A Shadow on the Wall

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  Was that, I wondered, what had happened to Abbot William? Had he despaired of protection from the plague, had he come to believe the world was no longer in the hands of a loving Creator? If so, to what had he turned in his desolation?

  We talked no more of death that night. Simone spoke to me about Bertrand, his likes and dislikes, his enjoyments and terrors. He had been badly affected by his father’s death, and for months afterwards she had spent most nights watching over him, for he would wake out of a troubled sleep, shouting and afraid. Even now, he would not sleep without a light beside his bed.

  She told me Bertrand had a fine singing voice.

  “When we lived at St Bertrand,” she said, “he was admitted to the choir of the Cathédrale Sainte-Marie. He had already started singing when his father died. I think he would like to have continued, but you have no cathedral in Cambridge.”

  “The nearest is Ely,” I said. “But some of the college chapels have choirs. The best is King’s. We could apply for a place in the choir school.” She fell in with my suggestion at once, and we began to talk, as we did so often that week, of the future. Her ambition was that Bertrand should become fluent in English, that he should excel at school, and that, in due course, he should take a degree at the university. By the time we had finished, we had all but lived an entire life for the boy, without his consent. But, in truth, all either of us wanted was that he should be happy.

  It is quiet almost beyond imagining in that stretch of the Lakes, far from any town, a mile or more from the nearest neighbour. The only sounds at night are those of waves lapping the shore, and night-birds, and sometimes, far away, the barking of a sheepdog or a fox. That night we went to bed late. I had still not grown accustomed to sharing my bed with someone else, and that night I did not fall asleep easily. I remember thinking a great deal about Marcellin and the manner of his death, and I know I dwelt for a long time on my own inadequacies. It seemed impossible to me that I should ever make a good husband to Simone or a wise father to Bertrand, for I felt I must fall far short of Marcellin in all respects.

  In spite of this, I fell asleep at last, and the silence must have soothed me, for I did not awake until shortly before dawn. At first, I noticed nothing amiss. It was only when I reached out my hand to touch Simone that I realised she was no longer in bed beside me. Nor was she in our bedroom.

  I rose and slipped on my dressing-gown. It was very cold. I do not know why, but my heart was beating. I felt a sense of dread, as though something sinister had happened or was about to happen. There was a lamp beside the bed. I lit it and went out into the corridor.

  Simone was downstairs in the sitting room. A candle was burning near her, which she must have lit to assist her down the stairs. She was standing by the large window that looks out onto the lake. Hearing my step behind her, she started. I could not see her clearly in that low light, but as she turned I caught a glimpse of her face, more drawn and pale than I had seen it.

  “Is something wrong, dear?” I asked.

  She crossed the room to me and came into my arms, and as I took her to myself, I noticed she was trembling.

  “You’ll catch your death of cold,” I said. She was wearing only her night-dress.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I was about to go back to bed anyway.”

  “I asked if anything was wrong.”

  She hesitated.

  “I thought I heard something outside. It must have woken me. Footsteps, perhaps. Something scraping on the rocks. I’m not sure. I got up and came down here to have a look without disturbing you.”

  “Far better to have woken me.”

  “You were fast asleep. It didn’t matter. I’m not afraid of the dark.”

  “Did you see anything?”

  She hesitated again.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “It’s still quite dark outside. There was something. No more than a shadow, very low to the ground, crawling quite slowly. It went along the edge of the lake. It might have been a man, I can’t be sure.”

  I went to the window and looked out. Pale light had appeared in the east, and was already touching the surface of the lake with tiny flecks of gold. I cast my eye along the rocks and sandbars of the shore, but I could see nothing. All the time, I felt sick at heart, but I could say nothing to Simone.

  I turned to see her standing behind me with her candle in one hand. Her hair tumbled about her shoulders, catching fragments of the flame.

  “Let’s go back to bed,” I said.

  Later that morning, we went outside and scoured the lakeside for signs of an intruder. The little boat that was tied up at our landing stage had not been tampered with, and we could find no footprints anywhere. I began to think that perhaps our night visitor had been a fox or a badger after all. But as we were heading back to the chalet, Simone stooped down and picked up something from the grass beneath the sitting room window. It was a scrap of black rag, coarsely woven and torn at one end, as though ripped from a larger piece. She held it in her hands for a few moments, then raised it to her nose and smelled it, only to throw it from her in disgust.

  I glanced down to where it lay, black against the grass, almost reproaching Simone’s fastidiousness. Carefully, I picked it up again. Once we were inside, I threw it on the fire, watching until it had been wholly consumed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  We got back to Cambridge late on Sunday evening. Simone’s parents, Agnes, Charles, and the three children were waiting for us at the station. There was a fly to take us newlyweds directly to Trumpington, while the others followed in two separate carriages.

  Agnes and Seillière (aided, I need scarcely say, by a bevy of maids borrowed from friends) had, in our absence, turned our rented house into something approximating everyone’s idea of a genteel family home. Agnes had even introduced some furniture that had belonged to our parents, to lend the house what she called a “homely air.”

  “You will, of course, want your own furniture as soon as it can be arranged,” Agnes hectored me gently as we went in. “But the rented furniture is of reasonable quality, and I am sure it will do very well for a month or two, until you are both settled.”

  As I remember it, the rest of that evening was spent in exhortation, advice and instruction. Treating Simone quite as if she were a new bride of seventeen, and not a widow entered upon her second marriage, my sister and her mother together undertook my wife’s initiation into the arcane mysteries of running a middle-class home on the outskirts of Cambridge. I think Agnes feared that Simone would otherwise introduce French ways into her household, and that before long our home would become an occasion of scandal for the neighbourhood. Albertine Seillière, conversely, seemed to have been quite concerned to prevent her daughter being sucked too precipitately into English ways.

  We menfolk stayed clear of all this to-ing and fro-ing by remaining like folk under siege in the very fine room that I had designated my library and which, while I had been in the Lakes, my dear René had furnished with those of my books that had already been marked for removal to my home. I still planned to keep my college rooms for tutorials or small gatherings of friends after Hall or chapel after evensong.

  Charles left early in order to ensure that Alice and Herbert were in bed by nine. Herbert attended St Faith’s (which we all referred to as “Goody’s”), while young Alice had recently started at the Perse School for Girls. That was Agnes’s idea, for Charles quite disapproved of girls having an education at all. I told him of our plan to send Bertrand to the choir school at King’s.

  “A first-rate idea. He can sing Dufay for them in the original. They’d like that. None of them can sing French, or Italian for that matter. They make a stab at Latin, but the Catholics do it much better. Young Herbert can’t sing. Never could. None of us Napiers ever had much of a voice.”

  He departed on this note, but as he got to the front gate, he turned and came back to me, leaving Alice and Herbert waiting.

  “I forgot to mention, your f
riend Atherton turned up last week. Said he was looking for you. Didn’t seem to know you were on your honeymoon. I thought he was a friend of yours.”

  “An acquaintance, Charles. I told you.”

  “Yes, well, he said he needed to talk to you. He was taken aback by the honeymoon—seemed to think you weren’t planning on getting married for some time yet. I put him right. He wanted me to pass the message on when you got back. Now I’ve done it.”

  I thanked him and went back inside. However hard I struggled, it seemed I could not escape the toils into which Matthew Atherton had led me.

  Albertine had prepared a light supper for us all. Agnes went off home to dine with Charles. Bertrand ate with us. This would be his first night under our roof, our first night together as a family. He was silent throughout the meal, estimating, no doubt, the features of the new world into which he had been brought, unconsulted and largely unprepared. Simone sat beside him, smiling at him often, and from time to time stroking his head, as though to soothe him.

  When we had eaten, Simone took Bertrand upstairs, sticking firmly to the bedtime rituals they had developed in their years together at St Bertrand-de-Comminges. She came down after about fifteen minutes.

  “Darling,” she said to me, “his father always went up to him last, to kiss him good-night. Do you think . . . ?”

  I nodded agreement and hastily made my way upstairs. Not unnaturally, I was a little in awe of this new role I was to play, and nervous of my presumption in stepping so boldly into another man’s shoes.

  Bertrand was awake. His night-light burned steadily on the bedside table. In his arms he embraced a toy rabbit he had brought from France. He seemed much younger than seven, a little boy snatched from all that was familiar, cradling his last tangible link with home.

  “I’ve come to say good-night, Bertrand.”

  I spoke in French, for it was the language we had come to use between us. In time, I thought, we must change to English; but not yet. He did not answer. When I drew closer, he turned his face away, and I noticed that his eyes were brimming with tears.

  I almost went back for Simone. She would know what to do and what to say, I thought. I felt helpless, knowing nothing of children or their comfort. But I reckoned it would be cowardly of me to sneak away like that and find someone else to do my dirty work. I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “What’s wrong, old man?” I asked. My own father had called me “old man,” and I supposed it would do well enough under the circumstances, even in French.

  He did not answer me at once, and for a while I did not think he would answer at all, and was at a loss as to how I might ever extract a reply from him. In the end, I did not have to. The words were there, all he had to do was find his way to them.

  “I want my father back,” he said.

  It came to me like a shiver of desperation how little use I was in this brave new world into which I had so rashly entered.

  “Your father? I . . . Surely, Bertrand, surely you know your beloved father is dead.”

  “He’s not dead. He can’t be. It’s a lie.”

  He turned his eyes on mine. Fierce eyes that burned me with their heat.

  “I wish it were a lie,” I said. “But it is the terrible truth. Surely your mother has told you that. She would not lie about such a thing. She misses him terribly as well. I know she does.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t care if it is true. I still want him back.”

  It was on my tongue to cry, “the dead do not return,” but I swallowed the words, knowing their untruth.

  “I am to be your new father, Bertrand,” was all I said instead. They were the hardest words I have ever spoken. It seemed so presumptuous in me to imagine I might take another man’s place.

  “You can’t be my father. Jamais, jamais, jamais.”

  “Nevertheless, I shall try,” I said. His desperation upset me very much. I was ill-equipped to deal with it. “And you must try to help me. I love your mother very much, and I want to love you as well. But I cannot do it without your help.”

  He was silent at this talk of love, for he was, in truth, not ready for it yet.

  Perhaps I should have bent down to kiss him, or offered to tell him a story; but I sensed it was too early for such affection. I rose instead and went to the door. As I put my hand to it, he called me back.

  “Mother says I am to be sent away to a big school.” His voice was choked with emotion, and I could see that this was the core of his anxiety.

  I shook my head.

  “You’re not to be sent away. The school will take you as a day-boy, and you’ll live here as normal with your mother and myself. And it’s not at all a big school. Quite the opposite. The boys are choristers at King’s College. It’s a small chapel, not even as large as the cathedral where you sang before. Your mother says you have a fine voice.”

  He shrugged.

  “I’d like to hear you sing some time,” I said. “Perhaps some evening after dinner?”

  “I don’t like to sing on my own. It’s better in a choir. No one notices you too much.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” I smiled. “But I would like to hear you all the same.”

  “Do you sing?”

  “No, I have no voice. But I play the pianoforte tolerably well. I could play for you if you like. And teach you some English songs. Not the sort of thing you sing in church. Jolly things. “Green Grow the Rushes.” That sort of thing.”

  He asked me to sing it for him, and I did, in a rather hushed voice. Some accompaniment might have helped, but he seemed to like it well enough. I explained some of the words for him, but I must confess I had as little idea as he had what they really meant.

  This time, as I was leaving, he stopped me with a different question.

  “Who is William?” he asked.

  He did not use the name “William,” of course, but “Guillaume.” It took a moment for me to see what he meant, and a moment longer for the truth to dawn on me.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. My mouth was dry with fear. “I know no one of that name. Did he say his name was ‘William’?”

  Bertrand shook his head.

  “He spoke to me in French. But he said you knew him.”

  “When . . . When was this?”

  “While you were away. The day after the wedding. I was in the garden, playing with Herbert and Alice. The game they call “Hide and Seek.” A man came up to me and asked where he might find you. I told him you had gone away, that you had gone on a “honeymoon.” He seemed surprised, then asked me where you had gone. I told him the name of the place, of the lake you had gone to. I asked him who he was, and he said his name was “Guillaume,” and that you would know who he was. Then he thanked me and went away.”

  “What was he like, can you remember?”

  “An old man. His hair was white. He was . . . dressed like a priest.”

  “And have you seen him since then?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not since then. I’m sorry, I should have told you before. But I forgot. I didn’t like to think about him much.”

  “Why was that?”

  He shook his head, reluctant to say more. “Please, Bertrand—why didn’t you want to think about this man?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. Perhaps . . . I think he frightened me a little.”

  “How was that?”

  “He . . . When he came behind me, he was so quiet I didn’t know anyone was there. I thought . . .” He hesitated. I could sense the fear in his eyes.

  “It’s all right, Bertrand, you can tell me.”

  “I thought . . . For a moment, I thought he was a ghost.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  René and Albertine left as planned. Everyone was in floods of tears throughout the day of their departure. In the few weeks they had been with us, they had won the affections of the entire family, and the warm regard of many of our friends. Their departure was preceded by a farewell breakfast at our
new home in Trumpington.

  It had been agreed that Charles alone should accompany my parents-in-law on the first leg of their journey, to see them safely through London and on to the boat train at Waterloo. Simone and I had very much wanted to go, but Albertine had set herself vehemently against it. Bertrand, she said, had endured too much upheaval for the present. His grandparents’ departure would itself upset him greatly, and should Simone and I also leave, albeit briefly, it would be bound to add considerably to his misery and make it harder for him to settle with us.

  Once they had gone, we dedicated ourselves to creating an air of normality in our home. For several weeks now, our lives had worn an air of unseasonable holiday. My teaching duties had been fitted in amidst a hectic round of visits, receptions, and outings. I had neglected my students and lost valuable time in the preparation of my manuscript. Now all that had to change. I would spend more time at college, Bertrand would start school, and Simone would learn to be mistress of a modest English family.

  Our household consisted, apart from ourselves, of a maid, Mary, a cook and housekeeper, Mrs Lumley, and a boy of fourteen to fetch and carry, Ned Larkin. They had all three been carefully selected by Agnes, following assiduous enquiries among the widest possible range of female acquaintances, informed shopkeepers, prim governesses, old maids, laundresses, and, for all I know, tramps and roadsweepers. We found ourselves well content with them.

  Simone had had no staff at home in St Bertrand, and to begin with found the task of ordering others to carry out simple household tasks quite uncongenial. There was, too, much occasion for misunderstanding, given that her mastery of English was still limited, and that the accents of our trusty servants were broad enough to tax the comprehension of even the most experienced resident of the county.

  They all lived in. Mary and Mrs Lumley had small rooms in the attic, while Ned made do with a warm space on the kitchen floor. We paid them what Agnes insisted was the “going rate,” though I rather think Simone thought it niggardly and added small douceurs from time to time. The women had one day off a week, and we were careful to make no demands on them after eleven o’clock at night. On Wednesdays, when Mrs Lumley had a day to herself, I had food sent up from college. Charles and Agnes did not altogether approve of that, but I considered it fair, and would not be dissuaded from it.