The Roses of Picardie

by Simon Raven

  ‘Exquisite detail,’ Marigold said.

  ‘“Couple seen for last time about a foot from right-hand edge of canvas, on skyline of low ridge (where there is now a stone terrace), well to S and E of minor Church of St Peter, which is itself south of, parallel with, and almost adjacent to the main and much larger Abbey Church of Our Lady. To reach the ridge they must have passed through the library, out of a far door into the Cloister, eastwards across the Cloister (to S of Our Lady), into St Peter’s by the West Door, some way up the nave of St Peter’s and out of it by the South Door, through a wilderness visible in painting (now a garden) and so on to the N end of ridge and along it to S. Figures are now therefore distant from view and very much smaller.” And at that point,’ said Jacquiz, ‘Auguste hustled us out. But we both, I think, have a pretty vivid recollection of that last scene on the ridge. No need of a written memo about that.’

  ‘No,’ said Marigold huskily, and shuddered once more. ‘Calma, calma,’ said Jacquiz. ‘Before we consider that scene, let us again consider the long route, mostly invisible in the painting, which took them to the ridge from the place where they had previously appeared. This was just in front of the Library. Already we are being warned, from the expression on the man’s face, that something is about to go wrong. Where, we ask ourselves, and what? What happened en route, Marigold, to account for what we see on the ridge?’

  ‘He married her,’ said Marigold flatly.

  ‘I agree. In the Library they gathered up the officiating priests and a congregation of monks – Benedictines they were in this Abbey. In the Cloister…in the centre of which, Marigold, I remember a fine yew tree…they picked up…more guests for their wedding. And in the smaller Church of St Peter, under the tenth-century galleries, they were married.’

  ‘A choir of monks chanting,’ said Marigold listlessly.

  ‘Yes. That would be right. The Benedictines have always been proud of their music.’

  ‘The bell, the book, and the ring,’ Marigold intoned. ‘But something is not right. She shrinks from putting out her finger. The shadows close behind her, and two hands take hers, forcing it forward and spreading five fingers, so that the ring may be duly placed and herself given to…to her lord and lover.’

  ‘Yes… What then, Marigold?’

  ‘A procession out of the Church, out of the South Door and through the wilderness in the painting which, you say, is now a garden. First the chanting monks, then the priests, then the bride and groom, and then, Jacquiz, then…’

  ‘…Then the guests who came from the Cloister. The guests from under the yew tree…’

  ‘…Cowled, like the monks, faces deep in shadow, hands folded, invisible, into sleeves…’

  ‘…And so they came to the ridge, where we actually see, in the painting, the monks chanting by the gate which leads into a tiny chapel…’

  ‘…Only it is not a chapel, Jacquiz.’

  ‘It has long since disappeared, if ever it was there. Dismantled for its stone, no doubt, after the Revolution. So we cannot tell what it was.’

  ‘Not a chapel, Jacquiz. We know what it was. We know, because the shadowy guests, in that painting, are urging the couple towards it, because the bride is cringing back in despair and looking out from the picture, her face, tiny as it is, pleading to us to save her from this horror.’

  ‘Another exquisite detail.’

  ‘We know, because over the ridge, to the east, a first, dim, single ray of dawn is showing. Some of the guests, the shadows, are pointing to it and shrinking back. The others are urgent in their gestures. “Make haste before it is too late,” their gestures proclaim, “before we the guests, and you the bridegroom are powerless.” Already it is almost too late for the shadows and the bridegroom. In a few minutes she would be safe from them. Already, because dawn is coming, the groom’s face is changing back to a skull –’

  ‘– Yet another exquisite detail –’

  ‘– And he is labouring desperately, as he grows weaker ’every second, to drag her into the little chapel, which is not a chapel, before the sun comes to save her.’

  Both of them sat in silence as the evening sun sank towards the eastern ramparts of Montreuil.

  ‘The vision of Richard Van Hoek,’ said Jacquiz at last.

  ‘What did he mean by it? And why did poor potty Auguste think that it would help us? What is that painting doing, there in the attic?’

  ‘That at least we can answer. The attic could have been Van Hoek’s studio “within the Castle Gate”. The painting could have been one which he left when he died. Someone…with a sense of the appropriate, could have had it placed on the wall of the room in which he worked, could have fitted that panel to protect it. And there it has stayed ever since.’

  ‘Valuable, surely?’

  ‘Not really. Valuable enough to guard from the hostel’s young guests with a padlock, but beyond that, no. Van Hoek was unknown, or almost. His style is standard for Dutch painters of the time and largely undistinguished. His method…that of rendering successive events from left to right of the canvas – is not altogether uncommon, even at this late period, and constitutes no more than a curiosity. No, not a valuable picture.’

  ‘Valuable enough for the Vibrots to take care of down the generations. I wonder why M’sieur or Madame didn’t show it to us. Here we were inquiring about Constance, who was once engaged to Van Hoek. They must have known we’d be interested.’

  ‘Tax. In France, if you are seen to possess a conspicuous object, somebody tends to come on you for tax.’

  ‘But we hardly resembled tax narks, French tax narks.’

  ‘The French trust nobody. But they needn’t have worried. The fiercest of tax men could hardly squeeze them for having a Van Hoek.’

  ‘I think that picture was better than you say. What about those “exquisite details” – your phrase first time?’

  ‘Ah. When Van Hoek did those he was working way above his usual form. He must have been, as they say, possessed. It is here that we might look for an explanation of the painting. He had something horrible to say, and he was so urgent to say it that at times his urgency lent him touches of genius.’

  ‘He was dying? Or knew he was doomed?’

  ‘Something of the kind. He returned from the bed of the Countess, remember, having taken the jewels which were now due to him, and found that there was plague in Montreuil. He feared lest the plague would get him, perhaps – as indeed it did pretty soon – and he fell to, with great energy to compose his last utterance.’

  ‘But what did he mean by it?’

  ‘The picture is obviously an allegory. The Woman in White, all youth and purity, has been tempted to walk by night with a specious young gentleman in black and a hint of scarlet. He persuades her, against all instincts and judgment, to marry him there and then; after all, he urges, the Church nearby will be lending its auspices to their union. But marriages should not take place at night after brief courtships under the deceiving moon. This she realizes only when it is too late, only when she finds that the monks – past and present have assisted at her marriage to a corpse, with whom she, still living, Marigold, must now consort. The whole thing is a ghastly warning.’

  ‘To whom and against what?’

  ‘To the world in general and to Constance Fauvrelle, his betrothed, in particular. In case he did not survive the epidemic of plague, he was leaving Constance a piece of advice. One can read it several ways. For a start, he could be telling her not to dedicate herself to his memory – “don’t marry the dead”. Secondly, he could be warning her against marrying someone who looked like a good prospect but might turn out, too late, to have brought her to live, so to speak, in a charnel house. Although he didn’t live to know it, such a warning would have been all too appropriate, in view of her later marriage to Comminges.’

  ‘We don’t yet know for certain that she was unhappy with Comminges.’

  ‘Her first letter from that front – the one retailed by the old veu
ve Vibrot to Constance’s father – cannot be called sanguine. If Van Hoek was warning her about marriage, she’d have done well to listen.

  ‘But there is no need to insist that his concern was in that area, though it would quite likely have been. There are dozens of other possible interpretations of that painting – a warning against threats posed by the Romish Establishment, as represented by the Abbey, to Protestants like Constance and her family; or against the wiles of the Papist Priesthood, for perhaps Constance had shown signs of wanting to make life easier by becoming a Catholic; or even against the external lures of splendid buildings which are insufficiently lit and the evil influence that can be exerted on the present by the past – an influence symbolized here by the cowled ghosts who urge the consummation of this hideous marriage. Any or all of this might be intended. But the important point, for us is simply that Van Hoek was saying, more or less, “You watch out what you do with yourself, my dear, because the world is a very disagreeable and deceitful place, and I do not want you to end up with worms feeding on your flesh”.’

  ‘All right. I’ll buy it,’ said Marigold, ‘but why is this allegory set, so particularly in the Abbey of Jumièges?’

  ‘A place famous for its beauty, its music and its learning, only two days’ journey on horseback from Montreuil. It is only natural that a visiting Dutch painter should have been there and been impressed. It’s even possible that they made up a party, so that Constance could go too…’

  ‘…Yes,’ said Marigold. ‘In the early days of their courtship, perhaps. And since it was a memorable outing, he decided to use Jumièges as an image when he issued his warning.’

  ‘Thus adding yet another level of meaning,’ Jacquiz said: ‘“Remember this beautiful place to which we went last summer, and already I am dead”. All of which is plausible enough,’ continued Jacquiz after a pause, ‘but why was Auguste telling us to go there?’

  ‘I’m glad you’re getting round to that at last,’ Marigold said.

  ‘We agreed, after we’d left him,’ Jacquiz pursued, ‘that he was telling us to go there, and we agreed that we would go if only faute de mieux. But why, Marigold? What should we look for when we arrive? Does the painting give us any clue about that?’

  ‘Like all dons,’ said Marigold, not unkindly, ‘you are being too clever and complicated. Whatever that painting may or may not have meant, and whether or not you and I have interpreted it correctly, none of that can have anything to do with what Auguste was telling us. All he was saying in his simple way, was, “I hope you recognize the place in this picture; please go to it.” He knew we’d been disappointed, and that it was his fault because he’d destroyed the letters, and he also knew that there was still something at Jumièges which might help us and which his parents, for whatever reason, were not going to tell us about. So he waited till they were asleep, and then for the first time in his life dared to bring someone into the house without their knowing, because he liked us, I think –’

  ‘– Because he liked you –’

  ‘– And was sorry we had been disappointed. He then told us, in the only way he could, where we should go next. The fact that that picture was crammed with beastly allegories is beside the point: all Auguste was saying was, “Go on to Jumièges”.’

  ‘But how much did he understand? He understood that we wanted those letters, but did he have any conception what they were about?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so for a moment,’ said Marigold patiently. ‘All he knew was that anyone interested in those particular pieces of paper, which had by now been flushed down the students’ loo, would be interested in something still to be found at Jumièges. He risked his parents’ anger to tell us that – remember how jumpy the poor dear was – and we owe it to Auguste, Jacquiz, not only to go to Jumièges, but to have a bloody close look when we get there.’

  ‘Well, whatever else comes of it, I’m glad to be seeing this again,’ said Marigold.

  She looked up at the only remaining wall of the lantern tower of the Abbey of Jumièges, and watched it sway in the wind as the clouds swept over its summit. Then she passed under the arch, out of the nave and into the broken chancel.

  ‘If only we knew where to start looking,’ said Jacquiz rather peevishly. ‘Have you got those indigestion tablets of yours?’

  ‘Too much lunch,’ said Marigold, fishing in her bag.

  They had started sharp at nine that morning from the Hôtel du Château de Montreuil, by the gate of which Auguste had been anxiously lurking.

  ‘Maintenant nous irons à Jumièges,’ Marigold had said to him, whereupon the idiot had clapped his hands and capered, then waved them gaily off.

  They had driven in silence as far as Abbéville, past its gasworks and chimneys, along its canals, and on to the Forest of Eu. There, ‘We’re in Normandy now,’ Jacquiz had said, as the car ran between the dense trees on either side. And then, as they rounded a corner and came over the brow of a hill, to see their road floating down from the forest and away through a wide and coloured valley past Fourcament and on to the ridges of Eawy.

  ‘It’s grand being with you on this trip,’ he said.

  ‘Nice Jacquiz,’ Marigold answered, and blinked as she looked along the valley. ‘Christ, how marvellous,’ she said.

  When they turned right for Tôtes and Yvetot, the country had become smugger, less dramatic, of a smaller scale, but still such, with its soft meadows and rustling autumn poplars, as to make a man give thanks to whatever gods there be and wish the day of his death long deferred. This they told each other in a roundabout way, by talking of the dull tasks which their Cambridge acquaintance would now be performing against the imminent beginning of the Michaelmas Term and congratulating themselves, by inference, on their escape into this world of exquisite sights and enchanted leisure.

  At Yvetot they turned left, drove for a while past little farmhouses arranged among their fields with the regularity of toys beside a child’s railway, and then wound down, through tall, cool trees, still green, to the demure river front of Caudebec, where they had lunch, in their euphoria rather ‘too much lunch’ as Marigold was later to remark, in a restaurant which overlooked the Seine. After this they had hurried through the prosaic townships which lay along the river towards Rouen and turned right, through a dormitory village and then into dreaming Jumièges, just as the guardian opened the gates of the Abbey to afternoon visitors. And now, under the soaring walls of the Church of Our Lady, where the nave ceased and broken shafts encircled what had long ago been the sanctuary Marigold fished in her handbag and said, ‘Here they are. Gelusil or the other sort?’

  ‘Gelusil. I think I’d better have three.’

  ‘Three? I hope they’re not addictive.’

  ‘– She passed him three white tablets. Jacquiz crunched them, then burped loudly. Marigold primmed up her face and walked down the short passage into the smaller Church of St Peter.

  ‘If only we knew where to look,’ grumbled Jacquiz behind her, ‘or what we were looking for.’

  ‘Just look,’ said Marigold.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ grizzled Jacquiz, ‘that we shouldn’t have gone straight on to Sens.’

  ‘Why Sens?’

  ‘That was the place from which Constance Fauvrelle – Or Comminges as she was by then – first wrote to the widow Vibrot…according to that account book your father showed me. At least we know that the newly married Comminges actually went to Sens. With Jumièges, as far as we know, they had nothing to do at all.’

  ‘Constance came here with Richard Van Hoek.’

  ‘She may have. What’s that got to do with where she went with Comminges months or even years later?’

  ‘Auguste must have had some reason for sending us here. We’ll have plenty of time to go to Sens, if we need to, later on. Just stop fussing and look.’

  Her body suddenly tensed.

  ‘Ouch,’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Lunch. Oh dear. Much too much lunch.’


  ‘Have a Gelusil.’

  ‘No good. It’s not that. Number two.’

  ‘It can’t be as sudden as that.’

  ‘All that cream in the sauce,’ Marigold said. ‘It brings on those quick, hot, runny ones.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘After a bit you can hardly walk with it. We must find a loo. Quickly.’

  ‘Through the garden and on the terrace? You know, the little ridge in that picture where –’

  ‘– Yes, yes, yes, come on,’ Marigold said.

  They left the Church of St Peter by the South Door, turned left through a garden of shrubs, and walked up some steps onto the terrace.

  ‘No sign of one anywhere. Eeeeeh.’

  ‘Hang on, old girl. The old Abbot’s Lodge is a Museum. ‘Perhaps there…’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Back through the little church and then the cloister.’ Marigold scuttled ahead with quick, short, anxious steps, into St Peter’s, out of the West Door, past the yew tree in the cloister, through the skeleton of the Library, across the grass to the Museum.

  But the Museum, whether or not it contained a loo, was tightly closed.

  ‘The guardian in the Gate House.’

  They shot across to the entrance and into the guardian’s office. The guardian listened indifferently to Marigold’s breathless request, considered it coldly, shook his head in absolute and heartless negation.

  ‘Jacquiz…I must.’

  ‘I think I saw a café across the road.’

  Marigold tottered out of the gate and then crossed the road with long, desperate strides, calculating that speed was now even more important than constriction. As Jacquiz followed her into the café, she squawked at a man behind the bar, then plunged through a tiny door by a juke box. Jacquiz started to order coffee and cognac for two, hoping that the preparation of this refection would distract the man from the celebratory noises which issued from behind the narrow door.