Authors: Deborah Lawrenson
I
spun the zoetrope.
Through the slits, the pictures blurred together inside the wheel to give the illusion of movement. A miniature dancer kicked one dainty leg and then the other. Over and over again, for as many times as I cared to spin the device. The story would never change. The only way it could alter was in the mind, in the understanding of it from a basis of newly acquired knowledge.
Rachel was dead.
“How?” I’d asked. “When?”
Dom had his head in his hands. “Please don’t do this . . .”
“But I need to know! For God’s sake, why can’t you understand that?”
A silence, which I was not going to break.
“It was nearly two years ago. She had cancer. She was ill, and she died. I should have told you that before, and I made a mistake, okay? I’m sorry. It was hard to talk about, you know?” He finally looked up, but couldn’t hold my eyes.
“But—”
“No, I really don’t want to talk about how I feel, then or now. It won’t help. Believe me, I know, it will not help. Please.” Please leave it, he meant, don’t make me think about it anymore, I don’t want to talk about this, nothing has changed.
What could I say? It was trite to tell him I understood he was still grieving, that maybe he hadn’t allowed himself to grieve properly, so I had to drop it.
And so, incredibly, on the surface, nothing did change between us. For a few more weeks, anyway. I kept up my side of the charade, my emotions in turmoil, locked into inaction. Because something had happened—was happening—that made me need him, quietly, more than ever. It was dreadful timing, and I wasn’t absolutely sure, but all the signs were there.
A
s we maintained our composure, Dom at his piano, I with my books, what we both sensed, I think, was the desperation behind our efforts, the drive to understand. I did not know how music could change and charge the emotions, where it came from. It was too wide and deep and haunting for me, a person who needs to pin down and unravel emotions in words.
We were both afraid, in our different ways.
At night, he held me tightly and whispered, “I promise you, absolutely promise you, that we will get through this. I know it all seems as if it’s all going wrong, and it’s horrible, but it will be all right, I promise. Nothing changes how I feel about you. If it’s possible, I love you more now than in the beginning.”
I wanted so badly to believe him, to trust in him—more desperately than ever. To be reassured that I had not lost all reason when I fell for him.
M
emories form in counterbalance with forgetting. You can look at a photograph, years later, of a place that is vivid in your memory, and find that it looks nothing like the pictures filed in your brain. Only a few specific details will tally exactly, making the rest a strange reminder of what has been forgotten. Do photographs and memories complement each other, or do photographs inevitably prove more dominant, ultimately taking the place of the true memory?
Sight offers such a powerful and immediate understanding that an image always seems more persuasive, a proof of what was once seen. We believe the evidence of our eyes. When we hear, think, touch, smell, there is always the suspicion that we might be on the wrong track, we might be mistaken.
And the interconnections we make between pictures can produce a dangerously subjective narrative. If I had succeeded in finding a photograph of Rachel stowed in a drawer, would I really have seen her, or what my own assumptions supplied?
I would have seen her beauty for myself, and one of the reasons he loved her. My mind would have grasped on to the way he had tried to love someone else in her place and had clearly failed. In these scenes, I would never be the woman Rachel was, only a pale imitation. No matter how hard I tried to be a better partner, I was only a partner, not a wife.
Yet, whatever Sabine said, Rachel did not have his child.
Rereading Rachel’s articles, I was struck again by her resourcefulness. The way she wrote, too. It was obvious she liked stringing along a story. There may not even have been much of a story—no proper ending—but that didn’t matter. It was a world in miniature and it spoke of human nature. Sometimes I think that’s really all you need in a book, though it’s rare to find it in a newspaper article. I admired her. I could understand why Dom would want to marry her.
She seemed to care, too, about the outcome, about the people she met. And it seemed they warmed to her; otherwise, how could they have opened up as they did?
Perhaps this was the key to my own peace of mind. I needed to recognize that here was someone with strength of character and purpose. She was her own person and she had died. Dom had come to terms with that, and now I had to, as well.
Toward the end of the Francis Tully piece, I came to the part about Magie, his young model. I call her Magie, he’d said. That implied it wasn’t her real name, or even the one by which most people knew her. Perhaps we are all different people, depending on whom we are with.
I
t was after the work on the pool had begun, under the chill blue skies of spring, when the rains had ceased, that the first intimations of a downturn in our run of good fortune crept in. As I have said already, in a big old place like this, objects always appeared and disappeared. But when items of more value began to move, it was something different.
First, it was my silver hairbrush, bequeathed to me by Mémé Clémentine. I searched and searched, all the while knowing that I would never have put it anywhere but in its usual place on my dressing table. I was upset because it was so precious to me, a symbol of all I remembered about her. The idea that it had been stolen was horrible, yet what other conclusion could I draw?
Then a small picture went from one of the downstairs rooms that were normally left shuttered. By the time the gilt clock in the hall disappeared, I was beside myself, forced to suspect the pool contractor and his men as the only possible perpetrators, and all the while wondering how they thought they would get away with such dishonor among neighbors. Unpleasant scenes chased through my head. It was reminiscent of Pierre’s old tricks.
So I shouldn’t have been that shocked to find, quite soon afterward, that he had returned, bold as brass, with no explanation or apology for his prolonged absence.
T
he day I went to the secondhand furniture store to find some bedside tables with the right degree of age and patina on them, I returned to find an unknown car held together by corrosion and postal tape, and Pierre in the courtyard, looking around at the trees as if perturbed by how much they had grown since he had last seen them. “They say places seem smaller when you come back after a long time,” he said. “But I’d forgotten how big this house is. And what the hell are you doing in the garden?”
His face had changed. The eyes that used to glint with mischief had grown dull, the skin around them puffed and baggy. He had lost his athletic body, but then what grown man stays the same as he was as a youth? He was now just over fifty, but even so, the transformation since I had last seen him was radical. What was most painful to see was the sneer now permanently embedded in the lines and flesh of his face. He made no observation about my own personal changes beyond a swift, appraising stare.
He walked around the place without saying another word, which immediately put me on my guard. I had no idea what he wanted.
I made up a bed in his old room, and he ate most of the supper I prepared. Conversation faltered, the atmosphere became strained and belligerent when he admitted he was after money.
“We need to sell this place,” he said.
I told him how Marthe had once suggested selling and how we had decided to develop it instead. “That was a wise move,” I said emphatically. “We’ve built up a good little business here.”
“Let’s see how she thinks now, then. Get her here.”
It was hard to eat when my crossness with him was nearly choking me, but my childhood ability to suppress my emotions in his company still worked, it seemed. He retired early, after drinking a bottle of good wine from the cellar.
I sent a telegram to Marthe from the post office the next morning, knowing there would be no peace until I did. “Pierre has returned. Wants serious discussion. Please come soonest.”
D
espite the urgency implicit in my message, it was nearly a week before Marthe was able to travel. She had commitments in Paris, and then the added complication of arranging a visit to Manosque on some kind of business, which she could explain in due course. We had to be content with that.
The days with Pierre did not improve. He continued to march around with private purpose and sullen expression. He made a few disparaging remarks about the food I served, complained about his raffia mattress, drank wine, and refused point-blank to enlighten me about his current circumstances. At a guess, they were not happy ones.
I was relieved when he took himself off to town, saying he would wait there, where there was life and good company, until Marthe turned up. I was to leave a message at the bar on the corner of the square, the Lou Pastis, when she arrived.
The silver candlesticks and Maman’s mirror disappeared at the same time. I didn’t care for the objects themselves, but it was the principle of the matter, and what it said about Pierre’s attitude toward the family, that hurt.
O
n Thursday, Marthe finally arrived, accompanied by a young girl, the two of them escorted by a polite young man in a smart suit. The girl was about sixteen, and very shy. Marthe introduced her as Annette, who was to be her new apprentice, and told us proudly that she came highly recommended by the school at Manosque. The warmth in her voice was clearly intended to reassure the girl, and indeed, Annette smiled and seemed to relax a little.
“Come in, come in!” I tried to emulate my sister’s tone.
Annette patted her hand along the top of her valise before she found the handle.
“Do you need to take my arm?” I offered.
“No, thank you.”
Confounding my expectations, she then seemed to have no trouble finding the start of the steps leading up to the kitchen.
“She’s not completely blind. She’s partially sighted,” said Marthe, as if reading my mind.
I set out some cake to welcome them, and put the coffee on the stove. My fingers were trembling. This small show of domestic harmony could not protect any of us.
Barely had I shown Annette to the bathroom to wash her hands after the journey and returned to pour the coffee, when Pierre crossed his arms and stated his case.
“The farm must be sold as soon as possible,” he announced. “I have instructed a land agent.”
He hadn’t even waited to ask Marthe her news.
“Why?” she asked reasonably, though with a harder edge to her voice.
“I need the money.”
Marthe’s shoulders stiffened visibly.
“This is my inheritance as much as yours,” he went on. “I want my share.”
He had a point, of course he did. “You’ll get your share,” I said, emboldened by Marthe’s presence. “We’re not trying to deny you your share, it’s just that—well, this is all a bit too sudden. You go away for years and years, while we find a way to keep everything afloat, quite successfully at the moment, as it happens . . . and now out of the blue you come back making demands. We will sit down and discuss this calmly and rationally. Later.”
Pierre picked out a sharp knife from the drawer and began to clean his filthy fingernails. “We need to get on with it,” he said.
“Yes, thank you, Bénédicte, I will take some coffee,” said Marthe pointedly. “And the cake smells delicious—lemon with a hint of ginger, am I right?”
The young man from Manosque took his leave soon after, and, luckily for us all, dinner was not a long, drawn-out affair. Annette, tired and overwhelmed, had respectfully requested an early withdrawal to the bedroom I had hastily made up for her.
The argument downstairs could begin.
M
arthe was even more resolute than me. The years in Paris in business had left her well able to stand her ground and put forward her opinions emphatically yet with an impressive detachment. Inwardly, I was cheering as she said quietly but firmly: “Your demands are completely unreasonable.” His attitude, too, though she did not need to say it.
“Without our consent you cannot sell, so the instruction of a land agent is a waste of his time and yours. You want the money that would be raised by selling. You left the family and the farm long ago, so we can assume no great attachment to the property. This is a question of money. The money does not have to be raised by the sale of this place. If it’s money you need, then we can go to the notary and come to some formal arrangement whereby, perhaps not in full but partially, we can buy you out.”
“Why do you need so much money right now, anyway?” I wanted to know.
Pierre tossed me a glance of sheer contempt.
“Yes, it would be nice to know what has prompted all this,” said Marthe. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
“I’m sure you would like to know, but it’s really none of your business.”
“But this is our business!” I cried, meaning the farm. “And it’s a good business now. We’re doing well! Why not let us continue with it?”
“While your own flesh and blood starves . . .”
He did not look as if he was starving, and I was quick to point this out. “Anyway, it’s you who doesn’t care about the family! We did think of selling a few years back, when things were really hard here, but we couldn’t. And why not?” Expediently, I glossed over my objections at the time; the point was what was important. “I’ll tell you why not, because you were nowhere to be found. Couldn’t even let us have an address, could you?”
Pierre waved that away, an irrelevance. “I want what is due to me, and for it to be divided now. Why should I let you keep the property only to see that you are twice as rich from it in ten years? That would be unfair.”
“But that’s the way it works, Pierre,” said Marthe. She looked so tired as she took him firmly but kindly through the principles of ownership. “If you want your share out now, you get the current price. If you stay in, maybe with some of your share released in advance, it will be calculated as a percentage of the current price, but you will still have a stake in the property, the same as we do.”
What she could not see was that she was not speaking to a rational person. Pierre, hunched inside his dusty coat, picked his teeth with the point of the knife and waved away her reasoning with a hand that trembled.
“You just don’t want me to have what’s mine. But I’m here to tell you that you will do what I say. Bitches!”
“But it’s working. It’s a good business,” I said.
“Gah! This is just a little toy for you now, this place. You don’t farm. How can it be a business?”
“A good business,” reiterated Marthe. “Which could be worth a great deal more in years to come.”
“A blank no, then, is it?”
It was, we said.
“That’s it, then.”
“Not exactly,” I said. “Where are Mémé Clémentine’s hairbrush, and the candlesticks from the dining room, and Maman’s old mirror, and the clock?”
Pierre exhaled heavily to demonstrate his irritation, then threw the knife into the wooden table with such force that it stood quivering on its tip.