The House with Blue Shutters (24 page)

‘You two live alone, you say, Mademoiselle?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you are not, that is you have never?’ He paused and said something in German, the helmeted men sniggered and one of them
shook his head. ‘Never mind. You will report to the
Mairie
tomorrow morning please, at eight o’clock? With your brother?’

‘Yes.’

He saluted her and clicked his heels together smartly. ‘Thank you, Mademoiselle.’

They were starting up the car when there was a raucous whooping from the road. William was hurtling into the yard, his face
tight and terrified, blood streaming from his nose. Two soldiers chased him, so fast that when they saw the car and stopped
short, the second of them crashed into his companion and stumbled to the ground. William threw himself at Oriane, clutching
at her clothes and gasping, butting his head against her shoulder as though he was trying to hide. The hands of the men in
the car reached swift and simultaneous to their hips, and Oriane realized with a sick dread that they were, truly, reaching
for guns.

The man in the cap was kind, though. He bellowed at the two soldiers as they stood shiftily to attention, and apologized formally,
in French, no less, to William. His attention gave her a kind of pride, as though it made her and William distinguished, that
they had been singled out to be defended so. He must be an officer, she thought. The man’s eyes were a sharp greenish blue,
like roof slates after the rain.

Claudia’s misery had descended to the point where she felt mechanical, divided between one self, which functioned, spoke to
Aisling and Alex, swam, ate, performed efficiently, and another, which floated somewhere outside, the same questions running
through its mind, wretchedly irresolute, permanently on the edge of tears. There was a sort of perverse pride in the discipline
it took to keep the two selves apart, like holding a pair of magnets without permitting them to touch. What had seemed so
simple and obviously apparent in London was now clouded, opaque, a treacherous quicksand that would swallow her whether she
moved forward or back. The link between the d’Esceyracs and Sébastien had recalled her, horribly, to the fact that he, unlike
her, was not suspended in limbo, that his life continued in the world with no sense of hesitation as to how she, Claudia,
would act.

If she could not choose to love Alex, the sensible thing would be to get rid of the baby, get over Sébastien, engineer
some quarrel with Alex and return to her life as though nothing had happened, but she was afraid. If she pursued that, it
would be unpleasant for a time, but she knew rationally that she would recover, that no one would die of it, except the baby.
There was a sort of arrogance, she thought, in people’s belief in their capacity to cause others pain. Alex would not be irrevocably
damaged, he would not collapse of a broken heart. He would be disappointed, angry perhaps, and uncomprehending, but not destroyed.
Or she could do as she had originally intended, but then why was that now so difficult? There were worse things, surely, than
to marry a man who she found embarrassing, and what did it tell her about herself that Alex’s slight buffoonishness outweighed
his other qualities? She could justify not marrying him on the grounds that it was insulting, such a deceit, and cruel to
pretend to love him when she did not, but this argument was implausibly abstract. She did not believe it because she did not
believe that Alex would ever know the difference. He would not necessarily prefer the kind of woman who would love him as
he deserved.

What Alex deserved was one of the Emmas or Lucys, someone unimaginative and undemanding, who would admire him, but what he
wanted, what he thought he was worth, was difficult, clever, beautiful Claudia, so was it not generous, truly, to encourage
him in the delusion that she would have had him even if he weren’t second prize? Maybe that was a disgusting thing to think,
but it was nonetheless true. It was why she could not blame Sébastien. The only deceit had been her own towards herself, and
she acknowledged that she was craven enough to have been grateful if he were to have
deceived her, to have pretended to love her. Though surely in that case she would not have known and so would have been happy,
as Alex was happy now. All through the settled routine of the days at Murblanc, Claudia dismantled her reasons and rebuilt
them thus, and the only idea that did not occur to her was that this torturous logic grew from a need to rationalize where
it had previously been valid only to feel. She had never before had to reconcile desire and possibility, to accept, simply,
that she would not have what she wanted.

The peacefulness with which she was surrounded was beginning to feel oppressive. She felt banked in, as surely as the house
and the village were held in their bowl of hills, moving in a slower time. Aisling seemed so contented, so preoccupied with
her tiny universe, as unbearably smug and self-satisfied as Alex’s London friends, and yet Claudia envied her in a way, envied
her assurance of agency, however limited its scope. There was no need for gin and hot baths, Claudia had autonomy too, she
could elect for that life she had before, her flat, her job, her friends, yet things were too far gone for that. She had been
offered a sort of grandeur, a chance to alter herself radically, to become someone else, and mysteriously she felt superstitious
about negating it. Not to move forward would be a denial she might regret. So why was she so afraid to take what a few weeks
ago had seemed a simple and necessary step?

She said she felt like a walk, Alex offered dutifully to accompany her, but she could see he would be glad to continue with
the phone calls that spun him across the sea to London.

Claudia climbed the hill to Aucordier’s and went to find old Oriane. She had the excuse of the Sternbachs, and tried
to begin by explaining their story, that she had wondered if Oriane could remember anything. Did she know another lady, Amélie
Lesprats? Oriane was sitting as usual in the kitchen, the television making its perpetual murmur in the corner. Claudia brought
the story around to the visit to the chateau, then petered out. Was this too indelicate, too hurtful? But the memory of the
old woman’s calm acceptance of her earlier outburst made her feel that she might say anything, so she simply asked.

‘Was it the old Marquis, your baby’s father?’

‘Is that what you thought?’

‘Well, I sort of guessed.’

‘You were wrong.’ They used the formal ‘
vous
’ with one another. Claudia was mortified.

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I haven’t said anything to anyone else. I just, you know, when you said about the baby—’

Oriane patted the sofa beside her. ‘Come and sit here.’

Claudia got up from the hard kitchen chair where she had been sitting, fiddling uselessly with the hem of her skirt, and took
the proffered place. The old lady smelt clean today, like talcum powder.

‘Down the hill, behind Murblanc there, there was a good place for gathering ceps. We used to go there. We’d find them quickly,
maybe half a kilo, a kilo after the rain. Cook used to put them up in butter and serve them with little potatoes and black
pepper. They were delicious that way.’

Claudia tried to look interested, but her stomach was contracting like a snail pulled out of its shell and left in the sun.
What was she going on about mushrooms for?

‘One time, I went with my brother. He was called William, my brother. People thought he was simple, but he could be clever
in his way. When they came, the Marquis asked William to move some things for him. Just boxes, but they had important papers
in them, I think, and he wanted someone he could trust, someone who wouldn’t talk. Poor William couldn’t exactly talk. So
when we’d got the ceps, we took them up the hill. I was going to share them with the girls who worked in the kitchen, although
Cook had gone by then. Well, we came to the house, and William got excited, he was pulling at me, wanting to show me something,
so I followed him into the stables. I wasn’t supposed to go in there, it was where they slept, see?’

Claudia nodded, although she didn’t see.

‘And he showed me a little cupboard, and in the cupboard was a key.’

‘A key. Good.’

‘I couldn’t see why he wanted to show me that. But then he took me down into the woods and he showed me the place the key
fitted, a sort of cellar, where the Marquis had put his boxes.’

‘Did you look inside?’

‘There were just papers, like I say. Some of them in English, I think. I think he thought they would be important if he got
killed. But I kept the key. And that was where I met him. Jacky’s father, he was one of them, see?’

Claudia took a moment to concentrate, still confused by the mushrooms. She had not expected this sort of chattiness, really.
She began to babble about her visit to the chateau, describing what she and Otto had found. ‘Look,’ she said
brightly, trying to distract Oriane, ‘there were three of these.’ She tumbled the compacts on to the dingy cushion between
them.

Oriane picked one up, opened it, examined the design, turned it over and read out the name on the underside. She surveyed
her face in the mirror.

‘
Regarde toi
,’ she said softly.

Claudia was chattering, ‘I wonder where they came from? How they got there? It’s a funny thing to find, no?’

‘I know how they got there,’ answered Oriane, and her voice was curt again.

She reached for her stick and pulled herself up, slowly, manoeuvring with her unbandaged arm. For a while Claudia was left
alone with the half-light from the shutters and Gérard Depardieu. There seemed to be only about eight actors in France, she
thought. She could hear Oriane moving about upstairs, and then the shuffle and tap as she returned.

‘Are you all right? Should I fetch you some water?’ Oriane’s face was flushed, bruised-looking.

‘Do you love the other one then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does he love you?’

‘No.’

‘Then have a look at this.’

Claudia held the compact, identical to the others. Inside it, scratched in amateurish gothic letters, was ‘Oriane’. Fuck.

‘He didn’t love me either, not enough anyway. But I didn’t care.’

Claudia on her feet, backing away, murmuring I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Oriane said nothing to help her until she was
almost at the door. She could not believe she had been so crass, so selfish, so involved with her own wretched, meagre story
that she had failed to see that time was something more than a story of people’s activities that had been scrapped, that the
world was not the sole property of the living. Ghosts had shares in the present. She was stupid and wicked and cruel and blind.
How could she have exposed Oriane like that, how could she not have picked it up?

‘It’s all right,’ said Oriane, her voice so warm and gentle that it sounded young. ‘I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry for any of
it, now.’

‘Try it, then.’

‘I can’t see. Bring the candle.’

It was night here. Karl held up the candle to the side of the little mirror and Oriane saw her mouth inside the gold rim.
He rubbed a finger across her lips. Close up, the powder sat chalkily on her skin, pinker-toned, but if she held the mirror
away, her face looked soft, warmer. The lipstick matched the compact, a twisting design around the tube, and when she rubbed
it carefully across her lower lip it smelt of greasy flowers.

‘Don’t look yet. Close your eyes.’ She felt bold with her painted face. His boots were lying next to his folded clothes, they
felt huge as she dragged them up her bare legs, over her knees where the leather chafed against her skin. Her dress and bodice
and drawers were dropped untidily, her hair covered her breasts and she spread it out, imagining her white skin in the candlelight.

‘Not yet. Wait.’ He grabbed at her as she moved past him,
she swung her hips neatly out of the way and lay down on the blanket, leaning back on bent arms, her throat exposed.

‘Now look.’

Karl saw Oriane naked except for his jackboots, her eyes on his face, her red mouth a little open. The skin of her thighs
looked luminous, catching the polish of the black leather, she parted her knees, lolled them open, then stretched her legs
wide, her eyes following his own, showing him everything. Down there her hair was black and thick, he could make out the gleam
of the opening.

‘Huur,’ he whispered, and she smiled stupidly. He knelt between her legs and she reached forward to unfasten his trousers,
pulling open the white drawers until his cock was released, holding his belt on one side.

‘Watch.’ Her hand was dipping between her legs, when she brought it up the fingers were shining. She reached to his mouth
and smeared her wetness across his lips, beneath his nose. Taking more, she traced a finger across his straining cock. ‘See?
See what you do?’ He rubbed the backs of his knuckles against her, held them above her face so she stretched her tongue to
lick her own juice off the curved heel of his palm.

‘Well, I don’t care,’ Andrée had said defiantly, ‘it’s true.’

‘You shouldn’t say things like that, though. It’s wrong.’

‘Why? I think they’re the handsomest men I’ve ever seen. There.’

By June, there was a photograph in the window of the café, next to the picture of Maréchal Pétain. It showed Herr Hitler in
a uniform, his arm raised straight out in the German salute. Underneath, Monsieur Dubois had written on a piece of
cardboard: ‘We welcome our friends the Germans’. In the evenings, Betty served wine and cognac to the officers, she said they
couldn’t get enough of her omelettes and duck rillettes. She recited the strange names to her friends, ‘
Haupsturmführer
’, ‘
Standartenführer
’, which Monsieur Dubois had asked them to write on a piece of paper. Only the officers were permitted to drink in the village,
Betty said, and they put white cloths on the tables for them. The bench outside the door was usually empty now. Bernard and
Yves no longer wheeled poor Jean-Marc there of an evening, though Betty said her father said that the others drank more and
left quicker, so that was better. Camille Lesprats still sat in his corner every night, his nose splayed and bulbous, like
a potato forgotten in the cellar for a whole winter. At first he had been alone, but as the weeks passed the men resumed their
accustomed places and played
pétanque
outside in the dust.