by John Tagholm
‘Sometimes she showed me articles about him, but no, she spoke very little about him. She said it was in another life that he happened.’
‘Weren’t you curious about that life?’
‘I had Odile and that was enough.’ Again he looked directly at her with an expression that said surely you must be able to understand this.
‘And what about the war? Her friend Marguerite said she didn’t want to speak about that either.’ Again the stare. Beatrice had been told that he suffered from mild Alzheimer’s and she wondered if he couldn’t remember, or didn’t want to remember or perhaps remember and not want to tell her.
‘She said she couldn’t talk about the war.’
‘And how did you feel about that?’
He narrowed his lips before replying. ‘Bad things happened. I know. I, too, find it difficult to talk about the war.’
‘But did you tell her about your own experiences?’
‘Of course. She was the only one I ever did tell. With her I was able to be intimate.’
‘But not the other way round?’
He shook his head. He had artist’s hands, long and distinguished, practical and yet fine and he placed one on the other and rubbed over the liver spots and knuckles. He seemed to drift off into another space where the fragments of his life were collected like a kit waiting to be reassembled.
‘I was glad she was mysterious,’ he said out of nowhere. ‘It was what she always remained to me.’
‘Do you have any idea why she remained mysterious about the war and Joseph?’
‘Perhaps she didn’t want to hurt me?’ And, then, as an afterthought. ‘Or maybe she didn’t want to hurt herself?’
He had said that Odile couldn’t speak about the war and Beatrice considered the various interpretations of the word: that she physically and psychologically couldn’t, that she had been traumatised to the point of silence; or that she was forbidden to do so for some unknown reason; or that she couldn’t because she didn’t want to. And then it dawned on Beatrice that all three could be true, that the act of describing those years might simply be too difficult, that the repercussions would be too great and so, ultimately she couldn’t and had consigned her experiences to a vault inside her and locked the door and thrown away the key. Since Joseph, she assumed, was the only living family survivor the sole reason she would have done this was to protect him.
‘Elliot?’ she asked and he seemed to wake back into the present. ‘When Odile died, what happened to her possessions?’
He appeared puzzled at the question. It was four years since she had died and according to the nurse at reception, he’d been at the home for almost a year.
‘I couldn’t look at anything,’ he said after a long pause. ‘She was a careful women, ordered and she knew she was going to die. It all went somewhere when I came here. Somewhere…’
Beatrice could see that he was finding it difficult to cope with the recent chronology of his life. ‘Do you know where?’ Even as she asked the question she knew that answer was lost somewhere in his dislocated memory.
‘It doesn’t matter now.’
Beatrice felt a hand on her shoulder and the nurse who smiled down on her did not have to use words to tell her she should stop and leave Elliot Honeywell to his thoughts. She said goodbye to the old man and as she was leaving asked the nurse on reception who now looked after the affairs of Monsieur Honeywell. She went into her files and wrote some details on a piece of paper. ‘I think he’s a nephew,’ she said, handing it to Beatrice.
Outside Beatrice made a note of the address on the sheet she had been given and sat for a while in front of the church. Simon Honeywell, rue du Bac. 37, flat 3, she read. She was dissatisfied and felt caught in a loop of repeating events, as much to do with herself as Joseph Troumeg. She had just over a day left in Paris so she decided to continue her pursuit and tackle the other issue when she got back to London. She descended in to the Metro yet again and trundled north-westwards and having made a considerable loop and one change, got out at St Germain des Prés and walked along to rue du Bac. It was four in the afternoon so she wasn’t surprised there was no reply from the address she had been given, so she meandered across the street looking at the shops. A couple of hours later she tried again and an impatient voice answered the intercom. Beatrice felt odd standing on the busy street shouting into the speaker her reasons for wanting to speak to a man who she had never met about a woman she had never known. He clicked her in and she took a small lift to the second floor where he met her at the gate.
‘Simon Honeywell. Enchanté.’
He was a tall man in an immaculate blue suit and an open necked pale pink shirt. He guided her into his apartment and Beatrice had the sense of ricocheting into the lives of other people and barely glimpsing what was going on, a pinball out of control.
‘I’ve just been to see your uncle,’ she explained, although she had already shouted this into the intercom, ‘because I’m making a film about Joseph Troumeg and I need to find out more about his mother, Odile.’
‘Yes, you mentioned,’ he said in perfect English. He was a handsome man in his mid-forties and Beatrice could see that he found her attractive, his smile warmer than it might have been if he’d invited a strange man up from the street. ‘Please.’ He offered her a place on the sofa and made her tell him the story of her interest in Joseph Troumeg.
‘He always spoke so warmly about his mother,’ she said, omitting the fact that he had disowned her, wondering if Simon Honeywell would notice or indeed if he knew of their estrangement. He offered her a kir in a long glass, adding a twist of lemon. ‘It would be good to discover more.’
‘It’s all vague shadows to me,’ he said, sitting on the arm of the sofa. ‘My father was Elliot’s only family and he died about ten years ago. I came to work in Paris and when he became, shall we say disorientated after Odile died, it sort of fell to me to help out, more by default really. I helped sell his apartment and took some of the precious stuff he wanted kept. Have you seen his paintings?’ He gestured to the wall behind him where two colourful landscapes hung. ‘He really was quite good and made a reasonable living.’
Beatrice got up to look at the paintings and he came to stand by her side, rather too close and she stepped away, pretending to look at a detail. ‘You see,’ she said while leaning forward, ‘I’m trying to trace Joseph Troumeg’s father.’
It was clear that Simon Honeywell knew little about the family history and right now was more intent on discovering more about her.
‘There is a box marked Odile, which came from his apartment. Do you suppose I could allow you to look at it?’
The remark was deliberately teasing and she knew at once that she recognised this man, for she had met him in several guises before, thoroughly pleased with himself and not the least interested in her except sexually. But she could play this game as well. ‘That depends if you’d be prepared to trust me,’ she said, making her eyes wide and innocent as she had done to the man in the mairie. He got up and went in to another room to return with a black lacquered box with gold handles, placing it on the coffee table. She gave him a coquettish look whilst registering that this was a man without scruples.
‘I have one or two calls to make. Why don’t you see if there is anything of interest in there.’
She felt uneasy and considered that his own lack of respect should not be compounded by her own. She looked at the box, a life distilled into an area no bigger than a small suitcase and hesitated before lifting the lid. Inside were bundles of letters tied with ribbon, several objects, a larger folder of photographs and a framed photo of a boy wearing a white shirt and knickerbockers, his hair neatly parted, his face serious. It was Joseph Troumeg. She lifted the portrait and knew that she had been right: how could Odile Leval have accepted the separation from her son? She could hear Simon Honeywell talking rapidly in French in the other room. Beatrice was uncomfortable about looking at the letters and so she began examining the vari
ous objects, a small doll, a gold pocket watch, a round frame containing a lock of blond hair and what looked like a ring box in worn brown crocodile skin. She lifted this and pressed the gold pin to release the lid. Inside was a gold ring and Beatrice looked behind to be sure she was still alone before picking it up and turning it in her hands. There were words inscribed on the inside and she read Seb T Toujours. 1935. She replaced the ring and clicked the box closed and felt a mix of excitement and shame, as though she had furtively lifted the lid on someone’s life in circumstances that were forbidden.
Beatrice experienced physical discomfort, made worse when Simon Honeywell came back into the room and offered her another drink. ‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘I think I should be going.’
‘But you’ve hardly started.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Let me take your mobile number and I’ll call to fix another time.’
‘Can’t I take you to dinner?’
‘Do you mind,’ she said, ‘I really can’t.’
And she left, descending in the old lift, like an intruder not wishing to be seen.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
She had been told to stay behind with her daughter but she refuses. It is her husband who remains while she climbs the hill with the carts, far enough away to be safe, close enough to see the shrouds covering the bodies. She cannot allow her mother to go alone on this final journey. The day mocks their passage, clear and warm and full of birdsong.
The open pit makes no concession to rank and is without dignity. She watches from the trees as the bodies are lowered into the stony ground to lie together in a silent chorus, anonymous behind their white cloaks. She cries as the earth is shovelled on top, the scrape of tools hiding her sobs, each slap confirming her desolation. The flow of wisdom she has received from her mother will now cease and on the bleak hillside she already feels its loss. She looks down over the town and knows that she is not able to embrace it like her mother. A pink and grey bird with a white crest lands on the ground near her and performs a crooked dance. She cannot trust her thoughts for her head is full of sadness and there is no room for logic. Her mother told her to have faith in her instincts, that she would feel what was right and so she would wait.
She comes down the slope not to the town but to the sea where she removes her clothes and dives into the clear water. The dust of the hillside is lost, but not the pain. With her clenched fists she rubs her body until it is marked red, cleaning it for the return to her daughter. The child would not understand the loss nor would she remember the death and for this she is glad. Her grief is different, her loss permanent.
At first she is frightened to embrace the girl, frightened of the disease, frightened that her tears might alert her daughter. She plays by her grandmother’s empty bench and stands at the window wanting to be outside. Life is a series of survivals which arrived like lines of waves, to be dealt with one by one with sometimes barely a gap between the blows.
She takes her daughter out along the sea, running with her across the bleached white rock, leaving the town behind. Where later great rusting ships will dock and unload and the city stretch in a great long finger towards the setting sun, at a place where the famous artists would come to record the beauty of these scenes, she hugs the girl towards her, covers her body as much as she can and tells her of the death. There would be no reply but there is a message in the way the words are said, the power of their conveyance, that the child would understand, the first of many messages that she would give, just as her mother had given her. When the great black fish leaps from the water not once but many times she knows that it has been received and above her the birds scream and swoop.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
To eat in a restaurant alone, Beatrice had realised a long time ago, was to invite interest and so, as she had done in the past, she sandbagged her isolation with activity, open notebooks, a novel and a mobile phone in the hope that these would prevent inquiry from men keen to engage her in conversation.
By now she knew that looking into the box of Odile’s possessions was a step too far, an intrusion into privacy and the only reason she had been allowed to do so was Simon Honeywell’s hope that she would be grateful one way or the other. Well, one way really. She doodled ‘Sebastian’ and assumed this was the Christian name of ‘Seb’, the man who had given the ring to Odile. She added the ‘T’ and followed it with ‘Troumeg’ and a query. Too simple, surely? Joseph had changed his surname and she had failed to find any Troumegs at the mairie. She imagined the thousands of Americans, or Frenchmen who were called Sebastian or Sebastien. If she had looked at the letters she might have found the answer, she was sure but at that moment her hesitation had been correct and confirmed her feeling that she had no right to go further. She looked at the number Simon Honeywell had given her and tapped it into her phone.
‘Let me take you to dinner instead,’ she said and when he protested that it was he who had invited her, she said there was a condition. ‘I want you to look in Odile’s box and find if there are any letters from a man called Seb, or Sebastian, or Sebastien. I don’t want to see the letters, or know what’s in them. I don’t think it would be correct. And you’ll find me at the Brasserie Île St. Louis. I’ll be the one surrounded by notebooks.’ And she rang off. She considered it was a small price to pay although she had second thoughts when, half an hour later, he sat down opposite her with the smile of a man who thinks he has won a battle. The brasserie was noisy and cramped and not what she would call intimate, the perfect place, then, for such an evening.
‘How did you know about this place?’ he asked and although it was a perfectly reasonable query she couldn’t help but take the question the wrong way.
‘Well, it’s quite well known, isn’t it? And we girls can be quite resourceful you know.’
‘I used to come here on Sundays when I first came to Paris. It’s a bit too noisy for me.’
But perfect for me, thought Beatrice. ‘And what is it that brought you to Paris in the first place?’ she volunteered.
‘I work for Paribas, mergers and acquisitions. I’m from New York, like Elliot, but he left a little earlier than me. He liked it over here, I’m not so sure.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘It’s the French and all that red tape. They’re different and I haven’t quite got used to them. I’m not sure I will. It must be a nightmare to live here.’
‘It has some attractions, though?’
‘It certainly does,’ he said, looking at her.
She chose not to respond and waited for him to ask some questions about her. They ordered and he told her, at inordinate length, what his job involved and the bonus he received the year before and how that had meant he had been able to buy the apartment in the rue du Bac without a mortgage. On his wrist he had a watch that was too big, no doubt bought with the very same bonus and he had the irritating habit of looking around every so often to see who had come in, or, more likely, who might be watching him. She knew he was deliberately keeping the Odile information to himself, wanting her to ask for it, but she carried on listening, amused at his self-absorption. Now that she felt distanced from this pantomime, stepped one pace back from the theatre of boy meets girl, she was more in control and could see the wheels and pulleys and special effects at work. He asked for another picher of wine but she shook her head when he went to fill her glass. He had yet to ask about the film, or refer to Odile.
‘I think I have the information you want,’ he said, taking an envelope from his inside pocket.
Beatrice was shocked to see what must have been one of the letters from the box. ‘Do you think you should have removed it?’
‘What’s the difference? If it helps you, who’s to know? Odile is dead and Elliot’s on the way to being gaga. What would happen to it otherwise?’
She looked at him and saw how the smoothness of his skin, the lack of lines around his eyes and mouth, the very blandness of his features spoke of his inability to experience any
of the feelings associated with delving in to the past of a member of his family. As in business, as in life, this was a means to an end. And she was party to this, shared a responsibility and she accepted at that moment she had a duty to the information she was about to receive, in what way she wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t treat the process as lightly as the man sitting opposite.
‘Do you want to know his name?’
She refused to play this game and remained still.
‘Yes, his name was Sebastian, with an ‘a’ and not an ‘e’.’ He paused.
‘So he wasn’t French,’ Beatrice said, but wished she hadn’t.
‘Exactly. But he writes in French.’
He made to push the letter across the table but she shook her head. ‘I don’t feel that it is right to look at the letters without Elliot’s permission.’
‘But you don’t mind if I do?’
‘You’re family. It’s your decision.’
‘And his surname? You’ll want that, won’t you?’
What a tedious man, she thought, catching a faint whiff of his after shave which clashed with the smell of food in the room.
‘He was called Traugott.’
Beatrice wondered if she had misheard. ‘Traugott and not Troumeg?’
She saw him nod. ‘Two tees at the end,’ he added, as she jotted the name in her notebook, still trying to assimilate the information. ‘I’ve only read a couple of the letters and there’s very little information in them beyond the usual endearments. The name sounds a bit German, or maybe English.’
Beatrice thought of Marguerite sitting in her apartment overlooking the park making her bleak observation of what some women had been forced to do during the war to survive. But Joseph was born four years before it started.
‘Thank you for looking for me. This is most helpful.’
