46

EVEN FROM THE end of Kerkstraat Veerle could see that something was wrong.

Lights, she thought. Why can I see lights?

She was back later than she had planned, and although it was not yet properly dark the daylight was fading and the street was slowly sinking into shadow. Normally Claudine put down the roller shutters before nightfall, sealing the house so that not one chink of light escaped.

Now, however, yellow light was pouring out of the front windows, and as Veerle approached the house she could see that the front door was ajar and it was pouring out of that too, as though the house were haemorrhaging light. She picked up her pace a little, and then she slowed again, feeling the first stirrings of apprehension, as fleet and subtle as mice scurrying under straw. When she came to the stretch of pavement in front of the house, she paused altogether for a moment and stood there looking at the open front door.

Something’s wrong.

She pushed the door wide open and went inside.

‘Maman?’

For one long moment there was silence, and unpleasant ideas flickered at the edges of her mind. Then she heard someone stirring in the sitting room and she thought, I’ve spent too much time thinking about Vlinder and Egbert.

Veerle went to open the sitting-room door, but before she could do so, it was opened from the inside and she found herself face to face, not with Claudine, but with someone else entirely. The expectation of seeing her mother was so strong in her mind that for several seconds she stared quite blankly at the person in front of her. Then she recognized the woman: it was a friend of Claudine’s, a French-speaking woman who lived in the next village.

What’s she doing here?

Veerle couldn’t recall the woman’s name. She was about Claudine’s age, but that was the only thing the two women had in common. Claudine had a worn and faded look, as though life were wearing her thin; Madame Whatever-her-name-was had a considerably more solid appearance, with a large-featured face, big hands and a bosom that jutted alarmingly. She did not look pleased to see Veerle.

‘So there you are, miss,’ she said in French.

Veerle tried to look past her but there was no peeping around that meaty shoulder. ‘Has something happened?’ she asked. ‘Is my mother all right?’

‘Now she asks.’

Veerle’s patience unravelled. She pushed past and went into the sitting room. She could hear the woman’s indignant remarks behind her but she ignored them.

Claudine was sitting in the armchair, propped up with cushions. There was a blanket over her knees. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed, but when Veerle came into the room she opened them, blinking as though waking from a deep sleep.

‘Maman? What happened?’ asked Veerle, but it was not Claudine who answered, it was her friend.

‘You know perfectly well what happened,’ she snapped. ‘Your mother is very ill.’

Veerle opened her mouth to say something, to say I didn’t know she was ill, but it occurred to her that she had known; at least, she had known that Claudine was claiming to be ill. She simply hadn’t believed her – or at least, not enough to abandon her expedition with Kris.

Claudine’s friend was sweeping on anyway. ‘You should not have gone out leaving your mother alone. She had to call me! Of course I came at once, but I couldn’t be here immediately because I had to come from home. It’s four kilometres, you know.’

Veerle’s hands closed into fists, so tightly that she felt her nails digging into the palms of her hands, but she did not rise to the bait.

It’s true, she thought. She told me she was ill and I still went out. And I can’t tell either of them why I had to go.

She tried to make herself think of Kris, of the pressure of his hand on hers, the warmth of his fingers entwined with her own. Stay calm. Don’t lose it. You can’t tell them anything.

The creeping fear that perhaps the woman was right, perhaps Claudine really was ill, wasn’t helping.

I wouldn’t have gone if I didn’t have to, she thought.

Aloud, she said, ‘We should call the doctor, Maman.’

‘Call the doctor?’ said her mother’s friend contemptuously. ‘The doctor came and went an hour ago.’

Veerle faced her. ‘What did she say?’

‘It was a male doctor,’ came the reply, swiftly and with an unmistakable note of satisfaction in it; the woman was enjoying this, Veerle realized. ‘But I cannot tell you what he said,’ continued her mother’s friend. ‘I would not have dreamed of intruding. I went into the kitchen while he was speaking to her.’

‘Fine,’ said Veerle. ‘Well, I can ask her when you’ve gone.’

She had made herself speak levelly, without any audible trace of malice, but she saw the other woman stiffen anyway.

‘Of course, you want me to go now. But I wouldn’t be here at all if you had stayed at home.’

Veerle briefly closed her eyes. Don’t lose your cool. She could feel the weight of the evening’s excursion into Brussels, the frustrating conversation with Fred, the dangerous proposal Kris had made. There was a feeling growing inside her chest, as poisonous and pressurized as an abscess; just a gramme more pressure and she thought something would rupture. Keep your temper, she urged herself.

The woman’s attention had shifted to Claudine now, anyway. She was leaning over her, fussing with the pillows and the blanket, making a show of ensuring that Claudine was as comfortable as possible before abandoning her to the dubious custody of her neglectful daughter. She spoke to Claudine as she did so, reassuring her, but she did not address another word to Veerle until the pair of them were at the front door, Veerle holding the door open, waiting for her to go, and the woman standing on the step, buttoning up her coat against the cool evening air.

‘Don’t leave your mother alone again when she’s sick,’ she told Veerle, then turned abruptly and walked towards her car, without further farewells.

Veerle watched her go for a moment, and then she went back into the house and closed the door. She went to let down the shutters, as she knew her mother would have done, first the ones in the kitchen, and then the ones in the sitting room.

She re-entered the sitting room somewhat unwillingly.

I don’t know what to think. What to feel.

Her feelings about her mother were huge and incomprehensible, a great unscaleable slab carved with hieroglyphics she could never understand. Veerle was indignant and angry, and she was afraid – afraid that all the substance of her own life was going to be used up for the war effort that was her mother’s life, struggling incessantly against unseen enemies, foes that perhaps existed only in her mind. Guilt and resentment were so closely entwined that she could not have unpicked them even if she had wished to, but most of all she felt sorrow. As she crossed the room to the window she glanced at Claudine, lying limp and wan in the chair, and the pain she felt inside was a physical ache.

Why can’t I do what she wants?

She let the shutters down slowly and the darkening street outside was reduced to a square and then a flattening rectangle, and then it was gone altogether and she was faced with the blank slats. They were sealed in together, she and Claudine. Already Veerle felt as though she were suffocating.