Wild Lavender

by Belinda Alexandra

  The Spaniards continued their singing long after Uncle Gerome and Aunt Yvette had returned to their house and my parents and I had retired to our beds. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling beams and feeling the sweat run down the hollows of my ribs. The moonlight through the cypress trees created wave-like shadows on my wall. I imagined the shapes were dancers moving to the sensual music.

  I must have fallen asleep because I sat up with a start some time later and realised that the music had stopped. I heard Chocolat bark. I slid out of bed and looked out the window into the yard. A breeze had cooled the air and the silvery light splashed over the roof tiles and buildings. I glanced towards the wall at the end of the garden and blinked. A ring of people danced there. They moved silently, without music or singing, their arms sweeping over their heads and their feet stamping to an unheard rhythm. I peered into the night and recognised José dancing with Goya on his shoulders, the boy’s white-toothed smile a gash in his dark face. My own heels lifted from the floor. I had the urge to run downstairs and join them. I gripped the window frame, not sure if the dancers were really the Spaniards or evil spirits disguising themselves to trick me to my death. The old women in the village spoke of such things.

  My heart skipped a beat.

  Apart from Goya, there were five dancers: three men and two women. My mouth fell open when I glimpsed the long dark hair and fine limbs of the second woman. Fire smouldered under her skin and sparks flew from her feet where they touched the ground. Her dress flowed around her like a stream. My mother. I opened my mouth to call to her but found myself stumbling back towards my bed, overcome by sleep again.

  When I opened my eyes, the first light of day was breaking. My throat was dry. I squeezed my palms over my face, unsure if what I had seen had been real or a dream.

  I pulled on my dress and tiptoed down the stairs and past my parents’ room. My mother and father were asleep. I may not have inherited my mother’s powers but I did have her curiosity. I crept to the edge of the yard, near the wall where the almond trees grew. The grass was tall with summer and undisturbed. I glanced over the trees and plants for evidence of intrusion, but found none. There were no tied twigs, no fragments of bone, no sacred stones. No signs of magic at all. I shrugged and turned to go, but as I did something flashed in the corner of my eye. I reached out and touched the lower branch of a tree. Caught over one of the leaves was a single red thread.

  My aunt’s pale skin and my long legs did not spare us the work involved in distilling. My father and Uncle Gerome, their faces twisted with exertion, winched a steaming tube of compacted lavender stalks out of the still. My mother and I rushed forward to poke the mound with our pitchforks. We spread the stalks out on mats before dragging them into the sunshine to dry.

  ‘There’s no time to lose,’ my father told us. ‘With the new still we can use those stalks for fuel when they are dry.’

  My mother and I turned the cut lavender to prevent it from fermenting, while Aunt Yvette helped the men pack the next load into the still. When it was full my father told me to jump on top of it to compress the stalks and ‘bring us good luck!’

  ‘She’s too skinny to make a difference,’ Uncle Gerome scoffed, but reached out his arms to help me into the still anyway. ‘Mind the sides,’ he warned, ‘they are burning hot.’

  They say lavender is a mood enhancer; I wondered if the delicious scent wafting through the air had managed to improve even Uncle Gerome’s disposition.

  I stomped down the lavender, not minding the scratches on my legs or the heat. If my father and Bernard’s plan to harvest and distil lavender commercially worked out, my father would be able to reclaim his part of the farm. With each stamp of my foot, I imagined that I was helping him take a step closer to his dream.

  After Uncle Gerome had helped me out of the still and sealed the lid, my father pulled himself down the ladder to the lower floor. I heard him stoke up the fire. ‘I can tell from the first load that the oil is good,’ he beamed when he returned.

  Uncle Gerome rubbed his moustache. ‘Good or not, we’ll see if it sells.’

  At midday, after the fourth load, my father called a break. We dropped onto the damp straw or sank to our haunches. My mother soaked pieces of cloth in water and we pressed them against our burning faces and palms.

  A motorcar sounded outside and we went into the yard to greet Bernard. In the passenger seat was Monsieur Poulet, the village mayor and manager of the local café. In the rear sat Monsieur Poulet’s sister, Odile, with her husband, Jules Fournier.

  ‘Bonjour! Bonjour!’ Monsieur Poulet called, stepping out of the car and wiping his face with a handkerchief. He was wearing the black suit he kept for official occasions. It was a size too small and pinched his shoulders, making him look like a shirt pegged on a line.

  Odile and Jules stepped out of the car and everyone moved inside the distillery. Monsieur Poulet and the Fourniers studied the still which was much larger than the ones that had been used in the region for years. Although they were not farmers, they had an interest in the success of our venture. With so many people leaving Pays de Sault for the towns, they hoped that the lavender would bring back business to our village.

  ‘I’ll get a bottle of wine,’ said Aunt Yvette, turning towards the house. Bernard said that he would help her with the glasses. I watched them walk up the path, their heads close together. Bernard said something and Aunt Yvette laughed. My father had explained to me that Bernard was a good person who wasn’t interested in women in the usual way, but he was so gentle with Aunt Yvette that sometimes I wondered if he was in love with her. I glanced at Uncle Gerome, but he was too busy boasting about the new still’s capacity to notice.

  ‘It is the type of still that is being used by the large distilleries in Grasse,’ he said. ‘It’s more efficient than the portable ones we’ve been using.’

  From the way he was talking, anyone would have thought the still had been his idea. But he was the financier, not the dreamer: he had provided the money for the expensive still and would take half the profits. But my father and Bernard had calculated that if three successive lavender crops were good, the still would be paid off in two years and the farm in another three.

  Odile sniffed the air and sidled up to me. ‘The oil smells good,’ she whispered. ‘I hope it makes us all rich and gets your father out of debt.’

  I nodded but said nothing. I knew too well the shame of my family situation. The land had been divided between the two brothers on the death of my grandfather. When my father was away at war, Uncle Gerome lent my mother money to keep our farm going. But when my father returned maimed, and the meagre war pension was not enough to pay off the debts, Uncle Gerome reclaimed my father’s half. After my father recovered, Uncle Gerome said he could buy his farm back in instalments with interest each year. It was a shameful thing to do within the family, when even the poorest in our village had left baskets of vegetables on our doorstep while my father was sick. But you could never say a word about his older brother to my father. ‘If you had seen how our parents treated him, you would understand,’ he always said. ‘I can’t remember either of them giving him one word of kindness. He reminded our father too much of his own father. From the time Gerome was a boy, he only had to look at our father to get a boxing around the ears. By rights, the entire farm should have been his, yet for some reason our parents always favoured me. Don’t worry, we will buy our share back.’

  ‘Who else will be bringing you their lavender to distil?’ Jules asked my father.

  ‘The Bousquets, the Nègres, the Tourbillons,’ he answered.

  ‘The others will come too when they see how profitable it is,’ said Uncle Gerome, sticking out his chin as if he were imagining himself a successful distiller-broker. Monsieur Poulet raised his eyebrows. Perhaps he thought Uncle Gerome was imagining himself as the new mayor.

  My mother’s face pinched into a scowl and I could guess what she was thinking. It was the first time Uncle Gerome had sounded
positive about the success of the project. While he would be taking half the profits, my father was taking all the risks. Our farm had been turned over almost entirely to lavender while Uncle Gerome was still planting oats and potatoes. ‘In case it doesn’t work out and I end up having to feed you all,’ he’d told us.

  When the lavender harvest was over, the driver returned with the wagon to take the workers to another farm. I stood in the yard and watched the Spaniards load their belongings. It was the same process as the morning they had arrived, only in reverse. Rafael hoisted up sacks and trunks to Fernandez and José, who crammed them towards the front of the wagon so they could sit at the back and keep the load balanced. When all was packed, José picked up his guitar and strummed a melody while the driver finished the wine my aunt had poured out for him in a tall glass.

  Goya danced around his mother’s legs. I took the lavender sachet I had kept in my pocket during the harvest and gave it to him. He seemed to understand that the gift was to bring him luck and pulled a piece of string from his own pocket and looped it through the ribbon. When he was lifted on top of the wagon to sit with his mother, I saw that he was wearing the sachet around his neck.

  If Uncle Gerome had had any doubts about the profitability of the oil, they were dispelled a few days later when, on Bernard’s recommendation, a company in Grasse bought the entire yield.

  ‘It’s certainly the best-quality oil I’ve come across in years,’ Bernard said, laying the bill of sale on the kitchen table. My father, mother, aunt and I gasped when we saw the amount scrawled at the bottom of the note. Unfortunately Uncle Gerome was out in the fields and we didn’t have the pleasure of seeing his surprise.

  ‘Papa!’ I cried, throwing my arms around his neck. ‘Soon we will have the farm back and then we will be rich!’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Bernard, covering his ears. ‘I never knew that Simone had such a loud voice.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ said my mother, her eyes twinkling with laughter. ‘The night she was born, her grandmother declared she had an extraordinary lung capacity and predicted that she would be a singer.’

  Everybody laughed. Underneath her reserve my mother had a mischievous sense of humour. And just to give her back what she was handing out, I stood on my chair and sang ‘À la claire fontaine’ at the top of my voice.

  Every month my father made a trip to Sault to buy supplies that we couldn’t get in the village and to sell some of our produce. My father handled the mule and cart well on the farm, despite his missing eye, but the road to Sault was slippery limestone rock and ran alongside the precipices of the Gorges de la Nesque. Any error of perspective could be fatal. In October, Uncle Gerome was busy with his flock of sheep so our neighbour, Jean Grimaud, agreed to accompany my father. He needed to buy some harnesses and rope in town.

  The morning mist was disintegrating when I helped my father load the almonds he would sell in town into the cart. Jean called out to us from the road and we watched his giant figure make its way towards us. ‘If Jean were a tree he would be an oak,’ my father always said. Indeed, Jean’s arms were thicker than most people’s legs and his hands were so large that I was sure he could crush a rock between his palms if he wanted to.

  Jean pointed to the sky. ‘Do you think there might be a storm?’

  My father considered the few wispy clouds floating overhead. ‘If anything, I think it might be hot. But you can never tell this time of year.’

  I stroked the mule while my mother and aunt gave my father a list of supplies to buy for the house. Aunt Yvette pointed to something on the list and whispered in his ear. I turned towards the hills, pretending that I hadn’t noticed. But I knew what they were talking about; I’d listened in on a conversation between Aunt Yvette and my mother the previous night. My aunt wanted to buy material to make me a good dress for going to church and for trips into town. I knew that she wanted me to have a different life to hers. ‘A man who truly loves a woman respects her mind,’ she often told me. ‘You are intelligent. Never marry beneath yourself. And don’t marry a farmer if you can help it.’ While my father always said that I could choose a husband for myself whenever I thought the time was right, I suspected that Aunt Yvette had the sons of the doctor or notaries in Sault in mind for me. I wasn’t at all interested in boys, but I was interested in a new dress.

  Uncle Gerome appeared in the yard in his leather leggings with a hunting gun over his shoulder. ‘Careful on the road,’ he warned my father. ‘The rains have washed some of it away.’

  ‘We’ll take it slow all right,’ my father promised him. ‘If we think we won’t get back before dark, we’ll stay overnight.’

  Autumn in Provence was as beautiful as spring and summer. I imagined my father and Jean travelling past the jade pine forests and the flames of Virginia creeper. I would have liked to go with them but there wasn’t enough room. The men waved us farewell and we watched the cart bump and sway down the road. My father’s voice rang out in the air:

  Those mountains, high mountains

  That fill the skies

  Stand up to hide her

  From my longing eyes.

  My mother and aunt headed back towards Aunt Yvette’s kitchen, which we used more than our own because it was bigger and had a wood-fired stove. I followed them, completing the last verse of my father’s song:

  The mountains are moving

  And I see her clear

  And I’ll soon be with her

  When my ship draws near.

  I thought about what my mother had said about my grandmother’s prediction that I would be a singer. If that were true, then I could only have inherited my talent from my father. His voice was as pure as an angel’s. Bernard said that when they were knee-deep in mud in the trenches, with the smell of death all around them, the men used to ask my father to sing. ‘It was the only thing that gave us hope.’

  I scraped my boots and pushed open the kitchen door. My mother and aunt were setting out porcelain bowls on the workbench. There was a basket of potatoes near the table and I sat down and began to peel them. My mother grated a block of cheese while my aunt chopped garlic. They were going to make my favourite dish, aligot: puréed potatoes, cheese, sour cream, garlic and pepper, all stirred into a savoury mash.

  With Uncle Gerome out hunting, we were free to be ourselves. While we cooked my aunt told stories from books and magazines she’d read and my mother recounted village legends. My favourite one was the story about the curé who became senile and arrived at church naked one morning. I sang for them and they applauded. I loved my aunt’s kitchen, with its mixture of orderliness and clutter. The woodwork was imbued with the scents of olive oil and garlic. Cast-iron pots and copper saucepans of every size hung from beams above the fireplace, which was blackened from years of use. A convent table stood in the middle of the room, its benches laid with cushions that sent up puffs of flour whenever somebody sat on one. Mortars and pestles, water jugs and straw baskets lined with muslin were scattered on every spare shelf or bench.

  As my father had predicted, by midday the weather was hot and we sat at the table in the yard to enjoy our little feast. But in the afternoon, when I went to collect water from the well, the clouds were beginning to cast grim shadows over the valley.

  ‘Just as well they took wet-weather clothes with them,’ observed Aunt Yvette, throwing the potato skins to the chickens. ‘They must be on their way back by now. If the storm breaks they will be soaked through.’

  A light rain began to drizzle but the clouds in the direction of Sault were more sinister. I sat by the kitchen window, willing my father and Jean a safe journey home. There had been a sudden downpour the day I went with my father and Uncle Gerome to the Lavender Fair in August, and one of the wheels of our cart had become embedded in mud. It took us three hours to free it and get moving again.

  A flash of lightning buckled across the sky. The clap of thunder that followed made me jump.

  ‘Come away from the window,’ said Aunt Yv
ette, reaching out to close the shutters. ‘Watching the road won’t bring them here any faster.’

  I did as she said and took a seat at the table. My mother was slumped in her chair, staring at something. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the clock on the mantelpiece had stopped. My mother was as pale as a sheet.

  ‘Are you all right, Maman?’

  She didn’t hear me. Sometimes I thought she was like a cat, vanishing into the shadows, able to see but not be seen, only reappearing from the darkness when she willed it.

  ‘Maman?’ I whispered. I wanted her to speak, to offer me some word of hope, but she was as silent as the moon.

  At dinner Uncle Gerome stabbed his vegetables and tore his meat. ‘They must have decided to stay in town,’ he muttered.

  Aunt Yvette assured me that Uncle Gerome was right, and the men had decided to stay the night in the cartwright’s barn or the blacksmith’s shed. She made me a bed in one of the upstairs rooms so I wouldn’t have to run out in the rain to get to my own house. My mother and Uncle Gerome sat by the fire. I could tell by Uncle Gerome’s gritted teeth that he didn’t entirely believe in his own supposition.

  I lay in bed listening to the rain on the roof tiles and softly sang to myself. I must have fallen asleep soon afterwards because the next thing I knew there was a loud banging on the kitchen door. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. The mule was there in the rain but there was no sign of the cart. I heard voices downstairs and hurriedly dressed.

  Jean Grimaud was standing near the door, dripping water onto the flagstones. There was a gash across his forehead and blood was oozing into his eyes. Uncle Gerome was as grey as a stone.