The Cleaner of Chartres (13 page)

Chartres

Philippe Nevers often encountered Agnès on her way to clean the cathedral as he made his own way down from his apartment in the place du Cygne, to catch the early Paris train. If he was not running late – which he mostly was – he usually stopped for a bit of friendly banter with his old babysitter. He had defended her once and those we defend will tend to occupy a tender spot in our loyalties.

Philippe managed a fashion boutique in Paris in the 16th arrondissement. For such an otherwise likeable young man he had made himself needlessly unpopular, as his friend Tan often told him, with women – especially the women of Chartres, who were cautious in their dress – with his bold sartorial suggestions. But he admired Agnès’ indifference to fashion, an indifference, as he explained to Tan, which is the basis of true style.

However, that morning he had weightier things than fashion on his mind.

‘Good morning, Agnès. Listen, my sister – you remember, Brigitte? – is coming to stay with her new baby. Things aren’t going too well with her current man so she needs a place to hole up in while they decide what to do. I couldn’t say no.’

Agnès, who remembered Brigitte, smiled.

‘You couldn’t do a couple of hours’ cleaning for me? She’s always been an obsessional, God knows, but with this kid she’s become totally neurotic. Or maybe it’s the break-up. Who can tell?’

‘When do you need it done by?’

‘Agnès, you’re an angel. Look, take the spare key. You know where I am, by the flower stall, first floor, over the estate agent’s. Any time before the weekend. I like that shade of red with the green, by the way.’

•   •   •

Agnès opened the inner door of the North Porch as quietly as the weight of the wood and the age of the hinges allowed. But Alain was there, apparently waiting for her on the altar dais.

‘Breakfast?’

‘Thanks, I’ve had some.’ She went to the kitchenette but when she returned, bucket and mop in hand, he was there still.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing.’

‘In case you don’t know, your face is an open book. What’s up?’ he asked again. He peered at her and then said, quite nastily, ‘It’s that bloody old bitch, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll go and see her. Tell her I was merely picking you up from the floor. No hanky-panky, though what in God’s name it has to do with –’

‘It isn’t that,’ Agnès interrupted.

‘So what is it?’

‘She thinks I took or broke something.’

‘What?’

‘A china doll.’

‘What!’

‘A little antique doll. She collects them. It’s missing and she thinks I took it, or broke it.’

‘So what if you did?’

‘She said she’ll report it to the police.’

At which he threw his head back, laughing. ‘Don’t be an idiot. She probably broke it herself in a fit of rage. My bones are good at clocking madness and they definitely dislike her. She’s deranged.’

‘That’s what Robert said.’

‘Who’s Robert?’

‘A painter. I sit for him.’

‘The hell you do.’

‘I’ve sat for him for years,’ Agnès said. ‘He’s harmless. He comes in here quite often to paint the stained glass.’

‘I’ve seen him. And his stuff. It’s vile.’

‘He has to make a living,’ Agnès said. ‘He’s been very kind to me. He got me work when I came here. And a room.’

‘Are you lovers?’

She blushed. ‘Of course not.’

Alain treated her to a long look. ‘It has been heard of. Anyway, Ma Beck can’t report you to the police for a doll. Tell her to go and boil her head.’

But Agnès, having completed her work and chatted for five minutes with the Abbé Bernard, who was anxious to know if she believed in miracles – ‘But the Holy tunic, Agnès, you think it really did effect cures?’ – called by Madame Beck’s apartment with an envelope in which she had placed three twenty-euro notes. She posted the envelope through the letterbox without ringing the chiming bell, which did not prevent Madame Beck from hastening to the window when she heard the letterbox to observe her former cleaner as she hurried away down the rue aux Herbes to the safety of Professor Jones’s apartment.

•   •   •

The archiving at Professor Jones’s was coming on apace. The faded and discoloured wallpaper in the study was now almost completely hidden by a collection of skilfully-mounted photographs of his past. Professor Jones had been so animated by the recovery of his own history that he had begun to write his recollections of his childhood in Wales. He discussed these from time to time with Agnès as she tried to sort his lectures and his lecture notes, a harder task for her than the letters or photos.

Seeing what she was doing, he said, ‘May I have a look at the article on Rheims?’

Agnès stopped sorting. ‘Which?’

Pointing vaguely he said, ‘That one on the floor beside you.’

Agnès, who could recognize an
R
, passed him a paper.

‘No, not Rome, Rheims.’

She looked up at him from her position on the floor and perhaps because of his recent plunge into childhood he understood that what he saw in her face was fear. ‘Agnès, you can read?’

‘No.’

‘My God. And you’ve sorted all this for me. How?’

She shrugged, ashamed.

‘One would almost say you didn’t need to read with guesswork like that.’

‘I wish I could, though.’

‘Would you like me to teach you?’

‘I can’t. They tried.’

‘Who tried?’

‘Sister Véronique.’

‘You have a sister?’

At which she laughed aloud. ‘She was a nun. I was brought up by nuns.’

‘You’re Catholic, then?’

‘I was an orphan,’ Agnès said. ‘I had no choice.’

It was many years since Professor Jones had felt any true concern about anyone but himself. Even his philanthropic interest in the beggars was, at heart, self-regarding. But the young woman with her brightly coloured clothes and her quiet presence had smoothed away some of the cares which had clogged his natural curiosity. The recovery of his childhood memories had restored something of the child’s keener perception. He took her hand. ‘How very horrid for you, my dear.’

And Agnès, on her knees, also felt a novel sensation. One she had not experienced for many years. She felt she was going to cry.

•   •   •

Two hours later she let herself into Philippe Nevers’ apartment, as unlike Professor Jones’s as it was possible to be. The salon, which looked over the tree-filled square, was full of light, the minimal furniture all in the latest contemporary taste down to the kitchen utensils, which that year were being sold in apple-green. Did Philippe renew them each time the fashion changed, or was it just a lucky coincidence?

There was a faint smell of cooking oil so she opened a kitchen window to air the place. Otherwise, it seemed spotless. The neurotic Brigitte could hardly find much to complain about.

Nevertheless, Agnès found a tidily arranged cupboard of cleaning materials and set to work. As she wiped the frames of the pictures on Philippe’s walls, half wondering, but with no very burning curiosity, how his sister would react to these – for the most part they were images of naked men in startling erotic poses – she reflected on her strange morning with Professor Jones.

An unusually determined Professor had sat Agnès down at his kitchen table, which thanks to her was no longer covered in a patina of ancient grease, where he insisted on giving her tea, for, despite his many years of living in France, the professor clung to his native belief in the remedial powers of strong tea. Then he had begun her reading lesson.

Among the treasures of his past, revealed in the course of the ‘archiving’, were some of the professor’s childhood books:
Treasure Island
,
Alice
both
In Wonderland
and
Through the Looking-Glass
, a child’s version of Malory’s
Le Morte d’Arthur
,
Doctor Dolittle
,
Biggles
and the
Just So Stories
. None of these seemed to him quite the thing to engage a young, illiterate woman.

Searching through a cardboard suitcase, retrieved from under a sagging divan bed (now relieved of its cover of papers) and stuffed with a motley collection of books, the professor found a copy of
Little Black Sambo
which he concealed hastily in a paper bag. He did not himself see what was wrong with
Little Black Sambo
but he was aware that this, any more than
Doctor Dolittle
or
Biggles
, was not quite the thing for Agnès to learn to read from.

Further delvings into the suitcase revealed a paperback copy of
The Secret Garden
. Opening it, he read, on the title page in a round childish hand, ‘If this book should dare to roam/ Box its ears and send it home to/ Gwen Williams, Church House, Broad Street, Presteigne, Radnorshire, Wales, Great Britain, Europe, the Northern Hemisphere, The World, The Milky Way.’ Beneath these words was a picture of the sun, the moon, some planets and a shooting star. Each had a smiling face except the star, which was sticking out a contemptuous fiery tongue.

How did
The Secret Garden
come to have roamed so far afield? He remembered Church House, the home of his maternal uncle and aunt, with fondness: a square, redbrick family home with two tall chimneys, which stood by the grassy graveyard of St Andrew’s Church, with its ‘holy’ spring and venerably twisted yew tree. He had had fine times there in the holidays, playing with his cousins in the roomy attic and immense cupboards, just made for games of Sardines and hide-and-seek.

The story of Mary Lennox, the orphaned girl sent from India to Yorkshire, he now suddenly remembered, he had read to his cousin Gwen, the summer she had chickenpox so badly that her face had swelled and she couldn’t read. Was it merely one of those accidental thefts which had never been rectified or had he gone away with the book on purpose?

He had been a little in love with Gwen, who had wild dark red hair, which she tossed from her face like a mountain pony, and a white, white skin – skin like the slivers of bark from the birch trees that had fascinated him too, and which he had enjoyed peeling off for his cousin to make into fairy slippers and other magical artefacts. Once he had kissed her, while they were playing Sardines and hiding in one of the Church House cupboards, and she had seemed not to mind.

‘I will translate this into French, simple French, and read you each chapter aloud first,’ he announced to Agnès, ‘so you will understand the story,’ and commenced translating at once. After half an hour, he announced with unusual firmness, ‘Now stop sorting and come here by me.’

It was the first time, since the days of Sister Laurence, that Agnès had listened to a story (other than those she heard on the radio) and, for all Professor Jones’s odd accent and sonorous reading style, within three pages she was entranced.

Evreux

Agnès said very little on the drive with Denis Deman from the hospital in Le Mans to the outskirts of Evreux. She sat staring out of the passenger window, apparently absorbed in the sight of the passing countryside.

From time to time, he glanced at her to see if she was all right, but any question was met with an inevitable, ‘Fine, thank you, Doctor.’

What a strange undertaking he had embarked on. Inès Nezat was right to be suspicious – it was untoward to take such an interest in the girl. But, more and more, he was convinced that it was he himself who had precipitated this further tragedy of hers, as if her circumstances had not been quite tragic enough without his clumsy interference.

The girl was illiterate. What in the world had induced him to suppose she had read her file? Sheer panic at his own foolhardiness in going to that address. And then he had compounded that idiotic error by writing the address in her file. And that error had led, by a ghastly chain of consequences, to the grosser error of his supposing that she had come to the conclusion at which he, so mistakenly, had arrived. What a complete and utter and ludicrous fool he had been.

His hope now was that meeting Jean Dupère might help the girl towards a better sense of her own reality. The past that she had really lived and not the fantasy in which he had haplessly encouraged her to believe. The real past, of course, was starkly painful. No parents, no known relatives, no knowledge of her background, no child, or any she could see or care for, only this one – rather decent – human being whose connection with her was probably too tangential to provide any true sense of being held in another’s heart.

As the Renault bumped down the now familiar track to the Dupère farm, Denis Deman felt a clawing apprehension. It was very likely another of his mad ideas, bringing these two together again. Jean Dupère would not recognize in the lumpen, spotty girl with the lank and greasy hair the pale, sylphlike creature he had last seen, lying comatose in her bed in the clinic. Now the poor child was comatose again, in an alien waking world, muffled in her mind by the drugs in which he had no confidence.

The old man must have heard the car for he was waiting at an open door.

‘Little Agnès.’ Not a hint of surprise or disappointment in his face. Only an expression of eager welcome. ‘Come in, come in.’

Jean Dupère’s helpful neighbour had plainly been round, since lunch was on the kitchen table. He was anxious to tell them it was all home grown.

‘Radishes and lettuce from the garden. Tomatoes. Our own cured ham and the Camembert is from our neighbour. Take some milk.’

Without waiting for Agnès to answer, he poured her a glass of milk from a pitcher from which he had removed a muslin cloth weighted with blue-glass beads.

Agnès sat and drank the milk obediently.

‘Help yourself, sweetheart. Doctor?’

Denis Deman took several slices of ham. He found he was suddenly terrifically hungry. Jean Dupère helped Agnès to a mountain of food but took nothing except bread and cheese for himself. Silently, they all began to eat.

Suddenly Jean Dupère, wiping his moustache with a napkin, said, ‘See that basket hanging over there, left of the fire? That’s what I found you in.’

Agnès stopped eating, fork poised in the air, and stared at the old straw basket.

‘Go on. Take it down.’

She looked across at Denis Deman and he realized she was waiting for permission.

‘It’s
OK
, Agnès. You can get down from the table.’

She moved across the kitchen, reached up and detached the basket from the black hook.

‘That’s what I found you in,’ the old man repeated. It was a moment he had envisaged often without ever quite believing in its realizable possibility. He was not, therefore, prepared for Agnès’ reaction, which was to stand in the middle of the kitchen floor holding in her two hands what had stood in for her crib and shed solemn tears.

Jean Dupère was appalled.

Denis Deman tried to reassure him. ‘Naturally, she is moved. It’s catharsis.’

Which was Greek, of course, to the old man.

‘I meant it for a nice surprise.’ He had taken down the basket beforehand, in readiness for this moment, and shaken out the cobwebs, dead flies, moths and live earwigs, which had somehow negotiated a home there.

‘It will be.’ Denis Deman let Agnès cry. The old man’s dismay also prevented his making any attempt at consoling the girl. Tearless now, she stood in a pool of summer light, trembling. She seemed to Denis Deman’s imagination like the trapped leveret he had found as a boy in a meadow near his home.

‘Really, you have done nothing wrong,’ he assured the worried old man again much later, when Jean was conducting them round his farm and Agnès was picking field flowers. ‘It is roughly what I expected – hoped for.’

‘For her to take on so?’

‘For her to begin to feel what she must so long have been feeling.’

‘She will recover? She can come away from that – that place?’

‘We can only hope so. You’ve done a good deal already with the earring, and now this. If she can recover the memory of her own life maybe she’ll be able to give up the one she has created.’

‘But she will never have her baby?’

The question, as they both knew, was rhetorical.

‘She will have to learn to bear it. It is a wrong she has been done but we must be prepared to believe that the Sisters supposed they were doing what was best for her and the child.’

But if Denis Deman supposed he could get away with sanctimonious expressions, he was to be proved wrong.

‘They did it because they believe in “good and evil”,’ Jean Dupère, with surprising heat, declared. ‘I am to blame. I gave her to them. I did wrong but they,
they
have done her an evil in their wrong belief.’ He turned candidly angry eyes on Denis.

‘Maybe,’ said Denis Deman, impressed by this vehemence. ‘But the main thing is, what can we do now for her for the best?’

He was considering this further when the three had said goodbye, with a promise to meet again the next day, and he was driving Agnès to the clinic, where she was to spend one night.

Agnès was clutching the basket containing the already wilting poppies and cornflowers, some eggs, courtesy of Jean Dupère’s neighbour, and an embroidered prayer card to St Agnès, which Jean Dupère had found in the pages of his mother’s old receipt book. As they drove, she hummed a tune Denis Deman did not recognize.

‘Did you enjoy the visit, Agnès?’

‘Yes.’

‘You would like to go again tomorrow?’

‘Yes, please. I would like to.’

Well, that was a start.

She seemed pleased too when they arrived at the clinic and climbed eagerly out of the car, with the basket in hand.

‘We’ve given you a room here. Come.’ He led her to the private wing, where the rooms were single.

‘I’m not sharing?’

‘No. Unless you’d rather.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Would you rather, Agnès?’

‘Yes, please, Doctor.’

This posed a problem. He could not in all conscience put her in with one of the fee-paying patients. It would have to be one of the others, who might disconcert her, and the visit must be as calm as possible if it were to be a success. Maybe, he thought, one of the nurses might be induced to spend the night with her.

Denis Deman had remained mildly attracted to the tall Australian nurse who had, quite unwittingly, set him off on his wild-goose hunt for Agnès’ child. Inquiry revealed that she was about to come off her shift and he found her and explained the situation. ‘Might you be willing to spend the night here with her?’

‘Is she violent?’

‘There’s no evidence of it. She’s only ever harmed herself. We, that is her current consultant and I, think now that this fixation she had on the other child is pure delusion.’

‘Poor mite. Funny I should have known the family.’

To cover his embarrassment Denis Deman said, ‘You might be able to help there. Talk to her about it. About him.’

‘You mean the other boy?’

‘Yes. What was his name?’

‘Caspar.’

He remembered now the child’s grotesque conjunction of names. ‘The thing is, I feel if she can surrender this delusion that the boy is hers we can reasonably appeal to have her de-sectioned. She’s no business in a secure hospital. She’s quite harmless.’

‘
OK
. But if I’m found knifed in the back it’s on your head, mind. I want this in writing.’

Dr Deman spoke with some stiffness. ‘Naturally, there will be someone on duty. I’m only asking you to sit with her and keep her company.’

‘Don’t get your knickers in a knot, Doctor. Of course I’ll help out. What’s she come here for, anyway?’

Denis explained. ‘Ah, poor thing. It’s like a story – a baby in a basket. So the old man wants to see her?’

‘I wanted him to, in fact. I thought it might help establish her own history for her.’

‘It would help. My dad never knew his dad. My grandma’s indigenous – “abo” to you.’ Denis Deman attempted to protest but she laughed and said, ‘It’s
OK
. We’re used to it. No, as I was saying, my dad’s dad was some white guy who had his way with my grandma and then relieved himself of any responsibility. Dad spent half his life trying to find him. Good riddance, Mum and I say, but blood’s thicker than water, I guess.’

‘But Jean Dupère isn’t Agnès’ “blood”.’

‘He might be the nearest thing. Of course I’ll watch her. Nice little thing, she was.’

‘She’s rather a big thing now.’

‘Rotten diet in those places. I wouldn’t work in one myself.’

‘Maddy, I forget, why did you leave?’

‘It wasn’t the boy. He was a pet. It was the father – couldn’t keep his hands to himself. I can manage that but she, Miss Moonshine, or whatever she called herself, guessed and there was an atmosphere. I hate atmospheres.’

Denis Deman took Maddy to introduce her to Agnès. ‘So, then, Agnès, I’ll leave you with Nurse Fisher –’

‘Maddy, please.’

‘Maddy will look after you this evening and I’ll see you in my room tomorrow morning.’

When he had gone, Maddy said, ‘Come to pay us a little visit?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s it like in Le Mans?’

‘
OK
.’

‘Nicer here, though.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m going to keep you company tonight. Anything you’d like to do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘
OK
. We’ll just stay cool, then.’

Asked if she might like to walk in the garden, Agnès agreed that she might. They strolled for a while but she seemed ill at ease outside and said what she would really like was to watch the pop programme on
TV
.

‘Sure. There’s a
TV
in the common room. Supper now or after?’

They ate supper watching the pop programme. After about twenty minutes Maddy observed Agnès had kicked off her shoes. Later, as Agnès was getting ready for bed, Maddy said, ‘You like it here, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know what, you might be able to come back.’

‘How?’

‘Well . . .’ The doctor had told her to have a try at talking to her so why not have a go? Maddy sat down on the bed. ‘The little boy you say was yours. He’s not. I was his nanny so I know.’

Agnès stared at her.

‘The thing is, the nanny with him was attacked, quite seriously, I hear, though she’s
OK
now. Thank my lucky stars I was out of it or it might have been me. But they can’t risk your maybe having done that. That’s why they sent you off to Le Mans. If you can say he isn’t yours, and you know that now and you didn’t do anything and it’s all been a terrible mistake, they’ll maybe stop worrying about you going after someone with a knife. See?’

‘Would it mean I could leave there?’

‘Well, don’t quote me but it’s a possibility. They might send you back here for a while and then, you know, you could do what you wanted.’

‘What would I have to say?’

‘
OK
,’ Maddy said. ‘So this is how it goes. They’d have to believe you. So it has to sound like you mean it. Not like I’ve told you. Or anyone else told you.
OK
?’

She accompanied Agnès to Denis Deman’s room the following morning.

‘Everything go all right last night with you two?’

Denis Deman had passed a restless night. Much as he wanted to believe in Agnès’ innocence, Maddy’s quip about the knife in the back had unsettled him. Agnès was a dark horse. No one, he felt, least of all himself, had ever fully fathomed her. Perhaps after all his first impressions were correct and she had been the author of this violent deed.

‘We had a great time, didn’t we, Agnès?’

Agnès beamed. ‘Yes, we did, Maddy.’

The reassurance from the strong Australian girl revived Denis Deman’s spirits. ‘Very good. Thank you, Maddy.’

‘Not at all. We enjoyed ourselves, didn’t we, Agnès? Remember what I told you, now?’

Agnès favoured her with a radiant smile.

•   •   •

‘What was it that Nurse Fisher told you?’ Denis Deman asked a little later. They were in his room. Above his desk, she saw again the maze on the wall. If she tried really hard she was sure she could follow the path with her eyes to the centre.

‘Agnès?’

Oh, but she never could get past that first loop round to the right. ‘She told me that she looked after the baby I said was mine and she told me he wasn’t mine.’

‘She did?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what do you think of that?’

‘I think I made a mistake.’

‘And you were never there?’ It was a leading question but to hell with that.

‘It was a mistake. I didn’t do anything. Can I come back here now?’