Englishwoman in France (10 page)

I stop myself saying that it was only yesterday, when I saw them.

He stands back from me and makes this strange gesture, open-handed, towards the town. ‘You will return to the town? We could walk together?'

I stand up and take some deep breaths to calm myself down. There is no way I can refuse this civilized request.

At first it is a bit awkward, as it always is, when you walk alongside a new person. On the narrowest ways I don't know whether to walk behind or in front of him. Then the man makes it easier; stepping back he holds out his hand to help me over a massive tree root and lets me walk before him. His hand is strong and dry. He asks me how I like the town. I tell him I'm growing to admire it.

I hear his footsteps behind me. ‘I know you can feel the time in this place and in the other cities here in the ground.' His murmuring voice is in my ear.

I stop to look back at him. ‘I met this woman at the Plazza and she told me to look in this hole in a road by the harbour. I went there but it was hard to tell just what was what. She said you could see evidence of five cities in the lines of the earth.'

He nods. ‘You refer to Madame Patrice. She lives in the room below me in the rue de la Poissonnerie. I know this lady. She is an exceptional woman.'

What could I do? I turn and walk again, ahead of this stranger. I walk ahead of him into the town. Something is about to happen but I don't know what.

Something . . .

T
his stranger and I finally stand side by side as we wait by the road across the bridge, making ready to dodge through the traffic to get across the road. Here again we encounter the dreadlocked man with his bags and his dog. For a second he stands silently in front of us, barring our way.

Then my companion puts a hand on the man's shoulder and points up the river, which is flowing under the bridge. ‘That's the way, brother,' he says.

The man nods and pulls his dog to one side. Then he turns haunted eyes on me and says, ‘'
Jour, 'dame! 'sieur!
' and goes the way he has been directed.

We walk. ‘You know him?' I say, curious.

‘I've met many like him,' he says. ‘He's just another pilgrim.' He stops and turns to me, smiling slightly. A dimple deepens in his left cheek. His eyes are bright blue. ‘We walk together and we have no names,' he says. ‘My name is Louis. And you?'

‘Estella. But some people call me Starr.'

He laughs, his face full of merriment. ‘Ah. A good name, Starr. Bright and shining, and showing people the way in the dark.'

I want to tell him that his comment reminds me of Madame Patrice, but I don't know how to say that. It seems too intimate, too knowing. This man knows Madame Patrice. Perhaps he's the one having tea with her this afternoon.

Now we're on the quayside and I stumble on the uneven lava blocks that pave it and – quite naturally – he takes my arm. I can hear the jingling of boat tackle and the shout of seamen's voices but there are no boats drawn up on the quay these days, just waiters and waitresses setting out cutlery and napkins in the smart pontoon cafés huddling here in the place where ships once docked, drawn up side by side, ready to unload. Madame Patrice said that, didn't she?

‘You know Madame Patrice? You said you knew her,' I say.

‘I think I probably do. I knew her husband Etienne from another time. He was a great scholar. And I am acquainted with Madame Patrice. But I've not been here so long, this time.'

‘So why are you here now? In Agde?' This is more direct than I've been for years.

‘I come from the University of Toulouse, and before that the Sorbonne, and before that, Rome.'

‘What is it? Some kind of research?'

‘It's my mission.'

It's an odd thing to say but now I am distracted. The quayside has opened on to a pretty tree-lined square with a huge carved globe of the world at its centre. The man called Louis pauses at a café table. ‘The Place de la Marine is always a good place to stop. It's where the fishermen landed their catch in the old days,' he says. I look around. This neat café – a scattering of tables under the dappled shade of trees – is different from the bustle of the Café Plazza.

Sweat is running down my back from the exertion of the walk and the intense heat of the afternoon sun. He pulls out a seat for me. ‘We rest a little here,' he says. ‘You look tired.'

I take a deep breath and smile. ‘I haven't walked this far in some years.'

‘You're pale. You've been confined?' he says. ‘Shut away?'

Siri.

‘Something like that.'

‘You've been very sad,' he says.

‘Heartbroken,' I say. My own boldness makes me blink. I can't stop my eyes blinking. Then suddenly they stop. I feel calm. He glances away, across the river, taking the pressure away from me. We leave it at that and wait for our coffee. I try to guess his star sign. Libra. I bet it's Libra.
A thinker, a problem solver. Good mediator. Bit of an extrovert who loves teaching, can share his ideas in a very natural way.

I fill the air between us with polite words. ‘So, this research of yours. What is this research?'

He shrugs. ‘Some people would think it's very boring. My study is to evaluate the nature of being a Christian when to follow the Christian way was to be a heretic. In the time before the great Roman Emperor Constantine. In the time before the Roman world took it on itself to define Christianity and convert the world.'

It's hard to know what to say to that.

He catches my blank look and laughs. ‘I know! Who cares? It is of the past. I should be studying how to make the world a greener place, no?' He nods at the waitress – a sturdy girl in dungarees – as she puts coffee down before us. ‘But you? Why are
you
here in Agde?'

I smell the round warm smell of the coffee. ‘It's a kind of . . . accident. I was brought here by my partner because I have a sickness. He thought it would make me well.'

His close, forensic gaze reminds me of Billy. ‘You look tired, Starr, but not sick. You're sick in the heart, perhaps?'

Even I know it's a mistake to talk to a stranger like this. I look around. ‘I have to get back to the house, I think.'

‘And where do you stay here in Agde?'

‘On the rue Haute. The house is called Maison d'Estella.'

His look sharpens. ‘Ah, I know this house of Pierre d'Estella. It is very old. On the high citadel. By the Parthenon.'

I have to smile. ‘
Parthenon!
'

He nods vigorously. ‘There was a temple to Aphrodite there on the high point in the old Greek city. And in the same place when it was a Roman city there was a temple to Venus. Just along from the house of the Roman Governor. These two cities – the Greek and the Roman – would be on the lower levels in the hole in the road you investigated at the suggestion of Madame Patrice.'

I frown. ‘How can you know all this?'

He ducks his head to finish his coffee. ‘You forget, dear lady. Me, I'm a student of those ancient times!' He stands up. ‘Now you must go back to the Maison d'Estella and look out again over this city, whose layers you are peeling like an onion.' He pauses. ‘You found that house because of the name? It is like your name, is it not?'

My turn to shrug. ‘A coincidence. Just a coincidence.'

We walk through the town and part at the Café Plazza. He shakes hands with me and then, to my surprise, kisses me three times on the cheek in the way I've noticed here. Left, right, and then left again. ‘
Au revoir
,' he says. And somehow I know this is a message as well as a farewell.
Till we meet again
.

There is not to be an end.

When I get back to the house, it's empty. After the heat of the early afternoon outside the shadowy courtyard is cool. I pour myself some lemonade and – suddenly hungry – I butter a hard chunk of bread left over from breakfast and sit outside eating it at the wooden table.

And now Siri sweeps back into my mind like a warm breeze off the river
. Siri.
I reflect on how long it took her to be born and how kind the midwife was, how patient; how I apologized for not being
good
at this thing that some women do so easily.

I remember listening to my mother pottering round my tiny flat, keeping out of the way, just as I'd asked her to. I remember the midwife sitting with me into the early morning hours knitting a jumper for her son, waiting for that fulcrum point where Siri really
wanted
to come and my body felt a proper willingness to squeeze her out. I remember thanking God that my colleague at the magazine had managed to fix me up with a home birth. By now, I thought, in hospital they'd have been doing all kinds of things to haul Siri out. They'd have had instruments out, for sure. But that night my midwife told me that all it took was patience.

Then at last Siri joined me in the world. The fact that my mother was in the next room made me swallow the grunts and roars as, with a final heave, Siri came! She was here, with me in the world, outside my body. She let out this very polite, yelling cry of surprise and the midwife washed her face and wrapped her in a linen cloth. Then she laid my baby on my breast with her face close to mine, squeaking and muttering like a kitten.

‘Not hungry yet,' said the midwife. ‘Tired herself out getting out of there, poor pet.'

I stared down at Siri's round, pink face and the rim of hair standing up from her head like a black crown. The midwife, busying herself at the other end of my body dealing with the afterbirth, glanced up just as my baby opened her big black eyes and looked straight, straight into mine. My body was engulfed by what felt like waves of electricity as we recognized each other.

‘Ha!' said the midwife. ‘Been here before, has that one!'

That was when my mother pushed her head round the door. ‘That's it, then? Did I hear someone cry?' She came in with a big mug of tea. ‘Aren't you a clever girl?' She kissed my sweating brow. Then pulled back the linen cloth. ‘And isn't this a very pretty . . .'

‘. . . Girl!' I said.

‘I thought so,' she said.

Then the midwife, suddenly looking very tired herself, started to pack her bags and baggages. ‘Kip for me,' she said, smiling down at me. ‘We did well there, kid.'

‘What's your name, Miss Clark?' I said. ‘What
is
your name?'

‘Siri,' she said. ‘I know, I know! But my Mum's Swedish pen-friend was called that. You know what mothers are.'

‘I do now!' I said, touching my sweating cheek against that of my new daughter. ‘I do now.'

L
ed by one of the Governor's guard, the harbourmaster made his way through the garden on to the colonnaded terrace that looked down towards the harbour. Helée was sitting on a stone bench, his hunting dogs at his feet. Like many Romanised Gauls, Helée relished the hunt.

The harbourmaster stood, holding his round cap, his face nut-brown under the pale line which marked the place where his hat normally protected his massive forehead. His heavily greased hair was pulled back into a cue.

Helée nodded, gesturing towards a low stool by the bench. When the harbourmaster sat, his knees almost came to his chin. He had to look up to the Governor to make his report. He reported on the weather, the fish catches, the imports and the exports, the markets and the census. Behind him, by the wall, the scribe scratched away on his tablet.

It was all good news. The Governor nodded his dismissal. The harbourmaster sat on, turning his hat in his hands.

‘And was there something else, Harbourmaster?' said Helée. He'd learned early in his army career that a kind of tough courtesy got you quite a good way with such people, who – being only a hundred years from barbarism – were as jumpy as a startled hind, only rather more dangerous.

‘Well, your honour. I did hear that your honour's son is becoming very popular with these cures of his and all. News of it is shouted right across the province. I hear he cured your honour of a very bad affliction.'

Helée bent his head. ‘That is so, Harbourmaster. He is becoming a fine doctor.'

‘So many fine arts are at his fingertips, your honour.'

Helée stood up and his dogs got to their feet, ears pricked. ‘Was there something of concern for you, Harbourmaster?'

‘He did attend to my own dear son, your honour, but to no avail.' The harbourmaster squeezed even harder on his hat. ‘Well, your honour, a certain thing does concern me. It concerns me that these wonders are performed alongside invocation to the Nazarene, the one some of the Greek lads down on the dock call the Christ. The young master makes the mark of these Christians when he performs these miracles.'

Helée scowled and moved to grab the harbourmaster by the folds of his cloak and up off his feet. The dogs growled, their tails low. Then he dropped the harbourmaster, brushed his hands, one against the other and shouted for his guard who were lounging outside the door. ‘Here! Kick this fellow down to his hovel at the harbour and kick him on to a ship where he may cure his concerns with a bit of hard rowing. He resents my son for not curing his son and he blasphemes against the Emperor and blasphemes against my house.' Helée stood there and watched his guards kicking and pushing the harbourmaster all the way down the hill. Then he shouted at the door for someone to bring his son. ‘. . . And the Corinthian!' he bellowed. ‘And while you're at it you may request that my wife attends me.'

Later, standing before a red-faced Helée, neither Modeste nor Tib denied that they invoked the Nazarene to aid them in their work. Helée moved in closely to Modeste who took half a step backwards. ‘Is this what you do, Corinthian? You take my son and make my very blood blaspheme against the Emperor and our god Emperors? Our great Emperor has toiled to purge the army of these savages, putting them down like the vermin they are. They're like the monster whose head you cut off and two grow on its place.' He was terrible in his rage, spitting his words into Modeste's face.