Englishwoman in France (6 page)

Mostly I slept till noon, then came down to the courtyard to eat a tray of ‘finds' from the fridge in the kitchen and drink the wine Philip had opened. Then I would lie back and try not to think of Siri, allowing the sounds of the alley outside to wash through the door and flow over me. Alongside the sounds of clamouring women and children and the grind of motor scooters I could hear the clatter of horses' hooves and the faint cries of street-sellers from other ages, the urgent murmur of townspeople from other times. They crowded in on me. I dreamed them and saw them, night and day.

Most days Philip hired a car to go to the beach and drive up into the hills of the Languedoc but I encouraged him to do that on his own. He made acquaintances in the town: English people who had packed up and come to live here; French business people he met in bars who spoke his pragmatic language in more ways than one. He read biographies of British comedians, histories of France from the revolution to the Second World War. He watched international rugby in the sports bar, drank coffee and brandy, and played poker with an old soldier he met there.

He would return to the house from his own journeying about five o'clock, having done his marketing. Then he would become absorbed in his elaborate preparations for our evening meal.

All the while I knew he was waiting, waiting for me to get better. Waiting for me to become calm, to lose my madness. He waited for me to forget Siri dying. For him I should only remember her living. He was so very anxious. I knew it was not for nothing that his boss had given him compassionate leave, to cure his wife of madness and save his marriage. Or not. Even through my perpetual fog I knew that this was our last throw of the dice, our last chance to stay together. Still, the way I was, I found it very hard to focus on this.

My nocturnal habits were blighted a bit by the fact that I had to get out of the house at some time during the day to go to the Maison des Savoirs – the rather grand library – to file my columns to London, Australia and South Africa, do my emails for my online consultancies, and rake cyberspace for . . . what? Notices of sightings of Siri? I looked all the time but I didn't know what I was looking for.

Then one day out of the blue I had this rambling email from Mae in response to some jokey card Philip had sent. Who knows? Perhaps he had sent out some coded cry for help. Anyway it seemed Mae had decided to come and stay with us. The children needed a break. Hubby (as she called him) Billy needed a break and seeing as we had all this room she had decided they would come to help us out.

I told Philip when he came back from a ride out to a monastery in the hills. He was delighted at the news. Relief bled from his pores and danced in the air. He'd got on so well with Mae right from the beginning. Her openness and forthright pragmatism appealed to him. As she got older Mae had become more, not less attractive. She watched her diet, became toned and tough. She ran a slimming support club at her doctor husband's surgery. She laughed when Billy told us gravely she was a pillar of the community, but still she believed him. I always asked about Spelk but their lives had diverged. He was now working for some charity, directing the building of a school in Africa.

When we lost Siri, Mae came down to London and flurried around us quite a bit. She let Philip feed her and in return she cleaned the house, which had gone downhill a bit. She tidied Siri's bedroom without my permission. She tried to approach me with comforting assurances but I wouldn't let her inside my grief. In the end she went home. The last day she looked at me. ‘I did what I could, Starr,' she said. ‘I tried.'

‘I know,' I said. I managed to touch her arm.

‘But it would never be enough, would it?'

I shook my head and almost pushed her through the door.

And now here she was in France, trying again. One call from Philip and she was here.

Philip was disappointed at my lack of enthusiasm for Mae's visit. So he set to work himself, sorting bedrooms and buying new sheets in the Thursday market for her and her brood. He swept the courtyard and stocked up the kitchen with things like Diet Coke and crisps
ancienne et naturel.
As he was a stickler for healthy food and authentic cooking, this was quite a concession. He spent all that week marketing, chopping, planning and fettling.

As it happens I'd had a very bad night the night before their arrival. I'd sleepwalked down the steep wooden stairs and ended up on my back in the courtyard babbling to the stars.

So, the next day Philip decided that it might calm me down to take a boat trip on the famously beautiful Canal du Midi
.
It would take the best part of the afternoon, so he could finish his shopping and get some decent food on the table for Mae and her family.

Somewhere, fogged up in my soul, I think I agreed with him. My sign was Pisces after all. From water we came and to water we shall return. The water of the canal might just dissolve the lava lump of pain that sat inside me.

When I got up in the morning I felt very unwell. Philip took my arm quite tightly and said, ‘You don't want to be here when they arrive. I'll get them settled in. I know it. You
are
going on this trip, Estella, if I have to carry you there. I'll tell the people on the boat to take care of you. But I tell you, Estella, you're doing that trip!'

I
feel a silent gliding in my body even before I get to the side of the canal. A crowd of people jostles around the landing place. Will they let me on? Philip has spoken to the captain.
Make way for the invalid!
The French respect the ill and the invalid. The way parts before me like the Red Sea divided. The Captain's helper – a
gamine
in black jeans – sets me against the side of the boat like a pot plant. Even wedged as I am in this genial crowd it takes a mile or two of gliding for me to feel safe, stuck as I am in the here and now. The hubbub of the travellers fades, as one by one we're hypnotized by the silver-green water and the trees standing to attention every ten metres, clawing the banks to make them safe.

Now my mind slips backwards and I can see old men in dingy clothes about their business, steering their barges loaded with coal and tin, bales of cloth and racks of wine. Then there's only the limpid beauty – silver, green, slate grey; gleaming water alternating between the elongate shadows of trees and the bright reflection of the southern skies.

We're one hour into the journey when I notice the boy: narrowly built with orange hair and eyes too wide for life. He's leaning backwards, staring at the Wedgwood-blue helmet of sky, his long hair dripping towards the water like strands of fire. At his side sits a youngish man in a crew-necked sweater, his long nose in a worn black book. Even in repose the dimple on his cheek gives his face a benign look. His black hair is slightly long, but short at the front, combed across his broad brow. When he raises his eyes to gaze at the canal I see they are bright, cornflower blue. Now and then he puts out an absent hand to stop the boy tipping back into the water. These two are an odd pair. Father and son? No. The older one's too young. Brothers? I have to settle for brothers. But there's no resemblance. Absolutely none. The colouring is wrong.

Suddenly I have this prickle of unease. I know when things are not quite right, in this and other worlds. I close my eyes and have another glimpse of them but now the boy has his hair tied back in a kind of cue and the man is wearing a hooded jacket.

I blink. Now the boy's sitting upright and leaning across to speak into his companion's ear, making him laugh, bringing that dimple into full play. The man's teeth gleam in a flicker of sunlight. The man cuffs the boy on the shoulder and they dissolve into conspiratorial giggles. I know now that things are all right with these two and the black cloud that has been sitting somewhere in my head all morning starts to shred itself.

Oh! Now the boy has climbed up and is balancing on the rail, arms out straight, like a tightrope walker. He makes his way, dancing on light feet, towards the prow of the boat. A mutter ripples through the crowd and a woman nudges the arm of the boy's companion, making him drop his book. He stands up, just in time to see the boy launch himself off the prow of the boat and sink like a stone under the grey-green water, creating ripples that surge towards the bank, swilling the roots of the great trees that hold the canal safe, soaking the bright yellow irises sitting there on the verge. The muttering swells into shrieking and the canal boat's engine putters into silence.

At last the boy's head breaks the surface of the water and the shouts turn from panic to relief.
Dieu merci!
The boy swims to the bank and hauls himself out, water dripping from his whipcord muscles. He grins a crooked-toothed grin and holds his clenched fists above his head in victory. The people are cheering.
Bravo!
Everyone cheers the boy except me. And the boy's companion.
He
shrugs, leans down to retrieve his book, and starts to read again.

The sky darkens and rain begins to patter on the boat's awning. Of course this is not like English rain. It does not cool the warm air. The boat's engine starts up again. Now the boy is jogging on bare feet along the towpath. We race the boy the last half mile to the jetty. He's fleet footed and wins the race, but the boat is not far behind.

My Philip is standing under a big golf umbrella in the rain at the jetty. He searches my face anxiously. I take a deep breath. As I've said, my state of mind these days is Philip's big nightmare. He's always been so afraid of my agitation. His myth is that I just need to
calm down
for me to get better. His recipe is afternoons in shaded rooms; platefuls of his gourmet food; more wine than is good for me – anything to
calm me down
. You'd think a murdered daughter was an illness visited on a person by natural processes. And by similar natural processes you will eventually become
calm
and thus be cured of her death.

He's well intentioned, is Philip, but he's the mad one, when you think of it. But he wouldn't know, would he? Not knowing could be a sign of his delusion.

When we moved into the Maison d'Estella two weeks ago I tried to tell Philip I actually
liked
the house – not least because it had presences. I mentioned the people walking through the rooms.

‘Ghosts?' he said. ‘Sweetheart! You are so funny. Imagination getting the better of you again!' Then he smiled in that special inward way he has, complimenting himself on his tact with this woman whom he loves, but who is rather inconveniently crazy. What he first thought charming he now finds wearying.

And now today as we splash our way through the traffic across the bridge and up into the old town, he scoffs at my tale of the red-headed boy. ‘I was there at the landing, sweetheart! No saturated boy, no man with a black book got off the boat! I assure you.'

But there was. The people on the boat cheered the boy's safe emergence from the water. The woman nudged the man. I
saw
them.

And I've seen the boy since. Walking on top of the town wall, and then in the alleyway behind the Promenade, legs astride, standing upright on the pedals of his mountain bike.

Now I'm getting ahead of myself. First I must go home to the Maison d'Estella and greet my guests.

I
look up at the old door, a solid and safe haven even after living here only two weeks. As usual Philip struggles with the key. The door is massive – heavy hinged, peeling and weathered with time. I stand for a second out in the narrow alley and reflect how the house has grown on me. I've felt safe in this house, roaming the rooms at night, standing on the terrace after Philip has gone to sleep, looking across the shadowy, eternally crimped roofs to the black mass of the cathedral and then – always, always – on up into the sky, dense as blue-black ink. Virgo is so alluring, so seductive that I feel I can put up a hand and very nearly touch the constellation. Some nights I come down from there making my way down the wooden staircases to the courtyard where I lie on the ground and look up through the cupped hand of the old building into the night sky. As I've said sometimes I do this in my sleep and end up in the courtyard still unconscious, which rather upsets Philip.

Today we open the door to the sounds of Norah Jones singing ‘Feelin' the Same Way' and to the sight of Mae dancing around the courtyard, a glass in her hand. Her husband Billy is at the wooden garden table, the
Observer
close beside him and a beer beside his hand. The geraniums are nodding in their pots. Surfboards and beach chairs are tumbling from the space under the grand
escalier
which leads to nowhere.

‘Stella!' Mae puts down her glass and flies across to me. I hold myself stiff as she hugs me to her. Her body feels like a bunch of sticks. She smells of Coco by Chanel, of cigarettes and of that stuff people use to dispel the smell of cigarettes. I must smell of . . . what? The air? Wine? The garlic in the
cassoulet
that Philip made last night? Misery? What does misery smell like? In my experience we all smell of our feelings – right through from desperation to elation, unhappiness to euphoria. This fact used to help me a lot when I used to do personal readings. People would clap their hands at my insight and say ‘How did you know? How did you
know
?'

Mae strokes my upper arm. ‘Phil was saying you've been down the canal on a boat. I don't know how you could do that, me! Go on a canal in this foreign place, among strangers. You might catch something.' She hugs me tighter – wanting, I know, to say more than that, to call up our early days, before she was thin and before I was crazy. In my head I can hear Mae say it. ‘Things were so much simpler then, Starr.'

Her accent has smoothed off through the years, evolving into that middle-England speak that echoes a person's home region but has rounded itself out, become more distinct, more articulated. It happens to us all, I suppose.