The Splendour Falls

  “He’s been with you a long time, has he, François?”

  “A long time, yes. His parents worked for my grandparents, and François himself was born the same year as my father—1930.” He caught himself and winked at me. “Don’t tell him I told you this. He likes to be most secretive about his age. My wife said always François was like those men in films, you understand, the valet faithful to the family who counts their needs ahead of his.”

  I told him I could understand her point. “He looks the perfect butler, and he does seem rather loyal.”

  “Perhaps. But he is more like family, François, and he stays because the vineyard is his home as much as mine. He does not serve without the questions, like the valet of the films, and if he serves at all it is because he likes the person he is serving.”

  “He must like you, then.”

  Armand smiled above his wine glass. “I try his patience, sometimes, but this is natural for people who have passed a life together. Lucie he adores.”

  I remembered the way François had watched his young charge by the ducks that morning, how his weary eyes had softened on her face. But even as I thought of that another image rose to take its place—of François staring, startled, at the laughing little girl. Seeing ghosts, he’d told me. For a moment I debated asking Armand if Lucie looked very like her mother, but then decided it might be easier to ask him about Didier. If I could only find some plausible excuse, some way of leading him round to the subject…

  Toying with my glass, I tried the indirect approach. “You said Martine came back to live with you when… when you were widowed. Where did she live before that? Here in Chinon?”

  “With her husband, yes. You know that he is dead?” The dark gaze flicked me, moved away. He shrugged. “One should not be speaking ill of the dead, I know, but he was not a pleasant man, her husband. Already when she came to help with Lucie there were problems with the marriage.”

  I nodded, pleased that my tactic had worked. “Yes, I’d heard they were divorced.”

  “Annulled. There is a difference, to the Church.” The wine swirled like liquid gold in his glass as he lifted it and smiled faintly. “If you believe in that sort of thing.”

  “And you don’t, I take it?”

  “Me? No, I believe in the things that I can touch—my land, my family, old traditions and good wine. And you?”

  I had to admit I hadn’t the faintest idea. “I’m a skeptic, I’m afraid.”

  “You have no religion?”

  “No.”

  “People, then. You must believe in people.”

  “People aren’t permanent,” I answered drily, and he raised his eyebrows in surprise, a slow smile forming at the corners of his mouth.

  “You are indeed a skeptic, as you say. Tell me, did you always think this? As a child?”

  “Good heavens, no.” I grinned. “I was the most believing child that ever lived. I wished on stars and everything.”

  “So what has happened?”

  “Life.” I gave the answer with a shrug. My last mussel had grown cold in its shell, and I pushed it away with my fork. How had we got on to this subject from Didier, I wondered? The conversation wanted steering back to more productive ground. “And Martine’s husband? What did he believe in?”

  “Money,” came the answer, then he tempered his quick judgment with an even-minded shrug. “That is not fair, perhaps, because I do not know what it is like to be coming from nothing, as Didier did. He had, I think, an ugly childhood. Martine had money, so he married her.”

  I found it rather difficult to imagine any man marrying Martine Muret simply for her money, but Armand assured me this was so. “It is the thinking of most people, of Martine herself. But then,” he admitted, “most people, they think this is also why I married my wife.”

  “You?” I stared, surprised. “But you’re…”

  “Rich? Yes, now, but when I married things were not so well for the Clos des Cloches. I managed badly in the early years, the harvests were not good, and everybody knew this. I’m not surprised that people think I chose Brigitte for money.”

  “And did you?” It was too late to withdraw the question, however much I kicked myself for asking it. Already Armand was leaning back, head tilted, considering his answer.

  “In part.” He smiled without apology. “This was no burning passion, between Brigitte and myself. It was more business, an exchange. She wanted a nice house, where she could play the hostess, hold her parties. And me, I wanted a beautiful wife of good family. That she had money was one more attraction. At that moment, we suited one another, but later… I was sorry for her death, but I did not suffer with it.” His smile softened. “Do I shock you? I should keep to the politics in conversation, or you will not come to lunch with me again.”

  But he didn’t keep to politics. Instead he asked about my family and my childhood, so I favored him with a few of the better anecdotes I’d gathered growing up a Braden. I finished with the one about the day Harry tried to burn me at the stake. We’d been playing in the garden—Joan of Arc, as I recall—with me strapped to the rose trellis for an added touch of authenticity. The blaze had been spectacular, and for a few long moments, while Harry was off looking for my father’s garden hosepipe, I had felt uncomfortably close to poor St. Joan.

  Most people laughed when I told them that story, but Armand looked rather shocked. “He is alive still, this cousin of yours? Your father did not kill him?”

  “No, he survived. He lectures in history, on and off, in London.”

  “I see.” He smiled then, and leaning back he felt for his cigarettes. “Then I am glad you did not bring him with you. The history of my family, that is one thing, but the wars, the kings and queens…” His shrug dismissed such trivialities. “I find them always boring.”

  Here was my opportunity, I thought, to swing the conversation round again. “Your brother-in-law was quite the historian, though, from what I hear.”

  “Didier?” The cigarette lighter clicked shut. Leaning back, Armand narrowed his eyes as the smoke curled upwards. “A historian? Who has told you this?”

  “I don’t remember,” I hedged, keeping my voice light. “Someone at the hotel, I imagine. I thought they said he had a love of history.”

  He lifted the cigarette and inhaled smoothly, but I saw the line of his jaw tighten. “You have been misinformed, I think. My brother-in-law loved nothing but himself. And money. Always money.” His voice sounded hard. Didier Muret, I was learning, had that effect on people. “He couldn’t keep a job, because he stole. Brigitte, my wife, she once found him work with her own lawyer, for Martine’s sake, but it was no good. The money went missing there, too. Martine left him after that. She let him stay in the house, but he got no more money from her.”

  Well done, Martine, I thought. “Actually,” I went on, trying to make the white lie sound convincing, “I think it was young Simon who told me your brother-in-law liked history. They’d met each other once, I think.”

  “Simon?” Armand looked skeptical. “The boy with the long hair, who came to tour my vineyard? But he does not speak French, not like his brother. And Didier, he spoke no English. They might have met, but they could not have talked to one another.”

  “I must have got it wrong, then,” I said brightly. Three people had now told me the same story, and three people, I thought, couldn’t be mistaken. Which meant that Didier Muret could not have read my cousin’s article, would not have had a reason to contact him, had probably never met him. What had Armand said that morning, about his daughter? Lucie, she sometimes gets her story wrong. And a duck named “Ar-ree” was hardly the best evidence, I reminded myself with a wry smile. “It must have been some other Didier he was talking about. Simon’s less than clear in conversation, sometimes.”

  Not that I was very much better. I really must go easy on the wine while trying to i
nvestigate, I thought. It took all my effort, as we left the restaurant, just to walk a straight line without tripping over cobblestones.

  I don’t think Armand noticed. He strolled easily beside me, along the half-deserted rue Voltaire. I smiled when I saw he walked with one hand in his pocket, his cigarette held loosely in the other. Most French men walked like that. It was a sort of national identity badge, a wholly unconscious habit they acquired at some early age and carried till they died. In my younger days in Paris I’d often passed a lazy hour at the Luxembourg gardens, spotting the français among the tourists by the way they walked.

  “I have enjoyed this,” Armand said, when we came out into the fountain square. “I enjoy your company. We should have dinner one night before you leave.”

  It was a noncommittal sort of invitation, and I responded in kind. “I’d like that.”

  The light good-bye kiss caught me slightly off guard, I must admit. Things naturally progressed this way, of course, among the French: from smiles and nods to handshakes to la bise, the friendly double kiss, but they didn’t usually progress this quickly. Armand Valcourt, I thought, worked fast.

  He was only a flirt, and a harmless one, and I was decidedly single, but still I felt a twist of guilty conscience. I cast a quick glance upwards at the hotel, along the row of empty balconies, to where the tall and graceful windows of Neil’s room reflected back the calmly drifting clouds. I thought I saw a flash of something pale behind the glass, but I might have imagined the movement.

  I must have imagined it. The château bell was chiming three o’clock when I entered the hotel lobby—it was Neil’s normal practice time, but there was no violin this afternoon. There was only Thierry, looking very bored behind the desk. No, he told me, nobody was back yet. There was only him, and the telephone, and… He broke off, brightening. “You would like a drink, Mademoiselle? In the bar?”

  I shook my head. “The last thing I need, Thierry, is a drink. I’m floating as it is. No, I think I’ll go upstairs and have a nap.”

  He rolled his eyes. “The naps,” he said, “are for old women, and for children.”

  He was quite wrong, I thought later, buried deep beneath my freshly-ironed sheets and soft wool blanket. An afternoon nap was a glorious indulgence, tucked into the middle of a long and active day, with rich food and fine wine fuzzing round the edges of one’s drifting mind. I sighed and snuggled deeper.

  Few sounds rose to drown the murmur of the fountain underneath my open window. Now and then a car passed by, or someone shouted to a friend across the square. Nearby a dog barked sharply and was silenced by a quick command. But nothing else disturbed the peace, the perfect peace that filled my shadowed room. The fountain’s voice grew louder still, subtly altering pitch, becoming low and deep and lulling like the darkly flowing river to the south.

  It was so close, that sound… so close…

  It was beside me. I hardly ever dreamed, not anymore, so I was rather surprised to find myself moving in that strange, disjointed way that dreamers do, not in my room but down along the river, where the plane trees wept like mourners in the wind beneath a gray uncertain sky. I moved with no real purpose, no true course. One moment I was standing on the bridge, and then there was no bridge, and I was sitting on the riverbank, my arms hugged tightly round my upraised knees. Across the calm water I could see my cousin Harry, pacing back and forth along the tree-lined shore of the little island. He wanted to cross, but without the bridge it was impossible.

  “No point in worrying about Harry,” my father said beside me. Smiling, he reached into his pocket and handed me a King John coin. “Here, make a wish.”

  I took the coin from Daddy’s hand, without thinking, and tossed it in the water. It changed, too, as it fell, no longer silver but a diamond, and where it sank the river ran pure red, like blood.

  Alarmed, I looked up at the place where I’d seen Harry, but he wasn’t there. The only person standing on the far shore was a lean tall man with pale blond hair, his eyes fixed sadly on my face. He was trying to tell me something—I could see his lips moving, but the wind stole his voice, and all that reached me was a single word: “Trust…”

  A cold shadow fell across the grass beside me, and I looked up to meet the gentle gaze of the old man François. “Seeing ghosts?” he asked me. Then, incredibly, he raised a violin to his shoulder and began to play Beethoven.

  I opened my eyes.

  One floor below, Neil stopped his practicing a moment, tuned a string, began again. I listened, staring at the ceiling. Ordinarily, I found Beethoven soothing, just the thing to clear my mind of stray and troubling dreams, but this afternoon it proved no help at all.

  At length, I simply shut it out. Closing my eyes to the light, I turned my face against the pillow and felt the unexpected trail of tears.

  Chapter 22

  There moved the multitude, a thousand heads:

  “You’ve got a snail on your sleeve,” Neil pointed out, quite calmly, as if it were an everyday occurrence. I looked down in surprise.

  “So I have. Poor little thing. Making a break for it, that’s what he’s doing.” Gently I detached the clinging creature from the slick material of my windcheater. I ought to have put him back in the bucket with the others, I suppose, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead I closed my fingers softly round the snail and wandered on, away from the fishmonger’s stall. The noisy Thursday market crowd pressed in on all sides, but Neil managed to stay close by my shoulder.

  “Thief,” he said, grinning.

  “I’m not stealing him, I’m liberating him,” was my stubborn reply. “Bravery should be rewarded.”

  “Well, I’d hardly think that chap back there with the tattoo and the cleaver would agree with you. He’s charging a good penny for his escargots.”

  I shrugged. “Plenty more in the bucket. Do you see a planter anywhere about?”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I can’t put him down here, now can I?” I explained, patiently. “He’d be trodden on.”

  Neil sent me a lopsided smile and lifted his eyes to look over my head. “Would a flower pot do?” he asked. “There’s a flower seller over there, by the fountain.”

  The fountain square was not so crowded, and one of the benches was actually free. Neil sat down with a grateful sigh while I set free my pilfered snail among the potted geraniums.

  I was rather glad myself to be out of the crush for a moment. For all its festive fun and color, the market was a confusing sort of place, with everybody jostling and disagreeing over the price of a bolt of calico or a hunk of cheese, and children coming loose from their parents and being chased down with a stern warning not to wander off again, and the vendors themselves doing everything short of a strip-tease to make one stop beneath the bright striped awnings and take notice.

  Some of the vendors had gone high tech. With microphones shoved down their shirt-fronts they kept their running patter up and drowned the ragged voices of their neighbors, while from every corner of the Place du General de Gaulle came blaring music, blending like a weird discordant symphony by some off-beat composer.

  I didn’t mind the noise—it was the crowd that was a nuisance. We’d started off in company with Simon and Paul, only to lose them several minutes later. I’d tried myself to lose Neil, once or twice, but it hadn’t worked. He was tall enough to see above the milling heads, and my bright blue jumper made me easy to spot. And, to be honest, I hadn’t really tried that hard.

  “I must be getting old,” said Neil. “I haven’t the stamina for market day that I once had.”

  “I know what you mean.” I turned, leaning against the bench, and found him watching me. The strong midday sun caught him full in the eyes, making them glow a strange iridescent blue before he narrowed them in reflex.

  “How many pets do you have, back in England?”

  I stared at hi
m. “Not a one. Why?”

  “I just wondered. Animals do seem to follow you about, don’t they? First the cat, and now a snail.” Again the brief and tilting smile. “I’d have thought your house would be stuffed to the rafters with strays.”

  I shook my head. “No, there’s only me.”

  “I saw your cat last night, by the way, when I went for my walk. Quite an adventurous chap, isn’t he? He’d gone clear across the bridge to the other side of the river, the Quai Danton.”

  I heard the hint of admiration in his tone, and glanced up sideways, struck by a sudden thought. “I don’t suppose you ever adopt strays, yourself…?”

  Neil intercepted my look with knowing eyes. “Much as I’m sure your little friend would enjoy the train ride back to Austria, I’m afraid I couldn’t take him. My landlady doesn’t allow pets.”

  I’d been tempted to take the cat home with me to England, only it wouldn’t be fair to put him through the quarantine. I thought of winter coming on, and sighed. “He ought to live in Rome,” I said. “They have whole colonies of cats there, running wild, with women to feed them.”

  “That reminds me,” Neil said, shifting on the bench to dig one hand into the pocket of his jeans. “I’ve got a present for you.”

  I blinked at him. “A what?”

  “A present. I meant to give it to you at breakfast, but Garland trapped me at my table…” He dug deeper, frowning slightly. “Don’t tell me I’ve bloody lost it, after all that… no, there it is.” His face cleared, and he drew the whatever-it-was from his pocket.

  It didn’t look like anything, at first—I only saw his hand stretched out toward me. And then his fingers moved, and a disc of bright metal glinted between them, and he dropped the coin into my upraised palm.

  It was the size of a tuppence but twice as thick, with a gold-colored center surrounded by an outer ring of silver. Absently I rubbed my thumb across the bit of braille close to the coin’s edge. “It’s Italian,” I said, faintly puzzled.