Shallow Be Thy Grave (18 page)

“The doorman told me.”

“Monsieur Chirot.” Madame Beaumont pursed her lips and for a moment the smooth skin of her face wrinkled and she looked older. Lily could see dark hairs on the top of the French woman’s lip that she hadn’t noticed before. “I do not believe it. That is my name, before I was married.”

Lily winced on Madame Beaumont’s behalf, but she had to keep focused. “I want to get in it. I want to see if Fiona’s there.”

There was a silence, punctuated only by the steady stream of traffic in the road behind them. The two women stared at each other, Lily determined not to look away. She held her eyes open against their will, refused to let them blink.

“I found a key,” said Madame Beaumont. Her eyes ducked down, didn’t meet Lily’s. “I found a set of keys, in my husband’s pocket.”

Lily couldn’t speak, couldn’t think of any words that might help put this woman out of her misery. There were no words.

The French woman spoke to the pavement. “I was taking his suit to the cleaners.”

The defensiveness in her voice was so obvious, Lily felt embarrassed. Embarrassed to have to bear witness to a full-grown woman, a woman she had first met as a together, stylish, hot-shot lawyer, confessing to rummaging through her middle-aged husband’s possessions. Rummaging through her husband’s possession in search of evidence he was sleeping with a teenager. Lily had never imagined herself getting married, but, she thought now, if she ever did, she promised, vowed she would never, ever get to the point where she was checking her partner’s pockets. The depths people sank to never ceased to startle her. 

Madame Beaumont opened her bag and pulled out a small set of keys. She held them out on the palm of her hand, like a child might offer up a stolen, half-eaten chocolate biscuit. Lily noted the brass key fob with St Paul Appartement, together with a picture of the distinctive lanterns that hung outside the building, engraved on it. She despaired at Monsieur Beaumont’s apparent lack of subterfuge. At least take the fecking fob off the key ring. She tutted without intending to. Amateur.

“I don’t know what number it is,” Madame Beaumont said. Her voice was shaky, her whole demeanour altered.

“I do,” said Lily. “But they threw me out.”

“Who?”

“The security guards.”

“This is because you don’t look like you belong,” said Madame Beaumont. She let her gaze run up and down the length of Lily’s body, taking in her standard uniform of outsized, long-sleeved black T-shirt, black canvas trousers and Doc Marten boots. Madame Beaumont took a deep breath, drew herself back up to her normal height. “So, what are we to do? Are we to go and see the apartment, see if we find your lost sister and my, how do you say, disappeared husband?”

“He’s disappeared?”

“His body is still here, but my husband is missing,” said Madame Beaumont. “In France, fidelity is not everything, like with the English wife. But in the past, he always still interested in me. Now he is like a ghost. His body is here but his spirit is gone.”

That’s the opposite of a ghost, thought Lily, but she didn’t say it out loud. Instead she asked, “How will we get past the doorman?”

“We will need a disguise. You must come with me.  I know where we can go,” she said checking her watch. She repeated her last line like a mantra, her shoulders straightening as she spoke. “I know where we can go.”

Madame Beaumont hailed a taxi, which again appeared from nowhere, as it had with Monsieur Beaumont earlier, although Lily didn’t draw the comparison to his wife’s attention. Let sleeping dogs lie. Within five minutes they were in a French… boutique, was the only word Lily could think of to describe it. It wasn’t like any shop she’d been in before. There were hardly any clothes in it for one thing and assistants hovered at every pillar, like they were expecting her to shoplift the lot. She toyed with them briefly, picking up a pair of sunglasses and then deliberately wandering close to the entrance, like she might just be considering making a run for it.

Madame Beaumont interrupted, oblivious to Lily’s mind games, and handed her a pair of beige tailored trousers. Lily frowned but the French woman pushed her towards the changing room, which was more like a boudoir than a changing room, with gold curtains draped at the front and an arm chair inside. Lily sat down and peeled off her black canvas trousers.

She was struggling with the sensation of soft silk on her thighs when Madame Beaumont whipped back the curtain. Lily hastily did up the zip. “Nice. You can wear my jacket.”

Madame Beaumont slipped off her jacket and handed it to Lily. She didn’t seem to notice Lily’s discomfort, or if she did, she didn’t indulge it. “Put it on,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. And then she turned back to the shop, speaking to herself, although loud enough that Lily heard. “New shoes. No woman in Paris would wear those boots.”

The French woman disappeared as Lily stared at herself in the mirror. She looked ridiculous. The jacket was fitted, clearly intended for someone with breasts for one thing. She fastened the top button. Her waist looked ridiculously skinny – she’d never had a waist before, favouring a more ironing board style of clothing – straight up and straight down. And black. The jacket made her feel like Joan Collins. Jo would piss herself laughing. All she needed was shoulder pads. And a briefcase. She turned to one side, marvelling at how the trousers had managed to give her the appearance of having hips. She undid the button, but before she had chance to take the jacket off, Madame Beaumont was back, this time with a pair of low-heeled shoes and a silk scarf.

Lily still wasn’t that good with the exchange rate - although on paper ten francs to one pound shouldn’t have been too hard - but there seemed to be way too many zeros on the price tags. She couldn’t believe people spent this much money on clothes. Madame Beaumont didn’t appear to have any problem with it though, as she snapped her fingers at the nearest assistant and said something in French.

“We take the lot,” she translated to Lily.

“I feel a bit-”

“You look one hundred times better than before.”

The assistant picked Lily’s old clothes up off the floor and carried them off to the desk. She held them aloft in front of her, like they might bite.

“I want those,” shouted Lily after her.

“Ok,” said Madame Beaumont, as she settled the bill with a credit card that Lily couldn’t help noticing came from a joint account. “It is not, how do you say, complete, but it will be enough. Let’s go.”

Lily carried her own clothes in a white cardboard bag and followed Madame Beaumont out of the shop. The way the trousers felt soft around her leg, almost tickled, and she felt much cooler, as in less hot. The scarf around her hair, disallowed any feeling of cool as in street, but at least she could pretend it wasn’t her. And her legs felt so much lighter without her trademark Docs. Great for the heat, but terrible if she needed to kick anyone. Lily could still remember the first time she’d put on a pair of Docs. She’d instantly felt bigger, more powerful. Like men must feel, she imagined. Women’s shoes were designed to make the wearer feel weak and helpless.

They didn’t speak at all in the taxi as they made their way back to Rue St Honoré. Lily couldn’t help a sneaking feeling of respect for the elder French woman. Once she’d decided on a course of action, she was calm, prepared to confront the truth without falling to pieces. Lily tried to imagine how she would have felt in similar circumstances. The woman had three children. The only experience Lily had to compare it to was the reaction of her mother, twenty years ago, to Lily’s father’s affair. Her mother had never recovered, had spent the rest of her life reeling from her sense of rejection. She’d been the size of a sofa by the time she’d died. Lily couldn’t imagine Madame Beaumont doing the same. She knew there might be a delayed reaction, but she couldn’t imagine Madame Beaumont giving up on life. Lily’s father’s affair had marked the end of her mother’s will to live.

They got out of the taxi a couple of blocks down from the apartments and strolled the rest of the way in the late afternoon sunshine. Lily felt slightly ridiculous, at the same time as slightly liberated, by the feeling she was incognito. She smoked her last Lucky Strike. “Ok, don’t say anything,” said Madame Beaumont as they approached Saint Paul’s. “I will handle the speaking.”

The two women walked into the apartment block, Madame Beaumont striding purposefully towards the lift. The uniformed doorman was behind his desk and called over to them as Lily’s heart rate increased. Lily pretended to be immersed in the study of a print of a field of poppies that hung on the wall, while Madame Beaumont spoke a string of rapid French. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Madame Beaumont smile and wave the keys at the doorman. She heard her speak some more French that sounded like honey, soft and smooth. Madame Beaumont pressed the button for the lift and the doors opened straight away. Lily put her chin down and dashed across the marble floor. As soon as she stepped inside Madame Beaumont pressed 4 for the fourth floor. The doorman was still behind his desk, smiling at them. Lily ducked her head and the lift doors closed slowly, slickly.

“I told him you are Turkish,” said the French woman as she licked one of her fingers and smoothed out her eyebrows.

This information seemed to amuse Madame Beaumont. Lily didn’t respond. She hated lifts. As soon as the doors closed she felt like she was in a race against time. Would the doors open before the walls closed in or the oxygen ran out? Always a gamble. She concentrated her efforts on trying to breathe. A long less than a minute later, the doors opened again to reveal a deep, plush red carpet and an endless corridor stretching away in front of them. The two of them stepped out and strolled down the walkway, checking the door numbers. Lily’s low heels sank into the thick carpet as they counted them off. 401. Lily increased her pace, each stride longer than the last, her heart in her mouth. She prayed to a God she didn’t believe in that her sister would be here, behind these doors. 407, 408. “This is all Brigitte’s fault,” said Madame Beaumont.

Lily frowned. She failed to see how Beaumont’s affair with Fiona could be blamed on Brigitte. Never the man’s fault, thought Lily, but she didn’t say it out loud.

They came to 411 and halted. Neither woman moved. “Shall we knock?” whispered Lily.

Madame Beaumont shook her head. They turned to face each other and Lily noticed for the first time how the French woman’s eyes were different colours, one blue, one green. It lent her whole face an exotic look, almost extraterrestrial.

Madame Beaumont held the keys out on the palm of her hand. Three keys on the key ring - one silver, long front door type key, two shorter Yale-type ones. Madame Beaumont selected one of the Yale keys and slowly, quietly pushed it into the lock. It slipped in. They stared at each other again. Madame Beaumont turned the handle, turned the key and the door swung open, noiselessly. Neither woman moved again, both rooted to the spot, until the sound of a door opening further down the corridor spurred them both into action. They fell across the threshold together.

The room was dark, the curtains drawn, although the late evening sunshine peeked in through the small gap at the top of the window frame. Lily pushed the door closed behind them as Madame Beaumont felt for the light switch.  Lily felt her way across to the window and banged her leg against a low table, nearly squealed with pain. She pulled back the curtains and dusky sunlight flooded the room, which was small, compact - looked more like a hotel room than an apartment, although Lily wasn’t sure what she had been expecting. Whatever it was, her sister wasn’t in it.

A double bed took up most of the floor space in the main room and there was nowhere anyone could hide. Lily opened the only door in the room, which led into an en-suite bathroom, slightly bigger than the one at Brigitte’s flat and this time with a bath.  Bottles of shampoo and bath foam lined one side of the bath, and two toothbrushes stood to attention in a glass by the sink.  On a shelf above the sink was a tin of hairspray, a roll on deodorant and a box of condoms. The biggest box of condoms Lily had ever seen, - like someone had got them from one of those trade discount shops. Bought in bulk. Lily fought the urge to look inside, some belated sense of not wanting to probe too deeply into her sister’s life holding her back, when Madame Beaumont pushed past her. She saw immediately what Lily was staring at and pulled the box down from the shelf, emptying its contents into the sink. Three foil packets slipped out.

“What’s the age of consent here?” asked Lily. “Can we get him arrested?”

“Arrested for sex? Are you crazy?”

“It’s not illegal for a forty year old man to have sex with a sixteen year old girl?”

“He’s thirty eight. And in France it is fine to have sex with girls at fifteen.” Madame Beaumont threw the empty box of condoms into the bath.

“Fifteen? That’s disgusting.”

“There have been campaigns to lower the age, to get rid of it altogether. In Spain it is thirteen. Besides, your sister, I think she came to France to find herself a man. My man. She is no innocent.”

Lily stepped back into the main room and sat down on the bed. When Lily had first met her half-sister, Fiona had been fifteen years old - a child on the brink of adulthood. To Lily, the idea that anyone could get to the age of fifteen without rebelling against something was totally alien. She’d never met anyone like Fiona before. She was so well cared-for. It shone out of every pore of her body - her straight, white, all perfectly aligned teeth, the brightness of her eyes, the glossiness of her hair. Every inch of her screamed of someone who had been taken seriously and cared-for. Nurtured. And then Lily had blundered into her life.

Lily remembered the night Fiona lost her virginity. Lily had been there, not there in the room, but there in the house. Innocent was exactly what Fiona was, or at least had been. “This is all my fault,” said Lily.

“Spoken like a true woman,” said Madame Beaumont, joining her on the bed, holding one of the small, square packets of condoms. “Strawberry flavour.”