“Why’s that?”
“She’s too needy. Know the type I mean? And I can’t cope with that. Least not at the moment.”
“And the baby?”
“Good Lord, no.” Nelly whispered close up. “She got rid of it.”
Colette frowned, trying to imagine ending a life when she’d tried so hard to nurture one.
“I’m sorry.”
“Now she just wants to get out. Don’t we all?” Nelly quipped, pulling at bits on her rug. “Says she’s going to hang around in Évry. That her baby’s still there even if it was flushed down the toilet.”
Nelly suddenly stopped because someone else was in the room, gliding towards them. Colette instinctively stood up as the tall, slender figure in white with a vermilion heart appliquéd to her chest came closer. She gave a tiny, powerful smile until Nelly too got to her feet.
“Sister Marie-Ange, Sister Superior.” Her hand cool and smooth from little more than page-turning went from one to the other. “Welcome both of you to our brief abode, although I have of course already met Mademoiselle Augot.”
Her ethereal beauty mesmerised Colette. It was as though Heaven itself had brushed her skin with milk and honey. Her eyes of no one colour were set baldly between their lids like those of the Silver Bream. “I trust you’ve been given some refreshment and that Sister Agnès has shown you your night spaces.”
“Indeed, thank you.” But it was someone else with a lisp and one foot shorter than the other, who’d performed that task and been too anxious to get away. “Excuse me asking,” Colette then ventured, “but is there any sort of bathroom round here?”
Nelly snickered then did her best to disguise it. But the nun paused for a terrible tense second.
“That will be dealt with I can assure you, Madame Bataille. We do in the meantime have contingency plans. Naturally, once the Holy Father has completed his programme tomorrow, we shall be returning to Libourne and a semblance of normality.”
Libourne?
Colette wondered what these contingency plans were, until memories of vineyards where the Dordogne and the Garonne meet at the Bec d’Ambes came flooding back.
The summer before her Bac, she and some school friends studying François Mauriac had camped in the very pine woods that had so imprisoned poor Thérèse Desqueyroux. A place of black, pillared trees and the Atlantic wind roaring its exclusion through the days and nights.
“It will then take the rest of the week to resume our routine, but I’m sure the good Lord will forgive us.” The Sister Superior turned to the bespectacled ex-student of English. “And what are your plans, young woman?” Are you reconsidering your decision, or are the Pauvres Soeurs merely a convenient rock in the midst of your particular torrent?”
Nelly glanced at Colette, pushed her glasses further up her nose and cleared her throat. “Your analogy of a river, Sister Superior, is excellent, and I admit to being a worthless piece of flotsam adrift in our state of advanced capitalism, but if we’re talking about brides of Christ, then I’d rather be a demoiselle d’honneur.” Her gappy smile failed to disarm, and Colette looked on, embarrassed.
“Allow me to clarify one small point, Mademoiselle Augot. We are not simply a contemplative Order. Our prayers are in equal measure to our good works...” She paused. “Or you for one wouldn’t be here.”
“Nor me.” Colette was trying to surmise what colour Marie-Ange’s hair might be under her veil.
“Precisely. And like yourselves, there are many others who have benefited from our charity. In fact, all over France.”
“D’you mean they come to you?” Colette asked.
“Yes, but we also reach out to them.”
Colette and Nelly exchanged glances.
“We set up our ‘Bienvenue’ Centres wherever the young of our country are congregated. Be it a religious festival, folk festival, it makes no difference.”
“Good Heavens.” Colette tried to grasp the logistics of such an enterprise.
“But I would emphasise our requirements are not for the faint-hearted.” The senior nun pulled out a fob watch from a side pocket and rewound it. “I’ll speak with you again in the morning after matins. In the meantime, let us hope the Lord’s sleep will clear your heads.”
Her audience of two stared after her and stayed silent long after the doors had closed.
“Can you imagine some low-life rasta seeking this lot out?” Nelly looked bemused.
“It’s possible.”
“Well, on second thoughts, I’d rather be faint-hearted. How about you?”
“I can’t be. I’m supposed to be looking for someone.”
“Oh? Who’s that then?”
“My son. Bertrand. A student.”
The girl patted her arm encouragingly.
“Well don’t worry. When we’re out of here, I’ll help you.”
Colette saw the halo of window light around her unruly hair. The brightness enlarging, fixing her in its power and instead of saying the Mater Christi, or other soulful pleadings, the secretary from Lanvière simply closed her eyes.
“It’s very sweet of you, Nelly, but I really don’t think you can.”
XIV
Friday August 22nd
Breakfast was a cold brioche and a thin conserve of doubtful origins, while coffee, too long on the simmer switch, came out like black tar. The impermanence of paper plates and cups, with their attendant flimsy stirrers would soon, in the Refuge des Pauvres Soeurs at Libourne, be pine and sycamore; heavy apostle spoons and napkin rings engraved with each member’s name.
Colette ate slowly, trying to get her bearings, aware of everyone’s stares, and isolated by the absence of those who’d earlier made her acquaintance. The sole diner in a worldly suit, she sat near the self-service trestle where she could ignore the curious and watch instead the three helpers, set apart from the rest in vivid red, whose identical features looked pale and swollen like dough. Triplets, she guessed, performing their tasks slowly yet with the thoroughness of the blind. She’d wondered why they’d been taken in, if they had parents, but when she’d tried conversing with the girls, someone behind her whispered a warning.
Colette scoured the queue for either Nelly or Agnès, as gradually her table filled up with more strangers. Their robes billowed out behind as they sat down bringing with them a faint smell of urine.
After scrutinising her, they set to, guzzling from their trays as though that would be their lot for the day. Grace had been a brief mumbled affair by a novice to a half-empty room, as sunlight bored through the window on to her already etiolated face and the pile of suitcases behind her.
Colette still felt light-headed, for her early morning conversation with Sister Marie-Ange had been little more than a one-sided confession. Maybe she’d said too much, maybe not enough. Whatever, an eddy of efficient succour had caught her, and somewhere, far away on the bank and fading in the heat, someone familiar had been waving.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the novice next to her as her stirrer flipped into new territory. “This is all new to me.”
“Me, too. I’ve only been here twelve hours and that’s twelve hours too many.”
“You didn’t have to stay.”
“Oh, didn’t I? ” She showed Colette the inside of her elbow where the basilic vein was raised more purple than blue, making her neighbour wince. And one look at her rice paper cheeks, old before their time, and the tense pucker round her mouth made Colette edge further along the bench.
“You’re not coming here are you?” her neighbour asked.
“Oh, yes.” Colette used her napkin to wipe her knife, then as it was more usefully thick than the last one, hid it for later, in case it was bedpans again that night. “So you see, I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Her pale companion stared then shook her head.
“What’s your name?” Colette deflected.
“Chloë. Sister Marthe now, so they tell me.”
“I’ve heard about you,” Colette s
poke softly, aware that other ears were close by.
“Oh, yeah?”
Colette wanted to ask about her baby but judging by her pallor it was best to leave it. Instead she rejoined the coffee queue.
Suddenly the room fell silent. Outside the window the drone of incoming traffic was interrupted by the sudden, violent thud of a blackbird hitting the glass. Colette saw it fall to the ground in a sorry, dead heap.
Another little gasp rose up as the Sister Superior with Agnès close behind came through the door. All activity ceased, and the meagre cutlery laid down with a sense of occasion.
“We shall muster at nine-thirty with those newest to the Pauvres Soeurs bringing up the rear when we leave for the Mass,” said the Sister Superior.
Colette thought Chloë looked about to faint.
“No personal effects, no pens or paper either as we are recording the whole celebration for everyone’s later use. Besides, you will need both hands free for prayer.”
Agnès nodded agreement and Colette tried in vain to catch her eye, but the signal came for eating to resume and the two Sisters moved away to a far table. Of Nelly, still no sign.
Doubly disappointed, Colette held out her beaker and stared at the identical threesome more closely. Each had the same fringe below the same red veil, but their eyes, the weirdest of all, were like little beads fixed on to puckered skin. Even when Colette passed her hand in front of them and tried to ask their names again, it was as though the dead stared back.
“They’re glass,” a voice whispered. “Born blind with just holes for eyes.”
Colette spun round spilling her drink down her skirt. Nelly was helping herself to a butter pat. “But they’re such poor girls, and they look so unhappy,” she said.
“Wouldn’t you be, stuck here with this lot?”
Colette ignored the coffee stains that had spread to form a leopardskin pattern. Instead, she pointed to Chloë. “And have you seen her? The poor girl looks really ill.”
“She’s had it.” Nelly still in her street clothes, found an end space and moved along, but Colette stayed standing.
“I could try and help. Someone’s got to.”
“I don’t think so, somehow. Her mind – I mean she wasn’t all there after you know what...”
“Well I suppose at least she’ll get looked after here. Better than sleeping rough anyhow.”
“I suppose,” Nelly said wrily.
But the chance for further contact had gone as Agnès was marshalling everyone before her, including the triplets who’d finally left their post.
“May I see you for a moment, over there?” The Sister Superior was silently upon them with a frown spoiling her forehead. Colette’s coffee jumped in her throat.
“Fine. No problem.” Nelly misjudged the gaze and got up.
“I mean Madame Bataille.”
The student subsided to watch her confidante led away to a side door marked S. S.
***
“We have five minutes. Our Lord cannot spare more.” Sister Marie-Ange used her desk as an island, around which she appeared to float in perpetual motion. A bare prop for her performance, with no blotter or pens to detract from its deliberately sparse symbolism. “It is now time to ask.” She smiled, locking her hands together in anticipation. “Do you wish to become one of us?”
For a moment, Colette’s heart seemed to stop. So this is how it had been for Chloë. Poor sad Chloë, and yet...
“I’ve certainly given the idea a lot of thought.” Was truthful but desperately procrastinating.
“One can consider things for the rest of one’s life, Madame Bataille. The pit of uncertainty is like the pit of Hell.” She pulled out her rosary beads, mother of pearl, the colour of tears, and began to recite of charity towards one’s fellow being in a manner that became almost singing. And when she’d finished, stroked Colette’s hair. “Just think, with us you will find here a true and deeply satisfying happiness. A refuge from the troublesome world, and I know this is what has sorely vexed you for so long. That you, who have a kind spirit, have suffered more than most.”
Had Agnès been talking, or had she herself unwittingly added to the Sister Superior’s armoury? Colette’s heart again uneven, and sweat bubbled hot on her forehead.
“I’m not sure...”
“We are here to grant you peace. The closest you will ever come to that of eternal rest, with benediction for your body and salvation for your soul.” Her voice possessed such sweet monotony that Colette grew dizzy in the searing shaft of sunlight. She gripped the desk as the words washed round her like a silent, numbing sea.
Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a sheet of cream vellum appeared with the letters P S S in gold, across the top. The Sister Superior’s very own pen was in her hand. Her fingers closing over it. “Anywhere will do for your signature. And I know St. Barbara is already beginning to welcome you as her namesake.”
A tiny bell tinkled from somewhere on her body and the door opened. Not Agnès, but that lame nun again who limped over and, after the signing, helped drag the new recruit to a small adjoining annexe that doubled as a stock room. There the Sisters of Charity left her and locked the door.
XV
Eight stops under the Seine to the north east where the nondescript suburb of Drancy lies excluded from roads curving to the warm south. Its name obscure on any map, makes a small mean sound in the mouth. Its railway to the Vistula, however, has been a generous source of trade in human cargo and now entwines with the new TGV route from Lille. Goods of a different kind move in perpetual motion while the rising and landing planes of Charles de Gaulle scrape the skies above.
Plagnol’s territory.
The two priests sat motionless throughout save for the widening irises of each eye as stations loomed out of the blackness then vanished.
“Next stop,” was the only thing Vidal said, though it wasn’t for want of thinking. The address and key, for emergencies only, lay in his wallet together with new phone cards and an assortment of foreign coins. In his inside pocket, a coil of fuse wire and a spring, used already at Villerscourt to pay his final call on Tessier. Also a Browning semi-automatic he’d bought last year.
He watched Mathieu study the map above the carriage window – a country mouse fathoming the city’s hidden arcana – and felt a small satisfaction that in this situation he, Robert Vidal, would have the upper hand. The Breton had visited the metropolis just once before, with his mother, to the Mass for Toussaint during his last year at the Seminary. The whole experience had proved so crushing, so burdensome to his spirit, that the closeness of his mother had seemed then the only escape.
DRANCY. Works in progress, widening the platform. The drilling made a fog of dust, lit up by arc lights. Vidal slotted both their tickets into the exit gate and led the way up the steps past two beurs squatting close together in badly stained Arab dress.
“A few francs, sir?” one of them asked in bad French.
Mathieu paused, searching his pocket.
“Leave them,” snapped Vidal.
“I can’t.”
The taller man pulled him away.
“Noir shit. I’m trying not to breathe.”
Mathieu still managed to throw down his coins, and the beggar yelped as they hit him.
“Sorry, mate.”
“Allah will save you, sir,” said his companion.
“He’s done alright for you, I see.” Vidal sneered, bounding out into the forecourt where a solitary taxi waited with its four doors wide open and sounds of Roch Voisine drifting into the night. Mathieu looked back to check they weren’t being followed. Saw Vidal’s profile cut-glass hard, giving nothing away. “We’ll walk.”
Mathieu sensed this man, who liked to disappoint, needed time to think. He therefore bided his time, keeping up a determined camaraderie as they turned into the Avenue Gambetta. Like everything else, Vidal knew the address off by heart.
“It’s just past the Renault place. 15a, le Passage...” His voice d
ifferent, quieter. He was obviously troubled and slowing down. “Look, this wasn’t my doing, understand?”
“You could have stopped them.”
“As The Holy Mother’s my witness, I knew nothing. It was all stitched up with Duvivier while he was holidaying at Villerscourt the week before me. They’re real bloody fools. Whatever the stupid kid’s done, this isn’t the answer.”
Vidal’s face tightened to a splinter under the street light. A dog barked from somewhere as the traitor double checked his watch.
Mathieu wondered where the Jewish deportees’ collection point and the memorial were. Where the blind terror of the tunnellers, shot like rats, and those fresh from the Vél d’Hiver round ups, had coalesced into a quiet futility.
And where, God, were you? Surely an answer after half a century isn’t too much to ask?
Then he recalled his own shameful words from the Hôtel Marionnette’s bedroom and looked up to the stars as though they were the Almighty’s eyes winking admonishment.
That’s all very well but at least now I’m trying to help, to make amends...
But in reality, there was nothing to choose between him and the accomplice next to him, dressed for the night in black leather. He crossed himself repeatedly, then quickened.
“Not so fast, pal.” The assistant choirmaster caught up and kept his hand on his shoulder as they reached the Renault showroom taking up a large corner plot, topped by limp flags. Sleek new cars like glossy aubergines reposed on a thick-pile carpet in the showroom. The luxury end of the market at odds with its grim surroundings, and where Plagnol had not long ago indulged himself by buying his white Laguna outright with cash.
Beyond, an apartment block of ochre concrete reached above the street lamps, its balconies inlaid, plain and body length. Ready and waiting, Mathieu thought, like the Étagères de la Nuit with their morbid array of skulls, in St. Paul de Léon.
Suddenly a starling shot out from the entrance, beating its wings in terror. He jumped, for a moment clutching Vidal’s arm.
“Nice place.” Vidal disengaged himself while Mathieu hung back, taking in the dirt, the neglect on what was a typical example of post-war urban architecture. It had a secret and forbidding air. Even the list of occupants individually encased behind plexiglass were almost bleached out, and Vidal’s finger trailed from top to bottom without much fervour.
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