From days before we went, I’d had in my mind this picture of me and Tommy standing in front of that door, working up the nerve to press the bell, then having to wait there with hearts thumping. The way it turned out, though, we got lucky and were spared that particular ordeal.
We deserved a bit of luck by then, because the day hadn’t been going at all well. The car had played up on the journey out and we were an hour late for Tommy’s tests. Then a mix-up at the clinic had meant Tommy having to re-do three of the tests. This had left him feeling pretty woozy, so when we finally set off for Littlehampton towards the end of the afternoon, he began to feel carsick and we had to keep stopping to let him walk it off.
We finally arrived just before six o’clock. We parked the car behind the bingo hall, took out from the boot the sports bag containing Tommy’s notebooks, then set off towards the town centre. It had been a fine day and though the shops were all closing, a lot of people were hanging about outside the pubs, talking and drinking. Tommy began to feel better the more we walked, until eventually he remembered how he’d had to miss lunch because of the tests, and declared he’d have to eat before facing what was in front of us. So we were searching for some place to buy a takeaway sandwich, when he suddenly grabbed my arm, so hard I thought he was having some sort of attack. But then he said quietly into my ear:
“That’s her, Kath. Look. Going past the hairdressers.”
And sure enough there she was, moving along the opposite pavement, dressed in her neat grey suit, just like the ones she’d always worn.
We set off after Madame at a reasonable distance, first through the pedestrian precinct, then along the near-deserted High Street. I think we were both reminded of that day we’d followed Ruth’s possible through another town. But this time things proved far simpler, because pretty soon she’d led us onto that long seafront street.
Because the road was completely straight, and because the setting sun was falling on it all the way down to the end, we found we could let Madame get quite a way ahead—till she wasn’t much more than a dot— and there’d still be no danger of losing her. In fact, we never even stopped hearing the echo of her heels, and the rhythmic thudding of Tommy’s bag against his leg seemed to be a kind of answer.
We went on like that for a long time, past the rows of identical houses. Then the houses on the opposite pavement ran out, areas of flat lawn appeared in their place, and you could see, beyond the lawns, the tops of the beach huts lining the seafront. The water itself wasn’t visible, but you could tell it was there, just from the big sky and the seagull noises.
But the houses on our side continued without a change, and after a while I said to Tommy:
“It’s not long now. See that bench over there? That’s the one I sit on. The house is just over from it.”
Until I said this, Tommy had been pretty calm. But now something seemed to get into him, and he began to walk much faster, like he wanted to catch up with her. But now there was no one between Madame and us, and as Tommy kept closing the gap, I had to grab his arm to slow him down. I was all the time afraid she’d turn and look at us, but she didn’t, and then she was going in through her little gateway. She paused at her door to find her keys in her handbag, and then there we were, standing by her gate, watching her. She still didn’t turn, and I had an idea that she’d been aware of us all along and was deliberately ignoring us. I thought too that Tommy was about to shout something to her, and that it would be the wrong thing. That was why I called from the gate, so quickly and without hesitation.
It was only a polite “Excuse me!” but she spun round like I’d thrown something at her. And as her gaze fell on us, a chill passed through me, much like the one I’d felt years ago that time we’d waylaid her outside the main house. Her eyes were as cold, and her face maybe even more severe than I remembered. I don’t know if she recognised us at that point; but without doubt, she saw and decided in a second what we were, because you could see her stiffen—as if a pair of large spiders was set to crawl towards her.
Then something changed in her expression. It didn’t become warmer exactly. But that revulsion got put away somewhere, and she studied us carefully, squinting in the setting sun.
“Madame,” I said, leaning over the gate. “We don’t want to shock you or anything. But we were at Hailsham. I’m Kathy H., maybe you remember. And this is Tommy D. We haven’t come to give you any trouble.”
She came a few steps back towards us. “From Hailsham,” she said, and a small smile actually went across her face. “Well, this is a surprise. If you aren’t here to give me trouble, then why are you here?”
Suddenly Tommy said: “We have to talk with you. I’ve brought some things”—he raised his bag—“some things you might want for your gallery. We’ve got to talk with you.”
Madame went on standing there, hardly moving in the low sun, her head tilted as though listening for some sound from the seafront. Then she smiled again, though the smile didn’t seem to be for us, but just herself.
“Very well then. Come inside. Then we’ll see what it is you wish to talk about.”
As we went in, I noticed the front door had coloured glass panels, and once Tommy closed it behind us, everything got pretty dark. We were in a hallway so narrow you felt you’d be able to touch the walls on either side just by stretching out your elbows. Madame had stopped in front of us, and was standing still, her back to us, again like she was listening.
Peering past her, I saw that the hallway, narrow as it was, divided further: to the left was a staircase going upstairs; to the right, an even narrower passage leading deeper into the house.
Following Madame’s example, I listened too, but there was only silence in the house. Then, maybe from somewhere upstairs, there was a faint
thump. That small noise seemed to signify something to her, because she now turned to us and pointing into the darkness of the passage, said:
“Go in there and wait for me. I’ll be down shortly.”
She began to climb the stairs, then seeing our hesitation, leaned over the banister and pointed again into the dark.
“In there,” she said, then vanished upstairs.
Tommy and I wandered forward and found ourselves in what must have been the front room of the house. It was like a servant of some sort had got the place ready for the night-time, then left: the curtains were closed and there were dim table lamps switched on. I could smell the old furniture, which was probably Victorian. The fireplace had been sealed off with a board, and where the fire would have been, there was a picture, woven like a tapestry, of a strange owl-like bird staring out at you. Tommy touched my arm and pointed to a framed picture hanging in a corner over a little round table.
“It’s Hailsham,” he whispered.
We went up to it, but then I wasn’t so sure. I could see it was a pretty nice watercolour, but the table lamp beneath it had a crooked shade covered with cobweb traces, and instead of lighting up the picture, it just put a shine over the murky glass, so you could hardly make it out at all.
“It’s the bit round the back of the duck pond,” Tommy said.
“What do you mean?” I whispered back. “There’s no pond. It’s just a bit of countryside.”
“No, the pond’s behind you.” Tommy seemed surprisingly irritated. “You must be able to remember. If you’re round the back with the pond behind you, and you’re looking over towards the North Playing Field…”
We went silent again because we could hear voices somewhere in the house. It sounded like a man’s voice, maybe coming from upstairs. Then we heard what was definitely Madame’s voice coming down the stairs, saying: “Yes, you’re quite right. Quite right.”
We waited for Madame to come in, but her footsteps went past the door and to the back of the house. It flashed through my mind she was going to prepare tea and scones and bring it all in on a trolley, but then I decided that was rubbish, that she’d just as likely forgotten about us, and now she’d suddenly remember, come in and tell us to leave. Then a gruff male voice called something from upstairs, so muffled it might have been two floors up. Madame’s footsteps came back into the hallway, then she called up: “I’ve told you what to do. Just do as I explained.”
Tommy and I waited several more minutes. Then the wall at the back of the room began to move. I saw almost immediately it wasn’t really a wall, but a pair of sliding doors which you could use to section off the front half of what was otherwise one long room. Madame had rolled back the doors just part of the way, and she was now standing there staring at us. I tried to see past her, but it was just darkness. I thought maybe she was waiting for us to explain why we were there, but in the end, she said:
“You told me you were Kathy H. and Tommy D. Am I correct? And you were at Hailsham how long ago?”
I told her, but there was no way of telling if she remembered us or not. She just went on standing there at the threshold, as though hesitating to come in. But now Tommy spoke again:
“We don’t want to keep you long. But there’s something we have to talk to you about.”
“So you say. Well then. You’d better make yourselves comfortable.”
She reached out and put her hands on the backs of two matching armchairs just in front of her. There was something odd about her manner, like she hadn’t really invited us to sit down. I felt that if we did as she was suggesting and sat on those chairs, she’d just go on standing behind us, not even taking her hands away from the backs. But when we made a move towards her, she too came forwards, and—perhaps I imagined it—tucked her shoulders in tightly as she passed between us.
When we turned to sit down, she was over by the windows, in front of the heavy velvet curtains, holding us in a glare, like we were in a class and she was a teacher. At least, that’s the way it looked to me at that moment. Tommy, afterwards, said he thought she was about to burst into
song, and that those curtains behind her would open, and instead of the street and the flat grassy expanse leading to the seafront, there’d be this big stage set, like the ones we’d had at Hailsham, with even a chorus line to back her up. It was funny, when he said that afterwards, and I could see her again then, hands clasped, elbows out, sure enough like she was getting ready to sing. But I doubt if Tommy was really thinking anything like that at the time. I remember noticing how tense he’d got, and worrying he’d blurt out something completely daft. That was why, when she asked us, not unkindly, what it was we wanted, I stepped in quickly.
It probably came out pretty muddled at first, but after a while, as I became more confident she’d hear me out, I calmed down and got a lot clearer. I’d been turning over in my mind for weeks and weeks just what I’d say to her. I’d gone over it during those long car journeys, and while sitting at quiet tables in service-station cafés. It had seemed so difficult then, and I’d eventually resorted to a plan: I’d memorised word for word a few key lines, then drawn a mental map of how I’d go from one point to the next. But now she was there in front of me, most of what I’d prepared seemed either unnecessary or completely wrong. The strange thing was—and Tommy agreed when we discussed it afterwards— although at Hailsham she’d been like this hostile stranger from the outside, now that we were facing her again, even though she hadn’t said or done anything to suggest any warmth towards us, Madame now appeared to me like an intimate, someone much closer to us than anyone new we’d met over the recent years. That’s why suddenly all the things I’d been preparing in my head just went, and I spoke to her honestly and simply, almost as I might have done years ago to a guardian. I told her what we’d heard, the rumours about Hailsham students and deferrals; how we realised the rumours might not be accurate, and that we weren’t banking on anything.
“And even if it is true,” I said, “we know you must get tired of it, all these couples coming to you, claiming to be in love. Tommy and me, we never would have come and bothered you if we weren’t really sure.”
“Sure?” It was the first time she’d spoken for ages and we both jolted back a bit in surprise. “You say you’re sure? Sure that you’re in love? How can you know it? You think love is so simple? So you are in love. Deeply in love. Is that what you’re saying to me?”
Her voice sounded almost sarcastic, but then I saw, with a kind of shock, little tears in her eyes as she looked from one to the other of us.
“You believe this? That you’re deeply in love? And therefore you’ve come to me for this… this deferral? Why? Why did you come to me?”
If she’d asked this in a certain way, like the whole idea was completely crazy, then I’m sure I’d have felt pretty devastated. But she hadn’t quite said it like that. She’d asked it almost like it was a test question she knew the answer to; as if, even, she’d taken other couples through an identical routine many times before. That was what kept me hopeful. But Tommy must have got anxious, because he suddenly burst in:
“We came to see you because of your gallery. We think we know what your gallery’s for.”
“My gallery?” She leaned back on the window ledge, causing the curtains to sway behind her, and took a slow breath. “My gallery. You must mean my collection. All those paintings, poems, all those things of yours I gathered over the years. It was hard work for me, but I believed in it, we all did in those days. So you think you know what it was for, why we did it. Well, that would be most interesting to hear. Because I have to say, it’s a question I ask myself all the time.” She suddenly switched her gaze from Tommy to me. “Do I go too far?” she asked.
I didn’t know what to say, so just replied: “No, no.”
“I go too far,” she said. “I’m sorry. I often go too far on this subject. Forget what I just said. Young man, you were going to tell me about my gallery. Please, let me hear.”
“It’s so you could tell,” Tommy said. “So you’d have something to go on. Otherwise how would you know when students came to you and said they were in love?”
Madame’s gaze had drifted over to me again, but I had the feeling she was staring at something on my arm. I actually looked down to see if there was birdshit or something on my sleeve. Then I heard her say:
“And this is why you think I gathered all those things of yours. My
gallery, as all of you always called it. I laughed when I first heard that’s
what you were calling it. But in time, I too came to think of it as that. My gallery. Now why, young man, explain it to me. Why would my gallery help in telling which of you were really in love?”
“Because it would help show you what we were like,” Tommy said. “Because…”
“Because of course”—Madame cut in suddenly—“your art will reveal your inner selves! That’s it, isn’t it? Because your art will display your souls!” Then suddenly she turned to me again and said: “I go too far?”
She’d said this before, and I again had the impression she was staring at a spot on my sleeve. But by this point a faint suspicion I’d had ever since the first time she’d asked “I go too far?” had started to grow. I looked at Madame carefully, but she seemed to sense my scrutiny and she turned back to Tommy.
“All right,” she said. “Let us continue. What was it you were telling me?”
“The trouble is,” Tommy said, “I was a bit mixed up in those days.”
“You were saying something about your art. How art bares the soul of the artist.”
“Well, what I’m trying to say,” Tommy persisted, “is that I was so mixed up in those days, I didn’t really do any art. I didn’t do anything. I know now I should have done, but I was mixed up. So you haven’t got anything of mine in your gallery. I know that’s my fault, and I know it’s probably way too late, but I’ve brought some things with me now.” He raised his bag, then began to unzip it. “Some of it was done recently, but some of it’s from quite a long time ago. You should have Kath’s stuff already. She got plenty into the Gallery. Didn’t you, Kath?”
For a moment they were both looking at me. Then Madame said, barely audibly:
“Poor creatures. What did we do to you? With all our schemes and plans?” She let that hang, and I thought I could see tears in her eyes again. Then she turned to me and asked: “Do we continue with this talk? You wish to go on?”
It was when she said this that the vague idea I’d had before became something more substantial. “Do I go too far?” And now: “Do we continue?” I realised, with a little chill, that these questions had never been for me, or for Tommy, but for someone else—someone listening behind us in the darkened half of the room.
I turned round quite slowly and looked into the darkness. I couldn’t see anything, but I heard a sound, a mechanical one, surprisingly far away— the house seemed to go much further back into the dark than I’d guessed. Then I could make out a shape moving towards us, and a woman’s voice said: “Yes, Marie-Claude. Let us carry on.”
I was still looking into the darkness when I heard Madame let out a kind of snort, and she came striding past us and on into the dark. Then there were more mechanical sounds, and Madame emerged pushing a figure in a wheelchair. She passed between us again, and for a moment longer, because Madame’s back was blocking the view, I couldn’t see the person in the wheelchair. But then Madame steered it around to face us and said:
“You speak to them. It’s you they’ve come to speak to.” “I suppose it is.”
The figure in the wheelchair was frail and contorted, and it was the voice more than anything that helped me recognise her.
“Miss Emily,” Tommy said, quite softly.
“You speak to them,” Madame said, as though washing her hands of everything. But she remained standing behind the wheelchair, her eyes blazing towards us.
