Harriet Smart: The Romances, page 53
After that she did not linger.
She pressed on and found herself on a road she remembered vividly – the road from Point Croix to the Seigneurie. It passed through a long tunnel of trees before it emerged into the light again. Then, on the right-hand side, there was a pair of high gates making the world beyond private and invisible to the casual passer-by.
She pulled up nearby, not yet ready to go in.
That woman in the restaurant – she could not shake the image of her sitting there in her faded print dress and dirty old coat, with the pins falling out of her wild, dry hair. What on earth had happened to her to make her cry like that? What had she lost, who had she lost? She had set Saskia’s already raw nerves vibrating, making her feel all her pain as well as her own. She had looked like something in a Greek tragedy, except this was a French tragedy.
This was not, Saskia realised, the country she had left when she was twelve. It was not the hedged-in world of her pampered childhood where meals appeared on the table without her asking for them, where her clothes were laid out for her each morning. This was a country that had been humiliated and trounced, which had suffered far more than Britain had. What sort of a fool was she to think it might be a comfortable sanctuary? A desperate one, no doubt. So Saskia sat and let herself cry too, feeling shards of glass in her heart.
Eventually she found the courage to get out. She had come this far, she decided; she might as well see for herself the ruins of her dreams.
She struggled to open the gates, their springs groaning noisily in protest at being disturbed and to alert the world of an invader. To them, Saskia was a trespasser.
Ahead of her stretched the drive, little more than a weedy, muddy track now, through the woodland which was hopelessly overgrown, choked with bracken, brambles and saplings. It had rained heavily earlier in the day, and the rain seemed to hang in those woods, making them sodden and on the verge of rot. She peered into it, remembering how lily of the valley had once grown there in profusion, making a heady perfume when mixed with the sweet stink of wild garlic, but she could not see any sign of them. They had been choked out.
Then she tried to identify the path up to the chapel, but there were no signs of any tracks through the woods any more. The chapel was probably drowned under all this growth. She would only be able to find it again if she took a knife and hacked her way through. Taming this would be impossible. She imagined hours of back-breaking work, only to have the plants creep back again and imprison her, pulling her down and muffling her cries with swags of creepers.
She wrapped her arms around her and walked briskly until she reached the sharp bend in the track. Any moment now she knew she would see the house – or at least what remained of it.
She smelt the tang of wood smoke in the air and the distant promise of a warm fire and a welcome. The smell puzzled her – there was no other house within striking distance, and there was no wind to carry the smell of smoke so far. There was only one place where it could be coming from, and that was the house.
She walked around the bend, and at last looked down the final stretch of the drive towards the house.
There it sat, like a picture from a fairy story, surrounded by its protecting walls of grey granite. The round-roofed tower still guarded the entrance and an elegant pointed archway still led into the courtyard. It was not a ruin. It was just as she remembered.
She stared, incredulous, expecting any minute that this hallucination would evaporate and be replaced by a smoking ruin. But it did not. The only smoke came from just where it should: the big chimney at the end of the main range.
She went through the stone arch and saw that there were tulips growing in large stone pots. Their colour perfectly matched the crimson paint of the window frames and the door, the same exuberant shade that they had always been painted. Her father had chosen the colour – and her mother had hated it.
Someone had been caring for the place, and caring for it well. She noticed that one or two of the windows were open – perhaps this was the day this miraculous person came to clean and air the place. If so, she had chosen a good time to arrive.
She twisted the large bronze ring on the front door. It yielded, and the door opened to reveal the big entrance hall with its floor of hexagonal tiles. In the middle was the long table of polished oak, with bulbous legs, somewhat like the thighs of Elizabethan gentlemen in their doublets. Her mother had always made a point of putting a large, elaborate flower arrangement on it – a protest against her father’s perpetual mess; the hats, dog leads, sticks, old letters, books and painting equipment that seemed to wash up there, as on a tide margin. Today the flowers were there, but no debris, and the table top gleamed with polish. It was all just as her mother would have wished to see it.
She went in and looked around, still quite unable to grasp it. She reached out and touched one of the egg-yolk yellow narcissi in the flower arrangement, checking to see if it was real. If someone had been expecting her, this would not have been so strange. The flowers would be there to welcome her and the apple-pie order of the place would have been entirely appropriate. But no one was expecting her.
Then she realised she was not alone. A middle-aged woman, dressed in a black dress and a white ruffled apron, had appeared from the back. She stopped in her tracks, as puzzled as Saskia was. She did not look like a caretaker. She looked like a maid.
Had Mr Wendover got it wrong? Had the house had been sold after all?
THE TRUE VALUE OF PEARLS
Chapter Thirteen
“Oui?” said the maid, curtly. Not a respectful, “Oui, Madame?”
Saskia realised that she must look so disreputable as to be beyond the reach of the automatic courtesy of France. If the maid had had her broom in her hands, she would probably have tried to push her out with it, like a stray dog.
“Do you work here?” Saskia said.
“Of course,” the maid said. “So, what do you want?”
“This –” Saskia began and broke off. She had intended to say: “This is my house,” but that would sound ridiculous. She was searching for the right phrase when they were interrupted by the noise of a car drawing up in the courtyard outside.
“Georgette!” a woman’s voice rang out. “Monsieur le Comte is here!” This was accompanied by the sound of high heels on stone flags.
The maid looked flustered and began to shoo Saskia towards the open door.
“Georgette, who is this?” said the woman coming into the hall.
“I don’t know, Madame,” said Georgette. “She just walked in.”
Saskia drew herself up and turned to face her. This woman was clearly the mistress of the house – of her house, apparently, if it was still hers.
She was wearing a blue silk dress, and was immaculately turned out.
“Madame,” she said, “my name is –”
She did not get a chance to finish, for now a white-haired man with a finely-trained moustache strolled in and Georgette scuttled forward to take his hat and silver-topped stick. He stood taking off his gloves, with ritualistic precision, while Georgette waited for him to finish.
“Monsieur,” Saskia added, thinking it best to include him. In his dandyish magnificence he could scarcely be ignored. “My name is Saskia Harper, and –”
“No –?” said the woman in blue silk. She was looking at her with curiosity.
“Yes?” Monsieur prompted Saskia with a cold stare.
“And this is my house,” she said as firmly as she could.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
“My house,” she repeated, “I believe.”
He turned to the woman in blue silk.
“What is going on, Marianne?” he said. “Who is this?”
“Oh, nothing for you to worry about, my dear,” the woman called Marianne said, stepping forward and taking his arm. She used the familiar ‘tu’, Saskia noticed. “Nothing at all,” she went on in a soothing whisper and led him off towards the salon. “Now, would you like some champagne, cheri, or perhaps a whisky and soda?”
Saskia was going to follow, but Georgette jumped into her path. The door closed behind them.
“Please tell your employer that I must speak to her at once,” Saskia said.
“Madame is busy, as you can see. You had better leave.”
“I wish to see her now.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“I think it is!” Saskia exclaimed, and attempted to dodge past Georgette, without success. They were engaged in this ridiculous little dance when Madame came out of the salon again. They stopped in their tracks as she carefully closed the doors behind her.
“Madame, she won’t leave,” said Georgette.
“Go and see to Monsieur le Comte, Georgette,” said Madame. Then she looked at Saskia. “May I have a word?” She walked across the hall, towards the door, then stopped, apparently waiting for Saskia to join her.
Saskia hesitated, and then took a few steps towards her.
“You’ve got a nerve coming here!” Madame burst out in perfect English, but with a strong Scots accent. “I want you to leave my house, right now!” She flung her hand out towards the door.
“Who are you?” Saskia managed to say. “What are you doing in my house?”
“Your house?” she said. “Well, that’s rich! Your house!”
“It’s my house,” Saskia said. “And who are you?”
“Don’t you know who I am?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
Marianne stared at her.
“You really don’t know?” she said.
“No, I don’t,” Saskia said again.
Madame then drew herself up a little, like a cat preparing to defend its patch.
“I am Mrs Lionel Wilde,” she said.
“I’m sorry, did you just say...?” Saskia began and then gave up, lost for words.
“I’m your father’s widow. Your step-mother. Oh, come on now, you’re not going to pretend you didn’t know about me, are you?”
“But he never said anything to me –” Saskia began.
“Oh really?” she said, as if she did not believe her for one minute. “He told me all about you.”
Saskia’s hands sought the comfort of Owen’s overcoat pockets. She raked through all the conversations she had had with her father over his last years, looking for some hint of this. But he had said nothing of the Seigneurie other than that he had sold it to a local farmer and got out as best he could. He had said he did not want to talk about France. He had come home, he had kept repeating it. He had needed to come home.
That had been in 1941. He had been a wrecked man. He had had nowhere to stay and hardly any money. He had camped with Saskia in her bed-sitting room in Chelsea, much to the fury of her landlady.
“He never said a word about you,” Saskia said. “Not a word.”
There was a long silence. Madame fiddled with the cross that she wore at her throat.
“The world got between us,” she said. “But I hoped he would come back. Come back to where he belonged. But he never did.”
“How did you know he was dead?”
“He left a letter for me – to be sent if he died. That hospital you put him in sent it. Of course, I didn’t get it until after the war.” She looked away a moment. Saskia saw her swallow hard. Then she turned back to Saskia with a blazing look: “And to find out that you put him in that dreadful place!”
“He was ill,” she said. “I wanted to look after him, but –”
“I would have cared for him!” she cut in. “As you should have done. And now you think you can come here and claim this house is yours. How dare you?”
“I have the papers.”
She shook her head.
“This house belongs to me. I am his wife. That’s the way the law goes here.”
“But he made a will. I’ve seen the will. And my solicitor says –”
“I want you to leave.”
“I think we should discuss this. His will is very clear,” Saskia said.
“You really do have some gall,” she said. “To come here, unannounced, and try to throw me out of my home!”
“There has been a misunderstanding,” Saskia began. “And –”
“Which you’re trying to use to your advantage.”
“Which we need to sort out,” Saskia said, as firmly as she could.
“There is nothing to sort out. The law is clear. This house is mine and you can have no claim on it.”
“I think we should both talk to our lawyers.”
“There’s no point. You’ll be wasting your money. Oh, I know it’s wrong of me, but it gives me great satisfaction to tell you what’s what! After what you did to him, it’s the least you deserve. You know he hated you,” she went on. “That’s what he said in that letter. That he hated you. That he never, never could forgive you for putting him in that horrible place.”
“If you had seen him, you would have done the same. I had no choice,” Saskia said.
But how could she honestly begin to disagree with her? She had seen and felt his hatred when she had gone to visit him at the asylum. She had seen him slumped in his chair, lethargic with misery and refusing to move for anyone. But he had always found the will to turn away from her.
THE TRUE VALUE OF PEARLS
Chapter Fourteen
Saskia was lost again.
She knew she was no longer on the road to Point Croix, where she had decided to find a cheap hotel and some legal advice.
A rainstorm came on, apparently from nowhere, turning the sky grey-violet, electrifying the air, turning the roads to a mire of mud. The windscreen wipers were having trouble clearing the rain and Saskia could scarcely see where she was going. She found herself driving along a narrow twisting road, lined with huge forbidding trees that hung over the road, with dense, untamed undergrowth below. It looked like the sort of place where wolves and bandits lurked.
She was on the verge of stopping to try and make sense of where she was on the map, when the rain turned into hail. She was approaching a sharp bend, and bewildered by the onslaught, she did not slow down, but went wheeling about the corner, scarcely in control of the van.
As she rounded the bend, braking as much as she could, something crunched against the bonnet. Something like a big, heavy sack, but Saskia knew at once it was a not a sack. It felt like an animal. She slammed on the brakes. There was the most excruciating noise, and she jolted violently forwards.
She hurled herself out of the cab and into the lash of the hailstorm to see what it was she had hit. In the gloom she could see a trilby hat lying on the ground and beside it, a body.
She had knocked down a man.
She ran over and crouched down on the sodden ground, blinking against the hail, and saw that it was the man from the restaurant in Pont Croix.
He was lying in a rapidly rising puddle. His beautiful tweed coat was twisted about him like a straitjacket and he was trussed up by the broad leather strap of the bag he was wearing crossways across his body. He was as still as a corpse. Had she killed him?
Saskia had seen her share of mangled bodies, but she hadn’t been responsible for them. It was as if the van had hit her as well. She had to struggle to breathe, to think rationally and practically.
She seized his hand and felt for his pulse. It was beating strongly, though not as fast as hers. He stirred a little and soon he began to twitch back into full consciousness.
“Careful now,” Saskia said, putting her arms about him to support him as he struggled to sit up. He stared at her, puzzled and in pain. Then recognition flickered across his face. He focused on her for a moment longer, then lunged forward, catching his head between his hands. It was then Saskia saw the blood oozing through his hair.
“You were out for a few moments,” she said. “Can you still feel your toes?” She had to think very hard to remember the French word for toes. He nodded. “And your legs?”
“Yes,” he said, softly, and with effort looked up at her and then at the van. “That’s your... ?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“You knock-ed me down?” he said, in clumsy English.
“Yes, yes, I did. I am sorry.” He closed his eyes again and flopped forward. “I’m going to take you to a doctor,” she said. “Everything is going to be all right.”
Be calm, be cheerful, be reassuring: that was what they had been taught in the ARP. It had worked well enough at the time, but now Saskia felt as if she was spouting platitudes. She had no idea to what extent she might have injured him. He had been knocked ten feet by the force of the van and that would have done God knows what to his insides. Not to mention that terrible cut on his head. She thought of slapping her dirty handkerchief on it in an attempt to staunch the bleeding, but then decided that would do more harm than good.
The hail had been replaced by heavy rain. He was shaking and she was as well. Since he seemed to have feeling in his legs, she decided it would be safe to walk him to the back of the van and get him into it. If he had sprained something then that wouldn’t damage things too much. She had a small first aid kit and could at least patch him up a little.
He grunted as they stood up together. His whole weight was on her as they staggered over to the back of the van. His breathing was choppy and alarming. He clutched at her and Saskia feverishly wondered how many of his bones she had managed to shatter with her carelessness.
Her bed remained spread out on the floor of the van – a misshapen heap of eiderdown and blankets, tossed around by her erratic driving. She eased him down onto it. He lay there panting, his eyes closed while she fussed over him, trying to make him comfortable, knowing all the time how little she could do for him. She found some iodine and dabbed it on the open cut, which made him swear violently, and probably did very little good. It was going to need stitches.
She wondered how far she was from Point Croix. If she retraced her steps she would perhaps regain the right road. But she would have to drive slowly – very slowly.
She reached for the buckle of his shoulder bag, intending to undo it and take it from him. It was cutting across his chest, constricting his breathing. But the moment she tried to loosen it, he grabbed her hand and resisted her, fiercely.
