The Scapegoat (24 page)

‘Well,’ she said, ‘where were you?’

I guessed that everything Renée and Marie-Noel knew of my morning had already been told: the drive to Villars, the expedition to the market, the visit to the bank, and possibly, through a telephone call to the clerk, the actual moment of
my leaving it. The fact that she asked where I had been showed ignorance of the house by the canal. This was something, then, which Jean de Gué withheld from his mother.

‘I had business,’ I said.

‘You left the bank before half past twelve,’ she said, ‘and it’s now half past six.’

‘Perhaps I drove to Le Mans,’ I said.

‘Not in the Renault. It was in the Place de la République all afternoon. The man who drove Renée home reported seeing it when he returned to the garage in Villars. I told Renée to telephone and ask him.’

I smiled. The itching curiosity was blatant, like a child’s.

‘If you want the truth,’ I said, ‘I was trying to avoid Renée. And I succeeded. That’s all I’m going to tell you. You can question me until midnight and you won’t be any the wiser.’

She chuckled, and I saw that once again my instinct not to lie proved my salvation. ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said. ‘Don’t give in to her, or she’ll prove insatiable.’

‘She hasn’t enough to do,’ I said. ‘None of you women have enough to do.’

‘I had plenty to do once,’ she said, ‘when your father was alive, in the old days, before the war and before you married. There were no women sitting about idle then. Empty-headed fools like Françoise and Renée were children in their teens. I had something to live for. So had Blanche.’

The sudden venom in her voice startled me. I looked up, and the mouth was narrow, hard, like her daughter’s, and the eyes that had mocked me a moment ago were veiled under the hooded lids.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘You know very well what I mean,’ she said, and then, as swiftly as it had come, her expression changed again, the mouth sagged, relaxed, and she shrugged her shoulders. ‘I’m old and ill, that’s my trouble,’ she said, ‘and it bores me, as it will bore you when your time comes. We’re too much alike. We don’t
want to be bothered with our own ailments or anybody else’s. How is Françoise this evening?’

I felt I had been near to some inner core of revelation that, could I perceive it for a moment, would bring understanding of what went on under the folds of flesh, but the new question came from another quarter, the quiet, elaborately casual tone was that of someone without heart or feeling.

‘As you know, I missed Lebrun,’ I said. ‘He’s going to telephone me later. She has to stay in bed. She isn’t at all well.’

I watched her fingers beating a tattoo on the arm of her chair. It went to a definite rhythm – three and two and three again. Glancing at her, I saw that she was not conscious of this; she did not even know that her fingers moved. The tattoo was keeping pace with a thought not clearly formed, to which she might, or might not, give expression.

‘I saw Lebrun myself,’ she said. ‘He won’t tell you any more than he told me. He’s a bungler, and he won’t admit it. She’s going to have trouble with this baby, just as she did with the last – I’ve known it all along. The only difference is that this time she’s succeeded in carrying it longer.’

The tattooing on the chair-arm continued. I watched it, oddly fascinated.

‘Françoise doesn’t want a specialist,’ I said. ‘I suggested it just now.’

‘You suggested it?’ she asked. ‘Whatever for?’

‘Why surely,’ I said, ‘if there’s going to be difficulty, any sort of trouble …’ Unaccountably, her eyes meeting mine, discomfort seized me. I remembered the terms of the Marriage Settlement, and that if Françoise died without giving birth to a son the whole vast dowry would be divided between Jean de Gué and Marie-Noel.

The room, already stifling, became suddenly unbearable. I got up, loosening my collar. I felt her eyes upon my back as I went over to the window, but she did not say anything as I stood there, wrestling with the shutters. I threw them back, lifting
the sash of one of the windows, and leant out, drawing in a deep breath of air. Dusk had come, and with it mist. The paths were shrouded, the huntress hidden, even the dovecot on the verge of grass below was black and humped into obscurity. Immediately beside me was a gargoyle’s head, ears flattened, slits for eyes, the jutting lips forming a spout for rain. The leaded guttering was choked with leaves, and when rain came the whole would turn to mud and pour from the gargoyle’s mouth in a turbid stream. How loud the sound of rain would be here, close to the roof, first pattering on the leads, then falling fast, seeping down the walls, swirling in the runways, choking and gurgling above the gargoyle head, driving sideways like arrows to the windows, stinging the panes; and to the owner of this room beneath the roof, lying alone in bed, there would be no other sound, perhaps, for hour after hour through the long winter’s night but the falling rain, and the flood of leaves and rubble through the gargoyle’s mouth.

I shut the window and looked back into the room. She was watching me still, but her hands no longer beat a tattoo on the chair.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said. ‘You’re nervous, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ I answered. ‘I couldn’t breathe, that’s all. You keep this room too warm.’

‘If so, it’s partly for your sake,’ she said. ‘You always say the château is too cold. Come over here.’

I went towards her slowly, against my will. Those eyes of hers, so like her son’s, so like my own confronted in a mirror, surely had intuition of the masquerade. She reached for my hands and held them.

‘Are you developing a conscience at long last?’ she asked.

They say the touch of hands reveals the self. A child puts his into an adult’s, and knows instinctively whether to trust or to dislike. Two nights ago these hands had clutched and pleaded, panic-stricken, lost, and now this evening they were stronger
than mine; the grip was firm, the pressure ruthless. Her hands neither gave confidence nor sapped it: they turned the assurance I had to a different plane. The faith she had in her son was so intense that even if she did not know his secrets, or share more than a small part of his life, it was as though he remained within her, bound and sightless as he had been before birth, and she would never loose him.

‘Don’t let’s become sentimental,’ she said, ‘and trouble ourselves over what fate sends us. It’s too late, for you and for me. Life isn’t a short affair, as everybody likes to make out; it’s long, much too long. We are neither of us going to die for years. For God’s sake let us both be comfortable, if we can.’

A discreet tap at the door revealed Charlotte with the tray, followed by Germaine with a second, and once again there was the ritual of the meal, now familiar to me. The first evening the comtesse had barely tasted food, but tonight she sopped up her soup with soft pieces of bread, mushing it to a broth, her eyes intent, her chin nearly touching her plate. I thought of the ham and cheese and fruit in the house in Villars, and my companion there, and I wondered what Béla’s life was in the evening; whether she went out and dined with friends, whether she sat alone, how it would seem there with the shutters closed. The mother turned to me, forking a piece of steak from her mouth to one of the dogs, and said, ‘Why are you so silent? What are you thinking about?’

‘A woman,’ I said. ‘Nobody you know.’

‘Does she suit you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s all that matters. Your father kept a mistress for a time in Le Mans,’ she said. ‘I saw her once, red-haired, a perfect beauty. He used to go and see her every Friday. It made him better tempered at week-ends. Then she married a rich butcher and went off to live in Tours. I was sorry when she went; she did him good.’

Charlotte brought us
créme caramel
in little pots. The dogs waited expectantly, paws lifted.

‘So you let Marie-Noel drive back from Villars with Julie and her grandson,’ she continued, switching her train of thought. ‘She came to me full of it, said she preferred it to the Renault. Who drove, I asked? One of the workmen, she said, the young one with curly hair. She said she liked his smell. Tell that to your aunt Blanche, I said. See what she has to say.’

So Madame Yves was Julie. I was relieved. In the return to find Françoise ill in bed I had forgotten the child and the lorry.

‘All children like driving in lorries,’ I said. ‘I probably did the same myself.’

‘You?’ She laughed. ‘Better forget what you got up to at her age. Have you forgotten little Cécile who came to tea? You took her inside the dovecot and locked the door. Her mother never brought her again. Poor Cécile … Watch Marie-Noel, she’s growing fast.’

‘It’s not very amusing,’ I said, ‘being an only child.’

‘Nonsense, she loves it. She doesn’t want other children. She likes them older. I know, I was the same at her age. I fell in love with all my grown-up cousins. Marie-Noel hasn’t any cousins. She’ll fall in love with the workmen at the
verrerie
instead.’

There was a knock on the door. ‘Who is it?’ she called. ‘Come in. I hate people who knock on doors.’

Germaine stood in the doorway. ‘Dr Lebrun on the telephone for Monsieur le Comte,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ I got up, laying down my napkin on the tray.

‘Better say good night to me now. I shall be tired directly. Tell the old fool not to panic. All Françoise has to do is to keep her feet up, and she may produce a boy. Kiss me, then.’ The hands gripped me once again, the eyes held mine. ‘None of this nonsense about specialists. They cost too much,’ she said.

I went out of the room, down the stairs, and to the telephone in the cloakroom. Marie-Noel, in her dressing-gown,
was waiting by the instrument. She looked at me anxiously, her face pale.

‘Can I listen in aunt Blanche’s room?’ she asked.

‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘Dr Lebrun wants to speak to me.’

‘Will you tell me what he says afterwards?’

‘I don’t know.’

I pushed her out of the way, went into the cloakroom and shut the door. I said ‘Hullo?’ and the voice of the doctor answered, high-pitched, elderly, running on and on in a flurry of words.

‘Good evening, Monsieur le Comte, it was so unfortunate that we missed one another this morning. I was in Villars this afternoon and could have seen you there, even, had I known where to find you. Now I found Madame la Comtesse Jean in a highly nervous state, very apprehensive about herself, and certainly any agitation at this stage might easily bring things on before the natural term, and taking into consideration the difficulties she has had before, the anaemia and so on, she might have considerable trouble. In fact, it is essential that she should have complete rest during the next few days; this moment during the seventh month can be critical, you understand. I am not alarming you in any way?’

He paused two seconds to draw breath, and I asked him whether he would like a consultation with a specialist.

‘Not at present,’ he said. ‘If your wife rests and has no further symptoms of malaise, above all no sign of haemorrhage, then all should be well. For the event itself I would suggest that she goes to the clinic at Le Mans, but that can be discussed in a few weeks. At any rate, I shall be in touch with you constantly, and will give you another ring tomorrow. By the way, you are expecting me on Sunday, I suppose?’

Perhaps it was his custom to take lunch at the château on Sunday, or pay, not a visit of inspection to his patients, but a ceremonial call.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘We shall be delighted to see you.’

‘Luckily your bedroom faces the front. Your wife will not be disturbed. Very well then, we shall meet on Sunday.’

‘Au revoir
, doctor.’

I hung up the receiver. Your wife will not be disturbed … Was Sunday lunch so convivial that the sound of merriment echoed through the salon and rang to the rafters of the château? It was unlikely, and I wondered what he meant. I went out of the cloakroom, and Marie-Noel was still there.

‘Well?’ she asked quickly. ‘What did he say?’

‘He said Maman was to stay in bed.’

‘Is the baby ready to come?’

‘No.’

‘Then why was everybody saying that it was, and if it did come it would be born dead?’

‘Who said so?’

‘Germaine, Charlotte, everybody. I heard them talking in the kitchen.’

‘People who listen at doors always hear lies.’

I could hear Paul talking to Renée in the dining-room. They had not yet finished dinner. I went into the salon, the child following me.

‘Papa,’ she said, and she was whispering now, ‘is Maman ill because I broke the porcelain and made her unhappy?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s got nothing to do with it.’

I sat down on the arm of the chair and pulled her to me.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ I asked. ‘Why are you so nervous?’

Her eyes flickered away from me, looked at everything in the room but me.

‘I don’t see why you want it,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t see why you want to have this baby. Maman thinks it is a nuisance. She told aunt Renée a long time ago that she wished she didn’t have to have it.’

Her question, so full of anxiety, was surely logical. Why was her mother obliged to have a child she did not want? I wished
she could have asked the reason of Jean de Gué. I made a sorry substitute. In the circumstances it seemed easiest to tell the truth as I saw it myself.

‘It’s peculiar,’ I said, ‘and rather cold-blooded, really. Your grandfather Bruyère had a lot of money. He tied it up in such a way that your father and mother can’t use any of it unless they have a son. So, even though they are perfectly content with their one daughter, it would make things much easier financially if they could have a son.’

The instant look of relief upon her face was as though she had been given a blessed antidote to physical pain.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘is that all? Just for money?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Mercenary, isn’t it?’

‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I think it’s very sensible. Does it mean the more boys you have, the more money you and Maman get for yourselves?’

‘Hardly,’ I said. ‘It just works for one.’