The Betrayals(106)
She sits down at the desk. How many times has she run over the memory of that morning in her head? She climbed the stairs at home, under the crumbling plaster and dingy scrolling paint, calling Aimé’s name. It was nearly midday, already warm, and in the silence she could hear a fly throwing itself against a window, the buzz-crunch of more impacts than a person could stand. ‘Aimé,’ she’d said, ‘Aimé,’ – that name which was his and hers, the name she’d stolen – and then she pushed open the bathroom door, and saw. If only it was a moving picture she could reverse it, so that as she walked backwards down the overgrown drive the blood would trickle upwards, defying gravity, sucked back by the wound in his throat and gathering force until the last drops were enough to knit his skin back together. And she would step, heel-first, into the train, and let it take her back to Montverre, all the way to the time before she saw her name, his name, on the noticeboard and knew Léo had lied to her.
Aimé gave her so much, and she’d let him down. If it hadn’t been for him … She can see him now, that night when he’d got the summons for his Entrance viva: he’d been sitting at the piano, hands crossed behind his head, staring at the damp patches on the ceiling. ‘What a drag,’ he said, as if they were in the middle of a conversation. ‘Montverre sounds like a prison anyway. I’d much rather stay here and read.’
‘You’re lucky you get the choice,’ she said, turning a page, refusing to be drawn. It was an old sore point – the subject of endless childhood taunts – that Montverre didn’t accept women.
‘They can’t teach me anything. It’s a waste of time.’ He grinned at her. When she didn’t answer he jabbed at the top C, plinking until she rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a de Courcy. I’ve been playing the grand jeu since I could read. I don’t need three years in a monastery.’
‘Don’t be so big-headed.’
‘And yet … if I don’t go, I’ll be letting down the family name.’
‘We’d survive.’ She went back to her book, while he went back to twiddling on C-sharp. But a second later she lowered it again. ‘You don’t mean it, Aimé?’
‘What if I do?’ He hunched his shoulders as if her stare was a jet of freezing water. Suddenly his voice was flat, with the weight of certainty behind it; that casual spontaneity had been fake. ‘I don’t want to go. I’ve made up my mind, actually. I’m not going. So there’s no reason to do a viva, is there?’
‘What? You can’t not go to Montverre!’ He grimaced, looking mulish. She sat up straight and slammed her book down on the table next to her. ‘So why did you apply? I helped you with that game for days.’
‘You could go in my place.’
‘Don’t be stupid. Aimé, of course you’ll go.’
‘Did you hear what I said? I’m serious.’ He leapt up and bounced from foot to foot. ‘You could viva my game with your eyes closed. It’s half yours, after all.’
‘Except they might notice the fact that I’m female.’ She sat back, crossing her arms.
‘Oh, come on. You’re tall and scrawny enough. Cut your hair, wear my clothes – maybe squash those down a bit,’ he added, waving at her chest, ‘but it’s not like you’re very womanly to start with. And your voice – you can pass for a tenor, easily.’
She gave him a sour look; but the longer he held her gaze, and didn’t burst into giggles, the harder it was to keep that expression on her face. ‘You think I could?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because …’ She inhaled through her teeth: it was like trying to explain the concept of a locked door. ‘You know it’s not that simple.’
‘Worth a try, though, isn’t it?’ He paced towards the window and stopped, distracted, to scratch at a new patch of mould on the Chinese wallpaper. ‘I’m going to stay here and write my own games. I’m on the verge of a breakthrough, something really big; I don’t want to end up like those idiots in the Gambit. And I’ll be able to work all night and sleep all day …’
‘You’d be alone practically all the time. It wouldn’t be good for you. I can’t, Aimé,’ she said, ‘so stop harping on it. You should go to Montverre, and I’ll go to stay with Aunt Frances, like we agreed.’
‘Is that what you want?’
Silence. A rat scuttled somewhere. She shut her eyes. For a moment she imagined packing her trunk – Aimé’s trunk – and setting off. The train, the village, the mountain road – and then the buildings of Montverre, not in the intricate greys of an etching, but vivid against a real blue sky. Aimé might disdain the lessons, but she ached for them: maths, music, words, notation, history. A library ten times bigger than the mouldering, haphazard, pawnshop-decimated one here; the greatest grand jeu archive in the world. It was like being hungry and dreaming of food. ‘You know what I want,’ she said, her stomach twisting.
When she opened her eyes, he was standing over her. He took hold of her, pulled her out of her chair, and bowed. He was smiling; from that angle he looked like Papa. ‘You must be Aimé Carfax de Courcy,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ And then, with a flourish, he made the gesture of ouverture.