At this point I remembered the entire tragedy. A former mayor of Lyon, Gaston Brossard was a highly successful building contractor and intimate of President Pompidou’s, a millionaire many times over. At the peak of his success this 55-year-old man had married for the third time. For his young bride, a beautiful ex-television actress in her early twenties, he had built a sumptuous mansion above Vence. Sadly, however, only two years after Christina’s birth the young mother had died when the company aircraft taking her to join her husband in Paris had crashed in the Alpes Maritimes. Heart-broken, Gaston Brossard then devoted the remaining years of his life to the care of his infant daughter. All had gone well, but twelve years later, for no apparent reason, the old millionaire shot himself in his bedroom.
The effects on the daughter were immediate and disastrous — complete nervous collapse, catatonic withdrawal and a slow but painful recovery in the nearby Hospice of Our Lady of Lourdes, which Gaston Brossard had generously endowed in memory of his young wife. The few clinical notes, jotted down by a junior colleague of Derain’s who had conscientiously made the journey to Vence, described a recurrent dermatitis, complicated by chronic anaemia and anorexia.
Sitting in my comfortable office, beyond a waiting room filled with wealthy middle-aged patients, I found myself thinking of this 17-year-old orphan lost high in the mountains above Nice. Perhaps my anti-clerical upbringing my father had been a left-wing newspaper cartoonist, my mother a crusading magistrate and early feminist — made me suspicious of the Hospice of Our Lady of Lourdes. The very name suggested a sinister combination of faith-healing and religious charlatanry, almost expressly designed to take advantage of a mentally unbalanced heiress. Lax executors and unconcerned guardians would leave the child ripe for exploitation, while her carefully preserved illness would guarantee the continued flow of whatever funds had been earmarked for the Hospice in Gaston Brossard’s will. As I well knew, dermatitis, anorexia and anaemia were all too often convenient descriptions for a lack of hygiene, malnutrition and neglect.
The following weekend, as I set off for Vence in my car — Prof. Derain had suffered a mild heart attack and would be absent for a month — I visualized this wounded child imprisoned above these brilliant hills by illiterate and scheming nuns who had deliberately starved the pining girl while crossing their palms with the dead man’s gold dedicated to the memory of the child’s mother.
Of course, as I soon discovered, I was totally in error. The Hospice of Our Lady of Lourdes turned out to be a brand-new, purpose-built sanatorium with well-lit rooms, sunny grounds and a self-evident air of up-to-date medical practice and devotion to the well-being of the patients, many of whom I could see sitting out on the spacious lawns, talking to their friends and relatives.
The Mother Superior herself, like all her colleagues, was an educated and intelligent woman with a strong, open face and sympathetic manner, and hands — as I always immediately notice — that were not averse to hard work.
‘It’s good of you to come, Dr Charcot. We’ve all been worried about Christina for some time. Without any disrespect to our own physicians, it’s occurred to me more than once that a different approach may be called for.’
‘Presumably, you’re referring to chemotherapy,’ I suggested. ‘Or a course of radiation treatment? One of the few Betatrons in Europe is about to be installed at the Clinic.’
‘Not exactly…’ The Mother Superior walked pensively around her desk, as if already reconsidering the usefulness of my visit. ‘I was thinking of a less physical approach, Dr Charcot, one concerned to lay the ghosts of the child’s spirit as well as those of her body. But you must see her for yourself.’
It was now my turn to be sceptical. Since my earliest days as a medical student I had been hostile to all the claims made by psychotherapy, the happy hunting ground of pseudo-scientific cranks of an especially dangerous kind.
Leaving the Hospice, we drove up into the mountains towards the Brossard mansion, where the young woman was allowed to spend a few hours each day.
‘She’s extremely active, and tends to unsettle the other patients,’ the Mother Superior explained as we turned into the long drive of the mansion, whose Palladian faade presided over a now silent fountain terrace. ‘She seems happier here, among the memories of her father and mother.’
We were let into the imposing hall by one of the two young nuns who accompanied the orphaned heiress on these outings. As she and the A HOST OF FURIOUS FANCIES Mother Superior discussed a patient to be released that afternoon I strolled across the hail and gazed up at the magnificent tapestries that hung from the marbled walls. Above the semi-circular flights of the divided staircase was a huge Venetian clock with ornate hands and numerals like strange weapons, guardians of a fugitive time.
Beyond the shuttered library a colonnaded doorway led to the dining room. Dustcovers shrouded the chairs and table, and by the fireplace the second of the nuns supervised a servant-girl who was cleaning out the grate. A visiting caretaker or auctioneer had recently lit a small fire of deeds and catalogues. The girl, wearing an old-fashioned leather apron, worked hard on her hands and knees, meticulously sweeping up the cinders before scrubbing the stained tiles.
‘Dr Charcot…’ The Mother Superior beckoned me into the dining room. I followed her past the shrouded furniture to the fireplace.
‘Sister Julia, I see we’re very busy again. Dr Charcot, I’m sure you’ll be pleased by the sight of such industry.’
‘Of course…’ I watched the girl working away, wondering why the Mother Superior should think me interested in the cleaning of a fireplace. The skivvy was little more than a child, but her long, thin arms worked with a will of their own. She had scraped the massive wrought-iron grate with obsessive care, decanting the cinders into a set of transparent plastic bags. Ignoring the three nuns, she dipped a coarse brush into the bucket of soapy water and began to scrub furiously at the tiles, determined to erase the last trace of dirt. The fireplace was already blanched by the soap, as if it had been scrubbed out a dozen times.
I assumed that the child was discharging some penance repeatedly imposed by the Mother Superior. Although not wishing to interfere, I noticed that the girl’s hands and wrists showed the characteristic signs of an enzyme-sensitive eczema. In a tone of slight reproof, I remarked: ‘You might at least provide a pair of rubber gloves. Now, may I see Mile Brossard?’
Neither the nuns nor the Mother Superior made any response, but the girl looked up from the soapy tiles. I took in immediately the determined mouth in a pale but once attractive face, the hair fastened fanatically behind a gaunt neck, a toneless facial musculature from which all expression had been deliberately drained. Her eyes stared back at mine with an almost unnerving intensity, as if she had swiftly identified me and was already debating what role I might play for her.
‘Christina…’ The Mother Superior spoke gently, urging the girl from her knees. ‘Dr Charcot has come to help you.’
The girl barely nodded and returned to her scrubbing, pausing only to move the cinder-filled plastic bags out of our reach. I watched her with a professional eye, recalling the diagnosis of dermatitis, anorexia and anaemia. Christina Brossard was thin but not under-nourished, and her pallor was probably caused by all this compulsive activity within the gloomy mansion. As for her dermatitis, this was clearly of that special type caused by obsessive hand-washing.
‘Christina—,’ Sister Louise, a pleasant, round-cheeked young woman, knelt on the damp tiles. ‘My dear, do rest for a moment.’