The French for Always

by Fiona Valpy

  She drew her knees up and turned in the passenger seat to look at Thomas, his square jaw and aquiline profile lit by the glow of the van’s dashboard lights. He seemed lost in thoughts of his own. Becoming aware that she was watching him, he glanced at her and his serious expression melted with his slow smile. ‘What?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’ A pause. And then, ‘I love your family, that’s all.’

  Looking straight ahead at the road again, Thomas nodded. And after another moment he said, seriously, ‘Coming from a girl who keeps her heart locked away in a tall tower, surrounded by a forest of thorns, that’s quite an admission.’

  She dropped her gaze again, her eyes filming over with sudden tears.

  And then, carefully, looking straight ahead now herself, she replied, ‘You do know me well, Thomas Cortini.’

  Something Old

  Sara set down the tin of furniture polish and hurried into the hallway to answer the phone. She was delighted to hear Gina’s voice at the other end of the line.

  ‘You remember at the night market I mentioned that my mother-in-law, Mireille, might be able to tell you a bit more about the château’s history? Well, her sister, Eliane, is visiting her today. I told them about our conversation and they’d be happy to come and meet you. So I wondered whether we could seize the moment and come over this afternoon. Only if it suits you, of course. If it’s not convenient at such short notice then we can always organise it for another time.’

  ‘Today would be fine,’ Sara smiled, welcoming the distraction from her anxiety about her financial future as she waited for the bank manager’s phone call. ‘Come for tea. It’ll be lovely to meet them both. And to see you again too.’

  They arrived promptly at three thirty, the doors of Gina’s little car opening to disgorge two of her children—her stepdaughter, Nathalie, and her baby son, Pierre—as well as the two elderly ladies.

  Mireille was obviously the elder sister, dressed in black, her slight frame bent with age as she leant on a stick to help her walk, but her eyes were bright and she glanced about sharply, taking in the château and its grounds and appraising Sara in one piercing sweep. Eliane was a little taller, less stooped than Mireille. Her pure white hair was twisted into a simple knot at the nape of her neck and a few strands had escaped, blowing across her face as she stood for a few moments gazing out at the view, slightly apart from the others, who were busy with greetings and introductions. When she finally turned to take Sara’s hand, the expression in her clear grey eyes seemed a little distant, as if Eliane were seeing things other than the cluster of women and children in front of her, her head cocked slightly to one side as though she were listening to voices other than those of Sara, Gina and Mireille. Could she hear the voices of ghosts, mingling with the laughter of Nathalie and little Pierre as they ran across the lawn to play on the swing-set on the far side? That was the impression Sara had. She invited them to take a seat on the terrace and brought out the tea things.

  Eliane smiled at the jug of blue and white cottage-garden flowers on the table. ‘Cosméa, bourrache, bleuet...’ she named each one, gently touching the petals with her fingertips. She lingered over the sky-blue cornflowers. ‘The bleuet is the French symbol for those who have given their lives in times of war, you know. You English use the poppy to remember; we use the cornflower. They grow side by side on the battlefield, the first flowers to re-grow. New life. New hope, after all that destruction.’

  ‘Eliane knows everything there is to know about gardening,’ Gina explained. ‘She’s an expert on wildflowers and knows where to find the best wild mushrooms.’

  Eliane looked at Sara, her eyes more clearly focused on her now. ‘You grow these here, in the gardens at the château?’ Her speech was slow and considered, making it easy for Sara to understand, even through the strong local accent that gave the words a twanging edge.

  Sara nodded. ‘Oui. When I came here the gardens were completely overgrown. I’ve made a start, but there’s still work to do, both landscaping and planting.’

  ‘My sister used to work here at Château Bellevue,’ Mireille chimed in, ‘in the kitchen mostly but sometimes in the garden too. Especially the potager.’

  ‘I’ll be pleased to show you round, and I’d love to hear more about how the gardens used to be,’ smiled Sara. ‘But I must warn you,’ she went on, apologetically, ‘I haven’t had a chance to get to work in the kitchen garden yet. That’s a project for this winter. So you’ll have to excuse the weeds there at present.’

  ‘But I see the old pear tree’s still there.’ Eliane nodded to where the higher boughs, weighed down with their heavy gold fruit, were just visible above the weathered stone wall that enclosed the potager. ‘That does my heart good.’

  Sara passed Eliane the cup of herbal tisane that she’d asked for, and then poured tea for the rest of them. ‘There are cartons of apple juice for Nathalie and Pierre if they’d like them,’ she offered Gina.

  ‘Perfect. But let’s leave them where they are for the time being,’ Gina was watching her children playing happily, Nathalie gently pushing Pierre on the baby swing and making him gurgle with laughter by clapping her hands in between pushes, ‘and enjoy our peaceful cup of tea.’

  Mireille picked up the bone china cup carefully, her hands bent and knotted with arthritis. ‘An occupational hazard,’ she explained, flexing the stiffened fingers as she noticed Sara glance at them sympathetically. ‘I worked as a seamstress, in the days before electric sewing machines.’

  Sara turned to Eliane. ‘When was it that you worked here at the château?’

  There was a pause. The old lady’s grey eyes seemed to focus once again on scenes from a time and a place in the distant past, as if she were watching things that were invisible to the rest of them.

  ‘I worked in the kitchens for about three years,’ she replied finally. ‘From when I was sixteen until I was nineteen.’

  ‘It was during the war,’ Mireille elaborated, ‘Nineteen forty-one to nineteen forty-four. I’d left home to go and do my apprenticeship in Paris, just before the Second World War broke out. Château Bellevue was owned by a nobleman at the time, and it was for this Comte that Eliane worked, as an assistant to the cook. Our parents lived in the old moulin on the river: our father ran our small farm as well as the mill, and our mother was a sage-femme.’ She turned to Gina for help translating this.

  ‘A midwife. It literally means “wise-woman”.’

  Mireille nodded. ‘Our mother knew all about using herbs and plants as medicine. It’s from her that Eliane gained a lot of her knowledge.’

  ‘So did the Comte keep the château in the war?’ Sara had the impression that both Mireille and Eliane’s expressions changed slightly, becoming a little more guarded. It was almost imperceptible, as if a faint mist had drawn a veil across the sun. She remembered what Thomas had said, as well as Gina’s gentle warning, that night in Saussignac, that people around here didn’t really like talking about the war years much.

  ‘Non,’ Mireille shook her head, raising her cup carefully to her lips once again to take another sip of tea. ‘The Germans took the château from him in nineteen forty-three. This area was right on the edge of occupied France at the time and they wanted to use it as a command post. They broadcast pro-German and pro-Vichy propaganda from here by radio.’

  ‘That probably explains the jacket I found.’ Sara told them the story, and how she’d burned the black, tattered remnants, watching the Nazi insignia being consumed by the flames.

  Mireille nodded. ‘It sounds like the uniform of one of the SS Panzer Divisions. They passed not far from here on their way northwards en route for Normandy in June nineteen forty-four. To fight back against the allies after the D-Day landings.’

  Sara was quiet as she digested this more sinister side of Château Bellevue’s history, understanding now why a shadow had passed across the faces of Eliane and Mireille as they remembered those darker times, filled with fear and conflict. The ch
âteau had changed hands so many times in the past. It made her feel faintly sick to contemplate the possibility that she might have to hand it on to another set of owners before long. She wanted to ask a thousand questions, curious to know what it had been like for each of the sisters, one in this sleepy hamlet and the other in bustling Paris, as the hurricane of war had transformed their lives. But she respected their reticence and stayed quiet, allowing them to say only as much as they wanted, not pushing them through the doorways of memory that they’d rather keep closed. Perhaps there’d be more visits in the future when Eliane and Mireille would tell her more...

  The children came back across the lawn, Pierre holding tightly to his big sister’s hand as he toddled on slightly unsteady feet, and the old ladies’ expressions brightened once more, the clouds dispelled by the children’s laughter and the sight of Pierre’s eyes opening wide in delight at the sight of a large slice of lemon drizzle cake.

  ‘Let me show you what I’ve done in the gardens so far,’ Sara offered Eliane and they strolled through the grounds, Eliane nodding in approval as Sara explained her planting scheme, carefully planned to give continuous colour from spring to autumn as a backdrop for wedding photos. Mireille, leaning on her walking stick and Gina’s arm, followed close behind.

  Finally they reached the viewpoint. ‘Look,’ Mireille nudged Eliane. ‘You can see the old mill-house from here.’

  ‘Thomas told me there’s a rumour that there’s a secret tunnel running from the mill all the way up to the château,’ Sara ventured. ‘But I don’t suppose it’s true.’

  Eliane’s grey eyes fixed her with their gaze, suddenly as clear as a summer sky. ‘Mais oui, Sara, it is true. The tunnel itself is blocked off now though; it would be too dangerous to use. But it began and ended by opening out into a cavern at each end, most likely carved out by an ancient underground river before man walked the Earth. Remember, Mireille, we kept the pig in the cave down at the moulin?’

  Sara remembered the stable door set into the rock face behind the mill. And then she felt a rising sense of excitement. ‘And the cavern at the other end?’

  ‘Why, my child, it’s right here under our feet!’ As Eliane’s face broke into a broad smile, Sara caught a glimpse of the natural, breathtaking beauty of the nineteen-year-old girl she must have been, who’d worked here all those years ago. ‘And the entrance to it is in your cellar, beneath the kitchen.’

  She led the way back to the château and Sara handed her the key to the cellar door, flicking the light switch to illuminate the dark well of the stairs that led down to the wine store.

  ‘Have you got a candle and some matches too? Bring them with us,’ Eliane said.

  ‘Pierre and I will stay here,’ Mireille said firmly. ‘We’ll need to call out a search party if you get lost down there.’

  ‘I’ve been down here hundreds of times and I’ve never seen anything,’ Sara mused as they descended the cellar stairs. ‘Maybe it’s been filled in?’

  As sure-footed as a teenager now, Eliane made her way past the racks of wine bottles, sleeping quietly in the cool darkness which helped to keep them in perfect condition until called upon to help animate the wedding celebrations above ground. She stooped under a low stone arch, into a smaller room in the shadows, away from the electric lights of the main cellar.

  ‘The barrel store?’ Sara asked.

  ‘Oui.’ Eliane struck a match and lit the candle. Her eyes glittered in the light of the small flame. ‘The entrance is right here. Well-hidden, non?’

  Sara looked about her. The stone walls rose solidly on all sides, curving into a vaulted ceiling above their heads. Three big barrels, long-ago emptied of the Bordeaux wines they once held, rested on their sides on the age-worn terracotta tiles of the floor in front of them. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘Look carefully.’ Eliane bent low to hold the candle nearer floor level. ‘Do you notice anything about the bases of the barrels?’

  Sara looked more closely. Two of them had wooden chocks jammed in on each side to stop them from rolling out of position. But the third one had no chocks. Sara stepped back. Come to think of it, that one seemed to be sitting very slightly lower than the others, even though it was clearly the same size. She pointed towards the floor, hidden beneath the belly of the barrel.

  ‘Oui, you’ve got it. The barrel sits on the opening. Here, take this,’ Eliane handed the candle to Gina. ‘Sara, give me a hand.’

  They rolled the barrel sideways, and there, where it had lain, was a dark, rectangular hole leading even further down into the earth, rough stone steps just visible at the lip.

  ‘Wow! The secret tunnel!’ gasped Nathalie, gripping Gina’s spare hand a little more tightly.

  ‘Give me the candle and wait here.’ Eliane’s voice echoed slightly, bouncing off the vaulted ceiling. ‘We need to make sure the air hasn’t gone bad after being sealed up for so long.’

  ‘Eliane, let me! Are you sure it’s safe?’ Sara peered down into the void as Eliane’s white hair disappeared downwards into the gloom. ‘Wait here,’ she turned to Gina. ‘I’ll go in after her and make sure she’s okay.’

  Nathalie’s eyes shone bright in the shadows of the barrel store, with a mixture of fear and excitement.

  The steps descended steeply, almost vertical, but Sara could see the faint glow from the candle beneath her. Pressing her hands into the rough stone sides of the shaft, she felt her way downwards cautiously, the steps levelling out into a gently sloping tunnel just high enough for her to stand up in if she bowed her head. Suddenly the claustrophobic space opened up before her and she found herself standing alongside Eliane. In the flickering glow of the candle’s light, the white stone walls and roof of a sizeable cave were illuminated around them. The air was cool, but surprisingly dry with no hint of mustiness, despite having been sealed up for so long. Eliane turned to her, triumphant. ‘Et voilà!’ she proclaimed, like a magician unveiling his very best trick.

  ‘Oh, Eliane, it’s incredible!’ Sara gasped in amazement at this magical secret place that had been right there beneath her feet all this time.

  Eliane seemed to be searching for something, holding the candle close to the stone. As the flame played across the smooth walls, excavated and shaped so many thousands of years ago by the flow of an ancient river, it suddenly picked out a shape, carved not by water but by the hand of man. A heart. With two sets of initials, set into the bedrock beneath the château. Eliane traced the shape with her fingertips, as if reading Braille, but in the candlelight her grey eyes shone once again with a light as clear as a summer’s day.

  ‘I wonder who they were.’ Sara met Eliane’s gaze. ‘And when that heart was carved.’

  Eliane smiled, her expression enigmatic. ‘Your château is built on love, Sara. Love and happiness. No matter what sadness has happened here too. Remember that, Sara.’

  ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’ Gina and Nathalie crowded into the space behind them and the cloud fell over Eliane’s expression again.

  ‘We’d better not stay here too long. It needs a good airing after being shut up all these years.’ Eliane held the candle away from the wall so that the carved heart faded back into the smooth wall once again. ‘See over there,’ she gestured. ‘That’s where the entrance to the tunnel used to be, that ran all the way down to the lower cave in the moulin.’ An old opening at the far end of the cavern was blocked off with dense rubble, planks of wood fastened across it to hold the debris in place and stop it collapsing into the cave.

  ‘Come, we’d better be going up now. Otherwise Mireille and Pierre will be imagining we’ve disappeared into the centre of the Earth,’ Eliane smiled reassuringly at Nathalie, who was still keeping a firm grip on Gina’s hand.

  They made their way back up, leaving the barrel rolled away from the entrance to the cave, although Sara took the precaution of piling a few boxes of wine in front of the gaping hole so that Antoine and Thomas couldn’t step into it by accident. She couldn’t wait to s
how them the château’s secret and planned to come back here with a torch so that she could get a closer look at the initials carved into the cave wall. She had a feeling that one set had looked like E.M. or E.H., though she couldn’t be sure.

  Brushing off the dust and cobwebs from their clothes, they emerged, breathless and triumphant, into the sunny kitchen where Mireille and Pierre were waiting for them.

  ‘Maman!’ Pierre cried out, holding out his arms to Gina, relieved to see his mother and sister safely back again.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming.’ As they said their goodbyes, Sara held both Eliane’s hands in hers. ‘By the way,’ she asked, casually, ‘what is your surname?’

  ‘Dubosq,’ Eliane replied.

  ‘Oh.’ Sara was faintly disappointed to learn it didn’t start with an M or an H. ‘Well, it’s been lovely learning more about Château Bellevue. I’m so grateful to you for sharing your memories today.’

  Eliane nodded and embraced Sara warmly. ‘I’m glad it’s in such good hands these days. We French don’t like to think too much about the war years. But it’s time some of these ghosts were laid to rest now.’ She looked around at the roses against the stone of the château’s walls, gently exuding their sweet scent into the late-afternoon air. ‘A garden is a healing place. I’m sure we’ll meet again before long.’

  Then, fixing Sara again with that clear, calm gaze, Eliane said, ‘At the end of a story we say, “et ils vécurent heureux jusqu’à la fin de leurs jours”.’

  Sara nodded. ‘In English we would say, “and they all lived happily ever after”.’

  The old lady held both Sara’s hands in hers for a moment. ‘I’m so pleased the château has found its rightful use in the end. Always remember, Sara, even in the darkest of times, love will light the way. Always.’

  The breeze blew strands of hair across her lined face as she turned to go. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ she paused, turning to Sara one last time before she climbed into the car. ‘Mireille and me? Our family name was Martin.’