The Ghosts of Kerfol (9 page)

And there they were again, the dogs, the golden one a little ahead of the others. The black greyhound shivered beside a triangular shrub. They were everywhere, it seemed — one here, one there — stationed behind tidy hedges, fanned out in a design of their own accord as if to mock the unknown gardener’s studied pattern.
They form their own maze,
he thought wildly,
and to enter it is to die a madman.

“Stupid animals!” His voice startled even him. The dogs stood motionless, ears alert. Perhaps they had lived too long with people who never spoke to them, he thought now, grasping for sympathy. Their coats were smooth, and none but the greyhound seemed too thin, but their strange passivity seemed even sadder than the misery of starved and beaten animals. If Victor were a man like Michel, he might draw them into a game or a scamper, but the longer he met their fixed and weary stares, the more preposterous that idea seemed. The dogs knew better, it seemed. They knew what this place would and wouldn’t tolerate.

In the end, it was as if they held in common one memory so deep and dark that nothing since had seemed worth a growl or a wag, rather like Victor’s own notions of his father under the blade of the guillotine. How could he wish to be a man after that knowledge? Did death not dwarf all expectations? All ambition?

What these dogs most suggested to him was loneliness beyond reckoning, and he tried to imagine his father’s loneliness under the blade. Had they thrust a hemp bag over his head? Could he see the sky through the fabric? Were there bits of blue, Victor wondered, to soothe his eyes, and did white clouds reel past, perhaps a seagull circling — or some better, brighter bird? Was it all blinding brightness in that last moment? All color, like the world when Victor closed his eyes or let his vision blur, let the brush lead him . . .

Maybe Mother and his succession of tutors were right, and he would always be a child, painting unexceptional pictures.
Except one,
he thought with grim pleasure, remembering the girl on the easel across the courtyard.

When he arrived at the patio, the dogs had already stationed themselves on either side of his worktable like sentries. He laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. The dogs shifted uneasily. What were they waiting for? What could he give them?

When will you
do
something?

Though the portrait was on the other side of the easel, he held her face in mind with desperate clarity, and at almost the same moment that the dogs began to stir, he remembered Marguerite’s words.
That neck begs the blade.

Real or imagined, the words struck him with fresh horror, and he blundered to the easel with closed eyes, shooing back the dogs, and now Sömmering’s words swarmed into his thoughts like wasps.
Furthermore, credible witnesses have assured me that they have seen the teeth grind after the head has been separated from the trunk.

Victor opened his eyes long enough to snatch the painting up under an arm and gather the paint tray to him like a child from a burning bed, and then he closed them again, with surprising determination.
And I am convinced that if the air could still circulate through the organs of the voice . . . these heads would speak.

He felt paint ooze over his wrist as he strode past the wretched watchers into the gilt-and-mirrored shadows of Kerfol. Once inside, he dared to open his eyes, hurried to a bench in the great hall, and set her down beside him. He held the board in two trembling hands as he might the shoulders of a lover.

Yesterday’s glaze had dried, and his soul’s mate seemed to watch him, craning her tender neck, and he knew then that they were but two dolls, poppets, playthings. Whom would he love in a world of play? Playing house, playing lovers, playing at a future?

Do
something.

He took up a paint pot, the first he snatched, red cadmium — a good, dark color — and began to slap paint straight from the pot onto her face. He heaped it onto his palms, the oily slap a pleasure against his skin, a joy in his nostrils. With hands slippery as a surgeon’s, he swiped and fumbled for the big boar’s-hair brush. He slashed at her pretty eyes, erasing what could only suffer, saving her.

Before long, much of the panel was a blank red stain, and his heart beat hard as he strode to the big front door and opened it again, his hand leaving a bloody smear on the doorknob. The dogs were there, dotting the lawn, perfectly still. Soundless as before.

He eased the door shut, though they would not pursue him. Again, he knew this. Somehow. Still he staggered to the stairs, tripped, and fell forward on his hands. Victor walked up on all fours like prey, leaving a pattern of handprints.

Mother woke him in his bed, but only after the trunks were packed.

In a silky bustling of widow’s silk, she peeled the covers back and cursed the paint everywhere. “Oh, Victor, not
you
as well as the stairs!” She barked for Michel, whose footfalls came nearer. “Victor, look at you. Covered . . .”

He cringed like a child as she heaved the blankets away, curling out of her reach. “I don’t care if I never come back here,” he told the pillow, feeling the full wrath of his father’s memory.

“Look at you . . . foolish boy. You’re not well again. Up, now!” She slapped his behind, and he rolled sullenly away. “See what Mother has for you in the carriage . . .”

“Or if I die penniless —”

“You’ll have that chance after I’m dead. Only then, my boy —”

The servant heaved him up with that drab, knowing expression Victor hated. Michel, who had lifted him before, seemed especially despicable now, with his strong forearms hooking Victor’s armpits.

“Take me from here,” he begged. “Those dogs —”

“We’ll take you . . . if you’ll stand
up.
”

He did, and Mother held his sticky hands high for Michel to rub with turpentine. “What dogs, Victor?” She held him clear of her silks — not wishing to squander her newfound wealth so quickly — as Michel shoved and groped him with the rancid rag. “Hadn’t you better learn to control these fits? You’re an heir now.” She smiled at Michel, and together they led Victor blithering down the staircase, out into the empty yard, over the pebbled drive, into the waiting carriage. “A man of means.”

He breathed the good smell of horses as Michel snapped the whip and Mother snatched a page from the coach seat, rattling it gleefully in his face. “The ink is dry, my boy. Rejoice.”

He cast one last look down the avenue, growing smaller behind them, and knew he was forgetting something. Something he would not recover, and even as Mother stroked his pale forehead, it was already a dim memory.

“My own little man.”

T
HIS PARTY WAS A BORE
, like so many parties, like so much of life after Stan — an ocean away from Stan. Heels stomping out the Charleston. The moat outside full of floating vomit and cigarette butts. Sinks full of shaved ice and French champagne, and a bathtub full of gin. They were in France, sure, but Prohibition was a hard habit to break. Half the fun of doing
anything
was knowing that you weren’t supposed to, and cathedrals and pretty gardens aside, you could take these wealthy sheiks and shebas off to Europe, but you weren’t going to get them far from the bathtub, really, and when they got there, they’d be pie-eyed and pissing on the lawn.

Speaking of sheiks, the most momentous thing that had happened all day was the arrival of Emily’s telegram from Connecticut. Valentino was dead, and half the country —“the better half,” wrote earnest Emily in her telegram (it was comments like that that sometimes made Suze wonder if her prude of a cousin even
liked
boys) — was in mourning. More than one love-struck farm girl had actually hanged herself from the rafters of daddy’s barn. Over a movie actor. But what an actor. What a face. Sitting in the dark, no matter with whom, to watch Rudolph on the screen was to feel every fiber of your body awake and screaming for something, anything, and quick.

Suze sat smoking in the garden among the bees, her hand shaking — nerves, coffee, too few meals — the music a distant buzz at the back of the big stone mansion. . . . The band was getting drunk. They were off-key. Young couples strolled along, enjoying the sun on their faces, and Suze did the same, steady on her feet for once because the last line of Emily’s telegram (“I heard Stan’s sailed off to the Caribbean again”) had knocked her sober. Anyway, Daddy was due back from business in Rennes tomorrow, and she had a lot of cleaning up to do — a lot of supervising from her garden chair, anyway.

She thought of Stan on his little yacht under the Caribbean sun. The same sun now shining on her. She felt its warmth on her cheeks and bare shoulders, on her belly, still flat beneath summer linen, and she imagined Stan at sea, a nursery rhyme playing lazily through her thoughts:

Like his father, Stan was a boatbuilder by trade, a craftsman who could carve and sand and stain wood to make it glow. Like gold, people said. Even her father said so. “An alchemist,” he’d joked once, “like me.” Daddy was a stockbroker, and making gold out of base metal was exactly what he and his kind did daily.

Despite his disapproval — nay, forbiddance — of her relationship with Stan, Daddy liked him. Suze knew he did. But Stan was what her father called “a bad risk.” He was spontaneous at best and reckless the rest of the time, a gambler like his own father — losing sporadic if significant sums, which he earned catering to wealthy clients in New York and New England.

“Maybe he just needs guidance, Daddy. Don’t you remember what that was like? You had help. You have to remember what it felt like . . . to have talent but need help.”

“I remember, and I see what it’s cost me.”

“But you
don’t
see.”

“
Here’s
what I see, Susanna. Every time your grandfather looks at you, he’s not sure if it’s your mother looking back at him from those pretty doe eyes, or me. We need to make sure it’s her. Otherwise you’ll end up coming in the back door. Like I do.”

“You do not.”

“In spirit. I do.”

“Stan loves me.”

“He loves your money.”

“I don’t have any money.” She smiled gratefully. “You do.”

He ran a light hand over his perfectly parted and oiled salt-and-pepper hair and straightened his bow tie, English driving cap in hand. “It’s your mother’s money, and she’s dead, so we may as well admit it’s your grandfather’s.” He was straining, she could tell, already on the move, though her pleadings held him here. For now. “I’ve learned how to invest it. That’s my contribution.”

“That’s plenty.”

“But I lack manners, says Gram, and yours leave a lot to be desired. I don’t want them to write you off as they have me. I don’t want you to disappoint them.”

“Like I’ve disappointed you?”

“You’ve had everything.”

“On a silver platter. And you came up from nothing and resent me in advance for blowing it all to bits. Because that’s what I’ll do, Daddy, if you don’t let me have what I want, if you don’t let me have Stan. I want to go home to Stan. There’s nothing else you can give me anymore. I’m drowning in
things.
” She swallowed. “There’s nothing else I want.”

He grinned that guileless grin of his — ill timed, Suze thought, as she was battling back fresh tears, but it usually had a gift attached, so she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Not even this?”

“This,” she saw, looking up through her lashes, sniffling, was a beautiful antique sapphire pendant set in an elaborate choker of waved white gold, inset with diamonds. The whole effect was worthy of Poseidon.

She reached out, but he pulled it back, his grin wavering. “Now, this one’s not for keeps. It’s far too much for someone your age, but I know you like to play, and this holiday’s yours, so enjoy. It’s something from the estate safe. They let me use it, evidently forgetting they had a few things gathering dust in there. Shame to see it go to waste. But take care. I mean that, Suze. That’s a pretty penny there, and I have a few pennies, but I’ll bet that thing has a history if it’s languished this long.”

Suze pouted.

“I’ll make it OK. I always do — make it OK. Don’t I?”

She hung her head, thrilled and humiliated by her own willingness, her vast good fortune. But she let him clasp it behind her neck, though it took dedication and prying of the chin to get her to look up and seal the compact with a smile. Yes, one more season would bring her to her senses. One more spin round the globe. One more shiny gemstone. “Thank you, Daddy.”

“My pleasure.” He kissed her forehead. “I mean that. It brings me pleasure, you know, to make you smile. To see you happy. With everything I’ve got, it’s all I want.”

Then why do you work so much?

Suze fingered the jewels and let herself feel ashamed: not to admit a little shame made her an ingrate. There were things to be ashamed of, things she could only begin to contemplate this far from Stan, all this way round the world in a musty old castle in France.