by Aileen Izett
Anyone sensible would have stood up, drawn herself up to her full height and told her if that was the way she felt she should leave immediately. I wish I had. I missed another opportunity to stop us hurtling full-pelt towards disaster. It would have been kinder to Eveline but I was only thinking of myself.
“Eveline it is then,” I said cheerfully. “It’s a special name, for me, at least.”
When he was little, my brother shortened my name ‘Sis’ – he couldn’t cope with the other syllables — and has never called me anything else since. My father had a myriad of pet names for me: ‘Smiley’, ‘So-so’, ‘Twinkle-toes’. I used to call Philip all sorts of silly little endearments. Tom though, for me, has always been ‘Tom’.
Eveline didn’t say anything. Particles of dust swam in the sunshine spilling in over her head. The drip from the tap splashed into the saucepan I’d left soaking in the sink.
Greg strutted into the kitchen. He was back in his painter’s overalls, his hair carefully slicked back. His ears were very large, quite goblinesque.
“How are we all today?” His eyes were full of concern. He sensed the tension emanating from me, watching Eveline who was still munching her way through croissant.
“I’m sorry,” he addressed Eveline directly, “for shouting last night.”
She lifted her face. “That’s okay.” Her voice was little stronger than before.
A ray of sunshine cut across the room with me and Eveline on one side and Greg on the other.
Greg’s eyes lit on the croissants.
Eveline pushed the jam in Greg’s direction.
“You’ve a visitor,” Greg said between bites. “Valerie. Outside. She’s wandering around the chapel or at least she was, five minutes ago.”
Eveline started on another croissant.
“Where will you be later?” I asked him lightly. I wanted to tell him about Eveline’s husband, but not in front of her.
*
“I’ve brought your car back,” Valerie called. “I thought I’d save you the journey. Wonderful, isn’t it?” she said when I got nearer. “So spiritual.”
I stood with her as she paid homage to the view of the church on the opposite hill. The birdsong was extraordinary. The smell of the earth, pounded by the rain the previous night, was glorious. Down in the village, a horn blared. Someone shouted. Someone else shouted back, a man. Valerie lifted her face up to the sun, closed her eyes and drew in deep, deliberate breaths.
“The elixir of life,” she pronounced. “So clean, so fresh after a storm. It must be so nice for you to breathe fresh, clean air after London.” She opened her eyes and contemplated me solemnly. “You look better, rested.”
I smiled, thinking of the night we had and then, before I knew it, I was laughing — horrible, involuntary laughter. Valerie giggled.
“Did I say something funny?”
“No. Sorry.” I hiccupped, gulping down superior French air.
“Not much sleep?” She raised her eyebrows. “Greg stayed here last night, didn’t he?”
The laughter stopped as suddenly as it started. “How do you know that?”
“I went by his caravan after I dropped you off. His roof leaks.”
I watched a strip of cloud like a lamb’s tail — the only cloud in the sky — drift past the church steeple.
“Just wonderful,” Valerie murmured. “I’ve never seen the inside of the château, would you believe?”
“I couldn’t help but notice,” Valerie kept up with me as I strode across the gravel, “that your car clock is still on English time.”
“It’s only an hour earlier.” I took her in through the front door rather than through the archway. I wanted to protect Eveline from Valerie’s curiosity.
“You really,” Valerie said sweetly, “have got to take living in France a little more seriously.”
In fact, the car clock was the only clock which worked over there. I hadn’t found the keys to rewind the clocks at the château. Anyway, I didn’t mind going into different rooms and finding wildly varying times. I’d left my watch behind in London. It was a silly gesture — my way of confirming that our life together, had stopped, that last evening in London. Philip had given me the watch on our twentieth wedding anniversary.
“So this is it,” Valerie said with an intake of breath as she stepped across the threshold. “This is living history.” Her eyes scanned the great height of the hall. I could see that she liked, as I loved, the light falling from the stained glass window. “You are so lucky.”
“You know,” she says, “the château was once owned by my husband’s — ex-husband’s — family? Well, distant cousins thereof.”
“I only know about the Kumonos and someone with the initials CH? At least, that’s the monogram on some of the linen in the cupboards.”
Valerie closes her eyes as she tries to recall the name. “Christophe Hallier,” she pronounces. “My husband’s grandfather.”
“That’s CA”
“We don’t pronounce the ‘H’.”
“What happened to him?”
“He died,” she said blithely. “He had a heart attack in his car by the entrance.”
Despite everything that had happened, I couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride as I gave Valerie a tour. The rooms were lit up by sunlight. There was no real sense of the darkness within the château — over the surface of which I had paddled for months — leaving me free to revert to my fantasy that the château would be a lovely, comfortable family home for my brother. Valerie, though, looked disappointed. I think she had expected the château’s interior to be far more grand. She was definitely not interested in restoration.
In the library she gazed at her reflection in the mirror while I pointed out the corner in the ceiling where Greg and I managed to replace the cornicing. It was a difficult job.
“And it was out of this chimney,” I told her, “that bees swarmed.”
“Aren’t you disappointed that there’s no wallpaper?”
I was taken by surprise. “How do you know that I…?”
“I googled the name,” she said. “At the café. You don’t mind do you? Everyone does these days.”
I’d almost forgotten I had a name, it seemed such a long time since I’d left London.
“No,” I said. “I suppose not. I thought you didn’t hold with computers?”
“Only in my own home.” She gave me a sideways look. “I guessed you’d use your own name, not your husband’s. There are pages and pages on your brother. It doesn’t look too good for him does it?”
I wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of telling me what she meant. Tom was always of the opinion that bad press was better than none.
“Oh Tom,” I said dismissively. “He’s always been controversial.”
“There is wallpaper by the way,” I added.
I didn’t bother to show Valerie the rooms on the upper floors. I made an exception for the room full of gym equipment.
There was a mattress with a couple of blankets between the running machine and the cross-trainer. I remember wishing that Greg had put a sheet over the stained ticking. It looked repulsive.
Valerie shuddered at the sight of the equipment. “I hate the gym. Let’s go.”
She didn’t want to look out the window, at the view of the chapel. She definitely didn’t want to know that an entire wall has been re-plastered.
So I took Valerie up to the lower tower room. There was absolutely nothing in that room to detract from the wallpaper — even in the twilight of a curtained room, its monochrome glory blazed off the walls. Valerie didn’t pause. She started up the spiral staircase to where I slept.
“Wait a sec.” I drew back the curtains. The light flooded in. “Well?” I said triumphantly. “What do you think?”
She gave the panels a cursory examination. “They are hideous. Are they old?”
Her forthrightness completely took me aback. “You can’t really mean,” I began.
“
I can,” she said. “Remember beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. What are you going to do with them?”
I laughed. “Make sure they’re preserved for posterity for starters.” I pulled the curtains back across the windows.
With three turns of the stairs, we were up in my room. Valerie took in the unmade makeshift bed, the narrow chest of drawers which I’d brought up from the floor below and the original chair, draped with my dirty clothes. With nothing else to examine, she turned to view the vista from one of the windows.
“You’re related to Richard Braid?”
“The writer?” It was years since anyone had asked. “I’m his daughter.”
“I did wonder. Your father wrote wonderful books. I’ve got them all. He died young didn’t he? You must have been terribly young yourself…”
“A child,” I said, seeing a solemn little girl in white knee socks and a yellow frock with daisies around the hem, in front of a coffin and an oblong hole with earth banked up to one side. The smell of freshly turned earth always brings back the memory. Our mother hadn’t wanted us in black. Tom wore his sailor suit. He clung to my hand. Our mother didn’t have to tell him that he had killed his father. I didn’t tell him. He just knew that it was all his fault and I was so sorry for him.
Valerie looked at me slyly. “It is such a coincidence that you have an Eveline staying with you.”
I couldn’t recall telling her the night before.
“Do you know,” she continued, “I always wondered if that book was semi-autobiographical? It’s such powerful portrait of the disintegration of a marriage…”
“I have never heard anything so ridiculous.”
“But it’s all in there,” she started, “My husband ran off with someone else. I should know…” She didn’t dare to say anything more. She could see the expression on my face.
I remember Tom and I scattering petals, one by one, over the coffin. Pink and purple, I remember their soft, fleshy feel between my fingers. Our mother made a posy. She threw it in last. I could tell that she was trying not to avoid Tom because sometimes, her eyes would flick away from him, before returning with an effort to contemplate his face.
Chapter 27
We went back down to the hall. Valerie’s skirt swished across the treads of the stairs, amplifying the silence between us. We had run out of things to say.
I didn’t show Valerie Eveline’s room. I didn’t want her in the house any longer. She had outstayed her welcome.
At the front door, Valerie looked expectantly at me. For a moment I thought she was waiting for me to offer of a cup of coffee and then I thought no, she was waiting for a lift. How else would she get home without a car?
I heard the click of a door shutting down the dark corridor off the hall leading to Eveline’s room. For a moment, it looked as if a shadow was moving towards us, and my heart stopped for a second. It was Eveline. She stopped short when she saw Valerie. Valerie held out her hand. Eveline glanced at me, advanced, and shook Valerie’s hand shyly.
“Nice to meet you.” Valerie clasped Eveline’s hand, giving me a sly glance. “I am sure your hostess told me that you had gone.”
“I’m just dropping Valerie back,” I told Eveline.
“Hold on,” Valerie searched through her pockets. She had pockets everywhere: on her skirt, on her shirt and on her leather jerkin which looks like part of a hunter’s paraphernalia.
“You know you said last night that your guest came with something? Well I found this in a ditch a couple of years ago…” She burnished a small object with the edge of her shirt. “It’s always intrigued me. You see this mark?”
With a dirty nail, she pointed to the scratched symbol on tarnished silver. Eveline leant over Valerie’s hand to see better. Her head brushed against mine. Without warning, she crumpled to the floor.
Greg must have heard me shouting “Eveline! Eveline!” because he dashed up from the kitchen and shoved me and Valerie out of the way. He swung Eveline into his arms in one easy movement. Thinking back now, why should she have recognised that name? It was never her name.
Eveline’s head slumped against Greg’s chest, eyes closed, skin ashen. Valerie and I followed him into her bedroom. He laid her tenderly on the unmade bed. I pulled off her shoes. She opened her eyes. She looked absolutely despairing — worse even, than the day before. She refused water but I brought the glass to her lips and insisted. The effort exhausted her. She closed her eyes again. Valerie remained by the door. I drew the curtains across both windows.
Greg and I stood by the bed. I covered Eveline with the counterpane, which was green and blue with threads of yellow silk.
“Is she ill?” Valerie asked in a stage whisper.
“What the hell happened?” Greg tucked her arm under the counterpane.
“Valerie has a bullet, identical to Eveline’s. Same markings.”
Greg gave me a sharp look. “The one in the shoe?”
“Couldn’t she have an underlying heart condition or something?” Valerie’s voice cut between us.
“It’s just shock,” I turned towards her, “at seeing your bullet.”
“Shouldn’t you call the doctor?”
“Maybe, if she isn’t better within the hour.”
For five minutes or so, the three of us watched Eveline — so still that she could have been taken for dead if it weren’t for the slight rise and fall of her chest.
I told Greg that I would check on her in half an hour.
“Good idea,” He sounded gruff. “I’m off. Things to do.”
He brushed past Valerie, rudely, without acknowledging her. She ignored him.
“Tea?” she asked me. “I don’t know about you, but I could do with a cup.”
Valerie bustled about the kitchen. “Where do you keep your mugs? Teabags? Milk?”
I was too anxious about Eveline to bother about Valerie taking possession of the kitchen. She slipped a mug across the table to me and sat down herself. She had forgotten that she’d told me that she never drank normal tea. She helped herself liberally to our carton of long-life stuff and two spoons of sugar.
“What is wrong with the girl?”
“I don’t know. She’s had a bit of a hard time.”
Valerie drank her tea in careful sips.
“How come?”
I laughed. “I don’t even know her name.”
Valerie nodded. “I thought it a bit of a coincidence, you calling her Eveline. What’s she doing here?”
I shrugged. “Ask me another. That’s why I was asking you about the Kumonos.”
“What a nightmare. Poor you.”
For a while she concentrated on drinking her tea, thinking, not looking at me.
“I knew she was here,” she started again. “I saw her by the swimming pool yesterday.”
“How come?”
“I was walking in the woods.”
“I didn’t know you could see the château from up there.”
“You can’t really, just the roof and water.”
“Why didn’t you say?”
“How could I? You told me that she was no longer with you.”
There was a shadow on the floor. I blinked hard. It disappeared.
“Where did you find that bullet?”
“In the woods. I can take you to the spot if you like.”
“The Kumonos…” Valerie broke the silence between us. “If you want to know more — there is someone who might be of help. Claudine. You might have seen her wandering around. She was a collaborator during the war — in Paris, I think. She’s an ancient old crone now and quite mad by all accounts. I mean, no one speaks to her. God knows how the Kumonos found the only untouchable in the village to do their cleaning, but they did.”
“I’ve met her.” I told Valerie the bizarre incident of the old woman appearing out of nowhere and brandishing a broom at me very early on in my stay.
“It makes sense,” I said with mounting excitement. “It must have been her. She would
have known how to get into the kitchen from the archway.”
“She must have wanted her old job back. She looks destitute.”
“Will you come with me to see her?”
“I don’t think so,” Valerie said after careful consideration. “It’s not what I’m about. Not my scene.”
“I’d need a translator.”
“Tant pis,” she said, “as the French say. Listen,” she sprang to her feet. “Don’t worry about a lift. I’ll cut back through the woods.”
It wasn’t not until five minutes after she had gone that I realised that she had taken the bullet with her. I hadn’t asked her to leave it behind, nor had she offered.
Chapter 28
“Eveline.”
Maybe the movement of light as I widened the crack in the curtains woke her. Or my fingers slipping beneath her pillow, searching. Maybe she was never asleep at all. She was more of a mystery than ever. The bullet, tarnished and greasy from too much handling, had an identical mark to the one Valerie found in the woods.
“How are you feeling?”
She blinked, her eyes not wavering from the bullet rolling stickily across my palm.
“You’re worrying me.”
She levered herself onto her elbows.
“Are you in trouble?”
She shook her head.
“You’re quite sure?”
She nodded. Her fingers grazed my palm as she took back her bullet. She tucked it beneath her pillow. She sat up, the pillow behind her, almost as if she was guarding it from me.
“It’s yours?”
There was a barely perceptible nod. I was desperate for her not to retreat into non-speaking mode.
“And the one Valerie has?”
She cleared her throat. “My brother’s.”
“And where is your brother?” I was talking to her like a child but she was a child, someone’s child. She was young enough to be my child — if I’d lived on another continent and had another man.
She flung her arms around my neck. “I don’t know but when that strange woman showed me his bullet I knew he was dead.”