The Soldier's Dark Secret

‘You know we are not,’ she said sadly, turning away. Out at sea, the sky was darkening. A wind had blown up. The tide was on the turn. The fisherman who had brought them here was already on his way, the boat scudding along the white-crested waves, heading back to Vallons des Auffes. Celeste pulled her cloak around her. ‘We should go,’ she said to Jack brusquely, picking up a portmanteau and striding ahead of him, along the jetty and into the village.

* * *

The house stood apart at the far end of the meandering street, at the opposite end of which stood the village church. The key was where it had always been kept, under a large plant pot to the side of the door. Celeste struggled to turn it in the lock. The salt water made everything rusty here. Jack edged her aside and pushed open the door. She steeled herself, but the only smell was of dust. She took a tentative step into the hallway. ‘It’s cold,’ she said, turning to Jack.

He put down their bags and closed the door behind him. It creaked, just as it had always done. She’d forgotten. No, obviously she had not forgotten. She had rolled the carpets up when she was here the last time. Her feet echoed on the boards as she made her way to the sitting room. Her stomach was churning. As she opened the door, she realised she was half-expecting her mother to be there, sitting at the table by the window, making the best of the morning light, painting or embroidering or drawing.

‘Always doing something,’ she said to Jack. ‘My mother. Her hands were never still.’

The furniture was covered in cloths, as she had left it. The grate was empty. The spaces on the walls where her mother’s paintings had hung were clearly marked. As she stepped into the room, her nose twitched. The dusty smell of watercolours assailed her, mingling with the dried lavender her mother kept in a bowl on the hearth. The bowl was empty. The watercolours were in Celeste’s Paris studio.

She went over to the window. The surface of the table was covered in tiny droplets of paint. She could make out every colour. She ran her fingers over a bump of muddy brown, her failed attempt to mix red, she remembered. ‘Henri was furious,’ she said to Jack, ‘though Maman made more of a mess than I ever did.’

His chair was over there in the corner. Maman’s faced it. She had had a stool. It wasn’t here now. She’d never been back long enough to merit anything more comfortable. A few weeks ago, she would have sworn that this was because she was not welcomed. Now she recalled many times when she sought any excuse not to come.

‘You should start on your search while the light is still good,’ she said to Jack. ‘Let me show you the rest of the house.’ She led him quickly through the dining room to Henri’s study where the glass-fronted bookcases covered the walls. ‘I was never permitted in here,’ she told Jack. She led him down to the kitchen and scullery. Then back up to the top floor. The fifth stair creaked as it always had.

‘Henri’s bedchamber.’ Celeste threw the door open. ‘Maman’s bedchamber.’ Another door thrown wide. The bed was stripped, the mattress rolled. Her feet fixed themselves automatically on the very edge of the threshold, as if the invisible barrier was there still, even though her mother was no longer here to forbid her to enter. Celeste stepped boldly in and threw open the cupboard. Maman’s few remaining clothes were here. Thick woollen skirts and jackets. Her heavy black boots.

She could not have described that very particular smell that was her mother. Wool, powder, roses, but there was something else. She closed her eyes. It was still there. Faint, but there. ‘Essence of Maman,’ she said softly to herself. A fleeting image of herself howling in pain, of two hands swooping down on her, and then that smell as she buried her face in her mother’s neck and was comforted.

She blinked. Jack was watching her carefully. ‘Memories,’ she said, closing the cupboard. ‘Don’t look so concerned. They are not all of them bad.’

But some of them were. The last room was her childhood bedchamber. Thinking only that this had been her sanctuary, Celeste opened the door almost without thinking. It swung wide, the panel slamming into the coffer which was positioned behind it. Positioned in that precise place to obscure the corner of the room, where a small girl could crouch down, hidden from the open doorway, and where that small girl could cry inconsolably because there was no one to care that she cried, or why.

In a daze, Celeste entered the room, curling herself into the tiny space, wrapping her arms around her waist. ‘They never beat me. They never touched me. Neither cruelty nor love, but indifference is what they gave me, and forced me to give them in return. That was what was so hard.’

* * *