‘You are very much like your maman. And I wouldn’t want either of you different. You look like her too.’
Cap waits. The silence stretches on and on. She knows her father will say nothing more on this subject but it is enough. It is like a jewelled relic that she will keep in a secret coffer in her mind. To break the silence, she says, ‘La comtesse told Ti-Loup that I don’t wash my hair and I stink. She should apologise.’
‘You know, Cap, that is like asking a fish to apologise for swimming. La comtesse lives in a different world from the rest of us. But Ti-Loup came to apologise and that is a remarkable thing. Be gentle with that sad little boy. And don’t forget that I owe my life to his mother. Treat her with respect. Treat everyone with respect.’
‘But she doesn’t treat me with respect. And you told me I should never kowtow.’
‘To treat her with respect does not mean you have to kowtow.’
Cap bathes and washes her hair. She wears shoes and her church dress. At the gates in the stone wall of the outer courtyard of the chateau she pauses, hesitates, and decides to climb the tree and drop over the wall instead, her habitual method of entry. She has done it this way since she was three years old, even though her father has a key to the great gates. Nested in the crook between the trunk and the branch that hangs over the wall, she can see the world. On one side of the wall is the chateau, the crushed-stone court, the wing of the grange above the underground cellars, the manicured chateau garden within its boxwood knots. On the other side is the gardener’s cottage, the potager, the herb garden, the orchard, the woods with their secret cellar, the vineyards stretching away towards the river on one side and the church spire on the other, the grey cluster of stone houses surrounding the church, the terracotta roof tiles of the village of St Gilles, within which is the establishment of Monsieur Monsard, the butcher. Cap can see everything. She could be God. She feels comfortable in trees, as though she were perhaps part bird, which maybe she is, given that her mother had flown from the nest the minute that Capucine was hatched.
In trees, there are so many footholds and handholds that walking along a limb is as easy as walking down a lane. Easier. Cap steps lightly along her branch, sees below her the thick line of the stone wall, passes it, then eases down into saddle position, one leg on each side. She bends forward, flattens her body along the applewood limb, her arms forward and fully outstretched. There surely cannot be anything more beautiful than the smell of living wood and crushed leaves, the view of the grass below. She bracelets the narrowing end of the branch with her hands and swings herself out to dangle above the six-foot drop. As her shoulders arc, her dress billows and catches on something. She feels the thud of the landing a split second after she hears the rip. She pitches forward and brakes her momentum with her hands.
There is a sharp jarring pain in her wrists. She has made this crossing so many times, more times than anyone could count, but always in coveralls, never in her best Sunday dress. Apparently this has made a difference. Her hands are blackened with earth and she wipes them carefully on the grass before she wipes them on her dress. She notes the tear, from hemline to waist. Fortunately it is at the back of her skirt and she can mend it before next Sunday. It will be important, of course, always to face la comtesse on this visit, never to let her backside be seen.
She is late for her rendezvous now.
She runs across the gravel court, her feet crunching the stones with a soft percussive sound. She pulls on the bell-rope at the great carved doors of the chateau.
A pageboy dressed in red velvet pantaloons greets her. Cap knows the boy, who is a couple of years older than she. The boy’s father raises goats and Cap has been to the farm with her father to buy goat’s milk and cheese. ‘Hi, Pierre,’ she says.
‘What shall I say is your business?’ Pierre asks.
Capucine grins. She puts a hand over her mouth but cannot keep her laughter stoppered in. ‘Pierre,’ she says. ‘It’s me.’
‘What shall I say is your business?’
‘Why are you talking funny?’
‘Because I’m not still a peasant like you. Why are you here?’
‘La comtesse wants to see me,’ she says. ‘She sent for me. Remember, Pierre, I’ve seen your dick. I’ve watched you showing it to the goats.’
‘Wait here,’ Pierre says with icy dignity, pointing to a spot just inside the doors. ‘And by the way, you have mud all over the front of your dress. La comtesse will not be impressed.’ He walks away from her down a hallway which seems to stretch to the end of the world.
Capucine leans back against the doors. She is in a small room with a stone floor that apparently exists solely to separate the lofty entry space from the hallway, down which a crimson river of carpet flows into the horizon of the chateau. Cap wonders if she should take off her shoes and leave them on the stone floor before she steps onto – or into? – such rich softness. A stone arch separates the entry room from the hall. There is a vaulted ceiling far above her head, though otherwise the dimensions of the entry room are small. Against one wall, the one on Cap’s left, is a narrow sideboard and above it a window. The flowered arc of a white potted orchid on the sideboard catches the light. When Cap looks to her right, she confronts herself in the most astonishing mirror she has ever seen. It stretches from floor to ceiling and is framed with elaborate gilt moulding. The top of the mirror is a golden forest of vine twisted around a fleur-de-lys. She is so awed by the mirror itself that at first she is barely conscious of the reflected vision of her unkempt self, of the mud on her dress, of the leaves and twigs caught in her hair, or of the reflection of the sideboard and the orchid behind her. Then she is charmed and confused by the reflection of the window above the sideboard and the seemingly infinite view down the boxwood hedges in the courtyard.
She approaches the mirror as though she might walk into it, through it, directly into the paths between the hedges. She thinks of pressing her mouth against her own lips.
She does not hear Pierre behind her.
‘Mon Dieu!’ he says. ‘Your dress is torn.’
Cap whirls around, clutching her skirt, holding its tattered hind-wings together.
‘I saw your underthings and your derrière,’ Pierre smirks.
‘That must be a shock,’ Cap says, ‘given how well acquainted you are with the backsides of goats.’
‘La comtesse is coming,’ Pierre says coldly. ‘Follow me. You are to wait in the salon.’
Cap enters a space so vast and so grand that it seems to her she may have crossed the river that separates this world from the next. In the hallway, there is a staircase. The banister is a coiled whorl of mahogany that Capucine wishes to stroke. There are intricately carved spindles that mount with the stairs. There are huge woven tapestries hung from high on the wall above.
‘The salon is in there.’ Pierre points through the doorway to the right, at the foot of the stairs. In the salon, there is another carpet, darkly crimson and convoluted in design, that glows against the stone floor like the red lamp above the altar in the church. There is a great carved wooden candlestick, taller than Cap. She caresses it, sliding her hand up and down its double-spiral whorl. She strokes the surface of a heavy sideboard with her fingertips. The dark wood feels like satin. She touches a porcelain vase, a marble bust. For a reason she does not understand, she feels as though she may begin to weep.
‘So you like beautiful things?’ La comtesse, in pale blue silk, stands on the staircase, her hand on the banister. ‘That is a Louis XIV,’ la comtesse says. ‘Walnut. Do you like it?’
Cap nods. She does not feel able to speak.
Slowly the countess descends the stairs. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘is it possible, after all, to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear?’ She studies Cap carefully. ‘You really are a wild thing, aren’t you? Completely wild.’ She is now on the third lowest stair but still far above Cap. ‘How old are you, child?’
‘I think I am nearly eight. But my father says I am not
quite seven.’
‘Indeed? And how does it come about that you and your father disagree about your age?’
‘Because we don’t have a birth certificate. The priest from St Gatien in Tours brought me. Papa says I was three weeks old, but Marie-Claire says I was older. She says I was born in the last weeks of the Occupation,’ Cap explains.
‘I see. I was here during the Occupation and you were not. I was married here in February 1945. You were not born then.’
‘I think I was, Madame la Comtesse, but the nuns were still hiding me in Tours. The priest didn’t bring me here until later.’
‘I see.’ The countess touches the crucifix that hangs from a gold chain around her neck. She touches it to her lips. She closes her eyes in prayer. Cap notes that her hands are trembling. After what seems to Cap an eternity, the countess says calmly, ‘Let us assume you are not quite seven. The same as my son. So you will make your First Communion together next year. My son is a gift from the Blessed Virgin.’
‘Yes,’ Cap says. ‘I know. He told me.’
‘When I was not quite seven …’ the countess says, but she trails into silence.
‘Did you live here?’ Cap asks. ‘With all these beautiful things?’
The countess raises her eyebrows. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I did. I spent my childhood here. Between here and Paris.’
‘Oh!’ Cap is enchanted. ‘The chateau and Paris! You must have been so happy!’ Such a childhood seems to her as seductively mythical as the rose gardens of troubadours and their fair ladies. When he is working in the vineyards, her father sings songs about that golden time. He sings in some strange kind of French – Old French, he says – that Cap does not understand. He sings of Tristan and Iseult, of Lancelot and Guinevere, of lovers who will die of their love and for their love. That time is not past, he has told her.
Do you mean you and Maman? she asked.
All the great love stories end in loss, he said. They are all as much about sorrow as they are about love.
‘Why do you think my childhood was happy?’ the countess asks.
‘Because of all these beautiful things. Because you love them. But Papa says love is always about sorrow and loss, and Petit Loup says you are always sad. Why are you sad?’
La comtesse is too stunned to speak. Her hand tightens on the banister. She leans against it then slowly, very slowly, subsides until she is sitting on one of the stairs, her silk skirt sighing around her and settling like a slowly deflating balloon.
‘Ti-Loup thinks it is his fault,’ Cap explains.
La comtesse stares at her blankly. ‘Who?’
‘Ti-Loup. Your son. He thinks it is his fault that you are sad.’
‘My son is my sole source of happiness,’ la comtesse contradicts sharply. Then she corrects herself: ‘My son and my devotion to God. These are the sources of contentment. My son is a gift from the Virgin Mary. You may refer to him as Monsieur le Vicomte Gwynne Patrice de la Vallière Vanderbilt.’
‘Madame la Comtesse,’ Cap says politely, ‘if Ti-Loup is your happiness, why do you want to make him so unhappy? You should not make him wear a dress.’
La comtesse, astonished, affronted, energised, stands and slaps Cap on the face. She is abruptly appalled by her own act. ‘Je m’excuse,’ she says. ‘I do not strike servants.’
Cap presses one hand to the sting on her cheek.
La comtesse is trembling. ‘I have never struck a servant before,’ she says, slowly subsiding again to sit on a stair.
‘I am not your servant, Madame la Comtesse.’
During several long seconds of silence, the countess and the child do not break eye contact.
La comtesse draws several deep slow breaths. ‘I am not someone who strikes servants,’ she says. She fiddles with the silk ribbons on her cuffs and her fingers begin to braid them absently. ‘It is also beneath me to answer the questions of servants.’
‘I apologise, Madame la Comtesse. My father says I must treat you with respect. We just wish, my papa and me, we wish he wasn’t such a sad little boy.’
The eyes of the countess widen with shock. ‘I would give my life for him,’ she says passionately. She takes short gasping breaths. She appears to be having trouble speaking. ‘I protect him from all possible harm. His father is trying to take him away from me. He is afraid of his father. I would die if anything –’
‘Madame!’ Cap says in alarm. ‘Madame, I will bring my papa.’
‘No,’ the countess says. ‘Wait.’ She breathes slowly. ‘I have taken a vow,’ she explains. ‘My son is dressed to give thanks to the Virgin until his First Communion. Like Louis XIV. Do you understand? Do you know history?’
‘Not very much history, Madame la Comtesse.’
‘The Queen, the mother of Louis XIV, had four stillborn children before her son Louis was born. For sixteen years after her marriage to Louis XIII, she was childless and mocked by the court. When Louis XIV was born, he was called Louis le Dieudonné, the God-given child, not only by his mother but by all the princes and courtiers of the realm, and he was promised to God. He wore a dress until his First Communion. And then he became the Sun King. My son, le vicomte, will also have a great destiny if I fulfil my vow.’
‘Now I understand why you are so sad, Madame la Comtesse. Did you also have stillborn children?’
‘No, I did not.’ Again la comtesse seems shocked and angry. ‘You are extremely impertinent, child. You have no idea of your station.’
‘I am sorry, Madame la Comtesse – I don’t know what my station is.’
‘Indeed you do not. I will have to speak to your father.’
‘My father says he owes you his life.’
‘Il a dit quoi?!’ demands the countess, astonished.
Impulsively, Cap hugs the countess. ‘Thank you, thank you, Madame.’
The countess stiffens and turns away and places a hand over her mouth. She scrunches her eyes tightly shut, and when she opens them she stares fixedly beyond the window, down the boxwood lanes, into the orchard. ‘Your father is a good man,’ she says at last. ‘We were children together. He danced at my wedding. I remember that. He was present with your little brother.’
‘Madame la Comtesse, my brother is much older than I am.’
‘At my wedding, he was a little boy. I waited a long time to marry. I was considered … une vieille fille, an old maid, you understand?’ The countess pauses, dazed, her eyes fixed on air as though her words are floating there and she is reading them back, unable to believe she has spoken them. ‘These questions … You have no understanding of your station, child. Absolutely none.’ La comtesse rubs her hands together as though scrubbing off mud.
‘I am sorry, Madame la Comtesse. I did not mean to upset you.’ Once again, instinctively, without forethought, Cap leans forward and kisses the countess on the cheek, three times, left, right, left, in the formal French manner. ‘My father says I must treat everyone with respect but question everything.’
La comtesse turns her head aside, much preoccupied with the lace cuff and the ribbons on her sleeve. After some time she says, ‘Your father, yes. He is an unusual man, your father. Sit here.’ She pats the space beside her on the stair.
‘Le vicomte is my only child. I made a vow on my wedding night and a vow must be fulfilled. And now,’ la comtesse presses one hand over her heart, ‘you have so disturbed me that I must meditate and pray. You will join me.’
Her wrist taken in a vice-like grip, Cap is led to one corner of the great salon. Two prie-dieux, twins, in lustrous oiled walnut, stand side by side. There are red velvet cushions on the kneelers. On each desktop rests an illuminated Book of Hours and a rosary. La comtesse kneels at the prie-dieu on the left and passes the rosary through her fingers, murmuring softly, her lips forming almost silent words. Her eyes are closed. She is in a passionate and private state. Elle est ailleurs, Cap marvels. La comtesse is not here, she is somewhere else. Cap is amazed, fascinated, aware that if she were to touch the c
ountess at this moment, lightning might strike.
Rosaries have never been part of life in the gardener’s cottage. Cap has never been quite sure of the rules. Pass the beads through one’s fingers, yes, that is obvious, but then what? Count them? Recite a psalm for each bead? Say a Hail Mary or a Pater Noster for each bead? The rosary on the prie-dieu where she herself kneels is made of cobalt blue beads strung on a silver chain. Cap moves the beads through her fingers, delighted by the rich colour, the smooth texture. After every tenth bead there is a small silver ball. She notes that the rosary of the countess seems to be made of pearls with a cloudy and pale green bead between each decade. She notes that the countess pauses at each bead and murmurs a prayer. Cap summons an image for each of her own blue beads as they pass between her fingers.
First bead: for her father. She imagines his face candling eggs, gazing at the baby brought by the priest, watering the new vines, winding the new runners along the wires.
Second bead: for Petit Christophe. She sees him training the runner beans, mulching tomatoes, ploughing in cover crops with a hoe, moving his boning knife through the channels between the bones, wiping blood off his hands, kissing Chantal.
Third bead: for her mother. Where is she? What happened to her? Did she look like the Virgin Mary? Did she hold her baby, kiss her, make promises, before surrendering her to the nuns?
Yes. Suddenly Cap is certain of this. The blue beads pass through her fingers like a string of days, all of them sunlit, all of them smelling of the fragrant skin of her mother. She feels a most wondrous calm, a benediction, settling on her like perfume, like ashes of roses, like peace. She can feel tears coursing down her cheeks.
‘That is the power of praying the rosary,’ la comtesse says, observing her. ‘I consider this a sign from the Virgin. She has placed the mark of her blessing on your forehead.’
‘The rosaries are very beautiful,’ Cap says.
‘Your beads are of lapis lazuli. Mine are pearls with jade for the prayers à Notre Père qui êtes aux cieux.’
The Claimant Page 19
