The House with Blue Shutters (12 page)

‘I still don’t see why we have to go,’ said Wendy Froggett at seven o’clock. She felt hectored. This was their holiday after
all, they owed no social obligations to the Harveys, and she did not see why she should waste her precious evening making
conversation with people she didn’t know.

‘It’s just to be polite,’ said Giles wearily. They had been having this discussion ever since Aisling had popped down to La
Maison Bleue to tell them of the invitation. Wendy had been furious that he hadn’t made up an excuse, but since they were
clearly going, now, he didn’t see the point in arguing about it.

‘And what about Caroline? It’s not fair to leave her on her own.’ Wendy was not going to let up until he admitted that it
was all his fault for trespassing in the first place.

‘I think Caroline’s quite happy to have an evening with those boys. They seem to get on.’

‘This is supposed to be a family holiday. Alice will probably want to do her own thing next year, with university, it’s just
a waste of an evening.’ Wendy was putting on her lipstick all the same, Alice was lolling downstairs, ready. It couldn’t last
much longer.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Giles, ‘it’s my fault, I know. Look, we’ll have one drink and then we’ll go to that bar in the village and
get a meal. Caroline’ll be fine.’

Giles was pleased to be going. It wasn’t every day you got invited to cocktails in a castle, and Wendy was deluded if she
thought either of their daughters gave a stuff about family holidays. Caroline was no doubt dying for a chance to snog with
young Richard Harvey, and Alice could accuse someone
else of being bourgeois for a change. Giles hoped that the prospect of some genuinely dissipated aristocrats might incense
her to the point where she stopped lecturing her parents about Marx for a couple of evenings. Secretly, Giles thought it was
hard cheese to spend his holidays dealing with sulky teenagers when he had them all year at school, and he was looking forward
to a bit of adult conversation.

It was still very hot when the Harveys and the Froggetts decamped from two cars on the circle of weedy gravel in front of
the chateau at half past seven. Jonathan had been for walking, but Aisling didn’t want to arrive looking tousled from the
climb through the woods, although she said that they ought to drive just in case the dogs were on the prowl again. The Froggetts’
Mondeo followed the Harveys’ dusty Saab down to the little bridge over the river and then right along a white unmade road
on the opposite bank. Aisling swivelled around in the back seat and pointed enthusiastically to La Maison Bleue, which was
just visible on its rise above the tall poplars that flanked Murblanc land. Giles and Wendy turned their heads too late and
nodded politely. They crossed over again, a more impressive stone bridge with columns at the corners, which gave on to the
avenue. Tall wrought-iron gates, with a large ‘
Proprieté Privée
’ sign, stood rustily open.

Aisling had walked here many times, hovering nervously halfway across, alert to the sound of approaching terrible barks. Though
she had never dared to step beyond the bridge, she felt almost proprietorial about the avenue, pleased that it sustained the
beauty it had held in her memory, pleased at the reaction it drew in Claudia and Alex. In the high growth of
August, the avenue was a green nave, cut dead straight through the woodland, rising beneath the yellow barked, summer-asperous
horse chestnuts in a clean perspective cut off at the summit of the hill by what seemed to be the doors of the chateau itself,
black inside a white stone archway.

They stood about on the gravel, uncertain if they should look for a bell, no one taking a lead. Aisling wore a white tunic
and loose navy trousers, as she didn’t want to look as though she had tried. Claudia was in an expensive-looking linen shift
in a sludgy greeny-bronze that would have looked horrible on anyone else. Wendy Froggett wore frosted pink lipstick, unfortunate
with the ruddy beginnings of her tan, and a white T-shirt tucked into a drooping floral skirt. Giles Froggett was still wearing
his shorts. Alex tugged at the waistband of his chinos and wished that Claudia didn’t have views on shorts. The Marquis appeared
from under the stone archway at the side and shouted ‘Welcome’ in English, so they trooped the length of the eighteenth-century
façade, fourteen windows long, as though they were on a school trip.

‘How pleasant to see you again, Madame Harvey,’ said the Marquis, bending over Aisling’s hand. Wendy Froggett was next. As
he dipped his face to her knuckles she suppressed an absurd desire to curtsey.

‘And this is Claudia,’ announced Aisling.

‘Hello, Marquis,’ said Claudia, confidently, in French.

‘Claudia, what a surprise! How are you?’ The Marquis kissed her on both cheeks, laughing, ‘What are you doing here in the
middle of nowhere?’ He continued to hold her hand.

‘This is my fiancé, Alex …’

‘How do you do?’

‘… who is Jonathan’s brother, that is Aisling’s husband Jonathan, here.’

‘How do you do?’

‘We’re staying at the house, with Wendy and Giles, of course. And their daughter, Alice. I believe you and Giles have already
met?’ Claudia smiled as though she had executed a conjuring trick, her hand still lying familiarly in that of the Marquis.
‘I’m an idiot, I didn’t think,’ she continued, ‘but then I don’t think Aisling told me your name. You were just the mysterious
Marquis on the hill.’

‘Well, what a wonderful coincidence. Delphine will be pleased. Please, everyone, we thought we would have drinks outside,
where it’s cool.’ The troop filed off. The Marquis led the way with Claudia.

‘How enchanting!’ exclaimed Aisling, a beat too quickly, since she really couldn’t see anything but Jonathan’s back. To Giles,
the arrangement on the lawn seemed not to have shifted since the previous day. He could see the path through the woods beneath
the big tree where he had emerged with Charles-Henri, and had an odd sense, now, of being inside the composition that had
been waiting so placidly as he had staggered bleeding into the light. The back of the chateau seemed older than the front,
more romantically irregular, with a slim, round tower, cone-tipped in grey slate as for a cartoon princess, completing the
wing at the left. In the centre, a broad flight of worn steps led from a terrace to the round lawn, where the white furniture
was grouped around the table and the Comtesse was rising to greet them.

‘Look!’ cried the Marquis, ‘here’s Claudia!’

Claudia was a good liar in the main because she had an excellent memory. All the time that introductions were being made,
the guests settled into chairs and the circumstances of Giles’s adventure recounted with determined hilarity, she reviewed
the occasions on which she had met the Marquis and Delphine in Paris. The first time, she was sure, Sébastien had taken her
to a small drinks party, a
vernissage
, in the Marais, where people stood in the hot street with plastic cups of white wine and talked to one another without bothering
much with the exhibition in the little beamed gallery. Sébastien had introduced the Marquis d’Esceyrac, explaining that he
had been so kind as to allow him to look at two Bonnards he owned for his last book. Claudia recalled the oddly deprecating
language buyers self-consciously use about pictures, ‘rather lovely’, ‘very pretty’, as though discussing some domestic acquisition,
like flowered china rather than things that hang in museums. Claudia knew the right language, and had been confident at the
time that Sébastien was pleased with her, though now she doubted honestly whether he had even noticed.

The second occasion, she had seen Delphine, elegant in that fussily skinny French way, at a guest lecture in the Christie’s
education building, the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild. The Marquis had invited her to sit with them whilst Sébastien spoke,
and afterwards, when she saw how insistent Delphine was to emphasize the length of her own acquaintance with her lover, Claudia
had felt a little vicious stab of pleasure that she, and not this perfectly finished Parisienne, should be leaving with him.
The third time, Sébastien and a guest had been invited to a dinner at the Marquis’s St-Germain apartment.
Claudia swiftly ran through the details. She was certain that there was nothing in any of these meetings that could give her
away, nothing to suggest that she had been ‘with’ Sébastien in any sense other than that of a friend visiting from London
who worked in the art world. Of course, she would have assumed, herself, that they were together – they arrived and left together
and seemed to know one another well. She was protected, she thought, from an accidental betrayal by the distance of French
social conversation which, to her, was less personal and individual than what one expected in London, and by the fact that
Sébastien had never gone in for that cubbish physicality (which Alex, arm slung around her shoulder, was displaying now),
which marked newish couples in England. And then Alex was aware that she was friends with Sébastien, she had made no secret
of having seen him, at least occasionally, on her trips to Paris. Alex seemed incurious, though unflatteringly it was not
wisdom, she thought, that prevented him from asking questions, but indifference to her life except insofar as it related to
himself.

Claudia accomplished this analysis while a woman in a black skirt and white blouse poured white wine and offered tiny square
linen napkins and dishes of olives, chunky local sausage and rounds of
ficelle
spread with terrine.

‘Bought,’ thought Aisling. The conversation was taking place in English, in consideration of the Froggetts and Alex, though
Aisling had greeted Charles-Henri and his brother Jules in French and said pointedly that it was all the same to her and Jonathan
whichever language they spoke. Sarah Ashworth took the boys away to their supper.

There was a pause. Wendy Froggett stared quietly at the
view. Alice was running a belligerent eye over the chateau, as though calculating how many cringing serfs its cellars contained.
Jonathan and Alex swigged at their wine. Neither the Marquis nor his daughter-in-law seemed inclined to speak, though they
smiled pleasantly.

Aisling felt sweat dampening the armpits of her tunic. ‘Well,’ she said brightly, ‘how kind of you to ask us.’

‘Not at all,’ replied the Comtesse graciously.

Alex reached for a lump of sausage. Aisling felt murderous towards the Froggetts.

‘Delphine,’ said Claudia smoothly, ‘I remember last time we met you were thinking about an English school for the boys. Aisling’s
sons board in England, I’m sure she has heaps of advice.’ She turned energetically to the Marquis and asked him whether he
had seen anything ‘nice’ at the rooms lately, keeping at it until the conversation creaked into life, with Aisling comparing
the merits of various public schools, Jonathan and Alex chipping in with recollections, and Giles Froggett explaining about
league tables. Even Alice ventured a remark on the odd difference between public and private. No one minded Wendy, until she
said, ‘So how do you know Claudia?’

‘Oh, we were introduced by a celebrity,’ replied Delphine. Claudia suddenly felt very hot, and prayed she wasn’t blushing.
Delphine, in her achingly plain black silk dress, was transformed into an allegory of malice. Claudia had feared some unintentional
reference, easily explained away to Alex, but she was quite aware that Delphine had been waiting for the chance to make trouble.
But she did not interrupt.

‘Sébastien Marichalar, the art critic. I believe he’s very well
known in your country? Tell me, Claudia, how is Sébastien?’

‘Do you know, I haven’t seen him for ages? I’ve hardly been in Paris, and then he’s so busy. Such a shame, I haven’t had the
chance to introduce him to Alex yet.’ That was the best she could do, Claudia felt.

‘Oh, he’s on the telly,’ chimed in Wendy, ‘you know, Giles, we loved that programme didn’t we?’

Giles Froggett felt it was common to talk about the television, but then this was a friend of Claudia’s, and the Comtesse
had brought it up. ‘Yes, very interesting. Not that we watch much.’

Claudia thought that rather dear.

‘He’s gorgeous, isn’t he Claudia?’ Wendy chimed on. ‘You better watch out, Alex!’ Her daughter cringed visibly.

‘No need,’ said Claudia, knowing she was being winsome, looking at the Marquis, ‘Frenchmen are just too charming for me. They
can’t be trusted!’ Everybody laughed. Aisling and Claudia both thought about sticking a cocktail stick in Wendy Froggett’s
eye.

Jonathan asked where the Marquis had learned his excellent English, and was told that, as a little boy, he had spent the war
in England with his mother. This gave rise to several remarks, but it became clear, after an hour, that the English party
was not staying to dine. The wine glasses remained emphatically empty.

Aisling, alert to the awfulness of people who came to drinks and stayed put, picked up her handbag determinedly and Claudia
followed suit. The Froggetts looked rather surprised. As they said goodbye, Delphine told Aisling, in French, that she would
love to come down some time and look at La
Maison Bleue, she had heard Aisling had done such clever things with it.

‘Of course,’ Aisling replied, as casually as she could. ‘Why don’t you bring the boys? I’m sure they’d love a swim.’ Later,
she asked Jonathan whether he thought that might have seemed rude, that she had made it obvious that there was no pool at
the chateau.

‘I can’t imagine she cared,’ he answered, which was unsatisfactory, especially if he were right. When the chicken gremolata
was eaten, the Glovers thanked, and Richard and Olly in bed, Aisling sat on the balcony with a glass of wine. Alex said rudely
in the car that it felt as though they had been there about a decade, but on the whole she was pleased with the evening. Claudia
had surprised her. The girl had been gracious, it must be said. And how did she become so friendly with the Marquis? This
Marichalar person must be well known if Wendy Froggett had heard of him, and Claudia, it appeared, had a life, a French life,
which brought her into easy contact with such people.