The Scapegoat (20 page)

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been naughty,’ she said. ‘Don’t I have to go to bed?’

Suddenly I saw the adult world through her eyes, the strength of it, the absence of logic and understanding, so that the calm undressing at a quarter to ten, when she had only been up perhaps an hour, and the sun was streaming into her room, became things accepted without question because this was how a grown-up person punished.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it would do much good. And anyway you were not naughty. It was bad luck.’

‘But I can’t come to Villars now, can I?’ she asked.

‘Why not?’

She looked bewildered. ‘It’s a treat,’ she said. ‘A person can’t have a treat when they’ve broken something valuable.’

‘You didn’t intend to break the figures,’ I said. ‘That’s the difference. The thing to do is to try and have them mended. Perhaps we could find a shop in Villars.’

She shook her head in doubt. ‘I don’t think there is one.’

‘We’ll see,’ I said.

‘I shouldn’t have overbalanced but for my hands,’ she said. ‘I had them too near the table, and my wrists went weak. I’ve done it heaps of times before out in the park.’

‘You chose the wrong place, that’s all,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

Her eyes searched mine, as though in hungry confirmation of some unspoken thought, but I had nothing more to tell her and nothing more to say.

‘Shall I put on my dress again?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Then come downstairs. It’s nearly ten o’clock.’

I went down to the dressing-room, and picked up the broken pieces in their wrapping paper. Downstairs the car was ready waiting, and Renée was standing in the hall.

‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting,’ she said.

There was a world of anticipation in her voice, and of confidence too, as she walked past me on to the terrace and down the steps; and the very way she moved, and then called good morning to Gaston standing by, with a glance above her at the
warm bright sky, betrayed excitement and avidity. The scene was set, this was to be her day. Then the child came running across the terrace after us. She wore white cotton gloves and a white plastic handbag dangled from her wrist on a chain.

‘I’m coming with you, aunt Renée,’ she said, ‘but it’s not a treat. I have some rather serious shopping to do.’

I had never seen expression alter so swiftly from assurance to dismay.

‘But who said you could come?’ exclaimed Renée. ‘Why aren’t you doing your lessons?’

I caught Gaston’s eye, and the understanding that I glimpsed, the appreciation of the situation, was so superb that I wanted to wring his hand.

‘It suits aunt Blanche better when we do lessons in the afternoon,’ said Marie-Noel, ‘and Papa is glad of my company, aren’t you, Papa? May I get in front? I shall be sick if I sit in the back.’

For a moment I thought Renée was going to return to the château, the frustration was so shattering, so complete. Then she pulled herself together, and without looking at me climbed in behind.

I need not have worried about the road to Villars. The truth, as usual, proved an easy way out of difficulty.

‘We will pretend,’ I said to Marie-Noel, ‘that I’m a stranger and don’t know the way, and that you have to direct me.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘what a good idea.’

It was as simple as that.

As we drove out of St Gilles, and along the side-roads through the shimmering countryside, golden-green under the October sky, I thought how easily and happily children lend themselves to fantasy, and that life for them is only bearable because of this facility for self-deception, for seeing things other than they are. If I could have told Marie-Noel the truth about myself without destroying her faith in Jean de Gué, with what passionate intensity she would have given herself to complicity,
and what a wizard’s aide she would have been, the genie to Aladdin’s lamp.

Soon we were out of the magic of field and farm and forest, of sandy by-ways and falling poplar, and back on the hard, straight
route nationale
and so to Villars, the child announcing in a singsong chant each turn I had to take, while behind us our passenger kept silence – except once, when I braked swiftly before a suddenly slowing vehicle in front, and the smothered ‘Ach!’ of shock and exasperation, as the jolt shot her forward, betrayed the mood within.

‘We’ll drop aunt Renée at the coiffeur and put the car in the Place de la République afterwards,’ said Marie-Noel.

I stopped in front of the small establishment with the waxen lady’s head in the window all crimped and curled like a sheep ready for shearing, and opened the door for Renée, who got out without a word.

‘What time will you be ready?’ I asked, but she did not answer. She went straight into the shop with never a backward glance.

‘She seemed in a bad mood,’ said Marie-Noel. ‘I wonder why.’

‘Never mind about her,’ I said, ‘go on directing me. Don’t forget I’m a stranger here.’

The absence of Renée put an end to restraint, and my mood, like the child’s, turned festive. We found parking-space beside a line of lorries, and, heedless of the warnings about fleas, plunged into the market in the Place beside the church.

Nothing was on a grand scale, as it had been in Le Mans. Here were no beasts, no cattle, but trestle tables crammed together in a small space, spilling over with aprons, jackets, macintoshes, sabots; and the child and I moved leisurely between them, our eyes caught foolishly by the same objects – by spotted handkerchiefs, scarves, a china jug shaped like a cock’s head, pink rubber balls, chunky coloured pencils, red one end and blue the other. We bought some grey and white
checked slippers for Germaine, and then, distracted by a rival firm which was offering the same thing in a lively green, shamelessly took our custom to them; and hardly were the slippers wrapped and paid for than a desire seized us both for yellow bootlaces, both for ourselves and for Gaston, and two sponges on a string, and finally a great hunk of milk-white soap, a mermaid riding a dolphin embossed upon its surface.

We turned in the crowded alley, laden with our wares, and I saw we were being watched with intense amusement by a blonde woman in a bright blue coat, her own arms full of dahlias, and she said over the child’s head, and as though to the stallkeeper beside her, ‘It must be true, then, that they are closing down the glass-foundry at St Gilles and turning it into a
bon march
é store.’ And as she brushed past us, going in the opposite direction towards the church, she murmured for my ear alone,
‘Père de famille
for a change?’

I looked back at the blue coat swinging down the alley, amused, intrigued, and then Marie-Noel, pulling at me, said, ‘Oh, Papa, there’s a little lace cloth. Come quickly – it’s just what I want for my prie-dieu.’ And we were involved in purchases once more as she darted from stall to stall, and I, indulgent, lazy in the warmth of the sun, forgot all about my purpose in coming to Villars, until the church clock boomed half past eleven and I thought, aghast, of the bank closing at twelve, and nothing achieved.

‘Come on, hurry,’ I said, and we went and spilt our purchases in the car. While she was arranging them on the back seat I glanced once again at the cheque-book to memorize the address of the bank.

‘Papa,’ said the child, ‘we’ve never seen about mending the broken porcelain for Maman,’ and, looking at her, I saw anxiety in her face, the happiness gone.

‘That’s all right,’ I told her, ‘we’ll do it later. The bank is more important.’

‘But the shops will be shut,’ she urged.

‘That can’t be helped,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to risk it.’

‘I wonder if they mend porcelain in that place by the Porte de Ville,’ she said. ‘You know, where they have candlesticks.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I shouldn’t think so. Look, will you sit and wait for me here in the car? It will be very dull in the bank.’

‘I don’t mind. I’d rather come.’

I was not sure I wanted her sharp ears overhearing all I said.

‘Listen,’ I answered, ‘I may be some time. And there will be a lot of talk. It is much better for you to stay here, or go and wait with aunt Renée.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘that’s much worse than the bank. Oh, Papa, couldn’t I go to the shop by the Porte de Ville and see if they would mend the porcelain, and then come and meet you at the bank?’

She stared up at me expectantly, delighted with this solution. I hesitated.

‘Where is it?’ I said. ‘I’ve forgotten. What about traffic?’

‘Just inside the Porte de Ville,’ she said impatiently. ‘There’s never any traffic. You know, next to the umbrella shop. And then I’ll come back past the church and straight to the bank. It’s barely four minutes.’

I looked up and down the avenue where we had parked the car. The flamboyant Gothic spire of the great church topped the trees. Wherever she meant to go could not be any distance.

‘All right,’ I said, ‘here’s the parcel. Be careful, now.’ I put the broken pieces wrapped in cellophane and paper into her hands.

‘Do they know you in the shop?’ I asked.

‘Oh, surely,’ she said. ‘I’ve only got to say the name de Gué.’

I watched her across the road and then turned left, back to the market-place and to the obvious bank building standing at the corner. I pushed through the doors, and with a brilliant feat of memory asked for Monsieur Péguy.

‘I’m sorry, Monsieur le Comte,’ said the clerk, ‘Monsieur Péguy is still away. Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I want to know how my account stands.’

‘Which one, Monsieur?’

‘All of them.’

A woman typing at a desk behind the counter looked up and stared.

‘Excuse me, Monsieur le Comte,’ said the clerk, ‘do you mean you require the bare balances, or do you want to see a full statement of figures?’

‘I want to see everything,’ I repeated.

He disappeared and I lit a cigarette, leaning against the counter and listening to the click-click of the woman’s typewriter beating against the slower tick of the clock on the wall. There was the close, airless smell familiar to all banks, and I thought of the many times I had cashed small travellers’ cheques in similar branches throughout the country, and now, like a gangster, was preparing to probe the secrets of another. The clerk returned with a sheaf of papers in his hand.

‘Perhaps you would like to take a seat in the office, Monsieur le Comte?’ he said, and he led the way through to a small room with a glass-fronted door.

He left me alone with the file, and as I turned the papers I realized that I was as lost before these columns of figures as I had been before the bills and statements in the
verrerie
. I looked them over one by one, but could make nothing of them, and then the clerk returned to find out whether I wanted any more information.

‘Is this all?’ I asked. ‘You have no other papers of mine?’

He looked at me inquiringly, a little puzzled, and said, ‘No, Monsieur le Comte, unless, of course, there is anything you wish to look at in your safe in the vault.’

I had a vision of clinking bags of gold in some massive safe. ‘In my safe?’ I asked. ‘What have I got in my safe?’

‘I don’t know, Monsieur le Comte,’ he said, looking offended, and murmured something about its being unfortunate that Monsieur Péguy was away.

‘Is there time for me to look in it before you close?’ I asked.

‘Certainly,’ he replied, and he disappeared again and came back with a bunch of keys, and I followed him down a long flight of stairs to the basement. He opened a door with one of the keys, and we were in a vast, low room like a cellar, the walls lined with safes, all numbered. He stopped before number 17, took another of the keys on his bunch, put it in the lock, and turned it. I waited for the door to open, but instead he withdrew the key, stood back, and looked at me expectantly. Seeing that I made no move, he said with a puzzled air, ‘Monsieur le Comte has forgotten to bring his key with him?’ Cursing myself for a fool at not knowing what he expected of me, I felt in my pocket and brought out Jean de Gué’s bunch of keys. One of them – longer and bigger than the others – looked to me as if it might be right, and, stepping forward with an air of confidence which must surely seem as false to him as it did to me, I put it in the lock, and thank God it turned, and when I tried the handle of the safe the door swung open.

The clerk, murmuring that he would leave Monsieur le Comte to find the papers he wanted, went out of the vault, and I put my hand in the safe, to find no bags of gold but another mass of papers, all of them tied with tape. Oddly disappointed, I took them to the light. The title of a document caught my eye, ‘Marriage Settlement of Françoise Bruyère’, and I was beginning to untie the tape when the clerk returned.

‘Your little girl is outside,’ he said. ‘She asked me to tell you that everything is arranged about the porcelain, and can she go back in the lorry with Madame Yves?’

‘What?’ I asked impatiently, preoccupied with the papers in my hand.

He repeated the message stiffly, but it made no sense to me, and I did not want to inquire what lorry he was talking about or who Madame Yves might be, for clearly I should know.

‘All right, all right,’ I said, ‘tell her I’ll be along in a moment.’

Now I had the tape undone and had opened the document, and I immediately forgot about being in the vaults of the bank, for this was familiar ground in spite of the legal jargon. I might have been browsing through archives back in Tours or Blois, or in the Reading Room at the British Museum.
‘Régime dotal … majorat … usufruit…
’ here were all the perplexities of French matrimonial law, the sort of thing I found fascinating and incomprehensible in one; and, time of no account, I sat down and began to read.

The father of Françoise, a Monsieur Robert Bruyère, had evidently been a rich man with little faith in the stability of Jean de Gué, and no desire to bolster the tottering fortunes of the family of St Gilles. Her dowry, which was considerable, was therefore in trust for the male heir, but the income from this trust could be used during the minority of the said heir, husband and wife having joint control over it. In default of a son, when Françoise reached the age of fifty the trust funds were to be divided between her and any surviving daughters of the marriage, or, if she predeceased her husband before she reached the age of fifty, between the husband and any daughters. The point was that the income from this vast trust could only be used by the parents on the birth of a male heir, and if no male child was born no one could touch a sou of the money until Françoise reached the age of fifty – unless, of course, she were to die before that age. On the date of the marriage itself a capital sum had been allotted to the husband for his own use, but this was less than a quarter of the total dowry.