Bright Hair About the Bone
Page 17
Aware of the contrast with the dishevelled, post-nightmare image she must herself be presenting, Letty tugged at her dressing gown and smoothed down her hair. Marie-Louise, noticing her embarrassment, looked tactfully aside, and Letty was struck by a surprising resemblance. She’d seen something very like this girl’s features somewhere before and the sudden tilt of the face and the half-closing of the eyes had made it clear. At the end of March she’d attended the premiere of Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis. She hadn’t enjoyed the film much but she’d been taken with the programme cover. The face of a girl, its cold and expressionless whiteness betrayed by a sensuous red mouth, had, with closed eyes, gazed internally at who knew what appalling vision. A vision hinted at, perhaps, by the sleek black machine-tooled helmet she wore?
The brief illusion faded when Marie-Louise spoke again, in a voice warm with sympathy. “I heard all about the incident at the trench from Rolande at the café. Everyone’s talking about it. Poor Stella! What a dreadful discovery to make!”
“Oh, I’m all right,” Letty replied. “But I feel so very sorry for the young man. I can’t imagine the circumstances that led him to such a death!”
“Oh, I can,” said Marie-Louise, frankly. “Dozens of circumstances. Paul Morel was a village boy. He was notorious hereabouts…a voyou of the worst kind. Such a trial to his father, who has worked on the count’s estates all his life. A loyal servant. A good man. But the son was completely out of hand. There are many in Fontigny who will not be mourning him.”
“The count himself being one of them, I think?”
Marie-Louise smiled. “You are quick to blame him? You have taken a dislike to our local lord, I think. Look, Stella, you must make up your own mind, of course, about Edmond d’Aubec, but he may not be the ogre you take him for.” And, in response to Letty’s snort of cynicism: “Who has told you these bad things about him? Paradee! The American. Well, there you are! Those two men hate each other and have no good words either for the other. But most people who know d’Aubec have reason to be grateful to the man…I myself have personal experience of his generosity. Indeed, the count is very good to our school and to the whole community. You will find many to praise his concern for their welfare.
“I’d better declare,” she added with a hesitancy that warned Letty to expect a revelation of some sort, “that my political leanings, such as they are, are to the left. You would call me a ‘socialist,’ and it goes against the grain to admit that this aristocrat is generally well regarded in the region. But d’Aubec is. He is not an absentee landlord—one of those who live in Paris and turn up on their estates briefly for the shooting. No. He lives his life here. He employs—and pays generously!—many local people. I would, of course, prefer that his privileges and property were returned to the community but…”—Marie-Louise shrugged—“he does well with what he has and he loves and protects his native land.”
“You forget that I saw him in action myself the other night. Bully of the worst kind! I dread to think what would have happened if Reverend Gunning hadn’t stepped in to put a stop to his activities!”
Marie-Louise’s eyes sparkled with amusement, but she was not about to join Letty in her condemnation. “Ah, yes! I heard that our surprising pasteur has skills we had no idea of! William is a most intriguing man, is he not, Stella?”
“He is indeed,” Letty said, and, holding out her cup for more tisane, decided to plunge into the confidences-in-the-dorm session that the French girl seemed to be craving. “Tell you what, Marie-Louise, why don’t you do the man an immense favour and run away to Paris with him? Ensnare him! You’d make a lovely couple.”
Marie-Louise gave a derisory laugh. “You think so? I would certainly love to get away from this stifling little town, and the vicar would be a most agreeable companion.” She moved to the window and flung back the curtain. “Come and look!”
Letty looked out at the dawn breaking on a peaceful garden and understood. She saw an orderly garden enclosed on all sides. Vegetables stood to attention in neat rows; espaliered peach trees struggled, crucified, on a south-facing wall; and, contained in their hutch, rabbits grew fat awaiting their fate. Beyond, a flush of ochre in the sky outlined a sweep of dark blue sheltering hills—sheltering or restraining, a symbolic barrier. The yearning in Marie-Louise’s eyes saddened Letty. She suddenly saw the young woman’s room for what it was—no more than a medieval cell papered over with the pickings of glossy magazine illustrations—and she caught the blast of an almost out-of-control despair.
“What does the future hold for you, Marie-Louise?” she asked quietly. “I had understood that the world had opened up for women in France?”
“Oh, yes. Of necessity women took the places of men away at war. Four years’ carnage advanced our cause more effectively than forty years of suffragism! And next autumn women in my profession are to be awarded a salary equal to that of the men.” Her words were bland, though her tone was bitter.
“Well, that’s better than you could expect in England. Though, like us, you have not yet been given the power to vote, I think? It annoys me to a murderous pitch that since I am under the age of thirty and own no property I may not vote, though any cottager in the village may do so, however ill-informed, so long as he be male. And most of the opportunities women had snatched at during the war years when men were pleased enough to look the other way have been dashed away with the return of men to civilian employment. So, if it’s new horizons you’re seeking, you may have to look farther than England. Other countries? You’d like to travel farther than Paris, perhaps, with this agreeable companion?”
Marie-Louise nodded and closed the curtain.
“You and the vicar—you’re both intelligent and sensitive people,” Letty commented, as further comment seemed to be expected. “I don’t see why you shouldn’t hit it off. I mean, a rip-roaring, eye-crossing love affair would be wonderful but, really, Abélard and Héloïse are the exception, aren’t they? We can’t all wait about for Fate to serve up an experience like that. I’m quite resigned to never finding my own knight in shining armour, my own Lancelot. In fact, I’m coming to the conclusion that hen-headed old Guinevere didn’t know when she was onto a good thing. If King Arthur pops his head above the parapet I shall raise my bid card!”
Marie-Louise smiled. “That’s a very modern view. I would have expected something more…” She flushed: “Stella…I wonder if you ever…?”
Oh, Lord! thought Letty. Now we’re in for a hot squashy corner! Can I bear this before breakfast? But she at once felt guilty at her selfishness. This sort of intimacy was obviously a new experience for a single daughter, who had never been away to school and benefited from the very particular educational possibilities of girls’ dormitories after lights-out. “Have I ever been in love? Is that what you’re wondering?”
Marie-Louise nodded.
“About fifty times. I started with the usual crushes on my boy cousins, the Head Girl, the Gym Mistress, even my piano tutor came in for a bit of attention, predictably…but I can tell you that nothing compares with the knee-trembling surge of emotion you feel when you fall in love for the first time.”
Marie-Louise was listening intently to this nonsense, eyes gleaming with anticipation.
“Hang on a tick! I’ll show you a picture of my first love…if that would be of any interest?”
Letty hurried to her room. She pulled open the bottom drawer of the chest where she’d tucked away a pile of comforting reminders of home: photographs of her ten-year-old self with mother and father, herself with a changing series of large black dogs, one of Letty arm in arm with a friend’s brother (always willing to masquerade as a boyfriend), a five-year diary, an old June Ball programme, and—there it was—the exercise book she was looking for. She returned and handed it to Marie-Louise.
“But what is this?” Marie-Louise trailed a finger over the pattern painted in primary colours on the cover. And then, with distaste: “Is this some book of magic, perhaps?”
“But these symbols? What are they? Red-Indian? These words Kibbo Kift, are they Indian? No…but it’s pagan of some kind, I’m sure…And this star? And two Latin words: Stella Maris…Three moons and…ah, I recognise this sign—a cross with a sort of loop at the top—it’s the ancient Egyptian ankh, isn’t it?” She was holding the book as though she had just fished it out of the gutter.
“Yes,” said Letty, “I took it to be symbolic of Isis. I decorated the book myself. When I was sixteen. It’s my diary of a fortnight spent in summer camp. The organisers of the camp encouraged us all to design our own personal emblems and even invent our own clan names. Our leader was called White Fox, I remember. My name being ‘Stella,’ the star—well, it made it rather easy for me. I did a bit of research and discovered that Stella Maris—such a pretty phrase—meant ‘Star of the Sea’ and was a reference to the bright star Sirius, worshipped by sailors when it rose out of the eastern Mediterranean. It was the symbol of the mother goddess Isis, whom they worshipped. They believed that her appearance over the horizon would lead them to good fortune. Rather glamorous, I thought; this is for me! I pursued my goddess through the pages of Frazer’s book on mythology and added the moons and that border of ears of corn which are also attributes of hers. And I set it all out on this green background.”
“Green? Wouldn’t dark blue have been more dramatic, more aesthetically pleasing?”
“Probably. But green is significant. Isis had many names: Mistress of Mysteries, Corn Goddess…but I especially liked Creator of Green Things, Green Goddess.”
“I see,” said Marie-Louise, clearly mystified. “I think I see. Decidedly pagan! You English! You were an éclaireur…a Boy Scout then?”
“Oh, no!” Letty grinned. “Certain things in common, I suppose, but this was a very special camp—open to both sexes and all ages. It was run by an organisation called the Kibbo Kift.” She pointed to the words on the cover. “It’s not Red Indian—it’s old English dialect and it means ‘a proof of strength.’ It’s an association of like-minded people: boys, girls, men, women, all pacifists, all intensely interested in the preservation of Englishness, fitness of mind and body, the learning of handcrafts, the appreciation of nature, the regeneration of urban man and woman through the open-air life. And it has wider ambitions—nothing less than to be the human instrument that will create a new world civilisation.”
Marie-Louise gasped. “A cult! It all sounds dangerous to me! And especially dangerous when it springs from the empire-building souls of the Anglo-Saxon race. There is a movement like this in Germany—the Wandervogel—intense young people set on developing physical perfection, discipline, and nationalistic fervour. Poor France! Is my country to be trapped between two ambitious, muscle-flexing races? You fought each other on French soil ten years ago. How long will it be before you re-discover your shared roots? There are those who have always maintained that the English have far more in common with—and more sympathy for—the Germans than they ever had with the French. Your royal family have German cousins, do they not?”
Letty was taken aback by the girl’s passion and at a loss as to how to counter what some might consider her well-judged apprehension. She hurried to reassure her. “No, no. You misunderstand! It’s all jolly sing-songs round the campfire, reef knots, and treasure hunts. I can’t speak for the…Wandervogel did you say?…but I can tell you there’s no political and certainly no religious aspect to the English movement at all. It has some very famous and admirable men and women on its advisory panel: H.G. Wells, Julian Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Rabindranath Tagore. None of them would be associated with anything remotely suspect. It’s grown in popularity and there are thousands of members scattered all over England.”
“And this is what you fell in love with? A movement of nationalistic woodland folk aiming for world domination?”
“Gracious, no! I loathe camping and cocoa and wood-whittling! I’d have done a bunk after the first day, but I fell with a bang for the leader of the movement! Complete, trembling, gasping passion! Just look inside the front cover at the photograph I stuck in there.”
Marie-Louise sighed and opened up the garish book. She looked and was silent for quite a long time.
“That handsome fellow is ‘White Fox.’ He was twenty-six when he formed the Kindred and I was present at one of his first camps. He’s a man of amazingly strong charisma, tall, athletic, inspiring, with the hypnotic powers of a Svengali! Do you wonder that my knees trembled?”
“But this man is a dark angel,” said Marie-Louise. “He is Lucifer before the fall.” She went on staring at the strong features, the bold eyes glittering and partially hidden by a black Saxon hood. “My poor Stella! Being exposed to the force of a man like this at sixteen! It could have ruined you for life!”
“I’m not so easily ruined! I think of it as a sort of immunisation,” said Letty practically. “After an injection of Lucifer Attraction, nothing much can touch me henceforth.”
“I wonder if it’s occurred to you, Stella, that the count—d’Aubec—is cast in much the same mould?” Marie-Louise suggested hesitantly.
“Yes. Of course, I had seen the resemblance. Physically, at any rate they are, as you’ve noticed, strikingly similar. But the presence, the personality…” She sighed. “No two men could be more unlike. No, Reverend Gunning is more like the White Fox in character…unyielding, demanding, self-sacrificing, on the side of the angels…if he believes in angels. And I understand him to have been a Boy Scout in his youth.”
“I’m not sure that would recommend him to a French girl!” Marie-Louise smiled. “It’s clear to me that you have little time for the man but—can you not think of anything it would please a woman to hear about Mr. Gunning?”
“As I said, I think he’d make a wonderful travelling companion for you. He’s full of information on a range of interesting topics and he drives well.”
“But…Stella…” She hesitated and bit her lip, searching for words, unaccustomed to exchanging confidences of this kind.
“But you can’t be certain that he’s interested in you?” supplied Letty.
“Yes, that. But more than that…” She coloured and looked away and suddenly Letty understood.
“Oh, you mean, you can’t be sure that he takes an interest—an amatory interest—in females at all? Do you know, I really have no idea. I can usually tell but I have to say, in his case, I just don’t know for certain. Only one thing to do, isn’t there? Now, had you thought you might…?”
They laughed together in eager conspiracy and Letty wondered what would be the reaction of the austere Gunning, lying asleep in the room above their heads, if he could have heard some of the scurrilous schemes they were devising in an effort to test out his sexuality.
Poor Marie-Louise, though, she decided as she made her way back to her own room, was in for a disappointment. Letty had told an easy lie. It was perfectly obvious to someone of her experience. Neutered tom. That was what, in her innocence, Marie-Louise had to deal with.
CHAPTER 19
Letty was not aware that Paradee had been standing a few feet away from her, watching her work. He approached and inspected the length of foundation she had neatly revealed with trowel and stiff brush, then moved on to check the contents of her finds tray. A smile broke through at the sight of her anxious face and he hurried to reassure her. “Relax, Stella. That’s just fine! You’ve done a lot this morning. Glad to see that yesterday’s nastiness hasn’t put you off your game. Keep this up for a few more hours and I’ll think you’ve deserved some time off. Report to my office at four o’clock, will you? Oh—go home and change first. Into something comfortable.” He called after her, “And put your boots on!”
At four, in clean shirt and trousers, she banged on the knocker and entered on hearing his shout. “Come in!” he invited, a
nd proceeded to sweep charts and pens to one side, clearing a space on his desk. “You look as though you could do with a drink.” He shot ice cubes into two glasses and filled them with a swish of water from a dark green bottle, added a slice of lemon, and handed her one.
“Well, now,” he went on, sipping his drink, “how would you like to come for a ride? It’s high time you got a look at the surrounding country—so far you’ve only seen it on a plaster model.”
Letty looked at his humorous, inviting face and thought there was nothing she would enjoy more after her hot day bent double in the confines of a trench. “But what will I do for a horse?”
“You ask that in Fontigny?” He was laughing at her. “The cream of the country’s horses are just around the corner, the director of the Haras is my good friend, and I have a key to the stables,” he said, flourishing it. “What are we waiting for?”
Minutes later they were letting themselves in to the stables by a side door. As it swung to behind them, shutting out the noises of the town square, Stella’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, her ears to the soft familiar sounds of the stable and her nose to the well-remembered smells. In delight she wandered along the beaten earth track between the stalls, reading the name of each stallion on the board above his head. She paused occasionally to run her hand over a silky rump or fondle an inquisitive nose turned in her direction. She quivered with anticipation when she realised just what was being offered by this confident American—a ride on one of these horses, lined up in their stalls; horses of different sizes and breeds and colours but all with one thing in common: an impeccable pedigree.
“Careful now! Keep your distance from that animal!” warned Paradee as Letty approached a large Arab, gleaming from nose to lashing tail.
“Carnaval,” she murmured, reading his name. “Lovely creature! Well-bred but rather evil-tempered, I should guess,” she added keeping well away from the waltzing hooves, the thrashing head, and the angry white eye.