The Cleaner of Chartres by Salley Vickers Page B

because there is only one path. A long and complicated one but only one.’
    ‘Why is it here?’
    ‘Maybe because of what you say. To make sure among all this exalted stuff we also keep our feet on the ground. Who knows? No one does, really. Of course there are theories, most of them guesswork. Half of them crazy. You know the story?’
    The door through from the West Portal creaked, heralding the arrival of the Abbé Bernard.
    Alain winked at Agnès. ‘Better get back to work. See you around.’
    The Abbé Bernard had been increasingly plagued by bad dreams which woke him early each morning. Sometimes he awoke in tears. In all cases, he knew the dreams had been about his mother. Once she came as a great tabby cat with cruel claws and draggled, matted, wet fur. Once as he had known her when he was a boy, in a hat dressed with blue flowers, a hat which had quite left his conscious memory. More than once he had learned to his horror that she was not dead at all, and had never been, but was trapped in her coffin underground. His nights were made hellish by her sepulchral calls.
    He was very glad to see Agnès in her yellow turban headscarf and leaf-green skirt.
    ‘Early bird, eh, Agnès?’ The Abbé Bernard gave what he imagined to be a jaunty laugh.
    Agnès smiled acknowledgement. She did not want to admit that she was in fact later than usual lest he come in earlier to find her.
    ‘I wonder,’ said the Abbé Bernard, ‘if I might confide to you a dream I had last night. I was in a train . . .’
    •   •   •
    Madame Beck watched Agnès leave the cathedral by the South Porch with the Abbé Bernard. The silly old fool was clutching her arm, almost as if they were familiar friends. When Madame Picot called round for tea, this being Madame Beck’s week to host this ritual, Madame Beck said, ‘Is it right, that girl cleaning the cathedral? She never goes to mass. Bernadette was a regular attender.’
    Madame Picot, who was not much of an attender herself, sighed and remarked that this was the way the world was going. Young people, she attempted to expound . . . But she was not allowed to complete her wisdoms on the mores of the young.
    ‘All the more reason for the Church to set a good example. There are plenty of good Christian women who would be glad to do that job. I wouldn’t mind betting that missy there is a Muslim. She has the look.’
    ‘But what can you do about it, dear?’ Madame Picot picked out the least stale-looking biscuit from the plate which her hostess had provided. She much preferred it when Louise came over to hers. Her tea was better than Louise’s – her daughter sent her English leaf tea from her London visits – and she didn’t have to leave Piaf, who sometimes expressed her displeasure by dragging her nails on the Persian carpet. ‘I mean, you weren’t thinking of managing the cleaning yourself, were you, dear?’
    ‘Don’t be absurd, Jeanette. Of course, I don’t mean myself. I might have a word with Father Paul, or the Bishop. Father Bernard is going soft in the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t set her cap at him along with Professor Jones. Men are idiots at that age. A nod and a wink from anything in a skirt and they lose their heads.’
    Naturally, she was not thinking of her own late husband.

16
    Chartres
    Professor Jones was utterly absorbed in reacquainting himself with his childhood. More than his childhood – his whole past life.
    Agnès had filled several pages of the sticky paper with photographs from the collection: his grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts and cousins, and then later his first schooldays. Various photos of animals had also been found and stuck on a sheet of their own: Phoebe, Nana and Grandpa’s black-and-white cat, his twin cousins’ dogs, Pitch and Pine, his own pair of budgerigars, Salt and Pepper, a rabbit belonging to his other cousin Jane, called Muffet – or maybe it was Moppet? – and a mysterious parrot