Fire in the Blood (7 page)

Colette's eyes, however, were full of tears. "But I wanted to have a life like yours, Mama," she whispered.

Her mother knew what she really meant was: "I wanted to be happy like you."

Helene sighed. "It was God's will, Colette."

She kissed her daughter, took the baby in her arms and went inside. I watched her walk away, through the garden
,
proud and beautiful still, despite her greying hair. It is astonishing how she has managed to keep her light, confident bearing all these years. Yes, confident; the confidence of a woman who has never chosen the wrong path, never run, out of breath, to a secret meeting, never stopped, never faltered beneath the weight of a guilty secret ...

Colette seemed to be thinking the same and put it into words. "Mama is like the evening of a beautiful day . . ." she said, taking her father's arm.

He smiled at her. "Now, now, my darling ... Your evening will have the same grace and serenity. Come on, hurry up now, we have a long way to go."

The whole way there, Colette seemed more cheerful than she'd been since Jean had died. Francois was driving. She was sitting next to me, in the back of the car. It was a lovely warm day, with just a hint of autumn in the air. Beneath the blue sky, colder and crisper than in August, only a scattering of crimson leaves and the occasional breeze foretold the end of summer. After a while, Colette began to laugh and talk excitedly, something she hadn't done in a very long time. She recalled the long outings she'd been on with her parents, along this very road, when she was a child.

"Do you remember, Papa? Henri and Loulou hadn't been born yet. Georges was the youngest and he was left at home with the maid, which made me feel so happy and proud. What a treat! Goodness, I'd had to wait for it, though, sometimes as long as a month. Then we'd get the picnic baskets ready. Oh, all those lovely cakes ... They just don't taste th
e s
ame any more. Mama kneaded the pastry, her arms covered in flour up to the elbow, remember? Sometimes friends came along, but we often went alone. After lunch, Mama made me lie down on the grass to rest, while you read. That's right, isn't it? You read Verlaine and Rimbaud, and I so wanted to run about . . . But I'd just lie there, half listening, thinking about my toys, about the long afternoon that was drifting away, and savouring the . . . the perfect happiness I felt then."

As she talked, her voice grew deeper and lower, and you could tell she'd forgotten her father and was talking to herself; she fell silent for a moment, then continued, "Do you remember, Papa, the time the car broke down? We had to get out and walk, and because I was so tired, you and Mama asked a farmer who was passing by with his cart full of lopped branches if I could ride with him. I remember he made a kind of roof out of the foliage to shelter me from the sun; you walked behind the cart and the farmer led his horse. Then, because you thought no one could see you, you stopped and kissed . . . Do you remember? I suddenly popped my head out from underneath the branches of my little house and shouted, 'I can see you!' And you both started to laugh. Do you remember? And it was that evening we stopped at a big house where there was very little furniture, no electricity and a great brass candelabrum in the middle of the table ... Oh, it's so funny, I'd forgotten about that, and now it's coming back to me. Maybe it was just a dream."

"No it wasn't," said Francois. "That was Coudray, you
r o
ld Aunt Cecile's house. You were thirsty and crying, so we stopped to ask for some milk for you; your mother didn't want to, I can't recall why, but you were screaming so much that in the end there was no other way of keeping you quiet. You were six then."

"Wait a minute ... I remember it all very well now. There was a spinster with a yellow shawl round her shoulders and a young girl of about fifteen. The girl must have been her ward."

"Yes, that was your friend, Brigitte Declos, or should I say Brigitte Ohnet, since she's about to marry that young man."

Colette fell silent and stared pensively out of the window. "Are they definitely getting married, then?" she asked finally. "Yes, I've heard their banns are being published on Sunday."

"Oh."

Her lips were trembling but she spoke quite calmly. "I hope they'll be happy."

She didn't say another word until Francois was about to take the long way round to Maluret, to avoid passing the Moulin-Neuf. She hesitated for a moment, then touched his shoulder. "Papa, please don't think it will be painful for me to see the mill again. Quite the opposite. You see, I left the day poor Jean was buried, and everything was so solemn and sad that it left me with a very disturbing memory of the place ... and ... it's not fair, somehow . . . Not fair for Jean. I can't explain it, but ... He did everything he could to make me happy, to make me love the house. I'd like to exorcise th
e m
emory," she added, her voice low and strained. "I'd like to see the river again. Maybe it would cure me of my fear of water."

"That fear will disappear by itself, Colette. What good would it do to . . . ?"

"Do you think so? Because I often dream about the river and it seems sinister to me. To see it again, in the sunlight, would do me good I think. Please, Papa."

"If that's what you want," Francois said as he turned the car back.

We passed Coudray (Colette looked sad and jealous as she glanced towards its open windows), then we took the road through the woods and crossed the bridge. I saw the mill up ahead. Some farmers noticed us go by, but since they didn't acknowledge us I asked Colette if they were the tenants I'd met, the ones who'd sent their farmhand to Coudray the night of the accident.

"No," she said. "That was the family of Jean's nanny. After my husband's death, she was unhappy here. Their lease expired in October and they didn't want to renew it. They've gone to Sainte-Arnould."

As she spoke, she touched her father's shoulder to get him to stop. As I've said, it was a lovely day, but so nearly autumn that, as soon as you were out of the sun, it felt cold and everything looked suddenly dismal. That never happens at the height of summer, when even the shade gives off a secret warmth. As we were looking at the Moulin-Neuf, a cloud hid the sun; the light that played on the river disappeared. Colette sank back and closed her eyes. Francois restarted th
e e
ngine. After driving for a few moments he whispered, "I shouldn't have listened to you."

"No," Colette replied softly, "I don't think I'll ever be able to forget ..."

At Maluret they were finishing their meal, their "four o'clock," as they call it here, before going back to work. Everyone was in the main room. Maluret is a chateau that used to belong to the de Coudray barons. Aunt Cecile's Coudray was also part of the estate a hundred and fifty years ago. That was when the bankrupt baron's family left the region and their land was split up. Jean Dorin's grandfather built the Moulin-Neuf and bought the chateau, but he hadn't worked out the costs properly, or perhaps, blinded by his desire to own it, hadn't seen what a sorry state the house was in. He soon realised that he wasn't rich enough to restore it and turned it into a tenanted farm, which it has remained to this day. It looks both proud and pitiful, with its great courtyard, now home to the henhouses and rabbit hutches, its terrace, cleared of chestnut trees and hung with washing, and its high gate topped by the crumbling family coat of arms, shattered during the Revolution. The people who live here (their name is Dupont, but they're called the Malurets: it's a custom in these parts to confuse the person with his land to such an extent that they become one and the same), these people are far from friendly. They have a suspicious, almost primitive nature. Maluret is surrounded by extensive woods (the former seigneurial park, which has run wild) and is far from the village. In winter the farmers can go six o
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ight months without seeing a soul. Not that they have anything in common with our rich, slick-talking landowners whose daughters wear silk stockings and put on makeup on Sundays. The Malurets have no money and are even stingier than they are poor. Their sullen nature is a perfect match for the rickety old chateau with its bare rooms. The floorboards creak beneath your feet; stones fall from the great wall and bluish slate tiles from the roof. The pigs are kept in the former library; woollen fleeces cure inside the house. The fireplaces are so enormous that fires are never lit: they would devour the entire forest. There is one exquisite little room with a painted alcove and a window at the back; the alcove contains their stock of potatoes for the winter and around the window are strung golden garlands of onions.

Francois says it's particularly difficult to do business with the Malurets. I can't now remember exactly why he'd come to see the head of the household; in any case, they both went out to look at the roof of a barn that had caught fire. The rest of the Malurets, along with the servants, friends and neighbours who'd come to help with the threshing, continued slowly to eat their meal. The men kept their hats on, as was the custom. Colette went to sit in the arch of the large sculpted fireplace and I sat down at the big table. I knew a few of the people there, but many were unfamiliar, or perhaps they simply seemed so and, in fact, they had just grown old, like me-so old they looked like strangers. Among them were the farmers who had once been tenants of the MoulinNeuf, the ones who left after Jean died. I asked after their ol
d m
other, Jean's nanny: she had died. There were ten or twelve children, something like that; among them was the young lad who'd come to tell Brigitte about the accident. He was sixteen or seventeen and for the first time, no doubt, he was drinking like a man. He seemed tipsy; his eyes were red and swollen, and his cheeks burned scarlet. He was watching Colette with a strange intensity. Suddenly he called out to her from the end of the table, "So, that's it, then, you don't live up there no more?"

"No," said Colette, "I've gone back to live with my parents."

He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but Francois came in, so he kept quiet. He poured himself another large glass of wine.

"You'll have a drink with us, won't you?" asked Monsieur Maluret, gesturing to his wife to get out a few more bottles. Francois accepted.

"And you, Madame?" he asked Colette.

Colette got up and came over to join us, for you can't insult your hosts by refusing to have a drink, especially during these big country get-togethers. The men were all mildly intoxicated in the heavy, morose way of farmworkers. Up before dawn, they could feel ten hours of work in their muscles and had wolfed down their food with giant appetites. The women busied themselves around the stove. They started teasing the young lad, who was sitting beside me. He replied with a kind of rude impudence that made everyone laugh. You could tell he was drunk in a bad way
,
looking for a fight-that state of intoxication where you can't hold your tongue, as we say around here. The heat in the room, the smoke from the pipes, the smell of the tarts on the table, the buzzing of the wasps around the overflowing jam pots, the loud, resonant laughter of the farmers, all this must have contributed to the dream-like state you float in when you can't hold your drink. And he never stopped staring at Colette.

"Don't you miss the Moulin-Neuf?" Francois asked him absent-mindedly.

"Hell, no, we're better off up here."

"Well, that's gratitude for you," said Colette, smiling uncomfortably. "Don't you remember the lovely jam sandwiches I used to make you?"

"'Course I remember."

"Well, that's good."

"'Course I remember," the lad said again.

He was turning his fork over and over in his heavy hand and continuing to stare at Colette in the most intense way. "I remember everything," he said suddenly. "Many people might've forgot, but not me, I remember everything." By chance, just as he spoke, all the other conversation stopped and his words resounded around the room so loudly that everyone was shocked. Colette went very white and quiet. Surprised, her father asked, "What do you mean, my boy?"

"I mean, what I mean is that if anyone here has forgotten how Monsieur Jean died, well, not me, I remember."

"No one's forgotten," I said, and I gestured for Colette to get up and move away from the table; but she stayed put. Francois saw something was up, but since he was miles away from imagining the truth, instead of making the kid shut up he leaned towards him and questioned him anxiously. "Do you mean you saw something that night? Tell me, please. This is very serious."

"Pay no attention," said Maluret. "You can see he's drunk."

Good Lord, I thought, they know, they all know. But if this imbecile doesn't talk, none of them will ever breathe a word. The farmers around here don't gossip and would rather walk through fire than get involved in other people's business.

But they knew; they all looked away, embarrassed. "Come on. Behave yourself," said Maluret brusquely. "You've had enough to drink. Back to work."

But Francois was upset and grabbed the boy by the sleeve. "Don't go. You know something we don't, I'm sure of it. I've often thought his death was odd; you don't fall from a bridge accidentally when you've been crossing it every day since you were a child and you know every step of the way. And Monsieur Jean had brought back a lot of money from Nevers that day. His wallet was never found. We all thought it had got lost when he fell and was carried away by the river. But maybe it was simply that he was robbed, robbed and murdered. So listen, if you saw something we don't know about, it's your duty to tell us. Isn't it, Colette?" he added, turning towards his daughter.