Shutterspeed (9 page)

The column began to move. I had some trouble keeping up.

‘Attaboy,’ Uncle whispered to me as we moved past the pulpit, and Aunt wiped a tear from her eye.

The doors of the main entrance swung open. A brilliant wave of sunlight broke over us, bringing a rush of hot air from outside. Behind us the congregation began leaving their pews to bring up the rear of the procession.

‘Get on with it, mate,’ hissed the boy beside me. The two of us were holding the back poles of the canopy. ‘Come on, keep up …’

‘Shush, lads, shush. No arguing,’ muttered the priest, without turning his head.

We proceeded through the churchyard where the graves lay baking in the sun, past the headstone from which my smiling father gazed straight through us into the void.

The almshouse biddies were all in their front gardens, where tables had been set up with bunches of lilac and statues of saints. They clicked their rosaries in Morse code, they knelt for the Holy Sacrament and crossed themselves as we passed, making good the rent for the next year.

We continued past the fields and then along the railway embankment, where the meadow sloped down to the stream. The choir walking some distance ahead of us rang
out in double descant:
Lord who goes with us and strikes water from the rocks
.

‘Get a move on, Alderweireldt, get a move on,’ hissed the tall boy ahead of me. ‘Or we’ll mess up the formation.’

‘They can wait,’ said the priest, to reassure me. The muscles in my upper arm and in my wrist were turning numb. Sweat trickled down my back.

The column shuffled to a halt by the entrance to the chapel of the new cemetery, which was surrounded by a row of freshly planted cedars.

‘You’re doing fine …’ Uncle Werner murmured from somewhere behind me.

I nodded, but was glad for the chance to rest the base of the pole on the ground while the priest went inside.

It did not happen until we were almost back at the church. We had to stop and wait for a car to turn around because the driver had ignored the gamekeeper’s whistle up the road.

My mind must have gone blank. I heard the boy beside me fulminate: ‘Alderweireldt, watch out! Eyes as big as saucers, and blind as a bat – Alderweireldt!’

Only then did I notice that the others had started moving again, and I found myself lurching forward to right my end of the canopy with my pole, which consisted of two sections. The upper section was tipping forward at an alarming angle, and the next thing I knew it shot free from the base.

This sent me reeling backwards, and I fell against
someone’s legs. I scrambled to my feet amid horrified consternation.

The tall boy had tried to catch my pole but had not been able to stop it thudding against the back of the priest’s head.

I saw our shepherd stagger and something flying through the air. The gold crown in the monstrance had come loose. It bounced off the asphalt and under the tall boy’s foot, without him noticing, so that he tripped on it and flailed his arms wildly to keep his balance.

Miss van Vooren shot forward to steady him, then snatched up the crown from the verge and fumbled it back into place. She threw me a murderous look.

Uncle retrieved the top half of my pole and reinserted it in the base.

‘Worse things happen at sea,’ he offered.

After that he stayed at my side, helping me to hold the pole upright. I kept my head down all the rest of the way, convinced that a thousand eyes were fixed on me.

In the sacristy there was a mortal hush. Miss van Vooren was applying a small poultice to the priest’s neck.

‘That was some fine mess you got us into,’ he said.

I was relieved he did not sound too angry.

‘I told you he was far too young,’ Miss van Vooren said crossly.

‘His pa used to do so well …’ said the priest.

‘His pa …’ she echoed. She breathed heavily down her nostrils, then began to help the shepherd out of his surplice.

We stood in the corner dragging our vestments over our heads.

‘If we don’t get our money,’ the tall boy snarled at me, ‘I’ll smash your face in, you idiot.’

One of his mates pointed to the sacristy closet, the doors of which were open. He poked the tall boy with his elbow, indicating the shelves with repeated jerks of his head.

‘You be the lookout,’ the tall boy hissed at me. His hands disappeared into the closet.

‘Watch out for those two,’ muttered the other boy.

They hadn’t noticed a thing. Miss van Vooren was too busy helping the priest to disrobe.

A cork popped softly at my back. I heard the tall boy taking great gulps. One of his friends whispered: ‘Give over, my turn now …’

There was a scuffle.

‘What are you boys up to?’ boomed the priest from afar.

‘Quick,’ hissed one of the boys.

I felt the fumble of hands against my shoulder and found myself hugging a bottle of communion wine.

The others pulled their most innocent faces.

I turned round to find Miss van Vooren glaring at me.

‘I might have guessed,’ she said, in a rage so cold as to frost my lashes with ice crystals. ‘Taking after your father, I do believe.’

When I got home the relations were already drinking their aperitifs under the apple trees. Uncle had dragged the
dining table outside. Aunt was in the kitchen putting the soup in the blender.

‘Well I never! Here’s our acrobat!’ cried a cousin of Aunt’s. ‘Catch a bit of circus fever last night, did you?’

‘Lay off him,’ said Uncle, ‘he’s had a rough time.’

I sat down, made myself small, shrinking from their presence like a hedgehog curling up in its nest.

They were good-natured folk. The women had big, blotchy arms bulging out of their sleeveless dresses, and by their second glass of port pink blotches began to appear on their cheeks too.

‘One sip and I see double,’ cooed Aunt’s eldest sister. ‘So many people here all of a sudden.’ There were guffaws in the background. ‘You’ve got a twin sitting right next to you,’ she went on, squinting at me. ‘Alike as two peas.’

The afternoon wore on. Roast chickens were carved and stewed pears ladled out with lashings of syrup. A numinous hush descended on the table.

At about three, when half the company had gone out into the road to watch the cycle race go by, a car pulled up in front of the house. Aunt had just started cutting the cakes. High heels tapped sharply across the cobbles in the back yard.

I drew my head in as far as it would go.

‘Look, Joris! A visitor for you,’ called Uncle.

I twisted round in my chair and saw ankle straps with glittery studs, the deep tan of her legs, the vibrant pink of her dress, the pearls at her throat, and then the thick
locks of hair by her cheekbones, just like in her wedding picture.

‘Hello, Joris,’ she said, smiling. ‘Aren’t you glad to see me?’

I gazed up into her grey eyes, grey like mine.

‘Hello, Ma,’ I said.

THEY WOULD NOT STAY LONG, NO LONGER THAN COURTESY
required.

‘Take a seat, take a seat!’ cried Uncle.

His heartiness sounded a mite too enthusiastic to convince me.

The aunts stopped cooing. My mother’s brother took a seat near Uncle Werner’s cousins, who were discussing their homing pigeons. Their voices trailed off, and they sat with their elbows on their knees studying the grass at their feet, at a loss for a topic of conversation that might appeal to the city type in black shirt and gold-rimmed sunglasses, whose pointy calfskin ankle boots gave off the sweet smell of shoe polish when he swung one leg over the other.

He drew a metal case from his breast pocket, snapped it open in the palm of his hand and, with an overly genteel flourish, offered the cousins a cigarette, for which they stammered their thanks.

They were country folk, sometime farmers who now held jobs or ran small businesses as Uncle did, but they had never quite uprooted themselves from the land that
had been ploughed by generation upon generation of their forebears. Ungainly men, gnarled like pollard willows by a boyhood of hard graft on farms, where the odour of the stables mingled with their sweat as they slept, where hens clucked beneath the window and the clock in the hallway ticked away on its rounds of days punctuated by the clatter of pails and churns.

My mother, who had seated herself at my side, draped her arm over the back of my chair. I edged forward, wary of her dizzying nearness and the floaty, almost gravitydefying manner in which she moved and spoke.

‘Sponge or Saint-Honoré?’ enquired Aunt, indicating the cakes.

She opted for the sponge.

‘They’re both very light,’ Aunt assured her, for she was rather proud of her Saint-Honoré, which consisted of cream puffs piled into a pyramid. ‘I used low-fat cream, and marge in place of butter.’

‘Sponge,’ repeated my mother, ‘I’d prefer the sponge.’

‘I say, Werner, there’s been some news about the headstone,’ said her brother, emitting a cloud of smoke which drifted off over his shoulder towards the chicken run. ‘Remind me to fill you in before we go.’

He held the stub of his cigarette between nicotinestained fingers and raised it to his mouth. His features twisted briefly into a scowl, which was all the more impressive for the dark sunglasses and the pencil moustache pleating like a concertina as he inhaled.

Uncle nodded. ‘Will do.’

They must have been in touch with her some time earlier, without my knowledge. They had not called me as they normally did when they had her on the phone, for me to say hello to her in some far-off place and to hear her reply while the line hummed and crackled, as if there were stars imploding in the immeasurable distance separating us during our halting exchange, or long-tailed comets zipping over the Pyrenees.

It was always a relief to be able to pass the receiver to Uncle or Aunt and just stand there listening to the rest of the conversation, even if it was only half of it, for it was the half that was familiar to me. Usually I would hear Aunt telling her I was still eating well, but that I was a bit of a rascal at school.

Once I heard Aunt say, ‘Measles? What measles? An epidemic, you say? But he had it five years ago, Francine. You can’t get measles twice, you know.’

One of Aunt’s sisters asked my mother how she was getting on in Spain. My mother concentrated on cutting her slice of cake with the side of her fork, pretending not to hear.

Her brother blew out a cloud of smoke and said: ‘Spain’s finished.’

An uncomfortable silence ensued.

‘Joris,’ said my mother, ‘come here with your face, will you.’

She took a dainty handkerchief smelling of violets and brushed the crumbs from the corners of my mouth.

Aunt began to clear the table, making more clatter than
usual as she collected spoons and forks on top of the stack of used plates.

‘Can I help?’ offered my mother, rising.

‘Not to worry,’ said Aunt Laura.

My mother sat down again, laid her arm over the back of my chair as before and trailed her fingers over my shoulder from time to time while the table talk continued.

When I went up to my room afterwards, she was there. I had seen her from halfway up the stairs, standing beside my bed and glancing about the room, at the furniture, the walls, almost as if she had stepped into a picture gallery that held little interest for her.

No doubt she had been to the bathroom. Her bag hung on her arm. The suitcase from under my bed was on my writing table. She must have put it there, because I had not touched it for days. The lid was open, and the binoculars had been taken out and placed on my chair. As I reached the top of the stairs I saw her bending over the suitcase. I heard her sigh, with what seemed to me a mixture of sadness and amusement.

‘Did you collect all these things yourself?’ she asked when I came in.

‘I’ve kept all your postcards, too,’ I replied sheepishly, and hated the sound of my voice.

For the next few minutes we stood side by side, heads bowed over the suitcase. I saw myself as a small child in a cotton sunbonnet, sitting beside her on a cloth spread out on a riverbank, gnawing at a crust with my milk teeth.
I tottered down a road between her and my father, clinging on to their hands, I dug holes in the earth with toy spades in the garden at the back of a house of which I had only the dimmest memories.

I stirred the photos with my hand.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, having carefully smoothed her skirt over the back of her thighs with both hands. ‘Why don’t you sit here with me for a bit? Come on …’ she said, patting the mattress beside her.

I made her wait while I took one of the elastic bands I used for keeping the photos in place and twisted it round and round my index finger until the tip turned blue.

‘Come on …’ she repeated.

I sat down, released the elastic and savoured the tingling sensation as the blood returned to my fingertip.

‘Joris, look at me for once …’

It was hard not to return her smile, that huge, glorious smile which sometimes lit up her whole face.

The first hint of crow’s feet appeared about her eyes. She must have been in her early thirties at the time. I noticed that she was wearing make-up. It was thinly applied then, but in later years the stuff would be slapped on her face and throat in ever greater quantities, until in the end she became a doll, wrinkle-free and plasticised.

‘What did you do in Spain, then?’ I asked.

I saw a shadow pass over her irises. She turned her face to the window.

‘Nothing very sensible,’ she said after a pause.

She looked at me again, rested her hand on my shoulder and stroked my earlobe with her fingers.

‘I’d like it if you came to live with me again. You’ll be going to a new school a few months from now, anyway. There are good schools in town, your uncles went there too. You can stay with us, our place is far too big for just your uncle and me. You’d have all the space in the world …’

She waited for me to reply. I stripped the elastic band off my finger and stuffed it in my pocket.

‘I’d really like you to be with me. You can come back here as often as you like. I know you like it here, and that they take good care of you.’

‘I’ll ask them …’ I said.

She stood up and adjusted the strap of her shoulder bag.

‘They already know. You deserve a good school, that’s what they said.’

I did not react.

She cupped my face with her hands. ‘I’ve missed you, Joris. I’ve really missed you.’

I shut my eyes to avoid meeting hers.

Her lips brushed my forehead, then she was gone.

I heard her going down the stairs. Later on, when they were leaving, I looked out of my window and saw her in the churchyard. She was standing by my father’s grave, clutching her shoulder bag, unsteady on her high heels in the coarse gravel.

Her brother was waiting with the engine running.

‘Francine,’ he called.

She picked her way daintily to the kerb and got in the car.

The dark was setting in and Aunt was in the kitchen finishing the washing-up. Uncle was outside feeding the chickens.

I posted myself in the doorway and stared at her blankly. When it came to getting on her nerves I knew every trick in the book.

The dishcloth flew faster and faster over the pans, as I was pleased to note. She slammed the doors of the kitchen cupboards. She took the already washed tureen and rinsed it again by mistake.

Then she flung the sponge in the sink and turned to confront me.

‘Joris! What’s the matter with you?’

I shrugged and pulled a face. ‘So I’m supposed to be leaving then, am I?’

‘Leaving, leaving, who told you that? She wants you to be with her during the week, so you can go to school there. That’s all.’

She returned to her pans.

‘Well, perhaps it’s time to move on …’

‘I want to stay here.’

‘It’s not up to you.’

She paused in her scouring, took a deep breath and fixed her eyes on the cupboard door over the draining board.

‘Whichever way you look at it, she’s still your ma, Joris.
We can’t stop her. But it’s early days yet, plenty of time for you to get used to the idea …’

She set the pan on the drying-rack.

‘And us too.’

‘I’m going up to bed,’ I said.

She offered her cheek for me to kiss her good-night, but I stalked out of the kitchen.

The next morning I woke up late. I had slept soundly, and was not conscious of having dreamed. Last night before getting into bed I had closed the lid on my father’s suitcase and slid it back where it belonged.

From my bed I surveyed my room. I willed each crack meandering across the ceiling to imprint itself on my memory, so that when I was packed off to that stuffy town house just shutting my eyes would be enough to whisk me back to the comfort of my old bedroom.

Aunt called from downstairs. She asked me to put something clean on because she was taking me to Hélène Vuylsteke’s for coffee at the big house. I could go out and play in the grounds if I liked, she said, no lack of space there.

She sent me back upstairs twice, the first time because the jumper I was wearing was too tight and the second because it was too loose.

We set out a little after midday, and were to call at Miss van Vooren’s on the way, as she had also been invited.

Despite the overgrown cedars screening the walls of her house, Miss van Vooren had not been spared the heat. She opened the front door looking rather flustered, shook
hands with Aunt and glared at me as if I were some small dead rodent the cat had deposited on the doorstep.

‘Could you wait a moment,’ she said. ‘I still have to do my hair, and I need to take something for my ulcer before we go.’

We were not shown into the parlour, where she usually kept me waiting while she composed her list of groceries, but into a rarely used antechamber on the opposite side of the hall. When Aunt sat down, the springs of her chair squealed as though in fright.

On the mantelpiece stood dreary little bunches of dried flowers between framed photographs of prim young ladies in front of churches, basilicas, and every Virgin’s grotto in the area. They were invariably disposed around the central figure of Miss van Vooren, who wore a look of permanent migraine and sometimes linked arms with Hélène.

‘I must be up there somewhere too, with all the rest,’ said Aunt.

A musty odour hung in the room. The walls were obviously affected by rising damp, which the seldom-lit stove did nothing to combat.

‘God, what a pong in here!’ I said, in a much louder voice than usual. Miss van Vooren had left the door to the hall ajar. Elsewhere in the house she turned a tap on. Secretly I hoped she had heard me. The incident in the sacristy was still fresh in my memory.

‘Joris!’ Aunt remonstrated, holding her forefinger to her lips.

‘Well, you said so yourself! She may be pure in spirit,
but her cupboards could do with a dusting … that’s what you said – I heard you.’

‘That’s quite enough …’

‘Even Uncle says so. Smells as musty in her house as between a nun’s legs, he says.’

Aunt stood up, grabbed me by my arm and sat me down on the chair beside her.

‘What’s the matter with you today? I’ll send you straight home if you don’t mind your tongue.’

I was fuming.

Just as I opened my mouth for an even ruder rejoinder, Miss van Vooren appeared in the hallway. With her dark glasses on and a filmy little headscarf reining in her swollen hairdo except for a curl on either side, she looked more or less her old self. All she needed was a pair of glass wings for her to look exactly like an insect whose frail appearance belied a nasty sting.

‘All set now,’ she said.

Aunt and I stood up and followed her out of the house.

We walked up the tree-lined alleyway to the back entrance of the estate. Miss van Vooren had no objection. The main access was on the other side: a formal gateway with posts of classical design crowned by urns and horns of plenty, the aesthetic effect of which Miss van Vooren considered wasted on ordinary folk.

With each step we took in the knee-high grass between the lindens, the throbbing activity of the village dwindled away behind the banks of brushwood curving around the
estate like defensive earthworks. The afternoon took on a compacted stillness, rent now and then by the shrieks of peacocks in the trees.

Before us sprawled the big house, bathed in sunshine. The awning had been erected over the terrace. We shut the gate behind us, and as we crossed the footbridge a figure in a wide-brimmed straw hat came down the steps towards us.

‘Welcome, all three of you!’ exclaimed Hélène Vuylsteke. ‘How nice to see you, Rosa.’

Kisses were exchanged.

‘And our celestial acrobat too …’ she smirked.

‘The talk of the village, he is,’ Miss van Vooren said offhandedly.

‘Oh come now, Rosa,’ laughed Hélène Vuylsteke. ‘Nous deux, nous avons survécu deux guerres. After what we’ve been through, that kind of upset is a mere bagatelle.’