Petite Mort

by Beatrice Hitchman

  A sheaf of papers at the front. I pulled out the tottering stack and held the leaves up to the light one by one. Deeds to the house; the purchase of an automobile; a marriage certificate, which I considered burning, then put back in place.

  At the back of the safe, my fingers felt wafery paper; I pulled out a tightly bound bundle and found it was not money, but what looked like a will. I scrabbled with my fingers at the back of the safe: there was no cash in there.

  I went to slam the locker door shut, piqued, when my fingers brushed another object: cold metal, which I had first thought was part of the inside of the safe.

  I drew the revolver out into the light and studied its snub nose, its brutal little tongue. For a moment I considered taking it, for its workmanship, strictly to the purpose and nothing more, struck me as beautiful – but then I reconsidered. It would be better for André not to notice anything was missing. Laying it back in its place, I shut the safe door, blew out the candle and crept from the room.

  The cold was edged: my breath froze into a cloud before my face as I joined the last of the guests heading for the lake.

  I was the only person walking on their own – all the rest were couples, and nobody spoke to or looked at me. After twenty aching minutes, we were suddenly at the fringe of the Bois. The lanterns showed us how the path straggled in under the eaves of the woods; there were giggles and fallings-over, as the ladies of the party grappled with the uneven ground. Then the track broadened out, and suddenly we were on the edge of a white clearing.

  From behind me I heard a chorus of well-bred oohs and aahs. The lake’s frozen surface was perfect, violet from the moonlight and streaked gold from the lanterns strung in the branches overhanging the banks; the trees closed in on every side. The ice was already covered in skaters, zipping adroitly here and there, insects to flowers. A long table for refreshments was stationed on the far bank: steam rose from a vat and behind the table I could just make out Thomas standing watching the scene. Set a little further back was a bonfire, just beginning to take; a couple of ladies had already retreated nearby, holding their hands out to warm them.

  I looked around for Luce, and saw her standing with André in the very centre of the lake, in a knot of admirers. She was laughing at a joke or an aside; her hand still resting on André’s wrist. As I watched, André leant forward to add a bon mot and she, along with the other guests, threw her head back in laughter. She turned to watch André tell the rest of his anecdote, her face shining, her fingers gripping his arm, her lips rouged.

  It was strange: like going back in time to before her illness.

  As I wondered what to do, how to approach her, a footman tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Skates, Mademoiselle?’

  I said yes, and stared as he put a pair of white boots in my hands; the blades were clean but hungry-looking. But the only way to Luce was across the lake, so I bent and struggled into them, and placed one tentative foot on the ice.

  Immediately the world tilted. Steady, laughed a man as he whooshed past me. I put another foot down, and stood, wobbly-legged, on the ice; tried to advance, picking up each boot as though walking. Careful, another man said impatiently – I glimpsed his flashing eyes as he whirled away, arms laced behind his back.

  Why hadn’t I been born rich, so that winter sports were second nature? I gazed at Luce, willing her to turn and see me. Darling: but she was talking now, engaged in a story, her gloved hands moving in the air.

  The inevitable happened. A lady shrieked as she cannoned into my sprawled body; her skates missed my outstretched fingers by half an inch.

  Firm hands gripped me under the arms and hauled me upright; clever eyes staring at me from a lean, weather-lined face.

  ‘All right?’ said Aurélie Vercors. ‘No bones broken? Back on the horse,’ and, her fingers tightening on my forearm, she pulled me after her. ‘That’s it,’ she said, as, despite myself, my ugly-duckling stumble drew out into smooth strokes, ‘just let yourself go.’

  ‘I have to speak to Luce,’ I said.

  ‘Not until you can put one foot in front of the other,’ she said brightly. She was wearing a fur-trimmed grey dress, her hair drawn back into a tight bun.

  My skates made a sound like scissors as we moved over the ice.

  ‘Good,’ Aurélie said. ‘You’re a natural.’

  She moved with absolute ease. On our second circle, she jerked her chin at Louis, standing alone on the bank, watching us nervously, still wearing shoes. ‘He doesn’t skate. Too much thin ice in politics as it is.’

  I didn’t even smile. Luce was still invisible behind the knot of guests.

  ‘What is your plan, Mlle Roux? Are you going to storm over there, and fall as you reach her, and give André the satisfaction?’ Bright eyes watched me from above her Roman nose. ‘A scene is never worth one’s time. We will stay back, like this, and choose your opportunity with caution.’

  I could not think of a single intelligent thing to say to this. We skated on.

  ‘Refreshments,’ Aurélie said. We had reached the drinks table. She snapped her fingers to Thomas, who passed her two cups of mulled wine. ‘Now come and sit with me on the bank.’

  She tugged me over to the firm ground and helped me climb a way up the bank. I wrapped my hands gratefully round the mug and peered through the steam.

  ‘Come in under the eaves, the view’s better,’ she said, and without waiting for an answer she grabbed my hand and led me a little way under the tree line.

  There was nobody else about; the trees extended into the darkness behind me. Aurélie was right: we were afforded an excellent vantage point. From here it was possible to see the entire canvas, the way the whirling lights and shadows combined. I had never thought of Aurélie as someone who could appreciate the form of things.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘here you are alone, when by rights every person with eyes in their head should be asking you to skate.’ She spoke without pity: merely outlining a problem.

  ‘How did you – did she—’ I asked.

  ‘She didn’t have to tell me. It was obvious, if you know her as well as I.’

  There was a little pause. I turned back to the problem at hand.

  ‘She has to be her social self tonight,’ I said uncertainly. I wished I could believe that was all it was: just camouflage.

  ‘Oh, no doubt.’ Aurélie swirled her wine and looked out over the frozen lake; laughed as a large woman in furs fell over, arse in the air and her red round face angry, and began shouting at her husband.

  ‘It never ceases to amaze me how people who are born rich carry on,’ she said. ‘It’s as if the world should be perpetually to their liking.’

  ‘I thought—’

  She watched me over the rim of her cup, dark eyes twinkling. ‘My parents were grocers in Orléans.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I’m married to a bore. But I have security, my books, my stables and I find that I can watch those people out on the lake and not mind if they hardly see me.’

  ‘She’s different,’ I said. ‘She isn’t herself. She hasn’t been for a few weeks.’

  ‘And why do you think that is?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t think how to help her.’ It was surprisingly easy to talk to her, sitting here away from the rest of the world.

  ‘Here,’ she said, taking off her stole and reaching across to wrap it snugly round my shoulder.

  ‘It’s been since the faint,’ I said. ‘I can’t seem to get her to listen. Sometimes she’s there and sometimes she’s not. And then, things like tonight—’

  ‘She seems to pick and choose who she is.’

  ‘Yes.’ I blushed. But there was a warm feeling, too, the spice of the disloyalty.

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I thought unhappily of the empty safe. The plan seemed stupid – out of reach and childish. I turned to look at Luce. She was talking to someone else now: as animated as I had ever seen her.
r />   ‘In the meantime, what about you?’

  The wine had made my cheeks hot; I pressed my palms to them to cool down.

  She murmured: ‘It seems there are a lot of things you’re not sure of.’

  She reached for my hands, and folded them in hers, and gave them a squeeze. ‘That big house, and André so very present all the time,’ she said. ‘I suppose you must ask yourself: How long am I prepared to wait?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. She was still holding my hands loosely in hers. It was more for something to say, than anything else: I felt dull, and tired. It was as if the wine had drawn a curtain between us and the rest of the party, skating in endless loops.

  She drew a pattern on the back of my hand with her thumb. ‘One must wonder how many other opportunities one may miss along the way?’

  Her look was lowered; at first I didn’t understand. Then she looked up, and the old Aurélie was clearly visible in the cast of the lips.

  I pulled my hands away. She knew then that she had miscalculated; she licked her lips. ‘But wouldn’t you agree, we only regret the chances we didn’t take?’

  I stepped back, away from her clutching hands, towards the ice.

  She smiled her lemon-slice smile, followed me forward and gripped my wrist, and we stood like that, in tension, running away impossible.

  Her voice was a low murmur: ‘She’ll wring you out and run back to what she knows – it’s how she is built.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about us. She loves me.’

  There was something like tenderness on her face. At the same moment, the crowd parted and I saw Luce, laughing and talking, not ten feet away, a circle of admiring, fashionable women around her.

  ‘Come now,’ Aurélie said. ‘Did you really think you were her first?’

  I stepped off the bank and half-skated, half-staggered as fast as I could across the ice. From the corner of my eye, Luce turning, confused, to watch me go.

  On the other side of the lake, I took my skates off and started back down the path towards the house.

  I had reached the lawn before I heard her footsteps behind me, looked around and found her close enough to touch.

  She moved round till we were facing each other; stood watching me, her chest rising and falling. She looked like the person I had thought was mine, the person I had met in the salon all those months ago: her face lovely with exercise, her eyes sparkling from all the fine conversation and clever jokes.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Aurélie?’

  Her eyes widened. I saw it clearly now, how she darted here and there, looking for the right thing to say.

  ‘It was a long time ago. Nothing.’ Her eyes cut downwards. ‘Why, what did she say?’

  ‘That you use people up and let them go. Is that what you did to her? Were you in love with her? Are you still together now?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

  I shake my head. ‘What haven’t you told me? What’s going on now, that you won’t tell me about?’

  She closed her eyes, tight: but not before I had seen something flicker in them.

  I slapped her. A casual, arcing blow, but hard, because it made the small bones of my hand hum.

  Her head snapped sideways; she put her hand to her cheek to test for blood; finding it, she put her fingertip experimentally to her tongue, and was her old self again; all the way back, wiping out everything, to the person I had seen being expelled from Pathé, eyes narrowed and glittering. In the distance, the pop and fizz of New Year fireworks bursting over Paris.

  Juliette and Adèle

  1967

  Adèle looks out of the window, watching something else.

  At last, she takes a sharp breath in. ‘But you said you had something to ask me,’ she says.

  I slide the list of names the man from Public Records had sent me across the table. She reaches for her handbag, extracts a pair of reading glasses, and perches them on the end of her nose.

  ‘What am I looking at?’ she asks.

  ‘These are all the people who lived in Anne Ruillaux’s house before her.’

  ‘Anne Ruillaux being the lady who handed in the film canister?’

  I say: ‘Correct. Can you tell me if you recognise any of them? The man from Public Records said they had no connection with Pathé, but I just thought one of them might be familiar.’

  She studies the sheet. Slides it back across the table.

  She says: ‘No. I’m sorry. I don’t recognise anyone.’

  She watches me for a few seconds. ‘When I have a problem, I turn the telescope around. Look at it from the reverse angle. Start again from the beginning, or recommence at the end. Might that be of some assistance here?’

  I put my fingers to my temples and press inwards. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘What is the beginning of the mystery? When was the last time anyone saw the film?’

  ‘During the fire at the Pathé factory,’ I say. And look up at her.

  Juliette, vi.

  The Pathé archivist beams when she catches sight of me, her pointed face opening.

  She walks towards me, carrying a box-file, and puts it on my desk.

  ‘The Pathé fire of 1914,’ she says. ‘This is everything.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I pull the box towards me and lift the lid.

  She hovers. ‘Is this to do with the missing film?’

  I am leafing through the newspaper articles about the fire – Inferno at Pathé factory – Workers evacuated – No fatalities…

  ‘They started the fire,’ I say. ‘The person who stole the print set the factory on fire to cover up the theft. I’m sure of it.’

  The archivist frowns. ‘But the papers all said the fire was an accident.’

  ‘It’s the only way the thief could be sure nobody would know the film had been stolen. This way, everyone would assume it had just been destroyed along with everything else. It wouldn’t even be missed, and nobody would come looking for him. And you have the records, don’t you?’

  The archivist stares. ‘But nitrate cellulose is so flammable. The reaction generates its own oxygen, so it just burns and burns. When a film reel caught fire at the Paris Bazaar in 1897, the fire continued for days. A hundred people died.’

  I say: ‘You mean whoever started the fire couldn’t be sure the firemen would be able to put it out? Without loss of life?’

  ‘Yes. Whoever it was must have been really desperate.’

  She looks down with distaste at the papers arranged in a fan on my desk.

  ‘He’s in there somewhere,’ she says. ‘Your ruthless person.’

  5. janvier 1914

  I’D DR EAMED OF HOW this would feel; the cosmetician asking me to bend my head a little to the right, and with deferential flicks of her wrist she dusted my right cheek with powder. Then she invited me to offer a pretend kiss to the mirror, and painted my lips, and then put kohl just underneath my eyes, which wavered away from their own reflected gaze.

  ‘All done,’ she said, starting to replace her pots and unguents in her make-up case with precision and fastidiousness. Everything in its proper place.

  I wanted to ask her to stay with me until it was time to go to the stage, but she kept her back to me. I heard the snap of the clasps fastening her bag, and she left the room without saying anything else.

  The dressing room is quiet apart from the ticking of the pipes overhead. I put my palms on my knees and listen to my own breathing.

  A knock at the door: the camera assistant. ‘It’s time.’

  It had taken me a few attempts to get through to Peyssac on André’s study telephone; a few tries to understand how the dialling worked, and which end one picked up. And then I had to choose my moment, before the household was properly awake and I could be interrupted.

  Peyssac’s early-morning-peevish voice came through on the crackling line: ‘Yes? Who is it, please?’

  ‘It’s Adèle Roux.’

  I thought
: Perhaps he won’t remember me.

  A hush, as he considered. ‘How wonderful to hear your voice again.’ The delicacy of the pause. ‘And do you have good news for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Delightful. So pleased.’

  Another pause. What do you say to a co-conspirator?

  ‘Can you be free in two days’ time, say, at nine in the morning? We will arrange for a car. And – given your situation – yes, I think we can complete your scenes in a single day. Nobody need know until such time as you choose to tell them.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I was about to hang up when I thought of the money; I’d need it if I was going to live independently again. ‘I will want to be paid,’ I said.

  Miles away, Peyssac spluttered. ‘Of course! Your wages will be available to be collected at the Pathé offices, the day after filming, as is customary.’

  I replaced the receiver without saying goodbye.

  The night before the filming, I packed my valise and slid it under the bed. Straightening up, I hesitated, listening.

  Then shook my head: of course that sound was not footsteps, coming to my room. It was only the floorboards complaining as the house tacked into the wind.

  ‘That is our final shot. Thank you, everyone.’ Peyssac bounces forward, hands clasped. ‘Mlle Roux. Words cannot express – it has been an honour. I do most fervently hope we will work together again.’

  The cameraman is turning away, collapsing the tripod. Extras mill about, chatting, getting out cigarettes. The light coming through the studio roof is tinged with pink.

  In the dressing room, I am left alone to remove my make-up: the Vaseline in long, greasy smears; the kohl, picking at it with watery cloths to get it out of the creases under my eyes.

  At the factory gates I get into the car Peyssac has provided: the latest model, its engine builds to a roar before we purr away.

  The streets unribbon. At a greengrocer’s, I see Mathilde. Her spidery fingers are engaged in examination of fruit – she holds a plump apple up, inspecting it for bruises, then drops it satisfied into her string bag and looks up, scanning about her for the next thing.