The Scapegoat (41 page)

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘What’s that to do with you?’ interrupted his mother. ‘Jean owns the
verrerie
, not you. He had a perfect right to make what arrangements he pleased.’

‘I try to direct it, don’t I?’ said Paul. ‘God knows it’s always been a thankless task. I never wanted to do it. There was nobody else. But why should Jean lie, that’s what I want to know? What
was the point of making fools of us all?’

‘I didn’t want to make fools of you,’ I said. ‘I thought it was the only way to save the
verrerie
. I changed my mind after I came back from Paris. Don’t ask me why. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘How did you think you were going to raise the capital?’ asked Paul. ‘Talbert says that under the new terms it would mean running the
verrerie
at a complete loss.’

‘I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.’

‘Monsieur was hoping for an heir?’ suggested the lawyer. ‘No doubt that is why he confided the matter to Madame la Comtesse Jean? Of course, as things have turned out …’

He stopped. Discretion overwhelmed him. The comtesse stared at him from her chair beside the fire.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘Finish your sentence, Maître. As things have turned out – what?’

The lawyer spoke apologetically to me. ‘I am sure it is no secret to any one of the family, Monsieur, that under the terms of the Marriage Settlement you come into a considerable fortune on the death of your wife.’

‘No secret at all,’ I said.

‘So that in point of fact,’ the lawyer continued, ‘whether the terms of the Carvalet contract are favourable or unfavourable, it doesn’t matter so very much. Increase of capital will cover the loss.’

Nobody seemed to have noticed, or even cared, that Marie-Noel was seated on a stool beside her grandmother, and was listening intently to the conversation.

‘Does Monsieur Talbert mean that Papa gets some money after all?’ she said. ‘I thought he only got money if I had a brother?’

‘Be quiet,’ said her grandmother.

‘Yes,’ said Paul slowly, ‘I suppose we did know that. But it’s not one of the things people discuss in a family. Naturally, every one of us was hoping my sister-in-law would have a son.’

The lawyer said nothing. There was nothing he could say. Paul turned to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but if you don’t mind, I still think it’s only fair to me if I see the contract.’

I threw the bunch of keys on the table. ‘It’s in the valise in the wardrobe,’ I said. ‘Go and find it, if you like.’

Marie-Noel jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll find it,’ she said, seizing the keys. She was out of the room before anyone thought of stopping her. Not that it mattered; the contract would have to be read.

‘Really, Paul,’ said Renée, ‘you’re being very inconsiderate. As Maître Talbert says, the position is changed now, because of poor Françoise’s death, and I hardly think this is the moment to start talking business. It makes me feel extremely uncomfortable, and it must be very painful for Jean.’

‘It’s painful for the whole family,’ said Paul. ‘I don’t want the
verrerie
to benefit because of Françoise. I hate being made a fool of, that’s all.’

Maître Talbert was ill at ease. ‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘I would not have mentioned the matter had I known there was this unfortunate misunderstanding between you as to the terms. Naturally, I am at your disposal, Monsieur,’ he said to me, ‘for a full discussion on this and other matters at any time convenient to you after the funeral.’

‘The funeral will be on Friday,’ said the comtesse. ‘I have already arranged it with Monsieur le curé. My daughter-in-law will be brought home the day after tomorrow and will lie here so that our friends and everyone in the district will have time to pay their respects. I shall of course receive them.’ The lawyer bowed. ‘You will have the kindness, Maître, to see that notification of the death goes to the newspapers this evening, so that it can be read in tomorrow’s editions. I have written the notices myself.’ She took some sheets of paper from her lap, and handed them to him. ‘Monsieur le curé is arranging with the Mother Superior of the convent at Lauray to send sisters to the château to watch during the nights of
Wednesday and Thursday.’ She paused for reflection, tapping the arm of her chair with her fingers. ‘The bearers, of course, will be our own people on the estate. Let us hope the weather holds. My husband died in winter when the snow was on the ground, and the men found it very slippery as they carried him over the bridge.’

The sound of Marie-Noel running down the stairs and across the hall could be heard through the open door.

‘Not so much noise, child,’ said the comtesse as she burst into the room. ‘One should tread softly in a house of mourning.’

Marie-Noel went straight to Paul and gave him the document.

‘Have I your permission?’ he asked, glancing at me.

‘Naturally,’ I said.

For a while there was no sound except the rustling of paper as Paul turned the crisp pages of the contract. Then he turned to me.

‘You realize,’ he said, his voice expressionless, betraying nothing of what he must have felt, ‘that this contract goes against all we agreed to before you went to Paris?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You’ve signed the duplicate and returned it to them?’

‘I signed it in the office on Saturday, and posted it on the way home.’

‘Then there’s nothing more to be done. As Maman says, you own the business, you can make what terms you please. It just means that, as far as I am concerned, trying to run it for you becomes impossible.’

He stood up and handed me back the contract. His frustrated, harassed face looked suddenly old and tired. ‘Heaven knows I don’t pretend to have brains,’ he said, ‘but if I had gone to Paris I could have done better than that. Only someone with immense capital behind him could afford to put his name to such terms. All I can conclude is that you were in an extraordinarily reckless frame of mind the whole time you were in Paris.’

For a moment no one spoke. Then the comtesse reached for the bell beside the fire. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that we needn’t detain Maître Talbert any longer. A prolonged discussion on the future of the
verrerie
is quite out of place at the present time, and I am sure that he must have plenty to do in Villars, as we have here in the château.’

The lawyer shook hands with all of us and followed Gaston from the room.

The comtesse turned to me. ‘You look tired, Jean,’ she said. ‘You’ve had a long, emotional day. Why not have a rest? You have just an hour before we go to church for the special Mass for Françoise which Monsieur le curé has arranged. After that we shall all drive into Villars to the hospital chapel.’

She fumbled for the spectacles hanging beside the crucifix on her bosom, and began to scribble names and addresses on sheets of paper.

I went outside and stood in the grounds beyond the moat. The cattle had come to pasture, and the sun had dipped behind the trees. Beside the dovecot were the ashes of the bonfire, smoky-white. Soon the mist would rise, encompassing the château, and already, with shutters drawn and windows closed, it stood remote from the evening world, from the jackdaws massing in the woods and the black and white cattle cropping the grass.

Paul came and joined me on the terrace under the windows. For a moment or two he smoked a cigarette in silence, then nervously he threw it away, saying abruptly, ‘I meant what I said just now.’

‘What did you say?’ I asked.

‘That it was impossible to run the
verrerie
for you any more.’

‘You said that? I’m sorry. I’d forgotten.’

I turned and looked at him, and his face, perplexed, weary, seemed to merge into that of his sister Blanche, when, tense and watchful, she had stared at me only a little while before as we waited in the hospital. I knew that his sudden doubt of
me, and his aversion, too, sprang not merely from feelings going back to boyhood days, to childish slights and jealousies and quarrels, turning later to suspicion and envy; they were due also to my own blunders in his brother’s name, my own failings and weaknesses that could not be explained. I might, if I had tried, have drawn him to me as a comrade and a friend; instead I had antagonized him, sown still more discord and dislike, and his present mood was part of the damage I had done, like the still face of Françoise in the hospital bed.

‘What’s your reason?’ I asked.

‘My reason?’ He stared down into the moat. ‘We’ve never got on, you know that. You had all the favours and I the kicks. I’ve been used to that my whole life. You asked me to run the
verrerie
for you because nobody else would take it on after Maurice was shot, and you were too idle yourself. I did it for the sake of the family, not for you. At least, up to date, I’ve respected your business judgement, if nothing else. Now I can’t even do that.’

His voice, resentful, bitter, sounded as though he had lost all faith not only in his work but in himself; as if what he had striven to do, through the years, had come to no account, the purpose gone. The foolish contract he had read, which had been set in motion by a stranger during five minutes over the telephone, might have been drawn up deliberately to mock him, tearing asunder everything he had with patience helped to build.

‘Supposing,’ I said slowly, ‘that in future I rely upon your business judgement, not you on mine?’

‘What do you mean?’ His eyes, wretched, doubting, reminded me of those snapshots in the album, where he stood always on the fringe of a group, because the central figure claimed attention, and he, uncertain, somehow did not fit into the picture but was out of place.

‘You said in the salon that you had no brains,’ I said, ‘but that nevertheless, if you had gone to Paris, you could have done
better than I did. You’re right; you could have done. Suppose, in the future, you take on that part of the business – travel, get the orders, go to Paris, London, any city you please, get fresh contacts, meet people, go all over the world if you like – while I stay here?’

He straightened himself and looked at me, puzzled, unbelieving.

‘Are you serious?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I answered. Then, because he looked doubtful still, ‘Don’t you want to travel? Don’t you want to get away?’

‘Not want to get away?’ His laugh was short, mirthless. ‘Naturally I want to get away. I always have done. But there was never the money, nor the opportunity. Nor did you ever make it possible for me.’

‘I can make it possible for you now,’ I said.

Constraint, that had for the moment vanished, came near to us again. He looked away from me. ‘Because you’ve come into a fortune you’re going to play benefactor, is that it?’ he asked.

‘I hadn’t thought of it that way,’ I said. ‘It just struck me suddenly, that your life hasn’t been an easy one. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s rather late for regrets after all these years.’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know. You still haven’t answered my question.’

‘You mean,’ he said, ‘that you’d give me a free hand to travel in Europe, or even America, visiting other factories, other small plants like ours, seeing how it is possible to keep going under similar conditions by using more up-to-date methods, so that at the end of six months or so, when I got back, we might incorporate them here at St Gilles?’

The voice, which had been bitter and resentful, was suddenly interested, alert; and I, who had thought out none of the things he suggested, but was only profoundly sorry for having interfered in his life, realized that unwittingly I had stumbled upon an idea that would give his life new meaning. Instead of seeing himself as the younger brother, put upon, overburdened, never
thanked, he would be transformed into the one who made decisions, bringing fresh blood to what had been decayed and dying, thereby saving both tradition and himself.

‘I believe you could do all that and more,’ I said. ‘Talk to Renée, see what she says. I don’t want to force you to it.’

‘Renée …’ For a moment he frowned, thinking hard, then awkwardly, a little diffident, he said, ‘It might be the answer for us both. We haven’t been very happy – you’ve known that. If I once got her away from here, everything might be different. She’s felt herself wasted at St Gilles, whereas if we were travelling, meeting people, and she had something to think about, she’d stop being bored and dissatisfied, and I’d be a better companion. I wouldn’t seem the country boor that I do to her now.’

He stood staring in front of him, the new image of himself taking shape and substance, and oddly, with a sort of poignancy, I saw the image too – the Paul he wanted to become, wearing flashier clothes, a gaudier tie, playing deck quoits on a transatlantic liner, drinking martinis with Renée in a bar. And through his eyes I saw Renée smiling upon him, elegant and sleek, the pair of them enveloped in a little cloud of their own success which would make them kinder to one another.

‘Can I discuss this with Renée, now, tonight?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Before there’s any chance of you changing your mind?’

‘I shan’t change my mind,’ I said. ‘Good luck to you, Paul.’ And foolishly, like an old-fashioned figure in a drawing-room comedy, I put out my hand to him, and he shook it, stiffly, as though sealing a pact. I wondered if this was forgiveness of my own immediate blunders or whether it also included the past that was not mine.

He turned and disappeared into the château, and I went on standing there, watching the black and white cattle outlined against the dark trees, feeling the first chill of evening touch me from the long grass. Because no one came to join me, and I was undisturbed, I tried to make my own prayer for Françoise,
who was dead through folly and neglect, a prayer which I should not be able to offer later at her special Mass or in the hospital chapel, where acting her husband’s part would make me a deceiver.

When the church bell tolled solemnly, breaking the stillness, and I went and joined the others in the hall, I saw that we were not to walk across to the village as we had done on Sunday, but were to go formally in the cars. Both were drawn up below the terrace, with Gaston in uniform at the wheel of the first and Paul at the second; and the three women, already in deep black, followed by Marie-Noel in a dark winter coat, entered the cars in some order of precedence, which had already been decided upon – the comtesse, myself, and the child in the Renault, and Paul driving his sister and his wife.