The Girl at the Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks
‘But what do they say?’
‘Please don’t be pert with me, mademoiselle.’
Anne had learned that there was little to be gained from arguing with Mme Bouin. In any case she had no wish to hear her fears confirmed. She looked down at her feet.
‘Is there anything else, madame?’
‘Not at the moment.’
Anne went to the kitchen and found Roland sitting at the table reading a magazine and running a finger over the pocked and greasy skin of his forehead.
‘What are you reading?’ she said.
‘The Young Patriots’ magazine.’
‘Aren’t they the people who support the Germans?’
‘Don’t be stupid. They just think we shouldn’t fight them. They’ve got the right ideas. Better than this bunch of Communists we’ve got in power.’
‘But they tried to overthrow the Republic, these people of yours. Those riots in Paris . . . I was there.’
‘Good thing, too. The Republic’s done nothing for people like me. Now it’s a Jew as Prime Minister.’
‘Why shouldn’t we have a Jew?’
Roland laughed. ‘Everyone knows about Jews. They’re not reliable. It’s just money with them.’
‘Get your nose out of that and do some work!’ shouted Bruno, coming in from the back yard. ‘Come on, you pus-ridden little wretch. What are you reading? Smut, I expect. That’s all you think about isn’t it?’ He caught Roland a glancing blow on the head with the flat of his hand.
‘No, it isn’t, it’s –’
‘Go and unload the van. Now. And you, girl, go and help him. We’ve got a special menu tonight. A gastronomic menu.’
‘Oh God,’ said Roland.
‘Quick!’ Anne laughed, and grabbed his arm to pull him out of the way of Bruno’s swinging boot as together they ran into the back yard.
She had grown to like Roland, for all his surly manner. He made her laugh when he imitated Bruno behind his back, and he was truly afraid of Mme Bouin. He had fixed the seat on his bicycle for Anne to ride and had lent it to her several times. There were other little grudging acts of kindness he had performed, and once a small bunch of flowers had arrived for her unaccountably in the kitchen. Roland’s snort of disdain when it was suggested he might know where they came from was not wholly convincing.
Roland for his part felt excluded from what mattered to him most. He feared that accidents of birth and nature meant that he would never make love to a girl like Anne and he felt constantly resentful of those whom pure luck, untouched by merit, had singled out to have such pleasures. He looked at the awful old women in Janvilliers and supposed that one day he would be married to a hag like that. Someone must have married them, he thought; someone must at one point have said yes even to the old crows in widow’s black. He had an awful feeling that the someone had been a version of himself. Perhaps the passage of time would take away the physical pain of frustrated lust that moved like a slow mist through his waking hours.
He looked at some of the men who brought attractive wives to the hotel and wondered what it must be like to have an object of such desire at your disposal. When the men went home they could sate themselves each night. What was more, their indulgence of their longing was sanctioned by society, which called their wives ‘Madame’, and even by the Church!
When Roland read accounts of young men gathering in small provincial towns and running riot in the name of patriotism and the old France he didn’t feel that something sacred, the Republic, was under threat. He thought it sounded a better way of spending the evening than cleaning boots at the Hotel du Lion d’Or. Protecting some ideal was the privilege of those who profited from it, he thought, but for people like him whose wages had been reduced by previous governments, there was nothing to lose in responding to the rallying call of old soldiers and young men with whom he felt a vital sympathy.
He felt no fear when people talked of another war against the Germans because he felt no part of what his country had become. Until such a day, he watched Anne closely, dredging the depths of his memory to recall what he had seen on those precious evenings looking through the bathroom wall. He also spent time practising his imitation of Bruno, because he saw she liked it.
The next day Roussel made his first appearance at the Manor for a fortnight. Hartmann walked out to meet him in the driveway.
‘Have you been ill?’ Hartmann asked, as Roussel leant his bicycle against the side of the house.
‘No, M. Hartmann. In the best of health, thank you,’ said Roussel unconvincingly. ‘My little girl, she’s been bad, mind you. We’ve taken her to see the doctor.’
‘Ah yes, the doctor. Everyone goes to see the doctor nowadays, don’t they? And was he any help?’
‘He’s given her some medicine. She seems a little better.’
‘Good. Now what about this work? I’ve been down into the cellar today, and it seems to me you’re still a long way from being finished.’
‘Oh no, not that far.’
Hartmann looked carefully at Roussel. He might have called the doctor for his daughter, but clearly it was he who needed help. He looked pale and vacant, yet also curiously relieved, as if he had taken some decision which was going to free him from responsibility.
Roussel began to wander over towards the lake, as if he were in a daze. He stopped and looked out across it, then put his hand on top of his head where the hair had thinned out.
‘Oh yes, M. Hartmann.’ He spoke more quietly than usual.
‘We’ll be finished one day.’
‘But you know I’ve paid you all the money, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes. Oh yes. I know that.’
Roussel’s face, which was expressionless at first, broke into a thin smile as he felt Hartmann’s eyes on him.
‘It seems to me you’re never going to finish,’ said Hartmann.
‘It’s all right, we’ll finish.’
‘Are you really sure? Don’t just say that to please me.’
‘We’ll stay.’ Roussel’s voice was now almost a whisper.
‘Did you have to move any beams or joists down there?’
‘We just put some supports in where there was a load-bearing wall. It should make it stronger. There’s not much to do now. Just the floor and the wine racks.’
Roussel began to walk along towards the woods. ‘It’s a nice house, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ said Hartmann walking beside him.
Roussel held out his hand. ‘I think I’ll go now, monsieur.’
Hartmann felt the passive hand in his and Roussel smiled at him. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to say that. Thank you.’
Hartmann watched curiously as Roussel climbed on to his bicycle and pedalled with difficulty up the potholed drive. From the top of the drive, where it met the road, he heard the thin ringing of a bell.
The following Wednesday afternoon Anne was working in the kitchen. Christine was sitting next door in her small morning-room, embroidering with snappish movements of her fingers. She had said nothing to her husband, though she found the strain of silence increasing. The rasp of the broom from next door played on her nerves. She thought of the girl’s hands that held it, and how they must have run through her husband’s hair; how her fingers would have run down his back. Christine couldn’t imagine how the woman had the cheek to come to the Manor and wash and scrub as if nothing had happened. It seemed an impertinence of a grotesque order. Hartmann, she noted, had gone off for the day to see a client; presumably he no longer had any need of their stolen moments together in his study or wherever it had been – not now they were lovers.
The rough-bristled broom rasped again over the stone-flagged kitchen.
Christine didn’t know how to approach the servant girl without losing her own dignity. She vigorously disapproved of the new licence granted to workers by the Government, and hated the thought of meeting such people from the big towns on their holidays, but her own family was
When Anne passed the door on her way to scrub the hall floor, Christine called out to her.
‘Yes, madame?’ said Anne, stopping in the doorway.
‘Come in here for a moment, would you? Put those things down outside.’
Anne left the pail of water and brushes by the door and wiped her hands on her apron before trying to tidy her hair and push back the long strands that had escaped from their combs on either side. She walked a little way into the room.
Christine had no idea what she was going to say. ‘It’s getting cold, isn’t it?’ she began, looking out of the window, where the sky was already colourless.
‘Yes, madame.’
‘I think it’s going to be a hard winter. It gets very cold here, you know.’
‘Yes, madame, I arrived here in February. I remember it was cold then.’
‘Is it cold in the hotel? In your room?’
‘I – no, it wasn’t too bad. They’d left a lot of blankets on the bed.’
‘So you’ll be all right, now that the winter’s coming on?’
‘I think so.’
Christine admired the way the girl had moved away from her question without actually lying, merely by transposing it to the past. She seemed practised at evasion.
She put it to her more directly. ‘Do you still have the same room as when you arrived?’
Anne felt a slow blush rising in her neck. Her heart began to judder and pound at the entrance to her throat. Christine saw her discomfort and noted without pleasure that even this seemed to make her prettier, more vital and more varied in her looks than she herself could ever be.
‘No madame. I’ve moved. I have a room near the station.’
‘Do you now?’ said Christine. The plummeting sense of disappointment as the rumour proved to be true gave her the calmness she needed to appear detached. ‘That’s an unusual arrangement, isn’t it? To have the staff not living on the premises?’
‘Monsieur the Patron is very . . . understanding.’
‘And how do you afford it? Surely my husband can’t be paying you so much for what you do that you can afford to rent accommodation?’
Anne couldn’t believe what she was hearing. From an afternoon of casual loneliness she had been thrown into something worse than she could have imagined. ‘Your husband, madame?’ she managed to say.
‘Yes.’
‘For what I do?’
‘We’re not in the habit of hiring servants and not paying them.’
‘I see, I see, of course.’ Anne fought to recover from her misunderstanding. ‘But surely, madame, it is you who authorises the payments to the servants? And you must know that –’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Christine, feeling the advantage slip away from her. ‘But my husband is so ludicrous in the way he gives money to servants. Take that idiotic builder man, for instance.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Anne. ‘I like M. Roussel.’
‘We don’t want to talk about him.’
‘No, madame.’
There was a pause, and Anne shifted back a couple of steps towards the door. Christine looked up and caught her eye. She stayed quite still as she spoke. ‘So how do you pay for these rooms in town?’
‘I was left some money by . . .’ Anne couldn’t remember if it was supposed to be an aunt or a cousin ‘. . . someone in my family. Not very much, but the income is just enough.’
Christine noticed that Anne had not resisted the change from ‘room’ to ‘rooms’ and felt a tug of despair as Marie-Thérèse’s story seemed to be confirmed still further.
‘And do you like it here in our town?’
‘Yes, thank you, madame.’
‘Have you found it easy to make friends?’
‘I have one or two. Pierre, the head waiter at the hotel. And a girl called Mathilde. It isn’t easy because I spend so much time working.’
‘And you must have admirers? A pretty girl like you.’ Christine found the words easier to say than she had expected.
‘No, I . . . Not really, madame.’ Anne looked at the floor.
Christine stood up and walked over to a table on which was a pile of books. She picked up an old photograph album that lay on top and walked over to a small sofa. She had had no plan of how she would proceed, but she felt that the album could be put to some use.
‘Come and sit here, next to me,’ she said, arranging herself among the cushions.
Anne looked down at her dress, which was dirty from the work she had done, and at her apron, which was splashed.
‘I –’
‘Come on. It doesn’t matter if your dress is a bit dirty.’
Reluctantly Anne walked over and sat down where Christine indicated.
‘What do you want, madame? I have so much work left to do before I go.’
‘I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to have a little chat.’
Christine opened the photograph album and placed it on the sofa between them.
‘This book belonged to my husband’s father,’ she said. ‘He was a very distinguished man. He was quite an influence on my husband, as you can imagine.’
Anne said nothing, but looked at the brown pictures in the book as Christine turned the pages. ‘This is the Manor when his parents first moved in. You can see what a state it was in. But they soon restored it. Mind you, those were the days when servants and workmen knew their job.’
The pictures gave a history of the house from the time Hartmann’s father had first bought it. Family, friends and visiting relations were shown in front of it. Anne hated looking at the photographs in this way. She would have liked to have them explained to her by Hartmann, not shown by Christine who overlaid them with a glaze of bitterness. There was a page or two which seemed to have intruded from an earlier time.
‘This is Vienna . . . and this, I think, must be Rome.’
Anne looked away from the photographs, but Christine moved closer to her and opened the book wider, so that one half of it rested on Anne’s thigh where she was obliged to steady it with her hand. Free for once of the irritating eczema, the skin was soft and clear. She could smell Christine’s scent when her arm moved to turn the pages.
‘And here is my husband. This must be just before he left to join the army. Look at it. Doesn’t he look fine in his uniform? Go on, look at it.’
‘Yes, madame.’ Anne’s voice was barely audible.
There were more pictures of him, and one of a party outside the house with long tables laid on the terrace and beneath the trees. It looked like a marriage or a first communion. Anne felt her body tighten from the longing she had to be free of the room.
‘Ah, now look at these.’ This time there seemed to be a genuine note of enthusiasm in Christine’s voice. ‘The Arctic swans.’
Anne looked down at a blurred picture of two large birds in flight and a clearer one of them standing by some water’s edge.
‘They’re very rare, these birds,’ said Christine. ‘They come all the way from the Arctic during the winter to find somewhere warmer. These pictures were taken just here. Do you recognise the lake and the woods behind?’
‘No.’
‘Look carefully. There, you can see the edge of the dyke. Look, there.’ Christine’s short finger with its brightly varnished nail pointed at the old photograph.
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Do you know how far it is from the Arctic to this lake here?’
‘No, madame.’
‘Nor do I. Not exactly. But it’s a terrible journey. It takes them weeks, and many of them die on the way. They came here for three or four years, and then they stopped coming. They haven’t been for ten years now. So my husband says.’
Anne tried to move away, but felt Christine’s hand take her wrist.
‘Do you know why they do it, these birds?’
‘Because they have no choice. That’s why.’
‘Please let me go, madame, I –’
‘Look at me!’
Anne raised her eyes to Christine’s. ‘Can you imagine what courage it must take?’ she said.
‘No. No, I can’t.’ Anne at last managed to wrench her arm from Christine’s grip and ran from the room.
That night the wind began to blow from the Atlantic. Anne heard a scratching at her window and found the cat, Zozo, trembling outside. She took him in, pretending that she was doing him a favour, but in fact glad of his company.
Hartmann had called in at the Lion d’Or on his way home and he and Anne had spoken in the guarded way they had now adopted in the vicinity of others. He left at ten o’clock and arrived back at the Manor to find Christine bolting the shutters in the lower rooms.
After greeting him she said, ‘Neither of the workmen came today. I think Roussel must have stopped paying them.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Hartmann, sitting down and stretching out his legs against the fender in the sitting-room. He expected her to berate him further for placing too much trust in Roussel and had decided not to respond to her criticisms.
Christine prepared herself a tisane, and Hartmann drank some brandy.
She said, ‘I had an interesting conversation with whatshername, the servant girl, today.’
‘Anne. Did you?’
Hartmann’s voice registered only faint interest.
‘Yes, we talked about this and that. She seems a bright girl, really.’
‘Yes, I think so.’
Hartmann found the deadpan response he had prepared for dealing with Christine’s expected nagging about Roussel was useful too for this more delicate subject.
Christine placed her cup carefully on its saucer and folded her hands in her lap.
‘Sometimes you wonder what girls like that expect from their lives, don’t you?’ she said.
‘Do you?’
‘I mean all she must want to do is find a nice husband, don’t you think?’
‘I imagine so, yes. She has no money – as far as I know. So she must want to settle down with someone who’ll support her. And then she’ll want children.’