The Woman on the Train (8 page)

I went to bed and dreamt of making love to Isabelle.

*

It’s one of the great joys in a conductor’s life – the start of the concert. The orchestra is ready; the audience is seated and awaiting your appearance; silence descends, edged with anticipation; the lights are dimmed. It is now, as a conductor, one makes one’s appearance beneath the spotlight. It’s Saturday night and everything is ready. Our replacement cellist, costing a small fortune, has stepped into Isabelle’s shoes, all the top brass from my American record label are present, together with an assortment of music reviewers and even a couple of politicians. Every ticket has sold out; I heard rumours of tickets being sold on the black market for four or five times their face value. It is the biggest musical occasion of the year. I am a professional and all thoughts of Hilda, Drancy, and Isabelle have been banished from my mind. I confess, I have butterflies but I know that on picking up the baton that I shall live for the music and the music alone. I hover in the stage wings. The stage manager uses a walkie-talkie to communicate with the lighting guy. All is set. He gives me the thumbs up. It is time.

I step out onto the stage and wait for the applause to hit me. There is an inexplicable delay. Then, instead of applause, I’m greeted with a slow handclap. I feel the panic rising within me. I can’t tell what’s happening out there – the glare of the spotlight blinds me. Someone even has the audacity to boo me. How dare they? Don’t they know who I am? I pick up the baton from the music stand and I realise I am shaking. I try to breathe away my nerves, to call on my inner resources. But I am stumbling; I feel my confidence seep away like water down a drain. I face my orchestra; I can see their concerned faces. I daren’t turn around. I just need to start and allow the music to do the talking for me.

Two gruelling hours later, and we finish. I am sweating from every pore; I have never put so much effort into conducting and I am trembling with exhaustion. The audience doesn’t clap. Finally, I turn around, panting heavily with the exertion, and peer out into the auditorium. It takes a few moments for it to sink in but, like a punch into my stomach, I see half the seats are empty. I don’t understand. A rage descends over me. Throwing my baton down, I storm off the stage and into the side wings where I see the stage manager and my agent. ‘What was that about?’ I yell at them. ‘I thought we’d sold out.’

‘We didn’t want to tell you, but the box office told us they’d been inundated with people demanding their money back.’

‘What on earth for? Why?’

‘We don’t know exactly…  some sort of boycott, we think.’

‘A what?’ I know I am screaming but I can’t help it.

‘We think it’s to do with your appearance in court.’

I put my face in my hands and scream. I storm to my dressing room and, slamming the door shut behind me, pace up and down unable to believe that it had come to this. I pour myself a whisky and gulp it down in one. I stand there with the empty glass in my hand, shaking from head to foot while my throat burns. I catch my reflection in the mirror – a man in a tuxedo, bow tie undone, his face red with anger and sweat, a man contaminated, and for the first time in my life I hate what I see. I fling the glass at the mirror, shattering it.

Half an hour later, having ordered another glass and drunk too much whisky, there was a knock on the door. ‘Leave me alone,’ I shouted.

‘Maestro, sir,’ came the nervous voice from the other side. ‘There’s someone to see you.’

‘Tell them to–’

‘They say they’ve got something of yours and that it is important.’

I hesitated but of course who can resist something like that. I staggered to my feet, feeling distinctly woozy, and opened the door.

‘Good evening, Maestro,’ he said, walking straight past me to stand in the middle of my dressing room. He took in the mirror but said nothing.

‘Jesus, what are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to give you this back,’ he said, holding something curled up in his hand.

‘What is it?’

He opened his palm and let something unfurl from his fingers. ‘It’s your tie.’

‘Yes,’ I said, transfixed by its many colours.

‘Isabelle wanted you to have it back. She said you weren’t to try and contact her again. Also, she asked me to give you another message.’

I looked at him expectantly. ‘Yes? What is it?’

‘It’s this.’

Hell, the pain. It felt like a sledgehammer had slammed into my face. I fell back, falling against my chair and landing awkwardly amidst the shards of broken glass. My whole face felt as if it had ballooned, pulsating with pain. My vision blurred, blood poured from my nose and from a cut in my hand where I’d landed on the broken glass. Jacques transformed himself into two before throwing the tie at me, spinning on his heels, and leaving.

I knew my career would be in tatters but I hadn’t expected to be torn apart quite so spectacularly. On the Monday morning following the disastrous Saturday concert, my record bosses telephoned me to tell me they were due to have discussions about my future. I could expect to hear from them the following week. That same day I went to see my doctor about my broken nose. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, after two days of deliberations, the jury returned their verdict on Hilda Lapointe. Unsurprisingly, they found her guilty of war crimes. The next week, my record label called me in for a meeting. Having asked what had happened to my nose, they told me that through my association with a war criminal, I had become a liability both to myself and, more importantly, to the label. They had no option but to release me. When I hinted at compensation, they told me I was lucky they had decided against suing me. Apparently, there was a standard clause in my contract about not bringing the label into ill-repute. Two days later, Hilda was back in court to hear the sentence – she got five years. The papers led the public outcry, saying it was far too lenient. They reckoned she’d be out within three years. It was a national disgrace, they said, a slap in the face for those who had suffered during the war.

I received no word from Isabelle. Not that I had expected to. I missed her terribly and spent weeks pining for her.

Things got worse. If I thought my royalties would keep me afloat, again I was to be disappointed. My record sales dried up entirely. I had no work and no income.

The case, and the sentence, also upset Michèle, bringing back too many painful memories of the war. Her indifference towards me deepened, first to resentment then anger. How could I spoken up for her, she kept asking, how could I have done it. I had no answer; I didn’t truly know myself. I wanted to use words like ‘honour’ and ‘debt’, but they sounded too hollow, too inadequate.

Come Christmas 1968, Michèle announced she was leaving me. I’d been half expecting it. I thought I’d be devastated but, in the end, it came almost as a relief. She’d been seeing someone else, she said, a dentist, someone she was very much in love with and someone she wanted to marry. Of course, I thought, the wonderful dentist. I wondered how he’d managed to bring out her love when I, after so many years, had failed.

Oddly enough, we got on better in those last few weeks than we had for years, with the exception of our holiday in Morocco. It was probably the relief. We reached an amicable settlement, sold the house and split the proceeds. With my share, I bought a modest little house with a small garden in a tiny village outside the town of Annecy, near the Swiss border, about 40 kilometres south of Geneva. With its low ceilings and stone floors and old-fashioned wooden furniture, the house is what one might describe as rustic; a far cry from Paris. Here, in this village, stuck sometime in the previous century, no one recognised me. I was yesterday’s news and already forgotten. Also, my longer hair and newly-shaped nose acted as a disguise. I bought a puppy, a short-legged Jack Russell, and called him Claude – after Claude Debussy. In March, I found a job in a warehouse in town, and tried my best to adapt to my new circumstances.

The town of Annecy lies on a lake and on Sundays, Claude and I would walk round its perimeter, admiring the views, soothed by its calm waters. In the evenings, with Claude nestled on my lap, I’d watch television, read the papers or the monthly classical music magazine,
Diapason
, and go to bed to dream of Isabelle.

But it was Hilda that occupied my thoughts.

In April 1969, Charles de Gaulle resigned as president. Elections for his successor took place in June. I went to the polling station in Annecy to cast my vote. I handed over my identification to the old woman working there. Having found my name on her list, she looked up quizzically at me and asked, ‘Aren’t you–’

‘No,’ I snapped. ‘We just share the same name.’

‘You look like him.’

‘No, I’m far more handsome.’

I voted for Georges Pompidou for no other reason than I liked his name. He duly won and became our new president.

Every day I thought less of Isabelle and more of Hilda. I constantly wondered how she was getting on. She ‘d been incarcerated at the
Centre Pénitentiaire de Rennes
, a women’s prison in Brittany. I hoped she was suffering. I hated her for what she’d done to me, and resented the idea that she’d taken the credit for supposedly having saved me but none of the flak for having, in effect, destroyed me. I was determined she should know, that she should apologise for having caused all my misfortune. Some nights, unable to sleep, I relived Madame Kahn’s testimony, visualising those poor women naked on the ice while she whipped them across the breasts. Sometimes, I fantasised about killing her. I would buy poison, I decided, strychnine perhaps, and administer it to her via a homemade cake. After all, they say Alexander the Great was killed by the stuff. But I am no murderer. Yet, the thought of seeing her began to obsess me. I wanted to see her in prison, miserable, repentant for all the things she had done.

Unable to bear it any more, I wrote a letter to the prison authorities in Rennes, expressing the desire to visit my “old friend”, and, having posted it off, waited for the reply. It came two weeks later. Yes, it said, Hilda Lapointe would see me. I was given a specific date and time.

And so, at the crack of dawn on a bright but chilly autumn day in October 1969, I embarked on the seven-hour train journey to Rennes, changing at Montparnasse in Paris. It was the first time I’d been in the capital since my departure a few months before but I had no desire to see it, and remained in the station platform’s waiting room until I was able to board the train to Rennes. The return train fare was not cheap. This, in itself, was a new sensation – I’d never had to worry about money before, I just had it. Now, things were different – I was having to budget and mind the centimes.

I settled down on the train, and, eating my cheese baguette, began to read the latest edition of
Diapason
. I may have been shunned but I was still interested in reading about the world of classical music. I knew, from the previous edition, that the Americans had found a replacement for me in whom they had high hopes. On the day of his first performance, I even sent him a telegram wishing him luck. I tried to mean it but, in truth, I rather hoped to see him fail. The magazine helped pass time on the train. But then, having reached page thirteen, my mouth hung open, my mind whirling – there, looking stunning, was a photograph of Isabelle. My heart thumped as I read the accompanying interview, barely able to take in the words. I’d absorbed enough to see that she been taken on by my old label as a soloist and was due to record her first record soon.
Gifted with a natural talent,
concluded the article,
Isabelle has a bright future in front of her. And she’ll enjoy the support of her new husband and manager, Jacques. We wish them both well.
I threw the magazine to one side and felt myself overwhelmed with a sense of longing and regret.

Rennes, at a cursory glance, seemed an attractive town. But ignoring it, and with no time or desire to explore, I caught a taxi straight to the prison. There, I had my bag searched, my magazine flipped through, and went through all the other security checks. Satisfied, the guard then took me to a bare, grey-bricked, airless room and told me to wait. I took a plastic seat and sat with my hands on my lap, watching as various people and prison staff came and went. Only now did I begin to regret my haste. Yet, I knew, having come this far, I had to go through with it. I felt as if I couldn’t get on with my new life until I had confronted her and finally put the whole sorry episode behind me. I had wanted an apology but I knew that was expecting too much. I wanted something from her, I just couldn’t work out what it was. Perhaps if I had stayed in court that day, I would have heard what I needed to hear.

Half an hour later, I was called through. My heart skipped a beat on hearing my name. I followed the female guard across a courtyard, up a flight of steps, and through a maze of corridors, stopping behind her as she unlocked and relocked numerous doors and gates. The guard escorted me into a large room full of tables and chairs, some already occupied by fellow visitors, and told me to take a seat. Was this it? I wondered. I rather expected a partition between us and them, but no, we were to share a table as if enjoying a coffee in a café, albeit a bleak one.

A door opened at the far end of the hall, and in came two guards followed by a number of prisoners, each wearing handcuffs, and all dressed identically in grey prison overalls. There were waves and embraces. I searched for Hilda and found her, last in the queue. On seeing me, she nodded and strode towards me. She sat on the opposite side of the table from me, leaning back on the chair, fixing me with a steely stare.

‘Hello, Hilda. How are you?’ Stupid question, I thought.

‘I’m fine, as you can see.’ She had managed, somehow, to have gained weight, although it might have been illusion in the shapeless overalls. But her shoulders looked square, her jaw likewise. She had the pallor of someone lacking sunlight on her skin, her face was almost grey, her eyes deep-set.

‘Why do you want to see me?’ she asked, bypassing all small talk.

‘I don’t know,’ I stuttered. ‘I suppose I wanted to see how you were.’

‘I’m fine – I told you and, as you can see, I am here, and I am well, all things considered.’

‘Are you… are you treated well?’

She pulled a face which I interpreted as a reluctant yes. ‘What happened to your nose?’ she asked.

‘I walked into a wall.’

I felt unnerved by her attitude, the unsmiling way she was looking at me, sitting there with the handcuffs round her wrists. ‘Do you get any other visitors?’

‘No, you’re the first.’ After a pause, she added, ‘And no doubt you’ll be the last.’

I’d come all this way for this?

‘What you really want to know is have I repented for my sins?’

I laughed nervously. ‘You make me sound like a priest.’

‘They sent a priest to see me – I sent him away. What use have I for a priest? OK, as you’re here, I’ll tell you. I shall never say it again. Had you stayed in court and listened, you would know.’ Exactly what I’d thought. ‘What I said, and still say, is that I had no choice. I had to be severe, it was expected of me, and of course, I feel sorry for the women I hurt as individuals but we mustn’t forget, Maestro, that they were Jews. Don’t you remember what it was like before the war? Perhaps you were too young. We had that Jewish prime minister and the country was going to the dogs. Decadence, lack of morals, debauchery, corruption – that’s what we had. Leftism, too much leftism. It took the Germans to bring us back into line. Of course, it’s highly unfashionable to say that now, especially now that we know what we know.’

‘The death camps?’

She nodded.

‘But–’

‘No, I may have helped the Jews onto the train but I swore in court that I didn’t know what was going to happen to them. “Re-settlement” – that’s all I knew. I knew not to question orders.’

‘Do you regret–?’

‘It’s not for you to ask me that.’

We glared at each other. Eventually, I said, ‘You told me once that when you saw me on that train, you thought it rare to see a youngster pursuing such noble pursuits.’

‘Yes, I saw that you weren’t one of
them
, a leftist, that you had a cause, a decent one. You were reading your music and I saw in you the future of France.’

‘Me? Decent?’ I shouted. ‘Huh, I’m sorry, but you got that wrong.’

‘No, I did not. You conducted beautiful music, you helped introduce the masses to what’s good in life – culture, appreciation, refinement.’

‘Do you really think that? You talk about the lack of morals and debauchery – that was me,’ I yelled, jabbing myself in the chest. ‘I may have conducted some of the finest French composers but my God, I lived a life of indulgence.’

One of the guards came over. ‘Is everything OK here?’ she asked.

‘Yes, thank you, we’re fine.’ I realised that others were looking our way. ‘I’m sorry.’

She walked away slowly, keeping her eyes on us.

‘You can’t mean that,’ whispered Hilda.

I leant towards her. ‘You have no idea the amount of money I earned. Obscene amounts. And did I use my wealth to help others? Did I donate to charity; did I become a benefactor of people less fortunate than me? No, I never gave it a thought. I paid my taxes, and that was all, and even that reluctantly. I had no interest in anyone, no concern for the masses, as you call them. As long as I had my wealth, and constant admiration and gratitude, I was happy. I was unfaithful to my wife and went to bed with a beautiful younger woman. So you see, you were wrong. The young man you saved that day proved to be the very definition of what you hated. Those women you so cruelly beat had a greater sense of morality in their little fingers than I have in my whole being. You took it out on the wrong people, Hilda. It was all for nothing, everything you ever did was all for nothing.’

‘No, I cannot believe this.’

‘And now I’ve fallen from grace, cast aside, and I have nothing.’

‘Oh please, now you’re going to tell me that with nothing, you’re happier than ever; that you lead a more fulfilling existence.’ She laughed.

‘No, I’m not – I’d have it back in an instant. Who wouldn’t? But I would want to be younger, and be in a rock band, and take drugs, and go to orgies.’

‘Do you really think I believe that? You’re pathetic. Your circumstances may change but you can’t change who you are.’

‘You said it, Hilda, you said it.’

She leant back in her chair. ‘Thank you for taking the time to visit me, Maestro.’

‘Fine, I’m happy to go.’

‘Good.’

I rose from my chair. The guard came over, perhaps to ensure I didn’t start shouting again. I turned to leave. ‘Oh, I almost forgot. I brought you a cake. Reception said it’d be OK.’ I placed the box on the table, removing its lid. ‘I hope you like it. It’s, erm… homemade.’

*

By the time I’d returned to Annecy, it was dark and raining. From the station, I caught the bus back to my little village. All the way home from Rennes, I asked myself time and again, whether I’d been honest with Hilda – would I want it all again? Perhaps, I thought, perhaps. All I did know was that, having seen her, I would never see her again.

Exhausted after such a long day, I opened the door to my house and was greeted by an over-excited and hungry Claude. I let him out for a pee and then fed him. Having dried him off, I put on some Moroccan music and settled down for the evening with Claude on his back on my lap, and felt a surge of affection for my little home. As I tapped my foot and tickled Claude’s stomach, I realised it had taken the whole day but Hilda had given me the answer I was looking for after all – I had no desire to go back to my old life.