Stone's Fall

Stone’s Fall Iain Pears

To my mother

PART ONE

Paris, March 1953

The Church of St-Germain des Prés, at the start of what was supposed to be spring, was a miserable place, made worse by the drabness of a city still in a state of shock, worse still by the little coffin in front of the altar which was my reason for being there, worse again by the aches and pains of my body as I kneeled.

She'd died a week before I arrived. I hadn't even realised she was still alive; she must have been well into her eighties, and the hardships of the past few years had weakened many a younger person. She would not have been impressed, but something approaching a real prayer for her did come into my mind just before I struggled back onto the pew. Age has few compensations; the indignity of discomfort, the effort to conceal constant nagging pain, is most certainly not one of them.

Until I read the Figaro that morning and saw the announcement, I had been enjoying myself. I was on a farewell tour; the powers that be had scraped together enough foreign currency to allow me to travel. My last visit to the foreign bureaux before I retired. Not many people could do that sort of thing these days – and would not until foreign exchange restrictions were lifted. It was a little mark of respect, and one that I appreciated.

It was a fine enough service, I thought, although I was not an expert. The priests took their time, the choir sang prettily, the prayers were said, and it was all over. A short eulogy paid tribute to her tireless, selfless work for the unfortunate but said nothing of her character. The congregation was mainly freshly scrubbed and intense-looking children, who were clipped around the ear by teachers if they made any untoward noise. I looked around, to see who would take charge of the next round, but no one seemed to know what to do. Eventually the undertaker took over. The body, he said, would be interred in Père Lachaise that afternoon, at two o'clock, at 15 Chemin du Dragon. All who wished to attend were welcome. Then the pallbearers picked up the coffin and marched out, leaving the mourners feeling lost and cold.

'Excuse me, but is your name Braddock? Matthew Braddock?'

A quiet voice of a young man, neatly dressed, with a black band around his arm. I nodded, and he held out his hand. 'My name is Whitely,' he said. 'Harold Whitely, of Henderson, Lansbury, Fenton. I recognised you from newsreels.'

'Oh?'

'Solicitors, you know. We dealt with Madame Robillard's residual legal business in England. Not that there was much of it. I am so glad to meet you; I was planning to write in any case, once I got back.'

'Really? She didn't leave me any money, did she?'

He smiled. 'I'm afraid not. By the time she died she was really quite poor.'

'Goodness gracious me,' I said, with a smile.

'Why the surprise?'

'She was very wealthy when I knew her.'

'I'd heard that. I knew her only as a sweet old lady with a weakness for worthy causes. But I found her charming on the few occasions we met. Quite captivating, in fact.'

'Yes, that's her,' I replied. 'Why did you come to the funeral?'

'A tradition of the firm,' he said with a grimace. 'We bury all our clients. A last service. But, you know – it's a trip to Paris, and there's not much opportunity for that these days. Unfortunately, I could get hold of so little currency I have to go straight back this evening.'

'I have a little more than that, so would you care for a drink?'

He nodded, and we walked down the Boulevard St-Germain to a café, past grim buildings blackened with the filth of a century or more of smoke and fumes. Whitely – formerly Captain Whitely, so he told me – had an annoying tendency to grip my elbow at the difficult bits to make sure I did not trip and fall. It was thoughtful, although the assumption of decrepitude was irritating.

A good brandy: she deserved no less, and we drank her health by the plate-glass window as we sat on our rickety wooden chairs. 'Madame Robillard,' we intoned several times over, becoming more garrulous as we drank. He told me of life in Intelligence during the war – the time of his life, he said wistfully, now gone for good and replaced with daily toil as a London solicitor. I told him stories of reporting for the BBC; of D-Day, of telling the world about the Blitz. All yesterday, and another age.

'Who was her husband?' I asked. 'I assume he is long dead.'

'Robillard died about a decade ago. He ran the orphanages and schools with her.'

'Is that why all those children were in the church?'

'I imagine so. She started her first home after the war – the first war. There were so many orphans and abandoned children, and she somehow got involved with them. By the end there were about ten or twelve schools and orphanages, I gather, all run on the very latest humanitarian principles. They consumed her entire fortune, in fact, so much so that I imagine they will all be taken over by the State now.'