The Cleaner of Chartres (25 page)

Chartres

The moment Madame Beck got in from her abortive visit to the Abbé Paul, she went straight to her dressing-table and her jewellery box.

Compared with her other jewels, the earrings were not valuable but Claude had given them to her when it was clear that they had finally begun to make a go of the restaurant. They had had a party with all their best customers to celebrate. A publicity event, Claude had called it. They had agreed on such things, she and Claude. She had found the earring gone from her ear when, way past midnight, they finally tipped into bed and Claude had said not to bother to go and look, and she would be sure to find it on the floor in the morning. And then they had . . .

Denuded of her wig, Madame Beck allowed herself to remember the embraces of the man she had loved and once believed herself loved by. Too happy at the success of the evening and Claude’s sudden desire for her, she had not taken the usual precautions and it had led to the one and only pregnancy of her life – the pregnancy that they had both decided was better discreetly terminated by a private gynaecologist who was prepared to take the necessary risk with the law.

Claude had not wanted children. Had she not wanted them either? She had wanted, or she had believed she wanted, what he wanted, what he said was best for the business. But, Madame Beck allowed herself to muse – pulling from her jewellery box the soft cloth bags in which she kept the tokens, the pearls, the diamond clips, the costly rings and bracelets, that Claude, over their long marriage, had also given her – it might have been nice sometimes to go, as Jeanette did, on shopping sprees with a daughter.

For all she had searched the restaurant the following morning, she never found that missing earring. That pert Algerian waitress with the long black hair took it, she was sure of that. The one she had had to fire for taking the restaurant linen. The one she found that time with Claude. The woman had had the nerve to write to him some months later asking for ‘help’ with some trouble she had got herself into. Lucky that she had intercepted the letter before he read it. Claude had had a soft side.

Alone on the wide matrimonial bed that her husband, in later years, had so rarely occupied, Madame Beck found at last the small white box where she kept those earrings which, over the years, had lost their partners. But, tipping them out on to the bed, to her amazement, when she had sorted through the jewelled jumble, she found the solitary turquoise drop, set in the distinctive silverwork, that she had been so convinced she had seen on the Abbé Paul’s table.

A horrible fear began to overtake Madame Beck. Perhaps she was going demented, losing her mind? Hadn’t Jeanette made a comment about that only recently? Despite their recent coolness, she rang Madame Picot, who was, after all, her closest friend; but she got no answer.

An hour or so later, after a dispiriting frozen ‘single’ meal and an unamusing
TV
programme, Madame Beck went to her bureau, sat down and took out a box of scented notepaper.

‘Dear Mother,’ she wrote beneath a spray of honeysuckle. ‘I would be glad to take up your kind suggestion of a stay in your Retreat Wing.’

•   •   •

Madame Picot was out on a mission of her own when her old friend failed to reach her. She had taken Agnès’ address from Terry and put sixty euros into an envelope, along with the card which Auguste had brought back from the Courtauld in London, the picture by Gauguin of the young woman asleep on a yellow pillow, whom Agnès so resembled.

On the card she had written ‘A little “thank-you” for finding Piaf. Affectionately, Jeanette Picot.’

Putting the card through the door of the Badon apartment, Madame Picot felt the peculiar warmth of unmerited self-satisfaction. Walking back into town, she thought that Louise may not approve of what she was doing, but, as she murmured to Piaf, Louise could ‘go fuck herself!’

•   •   •

Professor Jones had popped out to post a letter when he observed the figure of Alain carrying Agnès down the cathedral steps. An awful thought had beset the professor. He had never paid Agnès, and although she had never referred to this oversight he had concluded that this was why she had disappeared. The money he had so lavishly distributed; none of it had gone to her. What had he been thinking?

About to hail her, in an attempt to correct this dreadful omission, the professor held back. The couple were laughing; his presence would perhaps be an intrusion.

An association of ideas led the professor to thoughts of his cousin Gwen. The letter he had been about to post to her was still in his hand. Maybe he should have suggested that his cousin pay him a visit? Or should he propose visiting her? He hurried home with the letter unposted to add a postscript.

About to reseal the envelope, a further thought struck him. ‘P.P.S.,’ he wrote. ‘I wonder, did we, as children, know anyone, can you remember, who had a parrot?’

Chartres

When Alain and Agnès got back to the Deanery, they found a note stuck in the letterbox: ‘Key under geranium pot. Help yourselves to wine.’

‘He’s not afraid of burglars, then?’ Alain suggested.

They let themselves in quietly.

‘Do you think it’s really all right for us to help ourselves?’ Agnès asked as Alain poured her a glass. ‘I generally wash these for him.’

‘I’m sure it’s all right. He’s a very generous man. Exceptionally so.’

‘Yes.’

He sat down next to her on the blue chaise-longue, running his hand over the dark silk. ‘Paul has taste. Listen, no need to now but sometime, my darling, you might want to tell me how you came to have Gabriel.’

‘Yes.’

‘No hurry. Or compulsion. Never let that be the case with us. You know that?’

‘I think so.’ She thought a moment and then said, ‘I will tell you. But – but now is too nice to spoil.’

‘When you’re ready.’

‘You know, when I said I didn’t like it much?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t like it at all. Not at all.’

‘And now?’

‘You’re making me blush.’

‘Good.’

Much later he said, ‘I don’t want to leave you but I think it’s politer to Paul if I go. And you should rest up.’

‘Alain . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘You will. . .’

‘I’ll come and fetch you without fail but not before you’ve had time to rest.’

•   •   •

So it was only the Abbé Paul and Agnès who sat over their breakfast coffee together in his fire-lit study the following morning.

The goldfinch had long left the spray of hips but a jay was performing a raucous solo in the garden.

‘You look better, my dear,’ suggested the Abbé Paul. Better than ‘better’, he thought.

‘Father Paul –’

‘Paul, please.’

‘I’m not sure I can call you anything but “Father”, Father.’

‘If you must, then.’

‘When I was in the cathedral with Max, the day I fainted and you brought me here, I saw something.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes.’ She sat there a moment. Then, ‘I saw the Virgin. At least I think, no, I know it was her. She came through the wall of the South Transept in a blue light.’

‘Ah.’

‘That’s all really. I wanted to tell someone.’

‘Thank you for telling me.’

‘I’ve not told anyone else.’

‘Not even Alain?’

It might have been the closest the Abbé Paul could come to a reproach, but if Agnès felt that the mention of her lover had more behind it than the simple question suggested, she ignored this. ‘I think, I can’t explain, but I think, I feel, that I should only tell you.’

‘It’s a great honour.’

‘I know.’

The Abbé Paul was not a visionary. Nor, on the whole, did he take much account of reports of such occurrences. But he had lived long enough in and thought deeply enough about the world to know that the fine mesh of what is called ‘reality’ was also made up of exceptions. ‘I meant that it’s a great honour that you do me.’

She sat thinking some more. ‘It’s like this. I
think
it’s like this. I found a “father”. He died but he gave me love and care and his coat and my silver chain. I think, I know this sounds odd, but I don’t know how else to put it, but I think in a way, you’ve been my “mother”.’

The Abbé Paul said nothing to this but he smiled. If this strange pronouncement from the young woman, who looked that morning, in his shabby dressing gown, so unbearably radiant, hurt him at all no mortal soul could have detected it.

Looking across to him, Agnès said, ‘I know it sounds odd. You don’t mind?’

He stood up and went over to embrace her. Holding her close, so she should not see that his eyes were unsuccessful in holding back tears, he said, ‘My dear Agnès. How could I possibly mind?’

There are no true endings but there are places where any account comes to a natural halt. Those who have followed this story may like to know that Max Nevers was eventually given into the care of his uncle, Philippe, and his civil partner, Tan.

Denis Deman did return to France. With the help of Sister Laurence, he finally tracked down his old patient Agnès Morel. But he never learned the full truth about the events he had triggered.

Agnès continued to help to look after Max while she and Alain remained in Chartres. After they left, they were frequent visitors at the Deanery, where they were the guests of their friend, the Abbé Paul, godfather to their son, Jean-Paul.

So far, Agnès has not found her first child, Gabriel. She lives in hope.