by Simon Mawer
She takes the lift to the top floor, where there’s an imposing door on the left hand side with the letter G dead in its centre and the name Pelletier engraved in brass. When she rings, the door is opened by a maid, a sour and shrivelled creature who must have spent years keeping unwanted visitors at bay. She considers Alice’s inquiry as though it might be some kind of affront. ‘Mam’selle Pelletier is not at home.’
‘Will she be back soon?’
‘I have no knowledge of Mam’selle’s movements.’
Alice smiles. She needs to win this woman’s confidence, at least for a few minutes. ‘What a shame. It would have been such fun to surprise her. And Monsieur Clément, is he at home?’
‘He is here, yes.’
The answer brings a flood of relief. ‘So could you call him?’
The woman sucks on her thoughts. ‘Who shall I say …?’
‘Let’s keep it a surprise, shall we? Let’s see if he remembers me. I haven’t seen him for many years. We are old family friends, from Geneva. When I was a young girl I used to worship him.’
Sympathy battles with jealousy across the maid’s face. She obviously worships him as well. Eventually sympathy wins and she allows Alice to step forward into her kingdom. ‘I will see if he is available.’
Alice waits in the hallway, sitting on an upright chair like a domestic waiting for an interview, her suitcase on the floor beside her. She picks nervously at her nails, thinking of Ned. Ned is here and he is not here, both at the same time, like that bloody cat they told her about, the cat that was both dead and not dead. What was the name? Schrödinger. Schrödinger’s Cat.
‘It’s horrid putting a cat in a box!’ she protested, and the two boys laughed at her stupidity.
‘It’s a thought experiment, you idiot,’ Ned exclaimed.
Entanglement was a term they used, entangled particles. And now she feels the entanglement of past and present, of Marian Sutro and Anne-Marie Laroche, of Ned and Madeleine and Clément.
‘Can I help you?’
She looks up, startled. He has appeared in the corridor leading off the hall, standing back from the light so that his face is in shadow. But she recognises him just the same, the small, precise agony of recognition that makes her flush as though she has been hit across the cheek.
She gets to her feet, feeling foolish – a child once again, reduced to explaining herself to an adult who probably doesn’t care any longer. ‘Clément,’ she says, ‘it’s me. Marian.’ The name sounds strange in her ears, as though she is talking about another person, someone she, and he, once knew.
‘Marian?’ His expression changes, from puzzlement to something approaching apprehension. Apprehension in both meanings of the word: recognition, but also fear. ‘Good God, what on earth are you doing here?’
‘I thought I’d look you and Madeleine up—’
‘I thought you were in England—’
‘And I need somewhere to stay.’
‘To stay? Of course you may stay.’ He comes closer and puts his hands on her shoulders. He seems bigger where once he was thin and rather awkward. Dégingandé, her mother used to say. His looks seem to have been hardened by the four years since she last saw him, as though a piece of sculpture that was once polished to an unearthly beauty has been roughened up by a chisel. He leans forward and kisses her, on one cheek and then the other. ‘My God, how extraordinary,’ he says. ‘My little Marian is not so little any more.’
‘I was exactly the same height then.’
‘I wasn’t referring to height.’ Now he’s smiling. Perhaps the apprehension was only an illusion, a trick of the light. His smile is what she remembers, how he found amusement in all things, even the most serious; and the way his mouth articulated the smile, the mouth she so admired and now finds that she admires still – something feminine about it despite the masculine chin in which it is set, something quirky and ironic. ‘Come,’ he says, with his hand at her back for guidance. ‘Come into the salon. Leave your suitcase. Marie, who observed that you seemed a little défraîchie – how would you say that in English? Unfresh? I see you only as charming and a little wind-blown – anyway, Marie will see to it. Would you like some coffee? I can offer you some real coffee, believe it or not. Is that what you would like? I seem to remember Squirrel used to loathe coffee, but I suspect things have changed now, haven’t they?’
Squirrel. The sound of her nickname, a name that no one ever uses outside her family, ambushes her. Clément’s arm is round her shoulders and she finds herself weeping, a fearful sensation of helplessness that she despises at the very moment of feeling it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says through a blur of tears; and that small, hard fragment of her personality that calls itself Alice or Anne-Marie Laroche or anything other than Marian or, for God’s sake, Squirrel, watches with contempt this lachrymose creature being folded into Clément’s arms and comforted by the texture of his pullover against her cheek and the touch of his hand on her head.
‘What is there to cry about?’
‘Nothing,’ she says against his chest. ‘Relief, that’s all. I’ve been travelling since yesterday. I’m exhausted.’
He lets her go, slowly as though he fears she might fall. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘Of course. I’ll get Marie to make up a room for you immediately.’
‘Actually, I need to use the bathroom, if I may. I …’
‘The bathroom. But certainly. How thoughtless of me. Let me show you … and meanwhile Marie can make some coffee and even open her secret supply – oh yes, I know she has one – of sugar. Is there sugar in England? I rather imagine there is.’
Once safely inside the bathroom, she locks the door and squats to remove the crystals. It’s painful now, a sharp burning, as though something scalding hot were being pulled out of her. She unwraps the package of crystals and slips them into her handbag. Then she pees, and washes her hands and peers into the mirror. A tired, anxious face looks back at her, ravaged by tears, the eyes reddened, the skin flushed. She splashes cold water to try and coax some life back into her appearance and pats her skin dry on a towel that is soft and white, not like the thin grey rags she used at Plasonne.
Is there sugar in England? I rather imagine there is.
A small blizzard of questions buffets her mind, matters of logic and logistics, of family and friends and the uneven shifts of loyalty. For a moment she struggles to be Alice once more, trying to calculate her next moves, aware of danger. But she knows that this rationality will only last these few moments of privacy until she confronts Clément once more and all the associations of childhood come crowding in to bury her in a soft, cold snowdrift of memories. She brushes her hair into some semblance of order, pats down her skirt, straightens her jacket and steps out into the hall.
He’s waiting in the salon. It’s a long, ornate and old-fashioned room with three full-height windows overlooking the square outside. There’s an air of faded elegance about the furnishings, as though the room has been preserved in memory of an older generation. Clément seems modern against this backdrop, a careless figure in his open-necked shirt and pale blue pullover, with perfectly ironed trousers and brightly polished shoes. So different from Ned. He rises to his feet, looking at her with the faint amusement that he always showed, as though she were about to do or say something delightful and absurd. ‘That’s better. A metamorphosis. From caterpillar to butterfly.’
She attempts a laugh. ‘Where’s Madeleine? I expected to find Madeleine.’
‘Am I a poor substitute?’
‘You’re not a substitute at all. You’re Clément. But I had hoped to find Madeleine as well.’
He shrugs. ‘Paris is no place to be at the moment. She went to Annecy. With my wife.’
She betrays nothing. That much she has learned, to receive any revelation with apparent indifference. There’s a pause while coffee is poured before she manages a response. ‘You’re married, then?’
‘Certainly I’m married. With a six-month-old baby.’
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br /> ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thank you. It’s a shame you couldn’t have met Augustine.’
‘The baby?’
‘The wife.’ He offers her a cigarette, lights one himself, watches her through the smoke. She shifts her legs, crossing them and turning herself sideways on the sofa, remembering his look while she did the same thing years ago, in the sitting room in their house in Geneva, his eyes glancing down at her knees. It made her blush. ‘The baby’s called Rachel.’
‘And you let them go without you.’
‘They’re safe where they are, and this is where my work is.’
‘I feared you might have been taken for the STO or something. Been shipped off to some labour camp in Germany.’
Faint laughter. ‘Fortunately I’m too old for that kind of thing. But what about you, Marian? What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I’ve been in the South-west all this time, living on a farm …’
‘But your parents—’
‘Are in London.’
‘Didn’t you go with them?’ His eyes are on her lips, as though reading what she is saying and seeing there the soft tremor of deceit.
‘I was in England for a while but then I went back to Switzerland …’ She makes up the story as she goes, extemporising, elaborating, searching ahead for flaws even as she lays down the lies. This is what you were told never to do. Never make up a cover story on the fly. Never try to bluff. Always, always prepare yourself in advance. ‘There’s nothing flashy about the clandestine life,’ one of the instructors said. ‘It’s dull and methodical and that’s what you must be. Dull, quiet, methodical.’ And here she is, being silly and capricious and making an exhibition of herself. ‘I have dual nationality, you see. From my mother. I went back to Geneva for a while to study, but I always felt drawn to France so I came back last year and’ – she shrugs – ‘I’ve been here ever since. It’s where my heart is.’
Does he believe her? She feels the thrill of panic. She doesn’t know this man. She once worshipped him, but she never knew him, then or now. ‘That all sounds most patriotic,’ he says. ‘Although I must admit, I never thought of you as French. English, I thought, with a touch of French élan. A traditional dish served up with an unusual spice.’
‘I feel French. I’ve always felt French, especially in England.’
‘And now you’ve come to Paris …’
‘To find a friend. I’ve heard she’s in trouble. Look, I really must get some sleep. I’m exhausted.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Suddenly he is solicitous, concerned for her well-being and apologetic for being insensitive. ‘I’ll have Marie show you your room. You must have a lie-down.’ He uses the English expression ‘lie-down’ with its hints of childhood, its echoes of family days in Geneva and Annecy. He must have heard it then, on her father’s lips, or perhaps her mother’s. It is one of those words that her family uses even when speaking French.
‘I’ll wake you when dinner’s ready.’
The bedroom is like the sitting room, redolent of a previous generation. There are heavy velvet curtains and elaborate belle époque furniture and an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece that ticks out the time in magisterial fashion. And evidence of Madeleine’s recent presence: her dresses in the wardrobe, her underclothes in one of the drawers and, on the dressing table, a pair of hairbrushes that still have strands of her blond hair among the bristles. A photograph of her and her mother in a silver frame smiles reassuringly at the pre-war world.
Madeleine should be here to bring comfort and security, to defuse the explosive device that lies at the heart of things.
Alice turns off the light and pulls the curtains aside to look out. There is a drop of four storeys down to the courtyard in the middle of the building. No way out. She’s trapped and alone, and the trap is one of her own making and she is too tired to care. She draws the curtain, takes off her jacket and skirt and lies down in her slip, pulling the eiderdown over her. In a minute she is asleep.
Then awake. The room is darker now. There is no hint of daylight skulking beyond the curtains. But a figure is standing over her in the shadows and for a moment she has no idea where she is or who this may be. She cries out and grabs the eiderdown, pulling it and herself towards the pillows, cringing from him. And then memory comes crowding in and he’s apologising for startling her – ‘I should have left you to sleep’ – and she’s denying it, denying the fright, explaining it away as a bad dream.
‘You’ve slept four hours. Marie has dinner ready.’
‘Four hours! My God.’
‘Take your time. There’s no rush.’
She prepares herself as best she can: a quick wash in the bowl of cold water that the maid has put out, and then some makeup – a dash of crimson lipstick, a hint of eye shadow and mascara, a faint blush. Faced with Clément she cannot be a girl again. She cannot be young and naive. She needs the protection of maturity.
Dinner is laid in the dining room, at one end of a table designed to seat fourteen. Clément sits at the head with Marian beside him, leaving the rest of the table an empty expanse of polished walnut. The maid has an aged mother to look after and has already gone home, leaving the food in the kitchen, so Clément serves, solicitous and attentive, apologetic about the inadequacies of the household, concerned that Marian is quite comfortable. He pours wine ceremoniously, standing at her right-hand side while she tastes. Château La Mission Haut-Brion is the name on the label. The wine is excellent, too excellent for her to be able to judge but of a quality out of all proportion to what they have to eat, which is plain and parsimonious – some scrawny chicken legs and a few potatoes. Barely enough to eat, even if you take advantage of the black market, barely enough fuel to warm two rooms, barely enough of anything. ‘This is what we’re reduced to,’ he observes, poking at the chicken with his fork. ‘Great wines and starvation rations. It’s ridiculous. Were it peacetime I would take you to the Tour d’Argent and have you eat oysters and foie gras.’
She laughs. They ate once in Paris together, that time with her father and Ned. It wasn’t at the Tour d’Argent but in a small bistro in the rue des Grands-Augustins where Clément said artists and writers went; but they had seen no one of note. Does he remember?
Of course he does. ‘Did you expect me to forget?’
‘Things change, don’t they?’
‘Some things don’t.’ Outside it is raining hard; inside there is the warmth of this dangerous intimacy that bridges years and memories: a man who was once some kind of deity to her, and is now sitting beside her, his features eloquent and familiar, the blue eyes that seem a brilliant contrast to his black hair, the mobile femininity of his mouth, an expression that used to seem painfully sensitive and alluring and now appears amused and self-deprecating.
What about the family?
His father is in Algiers, playing politics. His mother is at the house in Annecy, with his wife and Madeleine.
And what is he doing?
He shrugs. ‘What I have always done. Working at the Collège. Teaching. Trying to keep things as normal as possible. What else can one do?’
‘Your research?’
‘It continues as far as it’s possible these days.’ He smiles. ‘I used to try and explain it to you, didn’t I? Try to turn it into something intelligible to the ordinary person.’
‘Is that what I was?’
He looks at her without smiling, as though trying to puzzle out the answer. ‘You were much more than that.’
Does she blush? Perhaps it’s the wine. ‘Remember when we went up to Megève that time,’ she says. ‘To the chalet, just the four of us?’
‘When Madeleine skied right over that hut …’
‘And landed in a snowdrift on the other side …’
‘And the door opened and someone came out and asked her what the hell she was doing, that this was private property and how would she like it if someone skied over her roof and landed in her garden?’
; The memories circle round, like predators preparing for a kill. ‘And sailing on the lake,’ Marian says. ‘Remember that? Ned was unwell and Madeleine stayed with him and so it was the two of us alone.’
He does remember that, of course he does. She can see it in his expression. He remembers pushing the boat out into the lake, the two of them wading out thigh-deep and then throwing themselves laughing over the gunwales. He remembers exactly.
‘When was it?’
‘You know perfectly well when it was. The summer of 1938.’
It was the kind of adventure where familiar places became unreal, pervaded with the strangeness of the whole hot summer’s day, dazzled by the glare of sun on water. The two of them lean and brown and laughing. Barefoot and bare-legged. Pushing each other and mock-fighting and he grabbing her hands to stop her hitting him, their difference in age somehow telescoped so that she felt older than her years and he seemed younger. They brought the little boat ashore on a promontory where there were some reeds and a small inlet and a piece of beach. ‘Where are we?’ she asked, as though they might be lost.
‘Who knows?’ he said, helping her out of the dinghy, then keeping hold of her hand as they walked up the beach. She’d never held a man’s hand before, except her father’s and Ned’s. Girlfriends’, yes, of course. But never a man’s. It seemed a gesture imbued with great significance: he likes me, she thought. He wouldn’t hold my hand if he didn’t like me.
Like. That equivocal word. More so in French. Aimer. The ambiguity of words struck her, their uncertainty and imprecision.
Behind the beach there was a small wood and the roof of a house hidden amid the foliage. They crept up to a garden wall and clambered on rocks to peer over onto lawns and flower beds and a weeping willow. Somewhere a dog barked but the house seemed deserted, its blind windows reflecting the sky and the mountains. Clément’s arm was round her waist to steady her. She remembered that more than she remembered the garden. Clément’s arm around her. And then his turning her to face him, his face so close that she could feel the warmth of his skin.
