Bloodstream by Sally Spedding

Author:Sally Spedding [Spedding, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-05-08T04:00:00+00:00

24.

For the first time since her arrival in the autumn, Pauline had ‘Les Sapins’ to herself. No-one else was in the kitchen or with the roses, just a quiet emptiness relieved only by her sandals slapping against the floor’s loose stone flags. Within, there was neither an air of mystery, nor anything sinister from which could be summoned morbid thoughts of the supernatural. In fact, the atmosphere was of nothing. A void, of a life gone and not replenished.

Outside however, was different. The house, although transformed by fierce elements for more than seven decades and fortuitously undamaged by the ‘Guerre Mondiale,’ its concrete shell was crumbling away on exposed corners and along the wind-struck front wall. Any stranger visiting for the first time - a fanciful idea, as none rarely did - would have difficulty guessing the status of those inhabiting its large, austere rooms. Perhaps assuming from that young boy’s smiling face in the fine filigree photo frame, and also the nursery stocked with various toy animals, that a young child still lived amongst them. But there’d be no other evidence to reinforce this.

Neither did any silk curtains grace those stark, oblong windows. Only remnant lengths that the cunning old Alsatian had hand-sewn and hung after the first redundancies had been announced. The Vincente’s rich, plum-coloured bedspread had been replaced by one of coarser cloth, lest a window cleaner detect such a sign of affluence. But no tradesman ever came, and the panes on the upper floor stayed as opaque and mildewed as those in the greenhouse.

*

After a few sips of coffee and a sugar lump taken from the café in Luxeuil, Pauline went upstairs, unsteady in the dismal light, past the bathroom - a Spartan, white tiled ‘clinic’ for several attempts at abortion - and into the main bedroom.

Drizzle combined with the darkness of ‘Les Sapin’s’ forestry-bordered grounds dulled that early morning, and although fingering the light switch, Pauline decided against creating an artificial glow which might be seen from the road.

Unlike the equivalent room in Ratcliffe Close, hung with old family photos and evening-class watercolours, this one, extending most of the width of the house, was quite bare. The only relief from its pale walls was a dusty Shrove Tuesday palm, centrally placed over the bed. There were no ballet certificates, music grades passed. Guides, Cubs or their French equivalents illustrating the progress of flesh and blood in all things conventional.

Yet where had position number two of the feet, or a harmonic minor scale in C with both hands ever got her? Underneath a suave, well-dressed lawyer in the beech woods. That’s what…

She suddenly laughed out loud, and that little boy in a less elaborate photo frame than the copy downstairs, seemed to smile.

*

This English incomer whose toiletries were limited to Woolworth’s own brand, sat at the large dressing table, entranced by its collection of beautiful glass bottles marooned on their tiny lace mats. Works of art in themselves, obliquely cut and gilded with intricate strips and stoppers - she was spoilt for choice.

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