4
AT ABOUT FIVE o’clock the same day a note was delivered for Anne by Jacqueline, the postman’s daughter. It was in an angular but firm hand that she at once recognised from the papers in the study at the Manor. It said, ‘Call as soon as possible at the address below and ring the bell bearing the name Mlle Calmette. You will, I hope, learn something that pleases you.’ It was signed in an illegible scrawl. Anne read the note several times, tracing the hurried movement of the spluttering black ink.
She found Pierre in the cellar and asked him where the street was. He told her it was on the north-west side of town, not far from the church; she estimated she just had time to go before her evening shift began. She hurried up the rue des Ecoles and into the Place de la Victoire from which she could see the spire of the church. In the Place de L’Eglise she asked the way from a widow with bandy legs and a headscarf who looked at her with toothless disapproval, as if she had asked for directions to a house of ill-repute. Anne barely knew what to expect, but was prepared to rush to any destination prescribed by that handwriting.
The street was narrow and quiet; some of the houses had dried wooden gables, and some had huge double doors that would lead into paved courtyards beyond. It was one of these doors, painted a dark green, that bore the number in the note. She found Mlle Calmette’s bell and rang it. There was a remote, disconnected jangling. A thin bark rose from behind the wall and was abruptly silenced.
At last she heard slow footsteps from behind the door and then a lock being turned. A small woman of about seventy with a crinkled face opened the door and peered nervously round it. Anne introduced herself.
‘Ah yes, mademoiselle.’ Anne noticed that the old woman’s hair seemed unnaturally brown for the age of her face. ‘Please come this way.’
A cat was sleeping against one of the side walls of the courtyard where a flowerbed held half a dozen wintry shrubs and under-watered plants. The woman paused at a narrow, black-painted door and fumbled in her cardigan. She pulled out a single key on a piece of string, then turned to Anne and smiled. ‘You are just as he said.’
Anne felt a moment of panic, as though she were a counter in a game being played by two other people.
The door opened on to a small square hallway and a flight of scrubbed stairs. Anne followed the old woman, tense with a mixture of fear and excitement. On the landing was a rug. and a pair of glass-panelled doors.
‘This is your sitting-room.’
‘My . . . ?’
She looked around a small neat room on whose polished wooden floor and circular table the sun shone gently. She felt a thin hand grip her forearm.
‘This is your bedroom.’
A door opened on a broad wooden bed with lacework and broderie anglaise covers and a mahogany dressing-table with a vase of freesias. The wrinkled hand waved again. ‘Bathroom. And behind the curtain on the landing is a little space for cooking, if you can get the gas to work. Don’t forget to open the window.’
‘For me?’
‘There’s a note for you on the dressing-table. From M. Hartmann. My apartment is next door if you should want anything. My sister used to live here, but since she died I’ve let it go on short lets. Here’s your key, and here’s one to the street door. I hope you like it.’
Anne was too confused to take in what the old woman was saying, but then it was too late and she had gone down the stairs, her heavy black shoes ringing on the bare wood.
Anne went back into the bedroom and tore open the letter on the dressing-table. ‘Dear Anne,’ she read, ‘I have rented these rooms for you because I thought you might like them better than your attic at the Lion d’Or, and I am sure you will have no problems with voyeurs. You don’t have to take them if you don’t want to. I won’t be hurt if you prefer to stay at the hotel, nor does taking them confer any obligation on you. Mlle Calmette is an old friend of our family (her sister worked once as my father’s secretary) and our financial arrangement is easy-going – by which I mean you shouldn’t feel uneasy about any expense you might think I’m incurring. It’s not much and, in any case, it is money I would like her to have.
‘I hope you’ll like it here. I suppose it will mean getting up ten minutes earlier each morning to get to work on time but perhaps it’s worth it. I have to go to dinner in town tonight and I will look in around eleven to see that you’re settled. If this is inconvenient, you must telephone me at the Manor early this evening. I will make sure I answer the telephone. My wife doesn’t know of this arrangement and if she did she might draw the wrong conclusions. I’m sure you understand.’
Hartmann arrived shortly before midnight, full of apologies. ‘It was impossible to get away earlier, it would have been rude. I left just as soon as I could. And now you’ll be tired in the morning, while I can lie in bed till eight o’clock. I wouldn’t have come at all, but then I thought you might wait up and that would be even worse.’
He was wearing a dark suit and a formal white collar. His eyes seemed sunk a little deeper than usual into his face – an illusion produced by a shadow of fatigue beneath them. In the shaded light that hung from the centre of the small sittingroom his face seemed all contours and hollows, defined by the sharp expression of apology that had replaced his more customary one of just-suppressed humour.
‘My dear Monsieur, that you should apologise when, when . . .’ Anne threw her arm wide to indicate the room.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Like it. Oh, my God, it’s wonderful, wonderful.’
Hartmann saw her eyes brim with tears and the look of worry left his face. He turned away for a moment. ‘It was a dreadful dinner,’ he said. ‘From the moment we sat down my heart sank. It became a test of endurance. The old woman who brought the food in took an age between each course and then, when we’d finished, our hostess insisted that we listen while one of the other guests played the piano.’
‘But wasn’t that nice?’
‘I’m afraid not. I’m no musician, but even my ears were offended.’
Anne smiled. ‘I’ve bought some brandy. I thought perhaps you might like some. I’m afraid it’s not very good, but it was all I – all they had in the local shop.’
She handed him a glass from the cupboard and filled it. ‘It’s fine,’ said Hartmann as the liquid seared his throat. ‘But won’t you have any?’
‘I don’t know, I hadn’t thought about it. I don’t normally drink brandy.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I can’t see why not.’ She poured herself some and sipped at it suspiciously. It made her eyes water.
‘Here’s to your new home,’ said Hartmann, raising his glass.
Anne smiled and raised hers. ‘To you, monsieur.’
‘You’d better not tell anyone at the hotel about this arrangement. If they want to know how you can manage to live in your own rooms you’d better tell them that an aunt left you some money in her will or something like that. It’s not that there’s anything wrong in the arrangement, it’s just that in a small town people talk. If they knew I paid for you to be here they’d jump to only one conclusion. So you must tell no one.’
Anne turned her head. ‘Very well, monsieur.’ She felt uneasy, as though she really were his mistress. In the excitement of the afternoon she hadn’t thought properly about these things; now she felt the sense of panic returning.
‘What’s the matter, Anne?’
She looked up and smiled, though without much spirit. ‘Nothing, monsieur, nothing. It’s wonderful, these rooms, this little courtyard . . . But I don’t like the feeling of secrecy. I don’t like to be furtive. I’ve kept too many secrets in my life. I would like things to be more open.’
‘I know. It’s not a perfect arrangement for you. But that’s not your fault and it’s not mine. It’s the fault of small-town society where people have nothing better to do than gossip and lie about each other.’
Anne looked down.
‘There’s nothing you or I can do to change that. You simply have to try to make the choices that will make you happiest in the circumstances. If you’d feel better back at the Lion d’Or, then I quite understand. Please believe me, I won’t be offended. It’s your choice.’
‘Oh no! I adore these rooms. It’s the prettiest, most perfect little apartment, I’ve ever seen. I know I’ll be happy here. I just . . . it’s silly, but I just wish things were more straightforward sometimes.’
Hartmann’s voice rumbled on soothingly. He had a way of making things seem quite clear and reasonable, Anne thought; so much so that he could talk away the most unsettling doubts – talk away, perhaps even the horrors that visited her in the night.
She raised her face to him and he noticed that her eyes were fierce with pleading and determination. ‘Monsieur, you must not betray me.’
Hartmann was aware from the hard edge of her voice that she was asking him for something fundamental to her happiness. He also knew, without admitting it to himself, that the more reasonably he put the case for Anne’s staying in the rooms he had rented for her, the more he stressed the possible drawbacks, the more he said it was her own free choice, the more likely she was to do what he wanted.
‘You can trust me, Anne,’ he said. ‘I give you my word.’
It was a meaningless promise because it was so vague, but Anne believed in it. Hartmann hardly knew himself what he was saying, apart from assuring Anne that his regard for her was sincere. He looked over to where she stood by the table in the middle of the room, her face half in shadow from the hanging light above. He felt the same onrushing of desire that had made him throw the books towards the rafters of the attic; and mixed with this he felt for the first time a sense of identification with her and with her vulnerability.
Anne at the moment found that her doubts were soothed, as she looked at him sitting at ease in her armchair, in her apartment. With his fastidious gentleness, his niceness of feeling and yet, too, that self-control and confidence in all his dealings – with these qualities she could not be doing wrong, whatever she did. She smiled at him again.
Hartmann stood up, ‘I mustn’t keep you, now that you’ve got to get up even earlier in the mornings.’
‘It’s only ten minutes. You don’t have to go.’
‘I must. But I’ll come and visit you again if you like. One day next week, perhaps.’
‘Oh yes, please. I’ll make you dinner. I can take an evening off. What would you like?’
‘Anything you can do easily. A stew or coq au vin or something like that. I don’t mind at all.’ He didn’t want her to spend too much money.
‘Could you come on Sunday?’
‘All right. I’ll bring some wine, so don’t bother about that.’