As for the bump, well goodness me! I had no idea at all that I would feel this enormous and there’s no question that it will be a relief when this baby is at last born and I have my body back to myself again! I’ll keep you posted.
xSylvie
29th June 2007
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: Baseemapé[email protected]
Subject: pictures of Ruby
Dear Ma
I thought you would like to see these pictures Kate took out in the garden this morning. Everyone in the village thinks that she is the most beautiful baby anyone has ever seen. The doctor tells me that the birthmark will just fade in time so we don’t need to worry too much.
I am absolutely flat out, Ma, what with this and the business. But thanks so much for your help and for your kind words.
Love
xSylvie
P.S. Kate read the journal. She said it was really interesting.
16th August 2007
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: Baseemapé[email protected]
Subject: Re: pictures of Ruby
Dear Ma
Here are some more pictures of Ruby that Kate took in her nursery. Doesn’t she look so sweet when she is sleeping? You will see that I moved things around a little in her room. I think it looks better with the wardrobe against the back wall now.
It has been a strange time with this very hot weather. At the beginning of August the temperature began to soar and the leaves dried out around the fountain. Kindly, Sandrine from the shop was able to take Ruby out in the pushchair for a few afternoons walking up and down the avenue of trees, which allowed me to take a break from her and from the guests and just lie on my bed upstairs and listen to the cicada throbbing in the trees, not stopping until nine or ten at night – such a sound that I have wondered, lying awake in siesta time, how the visitors would ever concentrate on their painting. Yes, it has been so hot… I have cooked and cleaned and organised picnic lunches. And I have noticed all the time Kate spends sitting out in the courtyard chatting to the guests, and carrying on with that old tutor the way she does. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t jump her, the way she carries on. It’s a relief to think that the courses will soon be at an end and then she will be able to spend a bit more time with me and with Ruby.
But all in all we are well. This morning I was wearing the long black linen dress you sent me. I had to change after lunch because I got so much milk on me but it was nice to see that it does fit! Everything else in my wardrobe is way too small.
This afternoon I wanted to take Ruby for a walk and photograph the houses in the square with the doorways and the paint peeling off the shutters and the roses bobbing gently on the balcony. The brochures we are putting together had come out very expensive on the first quote but I decided to take this aspect of the business into my own hands and spend some more of the money that Daniel sent on marketing.
How very clear and uncomplicated is this way of life, Kate said to me when we first started work on the chateau. And how very real. How lucky, she said, that we were born here where things were so much clearer – clear from the beginning. I thought she was being horribly patronising when she said this. So then we had this big debate about how people like her romanticise life in these villages when in reality it’s not romantic at all. But the thing is, Ma, I begin to know what she means as I walk about in the streets here with Ruby and sit outside the café in the square where everyone stops to lean into the pushchair and talk to me and my baby and asks how we are.
I breathed very deep here this afternoon. Of the air and the roses and the dusty smell of these houses, of the people sleeping back to the beginning of time, their hearts full of the sun and human kindness. And I wrote this down in my notes for the brochures, Ma. Because it just seemed so right. ‘Full of the sun and human kindness.’
2nd October 2007
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: Baseemapé[email protected]
Subject: Re: pictures of Ruby
Dear Ma
October now and the square is deserted. The fountain is working properly again but the pool is full of leaves. The shop hasn’t changed hands, but they have got rid of the old people’s clothes and started selling other things like towels and bath mats at the front of the shop. I suggested to Kate that we bought some for the chateau bathrooms but she didn’t like the quality and so she decided to buy them from England online. For the New Year they will have a box of fireworks on the counter in the shop. This morning we heard that an old winemaker from the next village died falling under the wheels of his tractor, and there will be a funeral on Tuesday.
The grapes have just about been gathered now and the Spanish kids who came for the harvest have gone back home, which, as always, is a relief to all the residents because they were more noisy than ever this year and no one liked them hanging about in the square. It’s mostly the old people here who are not very tolerant. I was discussing this with Kate, you know, and she said, well, whose world is it anyway? It’s not about land, though, is it? It’s just humans getting irritable with each other and trying to survive with the old problems of weather and money. But still, there is this tolerance issue. The Mayor told me that things are only going to get worse and worse with the suburb situation in Paris. There are not simply not enough jobs.
But dad is getting a shift or two in the café. And I am cleaning as much as I can.
It was a hot summer, this year, people said. But not too bad.
Some new parking spaces have been marked up outside the church. A baby has been born to Marie and Guy’s daughter who has come to live in no. 15 on the square. I hope that she and Ruby will be friends.
Nothing else has changed. Nothing anyone could write to anyone about. The village is quiet, with that blue in the mornings and that air of tranquility that Kate tells me she first fell in love with. Just wait till she finds all the mice coming in off the fields…
EPILOGUE
3rd March 2011
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hi!
Dear Daniel
Thanks for your message. You’re too late, I’m afraid. Kate isn’t here.
She sold the chateau because she couldn’t afford to keep it on. We were ok for a couple of years and we ran some art courses. We had a bed and breakfast, of sorts, with six excellent rooms. People really loved it here. They came once and then they came again.
We painted the whole thing white. It was really beautiful – so clean and bright. And then we started working in the garden. Kate was like a demon about it all.
But there were problems always with the roof and the damp and the wiring in the chateau and our third winter was terrible. Kate got heavily into debt and there was nothing any of us could do. We tried our best to patch the place up but, quite honestly, it felt like we were putting the smallest of plasters over the largest of lesions and in the end, the cracks became too great; the roof caved in.
Kate left six months ago. She had a brief relationship with an art tutor but she couldn’t bear another winter here. So she decided to go back to her husband. As it turned out, she had really begun to miss him. I think she found that life was easier with the compromises of marriage, after all. I’m sorry to learn that you’ve been thinking of her in that way, which your letter makes absolutely plain.
The village is back to normal. And the new people who bought the chateau haven’t arrived yet. They might come next summer but probably not this one. At least, that’s what people in the village are saying. They’re not from America. They’re just European. No one really knows where they live.
So the chateau just sits there now, as before, quietly rotting away.
I have moved back into my old house with my daughter, Ruby. Her father is Swiss but we have no contact. Lollo lives with us too. But his health isn’t great. I’m not sure how much longer he will be around.
I wonder if you have found a way to make it all work for you
rself, wherever you are. Perhaps you have found a way of keeping yourself aloof. The joy of work, as our mother would say. Perhaps that’s the only way. She’s content. Then again, in his own way, so is Dad – now that he lives here again, with the only life he ever knew. I don’t know about the rest of us. The next generation. What a muddle we seem to have got ourselves in. I have tried to visualise clearing the muddle in order to gain some control and sometimes I have felt rather close to it all.
As for Kate, well, I thought we were friends but I haven’t heard a peep from her. It’s mostly a shame for Ruby, who misses her too.
But, honestly, we are fine. Life just goes on. I don’t think that, if I were you, I would think of coming back here, though. You won’t find anything here for you, Daniel. It is as it was and always will be. Not your world, certainly. As you said to me when you came back here, there’s so little here. It made you feel empty. But where you are isn’t what it’s about, I don’t think. Before I had Ruby I was hollow too. Perhaps that’s the same for everyone. But the beauty of living in a place like this is that no one will let you feel lonely. We sit and we watch each other’s children run round the fountain. And that, I think, in the end, is all we really need.
xSylvie
P.S – A few years ago, Ma sent me Lucie’s journal. It seems that Lucie’s nephew Paul sent it to her from Paris. It was mostly unreadable – inane and deluded mutterings from a woman going mad. But inside one of the pages was a letter gone a bit yellow. It was written the night you left and Frederic died. She must have written it when she went up to bed and we three were in the garden room. It’s strange to think that she might have been up there writing it while you and I were passed out and Frederic was quickly dying.
I thought it was quite beautiful when I read it. I don’t think anyone knew she could feel or write like that. There’s something in it about the house and the bird that really stuck in my mind. And it just goes to show how there are, in all of us, these moments of real brilliance, Daniel. And the rest so murky, so misunderstood.
The heat of the day has gone now. It’s lovely and cool up here. And I am cool, my blood is quiet, so still; there is hardly a heartbeat. I am almost asleep. You’ve nothing to fear.
After everyone left, I came upstairs and went through all the rooms, opening doors and opening up the shutters; feeling the air at last. How the chateau seems to love having the air blow through it. You can almost hear it sigh. This summer has been so hot. It’s no wonder things have got so bad.
Sometimes, in my dreams, I see this old house and I see myself as a young woman, newly married, and arriving here, stepping round to look in at the windows, drawing closer to peer in. I go backwards and forwards. In my sleep I feel the rocking motion as I step closer and then back away from the walls, and I never get to seeing what’s actually inside before I find I am sitting upright and wide awake. It is always just the outside, and all the doors and the windows blowing open, leaves drifting in.
I’ve been watching you from the balcony, moving around in the courtyard, night after night, kicking up stones. I cannot imagine what hurts you, Daniel. Always, you seem to be fighting with someone. Fighting with Frederic and Sylvie, fighting with your father, fighting with me.
Come inside. Come sit with me for a while. We don’t have to think about anything. Not necessarily. Not here, not now. We’ll sit in our chairs by the window, looking out on the garden, hearing the cicada beating themselves in the trees. Just as it used to be. Summer nights. When you were young. We’ll talk about things. Nothing heavy. Only things that are separate to us, like the lines of basalt etched on the moon, or the distance between us and the stars. We used to consider how long it would take a car to get us to the nearest star… if you could picture the road. Remember? And politics. You always liked to talk of politics. The things occurring in Paris, the problem of immigrants.
The hours will pass and we will be happy enough together, as we always were, content in the silence, feeling the comfort of having each other near… Then it will be time to sleep and maybe, after all the wine and the party, we’ll not bother to go to bed but drift off to sleep in our comfortable chairs. And I’ll thank you, before I go, for the table you carried out into the courtyard, and for the lanterns you hung in the olive trees, such lovely Chinese lanterns, gold and green, the colours I love, for my birthday.
You’ll ask me to tell you again the story of when we came here, your father and I, and there was nothing here but the birds and a big empty house. And how for months we lived only in the kitchen, eating whatever the garden would provide. We were all scavengers after the war, Daniel. We were all so hungry, even the birds.
You’ll ask me again about the day the crow came in and flew at me while I was making the lunch, and I’ll tell you again, as I did before, about the parable of the bird and the human soul, which is from St Augustine, about how the soul is like a bird that flaps around in a big house for a while, then finds an exit and disappears.
But your concentration will have gone by now, Daniel, and you’ll be back to the things you know about, the things you know you believe: the earth, the vineyards, the soil, rubbing the smooth surface of a stone beneath your thumb, and you’ll ask me, as you did when you were five or six, what it would be like to be a stone, standing still in a wall like this for five hundred years. You looked down at your hands then, my darling boy, at your fingernails, your skin, and you turned very pale then as if you had seen a ghost, as if you had passed through some tunnel of knowledge about yourself that answered to a truth that was too painful to bear. You looked up at me then, Daniel, and you burst into my arms.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For their love, support and encouragement, I would like to thank the following people:
Fae Brauer, Lara Brauer, Hamish Burton, Ollie Burton, Aurea Carpenter, Jessica Carsen, Karen Cooper, Marie-Hélène Dupré, Alex Elam, Danny Finkelstein, Justin Fleming, Frances Gayton, James Harding, Barbara Heide, Andy Hine, Mercy Hooper, Clemmie Jackson-Stops.
Oliver Kamm, thank you.
Lottie Moggach, Paul Myners, Rebecca Nicolson, Alex O’Connell, Lucy Parrish, Richard Pohle, Rozanne Rees.
Louis and George, I love you.
Peter Sandison, Eleanor Scharer, Sally Sole, Tara Stewart, Caroline Sullivan, Emma Tucker, Alice Van Wart, Erica Wagner, Vanessa Webb, Laura Westcott.
Rhian Williams, thank you.
Hattie Young, for the first book, James Young, and Nicola Young.
And thank you to my parents, Michael and Daphne Young..
Natalie Young has worked for The Times for several years.
She has two children and lives in London.
This is her first novel.
Copyright
First published in 2011
by Short Books
3A Exmouth House
Pine Street
London EC1R 0JH
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
© NATALIE YOUNG
The right of Natalie Young to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–907595–82–0
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We All Ran into the Sunlight Page 22