The Scapegoat Page 15

  'I don't mind one way or the other,' I answered.

  'That's what I thought.'

  She went on pinning her hair. This, I thought, is one of those issues in married life making for reconciliation or tears or interminable argument, and it would not have happened but for the bottle of 'Femme' with the initial B so carelessly scribbled upon it. We had both of us bungled, her husband and myself, and because I believed he would have responded with silence, that was the course I chose too.

  'Very well,' I said, 'I'll sleep in the dressing-room.'

  I went back into the bathroom and began to run the water, and as I cleaned my teeth, remembering which was my toothbrush and which my glass, it was once again like those scarce-remembered, queerly familiar second nights at school. The bathroom fittings were no longer strange, the running water came with a sound that was not the home sound yet was now part of a settled scheme; and when Francoise brushed past me to fetch a pot of cream, neither of us talking, she might have been some dormitory companion of a bygone era from whom I was temporarily estranged. I felt it neither incongruous nor strange to be in vest and pants while she was in a trailing wrapper. I had become part of the bathroom background, and so had she. Only the silence was out of key, and when, in pyjamas and dressing-gown, I went to say good night and found her reading, and she turned to me a pale, indifferent cheek, with none of last night's anguish and none of last night's tears, I felt again not so much relief as guilt - guilt that the sins of Jean de Gue had been increased tenfold by his scapegoat.

  I went back to the dressing-room and opened the window. Tonight the chestnut trees were still, and there was no clarity, no stars, and no lone figure, either, in the turret-room above. As I climbed into the camp-bed and lit a cigarette, with the thought that this was my second night under the chateau roof and that twenty-four hours or more had passed since I came to St Gilles, I knew that everything I had said or done had implicated me further, driven me deeper, bound me more closely still to that man whose body was not my body, whose mind was not my mind, whose thoughts and actions were a world apart, and yet whose inner substance was part of my nature, part of my secret self.

  11

  When I awoke the next morning I knew there was something I had to do. Something urgent. Then I remembered the telephone conversation with Carvalet, and how I had committed myself, or rather the verrerie of St Gilles, to continued production on their terms, without the remotest knowledge of the family resources. All I possessed was Jean de Gue's cheque-book, and the name and address of his bank in Villars. Somehow I had to get to the bank and talk to the manager, inventing some excuse for my ignorance. He would surely be able to give me a rough idea of the financial situation.

  I got up and bathed and dressed while Francoise was still breakfasting in her room, and while I drank my coffee in the dressing-room I tried to visualize in my mind's eye the lay-out of the Michelin map and the road along which we had come from Le Mans. Somewhere along that road, surely not more than fifteen kilometres or so from St Gilles, was Villars. I remembered noticing the name when I looked up my original course northwest from Le Mans to Mortagne and la Grande-Trappe. I no longer had my maps, but the town should be easy enough to find. When Gaston came into the dressing-room to brush my clothes I told him I was going into Villars, to the bank, and I wanted the car.

  'At what time,' asked Gaston, 'does Monsieur le Comte wish to go into Villars?'

  'Any time,' I said. 'Ten, half past.'

  'Then I will have the Renault outside at ten o'clock,' he said. 'Monsieur Paul can take the Citroen to the verrerie.'

  I had forgotten there was a second car. This would simplify matters. There would be no questions from Paul, no suggestion of coming with me to the bank, which I had feared. I was reckoning, though, without the complications of family shopping. Gaston, naturally enough, must have passed round word of my intention, for I was putting change into my pockets, and was about to go downstairs, when the little femme de chambre knocked at the door.

  'Excuse me, Monsieur le Comte,' she said, 'but Madame Paul asked if she may go with you into Villars. She has an appointment with the coiffeur.'

  I wished Madame Paul another attack of migraine. The last thing I wanted was another tete-a-tete with her, but there seemed no possibility of excuse.

  'Does Madame Paul know I'm leaving at ten o'clock?' I said.

  'Yes, Monsieur, she has fixed her appointment for half past.'

  I wondered if it was a deliberate scheme for my company. I told Germaine that of course I would take Madame Paul to the coiffeur, and then, with a sudden inspiration, passed through the bathroom to the bedroom, where I found Francoise sitting up in bed.

  'I'm going into Villars,' I said. 'Do you want to come?'

  Then I remembered that surely every husband kisses his wife good morning, even if he has been banished from her side the night before, and I went up to the bed, and kissed her, and asked her how she had slept.

  'I was restless,' she said. 'It was as well for you that you had the camp-bed next door. No, I can't come into Villars. I shall stay in bed. I'm expecting Dr Lebrun some time this morning. Why must you go? I had hoped you would see him.'

  'I have to go to the bank,' I said.

  'Gaston could go for you,' she said, 'if you want some money.'

  'It isn't that. I've got business to discuss.'

  'I believe Monsieur Peguy is still away ill,' she said. 'I don't know who is doing his work. The senior clerk, I suppose. He won't be much use.'

  'It doesn't matter.'

  'We ought to make up our minds finally, you know, whether I should go into Le Mans for the baby or have it here.' The plaintive note had come back into her voice, the aggrieved tone of one who feels herself neglected.

  'What do you want to do?' I asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders, apathetic, resigned. 'I want you to make the decisions,' she said. 'I'd like to feel the whole nightmare lifted from me, and that I don't have to worry any more.'

  I looked away from the accusing eyes. This was the moment, I supposed, for problems, intimacy, discussion of the many little troubles of daily life that must be shared by a husband and wife. But because it was not my problem, and the moment not of my choosing, I felt impatient with her that she must produce it now, when all I could see ahead of me was the necessity of getting to the bank.

  'Surely Dr Lebrun is the right person to take charge of all this?' I said. 'We have to go on his advice. Ask his opinion when he comes this morning.'

  Even as I spoke I knew that I was wrong. It wasn't what she meant. She needed reassurance, and felt herself to be alone. I wanted, desperately, to say, 'Look, I'm not your husband. I can't tell you what to do ...', so that the burden of guilt would lift from me. Instead, as a sop, an attempt to ease my conscience, I added, 'I won't be long. I'll probably be back before he's gone.'

  She did not answer. Germaine came in to take away the breakfast tray, and behind her Marie-Noel, who having kissed us in turn, and bidden us both good morning, immediately demanded to be taken into Villars too.

  Here was the perfect counter-plot to Renee: I wondered I had not thought of it myself. When I said that she might come the child watched me with dancing eyes, wriggling impatiently while her mother brushed her hair.

  'It's market-day,' said Francoise. 'You are not to go pushing in those crowds or you'll catch something. Fleas, if nothing worse. Jean, don't let her go wandering in the market.'

  'I'll look after her,' I said, 'and anyway, Renee is coming too.'

  'Renee? Whatever for?'

  'My aunt Renee has an appointment at the coiffeur,' said Marie-Noel. 'As soon as she heard Papa was going into Villars, she came along to aunt Blanche's room to telephone.'

  'Ridiculous,' said Francoise. 'She washed her hair only four or five days ago.'

  I heard the child say something about aunt Renee wanting to look nice for la chasse, but I did not listen. I fastened on to a single flash of information, which was that the teleph
one extension was in Blanche's room. Blanche, then, had lifted the receiver and listened when I spoke to Paris. If not Blanche, who else? And how much had been heard?

  'I'll try and keep Dr Lebrun until you come back,' said Francoise, 'but you know how he is, he never can stay long.'

  'What's he coming for?' asked Marie-Noel. 'What's he going to do?'

  'He's going to listen to baby brother,' said Francoise.

  'Suppose he doesn't hear anything - will it mean he's dead?'

  'No, of course not. Don't be so silly. Run along now.'

  The child looked from one to the other of us, anxious, expectant, and then, for no apparent reason, suddenly turned a cartwheel.

  'Gaston says I have very strong limbs,' she said.' He says most girls can't stand on their hands at all.'

  'Look out ...' warned Francoise, but it was too late. The flying feet overbalanced and crashed upon the little table near the fireplace, scattering a porcelain cat and dog on to the hearth, smashing them irrevocably. There was a moment's silence. The child picked herself up, scarlet in the face, and looked at her mother, who sat up in bed gazing at the disaster, stunned.

  'My cat and dog,' she said, 'my favourite pieces. The two my mother gave me that I brought from home.' I thought for a moment that the shock of this sudden accident would be too great for her to feel anger, but a tumult of feeling must have swept over her on that instant, breaking all control, and the bitterness of months, perhaps of years, surged to the surface.

  'You little beast,' she said to the child, 'with your horrible clumsy feet, smashing the only things I possess and value in this house. Why doesn't your father teach you discipline and manners instead of filling your head with all this nonsense about saints and visions? You wait until you have a brother, then he'll get the petting and the spoiling and you'll take second place, and a good thing it will be for you and for everybody else. Now leave me, both of you. I don't want either of you, leave me alone, for God's sake ...'

  The child, her face drained of colour, ran from the room. I went over to the bed.

  'Francoise ...' I began, but she pushed me away, her eyes tormented.

  'No,' she said. 'No ... no ... no ...' She flung herself back on her pillows, burying herself against them, and in a futile endeavour to be useful, to do something constructive, however late, I picked up the fragments of the porcelain animals and carried them into the dressing-room, so that her eye should not fall upon them when she looked again. Mechanically I wrapped them in the cellophane and paper that had served for the great bottle of scent still standing on the chest-of-drawers. There was no sign of Marie-Noel, and remembering the night before, and the whip, and - even worse - the threat of the open window, I went out of the dressing-room and up the back stairs to the turret room, running three steps at a time in sudden fear. But when I came to the room I saw with relief that the window was closed, and that she was undressing, folding her clothes neatly on a chair.

  'What are you doing?' I asked.

  'I've been naughty,' she said. 'Don't I have to go to bed?'

  Suddenly I saw the adult world through her eyes, the strength of it, the absence of logic and understanding, so that the calm undressing at a quarter to ten, when she had only been up perhaps an hour, and the sun was streaming into her room, became things accepted without question because this was how a grown-up person punished.

  'I don't think so,' I said. 'I don't think it would do much good. And anyway you were not naughty. It was bad luck.'

  'But I can't come to Villars now, can I?' she asked.

  'Why not?'

  She looked bewildered. 'It's a treat,' she said. 'A person can't have a treat when they've broken something valuable.'

  'You didn't intend to break the figures,' I said. 'That's the difference. The thing to do is to try and have them mended. Perhaps we could find a shop in Villars.'

  She shook her head in doubt. 'I don't think there is one.'

  'We'll see,' I said.

  'I shouldn't have overbalanced but for my hands,' she said. 'I had them too near the table, and my wrists went weak. I've done it heaps of times before out in the park.'

  'You chose the wrong place, that's all,' I said.

  'Yes.'

  Her eyes searched mine, as though in hungry confirmation of some unspoken thought, but I had nothing more to tell her and nothing more to say.

  'Shall I put on my dress again?' she asked.

  'Yes. Then come downstairs. It's nearly ten o'clock.'

  I went down to the dressing-room, and picked up the broken pieces in their wrapping paper. Downstairs the car was ready waiting, and Renee was standing in the hall.

  'I hope I haven't kept you waiting,' she said.

  There was a world of anticipation in her voice, and of confidence too, as she walked past me on to the terrace and down the steps; and the very way she moved, and then called good morning to Gaston standing by, with a glance above her at the warm bright sky, betrayed excitement and avidity. The scene was set, this was to be her day. Then the child came running across the terrace after us. She wore white cotton gloves and a white plastic handbag dangled from her wrist on a chain.

  'I'm coming with you, aunt Renee,' she said, 'but it's not a treat. I have some rather serious shopping to do.'

  I had never seen expression alter so swiftly from assurance to dismay.

  'But who said you could come?' exclaimed Renee. 'Why aren't you doing your lessons?'

  I caught Gaston's eye, and the understanding that I glimpsed, the appreciation of the situation, was so superb that I wanted to wring his hand.

  'It suits aunt Blanche better when we do lessons in the afternoon,' said Marie-Noel, 'and Papa is glad of my company, aren't you, Papa? May I get in front? I shall be sick if I sit in the back.'

  For a moment I thought Renee was going to return to the chateau, the frustration was so shattering, so complete. Then she pulled herself together, and without looking at me climbed in behind.

  I need not have worried about the road to Villars. The truth, as usual, proved an easy way out of difficulty.

  'We will pretend,' I said to Marie-Noel, 'that I'm a stranger and don't know the way, and that you have to direct me.'

  'Oh, yes,' she said, 'what a good idea.'

  It was as simple as that.

  As we drove out of St Gilles, and along the side-roads through the shimmering countryside, golden-green under the October sky, I thought how easily and happily children lend themselves to fantasy, and that life for them is only bearable because of this facility for self-deception, for seeing things other than they are. If I could have told Marie-Noel the truth about myself without destroying her faith in Jean de Gue, with what passionate intensity she would have given herself to complicity, and what a wizard's aide she would have been, the genie to Aladdin's lamp.

  Soon we were out of the magic of field and farm and forest, of sandy by-ways and falling poplar, and back on the hard, straight route nationale and so to Villars, the child announcing in a singsong chant each turn I had to take, while behind us our passenger kept silence - except once, when I braked swiftly before a suddenly slowing vehicle in front, and the smothered 'Ach!' of shock and exasperation, as the jolt shot her forward, betrayed the mood within.

  'We'll drop aunt Renee at the coiffeur and put the car in the Place de la Republique afterwards,' said Marie-Noel.

  I stopped in front of the small establishment with the waxen lady's head in the window all crimped and curled like a sheep ready for shearing, and opened the door for Renee, who got out without a word.

  'What time will you be ready?' I asked, but she did not answer. She went straight into the shop with never a backward glance.

  'She seemed in a bad mood,' said Marie-Noel. 'I wonder why.'

  'Never mind about her,' I said, 'go on directing me. Don't forget I'm a stranger here.'

  The absence of Renee put an end to restraint, and my mood, like the child's, turned festive. We found parking-space beside a line of lorr
ies, and, heedless of the warnings about fleas, plunged into the market in the Place beside the church.

  Nothing was on a grand scale, as it had been in Le Mans. Here were no beasts, no cattle, but trestle tables crammed together in a small space, spilling over with aprons, jackets, macintoshes, sabots; and the child and I moved leisurely between them, our eyes caught foolishly by the same objects - by spotted handkerchiefs, scarves, a china jug shaped like a cock's head, pink rubber balls, chunky coloured pencils, red one end and blue the other. We bought some grey and white checked slippers for Germaine, and then, distracted by a rival firm which was offering the same thing in a lively green, shamelessly took our custom to them; and hardly were the slippers wrapped and paid for than a desire seized us both for yellow bootlaces, both for ourselves and for Gaston, and two sponges on a string, and finally a great hunk of milk-white soap, a mermaid riding a dolphin embossed upon its surface.

  We turned in the crowded alley, laden with our wares, and I saw we were being watched with intense amusement by a blonde woman in a bright blue coat, her own arms full of dahlias, and she said over the child's head, and as though to the stallkeeper beside her, 'It must be true, then, that they are closing down the glass-foundry at St Gilles and turning it into a bon marche store.' And as she brushed past us, going in the opposite direction towards the church, she murmured for my ear alone, 'Pere de famille for a change?'

  I looked back at the blue coat swinging down the alley, amused, intrigued, and then Marie-Noel, pulling at me, said, 'Oh, Papa, there's a little lace cloth. Come quickly - it's just what I want for my prie-dieu.' And we were involved in purchases once more as she darted from stall to stall, and I, indulgent, lazy in the warmth of the sun, forgot all about my purpose in coming to Villars, until the church clock boomed half past eleven and I thought, aghast, of the bank closing at twelve, and nothing achieved.

  'Come on, hurry,' I said, and we went and spilt our purchases in the car. While she was arranging them on the back seat I glanced once again at the cheque-book to memorize the address of the bank.

  'Papa,' said the child, 'we've never seen about mending the broken porcelain for Maman,' and, looking at her, I saw anxiety in her face, the happiness gone.