A Week in Paris (5 page)

‘Mum?’

‘I’m not crying. I’m just . . . so glad. That you have such happy memories.’

‘I do, though sometimes . . . there’s still that other one.’

‘What other one?’ Her mother looked at her almost sharply.

‘Oh, you remember. That time at Starbrough Hall.’

‘Oh, that.’

‘You said it must have been something I dreamed.’

‘Yes,’ her mother said, but hestitantly.

‘But I’m not so sure.’ She thought back to that dreary winter’s day when she was eleven. She and her mother had visited a stately home in the countryside where Fay was to play a violin solo in a children’s charity concert. During the afternoon rehearsal she had left the drawing room in search of the lavatory, but muddled the directions. She’d wandered the corridors and fetched up in a great dark room at the back of the house where her footsteps echoed on bare floorboards. Suddenly a sense had come to her of being in another such space, one full of people, but she had been lonely. Her mind rang with ghostly voices. She turned in distress and fled.

‘I suppose,’ Fay said carefully, ‘it was a bit like what happened to me in Paris – that time in Notre Dame. Which reminds me, there’s something I need to tell you.’

Now she’d plucked up the courage she delivered her news quickly. Her mother reacted strongly, but not with the fears of abandonment that Fay had predicted.

‘You’re going to Paris again?’ Her attention was certainly on Fay now.

‘Yes, I’ve only played with the orchestra since Christmas, and I’ve been asked to go on tour! Isn’t that marvellous?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘It’s only a short time, Mummy. No more than a week. I know I won’t be able to visit you, but I’ll come as soon as I’m back.’

‘A week,’ her mother echoed. She was staring at Fay now, her eyes full of urgency. Then she muttered something unexpected. ‘It might be long enough.’

‘Long enough for what?’

‘To visit somebody,’ her mother said, impatient.

A shadow fell across the grass and they glanced up to see an orderly approach. She stood before them, a stout, sour-faced woman, her stolid demeanour and the set of keys hanging at her belt giving her the air of a jailer. ‘You must be goin’ now, miss,’ she addressed Fay. ‘Her hev to go for her dinner.’

‘Goodness. Lunch already?’ Fay was disconcerted by this lack of charm. She got to her feet, but her mother hung on to her hand.

‘Wait, Fay. Please listen. Before you go to Paris, go home and look in the trunk. There’s a box in the bottom there . . . you’ll see—’

‘Come along now, Kitty,’ the orderly interrupted, the keys at her belt clinking with an urgent sound.

‘It’s Mrs Knox, not Kitty,’ her mother said with some of her old spark.

‘The trunk in your room, you mean?’ Fay said. ‘I can do that. I was going home to fetch a few things for Paris.’ The house was ten miles away, but instead of taking the train today she had managed to borrow Lois’s boyfriend’s car. ‘What is it you need?’

‘I don’t need anything. Just look inside the box in the trunk.’ The orderly was helping Kitty out of her chair.

‘Where’s the key to the trunk?’

‘The Wedgwood pot. Fay, promise me you’ll do it.’

‘Yes, of course.’

The orderly was leading her mother away, but Kitty was twisting round and saying something Fay didn’t quite catch.

‘What?’ Fay called back, hurrying behind.

‘By the church. Ask for Maremarry,’ her mother said, or something like it.

It made no sense. Fay’s mother was being led through the French windows. Fay saw her clutch the doorframe for support before she was dragged from view, and wondered who or what Maremarry might be.

She knew what Kitty meant by the trunk. Her mother used it as a storage chest. It was the only thing inside the house apart from the medicine cupboard in the bathroom that had ever been kept locked. Fay had seen it open once or twice when her mother wanted a spare tablecloth or the summer curtains. It was full of such stuff, all very dull and smelling faintly of camphor. It had to be kept locked, Kitty explained once, or the lid didn’t stay shut properly. Fay hadn’t felt remotely curious about the trunk after that, but now it appeared that she should have done. It must contain something important, something her mother hadn’t wanted her to find. Until now.

Again, that rush of irritation with her mother; again, that feeling of guilt. Yet there was also something else. A low, but growing thrum of excitement.

It had only been a fortnight since Kitty had gone into hospital, but Primrose Cottage already wore a desolate look. The daffodils in the tiny front garden needed tying back and the grass was overgrown. Fay unlocked the front door with a sense of trepidation. It was the first time she’d been home since her mother’s illness and it was sad knowing Kitty wouldn’t be there to welcome her. Mrs Ambler from across the road had been taking care of everything. It was she who had packed Kitty’s suitcase for the hospital; she was also good enough to pop by occasionally when anything extra was needed. Fay gathered up the morning’s post from the mat and went inside, leaving the door open to the sunshine.

In the kitchen a pile of letters lay on the table. Bills mostly, by the look of them. She slit open the envelopes and sorted them out, slipping the most urgent in her handbag for payment. Otherwise there was a picture postcard of a Welsh castle from Evelyn’s mother and a rose catalogue, both of which she put to one side before glancing about for anything else that wanted doing. The kitchen was tidy, but the old clock on the wall needed winding and there was something poignant about the single cup and saucer propped upside down on the draining board so she put them away.

She started to wander about the house, sharing its loneliness. The sitting room was neat, the fireplace brushed and bare. There was little reminder of her mother in here. She straightened one of the paintings on the wall before going out.

Entering the music room at the front of the house was worse. Here she missed her mother most. It was a lovely airy space, where on a day like today the sunshine falling through the garden trees danced restlessly on the walls. Generations of local children had played the beautiful old upright piano set in its shaded alcove. The room was normally orderly, the music filed away in the tall corner cupboard, but today the cupboard door wasn’t quite closed. She went to investigate and found the piles all higgledy-piggledy, as though her mother had been frantically searching for something. Fay tidied everything and managed to get the door shut. Then she turned her attention to the piano. The lid was up and a sheet of music spread open on the ledge. She slid onto the bench, where she’d sat so many times before, and arranged a hand on the ivory keys to play a broken chord. She hesitated, her attention caught by the title of the pages in front of her, surprised to see that it was Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata.

Her mother had been playing the Moonlight! Kitty always gave the impression she disliked it. She simply wouldn’t listen to it. Once when it came on the portable wireless in the kitchen, she had reached across and switched it off. ‘But I love it,’ Fay protested. Her mother turned the wireless back on then marched out into the garden where she started weeding the rosebed with fast, furious movements. Fay watched through the window bemused, wondering what she’d done to upset her.

She hadn’t even known that her mother possessed the music to the Sonata, yet here it was. Fay studied it for a moment, then picked out the open chords of the first few bars using the pedals to sustain the long notes of the left hand. The mournful beauty of the music was unbearable in her present mood so she stopped. As the notes died away she was visited by an overwhelming sense of loss.

Going upstairs, she found her bedroom was as always, though the china animals on her chest-of-drawers were frosted with dust. It had always been dusty, this cottage, the ancient plaster flaking off the walls. House martins scrabbled under the thatch to make their nests, occasionally a mouse would run across the floor, which needed sweeping most days. It was a living house, Fay always felt, not like those sterile red-brick boxes that had recently sprung up down the road, where the horses’ field had been. She opened the wardrobe and looked in vain for something suitable to wear in Paris, then caught an unexpected glimpse of herself in the inside mirror. Her hair badly needed cutting, she saw with dismay, and her skirt and blouse were impossibly dowdy for Paris. She must go shopping for clothes tomorrow, though maybe her mother had something she could borrow.

Kitty’s bedroom was peaceful in the afternoon sun, the bed made, the trunk in its place by the wall, a lace cloth spread over it. Fay picked up the familiar photograph in a tortoiseshell frame, from the dressing table. It was of her father, taken on her parents’ honeymoon, which must be why he looked so happy in it. There was a deep crease across one corner of the print, and the right-hand edge had suffered water damage, but Eugene Knox’s open round face with its broad smile, his fair curly hair blowing in the breeze, was still clear to see, looking out across the years. As a child, Fay would sometimes sneak in here and study his face, trying to remember something about him. The timbre of his voice, the warmth and scent of him, his laugh even. But nothing suggested itself. It was the only photograph of him her mother had. Now Fay looked deep into those smiling eyes. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered and remembered with a pang what the doctor had said: her mother had been talking about him. Fay wondered again what she’d said.

She laid the photo down carefully, because its hardboard stand was rickety, then opened the Wedgwood pot next to it and fished out a small key. Kneeling by the trunk, she swept off the lace cloth and worked the key until the rusty lock sprang open. She lifted the lid and began to remove the piles of material within. Some were familiar. The winter curtains for the sitting room. Bright scraps left over from a pair of yellow brushed cotton pyjamas Kitty had made Fay once. She stacked spare sheets and pillowcases up around her. Then, near the bottom, she pushed aside a worn eiderdown to reveal a cardboard shoe box with the name of a local department store printed on the lid. She brought it out onto her lap, surprised by how light it was. Inside was a layer of tissue paper. She peeled it away. And stared, uncomprehending, at what lay underneath.

Folded up in the box was a small canvas rucksack. She took it out, put the box aside and laid the rucksack flat. It was worn and travel-stained, the canvas straps frayed and the leather fasteners in their buckles cracked and twisted with age. She knew this rucksack, but she couldn’t think from where. Had it been hers, or perhaps her mother’s? Her own, she thought. Her fingers remembered how to open it and when she put her hand inside, she felt rough cloth. She knew what it was before she drew it out and unfolded it. A child’s dress, greenish-brown, of a simple shape. She contemplated it for a moment, remembering how, when she’d worn it, the material had scratched her neck, only that. Her hand slipped back into the rucksack, as if hoping to find something else, but it was empty. She felt a frisson of panic because she had expected something, something precious. She looked again into the rucksack, and again it was empty. There had only been the dress.

She was folding the dress back when she saw a torn piece of card sticking out of a pocket inside the rucksack, so grubby and curled up that she’d almost missed it. She smoothed it out. It was a label. On one side was written in a black sloping hand,
Fay Knox, Southampton
. The other side read,
Couvent Ste-Cécile, Paris
. St Cecilia’s Convent. The name meant nothing to her and yet she sensed it should. A convent. In Paris. And she was going to Paris!

She sat staring at the label for some time, while the faintest glimmer of a memory rose in her mind. Sunshine falling on flagstones, the blue robes of a statuette, and . . . but no, it was gone. It was as though a door had opened, just a chink, in her mind, before it shut again. She knew now that her mother had been trying to tell her something, something to do with Paris. Since the rucksack was her own, it suggested that they’d both been in Paris, she and her mother. But surely that couldn’t be right. When she was little there had been the war, and Paris was occupied by the Nazis – and her mother had never spoken of that. Instead she’d talked of living in the whitewashed house at Richmond.

Fay put the rucksack aside to take with her, then replaced everything else in the trunk and locked it. But when she returned the key to its pot she accidentally knocked the photograph frame, which slipped forward and fell to the floor. She bent to pick it up and saw to her relief that the glass hadn’t broken. It was coming apart, though. She tried to fit the backing board into place but it wouldn’t go. Something was in the way. She prised up the metal tabs to investigate.

A postcard had been inserted between the photograph and the back, the same size as the frame. She turned it over. It was a sepia-coloured shot of a battleship, its prow carving through the water. It was just possible to read the name on the bow: HMS
Marina
.

The
Marina
. It meant nothing to her, but it was a beautiful craft and staring at it she could sense vividly how it might feel to be standing on deck with the wind in her hair, the smell of tar, the taste of salt on her tongue. For a moment it felt as though she was there, feeling the low throb of the engines and the sea spray on her cheeks. How funny. As far as she knew she’d never been on a ship. This card, she thought, must be there to hold the photograph firm in the frame, for its reverse was not written on and she could see no further significance. She fitted everything back together and stood the frame in its place next to the pot.

Over the next few days she often took up the canvas rucksack and examined it, smoothing out the small dress it contained and wondering what it meant.
Maremarry
, her mother had said – Maremarry by a church. Ste-Cécile’s convent might be by a church, and Maremarry might be Mère Marie. She would try to find out when she got to Paris.