‘She isn’t.’
‘Oh, my dear, but she is! Didn’t you guess? With a name like Christina …’
He stood up. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ he said. ‘It’s Chryseïs, not Christina. You’re getting mixed up.’ He walked away. For goodness’ sake, people were so ignorant: they heard ‘chrys’ and thought it must mean ‘Christian’.
But he could hear her voice, that half-cracked drawl: ‘Jesus Christ, Léo.’ How many times had he told her not to say it? Because someone might think – because it was dangerous to sound like—
Could Christina be her real name? All right. Maybe she was baptised. Maybe, without Léo’s knowing, she was actually on the Register. And she’d disappeared.
Noise spilt out of the doorway of the ballroom. Suddenly the whole thing was sickening: the open mouths, the sweaty faces, the self-important laughter.
He left. It was raining, but he didn’t put his coat on; it was good to feel the icy water running down his back, soaking into his dress shirt, as if it could wash away the smell of the Party.
The next morning he went to see Dettler – who had stepped into his shoes as smoothly as a foxtrotting screen idol – and then Pirène. He didn’t stay long in his old office; the busyness set his teeth on edge, and every smile and every bright social answer from the secretaries rasped against his skin like sandpaper. As soon as he could, he climbed the stairs to Pirène’s dark boxroom and wound his way between boxes of papers to the two chairs in front of the gas fire. Even the chairs had files on them. Pirène was in the kitchenette; as he shouldered the door open and came out again, holding a tray, he said, following Léo’s gaze, ‘Oh, move them, anywhere will do, honestly, I haven’t seen my secretary for months, it’s possible she’s died.’ He set the tray down and began to pour. ‘How were the burgomasters of Montverre-les-Bains? Did you manage to impart much wisdom?’
‘It was one of the most boring evenings of my life. Thanks for setting it up.’
Pirène gave him a little smile. ‘Politics, my dear boy. One of them was the father-in-law of one of my superiors. Or is it the other way round? Anyway, it can’t have done you any harm.’ He passed him a cup of coffee. Real coffee, not the watery chicory that even the Magisters seemed to drink at Montverre. The bitter-roasted flavour flooded over his tongue: real, familiar, disappointing. All that time at Montverre he’d been dreaming of it. Along with Martinis, foreign novels, brand-new bedsheets, smoky jazz clubs, brioches for breakfast, sex. There were still a few of those he hadn’t got round to. Would they all be equally anticlimactic?
‘By the way,’ he said, trying to be casual, knowing that Pirène wouldn’t be fooled, ‘you haven’t heard anything about Chryseïs, have you? My mistr— my ex-mistress. Apparently no one’s seen her for a while, and some snide old virago from the Ministry for Justice told me she was on the Register.’
Pirène reached for a box of chocolate fondants and held them out. ‘Oh, the blonde? No, afraid not. A lot of people are keeping to the shadows, these days.’
‘I see.’ Léo waved the box away. ‘But I’d know if she were on the Register?’
‘Well, you could find out, I expect. Did you ever see her papers?’
‘She would never have signed up. She’s not stupid.’
Pirène raised an eyebrow. ‘It depends,’ he said. ‘If her baptism was recorded, and she renewed her passport in the last couple of years … Oh come on, Léo, you know how these things work. It’s getting impossible to dodge. The amount of money in that budget, honestly.’ He sighed, plucked a fondant from the tray, popped it into his mouth and chewed, thoughtfully. ‘Wonder what the country would look like if the Old Man hadn’t gone to a Catholic school?’
Léo shrugged. It hardly mattered; one way or another, the Register existed, the Culture and Integrity Act had been passed, more Purity Laws were on their way. ‘Could you look into it for me? If she’s in difficulties …’
Pirène swallowed and dabbed at his mouth. ‘The less said, the better, I’d say.’
‘If she were to get picked up—’
‘Drop it.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean it, Léo.’
‘I’m worried.’
‘You can’t do anything. No one can. If she’s gone into hiding, it’s best not to draw attention to her. If she’s been picked up … well, you can’t help. Trust me.’ He gave Léo a long look.
‘Fine,’ Léo said, ‘I’ll ask Emile Fallon.’
‘Don’t be a bloody fool. Yes, I know you’ve been writing to him. Keep up the good work and you might get something out of it. There are rumours that you’re worming your way back, that the Old Man might be softening – that’s great – but only if you stop rocking the boat. Haven’t you learnt anything? Grow up, Léo.’ Pirène sat down, leaning back until his chair creaked. ‘You’re on your second chance, and that’s more than most people get. If you blow it, you might as well take out an expensive life insurance policy.’
Léo put his coffee cup on the table beside him. The room felt tiny, humid and smoke-stained. He could practically smell the pleas and letters and decayed hopes that were pressed inside Pirène’s files like flowers. ‘Thanks for the advice.’
‘Time was you wanted my advice.’
He stood up. ‘I have to go.’
Pirène scratched his head. A few flakes of dandruff fell on to his shoulders. ‘Léo …’
‘Yes, I understand. I have a train to catch, that’s all.’ He wanted to get out, but he paused in the doorway. ‘This wretched place,’ he said, ‘I don’t know how you stand it. It makes me glad I’m going back to Montverre. Getting away from all of this.’
‘A sanctuary, eh?’ There was a strange note in Pirène’s voice.
‘What?’
‘Don’t count on it, that’s all.’
Léo stared at him. Pirène got to his feet and started to collect the coffee cups, keeping his head down. Then he disappeared into the kitchen without a word.
Léo left: down the stairs, along the brown-and-cream corridor, past the bubble-glass windows that gave on to the typists’ hall and out into the street. The rain had stopped, but instead there was a chill mist that made him cough. He was carrying his case with him – Pirène had given it an amused look, as if he thought Léo was planning to move in – and he made his way to the station, grateful he didn’t have to return to his hotel.
She was safe, somewhere. Of course she was. She was Chryseïs, she was beautiful and clever and she could squeeze gold out of a stone. There was no need to worry. He wasn’t worried. For a fraction of a second he imagined her wandering the streets, clutching a suitcase, a hat pulled low over her face: but no, she’d be on board a boat to America or Ireland, or already in an Italian city. Still in diamonds and furs, no doubt. She’d always been one to wear her fortune.
But he’d never felt so useless. There was a weight in the pit of his stomach: fear and guilt, and the dragging sense that he’d failed. All that time, she’d wanted his protection as well as his money, and he hadn’t known. He sat in the bar beside the station waiting room, and ordered a whisky; it was still early, but he didn’t want to think. It helped, a little – he managed to stop thinking about Chryseïs – but instead he found himself staring out into the station concourse, idly noticing how it had transformed since he first lived in the city. He’d visited with Dad a few times, but when he arrived alone, girding himself for his new life, armed with nothing but the address of the Party’s Central Office, a stamped receipt from his new landlady (oh, that first flat above the milliner’s shop!) and a valise of new clothes (recommended by Dad’s tailor as ‘suitable for a politician’ and turning out to be anything but), his heart had sunk at the grime and poverty, the papered-over windows and streaked glass ceiling, the rust and beggars and stink of indeterminate sewage. It had reinforced his resolve: be part of changing things.
And he was. Wasn’t he? He’d been there, part of the Party, in those heady days when the Old Man marched the streets with the rest of them, and the gr
izzled old veterans looked at them with suspicion, and their soup kitchens were chaotic and full of roped-in sisters, idealistic young ladies who had never seen a rat-dropping or a black-beetle before. Back when there were brawls with the Communists that ended with everyone swabbing minor wounds in the lavatory of the same tavern, and the Party ‘uniform’ was a green armband, and the leaflets left cheap ink on your hands, mirror-imaged words like prosperity and hope. When rooting out the Christians was only a bee in the Old Man’s bonnet, easy to ignore, and you could see people’s faces light up when the parades passed. It made Léo feel alive. Perhaps he threw himself into the fighting a little too hard, or wooed the soup-kitchen-ladies a little too avidly, and broke their hearts with too little compunction. But he was useful. He wrote propaganda with a better turn of phrase than anyone else; he knew how to charm the industrialists and donors, because they were like Dad; he could speak to a meeting, orating with nuances and gestures that wouldn’t have disgraced the Magister Motuum himself. It didn’t matter if he was lying, because he had faith in the greater good. And then the Party was elected, and the world was theirs. Whatever they’d achieved, he was part of it.
So the clean station, the shiny tiles, the way he could walk all the way to platform 12 without treading in anything that stank … The rubbish bins shaped like architectural features, their gold crests gleaming. And best of all, the people. Not that they were oil paintings, most of them – Chryseïs would have huddled deeper into her furs if they got too close, wrinkling her nose – but they looked a good deal more affluent than they would have done ten years ago. They had coats and hats and gloves. They moved with more purpose. Fewer of them hacked and spat dark globs on to the railway tracks; fewer of the children had rickets. And no cigar-sellers clawing at your sleeve, no gypsy kids threatening the evil eye if you didn’t buy their lucky charms, no beggars. It was good, wasn’t it? Not to have to brush people off, or jump when a bluish human hand emerged from a grimy pile of rags. It was something to be proud of.
Except that the rumours … There was a faint chiming sound. Léo looked down. He was tapping his thumbnail unconsciously against the thick glass. Where did they go, all the beggars? In Dettler’s office this morning a leaflet had been sitting beside the secretary’s typewriter. No more cadgers! No more tramps! Now you can feel safe on the streets. It went on to quote glorious statistics about employment, the end of inflation, the Housing Projects. As if every vagrant had gone from blood-coughing despair to a new job and a new flat, to sunlight and fresh paint and full cupboards.
Nothing about policemen in vans. Nothing about where the vans might go, once they were loaded up with reeking old men and coughing consumptive whores. Maybe it was only in Léo’s imagination that they trundled off into the hinterland, with weak fists pounding the metal side-panels. Even the rumours didn’t go into detail. The streets were cleansed of riff-raff, the way the educated professions were cleansed of Christians. No one asked where the rubbish had gone …
And Chryseïs? Would she be in the same vans, if someone picked her up?
He got up and went to catch his train, even though he had twenty minutes before it left.
The next time he went back up to town, he didn’t go to his club, or to any of the Party haunts; neither did he go to the Ministry, or look up Pirène. He went to buy candied chestnuts.
Now they’re in his case, wrapped in sapphire-and-gold paper. As the train rattles over points he can imagine them bumping against his shoes, along with … Oh God. He’s glad he’s alone in the carriage, because he knows he’s grimacing involuntarily. He must have been mad, that afternoon, when he went up the spiral staircase at Maison Angelard, tilting his head up to see the winter daylight streaming through the Art Nouveau dome. He already had the box of marrons glacés under his arm; there was no need to buy anything else, and certainly no reason to go to the ladies’ department, among the cabinets of perfume, the miniature pagoda-roofs in ivory and pale green, the smells of jasmine and cold cream. He’d been here before with Chryseïs, trailing about after her in an agony of tedium, but this time it was different. He was a tourist, admiring this feminine world of silk and nail lacquer, filmy stockings and lace and little trifles. For a few minutes he could almost imagine being a woman: being entranced, frivolously absorbed in decisions of style and colour, poring over the relative merits of ashes-of-roses and eau-de-Nil. Years ago, Carfax had argued with him about whether girls should be admitted to Montverre. He’d been passionate almost to the point of incoherence, insisting that these days, now that women were doctors and lawyers, it was sheer prejudice that kept them out. Léo remembered putting the familiar counter-argument that if the grand jeu was an act of worship, it was tantamount to letting them be High Priests – and that it was foolish anyway, as everyone could see that there was no chance of the rules changing, not for another twenty or fifty years. They reached stalemate when Léo sighed and said, ‘All right, find me a woman who can play the grand jeu,’ and Carfax had rolled his eyes and said, ‘Because they’re not allowed to study it! If my sister were here she’d wipe the floor with you.’ Maybe that had been a sensible point, in a way; but seeing the women here, buying handkerchiefs and wax roses and gold compacts, Léo was reassured. He wouldn’t let any of them near Montverre, and what was more they wouldn’t want to be there anyway. The Magister Ludi was different – it made him smile, to think Carfax had been right – but she was an anomaly; she didn’t disprove the rule. Maybe being a de Courcy trumped being female.
He paused by the scent counter. A girl with a brassy Marcel wave – a little like Chryseïs, but not as beautiful – gave him a shy upwards glance. ‘Can I help you?’ And then …
Argh, what possessed him? He shakes his head with a wry smile, as if he’s being observed. It’s one of the skills he learnt at the Ministry, dismissing his own embarrassment with panache; but this time there’s no one here to absolve him, no one to charm or distract. The second blue-and-gold package is crammed into the corner of his suitcase, wrapped in a pair of socks. The only person who knows it’s there is Léo himself; but he’s the only one he can’t deceive. What a fool. If he had any sense, he’d lean out of the window as the train winds along a ravine or over a viaduct and hurl it into unseen depths.
Then again, he can always keep it wrapped and hidden. No one will laugh at his stupidity, except him.
The landscape slides past – fields, a windmill – familiar and unfamiliar, places that he’s only ever seen from a moving train. How many times has he made this journey? Six times – no, seven times … Sometimes he liked the feeling of suspension, the in-between limbo before he arrived at Montverre; later, in his third year, he felt numb and taciturn, like a man on the way to the gallows. And now …
Now, he realises, he’s happy.
It’s like the first glimpse of himself in a full-length mirror, the day he got to Mim’s: he stuttered mid-step – no, actually walked backwards – to get a proper view of himself, astounded at how much weight he’d lost. His clothes had been looser, of course, but he was amazed to see the clean shape of his jaw, the straight drop from chest to waistband. He hadn’t realised he’d had that much to lose. And feeling happy is the same, somehow; it feels alien, dislocating. He can’t understand it. Is it merely relief at escaping Mim? No more tense dinners, greyish slabs of meat, painfully dilute cocktails. Or is it something else? The pleasure of serenity and sacrifice. Going back to a sanctuary from politics, and the Purity Laws, and his own guilt. The frisson of renouncing the temptations of the world and the flesh.
It’s nothing, nothing at all to do with the little blue-and-gold package in his suitcase.
18
First day of Vernal Term
It’s all so familiar. Slogging up the hill, the first sight of the towers through blinked-away sweat, the walk across the courtyard. Bright clouds scudding across the sky, so that the snow glared and dazzled and then died to dull grey. And when I looked up it looked like the Great Hall was toppling. About to f
all on me. Tragedy as promising scholar crushed by collapsing building. Bereaved father campaigns for compensation.
Carfax wasn’t at dinner. I went and knocked on his door after the Quietus but he didn’t answer, and when I pushed it open a crack the room was empty. Nothing there. His trunk wasn’t at the foot of the bed. I suddenly thought of that time he got a telegram from home. What if something happened and he couldn’t come back? Surely he wouldn’t stash it now. But then, where is he?
Second day of Vernal Term
Last night I couldn’t sleep. Again. I got up to put on an extra shirt, and a big woollen jersey, and another pair of socks. Then I didn’t feel like going back to bed. I’d only given myself a sketchy wash, because of the cold, and I had an itchy, grimy sensation on my skin from the train journey. I thought about going to the lavatory and running myself a bath, but at its best the water is tepid, and the idea of stripping off and getting in was worse than feeling dirty. I looked out of the window but there was no light anywhere. Everyone else was asleep. Remember that night when I saw Carfax’s window casting a square of lamplight on the curtain of snow? It seems years ago. Where is he? All over the vacation I kept thinking of things I wanted to say to him – jokes, ideas, fragments of grand jeu play, things that only he would understand – and now they’re all stuck in my head. It never occurred to me that he might not be here. He has to come back. He has to.
I found myself going out into the passage. I didn’t know where I was going but I set off as if I did. I kept listening for other footsteps, but it was as if I was the only person in the world. I don’t think it’s forbidden to wander around at night, but I’m pretty sure it’d be frowned upon. We’ve all got chamberpots, and the library’s locked at midnight, so it’s not like there’s anywhere you can legitimately go.
I made my way down to the Lesser Hall, and stood for a while at the window at the far end. The clouds were still sailing across the sky, so that you’d swear the moon was moving. Then I went out into the lobby. I actually considered going out into the snow – it looked so clean out there, almost daylight-bright – but instead I went over to a low, narrow door I’d never been through. It’s another tacit rule, that we’re not allowed in the servants’ corridors. I left it ajar behind me, in case I got lost, but the light disappeared as I climbed the spiral staircase and in a few moments I was in pitch darkness. I had to feel my way along, and I was starting to think I should turn round and go back when I came out at the top. I think I must have been above the kitchens. I was right under the roof, with low windows on one side and doors on the other – not big arched oak doors like ours, but plain and set close together. Staff dormitories, I guess. The place smelt of stale sour soap. I swear I could hear the servants breathing behind those doors. It was like standing outside a kennel: half comforting, half alien.
The Betrayals Page 18