Consolation (37 page)

‘So, if you know, that’s perfect,’ replied Kate. ‘And Alice? Has she got someone for us as well?’

‘I don’t know, but wait till you see everything she found at the junk sale! You’ll have to bring the car closer . . .’

‘Good Lord, no! Don’t you think we already have enough bloody stuff as it is?’

‘But wait, it’s really terrific! There’s even an armchair for Nelson!’

‘I see . . . Hang on a sec,’ she said, running to catch up with her and handing her a wallet, ‘run to the bakery and buy all the bread that’s left.’

‘Yes, Ma’am.’

‘You’re so organized!’ said Charles, impressed.

‘Oh? You call this organized? I would have said it was quite the opposite . . . Are you – are you coming anyway?’

‘And how!’

‘So, who’s Nelson?’

‘A very snooty dog . . .’

‘And L.R.?’

Kate stopped in her tracks. ‘Why are you asking me that?’

‘Samuel’s shirt.’

‘Oh yes. Sorry. Louis Ravennes, his grandfather. You don’t miss a thing, I see.’

‘Yes I do, a lot of things, but monogrammed teenagers are not that common.’

Silence.

‘Right.’ She gave a little shiver. ‘Let’s clear all this away and go home. The animals are hungry and I’m tired.’

She pulled her hair back into an elastic band.

‘And Nedra?’ she asked Yacine, ‘where has she got to this time?’

‘She won a goldfish.’

‘Well, that’s not about to make her any more talkative . . . C’mon, let’s get to work.’

Charles and Yacine piled up chairs and dismantled canopies for over an hour. Well . . . mainly Charles . . . Yacine was not particularly efficient, because he was forever telling him stories:

‘See, for example, you just stuck out your tongue while you were untying that knot. D’you know why?’

‘Because it’s hard and you’re not helping me?’

‘Not at all. It’s because when you concentrate on something, you use the side of your brain that’s also in charge of your motor activity, so by blocking one thing in your body
on purpose
, you can concentrate better . . . That’s why people, when they walk, they slow down when they start thinking about a complicated problem . . . D’you understand?’

Charles stood up straight, holding his lower back: ‘Hey, Mr Encyclopaedist . . . Wouldn’t you care to stick out your tongue a bit now, too? We’d go a lot faster . . .’

‘And the most powerful muscle in your body, d’you know which one it is?’

‘Yes. It’s my biceps when I use it to throttle you.’

‘Wrong! It’s your tongue!’

‘I should have known . . . C’mon, take the other end of the table, there . . .’

He seized the chance while Yacine was struggling with the sides of his brain to ask him his own question:

‘Is Kate your mum?’

‘Oh,’ he replied, in that fluty little voice that children use when they want to wind us up, ‘she said she isn’t, but I know that she is . . . at least a little bit, that is.’

‘How old is she?’

‘She says she’s twenty-five but we don’t believe her.’

‘No? And why not?’

‘Because if she were really twenty-five she wouldn’t be able to climb trees any more . . .’

‘No, of course not . . .’

Stop, thought Charles, stop right there. The more you try to find out the less you understand. Put the operating instructions to one side. Play the game yourself, too . . .

‘Well, I can tell you that she really is only twenty-five . . .’

‘How do you know?’

‘You can tell.’

When they’d finished sweeping everywhere, Kate asked if he could drive the two youngest back.

While he was settling them on the rear seat, a tall girl came up to him: ‘Are you going over to the Vesp’?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Kate’s place, that is . . . Can you drive us over there, with my friend?’

She pointed to another tall girl.

‘Uh . . . sure.’

Everyone squeezed into the tiny rental car and, with a smile on his face, Charles listened to them chattering.

He hadn’t felt this useful in years.

The hitchhikers were talking about a night club where they
weren
’t allowed to go yet, and Yacine was saying to Nedra, the mysterious little girl who looked like a Balinese princess:

‘Your fish . . . You’ll never see him asleep because he doesn’t have any eyelids and you’ll think he can’t hear you because he doesn’t have any ears . . . But in fact, he’ll be resting, you know . . . And goldfish are the ones who have the best hearing because water is a very good conductor and they have a bone structure that reflects all the sounds to their invisible ear, so, uh . . .’

Charles, fascinated, was trying hard to focus on what he was saying above the giggling of the two girls. ‘. . .

so you’ll be able to talk to him all the same, you see?’

In the rear view mirror, he could see her nodding her head, gravely.

Yacine caught his eye in the mirror, leaned forward and murmured, ‘She almost never speaks . . .’

‘And what about you? How do you know all that you know?’

‘I don’t know . . .’

‘So you’re a good pupil?’

A little scowl.

And a big smile from Nedra in the mirror, shaking her head.

He tried to remember what Mathilde was like at that age. But couldn’t . . . didn’t remember at all. For someone who never forgot a thing, this was something he’d lost along the way. The childhood of children . . .

Then he thought about Claire.

About the mother she would have –

Yacine, who didn’t miss a thing, put his chin on Charles’s shoulder (ah, he’d found his own parrot . . .) and said, to help him think about something else, ‘Still, you’re glad you won them, aren’t you, your sausages?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘you’ve no idea how glad I am . . .’

‘Actually I’m not supposed to eat any . . . Because of my religion, y’know . . . But Kate said God doesn’t care . . . He’s not Madame Varon after all . . . D’you think she’s right?’

‘Who is Madame Varon?’

‘The dinner lady, at the cafeteria . . . You think she’s right?’

‘Yes.’

He’d just recalled the story that Sylvie had told him the day before about the charity grocery, and he felt a sudden twinge of distress.

‘Hey! Watch out! This is where you have to turn!’

6

‘WELL THEN! I
can see you haven’t been wasting your time! You’ve already found the two prettiest girls in the county!’

Who giggled all the more, asked where the others had got to, and vanished into thin air.

Kate had her wellies on.

‘I was about to go on my rounds, are you coming?’

They crossed the courtyard.

‘Normally, the children are supposed to feed the menagerie, but oh well . . . It’s their party today . . . And this way, I can show you round.’

She turned to him: ‘Are you all right, Charles?’

He was aching all over. His head, his face, his back, his arm, his torso, his legs, his feet, his diary, his accumulation of late arrivals, his guilty conscience, Laurence, and all the phone calls he hadn’t made.

‘I’m fine, thank you.’

She had the entire henhouse following in her wake. And three mutts. And a llama.

‘Don’t pet him, otherwise he’ll –’

‘Yes, Lucas warned me . . . Then he won’t go away . . .’

‘It’s the same with me.’ She laughed, bending down to pick up a bucket.

No, no. She didn’t say that.

‘Why the smile?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Nothing . . .
Saturday Night Fever
. . . So. Over there you have the former pigsty, but now it’s the pantry. Mind the nests, there . . . Here, and in all the other buildings, it rains bird droppings all summer long . . . That’s where we store the bags of seed and grain, and when I say “pantry” it’s more like one for the mice and the dormice, unfortunately . . .’ She stopped to address a cat who was snoozing
on
an old duvet: ‘All right, little old guy? Life not too hard for you now, is it?’ She lifted a plank and used a tin can to fill up her bucket. ‘Here . . . Can you take that watering can, over there?’

They went back across the courtyard in the opposite direction.

She turned around: ‘Are you coming?’

‘I’m afraid I might squash a chick.’

‘A chick? No fear. Those are ducklings. Just keep going, don’t worry about them. Here . . . the tap’s right there.’

Charles didn’t fill the watering can up to the top. He was afraid he mightn’t be able to lift it . . .

‘This is the henhouse. One of my favourite spots. René’s grandfather had very modern ideas where the farmyard was concerned, and nothing could be too good for his little hens. Which was apparently the cause of no end of rows with his wife, so I’ve heard.’

Charles was repelled by the smell at first, then he was amazed by – how to put it – the care, the attention which had been given to planning the place. The ladders, roosts, nest boxes, all in straight rows, prepared, bevelled, even sculpted . . .

‘Look at that . . . opposite this beam he even put in a window so that these little ladies could enjoy the view whilst relieving themselves . . . And here, follow me . . . A chicken run for them to romp about in, a rock garden, a pond, watering troughs, a little bit of dust to discourage the vermin and . . . Do have a look at the view, really . . . Look how beautiful it is . . .’

While he was emptying the contents of his watering can, she added: ‘One day when . . . I don’t know . . . I must have been quite desperate, I suppose –’ She was laughing. ‘– I got the ludicrous notion to take the children to one of those holiday park complexes, you know the ones?’

‘Vaguely . . .’

‘I think it was the stupidest idea I’ve ever had . . . To put all these wild creatures in a jar . . . They were impossible. Okay, nowadays we all laugh about it a lot, but at the time . . . and when I think how much it cost . . . anyway, forget it . . . My point is that on the first evening, after he’d had a walk around that . . . place, Samuel made this solemn declaration: our hens are treated better. Then they spent the entire week watching television . . . Morning and night . . . Real zombies. I just let them. After all, for them that was exotic . . .’

‘You don’t have a telly?’

‘No.’

‘But you have the Internet?’

‘Yes. I can’t deprive them of the entire world, after all . . .’

‘And do they use it a lot?’

‘Mostly Yacine. For his research,’ she smiled.

‘That kid is amazing.’

‘You said it.’

‘Tell me, Kate, is –’

‘Later. Careful, it’s spilling. Okay . . . we’ll leave the eggs, that’s Nedra’s special treat.’

‘What about Nedra, then –’

She turned around: ‘Do you like really good whisky?’

‘Uh . . . Yes.’

‘Okay, later. Now . . . This is the old bakehouse. Which we use as a doghouse. Careful, the smell is unbearable . . . and here’s the storeroom . . . This was a stable. Transformed into a garage for bicycles . . . There’s the wine cellar . . . Don’t look at all this rubbish . . . That’s René’s studio.’

Charles had never seen anything like it. How many centuries were accumulated here? How many skips, how many arms, and how many weeks would it take to get rid of it all?

‘Have you seen all these tools?’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s like the Museum of Folk Art and Tradition, it’s extraordinary . . .’

‘You think so?’ she grimaced.

‘They may not have the telly but they can’t ever be bored, not for a second.’

‘Not
one
second, alas.’

‘And that? What’s that?’

‘That’s the famous motorbike that René has been fixing up ever since . . . the war, I imagine.’

‘And that?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘It’s incredible.’

‘Wait . . . there’s better, if you’ll follow me into the shop . . .’

They went back out into the daylight.

‘Here you have the rabbit hutches – empty. I have my limits . . . This here is a first barn for the hay, the fennel . . . Over there, for straw . . . What are you looking at?’

‘The roof framework . . . It’s amazing . . . You cannot imagine the theoretical knowledge you need to create something like this . . . No,’ he said again, thoughtful, ‘you cannot imagine . . . Even me, even when it’s my own field, I . . . How did they do it? It’s a mystery. When I get old I’ll take classes in carpentry . . .’

‘Mind the cat –’

‘Another one! How many do you have?’

‘Oh . . . there’s a big turnover . . . One dies and another kitten takes its place . . . Mainly because of the stream. Those idiots swallow hooks that still have the bait on them and they don’t make it . . .’

‘And how do the kids take it?’

‘A tragedy. Until the next litter . . .’

Silence.

‘How do you do it, Kate?’

‘I don’t do it, Charles. I don’t do it. But occasionally I do give English lessons to the vet’s daughter in exchange for a few visits . . .’

‘No, I meant – I was referring to everything else.’

‘I’m like the kids: I wait until the next litter. That’s one thing life has taught me. One day’ – she turned the lock – ‘after another. That’s more than enough.’

‘You’re locking the cats in?’

‘Cats never go through doors, don’t you know that?’

They turned round and saw . . . the rogues’ gallery.

Five mongrels, each one more battered than the next, were waiting for their dinner.

‘C’mon, me beauties . . . Your turn now.’

She walked back through to the pantry and filled their bowls.

‘That one, there –’

‘Yes?’

‘He only has three paws?’

‘And he’s missing an eye . . . That’s why we call him Nelson. Here’s where we store the wood . . . That’s another barn over there, with the old granary . . . For the grain, obviously . . . Nothing special. What a mess. Another museum, as you say . . . This one is even more tumbledown than the others . . . But look at those lovely double doors . . . that’s because this is where they kept the horse-drawn carriages. There are two left, in appalling condition, though – come and see.’

After they had disturbed the swallows, Charles said, ‘But this one still looks fine . . .’

‘The little trap? Sam restored it. For Ramon . . .’