by Lucy English
‘Then you will know that whatever he wrote to me he wrote to you as well.’
Stephen poured himself a glass of water and sat down. ‘Yes … I gathered that … you used to read them out, didn’t you?’
‘You never paid much attention.’
‘I know … I used to think … why doesn’t he come and see us … why does he stay in India … I thought he was a sod.’
‘I thought that too,’ said Mireille. ‘Loads of times. I don’t think that now. He did what he felt he needed to do. I respect him for that.’
‘When I read his letters, I thought, he’s a decent bloke, I wouldn’t mind having a drink with him.’
‘Gregor is a decent bloke,’ said Mireille. Stephen stood in the doorway, looking out across the valley, hot in the afternoon sun.
‘He never stopped asking about me.’ He stood there. A young man in shorts, walking boots and a pale blue shirt.
‘I’m going to light the stove. Do you want some coffee?’
‘I want to go to India. I want to go and see Dad.’
‘I’ve been thinking that myself,’ said Mireille.
The afternoon slipped into the evening and they were still talking, about Gregor mostly, what he was like, what he did, but Mireille knew she was only a small episode in his life and there was plenty about him she didn’t know. The more they talked, the more it became obvious to her she had been putting off going to India for far too long. If Felix had lived. If the baby had lived. But that was another stream and she thought about the rainwater pouring down the hill in so many streams all to land up in the muddy Rioux.
The lamp was flickering on the table and the moths came in and flew around it.
‘Yes, I want to go to India, but I want to go to Australia and New Zealand and Thailand and the States … I could look up Tony.’ Mireille had not seen Stephen so excited about anything.
‘This is more than a holiday you’re talking about, isn’t it?’
Stephen wrinkled his face. ‘Give up the job? That’s a big one … but you do it, don’t you? You manage to survive.’
‘I don’t have your lifestyle.’
That made him think. ‘But you don’t need these things, do you? Things. You can have too many things.’
‘Sell The Heathers.’
Stephen looked at her. She had suggested something outrageous. ‘I’m not ready for that. I like The Heathers.’
‘Let The Heathers. For six months. You would make money out of it.’
This was a new situation. Mireille giving Stephen advice about how to manage money.
‘Yes, through an agency. They specialise in these things don’t they…? Mum, you’re quite shrewd, aren’t you?’
‘I like to think I am.’ And they both thought about their own situations.
‘I reckon I could go to India for Christmas. I could have it sorted by then,’ said Stephen.
‘And Judy?’
He grimaced. ‘She’ll hate the idea. She’ll think I’ve gone mad.’
‘Sometimes you have to leave people behind,’ said Mireille and they were both quiet because they both knew how it felt to be left behind.
‘And you?’ said Stephen. ‘What are your plans?’
‘There’s nothing stopping me moving forwards anymore.’ When she said it she could feel Felix and the baby flying over the hut, towards the mountains. Flying with love. Flying with joy.
‘Mum, are you all right?’ asked Stephen and squeezed her hand.
‘I am now,’ said Mireille and squeezed back.
Stephen’s birthday and the next day he was going back to England. Browner and a year older, but he had grown up more in that week. They were sitting by the pool. It had been a quiet day. No expensive presents or parties. Mireille had given him a leather bracelet she found in the market and they had lunch in the café. There was the sadness of things ending but also anticipation. They were going to meet again for Christmas in India.
Talking seemed unnecessary because the trickling water provided all the varying patterns of speech. Light falling through the trees was filtered as green as water and it was impossible to tell if an hour had passed or two or three.
Stephen, who had been lying on the grass, sat up. ‘Has anybody ever been up that rock?’ he asked, and when he said it Mireille felt an old fear in her stomach.
‘Yes …’ she said, but before she could elaborate he had put on his boots and was planning the climb. ‘Won’t take me a minute,’ and he was up.
He didn’t call to Mireille to follow him and he didn’t look down at her. For the third time in her life she watched somebody she loved climb the rock and she was as anxious as when she was ten and her father became smaller and smaller.
At the top he was a small shape with the sun behind him. His hands on his hips looking at the view. It seemed to take a long time before he was on the ground again.
He was an experienced climber but he was distressed.
‘Were you frightened?’ she asked and sat on the grass next to him. He undid his boots and his fingers were shaking.
‘I’ve done that before, haven’t I? At the top I remembered … seeing the sea and the villages like you’re on top of the world … I didn’t go up there with you, did I?’
‘It’s hard to get me up a ladder,’ said Mireille.
‘I was on top of somebody’s shoulders. Then they put me down and I was holding their hand. They seemed huge but I felt absolutely safe, holding his hand on top of the world …’
‘That was Gregor,’ said Mireille.
‘I remember my dad,’ said Stephen.
Sunday 26th June. Afternoon
Something’s happened. A son has found his father and a mother has found her son and I am going to meet Gregor in India for Christmas.
Stephen went yesterday and now I’m alone. I don’t mind. I like being alone.
I’m going to India but I’m not quite sure when. It might be at the end of the summer. I am going to meet Gregor in India for Christmas and so is Sanclair.
Full circle.
Tuesday 28th June. After lunch
I went to the mini-market today and I walked all round the village. I thought, I love this place. It was a hot walk back through the woods and now I’m by the pool. I seem to spend every day by the pool.
Wednesday 29th June. Morning
I’m by the pool …
She put down her pen and picked up her accordion. It was music she wanted, not words. She played every song she knew, one after the other and the sound of it echoed round the grove of the Ferrou. Suddenly the sun flashed in her eye. It had just risen over the top of the rock.
She stood up and the sun was shining in the pool and the pool was a bowl of light.
The rock stood in front of her like a challenge and she knew she had to do it now, like a flash.
Like when she ran down the tow-path to Gregor, like when she looked into Felix’s eyes, like when she got up off Stephen’s sofa and put an ad in the paper to sell her houseboat.
This was the energy that moved her on and she needed it now.
She put her hands on the rock, and one foot, and hauled herself up. Stephen said it was an easy climb and it did look easy, over the craggy limestone towards the split, if you weren’t terrified and your hands weren’t shaking and sweaty.
Don’t look up. And she didn’t. She looked at her hands and the next handhold and the little plants growing out of the rock. Succulents with pink flowers and leaves like scales. Tiny gardens on each ledge. On the grey rock.
Don’t look down. She was halfway up and she looked down once but the rock started to sway. This was her old nightmare, being hurled down from a great height, and she couldn’t stop the falling feeling. Her hands were sweating more and her legs were shaking. She had to go on. There was nobody to rescue her.
Don’t look down. I went out in the rain and it wasn’t a monster it was a pig. A fat piggy-wig-wig. I was so scared and it was all for nothing. Hugo and Gregor and little Sancl
air got up here and they were no rock-climbers. It’s not hard.
She turned towards the split and climbed slowly on without a pause. The rock was darker here and wetter, but the footholds were easier. The rock smelled wet. Smelled of wet earth and moss. Her face was pressed against it. She could hear the water trickling, like a lullaby. Sung by ghosts.
Don’t look up.
There was a breeze now and plants, shrubs, to cling on to, broom, sage brush, the soil drier and crumbly. She was heaving and hauling herself up and up and it felt like her heart was bursting out of her body and everybody she had ever loved was singing in her ears.
You can do it. You can do it. And the ghosts were singing. You can do it.
And the last voice was Felix’s, soft and calm, a stream of magical dancing words.
You’ve done it.
She was lying flat on her stomach, on the bristly grass in the sun.
She couldn’t move. She lay there for some time. Ants crawled over her hands. Her fingers were scratched and bleeding and trembling. It felt like all of her was trembling.
She got on to her knees and looked up. She was looking at gorse and broom going up the hill.
Too high for pine trees. She turned round slowly.
Ahh . . !
The view took her breath away. In the distance the sea was a faint strip of blue and the mountains, indistinct but shimmering like fairy mountains, white castles. In front of her was the red ruined castle of Lieux on its hill and behind her to the right the church clock tower of St Clair. To her left the dark rock of Rochas and all of this above the tree tops as if it were swimming.
She stood up and for a moment everything did swim and she held her breath and looked down.
The round pool of the Ferrou holding the sun. A bowl of light in a grove of darkness. Not water but fire. The more she looked the more she could see it. The pool was the centre.
The three villages ringed around it. A beautiful natural pattern, the order exquisite, and the pool was pouring out light towards the Rioux, which roped around all of them.
The strange order of Nature. This remarkable sight unknown and forgotten except by those who had stood there. For her father it was a trick of the light, for Gregor it was the sign he needed, for Sanclair it was the link with his father and for Old Man Henri it was what kept him there for the rest of his life.
The guardian of the Ferrou. She understood the painting now. Thank you. Thank you. She was chosen. It awed her because she was a guardian too. She looked down again and the sun was passing out of the pool and the moment was soon to be lost but she had seen it.
Now she understood.
Friday 1st July. Evening
This is my last day here. Tomorrow I take the bus to Draguignan and then to the airport.
I’m going to India. I shall take my accordion. I shall never forget to play it.
I shall remember, there is always the fantastic. I climbed the rock.
Today I said goodbye to Jeanette. She cried and so did I because she is my true friend and here is my home. I shall come back here but now I need to go travelling.
This is my last night. It’s warm outside and I’m sitting by the table and the moths are flying round the light. There’s a smell of thyme, lavender, sage, pine resin and the smell of the river coming up from the valley.
I shall put this journal in the tin trunk but I shall keep writing. My life fits in a tin trunk but there are more stories to be written.
I shall remember, there is always the fantastic.
I climbed the rock.
Early morning on a hot day in July. A woman was waiting for a bus in a village in the south of France. She was a tall woman with grey hair but what was most striking about her was a sense of confidence and purpose that made her radiant.
It was a rare sort of happiness.
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