The Lantern

by Deborah Lawrenson

  The inference couldn’t have been louder and clearer.

  This was the real reason, of course, that I’d agreed to sit down and drink coffee with Sabine when all I really wanted was to be on my own with my hurt and confusion. And however wary I was of Sabine and suspicious of her motives, she was the only key I had to understanding. Rachel was the link. Knowledge was power, and what I needed was some more of it.

  Sabine studied her cup before she replied. “No. Still no sign of Rachel.”

  As usual, she would talk about Rachel, though.

  “Rachel was a curious person.”

  Did Sabine mean that Rachel was a little odd, or that she often showed curiosity? I couldn’t help but be drawn in.

  “There was a story that Rachel told me once, about herself,” said Sabine. “I suppose I remember it because it’s a tale that appeals to me.”

  “What was it?”

  Sabine settled herself more comfortably. “Rachel liked talking to strangers, which was how this incident began. She was on a train journey, and a conversation started between her and a couple sitting opposite. They were very charming, only a few years older than she was.

  “They all got on extremely well, and when the time came for her to change trains, it turned out they were making the same stop. It was lunchtime, and she had a couple of hours to kill before making her connection, so when they asked her if she would care to join them for a meal at a local café in the square, she accepted their invitation with real pleasure.

  “The train pulled in. It was a small town, but more akin to a large village in atmosphere. They walked from the station to the prettiest square, shaded with plane trees, which cast dappled light over the shops and houses. It was a place such as one always hopes to find. The scent of newly baked bread from the boulangerie. Busy and friendly but not too crowded. They sat outside, where they were served delicious food and wine, all the time still enjoying a wonderful conversation, a real meeting of the minds.

  “The couple even walked Rachel back to the station and waited with her until she was safely on the right train.”

  Sabine paused. I was beginning to wonder what the point was.

  “A few days later, Rachel was flipping through a newspaper when she saw a picture of the young couple. She was sure it was them, and the first names matched up. They had died in a plane crash, an accident in a small private aircraft, the same day as she had met them, but, oddly, the crash happened on a flight between two airfields hundreds of kilometers away from where they had eaten lunch.”

  “It might have been possible, depending on timing. Or she was simply mistaken—it wasn’t the same couple,” I said.

  Sabine nodded. “Of course. But now here’s the thing. For years after, Rachel carried the image in her mind of the perfect lunch in the perfect square, knowing she would have to return one day to see if it was as lovely as she remembered. The only thing she could not remember, and could not work out using even the most detailed maps, was the name of the town. And when at last there came the chance to take the same trains south, she decided to break the journey in the same town in the same way. But a connection was no longer possible. The trains ran direct to her destination. So she decided to drive.

  “She approached the area where the train must have stopped, but none of the names of the towns and villages along the railway line was the right one. She drove all along the route, dipping in and out of the places that could possibly have been reached on foot from the station, but none of them opened out into that perfect square.”

  “She never found it again?”

  Sabine shook her head. “Never.”

  “When did all this happen—just before you met her?”

  “No, several years before. But it’s a poignant story, no?”

  I wasn’t sure what to think. It reminded me of something. It might have been one of those apocryphal tales of la France profonde, like the strangers who find the perfect restaurant and eat the most wonderful pâté they have ever tasted, then disappear, only to be minced by the chef, added to the other ingredients in the ambrosial recipe, and offered to the next customers.

  Was Rachel’s a true story? I didn’t think so. It had too many shades of romance. And I found it hard to believe that a seasoned journalist like her would forget the name of the town if it had made such an impression.

  It was nicely open-ended, too. There was no spine-chilling detail about the couple being ten years younger at the lunch than they were in the newspaper, and it being ten years since the trains had ceased to connect at the town’s station. It was simply about the power of the imagination, and the way it can affect memory.

  “It’s a good story,” I said.

  A clatter from the café kitchen seemed to make Sabine refocus. “What does Dom say about her?”

  It was the way she said it. Knowing. Waiting for me to catch on.

  “Nothing. We don’t talk about her,” I said automatically.

  “He used to get angry with her.”

  “You saw that?”

  “Rachel told me.”

  A pause.

  Sabine went on, forcefully, locking the beam of her eyes with mine: “He’s never admitted, though he pretends not to know, that she might be still here in Provence after all? But that she might be dead?”

  It was a terrible thing to think, let alone to say out loud.

  “What exactly are you saying, Sabine?” I said slowly.

  Chapter 16

  Without André, it was hard to keep up with the chores. Neglect, of the land, of the buildings, of myself, crept in for far too long until you could hardly think it was the same place that once had so many people living here—four, even five families with children, and all the animals, too.

  Animals drinking springwater at the trough under the fountain, the stone bowl giving the scene a decadent air, had been a symbol for so long of the farm’s unique blessing, and now the trough filled with dead leaves whirring down from the plane trees.

  I should have—could have—married. A good, strong husband could have taken charge, but after André, strange as it may seem, I never met a man I loved in that way. Henri (he of the accordion and the unfortunate lower lip) asked me, naturally, and I even seriously considered accepting, but in the end, I turned him down. I liked him too much, you see, to shortchange him like that. It would always have been a compromise of feeling. Besides which, I’m not sure I could have gone through with . . . the physical aspect, not with him, not after knowing what it could be with André. So that was that.

  Marthe once said I was shooting the messenger, but she was wrong.

  Marthe wanted me to go to Paris, and I did—for a visit. What she had in mind was for me to live with her there, and gradually make my own way in the metropolis, taking advantage of all the introductions my sister would have been able to give me in scent firms and shops, but I always felt uncomfortable in a great city, and longed to be back on the hillside with the valley spread out before me.

  Besides, I had to get back to Les Genévriers. I wasn’t feeling well and needed to be home.

  I have heard it said that a happy childhood is a curse, because what follows can never measure up. All I can say is, those people must want too much; they can’t accept that life is a series of struggles and that happiness can be found in overcoming them, drawing strength from the reserves laid down in the good years.

  Back at the farm, I tried to soothe my ills by lying in a bath infused with lavender essence. I put my faith in its healing properties, in a fog of forgotten prescriptions of the nuns who grew it as a medicine, and sent the buds to be strewn on the stone floors of palaces and monasteries to mask foul odors and fight disease; the good witches’ herb, believed to repel evil spirits from entering the house.

  As I lay soaking, I summoned the scents of the past. The spicy blue junipers and the lemon thyme on the hot, dry slopes below. The winter heliotrope, also known as sweet-scented coltsfoot, which grows in hedges and at roadsides, by streams and e
ven on wasteland. There is nothing rare or precious about it. It is treated as a weed, an invasive nuisance, but it always reminded me of Marthe and our childhood, and spurred me on as I tried to block out the pain and the growing certainty that I knew what was wrong.

  So it was that not long after I returned from Paris, I went to see Mme. Musset in Manosque.

  Marthe had spoken fondly of her, and then given me a selection of perfume samples, which I offered to take to her old mentor. I suppose I could have sent them in a parcel, but I chose to take them myself on the bus and the train. I had realized by then, you see.

  I needed help, and Mme. Musset was the one person I knew who could supply it.

  Chapter 17

  When I got back, Dom was there.

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, head in his hands. I was so choked by angry questions that I could only stare at him, trying to pretend I wasn’t frightened by what might happen next.

  “Sorry.”

  He sounded defeated. I turned away instinctively from whatever it was he was sorry about. I didn’t want to hear any more lies of omission. It was obvious that he had been hiding a great deal from me, but I couldn’t decide whether hearing it was worse than not.

  “They let you go, then.”

  He scarcely managed to raise his eyes, let alone meet mine.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  At that, he blanched. I had never seen the color physically drain from a person’s face before.

  “Happened?”

  “With the police, at Cavaillon?”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “Let me guess. You don’t want to talk about it.”

  He closed his eyes tightly.

  “Why did they take you in, Dom? On what grounds?”

  A shake of the head and a mumble I didn’t catch.

  I had no idea what to say next. My head was bursting with frustration and anger. I wanted to rush at him and lash out, pound the truth out of him, but of course I did not.

  “What is wrong with you?” I shouted at last.

  Slumped at the table, he seemed to shrink.

  “Why do you not want to tell me anything? Whatever it is I would help you but you push me away all the time! I’m not stupid, I’m not insensitive, but I need to know! Otherwise . . . otherwise what am I to think! Please, Dom . . .”

  My words seemed to ring, too thin and high, all around us in the silence.

  Then he broke. His head went farther down and his shoulders rose. A horrible sound came from his chest. I stood there, waiting, still furiously running through possibilities in my mind, waiting for him to tell me something—anything. It was a few minutes before I realized he was sobbing.

  Even then, I couldn’t bring myself to comfort him. I continued to stand over him, as his shoulders heaved, and the strangled noises from his mouth made me feel hard and brittle and confused.

  Sabine’s parting shot still reverberated. How could she suggest Rachel was still in Provence, maybe even here on this property? That made no sense. But then Dom’s arrest made no sense to me.

  “They released me without charge,” he said.

  His voice was so quiet I had to lean in close to hear him. Through the window, the hills were misted, each a darker tone; the effect was that of a Victorian silhouette panorama in a box, so flat was the light. A thunderstorm would break soon.

  “So . . . why arrest you in the first place? Just because you are the owner of the property? They had no other reason than that, no?”

  “I suppose.”

  “What did they want to know that you hadn’t already told Severan here?”

  “They just kept asking the same questions.”

  “Did they ask about Castellet?”

  He looked at me as if he hadn’t heard right. “What?”

  “They didn’t mention . . . Castellet?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  I reined myself in. “And could you tell them anything more—about the bones?” I asked, with a small measure of relief.

  “How could I? Of course not.”

  “It’s just that . . .”

  “How could you ask that?”

  “How?” I shouted. “Because you won’t tell me anything! How do I know you’re not guilty?”

  “Guilty . . . ?” His face was still drained. Tiredness and tension were etched into every line.

  “Guilty, Dom.” I knew I was twisting the knife, but I had no intention of stopping now, not after all the evasions and uncertainties. “Guilty of something, I’m sure of that. You’ve been secretive. There’s more locked away than you will ever admit, but you get so angry if I ask . . .”

  He was waiting, making me come out and say it. Terrified as I was of the answers he might give, I blazed on. My eyes stung with the effort of holding back the tears. “You say it’s not true, but I can see you’re not happy! And when I look back to see whether it’s me, what I’ve done wrong, I keep coming back to the same point. Me wanting to know about . . . Rachel.”

  The light outside was now a deadly ocher.

  Dom’s hand trembled. His posture, his expression, his voice: all were deadened. “Why does everything come down to Rachel with you? What has this to do with her?”

  I swallowed. “If I ask you some questions, now, would you answer them?”

  He stared somewhere beyond my head, and nodded, imperceptibly.

  “Did you and Rachel have a child together?”

  “No.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  It was as if I had hit him in the face. “You’ve asked me that before.”

  “Because . . .” I went on shakily, “Because I’m trying to understand you, and—and you make it so hard. Because I’m beginning to wonder if I know you at all, and what I’m doing here.”

  There, it was said.

  “Are you telling me you want to leave? Please don’t . . .”

  “No . . . I am not saying that.”

  It seemed he hadn’t heard me. “Because, you know, I don’t think it would look good . . . Not right now, the police . . .”

  “I won’t—”

  “I need you, Eve. You have no idea how much. Promise me you will stay with me, even if it’s only until all this is over. After that . . .”

  “So answer me. Did you leave her, or . . .”

  The silence seemed to stretch forever.

  “She died,” said Dom at last.

  I knew it. All around us was a sense of fruitlessness, of utter weariness. It was a while before I could even say it. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  Chapter 18

  Maman died in her sleep.

  She was too young to go, but she looked far older than her years, by the end. The doctor couldn’t find a reason, any heart attack or stroke. One day she was there, and the next she wasn’t. An awful time, I don’t want to say more.

  As for Pierre, he returned briefly to lay our mother to rest after Marthe and I put a notice in the newspaper. I had no idea where he was. I had no means of contacting him, and neither did I have any particular wish to. Like so many of the young men, he went away to the town sure that he knew everything about modern life.

  Meanwhile, I stayed, occasionally feeling betrayed, usually just lonely.

  Poverty is stunting. Even the threat of it bears down on the human spirit. For centuries, people had known what it was to be poor: it meant that there was no choice but to go on scratching what they could from the soil, and gathering what grew wild. Now there was a choice. The wheels of industry were moving, drawing people down from the old life—the old imprisonment—in the hills. Many did not realize they were exchanging one kind of poverty for another.

  In the past, there was never any poverty of purpose, of love, of faith, of companionship, of family support in the villages and farmsteads. For all the back-breaking work and the unpredictability of due reward, there was richness for the senses all around. Independence, neighborliness, and mutual
understanding.

  When Marthe suggested selling the farm, I said no. Under no circumstances would I be willing to sell, which was a display of bravado, partly an unwillingness to admit failure, and mostly stubbornness. I did not say that to her.

  Anyway, my position was irrelevant. The truth was, without being in touch with Pierre, we were stuck. We could not sell without his consent, consent between the three siblings clear for all to see at the notary’s office.

  And who in their right mind would want to buy a failed farm? If we, who had lived there for generations, could not make it pay anymore, what hope for anyone else? Besides, the paysan—the country person—is custodian of the land, and it must be worked; that was what Papa always said. I struggled on.

  As the years passed, the world’s turning brought with it the hope of a solution, of sorts. This region had always attracted summer visitors, and now, with the success of the great move to the big, industrialized centers, the workers were returning, hoping to renew themselves with a week or two under the southern sun.

  By the 1960s, more and more people had money to spend on travel. All they wanted was sunshine and scenery for a few weeks. A few forward-thinking families had begun to offer rooms to rent at reasonable rates, and found themselves doing well. Many letters passed between us, and in the end, using Marthe’s money, we decided to repaint and repair the cottages to take in paying guests.

  Thanks to Marthe’s prestige in Paris, among the growing number of her happy clients were plenty who were charmed by the suggestion of staying at her childhood home. They came and stayed, and spread the word. After a few years, we were able to afford to employ a young couple to help. Soon we were opening at Easter and receiving guests until mid-October, when the sun’s sorcery was finally dampened by rains and the approach of winter. They were good years.

  The couple, Jean and Nadine, stayed for five summers. They were hard workers and we got along well. The more acclaim Marthe’s perfume shop received, the greater was the demand for our cottages. The visitors would ask all about my sister and I was content to tell them tales of our life here as a family, though carefully omitting any mention of the precise circumstances of Papa’s death.