by John Tagholm
‘Were you aware that Marguerite had lost a son, a baby, sometime in the thirties?’ Again, no response. ‘It’s important to remember this in relation to what happened next. I think she became very close to you, a replacement son, if you like, and her judgement became distorted. You were the product of a relationship with a German and I don’t think Marguerite could forgive Odile for this, particularly as the war went on and the atrocities increased. I think she saw a way of keeping you for herself and in the immediate aftermath of the war, she betrayed her friend, directly or indirectly, I’m not sure.’ She paused. ‘Do you want me to go on?’ A further nod gave her permission, but Beatrice hesitated, not wanting to wound the man whose exuberant high spirits she always found so rewarding. She realised, though, that there was no correct order or gentle way of presenting this information.
‘Your mother was revealed as a collaborator. She had her head shaved, in public and I believe was sent to prison as a result. I have a picture of her at that time, but perhaps you don’t want to see it.’ The nod came quickly this time and again Beatrice felt that this information was not new to him.
She pulled her laptop out of her bag and turned it on. She found the photograph of the shaven but defiant Odile, looking out beyond the crowd that had gathered to taunt her, and moved the screen towards him. She watched his face as he looked at his mother as no son should ever have to, but again he showed no emotion.
‘I was there,’ he said. ‘She was looking for me, hoping, praying, I think, that I wasn’t there. But I was. I was indeed.’ He carried on looking at the photograph, matching his memory with the image in front of him. She was certain now that most of what she’d said so far and shown him had come as no real surprise. As such, it might give logic to the fact that Joseph did not see his mother for more than half a century, but she wondered if what she would show him next might explode this reasoning.
‘I want to show you a letter, two letters, in fact,’ and as she said this she could not help but feel an intruder into the intimacies of his family. ‘As I said, I’ve just come back from Germany, where I read this one in the state archive.’ She slid the screen around again and this time Troumeg put on his glasses and slid them down his nose to read. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it and looked up at Beatrice as a signal for her to continue.
‘Odile Levy, Leval, was writing to your father Sebastian about you. It is a letter full of love, as were the ones he wrote her.’ She leaned across the computer and brought up one of Sebastian’s letters and left him to read. She watched his eyes move along the lines but again his face betrayed little emotion. ‘This was a proper relationship and not a wartime fling, or prewartime fling, as Lothar Traugott, the nephew would have it. They loved each other. Clearly.’ She saw him tighten his mouth, the first physical reaction to the information she was giving. He pushed the screen back to her and stood up and moved to the end of the room, looking out through the conservatory to the garden. She saw him lean against the work surface, spread his fingers on the wooden surface and lower his head.
‘So, she loved my father. You’re sure?’
Beatrice waited. ‘I’m sure.’ There was another long silence.
‘By the time she came out of Fresnes prison, I never wanted to see her again. Did you know that, Flotsam?’
‘I imagined it, Joseph, yes.’
‘And was I wrong?’
This was the sort of question that Beatrice thought she would never hear from Joseph Troumeg, always so sure of himself and not given to this sort of introspection. She remained silent and eventually he turned to face her.
‘I was, wasn’t I?’
‘I think she was protecting you, not wanting to humiliate you any more. She was in an impossible position.’
‘I was almost sixteen when she came out of jail. I found out from the papers. I fled, did Marguerite tell you that? I came down here and this is where I have escaped to ever since. Poor maman.’
‘The more famous you became, the more difficult it was for her to contact you. In a strange way, she colluded with your fantasy about her. It was a way of disguising the past.’ He came over and sat by the computer and looked again at the two letters, reading them slowly, scrolling up and down, confirming the information that had changed his perception of the past. His eyes began to glisten. This is a man, thought Beatrice, who had learned very early in life to contain himself, to create his own world when the one he was living was falling apart around him.
‘My dear, you’ve almost made me cry. I haven’t done that for years, except when I listen to opera.’
‘That’s why I don’t want to make the film,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I have the right.’
‘The right to upset me?’
‘Yes, and the right to upset the past you have created for yourself and which has served you well. To change that would be simply selfish of me.’
He absorbed what she said before replying, not in his usual jocular tone, but in a slow and measure way. ‘Flotsam, I knew there was something special about you from the moment we met. It must be those eyes. Where do they come from, I wonder?’
He made her a late lunch, his favourite he said, French beans sautéed in garlic with a slice of foie gras and a glass of sweet wine.
‘Did you see all the fuss outside when you arrived?’ he asked. ‘They found some bodies on the hill, when they were digging the foundations for a new building. Plague victims they told me in the café this morning, hence all the protective gear. They say that some jewellery was found as well, although they don’t know why. The past, a mystery as you know only too well.’
CHAPTER SIXTY
She tells her mother about the old woman and the graveyard, describing the burial and how it had made her sad and then, afterwards, happy in contrast, how she had run back home, her feet not touching the ground. She sees her mother smile, knowing that she doesn’t have to explain the way her old friend earns her money. She looks at her mother who stretches out her hand to touch her cheek and agree that life can be very cruel and that her old friend deserved better. Her mother takes her hand and leads her to the table where on a piece of wood she draws the outline of a girl with wings on her feet, who seems to float over the ground. Her mother tells her that she will make a silver broach with this figure on it and she should give it to her old friend as a present to lift her spirits.
She works with her mother, familiar now with many of the techniques she has been told about, excited at the process of creating an object of beauty from misshapen lumps, absorbed by the processes, knowing without question that one day she, too, will stand in the place of her mother. When it comes to the figure, the girl’s face is turned away, hidden by her trailing hair, her light clothing billowing to emphasise her progress, her feet sprouting wings whose delicate feathers are unfurled as they transport the apparently weightless girl. She is on a path that snakes into the future towards which she is running without fear, a timeless figure. Or perhaps it wasn’t a path, but the river, flowing in and out forever.
She continues to see the old woman, often on the bridge crossing to the other side, sometimes turning to find her watching from a corner or trailing after her in the distance and she puzzles over how or where she will present her with the brooch now approaching completion. Somehow she knows that it will be difficult for the woman, that it will confuse her and that she will search for the true meaning of the present and think, for a moment at least, that she is being mocked.
The sad faced woman was still living up by the wall, against its southern flank so that this sunny morning she sees her resting in the warmth, her eyes shut and her face tilted upwards. It is possible to see the face of the girl she had been once upon a time, the distant trace of beauty. She waits until she opens her eyes, the eyes that had so frightened her and when they see her the hunger appears in them again. She walks forward, feeling the sun on her back and bows before handing over the package wrapped in golden cloth. As she had guessed, the woman’s face is a mix of
query and suspicion and she hesitates before opening the gold bundle. The brooch lies in the palm of her hand and the woman continues to be wary, not touching the elaborate round of silver but continues to examine it, looking for clues as to why it should have been given to her this bright autumn day. She could find no reason and looks up, her eyes still questioning, still wanting more than she could deliver. This act of affection was in the process of being misunderstood, as she had feared it would be, a gesture beyond comprehension. The sad woman runs her fingers over the figure and turns her head to stare into the distance, perhaps remembering her childhood along the foreshore or, perhaps, closer and more painful, the brief youth of her lost child. Her fingers close over the silver broach and her head drops to her chest. She kneels before her and puts her hand over the woman’s and feels the coldness that not even the sun can penetrate.
When she walks away, she knows the eyes of the woman are still on her and that they posed the same question for which there was no answer.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
He was late.
She waited at La Bouillabaisse and watched Marseille go about its business, the old port perfect in the mid-afternoon sun. She had confirmed that the train was on time and even in their brief relationship she thought his lateness rather out of character. When, half an hour later, she saw him walking quickly down the hill towards her, he was busy on his mobile and distracted enough to almost collide with a couple of pedestrians. She thought he was going to walk past the café until at the last minute he looked up, registered its name and, finally, saw her sitting there.
‘You must have laid this on for me,’ he said, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek. In many ways she had, but sensed this was not what he was talking about.
‘The bloggers and Tweeters have been going mad about it. What a wonderful coincidence.’
She was still none the wiser. He leaned over and kissed her again, this time on the lips.
‘What they’ve found on the hill, up there,’ he said, pointing towards the old town. ‘The plague pit. Amazing stuff.’ He fiddled around with his phone and handed it to her. ‘Just look at that.’
She had to shade the screen from the sun and eventually found a shadow which allowed her to see the image which was so exciting him. He had come round behind her and was pointing at the photograph of a ring held by dirty finger tips. It was hard to make out the details, but it appeared to be a dark stone set in a square mount on what might have been gold.
‘Beautiful.’ He looked at the ring and then across at her.
‘It is,’ she said and she saw him shake his head and smile.
‘The curious thing is,’ he said, once again bending his body towards her, ‘that the ring is similar to one in the British Museum, which we saw on our visit. That was unearthed in London. It would be astonishing if it was made by the same person and yet discovered so far away. Can you imagine?’ He put his hand on hers and his enthusiasm coursed through his fingers and into hers and she felt it rise through her body. ‘Its about a thousand years old and already helps us date the body on top of which it was found.’
He was animated and she listened as he explained about the small circle of people who always came together when this sort of discovery took place, now linked electronically so that within moments they were able to share their knowledge, a group beyond boundaries, he said, linked by pre-history.
‘Outbreaks of plague happened down here, although the big one didn’t arrive until about a hundred years later. They had to live with death like we don’t. The average life span then was about thirty-five years and I would be surprised if any of the skeletons that are up there now are older than that.’
The discovery of the plague pit was a blessing, she realised later, taking any awkwardness away from this odd but inevitable meeting and allowing them to be involved in something outside themselves.
‘Who knows,’ said Beatrice, ‘they might even be connected to Flotsam? And that reminds me, Joseph has taken to calling me that all the time. Said that he was not surprised to see me wash up here again. In fact, every time I see him he gives me the impression that he’s been expecting me.’
‘I’m sorry, Beattie, I should have asked you straight away how it went. I was just so excited with the folks on the hill.’
She thought of several things to say, to do with dead bodies being more interesting than live ones, but stopped herself. ‘I think Joseph knew a lot of the stuff I was telling him, although I’m sure he didn’t know about Marguerite’s betrayal. In one way, I’m glad I was able to show him the letters his parents wrote to each other, but I think it hit him when he realised that his separation from his mother need not have happened. He was quite philosophical about this, but then he long ago learnt to be self sufficient and set the boundaries of his own world.’
‘How clever of you to piece all this together,’ Dr Harry Wesley said and she accepted the statement because of the way it was said. She considered his hand on hers, the comfort of this single gesture. ‘Why does what you’ve just said mean so much to me, do you think?’
‘Do you want the long answer, or the short one?’
‘I imagine I might get both.’
‘The longer version might take a few years.’
How had this man crept up on her, she wondered, to become so close, intimate almost, even though they had never slept together and she could number their meetings on the fingers of one hand? And then she worried that sex would spoil it, render useless this long and comfortable preamble. His mobile chirruped again and when he clicked on the message, he stood up and walked further into the shade of the terrace before returning to thrust the phone triumphantly back into her hands.
‘Look, look. This is the ring at the British Museum. They’ve just sent it to me from their records. It’s almost identical. It must have been made by the same person. Can we walk up there?’
He had half risen before she replied. Romantic weekends on the south coast of France don’t often begin with a visit to a plague pit, Beatrice thought as he took her hand and pulled her up the slope towards the old town, the site pinpointed by GPS on his phone. ‘Joseph lives up here,’ she said, nodding towards the dark steps leading off to one side.
‘Will you take me to meet him?’
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I’m sure he’s expecting you already.’
The brow of the hill was disguised by a rash of buildings of various heights and the sea, somewhere down to their left, was entirely obscured. The site, bounded by black and yellow tape, looked no different from any other building site, but for the figures in white overalls and masks on hands and knees at the base of a neat rectangle that had been cut out of the dry earth. One of the group, looking up, saw Harry and raised her arms in greeting. Clearly Dr Harold Wesley had been expected. Before the figure had time to clamber out of the pit, Beatrice whispered in his ear. ‘And I thought you were here to see me.’ Seconds later the woman in white was embracing Harry, removing her mask as she did.
‘Beatrice, let me introduce Dr Miriam Larose, who’s in charge of the dig here.’
She shook hands with a pretty dark haired woman, probably a few years younger than her, who immediately turned back to Harry to look at the photograph on his mobile sent from the British Museum.
Down below Beatrice saw the skeleton emerging from the earth, the bones of the fingers placed across the swell of the rib cage. The skull looked upwards to the blue sky, revealed for the first time in a thousand years, seemingly at peace. Beatrice stared at the figure and then at Harry and saw, in that very instant, a whole world open up to her, the curtain on a stage rising to reveal an unexpected and beautiful set. She was registering Harry Wesley for the first time. It had nothing to do with jealousy, quite the opposite, but the thrill of recognising that somehow she had been handed the key to a puzzle that she had been seeking to answer for years but had given up hope of ever finding. Until this moment, Harry Wesley had been someone she had looked at but not seen, part o
f her peripheral vision. He had ghosted through her preconceptions of how these things worked until he was suddenly there, by her side. She acknowledged the wave of pleasure and surprise that lapped through her and she put her hand on his arm, a gesture which caused him to turn and face her. She saw, when she looked into his eyes, that he instantly knew that something had changed, that they had stepped towards each other and moved on to a different level. She could not unpick the collision of events that had brought her to this point but she knew she had crossed a divide and high on a hill in Marseille, above the remains of an ancient body, she felt alive in a way she knew she hadn’t before.
The day before she had been going to book a hotel in Marseille but had stopped herself, unable to decide whether to reserve one room or two, but when Harry took her arm and guided her away from the site the question had already been answered.
‘There’s a hotel on the Corniche which I’ve read about,’ she said and he watched as she called and booked a double room. They didn’t speak as the cab took them around to the other side of the city, climbing above the old port beneath the outstretched arms of the Virgin Mary. There was an easiness between them, a complete lack of tension and ahead they watched the blue of the sea intensify. The same blinding colour filled the window of their room and they stood on the balcony anticipating the logical conclusion of their extended and unusual courtship. When it happened it was much more than she had expected, their sex the result of what had gone before rather than a physical act waiting afterwards for justification. When she stood before him naked and felt him outline the shape of her body with his fingers, she had the sensation of being observed for the very first time. What followed next, though, seemed like the conclusion of a much longer process and one that put her in touch with a part of her that was ancient and undiscovered and which had remained hidden for a very long time.