The Museum of Broken Promises Page 4
‘Home?’
‘Alabama.’ She grimaced. ‘Mint juleps, pie, Jim Crow.’ She gestured with both hands. ‘Craziness. Suffering. Heat. All that.’
May Williams had been glad to escape. ‘So, a refugee?’
May made a non-committal noise and peered into the main display case. ‘A railway ticket? What’s the language?’
A second elapsed before Laure replied. ‘Czech.’
‘Ah, yes, I think it was photographed for the interview you did with the Italian? It made a noise in the Czech Republic, who are a bit antsy about being reminded of the bad days under the commies.’
Laure turned away. ‘I believe it did.’
In the second room there were three display cabinets. May pointed to the first. ‘I wanted to ask you. What’s with the matchbox?’
‘If you look closely there’s a milk tooth. Seven-year-old Jamie brought it in.’
‘A child?’
‘Do you know many children? I don’t but, it turns out, they’re fierce guardians of promises and know immediately when they’ve been broken. Jamie’s father had promised him that he would be left money by the Tooth Fairy when his baby teeth dropped out. It was fine for the first two teeth but, by the third, Jamie’s father had gone and the Tooth Fairy with him.’
May made to place her hand on the glass but thought better of it. ‘Couldn’t Jamie’s mother have left the money?’
‘I suspect she wanted to show her ex-husband up. She brought Jamie in and he gave me the matchbox and told me the Tooth Fairy was a big liar.’ Jamie’s little face had been wounded and furious in equal measure. ‘He was talking about his father.’
‘So little Jamie’s distress and sadness are on display.’
Laure ushered May into the next room. ‘Interesting how a small boy found a way of dealing with it.’
‘Or the mother.’
Alerted by the acid inflection of ‘mother’, she asked, ‘Do your parents approve of what you do?’
‘What my father likes is bourbon. Lashings of it. Ask my dinosaur mother, who’s a good woman, by the way, but she just doesn’t happen to like her daughter… ask her what she hates most in the world she would treat you to the spiel about unmarried women paying astronomical rent to live in a box with cooking and plumbing smells in the Sodom of New York while waiting for the big break.’ May stared past Laure to a cabinet with a look that suggested difficult and complicated emotions. ‘She said it would be a hiding to nothing. It would be hard. And it was.’
‘I’m sure it was hard. But you made contacts. Obviously. Good contacts.’
May’s face cleared. ‘I did. It was one way of getting back at a mother born a hundred and fifty years ago but who happens to live now and whose pet hates are crazy liberals and feminists.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘That’s a long ways around of saying, she’s not like you.’
Laure had a startled micro-second to absorb that she was bracketed with May’s mother. Laugh or cry? ‘Right.’
‘Oh, Lord…’ Realizing she may have blundered, May Williams rattled around her journalistic armoury and produced a compliment. ‘I know you’re the sort of woman who’ll wear tight jumpers and eye shadow when you’re ninety.’
Laure found herself smiling. ‘Good.’
‘No children of your own?’
‘No.’
The unspoken question hovered. The unspoken answer sat on Laure’s tongue: I denied myself children. Not consciously, perhaps, but somehow it was never the right person, the right time, the right state of mind.
The two women continued onwards.
A few minutes later, May asked, ‘So why Czech?’
‘I lived there for a long summer.’
‘And that’s a broken promise?’
‘Actually, yes, as it turned out. It was.’
In the smaller room, the tall, lanky May resembled a confined animal. ‘How do you theme the display?’
‘Big question and it took us a lot of time to work out what was the most effective. In the end, we stuck to the relationship of the objects. Household stuff, say. Clothing. It doesn’t always work. But displaying the objects chronologically proved too difficult to control as we had to keep changing the rooms around.’
May snapped shut her notebook. ‘Sure.’
‘We’ve got a new patron and we’re discussing refurbishment.’ She led May towards the staircase, keeping the subject of conversation in her court. ‘Museum display is changing. Revolutionized, actually. Museums are becoming tactile places. Fun places. Unpredictable places. We have to keep up with the big guys.’
She led her into the final room. May pointed to the ‘Number 7’ written in gold lettering above the door lintel. ‘Seven. The special number.’ Her forehead wrinkled. ‘Of the first prime numbers, seven is the most interesting? At least, I think so. You can’t multiply or divide it within the group.’
‘Maths isn’t my strong point.’
The question sneaked in. ‘Then it must be difficult to deal with the museum’s finances?’
‘Did I say that?’
May let that drop and took a run at the next question. ‘What you leave out is as important as what you include, right?’
The light from the restored sash window fell over May’s hair, picking out its strands of white blonde and gold. An innocent question? Probably. Permitting May to write a profile of Laure was to cede power. May would dig. Laure glanced out of the window. Dealing with the fear of what lay hidden in the wrinkles of her psyche was an old, exhausting battle which she hadn’t won. ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘What you leave out is important.’
May swivelled. ‘What do you think you’re doing with these objects?
A hint of scepticism? ‘It’s a closure process.’
‘For whom? Someone might look at this and think “what a load of old tat”.’
‘Feel free to do so. Giving an object to this museum is a way of dealing with something that’s gone wrong in your life.’ Laure pointed to a sensationally ugly multi-coloured vase dominating the smaller display case. ‘As a society, we’re in danger of forgetting the importance of ritual.’
‘If you say so.’ May focused on the vase with a look of disbelief.
Laure found herself grinning. The confection of fantasy, yearning, rage and deep disappointment penned up behind the glass of the display cabinets was hard, if not impossible, to quantify at the best of times and the vase certainly didn’t look up to the job.
‘It’s so awful I can’t take my eyes off it,’ May confessed.
‘On bad days, we pray to the god of breakages but somehow he doesn’t hear us.’ She added hastily, ‘Don’t quote me.’
May transferred her attention to a framed silhouette hanging between the windows. It was rough and ready and the scissor marks on the black paper were crude. Its subject – a slight man with hair swept back and a Roman nose – held a guitar. ‘He looks great. Is he still around?’
Laure stood behind May. ‘No.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Well…’
May ran a hand over her hair, her fingers tangling in its mass at her neckline. She pulsed with energy, nerves, and a quirky vulnerability. Had Laure been like that? Yes, she had – and it was a good thought.
Usually when asked, Laure replied, I don’t know who he is. This time the words edged out of her. ‘I don’t know where he is. I wish I did.’
*
May Williams would be analysing that response. Of course.
The idea sat uneasily at the back of Laure’s mind as she went about the rest of the day. A finger with a sharp nail had been poked through her shell and, when that happened, it unsettled her.
On the Rue de la Grange aux Belles, Monsieur Becque was conducting his late-afternoon sale of the produce. For a couple of euros, Laure was invited to snaffle an Alphonse mango on the turn, four tomatoes and an aubergine. Not bad. She paid up, exchanged greetings and continued on her way.
It was a warm autumn evening, the kind in wh
ich Europe specialized and Parisians had been enticed onto the streets. Although the daylight was only just beginning to fade, windows were lit up and drinkers clustered in the bars and cafes, bright with illumination. Girls were bare-armed and, frequently, bare-backed. Older women wore high heels and leather skirts, the men chinos and bomber jackets. Groups of them flowed towards the canals and their exchanges blended together on the evening air. Quite a few were ensconced on benches, heads bent over their phones.
Laure set her face against the tide and turned northwards up the street towards the Maison de Retraite on the corner of Rue Martat and Rue Louis Capet. On this evening where life of every sort accosted the eye, she was about to visit someone on the brink of death.
Like the museum, the Maison was one of the older houses in the Saint-Martin quartier. It had long, narrow windows, walls of brickwork and stone and machicolations that hinted of a medieval past. It was a familiar sight but Laure had never been inside. On being invited to enter, she stepped into a narrow and gloomy corridor so cloistral in flavour that it didn’t seem suitable for elderly inhabitants. Yet local gossip had it that it was a good place to spend your last days. ‘They’re kind in there.’ ‘They understand about being old…’
At the reception, she was met by the slightly dishevelled and out-of-breath directeur, Madame Maupin, who looked to be a hands-on person. So it transpired. ‘Apologies, madame, I’ve been helping a new resident settle in. He wasn’t happy with the position of his bed and we had to move it around until he was.’ She held out her hand. ‘It is good of you to come. I hope you did not mind us contacting you?’
‘No. Not at all. I rely on people contacting me.’
Madame Maupin spotted a mark on her skirt, exclaimed and rubbed at it. ‘Madame Raoul does not have long; she had heard of what the museum does and wanted to make a donation. I guessed it was better to go to the horse’s mouth.’ That particular idiom was never so effective in French but Laure took the point. ‘She’s been hoping to make it to her hundredth birthday. But you never know what God has in store.’
‘No, indeed,’ replied Laure and trusted she did not sound as wry as she felt.
Madame Maupin ushered Laure into the lift that took them up to the top floor. Despite the smaller windows, the light was brighter on this floor and a slice of sunlight poked in through the south-facing casements.
Madame Raoul’s room was small and narrow. A hospital bed had only just been squeezed in but the medicines, clock, rosary and Bible were laid out with surgical precision on a white cloth on the top of a chest of drawers. A chair was slotted in beside the door.
At Laure’s entrance, the woman propped up in the bed with multiple pillows turned her head. Madame Maupin bent over her – and kindness flowed through the curve of her body. ‘There’s no need for politesse, madame.’ She stroked the corner of the pillow. ‘Just say what you wish.’
Laure took up a position on the other side of the bed. Madame Raoul focused on the directeur. ‘The pillowcase, madame.’ The voice was faint. ‘Will you fetch it?’
Madame Maupin opened the top drawer of the chest and extracted a package wrapped in tissue paper that she laid on Madame Raoul’s chest who indicated that she should unwrap it. It was a square lace-edged pillowcase decorated with white-work embroidery. A tang of lavender, and the mustiness of old unused linen, so often smelt in brocante shops, mingled with the smell of medicines and old lady.
Madame Raoul lifted a skeletal hand and pointed at the pillowcase. ‘I made this,’ she said, ‘when I was seventeen and about to be married.’ Between sentences she paused to take in a breath. ‘We were taught by our mothers and they were taught by their mothers. Where I came from it was the tradition. Every girl had to do it. It was a symbol of our role as wives and mothers.’
Laure touched the linen with a fingertip. ‘It’s exquisite.’
‘Madame Maupin, you won’t like what I’m going to say.’ Madame Raoul looked up and the two women exchanged a look. ‘Chère madame, I don’t wish to upset you.’
‘In that case, I’ve other things to do.’ Madame Maupin drew the chair up to the bed and indicated that Laure should sit down. ‘You will find it easier to listen if you’re comfortable. When you’ve finished, please ring the bell.’
Laure sat down, and her face was now almost on the same level as Madame Raoul’s. ‘Restez tranquille, madame. If we agree it has a place in the museum I can see exactly where it would go. Tell me about it.’
Madame Raoul’s chest heaved. Laure put her bag on the floor and folded her hands in her lap. If this exchange was to be peaceful, she knew she must remain still and watchful.
The indrawn breath was laboured. ‘Being a woman is to be God’s beast of burden.’
Laure sat up. She had been expecting pieties, not iconoclasm.
‘You’re a professional woman and you will know. I was a farm girl who had no choice. Aren’t you ever forced to the conclusion that, in creating woman, He played the biggest joke?’ She was visibly struggling to breathe and Laure laid her hand gently on her shoulder. ‘The work of a God who’s a sadist.’
‘Does that mean that you do not believe?’ Laure glanced at the paraphernalia of faith arranged on the chest of drawers.
There was a long sigh. ‘It keeps them happy. My hatred of God is too much for them. I understand. It’s hard for them.’ Her eyelids drooped wearily. ‘We were raised with faith, hung like a key around our necks. I believed it. God was the Father and I was taught that my purpose was to obey Him and my husband.’
Laure waited.
‘Faith is a lie, madame.’
Madame Raoul’s faith? Or all faiths that came in many forms, including political ones?
‘God took two of my babies. Not content with Lucie, he had Jean as well. God wanted everything that was precious to me and made sure that He got it.’
‘Your husband?’
Madame Raoul fingered the pillowcase. ‘If you could look… if you could see, beneath my skin are bruises and scars given to me by the man who promised to love and honour me.’
The effort to make sense was enormous and she fell into a doze. Laure looked up to the window and the darkening sky outside. It went without saying that the dying must be allowed to vent doubt and distress. They must be given licence to ask the questions that, perhaps, they were not permitted, or did not have the strength, to express during their lives.
Madame Raoul woke as suddenly as she had slept and fixed on Laure’s face. ‘Nothing in life was as promised,’ she said. ‘I ask you to take the pillowcase as an example of how women are betrayed.’
‘Not all, surely?’ Laure said gently. ‘But some.’ Madame Raoul frowned and Laure continued. ‘Madame Raoul, we’ve only just met each other but I don’t like to think of you so bitter. Is there nothing I can say to help?’
Madame Raoul turned her head away. ‘Don’t worry. Now I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say, I will be good and peaceful. I won’t worry them.’
Madame Raoul’s initials and those of her husband created a flowing bas relief. Folding the tissue paper around it, Laure said, ‘It looks almost untouched.’
The dying woman took several painful-sounding breaths. ‘If you look closely enough, there are bloodstains.’
‘Whose?’
‘Mine. From the sewing. I could never wash them out.’
Walking home, Laure reflected that the bloodstains, tiny as they must be, told the real story of Madame Raoul’s pillowcase and not the perfection of the snipped, conquered and embellished linen.
In the apartment, Laure ran a tepid shower, dried and got dressed in a sleeveless dress, twisted her hair up and took a cab to the Marais where she was meeting friends for dinner at the Lapin Blanc. In the cab she decided the pillowcase should be framed in a plain wood frame and hung in Room 7.
Early the next morning before she had left for work, her mobile shrilled. It was Madame Maupin. ‘Just to let you know that Madame Raoul died peacefully in the night.’
‘None at all,’ was the answer. ‘I’m afraid she was in prison for many years and her family disowned her.’
Laure was reluctant – very reluctant – to ask the question. ‘In prison for what?’
She heard the sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘For murder. Madame Raoul killed her husband.’
CHAPTER 4
MAY HAD DONE HER STUFF AND CONFIRMATION THAT Vanity Fair had commissioned an in-depth feature arrived the following week. After wrangling, it was agreed that she would shadow Laure for three days and would sit in on interviews provided she had signed a document undertaking to preserve confidentiality of the donors.
She rang in to check over the dates and Laure said, ‘I’ll put you on to Nic for the details.’
‘Oh, good.’
Out of the corner of her eye, she watched an animated Nic take the transferred call.
Sharp at the agreed time, May turned up in a tight pair of jeans and a black satin bomber jacket embroidered with red dahlias and the black neoprene rucksack. She held a tray of takeaway coffees and offered it to Nic. ‘Americano with a dash of milk, right?’
‘Right.’ Nic’s smile contained a helpless quality.
May turned to Laure. ‘Flat white?’
Laure laughed and pointed to the jacket. ‘You’re supposed to be unobtrusive.’
‘Of course.’ May took off her jacket and stuffed in into the rucksack. ‘OK?’
Extraordinarily enough, when May dropped into a chair in the interview room, she appeared – God knew how – to shrink into the wall.
Nic ushered in Joseph Broad who faced Laure across a small desk. He was thirtyish, of mixed race, undeniably handsome, and he looked wretched. His expression was one with which she had grown familiar. This was a man who was not at peace with himself.
In the office next door Nic was on the phone and visitors to the museum were coming and going up and down the stairs. In the interview room, however, it was calm and quiet, which was the plan.