by John Tagholm
She signed a contract to reproduce the photograph, a copy of which would be sent to her and she left the museum with the image fixed in her mind. The legend to the photograph told her that the women had been sent to Fresnes prison where Beatrice could only too clearly imagine the treatment Odile must have received. She had seen images and read about its reputation and she shivered at the unfairness of the punishment that had taken a woman from her nine year old son and destroyed their relationship forever.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The wind blows again, hot, clear and dry from the north and the sky returns to the ominous acid blue she knows so well. The dust whirls in eddies across the parched earth and the tips of the tall thin trees are bent so far they almost kiss the ground. The sea, a yet darker blue, is scarred with white and, like the sky, too intense to watch. This was the seventh day of disturbance and the wind rushes through the rooms and seeks out even the most sheltered corners. Nothing is still and it makes her feel uneasy, that in the roaring of the trees and the mad patterns of the dust, there is a message wanting to be heard but unable to escape. It is a year since her mother’s death and this same dust has been laid and displaced many times on her grave, layering and eroding by turn. She is too distracted to work and even the child seems subdued and she watches her looking out to sea, her eyes squinting at the glare. It is a remorseless, unforgiving day which makes no concessions. She puts down her tools, rewinding the gold thread. The wind would continue to make it impossible for her husband to return to the harbour, so fiercely is it blowing from the shore. Her daughter is missing her father and later she will run down to the harbour in the hope that he has escaped the perverse winds and made landfall.
When eventually the wind dies down and the sea resumes its sly disguise the silence brings its own threat. Some boats come wearily back into the peace of the harbour, but not her husband’s. The child now spends all day on the quay and every so often receives the reassuring touch of a returning sailor or sympathetic mother. Everyone knows the boat is missing but all say that it will appear soon. Perhaps he has been blown along the coast and taken shelter. They speak hopefully but their thoughts are darker and on the hill she knows the absence of the wind has brought no relief and the quietness has failed to sooth her. She had been unable to stop the wind, now it is impossible to dispel the calm and so she returns to work. The significance of the piece she is making is not lost on her and she thinks it yet another sign. The two sweeps of gold chain are linked by a garnet, also mounted in gold, with finely decorated clasps at either end. It is to be worn by a woman in the town whose husband had died during the winter. She would wear the jewellery around her waist to mark her position as the head of the household for his land, in one of the fertile valleys to the north of the town, is now in her charge. She holds the girdle hanger in her hands and weighs its significance and knows that she has to give it to the woman immediately. She takes her daughter with her, holding her hand on the quay and gently leading her away. Together they present the precious chain to the woman and what passes between them needs no words. It is a transaction that would have been more difficult if her husband was confirmed lost, or dead. Now it is possible to hope, to pretend, that he would return. She carries her daughter back up the hill, her long body too big but both have need for the comfort of each other’s warmth.
The days go by and what was inevitable hovers just this side of truth, so that she cannot quite say that her husband is dead. Perhaps, she thinks, she will never be able to do this, that like her father he has been taken away by the water and may exist somewhere else. In this limbo it is hard to mourn and impossible to plan. For the moment she can only wait with her child and with each empty day departing feel their hopes become weaker. She wonders if the child will ever decide that he is dead, or become content not to know in order to keep alive the hope that at any given moment he might appear around the corner and sweep her up in his arms. As for her, she has made the decision quickly, for she knows about death and has learnt its ways. Now she must help the child do the same.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Beatrice climbed the steps to the imposing entrance of another London museum, her mind still full of the images of Odile Leval, to be greeted by the slightly uncertain smile of Dr Harold Wesley. She could see that once again he wasn’t sure whether to take her hands, or kiss her, so she offered first one cheek then the other, French style and by the time they were through the big doors he was in full flow.
‘I’m so glad to see you,’ he said, taking the top of her arm and guiding through the great rooms. ‘How have you been? And were you successful in your searches? I’m so keen to hear more.’
There was barely a cigarette paper between his questions and she smiled at his almost schoolboy excitement. He looked different, but she couldn’t quite define why although she could see that he was now wearing a pale linen jacket over his familiar chinos and trainers and in place of the usual T shirt was a white searsucker shirt with faint mauve and yellow stripes.
‘You seem very thoughtful this morning,’ he continued, yet to receive a response from her.
‘You appear different as well,’ she said, still amused.
‘It must be the shirt,’ he said, smoothing his front. ‘I bought it specially.’
‘It suits you,’ she said and meant it. ‘And, to answer some of your questions, I had a very successful time, although the word doesn’t seem quite right.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s a bit of a story.’
‘We’ve got all day. Haven’t we?’ He glanced at her for confirmation.
They arrived under the new dome and discussed its merits as they organised coffee.
‘Weren’t we meant to meet in here?’ she said.
‘I was too impatient to see you.’
They sat in the diffused light and she told him about the man she believed to be Joseph Troumeg’s father and the photograph of Odile with her head shaved. She spoke in a flat, matter of fact way, as she might have done during a production meeting. He touched her on the arm again, resting his hand on her forearm now.
‘Strange and difficult stuff,’ he said. ‘You must have found it quite upsetting.’
‘I did. I am.’ She looked at him and could see that his concern was genuine and that he was sharing some of her dilemmas.
‘Can you be sure that he’s the father?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t have to tell you how hard it is to put your finger on history. My mind could be deceiving me, but Joseph looks like Sebastian Trougott and I’m pretty certain that in the archive picture of the women being shaved I saw yesterday, one of them is Odile.’ She fished out her camera and showed him her montage of Odile with the shaven head. ‘They’re sending me the photo and when they do, I’ll show you.’
Harry took the camera and stared at the picture. She watched him pause, his face serious, his face creased with concern. ‘How dreadful.’
‘Yes, I found it quite hard. She looked so beautiful, but then so did most of the women who had their heads shaved.’
‘And what happened to him?’
‘He was sent back to Germany in 1937 and according to the embassy, was killed in 1940.’
‘And do you think Joseph knows the whole story?’
‘What is the whole story?’ she said. ‘Can we really know this?’
‘Come with me,’ he said, standing. He waited for her to get up and in silence took her back to the main building and up stone stairs, surprisingly dark after sitting under the dome, to an upper floor and through a series of open doorways and rooms full of display cabinets, until he arrived at his destination. He stood for a moment and then pointed around him. ‘This is history unknown,’ he said. ‘This is the world of Flotsam, give or take a hundred years or so. This is how much we know. And how little. From now on, you have to use your imagination.’
He led her lightly by the arm again, stopping at various cabinets, connecting the objects he showed her, their journe
y around the two rooms illogical in terms of geography, but perfect in reflecting the story of how Flotsam might have lived. He spoke gently about the objects behind the glass, isolated fragments, the corner of a pot, the handle of a sword, a reassembled tile, a model of an excavated boat, from which a history had to be made, to be guessed, to be imagined. She looked at him as he tried to put Flotsam in context, excited, exact and engaging, he built a picture from the scraps at his disposal and yet he made it real, as if it had been lived yesterday and he’d witnessed it happening. He saved the best until last. She followed him across to a long cabinet against a far wall.
‘Perhaps Flotsam wore some of these.’ She looked along the treasure trove in front of her, lines of silver rings, beautiful broaches of gilded bronze and garnets, clasps of gold and necklaces hung with pendants of coloured stones. She was astounded.
‘They’re so sophisticated. I had no idea.’
‘The Anglo-Saxons were great craftsmen. Look at that ring, for example,’ he said, nodding down at a gold ring mounted with a polished garnet which had lost none of its lustre. ‘You could not find better today. But this, this is what I particularly wanted to show you.’ He pointed to a necklace and she saw a slightly cloudy glass ball, held in place by long, thin silver fingers on a silver necklace. ‘I think that would look beautiful on you.’ She read the legend and saw that it was a rock crystal pendant, about a thousand years old which appeared to have survived those years with its beauty absolutely intact. Together with the ring, they might have been made today, so perfectly had they come down through time.
When she looked at him, she had her palm across the top of her chest. ‘Do you think so?’
‘I’m certain. It’s rock crystal and back then, as now really, it was said to have special properties. It’s magical, isn’t it?’
Beatrice looked down on the necklace and tried to eliminate the years between then and now, to picture a young girl wearing the beautiful object around her neck but she could go no further, her imagination stopped, the days too distant and her knowledge too sparse.
‘We have a rule of thumb that says the present began in 1950 and everything before that was BP, before present. So your search into the life of Joseph Troumeg’s childhood falls into that category. More clues, more documents, moving images, photos, even some living testament, but it’s still a form of archaeology, of sifting through the layers for a sort of truth.’
‘A sort of truth,’ she repeated.
‘Yes. It’s what I like about history. Although some dates might be finite, most interpretations are not. So we end up telling stories the way we see them, based on whatever evidence we have. The results can be fallible.’
She laughed. ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve just thought, and not for the first time?’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘Tell me.’
‘How wonderful you would be on film. You put things so well. Most people don’t.’
‘That’s another one of your compliments, is it?’
‘I think it is,’ she said.
‘Well, it might be an opportune moment to ask you to lunch.’
‘Are you sure? You know what happened last time.’
‘Ah, yes, well shall we call that BP and try again?’
He took her to a small restaurant at the top of Drury Lane which looked on to a brutal new development on the other side of the road.
‘I like coming here because I can remember the old buildings that used to be over there, many of them small studios of commercial artists doing work for Fleet Street. My father once took me with him and it was like stepping into a world which Dickens would have been more familiar with, men sitting on high wooden chairs with ink stained boards and jars full of brushes and nibbed pens. Now look at it. Ten years old and it already looks weary and ready to be pulled down.’
‘What does your father do?’
‘Did. He died a few years ago. He was in publishing. Children’s books.’ And, as if anticipating the next question, ‘My mother and he split up when I was young. Bernard Makins, that’s the name of the artist my dad used to visit. And your parents?’
‘Dad, actuary, died when I was twelve. Mother still around, bit of a problem.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Why’s that? I suppose she only thinks about herself and that can be very wearying. She doesn’t understand what I do and is frankly not very interested.’
‘And she doesn’t approve of the men in your life and can’t understand why you haven’t settled down.’
‘Something like that.’
‘We’ve had some more reports in about Flotsam,’ he said, changing subject. ‘Dental pathology shows a distinct change in growth pattern and indicates that she might have lived in two different places. We see minor variations to do with periods of famine, or harsh winters, but this is quite different. And rather unusual. And…’ He stopped. ‘Sorry, we were talking about you but I knew you would be interested.’
‘No, go on, I’m fascinated. Do we know where she might have lived other than London?’
‘Hard to tell and it would be a huge guess, but the pathologist suggests that it was a healthier climate where the food might have been better, certainly more abundant.’
‘So somewhere in the south, then?’
‘Could be.’
‘It must be so frustrating,’ Beatrice said, ‘not being sure. A life just out of your grasp.’
‘But it gives us certain freedom, as well. Perhaps that’s what I like. It’s more difficult with Sebastian Traugott where the room to manoeuvre is less.’
‘But still enough to make mistakes.’
‘Sure. But why do you say that?’
‘Because I have barely touched the surface of his life, or Odile’s. I still have only scraps and we’re talking only eighty years ago. It’s like my parents. What I know about them I could write on the back of a postcard.’
‘You’d want to write that much about your mother?’
Beatrice laughed. ‘Far too much, you’re right.’
Afterwards she wasn’t sure exactly when things changed, when the balance of their relationship shifted, but it was about this point, when they exchanged proper laughter for the first time. What they went on to talk about was more serious, more personal, but it was perhaps this lighter moment of understanding which paved the way for this to take place.
‘You said you felt upset when you realised that Odile might have been one of the women to have had her head shaved.’
‘I think it was doing the shaving myself, if you like, creating the skull cap for the picture I showed you. I found that difficult.’
‘What happened exactly?’
She saw that he was looking directly at her, wanting to hear more, almost willing her to explain. ‘After I had done it, I felt very angry. I threw some things across the hotel room and left. I ran up the tow path of the canal, I can’t remember how far, three or four kilometres maybe. I just felt terribly angry and sad at the same time. I still do, really.’
Harry nodded, encouraging her to continue.
‘I suppose I’m not really sure why I reacted like that. Yes, as a woman I felt sympathy for the way Odile and the other women were made scapegoats and it was horrible to see them naked in public. I felt indignant for them.’
Just by the way he kept still she sensed him not wanting to disturb this moment and she felt strangely safe to continue, so for the first time she put into words the ill-defined feelings that had been shifting around her ever since the event.
‘Maybe I understood her predicament on a more personal level, that she had reached this terrible point in her life because of a man. She had collaborated with a man and she had ended like that, head shaved and humiliated.’ Now that she had said this, actually articulated the thought, she knew it was true and what Harry Wesley said next she would have said if he hadn’t.
‘Your collaboration with men has only ended in damage to you.’
‘Precisely.’
> There were so many facetious remarks that he could have made to this, but he remained silent and she was glad, for she felt she was on a tightrope high above the ground and a false word or gesture might have caused her to fall. ‘But it was a collaboration and I have to accept my role in what has happened to me.’ She thought, hoped, that at this point Harry Wesley realised why it was so difficult for her to contemplate another relationship and once again his response reassured her.
‘Of course. The historian in me, though, agrees with you. We don’t know about the relationship between Odile and Sebastian, how or why it ended. Some facts will help and I imagine, I know, that there will be facts to do with your, as you say, collaboration with men that will tell you more. We just have to study them. And how terrible,’ he added, ‘that I should have shown you the computer animation of Flotsam as a naked girl. How utterly foolish of me.’
The meal didn’t end but drifted into the afternoon, nor was there any difficulty in their parting. He merely said he would call her and she knew that he would and was happy with that and she strolled eastwards, through Clerkenwell and Shoreditch to her apartment where she allowed the day to end in the same easy way.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The patterns of life give her strength, tell her she can cope, help take away doubt. Her mother had lost a husband and survived. She had found another and sailed with him across the seas to start a new life. After the summer has ended, she accepts her own husband is dead and the wheel begins to turn again. Her mother is buried on the hill and the reasons for being here diminish every day. By now, her daughter has stopped standing on the quay and begun to play again and she tells her they will return to the place where she herself had been born and the child accepts the decision, just as she had before.
