The Museum of Broken Promises Read online

  A little later, needing the bathroom, she let herself out into the corridor. The door to Petr and Eva’s room was ajar and, like it or not, she found herself peering through to the bed framed in the doorway.

  Her nightdress streaked with blood, Eva was lying on her side with Petr bent over her. He had imprisoned her wrists and Eva was resisting. Not very effectively.

  He shifted position and Laure saw that his hands were covered in blood too.

  Was this a sex game? She had no knowledge on which to call. No experience. Was Petr beating his wife up or trying to rape her? And the blood?

  Whatever it was, it was horrible. Saliva rushed into her mouth and she swallowed frantically.

  Was Petr murdering Eva?

  Who could she call for help?

  Frozen by horror, she was unable to move. Then, it was over. Eva quietened, began to sob and muttered words in Czech. Petr released her and stood upright.

  The treacherous floorboards creaked as Laure slid past. Over Eva’s bare, white shoulder, Petr encountered Laure’s appalled gaze as he bent to kiss his wife.

  She stuttered. ‘Is everything all right? Can I get help?’

  ‘No,’ said Petr, walking over to the door. ‘It’s over now. Eva will sleep.’ He seemed exhausted and infinitely sad. ‘It’s not what you think.’

  ‘But the blood?’

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about. Perhaps one day I can explain. But not now.’ He held out his bloody hands. ‘I’m very sorry about this.’

  ‘My God, what is this?’

  She read confusion and distress in his eyes, and her own softened. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘You’re quite safe,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

  She fled down the corridor. On her return, the door had been closed. She went to bed and lay flat. Prague on a Shoestring would not be offering enlightenment and she directed her energies into trying not to think about the dreadful and complicated things that went on behind that door.

  CHAPTER 6

  Paris, present day

  LAURE WAS OUTLINING TO MAY WILLIAMS THE PLANS FOR the lunch to celebrate the collaboration between the museum and the Maison de Grasse when the first of the day’s interviewees was ushered in.

  She was a woman of forty or so, who had once been beautiful but had dieted herself into a pickled-looking skin. She had heavily made-up eyes with black rings engraved under them and professionally manicured hands. The preliminaries dispensed with, she produced a games board and a set of wooden chess pieces, which she set out with an ease that suggested second nature.

  It was done in silence. Used to waiting, Laure took the time to observe a tell-tale downturn of the woman’s mouth but also her expensive leather designer jacket.

  When she had placed the last pawn in position and the two sides were ranged against the other, she began. ‘You might not recognize me,’ she said in heavily accented English, ‘but my name is Adeline LeDuc.’

  ‘I’ve heard of you,’ said Laure.

  May was already googling the name. ‘You’re a grandmaster at chess.’

  ‘Yes.’

  May read out, ‘It’s a title awarded for life. Currently, only three women hold it.’

  ‘That is true, too,’ said Adeline. She slipped into French. ‘But it’s not helpful to… rather, I try to avoid gender politics.’

  Laure translated for May and indicated the chess pieces. ‘That’s a beautiful chess set.’

  Adeline raised her gaze from the board. ‘It’s handmade to my specification.’

  ‘May I?’ Laure reached over and took up a king. The figure had cropped hair and armour and wore a tabard quartered with armorials bearings on which the British lion was evident. ‘Am I imagining it or is this Henry V?’ She picked up a second figure which was of a young man with a scarf wrapped a couple of times around his neck. ‘Hamlet?’ She gestured to the board. ‘Characters from Shakespeare?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘A compliment to the English?’

  ‘I think there’s an argument for saying that Shakespeare is beyond nationality.’

  Again, Laure translated for May who said, ‘I agree.’

  Laure held the Hamlet piece in the palm of her hand. On the board were the pawns: a flowing-haired Juliet, a diminutive Feste, a willowy Rosalind dressed à la garçonne. Here were the fools and heroes. The reckless and the asinine. The noble and the wastrel – the bundle of human characteristics and follies were represented by those figures. ‘It’s surprising how recognizable they are,’ she commented.

  ‘If you know Shakespeare,’ intervened May in stumbling French.

  ‘I commissioned it as a wedding present. The person who made these was a fine craftsman. He’s dead now.’ She sighed, a sound gusty with regret. ‘He understood that each piece had to repay being handled. It was vital that they were beautifully made and beautifully balanced.’ One manicured hand darted across the board and a white pawn was positioned for the fight. ‘You might like to know I’ve just made a classic opening gambit.’ She waited for Laure to translate. ‘I’ve won with it on a couple of occasions.’

  May was fascinated. ‘So, if you had to counter it how would you do it?’

  In response, Adeline LeDuc moved the black pawn to face the white. ‘That’s put those two out of action and given me the advantage to move the bishop.’

  As happened in some of these museum encounters, there were discoveries. ‘Madame LeDuc, tell us why you wish to donate such a beautiful thing?’

  May muttered, ‘To be or not to be and – presumably – it wasn’t?’

  Laure sent her a look.

  ‘My husband was also a major chess player,’ said Adeline. ‘We had it set up in our bedroom. Sometimes, in the night, if one or other us were puzzling over a problem in a game we would get up and work it out on the board.’ She touched the second king, Macbeth holding a dagger. ‘We thought it would work. At the beginning, we promised each other that we would not mind if one or another won more tournaments and made more money. It didn’t turn out like that. I kept winning games but lost the marriage. Pierre tried. We both tried. He hid his jealousy and I made light of my winnings. Sometimes, I concealed them from him. Once, I deliberately fluffed a major tournament.’

  Laure translated.

  ‘Men,’ offered up May.

  Adeline LeDuc understood and shook her head. ‘Too easy.’ May coloured up. ‘It could have been the other way around. If Pierre had been the one to become a grandmaster, I might well have been bitterly jealous. Having married people competing on the same turf is not good.’ The expression in the eyes was bleak. ‘He failed to honour the promise.’

  Laure nodded. ‘I understand.’

  Adeline took up the Macbeth piece – the black king – and used it to square up to the white king, Henry V. ‘I would like it to be in a place where people could see how special it is. I can’t play with it ever again and my ex-husband refuses to touch it.’ She tapped Macbeth. ‘That’s checkmate.’

  ‘Neat,’ said May.

  ‘Madame,’ Laure stood up, ‘it has been a pleasure to meet you and to discuss the chess pieces. My colleagues and I will consider the space available…’

  Perhaps because Laure had signalled the end of the interview, Adeline LeDuc’s benignity slid from her. ‘My husband should learn.’ She gathered up the chess pieces and shut the board with a snap. ‘I see that I don’t impress you,’ she said to Laure, demonstrating what kind of adversary she might be across the chessboard.

  Having handed Adeline over to Nic, Laure returned to the interview room. May was staring out of the window, her laptop open. ‘How about this?’ She read out from her notes. ‘“So many things have been offered up in the museum, apart from the objects. Fragments from lives that have not gone according to plan which are presented in anger, in resignation, in despair but, sometimes, with relief and a lightening of spirit.”’ She looked up and what she read in Laure’s expression obviously puzzled her. ‘You’re not going to take the
chess pieces, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Darned if I know why not.’

  Laure crossed over to the window and May joined her. Together they looked out over the Parisian roofscape, gloriously fretted in the sunlight. ‘If you enter competitions you’re in them to win. That’s the nature of the beast, yes?’

  May did her hand-in-hair gesture. ‘Haven’t got you.’

  ‘As competitors, they have a duty to try and win and, if they were competing in the same competitions, one of them was always going to be in the ascendant. The promise they made to each other wasn’t realizable from the start. It wasn’t really a promise. It was a way of allowing the marriage to happen. They must have known that.’ Reluctantly, Laure turned away from the view. ‘With such limited space, I have to make difficult decisions. The chess set has to be one of them.’

  On the way downstairs, May stopped and asked, ‘Henry V conquered the French, right?’

  ‘Best not to mention it while you’re in France,’ replied Laure. ‘But, yes, he did, temporarily.’

  ‘So, apart from anything else, the chess set represents inconvenient history?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said, and proceeded to surprise Laure. ‘Glossing over history is a fool’s game. It comes back to bite you in the foot.’

  Laure ran down the remaining stairs. ‘But it can stop one going mad.’

  May locked on to Laure like a heat-seeking missile. ‘Then you know what’s it’s like to go mad? Or to have a breakdown?’

  ‘Did I say that? It was an observation, that’s all.’

  *

  At the finish of her evening inspection, Laure emptied the Donation Box, recorded the tally onto the online spreadsheet, shut down the computer in the sales kiosk and went upstairs. Here she leant against the door frame and watched as Nic and May swapped travel anecdotes.

  Nic was lounging by the window, a lean brown arm on the sill. May was in his chair looking up at him.

  ‘I bet you didn’t.’ Her smile was radiant.

  Laure crossed over to Nic’s desk. ‘Is he telling you how he conquered Everest single-handed?’

  ‘Something like.’ May did not take her eyes off Nic. ‘Should I believe him?’

  ‘Depends how much you enjoy fairy tales,’ replied Laure affectionately.

  ‘I have to work with this person,’ said Nick. ‘My life is hard.’

  Laure picked up the volume of Philip Larkin poems which had been in Room 1 and due for return. Its inscription ‘man hands on misery to man’ had been taken from the volume and embellished by an enraged husband who had struck out the first ‘man’ and substituted ‘woman’.

  May got to her feet. ‘I shouldn’t be here. But I wanted to ask how long objects have in the museum?’

  Laure retrieved her bag from under the desk. ‘Some have been here since the beginning but it’s usually three years or so. Having a turnover encourages visitors to return to check out what’s new. Each object is catalogued on paper and the computer. If we’re discarding, we get in touch with the donor and ask them how they wish us to dispose of it.’

  Once outside in the street, she felt so tired that she phoned her dinner date to cancel.

  ‘Simon, I’m done. I’m so sorry. Could we rearrange?’

  ‘I’m here to be mucked about with.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  A lawyer working for Nos Arts en France, Simon had turned into a friend. They had first met over the negotiations for the modest grant from Nos Arts. Later, an anonymous sponsorship deal had been offered which was to be administered by Nos Arts and Simon agreed to take it on. Initially, the deal had been reviewed on an annual basis and then – out of the blue sky – suddenly extended to a generous five-year funding contract. Additionally puzzling were the terms of the sponsorship which specified that Laure, her trustees or her team were not allowed to ask as to who the sponsor was.

  Why? she had wanted to know. Why should I be so lucky? Simon replied that there were many things on earth and in heaven that could not be explained and this was one of them. He also told her to take the money and run.

  One of those rare people who managed to be both discreet and a gossip at the same time, Simon never divulged even a hint of the process by which the decision was arrived at. ‘I’m a professional,’ he said, with the uneven smile which she had grown to love. ‘Anyway, it keeps you interested in me.’ Simon was faithfully married to Valerie with three children but liked to pretend that he wasn’t.

  ‘Simon, I love you very much. Please kiss Valerie for me and my goddaughter.’

  The Rue de la Grange aux Belles was busy. Night softened the city’s harsher outlines as daytime city smells segued into evening ones of roasted garlic, turmeric, perfume of all kinds, cigarette smoke.

  She walked slowly, eyes searching through the litter of papers and takeaway boxes for a sign of life. She passed the manhole halfway down the street and was hit by a smell of old, confined water and rotting things.

  She was increasingly anxious about Kočka.

  By the time Laure reached the triangle of earth where she usually encountered her, she was experiencing something akin to dread. If Kočka had moved on, dragging her difficult, painful life behind her, then did she have a future? A living thing that was so unloved and untended went against nature and she castigated herself for not doing anything about it sooner.

  But Kočka was there, in her usual place, stretched out over the lumpy, concrete-infested earth. At Laure’s approach, she raised her head. The large eyes were clouded and she was panting. Beside her lay three new-born kittens, two still inside the caul. None of them moved and Laure knew they had not made it.

  Laure reached for the bottle of water in her bag and squirted a little into Kočka’s mouth. She seemed grateful and licked it feebly. Laure got hold of her mobile and dialled the vet with whom she had earlier made the appointment. An answerphone kicked in and she was instructed that if it was an emergency she must go to the nearest animal hospital.

  Laure took off her cardigan, laid Kočka on it and wrapped her up in it. Wincing, she took up the still damp kittens, placed them carefully in her bag and summoned a taxi.

  The animal hospital was full with a record number of injured and abandoned animals. ‘One of humanity’s periodic fits of inhumanity,’ commented the vet when Laure lifted Kočka onto the examination table and unwrapped her kittens.

  She must have smelt them for she turned her head and uttered a soft distressed cry. The vet stooped over her and made a thorough examination, palpating her still swollen abdomen and checking for tears and bleeding. ‘She wasn’t in good enough condition to get them through.’ He cocked an eye at Laure’s now ruined cardigan. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘So am I,’ she said. ‘It was expensive.’

  She stood and watched, breathing in the smells of frightened animals overlaid with disinfectant that pervaded the room as he gave Kočka the works – vitamin shots, antibiotics and a drug to stop her lactating. Once, he looked up from Kočka’s prone body and said, ‘This is going to cost you a fortune.’ Finally, he laid the dead kittens on the table beside her. ‘She must be allowed to mourn.’

  They watched as the frail, wounded, disadvantaged Kočka nuzzled each one in turn.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to take her,’ the vet said eventually. ‘We have no room.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’ Those oh-so orderly arrangements of her life upended. Allowing in the music and fire and grief of a past? She looked down at the little cat who was trying to say farewell to her kittens. She grasped the edge of the instrument trolley and struggled to explain through the lump in her throat. ‘There’re rules where I live.’

  The vet indicated she should leave off hugging the trolley. ‘Hygiene,’ he said, not unsympathetically.

  An expert in these situations, he handed her a tissue. ‘In my experience, most animals live where there are so-called rules. Kočka cannot be put back on the streets.
Else why did you bring her in? When she is better and we are less pressed then something might be able to be done.’ He allowed a second or two to elapse. ‘We might have to put her down.’

  She stared at the vet. It was obvious he had been in this situation before, and kind and skilful as he was, he knew how not to blink.

  A noisier than usual row was in full swing in the Poirier apartment. Even so, smuggling the cardboard carrier containing Kočka past Madame Poirier’s sentry post took nerve and ingenuity. The old skills she had learnt in Prague kicked in. Move at normal speed. Do not look round. Tiny Kočka was weightier than she looked but Laure didn’t falter on the stairs.

  Inside the apartment, Laure placed the carrier on the floor and went through into the bedroom. The hair dryer was on the bed where she had flung it this morning and so, too, was the scattered make-up on the shelf by the mirror.

  At the back of the cupboard where she kept her linen, she found a worn swimming towel. This she spread over an armchair in the sitting area. Inside the carrier, Kočka was crying and she lifted her out of it and placed her on the chair.

  The vet had warned her that what was an, essentially, feral cat would not respect an interior and might be spooked by being enclosed but she was probably too weak and doped-up to react. Laure hunkered down beside her, stroked the small head and, one by one, fed her the cat biscuits that the vet had given her.

  After a while, Kočka slept, the rise and fall of her breath barely rippling her torso that was both swollen and emaciated. Unwilling to move, Laure settled herself on the floor beside the chair and reached for her laptop. Figures. Plans. Projections. With the movement of a finger, these slipped over the screen and vanished. She didn’t take in any of them.

  If Kočka was peaceful, Laure was not. Leaning over, she extracted the frame with the railway ticket from her bag which she had brought home. (It was hers to take.)