The Museum of Broken Promises Read online

  What are you doing? I stopped myself from crying out. Why are you doing this when you have me?

  It was impossible to forget the poisonous wave that had crashed onto me the day Jenna told me it was over and she was going to marry Ned. Impossible. Jenna cried at my reaction and I became hysterical, which frightened her. She begged me to let her go. After hours of torment, I gave in. ‘Go,’ I told her. ‘I never want to speak to you again.’

  That didn’t last for long.

  My own reflection lurked in the mirror behind Jenna’s. My dress was hanging in the flat. It was of the palest grey and a bouquet of blush pink roses had been chosen to go with it. As chief bridesmaid, I would bring up the rear of the procession.

  What was I thinking?

  The assistant was divesting her of the veil and the dress. I registered Jenna’s too-loose engagement ring and a bra strap that was beginning to fray. Those were details for me to notice, not him, and I hugged them to me fiercely.

  Jealousy is a vile thing. On one hand, I relished its savagery but, equally, I hated being in its grip because it denied me control. I went to see someone about it. Yatter, yatter. The only thing he did (apart from issuing the bill) was to nod and say nothing. The consequence? Everything I did was infected by it.

  The assistant retired to the till, which was discreetly hidden behind another curtain – anything to do with money in these sickly emporiums was always disguised. Jenna got dressed in her jeans and T-shirt. I reached over to help and she flinched away. ‘Don’t.’

  She was crying.

  ‘You should be happy,’ I hissed at her.

  She bent over to lace up her trainers. ‘What have I done, Rosie?’

  ‘You’re a fraud and I should be shouting it from the rooftops.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  She refused to look at me.

  At that moment, the penny dropped. Jenna wanted me to tell her groom that she did not love him. She wanted me to do the dirty work.

  She didn’t say it… oh no, she wasn’t going to say it… but I knew.

  Yes, I knew Jenna was a coward who would be happy to ruin her life, Ned’s life and mine because she dared not to say anything.

  Guess what I did?

  ‘A variant on the traditional love triangle, then,’ said May, returning to the letter. ‘“When she wore this veil, my wife promised to love me but she lied. She loved someone else and that someone was her bridesmaid who wrote this disgusting rubbish.”’ She folded it up and replaced it in the envelope. ‘Has the museum ever been sued for libel?’

  ‘It’s always a possibility but we work closely with the lawyers.’ Laure lifted the veil out of the box. Delicate and almost weightless, it was spume drifting over her outstretched arms. On examination, what was clearly a bite mark – pink and lipsticky – revealed itself at the hem.

  ‘Whoa,’ said May. ‘Can I take a photo?’

  ‘No.’

  May peered at it. ‘How full of rage and hatred must you be to bite a wedding veil?’

  Nic sounded shell-shocked. ‘I’m not surprised he used a green marker.’

  At the museum entrance, Jean-Paul manned the ticket counter. Laure introduced him to May and explained that Jean-Paul was halfway through a curating degree and came in to the museum for practical experience. He and Chantal did alternate weeks. ‘The stagiaires as they are called, are unpaid, but we fund their expenses.’

  Jean-Paul’s expression was enigmatic.

  May turned large eyes on him. ‘Does curating have a future in France?’

  ‘Yes, the government is supportive,’ replied Jean-Luc.

  May switched on the smile which could blind at a thousand paces. ‘How lucky you are. Back home, we are forced to rely on rich individuals.’

  A group of women, all wearing identical green plastic macs, filed in through the entrance and Jean-Luc’s attention was diverted. Laure asked May if she wanted to see her install the bridal veil which she had earmarked for Room 2.

  ‘I get it,’ said May on entering and surveying the display. ‘The theme is clothing.’

  One wall of the room was taken up by a full-sized display case, approximately six foot by twelve.

  There was a plain white T-shirt on which was printed ‘Iron Maiden’. The positioning of the transfer, however, had been imprecise and the ‘I’ was lost under the armpit. At a quick glance the legend read: ‘ron Maiden’.

  ‘Ron Maiden?’

  ‘I’ve a soft spot for him,’ said Laure. ‘He makes me laugh.’

  ‘He sounds a loser.’

  ‘Apparently he was.’ Laure pointed to the label and May read out. ‘He couldn’t even get the T-shirt correct.’

  Laure wrestled with the lock to the cabinet. ‘Pass over the veil.’

  Laure worked at arranging it and made sure that the bite mark was evident. May took a tour of the objects in the cases and halted in front of the cabinet by the door. ‘A puppet?’

  Laure tugged at the final fold of netting, arranged the label and backed out of the cabinet. Standing back, she assessed her handiwork. Draped and folded, the layers of white netting projected an intense aura. ‘It’s a marionette, actually.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Marionettes always have strings and are manipulated from above, puppets don’t.’ She glanced at May. ‘Hand puppets. Glove puppets.’

  ‘Tell me about this one.’

  ‘Marenka? She comes from a Czech marionette theatre. The Marenkas were used for the ingenue parts, including Sleeping Beauty.’ Laure did not need to check up on her for she knew her contours and jointed crevices as well as the lines on her hand. Every painted, rattling inch of her.

  ‘She’s quite a girl,’ observed May. ‘She sort of… sort of dominates.’

  It was true. Dressed in a calico gown with an intricately patterned lace veil thrown over her head from which a brown plait hung down behind, Marenka dominated the back of the display cabinet and demanded attention. Look at me. Properly. I connect with your deepest, darkest fears. I feed your hungry imagination.

  May took a step back. ‘Creepy?’

  ‘You get used to her.’ Laure pointed to a space between the windows. ‘When she first came, we hung her on the wall over there, which is the traditional way. But if a draught caught her, she clacked. Chantal and others found it a bit disconcerting. I did, too, I suppose.’ She smiled. ‘Banished to the display case, she has to behave.’

  ‘Can I touch her? Please?’

  Laure unlocked the cabinet and, reaching inside, May nudged Marenka who, obediently, shook out her limbs.

  Laure closed her eyes in the face of the inevitable deep, dark dive into a memory. Shadows licking up and down pocked and peeling walls. Her friend, Milos, working calmly away on their strings and talking to one of his marionettes who he treated like family. Like his children.

  ‘I deny absolutely that I come from a bourgeois background,’ Spejbl had said to Milos.

  ‘But Spejbl,’ countered Milos severely, ‘your father was a well-known shop owner.’ He glanced at Laure. ‘You mustn’t tell lies in front of visitors.’

  The click of wooden joints. The acrid sweat of puppeteers working furiously under the theatre’s unreliable lights… these were filed away, as sharp and pungent as they ever were.

  She opened her eyes. ‘I used to work in a Prague marionette theatre. I think I mentioned. Before the revolution when things were difficult.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I had a friend at the marionette theatre. He said—’

  He said. Laure checked herself. She must always give Milos his name because the State would have tried to make him vanish and, God forbid, may have succeeded. Because he was her friend.

  Milos had said: ‘Please don’t forget what we do here.’

  May waited for Laure to finish the sentence. Laure shrugged. ‘I can’t remember what he, Milos, said.’

  ‘Did Milos give her to you?’

  ‘Actually, he didn’t. As it
turned out, someone else gave her to me. Many years later.’

  May gave Laure space to elaborate but she didn’t.

  ‘She looks world-weary. As if she’s seen too much,’ said May.

  ‘You may be right.’

  May slotted a finger under the marionette’s arm and raised it in a Nazi salute. ‘Marenka, I must ask you on behalf of women everywhere who know about you. Did it work out well?’

  Laure watched. ‘She won’t tell you. She’s taken a vow of silence.’

  ‘That fits. Nobody wants to admit to having been taken for a great, big ride. You could answer for her, Laure. You could tell me.’

  Laure bit her lip and turned away. Resolved as she might be, the questioning got under her skin. ‘Not really qualified,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Really.’

  May was sceptical. ‘Whoa. I’ve just dived up a cul-de-sac. Right? Can I look under her veil?’

  ‘If you must.’

  The lace was exquisite and too good for a marionette. Easing it back, May peered at Marenka’s face. ‘How odd. One eye is blue, one green. Did they run out of paint?’

  ‘Getting hold of paint was always a problem. You had to take what you could get.’

  ‘It would have been easy enough to mix?’

  ‘True. But not everything was as straightforward as that.’

  May was not in on the secrets but the mismatched eyes conveyed the message to anyone who understood: not everyone thinks the same.

  May shrugged. ‘Makes me feel a little odd, that’s all.’

  Laure knew those wooden features so well. Intimately. If age had crackled the painted complexion, the scarlet bow lips were still defiant.

  May shot Laure a look from under her lids. ‘How would you describe her?’

  ‘Well,’ began Laure. ‘She’s an innocent.’

  ‘Ah,’ said May.

  ‘But not innocent. Marenka knows things. To look at her, she’s wooden and stiff and, yet, she pulses with life.’ She could hear her voice reflect the excitement she had once felt all those years ago. ‘She’s a marionette but possesses a soul.’ She paused. ‘You might think this rubbish. It isn’t.’

  ‘Go on,’ said May. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’

  ‘Marenka is a bundle of paradoxes. She can be seen for what she is. Or, you, the onlooker, can project an image of yourself onto her.’

  Marenka was Milos’s creation. He was the artist and painted into those odd eyes was the craziness and despair of how it had been.

  ‘Does she have a prince?’

  ‘He hasn’t shown up yet,’ said Laure. ‘She’s still waiting.’

  ‘Same old story,’ said May. ‘In my experience, they rarely do.’ She lowered the veil over Beauty’s face and backed out of the cabinet. ‘You said you never had two of anything. Shouldn’t Marenka lose her veil now you’ve put the other one in? If you follow your own rules, I mean.’

  ‘No,’ replied Laure, more sharply than she intended.

  ‘The eyes are weird,’ May said. ‘Haunting in their way. So, the marionette theatre. What happened to it?’

  ‘Politics,’ answered Laure. ‘The company always hoped to perform in Paris but never made it because they weren’t allowed to leave Czechoslovakia. Anyway, they got into trouble with the communist authorities. As I mentioned, it was years later that I was given Marenka.’

  May peered at the now drooping marionette at the back of the cabinet. ‘“Politics made it impossible to keep our promise,”’ she read out from the label. She shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘Are you ever surprised by what you learn here?’

  ‘All the time. These objects invite you to the edge of an abyss and urge you to look over.’

  CHAPTER 9

  Prague, 1986

  WAS IT NORMAL, WHAT SHE HAD SEEN IN THE KOBES’ bedroom?

  She pondered over it. Perhaps it had been about power – as she now realized her disastrous coupling with Rob Dance had partially been about.

  Forget Rob.

  Had it been a sex game? Was Petr abusing his wife? In the daytime, Eva frequently called him ‘darling’. In the light of what she had seen, what did it mean? Back home, she read about terrible things that happened to some women in the papers but, having examined her scanty knowledge of what was what in the sexual department, she failed to reach enlightenment.

  Whatever the explanation, Petr Kobes could not have been more pleasant or more anxious to help Laure to find her feet. But, it was unsettling not knowing whether to giggle or recoil over the contrast between the man who ensured that the strap on her rucksack was mended and the man who indulged in disturbing and messy acts in his bedroom.

  Neither Jan nor Maria slept well in the heat, with the result that they were often fretful by the afternoons and keeping them on an even keel tested Laure’s basic childcare skills. She considered encouraging them to make a model village (something she had loved doing) but there was no cardboard or paints to be had. Card games were more successful but they had their limits.

  During the day, they went for walks, sometimes to seek shade down by the river, sometimes up into the orchards and woodlands of Petřín Hill. The days were spent aimlessly and lacked routine. Jan frequently asked when they were going home to Paris and Laure promised to find out from his mother.

  It was laundry day. Maria was having her post-lunch rest and Jan had been dispatched to his room with orders to read a book. Outside, the sun pulsed brazen yellow.

  An ironing board had been set up in the utility room where clean washing was stacked. Eva sat at the window with her sewing box, mending a tear in Maria’s yellow cotton dress (purchased in Paris) and Laure tackled the ironing. An aroma of hot, clean clothes and starch filled the room.

  Laure had considered anxiously what she was going to say. She put down the iron. ‘Jan is worried that you won’t be returning to Paris.’

  Eva’s expression revealed nothing. Her stitching was painful to watch. In with the needle, a prolonged tug, out the other side, an inept pull of thread. ‘Is he now?’ she replied.

  As she spread one of Jan’s shirts over the ironing board, Laure said, ‘The children see themselves as French.’

  ‘Don’t ever say that.’ Eva’s head snapped up. ‘They are good Czechs. Good socialists. You don’t know anything about it.’ She savaged the thread with her teeth and thrust the mended dress at Eva. ‘When you’ve ironed this, put it away. Maria mustn’t wear it here.’

  Laure happened to know that it was Maria’s favourite dress but didn’t say anything. The rebuff stung. For the first time, she wondered if she had been too hasty in agreeing to come to Prague. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. It’s just they talk about Paris a lot. They miss the park and their friends.’

  Eva lowered her voice as if the walls might be listening in. ‘Jan and Maria are Czech. Not Slovak, mind you, Czech. Their home is here. They must understand that and so must you.’

  Laure was not sure that she did. Folding up the offending dress, she fell silent.

  At the end of Laure’s second week in Prague, the Kobes family were slated to attend a lunch to honour a delegation of railwaymen from the north of England. As an English speaker, Laure was also to attend.

  Having got ready in an aquamarine sleeveless dress, Eva appeared troubled by the idea of the outing. Her lipstick was dark orange but there was a pale line around her lips. ‘I warn you, it will be boring,’ she said.

  Petr hushed his wife. He focused on Laure with that trick that he had of making her feel that she was only person in the world. ‘I will make every effort to ensure that you enjoy yourself.’

  The hall hired for the event was so large that the fifty or so guests were dwarfed by its brick bleakness. The top table, the only one with the luxury of a tablecloth, was arranged at right angles to several trestle tables and had a microphone clipped to the edge. Whenever the microphone hiccupped, the electrician slapped down his beer glass and headed at speed over to it.

  Trussed up in sui
ts, the railway delegation looked dazed. Some had brought their over-heated wives, most of whom wore frocks more suitable for a Scottish winter than a Prague summer. They were being introduced to the Party wives who, as a group, had a tendency to bottle-yellow hair and very thin eyebrows.

  Laure was seated between Jan and Maria at one of the trestles which had been magnificently laid with paper napkins and metal plates. Placed on each setting was a badge embossed with images of Lenin, Stalin and the Czech flag. To reinforce the solemnity of the occasion, pennants in eye-watering yellow and green flew from the water glasses into which they had been stuck and proclaimed in Czech and English: ‘Welcome to our Brothers’.

  Seated opposite Laure were a couple of the railwaymen whose accents triggered a moment of homesickness. Between bouts of coping with the children, she tried to engage them in conversation. They weren’t inclined to be friendly until she informed them in her broadest accent that she was born-and-bred Yorkshire. Relations thawed. ‘Not saying, mind, I approve of your neck of the woods,’ said the older one who had a thin indentation at the back of his head where his cap usually sat.

  Laure did her best to wriggle past their defensiveness. In desperation, she pointed out Eva and Petr on the top table. The younger man whistled. ‘Your employers must be in with the chiefs.’ He cocked a knowing eye. ‘You won’t get nowt unless you have some folk on the inside.’

  Laure was tempted to reply that she had thought the communist doctrine rested on the absolute principle that no one should enjoy privilege over anyone else. Her scepticism must have registered with Bob who added: ‘How do you think we got on this jolly?’

  The food was totally out of whack for such a hot day. Thick meaty soup, a goulash, a plum dessert. There were lashings of it and between the main course and the dessert, there were speeches that proceeded with aching slowness because each sentence had to be translated from Czech to English, or vice versa.

  At the high table, Eva fanned herself with a copy of the chairman’s speech and slumped back in her chair.

  A translator bobbed between Petr and the leader of the railways delegation and looked exhausted. By now, the beer drinking was advanced and it was obvious that most attempts at translation were doomed. Czechs and Brits were letting down what remained of their hair and toasting each other witless.