Petite Mort (7 page)

Of course I did not take her seriously. What skill could she possibly have to rival my own?

On my way out of the apartment it occurred to me that I did not even consider telling Camille the truth.

It would have been a relief.
There is someone
, I could have told her, drawing innocent patterns on the bedspread with one finger. She might have folded me up in her skinny arms; it might have wakened the impulse I had longed to see in her; that she might want to take care of me a little, too. But even now I can remember the precise way her lip curled as she laughed at me; the prideful way she pointed out her valise.

I do not know why they say that the present draws a veil over the past, when it is only later that one sees things as they really were. Now I understand that I could not have done otherwise, because the jaws of the trap had sprung shut when
we were children. I told myself, as I set out for work, that my secrets were mine to keep.

That day, my mind was so full of Camille that I barely paid attention at work. The others read my mood: Elodie watched me from behind the safety of the sewing machine. ‘Something on your mind?’ she asked, and I shook my head.

At five I hurried away; when I got home I found Camille sitting on my bed, perusing my scrapbook of newspaper cuttings.

‘They’re mine,’ I said, and she glanced up, lost in the stories, brow furrowed – a child. ‘But of course you may borrow them,’ I added, and felt idiotic. I would never learn; she would always unseat me.

She stared at me for a moment, glanced at the clock on the wall and then hopped off the bed. ‘I’m going to take tea with Agathe now,’ she said.

‘You’ll have to be quick,’ was all I could think of to say to this, ‘don’t let her eat all the biscuits.’

Camille ignored me and skipped away down the corridor.

I called after her: ‘Have you seen Mme Moreau about that cleaning position?’

Camille looked at me blankly. I knew what she was seeing: a fussy ten-year-old, trying to make her tidy her half of the room. She shook her head and pushed the door of Agathe’s room open. When I turned back to my bed I noticed that she had taken the scrapbook with her.

André, iii.

She taught him to hold himself back until she was ready; taught him to be quiet and stealthy. More than once they paused, Caroline’s hand plastered over André’s terrified mouth, as Auguste called out merrily that he was home. André would scrabble for his shirt: she would draw him round, place her hands on him and soothe him: they had a few more minutes, at least. He was such a great joy to look at: his long limbs, his cheekbones, the skin like milk.

An afternoon, six weeks after the first time: early November. The autumn had cooled the earth outside, but Caroline lay on the bare floorboards of the schoolroom floor, her white dress beside her, in a pile with André’s blue trousers; and on the other side, arms and legs spread-eagled as though he had fallen from a great height, was André.

Caroline played with the curls on his forehead. Everything was peaceful. The house slumbered around them, basking in the sun. She felt him squirm, and sit up. They smiled at each other as they began to dress.

A curious thing happened: André turned away from her as he knotted his cravat, and when he had finished, he turned back and his cheeks were scarlet – startling Caroline, who thought he must have succumbed to a sudden illness. Then she saw it, and wondered why she had not seen it before: the boy had fallen in love with her in the way that is indeed a sickness. The display of passion frightened her: she sat down
on her chair to think what to do.

André knelt before her. His fingers pressed into her waist as he said what she’d feared: ‘We must go away somewhere together.’

But the house, the sugar-fields, the lace collar on my finest dress
… she shook her head. ‘Where would we go?’ she said, with a touch of temper.

His face was mutinous.

Why
, she asked, when they had everything they needed here.

He’s my father
, André said.
I don’t want to be dishonest any more
.

She almost laughed. Honesty: the preserve of rich men.

‘Let’s talk about it later,’ she said, and began to stroke with one hand the fork of his trousers. André pursed his lips and turned his face away.

The door slammed; later, she heard him stalking up and down in his room. She stood at the classroom window and bit her nails, one by one, down to the pink.

As they had never known when André’s real birthday was, it had always been celebrated on the same day as Auguste’s – the twenty-first of November – with a special meal. ‘A pack of blessings,’ Auguste liked to say each year, rubbing his hands, ‘we shall be spoiled, shan’t we? I plan to eat until I cannot move!’

When Caroline woke on André’s birthday morning, she found Auguste with his back to her, standing out on the balcony which adjoined their room. His hands were spread on the railing; as she watched he took a theatrical breath in.

She padded over to him. It was indeed a glorious winter sunrise, hazy and gold as a bitten coin.

‘Sixteen today. Can you believe it?’

It wasn’t a question; as always, it was a statement to which Caroline was only expected to murmur her assent.

‘All this,’ said Auguste, and instead of finishing his sentence, he waved an arm over the rich brown sea of the plantation; small dots of cane-workers trussing and tying the husks of cane for winter.

Suddenly he was clutching her hand. ‘You’ve been happy, haven’t you? We’ve been happy, the two of us?’

His face was so strange: so earnest and terrified, she took fright.

‘Of course we have.’ She searched wildly for safe ground, and found it by showing him the plantation. ‘Look what you’ve achieved.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose so.’ To her relief, he rallied. ‘It’s a great day today, isn’t it?’ He clapped his mottled hands together and walked to the door, where he paused and blew her a kiss.

Caroline dressed carefully and went downstairs to eat breakfast. André was out there working in the field: she could feel him, picture him listening to the overseer with all that respectful, youthful attention.

After she had eaten, she went to the reception room and read until it was time for the note to be sent. She wrote:
Your birthday present will be waiting for you at four o’clock in the library
, rang for a servant and told her to take it to André. The servant bobbed and hurried away. Crossing to the window, Caroline saw her running down the paths between the corn until there in the distance was André. Squinting, Caroline could just make him out receiving the note; then he looked up towards the house and raised one arm:
yes
. She could not see if he was smiling or not.

Caroline’s heart pressed on her ribcage as she sat down at the little walnut bureau and wrote out the second note.
Auguste – forgot to tell you, have ordered birthday cake for A. A birthday tea, quarter past four in the library? Say you’ll be there. Love as always, C.

She looked at her handiwork. It was beautiful: glistening black ink on the white paper.

It was time to decide what to do. Another stroke and she would no longer be able to see the land.

She smoothed it out, sprinkled sand, folded it and beckoned to the servant.

Caroline sat, read, stood, sat again to table but couldn’t eat; thought the servant’s gaze on her was speculative as she waved away her plate; sat again, this time in the salon, folding her hands first one way then the other.

She could stop if she chose, at this point
now
, or this one; or this new second, the tock of the clock’s longest hand slotting into the next, then the next. But she didn’t move; she sat, hands in her lap, looking at nothing. And then, at five to four, she stood and went out of the reception room and down the corridor to the library.

A Southern belle to her core, Caroline’s body gave her advance warning of barometric changes: she could feel the oncoming rain in little damp pinpricks up and down her forearm; as she took her seat in the library, dry-throated, rain began to scatter against the French windows which led out to the plantation.

A few moments later André appeared at the French doors, his face swimming in the wash of water on the glass; she unlatched the doors to let him in; and then left them carefully ajar. She scanned his face for evidence of a change for the better, and saw none: André looked like a boy dying for love. As he smoothed the rain out of his hair his movements were quick, jerky and doll-like, his pallor extreme.

Since that day in the classroom, they had barely spoken, still less been alone together; Caroline’s heart fluttered. It was important to play the game perfectly. She bent her head, as if in apology, waiting for his next move.

André looked not at her but up at the books, a smooth skin of leather covering all the walls. He looked at the furniture; over at the door, swallowing; anywhere but at her.

She took his hand. ‘I want us to go away,’ she said, and he looked back at her, astonished. She smiled. ‘We’ll get somewhere far away and start again.’

He reached for her as she’d known he would. She let herself be pulled in but with one eye on the clock – it was getting late, almost ten past – so she held him away from her as he tried to lead her to the door. ‘Here,’ she said, pointing to Auguste’s reading armchair. ‘Please,’ making her mouth open, her eyes glaze as she knew they did when she was possessed by feeling.

André picked her up and settled her on his hips, where she could feel he was hard; now it was all simple. They half-walked, half-fell towards the chair. He knelt in front of her and reached under her dress; she squirmed against his hand, tilted her head to check the time, and reached for the fastening on his trousers.

How silky he was, already pearling with excitement. He raised himself on his toes and pushed himself into her; she gasped – it hurt a little – and as André scrabbled for purchase on the parquet, knuckles bulging on the arms of the chair, the French doors opened inwards and Auguste stood in the room. In his right hand was a poorly wrapped package; André’s birthday present.

Do it now.

Caroline filled her lungs with air and screamed to Auguste to help her, flailing at André with her hands; André turned and shouted out in shock, then pulled away from her and knelt, covering his shame.

Caroline made her eyes wide and pleading, she looked up at her husband. ‘The shame of it! He forced me,’ she whispered, ‘as though possessed…’

Seeing Auguste’s face turn purple, she thought:
He will send the boy away. He will cut him out of the will. I have done it.

But: ‘My love,’ Auguste said to Caroline, and then he toppled. The servants ran into the room and took him by the shoulders and ankles; one of them ran screaming for horses, to fetch the doctor.

They found André’s present afterwards, skidded under a chair. It was a book: a fine new edition of a new book. The inscription read:
To my son, who I always knew would come back
, and the spine said: Thomas Edison’s
PRINCIPLES OF MOTION TELEGRAPHY.

Juliette, i.

The Pathé archivist unrolls the promotional poster lovingly, smoothing the edges with her white cotton gloves.

‘This was made in preparation for the release of the
Petite Mort
,’ she says. ‘It’s all we have in terms of promotional material. Everything else was lost in the fire.’

The poster isn’t as large as the modern ones I’m used to seeing – only a bit bigger than typewriter paper.

At the top of the page, in curvaceous black type, is the title –
LA PETITE MORT.
Underneath, down the right-hand side, is a drawing of a slender woman in a floor-length black dress. Her posture is elegant and composed apart from her face, held between her cupped hands as she stares directly at me. Her lips are pulled back from her teeth as she screams at something we can’t see. In the background, there is a slit window and bare stone walls, and in the corner of the room, a full-length mirror.

The left-hand side has text on it. In the same bold font, it reads:

I signal to the archivist, who comes over to stand beside the desk.

‘They told me the Doppelgänger trick is what’s missing from the print that’s turned up?’

‘Yes, that’s correct.’

‘Do we know what the trick consisted of? Aren’t there any papers?’

She shakes her head apologetically. ‘All we know is the studio gossip. It was supposed to be a great coup, a hitherto unseen trick, and everyone was excited about the film’s release. Only then, there was the fire.’

I look at the poster for a minute longer, as if there might be some hidden detail somewhere, but there is nothing: just the girl, and the mirror, and the castle room.

‘Don’t you have a script somewhere? Couldn’t we get an idea from that?’

She touches the tips of her gloved fingers to each other in turn: ‘No. I’m sorry. We looked all through the archive when the film print was found, but there was nothing.’

The girl’s eyes in the poster are dark blots in a pale face.

THE FOLLOWING DAY
, something happened which eclipsed even Camille’s arrival.

When I got to the costumery at ten past eight Elodie was already there, holding something up to the light for inspection.

‘Is that the Absinthe Fairy’s costume?’ I asked.

It was venom-green: the seed pearls on the bodice were winking at me.

‘That’s it,’ Elodie said, admiring it. ‘Her assistant’s coming to pick it up in a minute. They’re filming today.’

Terpsichore was somewhere close by; perhaps in the very next building, putting on her make-up in front of a mirror, being fussed around by executives and flattered by the director.

I sat at my station and started my machine, trying not to steal glances at the costume. Five minutes later, we heard a clattering of boots in the corridor, and a girl about my own age appeared in the doorway.