Englishwoman in France (11 page)

‘Messire, the Empress . . .' began Modeste.

Helée put up a hand. ‘Utter no more blasphemies, Corinthian!' He turned to the guard. ‘Shut away this blasphemer, teach him not to insult his Emperor. He needs a hard lesson. He's only fit for meat for the arena.'

The guard hustled Modeste away, grasping him with a handful of his gown.

‘Father!' pleaded Tib. ‘Please!'

Helée turned on his son. ‘And you! You're in for the best thrashing a boy may endure for doing this in my name.'

‘Helée!' murmured Serina, who was standing by Tib. ‘The boy gave you back your sight. Remember . . .' The delicate objection in his wife's voice enraged Helée further. Unlike him, she was Roman by birth, and sometimes this sat between them like a drawn sword.

‘The spawn of the Underworld possess their magic I do not doubt!' He loomed over her and she shrunk away from him. ‘You! You've not been listening to this traitorous gabble about the Nazarene? Tell me you haven't, woman!' There was a keen question in his voice.

She stood up very straight, her gown falling back in its graceful folds, one hand on Tib's shoulder. ‘I am faithful to the Emperor and faithful to you, Helée. But the boy and the Corinthian mean no bad things. They cure and help people. The boy is only eleven. He is my son. He is
our
son. I love him. You love him, Helée.'

Her husband's smile was like a fox baring its teeth. ‘Then your motherly love must hold him tight, madam, while I will beat this heresy out of him. He must give it up.'

He had his guard tie the boy to one of the columns in the courtyard. Serina placed her head on the stone beside that of her son so he could only see her face. She clutched one shackled hand tightly.

Helée took a whip from the guard's hand. From another part of the villa they could hear Modeste crying out in agony. ‘Do not hurt Modeste, Father. Do not!' said Tib in a clear voice.

That was when Helée struck Tib three times with a whip, making the boy grunt with pain. ‘Do you renounce this heresy?' He barked the words into Tib's face. The boy shook his head, tears flying down his face, glittering in the rays of the low afternoon sun.

The dogs growled.

Helée handed the whip to his guard. ‘Here, make him see sense, will you? Three strokes and ask him the question again.'

Then he strode off, dragging a protesting Serina with him.

The guard, a middle-aged Gaul, who had watched the boy grow up from birth and had witnessed his healing wonders, laid on the whip with a much lighter hand than his master, making sure the snap and crack occurred before the whip flicked the skin off the boy's back.

After twenty-one such strokes he reported to his master that neither the boy nor the Corinthian would recant. ‘There is one thing, sir. I have to say the boy's strips are healing up as soon as they are laid. Curious thing, that!'

Helée clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘Give the boy to his mother. How will I explain this? How?'

The next day Helée had Tib and a limping Modeste brought to him and pronounced his judgement. The two blasphemers were to be set in a boat and banished from his sight, to be left to the wilderness where the boars and the bears might take their fill of them. ‘You are my son. And now you must be an example to others. I will not have this poison in my house.' He turned to the guard.

Helée, from his high terrace, watched as the pair was marched down to the harbour surrounded by a unit of his guard. Tib had to help Modeste, who was badly injured from his beating, although he himself had not a mark on him. Serina and her ladies walked alongside in silence, the skirts of their gowns trailing in the dust.

The tumult and noise of the harbour came to a stop as slaves and the harbour men put down their ropes, left their pulleys and stood in silence watching the little procession. From his terrace Helée's sharp soldier's eyes observed his wife as she embraced both her son and the Corinthian and handed them over to the substitute harbourmaster, who lifted them bodily into a small boat that boasted only a mere slip of a sail and two oars.

Helée made his way out of the house and stood halfway down the hill, watching. He watched as Serina – who had clearly prepared for this – had her ladies put packages of food aboard, along with the leather pouches that they both carried with their cures. Last came a male slave with Modeste's boxes. She glanced up the hill at the still figure of her husband. He bowed his head, acknowledging her small defiance.

The boat pushed off and the man and the boy started clumsily to row upstream, watched by a silent crowd. Then, at a nod from Serina, one of the seamen jumped aboard and another followed him. They took the oars from Modeste and Tib and started to row the boat for them. A cheer went up amongst the watching people who admired the courage of the seamen. Who knew what punishment the Governor would exact for such an act?

His face expressionless, Helée turned away and marched up the hill. In the house he called on members of his guard to strip down the boy's eyrie of any remaining blasphemous documents and take them outside to burn them. They returned to say that the room had already been stripped and there was no sign of documents or other traitorous items. It was empty.

I
'm sitting in the courtyard munching strawberry jam on another chunk of breakfast bread when the big door opens and Philip and Mae tumble through, laughing. They look at me in surprise. I might be the turtle I saw this morning, swimming down the centre of the canal. Philip actually looks up at the window of the eyrie, where he expected to find me and now looks back down at me as though I'm the ghost of myself. ‘You're eating! My god you're eating, Estella!' He staggers and steadies himself with a hand on Mae's shoulder.

Mae giggles. ‘Yeah, honey-Starr. You're eating and
we're
drunk.' She puts an arm round his waist and guides him to a chair. He's the one more worse for wear.

Philip sits back and looks at me through half-closed eyes. ‘You're eating!' he repeats, his voice full of dark, self-pitying accusation.

I take another bite. ‘It's not against the law,' I say with my mouth full.

‘Against Philip's law,' says Mae. ‘Our Phil is a man of the law, i'n'he? Rules the table, rules the court, rules the world!' She giggles and busies herself finding a cigarette in her handbag.

Philip's head drops slowly and he closes his eyes. His face is slack and he looks vulnerable. To be honest, it's quite good to see him not in charge. I wipe the crumbs from my lips and look at Mae, who's trying to connect her lighter with the end of her cigarette. ‘So what happened?' I say.

Mae sits up straight, takes a long drag of her cigarette and pulls herself together. She's like a dog shaking itself, righting itself when it gets out of the water. Or rather a bitch.

‘Well,' she says. ‘What's happened is this . . .' Another drag of her cigarette. Then the words come out in smoke on one long breath. ‘We go to Cap d'Agde, take a look at the market, and take the kids down around the hurdy-gurdies. Then down on that nudist beach, take a look at a few naked women stretched out there, you wouldn't believe it, Stells. All shapes . . .' She takes a breath. ‘Then we have a swim. Then it's too hot so we have a long lunch and Billy takes the kids for an ice cream and Phil and I have
more
lunch. Well, more
pastis
. And more. Then Billy comes back and we're pissed. And he shovels us all into the car, and he's just shovelled the two of us out at the car-park down at the Jeu de Ballon. He's mad at us. Mad! Tells us to get back here and get to bed before he gets back here with them. That we're scaring the kids.' She giggles and takes another draw on her cigarette. ‘Not together. Bed, that is.'

Philip opens an eye. ‘Estella! You're eating!' he mumbles.

I'm grinning despite myself. ‘You'd better do what Billy says, Mae. Get Philip to bed. Not your bed, of course! I'll keep Billy down here.'

She screws out her cigarette on my bread plate, stands up, and gives me a mock military salute. ‘Yeah, ma'am! Keep Billy at bay, mind!' She pulls Philip to his feet then pushes and pulls him through the salon and up the stairs. Then I can hear her through the open window in the main bedroom as she pulls off his shoes and tells him to
sleep it off, darling
, before she trips on her high heels through to the bedroom that she and Billy share.

I pour myself some more lemonade, still smiling to myself at Philip's antics. And wait for Billy.

You know that Siri and I met Philip quite by chance. Siri was three or four and we were still living in my old flat and one night it got to ten o'clock and she'd woken up. She was always easy enough to quieten. All it took was warm milk with real chocolate, grated and sprinkled by her own chubby hand.

No milk
. . . She looked up at me, shaking her head.

‘No worries,' I said. ‘We'll go to Mr Patel's.'

She ran to get her small red hat. It was a favourite of hers at the time. Mr Patel's shop, out on the main road, stayed open all night. He used the quiet times to maintain the beauty of his vegetable displays. And he always made great efforts to ensure that whatever customers wanted was available on his shelves. Shelves of Weetabix, Shredded Wheat, loo rolls and kitchen paper sat alongside shelves of daal, olives, dates and spices – all a person could need, really. Just one thing was missing. Mr Patel had stopped stocking cigarettes due to some local dispute, when his fruit was spoiled by a gang of lads who were trying to buy cigarettes without paying.

His customers ranged from people who lived nearby to late or early workers who called for groceries on their way to or from work, to kids getting their mobiles topped up, to office people from the City on their way to the more prosperous northern suburbs.

Among these city types that night was Philip, neat in his suit, his business case on a long strap over his shoulder. He told me later that he often picked things up there on his way south after work and sometimes he worked very late. ‘I never have to worry,' he said. ‘I can park outside and Mr Patel is always open.'

Even our being there at the same time in the all-nighter was no guarantee that we should meet. It was Siri who guaranteed that. She ran up to him and showed him her red cap. In fact she offered it to him. I saw him go pink as he took it, and I thought that was touching. He pushed the cap back at her. ‘It's very nice,' he said. ‘A very nice hat.'

I caught up with her. ‘I'm so sorry,' I said. ‘She's very fond of that hat, so you should be honoured.'

He smiled. ‘Do you come here often?' Then he laughed. ‘I didn't just say that, did I?'

Philip was thinner then, and had this gentle face which was made more, not less beautiful by his rimless spectacles. I liked him instantly and so did Siri, who was now leaning on his trolley eyeballing him with the kind of fierce joy that was one of her gifts.

I told him I was not usually out this late. ‘It's more usually sixish,' I said. ‘We ran out of milk.'

Three nights later Siri and I came in for potatoes and an ice lolly at six o'clock. She saw Philip from the bottom of the second aisle and ran down it to give him her hat. He looked down at her and up at me. It wasn't a
coup de foudre
– well not for me. It might have been for him, but that was a thing he'd never tell you.

He grinned. ‘Well, fancy meeting you here!'

I rolled my eyes. ‘What a coincidence!'

He returned the red cap to Siri. ‘Well, if by coincidence you mean finishing work early and being at Mr Patel's at six o'clock for three nights running, stocking up on loo rolls for the nation . . .'

‘A man of purpose!'

He smiled broadly. ‘Well. It's served its purpose. Here you are!'

We stood looking at each other, neither of us sure of what to do, now he had achieved his goal. ‘Well . . .' I said.

This was something very different. In my life – so home-centred with work and with Siri – the only men I met were clients who wanted private readings to target their stock investments, to guide some business decision, or scan various houses for investment potential. In any case even most of that communication was on the telephone, not face to face.

Standing in an all-nighter looking into the eyes of a tall, attractive man my own age was rare, to be honest.

Now Siri mentioned the ice lolly and we all relaxed.

‘Come with me for an ice cream,' he said.

So, over ice cream at the local
gelateria
we discovered the usual things about each other – names, ages, jobs, favourite films, preferred music. He was a solicitor working behind the scenes doing something about property and the Church of England. ‘Dusty, but I like it,' he grinned. ‘Leaves time for proper things, like cooking.'

He liked cricket and jazz. He'd married his childhood sweetheart at twenty but she'd run away to America with a shoe designer. His mother lived in Hove but came up to town every three weeks to get her hair done. ‘No hairdressers in Hove!' he said. It wasn't very funny but I still laughed. He laughed as well. Siri waved her long spoon and laughed.

When he discovered what I did for a living he said the usual thing – how he'd never met anyone who'd done that kind of thing and wasn't it all – er – telling people what they wanted to know and usually what they knew already?

‘Not quite. It's often me telling some sharp businessman to avoid certain stocks.'

‘Can you really do that?'

‘Seems I can. Sometimes. A bit like remembering the future. I always tell them there's no guarantee. But they come back, so something must be working. The women come back as well – but a lot of them want other stuff. More personal.'

‘What are they like, these people? Isn't meeting strangers risky? There could be a few crazies out there.'