Caroline smiled. ‘I don’t mind. It doesn’t matter, does it?’
Auguste fumbled with the reins; guiltily he geed up the horses and was away.
But Caroline did mind. Over the past six months she had seen the depredations of senility on her husband: she’d seen the way Auguste watched André – a fascination that bordered on the awestruck; she had listened to Auguste’s excited breathing at night, and heard his elaborate, circumlocutive mutterings when he thought he was alone. His trip to town today was not to buy cloth for her Christmas dresses but to see the lawyer and change his will in his son’s favour. Now that André was grown, and apparently a prodigy, why delay?
When her husband died – and Caroline thought he must die soon, because how could his softening brain withstand everyday pressure for much longer? – she would not inherit. Caroline had not been forced into marriage, but she had been pushed. She would have nothing to show for all the long dry years – André would acquire everything: the roof over her head, the clothes on her body.
But was he not also a commodity of sorts, something to be acquired in turn?
Auguste was not expected back from town till late. At two o’clock in the afternoon she summoned André to the schoolroom.
While she waited for him she arranged herself underneath her own portrait, which had been commissioned by Auguste shortly after their marriage. She was painted alone, wearing her white high-necked costume, the cane-fields swaying behind her. Her knees were pressed together and turned slightly to the right, sensuously outlined beneath the flowing white fabric in the painter’s one concession to the feelings she gave rise to. Her eyes met the painter’s; her hands rested on a sketchbook which lay open at a drawing of the whole scene in miniature, complete with green cane and tiny white figure.
Caroline looked up and saw André; smiled and patted the chair beside her with a white-gloved palm.
He stayed where he was, uncertain; but also something else.
As she crossed the room to him, she registered his tallness, and wondered who the boy’s father had been, to have given him such long legs. She reached him, put her arms around his neck and leant the whole of her weight against him.
7. juillet 1913
THAT EVENING, I didn’t stay late for André. I left early with the others, and Paris was drowning: rain fell in sluices, pooling in the courtyards and battering our umbrellas as we giggled and hopped our way out towards the street. The Metro steamed with the closeness of our bodies pressed together. Further down the carriage, a man smiled shyly at Annick; she smiled sweetly back and then, turning to us, she crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out; we burst out laughing and the man looked down at his feet.
Annick and Georgette were the last to get out, arm looped in arm. The train moved off: for the final ten minutes of the journey I stood alone, looking at the pitch-black of the tunnel walls. Let him wonder.
The train surfaced and I left the station and crossed the Boulevard Montparnasse with its array of winking red lights, and turned into rue Boissonnade. The surface of the cobbles shone with water; the rain had stopped, washing everything clean.
From the salon came an unmistakable clicking sound. Mathilde was sitting in her shawl, hunched over the flicker of her hands. When she saw me, she paused in her knitting and brought her lorgnette up to her eye.
‘There you are,’ she said, ‘working hard as usual.’
She paused, as though picking words. I rushed to forestall it: ‘I get paid at the end of the month,’ I said. ‘I can give you all of it, I promise.’
‘No, dear, it isn’t that,’ said Mathilde.
She paused again, as though trying to find how to say a delicate truth. Then she said: ‘A young lady came asking for you, who says she is your sister. I told her there must be some mistake because your family were all dead. But she insisted.’
Camille is sitting on my bed, facing the window. On the coverlet next to her is an envelope which I recognise as one of my own. It belongs to the letter I sent to Père Simon; the return address is scribbled on the flap. Inwardly I flinch, as I recall the closing phrase: … almost certain that I shall be engaged as the lead in M. Durand’s Fée Verte. And we both know, my dear friend, to whom the first invitation for the premiere shall be sent!
Camille doesn’t turn straightaway.
‘I like your dress,’ I say.
She twists to look at me. With a jolt I see that the months since I last saw her have transformed her: the childish scarecrow has been replaced by poise. She plays with the hem of her calico – this old thing?
‘Pa gave it to me as a leaving present,’ she says. Already she is lying to me; our father would never have allowed her to come of her own free will. She looks up at me, a trick I know well because I use it myself, the slow lifting of the gaze, making me feel the force of her eyes.
‘You can stay for a week,’ I say, at the same time as Camille says ‘I thought I could stay here for a while.’
The impasse stretches out into a silence that feels like falling. I let myself drift – how can I do otherwise: it comes to me suddenly that wherever I go, it will never be far enough. Seeing my face, Camille peels down the sleeve of her dress, revealing a series of vicious welts across her shoulder.
Putting my forefinger over them I can feel how the skin is raised to the touch: the stripe of a willow cane like the one my father used. And there are others, none of them very old, forming a complex knot of scars intertwined.
Did I already know this, at the back of my mind? That when I left home our father would look for someone else to beat?
‘I can find work as soon as they’ve healed,’ she mumbles into my shoulder. I have pulled her into an embrace so tight that neither of us can speak.
Camille half-woke at three o’clock in the morning.
‘It’s so loud here,’ she complained groggily. I listened, and heard only ordinary sounds – the clink of Monsieur Z’s bottles in the stairwell, the carolling from the all-night restaurants on Boulevard Montparnasse.
I brushed the hair off her forehead to soothe her, and within a few moments she was asleep.
The noise from below faded; there was just the rustle of an old newspaper crackling on the pavement, and then the room was silent. But still I couldn’t sleep.
The street cleaners sluicing water over cobbles woke me at half past five and I lay watching the pale light filter in through the shutters until it was time to get up.
Camille turned over just when I thought I had reached the door without waking her. She propped herself on one elbow, and my heart sank as I recognised the expression on her face: matchless cunning that was not cunning enough to hide itself. It was as though the previous evening’s reunion had dropped away.
‘Are you off to work with Durand?’ she asked.
I was immediately on guard. ‘How did you know?’ I asked, trying to keep the strain from my voice.
‘Your letter, silly.’ She yawned. ‘Père Simon was so impressed. A senior producer, he said, I always knew it, he said, always, like this.’ She made her voice fluting, and clasped her hands piously to her chest, eyelids batting, expecting me to join in the joke.
Then her eyes narrowed.
‘You’re wearing your smart dress,’ she said. ‘There’s a boyfriend. You didn’t write about that.’ Her eyes glittered with joy of the discovery.
What tic of the mouth could I employ to convince her of my truthfulness, when my mouth was the same as hers?
‘It’s just an ordinary dress,’ I said.
She studied me for a few seconds, then her mouth twisted into a smile. ‘When you see Durand, you can tell him about me,’ she said. ‘Tell him I’ll come and work with him too. Tell him I’ve got a skill.’
She nodded proudly to her valise, still standing by the bed. For the first time I noticed it was new – square and black, more like an artist’s paint-box than a suitcase.
‘What skill?’ I asked.
Camille bit her lower lip betwee
n her front teeth, and shook her head at me. ‘Tell you tonight,’ she said. She flopped back down onto the bed and closed her eyes.
Of course I did not take her seriously. What skill could she possibly have to rival my own?
On my way out of the apartment it occurred to me that I did not even consider telling Camille the truth.
It would have been a relief. There is someone, I could have told her, drawing innocent patterns on the bedspread with one finger. She might have folded me up in her skinny arms; it might have wakened the impulse I had longed to see in her; that she might want to take care of me a little, too. But even now I can remember the precise way her lip curled as she laughed at me; the prideful way she pointed out her valise.
I do not know why they say that the present draws a veil over the past, when it is only later that one sees things as they really were. Now I understand that I could not have done otherwise, because the jaws of the trap had sprung shut when we were children. I told myself, as I set out for work, that my secrets were mine to keep.
That day, my mind was so full of Camille that I barely paid attention at work. The others read my mood: Elodie watched me from behind the safety of the sewing machine. ‘Something on your mind?’ she asked, and I shook my head.
At five I hurried away; when I got home I found Camille sitting on my bed, perusing my scrapbook of newspaper cuttings.
‘They’re mine,’ I said, and she glanced up, lost in the stories, brow furrowed – a child. ‘But of course you may borrow them,’ I added, and felt idiotic. I would never learn; she would always unseat me.
She stared at me for a moment, glanced at the clock on the wall and then hopped off the bed. ‘I’m going to take tea with Agathe now,’ she said.
‘You’ll have to be quick,’ was all I could think of to say to this, ‘don’t let her eat all the biscuits.’
Camille ignored me and skipped away down the corridor.
I called after her: ‘Have you seen Mme Moreau about that cleaning position?’
Camille looked at me blankly. I knew what she was seeing: a fussy ten-year-old, trying to make her tidy her half of the room. She shook her head and pushed the door of Agathe’s room open. When I turned back to my bed I noticed that she had taken the scrapbook with her.
André, iii.
She taught him to hold himself back until she was ready; taught him to be quiet and stealthy. More than once they paused, Caroline’s hand plastered over André’s terrified mouth, as Auguste called out merrily that he was home. André would scrabble for his shirt: she would draw him round, place her hands on him and soothe him: they had a few more minutes, at least. He was such a great joy to look at: his long limbs, his cheekbones, the skin like milk.
An afternoon, six weeks after the first time: early November. The autumn had cooled the earth outside, but Caroline lay on the bare floorboards of the schoolroom floor, her white dress beside her, in a pile with André’s blue trousers; and on the other side, arms and legs spread-eagled as though he had fallen from a great height, was André.
Caroline played with the curls on his forehead. Everything was peaceful. The house slumbered around them, basking in the sun. She felt him squirm, and sit up. They smiled at each other as they began to dress.
A curious thing happened: André turned away from her as he knotted his cravat, and when he had finished, he turned back and his cheeks were scarlet – startling Caroline, who thought he must have succumbed to a sudden illness. Then she saw it, and wondered why she had not seen it before: the boy had fallen in love with her in the way that is indeed a sickness. The display of passion frightened her: she sat down on her chair to think what to do.
André knelt before her. His fingers pressed into her waist as he said what she’d feared: ‘We must go away somewhere together.’
But the house, the sugar-fields, the lace collar on my finest dress … she shook her head. ‘Where would we go?’ she said, with a touch of temper.
His face was mutinous.
Why, she asked, when they had everything they needed here.
He’s my father, André said. I don’t want to be dishonest any more.
She almost laughed. Honesty: the preserve of rich men.
‘Let’s talk about it later,’ she said, and began to stroke with one hand the fork of his trousers. André pursed his lips and turned his face away.
The door slammed; later, she heard him stalking up and down in his room. She stood at the classroom window and bit her nails, one by one, down to the pink.
As they had never known when André’s real birthday was, it had always been celebrated on the same day as Auguste’s – the twenty-first of November – with a special meal. ‘A pack of blessings,’ Auguste liked to say each year, rubbing his hands, ‘we shall be spoiled, shan’t we? I plan to eat until I cannot move!’
When Caroline woke on André’s birthday morning, she found Auguste with his back to her, standing out on the balcony which adjoined their room. His hands were spread on the railing; as she watched he took a theatrical breath in.
She padded over to him. It was indeed a glorious winter sunrise, hazy and gold as a bitten coin.
‘Sixteen today. Can you believe it?’
It wasn’t a question; as always, it was a statement to which Caroline was only expected to murmur her assent.
‘All this,’ said Auguste, and instead of finishing his sentence, he waved an arm over the rich brown sea of the plantation; small dots of cane-workers trussing and tying the husks of cane for winter.
Suddenly he was clutching her hand. ‘You’ve been happy, haven’t you? We’ve been happy, the two of us?’
His face was so strange: so earnest and terrified, she took fright.
‘Of course we have.’ She searched wildly for safe ground, and found it by showing him the plantation. ‘Look what you’ve achieved.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose so.’ To her relief, he rallied. ‘It’s a great day today, isn’t it?’ He clapped his mottled hands together and walked to the door, where he paused and blew her a kiss.
Caroline dressed carefully and went downstairs to eat breakfast. André was out there working in the field: she could feel him, picture him listening to the overseer with all that respectful, youthful attention.
After she had eaten, she went to the reception room and read until it was time for the note to be sent. She wrote: Your birthday present will be waiting for you at four o’clock in the library, rang for a servant and told her to take it to André. The servant bobbed and hurried away. Crossing to the window, Caroline saw her running down the paths between the corn until there in the distance was André. Squinting, Caroline could just make him out receiving the note; then he looked up towards the house and raised one arm: yes. She could not see if he was smiling or not.
Caroline’s heart pressed on her ribcage as she sat down at the little walnut bureau and wrote out the second note. Auguste – forgot to tell you, have ordered birthday cake for A. A birthday tea, quarter past four in the library? Say you’ll be there. Love as always, C.
She looked at her handiwork. It was beautiful: glistening black ink on the white paper.
It was time to decide what to do. Another stroke and she would no longer be able to see the land.
She smoothed it out, sprinkled sand, folded it and beckoned to the servant.
Caroline sat, read, stood, sat again to table but couldn’t eat; thought the servant’s gaze on her was speculative as she waved away her plate; sat again, this time in the salon, folding her hands first one way then the other.
She could stop if she chose, at this point now, or this one; or this new second, the tock of the clock’s longest hand slotting into the next, then the next. But she didn’t move; she sat, hands in her lap, looking at nothing. And then, at five to four, she stood and went out of the reception room and down the corridor to the library.
A Southern belle to her core, Caroline’s body gave her advance warning of barometric changes: she could feel the
oncoming rain in little damp pinpricks up and down her forearm; as she took her seat in the library, dry-throated, rain began to scatter against the French windows which led out to the plantation.
A few moments later André appeared at the French doors, his face swimming in the wash of water on the glass; she unlatched the doors to let him in; and then left them carefully ajar. She scanned his face for evidence of a change for the better, and saw none: André looked like a boy dying for love. As he smoothed the rain out of his hair his movements were quick, jerky and doll-like, his pallor extreme.
Since that day in the classroom, they had barely spoken, still less been alone together; Caroline’s heart fluttered. It was important to play the game perfectly. She bent her head, as if in apology, waiting for his next move.
André looked not at her but up at the books, a smooth skin of leather covering all the walls. He looked at the furniture; over at the door, swallowing; anywhere but at her.
She took his hand. ‘I want us to go away,’ she said, and he looked back at her, astonished. She smiled. ‘We’ll get somewhere far away and start again.’
He reached for her as she’d known he would. She let herself be pulled in but with one eye on the clock – it was getting late, almost ten past – so she held him away from her as he tried to lead her to the door. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing to Auguste’s reading armchair. ‘Please,’ making her mouth open, her eyes glaze as she knew they did when she was possessed by feeling.
André picked her up and settled her on his hips, where she could feel he was hard; now it was all simple. They half-walked, half-fell towards the chair. He knelt in front of her and reached under her dress; she squirmed against his hand, tilted her head to check the time, and reached for the fastening on his trousers.
How silky he was, already pearling with excitement. He raised himself on his toes and pushed himself into her; she gasped – it hurt a little – and as André scrabbled for purchase on the parquet, knuckles bulging on the arms of the chair, the French doors opened inwards and Auguste stood in the room. In his right hand was a poorly wrapped package; André’s birthday present.
Petite Mort Page 5
