Petite Mort (23 page)

In the house, every lamp was lit from eight o’clock in the morning; for warmth, and because there was the Ice Ball to prepare for. Though the guests were not due to arrive till seven, lanterns must be strung to light the path to the lake; refreshments must be prepared and carried out, tray by painstaking tray. A car arrived from Paris with a hundred pairs of ice skates; servants flew to and fro; I flattened myself against the wall on the stairs as Thomas and André supervised the carrying down of a trestle from the upper floors.

Hoping for a moment alone with Luce, I looked for her, and found her by the French windows leading out onto the lawn. She stood, eyes wide, hands clasped at her front, giving directions to a pack of maids.

There was nothing to be done; the maids looked at me too, pink-cheeked and expectant. ‘Carry on,’ I said, and she turned gratefully back.

It didn’t matter. Today was for biding my time.

At five o’clock the sun fell from the sky. Inky blue on the
horizon, then black; I watched from the window seat of my room. A solitary maid worked her away along the string of lanterns leading out across the lawn, lighting each one.

Just before seven, the slam of carriage doors; shouts of laughter; hail-fellow-well-mets from the front of the house. Then the sounds were sucked down the central corridor and with an
Isn’t this charming
, the first guests emerged onto the terrace at the back of the house, underneath my bedroom window.

It
was
charming. The terrace was flooded gold with torchlight. With a surge, the lawn was suddenly filled with people: shadows walking towards the wood. The going was picky: a woman-silhouette leant on her husband’s shoulder, cackling, as she struggled along in her delicate shoes.

Then came the knock I had been waiting for.

‘M. et Mme Durand are making their way to the lake now,’ Thomas said.

‘Thank you.’ I smiled at him for the first time in months. He shut the door. I turned back to the window, and sure enough, there they were: André, with Luce on his arm.

He was sleek in his black overcoat. She was wearing furs, under which shone a white dress that I had never seen before. The bodice glittered with tiny jewels.

I slipped down from the window seat, crept down the stairs and along the corridor to André’s study. A piece of luck: the door was unlocked. I had brought a candle, so that nobody would see the electric light and wonder who was in the room; I crossed to his desk and started pulling at the drawers, looking for the stack of money, or something like it, that I had seen him count out before. The first drawer opened without resistance. It was empty.

Then the second drawer; a spare pen and ink-pot rattled, and a third item. I held it up to the light: tiny and golden.

I stood in the darkness, turning the little key over and over
in my fingers, wondering what it could unlock. All I knew about theft came from films, where the burglar would tiptoe into the house, pause to peer greedily at the sleeping demoiselle, then creep into the library and find a safe located behind some exquisite painting.

I moved about the room, thinking; and my eye fell on the portait hanging over the mantelpiece. I raised the candle: green swamp, gold sky – and wondered how I could have missed it the first time. That knowing smirk belonged to Caroline Durand: the portrait was the portrait from the story.

Could it be that simple? I thought how André might like to hollow out Caroline as she had hollowed him out. I slipped my hand behind the frame, looking for a catch or a lock; and with a flick of one finger the painting swung away from the wall. I laughed under my breath as I slotted the little key into the metal locker set into the plaster and opened the safe door.

A sheaf of papers at the front. I pulled out the tottering stack and held the leaves up to the light one by one. Deeds to the house; the purchase of an automobile; a marriage certificate, which I considered burning, then put back in place.

At the back of the safe, my fingers felt wafery paper; I pulled out a tightly bound bundle and found it was not money, but what looked like a will. I scrabbled with my fingers at the back of the safe: there was no cash in there.

I went to slam the locker door shut, piqued, when my fingers brushed another object: cold metal, which I had first thought was part of the inside of the safe.

I drew the revolver out into the light and studied its snub nose, its brutal little tongue. For a moment I considered taking it, for its workmanship, strictly to the purpose and nothing more, struck me as beautiful – but then I reconsidered. It would be better for André not to notice anything was missing. Laying it back in its place, I shut the safe door, blew out the candle and crept from the room.

The cold was edged: my breath froze into a cloud before my face as I joined the last of the guests heading for the lake.

I was the only person walking on their own – all the rest were couples, and nobody spoke to or looked at me. After twenty aching minutes, we were suddenly at the fringe of the Bois. The lanterns showed us how the path straggled in under the eaves of the woods; there were giggles and fallings-over, as the ladies of the party grappled with the uneven ground. Then the track broadened out, and suddenly we were on the edge of a white clearing.

From behind me I heard a chorus of well-bred
oohs
and
aahs
. The lake’s frozen surface was perfect, violet from the moonlight and streaked gold from the lanterns strung in the branches overhanging the banks; the trees closed in on every side. The ice was already covered in skaters, zipping adroitly here and there, insects to flowers. A long table for refreshments was stationed on the far bank: steam rose from a vat and behind the table I could just make out Thomas standing watching the scene. Set a little further back was a bonfire, just beginning to take; a couple of ladies had already retreated nearby, holding their hands out to warm them.

I looked around for Luce, and saw her standing with André in the very centre of the lake, in a knot of admirers. She was laughing at a joke or an aside; her hand still resting on André’s wrist. As I watched, André leant forward to add a bon mot and she, along with the other guests, threw her head back in laughter. She turned to watch André tell the rest of his anecdote, her face shining, her fingers gripping his arm, her lips rouged.

It was strange: like going back in time to before her illness.

As I wondered what to do, how to approach her, a footman tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Skates, Mademoiselle?’

I said yes, and stared as he put a pair of white boots in my
hands; the blades were clean but hungry-looking. But the only way to Luce was across the lake, so I bent and struggled into them, and placed one tentative foot on the ice.

Immediately the world tilted.
Steady
, laughed a man as he whooshed past me. I put another foot down, and stood, wobbly-legged, on the ice; tried to advance, picking up each boot as though walking.
Careful
, another man said impatiently – I glimpsed his flashing eyes as he whirled away, arms laced behind his back.

Why hadn’t I been born rich, so that winter sports were second nature? I gazed at Luce, willing her to turn and see me.
Darling
: but she was talking now, engaged in a story, her gloved hands moving in the air.

The inevitable happened. A lady shrieked as she cannoned into my sprawled body; her skates missed my outstretched fingers by half an inch.

Firm hands gripped me under the arms and hauled me upright; clever eyes staring at me from a lean, weather-lined face.

‘All right?’ said Aurélie Vercors. ‘No bones broken? Back on the horse,’ and, her fingers tightening on my forearm, she pulled me after her. ‘That’s it,’ she said, as, despite myself, my ugly-duckling stumble drew out into smooth strokes, ‘just let yourself go.’

‘I have to speak to Luce,’ I said.

‘Not until you can put one foot in front of the other,’ she said brightly. She was wearing a fur-trimmed grey dress, her hair drawn back into a tight bun.

My skates made a sound like scissors as we moved over the ice.

‘Good,’ Aurélie said. ‘You’re a natural.’

She moved with absolute ease. On our second circle, she jerked her chin at Louis, standing alone on the bank, watching us nervously, still wearing shoes. ‘He doesn’t skate. Too much thin ice in politics as it is.’

I didn’t even smile. Luce was still invisible behind the knot of guests.

‘What is your plan, Mlle Roux? Are you going to storm over there, and fall as you reach her, and give André the satisfaction?’ Bright eyes watched me from above her Roman nose. ‘A scene is never worth one’s time. We will stay back, like this, and choose your opportunity with caution.’

I could not think of a single intelligent thing to say to this. We skated on.

‘Refreshments,’ Aurélie said. We had reached the drinks table. She snapped her fingers to Thomas, who passed her two cups of mulled wine. ‘Now come and sit with me on the bank.’

She tugged me over to the firm ground and helped me climb a way up the bank. I wrapped my hands gratefully round the mug and peered through the steam.

‘Come in under the eaves, the view’s better,’ she said, and without waiting for an answer she grabbed my hand and led me a little way under the tree line.

There was nobody else about; the trees extended into the darkness behind me. Aurélie was right: we were afforded an excellent vantage point. From here it was possible to see the entire canvas, the way the whirling lights and shadows combined. I had never thought of Aurélie as someone who could appreciate the form of things.

‘So,’ she said, ‘here you are alone, when by rights every person with eyes in their head should be asking you to skate.’ She spoke without pity: merely outlining a problem.

‘How did you – did she—’ I asked.

‘She didn’t have to tell me. It was obvious, if you know her as well as I.’

There was a little pause. I turned back to the problem at hand.

‘She has to be her social self tonight,’ I said uncertainly. I wished I could believe that was all it was: just camouflage.

‘Oh, no doubt.’ Aurélie swirled her wine and looked out
over the frozen lake; laughed as a large woman in furs fell over, arse in the air and her red round face angry, and began shouting at her husband.

‘It never ceases to amaze me how people who are born rich carry on,’ she said. ‘It’s as if the world should be perpetually to their liking.’

‘I thought—’

She watched me over the rim of her cup, dark eyes twinkling. ‘My parents were grocers in Orléans.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I’m married to a bore. But I have security, my books, my stables and I find that I can watch those people out on the lake and not mind if they hardly see me.’

‘She’s different,’ I said. ‘She isn’t herself. She hasn’t been for a few weeks.’

‘And why do you think that is?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t think how to help her.’ It was surprisingly easy to talk to her, sitting here away from the rest of the world.

‘Here,’ she said, taking off her stole and reaching across to wrap it snugly round my shoulder.

‘It’s been since the faint,’ I said. ‘I can’t seem to get her to listen. Sometimes she’s there and sometimes she’s not. And then, things like tonight—’

‘She seems to pick and choose who she is.’

‘Yes.’ I blushed. But there was a warm feeling, too, the spice of the disloyalty.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know.’ I thought unhappily of the empty safe. The plan seemed stupid – out of reach and childish. I turned to look at Luce. She was talking to someone else now: as animated as I had ever seen her.

‘In the meantime, what about you?’

The wine had made my cheeks hot; I pressed my palms to them to cool down.

She murmured: ‘It seems there are a lot of things you’re not sure of.’

She reached for my hands, and folded them in hers, and gave them a squeeze. ‘That big house, and André so very present all the time,’ she said. ‘I suppose you must ask yourself:
How long am I prepared to wait?
’

‘I don’t know,’ I said again. She was still holding my hands loosely in hers. It was more for something to say, than anything else: I felt dull, and tired. It was as if the wine had drawn a curtain between us and the rest of the party, skating in endless loops.

She drew a pattern on the back of my hand with her thumb. ‘One must wonder how many other opportunities one may miss along the way?’

Her look was lowered; at first I didn’t understand. Then she looked up, and the old Aurélie was clearly visible in the cast of the lips.

I pulled my hands away. She knew then that she had miscalculated; she licked her lips. ‘But wouldn’t you agree, we only regret the chances we didn’t take?’

I stepped back, away from her clutching hands, towards the ice.

She smiled her lemon-slice smile, followed me forward and gripped my wrist, and we stood like that, in tension, running away impossible.

Her voice was a low murmur: ‘She’ll wring you out and run back to what she knows – it’s how she is built.’