by Lucy English
I have to describe the pictures, because that is all I have now.
We call him Sanclair, after the village, and he is a child of the air. He has blond hair and pink skin and I am besotted. I stare at him for hours. I feed him until no more milk can possibly dribble into his mouth. I hold him for hours. I don’t mind that Gregor works, because I have my baby. I don’t want to go to the village. I don’t want to go anywhere. I’m happy at the hut washing nappies and cooking.
In the winter I chop wood and stoke up the stove. Sanclair is a sturdy, plump baby sitting on a mat playing with pine-cones. He wears two jumpers because of the cold, but his cheeks are pink and he’s always smiling. I wait for Gregor to come back. At night we all sleep together and tell each other stories.
In the spring there are flowers everywhere. I show Sanclair a rainbow. I don’t know if he can see it, but he laughs anyway.
In the summer we spend the hot days by the pool. Sanclair is crawling now. He’s not afraid of the water. I swim with him. He splashes and giggles. His skin is golden brown now and his hair is quite white. He has hazel eyes like Gregor’s. He can say mama and papa.
I’m sitting outside the café. Sanclair is crawling over Macon’s dog and laughing. The dog is unaffected and lies there in the sun, panting. Sanclair has never been so close to a dog before and he’s not afraid. He’s not afraid of anything. Jeanette is talking to me but I’m not listening, because I’m watching Sanclair. I’m worried in case he pulls the dog’s ears and gets bitten, but he’s stroking the dog and cuddling it gently as if he understands.
‘Mireille, you’re not listening,’ says Jeanette and I turn my head as though she’s tugging it with a lead and I don’t want to come. ‘I said, you’re much too thin, your cheeks, look, they’re hollow. Gregor, does she eat properly?’
‘She eats all day!’ laughs Gregor.
‘Then she must stop breast feeding that child. Look how big he is, and how thin she is. He’s not a little baby anymore, he’ll be walking soon.’ They both look at me. I don’t know whether I’m thin or fat. I don’t know what I look like, but their attention makes me uncomfortable. ‘She’s a baby herself. Look at her, worn out looking after her baby. If only her mother were here, young girls need their mothers.’ Jeanette suddenly hugs me, pressing me into her squashy bosoms. ‘Look at her, look at her, she’s a bundle of sticks!’
Gregor is serious. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. But she has been so happy, yes?’
‘She won’t be happy when she gets ill.’ Jeanette squeezes me tighter. She scolds me, wagging her finger. ‘Stop breast feeding, you’ll get ill! You can’t look after your baby if you’re ill.’
I have not thought about myself and I know this, but I love feeding Sanclair. These days he crawls on to my lap and pulls up my shirt, but I love the suck and the tug, the dreamy tug on my nipple as his eyes close and he sucks himself to oblivion. I love it. It’s better than sex. It’s more close and intimate.
Auxille has joined the conversation now and she starts pinching my arms as if I’m the Sunday chicken, and recounting tales of dying young girls and grief-stricken husbands. I burst into tears. I want them all to go away. I want my baby.
That night in bed Sanclair has sucked himself to sleep and I’m still tearful. Gregor hates it when I cry, he hates to see me unhappy. We have reached a compromise. I will feed Sanclair at night, in the day I’m to push him away. ‘It’s true,’ says Gregor, ‘it’s just a habit now.’ He will spend more time with me, he will look after me. Somehow this doesn’t cheer me up.
It’s the middle of August. Sanclair is starting to walk. Gregor has spent most of the summer repairing the terraces. He does this in the morning before it gets too hot. I know he needs to be busy. I know he needs something to occupy him and being with me and Sanclair is not enough. It’s the hottest part of the day. He comes and sits with us by the pool. He has been tinkering with the van again. I don’t mention India because I don’t want to go there now, but I wonder if he’s thinking about it. He lies on the grass and looks up at the sky between the trees. Sanclair climbs on to him and bounces on his chest. Oof, oof, says Gregor and Sanclair laughs. I know Gregor loves him. I know Gregor loves me, but it’s not the same.
It was Auxille, strangely, who changed things. We went to the café in the evenings so Gregor could drink with the men and Sanclair could be fussed over. Jeanette was doing most of the cooking then, so it was Auxille who could chat. I didn’t mind her talking, she didn’t barrage me with questions and if she did ask a question she never waited for the answer.
Auxille tells me stories of Old Man Henri. She tells me again the story of Avelard and the Princess. Sanclair climbs on to my lap. He falls asleep as I stroke his hair. He’s listening to the story too, the sing-song French which I don’t want to stop. Gregor and Macon are also talking, about saucy village girls and cheeky farmers. Gregor’s French will never be brilliant but he can tell a rude tale.
‘And now you must sing,’ says Auxille. ‘Nobody sings these days.’ So I do. I sing the songs I learned at school. ‘Greensleeves.’ ‘Linden Lea.’ ‘Danny Boy.’ ‘The Unquiet Grave.’ Sanclair is completely asleep now, curled up like the tiny baby he used to be. Auxille taps her foot and nods her head. Gregor and Macon listen, as do the other customers in the café. Jeanette comes and stands in the doorway. It’s getting dark and there are candles on the outside tables. It’s early September. I left home two years ago. I’m singing, ‘The King of Love My Shepherd Is’, and thinking about cycling to school up the tow-path. It seems a life away.
When I finish, people clap. A woman gives me some money, she says keep it for the baby. Other people give me money. Perhaps I still look thin. Perhaps my skirt is torn. Perhaps I just look too young to have a toddling baby on my lap. Gregor picks up the money and says thank you. He puts his arm around me to show that he cares. He sits next to me. ‘We must learn some French songs,’ he says.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Monday 16th May. After lunch
– O Magali! se tu te fas
Lou pèis de l’oundo,
léu, lou pescaire me farai,
Te pescarai!
‘O Magali, if thou wilt play
At turning fish, beware!
For I the fisherman will be
And fish for thee.’
– Oh! mai, se tu te fas pescaire,
Ti vertoulet quand jitaras,
Iéu me farai l’aucèu voulaire,
M’envoularai dins li campas.
‘Oh, and if thou thy nets
would’st fling
As fisherman, then stay!
I’ll be a bird upon the wing
And o’er the moors away.’
Yesterday I walked in the hills. I sang that song as I walked. Above the village a small road leads to a farm called Clos Maroui. It’s a messy place with broken-down trucks and a half-built extension, but they have a vineyard and twelve terraces of olive trees, old, wide-trunked and twisted. It’s the highest farm. It was lunchtime. There was nobody to hear me, of course, they were all eating. Behind the farm the road loops into the hills, called the Bois Communal de St Clair, but there aren’t any trees, just a few stunted oaks, gorse and broom, all in flower. I was walking through yellow. Once above the pine trees you can appreciate how spectacular this countryside is. The valley of the Rioux way below me was just a dark shadow, and the village looked like something balanced on a pebble. I tried to work out where my hut was, but up there distances are distorted. The mountains looked nearer and the roads were merely brown streaks zig-zagging down. The track I walked on was stony. I was glad I had my boots. Black and yellow butterflies. Bright blue ones. An occasional small bird flipping across. It was breezy up there. The sun was burning, though, and I stopped for a while and sat in the shade of a rock. There were no human sounds at all. It was a lonely place.
I could see the road to Grasse quite clearly, running along the flat grassy plateau beyond the village. There’s another farm down the
re. The domaine, where they press the wine and the olives. This is the wealthiest farm and it belongs to the château. I couldn’t see the château. It was hidden behind a line of poplar trees. I could see the pool, though, a shining square in the grey stone of the terraces.
On the way back I tried to walk up to the château, but there’s now a huge gate on the road, an enormous wrought-iron thing. It was locked with an electronic security alarm. The whole place was like a fortress. I was disappointed. I was tired by then. Coming down from the hills took at least two hours and I was still a mile away from the village. I was never friendly with the Villeneuves, but I wanted to see the château. It used to have ornamental gardens, I remember them planted with roses. The front had sixteen windows. It’s built out of grey stone with orange blotches of lichen. The terrace runs right round the house. The pool was at the back. A stone pool with water flowing into it from a stone lion’s mouth.
The Villeneuves still own the château, but I know that they hardly ever stay there. It was the same when I was with Gregor, it was rented out, but it always seemed empty, half decayed.
Today the wind has blown up again, not the mistral, it’s not fierce enough, but one that sends thin streaks of cloud into the sky. I know how it will be now. The thinner clouds will follow, tumbling into the valley and then it will rain. But this won’t happen until late afternoon. Now, it’s midday and I’m in the hammock again. The military are exploding shells in the hills and it sounds like thunder. There’s still a cuckoo, but it seems far away.
We spent that winter learning songs, as many as we could find. Auxille knew dozens. Gregor was excited about it, we would be new troubadours. He was a man who needed a vision, he was a man who had to be doing something, and I participated. As soon as the tables and chairs went outside Le Sanglier, we were there. Jeanette and Auxille thought it was wonderful. There was no other café they knew of with such an attraction. We dressed in bright clothes we found in the market and Sanclair too, with his little drum. Perhaps the locals thought we were daft, but they still came to listen, and we were serious. We went to the library and found old books of songs. If there was no tune we made one up. When people listened to us it was with a strange wistfulness as if they were remembering something they only half knew, some snatch of a line their grandmother used to sing.
– O Magali! se tu te fas
La pauro morto …
‘O Magali, and if cold clay
Thou make thyself, and
dead …’
– O Magali! me fas de bèn! …
Mai, tre te vèire,
Ve lis estello, O Magali,
Coume an pali!
‘Thou healest me, O Magali!
And mark how, of a truth,
The stars, since thou did’st
drop thy veil,
Have all grown pale!’
It was then that Macon’s father gave me the piano accordion. He was a shrivelled drunk, unlike his strapping son. He came up to the café after we had been singing and put the thing on the table. ‘For you,’ he said, with no ceremony or explanation. It was beautiful. It was inlaid with ivory and had fine metalwork on the sides. I tried it out and it sounded clear, it had been well looked after. I thought he meant for me just to try it out, so I gave it back to him. He shook his head and smiled. He had a drunkard’s smile, over-emphasised and insistent. He didn’t take it back. There was an awkward moment. Macon, who had been watching, called out from the café doorway, ‘Do you not accept my father’s generosity?’ ‘Of course,’ I said. I was amazed. I turned to the old man. He smiled again. ‘Thank you very much,’ I said.
I’m practising on the accordion outside the hut. I’ve nearly got the hang of it. Sanclair is playing with stones and shells. I don’t think he’s listening but when I stop he says, ‘Encore, encore.’ I try another tune and he hums as well. These days we are wrapped in music. Gregor is on a job with Macon. After it’s finished we will go to the coast. There’s plenty of money to be earned there.
We sing in cafés in St Tropez, St Raphael, St Maxime. We sing wherever we can. Two strange bohemians and their little white-haired child. He bangs a drum and sings as well, obviously happy and radiant, cute and charming. When people give us money he bows and says, ‘Merci, mesdames.’ He’s a complete star. He loves the singing. He loves the travelling. He loves the beaches and the sea. He loves the people. At night we camp in the back of the van. Sanclair wants to see the stars. He wants to hear the waves at night. He wants to know what the fishermen are doing. He wants to know if there are sea monsters. Gregor answers his questions as if he’s an adult and not a small boy who doesn’t want to go to sleep.
It’s July and it’s hot. The nights are hot too. I sit by the open doors and play my accordion. The sea laps on to the beach. This is an unspoiled piece of coastline, but further down are the blank blocks of holiday flats my father helped to build.
It wasn’t like when we travelled before. Then I felt sick and tired and uncertain, but that summer I felt I was doing what I wanted to do with the people I loved the most. I was on a mission too. When I sang, I felt love and people loved us. I don’t remember ever being turned away, I don’t remember people treating us harshly. We were singing out our hearts. It didn’t seem to tire me.
Sanclair, I’m so sad you don’t remember this, how brave and confident you were. Three years old, golden child. You never cried, you never complained. When the singing was over you were a little boy again, playing in the dust with the other children, talking a mixed-up high-pitched French and English, but children communicate anyway, whatever their language.
I remember an English couple sitting outside a bar in St Raphael. Elegant and well dressed, not young, in their early fifties. The woman wrinkled her nose, and I could hear her say to her husband, ‘What a disgrace to drag a child around doing that.’
Sanclair went up to her with his drum. He said, ‘Aimezvous les chanters, madame?’ He smiled, put his hand on her arm and said ‘Très belle, madame!’ with such wonder, and didn’t she melt.
‘Oh how kind!’ She fumbled in her purse and gave him fifty francs. He bowed like a little prince. And wasn’t she charmed.
Sanclair, Gregor’s son. Learning to be kind. Learning how to look people straight in the eye. Learning to be interested. Gregor never shouted at him, was never impatient, and I sang songs and cuddled him when he wanted to be a baby. I don’t think it was a bad upbringing.
For most of the winter Gregor went back to the coast, working in bars, working on the boats. I had no fear he wouldn’t come back. Before he left he taught me how to drive, and I learned on the road that leads to the farm. Gregor was a patient teacher, he made me go over each manoeuvre again and again until he was sure I knew what I was doing. I think he wanted me to be more independent, he wanted to know that when he was away I would be able to cope. Gregor’s little schoolgirl, still naive and protected, wrapped up in her child, her music and her little home. I think he wanted me to grow up.
That winter was peaceful. Sanclair, now a little boy, didn’t need my full attention. He played outside every day. Even in the rain. There were places he sheltered and he didn’t come back until meal times, sometimes blue-lipped and shivering. He’d stay by the stove until he was warm and we’d play songs or I’d read him a story, but I could tell he was waiting to go outside again. He was an outdoor boy and he stayed like that. I read more. I could drive as far as Draguignan and go to the library. I read Mistral again, but this time his Mireille wasn’t the romantic heroine I remembered her to be. She was downtrodden and pathetic, dying miserably on the beach. I couldn’t identify with her anymore. I preferred to read Pagnol and Daudet, at least they made me laugh.
I want to see a picture of how I was then, but there are no photographs. I remember myself like this. My hair is long, right down my back and curling. I wear an odd mixture of clothes. A peasant skirt, thick tights and walking boots. Embroidered shirts and jumpers. I wear a sheepskin coat when it’s really cold. I
tie my hair up sometimes with scarves. I can chop wood and make fires. I talk French nearly all the time. When Gregor comes back the stillness and quiet is shattered into a thousand pieces, it’s hard to concentrate on anything except him and what he’s doing. When he’s away, if I feel lonely I go to Le Sanglier and talk to Jeanette. Sometimes I play music and sing. Not for money particularly, but because I like to. Jeanette says my mother must be proud of me. She doesn’t ask me so much about my mother now. I told her I phone her every time I go to Draguignan. I’ve been saying this for three years. Jeanette believes it. Gregor believes it and sometimes I think that I believe it. I’ve made up a version of my mother for myself. She’s cold and distant. She doesn’t want to see me. She’s not interested in Sanclair. No, she’s not proud of me.
It was May, about the same time of year it is now. For some weeks Gregor had been home. There were new tenants at the château and he had been working up there with Macon. It was a Sunday and I was going to meet him at Le Sanglier. I walked up the track to the village. I had my accordion on my back and I walked with Sanclair. There were wild flowers the whole way and we picked a bunch to give to Jeanette. A blue sky and light breeze, like it is today, changeable weather, but for the moment radiant. At the café Jeanette took the flowers as if they were dipped in silver, kissed Sanclair until he squealed and promised him sweets and biscuits and chocolate milk. Auxille was full of the woes of the village. She had fallen out again with Odette over the price of a slice of pâté, but I didn’t want to hear about it. I said, ‘Shall I sing?’ There weren’t many customers but I sang anyway. I didn’t play the accordion, I was waiting for Gregor, but I sang at the top of my voice, a song I’d made up about Avelard and the princess. They became troubadours. The prince awoke to his own foolishness. Avelard left her, so she dressed as a man and called herself Mellano de la Queste. The castle became deserted and the wilderness took over. It seemed as if my singing rose up from the square and was soaring round the bell tower on the church like the swallows. I stopped, and Sanclair came with me to collect the money. He had chocolate milk down his front. We didn’t collect much. On the last table were two men, an older man and a younger one. They were not locals, because they both wore straw hats. The younger man wore a cream suit. They looked wealthy. I stood for a while by their table.