The Scapegoat (49 page)

‘Béla,’ I said, ‘he doesn’t know I’ve been here. He need never
know, unless it comes out through Gaston, which is unlikely. Keep it from him, if you can.’

I got up from the chair.

She said, ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Leave the house,’ I answered, ‘before he comes. If I know anything of him, he’ll need you tonight.’

She looked at me thoughtfully. ‘I could leave the curtains drawn,’ she said.

When she said this I remembered what he had done to me. I remembered how he had not only taken up his own life once again but had destroyed the one that had been mine. I no longer had a job, or a roof in London, or anything that belonged to me but a suit of clothes, and the Ford, and a wallet containing some French money.

‘I asked you a question a moment ago,’ I said to her, ‘but you never answered it. I asked you if you would have gone with him, travelling, had he suggested it.’

‘I suppose so,’ she said, ‘if I felt he wanted me.’

‘It would have been a sudden plan,’ I said, ‘without much warning. Remember, he couldn’t have shown himself in Villars, in case he was recognized.’

‘He wouldn’t have come to Villars,’ she said. ‘He would have written to me, or telegraphed, or even telephoned, asking me to join him.’

‘And you would have gone?’

She hesitated for one brief moment. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, I should have gone.’

I glanced at the window. ‘Pull the curtains back when I’ve left the house,’ I said. ‘I’ll go down the stairs and through the door to the street.’

She followed me out of the room to the passage beyond. ‘What about your hand?’

‘My hand?’

‘It has no dressing.’

She went to the bathroom and fetched an oilskin packet,
similar to the one she had used on Sunday. As she held my hand, and dressed it, I thought of Blanche who had done the same for me in the morning, and I thought of the mother, whose hand had lain in mine throughout the night. I remembered, too, the firm, warm clasp of the child.

‘Look after them,’ I said. ‘You can do it, but nobody else. Perhaps he’ll listen to you. Help him to love them.’

‘He loves them already,’ she said. ‘I want you to believe it. It wasn’t just the money that brought him back.’

‘I wonder,’ I said. ‘I wonder …’

When she had dressed my hand and I was ready to leave, she said to me, ‘Where are you going? What are you going to do?’

‘I have a car outside,’ I answered, ‘the one he took from me a week ago. The one he would have driven you in, to Sicily or Greece.’

She came with me down the stairs, and standing there, at the dark entrance to the shop, she paused a moment before opening the barred door and letting me out into the night, and in a troubled voice she said, ‘You’re not going to harm yourself in any way? You haven’t said to yourself, “This is the end”?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘it isn’t the end. It may be the beginning.’

She drew back the bolts from the door. ‘A week ago,’ I told her, ‘I was a man named John, who didn’t know what to do with failure. I thought of a place I might go to, to find out. Then I met Jean de Gué, and went to St Gilles instead.’

‘And now you are John again,’ she answered, ‘but you don’t have to worry about failure. It doesn’t exist for you any more. You learnt what to do with failure at St Gilles.’

‘I didn’t learn what to do with it,’ I said, ‘it merely became transformed. It turned into love for St Gilles. So the problem remains the same. What do I do with love?’

She opened the door. The shops and houses opposite were shuttered and closed. There was nobody in the street.

‘You give it away,’ she said, ‘but the trouble is, it stays with you just the same. Like water in a well. The spring remains,
under the dried depths.’ She put her arms round me and kissed me. ‘Will you write to me?’ she asked.

‘I expect so.’

‘And you know where you’re going?’

‘I know where I’m going.’

‘Will you be there long?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘This place, is it far away?’

‘Oddly enough, no. Only about fifty kilometres.’

‘If they could have shown you there what to do with failure, can they also show you what to do with love?’

‘I believe so. I believe they’ll give me the answer you’ve given me now.’

I kissed her, and then I went out into the street. I heard her shut the door and bolt it behind me. I went under the Porte de Ville, and climbed into the car, and reached for my maps. They were where I had left them, in the pocket beside the driver’s seat. I found the route I had marked with a blue cross a week ago. The last ten kilometres might be difficult in the darkness, but if I kept the Forêt du Perche on my right, the road would take me to the Forêt de la Trappe and to the Abbey after leaving Mortagne. I might be able to get there in not much more than an hour, or an hour and a half.

I put down the map, and glancing up at her window I saw that she had pulled the curtains back once more. The light was shining from the window down to the canal and the footbridge. I backed the car, and turned and went up the avenue, and as I passed the hospital I saw the Renault drawn up beside the pavement. It was not outside the hospital entrance, but by the small gate, leading to the chapel. It was empty, and there was no sign of Gaston. Whoever had come in the car had gone in to pay tribute alone.

I drove to the network of roads at the top of the town, turned left, and took the road to Bellême and Mortagne.

^*
Margaret Atwood,
Negotiating with the Dead
, CUP 2002.