A Secret Kept

by Tatiana de Rosnay

  "Was it a suicide?" I ask.

  The older guy nods grimly. "It was. And we'll be here for a while. Some folks aren't going to like it."

  The younger guy leans against the toilet door, his face paler than ever. I feel sorry for him.

  "It's his first time." The older guy sighs, taking off his cap and running his fingers through thinning hair.

  "Is the person . . . dead?" I manage to ask.

  The man looks at me quizzically.

  "Well, when a high-speed train is going that fast, that's usually what happens," he grunts.

  "It was a woman," whispers the younger man, his voice so low I can hardly hear him. "The driver said she was kneeling on the tracks, facing the train, her hands clasped as if in prayer. There was nothing he could do. Nothing."

  "Come on now, kid, get a grip," says the elder man firmly, patting his arm. "We need to make an announcement. There are seven hundred passengers on this train tonight, and they'll be here for another couple of hours."

  "Why does it take so long?" I inquire.

  "The body remains have to picked up one by one," says the older inspector wryly, "and they're usually stretched along the tracks for several kilometers. From what I just saw, with the rain and everything, it's not looking good at all."

  The younger man turns away as if he is going to be sick. I thank the other man and stagger back to my seat. I find a small bottle of water in my bag and drink hastily. But my mouth still feels dry. I text Angele.

  You were right.

  She texts back:

  Those are the worst suicides. The messiest kind. Poor person. Whoever it was.

  The announcement finally comes. "Due to a suicide on the railway, our train will experience considerable delay."

  People around us groan and sigh. The English lady stifles a little cry. The fat man bangs his fist down on the table. The pretty girl had her earphones in and didn't hear the announcement. She digs them out.

  "What happened?" she asks.

  "Somebody committed suicide and now we're stuck here in the middle of nowhere," whines the man in black. "And I have a meeting in an hour."

  She stares at him with her perfect sapphire eyes.

  "Excuse me. You just said somebody committed suicide?"

  "Yeah, that's what I said," he drawls, brandishing his BlackBerry.

  "And you're complaining we're going to be late?" she hisses in the coldest voice ever.

  He stares back at her.

  "I have an important meeting," he mutters.

  She looks at him scathingly. Then she gets up, and as she heads to the bar, she turns around and says, just about loud enough for the entire carriage to hear, "Asshole."

  The English lady and I share a drink at the bar, some Chardonnay to cheer us up. It is dark now, and the rain has stopped. Huge floodlights illuminate the tracks, revealing the gruesome ballet of policemen, ambulances, firemen. I can still feel the thwack of the train hitting that poor woman's body. Who was she? How old was she? What despair, what lack of hope could have led her here tonight, waiting in the rain, kneeling on the tracks, her hands joined?

  "Believe it or not, I'm on my way to a funeral," says the English lady, whose name is Cynthia. She gives a dry chuckle.

  "How sad!" I exclaim.

  "An old friend of mine. Gladys. Tomorrow morning. She had all sorts of grisly health complications, but she was terribly brave about it. I admired her very much."

  Her French is excellent, just a trace of a British accent. When I comment on it, she smiles again.

  "I've been living in France all my life. Married a Frenchman." She winks.

  The pretty girl comes back into the bar coach and sits not far from us. She is talking on her phone, waving her hands about. She looks agitated.

  Cynthia goes on, "And just as we hit that poor person who decided to put an end to his or her life, I was in the middle of choosing a poem to read at Gladys's funeral."

  "Did you find your poem?" I ask.

  "I did, indeed. Have you ever heard of Christina Georgina Rossetti?"

  I grimace. "I'm not very good with poetry, I'm afraid."

  "Nor am I. But I wanted to choose one that was neither morbid nor sad, and I think I have at last found it. Christina Rossetti was a Victorian poet, totally unknown in France, I believe, and wrongly so, for most talented in my opinion. Her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti stole the limelight. He was rather more famous. You may have seen his paintings. Pre-Raphaelite stuff. Rather good."

  "Not very good at paintings either."

  "Oh, come on now, I'm sure you've seen his work. Those somber, sensuous ladies with flowing auburn hair, full mouths, and long dresses."

  "Perhaps." I shrug, smiling at the expressive way her hands suggest abundant bosoms. "What about the sister's poem? Can you read it to me?"

  "I will. And we shall think about the person who just died, shall we not?"

  "It was a lady. The ticket inspectors told me."

  "Then I shall read this poem for her. Bless her soul."

  Cynthia takes the poetry book out of her bag, slides her oversize owl-like glasses over her nose, and begins to read in a loud, theatrical voice. Everybody in the bar coach turns around.

  "When I am dead, my dearest,

  Sing no sad songs for me;

  Plant thou no roses at my head,

  Nor shady cypress tree:

  Be the green grass above me

  With showers and dewdrops wet;

  And if thou wilt, remember,

  And if thou wilt, forget."

  Her voice goes on, soaring through the sudden hush, above the grating, scraping noises of whatever is going on outside, which I don't want to think about. It is a poignant poem, beautifully simple, and somehow it fills me with hope. When she finishes reading, some people murmur their thanks, and the pretty girl's face is tearful.

  "Thank you," I say.

  Cynthia nods. "I'm glad you like it. I think it is fitting."

  The girl comes up to us timidly. She asks Cynthia for the author of the poem and writes it down in her notebook. I ask her to join us, and she sits down gratefully. She says she hopes we didn't think she was rude--what she said to the man in black earlier on.

  Cynthia scoffs. "Rude? My dear, you were remarkable."

  The girl smiles ruefully. She is unusually good-looking. Her figure is exceptional, swelling breasts only just visible under a loose, dark sweater, long line of hip and leg, round buttocks under tight Levi's.

  "You know, I can't help thinking about what happened," she whispers. "I almost feel responsible, as if I killed that poor person myself."

  "That's not what happened," I tell her.

  "Perhaps, but I can't help it. I keep feeling that bump." She shivers. "And I keep thinking about the man who was driving the train . . . Can you imagine? And with these high-speed trains, I guess there's no way you can brake fast enough. And this person's family. I heard you saying it was a woman. . . . I wonder if they've been told by now. Has she even been indentified? Maybe nobody knows. Maybe her loved ones have no idea that their mother, sister, daughter, wife, whatever, is dead. I can't bear it." She starts to cry again, very softly. "I want to get off this awful train, I want this to never have happened, I want this person to be still alive!"

  Cynthia takes her hand. I don't dare. I don't want this lovely creature to think I'm coming on to her.

  "We all feel the same," says Cynthia soothingly. "What happened tonight was dreadful. Horrible. How can anyone not be upset?"

  "That man . . . That man who kept saying he was going to be late," she sobs, "and there were others too. I heard them."

  I too will be haunted by that thwack. I don't tell her, because her awesome beauty is stronger than the hideous power of death. Tonight I am swamped by death. Never in my life has death hovered to such an extent around me, like the buzz of a persistent black moth. The cemetery my apartment gives onto. Pauline. The carcasses on the road. My mother's red coat on the petit salon floor. Blan
che. Angele's feminine hands handling corpses. That faceless, desperate woman waiting for the train under the drizzle.

  And I am glad, so glad, relieved even, to be but a man, a mere man who in the face of death feels more like reaching out and groping this gorgeous stranger's breasts than breaking into tears.

  I never tire of Angele's exotic-looking bedroom, with its saffron gold ceiling and its warm, cinnamon red walls that make such an interesting contrast with the morgue she works in. The door, window frames, and baseboards are painted midnight blue. Orange and yellow silk embroidered saris hang over the windows, and small Moroccan filigree lanterns cast a flickering, candlelit glow on the bed, which is covered with fawn linen sheets. Tonight there are rose petals scattered over the pillows.

  "What I like about you, Antoine Rey," she says, fumbling with my belt (and I with hers), "is that underneath that romantic, well-behaved, charming exterior, those clean jeans and crisp white shirts, those lovat green Shetland sweaters, you are nothing but a sex fiend."

  "Aren't most men?" I ask, struggling with her knee-high black leather motorcycle boots.

  "Most men are sex fiends, but some of them even more than others."

  "There was this girl on the train . . ."

  "Mmmh?" she says, unbuttoning my shirt.

  Her boots at last clunk to the floor.

  "Amazingly attractive."

  She grins, slipping out of her black jeans.

  "You know I'm not the jealous kind."

  "Oh, yes, I know that. But thanks to her, I was able to get through those three excruciating hours waiting on the train while they were scraping the poor lady off the wheels."

  "And how did you get through those three hours thanks to this amazingly attractive girl, may I ask?"

  "By reading Victorian poetry."

  "Sure."

  She laughs, that low, sexy, throaty laugh I love so much, and I grab her, press her to me, kiss her avidly. I fuck her as if there is no tomorrow. The fragrant rose petals get mixed up in her hair and in my mouth and taste bittersweet. I feel like I cannot get enough of her, as if this is our last time. I am frantic with lust. I yearn to tell her I love her, but no words pass my mouth, only sighs, moans, and groans.

  "You know, you should spend more time on trains," she mutters dizzily as we lie on the crumpled linen sheets, spent.

  "And I feel sorry for all those dead people you fiddle with. They have no idea what a good lay you are."

  It is later, much later, after we have showered, after a late-night snack of cheese, Poilane bread, a few glasses of Bordeaux, and a couple of cigarettes, and after we have installed ourselves in the living room, with Angele comfortably laid out on the couch, that she finally says, "Tell me. Tell me all about June and Clarisse."

  I take the medical file, the photographs, the letters, the detective report, and the DVD out of my bag. She watches me, glass in hand.

  "I don't know where to begin," I say slowly, feeling confused.

  "Imagine you are telling a story. Imagine I know nothing, nothing whatsoever. I have never met you, and you have to explain it all, very carefully, with all the right details. A story. Once upon a time . . ."

  I reach out and take one of her Marlboros. I don't light it, I just keep it between my fingers. I stand up, facing the old fireplace, with its dying blaze, embers gleaming red through the darkness. I like this room too, its size, its beams, its walls lined with books, the antique square wooden table, the quiet garden beyond that I cannot see, for the shutters are closed for the night.

  "Once upon a time, in the summer of 1972, a married woman goes to Noirmoutier island with her parents-in-law and her two children. She is on holiday for two weeks, and her husband will join her on weekends if he's not too busy. She is called Clarisse, she is lovely and sweet, and not a sophisticated Parisienne . . ."

  I pause. It feels strange talking about my mother in the third person.

  "Go on," urges Angele. "That's fine."

  "Clarisse comes from the Cevennes, and her parents were simple, rural people. But she married into a wealthy, well-to-do Parisian family. Her husband is a young maverick lawyer, Francois Rey, well known for the Vallombreux trial in the early seventies."

  My voice wavers. Angele is right, it is a story. My mother's story. And I have never told it to anyone. After a pause, I go on.

  "At the Hotel Saint-Pierre, Clarisse meets an American woman called June, who is older than she. How do they meet? Perhaps coming down for drinks one evening. Perhaps on the beach one afternoon. Maybe at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner. June has an art gallery in New York. She is a lesbian. Was she there with a girlfriend? Was she alone? All we know is--Clarisse and June fall in love that summer. This is not . . . just an affair, a summer fling. . . . This is not just sex. This is love. A hurricane-like, unexpected, twister of a love. . . . Real love--the kind that comes once in a lifetime--"

  "Light that cigarette," orders Angele. "It will help."

  I comply. I inhale deeply. She's right. It does help.

  "Of course, nobody must know," I continue. "There is too much at stake. June and Clarisse see each other when they can during the rest of 1972 and the beginning of 1973, which is not very often, because June lives in New York. But she comes to Paris for business every month or so, and that's how they meet, at June's hotel. And then, during the summer of 1973, they plan to spend time together again, at Noirmoutier. And things aren't as easy, as simple, that summer for June and Clarisse. Even if Clarisse's husband is not often there, because he works and travels, one day the mother-in-law, Blanche, has a horrible, niggling suspicion. She knows. And that day she makes up her mind."

  "What do you mean?" says Angele, alarmed.

  I don't answer. I continue my story, concentrating, taking my time.

  "How does Blanche know? What does she see? Is it a fleeting glance of longing that lasted a trifle too long? A tender hand caressing a bare arm? Is it a forbidden kiss? Is it a silhouette she spied in the night, flitting from one room to another? Whatever Blanche saw, whatever it was, she kept it to herself. She did not tell her husband. She did not tell her son. Why? Because the shame was too great. The horror and the shame of her daughter-in-law, now a Rey, now a mother, having an affair--and to crown it all, an affair with a woman. The Rey family name could not be soiled. Not over her dead body. She had worked too hard for this. She had not been brought into the world for this. She, a Fromet from Passy, married to a Rey from Chaillot--no, it was unthinkable. It was monstrous. It had to be ended. Fast."

  Oddly enough, I am very calm as I tell the story, my mother's story. I do not look at Angele's face, because I know it must be stricken. I know what my words sound like to her, their reach, their potency. I have never uttered this story, never pronounced that precise sequence of sentences, never said what I am now saying, and each word coming out is like a birth, the shock of cold air on a fragile, naked body slithering out of the womb.

  "Blanche confronts Clarisse in Noirmoutier, at the hotel. Clarisse cries, she is upset. There is a scene in Blanche's room on the first floor. Blanche warns her. She is frightening, ominous. Blanche threatens her, says she will reveal the affair to her husband, her son. She says she will take the children away from her. Clarisse sobs, yes, yes, of course, she will never see June again. But she cannot. It is beyond her control. She sees June again and again, and she tells her all this, but June laughs it off. She is not afraid of a snob of an old lady. The day June leaves for Paris to fly back to New York, Clarisse slips a love letter under June's door. But June never gets it. It is intercepted by Blanche. And that's when the trouble truly begins."

  Angele gets up to stir the embers of the fire, as the room is getting cold. It is late now--how late, I don't know. I am aware of a leadlike weariness weighing on my eyelids. But I know I need to go to the very end of the story, the part I am dreading, the part I don't want to have to say out loud.

  "Blanche is aware that Clarisse and June are still lovers. In the letter she stole, she l
earns that Clarisse dreams of a future with June and the children. Somehow, somewhere. She reads this with loathing and revulsion. No, there is no future for June and Clarisse. No future is possible for them. Not in her world. And there is no way her grandchildren, Reys, will have anything to do with this. She goes to a private detective in Paris and explains that she wants her daughter-in-law followed. She pays a lot of money for this. Again, she never tells her family. Clarisse thinks she is safe. She is waiting for the day she and June will be free. She knows she has to leave her husband, she knows what this entails. She is afraid for her children, but in her mind, she is in love, and she believes love will find a way. Her children are the most precious beings to her, and so is June. She likes to imagine a place, a safe place, where she can live one day with June and the children. June is older, wiser. She knows. She knows that two women cannot live together like a couple and be treated normally. This may occur in New York, perhaps, but not in Paris. Not in 1973. Certainly not in the kind of society the Rey family live in. She tries to explain this to Clarisse. She says they need to wait, to take their time, that things can happen quietly, slowly, with less difficulty. But Clarisse is younger and more impatient. She doesn't want to wait. She doesn't want to take her time."

  The pain is setting in at last, like a familiar, dangerous friend you let in with apprehension. My chest feels constricted, too small to contain my lungs. I stop and take a couple of deep breaths. Angele comes to stand behind me. Her warm body presses against mine. It gives me the strength to carry on.

  "That Christmas is a dreadful one for Clarisse. Never has she felt lonelier. She misses June desperately. June has her busy, active life in New York, her gallery, her society, her friends, her artists. Clarisse has only her children. She has no friends apart from Gaspard, the son of her mother-in-law's maid. Can she trust him? What can she tell him? He is only fifteen, barely older than her son, a nice, simpleminded young boy. What can he understand? Does he know two women can fall in love? That it doesn't necessarily make them evil, immoral sinners? Her husband is dedicated to his work, his trials, his clients. Maybe she tries to tell him, maybe she drops clues, but he is too busy to hear. Too busy climbing the social ladder. Too busy paving his way to success. He plucked her out of nowhere, she was just a girl from Provence, so unsophisticated it made his parents reel. But she was beautiful. She was the loveliest, freshest, most charming girl he had ever met. She didn't care about his fortune, the family name, the Reys, the Fromets, the real estate, the property, the establishment. She made him laugh. No one ever made Francois Rey laugh."