The Museum of Broken Promises Read online

  She looked up in a sky lashed with trails of whipped cream. ‘I shall fight tooth and nail.’

  ‘Chérie, you might not have any choice.’ He sounded regretful. ‘You have become powerful but not that kind of powerful.’

  It wasn’t the first time Laure had encountered a threat – theoretical or otherwise – and she had learnt to deal with them by splitting herself into compartments.

  There was the Laure whose experiences in the past helped her to negotiate the dusty, complicated structures of public governance without too much bother.

  Then there was the Laure who burned to make her museum work precisely because the past still lived in her and who could be cast down by the bureaucratic grind.

  ‘On a happier note,’ she said, ‘Maison de Grasse is going to be our patron.’

  It was Xavier’s turn to be taken aback, and the audible click of his tongue was an expression of admiration for a coup. ‘Nice.’

  Having started life as a small, exclusive perfume house, Maison de Grasse had grown into a multi-national that supplied scents for a huge range of goods from household cleaners, which would be unusable without them, to candles and room sprays. They still created and manufactured the most exclusive perfumes, of course. Many of the larger French companies offset tax liabilities by becoming patrons of a museum. Maison de Grasse was following suit in concluding that it would be a prudent blend of fiscal planning and largesse to support a slightly alternative arts project. For Laure, there were sweeteners promised in the form of publicity for the museum and advertising support.

  ‘Nice, Xavier repeated.

  A man totally absorbed by the screen on his phone banged into Laure. She dropped hers and the conversation went dead.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ said the man. ‘I didn’t see you.’

  Crystal clear.

  Many of Laure’s older memories were anguished and fudged, but what she recorded on first setting eyes on Canal Saint-Martin and the streets spidering out from the ribbon of water were just that: crystal clear.

  Ten years ago, it had been run down in places and it was stupid to wander there at night alone. But, here was the thing: the quartier clung to its seductions. Her searches revealed that, in its past, it had seethed with life (some of it pretty low), with sex (bartered or otherwise) and it possessed a unique louche elegance. It was an area that proclaimed to the visitor: I possess an impeccable pedigree, and many of my old buildings have survived revolutions and the destructions of Baron Haussmann. Or something like that. The wording often changed in her head but the gist was the same.

  The poor and homeless liked it. As did its long-stayers. So did Laure on the run from her divorce. Listening to the slap of water against the sides of the canal was to feel grounded into the city’s inner life. Likewise, traversing one of the cast-iron footbridges spanning the grey-green, rubbish-speckled water, or tracing the topography of streets with their occasional sinister feel, and she was passionately protective about the just-hanging-on-to-a-living shops and cafes.

  That had been then. Recently, an ice-cream shop selling every hue and flavour known to humanity, and an expensive clothes boutique, had arrived, plus a chocolaterie and a salon de beauté. Possibly, her museum had helped the renaissance but now that she had become a true-blooded canaliste, she kept watch over rapacious developers. Unreconstructed it still may be, but the quartier commanded intense loyalty from those who lived there, in a way that modern, sanitized areas possibly did not. Even, as some partisan canalistes argued, the up-itself Left Bank.

  The smell of the water was familiar and inescapable as she emerged out of the street and onto the canal bank. Flattish. Brackish and, since it was early autumn, carrying a hint of decay. (She had first noticed how water could smell that hot summer in Prague when she and Tomas had idled along the river.) An empty bateau mouche slid through the water eastwards, leaving a backwash of flotsam of orange peel, a plastic bottle and the remains of a hamburger.

  In the Rue de la Grange aux Belles, Madame Becque was folding back the shutters of her grocery shop. Recently, she and her husband had painted the woodwork a bright blue and dyed their poodles’ coats a lighter blue to harmonize, which added immeasurably to the gaiety of nations. The favoured bar on the corner that served late-night brandies was putting up the shutters for a few hours’ rest. A homeless man sat cross-legged outside it. As she went past, Laure dropped a euro into his cup.

  Further up the street, a scruffy, litter-strewn patch of earth was sandwiched between two buildings. Laure stopped. ‘Kočka,’ she called. Czech for ‘cat’, it was not an imaginative choice, but it was the one that had come into her head when she first spotted the little stray a couple of weeks ago.

  Tail dragging behind her, a tabby emerged from the shadow cast by the wall. Tiny-boned. Almost emaciated. Exhausted from the business of staying alive and beyond frail. Laure touched the small triangular face and ran a finger down her backbone, gently rubbing the spinal bumps and flat bone before the tail. It was a moment of communion. Of comfort. Of a small trusting exchange between animal and human.

  Should she be worried that she was not doing Kočka any favours by feeding her? An argument ran that said that a homeless stray would be better off dead. Death was not the worst thing to happen. Death could be welcomed.

  It was then she noticed that under the starved belly poked pink, swollen nipples.

  Her throat tightened. Kittens.

  Kočka was waiting unsentimentally (unlike Laure) for her benefactor to service her hunger. Laure emptied the expensive cat food stuffed with vitamins into the fruit punnet she had brought along and watched the cat fall on it.

  Bending down, Laure caught the faintest of purrs but, otherwise, she was ignored. Pleased about the purr, she told Kočka, ‘No promises.’

  She continued north up the Rue de la Grange aux Belles.

  When she had first set foot in the street, she was a woman whose decree absolute had just slid onto the lawyer’s desk. It had been a hard-frosted winter’s day. Her shoes were flimsy, and her frozen feet had refused to cooperate. As they grew damper, they made a flapping sound on the pavement.

  She had caught sight of a girl in a red coat and pile of coffee grounds on the pavement. A bad-tempered exchange emanated from the Asian supermarket. A dog barked. The cold was neither kind nor exhilarating and grey, bad-tempered snow flurries threatened.

  Exploring the quartier was to experience a jumble of impressions. It was only later, much later, these initial images assembled like a jigsaw to construct her personal landscape: the shutters, the noise of the dinky machines which cleaned the streets each morning, the ironwork on the older houses and, in her stone niche, a statue of the Virgin whose bovine eyes appeared to skewer passers-by.

  She had been so certain that pessimism was a condition of life and the slightest setback tipped her thoughts out of the box in which she struggled to confine them. Not helped by her broken marriage, she was dogged by a sense of failure. By that she meant: the past was too big to cope with. Apparently, according to quantum physics, the atom does not follow one path in order to exit a maze. It goes down every path all at the same time, which was a fine description of what Laure was doing. Running down every path without knowing why, falling at every obstacle, finding her face in the mud.

  It had taken her roughly thirty seconds to identify as interesting the flat-fronted, three-storey house at the further end of the street. A good proportion of its roof tiles were slipping from their moorings and the paintwork had bubbled and flaked. She watched the first few flakes of snow sift down over its roof while she absorbed its worn-at-the-edges presentation, the fact that it had obviously survived for a couple of hundred years, that it did not care a tinker’s cuss whether she, Laure, was a failure or not. Having absorbed that, the suggestion winged through her mind that the life inside the – nodoubt – moth-eaten rooms could be creative and serene.

  Crucially, it was for sale.

  She had no money. No expertise. Nothi
ng except an idea that arrived as she gazed at the house from the opposite side of the street and clenched first her right foot then her left in an effort to drive circulation into her feet.

  After arranging access to the house, she allowed herself plenty of time to walk through it. She examined its sash windows and tapped the floorboards, she trudged up the too-narrow staircase, poked her head into antiquated lavatories and ascended to the attics. She sniffed neglect, decay and trouble and winced at the reluctant squeal of a swollen door and the scatter of mice up above.

  The atmosphere suggested past struggles to live and to thrive, some disastrous, some triumphant. She wished for no more turbulence in her life. None, ever. As she paced the freezing, despairing rooms, she asked herself: would it be better to avoid such a place?

  Redemption was more than a word. It was a nirvana. It was a state of grace perpetually shuffling away from her. But maybe she could source it in bricks and mortar?

  In the cold, her toes had felt as stiff as clothes pegs. Yet, as she listened in to the orchestration of the house’s creaks and shifts, the answer became clear.

  Today, its paintwork was new, its stucco repaired, the roof fixed and a sign hung over the entrance which read: Musée and, underneath in French and English: ‘Museum of Broken Promises’.

  The second line read: ‘Curator, Laure Carlyle’.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE OFFICE AT THE TOP OF THE HOUSE WAS TINY. Originally, perhaps, the maidservant’s quarters, who might have considered it palatial but, for Laure, it presented an increasing problem of how to pack in the administrative needs of the museum.

  A solution had been to paint the walls, plus the even smaller room next door that was used for interviews, an Imperial Chinese yellow which resulted (God knew how) in making them appear more spacious. Another tactic was to demand a draconian level of tidiness.

  It was nine o’clock. Nic was already at his desk. In post for the past eighteen months, he was English, bilingual, unattached, ambitious to make his way in arts administration and part of the generation who had taken it as read they could up sticks to live in Europe and think nothing of it. ‘It’s been easy to move around,’ he said. ‘It’s what a lot of us do.’

  Of course, Generation Nic did. For them, Europe had been an extension of home territory. And she had felt the same.

  He lifted a hand in greeting. ‘Knock, knock.’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Robin.’

  ‘Robin who?

  ‘Robin the piggy bank again.’

  They were playing the game of who could nick the worst joke from the internet.

  She thought of Nos Arts en France and crossed her fingers. ‘What if I told you that you don’t get any better?’

  Nic’s eyes widened. ‘But I’ve learnt everything I know from you.’ He waggled his fingers. ‘Tell me I’ve become indispensable.’

  ‘You have,’ she replied truthfully.

  Still only in his late twenties, he possessed an unusual capacity to read people. To observe Nic negotiate his way out of a tricky encounter was an object lesson in life skills. If pushed, she would admit she learnt from him and was grateful for it. Love could, and did, take one by surprise but – and this had come as a surprise too – so did affection.

  ‘Have I got shaving foam on my chin?’ he asked.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘You’re staring at me.’

  She smiled. ‘That’s because I like you.’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  Nic tapped into what the museum was about. He understood the objects had things to say. When she had first ushered him through the rooms, she had watched that understanding dawn on him.

  The inaugural coffee of the day had been transferred by Nic to a thermos and placed on her desk along with Laure’s schedule. She sat down, placed her bag under the desk and tapped in ‘Vet, Canal Saint-Martin’ into Google. Seconds later, she was on the phone and making an appointment.

  ‘Didn’t know you had a cat,’ said Nic.

  ‘I don’t.’

  He sent her a look. ‘The schedule needs your OK.’

  She glanced over it. An interview with a freelance journalist was slotted for mid-morning. ‘Oh God.’

  Clever Nic had become expert in managing Laure’s reactions. ‘I arranged it so it’s done with before lunch. It will all be over by the time you tuck into your frites.’

  ‘Frites!’ She glanced up. He was smiling. She grinned reluctantly. ‘Who?’

  ‘She says she’s got top contacts who would look at her pitch.’

  Laure rolled her eyes. ‘In a previous life, I must have sinned greatly.’

  At his nicest, Nic could be flexible. Other times, he was up there with Caligula and Stalin. ‘This one shouldn’t be too bad and you must do it. She sounds good on the phone and I’ve checked her out. She’s had pieces in the New York Times magazine, among others.’ He added, ‘She’s young. Working her way up.’

  ‘They’re the worst.’

  ‘Are they now?’ He observed her expression. ‘Spoken as the woman who refuses to reveal if she prefers marmalade or jam at breakfast.’

  She gave a self-conscious little laugh. ‘Maybe.’

  Xavier always told her it was pathological.

  On previous occasions, Nic had said it was understandable but… he would never voice it, but by ‘understandable’, he meant shortsighted.

  ‘If you take a chance, a big piece in a major publication will benefit the museum.’ Nic had resorted to deviousness and worked the arguments up an ascending scale. ‘Those up-themselves museum directors would have to take note of you, Laure.’

  ‘I don’t mind if they do or they don’t.’

  ‘Think Gianni from Rome.’

  ‘He was unique.’ Gianni Rovere, the Italian journalist, had been good-mannered, humorous, and did Laure the courtesy of reflecting on her answers before going on to the next question.

  ‘Some might see this as a negative place,’ he had observed towards the end of the interview.

  ‘No,’ said Laure. ‘The museum offers a space to begin again.’

  Nic’s final thrust: ‘The directors of Maison de Grasse will love it. It’s the sort of exposure that will convince them they made the correct decision.’

  He had the best interests of the museum at heart and she trusted him. ‘If I agree, will that do until Christmas?’

  When Nic smiled, the sun came out.

  Mid-morning, he ushered the journalist into the office. Laure looked up and frowned. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘We’ve met.’ She picked up the card given to her by the girl that she had dropped into her filing tray. ‘May Williams?’

  Minus the sunglasses, May Williams could be seen to possess startlingly blue-grey eyes – one glance from which appeared to send Nic into a trance. Today she was dressed in skinny jeans, a tight T-shirt and fashionable trainers but looked nervous. ‘I really, really want to write about the museum.’ On closer inspection, faint shadows were traced under the startling eyes. ‘Could be an important piece.’

  Her seriousness was disarming and went some way to cancel out Laure’s irritation at the tactics to get the interview. She glanced up at Nic who pulled himself together and said, ‘Coffee, I think.’

  The girl produced a sheaf of papers from the black rucksack. ‘I thought you would like to look at what I’ve done.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact but the hand with its bitten nails told another story as she fanned out the papers in front of Laure. ‘I promise you it’s not shoddy work.’

  Laure skimmed through a couple. What she saw suggested a whip-smart intelligence and incendiary writing.

  Oh God, she thought. I don’t want her on the case.

  When the coffee arrived, May sniffed it and her eyes closed for a second. She drank a mouthful and a rime of milk appeared on her upper lip. ‘I’ve fallen in love with French coffee.’

  ‘If you like, I’ll take you to some of the best places to try out,’ said Nic.

  May
smiled at him.

  It occurred to May that Nic had not lied when he reassured Laure that he had checked this girl out. More had been discussed on the phone than the interview.

  ‘I’ll show you around,’ Laure said, ‘and you can get the feel of the place before you do the interview.’ May sprang to her feet and picked up the coffee cup. ‘Leave the coffee, please. We have to take great care not to have accidents.’

  ‘Sure.’ May drained the mug and patted her top lip. Her body appeared to assemble into brisker lines. ‘Shall we go?’

  Laure motioned them downstairs to the kiosk where Chantal was checking over the stock of souvenirs. She looked up from her tablet. ‘We need more fridge magnets with the handcuffs on them,’ she said in French. ‘Can’t get enough. This is the last one.’ She held it up. The magnet was stamped with a picture of fluffy tiger-skin handcuffs with the legend underneath: ‘They promised heaven’.

  Laure translated and May laughed. Laure ushered her into the first room and she observed, ‘You’re bilingual, right? How come?’

  ‘My mother’s French. My father, English.’

  May said little as Laure took her on the museum tour except to enquire how many rooms there were. ‘Three on this floor, four upstairs making seven altogether, plus the offices. It is difficult as the rooms are different sizes and we are always pressed for space. The largest must have been a reception room and the smallest we think was probably a powder closet. Most of the floors are still original. You can tell by the width of the floorboards.’ She continued. ‘You will know from when you were here the other day that you start here and progress through three rooms following the sens de visite arrows. Then up the back staircase. Through those rooms and back down the main staircase, which is tricky as it’s narrow. But it can’t be helped.’

  May circled around. ‘It’s very quaint and atmospheric, perhaps disturbing but definitely quaint.’

  ‘The objects represent something other than “quaint”,’ said Laure tartly.

  May stopped dead. ‘Oh, Lord. I have this rule to sit on the folksy words from home but that one sneaked past.’ There was a suggestion of panic. ‘I don’t mean to make the museum sound hokey.’