Belle - Lesley Pearse [52]
Annie looked at him with tear-filled eyes for what seemed a very long time. ‘You have helped already, Noah,’ she said eventually, wiping her eyes with a lace-trimmed handkerchief. ‘You let me say what was in my heart. It had been stuck inside for so long that it was poisoning me. Thank you.’
Chapter Ten
Belle was confused. She had been in the house in France now for four days. She was locked into a room at the top of the building like a prisoner, yet the two women who came in and out to bring her food, put coal on the fire, empty the slop bucket and bring water to wash in were kind to her.
They didn’t speak English, but the way they looked at her, brushed her hair, and tutted when she hadn’t eaten the food they’d brought, showed they cared about her. She wondered if they were whores – they didn’t appear to be as they wore dark blue plain dresses, caps and aprons. Back at Annie’s the girls wandered around in a state of undress most of the day.
Belle had tried with sign language and miming to ask them what was going to happen to her, and to try to make them understand she wanted to write a letter to her mother, but they just shook their heads as if they had no idea what she meant.
So Belle fluctuated between thinking that she was like the children in Hansel and Gretel, being kind of fattened up before being presented to a man. Or alternatively, and ideally, that nothing was happening because Madame Sondheim hadn’t liked her or considered her unsuitable and was planning to send her back to England as soon as she could arrange it.
The room she was being kept in was an attic room, and the ceiling sloped down sharply to the floor by the window. It was small, rather dark and simply furnished with just a small iron bed, a washstand and a little table and chair under the window. But it was warm and quite comfortable, though she found the food she was brought a bit strange. There was also a stack of jigsaw puzzles which helped to make the time go a little faster.
Escape was absolutely impossible. On the very first morning Belle had climbed out of the window to see if she could get down to the street that way, but once on the window sill she found it was a sheer drop down the back of the house. Looking up at the roof, she was far too afraid of trying to climb up those slippery old tiles to see if there was a way down the front of the house. Besides, if there had been a way she doubted Madame Sondheim would have left the window unbarred.
Listening at the door revealed nothing. She would hear voices and footsteps from time to time, but the people always spoke in French. During the evening she could hear music and occasional guffaws of laughter coming from downstairs, the same kind of sounds she’d heard back in London. But at home Mog had always come down to her a couple of times during the evening, the last time usually to tuck her into bed and kiss her goodnight. But here no one came up to see her after she’d had her supper, and twice the oil in the lamp had run out during the evening so she’d been forced to leave her jigsaw and get into bed.
They usually brought her supper quite late in the evening; once she’d heard the church clock strike eight as she was eating. So on her fifth night, when her supper was brought well before it was dark, she sensed something was finally going to happen.
The soup was vegetable, very tasty, with some chunks of bread, followed by a fish pie and boiled potatoes. There was the usual glass of red cordial too, but tonight it tasted different. She thought perhaps they’d put some wine in it, and she drank it down anyway.
When the door opened again she assumed it was one of the maids to collect her tray. It was the shorter of the two maids, with Delphine the housekeeper who had brought her up here on the first night. She spoke in very fast French and when Belle merely stared back at her, not understanding, she beckoned, as if to come with her.
Belle was pleased to have an opportunity to get out of the room, but also