Irene gulped and looked over her shoulder, expecting to see the ghost of the drowned woman drifting up the spiral staircase behind her, a demonic figure with claws stretched out towards her, a face as white as china and dark circles around her blazing eyes.
‘There’s nobody here, Irene. Just you and me,’ said Ismael.
Irene nodded but she wasn’t convinced.
‘Only seagulls and crabs . . .’
‘Exactly.’
The staircase led to a viewing point on the lighthouse tower from which you could see the whole of Blue Bay. As they stepped outside, the fresh breeze and the brilliant sunlight dispelled the ghostly echoes conjured up inside. Irene took a deep breath, mesmerised by the view.
‘Thank you for bringing me here,’ she whispered.
Ismael nodded.
‘Would you like something to eat?’ he said.
The two sat on the edge of the platform, their legs dangling in the air, and began to feast on the delicacies hidden in the basket. Neither was very hungry, but the food kept their hands and their minds busy.
In the distance, Blue Bay slumbered beneath the afternoon sun, oblivious to what was happening on that remote island.
Three cups of coffee and an eternity later, Simone was still sitting with Lazarus. What had begun as a friendly chat had turned into a long conversation about books, travel and the past. After only a few hours, she felt as if she’d known Lazarus all her life. For the first time in months, she found herself reliving painful memories of Armand’s final days, although she also felt a great sense of relief as she did so. Lazarus listened attentively, maintaining a respectful silence. He knew when to divert the conversation and when to allow her memories to flow.
Simone found it hard to think of Lazarus as her employer – the toymaker seemed more like a friend, a good friend. As the afternoon wore on, she realised, with a mixture of regret and almost childish embarrassment, that in other circumstances, in another life, the strange communion between them might have been the start of something more. The shadows of her widowhood and her past life persisted inside her, however, like the aftermath of a storm. In the same way, the invisible presence of Lazarus’s sick wife pervaded the atmosphere at Cravenmoore. Two invisible witnesses in the dark.
Simone could tell that identical thoughts were going through the toymaker’s mind. A golden light heralded the sunset, spreading a warm radiance between them. Lazarus and Simone gazed at one another silently.
‘Can I ask you a personal question, Lazarus?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why did you become a toymaker? My late husband was an engineer. In fact, he was quite talented. But your work is extraordinary. I’m not exaggerating – you know the truth better than I do. So why toys?’
Lazarus stood up and slowly walked over to the window, his profile tinted orange by the setting sun.
‘It’s a long story,’ he began. ‘When I was a small child, my family lived in the district of Les Gobelins, in Paris. You probably know the area. It used to be poor and full of old, run-down buildings. We lived in a tiny flat in an old block on rue des Gobelins. Part of the frontage was propped up because it kept threatening to collapse, but none of the families living there could afford to move to a better part of the district. How we all managed to fit in the flat – my three brothers and me, my parents and my uncle Luc – is a mystery. But I’m digressing.
‘I was a lonely boy. Always had been. Most of the things the other children on my street were interested in bored me, and the things that interested me didn’t appeal to them. I’d learned to read – it was a revelation – and most of my friends were books. This might have worried my mother had there not been more pressing problems at home. My mother’s idea of a healthy childhood was for me to run around the streets, picking up the habits and opinions of our neighbours. All my father did was sit around waiting for my brothers and me to add another wage to the family.
‘Others were not so lucky. In our block there was a boy called Jean Neville. Jean and his widowed mother were cooped up in a tiny apartment on the ground floor, next to the entrance. Jean’s father had died years before, from a disease he’d caught in the tile factory where he worked – something to do with the chemicals they used. Apparently it was quite common. I was aware of all this because I was the only friend young Jean had. His mother, Anne, didn’t let him venture beyond the building and its inner courtyard. His home was his prison.
‘Eight years earlier, Anne Neville had given birth to twin boys in the Saint Christian Hospital. Jean and Philippe. Philippe was stillborn. For those first eight years, Jean had had to shoulder the guilt of having killed his brother at birth. Or at least, that’s what he believed. For Anne made sure she reminded Jean, every single day of his life, that his brother had been stillborn because of him; that, had it not been for Jean, her marvellous boy would now be standing in his place. Nothing Jean did or said could win his mother’s love.
‘Of course, in public Anne Neville behaved affectionately enough. But in that solitary apartment, the reality was very different. Day in, day out, Anne would remind Jean that he was lazy. Bone idle. His school results were dreadful. His character more than doubtful. His movements clumsy. His whole existence, in short, a curse. Philippe, on the other hand, would have been adorable, studious, affectionate . . . everything that Jean could never be.
‘It wasn’t long before little Jean realised that he should have been the one to die in that gloomy hospital room eight years earlier. He had taken the place of another . . . All the toys Anne had been storing up
for years to give to her future son had been thrown into the flames, down in the boiler room, the week after she came back from the hospital, so Jean never had a single toy. They were forbidden to him. He didn’t deserve them.
‘One night Jean woke up screaming after a nightmare. His mother went over to his bed and asked him what was the matter. A terrified Jean confessed that he’d dreamed about a shadow, an evil spirit, pursuing him down an endless tunnel. Anne’s reply was decisive: it was a sign. The shadow he’d been dreaming about was the spirit of his dead brother, seeking retribution. He must make more of an effort to be a better son, obey his mother in everything, and not question a single one of her words or actions. Otherwise, the shadow would materialise and carry him off to hell. To reinforce her words Anne then picked up her son and dragged him down to the basement, where she left him alone in the dark for twelve hours, so that he could meditate on what she had said. That was the first time he was locked up.
‘One afternoon, a year later, Jean told me about it. I was filled with horror. I wanted to help the boy, to comfort him and try to alleviate some of the misery of his life. The only thing I could think of doing was to take the coins I’d been saving for months in my money box and go down to Monsieur Giradot’s toy shop. My budget didn’t stretch very far. All I managed to buy was a puppet, a cardboard angel with strings you pulled to make it move. I wrapped it up in shiny paper and, the following day, I waited for Anne Neville to go out shopping. Then I knocked on Jean’s door and gave him the parcel. It was a gift, I said. Then I left.
‘I didn’t see him again for three weeks. I hoped he was enjoying my present, since I wouldn’t have any savings to enjoy for a long time. Later, I found out that the cardboard angel survived only a day because his mother found it and burned it. When she asked him who had given it to him, Jean didn’t want to implicate me, so, he said he’d made it himself.
‘Then, one day, things went from bad to worse. His mother went berserk and took her son down to the basement again. She locked him in and warned him that this time the shadow was sure to appear to him in the dark and spirit him away for ever.
‘Jean Neville spent an entire week down there. His mother had got into a fight in the market at Les Halles and the police had locked her up, with a number of others, in a communal cell. When they let her out, she had wandered around the streets for days.