The Cleaner of Chartres (23 page)

London

Dr Denis Deman had never forgotten his patient Agnès Morel. How much his conduct in her case had propelled his flight to England was something about which, over time, he had come to brood.

His initial treatment of her was, he could reassure himself, effective. The nourishing food and rest he had prescribed had, at least superficially, rescued her from the damage wrought at the hands of the nuns by the loss of her child. And, later, the fresh air and the walking regime had seemed to strengthen her.

But the matter of the alleged attack over the little boy, and his part in her apparent involvement and subsequent treatment, remained an acutely sore spot in his memory. To be sure, from what had seemed a disastrous error on his part some good had come. He had managed to free her from the hospital in Le Mans and the attentions of Inès Nezat (for whom, however, he retained an amused partiality), and his patient’s years spent on the farm with Jean Dupère had been, he was sure of this, happy ones. But then she had been ousted from that oasis of security and to his shame he had lost touch with her.

His flight to England had hardly been a success. The relationship with Pauline, the girl he had impulsively married on the strength of her resemblance to his fictive fiancée, had not fulfilled his fantasies. The initial attraction, brought on by the chance to be of use, however slightly, had not been sustained. He had wanted, he recognized now, to be of use to someone.

Pauline was not a bad woman. But she lacked the kind of strength his own character needed. It was, he had concluded, a combination of the flight from his handling of Agnès and his disappointment in his marriage that had led to a growing tepidness in his medical practice.

His belief in the therapeutic virtues of trust and respect, his faith in nature and the remedial power of hope, had never entirely vanished, but they had, he was bound to acknowledge, been set aside. He had found his English colleagues more hidebound than his French ones. With the memory of his terrible error still fresh in his mind, some part of him had given up, had not wanted really to try. He had bowed to the unspoken distrust of his methods – indeed to his own mistrust in them – and resorted to drugs, in which he did not believe, and even to
ECT
, which he had always abhorred. The truth was, he acknowledged that morning, sinking into an armchair to read his post, he had lost heart.

But, on opening the letter which had been forwarded from the hospital from which he had lately retired, the lost heart palpably stirred.

Mother Véronique was writing, she confided in her elaborately florid hand, to give him the news that in a recent visit to Chartres she had come across Agnès. ‘She looks well,’ the letter went. ‘And she appears to be doing well too. She was quite overjoyed to see us (Sister Laurence accompanied me).’ The letter, in purple ink, ran on for a page and a half, outlining various improvements that the Mother was planning for the convent. It concluded with an invitation to visit them any time he should find himself near Evreux.

Denis Deman gazed round the drawing room, tastefully furnished and decorated but in a style and colours that he thoroughly disliked. He had always been so particular about colour, but he had allowed Pauline her taste, perhaps because it was something he could fairly give her when it appeared – for, to their joint regret, they had remained childless – that he could give her little else. She was away now seeing her mother. Pauline saw quite a bit of her mother these days, and it had crossed his mind that she returned home with a degree of reluctance which suggested that perhaps it was not only her mother she was seeing. It would not, he suspected, pain her were he to suggest that they part.

He reread Mother Véronique’s letter, walking now into his study.

Back in the Rouen days, he had had a sense of what mattered, of what a life – his life anyway – might amount to. He had loved his work and if he had not always been wholly successful with his patients, he had, by and large – with the exception of Agnès – felt he had done his best for them. Could he put his hand on his heart and declare that the same was true of his career since?

Looking at the curtains of his study, a heavy maroon weave, chosen for him by Pauline, he reflected how he would like to find Agnès, if only to satisfy himself that he had done her no lasting harm.

Time had softened certain things in Denis Deman but not his tendency to be impulsive. He went to his desk and fumbled in it till he found his fountain pen.

‘Dear Mother Véronique,’ he wrote, hung fire for a moment, crushed the paper to a ball, tossed it in the bin and began again.

‘Dear Sister Laurence . . .’

Chartres

Turning the key in the stiff lock of the door to the crypt, Alain felt a cat shoot past his legs. He had searched the upper cathedral first. But his stronger instinct had been to come here. A scared animal, he knew, will seek the shelter of a cave. The beam of the torch moved before him as he walked down into the darkness.

•   •   •

‘Agnès. Wake up.’

She was hiding now with Max. She was to meet someone. Someone, not a friend, maybe even an enemy, but he would take them into hiding.

‘It’s me, Alain. Wake up.’

But she had forgotten something. Something vital to Max. Some medicine he had to take. Without it he would die.

‘Agnès.’

But Max was dead already. She had forgotten. He was dead and she was responsible.

‘Agnès, listen to me.’

No point in running away. She had done this thing. They would get her now.

‘Agnès,
Agnès
.’

They had found her. She knew they would. She always knew they must.

‘Agnès, for God’s sake,
wake up
!’

•   •   •

‘Agnès, for God’s sake,
wake up
!’

What was Alain doing here?

‘Why?’

‘Because you must.’

‘What?’

‘Wake up.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘You must.’

She felt him grab her shoulders and drag her to a sitting position. ‘Listen to me, Agnès. Have you taken anything?’

‘Let me sleep.’

Now he shook her. ‘Answer me. Have you taken anything?’

‘Only . . .’

‘Only what? Only
what,
Agnès?’ He shook her again. ‘Speak to me.’

‘Only one.’

‘One what?’ Only one
what
, Agnès?’

‘Sleeping pill.’

‘Only one sleeping pill?’

‘Yes. Please let me –’

‘Are you sure?’

In spite of the dazzle of his torch, and the longing to return to sleep, she made out the concern in his eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘Sure? Just the one?’

‘Yes. Two maybe.’

‘
OK
. We’re going to the Abbé Paul’s.’

‘No, please.’

‘He told me to bring you there.’

‘No, I don’t want to.’

‘Yes.’

‘No, no, please.’

‘I’m sorry. But you’re coming with me, Agnès.’

Chartres

When Agnès woke, she was in a strange bed. The room was warm and peacefully dark, but she could make out from the familiar tatty tapestry of a heraldic shield hanging on the wall that she was in the Abbé Paul’s spare bedroom.

There was a man’s dressing gown at the foot of the bed and she put it on over her underwear. She had no recollection of having got undressed or of getting into the bed.

The Abbé Paul was washing up in the kitchen when she entered. He turned round briefly to ask, ‘Tea or coffee?’

‘Coffee with milk, please.’

Wordlessly he made coffee, heated some milk in a small pan and brought it to the table, on which bread, butter and jam were already laid. ‘Will that be enough?’

‘Plenty, thank you, Father.’

‘The jam is damson. I’m rather proud of it but watch out for the stones.’

When she had finished, he took away the plate and cutlery, washed and dried them, and offered her more coffee.

‘I’m having some. We can take it through to my study.’

They walked through to the study, where the Abbé Paul was in the habit of sitting with none but his few intimates.

‘What day is it?’ she asked.

‘It’s Saturday. My day off.’

‘Mine too.’

‘Excellent. We can take our day of rest together.’

Agnès looked out of the window towards his garden at the last frail white blossoms on a windblown rose. ‘There’s no rest for the wicked, isn’t that what they say, Father?’

‘Are you wicked, Agnès?’

‘Yes.’

The Abbé Paul, reaching out, refilled her cup with coffee and milk. ‘I’m assuming you wanted more.’

They sat without further words. The Abbé Paul allowed his mind to fill with the nothingness that long practice had taught him. After many mute minutes Agnès said, ‘A long time ago I did something.’

‘Ah.’

‘I had a baby when I was very young. Just fifteen. The nuns who brought me up made me give him away.’

‘Did your baby have a name?’

‘He was called Gabriel.’

‘A good name.’

‘I never wanted to give him away. He was taken from me and adopted. I had I suppose what you call a breakdown. I was sent to a clinic. St Francis. A nice place, for what it was.’

‘I’m glad of that for you at least.’

‘I was glad to get away from the nuns. And there was a doctor there. I suppose I must have been in love with him.’

‘Not unusual in those circumstances, I’m told.’

‘He was very kind and quite handsome. He had a photo of the labyrinth – our one – on his wall. It’s because of that I came here.’

‘A man of taste.’

‘He had all these ideas about how to treat people who were sick like me – we had special food and he liked us to sleep in airy rooms but he also liked us to go walking in the countryside. He thought that nature and exercise were good for us.’

‘He sounds splendid.’

‘He was. He was bit absent-minded – actually very, though I don’t think he knew that about himself. I knew it. I knew quite a lot about him.’

The Abbé Paul nodded. He was all too aware that even those who see clearly into the souls of others rarely see themselves quite as they are.

‘One day he had my file on his desk and when he got up to get something in another room I took it and hid it under my skirt. It was a long skirt so it wasn’t hard. I couldn’t read but I had this idea that it would say where my baby had gone.’

‘Not a bad supposition.’

‘Yes. And it did. Or I thought it did. I showed the file to another girl there and she read it for me. She said the only thing that might be a clue was this address that was written there. She told me where it was and I found out that it was not that far from the clinic. I was used to finding my way about the countryside and Dr Deman, that was his name, had told me to walk. I put the file back on his desk – he never locked his door and his desk was always untidy so that was easy – and walked there.’

‘To the address on the file?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you found it?’

‘It was a big house, old, and I could tell the people who owned it were rich. I kept thinking just because they’ve got money they’ve got my little boy and he was taken from me because I’m poor and can’t give him anything. That wasn’t the reason, of course, I know that now. Anyway, I hung around, in these trees by the road near the drive of the house, just watching and then I saw this young woman pushing a buggy with a baby in it up the drive. He was a sweet little baby boy with black hair, just the age my Gabriel would have been and she was blonde so I knew she wasn’t his real mother.’

‘That must have been a shocking moment for you,’ said the Abbé Paul, feeling some shock himself.

‘It was. Anyway, I walked back to the clinic and two days later I went back there with a knife. I had this thing about knives. I used to cut myself at the convent and although I mostly stopped doing it at the clinic I was always after knives. I had places I hid them. They never seemed to notice.’

‘So you were planning an attack?’

‘I don’t know what I thought I was doing exactly. I stole a scarf from a nurse at the clinic and wrapped it round my face. I don’t know if I meant to kill the woman but I don’t think I cared if I did. All I knew was I was going to get back my baby.’

Dear God, thought the Abbé Paul.

‘I went back to the trees and waited. It seemed hours. I thought she wasn’t going to come and then I saw her. Pushing my baby. He was asleep. I waited till she was passing the trees where I was hiding and then I must have stabbed her. Stabbed her in the back. I don’t really remember this bit properly. I suppose I just went mad.

‘Someone driving past saw me and pulled the woman away and I ran off and got back to the clinic. I put the scarf back on its hook and hid in the old laundry where no one ever went, but nobody said anything. Nothing happened for ages and then one day Dr Deman asked me about it and I still thought the little boy was my Gabriel, so I said so. I suppose I was off my head.’

‘But he wasn’t your child?’

‘I only found that out later. Anyway, I was very confused and I kept saying that the baby was mine. Dr Deman reported what I’d said – he had to, I don’t blame him – and the police questioned me but I never admitted to attacking the girl. I just went on about Gabriel. I’m not sure what I was saying, really. They weren’t either. I don’t think they knew what to believe so they had another doctor examine me. I don’t remember him at all or what I said to him, but he sent me to a secure psychiatric hospital, which was awful, I hated it. There was this big woman psychiatrist, not at all like Dr Deman. But Dr Deman came to see me there and took me, and I don’t quite know how he worked this, but he took me to see the man who found me when I was a baby, who I called “father” . . .’

The Abbé Paul got up to fetch a box of tissues.

‘I can’t believe I’m telling you all this.’

‘It’s good that you are, Agnès, I think.’

‘Anyway, I don’t know how but Dr Deman arranged for me to come back to stay at the clinic and there was this Australian nurse there, Maddy. I really liked her, and she told me how to get out of the other hospital. “Just say you didn’t mean it about him being your child and you didn’t know what you were saying,” she told me. “Keep saying it. Just stick to your story.” It was Maddy who’d given Dr Deman the address that was in my file. She’d been a nanny to the couple who’d adopted the baby that wasn’t Gabriel, and the girl I attacked was the new nanny. I guess Dr Deman must have thought for some reason that the baby was Gabriel too. Otherwise, why would he put the address in my file?’

‘And you did what Maddy said?’

‘Yes. I just kept repeating that I had not known what I was saying before but I knew now the little boy wasn’t mine and in the end it worked. They let me go from the secure hospital and I went back to the clinic for a bit and then I went to live with the man I called my father. And everything was good for a while.’

‘You had no father of your own?’

‘No. Nor a mother. I was found. The man I called my father found me.’

‘And you lived with this man?’

‘For just over two years. And then he died.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I really liked it at the farm.’

Not for the first time, the Abbé Paul reflected that it was not surprising that people had trouble believing in a merciful God. ‘And then you came here?’

‘It was because of the labyrinth. Dr Deman gave me a photo of it for my seventeenth birthday. He had it on his office wall and he knew I always liked it. I used to try to do it, get to the centre, with my eyes, but I never could. I left it behind when my father’s niece and her husband took over the farm. I was in a state, I suppose, and they were so anxious for me to leave I forgot to take it with me. They told me when I rang to ask about it that they had burnt it. If they hadn’t, I mightn’t have come here.’

‘It’s called Providence, I believe,’ said the Abbé Paul. ‘Agnès, have you told this to anyone else?’

‘No, Father. I couldn’t have told anyone but you. Because . . .’

There was a silence in which the Abbé Paul waited. Agnès got up, looked down at her bare feet and made an odd wriggling movement with her long toes. ‘I would never harm a baby.’

‘How about an adult?’

She smiled, which was a relief to him because he saw that she had read his mind and grasped the irony, and in his view the ability to correctly read another’s mind and interpret irony was a sign of health.

‘I’m not off my head now.’

‘No. I don’t believe you are. What would you like to do, Agnès?’

He observed her, quite literally, straighten her shoulders. ‘Should I tell the police, Father?’

The Abbé Paul also got up but he walked over to the window and seemed to be looking out. In the garden, still alive with fiery colour, a goldfinch was balancing on a long spray strung with rose hip beads. The red on the berries did not quite reflect the spot of red on the bird’s head. Lord, he thought, what a conundrum you’ve set me.

With his gaze still averted, the Abbé Paul said, ‘I think what is important is that you have told me. I am not God, and would never claim to speak for Him, but if God is, as I believe Him to be, all comprehending and merciful, He would, I think, say you have been punished enough. I don’t see what good could come of a further confession to the police. You were beside yourself.’

The berries that autumn were truly magnificent. It was going to be a hard winter.

‘She was in hospital for ages.’

Of course, thought the Abbé Paul. All of this is why she cleans. It crossed his mind to refer to the Prodigal Son but another story came to his aid. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘have you maybe come to the story of Ajax in my book of myths?’

‘It’s one of the names they list at the front. It’s an easy name to read.’

‘You might like to read his story. Ajax was one of the Greek heroes who went to fight in Troy. He became possessed by a demonic anger and tried to kill his colleagues – it was over something far more trivial than a baby, some armour, in fact, but that isn’t why I mention him. The goddess Athene made sure that he didn’t slaughter his colleagues in arms but some cattle instead, which is another way of saying that Ajax was beside himself. Not in his right mind.

‘I think you too were beside yourself. The young woman did not die and you cannot take back what you did to her by serving a prison sentence. You are not mad or out of your mind now, so nothing would be gained by your return to a psychiatric hospital. Indeed, much may be lost.’

It was the longest speech the Abbé Paul had made to a living soul since as a young man he had joined a philosophical society and discussed Spinoza. He turned and levelled a long look at Agnès, the image of the red hips still in his nether sight. ‘Ajax committed suicide when he found what he’d done. There was, is, no need for anything like that. Have you noticed, there are no tombs in our cathedral?’

‘No.’

‘You perhaps wouldn’t. The human mind doesn’t deal well in non-events. We tend not to notice what is not there when often absence is the more vital thing. All the great and famous cathedrals have the dead interred there save ours. Not ours, in honour of Our Lady, and I like to think it’s because she is for life, not for death.’

Words, words, words, as the afflicted young prince said, what were they worth? But, letting his mind go free, the Abbé Paul found himself adding, ‘There are forms of justice which override human law. I propose that the telling of this to me is your means to forgiveness, Agnès. Agnès, my dear . . .’

But she was crying and words were no longer needed.