Petite Mort (22 page)

And the child isn’t a child yet, is it?

Protesting, the baby kicks hard against her belly: the first time it has moved.

She pulls back from the lip of the pond and waits, fascinated, counting. Sure enough, ten seconds later, still reproachful but fainter, another kick.

As the baby kicks a third time, she finds herself flooded with the last thing she expects – not guilt, not irritation at this demand for attention, but worry for the child. Is it normal for it to kick so much? She puts her hands to her stomach and curves them around it protectively. The skin between her and the womb feels thin under her fingers. Who can she ask if this is normal?

Sadness and irony make her smile. Most women would ask their mothers. She turns and walks back to the house.

That night, André notices that the sparkle is back in her eyes. She goes to bed earlier than usual, kissing him chastely on the lips. He watches her go, relieved. He loves her, but recently he has not known how to help her; now he sees that whatever personal storm she was weathering has blown out to sea and away.

For the rest of the pregnancy Luce is covetous of each kick and murmur. She spends her days on the chaise longue, reading and resting as avidly as some people exercise, eating everything she is meant to eat; she passes the time imagining the baby. Now it is asleep in its permanent night, thumb jammed into its
proto-mouth; now it is rotating, stub-fingers pressing the amniotic sac almost to breaking-point.
What will you be
, she wonders,
a man of money and ambition like your father? Or will you be like me?

André is in his office when the note comes, in Dr Langlois’s precise hand:
Labour commenced an hour ago
. He flings down his pen and whirls his coat round his shoulders. The guards watch him go, astonished: though he has wanted to crow the news from the rooftops since he first heard, André has still not told anybody at Pathé that he is about to be a father.

He feels the change as soon as he sets foot in his house. The servants are keeping downstairs, out of harm’s way, and everything is very still. He runs up the stairs three at a time, up, up to the attic floor, where Thomas stands, holding a fresh bowl of water, outside the door of the confinement room.

The door is half open; André steps forward, suddenly unsure of himself, even on his own turf. Being an orphan, he has no map for this event: aren’t fathers supposed to stay outside?

When he peeps round the open door, he sees Luce stretched – but really stretched, not just lying, every tendon arching in pain – out on the bed. The room smells of exertion. At the foot of the bed stands grey-haired Dr Langlois, peering into his wife, exhorting her with gentle murmurs, over which she screams and screams.

Dr Langlois sees André standing appalled on the threshold, and Luce’s head turns to follow the doctor’s look, so he receives both looks at the same time: the doctor smiling his reassurance and Luce baring her teeth. He does not know which to believe, but ‘Perhaps you’ll wait outside?’ the doctor says, still encouraging and kind; so he does. Time passes slowly but at least it passes; the screams become weaker. ‘That’s a good sign,’ he says to Thomas, ‘she is in less pain, the baby’s coming.’

They hear Dr Langlois’ voice slightly raised, as though he is
telling Luce off. Then the screams become fainter. André nods vigorously – they are almost there now. He does not care if it is a boy or a girl, doesn’t care whether it is tall or small or gifted or plain, as long as it’s theirs. The day is not quite gone; a pale streak lines the sky above the horizon but that is all.

The sound of crying, quickly stifled; but not a child’s crying. Dr Langlois appears in the doorway, wiping blood into a cloth; not his blood.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, still kindly, ‘she’s conscious, and she’ll recover, but she has lost the baby.’

André smiles, polite and uncomprehending.

‘Stillborn,’ Dr Langlois says, shaking his head. He reaches out and puts one palm on André’s shoulder, steadying him; the palm is damp.

André pushes past him and into the room. He won’t believe a trick until he sees its outcome.

The thing is laid out on a chair, swaddled in its swaddling clothes up to the neck. Its features are all there – the mouth half open, the eyelids fat and closed – but an object more than a human. He expects it to burst into life and take a breath at any moment, but it persists in its silence and its stillness.

‘It may have stopped growing a couple of months ago,’ Dr Langlois tells him. André shakes his head to say,
But we were so careful
, thinking of Luce sitting beautifully on her couch; and then shakes his head again. He can’t see anything of himself or of her in this tiny half-amphibian.

Luce watches André from the bed. She knows what has happened; tears ooze from under her eyelids. When they try to tell her some things about the baby – sex, size – she lets her face go blank, and doesn’t hear them. Two days later André arranges a small funeral in the grounds of the house, which she does not attend.

But it isn’t over, not yet. They tie her to the bed in the attic,
and she forgets things: she forgets who André is and when he comes to sit beside her, she thinks it is a stranger, unpardonable in his rudeness, gripping her hand.
How dare you
, she hisses, and hearing how much like a stranger she has become herself, she laughs.

To try to make it clear to her, they move the empty crib they had bought for the baby into her room. Every day a doctor comes and asks her:
Do you know what this is? Do you remember what it was meant to be for?
Sometimes she thinks she has become an animal: a cat or a wolf or an owl, staring at her own sleeping form on the bed from the other side of the window. She learns to slip the knots around her wrists, and goes wandering through the attics, chafing the skin of her hands to warm the joints, she walks up and down the corridor, thinking she has heard the baby calling for her. But when Thomas comes to fetch her he tells her it is only an owl hooting, and there it is – bluish and terrifyingly large in the moonlight – perched on the windowsill, looking in at her.
I did hear the baby
, she hears herself insisting. Deferential, with a bob of the head, the owl slips off the sill and takes flight; Thomas smiles –
Madame, take your medicine
– and she watches fascinated: the owl’s wings move mechanically, a stage prop flying away.

When they escort her downstairs, she is surprised to see that it is still autumn, or autumn again. André’s hand is on her arm, guiding her; at her questioning look, he nods: yes, a year has passed.

Everything looks frail but familiar. The chaise longue is as it was, but wafer thin in the pale afternoon light; the desks, chairs are watery and sly; even the books on the shelves seem to be holding their secrets away from her.

From this she deduces that she is still not quite well.

André is in the room, in another chair, but she doesn’t know what to say to him. A year!

She knows the stillbirth was her fault, because she had once thought of killing it, and someone, somehow, knew.

It is time André was made aware; it is carrying this secret which has kept her chained to the bed. She opens her mouth to tell André, but feels his hand laid over her own, a warning to keep quiet.

The silence runs down from their joined hands and over them and spreads out over the carpet, blending with the sunset, which is unexpectedly fiery and distinct. They sit like statuary of a king and a queen, saying nothing to each other. Eventually the silence fills the whole house.

Juliette, v
.

The man from public records sighs; it’s his lunch hour.

He says: ‘The cottage that is currently owned by Mme Ruillaux was built in 1930.’

I scribble 1930 on my pad; prop the telephone in the crook of my shoulder and ask: ‘By whom?’

Another sigh. ‘A M. Undin. But he never lived there; he was an absentee landlord. According to this, it was occupied on a short-term basis until 1945, when M. Undin was killed. Mme Ruillaux bought it at auction.’

I ask: ‘How short-term?’

‘The tenants changed every year or two.’

‘Can you see anything about their occupations?’

He sounds affronted. ‘Of course. This is Public Records.’

‘Is there anyone who worked at the Pathé factory?’

I imagine him running his finger down a list of names. ‘I’m sorry. There’s nothing here that I can see.’

‘There’s no connection? No wife or husband or other tenants?’

‘I’m sorry. No.’

I say: ‘Can you send me the list of names anyway?’

WHILE HER ARM HEALED
, she stayed in bed, and I went to read to her every afternoon.

But she was not quite herself. I chose passages from Zola, to which she listened with a kind of pained attention, as if she were trying to tether herself to the room.

Sometimes, out of nowhere, her breathing became raucous, as if she was drowning in front of me. ‘Is it because of the child?’ I’d ask; and she’d nod. She would clutch at my hand; I would scream for Thomas, and he’d come running, bringing wet cloths, and smelling salts.

Afterwards we would sit in silence. If I tried to talk to her, about the baby, she would shake her head, squeeze her eyes tight shut, and the tears would come so quickly that I gave it up; pressed her hand and shushed her.

Once, I climbed into the bed beside her. We made love quickly, and afterwards she slept.

In early November she came downstairs.

She stood in the middle of the salon, held her arms out in front of her and smiled. ‘I’m so thin,’ she said.

I told her the truth, which was that she looked luminous.

She smiled shyly, as if she didn’t know whether or not to believe me.

Visitors came. Aurélie, every couple of days, once with a bouquet of flowers so enormous it obscured her face; the
Duchesse de Guise, to sit poker-straight and bemoan the passing of moral rectitude; other women, actresses and friends, whom I had never met before.

André stayed at home. When I passed him in the corridor, he would blow theatrically on his hands and say ‘It’s too cold to go to the studio.’ Nevertheless, he always seemed to be on the way to his study, so I had no doubt he was working on something; besides which, he too had visitors, workmen holding their caps and looking at the fine plasterwork, and Pathé bosses, clearing their throats and waiting for Thomas to take their umbrellas, almost every day, sometimes spending long hours in the study with him, and often staying for supper with us.

He talked openly about
Petite Mort
at the dinner table – the process of arranging the sets, selecting the actors, finding a reliable cameraman – his guests nodding with rapt attention.

Luce ate quietly, seeming indifferent to everything that was said.

At night, it was like a door opening: she spoke to me more. She told me what she was feeling; told me things from her past without my asking; in bed, she told me what she liked and didn’t like, in a constant, hoarse whisper, as if we were not the only ones in the room, and she was rough: not with me, with herself. Intermingled with her words were reckless terms of endearment:
My only one. My right hand
.

One night, she took my fingers and curled them into a fist; I pulled away.

I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry as long as she was like this. But suddenly I couldn’t help it. ‘I can’t do this,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand what’s wrong with you. It’s like you don’t even see me.’

She had lain down on her back again; now her head turned towards me. Her breathing slowed; not the panicked whispering I’d grown used to.

‘I do see you,’ she said.

I reached for her hands. ‘We have to go away. You’ll be all right if you’re not in this house.’

She squeezed my fingers in hers: listening.

‘Somewhere nobody would know us,’ I said.

She took a breath. ‘What would we do for money?’

‘Spend yours.’

She said: ‘It’s in André’s name.’

‘I’ll work. I’ll make costumes, or clean. I don’t care.’

She looked at me critically. ‘You don’t care at all?’

‘Anything.’

She laughed. ‘Then it’s easy, isn’t it?’

The laugh she gave was wild, but I didn’t hear that. I heard her saying yes.

Aurélie visited again, and more often, and spent as much as an hour with Luce, sitting, holding her hand and talking in low voices. I welcomed her warmly and offered to make myself scarce, because I had a secret. Even André’s whistling and constant presence could not touch my mood: I smiled at him over supper, and laughed at his jokes – laughed for the two of us.

In bed at night, I closed my eyes and gave myself over to calculation. Nearing Christmas, the house was awash with money: gold brocade hung from the banisters, and boxes of expensive fancies arrived every day in preparation for the Ice Ball which they held every New Year. But none of it was cash. Luce and I spent our afternoons making paper chains, whilst I wondered out loud, turning our problem over and over.

She still had sudden fits of panic. She would clutch my hands and shut her eyes tight; but when I asked her what was wrong, she only pressed her lips into a line and shook her head.

‘We will really go away,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Of course,’ and smiled back at her, happy
to see her face clear. ‘Now let me think.’

I closed my eyes and let the winter sunlight play over my eyelids, making shapes like a child’s kaleidoscope. And in time the plan unfurled as if it had always been dormant in my mind, only wanting an opportunity to be exercised.

NEW YEAR’S EVE:
the coldest in living memory. It was too cold for wind, for clouds; the trees rocked silently in the cradle of their roots. Birds fell from the sky in the icy Paris night and, of course, it was the day Aleksandr Romanov died. The ageing Russian princeling was found frozen to death in a gutter in the Latin Quarter, his fingers curled around a bottle of vodka, wearing nothing but a top hat and a happy grin.