Birdsong. Part 7

He went to fetch her clothes from the chair where she had left them. "Put your foot here and the other one here. Now stand up. And does this come next? How does this fasten? Let me just straighten this. You're breathing so hard, my love. Was it here that I touched you, was it here?"

Isabelle was half-dressed, half-revealed. She stood holding Stephen's head as he sank to his knees in front of her.

As she began to sigh again, he stood up in front of her and said, "You will come with me, won't you?"

Her answer was hissed between closed teeth.

The front door banged as Azaire made his way down the hall with a copy of the evening paper in his hand.

"Isabelle!" he called. "The strike is finished. The dyers return tomorrow." She appeared at the top of the stairs. "That's good news."

"And tomorrow Meyraux will recommend my new terms to the men."

"I'm very pleased."

At least it meant Azaire would be in a good mood, she thought; he would not persecute her with words or come to her room later to air his frustration.

"And when will you be leaving us, Monsieur?" said Azaire at dinner, pouring a small measure of wine into Stephen's gla.s.s.

"At the end of the week, as we planned."

"Good. It has been interesting for us at the factory, as I was saying to you this morning. I hope you've enjoyed your time with us."

"It has been a pleasure to stay with your charming family." Azaire looked contented. His eyes for once lost their wounded look. The prospect of a return to normal routine in all aspects of his life evidently pleased him. Isabelle saw his relief at Stephen's imminent departure and the end of the strike, but she could not understand how he could so happily contemplate a resumption of his life as it had been. The way he treated her might, at some stretch of his imagination, be viewed as a painful and provisional transition toward a better feeling, but not as a desirable way of behaviour that he was anxious to begin again. She was not frightened of him, but his att.i.tude depressed her. Winters of loneliness stretched out in front of her; if he was content not to change, then she would find deeper isolation in his presence than in her own.

Meanwhile there was Stephen, an alternative she could not consider with any kind of calmness. There was too much danger in her feeling and in the practical details of what they could do. She felt she might avoid the fallibility of her own judgement by depending on his; though he was younger, he seemed sure of what was right.

Lisette had been subdued since the excursion to the river; she no longer enlivened dinner with sulks or suggestive remarks. She would not catch Stephen's eye, though he tried to meet hers with some rea.s.surance. She sat in silence over her food as the sound of the clock on the small marble-topped serving table became louder in the room.

"I heard the strangest story," said Azaire abruptly.

"What was that?" said Isabelle.

"They told me that at the height of the strike someone was visiting little Lucien and was taking him parcels of food to give to the dyers' families."

"Yes, I heard that," said Stephen. "A number of sympathetic people in the town helped the strikers. There was one man in particular who wanted to be anonymous. So I was told at the factory."

"Oh dear me no," said Azaire. "This wasn't a man, this was a woman, "The strikers had help from many sources, I expect."

"But the strangest thing about this woman was that she was married to the owner of a factory." Azaire paused and looked round the table. Neither of the children were listening. Isabelle was motionless.

"Now isn't that a strange thing?" said Azaire raising his gla.s.s to his lips. "I couldn't believe it when I heard it."

"I don't think it's strange," said Isabelle. "It was me." Stephen looked at her uncomprehendingly. Azaire replaced his wine gla.s.s heavily on the table.

"But my dear--"

"I took them food because they were hungry. I had no idea of whether they should be on strike or not, but I had seen their children asking for bread, running along behind the carts bringing in vegetables to the market. I had seen them going through the dustbins in Saint Leu and I felt sorry for them."

Isabelle's voice was surprisingly calm. She said, "I would do the same again, whether the people made cloth or shoes or anything else."

Azaire was white; his lips were a shade of pale purple as though even this soft membrane had repelled his blood.

"Leave the room," he said to Lisette. "And you." Gregoire pushed his chair noisily back on the wooden floor, pausing to take a piece of chicken from his plate.

Azaire stood up. "I discounted these rumours. I did not believe them, even though it was your name that was attached to them and I suppose I should have learned about you by now. However wilful and selfish you are I could not believe that you would ever, ever behave toward me in such a way. And you, Monsieur, you had better leave the room."

"No. Let him stay."

"Why? He--"

"Let him stay."

A look of panic pa.s.sed over Azaire's face. He tried to speak, but failed. He drank again from his gla.s.s. His imagination seemed to be supplying more appalling possibilities than his previously controlled and teasing anger could admit. He struggled towards the worst question. He began it, "You...?" He looked at Stephen, then down at the table. His courage visibly failed him. He fought with himself, then regained control by resuming his previous manner.

"I did not believe my wife could let me down in such a way. The further reason I would not believe the rumours was that there was another piece of t.i.ttletattle that went with them, which said that the lady in question was also... " He waved his hand, as though swatting the thought "Not with Lucien," said Isabelle. Azaire's face seemed to collapse. His voice had so pitifully requested a complete dismissal of the rumour that Isabelle's partial denial appeared worse than a confirmation of what he feared.

She saw this and moved to end his uncertainty even if she could not stop his anguish. "Not with Lucien. With Stephen."

Azaire looked up from his seat. "With... him?"

"Yes." Stephen looked evenly back at him. "With me. I pursued your wife .1 seduced her. You must hate me, not her."

He wanted to protect Isabelle as far as he could, though he was astounded to find himself in this position: Isabelle could easily have prevaricated. His slow heart was beating hard. He looked at Azaire, whose jaw had gone loose, causing his mouth to open. There was a dribble of wine on his chin. Stephen pictured the misery from the way it affected the muscles of his face. He felt pity for him. Then, in the interests of preserving something for Isabelle and himself, he hardened his heart. It was an act of almost physical willpower, as he compelled the compa.s.sion to go out of him.

Isabelle was no longer able to be cold toward Azaire. The brief sentences with which she had informed him of her unfaithfulness seemed to have drained her resolve and she began to weep and to apologize to him for what she had done. Stephen listened carefully to what she said. He did not begrudge Azaire his wife's apologies but he did not want her to retreat too far.

Azaire was incapable of saying more than "With him? Here?" Isabelle said, "I'm sorry... so sorry, Rene. I meant you no harm. It is a pa.s.sion for Stephen. It was not done to hurt you."

"This... boy, this English boy? In my house? Where? In your bed?"

"It doesn't matter, Rene. It doesn't matter where."

"It does to me. I want to know. Did you... in which room?"

"For G.o.d's sake," said Stephen.

Azaire sat silently at the table, his hand still clutching the base of his gla.s.s. His mouth dropped open again and he screwed up his eyes in puzzlement, as though looking into a bright sun.

"And your father, Monsieur Fourmentier, what can he do...? What will they say? My G.o.d, my G.o.d."

Isabelle looked at Stephen and there was fear in her eyes. Stephen could see that she had not calculated what effect her sudden honesty would have on her husband. The fear was no doubt partly for Azaire's well-being, but also seemed to be for herself: there was a chance that in the crisis she might lose her resolution and follow some older code of conduct which would compel her to put herself once more at Azaire's mercy.

It made Stephen feel uneasy as he looked at the wreckage of this suddenly precipitated storm. He felt he needed to keep Isabelle's determination in place, but this could not be done if Azaire collapsed completely.

He was muttering to himself: "b.i.t.c.h... Your father told me and I never listened. In my own house. And now my children. What will become of them? b.i.t.c.h."

"Listen." Stephen moved swiftly round the table and took him by the shoulders. "What can you expect from a woman you have treated as you have treated Isabelle? Did you expect her to humiliate herself for your pleasure, to sit meekly at your table in the knowledge that you would beat her later?" Azaire was rejuvenated. "What did you tell him?"

"It doesn't matter what she told me. This is a house where everything can be heard. How can you sit there and call her names after what you've done to her? This is a woman with her own life and feelings and look what you have done to her. What have you _done?" _He pushed Azaire violently back into his chair. Azaire seemed inspired by Stephen's anger. He stood up and said, "You will leave my house within the hour. If you have any sense you will never let me see you again."

"Certainly I will leave your house," said Stephen. "And I am taking your wife with me. Isabelle?"

"I don't want this." Isabelle shook her head. The words came from her mouth without thought or calculation in their purity of feeling. "I don't know what to do or how to behave now. I could be happy in the simplest way, like any other woman with a family of her own, without this terrible pain I've caused. I won't listen to either of you. Why should I? How do I know that you love me, Stephen? How can I tell?" Her voice fell to the low, soft note Stephen had heard when she spoke on his first evening in the house. It was a beautiful sound to his ears: pleading and vulnerable, but with a sense of strength in its own Tightness. "And you, Rene, why should I trust you when you have given me so little reason even to like you?" Both men watched her in silence. Stephen believed in the strength of feeling between them, and believed it would persuade her.

Isabelle said, "This is not a situation anyone can be prepared for. Nothing I have learned in religion, or from my family or my own thoughts is any help to me. I won't be painted as some sort of wh.o.r.e by you, Rene. I'm a frightened woman, no more than that--not an adulterer, or a harlot or anything else. I'm just the same person I ever was, but you never took the trouble to find out what that was."

"Forgive me, I--"

"Yes, I do forgive you. I forgive you any wrong you've done me and I ask you to forgive me the wrong I've certainly done to you. I am going upstairs to pack." She left the room with a rustle of her skirt and a barely discernible trace of roses.

"You go with him," Azaire shouted after her, "and you are going to h.e.l.l!" Stephen turned and left the room, trying to still the exultation of his heart. Isabelle placed the framed photograph of Jeanne on top of the clothes she had piled in her case. She paused for a moment, then added the family group with her parents in their Sunday best, Mathilde, dark-haired and womanly on her father's right hand, herself, a little fair-haired child on her mother's left, with Delphine, Jeanne, and Beatrice standing behind. The photograph had been taken in a park in Rouen; among the plane trees in the background an oblivious couple were strolling over the gravel. In the foreground at her father's feet was the Fourmentiers' small white dog.

She looked into the staring face of her father, the eyes dark and remote above the thick moustache. How hard he would find it to understand what she was doing, she thought. How little he had ever tried.

She packed two dresses and the blouse with the dogtoothed edging. She would need more practical clothes for travelling: a coat, and shoes she could walk in. Presumably she could send for others when they arrived wherever they were going.

Isabelle did not pause for thought. She wanted to be out of the house, alone with Stephen, before the certainty deserted her and she began to consider the practical details.

She heard footsteps in the corridor leading to her room and turned to see Stephen in the doorway. She ran to him and he held her close against his chest.

"You are a wonderful woman," he said.

"What shall I say to the children?"

"Say good-bye to them. Tell them you'll write."

"No." Isabelle stepped back from him and shook her head. Tears flowed from her eyes. "I have done wrong to them. I can't pretend otherwise. I must just leave them."

"No good-byes?"

"No. Quickly, Stephen. We must go. I'm ready to leave."

"Wait here. I must get my papers."

As Stephen ran up the stairs to his room he heard the sound of a woman's voice shouting and sobbing on the floor below. There came the noise of a door slamming and he heard Gregoire's voice asking what was going on. He threw his pa.s.sport, his notebooks, work reports, razor, and a change of clothes into a small leather bag. As he descended to the first landing, he saw Lisette standing in her nightgown outside her bedroom. She looked pale and shocked.

"What's happening?" she said. "Why is everyone shouting?" Stephen felt a rush of pity for the girl. He turned speechlessly from her and ran to Isabelle's room. She had put on a coat and a green hat with a feather. She looked touchingly young.

"All right?" said Stephen. "Shall we go?"

She took his hand between hers and looked up into his grave face. She smiled and nodded as she picked up her case.

Each s.p.a.ce and unexpected corridor beneath the plunging roof with its conflicting angles was alive with voices and the sound of feet, heavy, hesitant, running or turning back. The door to the kitchen banged and rolled repeatedly on its hinges as Marguerite and the cook shuttled back and forth to the dining room under the pretext of clearing dinner, then lingered, listening, in the hallway. At the top of the stairs Stephen appeared with his arm round Isabelle, guiding her past the stricken looks and questions.

"To h.e.l.l," Azaire repeated from the doorway of the sitting room. Isabelle felt the pressure of Stephen's hand on the small of her back as they pa.s.sed. She turned on the threshold of the house and saw the pale figure of Lisette at the bend of the stairs. She shuddered, and led Stephen out into the night. Back inside the house, Azaire ordered the children to wait on the landing while he went to Isabelle's room. He pulled back the cover on the bed and looked at the sheets. He ran his hands over them. They were clean, starched, barely touched by the weight of his wife's body. He went upstairs to his lodger's room and ripped back the blanket. The narrow bed was more disarrayed than Isabelle's, as though Stephen had slept less soundly or the maid had spent less time making it, but it bore no signs of the adultery: the sheets were clean, with the ridge of the crease running neatly up the centre.

Azaire went back to the first floor and began to go through each room in turn. He raged with a desire to see the filth and shame of what they had done to him. He wanted to see the marks of his wife's betrayal, the stains of her degradation. In the midst of his anger and his humiliation, he noted the return of a low urge he had not felt for many months.

Gregoire stood terrified on the landing as his father scrutinized his bed. Lisette clutched her brother's hand as they watched the wretched emotions of adulthood. Azaire held the sheets from Marguerite's bed up to the light, believing he had seen a mark, but it was no more than beeswax or polish from her hand where she had not washed properly. He ran his fingers over the linen in the guest rooms and laid his head on it, inhaling deeply. There was only the smell of camphor. Eventually he stood defeated and flushed beneath the light at the top of the stairs. The doors to all the rooms stood open, their beds uselessly wrecked. Azaire was breathing heavily. In his haste and rage he had not thought of the red room. He had forgotten the narrow corridor with its plain wooden boards that doubled back from the garden side of the house toward the back stairs. Since he had first bought the house he had had no cause to visit it, had never in fact seen its finished shape, such as it was, after it had been cleared of the previous owners' unwanted belongings and modestly redecorated by Isabelle. It was a place he had not refound, but which had stayed, as Stephen had feared it might for him, beyond the reach of memory.

Stephen sat opposite Isabelle in the train going south towards Soissons and Reims. He felt the simple elation of his victory, the fact that it was he who had won, who had persuaded Isabelle against the weight of convention and sound argument to do the difficult and dangerous thing. And there was the deeper happiness of being with this woman, whom he loved, and the undeniable evidence, for the first time, that she was his. Isabelle smiled, then shook her head incredulously from side to side with closed eyes. When she opened them again they had a look of resignation.

"What will they say? What will he say to Berard and to his friends?" Her voice was intrigued but not anxious.

"It's not the first time a wife has left her husband." Stephen had no idea what Azaire would say, but he did not feel inclined to imagine. He felt it was important that he and Isabelle concentrate on themselves.

The train was the last of the evening, so they had had little choice of destination. At the station Isabelle had wrapped a shawl over her face, fearing recognition as she clambered on to the train. As it made its way south over the flat landscape, she relaxed; there might be years of regret, but the prospect of immediate drama and reverse had gone.

The train stopped at a dimly lit station and they looked out of the window at a porter unloading mail and pushing a trolley full of boxes to a wooden building that gave on to the empty stockyard. The man's face showed pale in the darkness. Behind him was the ordered black swell of a street, leading uphill into a town where the occasional yellow light showed hazily from behind curtains and shutters. The train shrugged and clanked out of the station and made its way south through the tranquil night. The summer was almost at an end and there was an edge of cold to the air. To the east was the forest of Ardennes, and beyond it the Rhine. After a stop at Reims they followed the line of the Marne through Joinville. Occasionally the gloomy river would be caught by moonlight when the railway traveled alongside before retaking its own course through cuttings and embankments whose high sides enclosed it in darkness.

As they moved south, Isabelle came and sat next to Stephen, resting her head against his body. The rolling motion of the train made her eyes heavy; she slept as it picked out its set course, nosing its way to where the Marne joined the river Meuse, whose course linked Sedan to Verdun--a flat, unargued path through the lowlands of her native country.

She dreamed of pale faces beneath rose-coloured lights; Lisette at the corner of the stairs, the bloodless features in the red glow, a lost girl, and others like her caught in some repeated loop of time, its pattern enforced by the rhythmic motion of the train; many white-skinned faces with dark eyes, staring in disbelief. They stayed in a hotel in the spa town of Plombieres. It was a grey building with wrought-iron balconies and thick ivy. Their room was on the first floor; it overlooked a damp garden with a broken summerhouse and a number of outsized cedar trees. Behind the wall at the far end were the baths themselves, whose waters were held to have curative properties for people with rheumatism, chest complaints, and certain diseases of the blood. There were a dozen or so other residents in the hotel, mostly old couples, who ate in the ornate dining room. For the first three days Stephen and Isabelle barely left their room. Isabelle was tired by the journey and the strain of what she had done. She slept in the large wooden bed with its boatshaped ends, and Stephen would sit beside her for hours, reading a book, smoking a cigarette, or standing on the balcony, looking over the peaceful little spa. A shy maid left trays outside their door at dinnertime and hurried back along the pa.s.sageway. On the third day Stephen went down to the dining room on his own, and sat by the window that overlooked the square. The owner of the hotel brought him a menu.

"Is Madame your wife quite well?" he asked.

"Quite well, thank you. Just a little tired. I expect she'll come down tomorrow." Various residents nodded their greetings to Stephen as they took their places at table. He smiled back and drank from the bottle of wine he had ordered. A waiter brought fish in a heavy cream sauce. Stephen drank again and let himself slip into the tranquil atmosphere of this foreign world: nothing, he imagined, had changed for years in the ordered routine of the hotel, in the thin air or the rich food that was based on recipes from the eighteenth century, or in the probably imaginary qualities of the waters and the genteel, restrictive lives their presumed properties had supported in the town.

On the fourth day Isabelle ventured out with him for a walk. She took his arm like a long-married wife as they explored the streets, sat for a time in an almost gra.s.sless park, and drank coffee in a square opposite the boys' school. Stephen was endlessly curious. He asked Isabelle to describe her early life in the smallest detail; he never seemed to tire of stories of her days in Rouen.

"Tell me more about Jeanne."

"I've told you everything I can think of. Now you tell me how you came to be in this place, this inst.i.tution."

Stephen exhaled slowly. "There's not much to tell. My father worked for the post office in a flat part of England called Lincolnshire. My mother worked in a factory. They were not married, and when she became pregnant he disappeared. I never met him. From what I heard of him later he seemed an ordinary man, someone who took what he could find and preferred not to pay for it."

"Is that what you think is ordinary?"

"It's how people live. My father probably had some charm, though he was not a handsome man, not what you would think of as a seducer. He was just a man who liked women and I should think I have half brothers and sisters in England, though I've never met them. My mother left the factory and went back to live with her parents, who worked in a village. Her father was a farm labourer. My mother eventually got a job in service, as a maid in a big house. Like Marguerite." Isabelle watched Stephen's expression as he spoke. There seemed to be no emotion in his voice, though the line of his jaw had tightened a little.

"But my mother was not a strong character either. When I was a small child I wanted her to prove herself independent of my father, so that he could be dismissed from our minds. In fact she got pregnant again, by someone who worked at the house. She was fond of me but never looked after me much. I was brought up by my grandfather, who taught me to fish and catch rabbits. I was a real farm boy. He also taught me how to steal and how to fight. He was quite young, still in his fifties, and very fit. He regarded it as proper that any labouring man should augment his income in whatever way he could. He would have bare-knuckle fights for money, if enough was offered, and he stole from the larger houses in the district. Mostly food or animals he'd trapped.

"My mother went off with the man she'd met at the house. I heard that they went away to Scotland. Soon after this my grandfather was arrested on some small charge and was sent to prison. Part of his defence was that he needed to stay at home to look after me. The court ordered that I should be taken into a home in the local town, since he was not fit to be my guardian. I'd been quite happy running wild, living with my grandmother, and the next thing I was dressed in a sort of tunic and set to work scrubbing floors and tables in this huge brick building. We had to do lessons as well, something I hadn't done before.

"There are things I remember about the place that will be with me even on the day I die. The smell of the soap that we used to clean the floors and the feel of the uniform against the skin. I remember the big room with a ceiling that was so high it was almost lost to view and the long tables we ate from. I'd been happy enough with my grandmother. I'd never seen so many people in one place before and it seemed to me each one of us was diminished by it. I had feelings of panic when we sat there, as though we were all being reduced to numbers, to ranks of nameless people who were not valued in the eyes of another individual.

"Those of us who had family or people to see were allowed out from time to time. I would spend the day with my grandparents. He was back from prison by now. One day I had a fight with a local boy, and I hurt him much more than I meant to. I can't remember who started the fight or what it was about. It was probably my fault. I remember seeing him sink to the ground and wondering what I had done.

"His parents called the police and there was a fuss. I was sent back to the home because I was too young to stand trial. The incident was reported in the local paper and a man I had never heard of called Vaughan must have read about it. My grandmother was excited because this man was rich and said he wanted to help. He came to see me in the home and talked to me for a long time. He was convinced I was clever and needed to be given a chance to improve myself. He asked if I was willing to let him be appointed my guardian by the court. I'd have done anything to escape from the inst.i.tution, and my grandparents were happy for someone else to take the responsibility.

"It took a year for all the legal things to be gone through. He was quite well known locally. He'd been a magistrate, but hadn't married or had children himself. He insisted that I go to school during the day and he taught me himself in the evenings. I lived in his house and he somehow procured me a place in the grammar school."

"What's that?"

"A school where they teach you Latin and Greek and history. And how to use a knife and fork."

"Didn't you know how to before?"