A Girl Called Flotsam

by John Tagholm

  It was what Marguerite hadn’t said which haunted her swaying passage on the Metro. She had been given the incomplete elements of a crossword puzzle clue, with neither the question nor the answer entirely clear. The old woman might just as well have been talking about herself as Odile and Beatrice was unable to make a judgement. Marguerite was suggesting that to survive the war in Paris, particularly as a Jew, some element of collaboration might have been necessary. Had Joseph discovered this or perhaps even witnessed the humiliation of his mother? Was it shame that had driven the young boy away and out of his mother’s life for ever? Her assessment of Troumeg changed and a shadow fell across the proposed film so that in her mind the music changed, the style of filming altered and its purpose became all the more serious. It was cool sitting out on the pavement and she could feel the first hint of winter not far away. She wandered along the boulevard St Michel in the direction of the river and could not shake the image of the naked woman out of her mind. It appalled Beatrice that Marguerite had seen such an ugly and violent act in a street of such beauty. This was history witnessed by someone still living and yet somehow it was still not entirely clear, the truth still just beyond her grasp, partially obscured, uncorroborated.

  In the end, she walked all the way back to the hotel, across the Île de la Cité, up the straight line of Sebastopol to the Gare de l’Est, where she picked up the canal that guided her back. She was impatient for the next day to begin for what the old woman had said haunted her and she needed to know more, wanted, she realised, to protect Odile Leval and, in turn, her son. And to do this she needed facts.

  So, as she arrived at the hotel and although her feet ached, she turned back across the 19th arrondissement towards the Café Le Fin. It was too late to visit Marguerite again but she hoped that Sandrine Vaillard might offer her some more clues. With the luck she believed comes from persistence, Beatrice found the patronne installed in the kitchen and arranged to talk to her after service was finished. When eventually she emerged to slump in the chair opposite, blowing the hair from her eyes, Sandrine called for a drink.

  ‘How are your searches going?’ she asked, raising a glass of red wine before drinking it down in one. ‘The kitchen seemed hotter tonight, for some reason. So?’

  ‘Well, I’m getting there. I saw Odile’s friend, Marguerite and I went to see Troumeg in Marseille. In fact, we ate at his first restaurant, not that it’s the same, of course. I was wondering if you might have any photographs of Odile, say a picture of her with your parents?’

  ‘There’s one over there, with all those other pictures by the door. I should have shown you before.’ She got up and lifted it from the wall and brought it over and placed it in front of Beatrice like a plate of food. The black and white photograph showed three people in dark overcoats taken in front of a church.

  ‘Odile’s in the middle and those are my parents either side.’

  Beatrice held up the framed photograph and stared at a woman whose hair was worn in the style of the day, a series of controlled waves over a long face in which she could see traces of Joseph Troumeg, or at least thought she could.

  ‘That must have been taken in the early 50s,’ Sandrine said, ‘so she would have been in maybe her late thirties.’

  Troumeg was right in calling her a beauty, for she stood centimetres taller than even Sandrine’s father and she struck the pose of a model, with one leg slightly in front of the other and one hand on her hip.

  ‘Why do you think Joseph didn’t come to his mother’s funeral?’ Beatrice hoped Sandrine wouldn’t mind the direct question.

  ‘My parents, when they were alive, told me that it was to do with a disagreement they’d had many years before, but I can’t tell you much more than that.’

  ‘And they named you Josephine after him. I don’t think they would have done that if they thought Odile would have been offended. Did your parents talk about Odile and the war?’

  ‘Do you have a reason for asking?’

  Beatrice weighed up what to say in reply. ‘I was wondering if something happened during the war, or immediately afterwards, that might have caused a rift between mother and son.’

  ‘Well, something must have happened. Curiously, he must have left around the time of that picture, although I’ve never thought of that before. Here, let’s have a look.’ She took the frame and turned it over, running her fingers along the tape before releasing the photograph. She examined the back where in pencil was the date, ‘Mai 1953’ and the words ‘avec Odile’.

  ‘May I make a copy of this and return it to you?’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘I don’t want to say more at the moment, but I will when I’m certain about what I’ve been learning.’

  ‘Sounds a bit serious…’

  ‘Who knows?’

  Every so often on the way back to the hotel, her feet stinging and hot, she stopped under a light to look at the photograph and the handsome woman posed at its centre. This was not the face of a woman whose son had fled, or one locked in the misery of some personal drama. Perhaps it had yet to happen and she was ignorant of the events that were about to overtake her. Or perhaps she was never to know the reason why he left. How infuriating that a history so recent should be so tantalisingly out of her reach. She had two days in Paris before she left for London, forty-eight hours to try and discover the truth of events that occurred around these very streets seventy years earlier. Time leaves its clues, but also covers its traces, she thought and that night, perhaps not surprisingly, she dreamed of the skull and the life it represented, one whose details had been lost almost completely.

  The next morning Beatrice was concerned that Marguerite might be resistant to seeing her again, so she phoned in advance to ask if they could take coffee together.

  ‘I think you might have misunderstood what I said last time,’ Marguerite said quickly, only too glad to see Beatrice again and straighten her account. And so it was later that morning Beatrice made her way up rue Manin, the sun lighting the Buttes Chaumont park to her right and several copies of the photograph in her bag. Perhaps it was the sharp morning light, or the aftermath of last night’s whisky, that left its mark on the old woman’s pale face at the door. Or was it the memories that Beatrice was disturbing, the carefully settled alluvium in the layers of her memory. When they had their coffees in front of them, Beatrice showed her the photograph.

  ‘She was a handsome woman, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Always. I used to be slightly jealous that she had to do so little to look so good. I had to work much harder. When was this taken?’

  ‘1953.’

  ‘I don’t know whether it feels like an eternity ago, or yesterday.’ She stopped and stared, as she had done the day before and Beatrice wished that she was recording these conversations for what was happening was not rehearsed and she was witnessing as memories and connections joined and came to life. The old woman nodded to herself, piecing together the events and chronology of those distant days. Beatrice waited and looked at the watery eyes in front of her, the face so much more fragile than the day before. ‘I didn’t tell her about the death of my son for a long time, either. In the end, we both had things to forget.’

  Again Beatrice allowed the silence to unfurl. ‘Do you have your own photographs of her?’

  She pointed at a brown envelope on the sideboard and Beatrice reached out to get it and with the encouragement of Marguerite, carefully tipped the contents on to her lap.

  ‘I knew you would want to see these. My husband took many of them. He was a good photographer. He died ten years ago and I find it difficult looking at them. But I did, for you. And Odile, of course.’

  Beatrice sifted through the dozen or so pictures and watched Odile Leval grow old and yet never lose the looks that distinguished her. In two of the photographs she was with a man, leaning into him on one and holding his hand in another.

  ‘That is Elliot. An artist. American. She was with him for a long time. A nice man.�
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  Beatrice looked up at her and had no need to ask the question.

  ‘Yes, he’s still alive, but he’s in a home. He has declined since her death. The address I have written on the back of one of the photographs. Take them.’

  ‘Thank you. Is there anyone else alive who knew her in the early days?’

  The old woman was shaking her head even before Beatrice finished her question. ‘They’re all gone. And I will be soon. The chapter will close.’

  ‘How did you survive the war, Marguerite?’

  ‘I did what I had to, like Odile. We were blamed, you know. We were blamed for surviving. But, enough.’ She placed the palms of her hands flat on her thighs. ‘Go and see Elliot. She will have told him more. Perhaps you should make a film about Odile and not her son.’

  And she laughed the girlish laugh Beatrice heard the day before.

  In the park afterwards, returning to the now familiar seat beneath the hill, she looked at the photographs again, shuffling through the snapshots of a life unknown and it occurred to Beatrice just how quickly she had immersed herself in this project, how it had taken her over and how, once again, it had enabled her to put everything else on hold. How much easier it was to pick at the corners of Odile’s past, chase the shadows cast by Joseph and she felt a moment’s guilt, an uneasiness which arrived like the cold wind in the boulevard café. In one of the photographs, taken when Odile was perhaps fifty, her hair cut short in a black plastic mac, she looked almost modern and her smile revealed white teeth, made more so by the dark lipstick, a woman clearly happy, not encumbered with a past or dreading a future. Beatrice could point to photographs of herself which appeared to tell the same story, particularly if you are a woman who people regard as beautiful.

  What do we know, Marguerite had said. What, indeed?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The child runs with a freedom she can recall but not recapture, for now the drop from the harbour wall, the clatter of the horses on the quay and the sea itself conspire to give boundary to her fears. She can share the joy of the child but now it arrives with an awareness that it could be taken at any minute. She was in joy, but outside it, observing it, aware of its dimensions. She thinks of her own legs carrying her down the hill to the old river, her long strides seemingly effortless, lengthening with her speed towards her father on the bridge. Now his memory is sadder, because it too comes with an extra shadow. He would never see his granddaughter, never be able to compare mother and child. But this day she knows clearly why he stood on the bridge and why he hid his fears from her. As with her mother, she sees her father differently and in her new knowledge there is loss and gain. Like her observation of her daughter running, her memory of him is now tempered with her new understanding of him as a parent. Her memory has been given depth and this brings its own rewards and penalties, for the simplicity has been lost.

  The plague arrives as it had in the old town, slowly and silently. On the hill she hopes they will be safe and she keeps the child indoors. When she sees the bodies, their legs disfigured, their sores open and weeping, she is frightened. There seems no end to the dangers laying claim to her daughter. Trapped in the room, they attempt to carry on as before. Her mother shows her how to widen the bracelet for the child’s wrist and begins to teach the elements of her craft, to show how patterns could be gently beaten into soft metal, how gemstones could be polished and shaped. She gives purpose to their imprisonment. She has helped her mother before and has learned by looking, but this is different. Afterwards she wonders if she had deliberately decided to pass on her skills, if she knew what was coming. They work on a simple necklace that too could be expanded as the child grew, twisting strands of gold with a single pendant of yellow stone, its surface shiny and smooth, in a mount of gold so that the colours would merge with the olive brown skin of the child. It would be the last piece of jewellery she makes for even before it is finished, the symptoms of the plague show on her mother’s body. She is frightened to touch her, to wipe her face and wounds, not for herself, but for the child. Her husband takes their daughter to the hills to live amongst the trees and she is caught between the anguish for her mother and the child. And then it is over almost before it begins. In two days a life that has given so much disappears in front of her and she is left looking at a face too still to be living, holding a hand too cold to shape gold again. She feels her dimensions extend again, to bring in territory she has not known before. The responsibility of wisdom has been transferred to her and its weight rests on her shoulders. It is not a duty, but a succession and she receives it with the generosity it is given. Her mother’s body is to be taken to a grave outside the town where she can be buried in safety along with the others. Her granddaughter will never remember her. She will live on in a series of stories and in her jewellery which would be passed on until the connection was broken and merely a thing of beauty remained.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘Have you abandoned us all?’ Amanda’s simple question managed to combine indignation with displeasure.

  ‘I’m still in France, on my way to a maison de retraite, if you must know,’ Beatrice said, negotiating yet another set of Metro barriers on her way across Paris to Charenton.

  ‘Well, that’s all very well, but I’ve seen you do this before,’ she continued, eager to get her point across, ‘sort of disappear into a tunnel and ignore life for a few months and then emerge thinking you can just carry on.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s sort of the nature of my work, Amanda and it is going to be a tunnel because I’m heading to the underground now. I’ll call you when I come out the other side.’

  She just heard Amanda say ‘…if you come out the other side…’ before the link was broken.

  La Maison Clemenceau was by the Bois de Vincennes, on the other side of Paris, at least sixteen stops and two changes and when she phoned to arrange a visit to see Elliot Honeywell she told reception she would be there in a hour. She looked at the spaghetti of colours that defined the system and wondered if she’d left enough time. Once she’d made the changes and settled herself for the final leg, she considered Amanda’s call. How easy it was to operate in this vacuum, she thought, as St-Sebastian Froissart came and went, with no allegiance except to my work. By Reuilly-Diderot she imagined Amanda must have read her mind, given her doubts in Buttes Chaumont earlier and by Charenton-Écoles she was looking forward to agreeing with her friend.

  ‘About time too,’ Amanda said and Beatrice sat in front of the church opposite the station, noticing from the clock on its tower that she had about ten minutes before she was due at the home. ‘He’s called me again.’

  It took Beatrice a moment to think what she was talking about.

  ‘And it’s clear that you’ve no intention of seeing him, at least in that sense. That’s what he tells me. Why?’

  ‘Not true, Amanda. Well, not completely true, at least. I am seeing him the day after tomorrow, when I get back from here. What did he have to say this time?’

  ‘I don’t know why I have ended up being your broker in this strange relationship, but he thinks you are entirely uninterested in him.’

  ‘I’m uninterested in all men at the moment, Amanda.’

  ‘What a time to start, Beattie.’

  ‘But it is true what you say about my work. I can see it. It’s a displacement activity, I realise that. I was thinking on the Metro that I get it from my father. His real world was dealing with future trends and improbabilities whilst the life he was living at home, with me and my hopes and disappointments, was a fantasy he didn’t recognise or understand.’

  ‘Goodness, Amanda. Where did that come from?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. How is it possible not to know your father, I asked myself and that’s the answer I got. Joseph Troumeg never knew his father at all and maybe that prompted my thinking.’

  ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m meeting Harry
at the British Museum on Saturday. He wants to show me some Anglo-Saxon relics.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like a typical first-date scenario. He asked me what you were like.’

  ‘And what did you say?’ Beatrice saw the big, black hand of the clock click forward. She knew the home was no more than two streets away and she began to walk in that direction, waiting for Amanda’s response.

  ‘I said I couldn’t believe you’d got this far without finding what you want.’

  ‘Not you as well. Troumeg said the same thing. I’m surrounded by people acting on behalf of my mother.’ She laughed, partly in relief, but of what, exactly, she couldn’t say. ‘I’ll come and see you when I get back. What about Sunday? I can give you a full report then.’

  ‘Sunday lunch. Don’t be late. You can hold Harper while I make the lunch. James is working.’

  La Maison Clemenceau was a smaller version of the mairie of the 19th arrondissement, elaborate and showy, a deliberate display of wealth. The building was now reduced in the ranks and served as a nursing home. If Elliot Honeywell said on the phone that he would be happy to see her, he’d forgotten who she was by the time she arrived at his side in the large sitting room with views on the Bois de Vincennes. He was a handsome man who had clearly been dressed for the occasion, a jacket with crimson handkerchief in the top pocket, a clean white shirt and black shoes. Beatrice explained again who she was and that she wanted to talk about Odile Leval and at the mention of her name he smiled, nodded his head and repeated her name. She told him about the film and when she asked if he would mind answering some questions he agreed with another smile.

  Beatrice, unsure of her ground, began too quickly. ‘Did Odile ever talk about her son?’ The question appeared to bewilder him and he frowned and stared at her and for one awful moment Beatrice thought he might not have known about the child.