The Cleaner of Chartres (18 page)

‘Boars,’ corrected Mother Véronique.

‘Oh yes, of course, “boars”,’ repeated Sister Laurence with seeming meekness but with enough of a treasonous glint in her voice for Mother Véronique to embark on a lengthy account of the life of St Lubin.

St Lubin’s window had been donated by the vintners, whose trade was advertised on panels depicting scenes of merriment connected with wine. Sister Laurence, trying to absorb the details of the life of the saint, wondered if, given that it was her birthday, she dared suggest to the Mother that they too might enjoy that evening a convivial glass of wine.

For the moment, however, she confined herself to wondering if they might maybe ascend the tower, from which vantage point, a notice advertised, a magnificent view of Chartres could be seen. But her request was refused. Mother Véronique had had, she said, since adolescence a horror of heights and always feared she might succumb to the temptation to throw herself off, a temptation she went on to compare with that of Jesus, similarly tempted by Satan in the wilderness.

Chartres

Although she didn’t always understand the words, Agnès tried each evening to read as much as she could manage of the Abbé Paul’s schoolboy book. It had grown to be a ritual: supper (she always cooked herself something) and then her reading.

She had started with Theseus and the Minotaur. It was slow work but from what she could make out numbers were important. Seven Athenian children of each sex were sent every nine years to Crete to feed the Minotaur. It was, she reflected, what Alain had been telling her about.

‘It’s all number here,’ he had said only that morning. She had followed him up to his eyrie again for an early breakfast of sausage and coffee and had noticed a sleeping bag.

‘You do sleep here, then? I thought that was a joke.’

‘The rooms in the hôtellerie have thin walls. There’s someone snoring like a herd of swine in the room next to mine so I thought tonight I’d stay here and get a better night’s sleep.’

‘Is it allowed?’

He shrugged. ‘Who’s to notice?’

‘What about washing?’ she wondered.

He laughed, showing his pointed eye-teeth. ‘You mean where do I pee? Plenty of buckets around. I don’t pee in the font if that’s what you’re imagining.’

‘No, I –’

‘Are you more interested in my ablutions or what I was telling you?’

‘What you were telling me, of course.’

‘
OK
, so, this place is all number. Three is the number of the spirit, the Trinity to Christians, but it’s a holy number in many faiths. Four is the physical number – four elements, earth, water, fire, air, four corners of the earth –’

‘But –’

‘Yes, I know it doesn’t have any – but it did – the four winds and so on. And if you add them together, spiritual plus physical, you get the number seven, which is wholeness. The medieval –’

‘Stop, stop.’ She was laughing again. ‘I’m only a poor uneducated cleaner.’

‘That’s rubbish and you know it.’

‘I don’t.’

He gave her one of his long looks. His eyes, she noticed, moved very slightly slower than those of most people. ‘I’m sorry. I’m an arrogant beast. I’m dreadful when I get into lecture mode.’

‘No, no, I like it.’ She did like it. She liked his airy confidence. ‘Go on.’

‘
OK
. But stop me when you’re bored. So, what was I saying? Seven. Well, the medieval curriculum was divided into two parts, the Trivium – grammar, rhetoric and logic – and the Quadrivium – geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. This is where the seven liberal arts come from – you can see them over the right door of the Western Front. Seven is a magic number: the days of the week, the seven deadly sins, and virtues, seven last trumpets at the end of time. Three times four is twelve, three times three is nine, and twelve and nine are also important here.’

‘The signs of the zodiac?’

‘Exactly – they’re on the North Porch.’

‘And the window.’

‘There too. Twelve months of the year, twelve apostles, twelve branches to the tree in the Jesse window. Nine is the triple trinity – there are nine doors to the cathedral, nine porches to the close, or were, and ditto to the town. The nine orders of angels on the South Porch are in three choirs of three: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones –’

‘Dominions,’ she joined in. ‘Virtues, Powers –’

‘Principalities, Archangels, Angels,’ they concluded in noisy unison.

‘Well, I never,’ he said. ‘I’ve won bets reciting those.’

‘There’s some good in a convent education.’ She laughed.

‘What?’

‘I was remembering you said you weren’t “chatty”.’

‘This isn’t chat, lady.’

When she clambered back down, it was reluctantly. But the Abbé Bernard was about to arrive and she needed to get on with the ambulatory without his trailing round after her.

•   •   •

When, later that same day, Agnès put down the book of myth in order to put on the kettle, she realized that the Abbé Bernard was still on her mind. His decline seemed to be hastening daily. Twice lately, he had asked her if she had noticed the Satan behind the screen covering the scaffolding, where, he assured her, the Prince of Darkness had his rebel troops concealed. Only that morning he had taken her down the south steps, his freckled hand gripping the flesh of her arm, and round to stand before the donkey with the hurdy-gurdy on the south-western end of the cathedral.

‘See there, see there,’ the Abbé Bernard had said, stabbing the air with an agitated finger at the odd stone figure. ‘His works are everywhere.’ And, as the white train which transports the gullible tourists around Chartres rattled past, he turned angry eyes upon it and denounced that too as ‘under the devil’s spell’.

She tried to stop thinking about the old abbé and to think about the tale she had read. Seven boys and seven girls were sent to Crete every nine years. Maybe that was why the story had found a place in the cathedral?

The phone rang. ‘Agnès?’ From the prickle down her breastbone she knew before the recognition became conscious whose the overloud voice was. ‘Mother Véronique speaking.’

‘Good evening, Mother.’

‘Sister Laurence told me she had bumped into you. When can we see you?’

‘Well, I . . .’

‘Tonight isn’t possible, I’m afraid. But tomorrow would suit us very well.’

‘I work, you see, Sister.’

‘“Mother”, it is, now. Where do you work, Agnès?’

Unable to resist that commanding voice from her past, Agnès said, ‘First thing, I start in the cathedral, Mother.’

‘What time is “first thing”?’

‘Six. But the cathedral doesn’t open to visitors until eight thirty.’

‘Sister Laurence and I will come to find you tomorrow morning at eight thirty sharp,’ said Sister Véronique. ‘Good evening.’ She rang off.

Chartres

‘You can always take flight,’ said Alain, when she told him that two of the nuns who had brought her up were arriving that morning. ‘Say “Hi”, tell them you’ve another appointment and then skedaddle.’

‘I would. But Sister Véronique – “Mother” she is now – will be sure to find me.’

‘Terrier or bloodhound?’

‘A bit of both.’

‘Well, remember I’m up aloft, your guardian angel, if not archangel. If you get into trouble, give me a sign and I’ll drop in on you. I’d quite like to meet these Holy Terrors.’

Agnès was so relieved it was not the Sisters entering at eight thirty sharp that she almost welcomed the Abbé Bernard. He had had another dream about his mother. This time, ‘She was walking along a wall, quite narrow, and when I looked up it was on the cathedral roof. But the roof was not green as ours is green but like the scales of a great dragon. It is the Leviathan, Agnès.’

‘It was a dream, Father.’

‘But the Leviathan . . . “Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord thou lettest down?”’

‘I know, Father. But we must hope your mother is with Our Lord in heaven.’

‘I fear she is with Beelzebub, Agnès.’

‘Let us hope not, Father.’

He went off muttering just as Agnès became aware of two figures in grey bearing down on her.

Mother Véronique gave her a bristly kiss and Sister Laurence hugged her close. She smelled, Agnès noticed, of one of the Mediterranean scents which could be sampled free in the pharmacy on rue du Soleil d’Or.

‘So you work here, Agnès.’

‘Yes, Mother. And for other people in Chartres.’

‘I am anxious to hear all about your life since we saw you last. We know about the incident, of course.’

Sister Laurence said, ‘Dear Agnès, this is such a marvellous environment. I’m so happy for you to be here.’

‘Yes, I am lucky, Sister. Father Paul has been most kind.’

‘And Father Paul is . . .’ asked Mother Véronique, keen to get everyone into their proper place in her mind.

‘The Dean here, Mother. I clean for him too.’

‘Very good. Very good, Agnès.’

They walked round the cathedral, with Mother Véronique issuing bulletins of information. ‘This here, the Prodigal Son window, is the only one that is not signed by a donor.’

‘It is very beautiful towards the evening,’ Agnès suggested. ‘With the sunset behind it.’ She herself liked the Miracle window donated by the blacksmiths just round the corner, with its image of the sturdy white horse being shod.

‘Notice up there, the young man consorting with harlots,’ instructed Mother Véronique. Sister Laurence narrowed her eyes the better to see. The eponymous Son appeared to have a firm grip on the buttocks of one of the ‘harlots’.

Mother Véronique felt compelled to pause before the choir and complain about the white masonry ‘grouting’ painted on the ceiling. ‘How vulgar. Why are they painting the joins like that?’

‘We’re taking it back to the original.’

Mother Véronique turned to the young man addressing her. ‘I beg your pardon.’

‘What you see – the ceiling colour and the painted mortar joins – is the way the original was –
is
, in fact.’

Mother Véronique’s expression became severe. ‘I’m afraid you are mistaken. The original was as we see here.’ She gestured at the grey vaulting above the altar.

‘Sorry, Sister, but you’ve been misinformed.’ The young man was smiling but his pointed eye-teeth gave the smile a faintly sinister aspect. Mother Véronique moved very slightly backwards.

‘This here,’ he continued, indicating the ambulatory ceiling, ‘the yellow with the painted mortar lines, has all been taken back to its thirteenth-century state. Eighty per cent of it is the original intact.’

Mother Véronique became mulish. ‘“Mother”, actually. I am sorry to contradict you but –’

Anxious to save the Mother from further humiliation, Agnès said hurriedly, ‘Mother, this is Alain Fleury. He works here as one of the cathedral restorers. Alain, Mother Véronique.’

‘I see. Very interesting. Is there somewhere we can take some refreshment?’ Mother Véronique turned from the impertinent restorer, who winked at Agnès.

Outside, at a table belonging to the restaurant café that was once ‘Beck’s’, Mother Véronique ordered coffee for Sister Laurence and Agnès and a chamomile tea for herself. ‘I have these dreadful “heads”, you may remember, Agnès.’

Agnès, who remembered all too well how they had affected Sister Véronique’s temper, nodded.

Sister Laurence said, ‘Please tell us how you’ve been, Agnès. We so often talk about you at home and wonder.’

‘I’ve been well, Sister. I came here twenty years ago and, as you see, I stayed.’

‘And the good man who found you? He must have passed away long since.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your doctor? Such an agreeable man.’ And Sister Laurence wistfully recalled her entertaining drive down to the farm to see Agnès with the attractive doctor. ‘What has happened to him?’

‘Dr Deman and I spoke quite regularly on the phone,’ interjected Mother Véronique. ‘Naturally, he kept me well informed.’

‘I don’t know. We lost touch after my – after Jean died.’

‘I shall make inquiries about him on my return,’ Mother Véronique declared.

Agnès explained she had to leave now to go to her next job and Sister Laurence asked if she might accompany her. Mother Véronique said she preferred to stay put. Her “head” had quite drained her. She would wait there for Sister Laurence, study her guide and perhaps take another tisane.

Sister Laurence accompanied Agnès to the place de la Poissonnerie. ‘My employer lives up there.’ She pointed out the professor’s apartment.

‘You clean for her?’

‘Him. Professor Jones. I’ve been sorting out his work. He is, was, an English professor, though he writes in French. He has a lot of papers.’

‘You
have
done well, Agnès.’ Sister Laurence beamed. She was happy to see her little girl transformed into this competent, elegant young woman.

‘I am learning to read at last,’ Agnès said, the expression in Sister Laurence’s brown eyes encouraging her to confide. ‘Professor Jones is teaching me.’

‘How lovely. So you can read stories to yourself now.’

‘I’m beginning to, yes.’

‘You did like stories. Rapt, you were as a little girl. I did love to tell you stories, Agnès.’

‘I liked you telling them to me too, Sister.’

Sister Laurence kissed her protégée goodbye and made her way, rather circuitously, back to the café, where she found Mother Véronique deep in conversation.

‘Sister, this is Madame Beck.’ The elderly woman extended a beringed hand. She appeared to have a head of unusually luxuriant hennaed hair. ‘Madame, this is Sister Laurence. Madame Beck was asking me about Agnès, Sister. Agnès cleans for her.’

‘Not any more.’

The woman turned two accusing eyes on Sister Laurence, who blinked. ‘Oh, I hope there was nothing –’

‘I have been explaining to Madame Beck, Sister, about poor Agnès’ “episode”. She was really very ill, you know, Madame. She had to be hospitalized. And then there was that other unfortunate incident with the child.’

‘Mother,’ said Sister Laurence. ‘I wonder if –’

‘Incident?’ asked Madame Beck, and her eyes appeared to Sister Laurence to hover momentarily in her face like pale blue flies.

‘Agnès had a child while she was only a child herself. We were all very distressed. It was adopted of course. A young woman in the vicinity caring for another child was later attacked and it was thought that maybe Agnès –’

‘Mother,’ Sister Laurence interrupted again with unusual vigour, ‘I would really like to show you the Maison du Saumon –’

‘All in good time, Sister. Anyway, poor Agnès was thought to be involved in the assault. Praise God, I believe later it was found not to be the case.’

‘It was indeed,’ said Sister Laurence firmly. ‘She was discovered to be quite innocent. Poor girl. On top of everything else that she’d been through it was very bad luck indeed.’ She almost glared at Mother Véronique.

•   •   •

Almost the first thing Mother Véronique did when she returned to the convent was to telephone St Francis’s to inquire about Dr Deman.

‘We have no Dr Deman here,’ the switchboard operator announced.

‘I assure you he used to work at St Francis’s.’

‘When was this, please?’

Mother Véronique consulted her memory. ‘I would say 1987. Yes, he was certainly there then. A consultant psychiatrist.’

‘Madame, that was twenty-four years ago. He’s probably moved on or maybe even retired.’

‘May I speak to someone in authority?’

The receptionist, well schooled in handling difficult callers, put her through to a line on which a long queue of callers was already waiting to make complaints.

Two hours later Mother Véronique rang again and this time got through to the ‘Administration Department’ without too much of a wait. Perseverance with a bored-sounding clerk finally brought a result.

‘According to our records Dr Deman left the clinic in 1991.’

‘Do you have a record of where he went?’

‘I’m afraid we cannot give out personal information, Madame.’

‘I am the Mother Superior of the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy,’ said Mother Véronique, with lofty irrelevance.

The irrelevant sometimes succeeds where honest reason fails. An amused voice came back down the line. ‘A colleague here tells me he moved to England.’

‘Do you have an address?’

The amused voice made a muffled inquiry. ‘He moved to a hospital in London.’ After a further muffled exchange the voice named a well-known psychiatric hospital. ‘It’s famous, I gather.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mother Veronique. ‘I have of course heard of it.’