House with Blue Shutters, The

by Hilton, Lisa

  SUMMER HOLIDAYS

  Otto must once have been a beautiful man, Claudia thought, though the dark, French type aged better. He looked like a Viking next to the Marquis, more so because his straight, massive shoulders were encased in a rough, dark-blue Breton shirt with a pocket in front, which would have looked ridiculous on Malcolm Glover, but seemed stylish and somehow urban on Otto. He was much heavier than Charles-Louis, but his eyes, still a sharp, sudden blue flash, and the remaining gold streaks in the grey hair on his collar, made him an attractive man. Claudia wondered if the Marquis noticed that she noticed. They had driven up to the chateau in Otto’s high, smooth car early in the morning, before it grew too hot, although the windows on the lower floor were already shuttered against the banking sun.

  Charles-Louis had said he would be delighted to show Otto over the house, though he doubted whether there would be anything to learn. He had fetched some books from his study, biographies of Hitler and de Gaulle, and Otto looked over them politely as he explained his story in simple but well-accented French.

  ‘There are some rooms closed up,’ Charles-Louis explained, leading them up the stairs and along a landing, ‘but you can have a look if you care to.’ They turned into a small, pretty room with a bow window giving on to what Claudia guessed would be the garden at the back, with a rather lovely day bed in pale green silk, figured with an old-rose pattern, and a cream tiled fireplace. A modern desk featured a wedding photograph of Delphine in a sort of Renoir confection with an outsized cartwheel hat. ‘Delphine has this room,’ explained Charles-Louis, though Claudia had already ascertained with relief that she and the little boys had gone to the riding stables near Landi. Charles-Louis unlocked a little door, let into the panelling next to the fireplace, which gave on to a narrow passage with bare buff-coloured walls and a tight, twisting staircase. Claudia loved the sense of secrecy of these servants’ alleyways, she had seen them at Versailles and Fontainebleau. Otto hunching over, they came up into a larger space, a gallery that ran the length of the building. It was quite empty, except for an ugly green futon thing, and the air was thick and close, as though the windows had not been opened for years.

  ‘I haven’t been up here since I was a child,’ remarked Charles-Louis.

  The telephone rang below them, deep in the passages.

  ‘I’ll leave you,’ said Charles-Louis, his feet disappearing down the stairs, ‘come to find me when you’re ready.’

  ‘Shall we carry on, Otto?’ asked Claudia. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  They progressed along the gallery, leaving marks in the dust. Now that Claudia’s eyes were accustomed to the dimness, she could make out vague shapes along the walls, a palimpsest of figures beneath what looked like a hasty coat of whitewash. As Otto fiddled with the bunch of keys the Marquis had handed him, Claudia noticed a patch of wall in one of the window bays that had not been covered.

  ‘Otto!’ she called. ‘Sorry, could you just give me a hand?’

  The window latch had been painted into immobility, and after struggling breathily for a few minutes Otto simply struck it hard from underneath with the heel of his palm. Flakes of paint scattered on to the floor as they wrestled the window wide enough for Otto to reach through and beat open the shutters. The gallery was suddenly alive with dust motes, dancing like plankton in the dark air. Claudia squatted in the dusty corner, fumbling around in her handbag for the clear plastic wallet that held her make-up. She found her fat bronzer brush and cleaned it against her grey cotton smock before carefully dabbing at the patch. In the new light, she could see a head, a vicious, etiolated little face with curling hair and twisted horns, cocked cheekily to one side against what appeared to be a woman’s flank. Claudia looked for a long time. Pretty, but probably negligible.

  ‘Sorry, Otto. Let’s go on.’

  They passed through the door at the end of the space into an anteroom with a large bricked-up doorway. Claudia guessed that once this had been the formal entrance to the gallery. Another concealed passage ran for a few metres, then turned around a few steps, ran and turned again. Claudia had no sense now of where they were, and was surprised when, after more attempts with the keys, they came out into a low, wide space with cheap wooden partitions and a stack of iron bedsteads like deckchairs in a corner. Claudia peered down the boxy staircase.

  ‘We’re above the stable. Or what used to be.’

  Otto was poking in a heap of odds and ends near the piled beds. He had pulled off a canvas sheet, creating more dust clouds. Effortfully, he dragged out a cumbrous wooden mangle, two large wooden tubs, bleached white on the inside, and a cardboard box. The box collapsed as he touched it, spilling a muddle of rusting iron oddments. It was chilly and Claudia was growing rather bored.

  ‘Look here!’

  ‘It’s just blankets, Otto.’ As he unwrapped the grey wool, Claudia shuddered and thought of rats.

  ‘Look!’

  Otto was turning out a drawstring bag. Three round, gold-coloured cases patted on to the blanket. Claudia picked one up, and laughed.

  ‘What a funny thing to find. Look, Otto, make-up!’

  The lid of the compact had a design of a classical nymph, holding a vase above her head, with a relief of garlands. Inside, there was a matching gold tube of lipstick, fresh and greasy, and a bed of beige powder. Claudia turned it over. There was a name she recognized, ‘Bourjois’, and then ‘Histoire d’Amour’. It was obviously not valuable, machine-made gilt, but it was charming, vintage, the sort of thing one would find in Spitalfields market.

  ‘What about this?’ proffered Otto excitedly.

  Claudia held two small rectangles of fabric, black, with white designs. One had two flashes, Deco lightning, the other a plain oblong. There were threads hanging off the back, as though they had been torn.

  ‘This is SS,’ said Otto, ‘a collar badge. I can look it up when we get back. They must have been here, Claudia, this is evidence!’

  Claudia failed to see why he was so excited, after all, he had known his father’s battalion had been quartered at the chateau, but she was glad that he had found something to please him. There ought to have been something sinister about touching it, SS was an idea that still conjured horror, but it was so light and tiny in her hand. They shoved the things back and recovered them, then went down into the sudden welcome heat and found the Marquis on the lawn.

  ‘Histoire d’Amour?’ he said to Claudia when she showed him the compact. ‘Well, you must keep one of those.’

  Delphine could feel herself growing more provincial by the second. She had never understood why the English considered it smart to be attached to the countryside. Charles-Edouard had loved that, as he loved everything English. During their courtship she had been obliged to spend many hideous weekends in freezing houses in the chillier parts of Burgundy, while he galloped about in a black coat looking for deer to kill. Occasionally the dogs chased one on to the road where it was handily run over, but Charles-Edouard would insist that it was the best meat he had ever tasted. Delphine could hardly bring herself to touch something that had been scraped off the underside of a lorry, but she told herself she put up with the weekends because they gave her fiancé so much pleasure. Naturally, she put a stop to them after they were married. Now she had a reason to get back to Paris, she could hardly wait. The country made one brood.

  This morning, she had actually found herself gossiping with Madame Lesprats about that Claudia girl. Apparently she was pregnant. She told herself she felt sorry for Claudia if she was indeed involved with Sébastien Marichalar. Was he the father? Sébastien had slept with practically every woman in Paris, though not actually with Delphine herself. She had a knack for turning pique to propriety when it suited her, and now believed she had firmly resisted his advances. The girl had a certain something, despite those dreadful droopy clothes; certainly she didn’t seem to fit with the Harvey brother. Delphine wondered what Aisling thought of her, of whether she was aware of the affair with Sébastien. Not that
it was anybody’s business, but that was the problem with the country, everything became one’s business.

  Delphine was aware that Aisling had a bit of a crush and was prepared to make use of it. Her boys seemed well brought up, and in a few years they would be able to speak English with Charles-Henri and Jules. Delphine was hardly in a position to dislike her for being such an obvious climber, the other English people around here all seemed rather dreadful, drunk the whole time and terribly patronizing. Delphine wondered idly – she seemed to spend all day doing that, she really had to get back to Paris – whether Aisling’s marriage was happy. It could hardly be an amusing life she led. Jonathan seemed entirely featureless to Delphine, just another overweight expat with too much time and too little to say, though there must be money. Madame Lesprats said that Monsieur Harvey had made a lot of ‘grain’ in computers.

  How mortified Aisling had looked, squashed in at the fête with the help! Though Madame Lesprats was probably better company than that pompous Chauvignat and his revolting old mother, who had dipped her bread in her wine and mumbled it in her toothless mouth. Still, she would have to get Chauvignat on her side if the hotel were to go ahead, it was amazing how much power these mayors had. How he had droned on about his father being a prisoner of war and his mother speeding heroically about on her bicycle, smuggling contraband sausages to the partisans. She had managed to keep a smile on her face by thinking of how she could work it up into an anecdote to amuse Armand. How people did seem to obsess over the war, like that Dutch chap who had come up to ask her father-in-law about it. Altogether it would be a good thing to have Aisling Harvey as a friend, she was the energetic type, and she truly had good taste. There had been some clever features in the converted barn, that cow byre, the wooden cradle used as a log basket, the lime-washed beams in the bedrooms. She would never do for Paris, naturally, but if she were to be spending time down here to get the hotel going, it would be nice to have someone to talk to. Her thoughts returned to Armand. She would mind not being Madame la Comtesse, though of course it was much better these days to pretend that one hardly noticed such things.

  Alex, too, was restive. He had spent his morning wandering about on the steep road up to the plain, finding and then infuriatingly losing a signal on his mobile to call the office. He couldn’t see why Claudia had made such a thing of it, they’d barely had any time alone since they had arrived. Each day was the same. He’d fancied a yacht in Croatia. It was beyond him why Jonathan had allowed Aisling to talk him into upping sticks and moving down here. He’d been into the study to catch up with the FT online and seen the ‘work’ Jonathan claimed to be so busy with. He’d expected lesbian schoolgirls and that sort of thing, tame enough, but he was quite shocked when he saw what his brother was involved in. It was one of those ‘second life’ programmes where the user takes on a character and manipulates it through a realistic alternative world. Guiltily, Alex discovered that Jonathan was Mikhail, an eastern European architect living alone in a loft space overlooking a sort of San Francisco Bay. Mikhail ran his own studio, and collected contemporary art. He went to the gym and drove a Maserati. Alex was tempted to make a joke of it to Claudia, it was the sort of thing she would say was ‘delicious’, but that seemed really low.

  Obviously the poor chap didn’t have enough to do. He thought about getting Jonathan to come in with him on something, maybe a property if he and Claudia were selling, but he had the impression that things might be a bit tight, not that Jonathan could ever bear to admit that to his little brother. He supposed he ought to start thinking about putting something aside for school fees himself once the wedding was sorted. Still, Claudia seemed happy here. She had seemed oddly nervous the last few weeks in London, but then it was a big step getting engaged. If the American markets carried on like this, he’d be looking at a fantastic bonus, maybe they could get a big place right away. Queen’s Park was really coming up, you could still get whole houses there. Claudia might need a bit of persuading, it wasn’t exactly the sort of place her trendy friends hung out, but in a few years, he could tell her, they’d need the room. Thinking of it, he went out to the pool to find her, and buried his face in the warm honey of her hair.

  MAY 1943

  Because they came over the plain, along the Cahors road, they passed by Aucordier’s first. It was the day for the May flowers, there was to be a dance that night. Oriane remembered that clearly, she remembered that she had been sitting on her stool in the yard sewing a bunch of silk violets to her old dress, the dress she had worn for Mademoiselle Lafage’s wedding. She listened to William playing as she unpicked the flowers from the bodice, thinking they would look better, perhaps, sprigged on to the shoulder. Laurent had brought them for her from Monguèriac, the day he took Alice to the market, and she hadn’t the heart to tell him that artificial flowers made her sad since they reminded her of her mother’s terrible Sunday hat. There had been a feather on that hat, too, that flapped viciously over her mother’s face as she shook William by the shoulders.

  ‘Look at you!’ her mother had hissed. ‘Look at you!’ They had been to Mass, and William had been startled by the vehemence of the singing, he shrieked and gibbered, his ears grubby, his face shiny with spit. Oriane had dragged him kicking down the aisle and tried to calm him, but later their mother beat at him with her fists in the square, for everyone to see.

  Still, Laurent had meant kindly, and when they got married she said to herself, she would have real flowers, orange blossom like Mademoiselle Lafage.

  William was playing, she remembered that, he was playing as she sewed, the tune of the May-horn. She sang along to the music, ‘Lou coucou! Lou coucou!’ Before the dance they would go around the village with the others, singing before each home and collecting two or three eggs for the May omelette. William stopped abruptly and turned his head up towards the plain. He brought the violin over to her, carrying it preciously as he always did, then he was gone, running, out of the yard, chasing a noise. Like a hunting dog, she thought, wondering what the sound was that acted on him like scent, too distant and subtle for her to catch. But he was back in a moment, tugging at her, and she had to push him away in case he spoiled her dress with rosin. ‘Lo monde,’ he was crowing, ‘lo monde.’

  ‘What people, William, where?’ She was half laughing, incredible that she had not known, but how could she know? She followed him with the dress in her hand to the corner of the barn, and looked where he pointed along the road.

  ‘Come on, William, come on now.’ He was too big for her to pull him, too excited by what he had seen. Her voice was wrong, she was helpless to communicate her urgency. Desperately, she cuffed him over the brow, as she had never done, and put aside the ache it gave her to see his face collapse in shock as something she would have to mind later, there was no time now. Cathérine’s words were in her head, she had to hide him. Pushing him in front of her, his hands over his ears, head bowed, she forced them both into the barn and pulled the big door tight. William had begun to sob, she slapped him again and the surprise of it calmed her so her hands obeyed and fastened the twine on the inside of the door.

  ‘Get the ladder, hurry!’

  He stared at her, smeary-faced. She felt very cold, she was shaking, but she brought her fingers to her lips, ‘Shhh!’ Like a game, it had to be like a game. ‘Get the ladder,’ she whispered, pointing. When they were up, she began to drag it towards her, rung over rung, feeling the muscles in her abdomen clench with strain, until he understood and took the weight behind her as it rose. The noise was there now, vibrating in the earth beneath them. ‘Lay it down, good boy, William.’ He was still whimpering. ‘Lou rescondat,’ she murmured, ‘so we have to be quiet, see?’ Hide and seek. Creeping forward to the window, lying down under the sill. She wished it was winter, so the hay would be in. Below, her dress lay where she had dropped it, a dead woman with a corsage of violets, weakly bright in the dust. William crawled up next to her, under her arm. ‘Shh!’ he said dramatically, sounding pleas
ed. He would forget where she remembered, he had never needed to forgive. The noise was real now, engines and the crunch of boots, but surely her heart was louder, they would hear her heart. Her skin was drenched and clammy, she felt sick.

  First there was a huge tank, like a picture in the newspapers at the café, snub and clumsy-looking as it rolled over the white road, but it moved shockingly fast, smoothly, as though it had thousands of tiny wheels. A fat little tower stuck up from the top and a man was visible to the waist, wearing a black jacket and a cap with silver braid around it. The tank was so high that Oriane could have reached down and plucked it from his head. There was silver too on his left shoulder, he looked straight ahead. On the side of the tower was the head of a black cat, snarling. Then came three cars covered close with plated metal, and another tank, then a beautiful open car, like the Marquis’s, with a driver in front and two men sitting behind. They had silver braid on their shoulders, and the lapels of their jackets had pink piping, a strange, ludic note in their frightening appearance.

  Oriane could hear a rat rustling in the roof above her and gripped William hard, her palm clamped around his jaw.

  ‘Please, please be good now. We don’t want them to find us, do we?’ Now there were columns of men in peaked caps, four abreast, buttoned into heavy grey coats with green collars even though it was warm, with black fabric showing at the neck. Some wore high boots like heavy riding boots, others had shorter, softer-looking ones with laces. William drummed his feet in time with the boots, one two three four one two three four, they filled the road and it seemed as though the barn was vibrating with their feet. Then three lorries with green canvas sides, puffing thick fumes, then more men, a third tank. They were so close. Some of them seemed to try to look into the yard as they came by, though only their eyes were moving. Beneath their boots, her dress showed its flowers sadly, then it was pressed grey and merged with the road.