‘It will pay for itself ten times over,’ was what she didn’t say.
Madame Blanche never talks about money, but when you come to know her you soon realize that everything she thinks about and speaks of has the tang of cash in it somewhere.
Have you ever held a handful of coins up to your nose and sniffed it? That’s another dirty smell, not like the smell of war but somehow akin to it. I am not saying that money is dirty, however. I am not such a fool as that. Money is why I am here. Those round dirty coins which stand for pigs or orchards or good square meals or your child sleeping in a safe warm bed with a full belly.
The men arrive. They drink wine in the garden if it’s fine, in the salon if it’s rainy or cold. Marie-Claude plays the piano. I pass around slices of sweet cake. Nobody eats it, but it looks nice: cake with wine. It has a feeling of home. Marie-Claude wears a white dress with lavender ribbons, or apricot ribbons. She plays the piano ardently. I make sure she only has one glass of wine, because otherwise she becomes tearful and tells everyone that she would have had a place at the Conservatoire if it hadn’t been for the war. This strikes the wrong note. The men become uneasy, because it reminds them of their sisters, who also take music lessons and dream of concert platforms. They don’t want to link girls like us with their sisters.
Marie-Claude plays on. The sun sparkles on Madame Blanche’s carp pond. From time to time she takes a young man aside in her motherly, discreet manner.
‘Would you like to bathe yourself?’
Madame Blanche’s bathroom is the talk of the town. These young men know what to expect. And they long for it. Deep, hot water, a cake of lemon soap and a towel that is big enough to wrap around you… it’s oblivion.
I can never make Madame Blanche understand that to bathe is not a reflexive verb in English. One of the reasons I am her aide-de-camp and her lieutenant is my command of the English language, but that doesn’t mean she’s prepared to learn from me.
‘Do take a bath, if you like,’ I murmur. ‘The bathroom’s awfully nice.’
Madame Blanche’s eyes slide towards me and I catch a gleam of satisfaction in them.
The men emerge from the bathroom as happy as babies. There’s still a tang of war on their clothes, but we can’t do anything about that. Even Madame Blanche hasn’t gone so far as to suggest that we open up a laundry. It would probably be illegal, anyway. I think that their uniforms are the property of the Crown.
Will’s uniform lay on the bathroom chair. I watched his back, with the runnels of silky water going down it. His arms were tanned, and his face, and there was a line where the white flesh met the tanned flesh. The sun was falling directly onto the bath and he was in his own sunlit world. He knelt up in the bath and began to soap his private parts with a care and thoroughness which I approved. He splashed more water over himself and as he did so he began to sing.
I love the flowers, I love the daffodils
I love the butterflies, I love the rolling hills
Boomdiara boomdiara
Boomdiara boomdiara
Boomdiara boomdiara
Boomdiara boomdiara
BOOM
I love the motor cars, I love the aeroplanes
I love the –
But he felt me at the door. He swung round and I saw his face full-on, frowning and wary. An adult face, not a boy’s face. The door was only a little way open and I stepped back quickly but I think he saw me.
I hurried back along the passage. I would not have put it past him to leap out of the bath on a wave of dirty water and come after me. I’ve seen how quick the reflexes of these men can be. At the turn in the passage I waited and listened. After a while the singing began again, loud and deliberate now, like a challenge.
Boomdiara boomdiara
Boomdiara boomdiara
BOOM
Petit Paul, who stokes the furnace for the baths, glided past me pressing himself sideways against the wall so as not to touch my skirts. Madame Blanche has drilled him. He is not to look at the young women here. He is not to burst into rooms. He is to knock, and wait.
He’s timid, anyway. He doesn’t want to touch us or look at us. He’s an undersized boy of fourteen who will be tall if he gets enough to eat. He is desperate to stay here because this is where food is, and war is not. If it means walking around with his gaze fixed on the floorboards all day, so be it.
I knew I mustn’t stand there. There were a hundred things to be done without fuss or haste, in the way Madame Blanche likes her household to run. I should go and listen to Marie-Claude talking about the piano lessons she used to have, and the day that her teacher told her that she had real talent, my child, real talent. If she could empty her heart to me, maybe she wouldn’t feel the need to burst out with it in company. I had to order the meals for tomorrow, and make sure that Danielle kept the dentist’s appointment I had made for her. She’s afraid of the dentist. She thinks he’ll pull her tooth out, and she’s right. It must be pulled. Her breath is rotten. I had to visit Gabi in her room and inquire about the terrible period pains from which she’s suffering. Next, there were roses to pick, and my blue linen walking skirt to mend. I had to make sure that lunch was on the table at twelve sharp so that the girls could lie down for an hour before the bell rang for the first time.
I wondered again who had let the man in the bath into our house at ten o’clock in the morning. No one ever comes as early as that.
And if I listen carefully enough to Marie-Claude, I thought, and ask the right questions, she will be in a good mood and will play for a while to Claire before she goes for her nap after lunch. Claire will sit on my lap and one of her small round fists will beat gently against my breast in time to the music. She is not aware that she is doing this. Her early days flood back to me, when she beat her fist on my breast like that as she fed. And I told her: You are mine, mine. I will never abandon you.
Perhaps Claire is musical.
Perhaps Claire should have piano lessons.
Perhaps, if I listen to Marie-Claude and make life sweet for her, she’ll be willing to teach Claire. And then, when Claire’s older –
I went up the stairs to the attic floor, rapidly but without the appearance of haste. I have learned this from Madame Blanche. It’s also from her that I’ve learned to appear cheerful and agreeable to the girls and to our visitors, while remaining utterly faithful to the programme set out for me. I have learned these things from Madame Blanche and when she’s away I practise them still more carefully. She may return at any moment. Once or twice she’s doubted me. I knew it instantly. She looked at Claire with that long, considering gaze I’ve seen turned on a girl who wasn’t pulling her weight. As if wondering how and why my child was in Madame Blanche’s house, eating Madame Blanche’s food, living under Madame Blanche’s protection. And I was flooded with fear, and she knew it.
I opened the door to Claire’s room. She was standing in front of the washstand while Marguerite washed her face. Standing still like a good girl, her eyes squeezed shut in mute protest. Why does Marguerite have to wash Claire’s face as if it’s a plate?
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I’ll do her hair today.’
Marguerite went out, banging the door not from annoyance but because to Marguerite doors exist for slamming, food for cramming into your mouth, men for ‘you know what’ as she calls it. But she’s willing and above all she’s cheerful, which is a cardinal virtue in this house. No long faces, please!
Claire leaned against my knee as I brushed out her soft, bloomy curls and wound them around my fingers.
‘I’ve got you a new ribbon,’ I said. It’s red, Claire’s favourite colour. I tied the ribbon into her hair and she stroked it proudly.
‘Sing me the new song, Claire,’ I asked her.
I have been teaching her:
Buttercups and daisies
Oh the pretty flowers
Coming ’ere the Springtime
To tell of sunny hours.
She knows all t
he words. She’s very quick.
‘Go on, try to remember,’ I urged her. She screwed up her smooth face.
‘Boomdiara!’ she announced. ‘Boomdiara, boomdiara, boomdiara, boomdiara –’
‘No, Claire. Not that song.’
Where can she have heard it? Has he been up here? They are not allowed up here, in the attics. I don’t have Claire downstairs in the salon when the visitors are here. In some establishments they have the children dressed up with their hair curled, like little monkeys on sticks. None of our visitors knows of Claire’s existence. Only the more experienced of them can tell that I have given birth to a child, and children so often die or are given away that there are no questions asked.
‘Boomdiara,’ sang Claire, looking straight at me.
She might have heard the song rising from the open bathroom window. To divert her, I picked her up and swung her high above my head so that she shrieked with laughter. I lowered her until her stomach was resting on my head, rubbing against my hair. I rocked her there and she laughed and laughed in the bubbling, unwilling way that Claire laughs, until she had laughed the song out of herself. And out of her memory, I hoped.
2
Madame Blanche
Madame Blanche is back. We know it without seeing her or hearing her. The flowers in the garden stand erect, and the cat who has been sunning himself on the front doorstep uncurls and disappears. The girls sit up straight, unless they are working.
I’m in the kitchen when I hear her footsteps. She is wearing a pair of lilac glacé kid boots, buttoned at the side, with low heels. The sound of her footsteps is both delicate and solid. It’s unmistakable. And inside me there’s the usual shiver.
I might be afraid of her. I’ve seen things which ought to make me afraid. No one is more ruthless, when she thinks she has cause. She knows too much about me, just as she knows too much about everyone in this house. Each of us, at some weak point, has yielded up her secret.
I’m in the kitchen, because Solange gave notice this morning, on the grounds that the noise of the shells is getting on her nerves. But it’s a bit late to be so sensitive. The shells can be heard in England, let alone here. One of the men told me that he walked on the cliffs in England, and heard the shelling.
Solange gave her notice this morning, and said she would go at once, never mind the wages owing to her. She chose this morning because she knew that Madame Blanche was out of the house.
‘She makes me feel like dirt,’ Solange said, as she threw her belongings into her bags. Angry, stored-up words spurted from her. She was angry with herself, too, that she hadn’t dared to say these words to Madame Blanche. ‘But what’s she, I should like to know? Putting white gloves on her hands while her feet are wading in pigshit, that’s her.’
I stayed, because I saw how close to the edge she was. Solange might go crazy with a kitchen knife, slashing our velvet curtains, our plump salon upholstery, maybe even the dresses we wore.
‘And what’s she, I’d like to know? What’s she that’s so wonderful?’
‘You know what she is, Solange,’ I said mildly.
‘You’re dead right there! I do know! And I’ll make sure everyone knows what she is, before I’m finished.’
She would say nothing. Everyone in town knew Madame Blanche’s business. It was only the detail, the manner of it all, that they didn’t care to know.
‘You want to get that kiddie out of here, if you ask my advice. Your Claire. Find yourself a decent feller and get off out of here, m’m’zelle Florence. I’m saying it for your own good.’
She moved close to me and looked into my face, part of her liking the drama of it, part of her, I still believe, really caring what happened to me. We had never quarrelled. Solange was always good to Claire. She made apple purée for her, and chicken soup, and let Claire climb up on a stool to play with pastry.
Claire will miss Solange.
‘It’s not as easy as that,’ I said.
‘Get away from here and nobody’ll know what you’ve come from. What you’ve been.’
I moved away from her and went to the window. ‘I know you mean well, Solange,’ I said. ‘But I have to think of Claire.’
‘It’s true, a decent man won’t take another feller’s leavings,’ said Solange, without the least malice in her voice. ‘They like to think they’re the first, even when they know they can’t be.’ Her face changed from anger to plump pleasure. She was thinking of how she had caught the miller. She had tricked him into believing that he was the first.
Now she’s packed her bags and off she’s gone, trudging up to the crossroads to meet the miller. She knows that he’s sixty, well past the age of military service, a prosperous and not completely ugly widower. Maybe she thinks he’s a jolly feller because of his red shining face and the way he likes what he calls a good handful to get hold of on a winter night. She won’t credit that he’s said to have killed his first wife. Not that he ever used violence, he’s not the type. That wasn’t the way he took his pleasure.
He’s a type that frightens me. They set their minds on one thing and they can’t be diverted, no matter what. Where a normal man would yield or forget or just grow bored, a man like the miller goes on planning and working until he gets what he wants. He’s got something wrong with his hands, too. I don’t want to think of Solange in those hands.
He killed his wife day by day, with the drip of meanness and cruelty and lovelessness. He mocked her flat chest and the way she scurried to please him. He stared at her while she ate until she could not swallow a mouthful. I knew her, and I know she was glad to die. Anything to get away from the private torments he had devised for her.
I told Solange about her death, when I heard that the business between her and the miller was serious. She stared back at me, blank and mutinous. She told me that people had got it all wrong. She knew exactly what they were saying and it was all lies, the lot of it. In fact it was libel, she said, bringing out the word with triumph, trumping me.
She wanted her ignorance. She clung to it. Or maybe she was more of an optimist than I’d thought, and she believed she could change him. There’s a third possibility, I suppose: that she hated it so much here, in this house, that any alternative was to be preferred. But I can’t believe that.
So, here I am in the kitchen, taking Solange’s place for the day. Carefully, I put a long metal spoon through the savoury crust of sausage and white-bean casserole. A dish from home. I stir gently, so as not to pulp the beans, add a handful of parsley, and replace the lid. The girls will be hungry. They are always hungry and they like big country dishes, cassoulets and casseroles and juicy hams. When our visitors are here we crumble sweet cake, but behind the scenes we draw up our chairs to the long oak table which is black with age, and tuck into a meal which lets you know you’ve put something in your stomach.
Madame Blanche makes sure that our establishment is not affected by food shortages.
‘Florence?’ says Madame Blanche. I don’t startle and I don’t immediately turn round. I bend to swing the heavy pot back into the oven. The oven’s heat buffets my face and I’m aware of Madame Blanche’s eyes on my back, on the nape of my neck, on the coils of my hair, on the muscles which flex in my arms as I push the metal rack firmly back into the oven.
She sees everything. She’ll notice that my hair is not as smooth as it should be. She will think I have been with one of our visitors.
‘So. Who was here, Florence? Anyone new? Anyone interesting?’
I turn to face her, wiping my hands on a kitchen cloth.
‘Major Blackie and the two captains who came with him before. One went with Mariette, one with Lucie. The Major stayed in the salon, listening to Marie-Claude.’
‘And Gabrielle?’
‘Still in bed. I’ve given her raspberry tea. She’s really unwell.’
‘It’s the fifth day? Or the sixth?’
‘The fifth.’
‘Annoying,’ says Madame Blanche. ‘She should b
e able at least to help in the kitchen by now if she can do nothing else. It would free you. So, Solange has left us. Well, that’s only what we expected, isn’t it? In another day or two I would have given Solange her congé, but it’s better that she left of her own accord. That business with the miller wasn’t reflecting well on us.’
And she smiles at me, broadly, as if we’ve cooked up Solange’s departure between us, conspirators in this as in so many things.
‘In fact, it was one of the reasons for my absence today,’ she goes on. ‘The new cook is engaged and she arrives tomorrow. We can give our dear Solange away to the miller without a care in our hearts.’
A repulsive and unlikely image rises in my mind. Down the church aisle, out of the doorway and into the sunlight rolls Solange, locked onto the arm of her miller. She is a nightmare of orange-blossom and white lace. Behind comes Madame Blanche, smiling her broad, inscrutable smile, and following in a procession are the girls in their best dresses, chattering and laughing and throwing rice. Thank God, I don’t see myself.
‘Why are you smiling, my dear Florence?’
‘No reason.’
‘When I was young I also used to smile for no reason. It’s nice to see it,’ she adds, looking at me with those eyes which I thought were black the night I met her. But they are not black, they’re a deep purplish-brown, the colour of dates. She has beautifully cut eyelids, but her eyes have a sheen on them which defies you when you try to look into them. It is so hard to make out her expression. And yet sometimes, just often enough to keep you tantalized, there is something bewitchingly personal about the way she looks at you. As if she has seen all of you, down to the bone.
‘So, nothing else new?’
‘An officer from the aerodrome,’ I say casually. ‘His name is William Hazell. Not young.’
‘Who introduced him?’
As she asks, I realize I don’t know.
‘A pilot? A squadron leader, perhaps?’
A squadron leader! Well, I’ve never been able to fault Madame Blanche for lack of ambition. But in fact I’ve no idea what he was. Pilot… observer… maybe even a balloonatic…