‘I suppose it was a long chance,’ she said to Mr Osworthy.
‘Yes, probably. A pity he wasn’t taken to the Brompton at once.’ Did Amy detect a faint note of criticism, or only self-criticism?
‘You did the best you could,’ she assured him. ‘The man was buried in an avalanche, after all.’
As she was sinking once again into exhausted sleep, someone knocked on her door, with towels maybe, or something about the minibar, though until now the Croix St Bernard had been free of these hotel nuisances.
‘Not now,’ she said in a loud, dismissive voice.
‘Amy?’
It was Kip’s voice, so she got out of bed. She put on the terry-cloth thing from the bathroom and peered out at Kip. When she saw him, she lost her temper, seized him by the shoulders, and shook him.
‘Where were you? Don’t you ever do anything like that again,’ she heard herself screech. ‘We were all frantic. Poor Paul-Louis! What on earth were you thinking of, you little jerk, that was so thoughtless…’ Until she heard herself say all this, she didn’t even realize how much Kip’s vanishing after lunch had been on her mind. Now she felt like such a mean hag – the poor kid was close to tears, and at the same time he was grinning. ‘I wanted to tell you about Kerry,’ he said. ‘She woke up.’ So it was Amy who said she was sorry, and hugged him, and told him what a great job he was doing. At this, he looked so pleased, it crossed her mind for the first time that he might have a kind of crush on her.
Eventually he left, and she once again went to bed. She wasn’t sleepy; she had the impulse to call Sigrid or Forrest or her parents. She wanted someone to talk to. Self improvement was a solitary business. The whole time she had been here, she had been feeling like a spy, or someone in disguise, unable to talk about her real situation in life, her conversations limited to empty social exchanges and one sexual interlude. Of course, wasn’t that the situation of any hotel guest? In a hotel, all were devoid of pasts, of contexts, everybody interacting in the present, putting forward only as much of themselves as necessary. Being a hotel guest was somewhat lonely, was the truth of it.
In the night she woke up thinking about how in the morning she would tell the Venns she was sorry their father had died, and sorry for her part in it. But something else had woken her. It began to seep back into her mind that she had slept with the baron, what an idiotic thing to do! What could she have been thinking of? She forced herself to go back to sleep and stop remembering it until tomorrow.
28
Though it seemed to her that she slept no more the rest of the night, nonetheless, she woke thinking at first that her dreams had been troubled by a bizarre fantasy. It was the feeling that something lay on her bosom, heavy and impish, smirking. What it was came back immediately – she had slept with a German real estate developer she barely knew, and had the deepest intuition that the aftermath would be troublesome. For one thing, his poor wife – he was obviously an incorrigible philanderer.
She stumbled to the bathroom trying to think what had made her do it, and remembered the explanation that had seemed plausible, and even exculpatory, in the night. She’d been stirred by, drawn to, the handsome television personality Emile at lunch, obviously had fallen a little in love with him before that, maybe at the moment that he had refused to kill the lobster. Put frankly, she had been aroused, wanting to get laid, and had displaced this feeling of erotic restlessness onto the baron. And of course she’d been sorry for the poor man with that wife. She would definitely put this behind her. Once frailty is identified, it can be slain. Otherwise a lovely day yesterday, the Alps laid out before them, a domain of impregnable beauty, the company of Europeans, mysterious and yet familiar.
At breakfast, she went straight to their table to tell the Venns of her regrets about their father. They were sitting in silence, Rupert in ski clothes, Posy looking tousled and cross, the French sister composed and courteous. There was a strong family resemblance, a similar sort of certitude of expression on their handsome faces. He – Emile – was not there, so she had no way of testing her theory that she had slept with Otto because she had been attracted to the Frenchman.
‘Yes, very sad,’ Rupert said, rising at her approach. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ Amy hesitated and sat down, and moved her cup for the waiter who wandered with the coffeepot.
‘We knew it was probably inevitable,’ he added. Posy looked up from the gloom through which she’d been staring at her plate and gave a little nod. Victoire smiled sweetly. ‘The doctors had never been optimistic.’
‘Maybe he shouldn’t have been moved,’ Amy brought herself to say. ‘I just assumed – I’m sorry for my part in it.’ She didn’t find it easy to apologize for a well-intentioned action, and she doubted it had actually brought on Mr Venn’s death, but how did one know? This is what Posy and Rupert murmured politely, reassuring her: How could anyone know? She appreciated their chilly British politeness where she might have expected reproaches.
‘It is so American to help,’ said Victoire in a friendly voice. ‘Your long tradition of saving Europeans!’
Yet Amy had the distinct impression they believed that moving their father had killed him – had jolted or unplugged him, had exposed him to glitch and jostle, and that she was responsible, for without her he wouldn’t have gone. Plus they hadn’t asked for her help.
She stayed a few minutes longer and then rose, not wishing to intrude any longer on their grief. As she was crossing the lobby, on her way to put on her ski stuff, a man carrying a giant bouquet approached the desk. Roses and poinsettias, the latter an allusion to the season and the roses, perhaps, to an eventual spring, or to some attitude of the heart. Her own heart sank. The Jaffe daughter at the desk accepted the flowers with an appropriate expression of approval that one of their guests was receiving such a conspicuous, expensive tribute. Was having an affair. Amy’s fears were justified; after reading the card, the girl glanced at her with a significant smile. A chambermaid appeared, together the two read the card again, the maid bore the flowers off.
As Amy dressed, the tap came at the door, and the chambermaid came in with the flowers, in a vase Miss Jaffe had found, and the card, from Otto. Amy saw what the Jaffes must have seen: a baron’s crest, or whatever it was, a little gold circle with a star in it, and the initals OS marking the envelope, for those who knew it, as being unmistakably from him. The chambermaid gave her a warm grin. Not that Amy cared really, maybe they’d think she’d bought a chalet. Yet she felt her face getting warm from embarrassment and apprehensiveness. Oh, woe, why had she done it? Of course, it hadn’t seemed so bad at the time.
In the morning the nurses had helped Kerry to sit up. ‘That is better. They have taken out those tubes, poor Madame Venn.’ She didn’t remember when they had taken the tubes out of her throat, but it must have been during the night, or while she was sedated. Now her mind felt remarkably clear, as if activated by an off/on switch now switched on. The immediate past was a black trough, then going backward beyond it, clear memories on the other side, of being in Valméri, the hotel, Harry and Kip, Adrian in his khaki ski coverall and boots of midnight-blue. The hotel, then the trough of blackness, during which something must have happened, then this hospital. Where were Adrian and Harry? It seemed odd that no one was here except the beaming nurse telling her she would be all right and they would move her to a room for a few days.
‘Where is my baby? My husband?’ she cried. Words you would expect as a first utterance from a wife and mother, nodded the satisfied nurses.
‘Safe, safe. Harry will be in to see you. Your husband is in another hospital, madame. He has been taken to London to specialists.’
Kerry concentrated on remembering, and, the way a paralyzed person might be urged to try to move his limbs – to try, to try – the nurse urged her to try to remember what had happened. Some of it would come back eventually on its own, the doctor told her, but trying to remember can set in motion the repair of those neurons, those frozen cells… and she
did remember they’d been skiing. At first that seemed enough of a memory. ‘We were skiing!’ and the nurses cheered her on, yes, yes, then what?
After breakfast, Rupert telephoned Mr Osworthy to tell him about Kerry’s regaining consciousness. Osworthy received this news with relief. ‘Frankly, the problems if she hadn’t, the custodial arrangements, the guardianship issues…’
‘I’ll be seeing her later. We’re setting out for London this morning but we’ll stop at the hospital to introduce ourselves to her. We should be in London by tonight.’
‘I would be much obliged if you could talk to her, Rupert. If she is able to say, I would very much like to know what she would wish for – for the formalities. And if she is going to be well enough to travel soon, I would be grateful if you’d stay there long enough to help her with coming back here,’ Osworthy said. ‘She should have someone with her, and as for the service, we would wish to wait till she can be there… I recognize – to stay would be an act of human kindness – you are under no obligation to see to her. But the estate would cover the expense of the hotel for another day or so if you could bring yourself to stay on. Otherwise I’ll have to come myself, and there is quite a bit to be done here. I’ll call Dr Lamm, I want to tell him about Adrian. Of course he will crow.’
‘I’ll talk to Posy,’ Rupert said. ‘I think she will feel we should be with Mother. For myself, I’m by no means averse to another day here, there’s nothing to do for Father now.’
‘Perhaps Posy could come back to be with your mother, you stay. A word to the wise, Rupert. I have seen such situations before. You and Posy can live in friendship and harmony with your father’s widow, or set off a bevy of conflicts. If you all get along, she may see the justice of doing the right thing with Adrian’s estate vis-à-vis mementos and things your father meant you to have. Alternatively, she may take care of her own child, period. So much is often a matter of diplomacy and goodwill.’
‘Are you saying we should be nice to her because she’ll stiff us otherwise?’
‘I don’t know that that would be my phrase. Of course friendship and harmony are their own reward,’ said Osworthy.
‘I’ll see what the situation is with Kerry and ring you,’ Rupert said.
Posy felt they ought to be with their mother, who was bound to be feeling sad at the death of Father, a natural emotion, though illicit, trespassing on the sorrow of the present wife. She didn’t add that she didn’t want to be near Emile and Victoire.
‘If we were in England, things would be easier, we would have to bake, feed people, give drinks. Here there is nothing to do besides think about Father,’ she said to Rupert in the car, driving to the hospital to check on Kerry.
Once there, Father’s death was brought home to them by the empty space in the intensive care ward where he had been, a vacancy they could not help noticing from the corridor. His bed had been wheeled away altogether. Now the nurses were gathered around the heroine Kerry, who had been moved from intensive care to a regular hospital room and was propped up in a tilted bed, wearing a yellow hospital gown, smiling, thanking people for their kindness in a hoarse whisper. It was the first time Posy and Rupert had ever seen her, if you didn’t count her inert form this past week.
The swelling of her face had diminished, and despite bruises she must have had something close to her normal appearance. Rupert found something very American about her looks, with nothing of his mother’s elegance, but perhaps it was unfair to judge her in this condition. She was young, but otherwise seemed an unlikely femme fatale to have seduced Father, an actually rather average-looking young woman, with light brown hair and freckled skin and strapping size even after her ordeal, five nine or ten, taller than Father. Now she was pale, her cheeks sunken and eyes dull, but when she came back to strength, she would still not be much of a beauty, just more of a force for a healthy lifestyle, it seemed to Rupert. There was something beyond the hospital smell in the air, as if she were exuding the sweetish poisons they had pumped into her.
Everyone took an interest in someone newly awakened from a coma, newly returned from the beyond she is imagined to have glimpsed. Perhaps, as with the first moments after waking from a dream, in the first moments of consciousness she can harden the memory of what she saw there. Perhaps there is a fixative that will prevent the images from disappearing in the blot of light that blinds the eyes opening on the real room, real noises impinging. Perhaps the fixative is speech, questions and answers: Where were you? What did you see? Did you happen to see God or at least the tunnel?
A memory, an image, gathered itself forcibly in Kerry’s memory, as if being fortified directly by the fluids dripping into her arm. It swelled, grew in clarity and brilliance, reconstituting itself. She and Adrian had been skiing. For some reason, they had turned and, up the slope above them, had seen a figure – a woman, she was pretty sure – wearing something metal or behind something metal, whose glint had caught them. She began falteringly to tell of it.
‘A light or a beam; it was maybe that which had caused us to turn. She wore a helmet, and had something like a spear or sword upraised.’
‘Man or woman?’ asked the nurse.
‘A woman, because her long hair blew around her face.’ The picture was all suddenly vivid, she could almost feel the wind she saw whipping the hair across the face of the woman above them. Pointing, gesturing, carrying a spear. It seemed important to keep on with this remembering, more important than ascertaining the whereabouts of Adrian and Harry; the faces of people around her wore joyful, supportive expressions, so that she knew nothing bad had happened to them.
Nurse Bénédicte, in a whisper as they approached, informed Posy and Rupert of what was happening: Madame Venn had been able to remember something of what had happened before the avalanche; she had seen a vision or warning, or had seen the actual cause of the avalanche. When she could speak more, they would have the explanation.
‘May we talk to her?’
‘Not too long, she is still weak,’ said the nurse. ‘Madame Venn, your relatives are here.’
They stepped forward. ‘It’s Posy and Rupert. We haven’t met…’ Rupert began. ‘Adrian’s children. We just came to tell you we’re happy to see you feeling better.’ He could already see that the doctor would have to be the one to tell her the bad news about Father, he couldn’t face doing it.
‘Oh,’ said Kerry weakly. ‘Did you see Harry? Your little brother, you know, your little half-brother.’
‘We did, a charming boy,’ said Rupert. ‘He was at the hotel with us.’
‘Well, not with us, being looked after, though,’ Posy amended.
‘Yes, my brother, Kip,’ said Kerry.
‘Yes, of course we met Kip too. I think they are coming to see you this morning.’
Kerry turned her head away from Rupert to speak to the nurse. ‘There was someone, I think she was pointing to Adrian,’ she said. ‘He is dead, isn’t he?’
‘We haven’t heard so, madame,’ said the nurse.
‘Oh, thank God… She had this sword or spear in her hand and she pointed it at Adrian. At the time, we didn’t understand, but looking back, I see that she was warning Adrian.’
Nurse Bénédicte touched Rupert’s shoulder and motioned them back a few paces. ‘She has told us a little. Just before the slide, she looked behind them to see a woman wearing armor or a shield, and a weapon she pointed at them. She is quite clear about it,’ she whispered.
‘How odd.’
‘Yes, it is. Anyone else who was there must also have perished, but no one else is reported missing.’
‘Does she think this mysterious figure caused the avalanche?’
‘It seems she believes it was warning them. We will learn more as her mind becomes clearer. Mrs Venn, tell us again about what you saw just before the avalanche.’
‘Yes, I turned, and a woman was here, a ways away, with a spear or lance, pointed at Adrian. She glittered all silvery in a beam of light, as though she was wearing
armor. It was very clear. Oh, and she had a shield. There was something written on it, but I don’t remember what.’
Just then, Harry ran in, followed by Kip, and seized Kerry’s attention. Kip was beaming with anticipation of Kerry’s joy. Harry threw himself toward his mother so violently that the nurses had to catch him and lift him carefully onto Kerry’s bed. Tears ran down Kerry’s face along with her smiles. The assembled hospital personnel, and even Posy and Rupert, felt their eyes fill.
Nurse Bénédicte, walking Rupert and Posy toward the waiting room, said, ‘It sounds to us like Jeanne d’Arc. She doesn’t say so herself. It is not the Virgin, apparently.’ Seeing their incomprehension, she added, ‘Madame Venn’s vision. It seems to us it might have been Jeanne d’Arc.’
Nurse Bénédicte, who had had a vocation as a réligeuse but not gone on with it, was in general disapproving of local rumors of apparitions and miracles – these cropped up all the time in the Alps and were never serious – but there was something intriguing about Kerry Venn’s experience, especially as she, Bénédicte, had with her own eyes seen the patient lying in a coma for almost a week, a woman who was probably not even a Catholic, so Bénédicte was sure there was no possibility of her having been manipulated by, or made a victim of, religious superstititon. Though rational explanations were the most likely, there were mysteries one should not discount; the mind didn’t have to understand everything.
‘Of course we are not sure. She describes the scene as it came to her, and it sounds to us more like an apparition, though it could have been a person, of course.’ Posy and Rupert, wearing the expressions to be expected of English skeptics, began to grasp that it really appeared to Nurse Bénédicte that Kerry had had a vision of, or received a visitation from, Joan of Arc. Kerry’s eyes did have an otherworldly expression, a glow of having seen supernatural things, but this was no doubt the effect of medicine or coma.
L'Affaire Page 21