'What!' exclaimed Leonie. 'The uncle who died in January?' 'Passed away, disparu; "died" is so vulgar,' she corrected, although Léonie could hear her heart was not in the rebuke. 'But yes, in point of fact, the same.'
'Why is she writing to you so long after the event?' 'Oh, she has written on a couple of previous occasions,' Marguerite replied. 'Once on the occasion of their marriage, then once again to inform me of Jules' death and the details of his funeral.' She paused. 'It is to my regret that ill health prevented me from making the journey and at such a time of the year.'
Léonie knew perfectly well that her mother would never have returned to the house in which she had grown up outside Rennes-les-Bains, regardless of the season or circumstance. Marguerite and her half-brother were estranged.
Léonie knew the bare bones of the story from Anatole. Marguerite's father, Guy Lascombe, had married young and in haste. When his first wife died giving birth to Jules some six months later, Lascombe immediately gave his son into the care of a governess, then a series of tutors, and returned to Paris. He paid for his son's education and the upkeep of the family estate, and when Jules came of age settled a fair annual allowance on him, but otherwise paid him no more attention than before.
Only at the end of his life had Grandpere Lascombe married again, although he had continued to live much the same dissolute life. He dispatched his gentle wife and tiny daughter to live at the Domaine de la Cade with Jules, visiting only when the mood took him. From the pained expression that came over Marguerite's face on the rare occasion the subject of her childhood came up, Léonie understood her mother had been less than happy.
Grandpere Lascombe and his wife had been killed one night when their carriage overturned. When the will was read, it transpired that Guy had left his entire estate to Jules, with not a sou for his daughter. Marguerite fled instantly north, to Paris where, in the February of 1865, she had met and married Leo Vernier, a radical idealist. Since Jules was a supporter of the ancien regime, there had been no contact between the half-siblings from that point onwards.
Léonie folded her arms. 'Well, it is quite absurd to imagine that I should accept an invitation to sojourn with an aunt to whom I have never been introduced, and for so prolonged a period. Indeed,' she added belligerently, 'I can think of nothing worse than being buried in the country with some elderly widow talking about the old days.'
'Oh no, Isolde is quite young,' said Marguerite. 'She was many years Jules' junior, little more than thirty years of age, I believe.' For a moment, silence fell over the breakfast table. 'Well, I shall certainly decline the invitation,' Léonie said in the end.
'I do not wish to go,' said Leonie, even more firmly. Anatole smiled. 'Come now, Leonie, a visit to the mountains? It sounds just the thing. You were telling me only last week how bored you had become of life in town and that you stood in need of a rest.' Léonie looked at him in astonishment. 'I did, yes, but-' 'A change of scenery might restore your spirits. Besides, the weather in Paris is intolerable. Blustery and wet one day, and temperatures that would not shame the Algerian deserts the next.' 'I own that is true, but-'
'But Tante Isolde might be thoroughly disagreeable. And how would I occupy my time in the country? There will be nothing for me to do.' Léonie threw a challenging glance at her mother. 'M'man, you never talk about the Domaine de la Cade with anything other than dislike.'
Marguerite let her gaze settle on her daughter. 'No, no . . . of course not. But, as it happens, last evening General Du Pont suggested he and I might visit the Marne Valley for a few weeks. If I were able to accept his invitation . . .' She broke off and turned to her son. 'Might I prevail upon you, Anatole, to accompany Léonie to the Midi?' 'I am certain I could be spared for a few days.' 'But, M'man,' Léonie objected.
Her brother talked over her. 'In point of fact, I was just saying how I was considering a few days out of town. This way, the two things could be combined to everybody's satisfaction. And,' he added, fixing his sister with a conspiratorial smile, 'if you are anxious about being so far from home, petite, and alone in an unfamiliar environment, I am sure Tante Isolde could be prevailed upon to extend her invitation to me also.'
At last, Léonie caught up with Anatole's reasoning. 'Oh,' she said. 'Could you be spared for a week or two, Anatole?' Marguerite pressed. 'Pour ma petite soeur, anything,' he said. He smiled at Leonie. 'If you wish to accept the invitation, then I am at your service.'
She felt the first prickling of excitement. To be at liberty to walk in the open countryside, and to breathe unpolluted air. To be free to read what she wished and when she wished without fear of criticism or rebuke.
She weighed the matter a little longer, not wishing it to be obvious that she and Anatole were in league together. The fact that her mother had not cared for the Domaine de la Cade did not mean that she would not. She looked sideways at Anatole's battered, handsome face. She had thought the whole business behind them. Last evening had brought it home to her that it was not.
'Very well,' she said, feeling a rush of blood to her head. 'If Anatole will accompany me and perhaps stay until I am comfortably settled, then yes, I shall accept.' She turned to Marguerite. 'M'man, please would you write to thank Tante Isolde and say that I - we - will be delighted to accept her generous invitation.'
The grey backs of houses and small towns flashed by in the gloom, more frequent now. The compartment was pretty empty. A couple of French businesswomen in pressed white shirts and grey pantsuits. Two students asleep on their backpacks. The soft tapping of computer keys, low calls made on cell phones, the rustle of the late-edition newspapers - French, English, American. Across the aisle, a quartet of lawyers in striped shirts and chinos with razor-sharp creases, heading home for the weekend. Talking loudly about a fraud case, their table was covered in glass bottles and plastic cups. Beer, wine, bourbon.
Set in delightful wooded parkland above the picturesque town of Rennesles-Bains in the beautiful Languedoc, the Hotel Domaine de la Cade is the epitome of nineteenth-century grandeur and elegance, but with all the comfort and leisure facilities expected by the discriminating twenty-first-century visitor. The hotel is situated on the location of the original maison de maitre, which was partially destroyed by fire in 1897. Run as a hotel since the 1950s, it reopened after a major refurbishment under new management in 2004 and is now recognised as one of the premier hotels in south-west France.
It sounded great. Come Monday she'd be there. It was her treat to herself, a couple of days of five-star luxury after all the budget flights and cheap motels. She pushed the brochure back into her transparent plastic travel file with the receipt confirming her reservation and put the whole thing back in her purse.
Meredith had checked out of her hotel in London at noon, had lunch at a cafe close by the Wigmore Hall before taking in an afternoon concert - seriously dull - then grabbed a sandwich at Waterloo station before boarding the train, hot and exhausted.
After all that, they'd been late leaving. When they finally got going, she spent most of the first part of the journey in a daze, staring out the window watching the green English countryside flash by, rather than typing up her notes. Then the train plunged beneath the Channel and was swallowed up in the concrete of the tunnel. The atmosphere became oppressive, but at least it killed the cell phone chatter. Thirty minutes later, they emerged the other side to the flat, brown landscape of northern France.
Chalet-style farmhouses, the flash of small towns, and long straight farm tracks looking like they led to nowhere. One or two larger towns, the slag heaps grassed over by time. Then Charles de Gaulle airport and the suburbs, la banlieue, the drab and depressing rent-controlled high-rises that stood mute on the outskirts of the French capital.
Meredith leant back in her seat and let her thoughts wander. She was part way through a four-week research trip to France and the UK, writing a biography of the nineteenth-century French composer Achille-Claude Debussy and the women in his life. After a couple of years of researching and planning - but getting nowhere - she'd caught a break. Six months ago, a small start-up academic press made a modest offer for the book. The advance wasn't great but, given that she didn't have a reputation in the field of music criticism, it was pretty good. Enough to make her dream of coming to Europe a reality. She was determined to write not just another Debussy memoir, but the book, the biography.
Her second piece of luck had been getting a part-time teaching post at a private college outside Raleigh Durham, starting the spring semester. It had the advantage of being close to where her adoptive parents now lived - which saved on laundry, phone bills and groceries and not far from her Alma Mater, the University of North Carolina.
After ten years of paying her way through college, Meredith had racked up a lot of debt and money was tight. But with the money she made from teaching piano, combined with the advance from the publishing company and now the promise of a regular salary, she summoned up the courage to go ahead and book the tickets to Europe.
The typescript was due with her publisher at the end of April. Right now, she was on track. In fact, ahead of schedule. She had spent ten days in England. Now she'd got nearly two weeks in France, Paris mostly, but she'd also scheduled a quick trip down to a small town in the southwest, Rennes-les-Bains. Hence the couple of days at the Domaine de la Cade.
The official reason for the detour was that she needed to check out a lead about Debussy's first wife, Lilly, before heading back to Paris. If it had only been a matter of tracking down the first Mrs Debussy, she wouldn't have gone to so much trouble. It was an interesting piece of research, sure, but her leads were pretty tenuous and hardly essential to the book overall. But she had another motive for going to Rennes-les-Bains, a personal one. Meredith reached into the inside pocket of her purse and pulled out a manila envelope with DO NOT BEND printed on it in red. She slid out a couple of old sepia photographs, the corners dog-eared and bent, and a printed sheet of piano music. She looked at the now-familiar faces, as she'd done so many times before, before turning her attention to the piece of music. Handwritten on yellow manuscript paper, it was a simple melody in common time, key of A minor, the title and the date hand-printed in old-fashioned italic script at the top: Sepulchre 1891.
She knew it off by heart - every bar, every semiquaver, every harmony. The music - plus the three photos she carried with it - was the only thing Meredith had inherited from her birth mother. An heirloom, a talisman. She was well aware the trip might turn up nothing of interest. It was a long time ago; the stories were faded. On the other hand, Meredith figured she couldn't be worse off than she was right now. Knowing virtually nothing about her family's past, needing to know something. For the price of the air ticket, it seemed worth it.
Meredith realised the train was slowing. The rail tracks had multiplied. The lights of the Gare du Nord were coming into view. The atmosphere in the carriage shifted again. A return to the real world, a sense of purpose at the end of a shared journey nearly over. Ties straightened, coats reclaimed.
She gathered up the photos and music, and her other papers, and slipped everything back into her purse. She took a green scrunchy from her wrist, twisted her black hair up into a ponytail, ran her fingers through her bangs, and stepped out into the aisle.