“Must be really worrying for them.”
“Yes. So they go down there every Tuesday, and take food and money and clothes for their grandson. Marie-Claude cooks, does the laundry, and cleans the flat.”
“Do they have other kids?”
“Yes, a son, younger than Pascale – Stephane. He’s in the army.”
I paused, taking it all in. “It seems quite a lottery, being a parent.” Then another thought struck me. “Do you think I should invite the Boutins over here? I’m not sure my cooking skills are up to a five-course dinner, but maybe I could offer some distraction?”
“That’s a nice idea. You could ask them in for drinks – keep it simple. But I’d give them a day or two. They’re often quite depressed when they get back from visiting Pascale.”
“No wonder. Why won’t she leave?”
“I’ve no idea. What do any of us know about other people’s lives, or their private thoughts?”
“Hm.” I digested this for a moment.
There was a long pause, as if we’d run out of things to say.
“Oh, one thing,” Michael said. “It’s market day in Roqueville tomorrow. I thought that might be worth a visit. You could take Dulcie. It’s a meeting place for dogs as well as people. If the weather improves it’ll probably be bustling.”
“Mm, maybe I will. Thanks.”
After he’d rung off the house seemed particularly quiet; I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I felt a pang of loneliness that was quite unlike the old Rachel. Even the dog seemed subdued, but that might have been because of the storm. When I lowered the blind and turned away I saw that Dulcie was skulking against the wall, shivering. “Sorry, hound,” I said. I squatted down and put my arms round her neck. She smelled of clean, healthy dog. “It’ll blow itself out before long.” She licked my hand and hid under the dining-room table.
While the ratatouille simmered I picked a novel from Michael’s bookshelf at random and sat at the table to read, my bare feet against Dulcie’s warm furry side. It was a fanciful story, based on some fictitious planet in the distant future, but well-enough composed, and I read it at speed, letting the writer take me along with him for the ride without undue criticism. When I looked up I smelled the ratatouille wafting in from the kitchen. It was well and truly done; I’d been reading for an hour, oblivious. The storm seemed to have abated, so I opened the back door and went out. Dulcie appeared at my side with a little anxious whine. “It’s OK, old girl,” I whispered. “It’s all gone. No more bangs, no more flashes. Peace.” She looked up at me, then trotted down the garden to relieve herself, and raced back indoors. Clearly she was not convinced.
The patio was awash, the grass flattened, and the chair I had used earlier and chosen not to put away was sodden and dripping. In the sky the clouds were drifting off, and one or two stars were blearily visible. I stood there in just my dressing-gown, the cool wet flags of the patio under my bare feet, inhaling the scents of soaked vegetation, hearing nothing but the drip of water. I shivered, suddenly chilled, and went indoors to finish cooking my dinner.
I awoke the following morning to a grey, misty day. Looking down the garden, a cup of coffee in my hand, watching Dulcie ferreting about under the trees, I could sense a faint warmth from the sun, but it was struggling to be seen. I showered and dressed, and threw a ball for Dulcie. She came in wet and I had to towel her down, which she tolerated amiably. I fed her and made myself breakfast from Marie-Claude’s eggs and the dry stump of yesterday’s bread.
The sky was beginning to clear when I reversed the car out of the garage, opened the boot, and let Dulcie out of the house. “In you get,” I said and she leapt in eagerly. As we rolled into town the sun came out in strength, and the wet fields began to steam as it warmed them. When we got to the edge of town I realized I should have left the car at home; stalls were set not only in the market square itself but also up all the little roads radiating from it, and there was little parking to be had. I thought I might park at the supermarket, but the car park there was full, and I drove round and round, getting more frustrated as I tried to avoid shoppers standing in the middle of the road in clusters, chatting and taking no notice of cars trying foolishly to get through.
In the end I saw a car leave a tiny space between two white vans opposite the church, and dived into it triumphantly before anyone else could snaffle it. I got Dulcie out of the car and snapped on her lead. “Remember your lessons,” I said to her. “I want you to walk to heel. There are lots of people about, and I don’t want you jumping on anybody, or getting the lead tangled, or any of that nonsense.” A woman passed me, a basket over arm, and gave me a strange look; but Dulcie looked up at me as if she understood every word.
The sun was now blazing from a blue sky, drying up the pavements, and people were taking off raincoats and collapsing umbrellas. With Dulcie on a short lead I strolled among the stalls, intrigued by their variety. There was a mobile barbecue with huge sausages sizzling on a griddle and mountains of part-cooked chips steaming; there were vans with awnings selling raw chickens and eggs, cheeses and butter, pork products, and fish. I watched the people at the fish stall queuing for crab and mussels and an array of fish, many of which I didn’t recognize. With the aid of pointing and smiling I managed to buy a handful of prawns. Dulcie sniffed at the bag appreciatively. “Not for dogs,” I said. The man behind the counter, wrapped in a vast apron slimed with fish-blood, smiled and nodded.
There were stalls selling plants and flowers in dazzling colours, fruit and vegetables, handbags, shoes, hats, garden equipment, mattresses and chairs, trinkets and toys. One stall was selling nothing but enormous bunches and ropes of pink garlic; another had a huge pan of paella steaming; a third had honey and beeswax soap. The aromas of onions, cheese, fish, frying and flowers battled for supremacy, and there was a constant rumble of talk. People stopped to gossip in groups and I had to weave my way around them. I stood for a moment and watched two women buying a red azalea. The older lady was stout, her ankles grossly swollen, her puffy feet crammed into open-toed shoes. Her waterproof was clearly too hot, and she was red-faced and flustered as she tried with difficulty to stuff the pot into her carrier bag. The younger woman, middle-aged, almost certainly her daughter, was patiently helping her, murmuring a soothing running commentary. Plant finally stowed, they walked away slowly, the mother holding on to her daughter’s arm. I remembered the families on the ferry, and wondered at myself, because I wasn’t criticizing them or revving up with impatience; I was watching them with interest, as if I was an invisible visitor from a distant planet.
I put the prawns into a string bag that I had in my pocket. I bought a melon, apricots, nectarines, eggs, and bread. On the outskirts I found a stall selling tiny vegetable plants, and I bought a dozen mixed lettuces – some green, some reddish-brown, which the hand-written label told me were called “feuilles de chêne”. I decided, once I had cleared the weeds, I would plant a row of lettuces to go with Michael’s tomatoes.
After half an hour I’d had enough, and walked slowly back to the car. I put Dulcie and my purchases inside. On an impulse, feeling like a tourist, I thought I would look inside the church; I was curious to see what a provincial Catholic church might be like. I knew it was open because I’d seen a woman go in carrying an armful of flowers. I opened the car window an inch or two so that Dulcie had air. “Shan’t be long,” I told her.
Tentatively I pushed open the tall wooden door and slipped inside. It was pleasantly cool. In contrast to the severely plain exterior, the interior was ornate and full of colour: light poured in through the high windows, one or two of which had stained glass, and there were many large pictures and painted statues. The woman I had seen with the flowers appeared near the altar and looked at me curiously. I had no wish to converse even if I’d been able to, so I slid into a pew in a side aisle and bent my head; I didn’t quite have the gall to kneel. I heard the heels of her shoes clack away as she went about her business. It came to me that I
had no right to be there – I was no sort of believer, and certainly not a Catholic, and I felt a surge of embarrassment, almost shame, at my own hypocrisy. Here I was, pretending to pray, treating with contemptuous frivolity something which had been sustaining people for two thousand years. I told myself I should either pray honestly, or leave at once. Guiltily I mouthed, “Sorry” to a God I wasn’t sure existed, and got up to go.
As I crept back down the nave to the door I had entered by, trying to make no sound with my shoes, I stopped in front of a large painting. There was the conventional, stylized Jesus, a beautiful young man with long smooth hair, beard, and unlikely blue eyes. In the middle of his chest, his heart stood exposed: nothing, of course, like a real human heart, as I well knew. One hand pointed inwards to the heart; the other was raised in blessing. The heart itself was pierced, drops of blood gently dripping from the wound. A circlet of thorns surrounded it, a cross within a flame stood on its top, and a weird light radiated from it. In the past I had mocked such images, looking at them as a scornful medic might, but that day, for some unfathomable reason, I knew I had missed the point. I didn’t care much for this kind of over-the-top devout imagery, but I was intrigued, almost uneasy. Where had it come from? What did it mean? What, if anything, was I missing? I thought of the Christians I knew, or had known: my father, perhaps, was one. Certainly so were Bridget, Father Vincent, Michael, and Jasper – all good people who had been more than kind to me. More, perhaps, than they needed to, certainly more than I deserved. Perhaps I might have countered, “Yes, but what about Eve Rawlins? What kind of Christian was she, attacking me with vengeful hatred, in an attempt to destroy my reason for being?” But I would have to have answered, in honesty, “A bereaved mother maddened by grief, now bitterly repentant and paying the price of her actions.”
I had a sudden desperate need to leave the building, to get away from the disturbing thoughts which seemed to have come from nowhere; but as I approached the door with a sense of relief I stopped again. A statue I hadn’t seen as I entered stood beside the door: improbably beautiful and calm, a blue-robed Mary, a gold crown on her head, holding in her lap a flaxen-haired child, his blue eyes looking just a bit blank, his pudgy infant hand raised over a suffering world in blessing. Seeing this mother and child, almost immediately after thinking about Eve Rawlins, gave me a sudden insight that pierced me, so that I almost gasped. I thought what I had not allowed myself to think until now: what must it have been like for Eve to lose her son? What must it have been like for the real Mary to watch her son die by crucifixion? Images crowded into my mind of the crucifixion scenes I had seen elsewhere which showed the sheer brutality of this death – the back scourged bloody, the slow suffocation. I thought of Michael too, and imagined what it would be like for him if he lost Jasper; and I felt physically sick. I ran to the door, pulled it open, and stumbled out into the sunshine of the busy market town. For a moment I leaned against the sun-warmed wall, swallowing down my nausea. Even in my confusion I knew I had experienced some kind of unwelcome epiphany, and I sensed that my world was spinning out of control, something to which I had been deliberately blind, but which was now manifesting itself in a way I could no longer ignore. I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. I still don’t, not really. Someone has to help me. Who was I talking to, in the silence of my mind? Maybe the God I had denied for most of my life.
I heard a sound behind me, and the woman with the flowers came out of the church, closing the door behind her, and locking it with a large key. She looked at me curiously, and said something I didn’t understand. I smiled feebly and waved my hand, as if waving her away; then I crossed over to my car, got in, and started the engine. In the rear-view mirror I saw the woman as I drove erratically away. She was frowning and seemed to be shouting. I felt myself smile with a dark humour – maybe she thought I had come into the church to steal the coppers that worshippers had left for candles. I drove slowly home. If I couldn’t explain to myself, what chance had I of explaining to her? Or to anyone?
When Michael rang that evening he seemed distracted, as if, unusually, he was only half listening to my tales of market and dog-training and lettuce-planting. He told me he had an important meeting the following morning and had been busy preparing for it, but he didn’t say what it was about, and I didn’t ask. I had absolutely no right to feel wounded by his apparent lack of attention, but it niggled me, and I wanted to shake him.
“Michael.”
“Hm?”
I had the distinct feeling he was looking for a reason to ring off. “I realize you don’t know me all that well, but would you say I lacked empathy?”
I was unprepared for his reply; perhaps he really had been listening all along.
“I’d say so,” he said calmly. “I don’t know all the circumstances, obviously, but I imagine any native empathy you might once have had was probably killed off by your will to succeed.”
“Oh.”
“That’s not intended as a criticism,” he added. But what else could it be? “Sacrifices have to be made. You chose a gruelling line of work, and some things are inevitably lost. We can’t be everything.”
“Can something like that be regained?” I said, trying not to let my voice show the disturbance I was feeling. If he had said, “Rachel, you are a most unlikeable person”, his opinion couldn’t have been clearer.
“Maybe, but at a cost. Empathy is painful. Standing in someone else’s shoes can be distressing. Most of us shield ourselves to some extent.”
“What about you? Do you consider yourself empathetic? How does that pan out in your work?”
I could almost hear him shrug. “I try to keep some kind of balance. More of an oscillation, really. Look, Rachel –”
“Yes, I know. You need to get on with your preparations. Everything’s OK here. I’ll ring off now.”
“I didn’t mean –”
“It’s fine, I understand. Perhaps we’ll talk again tomorrow. Bye for now.” I replaced the receiver before he could answer. I knew the game I was playing, and no doubt so did he, but although I was not proud of my words I couldn’t seem to help myself. I threw down my phone and stood chewing at my thumbnail.
I brooded on the notion of empathy causing pain, and perhaps inevitably an image of the crucified Christ flashed across my mental vision. He, so they said, had borne the world’s sin. I couldn’t even cope with what I knew of mine.
In the days that followed I worked myself to weariness, all ideas of rest abandoned. I kept up with Dulcie’s training; I weeded the vegetable patch, staked the tomatoes, planted the lettuces. In an outbuilding attached to the garage I found a ride-on mower, and with a little help from Gérard I checked the oil, filled the tank with petrol, and started on the grass at the back. But distraction doesn’t always work as thoroughly as one might wish. The awkward questions multiplied, and the answers weren’t keeping up.
Michael rang again on Thursday evening. I was determined to try to hide any trace of annoyance or hurt in my voice. But exchanging pleasantries seemed only to irritate me even more. I tried to steer the conversation towards neutral subjects.
“How is Jasper? Has the school broken up yet?”
“Just. He finishes today.”
Thinking of Jasper, I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m looking forward to seeing him.”
“He’s looking forward to seeing you too. Tomorrow you can talk to him instead of me if you like.”
“Oh!” I said. “Fed up with me already?” There was a pause, and I wanted to say goodbye and leave him wondering if I was offended, but then I relented. Grow up, Rachel.
“Look, Rachel –” He hesitated. “Did I annoy you the other day? Hurt your feelings? Behave like a lout?”
“No, of course not,” I began, falsely bright, then changed my mind. “Yes, maybe a bit. But I have no right to expect unduly tender treatment anyway. Forget it.”
“I won’t. And I apologize unreservedly.”
“Apology accepted. But you are not
a lout.”
I heard him chuckle. “Let me know if I am becoming loutish.”
“Let me know if I am being self-righteous and prickly.”
After that the air cleared a little. I told him about my attempts at gardening, and artfully avoided a direct answer to his questioning about my exercises. In my mind my hands were getting plenty of use, in a much more productive way than squeezing a ball and flexing fingers endlessly. But there were two things I hadn’t mentioned. One of them I wanted to be a surprise: I had dusted off the keyboard and begun to tinker with it, stumbling through some of the simpler music. Fortunately there was no one to hear because I made heavy weather of it. It had been so many years since I’d played, and I was as clumsy as a drunken rhino. Even if it came to nothing, at least it was more exercise for the fingers.
The other thing I didn’t tell him, and had no intention of telling him, was my decision to go to the service at St Nicolas on Sunday. I didn’t want him to read too much into it. It was curiosity, I told myself. Nothing but that. I’d arrive late, conceal myself in a back pew, and slip out discreetly when I’d had enough. I suspected the church, big as it was, would be quite full; it was summer and there were tourists passing through. No one, I hoped, would even notice me.
As it turned out, Sunday had the quality of farce, the result of my ignorance and poor decisions. It didn’t seem funny at the time, of course – except to others, when they found out.
For a start, I wavered about the protocol of appropriate dress, and decided my knees and shoulders should be modestly covered, which meant I sweltered. I put a scarf in my bag in case head-covering was also a requirement, but when I got there – at three minutes to eleven – nobody else was dressed in this peculiar way, not even the much older ladies. I chose a pew three from the back door and parked myself resolutely at the aisle end for a swift exit. But, later even than me, a cluster of people came in with irreverent clatter and loud voices, greeting their friends as books were handed out. A small woman of indeterminate age, wearing a flamboyant orange cardigan, decided my pew would do and shoved me up the length of it in a friendly manner, nodding and smiling, followed by several other women, clearly friends and neighbours. So one pillar of my plan was knocked sideways from the outset, because I found myself up against the stone wall, unable to get out, unless I disturbed the service. Despite what I had observed to be acceptable behaviour from the natives, I realized I was far too British to contemplate making a fuss or drawing attention to myself, two activities sternly disapproved of by my mother, which considering her own tendency to drama was a bit rich.
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