by Lucy English
Avelard became depressed. He kept to his room, sometimes for days at a time, looking out of the window at the wild, wooded landscape and the freedom that was denied him. It was the princess who realised his plight and came frequently to visit him.
‘My husband is a proud man,’ she said. ‘I know he will not let you go until he is satisfied,’ and there was something in her sad eyes that made Avelard realise she was right.
Then one day the princess came to him bright and excited. ‘I have an idea,’ she said, ‘why not teach me? I can sing, I am a fast learner. Teach me your songs then I will teach them to the prince. After all, I have the rest of my life to do that.’
That night the princess put this idea to the prince. At first he was adamant: no, Avelard must teach him; but gradually the princess put forward so many arguments in favour, she was so insistent, so charming, the prince agreed. After all, she was his most rare acquisition.
Over the next few months Avelard taught the princess and found to his astonishment she had the delicacy and intelligence to be one of the finest troubadours. Then the inevitable happened. They fell in love. The more the princess came to know Avelard, the more she despised her haughty, arrogant husband. The more Avelard came to know the princess, the more he realised how much he loved her. ‘Come away with me,’ he said, ‘let us live a life of freedom for ever.’
The time came when the princess had learned all Avelard’s songs and a great banquet was held in their honour. The prince sat at the head of the table puffed out with pride at his own cleverness. After all what could be more clever than having his beautiful wife sing to his guests. But after both Avelard and the princess had sung, and after the rapturous applause, the princess whispered in the prince’s ear that she felt unwell and needed to lie down. Unwell? The prince was delighted, perhaps this was the first sign of the son he had been longing for. Unperturbed, he continued with the banquet, getting more drunk with his self-importance.
In the midst of this merry-making nobody noticed two hooded figures slip across the courtyard, through a side door and into the dark woods that surrounded the palace. In the morning, when it became apparent what had happened, the prince was filled with fury at his wife’s betrayal and Avelard’s deception. He sent his army into the forest to find the runaway pair. No amount of public humiliation would be enough for them. But the army came back empty-handed. The princess and Avelard had disappeared into thin air.
The prince was stricken with remorse. He had to accept his own part in the events. He loved the princess but he could see his pride had driven her away. The wise and the learned stopped coming to his castle. It fell into disrepair, then disuse. Then it was practically no more than a ruin with the prince living like a hermit within its empty halls. As he had no heir, when he died his lands were divided and his once grand palace became no more than a heap of stones on the deserted hillside.
But what happened to the princess? Some say she and Avelard lived happily ever after, but some know better what is in the heart of a troubadour. One day, surely, the princess woke up in her makeshift bed under the stars and found that Avelard had gone, as she knew that one day he would. She was sad, because she loved him and she knew he loved her, but she also understood his need to be free. She could never go back to the stultifying life of the court. From that moment she became a troubadour in her own right. She too began the travelling life, singing in the great courts of Europe.
I love that story. I’ve told it to myself many times since Auxille first told it to me outside the café. I told it to Sanclair, sitting where I am now, in the doorway of the hut, as the light fades and darkness sweeps across the sky like an inky stain.
CHAPTER SIX
Monday. Afternoon
When the sun comes out it is quite warm. Over the last few days the wind has dropped. It rained several times, mostly in the night. There’s a feeling of stillness and moisture around here. I have decided to look for orchids. I drew a map, probably not accurate, of all the terraces, and yesterday and today went searching. On the top terrace near the woods were two patches of early pink. Behind the hut was something purplish, without chlorophyll, I’m not sure what it’s called, like a butterbur, and nearer to the gully was a bee orchid hiding in the grass. It does indeed look like a bee, and felt like one too, sort of furry. Some botanical paper this is going to be! Three species and none of them rare.
I have started to give the terraces names. There’s the top terrace, the hut terrace, the rock rose terrace, the bee orchid terrace, the fig tree terrace, the washing line terrace and the vine terrace. I put the names on the map. It’s a lovely game mapping out my territory, naming my boundaries. It’s a pretty map. I used coloured pencils. I drew the hut with me standing outside, a stick person in red and purple clothes. Actually none of my clothes here are red or purple, everything’s brown, blue or green. I used to wear such bright clothes. What happened? Velvet and silk, faded embroidery. Midnight blue. Pollen yellow. I look at my jeans and my walking boots and I don’t want to wear them. Here is a list of the shrubs and trees I found growing on the terraces. Pine, olive, box, fig, cherry, myrtle, juniper, holly oak, oak, wild pear, laurel, rowan, wild plum, and near the gully wild apple. Cistus and helianthus on the top terrace, which is the sunniest one. I want to list all the plants as well, but I don’t know their names. I shall get a book from Draguignan.
Now the wild flowers are coming out the whole countryside is like a garden. When I was a child I only came here in the summer. It wasn’t until I lived here with Gregor that I saw the spring. The flowers will all be dead by June.
But June in England is when summer is at its most beautiful. Roses, honeysuckle, the fresh green of the leaves and long, still evenings. I’m thinking of The Heathers, sitting on the patio and watching the cows in the meadow beyond the canal. That’s where the by-pass is now. But before that. Before they even cleared the canal.
When we came back from France we moved into The Heathers. It smelled of paint and varnish. The kitchen had white cupboards up to the ceiling. The bedrooms were white. I have never seen my mother so actively happy. It was a house designed for her. Modern. Spotless. Arid. Sweeps of floor and white walls. Dark brown leather furniture with a steel trim. Metal lamps. Open-slat wooden stairs. Their bedroom had nothing in it except a white bed and a vast skylight, like an abstract painting, but one constantly changing colour. Possessions and clothes were kept behind slatted doors. I can see now how brilliant my father was, because the house is filled with the sky, and the sitting room is one picture window looking across the valley. There’s no need for ornament. My room was at one end of the house. My father said that when I left home he would make it into a study. It was pure and bare like a nun’s cell. My things were in an oak trunk. There were no curtains but wooden blinds. The windows looked over a fountain courtyard. There was a table by the window.
I liked the fountain. It reminded me of the Ferrou. It was a circle of rocks and I watched the water tumble over them like the water down the split. The courtyard was made out of pebbles. Beyond was the curve of the hill and the sky above the meadow. I kept the Ferrou in my head. When it rained I tried to see the bright sunshine and the dark shadows. When it snowed I tried to see the colour of the terracotta tiles. When my parents held parties I tried to hear the sound in my ears when I held my breath underwater.
This must be one of the last days in St Clair. I’m standing with my father by the Ferrou. He’s looking up at the top of the rock. He says, ‘I wonder what you can see from up there.’ Then I realise he’s going to climb it. I’m terrified. I hate heights and I hate the thought of him going up high. What if he slips? What if he gets stuck? But he’s already off, up the side of the rock. ‘Daddy, be careful!’ I wail.
‘It’s not difficult,’ he says and offers out a hand to me, but I say, ‘I can’t, I can’t!’
‘Suit yourself,’ he says. He keeps climbing up. I wait by the bottom, being as quiet as possible in case I make him fall. I want to cry bu
t I try not to. My legs feel shaky. I can’t keep my eyes off him in case he makes a mistake. The rock seems to be swaying. He’s near the top. He pulls himself over the last bit, then he stands up slowly and puts his hands on his hips. I can hardly see him because the sun is behind him and is dazzling me. He is a black statue. And I am crying now.
‘Well, well, well … that is extraordinary …’ says my father from the top of the rock. ‘In fact that is remarkable …’ He stays up there for what seems like hours.
I watch him climb slowly down. I don’t feel happy until I am hugging him.
‘Could you see the sea?’ I try to sound cheerful.
He seems distant. ‘No … I thought I saw … but it must have been an illusion … it was a trick of the light.’
I know how it is. I see things out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn my head they’re gone. I thought I was the only person in the world that happened to until my father said that. It was strange to realise I wasn’t as different as I thought I was. Sometimes I see people. Especially in bright sunlight. People in the shadows. For years I used to see my father.
It’s a Saturday in early June and I’m playing in the garden at The Heathers. Around the house and down the lawn are planted the shrubs and heathers that give the house its name, but I am far beyond the planted garden. I’m on the wooden bridge. I’m looking into the water to see if there are any fish. The other side of the bridge is the old tow-path. I like being here, on the edge of our grounds, thinking if I wanted to I could just walk up the tow-path and away. One way is Bath. I know that. Daddy said he would take me the other way sometime. It’s the way to Bradford-on-Avon. The canal used to go all the way to the Thames and London. I’m trying to imagine what it was like when the canal was open and not full of weeds. I imagine a canal boat coming towards the bridge. I shout out to it, and the man at the front, who looks a bit like my father, says, ‘Hop on,’ and off we go, on an adventure, meeting canal people who are a bit like gypsies. We eat round camp fires at night and sleep on the roof of the boat. My father’s office is down the canal towards Bath. It used to be a boat-house. I went there once in the winter. He has a drawing board by the window. Alan Crawford works there too. Since The Heathers was built they have been working all the time. They’re designing more houses in France. Today they are playing cricket.
In the water something plops. Perhaps it’s a fish, or it could be a frog. The water is green and murky and I can’t see the bottom, not like the Ferrou, which looks like the bottom is only two feet away but it’s not, it’s much deeper than that. I lie on the bridge and look into the water. I can see my face. Sometimes it ripples and I disappear. When it’s still again I can see the clouds behind my head.
I haven’t had any lunch. My mother was on the patio this morning. I think she must have fallen asleep. I rub the mud off my shirt and my shorts. She doesn’t like me getting dirty.
She’s not on the patio, but the doors are open. I can see Alan Crawford walking up and down inside. There’s a crying noise coming out. It’s coming from my mother.
Alan Crawford knocked the ball for six. It whizzed across the pitch and hit my father on the head. They thought he was all right at first, but then he collapsed. He died on the way to hospital of a brain haemorrhage. All the time I was on the bridge looking for fish.
I don’t remember the funeral. I remember the house full of uncles and aunts I didn’t know and my mother crying and crying. My mother without her smart clothes and her make-up. People saying, ‘You must be brave, Vivienne.’ Alan Crawford answering the phone.
My mother wouldn’t get out of bed and if she saw me she screamed, ‘Keep that child away from me.’ Alan Crawford said, ‘She doesn’t mean it,’ but I knew she did.
Alan Crawford had killed my father. I didn’t like him, but I felt sorry for him. He was standing on the patio. He was wearing a dark suit. It was a hot day and he was sweating. He wiped his head with a blue handkerchief.
I said, ‘I haven’t got any clean clothes,’ and he looked at me as if it was the first time he had ever seen me. ‘We’ve all forgotten about you, haven’t we?’ he said and it was true. Everybody had.
Grief does strange things to people. It makes them cruel. It makes them hurtful. Did my mother say it? ‘Why didn’t you die instead of Hugo?’
I’m going to a new school after the summer. My mother is out of bed. She’s sitting on the sofa looking out of the window. I know if I talk to her she won’t answer. She’s wearing a flowery dress. I remember her wearing it in France. I want to ask her when are we going to France? I want to be in St Clair. I want to see Jeanette. I want to run down the track to the Ferrou. I want to run away. She picks up a magazine and looks at it. She starts flicking through the pages. If my father came into the room now she would smile and laugh and so would I.
I wake up in the night and I’ve been crying. I was dreaming my father fell off the rock, he was falling down to the bottom of the pool. I can hear voices in the lounge. It sounds like my father, but it can’t be, can it? I tiptoe out of my room. It’s Alan Crawford and my mother looking at papers. She’s dressed up like she used to be with pink lipstick and her hair in a band.
‘You can stay here,’ he says. ‘There’s enough money from the developments in France. But of course if you sold …’
‘I won’t leave this house,’ says my mother.
‘Of course …’ says Alan, ‘but you must understand that to build a house in St Clair is quite out of the question now.’
‘We could rent in the village like before.’ She lights up a cigarette.
‘Viv, you must understand if you want to live at The Heathers you have got to cut down your expenses. Cut them right down.’
‘I could sell the Ferrou,’ says my mother, and I hold my breath. I’m standing half behind a door.
‘It’s not worth anything,’ says Alan. ‘It may be one day, but at the moment there’s more land out there than anybody knows what to do with.’
‘Are you saying no more holidays?’ She blows smoke out through her nose.
‘No more holidays in the south of France.’
‘You mean if I want a holiday I shall have to take the child to Weston-Super-Mare and go donkey riding?’ She picks up the papers and looks through them angrily. ‘Surely there must be something else I can cut down on. What’s this school she’s going to?’
‘It’s where Hugo wanted her to go.’
‘Can’t she go to a convent? Somewhere cheap? I’m sure a convent would suit her. I’m sure I could save enough money so I could still have my holidays. She could stay with an aunt … they were all offering to help …’ and my mother smiles and puts her hand on Alan’s arm. Her mouth is a pink slit. ‘Alan, you like the south of France, don’t you?’
Alan Crawford went to America some months later. He now lives near Key West with a young man. My mother needn’t have bothered. I went to the convent. I don’t know how much money she saved, but she never went to France.
ST CLAIR
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tuesday. Morning
I was dreaming about Felix again. I dreamt we were in the boat and he was asleep beside me. When I woke up the day hit me like a slap and here I am on my own, and that empty all-gone feeling has come back. It’s difficult to get up. It’s difficult to do anything.
I think now I’m beginning to understand my mother. When the crying stops there is nothing left at all.
When my father died I missed him, but it was as if he hadn’t really gone. I saw him in the shadows, behind trees, behind doors. I talked to him. I suppose I invented him, my darling Daddy, my best friend. How happy we would be going off on an adventure together. I know my mother didn’t help. I couldn’t step forward and break her circle of ice. At The Heathers I’m always in another room. She’s on the sofa and I’m by the stairs. She’s on the patio and I’m looking through the glass. She’s in the kitchen and I’m in the garden. She’s in her bedroom putting on her make-up and I’m standing
by the door. A lonely child makes up friends. Makes up a whole world, troubadours, castles, deep woods in France and magic spells to make things better. What does a lonely adult do? I remember being about thirteen and realising pretending didn’t work. Sometimes it did, but it had changed because I knew I was pretending. I’m writing this because I know Felix has gone. I can dream about him. I can talk to him, but he is not there. He never will be.
Today I will go to the village and do my shopping. There are more swallows today and I thought I heard a cuckoo in the woods.
In the village shop she bought candles, matches and a pad of paper. She had already bought her food at the mini-market. Odette said, ‘You’ve got another letter.’
‘From England,’ said her daughter, standing behind her like a shadow.
‘Go and put out the newspapers,’ snapped Odette. Her daughter, Marie, could stack shelves and open boxes, but she couldn’t manage the till. Odette shuffled outside and sat on her chair. Her shop would be busy later.
‘Eugénie Gués went into hospital last night. They say she will die, and her husband Hilaire he died only in February.’ Mireille watched the daughter putting the newspapers upside down in the rack. ‘The old graveyards are full, they had to build another on the road to Grasse.’ Odette stretched out her swollen legs. ‘Everybody’s dying these days … it’s just like the war.’
From across the square Auxille was already waving. ‘That’s your letter,’ said the daughter, beaming as if she had said something very clever.
‘Go and put out some more cheese,’ said Odette.
Auxille was as gloomy as Odette. She handed Mireille the letter without asking about the contents. ‘It’s from your son,’ she said. ‘I recognise the handwriting.’ Jeanette peered out of the door, but the café was filling up with people and she couldn’t come over. Auxille sat down.