Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé (9 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Tuesday, 17th August

THIS MORNING, ROSETTE
and I went off to find out what had happened to Joséphine. The shops were all shut in Les Marauds – a clothing store, a grocer’s, a shop selling rolls of fabric – but we saw a little café there, staffed by a glum-looking man in a white
djellaba
and
taqiyah
prayer hat, polishing tables, who saw me look in and paused in his task just long enough to say, ‘We’re closed.’

I suspected as much. ‘When do you open?’

‘Later. Tonight.’ He gave me a look that reminded me of Paul Muscat, in the days when he ran the Café des Marauds; a look that was both appraising and curiously hostile. Then he went back to his tables. Not everyone here is welcoming.

Cross man
, signed Rosette.
Cross face. Let’s go
.

Bam was at his most visible; a bright orange scribble of light at her heels. I saw a mischievous look pass over her face; the man’s hat slipped and fell on to the floor.

Rosette made a crooning sound.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Bam do a somersault.

Hastily I took her hand. ‘It’s all right. We’re going,’ I said. ‘This isn’t the café we’re looking for.’

But arriving at the Café des Marauds, instead of finding Joséphine, I found a sullen girl of about sixteen, watching TV from behind the bar, who told me that Madame Bonnet had driven down to Bordeaux to pick up a truckload of supplies, and might be back quite late.

No, there was no message, she said. Her face showed neither recognition nor curiosity. Her eyes were so heavily made up that I could barely see them, loaded as they were with shadow and mascara. Her lips were glossy as candied fruit, and her jaw moved placidly around a sizeable wad of pink gum.

‘I’m Vianne. What’s your name?’

She stared at me as if I were insane. ‘Marie-Ange Lucas,’ she said at last, in the same vaguely sullen tone. ‘I’m covering for Madame Bonnet.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Marie-Ange. I’ll take a
citron pressé
, please. And an Orangina for Rosette.’

Anouk had gone looking for Jeannot Drou. I hoped she’d have more luck finding him than I was having with Joséphine. I took our drinks on to the
terrasse
(Marie-Ange did not volunteer to bring them), and sat under the acacia tree, watching the deserted street that led over the bridge into Les Marauds.

Madame
Bonnet? I wondered why my old friend, having gone back to her maiden name, should have chosen to keep the
madame
. But Lansquenet has its own way of imposing respectability. A woman of thirty-five or so, running her own business without the help of a man – such a woman cannot be a
mademoiselle
. I learnt this myself eight years ago. To these people, I was always Madame Rocher.

Rosette finished her drink and began to play with a couple of stones she had found in the road. It doesn’t take much to amuse her; with her fingers she made a sign and the stones shone with a secret light. Rosette gave a little crow of impatience and made the stones dance on the table-top.

‘Run off and play with Bam,’ I said. ‘Just stay where I can see you, all right?’

I watched her as she made for the bridge. I knew she could play for hours there, dropping sticks over the parapet and racing them to the other side, or just watching the reflections of the clouds as they sailed overhead. A shimmer in the hot air suggested the presence of Bam; I finished my
citron pressé
and ordered another.

A small boy of eight or so put his head around the café door. He was wearing a
Lion King
T-shirt that came almost down to the hem of his faded shorts, and sneakers that gave every indication of having recently been in the Tannes. His hair was bleached by the sun, his eyes a sunny summer-blue. He was holding a piece of string, which, as it travelled into view from behind the angle of the door, revealed at its end a large, shaggy dog that had also recently been in the Tannes. Boy and dog stared at me with open curiosity. Then they both made a run for it, heading down the road to the bridge, the dog barking madly at the end of its lead, the boy skidding alongside, each step sending a small, contained explosion of road dust from under his grubby sneakers.

Marie-Ange brought me my second
pressé
. ‘Who’s that?’ I said.

‘Oh, that’s Pilou. Madame Bonnet’s son.’

‘Her
son
?’

She gave me a look. ‘Of course.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know,’ I said.

She gave a shrug, as if to convey her total indifference to both of us. Then she collected the empty glasses and went back to watching her TV show.

I looked back at the boy and his dog, now splashing in the shallows. In the haze they looked gilded – the boy’s hair in the sunlight, even that disreputable dog – caught in a matrix of diamonds.

I saw Rosette watching the boy and his dog with curiosity. She is a sociable little thing, but in Paris she tends to be left on her own; the other children won’t play with her. Partly because she doesn’t speak; partly because she frightens them. I heard Pilou call something to her from underneath the bridge; in a moment she had joined him and the dog, and was splashing in the water. It’s very shallow at that point; there’s a bank of sandy, gritty stuff that might almost pass as a small beach. Rosette would be all right, I thought: I let her play with her new friends as I slowly finished my
citron pressé
and thought about my old friend.

So – Madame Bonnet had a son. Who was the father? She’d kept her name; she clearly hadn’t remarried. Today, there was no one here but Marie-Ange; no sign of any partner. Of course, I had lost touch with my friends when I moved to Paris. A change of name, a change of life, and Lansquenet had been left behind along with so many other things that I had thought never to revisit. Roux, who might have told me the news, had never been good at writing letters, sending me picture postcards with nothing but a single-line scrawl from wherever he happened to be. But he’d lived in Lansquenet for four years: most of that time at the café itself. I know he despises gossip, but knowing how close I’d been to her, why on earth hadn’t he told me that Joséphine had had a child?

I finished my drink and paid for it. The sun was already very hot. Rosette is eight, but small for her age; the boy Pilou may be younger. I wandered down towards the bridge, wishing I had brought a hat. The children were building a kind of dam across the sandy shallows; I could hear Rosette babbling in her private language –
bambaddabambaddabam!
– and Pilou giving orders, apparently in preparation for an attack by pirates.

‘Forward! Aft! The cannons!
Bam!
’

‘Bam!’ Rosette repeated.

This was a game I knew very well; Anouk had played it with Jeannot Drou and their friends down by Les Marauds, eight years ago.

The boy looked up at me and grinned. ‘Are you
Maghrébine
?’

I shook my head.

‘But she talks foreign, doesn’t she?’ he said, with a sidelong glance at Rosette.

I smiled. ‘Not foreign, exactly. But no, she doesn’t speak much. She understands what you tell her, though. She’s very clever at some things.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Rosette,’ I said. ‘And you’re Pilou. What is it short for?’

‘Jean-Philippe.’ He grinned again. ‘And this is my dog, Vladimir. Say hello to the lady, Vlad!’

Vlad barked and shook himself, sending a spray of water arcing over the little bridge.

Rosette laughed.
Good game
, she signed.

‘What’s she say?’

‘She likes you.’

‘Cool.’

‘So you’re Joséphine’s boy,’ I said. ‘I’m Vianne, an old friend of your mother’s. We’re staying down in Les Marauds, in Madame Voizin’s old house.’ I paused. ‘I’d love to invite you both. And your father, if he’d like.’

Pilou shrugged. ‘I don’t have one.’ He sounded slightly defiant. ‘Well, obviously I
do
have one, but—’

‘You just don’t know who he is?’

Pilou grinned. ‘Yeah. That’s right.’

‘My little girl used to say that. My other little girl. Anouk.’

Pilou stared at me, round-eyed. ‘I know who you are,’ he said. ‘You’re the lady from the shop, who used to make the chocolates!’ His grin broadened, and he gave an exuberant little jump in the water. ‘Maman talks about you all the time. You’re practically a celebrity.’

I laughed. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘We still hold the festival you started all those years ago. We have it at Easter, in front of the church. There’s dancing, and Easter-egg hunts, and chocolate carving, and all kinds of other stuff.’

‘Really?’ I said.

‘It’s
awesome
.’

I remembered my own chocolate festival; the window display, the hand-lettered signs, Anouk at six, half a lifetime ago, splashing in the shallows in her yellow wellington boots, blowing her plastic trumpet while Joséphine danced in front of the church and Roux stood by with that look on his face, a look that was always half sullen, half shy—

I suddenly felt uneasy. ‘She never mentioned your father
at all
?’

That grin again, as brilliant as sunlight on the river. ‘She says he was a pirate, sailing down the river. Now he’s on the high seas, drinking rum out of coconut shells and looking for buried treasure. She says I look just like him, and when I grow up I’ll get out of this place and have adventures of my own. Maybe I’ll meet him on the way.’

Now I felt more than uneasy. That sounded like one of Roux’s stories. I’d always thought that Joséphine had something of a soft spot for Roux. In fact, there’d been a time when I’d thought maybe they’d fall in love. But life has a way of confounding our dearest expectations, and the futures that I’d planned for us both have turned out very differently.

Joséphine dreamt of getting away, and instead has stayed in Lansquenet; I promised myself never to go back to Paris, and Paris is where I came to rest. Like the wind, Life delights in taking us to the places we least expect to go, changing direction all the time so that beggars are crowned, kings fall, love fades to indifference and sworn enemies go to the grave hand-in-hand in friendship.

Never challenge Life to a game
, my mother used to say to me.
Because Life plays dirty, changes the rules, steals the cards right out of your hands or, sometimes, turns them all to blank—

Suddenly I wanted to read my mother’s Tarot cards again. I’d brought them with me, as always, of course, but it has been a long time since I opened the sandalwood box. I’m afraid the technique has deserted me – or maybe that’s
not
why I am afraid.

Back in Armande’s house, which still smells of her scent – of the lavender she always kept pressed between her linens; of the cherries in brandy that even now line the shelves of her little pantry – I finally open my mother’s box. It smells of her, just as Armande’s house still smells of Armande; as if in death my mother has shrunk to something the size of a deck of cards, though her voice is as strong as ever.

I cut the cards and laid them out. Outside in Les Marauds, Rosette was still playing with her new friend. The cards are old, somewhat battered; the woodcut designs worn thin with frequent handling.

The Seven of Swords: futility. The Seven of Disks: failure. The Queen of Cups has a distant look; the look of a woman who has been disappointed so badly and so often that she dares not hope again. The Knight of Cups, who should be a dynamic card, has suffered a little water damage; his face looks raddled and debauched. Who is he? He looks familiar. But he offers no answer to my question. In any case—

The cards are bad. I should put them away, I know. What am I doing here, anyhow? I almost wish I had never opened Armande’s letter; that Roux had never delivered it; that he had thrown it into the Seine.

I check my phone. No message from Roux. It is more than likely that he hasn’t checked his messages – he is as unreliable with mobile phones as he is with letters – but after what I’ve learnt today, I need that simple contact. It’s absurd, I tell myself – I’ve never
needed
anyone. And yet I can’t help thinking that the longer I stay in Lansquenet, the more precarious the thread that connects me with my new life—

Of course, we
could
go home tonight. It’s very simple, really. What’s keeping me here? Nostalgia? A memory? A handful of cards?

No, none of those things. What, then?

I put the cards back in their box. As I do so, one of them escapes and falls face down upon the floor. A woman holding a distaff, from which a lunar crescent unwinds. Her face is cloaked in shadow. The Moon. A card I’ve long associated with myself, but today she is someone different. Perhaps it is that crescent moon, so like the one above the mosque. Or maybe it’s the shrouded face, which draws me back to the Woman in Black, that woman I have only glimpsed, but whose shadow stretches right across the river Tannes to Les Marauds, reeling me in, drawing me home …