Peach (64 page)

“I used to live here,” explained Noel. Following her into the familiar hallway, he waited for its smell of polished linoleum, strong disinfectant and stale dinners to overwhelm him. But the linoleum was gone, and the drab green walls. There was a cheerful rug in the centre of the carpeted hall and bright curtains at the windows and the scent from a bowl of flowers mingled with the girl’s cologne.

Hesitantly, Noel explained that he was trying to find who his parents were and that he needed to see the orphanage records.

The girl eyed him sympathetically. “I’m not sure we can help you,” she said, “but I’ll find out what happened to all the old files. I won’t be a moment.”

A pair of old ladies walked slowly through the hall, leaning on sticks and grumbling quietly to each other, and Noel watched as they vanished down the long corridor that he remembered led to the dining room. He could hear music and voices from a television somewhere upstairs and there was a new elevator behind the stairwell. Somehow he’d expected
it to be unchanged, still the way it was in his memory. He paced the rug nervously.

“You’re lucky,” called the girl hurrying towards him, “the old files are still here. But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to look through them yourself. It’s lunchtime here and we’re at our busiest. I’m sure you’ll understand,” she smiled.

A stack of old filing cabinets stood in the old changing rooms and there was still a faint whiff of liniment and sweat about the scarred green walls, stirring a memory of the night Noel had won the boxing trophy—the same night he’d made his bid for freedom. Walking to the cabinets, he pulled open the drawer marked “M” and began to search through the files. “Maddox Board of Governors, Maddox Financial Statements, Maddox Staff Pensions, Maddox Annual Meetings … Maddox Girls. Maddox Boys.”

The bulky files spilled with documents and Noel pulled the one marked “Maddox Boys” from the tightly packed drawer. Carrying it under the light he began to search through it systematically. After an hour he pushed the last document wearily into the file. The papers only related to the years after the war and there were no records of children before that date. Dispirited, he closed the drawer. Starting again at the top, he went through each drawer in turn, working his way through the titles of the files from “A” onwards, hoping to find something that would give him a clue as to where to look. In the very bottom drawer he came across a large black ledger, bound with red on the spine and with
REGISTER
printed across in gold letters. Noel knew at once that this was what he was looking for.
In here he would find who he was
.

The harsh glare from the naked lightbulb cast highlights and shadows over Noel’s lean bony face as he stood beneath it, running his finger down the list of dates and names.

At an entry date 5 April 1932, he read: “11.45 p.m. Male Caucasian child abandoned on doorstep. No more than a couple of days old. In good health. No identifying documents found with him. Named
NOEL MADDOX
.”

There it was, in two or three lines of cramped writing in a black ledger along with dozens of others.
No one knew who his mother was. No one knew his father. They didn’t exist!

Replacing the black ledger carefully in the cabinet, Noel walked to the door and switched off the light. He found the girl in the red sweater in the hall and he shook her hand and thanked her for her trouble. Then he walked through the doors and down the steps of the Maddox Charity Orphanage for the last time.

Noel drove the powerful car through the iron gates and back along the route he’d come.
The past had no more claims on him. He knew now that he was the man he himself had created
. Pushing his foot down on the pedal he sped up to the traffic light, anxious to get back to Detroit. He’d take the first plane out to New York and on to Paris. Peach would be there, and his child. They were all he loved and wanted in the world. The rest counted for nothing without them.

He slowed the car as he passed the neon-lit diner with the “For Sale” sign outside, remembering the weary blondehaired waitress still trying for glamour in her ridiculous red stiletto shoes, and he was suddenly filled with pity for her. She was someone who had never had a chance and somehow she symbolised all he was leaving behind.

The tyres screeched as he swerved suddenly into the tiny parking lot in front of the real-estate agency.

The owner of the diner was glad to unload it for the price Noel offered, though the old boy in the real-estate agency was suspicious when Noel told him it was for the waitress at the diner and that he should put
her
name on the documents;
but he’d been too thrilled by the commission and the extra fifty Noel put into his hand to make a fuss. At least, thought Noel, he’d given another person a chance in life.

The Indian summer had turned abruptly into chilly autumn and gaily striped umbrellas blew across the beach caught by a gust of wind. Huddled into a bulky sweater, Peach wandered by the water’s edge, retreating as the fierce little white-capped waves encroached further into her territory. She’d always hated the change of season, and those first grey skies left her with the feeling that summer’s long blue days would never return. Just as Noel would never return.

Turning, she surveyed the solitary track of footsteps along the sand, remembering when Leonie’s little cat would walk with her along the beach and her precise track of little pawmarks. Oh Grand-mère, Grand-mère, she thought desperately, what would you say to me now? Shivering as the first drops of rain spattered across the sea, she hurried back across the headland to the villa.

Charles dashed along the terrace to meet her, hurling himself into her arms, laughing. His cheerful innocence purged her temporarily of her troubles and when she was with him she almost felt that everything could be all right again. But being with Charles was only one part of her life and the long evening, when he had gone to bed, loomed frighteningly. It was the time when she went over and over
what had happened, what
he
had done, what
she
had said, opening up the wounds and finding them still bleeding.

Tonight it was cold and drawing the curtains Peach put a match to the fire, watching as the flames caught the logs of olive wood. Sitting on the rug in front of the warm red glow she felt the new baby kicking inside her and she put a hand on her belly, smiling. If only Noel were here, he could have felt it too … She glanced longingly at the telephone, wishing he would call. But Noel hadn’t called since he’d walked out a week ago. Peach checked the time on the little gilt mantelpiece clock. She knew Noel was in Detroit because the Paris office had told her so yesterday when she’d called.

The grey skies outside were already darkening into night and the wind was getting up, whistling through the trees. Peach could hear the roar of the surf as it whipped the sea into a storm and huddling closer to the fire, she wished again that Leonie were here. Leonie would know what to do. She would have been sitting opposite her, in her special chair with the little cat on her knee, watching her with amber eyes of love. What was it Leonie had said the night before her wedding? Yes, she remembered now. “Every man has his Achilles heel … If I’d been less concerned with myself, if I’d understood Monsieur better—then maybe I’d have acted differently. Monsieur needed my compassion as well as my love, and I never gave him that.”

It was Leonie who had told her that Noel hid his feelings from the world, and Peach knew it was true. Yet she had never bothered to try to find out why. Oh, she’d known where Noel’s weak spot was all right, and if there were anything left of their love, she had surely killed it with her cruel heartless words, wanting to wound Noel as he had wounded her. She would give anything to take them back, anything. It would be easy to pick up that telephone and call
him, she could even catch a plane and in a matter of hours she could be with him …

Noel had said the woman with him that night was someone from his past—and that he had needed her. Did it mean that in some way she, as his wife, had failed Noel? Or was it his own needs he was talking about? The blind ambition that always left him feeling dissatisfied with his achievements surely stemmed from his painful search for an identity he felt he lacked. The mother who had abandoned Noel might have done it because she thought he would have a better life without her, or maybe she selfishly had no room in her life for a child. Peach glanced down at the round bulge of her pregnancy, finding it hard to imagine deserting her child. But then she was lucky, she’d never had to fight her way from poverty, she’d always had her family and comfort, and love.

“Love is all that matters,” Leonie had told her, “remember that, Peach.”

Reaching for the telephone, Peach dialled Noel’s office number in Detroit. The secretary who had been with him for years told her that Noel was out of town. Should she ask him to call her when he returned?

“No,” replied Peach. “Don’t tell him. I’ll call him again, tomorrow.”

Curling up on the sofa she knew that Leonie was right. She loved Noel. And hadn’t he said he loved her, that he needed her? Tomorrow she would call him. She prayed it wasn’t too late to put things right.

Noel had been driving steadily through the darkness for hours watching the big car eating up the road to the south, and he peered at the signpost hoping it would say Aix but he was still fifteen kilometres away. He had stepped off the flight from New York to Paris and straight into the car, and he was desperately tired.

The small town he was approaching was already putting up its shutters for the night but the lights of a café-bar twinkled through the trees on the opposite side of the square. With the thought of a cup of strong black coffee urgently in his mind, Noel parked the car and hurried across the square. The last of the customers was just leaving as he pushed his way through the glass door. “Coffee?” he enquired hopefully.

The
patron
served him and went about his business of clearing up for the night, emptying ashtrays, wiping tables and straightening chairs while Noel sipped his coffee. God, did it taste good, scalding hot and piled with sugar just the way he liked it! He thought about his son Charles, in bed sleeping, and wondered what Peach was doing? Was she thinking of him? Or had he killed her love with his stupid selfish need to be the winner? Noel prayed it wasn’t too late. He glanced at the telephone, wondering whether to call her—but what he had to say to Peach couldn’t be said on the phone. He needed to hold her, he wanted to tell her that it was the memory of the first time he saw her that had coloured his whole life, that it was she who had fired his ambition.
An ambition he had thought was for power, but now he knew it was also a search for love. And for her. He couldn’t live without her love. He wanted her to know that she was still his golden girl, that she was his freedom—and his future.

The
patron
had put up his shutters and was waiting to lock his doors, and the lights clicked out behind him as he stepped into the deserted square.

The night was dark and windswept without a glimmer of moon or even a single star as he hurried across the street lost in his dreams of Peach. He knew how she would feel in his arms, he remembered the scent of her hair and the texture of her skin.

The car came out of nowhere, travelling fast, tossing Noel into the air as it struck him. It surged on unheeding through the little sleeping town, leaving silence.

Returning from blackness, Noel was aware of the ticking of his watch. Opening his eyes he stared into the night. He was shaking with cold, an icy freezing chill that crawled into his guts. He tried to move his arms but somehow they wouldn’t move the way he wanted them to and his legs were numb. Rolling on to his stomach Noel forced himself on to his hands and knees, trying to stand. It was no good, his legs just wouldn’t support him. But still he felt no pain. Was it because he was so cold? He crouched on all fours, panting in an attempt to catch his breath, but the rhythm was all wrong and somehow he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs.
He had to get help!
Still on all fours, Noel crawled slowly across the empty
boules
pitch beneath the plane trees, wondering if he were bleeding. He couldn’t see anything, it was so damned dark, but if he weren’t bleeding then he must be all right, mustn’t he? God he was cold,
so terribly cold!
Looking across the road he tried to focus on the faint glimmer of light. It was a house and the light was over its door.
If he could just get himself over there someone would help him, they’d get a doctor, an ambulance. He crawled slowly towards his goal, stopping every few yards to catch a shuddering breath.