The Scapegoat (23 page)

The light of the late day gave warmth and colour; this was a friendly town where people smiled. The Renault, waiting in the Place de la République, was suddenly familiar as my own, and Marie-Noel’s white plastic bag, left on the seat where she had thrown it with the market purchases, was not like any object in a stranger’s car but full of meaning: I saw it dangling on the small wrist above the short white cotton glove. Even the bank at the corner had its own place and purpose in the background. Villars was a citadel, a refuge; and as I drove out of it I wondered why the gift of another man’s mistress should prove such a curious antidote to strain. It seemed to me that nothing would move me now, neither tears from Françoise nor tantrums from Renée. The mother could be coaxed with affection, the child indulged to a limit set by reason, the brother pacified, the sister soothed: none of them seemed a problem, as they had done during those first forty-eight hours under the château roof.

The reason was hard to find. Physical ease alone was not enough: in the past I had proved it valueless. Could change of identity alter the body’s pulse, release some matter in the mind hitherto held back by prejudice? The world was full of tragic misfit phantoms seeking escape by making love disguised. I was not one of them. The Béla of Villars completed a pattern, a pattern containing mother, wife, and child. The warmth of one, the dependence of the second, the laughter of the third, shaped themselves to make a fourth of her, and, finding this, I lost myself in all. Here was a part of the solution, but not the whole.

I remembered the correct turnings to St Gilles, and as I drove down the lime avenue, over the bridge, through the gateway to the drive and under the archway of the moat to the outbuildings that I had only seen from a distance, my confidence was supreme. Nothing could daunt me now. I found myself in a yard containing two garages with doors flung wide, a potting-shed and an empty stable full of broken stalls. As I got out of the car and slammed the door, the old woman I had spoken to in the cow-shed the day before emerged from the entrance, and I heard her call over her shoulder to someone within. She said something about ‘Monsieur le Comte’, and a man in blue overalls followed her from the stables. They smiled and came towards me, and the man asked whether I wanted him to wash the car. I told him yes, for this was probably routine, and once again the woman pattered a string of incomprehensibilities, and I smiled and nodded, catching a reference to
‘beau temps’
and
‘la chasse’
, the rest escaping me.

I went back under the archway, and the retriever ran forward in his enclosure, barking. I stood still, calling him softly by name, but, doubtful, he continued barking, his tail wagging uncertainly at the same time, and I went to the gate of his run and waited for him to smell my clothes. He sniffed, puzzled, not satisfied, and I saw the man in overalls watching from the stable-yard.

‘What’s the matter with César?’ he said.

‘Nothing,’ I answered. ‘I must have startled him, that’s all.’

‘It’s funny,’ he said. ‘He generally goes nearly mad when he sees you. Let’s hope he’s not turning savage.’

‘He’s all right,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you, César?’

I reached through the gate and patted the dog’s head, who, gradually reconciled to tone and touch, was mute and continued sniffing. But when I moved away he began to growl again.

‘If he behaves like that on Sunday he won’t be much use to you,’ said the man. ‘Shall I give him a dose of oil after his food?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘let him alone. He’ll soon recover.’

I wondered what was expected of the dog on Sunday. Perhaps if I took him myself for exercise he would come to know me, and the suspicious bark give way to whines of welcome? If not, attention would be drawn to him, his behaviour questioned, the poor animal accused of treachery towards his master, when in reality he had proved himself to be the only instinctive creature in St Gilles.

I went up the steps to the terrace, and as I entered the hall Paul came out of the small cloakroom to the right of the stairs.

‘Where the devil have you been all day?’ he asked. ‘We’ve been trying to get you since one o’clock. Renée lost all sight of you, had to come back in a hired car, and then, to our astonishment, Marie-Noel turned up alone as we were finishing lunch, announcing quite calmly that she’d had a lift in the lorry. Lebrun waited until two, and then had to go. He’s just been through to me again.’

‘What’s wrong?’ I inquired.

‘What’s wrong?’ he repeated. ‘Only that Françoise isn’t at all well, and Lebrun has forbidden her to move from bed. If she isn’t careful she’ll have a premature baby and lose it, and more than likely be critically ill herself. That’s all that’s wrong.’

The contempt in his voice was something I had to accept. The fault was not Jean de Gué’s but mine. I had promised to be back in time to see the doctor. I had not kept the promise. I had not even remembered it.

‘What’s his number?’ I asked. ‘I’ll get on to him at once.’

‘No use,’ he said. ‘He’s been called out again. I told him to try you later this evening.’

He turned on his heel and disappeared through the dining-room into the library. He was not going to question me further. For that I was grateful. I knew what I had to do. I went straight upstairs and along the corridor to the bedroom. The curtains were half drawn, the fire had been lit, and there was a screen at the foot of the bed to mask the light. Françoise was lying
against her pillows with closed eyes. She opened them as I came into the room.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, ‘at last. I’d given you up long ago. I told them you’d probably taken the train back to Paris.’

The voice was flat, expressionless. I went up to the bed and took her hand.

‘I should have telephoned,’ I said. ‘I was held up in Villars, and frankly I forgot. There’s no more to it than that. I don’t even ask you to forgive me. How are you feeling? Paul tells me Lebrun has ordered you to stay in bed.’

The hand in mine felt limp and cold. She did not take it away.

‘If I don’t I shall lose the baby,’ she said. ‘It’s what I’ve been afraid of all along. I’ve always known something would go wrong.’

‘It won’t go wrong,’ I said, ‘not if you take care. The question is, how good is Lebrun? Wouldn’t you like me to call in a specialist?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t want a stranger interfering at this point, upsetting me, upsetting Lebrun. I shall be all right as long as I stay quiet and nobody worries me. What with Marie-Noel coming back on the workmen’s lorry, and Renée having to hire a car because you disappeared, I’ve been almost frantic with anxiety. And then, in the middle of the afternoon, I decided that I might as well give up and resign myself to the fact that you wouldn’t be coming back – that you’d got rid of them both on purpose and had gone off to Paris.’

The tired eyes searched my face, and I knew that the only answer was to keep as near to the truth as possible.

‘I had a long session at the bank,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind telling you, but I don’t want the others to know. The fact is, I lied about the contract. I didn’t succeed in getting an extension when I was in Paris, and only managed to arrange things by telephone, and through the bank, today. They’ve agreed to continue the contract, but on their terms. It means the
verrerie
working at an even greater loss than before, of course, but it can’t be helped. Somehow I shall have to find the money.’

She looked bewildered, and I went on standing there holding her hand.

‘What was the point of lying?’ she asked. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I suppose it was pride,’ I said. ‘I wanted everyone to believe I had succeeded. Well, perhaps I have succeeded, for a time. I haven’t been into all the figures yet. But I want you to keep this to yourself. I don’t intend telling Maman, or Paul, or anyone except you unless things turn out to make it absolutely necessary.’

She smiled for the first time, and, as she half raised herself on her pillow, I saw that she meant me to kiss her. I did so, and let go her hand.

‘I won’t tell anybody,’ she said. ‘I’m only too glad that you’ve taken me into your confidence for once. It’s funny, though, that you’ve bothered so much about the
verrerie
. The idea of closing down never seemed to worry you as it did Paul and Blanche.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘perhaps not. It began to worry me yesterday, when I went down there in the afternoon.’

She asked me to give her a comb and looking-glass from the dressing-table, and sitting upright against the bunched pillows she combed the lank fair hair away from her face. It was a gesture similar to another I had seen scarcely two hours before and because of the total difference of mood and personality, the one carefree and gay, the other so weary, lifeless, yet if possible more intimate still, I felt myself oddly moved: I wished the balance could be restored, and Françoise likewise vigorous and happy.

‘Why didn’t you tell me the night you came back?’ she said.

‘I hadn’t decided,’ I replied. ‘I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.’

‘Paul’s bound to find out,’ she said. ‘You can’t possibly keep
it from him. Besides, what does it matter if he does know, since you’ve fixed the contract? Anyway, all these things will be solved when the boy is born.’ She put the mirror back on the table beside the bed. ‘Marie-Noel said you were down in the vaults at the bank. Everyone wondered what you were doing. I didn’t know you kept anything there.’

‘Various securities,’ I said, ‘deeds, and so on.’

‘Is our Marriage Settlement there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you look at it?’

‘I did glance through it.’

‘If we have another daughter there’s nothing to be done, is there?’

‘No, apparently not.’

‘What happens if I die? You get everything, don’t you?’

‘You’re not going to die. Now, shall I close the shutters and draw the curtains and put on your light? Have you anything to read?’

She was silent. She lay back on her pillows. Then she said, ‘You might get me the locket you brought me from Paris. I think I’ll keep it here beside me, on the table.’

I went to the dressing-table in the alcove, took the small jewel-case I saw there, and gave it to her. She lifted the lid and looked at the locket, snapping the miniature open as she had done before.

‘Where was it you bought it?’ she asked.

‘A place I know in Paris,’ I said. ‘I can’t remember the name.’

‘Renée tells me that the woman who keeps the antique shop in Villars does miniatures from time to time,’ she said.

‘Oh? Perhaps. I don’t know.’

‘If she does, we might get her to do Marie-Noel some time, and the baby too. It would be cheaper than in Paris.’

‘Yes, probably.’

She put the locket, with the miniature open, on the bedside table. ‘You’d better go down and make your peace with Renée,’
she said. ‘I was feeling too ill to cope with her when she arrived back – you know how impossible she can be when she loses her temper.’

‘She’ll get over it.’

I closed the shutters, and then I put a log on the fire.

‘I suppose the child’s with Blanche,’ she said, ‘or upstairs with Maman. I haven’t felt well enough to see her. Tell her I didn’t mean what I said this morning, that I was ill and wretched.’

‘I think she understood that.’

‘What did you do with the broken pieces?’

‘Never mind. I’ve seen to them. Is there anything else you want?’

‘No. No, I shall just go on lying here quietly.’

I went through the bathroom to the dressing-room and changed my shoes and coat, as I had done the evening before. The bottle of ‘Femme’ was still standing on the chest. It was no longer impersonal, like something glimpsed in a shop window, but had all the significance of my own intimate life. I put it away in a drawer, and because the drawer had a key something made me turn the key and slip it into my pocket afterwards. I went out into the corridor, and at the foot of the stairs I came face to face with Charlotte.

‘Monsieur le curé has just gone,’ she said. ‘Madame la Comtesse has been asking for you.’

‘I’ll go to her now,’ I said.

Once again she preceded me up the stairs, as on my first evening. And that moment forty-eight hours ago seemed to me, following her a second time, like something in a distant past: the masquerader of that night was as different from the man who now climbed the stairs as he, in his turn, had been from the self waking in the hotel bedroom at Le Mans. It was as though the skin that covered me was like armour. Then my courage had been false; now it was invincible.

‘Monsieur le Comte was detained a long time in Villars?’ asked Charlotte.

I knew I was right to mistrust her and dislike her, and that every word she spoke was false.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Madame Paul had tea with Madame la Comtesse this afternoon,’ she continued. ‘She was very put out that she had been obliged to hire a car to bring her back, and she told Madame la Comtesse the whole story.’

‘There was no story,’ I said. ‘I was detained, that was all.’

We were now on the upper corridor, and I walked past her and went on to the further passage and the room beyond. I entered, to be greeted with the usual yapping from the dogs, and caring no longer I kicked them out of the way and went at once to the chair by the fire, where the mother was sitting, her massive shoulders draped in a purple shawl. I bent and kissed her, relieved to see that Blanche was not with her and she was sitting there alone.

‘Good morning and good evening,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I never came to see you this morning. I left early. You’ve already heard all about it. I’m glad to see you up. Have you had a good day?’

The mocking, questing eyes met mine, and she grunted and pointed to a chair.

‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘there, with the light on your face, so that I can see you. Get out, Charlotte. And no listening at the door. Go down to the kitchen and order two trays for dinner. Go on, hurry up. And take these things away first.’ She pushed the missal and prayer books on the table out of the way. The terriers climbed up and settled themselves on her lap, and she remained silent until the servant went out of the room. I lighted a cigarette, feeling her eyes upon me still.