Shallow Be Thy Grave (4 page)

“Bonsoir.” The woman scrutinised them suspiciously and the ‘bonsoir’ came out like a question.

Nell said something to the woman in French and then the older woman turned to Lily. “Fiona’s sister? I see.” She didn’t smile. “Fiona is not my favourite person at this moment.”

She walked across the room and stroked Sebastian’s head and said something in French to him. Lily noticed that neither boy asked to be picked up. “We’re here to find her,” said Jo. “Her granddad’s died.”

“Oui. Your father rang.” Madame Beaumont spoke directly to Lily, ignoring Jo. Lily had never felt such scrutiny. It was like she was drinking in every detail of her clothes, her hair, her skin. The Frenchwoman unwound her scarf and then appeared to remember her manners. “I am sorry for you, about your grandfather.”

“I didn’t know him that well.”

A look of confusion briefly swept the elder woman’s immaculately made-up face.

“We’re half-sisters,” said Lily.

“Ah yes. Fiona mentioned this.”

Nell started collecting up armfuls of laundry.

“We’ve come to take her back to England,” said Jo. “For the funeral. Do you know where she is?”

Madame Beaumont unfastened the belt of her coat and took it off. She draped it neatly over one arm. “Nell, would you please be so kind and put the boys in their bedrooms?”

Nell’s face said like she did mind very much, but Madame Beaumont said something in rapid French which Lily thought must have been something along the lines of a wage increase because Nell dumped the piles of laundry back down and turned her attention to they boys, who seemed shadows of their former selves – now quiet, compliant creatures.

“Would you care to join me in the kitchen for supper?” asked Madame Beaumont. “We can talk about Fiona in there.”

Sebastian’s head jerked up as he heard his mother say Fiona’s name. “Fi Fi?” he said again, the hope in his voice clear to all.

“Non, Sebastian. Fi Fi est en vacances. C’est maintenant Nell. Bien nuit, mon cher.”

She ushered Jo and Lily out of the room and down the corridor for what seemed like ages before opening the door onto the largest kitchen Lily had ever seen. The kitchen table was covered in peas and breadcrumbs and dirty plates. A half-eaten baguette languished in the centre. Madame Beaumont tutted and disappeared through a door at the rear of the room. She was back a moment later, minus her coat and scarf. She was also about five inches smaller and Lily realised she must have taken her shoes off. 

“So, Fiona is, disappeared?” Madame Beaumont indicated for them both to take a seat. She sighed theatrically. “I thought that girl was a bad influence. But what could we do? She is seventeen. She must make her own life.”

“What girl?” asked Jo, hauling herself onto a tall stool at the breakfast bar.

“She meet this girl. Brigitte. She has told you about her?”

Lily shook her head and Madame Beaumont smiled, a pinched, ‘I thought as much’ kind of smile that Lily hated.

“Before she meet her, Fiona is very happy here. The boys love her very much, she learning good French. I think maybe she live in France forever. She has the style of the French.” She cast a glance at Lily. “She talks about maybe going to University. Her mother was very pleased.”

“You know Ruth?” Lily’s short-term memory wasn’t something she ever relied upon with confidence, but she seemed to remember Ruth had something to do with Fiona’s getting the job as an au pair in the first place.

“I don’t know her very well, but she is also a lawyer. We have met at international conferences on the rights of women. She is a good woman. She had a terrible time with her husband.” She turned away from the refrigerator and caught sight of Lily’s face. “Your father,” she said as if she’d just made the connection. “I... Oh, I’m sorry, I forget all my English.”

She emptied a Tupperware box into a big brass saucepan and pulled down a bottle of wine from a rack above her head. She opened it and stood it on the breakfast bar in front of Jo and Lily. Moments later the smell of soup filled the air and Madame Beaumont popped a long French baguette into the oven. Lily’s stomach started to squirm at the thought of food. The cheese and onion pasty they’d eaten at the airport seemed like a very hazy memory.

Madame Beaumont stood three wine glasses down on the breakfast bar and after wiping down the table she poured first the warmed soup and then the wine. “Bon Appetit.”

“Merci beaucoup,” said Jo.

Lily’s cheeks flushed at the idea of speaking French. At school, it had never once occurred to her that she might one day be in a situation where she would need to speak a foreign language. Her horizons had been strictly limited to getting out of Accrington. She’d never considered the rest of the world. If she had, she would have concentrated more on what Beaky Howard had to say.  She nodded at Madame Beaumont, and hoped her gestures crossed the cultural divide.

“So, did she go inter-railing with Brigitte?” asked Jo, soup dribbling down her chin as she dunked a piece of heavily buttered French baguette.

“I do not know. She meets this girl and all of a sudden she is complaining about the work. She wants to be going out all the time, quibbling about babysitting and how much she is being paid. We are not wealthy people-”

Lily nearly spluttered her soup across the breakfast bar and Madame Beaumont paused as if taking Lily’s impressions into account. She regrouped and continued, “This is a difficult time for our country. We pay Fiona the rate the agency agree. Ok, a little less, but au pairs usually eighteen. Fiona only sixteen.”

“Seventeen,” said Lily.

Madam Beaumont ignored her. “This money is supposed to be pocket money. She lives here in this house, in the seventh district. She is very lucky. But does she feel this way? Non. Always, since Brigitte, she want more. More money, more ’olidays, more days off. I say to her-”

 “When did you last see Fiona?” Lily interrupted, tired already of the tirade against her sister.

“Last month, she tells us she doesn’t want to work here any more. I say she must give one month to help us find someone else. But no. She takes her things and she leaves. She says she will work for us for one month, but live with Brigitte. An au pair who lives in the ninth!”

Lily wasn’t sure what the ninth was, but there was no mistaking Madame Beaumont’s sense of the ridiculous. The Frenchwoman fixed her dark eyes on Lily. “What can we do? We have no one else to help us. We at breaking point. Then, the agency find us Nell. She is not very suitable, but we are desperate people.”

“So, when did you last see Fiona?”

“I was not here.” Madame Beaumont crossed the kitchen and opened one of the cupboard doors. She returned to the table with a small eggcup and a tiny teaspoon. A teaspoon as small as some students wore around their necks for the ingestion of drugs. “She spoke with my husband.”

“When was that?” asked Jo as Lily peered into the eggcup Madame Beaumont had set on the table.

“Salt,” said Madame Beaumont to Lily. She turned back to Jo. “It was a Thursday evening, because I am playing squash. Over a week ago.”

“The 3
rd
of May.” Jo raised her eyebrows at Lily and Lily knew what she meant. That was the night Fiona had rung and left her tearful message on their answer machine in Leeds.

“And did she tell him where she was going?”

“She said she was going inter-railing. Pah, like she needs a holiday.” Madame Beaumont drank the remainder of her wine.

“What time does your husband get back?” asked Jo.

“And now this terrible news and we cannot find her to say.”

“How did she meet Brigitte?” asked Jo. “Is she another nanny?”

“Non. She is not. Certainly not.”

“Have you got an address for Brigitte?” asked Jo.

Madame Beaumont slipped off her stool and went over to the shelves above the worktop. She reached up and plucked out a postcard, with a picture of the Mona Lisa on the front sporting a moustache. She handed it to Lily, who recognised her sister’s handwriting on the reverse. ‘New address: 12d, Rue Pigalle. Please forward my post.’

The French woman looked at Lily as if sizing her up for a job. She inhaled deeply. “Brigitte lives in the ninth. Do you know what this is?”

“The ninth district?” Lily had read some of the guidebook on the aeroplane. Paris was divided into twenty districts, in much the same way, she supposed, as Leeds was. Although she and Jo hardly ever ventured outside the student enclave of Leeds 6.

“The ninth district is where the prostitutes live. This is how Brigitte earns her money.”

“Because she lives in the ninth district, you think she’s a prostitute?” asked Jo.

“My husband says she is a prostitute.”

“And your husband is familiar with prostitutes?” asked Jo.

Lily raised her eyebrows at Jo as Madame Beaumont’s face went taut. The elegant French woman poured herself some more wine but omitted to refill either Lily or Jo’s glass. She took her soup bowl to the sink. “My husband also work as a lawyer, for the,” she struggled to find the right word, “for the police. He is the one who fights to put criminals in prison. I think he knows enough about street life, to know what he sees when it is standing in front of him.”

“I think we’d better go,” said Lily.

“I worry that Fiona thinks she can make more money this way,” Madame Beaumont’s voice was smug. Reminded Lily of one of her least favourite teachers at school. Smug and condescending.

Lily felt her cheeks grow red. She slid down off the kitchen stool. “Don’t you dare call my sister-”

“How else she going to pay for all this holiday?”

Jo lay a reassuring hand on Lily’s arm. Lily shook it off. “Obviously not on the slave wages you paid her. Talk about tight.”

Lily’s fingers itched to slap the French woman’s face.

“At least I have a job,” snapped Madame Beaumont. “At least I give people work. What do you do?”

Lily took a step towards Madame Beaumont.

“You think having a job makes you special,” said Jo, as she held Lily back. “Just makes you normal in my book. Normal and very boring.”

Jo pushed Lily towards the door. At the doorway she turned back to Madame Beaumont. “Thanks for the soup.”

Moments later they were back outside on the pavement. “I’m not surprised Fiona left there,” Lily said as she linked arms with Jo. “Uptight cow. Did you believe what she said about Brigitte?”

“She probably thinks any woman who isn’t a lawyer is a prostitute,” said Jo. “Typical rich bitch.”

“I want to go to Brigitte’s,” said Lily. “See if the neighbours know anything. They might be feeding the cat, or something.”

“They have a cat?”

“I don’t know. They might. At least then we can stop worrying.” Lily tried to ignore the growing feeling in her stomach that worrying was something she was going to be doing a lot more of in the days ahead.

It was almost ten o’clock and Lily sensed the change in atmosphere almost as soon as they emerged from the underground station into Pigalle Place.  The ninth district was altogether gaudier than the seventh. The first thing Lily saw was a McDonalds, its golden M shining like a religious artefact. Before she’d even crossed the road, Lily could make out the queues of people at the counter through the brightly lit windows, a sharp contrast to the metal shutters of the shops next door.

Jo and Lily paused at the top of the stairs leading up from the underground, both uncertain. Neon signs winked and flickered from every direction. “Live women,” Jo read out loud. She paused. “Suppose it beats the alternative.”

They might have stood in that spot for several minutes, building up the courage to step out into the square, but what Lily had thought was a heap of blankets by the metal railings, suddenly moved. They both started and Lily tried not to look aghast at the old man with dirty skin and few teeth. She felt in her pocket and dropped a couple of francs into his takeaway paper cup, the M not so golden now.

Lily linked arms with Jo and together they crossed the square, past a large, black nightclub illuminated with red neon signs. Jo pulled her into a street off the square and Lily saw the blue sign. Rue Pigalle. Her sister’s last known address. It was a narrow street, full of sex shops, bars and boarded-up stores. Lily’s pulse started to quicken.

“So, where’s number twelve?” asked Jo, scanning the shop doorways. Lily let go of Jo’s arm, her attention caught by a handwritten sign sellotaped into a dimly lit window. It was written in English. ‘Cheap massage. 20Fr’.

“That’s only two quid. That can’t be sex, right?” asked Lily.

Jo had moved on down the street and was staring up at a building. She called to Lily. “This is it.”

Lily hurried after her and saw the number 12 screwed onto a huge wooden door, as big as the door to a castle, or a prison. She found herself wishing she’d waited til the morning to come here. “How do we get in?”

Jo pressed the buzzer for flat D before Lily had even noticed the intercom unit on the right of the doorframe. There was a small piece of white card with the word ‘Chance’ written on it, stuck next to the buzzer. Lily held her breath. She could hear the sounds of cars in the square, the distant beats of music. After a few moments, Jo pressed the other five buttons on the unit. Not all them had names stuck next to them. A voice came over the intercom, totally unintelligible. Jo pressed all six buttons again and mumbled something vaguely French-sounding into the microphone. Eventually the door beeped and Jo pushed it open.  Lily glanced at Jo before they both stepped inside.

 The hallway was even darker than the street, and it took Lily’s eyes a moment to adjust. Looking up, she saw, right at the top of the zig-zagging staircase, a huge glass window in the high ceiling above them. It let in enough moonlight to cast a milky glow down the stairwell. The plastic button of a light switch jutted out from the wall near the door. Jo hit it with the palm of her hand, but nothing happened. “It’s a timer. Bulb must be out.”

They started climbing the stairs. On each landing the walls were decorated with graffiti. Lily couldn’t understand what any of the words meant, but she could tell whoever had done it hadn’t taken any pride in their work. Lily tensed, already hating the fact that Fiona lived here. She could sense the danger in the brickwork.