by Aileen Izett
I walked through the hall, the sound of my steps purposeful and confident which almost made me believe that I wasn’t in the slightest bit frightened. I ascended both flights of stairs. I walked down the four corridors. I opened every door. Every room was already lit up because Greg, I assumed, had already paced the house, looking for Eveline. I kept my eyes trained on what was in front of me and when I dared to look around I was relieved to find that I only had my shadow for company.
I went into Eveline’s room. Nothing suggested that she had done a bunk. Her suitcase was still in the corner. The bed was rumpled, like she had been lying on it. The silver bullet had gone from underneath her pillow. I opened the wardrobe and delved into her fancy shoes. Nothing. Hidden under a couple of t-shirts in the suitcase was the photo of the young man. It was a little crumpled and damp and I knew, with a heavy heart, that Eveline hadn’t stop crying for a long time after she left the room off the archway.
The phone rang and I ran, clattering down the stairs, two at a time. It was Tom, his voice so clear despite the storm that he could have been talking to me from the kitchen. I was disappointed. I’d wanted him to be Greg, to tell me that he had found Eveline and that she was okay.
“How’s tricks? I tried to call earlier. Did you get the message?”
“No.”
“The photo you sent of the girl? I had it circulated. No joy. Not that it matters now.”
“I don’t know where she is…”
“I thought she had gone?” His tone was sharp.
“Who is it you said you’d bought this place from?” I was just as sharp.
“What’s got into you?”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Why do you need to know?”
“You could have had the decency to tell me.”
I knew he was using the silence which followed my outburst to test which variation of the truth would placate me.
“The rumours are that it belonged to Innocence Kumono,” he said eventually.
“Fact,” I said. “I can’t believe that when I told you about the passport you still didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t think it mattered. Past history, you know? Anyway I didn’t buy the château. It was given to me.”
There was a crack of lightening which turned everything white for a second. I waited for the rumble of thunder to roll over.
“Come off it.” I shouted down the crackling line. “Why would anyone want to give you a château?”
“In lieu of debt,” I could tell from the strain in his voice that he was shouting too. “I took it as a favour.”
“What sort of debt gives you a château?”
I could hear someone calling my name outside. Greg.
There was no more interference on the line between Tom and me.
“I thought it would be a nice place for Sam and the kids — ” Tom continued more calmly.
“The girl you are so anxious I get rid of,” I said sweetly, “turned up because she looking for someone. It makes me wonder what went on here.”
“For God’s sakes!”
Finally I’d got to him. Him and his château.
Chapter 25
Although the storm had passed, the wind was still up. The dark swirled with moonlight and swaying shadow. Greg lurched towards me, half-carrying Eveline. Her head was slumped against his shoulder, both arms around his neck.
“Get us some tea, will you?” He wouldn’t allow me to take Eveline or help carry her. “And towels!” he shouted after me.
The phone rang upstairs: shrill and insistent. Eveline sat folded over, hiding her face, clutching a rag on her lap. Her clothes were sodden, limp against her body. Greg stood over her, arms crossed, droplets of water falling onto her bowed head. I gave them towels but Eveline was too miserable to move and Greg too tense with anger. I pressed tea bags against the sides of mugs, squeezing the last ounce of brown out of them. The phone stopped ringing and Greg rounded on Eveline.
“What the hell do you think you were doing? You could have got yourself killed.”
He looked at me, his eyes flashing with anger. “Do you know where I found her? By the chapel. Out in the open. Totally exposed to the elements. Meanwhile I’ve trekked through the woods, calling out for Little Ms Silence here. There’s no point in calling you Eveline, is there?” He jabbed a finger into her shoulder, making her look up at him with eyes swimming with tears, “Because that’s not your name is it?”
“There’s no point in shouting,” I said, handing him his tea. “That’ll get us nowhere.”
“Nowhere,” he repeated sourly.
He cupped the mug in his hands and blew on his tea, in and out like a bellows. The tip of his nose looked red and sore. I pressed Eveline’s icy fingers around her mug.
“Please drink.”
Dutifully, she began to sip the tea.
“I found her with that shirt,” Greg nodded at Eveline’s rag. “Would have walked past her if it hadn’t been for a bolt of lightning which missed her by a few feet — and me for that matter.” He gave a bitter little laugh. “Completely bloody stupid. I’m starving. Any chance of something to eat?”
I opened a can of confit de canard and spooned the glutinous mess into a saucepan. Greg sniffed the empty tin. “Duck. Can’t get anything else to eat in this bloody country.”
“Then why do you bloody well live here?”
He was right beside me at that point, both of us standing by the range. He stared at me and I stared at him, until I dropped my gaze. The thin, trilling sound of the phone upstairs started up again. It stopped before the answering machine clicked on. I lit the gas for Greg’s duck. The flame took at the first try.
Then someone cleared their throat. Not me. Not Greg.
“I am sorry,” a small light voice, a voice I had never heard before, announced from the other end of the room.
Greg and I looked at each other, not quite believing what we had just heard.
Eveline was smiling, ever so slightly, sitting on the chair, as if embarrassed by our reaction.
“Fuck me,” Greg said. “What was that you said?”
“I am sorry,” she said again, the voice stronger. She had a slight trace of an American accent.
Unlike Greg, I was not angry. I just felt overwhelming relief: that she could speak, that finally we would have some answers. I crossed the kitchen. I took both her ice-cold hands and warmed them in mine.
“You are with friends.”
Greg threw his mug into the sink with such force, it shattered. The sound made me jump, Eveline jump.
“I don’t believe it,” he shook his head. “She speaks. After all this, she speaks.” He advanced towards us, with slow, deliberate steps. “You’ve led us a pretty dance, haven’t you?”
He stopped short like he was on a leash, like his anger had jerked him backwards.
“I speak English.” She flattened the curve of her back into the chair, away from him.
“And I just thought you were dumb,” he jeered.
She let go of my hands. She wiped away the tears. There was a spark of defiance in those great eyes.
“And French, German, a little Italian and…”
“You turn up: no explanation, no money, and a bag of diamonds.” His voice rode over hers. Shock registered on her face.
She started to her feet, almost knocking me backwards. She pulled at the sodden waistband of her skirt, pulling it outwards like she was checking it, like she checked the clothes from the cupboard. She collapsed back into the chair, clutching her head in her hands.
“Who the hell are you?” Greg’s voice rang around the kitchen.
In the silence which followed, I could see the three of us: Eveline sitting, chair askew, at one end of the kitchen table, slumped forward, face hidden; me crouched beside her, an arm perched awkwardly across her bowed shoulders, anxiety written all over my face; and Greg standing, one foot thrust forward, fists clenched, quite still, his stance reflected in the
blackness of the windowpane, looking at Eveline with a mixture of pity and anger.
There was a smell of burning and a plume of smoke rose from the hob. Greg rushed to switch off the gas.
He turned to look back at me, still with my arm around Eveline. His body, suddenly, seemed slack with weariness.
“I’ve had it,” he announced. “Stuff the bloody duck. I’m having a bath.”
So Greg left us: me and my poor, uninvited, and impossible guest. She shook her head when I offered her another tea. I made myself one. I watched the steam spout out of the kettle. I poured the scalding water into a stained mug. I poured in the thick, UHT milk. I ignored the carbonised mess in the saucepan. All the time she sat with her arms wrapped around her, shivering.
Greg started to run a bath, the pipes beginning to clatter.
I raised my voice. “Where do you think you lost the diamonds?”
“In the woods.”
“You should come over to the range.” I set the little tongues of blue flame dancing at the back of the oven. I coaxed her onto her feet, and made her sit on a chair in front of the open oven door.
I busied myself by picking up pieces of Greg’s mug.
“At last you can tell me your name,” I said lightly, jokingly.
Somehow, I knew she wouldn’t. She stared into the oven. She had stopped juddering with the cold.
“Okay,” I say. “So what you are doing here? At the château? I mean — why?”
Her lips parted. “My husband left me.” She told this to the oven.
“Husband?” I was so surprised that all the bits of broken mug drop back into the sink.
“At the beginning of the avenue.”
The pipes stopped knocking and the phone started to ring.
“And where is he, your husband?”
She started to weep again, slow silent tears, dripping into her lap.
The phone rang off and in the sudden silence, I tried to marshal my thoughts and think about what best to do. Then the phone started again. Tom. It could only be Tom. Philip would never be so insistent — or selfish. Furious, I left Eveline and bounded up the stairs.
“Can’t you pick up the phone?” Tom bellowed. “I’ve been calling for the last hour and a bit.”
“Why can’t you leave a message?” I yelled back.
“I have. I’ve left several. You’re really worrying me, Sis.”
“Sorry. I’ve just left a girl in front of an open oven door and I’m not sure if she’s suicidal or not. By the way, she’s just lost a bag of diamonds. There’s a lot going on here.”
The sarcasm was lost on Tom. He picked up on one word. “Diamonds?”
“It’ll take too long to explain. And she speaks. And she’s married.”
“But diamonds?” he asked. “Where are they from?”
“I haven’t had a chance to ask her!”
“Calm down, Sis,” he said. “I know it’s difficult…”
“Like hell you do!”
“Look,” he said, “I didn’t tell you about Kumono. I thought it might put you off — ”
“You’re damn right.”
“But he never stayed there — ”
“His sons did.”
“You can’t believe everything you hear.”
“You didn’t even check the place out before I came.”
“I meant to, but something blew up over here.”
“Business?”
“Yes,” he sighed.
“Did you know Kumono?”
“I had to meet him a couple of times. All part of a marketing initiative…”
“You never told me that you’d gone over there.”
“If you knew the half…” He changed the subject. “So do you think the girl is associated with the old régime?”
I told Tom about the locked room off the archway and Eveline’s reaction to the clothes.
“I told you,” his voice was hard, “to get rid of her.”
“Philip says that she isn’t a Kumono.”
“So Philip’s in on this? That’s just bloody brilliant.”
“Of course he bloody knows.”
“I didn’t think you and he were in contact?”
“And where did you get that idea from?” I asked stiffly.
Tom laughed. “Come off it, Sis, I know you better than that! Anyway, apart from anything else,” he continued, “the girl sounds mad. I’ll phone the embassy in the morning.”
“No you won’t. That’s too cruel.”
“I’m phoning and she’s going.”
“You’re not. She’s not.”
“It’s my house.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Is it? Just because you’ve got a piece of paper to prove ownership. Or have you?”
“You have it then. Good riddance.” He slammed down the phone.
“And fuck off to you too.” Us — who never rowed, had rowed twice in a matter of hours. I didn’t care. He deserved it.
“What?” Greg had come into the dining hall He looked better, having had a bath. He had found a man’s dressing gown from somewhere.
“‘Not you. Tom. My bloody brother.”
Greg wandered off — to find a bed I presumed. I went back down to the kitchen and roused Eveline, who had fallen asleep, lulled by the warmth of the range. I took her by the hand and led her wordlessly up the stairs, and into the bathroom opposite her bedroom. She sat on the toilet lid and watched me as I ran a bath. Miraculously, there was still enough hot water. The racket from the pipes was so great that we couldn’t have talked, had she been capable. I helped her to undress. Her limbs were stiff. She had to hold onto me. I steadied her as she climbed into the steam. I cupped water, slippery with bath oil, over her chest. I handed over a flannel for her face. I watched as she slipped her head and shoulders beneath the water to wash her hair. Her body looked too virginal for a husband. I held the hand-shower so that she could rinse off the suds. I towelled her down like you would a child, quite roughly, to keep the warm blood coursing through her veins. I found her nightdress under her pillow. The soft silk stuck to the still damp skin. I pulled the bedclothes up so that I could only see the tip of an ear and a portion of forehead. I switched off the light, returned to the bathroom and gave my own aching body up to the wonderfully warm water, which carried a faint scent.
I thought of my four babies who never made it to fruition, two too small to have been much more than a rush of blood. They would all be teenagers now, not much younger than the young woman I had just helped to bed. I remember thinking about her mother, wondering if she was as beautiful as her daughter. I tried to imagine the woman’s sense of loss, her daughter gone — gone to a husband who presumably didn’t care enough to find her. I couldn’t imagine it. I didn’t have the resources. My loss is for what never happened.
Philip and I, we had so much hope once, so much innocent hope: the rush of delight when the pregnancy indicator turned blue and the castles in the air we built with a myriad of nurseries — only to have them cruelly crash at nine weeks, thirteen weeks, twenty two weeks and, last of all, seven months, which almost broke me and us. All a long time ago. Thirteen years to be precise: since the last raging against fate, the final hopeless weeping in Philip’s arms.
I wrapped the damp towel around my wet body. I slipped my clean feet into sandals gritty with dirt. I pressed open the bedroom door, just to make sure that she was okay. There was a bank of shadows between the window and the bed. I listened to the rhythm of breathing and shut the door. I crossed the hall and went up the stairs, two flights and a spiral, up to my bed and, for the first time since Eveline arrived at the château, I left all the lights blazing, behind me, warding off the darkness which was pressing against the windows.
And lying on my mattress, the naked man pitched out from the wall, faceless. “Mon Dieu,” he intoned from the cavernous slash where his mouth should have been, “sauvez nous…”
“Please,” I whispered. “Leave me alone.” The shadows on the wa
lls shook, like trees in a gale. I buried my face in my pillow. It was no use. Two floors down, the telephone rang, and I couldn’t sleep.
Chapter 26
I loved my father’s novel ‘Eveline’. I reread it when I was eighteen. It was a very precious experience; that particular book at that particular time gave me a very real sense of the man my father had been. His absence had become part of who I was — or rather, who I understood myself to be. The tempestuous relationship between the two principal characters was, I decided, my parents’ love story.
*
Hardly surprisingly, I got up late, woken by a sun high up in a clear blue, sparkling sky over a world which felt washed and refreshed. I managed to buy the last few croissants at the boulangerie — I wasn’t sure if Madame la Boulangère kept them back for me, because I’d become such a regular, so I smiled anyway to show my appreciation.
The girl I called Eveline greeted me with a shy “good morning” when she appeared.
I was suddenly wary at the prospect of having a conversation with her. She was quite capable of snubbing me, I knew.
“Come in, come in,” I said, welcoming her with my plateful of croissants.
She sat down in front of the window which had become her place at the table and ate so hungrily, I felt guilty. I hadn’t offered her any of Greg’s confit de canard last night, before it burnt in the saucepan.
“Did you sleep?”
She looked at me with tired eyes. “Not well,” she whispered, dipping her head back to the croissants.
I drew out a chair and sat beside her. “I’d like to call you by your real name — the name your parents gave you.”
Her knife layered jam onto flakes of croissant.
It was if I hadn’t spoken.
“Or shall I just call you Eveline?”
“I don’t care what you call me.” She whispered, her head bent. I could feel the heat of the blush rising from my neck. She might as well have slapped me across the face.