Petite Mort (25 page)

‘I don’t have a passport.’

Her face falls. ‘Calais, then.’

‘We can’t use Hubert to get to the station. Nobody must know where we’ve gone.’

She bites the ragged skin at the corner of her thumbnail.

‘We’ll hail a cab from the road.’

‘What about our suitcases? Won’t Thomas see us leaving?’

‘I’ll ask him to clear out the back bedrooms.’

We stand facing each other.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says. ‘This will work.’

HOW THE GAR DEN LOOKED
from my window that morning: silvery mint-coloured, the blades of grass curled over under their coating of frost. I didn’t feel it. What I yearned for was for the day to have already gone to plan.

I turned back to my valise and snapped the clasps shut. The sound was encouraging: definite and businesslike. I dusted my damp palms on my skirt and, going to my bedroom door, opened it a crack to listen, nudging my untouched breakfast tray out of the way with my toe.

The squeak of door hinges, the chatter of servants swelling and dimming as the door swung to. Luce and André must still be at breakfast. I waited; a minute, two minutes passed, and my neck began to twinge from the odd position; then I heard the scrape of a chair being pushed back and André’s voice, saying something over his shoulder, and his steps up the stairs. I drew back; heard a door open and close – his study – and then footsteps going back down. In the hall, I heard the rustle of cold-weather clothes, him whistling, and the front door clunk open; the buzz of the car engine, the slam of the door, and he was gone.

I heard Luce calling; walked down the stairs to the second landing. She was standing on the landing below; her upturned face was worried.

‘A visitor is coming to the house. He’ll be here at half-past eleven.’

‘But that doesn’t matter. We can wait until he’s gone.’ André
would not be back until the evening. ‘We can still catch the two o’clock train. It doesn’t matter, does it?’ I said.

‘Oh. Not at all.’

‘Just don’t let him to stay to lunch.’

She nodded.

We had been whispering, but a door closing somewhere on the ground floor made me suddenly mindful of standing out in the open. I blew her a kiss to encourage her; she gave a little shiver of nerves and a smile, turned and walked away down the stairs.

I waited till she was gone, then walked down the stairs to the ground floor. I heard Thomas in the salon, crossed the hall and rapped on the door. Pretend-confidence made my voice quiver as I asked him to fetch Hubert.

As he reached the door, worry made me add: ‘Mme Durand wants me to fetch her scripts personally from the studio.’

I knew at once it was a misstep, giving so much needless information. But all he said was, ‘Right away, Mademoiselle.’

I sat on one of the salon chairs, staring out of the window until the car slid past; Hubert’s steps outside the door; I ran to meet him.

I thought at first that he looked surprised to see just me, and not Luce – and then shook myself down inside – he was only surprised to be called so early, and those were just toast crumbs he was wiping from his mouth. ‘To Pathé, please,’ I said demurely as he held the car door open.

As the car crunched down the gravel drive I turned and looked up at the windows, hoping perhaps she would be watching us go.

‘Just you today?’ Hubert said, his eyes big in the rear-view mirror.

‘Just me.’

He nodded, and flexed his hands on the steering wheel.

It was clocking-in time when we got to the factory. I looked at the sea of workers milling about outside and wondered how I had ever thought they looked happy. They turned thin, unfriendly faces to peer into the car as Hubert fired the horn; I looked at my lap, fearful of seeing someone I knew.

‘Here is fine.’ I jumped down from the cab and crossed the courtyard to the tiny administrative lodge on the right-hand side.

Knocking and entering, I found four small desks in a cramped room piled high with all kinds of papers. A man in spectacles looked up.

‘I have come to collect monies that M. Peyssac left me. Adèle Roux.’

He peered at me. His hand hovered over a stack of ledgers on his overcrowded desk and he finally picked one up and, licking his finger, leafed through it. ‘Now, now, let’s see—’ He looked through; turned the volume the other way up, squinted, and returned it to its original direction. ‘When would the entry be for?’

‘It was only yesterday.’

‘Oh,
yesterday
.’ He dropped the ledger; picked up a second, sighed heavily and began to leaf through. ‘My colleague was here yesterday, not me. Let’s have a look.’

More hemming and hawing. I thought of Hubert, leaning against the car bonnet, smoking; of André, very close perhaps, maybe even on his way to the studio from his office in Building I.

‘This is most irregular,’ the old man was saying, ‘normally we don’t release any wages until the filming is completed. Adèle Roux, Adèle Roux, I don’t see it here.’

I could have closed my hands around his scrawny throat. Trying to keep my voice calm, I said: ‘M. Durand is my employer and he requires it.’

The man looked up under his eyebrows. ‘But in that case,
he would have countersigned the request.’

Another worker, a woman, looked up from her desk at me.

I said: ‘Find him. Ask him.’

The muscles in my throat tightened: what if he did really find André? What then?

The man pursed his lips. The woman looked down at her correspondence.

‘On this occasion,’ he said. He remained tight-lipped as he picked his way across the room to a box-safe in the corner. With agonising slowness he unlocked, counted out notes, recounted and fumbled about for an envelope. The clock on the wall read ten past ten; eleven past; twelve past, until at last he passed the envelope to me.

I counted it in front of him. ‘Thank you,’ I said, as crisp as the notes I held, and left the office.

Coming towards me across the courtyard was a redhead: Paul the security guard. I turned away, but it was too late: he was raising his hand and calling out to me. He broke into a jog and reached me as I reached the car.

‘Congratulations!’ he said. ‘I heard about
Petite Mort
. Does that mean you’ll be back more often now? As an actress?’

His face was all eagerness and goodwill.

I got into the car without a word.

I knew something was wrong as soon as we turned into the drive. Parked up in front of the house were two cars: an unfamiliar Daimler – this must belong to Luce’s guest – and then André’s studio car and his regular chauffeur, standing by the bonnet, squinting up into the winter sun in his dark uniform, the plume of his cigarette streaming skywards; he waved silently to Hubert, who saluted back, and drew our car round in a wide circle to park next to it.

‘Why is M. Durand here?’ I asked, leaning forward. ‘Whose is the other car?’

‘How should I know? Perhaps he’s come home early.’ Hubert walked round to open the door for me.

Silence in the hall. I took the steps two at a time. There was nobody in the first-floor corridor, so I ran lightly down towards the salon door, which was closed. As I approached, I heard voices from the inside of the room: I laid my ear to the panels very gently. A stern, authoritative voice, holding forth about something, the words impossible to make out: then André – I jumped at how close he was, only a few feet from the other side of the door – asking a question, then Luce, irritably countering something; then the first voice again, making peace.

Something about the voice was familiar but I could not place it: and finally, realising the discussion could go on for hours, I drew away from the door and considered what to do next.

It must be almost twelve o’clock; the meeting would be over soon, the visitor would leave and André would go back to the studios.

I exhaled, looking up at the cupola, a startling blue.

Five minutes passed. The voices went on and on, behind the door; downstairs, the grandfather clock chimed twelve.

Ten minutes became fifteen. I ran up to my room, took my valise from the bed and stood with it in my hand, with some idea of being prepared.

Five more minutes ticked by. Could we wait? But the news had already broken from Pathé. By tonight, she would know what I’d done.

As I stood there, indecisive, I heard the opening of the salon door, André saying something hearty but indistinct, and the party moved downstairs.

I waited, holding my breath, for the purr of a car engine – and finally it came. But then also André’s voice, cheerful, from the hall.

Why was he still here?

I hovered in my room, paralysed with indecision.

Then I heard footsteps coming up the stairs to my floor. Hers.

She burst into my room, staring, her hair wild. ‘I only have a moment,’ she said, ‘André isn’t going back to the studio, he’s staying, he wants me to have lunch with him and then he is having meetings here all afternoon. He’s invited some people round for supper.’

I stared at her, aghast.

‘I have to go,’ she said, hovering and agonised.

‘We’ll go out the back,’ I said. ‘There’s still time. Meet me by the lake. We can go through the woods and get a cab on the Boulogne road.’

She nodded. Put a trembling hand to her temple. Nodded again.

‘Who was the visitor?’ I asked.

‘Nobody,’ she said, and shut the door.

When she had gone, I took my suitcase and crept down the stairs.

Through the half-open dining-room door I saw her sitting at the table, doing her best to smile and laugh; the strain showing around her eyes.

I went through the back doors and out onto the terrace, and when it was safe to run, I did so, my feet thudding on the damp earth, the valise banging painfully against my knees.

For too long I seemed to make no progress: each time I turned the house was just as big as before, and then suddenly the woods were there, only fifty metres away; and then with a shiver of rain on cold leaves I was under the canopy.

I pushed onwards until the branches broke free and I was on the pebble path; five minutes’ walk and it tapered; the lake appeared up ahead.

It was not frozen any more, but black and studded with tiny
green jewels of algae. I chose a position near the path, and slid down against a tree trunk to watch and wait.

I calculated two o’clock. The meal would be finished; a cold kiss on the cheek for André. She would be collecting her coat, slipping downstairs and out by the French doors.

I calculated five past two. She would be on her way across the lawn, the grass crunching underfoot, her eyes trained on the distant woods.

Twenty past. A willow trailed its fingers in the lake and whispered,
She isn’t coming
.

A branch shook, somewhere in my line of vision: the barest quiver, and then another bramble spray was moved out of the way by a slender hand; her sleeve, her grey dress, her arm and brave face.

She was smiling; she had already seen me and was stepping off the path.

I ran to her. She burst into tears and clung to me.

‘I see you brought your wardrobe,’ I said, nodding at her valise. She held me, and turned her head to look at it. ‘Silly of me,’ she said. ‘I won’t need any of it where we’re going.’

She wiped her eyes; I tugged her hand. ‘Which way?’

‘Over there,’ she said, indicating a path through the trees; and smiled.

A rustling behind us: the branches moved aside again and André stepped through the gap. In his right hand, he held a revolver – the one from his safe – idly, as one might jingle a set of keys.

‘Taking your suitcases for a walk?’ he said.

I glanced at Luce, who had turned white and still.

‘Am I to understand that, in spite of everything we talked about, you have made promises to this young person?’

What he’d said repeated in my ears, meaningless. I grasped the essential – that somehow he had found out about us
– without grasping any of the implications.

‘She has made promises,’ I said, ‘we’re going away.’

André lifted the gun and tapped his chin with it, thoughtful. ‘Where exactly were you going to go?’

I looked at Luce. She had opened her mouth but said nothing. She was white and blank with shock.

‘A little cottage in Provence?’ he asked. ‘Somewhere you wouldn’t be recognised? The problem with being an actress, darling, is that everybody knows your face.’

He prodded her suitcase with his toe, toppling it; the gesture seemed to wake her out of her daze.

I said: ‘She isn’t coming back to the house. She’s coming with me.’

‘Sure about that?’ he said.

I didn’t understand. She had fixed her eyes on him, pleading. The revolver twirled in his hand.

He said: ‘You haven’t told her.’

‘What haven’t you told me?’ I said.

Luce started to cry.

‘What?’ I asked again.

She put one palm to her stomach and rested it there and looked at me, a look of such liquid misery that at first I didn’t understand.

Then I remembered the voice in the salon that morning.

‘Dr Langlois,’ I said.