He stopped and looked at me intently. “Yes, but it’s not just that. Please forgive me if you think I am being presumptuous, because I don’t really know very much about you, but I imagine you have had to sacrifice a great deal to get where you are.”
“Where I was, you mean.”
“No, where you are – where you will be again. That’s what I meant when I suggested this might be a period of opportunity. To do other things, not just activities connected with heart surgery or advancing your career. Things that you might have enjoyed once but haven’t done for a long time. Things that go together with rest and healing, looking after yourself.”
I frowned. “Go on.”
“I’m thinking of somewhere peaceful, different, away from here, where you don’t see the hospital every time you open your front door – the hospital that means work and ambition and struggle, but also the hospital where you were attacked.” He sat down again suddenly, facing me. “Perhaps somewhere where the pace is slow. Where you have the space to walk, rest, listen to music, even pull up a few weeds if you were feeling energetic. You could read – something other than heavy tomes with anatomical diagrams.” He looked sideways at the bookshelf and smiled. “Like those. I’m guessing they’re all you’ve been reading, ignoring Angela’s helpful choice of books.”
“I haven’t read a novel in years,” I said. “Never had the time.”
He nodded. “But stories carry their own truths – truths which perhaps can’t be mediated any other way, because they have to be viewed through the reader’s own perception, understood in the light of individual experience. Not all truths are facts.”
“Now there’s a revolutionary thought,” I murmured with a sly grin. “So this was Jasper’s idea?”
“Yes. And when I really thought about it, I saw he had a point.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know why you guys are so kind. Why would you want an awkward house guest?”
“As far as Jasper is concerned, you are his friend, and that’s reason enough.”
I wanted to ask, And what about you? Am I your friend too? but I sensed it was sensitive ground, and I was suddenly, inexplicably, afraid.
“The thing is,” Michael said, “Jasper and I can’t travel over until August. There’s a swimming event he wants to be part of, a few days into the holidays. Not to mention that the Olympics are on and he’ll be glued to the TV at every opportunity. I wondered if you would like to drive down there by yourself initially, and then we’d come and join you as soon as we could.” He looked at the floor. “The reason I thought that, and this is why it needs an adult head, is that if you had your own car with you, you wouldn’t have to stay on if you didn’t want to. You might prefer to come back rather than be with us. At least you would have the choice.”
“You’ve thought of everything.” My voice was faint.
He grinned suddenly. “I’m not totally without self-interest. I just came back from there, as you know, but it wasn’t for long, and I couldn’t do much. Our farmer neighbour keeps the orchard grass down with his sheep, but the garden otherwise will be getting very out of hand.”
“I could do the weeding, I suppose,” I said. “But my French is very rusty, and never was much more than schoolgirl level.”
“I thought of that,” he said, and now his eyes lit up with enthusiasm as he sensed I was not entirely opposed. “And also we have to be sure your hands are up to a longish drive. You’d need to get your car out and practise, build up the miles gradually. Meanwhile you could brush up your French, make sure you have enough to get by. You wouldn’t be too alone, if that would worry you – we have some delightful neighbours just a garden away. They don’t speak much English but they would help you if necessary.” He paused. “It’s a very quiet place with a low crime rate. But I had another thought. You could take Dulcie.”
“What?” I felt my eyebrows shoot through my hairline. “Take Dulcie? You’d trust me with your dog?”
“Of course I trust you.” Michael frowned, as if the idea that he might not was truly preposterous. “It’d be company for you, and nice for her. She loves it there. I have so little time for her when I’m working.” His smile broadened. “You’ve been saying she needs training. You’d have plenty of time for that, just the two of you, during the long summer days.”
“When I’m not gardening, chatting to the neighbours, reading all the books I’ve neglected.” I smiled back.
He stood up. “Look, Rachel, I’m going to leave you to think about it. I realize I’ve kind of dropped it on you from a great height. But it might be preferable to staying here, working single-mindedly to get your hands back, facing the inevitable disappointments alone. You can do all that when you get back – it’s only for a few weeks, after all.” He paused, scuffing the rug with his toe. He looked down at me, his face once again serious, and he spoke softly. “You’ve had to adapt and compromise many times over the years, I imagine. Perhaps with a bit of distant perspective you might come to see the current situation as yet another twist in that winding path.”
Just another twist. Not, then, wholly and necessarily, a life-destroying disaster? Were Michael and Jasper offering me a rickety ladder out of my black hole? Or was it all just a putting-off of the inevitable reckoning? Whatever the case, at some point I had to face the reality of my future, and it looked bleak and impenetrable. Could I take time out of it, though, time to rest, recover as far as I could, remember, ponder, do things I had almost forgotten? I thought of sitting in the sunshine with no company but a friendly dog, and it was a most strange thought, unsettling, alien, almost fearful; but what was my alternative? Right now, I was running short of choices.
That night once again I dreamed of my father, but this time there was no remembered horror. In it I was a small child, lying against his chest as he propped himself up on my pillows, reading out of some simple book, while I sucked my thumb and drifted sleepily off. When I awoke to the real world and the sound of busy birds outside my window, I was aware of a strange combination of comfort and sadness. I took no pleasure in either; it seemed to me then, sitting on the edge of my bed, my bare feet on the floor as I contemplated getting up and making a pot of coffee, that I had let the past have its way for far too long. Even while I gave it no conscious room, it was there, unresolved, dragging me back. I told myself the only way was forward, although I was afraid of what the unseen future might deliver; afraid, too, that I would be unequal to it, whatever it was. I would take up Michael’s invitation, even though it felt reckless. What did I have to lose that I had not already lost? I had, it seemed to me, already lost control of my life. What else remained?
Later that morning I decided to visit Angela. It was time I thanked her for all her kindness, not only in supplying all manner of things she thought I might need, but also in tactfully leaving me alone. It was time to act like a reasonable human being. I made some breakfast, washed and dried the dishes, and put them away. I showered and dressed in fresh clothes. Then, feeling like someone who had been taken apart and put back together slightly out of true, I shut my front door and walked slowly across the lawn to the Axtons’.
I rang the doorbell and waited, but no one came, though Angela’s car was parked on the drive. Then I thought I heard a shout from behind the house. I crossed in front of their bay window and walked down the path at the side, my canvas shoes crunching on the gravel surface. There was a wooden gate, which opened when I tried it.
“Hello?” I called. There was no answer, but now I could hear voices. Rounding the far side of the house I came upon Angela, stretched out on a sun-lounger, and beside her, cross-legged on the neatly mown grass, Jasper, with Dulcie milling round him, trying to draw his attention away. It was Dulcie who first became aware of me as I stood at the corner of the building, feeling a bit of an interloper. She bounded up to me, her ball in her mouth, a picture of hope.
Jasper looked up. “Dulcie – oh, Rachel!” He scrambled to his fee
t and came trotting over, as Angela turned her head towards us, taking off her sunglasses. She swung her feet to the ground.
“Come in, Rachel!” I walked towards her with Jasper and Dulcie like sentries at my side. “How lovely to see you out and about! How are you?”
“I’m getting better all the time, Angela,” I said. “I’ve just come to thank you for everything you’ve done for me. You’ve been very kind.”
“Nonsense, it’s the least we could do. Can I get you some coffee?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve only just had some. I didn’t realize you had company. Am I interrupting?”
Jasper laughed and put his arm round my shoulders in a gesture of easy familiarity. “I don’t think I really count as ‘company’, seeing as I pop in and annoy Mrs A most days,” he said. “It’s hard to concentrate on school work when it’s sunny and Dulcie keeps distracting me because she wants to go out and play.”
“Jasper, make yourself useful, please,” Angela said. “Get Rachel a chair from the shed.”
“OK.” He loped off and returned a few minutes later with a folding seat which he set down for me with a flourish. “Madame.”
“I won’t stay long,” I said. “I’m sure you’re busy.” I sat down, and Jasper again curled up on the grass.
Angela smiled. “There are a dozen things I should be doing, but when the weather’s good I don’t feel like doing any of them. I was lying here reading when Jasper and Dulcie arrived.”
After a pause Jasper said, with an air of innocence, “So, Rachel, did my dad come round to see you yesterday?”
“I think you know very well he did,” I said, looking at him with a mock-severe frown. I was amused to see him blush.
Angela looked from me to Jasper and back again. “Am I missing something?”
“Sorry,” Jasper mumbled. “Dad said I wasn’t to say anything till Rachel had decided.”
Angela looked puzzled. “Decided what?”
I suppressed a laugh. “It’s OK, Jasper. I have decided to take your father up on his kind invitation. Which I think I have you to thank for.”
Jasper leapt up, copied at once by Dulcie, who had been lying quietly at Angela’s feet. “That’s great news, Rachel! I’m so glad!”
“I don’t know why,” I demurred.
“No, really, it’ll be fun. Just as long,” he said, sobering, “as you won’t be too lonely while you’re on your own.”
“Is anyone going to enlighten me?” Angela asked. “You are both being most mysterious.”
“Sorry, Mrs A,” Jasper said. “I said to Dad Rachel should come down to France with us this summer. Get away somewhere different.”
Angela clapped her hands. “What a marvellous idea! And you’ve decided to go, Rachel? I’m sure it will do you good – a change of scene, fresh air, lovely French bread and cheese –”
“And wine,” Jasper interjected. “Dad’s got a nice selection, if we didn’t drink it all last time. And we can have some barbecues, and read, and play with Dulcie and go for walks and –”
I held up my hands. “Steady on, Jasper! I’m exhausted already!” I turned to Angela. “The idea is for me to go down by myself for a couple of weeks, and take Dulcie with me,” I said. “Then Michael and Jasper will join me later.”
“Will you be all right driving all that way?” Angela said, her forehead furrowed.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’ll have to practise – get the car out and do a bit of driving each day, see how I get on. It’ll be a few weeks yet, so I’ll have a chance to polish up my French too.” I cleared my throat. “No, I must be honest. My French doesn’t need brushing up; it needs resurrecting.” A thought struck me. “Have you got all week off, Jasper?”
He nodded. “But I have to go back to London on Saturday.”
“I was thinking about getting one of those courses on tape. You could help me with a bit of French conversation. As long as you don’t forget to do your school work.”
Jasper beamed. “Yes, I’d love to. But I’m warning you – I’m not that good.”
“Then we’ll stumble along together,” I said.
I decided to set out on Monday, 23 July. It gave me four weeks to work on my driving and improving my rudimentary French. It wasn’t long; but I figured if I found driving hard after four weeks of practice then the plan was a non-starter, and four weeks would be enough to reacquire basic French if I worked at it every day. After I left Angela and Jasper I went back to the flat just to collect my handbag, and walked briskly into the city, determined to act before my resolve faltered. In a bookshop I found something that would do: a French course for beginners, complete with a book and a CD.
Jasper came by on most days during his study week, and spent an hour talking with me in French. I was hopeless, and he wasn’t a great deal better, so it had its humorous moments, but there was only one way to go and I slowly improved. I reasoned that I would only be on my own for a fortnight – Michael and Jasper were due to arrive on 6 August after the swimming event on the previous Saturday.
Driving was a different matter. The trip down would take five hours or so from the French ferry port. Once he knew I would go, many things occurred to Michael that I absolutely should know. “You should stop at least twice,” he told me. “Dulcie travels well, but she’ll need to get out for comfort breaks and to stretch her legs. So will you, plus regular infusions of coffee. You mustn’t think of driving for longer than, say, an hour and a half at a stretch. French motorways are empty compared to UK ones, so it shouldn’t be too stressful, but we have to take care of your hands. Try to remember not to grip the wheel too tightly.”
“OK, OK. I’ll get the car out today.”
He frowned. “Is your car all right?”
I was surprised. “It’s fine. Four years old, regularly serviced.”
“Hm. France requires you carry certain items in the car to be legal to drive there. I’ll get them. And a dog guard. Can’t have Dulcie leaping about all over.”
The driving was tough at first, and I worried about the effect on my hands. But bit by bit I learned to alter my normal habits, relaxing my grip, and as the days went by my confidence grew.
It was good to have these two projects to focus on, as well as continuing with physiotherapy appointments and exercises. I thought of my list of “Things to do in France” while I was alone there: training Dulcie, walking, hand exercises, resting, reading. Perhaps I would do a bit of garden tidying – it was the least I could do to repay Michael’s kindness, even though any heavier gardening was probably not a good idea. I might be able to do something with the neglected kitchen garden he’d mentioned; at the very least I could do a bit of digging if the ground wasn’t too hard. I didn’t mention my list to anyone, but I knew it to be utterly necessary. To all who watched or enquired, I made a good show of gaining in confidence, but a show was all it was, and the list was the only thing, as I saw it then, that stood between me and despair.
PART THREE
ROQUEVILLE
Where did it all begin?
Was it on the ferry, as I thought at the time, watching the tide of travelling humanity, anonymous yet somehow intimate? Or must I go further back, to the moment of Craig Rawlins’ untimely and unanticipated death, a moment that jarred my life out of its smooth rut? Or perhaps even further, to the moment when I realized that my father was gone forever, taking with him my comfort, my protection, my warm cave of acceptance? Was it even more distant than that, when I came howling into the world, despite my mother’s murderous plan?
I couldn’t say, and it was useless to conjecture. In another time I wouldn’t have given such thoughts houseroom. But there they were, intractable.
Michael prepared me well – too well, I thought irritably. Perhaps he regretted his invitation, his idea that I should travel down alone as an advance party with no company but a dog. Perhaps he began to see all that might go wrong. He invited me to dinner one evening with the express purpose of tellin
g me as much as he could about the journey to Roqueville and how I should manage when I got there. He insisted that we look at a road map together, and he drew a pencil circle round the service areas that had somewhere to walk the dog, or sold good coffee.
He told me about motorway tolls and French road signs and speed limits. We rehearsed the French for various motoring instructions – even though I told him that there was a chapter in my French course that dealt with such things.
“I have driven in Europe before, you know,” I said.
“A long time ago, I imagine.”
“Mm, maybe ten years.”
“That’s what I thought.” He ploughed on, suggesting what I should do if I got lost, or the car broke down.
“I’ll get European breakdown cover,” I said. By this time I was taking in little of what he was telling me. He had fed me a fine French meal: a fishy terrine, a Provencal chicken dish, and a lemon tart. He was an excellent cook. I had also drunk more wine than I was used to; somehow my glass kept filling up.
He looked at me keenly, as if taking in my enfeebled state for the first time. “Maybe I should make some coffee,” he murmured.
The coffee sharpened me up in time for the next round of instructions. “Make sure you text me when you arrive. I’ll be at work, but I’ll keep my phone handy.”
“For goodness’ sake, don’t worry!” I said with a drunken smile. “I’ll be fine. I’m a grown-up. I’ll call for help in my schoolgirl French. Some Gaston or Guillaume will come riding to my rescue.”
“Or spin you a line and steal your car,” he said sternly. “OK, I’ll assume you’ve arrived in Roqueville without mishap and have found the house. It’s not difficult: 22, Rue des Hauts Vents, turn left at the church and keep going. There are two gates, one on the road, the other nearer to the house. It’s my way of keeping Dulcie from getting onto the road. The garden is well fenced. The only way she can get out is over the stile that leads to our neighbours the Boutins: I think Jasper told you about them.”
The Healing Knife Page 17