by Julia Stuart
When he eventually retired, he devoted his by now unparalleled powers of concentration to watching ants, but they never afforded him the same joy as his oils. But when he tried to pick up his brushes again, he found that he had developed a catastrophic allergy to turpentine.
Guillaume Ladoucette had always been embarrassed by his mother’s prolonged and public war with Madame Moreau. Not long after the famous mini-tornado of 1999, when he had returned from taking yet another of her tomato-splattered coats to the dry-cleaner’s, he invited Monsieur Moreau round for an apéritif in the hope that he might persuade his wife to desist, or at least to cut back on her ammunition, given his mother’s frailty. After apologizing profusely for his wife’s behaviour, Monsieur Moreau explained that in all his years of marriage he had never once managed to change his wife’s mind over anything. The only consolation he could offer his host was that such was the advancement of her years, his wife could now only hit her target in one throw out of every five. It was when the pair had just started their second glass of homemade pineau that Monsieur Moreau looked up and saw the portrait whose paint had been infused with his tears. Immediately, he assumed that Guillaume Ladoucette was the thief and was so taken aback that he put down his glass and declared that he had to leave.
Over the following months, Monsieur Moreau abandoned his study of the ants as he could think of nothing but the painting. He would sit on the bench in his brown nylon trousers and blue cap longing for another look at the lips over which he had laboured for months, such was his reluctance to leave the curves that reminded him of willow leaves. He would then imagine Guillaume Ladoucette slipping into the shed at night and discovering the portrait in its hiding place, although he could never fathom how the barber had managed to achieve such a feat. He would see him taking it down, lowering it into a large sack and sneaking out of the garden with it. What made matters worse was that the thief had then had the audacity to hang the stolen item in his sitting room for all to see. Yet he felt unable to demand its return, convinced that the felonious barber had recognized the sitter and would divulge his secret.
Eventually the man could bear it no longer. Woken up one afternoon by a sudden downpour as he dozed on the bench, he ran to Guillaume Ladoucette’s house and thumped on the door. Ignoring the offer of a kitchen chair and towel, Monsieur Moreau walked straight through to the sitting room where he settled himself on the armchair in front of the portrait, his hair dripping. He took the glass of pineau he was offered, but never once raised it to his lips as he instantly forgot it was there. Guillaume Ladoucette found himself pursuing a conversation that was largely one-sided with a man who smelt like a damp goat. Eventually, frustrated by his visitor’s distraction, he followed the man’s eyes to the portrait and asked: ‘Do you like it?’
‘With a passion you wouldn’t believe,’ he replied, taken aback by the thief ’s effrontery.
Guillaume Ladoucette immediately got to his feet, took down the portrait and gave it to him saying: ‘Then you should have it.’ Monsieur Moreau left with it wrapped in a plastic bag under his arm, happy that the thief had finally absolved himself, and Guillaume Ladoucette closed the door warmed by the happiness that giving brings.
7
THE ONE PERSON IN AMOUR-SUR-BELLE WHO WELCOMED THE FACT that the pigeons had suddenly forgotten how to fly was Émilie Fraisse. A number of residents, infuriated by repeatedly tripping over them when they scuttled out of nowhere like feathered rats, had resorted to kicking them into oblivion with rage. Yet the châtelaine, for the first time since her arrival, was able to sleep past five in the morning without being woken by the tapping of dry, horny beaks on the ancient château windows by grey crowds jostling on the enormous stone sills, a sound which had driven one fifteenth-century owner over the ramparts in despair. His infuriation was complete when he discovered himself irrefutably alive in the pestilent waters of the moat below, wondering how he was going to get back inside the fortifications which he had spent a lifetime making impenetrable.
Despite its narrowness, Émilie Fraisse slept on the right-hand side of the four-poster Renaissance bed, the position she had assumed throughout her marriage. She had picked the side nearest the door on her wedding night to enable a swift exit should the worst of her fears come to pass. But instead of the pain she was expecting, her groom had simply kissed her on the forehead and gone to sleep, leaving her blinking with bewilderment in the darkness. It wasn’t until almost three months later after several abortive attempts, that she finally lost her virginity, which increased her confusion. A year later, when still not pregnant, she started to attempt to increase the frequency of their love-making, while never once mentioning the subject of her husband’s lack of success. Serge Pompignac initially welcomed her efforts. But as the problems continued, her endeavours were eventually rebuffed and he would turn his back on her in a miasma of self-hating frustration. The longer the issue remained unspoken, the more they felt unable to talk of other matters, and eventually, the stitches binding them together came undone. Émilie Fraisse’s isolation was complete when she no longer felt able to talk to the maids, lest they brought up the subject of the shrinking furniture.
It was during her first night in the château of Amour-sur-Belle that she rediscovered the joy of sleeping alone. Instead of lying on her side facing away from her husband, her arms drawn up against her breasts for fear that they might torment him, she lay on her back, her arms stretched out either side of her as if she had been dropped from a great height. And when, in the middle of the night, the unfamiliarity of her surroundings woke her, she experienced the delight of getting up, going downstairs and returning with a steak sandwich so rare the bread was stained red, which she ate from within the bedcovers. And when she opened her eyes that first morning, never once having been bounced from slumber by a murmuring body next to her executing a five-point turn, she realized that for the first time in over two decades she was not disappointed to be awake.
Eager to explore her new home, Émilie Fraisse covered her slender nakedness with a white cotton dressing gown with dark-blue embroidered flowers, which she had hung on the back of the door. She hadn’t bothered to inspect the château before purchasing it, relying on her memory of the place from the last time she visited it during one of her rare trips home to see her parents, who eventually moved from Amour-sur-Belle in search of a more rational climate.
The building had been on the market for almost five years, during which time it had crumpled into an even more pitiful state. André Lizard, the previous owner, had parted with all of his inheritance to buy it, with the intention of restoring it into a respectable tourist attraction that would finally secure it a mention in the guidebooks. He had been determined to repair the scandalous ramparts, which were missing so many sections of their crenellations, raze the nettles in the dry moat and coax the Belle back into it. There were plans to drive out the bats from the bell tower whose centuries of droppings had risen so high they prevented the door from opening; to replace the junk-shop furniture, which had been bought to fill in the gaps left by the ancient treasures sold by previous owners to feed a variety of disturbing addictions; and to prevent the rain from leaking through the roof into the King’s Bedroom, which had been kept permanently ready for a royal visit that had never come.
It wasn’t long before André Lizard discovered the folly of his dream. When, after four years of frustrated searching, he finally found some of the missing stones from the crenellations buried several metres deep in the banks of the moat, he attempted to hoist them back up the outside walls using a pulley system. But the rope frequently snapped, sending the enormous blocks hurtling to the ground again, once flattening a dog. When the stones were finally fixed into position, he discovered that he had got them the wrong way round and spent another six months prising them off and resetting them. Eight days after the work was complete, the famous mini-tornado of 1999 scattered them over the side again like seeds.
He then turned his attention to the mo
at, but had to give up his attempts to lure the Belle back into it after the local barber made a spectacular fuss about changes to the water table affecting his potager. The layers of encrusted bat droppings revolted him to such an extent that he was unable to enter the bell tower by the window to remove them. Tired of grappling with the roof above the King’s Bedroom, he gave up, concluding that it was its destiny to permanently leak. And, as the years grated painfully by, bringing only a handful of visitors a week during the summer months, there was no income to fund the replacement of the junk-shop furniture. By the time André Lizard admitted defeat, the dry rot had risen up his shins, his skin had taken on the pallor of the stone walls in the dungeons and the damp had led to a fungal infestation which flourished in his armpits with unstoppable rapaciousness.
When news finally came of a cash buyer for the château and its contents, André Lizard immediately handed over the enormous iron key to his solicitor and left within the hour, his threadbare slippers crunching over the crisp pigeon droppings covering the drawbridge. A solitary suitcase in his hand, he had not decided upon a destination because anywhere else would be better. As well as the contents, he left behind him a large quantity of rare wine hidden from the Nazis in the dungeon, a tiny unmarked grave containing the remains of the dog that he had killed, and a colourful colony of moulds that the scientific world had long thought extinct.
In her bare feet, Émilie Fraisse walked slowly down the corridor, stopping to touch the rough stitches of the faded tapestries lining the walls. The first depicted a fifteenth-century wild boar hunt, its black prey surrounded by three baying greyhounds wearing wide collars. In the forefront beaters in blue and red tights held more dogs on leashes, while men hid amongst the trees aiming their crossbows. In the distance, sitting on a hill, was a smug-looking rabbit. Further down the corridor was another tapestry featuring a group of beautiful ladies-in-waiting posing in long, sumptuous gowns in a red apple orchard. Members of Catherine de’ Medici’s secret weapon known as the ‘flying squadron’, part of their duty included furthering the queen’s ambitions by the use of seduction.
Pushing open the heavy wooden door to one of the bedrooms, the châtelaine was heartened to see that nothing had changed since her previous visit. Sitting on the bed and the ornately carved chairs was the same collection of hideous old dolls in discoloured lace, their unblinking eyes staring blindly in front of them. Running her hand along the top of the dressing table, she was instantly comforted by the sight of the grey powdery residue on her fingers. Shutting the door behind her so as not to disturb the dust, which she was saving for later, she visited every room, opening the heavy wooden shutters and then throwing open the tall lattice windows behind them as she went. In sprang arrows of hot light that pierced the ridiculous junk-shop furniture and made the authentic antiques glow. By the time she had inspected every room, Émilie Fraisse knew she had made the right decision to buy the place: it was just as filthy as she had remembered it.
Without stopping to get dressed, she retraced her steps, collecting all the garish red and pink plastic flowers that had been crammed into cheap vases and putting them into a black rubbish sack she found in a drawer in the kitchen. Opening the vast front door, which had been bleached fossil grey by the sun, she padded across the courtyard to the splendid late fifteenth-century chapel that had been rebuilt using leper labourers, and cut armfuls of the ivy that was growing up its stone walls. She refilled the vases with twists of the evergreen, and placed a single apricot rose which had been rambling for centuries in the water glass next to her Renaissance bed.
Finally daring to enter the bathroom, she inspected with curiosity the insect carcasses lying in the bottom of the heavily stained tub. Taking a bar of soap from her solitary suitcase, she then went outside, took off her white cotton dressing gown with the dark-blue embroidered flowers and happily showered under the cold water of the garden hose. As she strolled naked around the château to dry off, the soles of her feet beetle black within an instant, she came across a leather chest studded with brass in one of the upper bedrooms. Her curiosity stoked, she knelt on the floor, heaved up the lid with both hands and discovered a nest of antique dresses. Standing up, she pulled them out one by one and inspected them as they hung from her hands, crippled from years of confinement. After selecting one in iris mauve with lacework covering the bodice, she stepped into it and to her surprise found that it fitted. Looking into a mirror dappled with age, she twisted her long grey hair, which was annoying her, into a pile at the back of her head, and secured it with one of the jewelled pins she found in a tortoiseshell box on the dressing table. She rustled her way back along the corridor and descended the stone spiral staircase, the bottom of the gown rippling down the cold steps with their lamentable repairs. In a pot by the kitchen sink she found a large pair of scissors still covered in dried flecks of parsley and hacked off the bottom of the dress from the knees down. She then set about looking for dusters.
When, within an hour, she had exhausted them, the châtelaine climbed into her car and drove to the nearest supermarket where people glanced in confusion at the woman in the antique shorn-off dress, whom many failed to recognize, purchasing an enormous quantity of cleaning materials, along with a week’s supply of food. When she returned to Amour-sur-Belle, Émilie Fraisse wound up the car window and kept her eyes straight ahead of her so as not to have to stop for conversation. Arriving at the château, she stuck a note over the opening times saying ‘Closed for the Week’ and pulled up the drawbridge behind her.
In the vaulted kitchen with its tarnished collection of copper pans and utensils covering shelves on three sides of the walls, she stuffed a pair of calf ’s ears with veal, ham and mushrooms and tied them securely into bundles. After putting them into some stock, she left them to cook slowly for three hours while she got down to business. Her treat for the day, which had pirouetted in her mind as she drove back, was the llama skeleton that stood in the hallway and had developed an ashen pallor. Working methodically on each of its seventy-nine bones, after several hours she had returned it to its natural colour of unripe brie.
Over the course of the week, the châtelaine navigated steadily through the rooms with her warship of dusters, brushes and scented polishes, sustained by the comfort of knowing that as soon as she had finished she would immediately have to start again. As she wiped and rubbed she found beauty in the decay of the place, which she had no intention of restoring, and looked in awe at the vast palette of the moulds and the tenacity of the woodworm. When her back and neck could take no more, she would climb to the roof and sit by the scandalous ramparts admiring the curves of the Belle, the bright yellow irises in the dry moat below and the flight of the buzzards, their big floppy feet hanging below them. At night, before sleeping, she would walk naked across the courtyard and lie on the uncut grass watching the shadowy swoop of the bats, enjoying the rich stench of their droppings.
On her final day before opening, like a diner about to savour her most succulent prawn which she has left until last, Émilie Fraisse slowly opened the door to the empty grand salon and looked inside. There, stretching towards the enormous stone fireplace, was the reversible floor, one side oak, the other walnut. According to the visitors’ guide, an incomplete collection of badly typed pages in a ring-bound folder that generated more questions than it answered, the floorboards, originally installed in 1657, were turned every two hundred years. Émilie Fraisse took a bucket and first lightly washed down the oak boards which were uppermost. When the sun’s fingers had dried them, she got back down on her hands and knees and polished each one until the floor reflected her shadow. Once she had finished she returned to the vaulted kitchen, fried several rounds of black pudding and ate them with a piece of bread sitting on one of the carved pews in the splendid fifteenth-century chapel, rebuilt using leper labourers. On returning to the grand salon, she stood at the doorway to admire her handiwork. Getting back down on her knees again, she released a small, spicy belch, and, ignoring
the fact that the boards weren’t due to be changed for another fifty-one years, turned them all over as she had been longing to do ever since she moved in. By the end of the day the rippling walnut was so dazzling that the house martins which flew in couldn’t find their way back out.
Rising early the following morning, Émilie Fraisse lowered the drawbridge and removed her hand-written note from the board. Halfway through the afternoon, while picking quince from the overgrown orchard, by which time she had forgotten that she was open for business, a German tourist in becoming shorts appeared at her side asking for a tour of the château. After offering him a couple, she put down her basket and led him to the hall. When she and her guest arrived at the llama skeleton, and he enquired where it had come from, Émilie Fraisse said nothing of the fact that, according to the visitors’ guide, its body had been found in the moat seventy-two years ago after it had escaped from a travelling circus. Instead, she found herself telling him how the animal had been ridden back from Persia by a thirteenth-century troubadour as a gift for his beloved after she had rejected both him and his previous offerings, which included a purple nightingale and one of his kidneys. The llama, a species that wasn’t even known to exist at the time, appeared to do the trick. For a period the three lived in harmony in the château, with the animal enjoying a bedroom all to itself with views of the garden and a place at the dining-room table despite its unsavoury habit of spitting. But, after a while, the woman began to pay more attention to the llama than the troubadour, since it wasn’t afflicted by a need to recite atrocious poetry in deadening quantities. Twisted with envy, one night when his lover had retired early to bed, the ungrateful poet killed his winning mode of transport, heaved it on to the spit and ate it. It was never known precisely what happened to the man, but his headless ghost still haunted the cesspit, and on a windy night snatches of atrocious poetry blew in through the cracks in the château windows.