The Cleaner of Chartres (19 page)

Rouen

It was some weeks before Denis Deman came to hear of the death of Jean Dupère. His contact with Agnès had not ceased; but over the two years of her stay at the farm it had diminished. She was so at home, so patently happy there, that by and by her former doctor ceased to trouble about her. They had both survived his panicky error and the outcome had maybe been more favourable to her than if he had never been so foolish as to make it in the first place.

Or so he consoled himself.

So it was with alarm he heard the news, via one of the nursing staff, a friend of Maddy and aware of his interest, that the old man had died and Agnès had been more or less thrown out by the niece.

Denis Deman remembered this niece: the one whom Jean Dupère’s mother had not cared for; the one to whom the old man had not wished to leave the silver chain. Reproving himself for not keeping a closer eye on Agnès, Denis Deman sat down at his desk and wrote to this unpopular niece care of the farm, marking the envelope for forwarding. Hearing nothing, he wrote again. His letters were not returned but if they were forwarded to Dreux, where the niece, he recalled, had come from, then he must assume she had elected not to reply.

Finally, in the absence of any other source of information, Dr Deman drove down the familiar track, where a sign advertising the sale of the farmstead stood at the junction with the road. He stopped not at the Dupère place but before it, at the neighbouring farm where Jean’s neighbour Yvette lived.

Yvette was pleased to see him and invited him in for a glass of Calva.

‘What happened to the little one I have no idea,’ she told him. ‘She left so quietly we didn’t hardly know she was gone and none of us have seen her since.’

‘But you’ll let me know if you hear anything?’

‘Such a nice girl and so fond of Jean. Between you and me I don’t like the niece.’ Yvette made a graphic gesture with her hand. ‘Greedy as sin and not so much as a tear squeezed out for her uncle, who left her everything, bless him. Poor little Agnès wept her blessed heart out at the funeral. Not that that was much to write home about. Very cheap, we thought.’

Denis Deman left asking again that she would kindly let him know if she heard news and leaving his card.

Unsure whom else he could turn to, he rang Inès Nezat in Le Mans.

‘I can’t help you, Denis, I’m afraid. I’ve heard nothing since Agnès went back to you. I’m sorry the old boy has passed on. How is Anne?’

Denis Deman, who had not had to have recourse to Anne for a while, was momentarily puzzled. ‘Anne?’

‘Your fiancée. Or is she not any more?’

‘Oh
Anne
. Sorry, I thought you were thinking of Maddy, the nurse here at the clinic whom Agnès liked. Anne’s very well, thank you.’

‘Have you seen each other lately?’

‘I’m off to England for Easter, since you ask.’

‘Which part?’

‘The Lake District. It’s supposed to be very pretty in the spring.’

And whether to salve his conscience (for he retained an affection for Inès Nezat), or because the fib, as can happen, had kindled his imagination, or for the want of anything better to do, Denis Deman did in fact go that Easter to England for a walking holiday in the Lakes.

At his hotel, he met a young woman who had suffered a sprain to her ankle while descending Scafell Pike. As a doctor, he offered his services. The young woman bore a startling likeness to his image of Anne, the fiancée whose powerful non-existence had brought him there in the first place. So much did the girl resemble his long-standing ideal that he proposed to her almost immediately and, shortly after, to his mother’s disgust, he moved to England in order to marry her.

Chartres

That Sunday, just before lunch, as Agnès was preparing
lardons
for a salad, Terry rang.

‘Sorry to be a pest but I’m in deep shit.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘That horrible little pooch has gone missing. I should never have taken her in. Never trust Pekes.’

‘What happened, Terry?’

It transpired that what had ‘happened’ was that Terry had gone to spend a night with the patents lawyer and had taken Piaf with her.

‘I couldn’t leave her overnight at mine, could I, so I asked if I could bring the pooch over to his. He said, yeah, fine, but then, when I get there it’s “Oh I don’t want a dog in the house”, so in the end I put her in the shed in his backyard. I left the shed door open so she could do pipi in the night and in the morning she’s only gone and done a runner.’

‘When does Madame get back?’

‘That’s just it, she’s home tomorrow. God alone knows what’ll happen if the pooch isn’t there to slobber all over her fat face. Shit!’

‘You want me to help look?’

‘Too right I do!’

But after three hours of fruitless searching Agnès said, ‘We should put up notices.’

‘That’ll advertise the fact she’s gone.’

‘Terry, you’ll have to tell her tomorrow anyway.’

‘Why did I take her, for Christ’s sake?’

‘For three hundred and fifty euros?’

‘Don’t remind me. That’s going to be history for sure.’

‘So, you will have to face the music.’

‘Just my luck and all for that wanker too.’

Madame Picot, arriving home, and bearing the extensive London purchases with which she hoped to arouse the envy of Madame Beck, was greeted by an uncharacteristically nervous Terry, who broke the news of Piaf’s disappearance. Madame Picot reacted as a tragic operatic
prima donna
might when faced with the news of the death of the love of her life.

‘She literally screamed,’ Terry recounted to Agnès. ‘Never heard anything like it in my life. Not even my little brothers screeched so loud. Yelled and cried and called me a murderess. I tell you, I’m done with dogs.’

They were at the jazz café, which, it being Monday, was not playing jazz. Agnès, who had felt that Terry needed something if not to cheer her up at least to distract her, had suggested they meet there for a bite.

Monique, the owner, who had been made aware of the loss, said, ‘You know, Pekes are intelligent. Piaf will find her way home.’

‘If she’s not dead,’ said Terry, who had reached the point in her drama where people refuse to be comforted.

She cheered up later when Philippe turned up. ‘I dare say Piaf is in someone’s hamburger.’

‘Oh, thanks a bunch, Philippe. Yours, let’s hope.’

‘I never touch the stuff. It’s ruinous to the skin.’

Philippe bought them all a carafe of wine to give him the licence to complain about his sister. ‘She and her man have decided to split so I’m stuck with her till she finds somewhere else to live.’

‘How is little Max?’ Agnès asked.

‘Maxling is great. I adore Maxling. But I can’t stand the way she treats him.’

‘The black cloth?’

‘What’s that?’ asked Terry, curiosity finally prising her from private grief.

‘It’s a dire method of training little children that my mad sister has adopted. You leave the kid to cry to “teach” them to sleep. Except it doesn’t work.’

‘No,’ Agnès said with unusual firmness. ‘It wouldn’t. Nature gave babies a special cry in order for women to respond to them.’

‘Men too,’ said Philippe, not wanting to be outdone. ‘I can’t stand hearing him cry.’

‘You’re a girl,’ said Terry. ‘You don’t count.’

Philippe blew her a kiss and said, ‘Any time you feel like taking young Maxling off our hands, Agnès, you’re welcome. I’ll pay you to have him for a weekend. My sister’s got to go back to Auxerre to get some of her stuff and she doesn’t want to take him with her.’

•   •   •

By the time Mother Véronique left Chartres, she and Madame Beck had become fast friends. Madame Beck had accepted an invitation to visit the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy, which, Mother Véronique explained, had recently opened a ‘Retreat’ wing to offer rest and respite to weary souls in need of refreshment.

All this, Madame Beck was eagerly waiting to impart to her friend, with the added pleasurable prospect that she might induce a little jealousy at the news of the acquaintance, made in Madame Picot’s absence, with a Mother Superior. Especially one as intellectually distinguished as Mother Véronique.

But the first part of the afternoon, when the friends were reunited after Madame Picot’s return, was taken up with the drama of the missing Piaf.

‘My dear,’ said Madame Beck, who, pushing out the boat in honour of her friend’s return, had bought some raspberry tartlets at the
pâtisserie
. ‘I know how you feel. I went through this over Lulu.’

‘I hardly think a china doll is the equivalent of a live dog, Louise.’

‘Well, you know, I’m not a dog person, dear.’

‘It’s the most terrible thing that has happened to me since Auguste died. And Terry . . . I trusted that girl and she has betrayed me.’

‘How did it happen, dear?’

‘I can’t get the story clear. She was visiting a friend and somehow Piaf got out through the fence.’

‘How very careless of her.’

Madame Picot was too taken up with Piaf to be as excited as her friend was by the news of Agnès’ past.

‘So she had an illegitimate child?’

‘Apparently she was only fifteen. They never got out of her who the father was. But then, she herself was someone’s unwanted “love child”.’ Madame Beck’s voice took on its most conspiratorial tone. ‘You see, I was right about her. There’s bad blood there. I knew it. Blood will out, Claude always said.’

‘But you say another child was involved. I don’t quite –’

‘A nanny for an adopted baby whose parents lived near the psychiatric hospital where Agnès had been sent –’

‘A psychiatric hospital?’

‘Yes, Jeanette. Have you not been listening? She attacked the then Mother, a Mother Catherine, Mother Véronique told me, with a knife. Appeared stark naked knife in hand by the Mother’s bedside. Mother Véronique, Sister as she was then, of course, had to rescue Mother Catherine. They had to have her sectioned.’

‘The Mother?’

‘Don’t be a fool, Jeanette. Agnès.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘She’s a little exhibitionist, all right. You can see that. She was showing us everything, cool as a cucumber, that day Father Bernard and I caught her in the cathedral with that man.’

‘But I don’t quite understand, dear,’ Madame Picot was confused by the torrent of information gushing from her friend’s busily working mouth, ‘where the nanny –’

‘I told you, Jeanette. Do listen.
A nanny with a baby
, the same age as Agnès’ adopted one, was attacked with a knife.’

‘How dreadful. And it was Agnès?’

‘Well,’ Madame Beck retreated into vagueness. ‘I gather from Mother Véronique that they never discovered who did it for sure. But the finger pointed at Agnès and the evidence must have been strong. She was sent to a secure hospital for the mentally deranged.’ Had someone presented Madame Beck with a whole showcase of antique china dolls she could not have looked more satisfied.

‘Oh dear,’ said Madame Picot again. She had had a happy week with her daughter shopping in the King’s Road and her love of scandal had been temporarily ousted by her love of acquisition. ‘How very unfortunate.’

‘I shall have to tell the Abbé Paul, of course. It’s my Christian duty. The girl has quite bamboozled him, you can see. I did try to tell him about her taking Lulu but he couldn’t hear me. Poor man, he has gone quite deaf. He was quite convinced that I had recommended her to him.’

‘So you said nothing?’ Madame Picot’s bad conscience over Lulu was renewed.

‘I left him in his fools’ paradise,’ said Madame Beck. It was her plain opinion that this was where most men preferred to live. ‘But I shall have to make sure he grasps the danger now. With all I have learned they can
not
keep her on at the cathedral. I shall refer the matter to the Chapter. If necessary the Bishop must be informed.’

Chartres

Philippe’s sister, Brigitte, had planned to visit Auxerre the following weekend and it was agreed that baby Max would be brought to Agnès’ apartment on the Friday evening.

Agnès, who had heard nothing from Madame Badon for weeks, months even, was dismayed to arrive home early, in order to get things ready for Max, to a message on the answer-phone announcing that she would be coming down to Chartres that weekend and she would be bringing her ‘friend’.

‘Too bad,’ Philippe said when Agnès rang with this news. ‘That’s so like life. People you never see turn up just exactly the moment you don’t want them.’

He called back a little later. ‘Listen. I was having a friend over this weekend but he says I can go to his. So why not come and look after Max here? All his gear’s here anyway.’

On Friday night, Agnès rocked Max to sleep in her arms and then laid him down beside her in Philippe’s king-sized bed. The little bundle wriggled and squirmed, but he woke fully only twice for feeds and then snuggled down again against Agnès’ neck, where he spent the rest of the night behaving like a miniature merry-go-round.

They breakfasted together, Max on Agnès’ lap, while he ate his baby cereal and she drank her coffee listening to France Culture.

‘That’s Bach,’ she told him. She recognized the unique chords from listening to the Abbé Paul’s
CD
s as she dusted.

The morning was fine and, though a November chill had now set in, the twin spires were still sharply defined against a canopy of the clearest blue. Agnès joggled Max in his buggy over the cobbles on the north side of the cathedral close towards the jazz café.

Monique, seeing them, called out, ‘What a beautiful baby,’ and as she came closer to greet them bent her knees to look. ‘Bless him. I could eat him. May I?’

Max, who was not yet asleep, gravely consented to be thoroughly kissed by Monique and volubly admired by several of the regulars who were taking coffee and beers in the sun.

‘Where are you taking him, Agnès?’

‘I’m going to show him Notre-Dame.’

Inside the cathedral, a wedding was taking place. Side by side at the crossing of the transepts, before the silver altar – which so resembled a blacksmith’s anvil that it added its own fairytale dimension to the scene – the bride and groom stood, she glorious in a meringue and whipped-cream lace frock, he in a stiff suit, brand new. Hand in hand, they glanced at each other, smiling shyly.

Behind them their families were ranged, the women resplendent in hats bought specially for the occasion, the men in their best suits, their shoulders braced to witness the plighting of the troths of the two young hopefuls who had no idea what a pack of troubles lay ahead of them.

Agnès, standing below the window of the Prodigal Son, watched the drama of present and projected bliss. Max in his buggy was making the quiet animal snuffles of a baby lost in sleep. The sun, shifting in its westward path, was already lighting the South Rose window and smudges of colour, refracted through the glass, were blessing the grey stone of the walls by the scaffolding that concealed the benign Blue Virgin.

As the wedding party started on the hymn ‘All the Saints and All the Angels’, Agnès, looking up and over towards the South Transept and the covered scaffolding, saw something . . .

•   •   •

When Agnès came to, a crowd was round her and the air seemed to be full of incense. Little Max was sobbing in the arms of an unknown woman. Struggling to sit up, Agnès cried aloud, ‘Give me my baby!’

‘Agnès.’ It was the Abbé Paul. ‘You fainted, my dear. Here.’ He offered his arm and she sat up while he helped her to rest her back against a column.

‘Please, give me the baby.’

Max was handed down to her and, holding him fast, she rocked him, feeling the stone base of the column reassuringly solid against her spine. ‘It’s all right, sweetie. There, there, lamb. I’m here.’

‘I’m sorry, Madame.’ It was the woman who had been holding him, looking anxious. ‘He was crying so much I thought –’

‘No, please, it is fine. Thank you.’

The Abbé Paul said, ‘Would you like us to call a doctor, Agnès?’

‘No, no. Please. I am fine.’

‘Why not come over to the house?’

The wedding party had stayed, it seemed, to ensure that this episode was no symbol of bad luck and they clapped and cheered Agnès as, holding little Max, she crossed the transept to the South Door.

•   •   •

Madame Beck, standing at her watchtower, was put into a veritable ecstasy of rage at the sight of the Abbé Paul carrying a buggy and following Agnès down the south steps. She rang Madame Picot, brimming over with the news.

‘That girl has positively bewitched him. I shall have to go round again.’

‘There is still no news,’ said Madame Picot mournfully at the other end of the phone.

Three people had rung in answer to the notices placed by Terry and Agnès advertising the missing Piaf. One man had seen a terrier somewhere, one had offered his own unwanted dog, and yet another woman had tried to sell her a puppy. ‘They weren’t even Pekes,’ Madame Picot complained.

Madame Beck made not the slightest attempt to pretend to care about the bogus Pekes.

‘She had a baby with her. With her reputation. It is my bounden duty to report this. After all, I have it on the Mother Superior’s authority that there was violence towards a child.’

•   •   •

The Abbé Paul followed a peculiar branch of Christian practice that meant he tried always to put himself in the shoes of others and to do to them as he would wish them to do to him. He therefore made no inquiry about what might have caused Agnès’ fainting spell but when the three of them were settled in his receiving room, he offered Agnès a glass of wine.

‘And maybe a little something to eat,’ he suggested. ‘I have some good Brie, some bread or a sweet biscuit, maybe?’

Agnès accepted the wine and a biscuit. The Abbé Paul poured them each a large glass of one of his better Chinons. Max, nuzzled close into Agnès’ breast, had fallen into a contented doze. Through the window, the Abbé Paul could see the pale mauve of the late Michaelmas daisies still in flower.

When in doubt the Abbé Paul tended to say nothing. He was unafraid of silence. Indeed, he welcomed it. And Agnès did not look as if she were ill. On the contrary, she looked unusually well as she sat, with the child in her arms, on his dark blue silk chaise-longue. The Abbé Paul, who was susceptible to all things beautiful, drank in the face and form opposite him even as he drank in his good wine.

After a while Agnès said, ‘I am sorry to be a nuisance, Father.’

‘You’re not a nuisance, Agnès.’

‘I feel fine. I ought to get going.’

‘Please stay as long as you wish.’

But Agnès, aware that baby Max’s next feed was almost due, finished the wine and got up to go.

‘How are you getting on with the Greek myths?’ Possibly the Abbé Paul wanted to detain her a little.

‘I like them, Father. I like –’ She paused. What was it she liked? ‘I like that they are, maybe, a bit wild?’

‘To be sure the Olympians are not your Christian God of love and mercy.’

The Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy had not always been so merciful. ‘No, Father. But –’

‘Yes?’

‘They can’t –’ She didn’t have the words, though she had the glimmer of a sense of the feeling of them. ‘They can’t be so
used
,’ was the best she could come up with.

‘Ah,’ said the Abbé Paul, for he understood her. ‘That is true. The Olympic pantheon is not pliant. Those pagan gods were less easy to press into the wrong sort of service. It is a fault, no doubt, of our own religion that it can be.’

And the Abbé Paul sighed.

•   •   •

When, only a few minutes after Agnès had left, the bell rang twice, and loudly, the Abbé Paul was in no doubt about the owner of the face that he would meet when he went to the door. He thought of ignoring the insistent ringing, but he had learned from experience how the devil pitches his tent in the spaces of procrastination. Nevertheless, he hastily poured himself another glass of wine and got most of it down before opening the door.

‘Madame Beck?’

‘Good day. Father, I must speak urgently with you.’