Girl At the Lion d'Or

by Sebastian Faulks

  She handed back the completed card to Mme Bouin. ‘When will I meet Monsieur the Patron?’

  ‘Monsieur the Patron? How should I know? He has the hotel to run and his other duties to attend to. Monsieur the Patron is an extremely busy man. Here now, you had better follow me.’ Mme Bouin stood up and circled the counter. She was much taller than Anne had expected. Her grey dress was inflated by a large bosom on which rested a gold chain and a handful of keys; she walked with an agile bustling movement, pulling a black cardigan about her shoulders as she led Anne to the foot of the stairs.

  ‘You may use the front stairs tonight. At all other times you will use the back stairs.’

  She went ahead up the thinning carpet. Anne watched the black-stockinged legs in their plain black shoes recede before her, briskly mounting the main sweep of the staircase and turning up another narrower set of stairs, then down a corridor lined with wardrobes and out on to a landing with a bare wooden floor.

  Mme Bouin indicated a further, twisting and carpetless flight of stairs. ‘Your room is at the top. There is a staff bathroom at the end of this passage on the left, though you must ask in advance if you wish to take a bath. Hot water is restricted and staff are not expected to bathe more than twice a week. You will find a jug and bowl in your room which are adequate for daily washing. You will be required in the kitchen at six-thirty, tomorrow morning.’

  Anne heard the rattle of keys on Mme Bouin’s bosom as she returned the way they had come. Alone again, Anne looked around her.

  The bedroom she had been allotted was under the eaves of the Hotel du Lion d’Or and its single window overlooked a back yard where she could see only filmy rain tumbling into the dark. There was an iron bedstead, a plain wooden chair, a small writing table and a chest of drawers with, as Mme Bouin had promised, a jug and bowl. A curtain in the corner concealed a hanging area for clothes which contained a black uniform. Although the room was plain and small, the rafters that slanted diagonally from above the window gave it a secure rather than imprisoning feeling; the agonised Christ above the bed could be moved somewhere he would be less visibly tormented; the bed linen, though rough and thinning, was clean; the bare floor, even if it was made only from boards, not parquet, had been scrubbed; and above the writing table hung a picture of a medieval knight.

  Everything Anne owned was in her two suitcases. Her favourite possession, a second-hand gramophone with a cracked but sonorous horn attachment, she had had to sell, since it was too heavy to carry and she didn’t think the Patron would approve of the sound of dance music coming from a servant’s room. The records themselves she had been unable to part with – half a dozen heavy black plates in brown paper covers which she stowed in the bottom drawer of the chest.

  Anne had left her door a few inches ajar so anyone on the landing below could see her light and might then be tempted to come and talk to her. Apart from Roland, Mme Bouin and the Patron, she had no idea who else the staff might comprise, but she hoped there would be at least someone who would be a friend for her – a girl of her own age, perhaps, with a big family in the town where she would be taken at weekends. When alone, Anne constructed fantasies of a kind in which the events were all conceivable but in which the crucial element of luck ran well for her. She didn’t want to live in a grand manor with cavernous rooms and wooded lands, but in one of those simple houses behind gates where children could be seen playing on the sandy paths and a dog padded silently across the grass. If once she saw such a place, her fantasy was unstoppable and she would bare its inner rooms to her scanning eye, and reshape, recolour and repeople them until they contained what she wanted.

  With her clothes unpacked, she arranged her half dozen books along the top of the writing table and propped her picture – a view of Paris roofs, layered and rainswept – on the chest of drawers. On the writing table, next to the books, she placed a photograph of her mother, taken fifteen years before. She wore a formal, posed expression which did not quite conceal a look of timid puzzlement about the eyes.

  The rain had stopped when Anne closed the shutters on the small window, though from outside she could hear the water that had gathered as it dripped from the eaves and rang on the paved courtyard below. She pushed her door a little further open and listened. She could hear the sound of crockery, distantly, and of a door banging, but otherwise nothing. Most people, she guessed, would now be in bed, so it was too late to ask Mme Bouin or anyone else whether it was permissible for her to have a bath. She took her dressing-gown from behind the curtain and went quietly down the twisting staircase and along the corridor to the bathroom. She went in and locked the door, a simple action which caused an eruption of furtive activity backstairs.

  Roland’s scabrous face was boiling with a mixture of anguish and excitement as he bent down and took off his shoes. He tiptoed out of the back pantry and down the corridor. He passed a vast sink which was awash with cold water and the hotel’s feebly crested crockery (‘Leave it for the new girl in the morning,’ Bruno, the chef, had said) and a wall full of unused culinary implements of the more sophisticated kind – peculiar fish-kettles and elaborate double-steamers – which Bruno regarded with robust contempt.

  The room next to the servants’ bathroom was a linen store, and it had been Roland’s aim, planned over many months, to steal the key from Mme Bouin’s bunch, copy it and return the original before she should notice. Since the keys seldom left her bosom this operation had not been without problems. The copied key didn’t fit very well, but it did turn the lock into the little windowless box whose slatted shelves were heated by the long pipes that ran down the wall. Roland breathed heavily, smelling timber, mice and mothballs, as he lifted the linen from one of the shelves, noting how it had been stored, before he put it to one side.

  High on the other side in the bathroom he had removed a tile, and twice a week on bath-nights he had worked away at the plaster, taking away the débris in his washbag at the end of the operation. Once the connection was made, he had concealed the hole in the linen closet with old bedspreads and curtains he knew were unlikely to be required. He ended up standing on one leg on the support of a lower shelf, craning diagonally upwards and drawing the rogue tile through to the linen room on a piece of string.

  The reward for his hard work had been the sight of Sophie, Anne’s predecessor, taking her twice-weekly bath. She was a sturdy girl from Lyon and not one who had previously attracted much attention from men, but Roland was loyal to her charms. Although the steam sometimes made it hard for him to see as clearly as he would have liked, he never missed an opportunity.

  He had waited anxiously for his first view of Sophie’s replacement and, when he had first glimpsed her at the station, he had not been disappointed. Now in his hurry he pulled the tile through with more than the usual noise. He waited for a moment, holding his breath, listening for a sound of protest from the bathroom. He heard nothing, and when he could wait no longer he jammed his bursting face against the opening.

  The first thing he saw was a girlish undergarment of whose exact name or purpose he was unaware. It had lace trimmings and hung over a wooden towel horse, irritatingly close to his line of vision. Through the equally frustrating steam that rose from the bath he saw the girl’s hair pulled up from her neck by a ribbon and saw where the stray wisps hung dark against the whiteness of her shoulders. There were perhaps some freckles there too, but Roland’s eye scorned such detail.

  She leant forward to turn on more water and he saw the fall of her breasts, a movement of surprising weight given the slightness of her frame. Then she raised her knee and he could make out the line that traced the distance from calf to mid-thigh; it ran like the outline of the fashion drawings he sometimes saw in newspapers – just a casual sweep that seemed to hint, by slenderness, at unforetold curves. He remembered the sturdy legs of Sophie which, until then, had seemed quite adequate.

  Anne herself had little vanity about her body, though sometimes she felt a vague gratitude towards it
for what it had taken her through. When she looked at her ankles and feet, so soft they seemed almost unused, or gazed in the mirror at her dark eyes, which were unlined and full of light, she wondered where she carried her experiences. Perhaps they lay stored in microscopic cells in her blood, or perhaps they lay waiting to ambush her in her mind. The body itself seemed full of health and latent energy; the physical contrasts of girl and woman, still not quite resolved, gave it charm.

  When she stood up with her back to him, Roland almost made the mistake of closing his eyes in ecstasy. She let the water out of the bath and went to the wash basin where she cleared the steam from the mirror and leaned forward, her feet apart, to look closely at her face. She moved then with a youthful swiftness, her body visible only momentarily as she dried it out of the line of Roland’s questing eye.

  Anne climbed the stairs after her bath, glad that she had not been interrupted by Mme Bouin hammering on the door. She pulled out the bolster from under the sheets and up-ended it behind the hanging curtain. She lay down in bed and found the ache of carrying heavy baggage, the noise of the train and the fear of newness were all forgotten as she clutched herself tight beneath the eiderdown, sailing out into sleep.

  Frequently she dreamed, strange unpleasant dreams relating to the events of her childhood. She never told people about them. She had read in a magazine that it was bad manners to tell others what you dreamed at night. Things which seemed so real to you meant nothing to them. It was hard enough to show an interest in the actual events of other people’s lives without being bored by their night-time imaginings.

  The trouble was that Anne’s dreams weren’t really fantasies or exotic figurations. They were prosaic, repetitive and based on fact. Her dream on that first night at the Lion d’Or held all the usual elements, though with the puzzling variation that much of it took place in an old-fashioned inn with straw on the floor, perhaps because Anne had fantasies about rustic inns which the Lion d’Or had not fulfilled.

  The end came in what old Louvet termed the only misery, abandonment. She ran into a field and called out some word, some mysterious sound.

  Then, that night anyway, she fell away into calmness.

  2

  ON HER FIRST evening Anne was sent to work in the town bar, which was on the other side of the hall from the main dining-room and had a door opening straight out on to the street behind. The position of the hotel made the bar a meeting place for people passing through and sometimes this gave it an agreeable air of bustle and change.

  Two men stood with their feet on the rail of the bar and their elbows on the zinc counter, talking in voices which, although conspiratorial, were not in any way muted, so that as she went about her work Anne could hear everything they said.

  ‘Hartmann. Yes, I’ve known him since we were children,’ said one, a man in his middle thirties with unusually curly hair and a mellow speaking voice. There was something angelic about his head, but his hands were small and restless. He reminded Anne of a man she had seen in a film magazine.

  The other man grinned. ‘I never thought he’d take on that leaky old manor when his father died. He’ll be needing a lot of work doing on it, I shouldn’t wonder. All good news for the workers.’

  He was small and dark with a chirpy note in his voice that seemed to place him lower down the social scale than his companion. His name, it transpired, was Roussel.

  ‘If he can be persuaded to part with his money, of course.’

  ‘Is he mean, then?’

  The film star rolled his eyes. ‘When we lived in Paris, Hartmann used to walk round to my apartment every night, though it was a long way away, so he could use my telephone because he was too tight-fisted to use his own.’

  ‘But I thought M. Hartmann was a friend of yours?’ said Roussel.

  ‘Yes, he is. My best friend.’

  Roussel glanced down at the bar and moved his drink from hand to hand. ‘I suppose it’s the Jewish blood in him. Have you known him for a long time?’

  ‘We were at school together. I remember another time. Hartmann invited me to bring a girl – a young woman I had met at the opera – and come round to his apartment so we could all go to the theatre. He was to bring his floosie of the moment. Then we went out to dinner afterwards, a place he said he knew off the rue Saint Denis – all of this was to be a treat on him, you understand. And then suddenly at the end of dinner he says he’s left his money behind and has no means of paying. He presents me with the bill from the theatre and from the restaurant. He said he’d pay me back, but of course he never did.’

  ‘But that’s terrible,’ said Roussel, standing up on tip-toe in agitation. ‘Why didn’t you ask him for the money back? I mean, if he had agreed to it?’

  ‘There are certain things one cannot do. As a gentleman, you understand. I reminded him once, politely. That’s really all one can do.’

  Roussel looked shame-faced, and swirled his cloudy drink round in his glass. Then his manner lightened as an idea seemed to strike him. ‘I suppose he’ll want a builder at the Manor, won’t he? You know my company has diversified. We do all sorts of different kinds of work now, it’s not just earth-shifting and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes, he may need someone. If you don’t mind a few delays with the payments.’

  ‘Well . . . things could be better in business at the moment. I mean, we’re doing well, but it’s the general feel of the times, isn’t it? And I thought that since you know him, you might be able to . . . put in a word. We could do it ever so cheap. Though I wouldn’t want to put you in a tricky position – you know, having to talk business with him, something that might damage your friendship.’

  Covertly, Roussel motioned Anne to refill the film star’s drink, which she did, earning a conspiratorial wink from Roussel as he slipped some coins across the counter.

  ‘I’m rather tired of fixing things for Hartmann,’ said his friend. ‘I’ve just arranged some work for him. You know, the big negligence case when three men died last year in the accident at the marsh reclamation works. It’s coming on in Paris and Hartmann is acting for the company.’

  ‘You fixed that for him?’

  ‘I put in a word here and there. He told me he was looking for work and he hasn’t been in these parts for such a long time I think most people have forgotten who he is.’

  Anne watched Roussel’s eyes widen. She was surprised at the way they talked so openly in front of her, as though she didn’t really exist, or as though being a waitress made her deaf or wholly discreet.

  ‘Have I shown you our new business card?’ said Roussel. He took one from his pocket. ‘We’re the first people to have them in this area. Here. Building, construction, decoration. We do anything really.’

  ‘Very nice.’

  Roussel tried several more times to bring the conversation back to Hartmann and any work he might need doing, but the other man seemed to have lost interest. Eventually Roussel took his coat from behind the door and said goodnight.

  When he had gone, the man with the curly hair turned slowly to face the bar. ‘It’s obvious from your accent,’ he said to Anne, ‘you’re not from anywhere round here.’

  ‘No, that’s right. I’m from Paris. I arrived yesterday.’

  He silently appraised her face and she looked back at him. His eyes were narrow and his nose was hooked, but his face was boldly shaped and the overall effect was handsome in a striking if unusual way.

  ‘So you’ve replaced the girl – what’s her name, Sophie?’

  ‘Yes. Her mother was ill and she had to go back to Lyon.’

  ‘Do you know anyone here?’

  ‘No one at all.’

  ‘Now you do. André Mattlin.’ He held his hand out over the bar for her to shake. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to, monsieur.’

  ‘Not now. I meant when you’d finished here. What time is that?’

  ‘I think we close at eleven-thirty, but –’

  �
��That’s fine. I have my car outside and there’s a place I know near the station that stays open till quite late. I could take you there and show you something of the town.’

  Knowing that she should say no, Anne agreed.

  3

  IT WAS FIVE days later, on her first afternoon off, that Anne walked up the boulevard and took the bending road to the left that led down to the public gardens on the river bank. Some people called it the main boulevard, which was misleading in that it implied there were others. Its claim to the title was in any case dubious since it didn’t offer the broad leafy sweep that people associate with the word. It did, admittedly, have trees on either side of it – plane trees chiefly, with one or two unaccountable cypresses – though their effect was less than majestic. The mayor at this time was a forester, a man bloated with civic pride as well as by the numberless municipal meals he ordered to be served in the formal dining-room of the town hall. The best way he could bring his woodland skill to the town, he thought, was by taking a special interest in the trees. The planes along the boulevard were thus, on his instructions, pollarded with a proud frequency. Their branches, naked against the grand houses behind, took on a pained, over-tended look, when the thin sandy pavements on either side and the slatted wooden benches needed something denser in the way of foliage if the road were really to aspire to the name of boulevard.

  It had been built originally on top of an old wall that had marked the edge of a small village fortification and the houses set back on either side were the oldest and certainly the grandest – to those who liked that solid provincial architecture – that Janvilliers contained. Most had four storeys, wrought-iron balconies overlooking the boulevard and shady gardens behind them. Those on the west were considered slightly smarter, and it was not unknown for socially ambitious families to cross the street into an identical house on the other side when they felt they could afford it. There was no good reason for this preference unless it was that the gardens on the east side backed on to the rue des Ecoles, which could be noisy. Both rows of houses presented a monumental face with their double iron gates and frequent notices warning of hostile dogs.