk chocolate. Only a slight redness of her eyes betrayed any discomfort from the night before.

  ‘Well, someone is not exactly a ray of sunshine this morning,’ she laughed.

  Her laugh was too loud. It dragged its nails across Romy’s skin.

  ‘Here, take this.’ Romy held out her winnings from the card game. ‘I apologise, Josephine. I shouldn’t have fleeced you last night.’

  ‘No, damn right you shouldn’t, you thankless creature. But I guess all is fair in love and cards.’ She grinned forgivingly, but nevertheless pocketed the money and breezed out again.

  It was when Romy turned back to the window that she realised that the train was slowing down. There was no scheduled stop between here and Paris. She heard the brakes. It was stopping in the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Come with us.’

  Romy would rather go with a viper.

  One uniformed gendarme filled the doorway of Romy’s couchette and another stood inside with her, boxing her in. He smelled of rain and yesterday’s body odour. His face was broad and self-satisfied, the face of a man who enjoyed his work.

  ‘What for?’ she asked.

  ‘We need to ask you some questions.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Just pick up your belongings and come with us.’

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘To the police station.’

  He gestured to the two police cars outside the train window, parked in the field of spiky wheat stubble that ran alongside the track.

  Parked in a wheat field?

  Couldn’t they wait until she reached Paris? Something was wrong here. The police didn’t park in fields. Did they? Yet the cars were real police cars and the uniforms were real uniforms and they had flashed a real badge at her.

  Martel, are you all right? Have they come for you too? How do they know we are here? She wanted to barge past the policemen and run down the corridor to the next carriage to find him, but she didn’t move a muscle. She wouldn’t lead them to him.

  The only reason for stopping the train between stations must be to remove her from the train in secret. Why would they need to do that? It didn’t make sense. Her heart was a hard knot in her chest and her mouth was as dry and empty as the bourbon bottle on her bed. She made the policemen wait stiffly while she finished her coffee. When she put the cup down, it wasn’t shaking. Her only shred of satisfaction.

  If Josephine Baker heard the police in the next couchette, would she bother to warn Martel?

  She picked up her bag. She was ready.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  FLORENCE

  I don’t like breakfast. It sets my teeth on edge. I would skip it if I had my way. For Chloé’s sake I pick at my croissant. She likes me to be here at the table, even though she spends the whole meal with her nose in a book. Today it is Patapoufs et Filifers.

  Roland sits in silence opposite me, though I barely see a trace of him behind his newspaper, Le Figaro. At intervals his hand becomes visible when it sneaks round for his coffee cup. I have often chided them both for this daily rudeness but I cannot break them of the habit.

  I observe my daughter’s face in repose and as always I am captivated. I could watch her forever. Even when reading, her features are mobile and alive, expressions of concern or amusement flit across her young face like sunlight on water, forever changing. She possesses my mother’s beautiful cornflower-blue eyes and high forehead, but there is something of my father in the s
hape of her head, something of him in the set of her jawline. At times when she is soft and sleepy, I run my finger along it, lingering there, and imagine that I am reconnecting with my father. One day I will tell her. But not today.

  ‘What are you doing today, Florence?’ Roland asks.

  He folds his newspaper with neat creases and regards me attentively. He asks me this every morning. Chloé looks up from her page, awaiting my answer. They keep tabs on me, these two.

  ‘I have a manicure appointment this morning, then lunch with Marianne Rambert at L’Étoile. Afterwards we are off to a gathering in rue de Rivoli where Jean-Paul Sartre will be giving a speech.’ I smile at them. ‘Satisfied?’

  They smile back, satisfied. They do not suspect the lie.

  The rain has stopped. I walk past a woman washing her hair in a bucket on the pavement. I stare in shock. She smiles at me with no teeth and I throw her a coin because what else can I do?

  How can my sister live in a street where people wash their hair in a bucket? On the pavement. How long is Romaine going to continue to punish herself this way? She has lovers but no love. She has jokes with her drinking companions but no joy. Her eyes light up for only two things – for her wretched aeroplanes and for Chloé. She loves them with a passion. Far more than she loves me. I can forgive her the idealistic left-wing claptrap that she spouts, but she can’t forgive me my right-wing pro-Nazi stance. There is no middle ground where we can meet. Except Chloé. She is our no man’s land. Our focus of love. In Chloé we see the best of each other.

  The door to Romaine’s building is thankfully open, but I find access to it blocked by a pair of broad female buttocks clad in a threadbare housecoat. The woman is on her knees scrubbing the doorstep and hallway. It strikes me as a valiant gesture amid all the dirt that surrounds her.

  ‘Bonjour, madame,’ I say.

  The concierge hoists herself to her feet, hands on wide hips, damp cloth dangling. Her expression in repose is peevish, but at the sight of my couture pastel suit and delicately frivolous hat she beams goodwill at me.

  ‘Good morning to you, madame, what can I help you with?’

  ‘I’m here to see Mademoiselle Duchamps. I am her sister.’

  She studies my face with interest. ‘Of course you are. I can see the resemblance. But she’s not here.’

  I assume an expression of distress. ‘Oh no, I need to speak to her urgently. Do you know where she is?’

  Her eyes narrow. She is wary now. ‘Out.’

  I don’t push it. Instead I extract two one-hundred-franc notes from my purse and slip them into the pocket of her faded housecoat. Neither of us mentions it.

  ‘Do you think I could wait in her room for her to return?’

  ‘It could be a long wait.’

  I smile encouragingly. ‘I’ll risk it.’

  ‘Wait here.’

  She shuffles off to the inner recesses of the building and returns after only a couple of minutes with a bunch of keys.

  ‘Upstairs,’ she says and starts to climb, keys jangling.

  I follow.

  The room is no different from when I saw it the day we danced together. It is awful. Worse than awful. The zinc bucket in the middle of the room has ten centimetres of rainwater in it from last night’s downpour and the smell in the air is damp and sour, but I ignore it all. I am not here for the room.

  I am here for her secrets.

  I look first at what clothes my sister has hanging up. It appals me how few and meagre they are. A couple of skirts, a dress, three blouses, a pair of black trousers. A sweater. A cardigan. That’s it. She must be wearing her flying gear, as it’s not here.

  Where are the pieces I’ve given her? Silk blouses, chemises, a summer dress. Where? And the navy Schiaparelli gown she wore at Monico’s.

  All gone. What does she do with them? Give them away? Sell them? Anything, I suspect, rather than keep them here in her room where she will have to look at them. If she looks at them, she will have to think of me, and clearly that is something she cannot bear to do. The tick of a pulse starts up in my throat and I can’t make it stop, but I know what it is. It is a pinpoint of pain. I am hurting.

  ‘Romaine,’ I whisper out loud.

  Her name drifts through the room and memories come swirling with it. My father’s voice, sharp and insistent. Romaine, put down that knife.

  The pain in my throat is so fierce I cannot swallow. I turn my back on the sounds and their echoes and I inspect the room. I detach myself from the pain. From the voices. There is nowhere to hide anything, just a small box with a few bits and pieces in it, three packs of playing cards, a hairbrush, a penknife, and, surprisingly, a chess set carved out of a dark wood. I say surprisingly because I didn’t know that my sister could play chess. I wonder who she plays with.

  I look under the bed. I lie flat on my stomach and peer underneath. I should have known. Should have expected it,but even so it catches me by surprise and I feel stupid for being naive. There are whisky bottles hiding under the bed as if scared of the light. They are all empty, all twelve of them. My stomach turns with disgust.

  So that’s it, it would seem. The room has nothing more to show for itself. Nothing more to tell me. Except that I know my twin sister better than anyone else on earth and so I know exactly where to look. I flick back the dusky pink bedcover I gave her and untuck the sheet. It takes me no more than five seconds to find the slit in the side of the mattress that she has stitched together with a bootlace.

  I undo it, push my hand inside and pull out a drawstring bag. It brings pieces of black horsehair mattress stuffing with it but I brush them off and open the bag. I gasp. Romaine. I expected a secret stash of cash but not this much. I don’t take it out, don’t count it, but I can see it must add up to quite a decent hoard. So why ask me for money? Well, sister mine, I am impressed. No wonder you live like a pauper.

  In an odd way, I am proud of her. She has a goal. I sit on my heels and try to work out what it is, until it dawns on me in a moment of absolute clarity. I know she has only two passions – Chloé and aeroplanes. Chloé has no need of Romaine’s money. So it is obvious. My sister is saving for an aeroplane of her own.

  I shiver. Part pride, part fear. But I laugh at myself for not having thought of it years ago, because I remember her as a child staring at the photograph of the aviatrix Elise Raymonde de Deroche hanging on her wall and swearing that she would own a plane herself one day. Her face tight with intent, her young voice booming out loudly in the room. Startling me.

  Oh, Romaine, be careful. Those planes will be the death of you one of these days.

  The thought chills my heart and I quickly close the drawstring, sealing the thought inside. Would you be happy, Romaine, if you had your plane? I sit here on my heels for a full minute waiting for an answer in the damp little room and then I open the drawstring bag once more. Into it I place all the banknotes I have in my own purse – ten thousand francs – and slide it back deep in the mattress. The horsehair is prickly but not unpleasant to touch. I rethread the bootlace that seals the split and pat it with satisfaction when it is done.

  Now, Romaine. Now, will you be happy?

  Will you forget that day in the study?

  There is so much to forget. The whiteness of your skin, the redness of your hands. The rattle of your breathing, as if a can opener had got inside you. You were good when the police came. Oh, Romaine, you were so good that I almost believed you myself when you told them you were with me in the garden and begged them to track down Papa’s killer. When you looked Karim Abed straight in the eyes and called him a liar. The police believed you. I could see it. They trusted you. More than they trusted me.

  Papa is dead because of you, Romaine. How can either of us ever forget that? You changed our lives forever.

  I shake myself. Literally. To strip the thoughts and images from my head, but their tentacles twine deep inside it. I jump to my feet. It is this room. It contains almost nothing, yet is so full of the past
. I pace the bare floorboards and catch a glimpse of myself in a small square mirror that is the only object that adorns the walls. I look as though someone has slapped my cheeks. Red blurs on my pale skin.

  The mirror reminds me of another of your hiding places as a child. I stride over to it, remove it from the wall and look at the back of it. I smile. You do not change, Romaine. On the back is stuck a photograph. I expect it to be one of your aeroplanes but it isn’t. It is you and me. We are standing on a beach, barefoot, with our skirts tucked up above skinny pin-straight legs. No more than nine or ten years old, white-blonde hair to our shoulders, yours curlier than mine. We are holding hands and smiling. Not at the camera, at each other. Eyes fixed on each other as if nothing else in the world exists.

  I start to cry.

  There is more. Much more.

  I stand there with the blurred image of us in front of me until the tears stop. I never cry. Never. But now I feel as though all my innards have been ripped out and shredded, and I remember the last time I felt this agony, the last time I cried. It was the night after Papa died.

  I swore then – and I swear now – never to cry again.

  I rehang the mirror. I dry my face. I stalk around the room once more, now that I know what I am looking for. I stop in front of the small bedside table made out of bamboo that has seen better days. I crouch down and look at its underside and yes, I am right. A brown envelope is pasted there. I examine it but it is sealed. I consider what might be in it.

  I don’t trust you.

  I peel it away from the table, tear open the flap and take out a single sheet of paper. It is covered in my sister’s bold black handwriting and a throb sets up behind my eyes because I know what is coming.

  To the Police

  My name is Romaine Céline Duchamps. On 18 July 1930 I was living with my parents, Antoine and Adelle Duchamps, at 14 rue Souchard, Paris, when my father was murdered.

  I killed him. I cannot remember why I committed this terrible act but I know that I did. I became unconscious and when I woke up I was in my father’s study. He was lying dead on the floor with a paperknife in his throat and I was covered in his blood.