Starburst (5 page)

He knew it had never been his father’s fault, but when, in his last year at school, he returned home one day to find an ambulance and two police cars outside the house and was then told by a gruff police inspector that Guillaume Dessuin had locked himself in the attic bedroom and had subsequently taken his own life with the revolver he kept as a souvenir from the last war, Albert’s desolation was tempered by an overwhelming sense of relief. He was now without the violent reaches of the unfortunate man.

Yet as the months went by thereafter and his mother’s silent chagrin finally lifted from her sad, embittered being, Albert found himself becoming the new and unwitting target for her verbal abuse, now more vitriolic than ever before. And it soon came to him that Guillaume Dessuin, through his actions, had inflicted on his only son a wound more permanent than any received during those regular beatings. He had succeeded in doing something at which Albert himself was forever destined to fail, and that was to rid himself of the very cause of so much misery in his life.

Abruptly, Albert stood up and strode over to the minibar, the memory of his troubled youth and the matriarchal ball and chain he dragged through his adulthood being too prevalent in his mind. He took out two small bottles of whisky, poured their contents into a glass and drained it in two gulps, feeling his body give out an involuntary shiver at the immediate impact the alcohol had on both his throat and his brain. In that moment, he became aware that no sound was coming from the next-door room. He moved across to the adjoining door and opened it quietly.

Angélique was lying fast asleep on the bed, her stockinged feet curled up under her bottom and her violin clutched like a comforting teddy bear in her arms. It was a sight that made Albert smile despite his melancholy mood. He had watched that girl grow up, becoming more attached to her than she would ever know, and he knew only too well what that particular instrument meant to her. It was her childhood, her passion, her fairy-tale world to which she used to escape from the impecunious and uncultured lifestyle of her family in Clermont Ferrand. And, over the years he had witnessed it gently coaxing from her one of the most truly remarkable talents he had ever had the pleasure of hearing. Oh, how easy life would be, he thought to himself, if one needed only to take one’s solace from a shapely piece of veneered wood with a few steel strings attached to it.

Dessuin soundlessly pulled the door closed and turned once more to raid the minibar of its anaesthetizing contents.

T
he shutters in the drawing room of the house in Clermont Ferrand were always kept closed during the summer months to protect the antique furniture from the sun, especially the lacquered top of the grand piano, which stood at an angle in the large bay window, squatting like a giant toad on its turned-out legs. It was covered with a white lace cloth upon which sat a weighty stack of music scores and the large blue Limoges terrine in which Madame Lafitte always kept an abundant supply of Nestlé’s plain chocolate secreted under its patterned lid.

So efficient were the shutters that it was always impossible to see anything in that room, even at ten o’clock on a summer’s morning when the sun was high enough to clear the trees that lined the Rue Blatin and hit the front of the house full-on. But if one entered quietly when nobody else was about and took care not to bump into anything, it was actually possible to
smell
one’s way around the room, which turned out to be so much more exciting than actually being able to see it. Starting on an anti-clockwise course, the fireplace came first with its acrid reek of cold, unswept chimney; next the long bookshelves, which gave off a heady whiff of leather; round past the grand piano, which was always sweet with beeswax; feel one’s way to one side of Dr. Lafitte’s high-sided armchair with the rich aroma of hair oil on its linen head cloth; then along the smooth-fronted sideboard, which gave off first the obnoxious tang of spent pipe tobacco, followed by the fading bouquet of potpourri; and then, finally, journey’s end came by the small Louis XV chair nestling beside the door, which ponged of Madame Lafitte’s two elderly Pekineses.

It was during one of these unsighted sojourns, when the perpetrator had decided to widen the search for new discoveries behind the grand piano, that a foot came into contact with some form of solid object, causing it to sound off a muffled reverberation in protest. After a moment of thumping heartbeat, during which ears were sharply attuned to the possible approach of footsteps, small hands were used to explore the shape of the object. First curvaceous around its base, then into a narrow waist, then some smaller curves before its lines ran parallel to the top. Imagination could not help in any way to understand what the box contained, and that was not to be of any satisfaction to one so curious. Accordingly, ten little fingers sought to break the sacrosanct spell of darkness, gripping hard at the edge of one of the tall shutters and pulling it open to allow the narrowest sliver of light to fall upon the box and upon nothing else. The little girl in the shapeless cotton dress and dirty plimsolls, who now revealed herself for the first time to her inanimate acquaintances in the room, knelt down in front of the box and slowly undid the three spring catches on the lid, and then carefully, oh, so carefully, she opened it up.

She did not touch its contents. She just gazed at them, so mesmerized by what she saw that, after an unknown quantity of time, she felt no discomfort from kneeling on the hard parquet floor, nor was she aware of the commotion that had started outside the room.

“You try upstairs, Marie. I will look for her down here.”

A door on the opposite side of the hallway groaned open on un-oiled hinges before being closed immediately with an echoing bang, and then the door to the drawing room was opened and a light turned on.

“Angélique? Are you in here?”

As she stood by the door, the woman, who, despite her advanced age, was tall and upright and elegantly turned out, her grey hair pinned in a circular plait to the back of her head, was puzzled by the crack of light that showed through the shutters. She walked over to the window and let out a cry of surprise when she came across the little girl huddled on her knees behind the piano.

“Oh, Angélique, what a fright you gave me,” she said, clutching a hand to her white-bloused heart. “What are you doing in here, little one?”

The little girl looked up at the old lady, her face radiant with delight. “What is this?” she asked, pointing at her discovery.

The lady was so warmed by the child’s expression that any thought of reprimand quickly melted from her mind. “That, Angélique, is a violin.”

“Is it very special?”

The old lady smiled. “That one is, yes.” She held a finger up to the little girl. “You wait right there. I must tell your mother I found you.” She walked over to the door and called out, “Marie?” into the hallway.

“I have not yet found her, Madame Lafitte,” a panicked voice sounded out from some distant point on the upper landing.

“She is down here in the drawing room, Marie, so calm yourself.”

Madame Lafitte walked back to the bay window, placing her long, graceful hands on the back of a low armchair and pushing it on squeaky castors to where Angélique remained as instructed, her face no more than ten inches away from the instrument. The old lady sat, tucking in her grey worsted skirt under her legs and shifting her knees demurely to one side. She reached down and lightly moved a thumb over the strings. The tone of the violin was muted by the thick green baize that lined its box.

“It was given to me by my father many years ago,” Madame Lafitte said, as if beginning the telling of a fairy tale. “He was a very kind and generous man. I had not long started playing the violin when he came home with it one evening. ‘Lillian,’ he said to me, ‘if you want to be a really excellent violinist, you need the assistance of more than just a good teacher.’ So he gave me that case, and I, like you, opened it up and just stared at it in wonderment.” She reached down and pulled the violin case towards her. “Of course, it is only a small one because I was very young at the time.”

“How old were you?” the little girl asked, briefly taking her eyes off the violin to look up at Madame’s kindly wrinkled face.

Madame Lafitte laughed. “Oh, now that is difficult. Not as young as you, at any rate. What are you now? Six? Seven?”

“Six and a half.”

“Well, I think I was probably about ten, and—”

Madame Lafitte was interrupted by the arrival of a heavy tread and an unhealthy wheezing in the room. In the doorway stood a large woman with a wild tangle of brown curls adorning the top of a very red and very round face. Her figure, which resembled that of an all-in wrestler, was encased in a sleeveless floral overall that looked large enough to double as a two-man tent and under which, judging from the expanse of bosom revealed, she wore little other than an overloaded, flesh-coloured brassiere, the straps of which were almost lost in the pudginess of her shoulders. Below the bivouac, her thick legs were sheathed in black calf-length stockings that ran amok with ladders, while her considerable weight was borne by a pair of battered, woollen bedroom slippers.

“Oh, madame,” she gasped, as she rocked her way over to the piano. “I am so sorry. I cannot understand what she was thinking of. She knows this room is
interdite
.” She placed her fists on her wide hips and frowned angrily down at her daughter. “Angélique,” she boomed, her voice suddenly taking on the force and volume of a Marseillaise fishwife, “you come out from behind that piano and apologize immediately to madame.”

Seeing the fear on the little girl’s face as she got to her feet and quickly backed away as far as the bay window would allow, Madame Lafitte held up a hand. “It’s all right, Marie,” she said in a calming voice, “no harm has been done. It is good for little girls to be so inquisitive.”

“But not here in your house, madame. That is unforgivable. She can be as inquisitive as she likes in her own home, but not here at my work.”

“And how much more work do you have to do this morning?” Madame Lafitte asked, trying to steer matters away from Angélique’s trivial misdemeanor.

“I have yet to finish off the polishing in Dr. Lafitte’s study, madame, and then if I might leave the dining room until tomorrow, I would be very grateful. I have to be home to make lunch for all my family.”

“What?” Madame Lafitte asked quizzically, knowing that the three Pascal sons and elder daughter laboured alongside their father in a furniture factory on the outskirts of the city. Marie Pascal had been working in the house for nearly eight years, and consequently Madame Lafitte knew that Angélique’s birth had been a bizarre mistake, remembering well the woman’s surprise and shock on discovering that she was pregnant fourteen years after her previous confinement. “Why would they be home on a Wednesday? Do they not all have lunch in the canteen?”

Angélique’s mother flicked back her head. “Of course, that is usually the case, madame, but today, they are all on strike.”

Madame Lafitte clicked her tongue. “Oh, not another strike. How long is this one going to last?”

The housekeeper threw out her hands. “
Je ne sais pas,
madame. I hope a very short time, otherwise there will be no food in the house for me to cook for them.”

“Well, Marie, you get yourself off home when you have finished the study, and while you are doing that, I shall keep Angélique here with me so that she does not feel the need to carry out any more of her explorations.”

“Oh, you need not trouble yourself. Angélique will come to sit quietly at the kitchen table and wait for me to finish my work. She has been—”

“Marie,” Madame Lafitte cut in sharply, “I am very happy to have Angélique with me here. We are going to have a little talk about the violin.”

Marie frowned. “The violin, madame? Angélique would not know what such a thing is.”

“In that case, I would like to explain it to her.”

With a shake of her head and a low muttering to herself, Angélique’s mother turned and headed towards the door, running a yellow duster she had taken from the front pocket of her overall along the full length of the sideboard before departing the room.

Madame Lafitte smiled conspiratorially at the little girl, who had waited for her mother to leave before sinking to her knees in front of the violin once more. Angélique watched with wide eyes as the violin was taken from its case and the bow unclipped from the lid. Madame Lafitte placed the violin under her chin and plucked at each of the strings, turning the small wooden pegs at the end of the fingerboard to tune the instrument.

“Oh, my word, it has been so long since I have played. My fingers are not so nimble nowadays and also the violin is quite small for me, so you must be ready to excuse a great many mistakes, Angélique.”

The little girl watched as the old lady straightened her back, held the bow lightly against the strings, and then began to play. Immediately the dark, soulless room was warmed by the sweetest sound that Angélique had ever heard. She stared open-mouthed at the hand that moved effortlessly over the strings, at the fingers that quivered to make every note resound more beautifully, and at Madame Lafitte’s face, which suddenly seemed to have become so much younger than before. Oh, it’s like magic, Angélique thought to herself; this is the most special thing I have ever discovered.

When Madame Lafitte eventually finished playing, she laid the violin and bow across her knees and smiled at Angélique. “Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Not so many mistakes after all.”

“Do you always have to pretend you’re sleeping when you play?” Angélique asked.

Madame Lafitte laughed. “No, my dear, I close my eyes to concentrate. One has to try to become part of the music, and if you are not looking at other things, like the piano there, or even at you, then you are not distracted.”

“If I closed my eyes, would I be able to play?”

“I don’t know. Would you like to have a try?”

With a gasp of amazement, Angélique jumped to her feet. “Am I allowed to?”

“Of course you are. The violin might still be
un peu grand
for you, but let’s see if we can’t play a note or two. Come here and stand beside me.”

When the violin was placed under the little girl’s chin, her face was at such an angle that she had to squint her eyes sideways to view the strings. Madame Lafitte bit at her lip pensively. “Now, that does not look very comfortable.”

“Oh, it’s very comfortable,” exclaimed the little girl, terrified the old lady would take the violin away from her.

“All right, then.” She put the bow in Angélique’s free hand and raised the girl’s arm so that the bow rested on the first string of the violin. “We are only going to use this string, so that is the one the fingers of your other hand need to press,
tu comprends?
”

“Oui.”

“
Bon.
So let us start with that finger, which we call your fourth finger, and now gently move the bow across the string.”

Angélique did what she was told and the violin emitted an ear-piercing screech. The girl let out a shrill laugh. “That sounds like the noise our cat makes when Papa stands on its tail by mistake!”

Madame Lafitte smiled. “In that case, we must immediately stop the suffering of your poor cat! Come on, we shall try
encore une fois
.”

The note, this time, came out almost perfect.

“That was wonderful, Angélique. Well done, you. Now what I want—”

But Angélique had already begun to play again, this time with her eyes screwed tightly closed, and when she repeated the note, she mirrored the technique of the quivering finger that she had seen Madame Lafitte use. It resounded exactly as the old lady’s had done. So Angélique pressed her third finger to the string and pulled the bow back across it, and again the lower note came out as pure as the last. And then she moved to the second finger, and after an initial screech, she readjusted her little wrist and the note once more came out perfect.

The old lady did not try to stop her, but watched the girl’s tenacity with fascination. “All right, now let’s try the next string over. The same thing again.”

The bow and the fingers moved together to the next string, and following one false start, three perfect notes were sounded, the playing hand arched just as it should be to avoid coming into contact with the fourth string, and then, without prompting, Angélique moved back to that string and played the three original notes again.