The Scapegoat (42 page)

Slowly we proceeded through the gateway and over the bridge, foreshadowing the cortège of the Friday to come, and slowly, at the same sober pace, descended from the cars after two minutes’ drive, entered the church, and took our places at the front as we had done on Sunday.

I wondered, kneeling there, listening to the Mass, what petitions went up in fervour or humility from those beside me, whether they asked for the repose of the absent Françoise or pardon for themselves; and it seemed to me that both requests must by their very likeness fuse, the ultimate purpose of all such prayers being surely the abolition of anxiety and pain. The veils in which the mother and daughter and daughter-in-law were hidden lent similarity to their figures, so that the three of them together might have been the facets of one personality, the triptych of a single countenance. Whether they were sorrowful or secretive I could not tell; only the child, her close-cropped hair unveiled, was a symbol of what had been, the lost innocence, lost youth, for which the shrouded figures mourned.

The Mass over, we drove to Villars to stand for a few moments in the chapel. Strangely, it was not, as I had expected, distressing and macabre. The now waxen and infinitely remote figure of
Françoise was not the person we had all betrayed but something mummified and distant, discovered after centuries in an Egyptian tomb. I watched the child, fearing perhaps tears or apprehension, but she gave no sign of either. She looked with interest at the two nuns, at the candles, at the flowers, and I realized that to her, as perhaps to the rest of us, sorrow and regret had no place here, but only curiosity and a vague surprise. Outside, Renée was the only one who wept. I saw her fumble for her handkerchief, and Marie-Noel, reddening, turned away her head, embarrassed to see an adult cry.

It was nearly half past eight by the time we returned to the château, the curé joining us for dinner. The comtesse, whom I had never before seen in the dining-room, took her place opposite me at the end of the table, and her presence there, despite the solemnity of the occasion, gave sudden warmth and distinction to the room. Instead of being a mourning party, we might have been sitting down to a New Year dinner. Grotesquely, I expected to see Gaston bear in a turkey or a goose. There should have been chocolates in coloured paper, and a bunch of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling. The voices, which had started by being low, subdued, rose as the meal progressed, and after the dessert had been served and the tray of coffee cups taken to the salon, the comtesse leading the procession, it was almost as if, once the servants had departed, we were going to put on paper caps, play forfeits or roast chestnuts in the fire. Only when the curé had taken his departure did the comtesse, for the first time, flag; and glancing at her I saw that she had turned suddenly grey. The beads of perspiration stood out on her forehead and ran down her cheeks, and her eyes, flickering restlessly about the room, lost instantly all life and concentration. Paul had left the salon with the curé, and Blanche, Renée and the child, turning the pages of some book, had noticed nothing.

Quietly I said, ‘I’m going to take you upstairs.’

She stared at me as if she did not understand, and then,
when I put out my arm to her, she leant upon it, trembling. I said, loudly, so that the others heard, ‘I think it would be much better if we went over the lists together in your room.’

She straightened herself, gripping my arm more firmly, and as we moved towards the door she said clearly, without difficulty, ‘Good night, good night, everybody. Don’t disturb yourselves. Jean and I have matters we prefer to discuss upstairs.’

They all rose instantly, and Blanche, coming forward, said, ‘You should never have come down, Maman. It has been too much for you.’

Her words had just the necessary sting to waken response, and in a second her mother turned, loosening her hold upon my arm, retorting, ‘When I want advice from you I’ll ask for it. There are four hundred envelopes to address before tomorrow evening. I suggest you make a start tonight, and the child can help.’

We went out of the room and climbed the stairs together to the first corridor. As she paused there for a moment to regain breath she said, ‘Why did I say that? What are the invitations for?’

‘The funeral,’ I said, ‘the funeral on Friday.’

‘Whose funeral?’

‘Françoise’s,’ I replied. ‘Françoise died today.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘For a moment I had forgotten. I was thinking of that time when we made lists for Blanche’s wedding. We had the invitations printed, and then none of them were used.’

She took my arm again and we mounted the second flight, and as we turned along the corridor to her room in the tower the shadows seemed to close in upon us, the silence deepen, and it was as though we were retreating to a past that was always there.

Charlotte opened the door for us, and I could see at once from her face that she was frightened. She darted a look at me, suspicious, anxious, and when the comtesse had passed through
into the room she whispered to me, ‘The boxes have gone from the dressing-room.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I took them away.’

‘What for?’ she said. ‘I shall need them tonight.’

‘No,’ I said.

I pushed by her, following the comtesse, and I said, ‘Undress and get into bed, Maman. You may sleep, you may not. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I shall stay here in the room with you tonight.’

Her shadow, reflected on the ceiling, monstrous and overpowering like a witch, seemed part of the heavy curtains and the hangings to the bed; but when she turned and looked at me the movement dwarfed the shadow, the shadow shrank to the ground, and the smile belonged to the woman who downstairs in the dining-room had held court and made a fiesta out of mourning, opposing tragedy with her own wit and pride.

‘The tables are turned,’ she said. ‘It’s a long time since one of us lay in bed and the other watched. You had a high temperature once when you were twelve years old. I sat in your room beside you and bathed your face. Is that what you’re prepared to do for me tonight?’

She laughed and waved me from the room, calling to Charlotte. I went out into the corridor and down to the salon, and found the others turning out the lights, preparing to go to their rooms. Marie-Noel went towards the stairs hand-in-hand with Blanche, her small face white with fatigue now that the day had ended.

‘You’ll come and say good night, Papa?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I promised, and went back into the dining-room for a cigarette. When I returned again into the hall I found that Renée had not followed the others, but was waiting for me on the stairs. Seeing her thus reminded me of that first evening, when, with my hand on the door leading to the terrace, I had suddenly heard her footsteps behind me, and she had stood there in her wrapper with her hair falling to her shoulders. Now she was
no longer passionate or angry or disconsolate, but somehow wiser and a little shamed, as though recognizing that the tragedy of the day was now a final barrier between us.

‘So you want to get rid of us, Paul and me?’ she said. ‘Have you been planning this ever since you returned from Paris?’

I shook my head. ‘There’s no question of it being planned,’ I told her. ‘This evening out on the terrace the idea came to me, that’s all. If you dislike the thought, put it out of your head.’

She did not say anything for a moment. She seemed to be considering something, and then she said slowly, ‘You’ve altered, Jean. I don’t mean because of today and the terrible shock to all of us; I mean for some little while. You’re not the same.’

‘In what way have I changed?’ I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t just mean you’ve changed to me. I realize now that you were amusing yourself these past months. You were bored, there was nothing else for you to do, and I happened to be here. You’ve changed somehow in yourself, become harder, more withdrawn.’

‘Harder?’ I said. ‘I should have thought the reverse. Softer, weaker in every way.’

‘Oh, no.’ She considered me thoughtfully. ‘I’m not the only one to notice it. Paul said the same thing only a day or two ago, when you burnt your hand. You’ve been more detached, not only to me but to everyone. That’s why it surprised us both that you made this suggestion that we should travel, and not you. From your behaviour the past week, you gave the impression that the one thing in the world you wanted was to get away.’

I stared at her, disconcerted. ‘I gave that impression?’ I said.

‘Frankly, yes.’

‘It isn’t true,’ I said. ‘I’ve never stopped thinking about all of you, day and night. The château, the foundry, Maman, the child, the whole family – you’ve been continually in my mind. The last thing I want to do is to go away.’

She looked incredulous. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she said. ‘I suppose the truth is that I never have. I was a fool to imagine
I once did. You were never in love with me for one minute, were you?’

‘I’m not in love with you now, Renée,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about the past, but I rather doubt it.’

‘You see?’ she said. ‘You are harder. You have changed. You can’t even be bothered to pretend any more.’ She paused, and then slowly, reluctantly, she added, ‘Paul hasn’t said so, but I’m sure he believes it, and I’m beginning to believe it too. Did you make that contract cold-bloodedly, deliberately, on the chance that … that what happened today might happen anyway?’

Her voice was low, yet I sensed a kind of urgency behind it, a mixture of wonder and horror that the man with whom she had been infatuated might have acted thus, and in doing so have somehow implicated her in his plans.

‘If you think I made that contract believing Françoise would die, no, Renée,’ I said to her.

She drew in her breath. ‘I’m glad,’ she said. ‘In the chapel this evening I was suddenly … overwhelmed by everything that had happened. A week ago I couldn’t have left St Gilles, but now …’ she turned and began to climb the stairs, ‘now I know I can’t go on living here. I must get away – it’s the only hope we have for the future, Paul and I.’

I watched her disappear along the corridor, and I wondered whether it was in truth Françoise’s death that had caused her shame, or whether it was my reserve, my indifference to her as a woman, that had killed her own desire.

As I switched off the light and climbed the stairs in darkness, it seemed to me that what I had done to these two, Paul and Renée, was not my own doing, the action of the solitary self of my former life, nor yet that of Jean de Gué, whose shadow I had become, but the work of a third – someone who was neither he nor I but a fusion of the two of us, who had no corporeal existence, who was born not of thought but of intuition, and brought release to us both.

Marie-Noel had asked me to say good night, and presently I went through the swing-door to her own turret stair and turned the handle of her door, expecting to find her still dressed, or at her prie-dieu. But the long day had closed upon her at the last. She was in bed, asleep. The image of the chapel had not left her untouched, as I had thought. Two lighted candles stood at the foot of the bed, and the duck now knelt in prayer between them. A celluloid baby doll with a battered skull reposed in her arms, upon her breast, and on a piece of paper, pinned to the head of the bed, these words were written: ‘Here lie the mortal remains of Marie-Noel de Gué, who departed this life in the year of our Lord 1956, and whose faith in the Blessed Virgin brought peace and repentance to the humble village of St Gilles.’

I blew out the candles, and, leaving the window open, closed the shutters. Then I went down to the turret stairs and through to the other side of the château, to that other room in the tower. Here there were no candles burning, only a light beside the bed, and the woman on the pillows was not asleep like the child, but awake and watchful. Her eyes, sunk in her grey exhausted face, stared up to mine.

‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ she said.

I dragged the chair from beside the stove, and pushed it close to the bed. I sat down in it and put out my hand to her. She held it fast.

‘I sent Charlotte to her room,’ she said. ‘I told her, “Monsieur le Comte is looking after me tonight. I don’t need you.” That’s what you meant me to say, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, Maman,’ I answered.

Her grip tightened, and I knew she would hold it thus, through the night, as her defence against darkness, and I must not move, nor withdraw it, for if I did the bond would be loosened and the meaning lost.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘In a few days’ time, when everything’s over, I shall leave this room and go downstairs to
my old one. It’s more practical. I can keep my eye on things.’

‘Just as you like,’ I answered.

‘Lying here,’ she said, ‘I find my memory goes. I don’t know if I am in the present or the past. And I have bad dreams.’

The gilt clock beside her bed ticked loudly, and the pendulum, showing through a glass case, moved backwards, forwards, the two combining to make the minutes slow. ‘Last night,’ she said, ‘I dreamt you were not in the château. You were fighting with the Resistance once again, and I was reading the note you smuggled to me the evening Maurice Duval was shot. I kept reading it over and over again until I thought my head would burst. Then, when you gave me the morphine I didn’t dream any more.’

In Villars, Béla had a luminous clock in a small leather case, the hands showing white against the dark face, and the tick, rapid and so quiet that one barely heard it, was like the quick, live pulse of a human heart.

‘If you dream tonight,’ I said, ‘I shall be here. It won’t matter.’

I leant forward and turned out the light with my burnt hand, and at once the darkness seemed to press upon me, enveloping me. The despair that was in the shadows invaded me, and she began to talk and mutter in a half-sleep that I could not share but could only listen to, with the ticking clock. Sometimes she called out, cursing, sometimes she fell into a prayer, once she broke into uncontrollable laughter; but never, as the fragmentary thoughts pursued her, did she clamour for relief, nor yet release my hand. When, just after five o’clock, she fell asleep and I leant forward and looked down at her, her face seemed to me no longer a mask, haggard, fearful, hiding the torment of months and years; but peaceful, relaxed and oddly beautiful, not even old.