Incidents in the Rue Laugier by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online

France.

FOUR

    S ITUATED IN A HOLLOW BETWEEN MEAUX AND MELUN , the house presented an unassuming façade of rosy brick which belied its age. Originally built in the seventeenth century, La Gaillarderie had once formed three sides of a square, with a small private chapel raising its pointed roof in one corner. Most of this had been done away with in 1793 by insurgents from Meaux, who suspected the owners, quite rightly, of royalist sympathies. Now all that remained was the original
corps de logis:
both the wings and the chapel had left no trace, although architectural historians still occasionally came from Paris to study the foundations. What was left was a pleasant rather low-built single pavilion of two main storeys, an attic floor, and a pitched roof punctuated by mansard windows. It was not without distinction, though not essentially different from many other country houses of the same period. Only the quality and colour of the brick, and the clean-cut creamyquoins and window surrounds, indicated a past of far greater splendour than that enjoyed by its present owners, Robert and Germaine de Bretteville. Robert had inherited the house from his father, who had in his turn purchased it from the previous owner, a lawyer who worked in Paris, spent his weekends in the country, and found the situation in the valley rather damp.
    This dampness—undeniable, and rather a problem in the winter months—in summer conferred upon the house a not unpleasant smell, redolent of apples and of fading pot-pourri. This, however, was noticeable only on the upper floors. In other respects the house was more than satisfactory. The interior was as unpretentious yet as dignified as what remained of the façade. A black and white tiled hall led from the front entrance to the garden side, where two drawing-rooms, a dining-room and a morning-room enjoyed the view through double doors which opened directly on to a broad terrace: from here one descended directly to lawns which led to distant trees, for most of the grounds were coppiced, although, as the lawyer had discovered, the shooting was poor. Robert de Bretreville, when he was at home, occasionally went out with a gun and shot a rabbit: throughout his childhood Xavier had endured cold November mornings standing quite still in an attempt to avoid his father’s bluff admonitions to beat the not inconsiderable undergrowth, in order to dislodge whatever wildlife was thought to be available. Inhaling the rank smell of damp fern, in which he stood nearly up to his knees, Xavier would send his obedient mind back to what he could remember of his Greek and Latin texts and ignore his father completely. Robert in his turn, aware of his increasing girth, his ears crimson in the damp depths of the wood, would blame his studious son for being so unsuited to country life, and for preferring to spend the bleak but beautiful autumn days reading in his room. Xavier could, had he made a more enlightened choice, haveaccompanied his father on a round of neighbouring houses and farms, where the men, guns at the ready, were only too willing to turn out for a day’s prospecting, from which they would return in the late afternoon, their breath smelling of
marc
, and at that moment most faithfully resembling the hobbledehoy aristocrats their remote ancestors might have been.
    Xavier’s room overlooked the terrace, as did the other four main bedrooms, his parents’ room, with double doors, forming a right angle at the bottom of the corridor. All the rooms had fireplaces and fairly exiguous
cabinets de toilette:
at the end of the corridor, facing the parents’ bedroom, was a bathroom, only occasionally used, mostly by guests, who had to accustom themselves to a staccato stream of rusty water before this ceased altogether, without warning. Thereafter the guest, or visitor, learned to use the washbasin in the cupboard off his bedroom, as, he supposed, did his host and hostess, who certainly had never struck him as less