L'Affaire (28 page)

‘How odd.’

‘Yes, it is. Anyone else who was there must also have perished, but no one else is reported missing.’

‘Does she think this mysterious figure caused the avalanche?’

‘It seems she believes it was warning them. We will learn more as her mind becomes clearer. Mrs Venn, tell us again about what you saw just before the avalanche.’

‘Yes, I turned, and a woman was here, a ways away, with a spear or lance, pointed at Adrian. She glittered all silvery in a beam of light, as though she was wearing armor. It was very clear. Oh, and she had a shield. There was something written on it, but I don’t remember what.’

Just then, Harry ran in, followed by Kip, and seized Kerry’s attention. Kip was beaming with anticipation of Kerry’s joy. Harry threw himself toward his mother so violently that the nurses had to catch him and lift him carefully onto Kerry’s bed. Tears ran down Kerry’s face along with her smiles. The assembled hospital personnel, and even Posy and Rupert, felt their eyes fill.

Nurse Bénédicte, walking Rupert and Posy toward the waiting room, said, ‘It sounds to us like Jeanne d’Arc. She doesn’t say so herself. It is not the Virgin, apparently.’ Seeing their incomprehension, she added, ‘Madame Venn’s vision. It seems to us it might have been Jeanne d’Arc.’

Nurse Bénédicte, who had had a vocation as a
réligeuse
but not gone on with it, was in general disapproving of local rumors of apparitions and miracles – these cropped up all the time in the Alps and were never serious – but there was something intriguing about Kerry Venn’s experience, especially as she, Bénédicte, had with her own eyes seen the patient lying in a coma for almost a week, a woman who was probably not even a Catholic, so Bénédicte was sure there was no possibility of her having
been manipulated by, or made a victim of, religious superstititon. Though rational explanations were the most likely, there were mysteries one should not discount; the mind didn’t have to understand everything.

‘Of course we are not sure. She describes the scene as it came to her, and it sounds to us more like an apparition, though it could have been a person, of course.’ Posy and Rupert, wearing the expressions to be expected of English skeptics, began to grasp that it really appeared to Nurse Bénédicte that Kerry had had a vision of, or received a visitation from, Joan of Arc. Kerry’s eyes did have an otherworldly expression, a glow of having seen supernatural things, but this was no doubt the effect of medicine or coma.

They had half hoped that Kerry would have already heard about Father’s death, but as the nurses had denied it, it seemed harder to tell her, disturbing her happy embraces of her little son and her brother, and her attempt to remember what she had seen. Drawing Nurse Bénédicte farther into the hall, Rupert whispered the news of Father’s death. The nurse did not seem greatly surprised, expressing only the most conventional sympathy and looking conspiratorially in at Kerry. It seemed to Rupert she might even feel some satisfaction at so dire a result because Father had been removed from their care.

‘She knows, at some level she understands,’ Nurse Bénédicte said.

‘But still she must be told,’ Rupert insisted.

‘Of course. Maybe a bit later, when she is stronger. Will you do it? Or the doctor, perhaps?’

‘We don’t really know her…’

‘The doctor,
bien sûr
. But you know, this is very interesting, what she saw just before the accident.’

They agreed that it was most important that Kerry recover the memory fully, for her own psychic peace, so that an amnesic trough or chasm didn’t frighten her forever, and she could deal with it and move on, truly accepting that Adrian was gone.

Dr Lamm approached as they spoke.

‘Did you hear, Doctor, that Mr Venn didn’t survive the trip to London?’ Nurse Bénédicte whispered to him, the satisfaction in her voice plain to the ear of one who was inclined to hear it.

Dr Lamm sniffed irascibly. ‘How could he have survived? He was dead before he left France. The man had not had so much as a brain blip in three days.’ They somberly contemplated this fact, the folly of the rescue plane, the fragile human emotions that had driven the situation, the decisive role of money in claiming victory for one point of view over the other – for someone had paid for that plane.

Posy and Rupert noted, without thinking much of it then, that the doctor had said that Father was dead in France. In their grief, Posy and Rupert had still not allowed themselves to discuss what each had perhaps thought of, that Father’s dying in England made all the difference to Harry and the newly resurrected Kerry, who would inherit, and of course, in a negative sense, to themselves, who wouldn’t.

‘How very sad for the little boy – he’ll never remember his father,’ Dr Lamm said to Rupert. ‘Do you want me to tell her? I would prefer to leave it to you.’

‘If you would tell her, Doctor…’ said Rupert.

‘She knows it anyway,’ said Nurse Bénédicte. ‘
Elle l’a senti.’
Dr Lamm, looking displeased at his role, stepped gravely into the room and approached Kerry’s bed.

Kerry received the news with serenity. ‘Yes, I understood that,’ she said. ‘That was the meaning of what I saw.’ Rupert, stepping forward, emboldened, explained that Mr Osworthy was handling funeral arrangements in London, and that he and Posy would wait in Valméri to travel with her when she was able. How sad they all were ...

At this, Dr Lamm had another word with Rupert. Rupert needed to know that Kerry would require a long convalescence. Several ribs and an arm were fractured, the lack of reflexes that had worried them when she was unconscious came from an injury to her spine, the deep bruises would take weeks to heal. ‘The two victims were tumbled like shoes in a dryer,’ said the doctor, though this didn’t seem to Rupert like a helpful metaphor.

Welcoming anything that took their minds off death, the three older Venn offspring stood in the hall and laughed a little about Kerry’s vision. Still, it was puzzling. ‘What could a woman with a shield have been doing there?’ Victoire wondered.

‘Those snow saucers look like shields,’ Posy said. ‘It was probably someone with a snow saucer.’

‘Or a snow machine,’ said Rupert. ‘Or a silver lamé skiing costume? Someone might still be buried up there?’

‘Yes, if someone really was there, she was probably caught in the same slide,’ Posy said, thinking of the icy
death, the recklessness of going out into nature. Uncertain about what to do, instead of starting for London they returned to the Hôtel Croix St Bernard.

In the late afternoon, Rupert, with instructions from Mr Osworthy to ask Kerry about the funeral arrangements, if she were well enough, went back to the hospital alone and again gained access to her room through a throng of people – not medical-looking people but people with notebooks. Kerry was about the same, wan but propped up. The nurse whispered that she had slept after lunch and was making brilliant gains in strength and morale, though there were the concerns about her spine. They also thought perhaps she had been distracted by people peeking in to hear her speak of Ste. Jeanne and had not quite absorbed the fact of her husband’s death.

‘I’m so sorry to have to bring this up,’ said Rupert to Kerry, ‘but did he ever say what he would want? About being buried? Cremation? Did he leave any instructions?’

Kerry looked vague, apathetic.

‘We have made some tentative arrangements, Mr Osworthy has, I mean. Cremation in London when you can travel, then you can decide about the disposition of, of the ashes,’ Rupert went on.

‘Who is Mr Osworthy?’ asked Kerry.

‘Father’s lawyer in London.’

‘England! No way,’ said Kerry. ‘We live in France! Our whole life is here. Harry will want to visit his father’s grave when he gets older, he shouldn’t have to go to England.’

‘Well, ashes, you could bring them back here,’ Rupert said.

‘I couldn’t stand the idea of Adrian being burned,’ Kerry said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I think he ought to be buried in Saint-Gond, in the proper way, in the churchyard. I’ll have to think about it.’ She began to cry, which everyone could understand, and the nurses shooed the visitors out.

‘If she is peremptory now, think of how she’ll be when she realizes she is a rich woman, comparatively speaking. That is my experience with Americans, peremptory – they have no cultural norms to guide their behavior,’ said Osworthy.

‘Rich?’

‘I think it’s fair to tell you that your father’s French estate comes to more than I myself had anticipated. Some investments, some abundant harvests, some inspired speculation. I’d rather not go into specifics of the bequests until I’ve had a chance to look at them more closely, in a day or two. There are one or two details I had not appreciated before. Not that it affects you, really. Kerry inherits, as I told you, but be reassured your bequests are still there.’ Though they had learned resignation, they could not prevent their hopes from soaring a little, if only because a bequest would sweeten the bitter loss of Father. Without something to hope for, they had nothing to do, in the boredom that follows a death, but mourn and wait for the claims of their unsatisfactory daily lives to reassert themselves.

29

Monday morning in Maida Vale, W9. Pamela Venn puts in a phone call to Géraldine Chastine in Paris.

Over the weekend, she had talked to Mr Osworthy more than once, even though she was not the concerned widow, and he had told her how Adrian’s will had left things. Pam was deeply unhappy, not on her own behalf, for she hadn’t expected anything, but for Rupert and Posy, especially Posy. Kerry and Harry would inherit everything, as expected; luckily, however, Adrian had left Rupert a fair legacy. He could not tell her how much before he told Rupert, but in the low five figures.

‘But there is something awkward, Pam,’ said Osworthy. ‘I’m afraid he has left Posy quite a bit less.’

‘Less?’ repeated Pam.

‘I’m afraid so.’

Pamela was disappointed. But of course she should not have been surprised. It was Posy who had quarreled with and defied him and derided his marriage plans. The vengeful man had punished her! She minded the insult to Posy more than the whole unfairness to both of her children, that after more than twenty years during which they were more or less dutiful offspring, they were to be treated in such a fashion at the end. She would have liked to blame this unfairness entirely on the influence of the new wife, a calculating American, but she knew deep
down that it was Adrian’s own nature to punish and torment people who didn’t agree with him, quintessentially the quarrelsome Posy, who needed the money. Rupert, hardworking and phlegmatic, would earn his own tens of thousands of pounds, while Posy’s prospects weren’t much, and she was the more vulnerable in all ways. Pam’s heart burned for her restive daughter. ‘What about the press, the vineyards?’ she had asked Osworthy. ‘The wife gets those, I suppose.’

‘Yes, according to his wishes. I’ve turned the French end of it over to our branch in Paris, because there are procedures to be followed over there.’

Procedures. Dim memories of procedures in the novels of Balzac, notaries and unscrupulous, scheming relatives, daunted her spirit even more. It would be merciful if Posy could be kept from finding out what her father had done, for it would wound her so; she, Pam, would like to make up the difference if she could, but she had no money.

It stayed on her mind, and finally she asked Posy, still at the Hôtel Croix, to ask Victoire (a hidden daughter, that in itself an astounding development!) for her mother’s phone number. Perhaps that unknown woman would be even more displeased than Pam at the way her own daughter had been treated, had always been treated – unless the devious Venn had secretly all along known of Victoire, pampered her, sent presents on her birthdays and the rest, indulging Victoire to the disadvantage of Posy. Nothing was beyond Pam’s imagination, but her instinct told her she had an ally in another woman whose offspring by Adrian was being slighted.

Géraldine Chastine fortunately proved to speak perfect
English, and was cordial, even warm, to Pam on the phone. The two discarded women quickly forged a bond on the coals of resentments smoldering for more than thirty years – since the resentments weren’t against each other. Géraldine, for her part, even found that her indignation was mitigated slightly by the small possibility that Venn had never heard about Victoire’s existence, as far as Pam knew.

‘I sent him word, but perhaps he didn’t get it. The mails thirty years ago were by no means as reliable as now, and he had gone back to England by the time I realized… At least he didn’t oppose the designation of his name on the birth registration.’ Pam didn’t observe aloud, but her rapid calculation confirmed, that she herself had just been married to Adrian when Victoire was conceived. Luckily she was beyond being wounded by this.

She was glad she had called Géraldine for another, much more important reason. She learned that Géraldine was not convinced that Venn could just give away to his new young wife a château, vineyards and the rest of his French property, whatever the wishes expressed in his English will.

‘There are laws! A man cannot own property in this country and leave his children with nothing.’

‘Really?’ Pam asked her to explain, hope stirring that his unjust neglect of Posy and Rupert in England would be redressed in France.

‘I’ve already telephoned someone who is more or less our family lawyer, who is going to involve himself in the matter. At least, he will telephone the English lawyer,’ Géraldine explained. ‘The two will discuss the situation.’

‘But he died here in England.’ That was the fact.

‘Nonetheless. Monsieur de Persand is on his way to Valméri as we speak. He said he was in no way averse to a day or two in the snow, and he will discuss the situation with your children and Victoire,’ Géraldine told Pam.

‘This is wonderful,’ said Pam enthusiastically. ‘I believe I will come to Paris one of these days, Géraldine, if I may call you that.’

‘I so hope you will! You’d be welcome to stay with us, or I can find a hotel nearby. Perhaps you should come rather soon,’ said Géraldine.