The Museum of Broken Promises Read online

  ‘Will you be all right?’ she asked. He shrugged, and she added, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What use is that?’ said Odile, breaking free from her husband and making for the street. ‘You can say sorry till your tongue drops out, it doesn’t change things. It doesn’t bring the dead back.’

  Yves cast an apologetic glance at Laure and went after his wife.

  Laure turned to go back in.

  ‘You’re Laure Carlyle, the curator, right?’

  Laure was accosted by a tall, Nordically fair girl in dark glasses but her accent suggested she was an American from the South. Tennessee? Georgia?

  Normally, the museum staff shielded her from the madder and more extreme petitioners. But the girl looked sane. And energetic. She also looked as though she wasn’t acquainted with fear.

  Buttonholing obviously came naturally to whoever this was for she continued, ‘I’m a freelance journalist over in Paris working on stories. I heard about your museum and I would love to talk to you about it.’ She searched in a black neoprene rucksack and thrust a card at Laure. ‘I’ve just spent time here. It’s special. It needs to be written about. You need to be written about.’ She added, ‘I do all the grunt work, so you needn’t worry. You just have to talk.’

  This was not unusual. The museum had gained footfall and traction in the guidebooks and the press. Journalists were intrigued by the concept and the location – oh, it’s in Paris! There was a hum about it on social media. Even Newsweek had made an overture in an email: ‘We will put you on the map’.

  ‘I rarely give interviews.’ Laure pocketed the card without looking at it.

  ‘I googled you,’ the girl said, and Laure bristled. As she always did. ‘You gave an interview to an Italian magazine a few months ago. Might it be time for another?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I have a big contact at Vanity Fair,’ says the girl. ‘It would be red meat for them.’

  Carrot. Dangled.

  This girl was on the make. Working her way into a career. She’ll take risks, lie a little. Or, bend the truth. Laure had clashed with the type often. ‘Please don’t think this is unkind, but no.’

  ‘Not unkind, but protective perhaps?’ Far from taking the flat refusal, the girl remained polite, charming and persistent. ‘This place needs to be known. It helps people?’

  This was true. ‘It does.’

  ‘If I had set up this place, it would be because I have something in my past to exorcise. What do you reckon?’

  The question was clumsily put, transparently ambitious, but smart.

  ‘You’d be wrong.’ Laure gave no hint of her dismay and made for the entrance. ‘I have to get back to work.’

  At the door, she looked back over her shoulder.

  Chantal had returned to the entrance desk. She looked up at Laure. ‘Quelle scène.’ She had the half-fascinated, half-appalled expression on her face that Laure had seen before. ‘Nic reckons she was a bit mad.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Laure placed a foot on the first stair. ‘Back to normal upstairs?’

  ‘They all wanted to know who was killing whom and why.’ Chantal’s smile revealed very even teeth. ‘It’s made the visit for them. They’ll tell everybody about it and we’ll have double the numbers tomorrow.’ She gestured to the revolving stand with the postcards. ‘We never know what happens in the end.’

  ‘No,’ said Laure. ‘But that’s the point.’

  ‘Dommage.’ Chantal stuck her head on one side. ‘You all right?’

  Chantal’s purple hair and piercings did an excellent job of disguising her motherly nature and she was hoping Laure would admit that she wasn’t because it would give her permission to fuss over her boss.

  ‘You’re a treasure, Chantal, but I’m fine.’

  ‘People…’ She fiddled with one of her several ear studs. ‘They think they can sound off anywhere.’

  ‘No, they think they can sound off in here. And that’s fine. Absolutely fine.’

  Laure went upstairs to check over the rooms. Rooms 3 and 4 were crowded with visitors which always added an air of excitement. A large group of Japanese tourists wearing orange baseball hats were being shepherded through Rooms 6 and 7. Laure stepped aside to let them pass. Most of them ignored her and surged through the doorways, blind to anything but their determination to reach the end.

  Room 5 was empty and the two videos on screens at either end of the room rolled on a continual loop. The first was of a walled garden. The first shots were of it under snow, with a frozen gallery of trees and bushes flanking a central lawn. The following shots were taken in spring and the starkness had been replaced by blossom and foliage. The summer brought frilled peonies and brazen dahlias in oranges and crimsons. The autumn shots were of berries and the laden apple trees at the far end of the garden.

  The final view was of a garden that was no longer a garden. Instead of a flowerbed blazing with autumn colour and windfall apples servicing punch-drunk wasps, four houses had grown within the walls. Unimaginative creations with plate-glass windows of the variety beloved by out-for-a-quick-profit property developers. These were houses not constructed for beauty or pleasure but to make money. The label underneath this video read: ‘My elder brother promised my parents never to sell the garden. Six months after their death, he did so for a large sum of money. I will never forgive him for destroying this piece of paradise.’

  A couple of years ago, Laure gave a lecture to trainee curators, with an age range from early twenties to early forties, during which she described the second video in Room 5.

  ‘The video is in black and white and shows a small room, furnished with a table and two chairs facing each other. There is no window in the shot. A black Bakelite phone, the squat old-fashioned type with a cumbersome dial and plaited cording, occupies the centre table. The cheap plastic chairs are embossed with cigarette burns, and the floor is of rough planking. There are no indications as to where the room might be.

  ‘The shot is held steady on this mise en scène and the only sound to break the silence is the click of the camera.

  ‘Without warning, the phone shrieks into the silence.’

  She continued. ‘The piece is powerful and disturbing, and the image of the telephone ringing appears to tap into a collective unease that many of us carry. I have watched it many times and, like most onlookers, still jump. Some of the visitors have been known to scream. On the feedback form which we ask visitors to fill in, one of the questions asks them to tell us which object had the most effect on them. A consistent majority pinpoint it.

  ‘We’ve had letters about it asking if it’s a horror film. Or a political one? Or is it just an installation?’

  At this point, she ran the video for the audience.

  ‘The answer is,’ she concluded, looking at the row of expectant faces, ‘the answer is that it combines all these elements which, I would argue, is the mark of a successful exhibit. You will, of course, question how it qualifies for the Museum of Broken Promises?’

  There was a shuffle of expectation and the women – generally it was the women who took notes – in the audience took up their pens.

  ‘I should add that this particular exhibit was sent in anonymously in the early days of the museum’s life and you will understand why when I read the label, which is in French, English and Czech. “From 1948–1989 in Communist Czechoslovakia we were promised employment, peaceful politics decent living standards and no corruption. This is what we got.”’

  By mid-afternoon, Laure was ensconced in the interview room with a cake tin from Room 1 on the table between her and the smiling woman who sat opposite.

  ‘It’s lovely to see you again, Myrna.’

  ‘It’s quite a journey from St Louis,’ Myrna replied, ‘but I had to see you. And to pick this up.’

  The change in her was startling. Three years ago, middle-aged, newly divorced and drained, Myrna had sat in this room crying so hard that Laure fetched a second box of tissues. Today, she was no le
ss faded or unobtrusive, but there had been a sea change: she was tougher-looking, full of humour, resolved on who and what she was. It was very attractive.

  It had been another matter then. Deep and profound weeping, such as Myrna had indulged in, was one way of groping towards an explanation.

  ‘My husband couldn’t understand that I had another life inside my head,’ she explained. ‘When we got married, he promised that he would make it possible for me to paint but he didn’t.’ She gazed over Laure’s shoulder. ‘He went out of his way to make it almost impossible. Then I realized that he didn’t want me to paint because it took attention away from him. He doesn’t want me to paint because he loves me.’

  It was always tempting to pronounce judgment. ‘Never, ever do so’, Laure instructed her team.

  The cake tin was decorated with a series of cartouches, scenes from a domestic life, the first of which showed a woman cooking at a stove. Hovering above was the same woman with permed frizzy hair and a frilled blouse holding a paintbrush filling in a sky of lapis-lazuli blue.

  Each of the cartouches repeated the device of Myrna performing her housewife routines, with the conceit of her alter ego hovering above to create a transcendent or magical scene. Open that tin, Laure remembered thinking, and out would sift broken desires along with the cakes over which Myrna had cried as she baked.

  ‘It was not as though I was overambitious,’ Myrna confessed through the tissues. ‘I just need the peace to do my painting.’ She struggled for composure. ‘I’ve left my husband. The paintings on this tin tell you why.’ Averting her eyes from the tin, she said, ‘There’s an angel cake inside. Pink and white with frosted icing. Enjoy. Please.’ She got to her feet. ‘I love him,’ she said. ‘But it’s not enough.’

  ‘I’ve come to take back the tin,’ Myrna was now saying. ‘He’s begged for forgiveness. He tells me that he now understands. We’re starting over.’

  Possibly, Myrna’s husband had arrived at a new understanding because the beautiful, glowing tin displayed in the museum had brought his wife a small fame and many commissions. No cynic (well, only a touch), Laure was delighted to acknowledge this winning fusion of love, forgiveness and… money.

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she told Myrna, and meant it.

  ‘Would you like to meet him?’ He’s lurking in the street outside.’ Myrna shot Laure a conspiratorial look. ‘Didn’t have the balls, if you know what I mean.’

  This was a day in the life of the Museum of Broken Promises.

  CHAPTER 2

  SHE NEVER ATE BREAKFAST AT HOME BUT, IF THERE WAS time, Laure brewed strong black coffee.

  Her apartment on the second floor of a former warehouse was typical of a modern Parisian conversion: small (some said cramped), the windows were plate glass and the doors MDF. The kitchen only just accommodated a modest oven and fridge and, if the table flap was up, it was a squeeze to get to the sink.

  Apart from the stacked, labelled boxes in the second, tiny cupboard of a bedroom occupying what space there was in it, furniture and trimmings were kept to a notable minimum. Sometimes, there was a vase of flowers, a coat cast onto a chair, a French novel in a yellow dust jacket but, usually, the effect was extreme minimalism.

  Finding anywhere to live in Paris was a nightmare and a flat, however small, was a flat. Admittedly somewhat joyless, the anonymity of the place suited her plus it was only a short walk to work.

  In the courtyard below, Madame Poirier, the concierge, conducted one of her conversations punctuated with explosive syllables. ‘It’s against regulations, monsieur,’ she was saying.

  Which ones this time? Laure wondered. (Madame Poirier’s regulations came and went.) Which monsieur was she bullying? In truth, Madame never shut up, but, like the ugly doors and windows, she was part of a set-up into which Laure had inserted herself. The quasi-bullying, the tiptoeing around the regulations, the irritations were anchors. They were the ingredients of the life she had chosen.

  Having washed up the coffee pot, she put it out to dry on a tea towel spread out over the drainer and checked that the one sharp kitchen knife was back in the drawer. Not content, she reopened the drawer and stuck a cork onto the tip of the knife, just to be sure. Sharp knives made her uneasy.

  She rarely cooked or entertained and possessed only four pieces of good furniture, including the sofa. But hardly anyone ever slumped down into it for a late-night drink or to read the Sunday papers. Sometimes her English friends – including Jane back home in Brympton – commented on how unlived-in it felt.

  Charlie, her younger brother, was more forthright. ‘You could at least unpack the boxes, Laure.’

  ‘They’re fine as it is. I want it light, free from clutter.’

  ‘Most normal people have something. A photo, some books, the chair Granny gave them. You might as well live in an egg box.’

  Laure eyed him. Charlie was not much of a home-bird either and their mutual amusement held more than a tinge of irony. ‘Pot and kettle?’

  ‘The very ones.’

  If it was a modus vivendi which struck the English as odd, the French saw nothing peculiar about it. They were not curious as to how Laure chose to live and, if they wished to eat a meal together, they met at a restaurant.

  Listening to the news with half an ear, she drank her coffee and dried her hair. The meteo predicted 26 degrees at midday and she hoped no higher because her hair would suffer. Dommage. She gave it a final blast from the dryer, threaded drop pearl earrings into her ears and inspected her nail varnish, an exciting dark red that required upkeep. But, the colour of riot and sex, it was worth it.

  She tilted her head at the image in the mirror.

  What she saw in it told her that her efforts had paid off. She had sometimes listened to other women saying how much they hated their looks but she felt that she had been through too much to allow herself to indulge in that. It hobbled the mind. She swept a finger over her cheek. Her skin, of which she was proud, was still clear and youthful-looking. Once upon a time, in another country, Tomas told her that her skin reminded him of mother-of-pearl. Her final act was to apply sun-protection cream before picking up her laptop and handbag and letting herself out of the front door.

  Emerging into the street, she turned canalwards, glancing right and left and scanning the buildings. It was the old habit of ‘dry-cleaning’, the art of shaking off surveillance, that she had never discarded. Or rather, it refused to discard her. She set off and her mobile piped ‘Night Owl’. It was Xavier, her ex-husband. ‘Oui, mon brave.’

  ‘Ma belle.’

  Neither greeting meant anything much. It was the language and tone they had mutually agreed to adopt since parting several years previously. Xavier had remarried and had had the son for which he had longed. So civilized had been the divorce that Marie, the new wife, invited Laure over to dinner from time to time. Possibly to keep an eye on her predecessor?

  ‘If we had loved each other more,’ Xavier once remarked, ‘meeting would be a problem, but it’s not.’

  ‘Strange to think how cut and shut it is now,’ she remembered replying.

  ‘Strange but true. Yet not uncomfortable, I think?’

  ‘No, darling Xavier, not uncomfortable at all.’

  They had stared at each other. Laure could not help thinking, as she sometimes did, that his kindly, worldly regard enshrined the accusation: your heart is arid.

  Traffic sounded in her ear and she deduced Xavier was in the street. A decade of marriage inevitably meant that this and that intelligence about your spouse stuck in the memory and there was a fair bet that he was wearing taupe chinos and the same black jacket he had cherished for years. His hair would be brushed back and, ten to one, he would be squinting into the distance because he was too vain to wear his glasses.

  ‘It’s one of the days I miss you, Laure. And your lovely gooseberry-coloured eyes.’

  She smiled. ‘Me too, Xavier.’ Regret for the failed marriage surfaced more frequently than she owned up to. Xav
ier had his quirks, but he was a principled man and often very funny. ‘But you have a wife.’

  ‘So I do.’

  Knowing that Xavier was still fond of her warmed Laure, picking her way around the rubbish on the street. ‘You will always be half a Brit,’ he once said. ‘However good your French and however long you live here. You need a champion.’

  Rubbish. Laure was more French or, to be accurate, more Parisian than Xavier gave her credit for. ‘J’aime deux choses seulement… vous et la plus belle ville du monde,’ she replied. It was a line from an old and sentimental poem, but it pinpointed her giving of her heart to the city.

  Xavier’s point about championing her was the one that held the real bite. If they had championed each other a little more during their marriage, the outcome might have been different. For that, she blamed herself. Mostly.

  Despite the banter, Xavier never wasted his phone calls. ‘Spotted an article in Figaro about the Louvre lobbying to gather the Museum of Broken Promises into its embrace. Its spokesman argues that the day of the private museum is over. They reckon you and they would be terrific in bed together.’

  ‘Apparently.’ She gave a tiny sigh.

  ‘Pushing the metaphor: the Louvre is a disgusting old roué and you’re but a child bride. It’s the old thing. Money talks and those who have it talk away. How would it fit in with Nos Arts en France?’

  Nos Arts en France was a semi-government body that issued grants for cultural enterprises. Laure had been warned that they were tricky but had found her dealings with them to be straightforward.

  ‘The board of Nos Arts will assess the situation and let me know whether they wish to continue funding the museum. If they do, nothing will change and I’ll be happy.’

  ‘Nos Arts have been generous to you.’

  ‘We could not have survived without them.’

  Xavier became serious. ‘Do you mind if you’re taken over?’