The Scapegoat (29 page)

Blanche, after her swift ministration at midday, had relapsed once more into silence. She showed little interest in the arrangements for the following day, merely reminding us, as she rose from the table, that whether or not the guests met on the terrace at half past ten Mass was at nine, as usual. I wondered whether she had forgotten that Dr Lebrun had asked her to dress my hand, and the same thought must have struck Renée, for as we passed into the salon she said, ‘If you want to go up early, Blanche, I can do Jean’s hand. Where are the dressings?’

‘I’m going to do it now,’ Blanche replied briefly, and in a
moment she was back again with the dressings that the doctor had given her, and she put out her hand to take mine, still without a word to me.

When she had finished, she said good night to the others but not to me, and Renée, settling herself on the sofa, remarked, ‘Isn’t Marie-Noel coming down for her game of dominoes?’

‘Not tonight,’ said Blanche. ‘I’m going to read to her upstairs.’

She left the room, and after a moment Renée said, ‘How unusual for the child to miss her dominoes.’

‘She was upset about Jean,’ said Paul, picking up one newspaper and throwing me the other. ‘I noticed it at the time. You’d better watch out, or she’ll start seeing visions again. I’m not sure that giving her a life of St Thérèse de Lisieux was a very sensible thing to do.’

The evening wore on, the newspapers our distraction, and now and again Renée glanced at me and smiled, the smile of sympathy, of collusion, framing her lips in the silent question, ‘Does it hurt? Is it any easier?’ – to show me, I suppose, that because of my injury I was now pardoned for my neglect of yesterday. I was worried about the child. She might have taken upon herself some new trick of martyrdom, strangling herself with an iron collar or lying upon nails, and at half past nine I said good night to Paul and Renée and went upstairs. I made straight for the little room in the turret and opened the door. The room was in darkness, so I fumbled for the switch and turned it on. The child was kneeling at her prie-dieu, clutching a rosary, and I realized I had stumbled upon some meditation.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back when you’ve finished.’

She turned blank eyes towards me, holding up her hand for silence, and I stood there waiting, uncertain what I was meant to do, whether to switch off the light or leave it on. But in a moment or two she crossed herself and laid her rosary at the feet of the Madonna, then stood up and climbed into bed.

‘I was doing my Stations of the Cross,’ she said. ‘It puts me in the right state for Mass tomorrow. Aunt Blanche always says
it helps to do the Stations if one is thinking about something else.’

‘What were you thinking about?’ I asked.

‘This morning I was thinking about the shoot and what fun it would be,’ she said, ‘which I’m sure was a sin in itself. The rest of the day I’ve been thinking about you.’

Her eyes were more puzzled than concerned. I was relieved. I did not want her to have been frightened. ‘You needn’t worry about me,’ I said, tucking her up with one hand. ‘My hand is much better tonight, and Dr Lebrun told me it would be quite all right in a few days. It was a silly thing to happen, the watch falling off – I ought to have remembered that the strap was loose.’

‘But it didn’t fall off,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’

She stared up at me, turning red, and began picking at the bedclothes in embarrassment. ‘I was in the dovecot,’ she said. ‘I had climbed up to the top, and was looking through that little gap beside the hole where the pigeons go in and out. I saw you come down from the ride swinging the watch in your hand. I was going to call out to you, but you looked so serious I didn’t like to. Then you stood a few minutes by the bonfire, and suddenly you threw the watch right in the middle of it. There was no smoke getting in your eyes or anything. You did it on purpose. Why?’

I
sat down on the chair beside the bed. It was easier than standing up. The gap between us lessened, and I was someone on her level, not just an adult talking to a child. I realized she must have interpreted my action as a deliberate deed to rid myself of the watch, and then, regretting it, had burnt myself retrieving it. Self-inflicted pain had not occurred to her, yet it was something she would readily understand.

‘The watch was really an excuse,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to shoot tomorrow. I didn’t know how to get out of it, and then, standing by the bonfire, the idea came to me to burn my hand. It was simple, but stupid. I did it rather too effectively, and it hurt more than I intended.’

She listened calmly. She took up my bandaged hand and examined it.

‘Why didn’t you pretend to be ill?’ she asked.

‘It wouldn’t have worked. People would have realized nothing was the matter. A burnt hand is genuine.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s never pleasant to be found out. Now you have mortification and have learnt your lesson. May I see the watch again?’ I felt in my pocket and gave it to her. ‘Poor thing,’ she said, ‘he’s black, and he has no glass. He’s had his day. Everyone was wondering at lunch why you should take so much trouble to rescue him. I kept my secret to myself. I did not tell them that before you tried to rescue him you had thrown him into the fire. It was rather a shame to make the watch suffer. Didn’t you think about that?’

‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘I was a bit muddled in my mind. I was thinking about someone who had been shot, murdered, a long
time ago, and in a flash I’d thrown the watch in the fire and burnt my hand pulling it out again. It was as quick as that.’

She nodded. ‘I suppose you were thinking about Monsieur Duval,’ she said.

I stared at her, surprised. ‘As a matter of fact I was.’

‘Very natural,’ she said, ‘since he gave you the watch and he was shot. The two things go together.’

‘What do you know about Monsieur Duval?’ I asked.

‘He was master at the
verrerie,’
she said, ‘and according to Germaine some say he was a patriot and some say he was a traitor. But he had a horrid death and I’m forbidden to talk about it. Especially to you and to aunt Blanche, so I never do.’ She handed me back the watch.

‘Who told you not to talk about it?’ I asked.

‘Gran’mie,’ she said.

‘When?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Ages ago, when I first heard the story from Germaine. I was telling it to Gran’mie and she said “Shut up. Never repeat servants’ gossip. It’s a string of lies.” She was very angry, and she’s never talked about it since. Tell me, Papa, why don’t you want to shoot tomorrow?’

Here was the question, and I did not know how to answer it. ‘I just don’t,’ I said. ‘I have no reason.’

‘You must have a reason,’ she insisted. ‘It’s the thing you like doing best.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘not any more. I don’t want to shoot.’

She considered me gravely, her large eyes suddenly and rather terribly like the child Blanche in the family album.

‘Is it because you don’t want to kill?’ she asked. ‘Is it suddenly a sin to you to take any life, even a bird’s?’

I should have told her instantly no, that my reason for not wanting to shoot was because I was afraid of shooting badly, but instead I hesitated, seeking a loophole for escape, and my hesitation was taken as assent. I could see, by the glowing excitement in her eyes, that she was weaving some fantasy in
her mind about her father being sickened suddenly of all blood, all slaughter, and that he had burnt his hand so that he should not be tempted to kill again.

‘Perhaps,’ I said.

As soon as I had spoken I realized my mistake. I had not deliberately lied to her before. Now I was doing so. I was building for her a false image of Jean de Gué, giving her what she asked for so that I might be spared the truth myself.

She knelt up in bed, and, careful not to touch my bandaged hand, put her arms round my neck. ‘I think you’ve shown great courage,’ she said. ‘It’s just like the verse in St Matthew: “Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than, having two hands, or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out …’ I’m glad it wasn’t your eye; that would have been much more difficult. As it is, your hand will heal, but still, it was the intention that matters, or so aunt Blanche always says. It’s a pity we can’t tell her, though I’d rather we kept it as a secret between us both.’

‘Listen,’ I told her, ‘there’s no need to make a great mystery of this business. I burnt my hand, I can’t shoot, I don’t want to shoot, and there’s an end to it. Now forget it.’

She smiled, and bent down and kissed my bandaged hand. ‘I promise I won’t mention it,’ she said, ‘but you can’t prevent me from thinking about it. If you see me looking at you tomorrow in a very particular way, it will mean I am thinking of your great act of humiliation.’

‘It wasn’t a great act. It was a foolish one.’

‘Fools are wise in the eyes of God. Have you ever read about St Rosa of Lima?’

‘Did she put her hand in a bonfire too?’

‘No, she wore a great iron belt and never took it off, and it bit so deeply into her that all the flesh went bad. She wore it for years, and gloried in it. Papa, aunt Blanche would like
me to be a nun. She says I shall never find happiness in this world, and I believe she is right. I think so more especially now I am reading about the Little Flower. What do you think?’

I looked at her. She was standing up now, small and serious in her white nightgown, her hands crossed.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think you’re a bit young to decide. Just because aunt Blanche hasn’t found happiness in the world, it doesn’t mean you won’t. It all depends what you mean by happiness. It’s not a crock of gold at the foot of a tree. Ask Monsieur le curé, don’t ask me.’

‘I have. He says that if I pray hard enough, one of these days God will show me the answer. But aunt Blanche never stops praying, and she’s years older than I am and hasn’t got the answer yet.’

The church clock struck ten. I was tired. I did not want to discuss the spiritual state of Blanche, or Marie-Noel, or myself.

‘Oh well,’ I said, ‘perhaps you’ll be luckier than she is, and know the answer sooner.’

She sighed and settled herself in bed. ‘Life is a great problem,’ she said.

‘I agree.’

‘Do you think it would be easier to be somebody else?’ she asked.

‘That’s what I’d like to find out.’

‘I wouldn’t mind being another child if I could be sure of getting you as my father,’ she said.

‘You’re wrong,’ I told her. ‘The whole thing is an illusion. Good night.’

Oddly, her devotion depressed me. I turned out her light and went downstairs to the dressing-room and the camp-bed. It was not my burnt hand that prevented me from sleeping – that didn’t hurt any more – but my realization that the façade was everything, the skin and semblance of Jean de Gué all that any of them wanted. César, who had known me for a stranger, had been the only one to recognize the fact and
yet be reconciled – he had permitted me to pat him this morning, and had wagged his tail.

I slept restlessly for a few hours, and was woken by Gaston throwing back the shutters to a grey damp morning with a thin drizzle. Instantly the whole day loomed before me – the shoot, the guests, the ritual of the hours to come, as foreign to me as a tribal feast – and it seemed to me desperately important that I should let none of the family down, that I should not disgrace the de Gué or the château of St Gilles, not because I had any respect for the absent seigneur but because something within me acknowledged tradition. I was aware of footsteps in the corridor and voices on the stairs, and the church bell began to ring for Mass. I thanked heaven I had shaved and had only to struggle into the dark suit laid out for me – and there was a tap on the door and Marie-Noel came in and was able to help me.

‘Why are you so late?’ she asked. ‘Is your hand worse?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’d forgotten the time.’ Together we went into the bedroom to wish Françoise good morning and then downstairs and on to the terrace. We could see the little family party going on ahead – they had passed through the gateway and were already crossing the bridge, Paul and Renée and Blanche, and on Blanche’s arm, huge, massive and bent, a black figure that I did not recognize. I was about to question the child when it suddenly dawned upon me that there was the comtesse herself, whom I had only seen seated or in bed. The two black figures, one, so large and dominating, leaning upon the other, stiff and upright beside her, looked like silhouettes cut out against a paper background of hillside and ancient church, the whole framed in a wan grey sky.

We caught them up and I offered the mother my other arm so that she could lean upon both Blanche and myself. I saw that she was even taller than I had thought: we were of equal height, but her massive frame made her seem taller still.

‘What’s all this about your burning yourself?’ she asked.
‘Nobody ever tells me the truth.’ We had reached the timbered entrance of the church as I finished my story and the bell ceased ringing. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said. ‘No one but an imbecile would have done such a thing. Or have you suddenly become one?’

A little knot of village people standing in the porch drew back to let us pass, and as we went through and up to our places, the comtesse still leaning upon Blanche and myself, I thought how incongruous it was that the family of de Gué came here to pray and ask forgiveness of their sins, when two members of it had not spoken to each other for fifteen years. The little twelfth-century church, so worn and simple without, the lichened stonework plain and unadorned, was garish within, smelling of varnish like a Methodist chapel, the windows violet-blue, while near to the chancel steps a doll-faced Madonna, wearing a crown too large for her, stared down surprised at the infant Jesus in her arms.

I had thought that once inside the church, and taking part in Mass, I might forget the masquerade and become the seigneur of St Gilles indeed. Instead, a latent sense of guilt rose to confuse me. I was more than ever conscious of deception, conscious that I was tricking not so much the family I knelt beside, who were already familiar to me and whose faults I knew and somehow shared, but the villagers in the church of whom I knew nothing. More important still, I was tricking the good old curé with his pink cherubic face, whose prayers encompassed me, but whose ample form, topped by the nodding head, reminded me suddenly and irreverently of a witch-doctor in an African scene, so that I had to avert my eyes and cover them with my hand, as if overcome by fervour.