Matty lifted her eyes. Her brow was drawn. She was pale and weary. Her hands, still clasped in her lap, looked as though they had been boiled, like old rags, then boiled again. She wore no jewellery save for a thin silver wedding band around which the flesh had expanded.
‘Claude’ll be pleased to hear you’re staying. We’ve both been hoping, praying. I mean, who’s left to run the place, make the decisions?’ There was a long pause. ‘It’s a complicated situation, without Luc to keep things on an even keel … He was so very generous to us all.’
‘He valued you highly, both of you and Arnaud too. You will say yes, won’t you, Matty?’
‘I haven’t been sleeping nights, tossing and turning, worrying about what lies ahead for our family. Who could have foreseen this turn of events, eh? I felt sure that Clarisse wanted us gone …’
‘Why on earth would she want you gone?’
‘Madame Cambon’s not the easiest. We feared she might have grown resentful, full of regrets now that she’s lost her only boy.’
‘Resentful? I don’t understand.’
Matty, whose attention had been focused on a carved wooden coffee-table where several more framed photographs were displayed, lifted her gaze back to Jane. Her eyes, oval as almonds, registered surprise. She looked hard at Jane, as though scouring her thoughts.
‘Full of regrets about what, Matty?’
Matty continued to stare at the younger woman and then a penny seemed to drop. ‘Oh, my Lord!’
‘What, Matty?’
‘I’ve – I’ve left the oven on. Pastry’s burning. Excuse me.’ She scrambled to her feet and heaved her bulky frame to the kitchen, abandoning Jane.
Jane was at a loss. She stood up, remaining where she was. Her mind was replaying the conversation. Had she missed something? She bent to the coffee-table and picked up one of the photographs. Three youngsters in swimming costumes on the beach. Arnaud and Pierre, two strapping teenage boys, and their tiny sister, Annie. She replaced the photo mechanically, still trying to unravel the exchange that had just taken place. She went into the kitchen and found Matty leaning over the sink, crying.
‘Matty! Have I upset you? I’m so sorry if I have.’
‘No, no, of course not. I’m a foolish old thing, don’t pay no attention to me.’
Jane moved up behind the bulky woman, who smelt of onions, and hesitantly wrapped her arms about Matty’s heaving shoulders, pressing her head hard into the broad back. ‘You will stay, won’t you, Matty?’
Matty nodded, and her entire body juddered like a mini earthquake. ‘Course we will. We haven’t got anywhere else to go.’
‘You don’t need anywhere else. This is your home.’
‘If Master Luc were here …’
‘It’s almost unbearable, isn’t it, Matty? The way we all miss Luc,’ whispered Jane, head still buried in ample flesh clothed in damp cotton. ‘There are days when I think I can’t go on without him. I just can’t keep going. And it’s for ever, Matty. Luc’s never coming back. That’s what I can’t come to terms with. I keep waiting for him, expecting him, listening for his step, his voice, his laughter. I don’t want to take my next breath without him and I pray so hard that the air won’t come, but it always does and I’m still here and I don’t know what to do with myself. Thank you for staying, merci beaucoup.’
Jane slid out of the door and ran fast to her car. Tears were blinding her. A guinea fowl in her path caused her to stumble. She sat in the sticky driver’s seat under the mulberry tree with the trunk that had divided and split and crept along the ground. They were still growing, those new trunks, seeking out new directions, sinking down new root systems, surviving.
Why would Clarisse want to discharge the Lefèvre family? She surely couldn’t harbour doubts about their qualities as employees? About employing them in the first place? And how did she intend to manage without them? The place needed physical strength and direction.
What if Jane could make a temporary life here, search for her next step from this territory she knew so well? Was that what Luc had wanted? Was Clarisse telling her a truth that Luc had never expressed? Or was his mother trying to trick her, to manipulate her? Jane’s head was spinning with so many convolutions, she thought she might go mad.
She pressed her hands against her face and screamed, sobbing hard. She threw the car into gear and reversed at speed, sending up whorls of small stones. Two geese honked and flapped.
Arnaud, from a distance, watched her retreat.
6
An empty coach was parked outside the wine-pressing block. Its driver, in sunglasses, was leaning against the bodywork, smoking, idling. Clarisse was in her office combing her hair, fixing her make-up. She was dressed in an old black-and-white Chanel suit. Jane was drawn up short by the pearl necklace she was wearing. It was the one her mother-in-law had worn on the day they had first met. She suddenly pictured her father, charming, young and virile, arriving here, pitching for employment, and all that had ensued …
‘Clarisse, may I have a word with you, please?’
‘Can’t you see I’m busy? There are clients waiting, potential buyers. Japanese tourists on a wine-tasting excursion. They have money to spend.’
‘It’s about Claude and Matty.’
‘Oh, God, what about them?’
Jane could hear laughter through the open doors, and the incomprehensible drift of Japanese being spoken. Corks were being drawn. The clinking of glasses. Clarisse was hovering impatiently by the open door, keen to be on the move. ‘Well, what is it?’
Jane spoke quickly: ‘I have reinstated them, put them back on full salary. God knows it’s a pittance, Clarisse, you cannot leave th–’
‘How dare you? They have a large, comfortable house, all bills paid, and you had no bloody right to go against my decision.’
‘For as long as I’m here, I’ll need their help. You owe them for their loyalty. For Heaven’s sake, Clarisse, have you no heart? They have nowhere to go, no income.’
‘I owe them NOTHING!’
‘Clarisse, they’re here for you.’
‘Mind your own damn business. You said you were leaving, so go! I’m the one who’s left with nothing. I have nobody. With Luc gone, I have no one.’
‘They have given their lives to you, to Isabelle and this estate.’
‘Spare me the heartache.’
‘Fine. Then I’ll pay their wages. For as long as I can. The funds will come out of my earnings and the proceeds of the sale of the London flat, unless you agree to pay them from the estate.’
Clarisse sighed loudly. A voice from the tasting room called to her, ‘Madame Cambon?’
‘Claude and I can clear up the vegetable garden and he can sell the produce at market, bring in a little extra cash for you all.’
Clarisse scoffed at such a suggestion. ‘Does that mean you’re staying on?’
‘There’s far more in the cellars to clear out than I’d … It’s going to take me a while.’
Someone called again for Madame Cambon. In haste, or for whatever reason, she agreed grudgingly that the estate would, for the foreseeable future, meet the cost of the couple’s salary. ‘And from now on, you keep out of my affairs. You’re just like my headstrong son. You don’t know what you’re meddling in.’
Armed with a bottle of mineral water, her iPad and a torch, Jane closed the pantry door and turned the key, locking herself in on the cellar side to prevent anyone – who might she be wary of? – disturbing her. Descending gingerly into the bowels of the house, she was already rattled by what she might find, intimidated by the prospect of further unsettling disclosures about Luc. Luc, who was revealing himself to have been quite another man from the one she had loved and married.
The rancid odour had gone and Matty had washed and disinfected the floors. Another, more chemical, smell had superseded the previous one. Claude had scattered lurid pink poison pellets on saucers and spread them here and there to keep any further trespassing creatures at
bay. Mousetraps were set under filing cabinets. And there was another scent, a lingering, sweet yet fetid odour of old wine or decaying apples, soaked into the walls over centuries.
She began by locking the drawer that held the Colt and the Bible, promising herself that, for this day’s search at least, she would not root in there again. She was here to list professional data. Nothing else. Then she would contact a film institute, or Dan perhaps. He must be back by now from his location work on the feature film. Call Dan, she scribbled, in a previously unused exercise book she had found down here.
Many of the cupboards were stacked high with paperwork. Each of Luc’s films – twelve in total, excluding his last unfinished one – had been allocated large, labelled boxes. Each box contained the preparatory work: shooting scripts, budgets, stills, research material, interviews. The documentation was meticulous, the process fascinating to follow. She had never fully appreciated all that was involved in the construction of a film. She glanced to and fro, wondering where he’d stored the boxes for his latest project. Where were the scripts? The transcribed interviews he and Dan had been working on in Marseille?
She came across an outmoded 8mm film projector. Was there a screen? Film stock? Yes, she had noticed 8mm film reels the first time she’d been down here. She spun about, trying to recall where she had spied them. There was such a wealth of data and it was getting dustier and wrapped in cobwebs. In no other area of his life was Luc a hoarder but here nothing appeared to have been thrown out. Where were the films? She was making notes on her iPad and back-up notes in the exercise book, using a black-ink ballpoint biro that had belonged to Luc and seemed polished by his grip. For such booty, the basic utensils seemed more appropriate, easier to get an overview, a perspective. Room one, room two and so forth.
She turned her attention to a stack of circular canisters containing spools of celluloid film. They stood in a corner like giant silver coins. She lifted the top one off the pile. The label, in Luc’s black-ink handwriting, read: ‘Mum and Aunt Isa. Cannes 1966.’
It would have been filmed three or four years after their flight from Algeria. Jane thought it would be intriguing to watch a film of Luc’s mother shot during a happier, more carefree era. She discovered that the spool was Super 8mm stock and was not compatible with the 8mm camera, or the camera was jammed, broken, dusty. Who knew? She couldn’t marry them, couldn’t play the film. In any case, it probably needed a projector and a projection screen. A pity. It would have been fascinating to see how Clarisse had looked and behaved back then. A swift forage through the canister pile suggested that these were all personal films. She logged them under To Keep, promising herself she’d find a way to watch them later.
She eased herself onto a stool to reach into a cupboard drilled high into the wall. As she did so, she was asking herself whether Luc had been the cameraman on all these films. If so, his film-making instincts had been seeded at a very early age. She drew open the cupboard. It was stuffed to bursting with disintegrating green and orange paper wallets. Each read ‘Kodak’ or ‘Fuji’. Many of the photographs within them were almost sepia with age, brown and curling. She rummaged and then lifted out the first few. Isabelle and Clarisse in summer dresses with full skirts, Luc between them, so young he could barely stand on his chubby legs. Palm trees, hot clear sky. Behind them a shiny black Citroën. Jane flipped the photo over: ‘Algeria 1960’. Within the folder there were several more postcard-size shots of the two women on the same occasion. No others with Luc, but all with the Citroën DS. They seemed to be showing off their new car. Clarisse couldn’t have been more than mid-twenties back then in Algeria. Nothing in the images suggested the ravages of war, although in 1960 the war had been under way for six years. Jane remembered the car. Clarisse had kept it locked in one of the old stables. Luc and she had sat in it once as kids, Luc at the steering-wheel, pretending to drive, the car spotless, all burgundy leather and polished.
‘It’s a Safari Wagon. We escaped from Algeria in it,’ he’d told her.
Jane wondered whether the car remained on the estate or whether it had been sold. She set the photos aside and reached into the cupboard for another handful. That caused a miniature avalanche of letters, photos and postcards to pour out from the two shelves, spilling over her and onto the stone floor. They looked as though they hadn’t been opened or glanced at for years. Luc’s past tumbling out of the walls around her. Jane crouched on her haunches and began to shuffle through them.
A face stared up at her, a black-and-white, head-and-shoulders photograph of a lean unsmiling man. He appeared to be in khakis. Dark hair, moustache, tanned skin, thirty or thirty-five, perhaps. She turned the image over and read: ‘Adrien 1960’.
He must be Luc’s father. Jane studied it carefully, trying to find Luc in him. ‘Adrien’ was certainly handsome but, in this photo at least, he was very serious, lacking warmth. She laid the picture aside. At the centre of the stack was a more recent offering. A single photograph. It stood out because it was larger than most of the others, A4 size. Its image was of the rear of a slender woman walking outdoors, wearing a black coat, collar turned up against the weather, a black woollen hat pulled low over her head. No hair visible. The image was chopped at the waist. The female was carrying a small child, a boy, two years old perhaps, whose chubby face over her shoulder was looking in the direction of the lens. Dribbling and frowning, the infant’s pouting gaze was fixed on the photographer. It was a winter scene. Stark. The cameraman would have been walking directly behind the mother and child. Jane scrutinized the image. Where had it been taken? The location was a town or city. Slick-wet wide street, zebra crossing ahead. In the direction the woman and child were headed, on the right side of the lane, there was a boulangerie and a series of cafés and restaurants. Further along, Jane saw an M for Métro. It was possibly somewhere in the suburbs of Paris. A northern metropolis, almost certainly. It couldn’t be Luc with Clarisse because they were still living in Algeria when he was the same age as this small boy. Had the French built a Métro system in Algiers? Jane swung the picture onto its back and read in bold script in French: Missing you when you’re away, Luc. We love you. A … x
She stared at the words, unable to take them in. She needed to sit down. Her legs were giving beneath her.
Missing you when you’re away, Luc. We love you. A … x
A?
‘A’ as one half of A and P? A and P whose lives had been irrevocably changed by Luc’s death? No, A and P were Matty’s boys.
The photograph was undated.
Jane settled the snapshot on Luc’s desk. Sickness swirled in her gut. Had Luc been the cameraman? Who was this A who had signed the photograph? Was Jane facing the possibility of a mistress?
7
She wasn’t wearing her watch, had forgotten her phone and there was no clock in the windowless environment with no natural light, so it was impossible to gauge how much time had passed. How long had she been staring in disbelief at the stub from the Crédit Agricole chequebook? She pushed it aside finally, still in a state of shock. Deep-rooted misgivings were taking hold as one more piece of a disturbing jigsaw fell into place.
Were they all building to the same picture? Or was she jumping ahead?
A thousand euros written in ink on a cheque stub, an account Jane had not previously been aware of, paid ‘pour Annabelle’. Luc’s writing.
Was the A in the photograph ‘Annabelle’? Was the boy her son? Was the chubby boy Luc’s son? A second family?
She peered hard at the child. Did he resemble Luc? She pulled over the pictures from Algeria, shuffled for the only one of Luc aged two. Was there a similarity between the two small boys? A little bit, yes. Or was she superimposing her emotions on the image? She couldn’t say. Her mind was playing tricks. Please let Annabelle be a staff member on Luc’s payroll, not connected to the photo of mother and child. But if that were the case, why would the cheque to Annabelle have been paid from a private account? An account whose existence Luc h
ad kept from Jane.
She stood up shakily. A landslide of photographs surfed over her shoes. She kicked lightly with her toe, pushing them to and fro. A quick glance without bending down offered nothing else of that mother and child. In any case, she had lost the will to continue. She felt dizzy, weak. There was an ache, a pulsing, in her chest that was threatening to choke her.
Had Luc been leading a double life that included a second family? A duplicitous existence that had led him into debt and possibly cost him his life? How many payments had he made to Annabelle?
Was Clarisse aware of the existence of another woman? Her mother-in-law had seemed genuinely surprised when Jane had disclosed details of Luc’s financial troubles. So, probably not.
Was anyone else aware of the hidden family, if that was what this evidence suggested? Robert Piper had denied any knowledge of anything untoward. But had he been too quick to do so? What about Dan? Why hadn’t he kept in touch? Or was she misinterpreting everything, allowing her reasoning to lose control? Were grief and loneliness driving her round the bend?
She needed to get out of the cellars before her head exploded. She left everything more or less as it was, took her iPad and beat a retreat, but halfway up the narrow wooden stairs the doubts pushed her into reverse, drawing her back to the photographs, the evidence of undisclosed moments in Luc’s life. Had Luc sired that woman’s child?
The idea caused a tsunami within her. She couldn’t face the possibility that another woman had delivered to Luc the child she and he had so passionately longed for, whom she had failed to produce. She took hold of the photo again, staring hard at it, searching for a clue, a fashion accessory, a hoarding, anything to date it. To fix a point where she might begin.
The Forgotten Summer Page 20