Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Durand, Marguerite noted, positioned behind a gold-leafed column, was watching and listening with all the alertness of a terrier on the hunt. Olivier had placed her at the end of one table between the Marquis de Conflans and the general. She kept the conversation light. She had been warned.

  There were to be no confrontations with the good people of the region. Her views were entirely a private matter. When she had asked Olivier what subjects he thought appropriate for the wife of a candidate, who as yet had no children of her own and thus could have no views about education, religious or secular, he had scowled and told her that she could talk about art, about changes to the château.

  ‘And gossip?’ she had intervened.

  ‘As long as it’s in good taste.’

  Marguerite kept her gossip in good taste, just as she had changed her dress at the last moment, at Olivier’s request, to one which exposed rather less bosom and shoulder. Jeanne had rushed her into his chosen long-sleeved, burgundy gown of shimmering brocaded silk and a sparkling ruby necklace. The rich colour brought a glow to the tired pallor of her face, while the jewels accentuated the lights in her hair, looped and twisted and topped with a single feather by her skilful maid.

  ‘Appropriately regal,’ Olivier had offered with a tight little smile. ‘Your bohemian aspect is best saved for Paris.’

  Now, she shivered the scene away. She asked the marquis and the general about the people round the table whom she didn’t know. She learned from the marquis, who had come to conversation in times less puritan than the ones Olivier was now trying to impose, that the bishop had once been known for his great flair with the ladies, that it was even rumoured that a certain mother superior, once upon a time the broken-hearted Mlle de la Vaudreuil, had had a soft spot for him.

  Her eyes moved along the table and she noticed that Père Benoit was preening himself before that very bishop. And there was Paul Villemardi, glowering in good artistic style at a dowager before he hid a yawn in his hand. Laure Tellier had somehow contrived to sit next to him instead of her sister.

  Inspector Durand, meanwhile, was listening intently to the investigating magistrate she had placed beside him, a small spectacled man with rat-like features that quivered as he spoke.

  Olivier was holding forth to his end of the table. His tones reached her, though the words were lost. There were nods of satisfaction from listeners, which could only mean he was mouthing appropriate matter. A wicked thought flashed across her mind as she noticed the editor of the Blois Journal making mental notes, but she imagined the paper didn’t resort to scandal-mongering in the manner of the Parisian press. Not that she approved of the latter.

  There were probably only a handful of politicians in all of France who could stand up to having their private lives examined. What rankled was public proclamations altogether antithetical to how they lived. She had little doubt that she would have felt differently about Olivier’s candidacy had he espoused a set of political ideas more closely aligned to his own experience.

  The curé’s eyes were on her. Had the insidious man read her mind? She smiled at him in vague acknowledgement. Her attention roved again around the tables. With the invisible care of a practised hostess, she noted with no ostensible sign the boredom or vivacity on a face, a flirtatious smile, a secret shudder, the lay of a plate or the lack of a salt shaker, the requisite movements of servants.

  The general was addressing her and she gave him her eyes. Not once had he mentioned the Dreyfus case and she was grateful to him for that. But now he wanted to know whether she was as troubled as he was by the continuing encampment of the gypsies on the outskirts of Montoire. Since they had arrived, there had been more crimes in the area than he could ever remember.

  ‘Did you know the dancer who died, then, mon général? Did you ever see her perform?’

  The old man touched one of his medals with a bony hand. ‘From a distance. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone murdered her just for showing all that nudity.’

  ‘But surely flesh comes to us from God,’ Marguerite murmured.

  ‘What was that, my dear?’ the marquis’s thin lips were shaped into a brazen grin.

  The general hadn’t taken in her aside. ‘Why, just the other day, I caught two of my maids at the camp making eyes at that snake charmer. A Jew from the look of him, hiding inside a turban.’

  Marguerite choked on her wine.

  ‘Your maids came to no harm, I trust. His snake has vanished, I’m told.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if we found it with its fangs buried inside the mayor’s throat. That’s the thanks we’ll get for letting them stay for so long.’

  Marguerite made a plea for charity, which must have been too vocal, since the old priest who had so upset Martine now looked in her direction. She was relieved when Olivier stood, marking an end to this part of the evening. He took her arm to lead her to the drawing room, where coffee and chocolates, brandy and liqueurs were waiting. He was smiling, at his most gracious, and for a moment Marguerite could almost imagine she had stepped into an altogether ordinary marriage with a man like any other. It was only the way in which he forcibly propelled her towards the ancient priest that reminded her otherwise.

  The man had colourless eyes beneath spectacles that kept sliding down a diminutive nose.

  ‘I wanted to greet you properly, Madame. I knew your parents. Truly an exceptional pair. I married them.’ He gave her a thin-lipped smile.

  ‘Ah, mon père, what a pleasure to meet you, to welcome you here. Again, I imagine.’

  ‘Yes. But after a great many years. You see, the war took me away and when I came back it was to another parish and I had no occasion to visit.’

  ‘Well, you are most welcome now, Father. Most welcome.’

  ‘Your mother was a pious woman, Madame. Were you ever told that she had once been drawn to the religious life? As a girl…’

  ‘No, mon père, I didn’t know.’

  ‘No, and your father had quite other ideas, of course.’

  ‘Yes.’ She took in his words, wondered how she might now bring up the subject of Martine, when Père Benoit was suddenly prominent at their side. ‘You must come and visit the château chapel, mon père. And our church in the village. It has been recently restored.’

  ‘Indeed, thank you, thank you. I’m feeling a little tired now.’

  Olivier ushered the man towards a chair, leaving Marguerite with the younger priest.

  ‘Père François is a saintly man, Madame. One of the most devout in the region. But you, too, must make a visit to the chapel, Madame. I had been hoping you would already have done so.’

  ‘So my husband has informed me.’ Marguerite kept her voice gracious.

  But the curé seemed to intuit her dislike. He gave her a hard-edged look that contained a barely veiled contempt.

  ‘I have done a great deal for your husband, Madame. Has he told you that as well? Can you not see it? His little eccentricities are quite gone. Family life restored. I would have thought it could only be to your benefit.’

  Marguerite’s shock could not have registered on her face, for he stepped closer. It looked as though the pompous young man fully intended to reveal the extent of her husband’s eccentricities here and now given half the chance.

  ‘Oh, I am certain it is, Monsieur, quite certain everything you do is to my benefit. You’ll excuse me.’

  She turned away, a flush in her cheek. Her benefit, indeed. Had Olivier perhaps told him that the foundling was a boon to their marriage. Yes, she could almost hear him saying it. But how objectionable that this stranger should think he had any right whatsoever to knowledge of their intimate life. All at once, the perfidy of confession struck her. Just exactly how much did the young priest know about her husband?’

  She thought of Martine and her dismay at the old priest’s words. It wasn’t dissimilar in a way. Poor defenceless girl to have to suffer that, particularly since she believed. The power of the clergy over people’s minds in
this region remained enormous. Men, dressed as God’s minions, infringing private boundaries by right. The prurience of the righteous.

  The smile on her face stiff, Marguerite looked round for Martine. The girl was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Durand now. She wanted him near. Amidst this frenzy of strangers, the inspector was her most trusted friend. Odd how home could feel like the most alien place of all.

  She exchanged pleasantries with the guests at hand and gradually wound her way towards the music room. The quintet that was to provide the evening’s entertainment was tuning its instruments. She waited for the music to begin, then fled upstairs in need of a brief respite. On a whim, she stopped in the babe’s room and startled a dozing Celeste. The mite, too, was asleep, his face basking in a fullness that could only mean peaceful dreams. As she looked at him, he raised a tiny hand and made a random, floating gesture. Almost a wave. Or a benediction. The benediction of an innocent.

  Still feeling peculiar, Marguerite slipped into the library. Her father’s ranked books would calm her, bring her back to herself. But there was already someone in the room, someone who had lit a lamp and was half reclining in a chair and staring up at a folio-sized sheet of paper.

  ‘I’m sorry. Sorry.’ Paul Villemardi leapt to his feet and bowed deeply as he recognised her. ‘I didn’t mean … I was only … I … Too many people bore me.’ He gave her his abrupt laugh. ‘Perhaps you feel the same?’

  ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘This? From Olivier’s collection. Have you not seen it?’

  He passed an ink drawing towards her. It was crowded with people gathered around a tomb in what was either a classical cemetery or a church. Only slowly did she realise that the people’s expressions and postures were out of the ordinary. They looked not unlike the hysterics she had seen when attending Charcot’s lectures at the Salpêtrière. But the people here were pressing against the tomb of a saint, it seemed. The infirm waved crutches in the air, the exalted thrust their arms and eyes towards heaven, others lay on the ground in positions of supplication or ecstasy. A priest-like figure was tending to a convulsive woman. A baby was being stretched towards the tomb. Here and there, boy vendors offered the crowd portraits of saints.

  ‘It’s eighteenth-century,’ Paul Villemardi offered.

  ‘An extraordinary scene.’

  ‘Like Lourdes today. The crowds for Bernadette grow larger with each passing year. Our lady of Lourdes heals. Just go to Bernadette’s grotto and all will be well. I thought I might have a look myself. For inspiration, you understand.’

  She nodded, unsure whether he was being serious or irreverent, or perhaps both simultaneously.

  He took the picture from her and laid it carefully back in a large open drawer.

  ‘Do you have other favourites?’ Marguerite asked, not wanting him to know that she had never seen the pictures in the collection.

  He pulled open an upper drawer and took out an etching, another holy scene with a struggling woman, her head thrust back so that it looked as if it might snap off.

  ‘Olivier is interested in exorcism.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marguerite said, keeping her voice even. She didn’t give anything away, but she was shocked by this turn in Olivier’s interests. She hadn’t suspected, when he had shown her Père Benoit’s present to him, that he owned this host of images here, one more excessive than the next. Flagrant beatings, convulsions, devils to be driven away. Madness.

  When she returned to the music room in time for the last plaintive moans of the violins, it was with a sense of profound exhaustion. Olivier had always presented a troubling mystery. Now she felt more than ever its prey, as if, vampire-like, he would sap her remaining spirit, in order himself to remain whole.

  He was leaning against the wall listening to the musicians, his eyes slightly narrowed, his arms crossed over his chest. A prepossessing man. She saw him with the gaze of Paul Villemardi, who had made him into a Medici – cold, regal, authoritative. He had that look about him now. Power.

  It took a moment for her to realise that all of it was being directed at the young pianist, whose body swayed in vigorous accompaniment to the chords he was beating out. When the young man stood to take his bow, his fine mop of hair swinging towards the ground to reveal a delicate neck, a predatory expression sharpened Olivier’s features. She wondered whether anyone else could see it. It was as if her husband had been transformed into a force whose unique direction was the curve of the young musician’s torso, the play of his limbs as he moved away from the piano.

  Olivier followed, aware of nothing, no one, not even her absence and return, which had he noted it would have irritated. The entire world had been curled into that young man. She watched transfixed, watched him reach the far door of the room in the wake of the quintet, watched his expression, which now had something maidenly about it, watched him disappear behind the door.

  A moment later, when she had already moved into action and was introducing Durand to the old Comtesse de Cambremer and asking Dr Labrousse whether he had enjoyed the Brahms, she was astonished to see Père Benoit opening the far door and following in Olivier’s tracks. The priest’s face wore a scowl.

  She didn’t see either of them for the rest of the evening, not even after the last guests had left or been safely tucked up in their rooms; not even after she had had a final word with Madame Solange and the staff and thanked them for their hard work.

  Only much later, when little Jeanne was helping her off with her gown and brushing out her hair, was there a knock at her door. It opened before she could speak to reveal Olivier. His features were drawn, his eyes bleary, but he was holding himself very erect.

  ‘You’ll leave us,’ he gestured to Jeanne, who raced from the room in fear.

  He closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock.

  Marguerite stayed at her dressing table. She picked up the brush Jeanne had put down. In the mirror, she saw Olivier moving towards her. He stopped just behind her and ran a fingernail along her shoulder where the nightgown left it bare.

  ‘You’re a beautiful woman, Marguerite. Despite the passage of years.’

  ‘There’s no need for this, Olivier. No need for pretence now.’

  ‘Pretence. I don’t know what you mean. A man coming to visit his wife after a successful soirée strikes me as something altogether ordinary.’

  ‘Yes, ordinary. Far too banal for us, Olivier.’

  She rose and reached for her dressing gown. He stopped her hand.

  ‘Let me look at you.’

  He raked his fingers along her back from her shoulders to her thigh – as if she were an instrument whose sound he hated but he had none the less learned to tune.

  She moved away from him. A prickle of dread had started up in her spine. He couldn’t. Not now. Not after all these years. It was unthinkable.

  ‘Yes, Madame de Landois. Marguerite de Landois. A great beauty, they tell me. Coveted by all the young bucks in Paris. They think me a lucky man.’

  ‘Go to bed, Olivier. You’ve had too much to drink.’

  ‘Not at all. How much is too much?’ His laugh was a scoff. ‘You know why I’ve come, Marguerite. I’ve come to thank you. Thank you for joining me in such a splendid evening. Thank you in the way husbands thank their wives.’

  He was suddenly too close to her, pushing her down on the bed. He took off his jacket, turned down the light, all with those swift mechanical gestures that did nothing to mask his dislike – of her, of himself, of the couple they formed.

  ‘Go away, Olivier. I want none of this. I need no thanks.’

  ‘No thanks at all, Marguerite? None at all? He took hold of her hair and with a painful twist pulled her head down on the duvet. She pummelled his shoulders.

  ‘You know, Marguerite, I often feel you are my most intimate enemy.’

  His voice had grown hoarse, edged with cruelty. Her resistance had excited him. His hand was on his crotch and he drew hers after it. She pulled back and sa
w him working his penis into stiffness. She averted her eyes, tried to goad him into reason.

  ‘What’s prodded you into this, Olivier? This charade? This unnecessary make-believe.’

  ‘You have, my dear wife, only you.’ He was pushing her nightgown up over her thighs. She shivered, tried to pull away, but he was too heavy for her. His arms held her down while he rubbed himself against her. There was an edge of disgust in his eyes. A mockery. Directed at them both.

  She lay very still, felt him grow small again. But he was determined, his implacable will guiding his body as best it could. He closed his eyes now and she could feel him willing himself to believe that the thighs he pressed himself against were that boy’s, that the cavity he blindly groped for was another’s. She tightened herself against him.

  ‘I shall scream, Olivier. I shall scream for your priest.’

  As she mentioned the curé, he shuddered.

  The shadowy lines of his face produced a revelation. She saw the black-clad form of Père Benoit chasing through the salon, running after Olivier and the musician.

  ‘No, Olivier. No.’

  Her voice stuttered out of her, torn on the knife of her thoughts. ‘He’s the one who’s sent you here? To me? Is that it? Penance. A proper marriage as penance for past sins. You let him have this power over you? You let him…’

  ‘Shut up.’ He slapped her hard across the face.

  ‘You let him,’ she whimpered.

  He slapped her again. The slaps drove him on. His face was heavy with perspiration and cruelty. He forced her legs apart, his breathing raucous.

  Tears streamed down her cheeks as she tried to push him aside.

  ‘This is madness, Olivier, madness. How could you allow him?’

  He twisted his fingers round her throat. ‘Shut up, Marguerite. You’re no better than a whore. You even frequent their brothels.’

  The violence drove his excitement.