Englishwoman in France (7 page)

I stand away, rescuing myself from her close clasp. ‘I'm as you see, Mae. Here and in one piece.' The words come out more crisply than I intended.

‘Estella!' Philip says sharply.

‘Great to see you, Mae. Really.' I make amends. My eye moves across to the table. ‘And you, Billy!'

Mae's husband holds up his glass in a toast. ‘Now, Starr.' Billy always called me by my nickname since the time I told him (having drunk too much) that my mother called me Starr. ‘I fear we've brought our northern weather with us.' Billy always starts his conversations with the weather.

I smile at him. ‘Perpetual heat here in May is a myth. But Nyrene, the lady who owns this house, tells me she loves this time of year. There might be rain, but because it's cooler and greener the flowers by the canal are a spring miracle. She's right. I saw them today from the boat. Flag irises, clover, carpets of vetch, lovely grasses. And birds.'

I wonder what Billy would think if I say I saw ghosts on the canal today. I want to keep talking to him because I like him, and also for some respite from Mae's attention and Philip's surveillance. ‘Nyrene rides along the canal path every day on her bicycle. She knows about flowers. And birds. She says there are nightingales in the evenings.
Rossignols
in French,' I add.

His eyes brighten behind his round glasses. ‘Bicycles? Can we get bicycles?'

‘Yep!' I say. ‘You can borrow them from the landlord. He's a good sort.'

Billy puts his head on one side and looks at me. His eyes are much kinder, less searching than Mae's. ‘Sea air's doing you good, then?'

I like Billy. Sturdy, uncomplicated GP. Ex rugby player running to fat; easy-going and quite content to let Mae push him around. I've also thought that's how he manages her. He has this chubby face and wears round glasses; he smells of cornflakes and, very faintly, of that antiseptic wash doctors use. I think the cornflake smell is because he's around the children a lot.

Suddenly there is shrieking and a strange thumping inside the house.

Mae laughs, her bright white, well capped teeth gleaming. ‘Terrors on board!' she says easily. ‘Playing trampolines on the beds.'

I wonder what my stylish landlady would think of that. The beds are big wooden carved wonders from the last century. Philip tells me the
brocante
shops here and in Pezenas down the road are full of them. Visiting them is one of his regular lone jaunts.

Come to think of it, these antiques will probably survive the bouncing better than the Ikea beds at home.

Mae catches my thought. She lights another cigarette. ‘Go and get them, Billy. Can't have them getting into
Madame
here's bad books, can we?'

Billy vanishes through the glass doors into the house and at last Philip comes to my rescue. ‘Estella needs a bit of a rest, Mae.' He gives me a gentle push. ‘Go and lie down, Estella. I'll sort the meal.' He usually calls me by my Sunday name. I've never asked him why.

Billy comes through the glass doors, hung about with George and Olga, four and six years old respectively. George is a small roly-poly version of his dad. Olga is tall for her age, just into little-girlhood. Designer jeans and tee shirt. Bare feet. Hair up in bunches and round red-framed glasses. She holds out her hand. ‘Hi Auntie Starr.'

Oh Siri!

‘Olga!' I fold her small hand in mine and feel the shadow of the thousand or so times I had done this with Siri. I feel sick.

‘Hi Auntie Starr,' squeaks George just behind her.

I take his hand too and smile. ‘Hello, love. Haven't you grown!' My voice is crackly like a bad record.

I hurry past them and, looking back, I catch a knowing glance between Mae and Philip, before charging through the glass doors and up the wooden stairs. I throw myself on the day bed in my top-floor eyrie. I'm angry at their knowingness – knowing that I am sliding away to some place where they can't reach me, exasperated because they can't help.

I close my eyes and concentrate. Now again I can feel the slight sway of the canal boat. I can hear again the chatter of the people as the boy jumps, his hair streaming behind him. The dark man is there and he leans down again to pick up his dropped book. This time, though, he looks at me directly, his eyes locking on mine. ‘
Travelling through, just like you
.' His tone resonates in my ear. Manchester? Edinburgh? No. That doesn't seem right. His voice is accent-less. Timeless.

My heart stops, then falters on.
Siri!

I can't sleep. I jump off the daybed, go to my work table and check my list. I bring up a chart on the screen and start to make notes. This work is the thread that has kept me this side of the sanity gap since Siri was taken from me. It can fulfil its sanity task for me today and all this week while we're entertaining Mae and her family. How can I relax or sleep with the sound of a small girl's laughter in my ears? I know that if I sleep I'll dream again of Siri kicking around a football with her friend Kerry then waving goodbye. Smiling.

O
ne day, in the spring of the year after the Corinthian came to Good Fortune to teach Tib, when he was off on his regular wanderings, a woman with running scabs all down one side of her face came to the great iron gate of the Governor's house and sent a child running, asking for ‘the boy doctor'.

Tib picked up his leather pack (a new gift from his father) and went to see her at the gate. He put his hand on the woman's shoulder and smeared her face with ointment from a horn he had in his bag. Then he said the prayer Modeste had taught him and made a mark of the fish on her forehead. He told the woman to keep the ointment on her face for five days and afterwards wash her face in running stream water from above the town twice a day for twenty days.

‘Above the town!' he said firmly. ‘Don't forget!'

Within two days the whole district knew the woman's face was clear of these chronic sores for the first time in five years.

There was another time, down by the harbour, when Tib came across two men holding down another, whose arms and legs were flailing around like a windmill. Small as he was, Tib hauled them off the man. Recognizing their assailant was the son of the Governor, the men stood back. The madman leapt to his feet and began to set about Tib, who tried in vain to keep him at arm's distance. Suddenly the flailing stopped and the man stared at the boy. Then he smiled and knelt at the boy's feet. Tib put one hand on the head of the man, then, with the thumb of the other he made a sign on his forehead. The man sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Then he stood up straight and strolled away, a picture of calm.

After that people started to trickle to Good Fortune from all across the region to be cured by the boy doctor. Tib applied all he had learned from Modeste in terms of both medicine and method. But the Corinthian observed that, in addition, the boy had this strange ability to calm people down, to right their disordered brains, to reduce their inner torment – all with a touch of his hand. The more observant patients and onlookers noted that his cures were always accompanied by some kind of invocation and a special touch on the forehead.

But Tib's growing reputation was not a total success. He failed to cure the harbourmaster's son, who was suffering from a throat infection that seemed to have closed off his throat entirely. Despite Tib's and Modeste's efforts over a whole week, the child died, and the harbourmaster was heartbroken.

At first Governor Helée looked on his son's emerging healing powers with benevolence. It was his job to keep the local population settled and happy, safe from brigands and not too upset about the taxes. Things were going well – after all, he himself still had Imperial ambitions. There were whispers of a move to Rome itself. He was in the habit of discussing this with eminent visitors long into the night, urging them to plead his cause to the Emperor. His wife Serina, in her quiet way, suggested that perhaps Helée might be seen as too keen on preferment. He should not pin all his hopes on such a vague possibility, she said. This extreme agitation was not good for him.

Then, one day, Helée woke up and couldn't see. He rolled out of bed and charged around his room, bumping into basalt columns and carved stools that stood by his bed. He roared for his servant, who went running for Serina. Serina calmed her husband down and got him back to his couch where he rocked backwards and forwards, praying to Jupiter to give him back his eyes. Had he not made the sacrifices? Had he not given the gods respect? Had he not made libations to the Emperor Gods? What reward was this for a man who had shown valour in the field of battle, to take away his eyes?

Serina sent the servant running for Modeste and Tib. She held his hand while Modeste did his usual thorough examination. Modeste shook his head in her direction. ‘There is nothing here, Madam. There is no sign on his body that His Excellency may not be able to see.'

Helée moaned out loud.

Serina and Modeste both turned to Tib, who came forward nervously. He put both of his hands, first on the crown of his father's head, then over his ears, and then on his brow, and then over his closed eyes. As he repeated this series of actions, under his soft boy's hand Helée became calm.

Then, still with his hands on his father's head, Tib closed his own eyes and muttered the prayer he had learned with Modeste. He made the mark on his father's forehead. Then he stood back, and stood up straight at his mother's side.

They all waited.

Helée breathed in deeply, let out an enormous sigh, leaned his head back on his cushions, and seemed to sleep. They stood there waiting for half an hour. An hour. Then Helée sat up, opened his eyes and blinked. He turned his head left and then right. He blinked. He could see! He stood up beaming and clapped his son on the shoulder. He even embraced his wife. ‘I said to you many times, my son. The Empire will be proud of you yet.'

Modeste and Tib went upstairs to a tiny corner room off the eyries where they did their work and gave thanks to Jesus the Nazarene for the curing of Helée, who, even though a pagan, was a man of virtue and common sense.

H
aving worked at my charts half the night, I drag myself from my bed earlier than usual the next morning. As I make my way down two flights of winding stairs at the Maison d'Estella the bell of St Etienne informs the whole town, as it has for hundreds of years, that it's eleven o'clock. Hedged around with the chitter of swifts and the occasional faux-baby wail of the seagulls, the house itself is silent. It's bright and hot today. Billy must have been pleased when he woke up.

I know that my visitors woke much earlier today. At eight o'clock I sat bolt upright in bed, groggily aware of the rumble and shriek of the voices of men and children. I threw myself back on my pillow and stayed where I was. I finally made it downstairs to find a note in Mae's scrawling hand on the kitchen table.
Off to Sête to suss those fab beaches! And look for bikes. Mmmmmmmmm
.

Philip has left me my breakfast covered in a cloth – croissant, cheese, ripe pear, coffee in a flask. I sit down and eat it as though he's still here, watching me, calling me Estella. At one time I used to hide the food he made for me and not eat it. I got very thin, but started to eat off very small plates and kind of grew out of that. It seems now that the last fragile tendril of our relationship is his making food and my eating it. But these days we rarely eat together, just as we rarely sleep together.

Last night he and Mae and the others ate their supper together in the courtyard. Billy brought my food up to my eyrie – some kind of mussel stew with green beans in a vinaigrette dressing on the side. On the tray beside it was a lovely crystal glass with a small
pichet
of
rosé
wine.

Billy had put the tray down on my work table, stood watching as I pulled up my chair, then he stayed there, massive rugby arms folded. ‘I bet you're sick of being asked how you are,' he said.

I poured myself a good slosh of wine. ‘You bet!' I replied with some feeling.

He hesitated, then took off his spectacles and wiped them. They must have steamed up as he laboured his way up all those stairs with my tray. ‘You know you shouldn't put pressure on yourself, Starr. It takes people years to get over . . .' He caught my look. ‘Of course I know one never really
gets over
these things. Perhaps the most one can expect is to get back on some kind of an even keel. Get some kind of basis to start over again, you know.' He hesitated again. ‘One has to do that, merely to survive.'

I was already shaking my head. ‘I don't want to start over again, Billy. Not without her, my Siri.' I like Billy and I was trying really hard not to sound soppy. But my heart still hurt so much. ‘Look! I need to
see
her, then I may be able to start over.'

He looked at me quietly for a moment. ‘I do respect all this stuff of yours, Starr, but . . .'

‘You think it's a load of old sewage.'

‘Not exactly.' He stared at me for a moment. ‘But wishing for something you can't ever have could stop you going on at all, Starr.'

Somewhere, somewhere in my soul I felt he must be right. I've been looking for Siri for so long now. ‘But if I don't see her what reason is there? To go on?'

He watched me, his eyes troubled. Finally he said, ‘So . . . how's the medication helping?'

I smiled faintly at him. ‘I'm down to the minimum, seeing as you ask. You don't have to worry that
they
be my chosen method.' I was seeing again the boy diving into the water. ‘I am Pisces. Water is my medium.'

‘You won't do
that
on my watch, I'm telling you, girl.' He pantomimed scowling grimness but there was no doubting his seriousness.