by Kate Riordan
I look for Élodie and spot her at the far end of the pool. She’s not looking at me. She’s watching Jean-Claude. Her head is cocked to one side and she’s studying him closely. Her hands move under the water, pale and distorted, and I can see there’s something in one of them, pencil-thin but shorter. I move slowly round the pool towards her. She did this, I think, the thought as clear as any I’ve ever had. I try to push it away, like I always do, for her sake and for Greg’s, for mine too, as her mother. I want to look away, in case anyone catches me watching her and reads my mind, but I have to know. I’m a metre or two away when she heaves herself out of the pool, lithe shoulder muscles flexing.
I glance back towards the other end but the adults have closed in on Jean-Claude, all eyes elsewhere. I grab Élodie and pull her into the shadow of the oleander, reaching round for the hand she’s put behind her back. Before I can get whatever it is, she throws it at my feet and wrenches away. I hear the dull ting of metal on stone as I let her go.
It’s a dart. There’s a craze for them among the boys, who swap them for their brightly coloured flights. One of them must have brought it with him because I would never let Élodie have them. This one, sky-blue and silver, has only just missed my bare foot before bouncing into the dead leaves at the tree’s base. Without thinking, I push it deeper into the soil and turn back to the pool. Élodie is nowhere to be seen.
Jean-Claude stops crying eventually, though his chest still heaves. Claire is a sensible woman who grew up with three brothers. She’s wiped the blood away with a tissue.
‘You’re fine now,’ she says, with a last kiss on his forehead. ‘No more tears.’
His lip wobbles but he’s given a chocolate biscuit and soon it’s almost as if nothing had happened. I drink another glass of the Crémant, but I’m keeping a closer eye on the pool now, and I notice Greg is too.
And then, right at the end of the afternoon, it happens again. Some of the families have gone by now and most of the pool is in shade. Cake crumbs are scattered across the stones around it. There are only four children left in the water and Élodie is one of them. Jean-Claude is another. I’ve gone inside to fetch cotton wool and disinfectant for a child who has slipped and grazed her knee. Greg is seeing someone off at the front door.
There is no cry from Jean-Claude this time. One of the other children raises the alarm, shouting, ‘Papa! Papa! Viens ici!’
I rush down the steps and across the lawn, clutching the disinfectant, the last to arrive. I am just in time to see a strange re-enactment of earlier, except it’s a different father lifting Jean-Claude from the pool.
The little boy is silent this time, his eyes closed, his lips indigo. Claire’s face is a mask of horror as she lunges for his hand. The father lays him gently on the stones and is just about to start mouth-to-mouth when Jean-Claude coughs wetly, pool water running from the side of his mouth. I sink to my knees, boneless with relief, the glass bottle I’m still holding chinking against the stone as I lose my grip on it. I look automatically for Élodie, and she is back at the very opposite end of the pool, in the corner where the shade is thickest. Her mouth is moving in a strange way, as though she’s talking to herself or – my heart skipping at the thought – trying not to laugh.
I’m so intent on her that I don’t see the girl who summoned her father lift her arm to point.
‘It was her,’ she says, her voice high and clear. ‘It was Élodie. She pushed him down under the water and wouldn’t let him come up, even though he was kicking. She thought it was funny. She was laughing.’ The raw shock and outrage in someone so young cuts through every parent present.
The other mothers – and it is the mothers, who have flocked together as if by instinct – don’t look at Élodie. Instead they turn as one to me, still kneeling like a penitent. Claire, of course, and Pascale, who had been next to me in the school register, Adèle, with whom I’d swapped pencil cases when we were seven, Jeanne Dubois, who was best friends with Camille for a time. They stare me down, these women, and I know I am no longer Sylvie Durand to them. I am no longer a fellow mother. There’s nothing left for me and my family but distaste and horror, even fear.
1993
Olivier rings the next morning and suggests we meet at the café again. My heart lifts at the thought of seeing him, and leaving the house, too, which we haven’t done since the circus. You flatly refuse to leave the poolside at first and, though you’re ostentatiously cross with me about the previous night with the Polaroid, I suspect you’re also hoping Luc might appear if you stay put.
‘But I think the filter’s getting blocked,’ you say, once I’ve persuaded you into the car, the whine in your voice grating. You’re inspecting the lightening ends of your hair. ‘Luc will definitely have to come and sort it out. It’s full of twigs.’ You steal a glance at me but I don’t react.
‘Mum, are you even listening to me? We could call in for him on the way back.’
‘Maybe.’
The road to the village unfurls ahead, the oncoming cars shimmering in the heat haze. The air that blows in through the window is tinder-dry and hot, like a hairdryer, even when I put my foot down. A figure walking along the hard shoulder makes my insides plummet, but as we draw closer it becomes obvious it’s just an old man in a flat cap, shuffling along with a basket over his arm. I slow to a stop.
‘Bonjour, Monsieur,’ I shout across you through the open window. ‘Vous allez au village?’
He peers in at me, unsmiling, then nods.
‘Go on,’ I say, chivvying you to get out and let him sit in the front, which you do with bad grace. I don’t know exactly why I’ve stopped for him, but I think it’s probably another attack of superstition. Paying my respects to the gods.
You don’t like being relegated to the back seat, insult heaped on injury, and your expression is sullen in the rear-view mirror as I try to engage the old man in conversation. Neither of you deigns to respond to my bilingual wittering, and by the time we reach the outskirts of the village, I’ve given up, a loaded silence descending.
The road to the square when we get there is closed off and I remember it’s Saturday: market day. I pray we don’t bump into Marc Lesage again.
It takes ages to park, and I can feel my blood pressure going up as the dashboard clock ticks on, afraid we’ll miss Olivier. Finally, I find a space just vacated by an orange camper van with German plates.
Olivier is a still point among the bustle of the square, his appearance as crisp and casually elegant as before. He stands to kiss me and bright speckles of sunlight filtering down through the plane trees dance across his face. His skin smells of limes and I feel the same sensation I had at the circus, a warm dissolving inside.
‘Désolée d’être en retard,’ I say. ‘I forgot about the market.’
He smiles and pulls out a chair for you. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ve been enjoying myself here, watching everyone come and go.’
When the waiter appears, I order a Perrier for me and a lemonade for you. You’re still quiet but Olivier’s relaxed air is contagious and you no longer look so mutinous. I feel myself unwind a little, and take in the market properly for the first time.
A stall selling a vast array of salami and cheeses is closest to where we’re sitting and I can smell a little of all of it, strong and savoury. Further on, another stall is selling soap, chunky squares of Savon de Marseille in pastel shades: rose, lavender, rosemary and olive oil, like my mother once used. I see your magpie eye drawn to the chequerboard of colours.
‘I’m going to go and look.’
‘Go on then. But don’t wander off. Stay this side of the square.’
You tut, and I’m no longer sure you’ll do as I ask. I’ve always taken that for granted, until now.
I watch you wander over to the stall.
‘It’s a good sign, don’t you think?’
I look at Olivier questioningly.
‘The soaps. All those pretty colours are for the tourists. The market’
s been changing the last couple of years. It’s getting more like the ones you’d find in the touristy villages further south. This will be good for selling La Rêverie.’
My gaze is still trained on you when I become aware of Olivier’s warm hand on mine. ‘Look, Sylvie, about the other night …’
‘Oh, God,’ I say, shaken out of my distraction. ‘I’m so sorry I ran off like that without a word.’
He puts up his hands. ‘Please, don’t apologize. I’m just sorry Emma was upset. Lesage has never been a nice man and he’s getting worse with age. Anyway, I have some news.’
My heart clutches. ‘News?’
‘It’s nothing to worry about, just that someone wants to have a look at the house.’
I pause, then arrange my face into a grateful smile. ‘Oh, a viewing. I thought … Yes, that’s good, thank you for finding them. Who are they? Are they local?’
‘No. A couple from Amiens with two little girls. They want a place in the south for holidays. Somewhere with more sun.’
Amiens. The nearest city to where Élodie had to go. I remember skirting the place on the way to see her that last time: the sky lowering almost to the road; the spitting rain that wasn’t enough to stop the wipers shrieking; and then, as the clutter of Amiens fell behind and the land flattened out, nothing to see but battlefield signs and pylons marching on the horizon.
‘Martine can’t make it so I said you wouldn’t mind showing them round yourself. Was that all right?’
I nod, watching the bubbles speeding to the top of my glass. I glance towards the soap stall. You’re still there, sniffing each in turn, smiling shyly at the woman running the stall.
‘Sylvie.’
I look back at Olivier and he takes off his sunglasses. His eyes look more tired than the rest of him and it makes him less intimidatingly handsome but somehow more attractive.
‘I was really enjoying myself with you and Emma before … what happened,’ he says, so low that I automatically lean towards him. He holds my gaze a beat too long and I’m aware of every inch of my body.
I smile and look down at the table. ‘Yes, so was I. It was a shame it had to end so … abruptly.’
‘So, that dinner I mentioned, at the Routier place with the lights?’ He’s still looking at me and it’s hard not to touch my hair, adjust the thin straps of my dress.
‘Yes, perhaps we could.’
He smiles. ‘Good.’ He reaches out and I think he’s going to stroke my face but there’s a tiny insect caught in my hair. It’s a long time since anyone has made me so aware of myself physically. I’d forgotten how heady it can be.
‘Do you really think the house will sell?’ I say in a rush.
‘La Rêverie is a magical place. Those people are stupid if they don’t buy it.’
‘Thank you. It is special. People see things differently, though, don’t they? For everyone who sees something magical, there’s someone who will see a roof that needs replacing in a few years.’
‘Let’s hope they’re romantic souls, then, like me. Though are you absolutely sure you don’t want to hang on to it? I don’t think I could part with a place like that. It would … well, it would be nice to know you were coming back here each summer.’ For the first time since I met him, he looks a little unsure of himself. ‘I don’t have much in common with the people I work with.’
‘Why are you here anyway? It’s a bit of a backwater.’
‘Not like London.’
I start to apologize for being condescending but then I see he’s teasing. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that it’s unusual. You were in Avignon for school, you said. Not many people come back to the village from the city, not till they’re ready to retire anyway.’
He pauses. ‘It was the usual reason people do foolish things.’ He looks away across the square. ‘A woman. My ex-wife. She’s still in Avignon. I washed up here.’
I feel absurdly jealous and something of it must show in my face.
‘It was a long time ago. I can’t think now what we saw in each other. All we did was make ourselves unhappy. I look back and it’s like watching someone else’s relationship – like watching a film. A depressing film.’
I laugh. ‘Yes, I know what you mean.’
He looks at me intently. ‘Do you? Was it the same for you? I always think it must be so much harder when you share chil– a child. I could move on and not look back.’
I glance away, feeling the mood shift. He turns his coffee cup in its saucer. I suddenly want to be back in the present. His discomfort makes me feel braver. I lay my hand on his arm and he looks up at me.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘now that Camille has gone back to Paris, and it’s just me and Emma, it might be easier if you came round to the house like before. Maybe on Monday, after the viewing. I could … I could let you know how it went.’
He smiles and I know he wants to, that the mood has shifted back.
‘Come on Monday,’ I repeat. ‘I’d really like you to.’ He reaches out and smoothes the twisted strap of my dress. The gesture, swift but intimate, makes my blood swarm.
‘Then I will.’
*
For most of Sunday, I barely think about Élodie. The seductive promise of Olivier’s visit has done the seemingly impossible and edged her out of my thoughts. I go outside to escape the guitars howling from the salon, where you’ve been playing the same Nirvana tape over and over, and become aware that it’s even quieter than usual outside. The only sounds are from insects and the church bells that echo across the fields between us and the village, out of time with your music, sonorous and slightly discordant.
The state Olivier has put me into – warm and liquid, brimming with promise – has also made me think of your father. You’ll understand when you’re older, Emma, that just because things don’t work out in the end it doesn’t mean they were wrong to begin with. Perhaps it was like that for Olivier, but it wasn’t for me and Greg.
Oh, London in those early days. The luck of arriving in 1967, when Twiggy was in Vogue and the Beatles had just opened their Apple boutique, the sober old Baker Street bricks painted in psychedelic swirls of colour.
I was a bystander to all that, really: a strait-laced little French girl, my maman voicing her disapproval in my head every time I went out without stockings on. A bystander until I met Greg, anyway. In those winter months before he persuaded me to give up my degree and return to France I was the most alive I’d ever felt.
I remember everything about our first proper date. It was like we were in a film: the two of us walking together through a series of lovingly lit shots. My senses were so heightened that I knew I would remember everything, not just what we would earnestly discuss or which pub we would end up drinking in, but the texture of the lint under my fingernails at the bottom of my coat pockets, the precise sensation of my breath-dampened scarf as it brushed my lips.
The city around us, rendered in many shades of grey, was so perfectly the winter-struck London I had imagined from France, the freezing air like crowds of ghosts, the pigeon-coloured sky lowering with rain that would soon fall. He bent towards me as we talked and I could smell the wool of his duffel coat and the salt-soap blend of his skin. His eyes glittered above wind-reddened cheeks as I turned to look at him.
Greg Winters. Even his name was perfect. I wanted to know everything about him, and everything about him was fascinating to me. I wanted to take a train back to where he’d grown up and see all the places he had known as a boy.
I’m going to love this person, I thought, though we hadn’t kissed yet.
Even after we had, even after we were sleeping together, I liked to frighten myself in the hours before dawn, too jittery with love to sleep, by imagining scenarios where we had missed each other by inches: him approaching another girl in the Union that day, her in my place next to him in the dark, their breath mingling to fug the cold air, his warm arm flung across her stomach instead of mine.
You surprise me out of these m
emories just before the sun sets.
‘What are you thinking about?’ you ask, but I don’t tell you. Maybe one day.
I rouse myself to clean up the ancient brick barbecue at the far end of the terrace and tip in half a bag of charcoal. When it begins to turn orange and grey, I make a salad and take a packet of thin, paprika-stained merguez sausages out of the fridge.
Because of the barbecue smoke, it isn’t until we’ve finished, plates wiped clean with bread that I catch another scent in the air. It has a different quality from our little fire, catching the back of the throat, nothing comforting about it. This is astringent, almost caustic.
We become aware of it at the same moment, you frowning and leaning back in your chair to check the barbecue hasn’t set light to something. I don’t need to look: I know that smell of old and, like the tigers at the circus, it awakes a fear so vivid and primal that, for the first time all day, my heart briefly loses its rhythm.
‘Is that …?’
‘Come on,’ I say, holding out my hand. You take it, yesterday’s mood finally forgotten.
Our bare feet thud loudly on the dusty wooden treads as we run up the stairs. I wrench back the shutters in my room, which I’d left closed to keep the heat at bay. There’s still a little light left in the western sky, but what I’m looking for is to the east: towards the hills that undulate greenly even when the fields and gardens of the valley have been scorched brown by the sun. What we smelt on the terrace is burning pine trees. Somewhere out there, a forest fire is blazing.
You lean right out, my hand automatically going to your arm to hold you steady.
‘How close are they?’
‘Not close at all.’ I gently move you a few inches back from the window. ‘Don’t worry. They don’t get this far.’
‘Why is your voice all shaky, then?’
I do my best to smile. ‘They used to frighten me as a little girl, that’s all. There were fires almost every summer – you must have seen the road signs, “Attention au Feu” with the tree and the match? The worst that happens is that some of the forest roads get closed off.’