The Virgin Blue

by Tracy Chevalier

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Is that such a surprise?’

  ‘Yes. No. I don't know. What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him he should ask you. But what a flirt!’

  I flinched.

  I took the scenic route back to Lisle, following the Tarn through winding gorges. It was an overcast day and my heart wasn't in the drive. I began to feel carsick from all the curves. By the end I was wondering why I'd bothered with the trip at all.

  Rick wasn't in when I got home and there was no answer at his office. The house felt lifeless, and I moved from room to room, unable to read or watch television. I spent a long time examining my hair in the bathroom mirror. My hairdresser in San Francisco had always tried to get me to dye my hair auburn because he thought it would go well with my brown eyes. I'd always dismissed the suggestion, but now he had his way: my hair was definitely going red.

  By midnight I was worried: Rick had missed the last train from Toulouse. I didn't have the home phone numbers of any of his colleagues, the only people I could imagine him being out with. There was no one else I could call nearby, no sympathetic friend to listen and reassure me. I briefly considered phoning Mathilde, but it was late and I didn't know her well enough to inflict distressed calls at midnight on her.

  Instead I called my mother in Boston. ‘Are you sure he didn't tell you where he was going?’ she kept saying. ‘Where were you again? Ella, have you been paying enough attention to him?’ She wasn't interested in my research into the Tournier family. It wasn't her family anymore; the Cévennes and French painters meant nothing to her.

  I changed the subject. ‘Mom,’ I said, ‘my hair's turned red.’

  ‘What? Have you hennaed it? Does it look good?’

  ‘I didn't –’ I couldn't tell her it had just turned that way. It made no sense. ‘It looks OK,’ I said finally. ‘Actually it does look good. Kind of natural.’

  I went to bed but lay awake for hours, listening for Rick's key in the door, fretting about whether or not to be worried, reminding myself that he was a grown-up but also that he always told me where he would be.

  I got up early and sat drinking coffee until seven-thirty when a receptionist answered the phone at Rick's firm. She didn't know where he was, but promised to get his secretary to call the moment she got in. By the time she called at eight-thirty I was wired with coffee and slightly dizzy.

  ‘Bonjour, Madame Middleton,’ she sang. ‘How are you?’

  I'd given up explaining to her that I hadn't taken Rick's name.

  ‘Do you know where Rick is?’ I asked.

  ‘But he is in Paris, on business,’ she said. ‘He had to go suddenly the day before yesterday. He'll be back tonight. Didn't he tell you?’

  ‘No. No, he didn't.’

  ‘I'll give you his hotel number if you want to call him there.’

  When I reached the hotel Rick had already checked out. For some reason that made me angrier than anything else.

  By the time he got home that night I could barely speak to him. He looked surprised to see me, but pleased too.

  I didn't even say hello. ‘Why didn't you tell me where you were?’ I demanded.

  ‘I didn't know where you were.’

  I frowned. ‘You knew I was going to the archives in Mende to look up records. You could've gotten in touch with me there.’

  ‘Ella, to be honest I haven't been sure what you've been doing for the past few days –’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘– Where you've been, where you were going. You haven't called me at all. You weren't clear about where you were going or how long you'd be away. I didn't know you'd be back today. For all I knew you wouldn't come back for weeks.’

  ‘Oh, don't exaggerate.’

  ‘I'm not exaggerating. Give me a break here, Ella. You can't expect me to tell you where I am if you don't tell me where you are.’

  I scowled at the ground. He was so reasonable and so right that I wanted to hit him. I sighed and said, ‘Right. Sorry. I'm sorry. It's just that I didn't find anything and then I came back and you weren't here and oh, I've drunk too much coffee today. It's made me queasy.’

  Rick laughed and put his arms around me. ‘Tell me about what you didn't find.’

  I buried my face in his shoulder. ‘A whole lot of nothing. Except I met a nice woman and a crotchety old man.’

  I felt Rick's cheek shift against my head. I pulled my head back so I could see his face. He was frowning.

  ‘Did you dye your hair?’

  The next day Rick and I strolled through the Saturday market, his arm draped around my shoulders. I felt more relaxed than I had in two months. To celebrate the feeling and the fact that my psoriasis seemed to be receding, I wore my favourite dress, a pale yellow sleeveless shift.

  The market had been getting bigger and bigger each weekend as summer approached. Now it was the busiest I'd ever seen it, filling the square completely. Farmers had come with truckloads of fruit and vegetables, cheese, honey, bacon, bread, pâté, chickens, rabbits, goats. I could buy candy in bulk, a housecoat like Madame's, even a tractor.

  Everyone was there: our neighbours, the woman from the library, Madame on a bench across the square with a couple of her cronies, women from a yoga class I was taking, the woman with the choking baby and everyone I'd ever bought anything from.

  Even with so many people around I spotted him immediately. He seemed to be arguing ferociously with a man selling tomatoes; then they grinned and slapped each other on the back. Jean-Paul picked up a bag of tomatoes, turned around and almost ran into me. I jumped back to avoid getting tomato all over my dress and stumbled. Rick and Jean-Paul each grabbed an elbow and as I regained my balance they both stood holding me for a second before Jean-Paul dropped his hand.

  ‘Bonjour, Ella Tournier,’ he said, nodding at me and raising his eyebrows slightly. He was wearing a pale blue shirt; I felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch it.

  ‘Hello, Jean-Paul,’ I replied calmly. I remembered reading somewhere that the person you address first and introduce to the other is the more important person. I turned deliberately to Rick and said, ‘Rick, this is Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul, this is Rick, my husband.’

  The two men shook hands, Rick saying Bonjour and Jean-Paul Hello. I wanted to laugh, they were so different: Rick tall, broad, golden and open, Jean-Paul small, wiry, dark and calculating. A lion and a wolf, I thought. And how they distrust each other.

  There was an awkward silence. Jean-Paul turned to me and said in English, ‘How was your researches in Mende?’

  I shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Not too good. Nothing useful. Nothing at all, in fact.’ I wasn't feeling nonchalant, though: I was thinking with guilt and pleasure that Jean-Paul had called Mathilde and I hadn't called him back; that Jean-Paul's awkward English was the only thing that revealed inner turmoil; that he and Rick were so different from each other; that both were watching me closely.

  ‘So, you go to other towns for doing this work?’

  I tried not to look at Rick. ‘I went to Le Pont de Montvert too but there wasn't anything. There isn't much left from that time. But anyway it's not so important. It doesn't really matter.’

  Jean-Paul's sardonic smile said three things: you're lying, you thought it was going to be easy and I told you so.

  But he didn't say any of this; instead he looked intently at my hair. ‘Your hair is turning red,’ he stated.

  ‘Yes.’ I smiled at him. He had put it just the right way: no questioning, no blame. For a moment Rick and the market disappeared.

  Rick slid his hand up my back to settle on my shoulder. I laughed nervously and said, ‘Anyway, we have to go. Nice to see you.’

  ‘Au revoir, Ella Tournier,’ Jean-Paul said.

  Rick and I didn't speak for a few minutes. I pretended to be absorbed in buying honey and Rick weighed eggplants in his hands. Finally he said, ‘So that's him, eh?’

  I shot him a look. ‘That's the librarian, Rick.
That's all.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Yes.’ It had been a long time since I'd lied to him.

  I was coming back from a yoga class one afternoon when I heard the phone ringing from the street. Running to answer it, I managed an out-of-breath ‘Hello?’ before a high, excited voice spoke so rapidly that I had to sit down and wait for it to finish. At last I interjected in French, ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Mathilde, it's Mathilde. Listen, it's wonderful, you must see it!’ ‘Mathilde, slow down! I can't understand what you're saying. What's wonderful?’ 120

  Mathilde took a deep breath. ‘We've found something about your family, about the Tourniers.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Who's “we”?’

  ‘Monsieur Jourdain and me. You remember I mentioned working with him before, in Le Pont de Montvert?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I wasn't working at the main desk today, so I thought I'd drive out and visit, see that room you told me about. What a garbage can! So Monsieur Jourdain and I began going through things. And in one of the boxes of books he found your family!’

  ‘What do you mean? A book about my family?’

  ‘No, no, written in the book. It's a Bible. The front page of a Bible. That's where families wrote down births and deaths and marriages, in their Bibles, if they had them.’

  ‘But what was it doing there?’

  ‘That's a good question. He's been terrible, Monsieur Jourdain. Imagine letting valuable old things like that lie around! Apparently someone brought in a whole box of old books. There's all sorts of things, old records from the parish, old deeds, but the Bible is the most valuable. Well, maybe not so valuable, given its condition.’

  ‘What's wrong with it?’

  ‘It's burnt. Most of the pages are black. But it lists many Tourniers. They're your Tourniers, Monsieur Jourdain is sure of it.’

  I was silent, taking it in.

  ‘So can you come up and see it?’

  ‘Of course. Where are you?’

  ‘Still in Le Pont de Montvert. But I can meet you somewhere in between. Let's meet in Rodez, in, let's see, three hours.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I know. We can meet at Crazy Joe's Bar. It's right around the corner from the cathedral, in the old quarter. It's American so you can have a martini!’ She shrieked with laughter and hung up.

  As I drove out of Lisle I passed the hôtel de ville. Keep going, Ella, I thought. He has nothing to do with this.

  I stopped, jumped out, ran into the building and up the stairs. I opened the library door and poked my head inside. Jean-Paul sat alone behind his desk, reading a book. He glanced up at me but otherwise didn't move.

  I stayed in the doorway. ‘Are you busy?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. After the scene in the market a few days before, his distance wasn't surprising.

  ‘I've found something,’ I said quietly. ‘Or I should say, someone else has found something for me. Concrete evidence. Something you'll like.’

  ‘Is this about your painter?’

  ‘I don't think so. Come with me to see it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘They found it in Le Pont de Montvert, but I'm meeting them in Rodez.’ I looked at the floor. ‘I want you to come with me.’

  Jean-Paul regarded me for a moment, then nodded. ‘OK. I'll close early here. Can you meet me at the Fina station up the Albi road in fifteen minutes?’

  ‘The gas station? Why? How will you get there?’

  ‘I'll drive there. I'll meet you and then we can take one car.’

  ‘Why can't you just come with me now? I'll wait for you outside.’

  Jean-Paul sighed. ‘Tell me, Ella Tournier, you have never lived in a small town before you live in Lisle?’

  ‘No. But –’

  ‘I tell you when we drive.’

  Jean-Paul pulled up to the gas station in a battered white Citroën Deux Chevaux, one of those cars that looks like a flimsy Volkswagen Beetle and has a soft roof that can be rolled back like a sardine can. Its engine makes an unmistakable sound, a friendly churning whine that always made me smile when I heard it. I thought Jean-Paul would have a sports car, but a Deux Chevaux made sense.

  He looked so furtive getting out of his car and into mine that I laughed. ‘So, you think people will talk about us?’ I remarked as I pulled onto the Albi road.

  ‘It is a small town. Many old women there have nothing to do but watch and discuss what they see.’

  ‘Surely they don't mean anything by it.’

  ‘Ella, I will describe to you the day of one of these women. She gets up in the morning and has her breakfast out on her terrace, so she watches everyone who goes by. Then she does her shopping; she goes to all the shops every day and talks to the other women and watches what other people do. She comes back and stands in front of her door and talks to her neighbours and watches. She sleeps for an hour in the afternoon when she knows everyone else will be asleep and she will not miss anything. She sits on her terrace for the rest of the afternoon, reading the newspaper but really watching all that passes in the street. In the evening she goes for another walk and talks to all her friends. There is a lot of talking and watching in her day. That is what she does.’

  ‘But I haven't done anything in public for them to talk about.’

  ‘They will take anything and twist it.’

  I took a curve wide. ‘There's nothing I've done in that town that anyone could possibly find interesting or scandalous or whatever it is you're implying.’

  Jean-Paul was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘You are enjoying your onion quiches, yes?’

  I stiffened for a second, then laughed. ‘Yeah, quite an addiction, really. I bet the old gossips are really shocked.’

  ‘They thought that you were, that you were –’ He stopped. I glanced at him; he looked embarrassed. ‘Pregnant,’ he finished finally.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you were having a craving.’

  I began to titter. ‘But that's ludicrous! Why would they think that? And why would they care?’

  ‘In a small place everyone knows everyone else's business. They believe it is their right to know if you are having a baby. But anyway they know now that you're not pregnant.’

  ‘Good,’ I muttered. Then I glared at him. ‘How do they know I'm not pregnant?’

  To my surprise Jean-Paul looked even more embarrassed. ‘Nothing, nothing, they just –’ He trailed off and fumbled with his shirt pocket.

  ‘What?’ I began to feel sick with disgust at what they might know. Jean-Paul pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Do you know the machine for selling Durex just off the square?’ he asked at last.

  ‘Ah.’ Someone must have seen Rick buying them that night. God, I thought, what haven't they sniffed out? Does the doctor broadcast every visit? Do they go through our garbage?

  ‘What else have they said?’

  ‘You do not need to know.’

  ‘What else have they said?’

  Jean-Paul gazed out the window. ‘They notice everything you buy in the shops. The postman tells them about every letter you receive. They know when you go out during the day, and they notice how much you go out with your husband. And, well, if you do not use your shutters they look inside, too.’ He sounded more disapproving of me not closing my shutters than of their looking in.

  I shivered, thinking of the choking baby, of all those shoulders turned against me.

  ‘What have they said specifically?’

  ‘You want to know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There was the quiches and the craving. Then they think you are pretentious because you bought a washing machine.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘They think that you should wash by hand the way they do. That only people with children should have machines. And they think the colour you painted your shutters is vulgar and not right for Lisle. They think you lack finesse. That you should not wear dresses without sleeves. That you are rude to
speak English to people. That you are a liar because you told Madame Rodin at the boulangerie that you lived here when you didn't yet. And you picked the lavender in the square, and no one does that. In fact that was their first impression of you. It is hard to change that.’

  We drove in silence for a few minutes. I felt tearful but wanted to laugh too. I had only spoken English once in public, but that counted for much more than all the times I spoke French. Jean-Paul lit a cigarette and opened his window a crack.