The Heatwave

by Kate Riordan

  ‘I should give you something for doing it.’

  He shakes his head, relaxed again now. ‘It’s fine, I like coming here. And Papa wouldn’t let you anyway. If I wasn’t here, he’d have me working in the fields and I’d much rather be doing this.’

  ‘Well, all right, if you’re sure. Thank you. How is Laurent? And your mother, of course.’

  Annette Martin had never liked me. When we were young and at school together, she was jealous that Laurent preferred me, that I was his childhood sweetheart – she wanted him even then. Later I think it was because I went off to London and found myself an Englishman, as though I considered myself something special, too good for the men at home. We all tried to be friends for a time: when Élodie was small your father and I must have crossed the field that separated our properties half a dozen times, Élodie in a sling across Greg’s back, the sun canted low over the neat rows of vines.

  One night, trying to make small-talk, I confided in her that I was exhausted from the nights of broken sleep that came with a small baby. She and Laurent didn’t have any children then – Luc came along later. She was unsympathetic. ‘Did you assume you would be different from every other woman with a newborn, then?’ she said, as she brushed past me on her way to the dining room where the men were sitting. She had spoken too quietly for them to catch it. She flirted shamelessly with Greg that night, though it was obvious he found it embarrassing.

  I blink, back in the present, and see that Luc is regarding me with an appraising eye. Normally you’d be embarrassed by how distracted I seem but you’re too busy gazing at him to notice. I can’t blame you: he’s beautiful in that way boys sometimes are, just for a year or two before they coarsen into manhood.

  I think he’ll probably be your first proper crush and don’t know how that makes me feel. Mainly nostalgic, I think – for your babyhood; for the me I was when I felt like that about Laurent; for the time before Greg and I lost our way. Before any of it.

  1969

  Her eyes were a dark foggy blue when she was born. There was nothing unusual in that, quite the opposite, but I didn’t know any babies and so that colour was new to me. It made me think of the word ‘unfathomable’, not only in the way of oceans deep beyond calculation, but the other, more abstract meaning, too. Unknowable. An enigma.

  While she spun and swooped inside me, I knew she was tethered; an extension of myself. Now she’s been out in the world for a few months, I understand that she’s an entirely separate person, even if she does rely on me for her survival. Lately, I have had the strangest sense that she resents me for this dependence, though she can’t yet lift the weight of her own head.

  In many ways, motherhood remains as mysterious and elusive a state as it was before I entered it. I had assumed I would be her everything: the hazy figure her eyes searched for, the voice that instantly soothed her. I had thought instinct would take over, that it would be all joy and exhaustion and fierce protectiveness for someone so helpless. And there is all that. I just hadn’t anticipated the force of her, the self-contained strength of her presence. Sometimes I feel I have to court her, win her approval.

  A couple of weeks ago, her left iris began to change. A speck of amber, like a coin winking from a well, has spread until there’s no newborn blue remaining. The other is stubbornly unchanged, though I check it every day. Regardless of colour, there’s never any expression in them. They seem unable to latch on to me or anything else that moves. I worry about this so much that I take her back to the hospital to get her sight checked.

  ‘They’re absolutely fine,’ says the doctor I’ve waited two hours to see, the receptionists shooting me disapproving looks because I haven’t done things in the proper order. ‘Nothing to worry about. Although …’ He tails off, his head on one side.

  ‘What?’ I say too quickly, trying to decipher his expression.

  Élodie is lying on her back, on a small foam mattress dotted with pictures of sailboats. The doctor doesn’t reply and we both watch her in silence, though I don’t know what we’re waiting for.

  After an interminable minute, he picks up one of Élodie’s tiny feet. ‘Babies are always moving. Have you noticed? They’re always on the go. It’s part of the reason they need so much sleep, so many feeds.’ He lets the foot drop. ‘I’ve never seen a baby so still.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ I say, resisting the urge to pull at his sleeve when he pauses again.

  ‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ he says eventually, with a glance at his watch I don’t miss. ‘She’s probably just a bit behind. Did she come early?’ He moves away to his desk to check her notes.

  ‘No, she was two days late.’ I pick her up to put her back in her pram and she’s heavy, inert, boneless, not like something so newly brought to life. ‘Could there be something wrong with her development, do you think? Is that what you mean?’

  Another look at the watch. He closes her folder. ‘Madame Winters, it’s natural for new mothers to worry. Your baby is perfectly healthy. Her sight is excellent. Go home and ask your husband to run you a nice hot bath. Have a glass of wine.’ He smiles and we’re dismissed.

  ‘Do you think I’m an hysteric?’ I ask Camille that night, on the phone. Greg is not there to run me a bath. I’ve taken to ringing my sister every few days.

  ‘Of course not,’ she says, as wearily as I’d hoped she would. Unlike the deep discussions Greg and I have about parenthood late into the night, I find her dismissiveness comforting. ‘You need to do less thinking and sleep more. You need to get out, too. Bring her to Paris for a few days.’

  But I don’t go. I tell myself that I haven’t the energy but it’s not that. I don’t want to witness something of my own unease creep into my sister’s face. In a strange way, I’d rather think it was just me.

  1993

  I’m in the study when you find me, sorting through old books, most of them yellowing paperbacks I can’t imagine reading again. Dust motes drift and turn on invisible currents in the air. I’ve been here all afternoon: my father’s old correspondence alone has taken me hours to sift through and stuff into bin bags.

  ‘Mum?’

  I clutch my chest. ‘God, you made me jump. I was miles away.’

  You scratch at a mosquito bite, your face preoccupied. ‘Can we go for a walk or something?’

  I look up at the window and see it’s already evening. I realize I’ve been squinting to read the spines of the books.

  ‘Is everything okay? You must have been bored today, on your own.’ I follow you into the kitchen where the ancient fridge is humming loudly. ‘Em?’

  ‘No, I just …’ You tail off, your fingernails pressing hard into the bite. I pull them gently away and resist the urge to take your chin and tip it up to the overhead light, to ask again if you’re all right, if you’ve remembered something.

  The atmosphere between us or around us, I’m not sure which, lightens as soon as we leave the garden behind. The fields that border the house once belonged to La Rêverie but my father sold the last one just before he died. It’s been Laurent’s for more than twenty years now, and the Carignan grapes he planted in the late seventies hang heavy with good health. Just as in my memory, the low sun has turned the rows into broad, curving ribbons of brown and green.

  ‘You brought your sketchbook, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, why?’

  ‘I was just thinking that you could do some drawing out here, or in the garden. There’s a nice view towards the house from over there.’ I point, embarrassed by the effort in my voice. You don’t look up. For the last couple of years, I haven’t known which version of you I’m going to get from one minute to the next, whether I’ll need to wheedle or cajole you.

  ‘Maybe,’ you say.

  ‘I was thinking, if you’re interested, we could look into some proper art lessons when we get back.’

  You take this in, then flash me a brilliant smile; the sun coming out again. ‘Really? That would be cool. Laura goes to this class on Tue
sday nights. Could I go to that one?’

  ‘If it’s not too expensive.’

  ‘Can I ring her later? I can ask how much it is then.’

  I nod and you push your arm through mine.

  ‘So, why did you want to come out, chérie?’ I venture, after a while. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever volunteered for a walk. What have you done with my daughter?’

  The joke doesn’t quite land and you ignore it, pulling away, turning inward again.

  ‘Emma?’

  ‘I dunno. I just felt weird this afternoon. Like when I was lying by the pool with my music on, I kept thinking someone was talking to me but then I’d turn it off and …’ You scuff your toes into the earth as I lead us around the perimeter of the field.

  I touch your arm lightly. ‘It’s probably because we were talking about ghosts yesterday. You’re like I was when I was a girl. I was always getting funny feelings about things. Camille used to roll her eyes, say I was so dramatic.’

  In the far corner of the field, a pale blur transforms itself into Laurent as we get closer. His beard is flecked with salt and pepper and there’s a small paunch straining at his shirt, giving him a bearish air.

  ‘You look good, Sylvie,’ he mutters in my ear, as we embrace. ‘I was hoping you’d come over. I didn’t want to intrude.’ His eyes haven’t changed, and I’d forgotten that uneasy blend of affection and guilt they always inspired in me.

  I smile. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t before. I –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  I put my arm round you. You’re frowning slightly, evidently feeling left out of the conversation.

  ‘And this is my Emma,’ I say in English.

  He takes your hand between his large ones and pats it. ‘You are a Durand, certainly,’ he says, accent heavy. ‘The same …’ He gestures at his mouth.

  ‘Smile?’ I say.

  In fact, you don’t look like my side of the family. With your freckles and tendency to flush, you look like your dad. It was Élodie and I who were alike, with our heart-shaped faces, though my features were rendered much more exquisitely in her, with their almost eerie symmetry. The only thing that wasn’t symmetrical was the dimple in her left cheek, just like mine. A flaw that people thought was pretty.

  ‘She must be the same age her sister was when –’

  ‘Thank you so much for getting Luc to sort out the pool for us,’ I cut across him in French. ‘Emma’s hardly been out of it.’

  Laurent shrugs. ‘Luc must have thought to do it himself. He’s a good boy, most of the time. He helps me more than some would.’

  ‘How’s Annette?’ I ask.

  He puts his head on one side, his expression rueful. ‘Ah, you know. Annette is Annette.’

  I glance at you but you’re looking away, excluded again by the rapid French. I wasn’t looking forward to you meeting Annette. You never knew what she would say next, what she might dredge up for her own entertainment. Her English was better than Laurent’s.

  ‘Who’s Annette?’ you ask, when we’re out of earshot.

  ‘Luc’s mum.’

  ‘Didn’t you get on?’

  I laugh and tug gently on a lock of your hair. ‘How did you work that one out?’ I glance behind us but Laurent is no longer in view.

  ‘The way you said her name.’

  I sigh. ‘Laurent was my childhood sweetheart and she never forgave me for it. She tried to kiss your father once, you know.’

  It’s cheap of me to tell you this, knowing you’ll be seduced by the sort of adult details you’re never usually party to.

  ‘No way,’ you say, as thrilled and scandalized as I thought you’d be. Adolescents are almost always conservative, all that nonchalance affected, a thin veneer. ‘I reckon Laurent’s still got a thing for you. I was watching him.’

  I hide my smile at your precociously sage tone by turning to look at the sinking sun. It’s beginning to burnish the vines to a deep copper. In the apricot sky over us, tiny bats ricochet back and forth, black sparks too swift to follow.

  I’d bought a dozen cans of Panaché at the supermarket – your idea, the tiny amount of beer they contained making them cool – and you run ahead to fetch us one each from the fridge so we can drink them in the garden. Staying outside soothes the temptation to just pack up and go.

  Every sense feels heightened since our return to La Rêverie, a little like they do in pregnancy. Wherever I turn, I’m accosted by beauty and sensation. I’d forgotten how the late sun turns the grey stone of the house golden, and the way the pale gravel of the path shifts underfoot. The place feels like an old lover I shouldn’t trust, trying to win me over again. You sense something of this attempt at seduction, too, I think, your eyes alert to the possibility that I might let us stay.

  ‘I went into her room this afternoon,’ you say, when we’ve finished our drinks.

  I feel my shoulders rise an inch. ‘Oh,’ is all I can think to say.

  It strikes me how much older you seem away from London, out of your school uniform. I notice the necklace then. You must have tucked it inside your T-shirt, but it’s worked its way out to glint against your skin: a delicate silver chain strung with tiny turquoise stones I would recognize anywhere.

  When you see my face, your fingers go to it, as though you’re afraid I might rip it off. ‘I mended the catch. But you don’t want me to wear it, do you?’

  I swallow. ‘I don’t mind, if you like it,’ I say. ‘But I thought we were going to sort through her room together.’

  ‘You were busy with the books. Anyway, I only went through the drawers and there wasn’t much. I found this down the back of them.’

  I didn’t need you to tell me that. I remember vividly how it got there; the skittering sound it had made as it hit wood and disappeared out of sight. It wasn’t long after that we cleared much of her room. Greg and I had found it unbearable to leave it as it was: a shrine that seemed to leach misery throughout the rest of the house.

  ‘Tell me a story about her,’ you say, more gently, in the tones of someone coaxing a nervous cat down from a fence. ‘One I don’t know.’

  Reluctantly, I cast my mind back, trying to find something that I feel able to tell and will satisfy you.

  ‘She loved the same music as me,’ I say eventually, smiling at the connection that had meant such a lot. ‘That’s why I overreacted so much when you put that record on last night.’ I reach out to stroke your cheek in apology. ‘Anyway, it always annoyed your dad that she liked pop music. He tried his Frank Zappa albums out on her but it was always my music she preferred.’

  She did, too, and despite herself, I think, because she always liked to please Greg. She always beamed when people remarked, as they so often did, that she was a proper daddy’s girl. Fille à papa.

  ‘As soon as the music started, she would begin to move, even when she was small and still unsteady on her feet. I don’t think she could help herself.’

  You smile into the gloom. ‘Is that why your taste got stuck in the sixties?’

  ‘I actually think I have very eclectic tastes.’ I raise an eyebrow. ‘I also listen to songs from the seventies.’

  But it’s true that my dog-eared LPs are rare survivals from that time. I couldn’t bear to lose them as well – even the disillusioned ones that came later, flipping paradise over to reveal its underbelly, drive-thrus giving way to desperadoes. Some nights back then I would dream I was in California, losing myself in the lush canyons, wrapped in the soft orange haze of smog.

  I don’t tell you that part, or how elated I felt when I saw her dancing and spinning to the music that lit up something deep inside me. Nor do I tell you how I once watched her move to a song I’d thought was hers and mine, her body pressed close to a man too old to be touching her. Thinking about all this makes me want to cry so I steer into safer waters.

  ‘I was always wearing these cheesecloth dresses and skirts then. My hair was almost to my waist and I hardly brushed it. Maman didn’t like
it – she was always saying that it wasn’t chic, that I looked like a grubby peasant.’ I smile at the memory and do an impression of her to make you laugh, muttering, ‘Mon Dieu!’ just as she had from the kitchen when the alien sounds and smells wafted down the stairs: joss-sticks and Joni Mitchell in full-throated wail.

  But, even as I laugh along with you, I’m thinking of your sister again, moving instinctively to the music. She is suddenly there, as alive as us, breathing in the same violet air of almost-night, her feet, bare and dirt-soled, stamping out the beat. I know if I turn I will see her, crouching beneath the oleander, the expression in her eyes as hostile as it was when I last saw her.

  1970

  ‘Ça va, chérie?’

  My mother has come to stay for a week. She’s standing at the end of the bed having just opened the shutters. She thinks she’s given me a lie-in but I’ve been awake since dawn. My father has been dead for a month, the new decade not meant for him. I’d assumed Maman would stay with us but she insisted on moving into my aunt Mathilde’s cramped apartment in Toulouse. She said it was time Greg, Élodie and I had our own space.

  ‘But I’ll miss you,’ I said, pride preventing me from saying what I really meant. But I need you.

  ‘Don’t worry if you feel a bit overwhelmed sometimes,’ she says softly now, her hand cool on my forehead. ‘C’est normal. I had it with you and Camille sometimes, you know. It gets easier.’

  I shield my eyes from the sunlight pouring in through the windows. ‘I don’t think it’s that.’

  She perches on the side of the bed, and begins to smooth my tangled hair. ‘Quoi, alors?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s nothing. I’m probably over-thinking things. Just … how did you feel when we were little?’