She was on the point of giving up, for that day at least, when from the front door of the art-deco building a woman appeared. A handsome woman in her thirties, with a fine, strong figure, in khaki pants and Converse sneakers. Her hair was long and wild, a mass of auburn, like a spill of syrup. She was laughing, talking animatedly on a mobile, hiking the strap of her bag onto her shoulder. She switched off the phone, pressed it into a pocket and jogged to the gate. Jane watched her, speechless. It couldn’t be. An image flashed into her memory of Matty’s daughter, Annie, gatecrashing the wedding dinner Clarisse and Isabelle had laid on for Luc and Jane so many years ago. The child Clarisse had chided and sent packing. The woman standing alongside Matty at Luc’s funeral.
Matty’s daughter.
Matty’s daughter, whom Isabelle had said worshipped Luc when she was a girl.
Luc had a son with Matty’s daughter?
Jane watched silently, pressing herself back into invisibility as Annie Lefèvre hurried out of the gate, half turned towards her, almost making eye contact. There was a nanosecond’s pause, as though she was about to change course and approach Jane, but she strode off fast in the direction of the Métro station, digging her phone out of her pocket.
Jane didn’t follow. She was too stunned.
Were Matty and Claude aware of this situation? Annie and Patrick had both been present at Luc’s funeral, but that was normal. As the offspring of family retainers, it was to be expected. Jane would not have recognized the boy, not from the fleeting glimpse of him this afternoon, but Annie? Yes, she was sure of the identity of this woman who was parading as Madame Cambon. One thing was certain: this imposter was fully aware of Jane’s existence. Hadn’t she gatecrashed their wedding party?
13
When Jane pulled up outside School House, no one was about. She had not contacted Claude to ask him to pick her up at the airport but had taken a bus instead, then walked from the town. It had been arduous. The summer was getting into gear. Why had she not called Claude? Why put herself to such inconvenience? She was confused, uncertain about what the caretakers knew of their daughter’s city existence and whom she could now trust. She parked the car alongside a trio of fig trees near a disused stable block, strode to the back door and beat on the glass. No one responded.
She waited, listened. All was still. She made her way, over stones and soil, no pathway, to the front door where she lifted the knocker and rapped. Her rat-tat disturbed two chickens on the veranda. One, pure white, was perched on the back of Claude’s old wooden rocking chair. A speckled companion was on the ground, trying to lay an egg. Aside from the fowl, the place appeared lifeless. A broom leaned against the wall. A pair of slippers lay by the entrance.
She called Matty’s name. No response. She retreated to her car. On the way, she paused to scan the barnyard. The Lefèvres’ Deux Chevaux was not in sight and there was no sign of Arnaud either. Jane returned to the back door and knocked once more. Gingerly, she closed her palm over the handle and turned it. As she had expected, the door was unlocked. She pushed gently and set one foot inside the kitchen. It smelt warm, of food and domesticity. ‘Matty?’ A clock ticked. A washing-machine was turning.
Jane hovered, half in, half out, on the threshold, then dared to enter, closing the door behind her. As an afterthought, she turned and opened it again, leaving it ajar. Her heart was racing at this transgression. She had no right to be there, to trespass, to meddle or pry. She had not driven here with any such intention. Her desire had been to talk to Matty, woman to woman, to find out what Annie’s mother knew, but it was early afternoon and the housekeeper was out. Claude was most probably in the vineyards or the vegetable garden. Matty could be anywhere. She had not been cleaning up at the manor house when Jane had arrived back from Paris.
Now that she was standing in Matty’s kitchen, what was she intending to do? What was she looking for? Proof, evidence, a rebuttal, assurance that this was all a ghastly misunderstanding, a misinterpretation of facts? She glanced about the old-fashioned Provençal kitchen, spacious but cluttered with wooden cupboards, a dresser and an impressive oven. The square porcelain sink was gleaming and empty. She could smell a recent brewing of coffee but the percolator had been washed out, cups returned to the pine dresser. This was a pristine environment, spotless, with swags of dried herbs and copper pots suspended from metal rails and butchers’ hooks hanging from the ceiling. There were no photographs on the kitchen walls. There was little spare space. A calendar from the Malaz fire brigade was pinned to a cupboard door. Certain dates had been marked with Xs in pencil. On the oak kitchen table there were a couple of open letters, bills, resting on their torn envelopes. A sugar bowl covered with a vintage beaded doily, pepper and salt pots, a pencil and a half-consumed bottle of dark red wine, the cork replaced. Above the table, hanging from the wall, was a large framed picture of the Virgin Mary, blue veil, hand raised in blessing. Little else. Floral printed cushions on the chairs.
Jane crossed the kitchen to a door that opened onto a dark, narrow corridor. A bundle of winter coats hung from a wall rack and wellingtons stood on the floor in an otherwise empty hallway that dissected the lower half of the house, leading from the front door to the stairs at the back. From there into the school room, converted now into a sitting and dining space. As it had been on her recent visit, it was dark and cool with the shutters closed. She lingered on the threshold waiting for her sight to acclimatize. The collection of framed photographs on the mantelpiece came into view and she picked her way carefully towards them. She needed light but resisted switching on the overhead bulbs. In the crepuscular glow she glanced about for a table lamp but could not see one.
She had reached the fireplace. There must have been a dozen framed pictures on display. The first she picked up was an old-fashioned image. Claude or Matty’s parents, perhaps, standing in a village street outside a shop. A wedding, wartime. Their tabac? The woman was pretty with a dimple in her chin and a small flower arrangement in her shoulder-length dark, wavy hair. He had cropped hair and a neat suit. Yes, the parents of Matty or Claude, surely, on their wedding day. Jane replaced the frame and took up the next. Matty with her newborn twin sons. A younger, far more slender edition of Matty than the woman of today. Handsome, strong-boned. Jane reconsidered the first photo and decided these were probably the housekeeper’s parents, not Claude’s. There was a likeness between mother and daughter.
She reset the newborn boys with their mother on the mantelpiece and glanced over the others until her attention fell upon a set of rosary beads placed in front of a picture of Luc. Luc with a small girl standing in front of him. Luc and Annie. The girl could not have been more than eight at the time and he in his twenties. Jane picked up the picture. How she had fussed all those years back over the seven-year difference that had existed between her and her dead husband.
She turned from the fireplace and moved to the centre of the room, where she had recently sat talking with Matty. She remembered the photo she had gathered up from the coffee-table of the three offspring. The twins and Annie. Alongside was another of Annie, younger, early twenties perhaps, holding a new-born child. Patrick? In the background of the shot, behind Annie, there was an unsmiling man possibly about the same age, slightly out of focus, not one of her brothers. A stranger to Jane.
A car door slammed. Jane was abruptly shaken from her absorption. She had completely forgotten that she was trespassing, spying on others’ lives. It was becoming an uncomfortable habit. She slammed the framed picture back onto the table nervously and, in the act, knocked over two others. One flopped flat onto the low table while the other tumbled to the stone floor. Its glass cracked and splintered.
‘Oh, God!’ She was at a loss and fumbling, all guilty fingers and thumbs. She snatched up the casing without looking at it and laid it face down on the table. Droplets of glass bled from it. How frequently Luc had warned her that these Occitanian people had no truck with busybodies. A rule of thumb in these parts, he’d drilled i
nto her, was, ‘Don’t busy into others’ business.’
Well, given his life, no wonder his advice.
‘Allô?’ Arnaud was at the back door. She had left it ajar. She prayed that Matty was with him or even Claude. If she had to be caught red-handed, please let it be by someone to whom she could explain herself. What in God’s name had possessed her to do this? Arnaud must have seen the estate Renault. He would have deduced that someone was in the house. In any case, where could she hide?
‘Papa?’ He was approaching.
She heard him clear his throat as he exited the kitchen and crossed the hall. The light went on. Arnaud was standing at the sitting-room door. He stared at her with surprise. She had cut her finger on the broken glass, she realized now.
‘Bonjour, Arnaud. I was – am waiting for your mother.’
He was frowning, puzzling, brow creased, glancing about him uncertainly, like a badger sniffing for danger before entering its sett. He travelled a few steps into the room. Jane saw then that he was filthy, sweat-stained with a day’s unshaven growth, and had been working at something physical. He was in his socks. Matty, not surprisingly, must insist that work boots were left at the back door. Arnaud’s blue overalls were stained with oil and dirt. He was staring at the broken glass on the floor, the damaged photograph, and then his eyes moved upwards, locking onto Jane. He noticed her bleeding finger.
‘I let myself in,’ she explained stupidly.
‘Your finger’s bleeding.’
‘I knocked it against – Apologies. Careless.’
‘Shall I find you a plaster?’
She shook her head vehemently, wanting no fuss, wanting to disappear, to be thin air.
Then a thought must have crossed his mind because his face grew darker, troubled. Outrage brewing. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded curtly.
Did he know that she had offered to help his family, and then when his father had requested permission to hire the men she had fled, reneging on her word? Did they judge her as harshly as they judged Clarisse? Did the local men know that she had not kept her promise?
He bent to the broken glass and touched it without clearing it up. He leaned down to the photographs and lifted the one lying on its face, the one now protected only by loose shards of glass. Jane hadn’t looked at it. It was of Annie, a wedding portrait. She was standing alongside the figure Jane had seen in the previous snapshot, the one with the small child, the baby Patrick. Arnaud held it towards his broad chest and stared at it lovingly, clearly heartbroken.
Jane watched him, curious. ‘Your sister,’ she dared.
He raised his eyes. There was anger in them, and pain. ‘Did you break this?’
‘It was an accident. I’m very sorry. I came in here to – to sit in the cool and – and wait for Matty and I must’ve – knocked it with my skirt,’ she lied. ‘Let me take it with me and I’ll have the glass replaced.’ She stretched out her hand with the bleeding finger to recover the photograph but he spun it away from her. An act that was both protective and aggressive.
‘What do you want here?’
‘I’ve already explained to you, Arnaud. I wanted to have a chat with Matty but it’s really not so important. It can wait till another time and I’m sorry I intruded. Why not let me take your sister’s photograph and have the glass replaced?’
He held it fast, like a stubborn, awkward child. ‘She’s not …’
‘Arnaud!’
Both swung round at the sound of the voice. It was Matty’s, forceful and sharp. Her eyes were burning. Neither of the occupants in the room had heard her entry.
‘Matty!’ Jane crossed the room in a flurry of relief, eager to be gone, desperate to explain herself, to ward off reproach. ‘Matty, I let myself in. Apologies if I shouldn’t have done.’
Matty’s attention was not on Jane. She was focused on her son across the room. He had remained where he was, head bent. ‘Why don’t you go and clean yourself up, Arnaud?’ she said to him, in a softer tone. ‘And give me whatever has been damaged as you go.’
Arnaud obeyed, handing the portrait to his mother before he strode from the room without a word. Matty glanced at the likeness held firmly between both hands. ‘You’ve been in Paris.’ She sighed. It was not a question.
‘Yes, I had some … some business of Luc’s to wrap up.’
‘Annie saw you there.’
‘Sorry?’
Matty crossed the room and began to gather up the broken glass, scooping the shards into the palm of her leathery hand. ‘She saw you waiting in the street across from her flat.’
Jane was speechless. So Annie had recognized her and, in that moment’s hesitation, had decided not to confront her.
‘You’d better tell me what you want with us, what you know.’
‘Could I have a glass of water, please, Matty?’
‘I’ll make you some tea.’
The two women returned to the kitchen. Jane ran her finger under the cold tap and it stopped bleeding but she couldn’t control the trembling. Her spine seemed to be clenched, rock hard yet quivering. Matty was at the stove, heating water for the teapot. Her expression appeared sterner, less forthcoming than Jane had ever seen it. She had no notion of whether Claude and Matty knew that their daughter had been involved with Luc, that their grandson had been fathered by her own deceased husband. How could she disclose to Matty all that she knew without risking the destruction of their equanimity, their family bond, the loss of their respect for everybody’s beloved Luc? The indignity and disgrace.
The washing-machine bleeped, its cycle completed. The room grew quiet. The clock ticked; timbers shifted and groaned. Footsteps above them: Arnaud crossing a room.
‘The photograph in the broken frame is of Annie and Raymond on their wedding day,’ said Matty, now over by the fridge and lifting out a jug of milk. ‘You still take milk with your tea, don’t you?’
Jane nodded. An English habit she had never eschewed.
‘It’ll be steeped in a few moments. Do you want me to get you a plaster?’
Jane shook her head. She was still shivering.
‘If you were still a girl, I’d tell you you’d got what you deserved for poking about in others’ affairs. You had no business coming in here nosing about. There’s no respect in that for other folks’ privacy, Jane, but I still think of you as family and you’re a bit old for such scolding. You’d better sit down.’
Jane hovered by a chair. Matty had never spoken to her in such a manner before. It was true that she’d had no business creeping in here like a thief but, under the circumstances, what would anyone have done?
‘Annie was champing at the bit to get away from here, to get on with her own life. The result was she jumped into a relationship with the first man who made eyes at her. Foolish girl. I saw it coming and told her so – I told Claude as well – but she wouldn’t listen to me. Raymond was the wrong man for her. They were no good for one another and he hurt her. It ended badly. The marriage didn’t last any time at all. Ever since she’s been fending for herself. Or she was till Luc stepped in.’
Jane lowered herself into one of the pine chairs at the table. Matty placed a floral-design china cup and saucer from the household’s best set in front of her guest, drew the sugar bowl close to it and returned to the stove to await the tea.
‘We thought you knew it all. We thought you’d returned to Les Cigales to set things in order here, close the doors on the past and get this place moving and operating again. That was what Claude understood, at least.’
‘I came back to clear out Luc’s cellar, his workspace. Staying on permanently had not been my intention, not at first, but the nature, the surroundings sort of drew me in. But then I found … the rental agreement for Annie’s flat, and I … Thank you.’
The pot of tea was in front of her now. Matty settled herself alongside her visitor and rested her thick arms on the table, fists bunched together.
‘I rang the agency, but I needed to find out for mys
elf –’
‘Jane, you don’t need to know everything, every detail. What’s done is done and there’s no going back on it. We’ve all got skeletons of one sort or another.’
‘But?’
‘You can rest assured that Annie knows her place. Her marriage was a mistake, yes, but she’s a decent girl, brought up right, even if I say so myself, and she’s not trying to grab anything from the estate, not even for Patrick, although he has rights that none could contest. My advice to you is to close your eyes to what’s gone before and look forward. We’re all grieving for Luc, each of us for our own different reasons, but no amount of sorrowing or heartache will bring him back, Jane. Hear me, for what it’s worth, and look to the future. Build yourself a life. Claude and me, we’ve been hoping it might be here, that you’d be willing to forgive the transgressions.’
‘Forgive the trangressions? It’s not that simple, Matty.’
‘She was a young woman and lonely. She meant no ill and she didn’t intend to hurt anyone. The child came along unexpected. It’s not easy in these parts. People talk. Surely you can understand that.’
‘No, Matty, I can’t!’
‘Jane, be bigger than you’ve been. Forgiveness, that’s the Lord’s way. Step into Clarisse’s shoes, see it from her point of view. Take over the responsibility and get this place back on its feet because God knows, and God give peace to her troubled heart, Clarisse is barely capable of it now.’
‘Matty, what you’re asking of me is too much –’
The Forgotten Summer Page 25