by Hilton, Lisa
In the salon, Cathérine sat down on a sofa. She arranged her dress fussily, reclining backwards, and spoke in French, in a refined voice, ‘Oh, my head is dreadful with this heat! Cathérine, do fetch me a tisane.’ Amélie giggled, but Oriane felt dismayed.
‘Cathérine, get up! What if someone sees?’
‘Who’s going to see?’ said Cathérine in her usual voice. ‘They’ve buggered off to Monte Carlo and left us.’ She continued in her Marquise tone, ‘Oh, really, the crowds at Monte this year were quite dreadful!’
Emboldened, Amélie sat in an armchair. ‘I thought we might try Deauville this season,’ she announced. Oriane couldn’t help it. ‘No, look, you’ve got it wrong.’
The cigarette box was on the table, she took one, lit it with a match from the silver stand attached to the ashtray, pursing up her mouth and blowing a feather of smoke towards the ceiling, ‘We find that Monte is still more select, my dear.’ Cathérine and Amélie helped themselves too, and they lolled there, smoking, bored ladies on a hot afternoon.
Cathérine jumped up. ‘Come on,’ racing into the hallway, her clogs clattering strangely on the newly naked stone of the staircase. When they followed, panting and laughing to the door of the Marquise’s bedroom, she had the wardrobe open and was throwing clothes on to the bed. She had a fur stole wrapped around her shoulders and a pale blue hat with a mauve silk ribbon jammed on her head.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you have this, Amélie!’
‘Oh, we can’t!’
‘Yes we can.’ Cathérine’s face was set, this was a test of loyalty. She had kicked off her clogs and was trying to work her foot into a pale pink suede dancing slipper. Amélie obediently undid her apron and skirt and stepped into the matching evening gown. The satin strained at the back and her bodice showed under the delicate shoulder straps, but she grabbed a forlorn powder puff from the dressing table and minced about, swishing the train and dabbing beige dust at her nose.
‘And this is for you, Oriane!’
A bunch of fabric the colour of milky coffee landed in Oriane’s arms. It was a silk negligée, trimmed with chocolate-coloured lace. Oriane put her arms through the wide sleeves and tied the thick, slippery sash.
‘Those shoes simply won’t do, my dear,’ said Cathérine the Marquise, ‘do try a pair of mine!’
Oriane ducked as they hurtled towards her. She stooped, gathering the silk carefully where it pooled around her ankles, stuffed her toes into the tiny yellow slippers figured with scarlet flowers. She went up to Amélie at the mirror and peered over her shoulder, then unfastened her hair. It fell down her shoulders, darker than ever against the creamy fabric. That looked right.
‘I’m going to tell my brother!’ hooted Cathérine. ‘That would get him going, seeing you like that!’
‘Would it?’ asked Oriane foolishly. She thought no one had guessed that Laurent Nadl was sweet on her. Her glance slid swift, involuntary, to the Marquise’s big carved wooden bed.
‘Look at her, the dirty cow,’ shrieked Amélie, ‘she can’t wait!’ She tittered coarsely, rolling her eyes, and Oriane felt cold. She began to unfasten the negligée.
‘Come on, now,’ she said quietly, ‘we’d best get on.’
Next day, the girls continued their work scrappily as the d’Esceyracs departed around them. William was behaving very hard. He said all his words in French and looked at Monsieur’s face like Oriane had told him. Madame had a hat with a feather, which startled him, and there was a big clock near the wall that fizzed and muttered so he wanted to lay his ear on the fragrant wood and listen to the beat of its polished heart. He contented himself with resting one fist behind his back in his open palm and flicking his fingernails secretly in counterpoint to the clock’s clicks, ssi-tum, ssi-tum, like blood throbbing from a chicken’s neck when Oriane killed it with the little knife that looked round but was very sharp so he mustn’t touch it, except it didn’t slow down like the chicken. Perhaps one ssi-tum escaped from his lips, but that was nothing serious like Oriane said when he did things that were bad but weren’t really bad. The clock room was big and had long windows that showed the lawn and the woods, not Papie’s house because that was lower down, but Monsieur pointed and said, ‘That’s your farm, isn’t it, William?’ so William saw that it looked much the same as it did when he was there, the big barn and the grey square roof, except smaller. It was hard to leave the clock, but Monsieur said he had a special secret to show him, and they went together right through the windows and across the scratchy grass that was full of footsteps.
Monsieur had one big box and William had another. He had to carry it very carefully, like his violin. They went down to a clearing where there was a little house with a pointy roof, then down again through the wood where the brook was, with the statue of the lady who was in the church too. The bridge crossed the brook where the water was muddy and crowded, humming with thorns. Monsieur scrambled underneath, holding back the branches. William did not want to go there, it was dark and nasty, but the box was so heavy and Oriane would be angry if he did not, so he followed Monsieur to a damp, chilly hollow where a few tumbled bricks crawled with lichen. In the wall was a little door. For sure, William would not go in there. He shook his head and began to bounce the box in his arms until Monsieur put down his own and took it from him. Monsieur took out a little bottle of oil and rubbed it on a key, then he disappeared inside. William climbed back up the bridge and waited in a patch of sunshine.
They went back to the big house where Monsieur put the key in a little cupboard that smelt of horses. It looked like the baby of Papie’s cupboard, all over flowers and dancing creatures. ‘Shhh,’ said Monsieur and put his finger to his lips.
‘Shhh,’ said William, so hard it made bubbles of spit.
William liked the next part much better, when they broke the bottles. They made a wonderful noise, some of them were green and they smashed deep and sad but the best ones were yellow and made a huge spluttering burst. Breaking things was very bad, but no one came to shout at Monsieur ever ever. Yellow and black wine ran into the ground as Monsieur cracked the bottles over the mounting block in the empty stable yard. It smelt like Mademoiselle Lafage’s wedding and a bit like Papie in wintertime. William was allowed to break them too, he swung the bottle up and whammed it against the stone which was all purple now and threw the splinters into the pile, a beautiful church noise like tiny bells.
‘That’s right, William,’ said Monsieur, and laughed, but it was not a happy sound, more like the thudding gasp of the green glass tearing on the stone. There were two bottles left. He had one bottle as a present. Monsieur cracked the other one carefully, just the neck, so that it was jagged but still whole. He held it out so William could see the label. ‘This is an Haut-Brion,’ he said, ‘and it was made in 1913.’ He tipped back his head and poured a little of the wine carefully into his mouth. ‘Do like me,’ he said, so William opened his mouth too and it was filled with wine.
‘Shall we have a toast, William?’ William wasn’t sure he hadn’t done something bad, so he just kept quiet.
‘Never mind, you’re a good boy. Go home now.’
They said goodbye and William remembered to take off his cap. As he set off down the track to Murblanc he heard the last bottle crack once, like a gunshot. He wished Oriane could have seen how he said ‘Merci Monsieur’. Maybe he would break the last bottle on a rock, just to hear that noise again, but that could be a shame because it was a present. He gave it to Papie, even though at Murblanc they had real wine from a jug. Papie said he was pleased all the same and while he waited for Oriane to fetch him home William had a piece of clafoutis with cherries and a stick to scrape on Madame Nadl’s washboard as much as he liked.
Oriane went home by the village road with Amélie and Cathérine. They were to leave all the keys to Monsieur Larivière at the Mairie, so Amélie could take them as she was nearest. There was nothing to stop them leaving through the main door, but somehow that didn’t seem right after t
heir long day of work had worn out the giddiness, so they came out as usual on the kitchen side, solemnly, stretching their arms and rubbing the backs of their damp necks. They took turns to carry Amélie’s suitcase, bumping it along the swathe of grass in the middle of the avenue where the twilight was hot and green. Nothing was different outside, the scent of the woods came up to them as though the thick air had deliquesced into the soil. Their clogs stirred autumn.
‘Do you think they’ll come back, then?’ asked Amélie timidly.
‘Them?’ Cathérine was scornful. ‘I daresay, when it’s all over. Leaving us stuck here in the meantime. What do you expect?’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Oriane, though she believed it. ‘Laurent says—’
‘Laurent thinks he knows everything because he’s been to the pictures in Monguèriac. They’re here, and they’ve won and we lost. We have to put up with it, that’s all, see?’
It was true that Oriane did not feel she had the right to say much. She had never seen a film or a newsreel at the pictures. She hadn’t even been to Landi. Mademoiselle Lafage had sometimes read La Dépêche out loud when she lived with them but Oriane had not bought a copy since the wedding, it was a waste.
It seemed sad, suddenly, that none of them really knew anything at all.
‘We’re best off minding our own business,’ added Cathérine, as though she knew what Oriane was thinking.
They reached the bottom of the hill in silence and left Amélie at the bridge. They watched her for a while, dragging the scuffed case up the hill. The light was growing blue now, thickening around her.
‘They put people like William in prison, you know,’ Cathérine announced, ‘they round them up and take them away for good.’ She could be like that, cruel because she was clever.
The wine dried slowly on the cobbles of the stable yard. Even after several hours when the moon came up, little rivulets ran stickily between the stones, showing a red bonfire of razors where the glass sparkled as its light caught the edge of the heaped shards.
SUMMER HOLIDAYS
When Delphine d’Esceyrac telephoned on Wednesday evening, Claudia had still not told Alex. Murblanc contained them, they moved into a rhythm. Claudia continued to rise early, and took one of the bicycles across the river into Castroux for the bread. Olly and Richard were pleased to get out of a chore that, for them, had neither novelty nor charm. Breakfast was on the terrace, and Aisling suggested, every day, some sort of activity for the visitors, a drive to the cathedral at Albi or the lovely old square at Monguèriac, but they were not bored, they saw no reason to go rushing about. Aisling was happy that her house drew them so, that they were content to remain within its orbit. Alex helped Jonathan in his potterings; they were building a low wall around the herb beds with pretty, pinkish local bricks, a cache of which Jonathan had found buried when the fosse was dug. The pool was PG territory in the morning, but they spent most of the afternoon there, chatting, reading, snoozing. As it got cooler, everyone took a turn at watering, and Claudia helped Aisling to gather the salads and herbs for the evening. The leaves of the lettuces were delicate, translucent, straining in the dry red earth. While they had drinks, the boys disappeared into the village for an hour or so, and they ate at nine, with music and wine in the cool, thick jugs.
Pushing the bike up the lane, a plastic bag with two flûtes swinging from the handlebars, Claudia had to slither into the ditch to make way for an open lorry stinking of fumes. The truck was half full of melons, some split and oozing, and half full of skinny, ratty men wedged amongst the fruit. They wore baseball caps and filthy T-shirts and stared down at her incuriously, slit-eyed in the sun. Jonathan said they were Albanians or something, brought in for the harvest. As the days passed, Claudia realized that the stillness of the landscape was an illusion. Silence sharpened as it was so often broken by tractors clanking heavy farm machinery up the lane, or along the valley, from where the sound carried for miles. Smoking a cigarette on the balcony before she went in for her bath, Claudia saw that the fields were full of little Brueghel figures, loading, tying, creeping across the earth. Old people worked on through the late twilight, squat bundles in the orchards, pruning and trimming now the fruits were over, occasionally a gun went off in the chateau wood, although the season had not begun. Claudia was absorbed, comforted. London seemed far away.
Aisling suggested that Delphine bring her sons to tea on Thursday afternoon. Madame Lesprats would be in to do La Maison Bleue in the morning, so she could be sure it would look its best after almost a week of Froggett depredation. A shame that the flowers were so poor in August, but she could put bunches of rosemary and lavender in the rooms, and the geraniums on the PG terrace were lovely. It was too hot for much, but she could do that fragrant almond and orange-flower cake, thinly sliced, on white plates. Could the Froggetts be got rid of? It was hardly fair to show Delphine around and not ask them for tea, and anyway, they were bound to hover even if she didn’t. When she hung up, Claudia was in the kitchen rubbing a garlic clove on slices of bread for bruschetta, wearing a loose embroidered tunic, silver on white, over her turquoise bikini. Her bare feet were tanned.
‘Thanks,’ said Aisling. She peeled the clingfilm from a bowl of broad bean and sage purée and handed Claudia a spoon to smear with.
‘Your friend from the chateau just phoned. She’s bringing Charles-Henri and Jules over for a swim tomorrow.’ Aisling settled on this unsatisfactory conjugation because she did not like to say ‘Delphine’ in front of Claudia, as she had not actually been asked to use her Christian name, but ‘The Comtesse d’Esceyrac’ sounded too overawed. What, really, should she call her?
‘That’s nice,’ replied Claudia, spreading, ‘although I don’t know her all that well. I’ve just met her a few times.’
Aisling decided on playful frankness. ‘Actually,’ she said, with an affected smile, ‘I’m a bit overwhelmed. La plume de mon oncle and all that. Do I say Madame d’Esceyrac to her?’
‘I should say Comtesse,’ said Claudia thoughtfully, ‘and then she’s bound to say call me Delphine. If she doesn’t, just stick to vous. More to the point,’ she smiled more sincerely than Aisling had done, ‘what’s to be done with the Froggetts?’
Aisling felt grateful, though defensively so. ‘It would be nice to get to know her in her own language, so to speak.’
‘Alex and I haven’t been to the lake yet. What about a picnic lunch, a late one? We could do pain bagnat with the ratatouille.’
‘They’re not so ghastly, really. Wouldn’t you mind?’
‘Not at all.’ Anything to avoid mention of Sébastien. ‘I’ll go down in a minute and ask them. I’ll get the chaps to come, too.’
They had a glass of PG white, and Aisling told Claudia about the Shirleys, last year, who had brought frozen chips in a cool bag all the way from Hemel Hempstead.
Claudia told Aisling that Delphine’s husband had, she understood, died suddenly from cancer. Aisling was most sympathetic.
Madame Lesprats steered her navy Clio carefully around the barn at Aucordier’s and honked. Ginette appeared at the door, waved, then stuck her head back in to say something to old Oriane. Her overall hung between her broad hipbones, which protruded like the shanks of an old horse. She was really a few years younger than Madame Lesprats, but a glance in the rear-view mirror was reassuring. Time had got the better of poor Ginette, but Madame Lesprats’s tightly permed hair was hennaed a nice shade of claret, and there was something to be said for a few extra kilos after a certain age, as Cathérine Deneuve observed. Like many of her friends in Castroux, Madame Lesprats was a devoted reader of Oh La! Sometimes she brought a few back copies up to Aucordier’s. Today, she was in a hurry to get on, as her son was coming to lunch with his wife, although it would not be kind to mention that to Ginette.
Ginette got out at the top lane, from where she would go to the main house to collect the linen. Madame Lesprats continued down the hill and turned right before the bridge, at the edge o
f Murblanc land. She took the gravelled path the guests used and parked next to the Froggett car at the side of La Maison Bleue, as Madame Harvey insisted on calling it. She remembered perfectly well when the house was no more than Nadl’s cow barn. The cleaning equipment was in a specially built cupboard under the oak staircase – once again Madame Lesprats marvelled at English extravagance, as she tugged out the plastic bucket and went to the kitchen to fill it. A spotty girl with sunburned shoulders was eating baguette and Nutella at the table. She said ‘Bonjour,’ and Madame Lesprats returned her greeting curtly, clattering a pile of washing up as she forced the bucket’s lip beneath the tap. The girl took the hint and sloped off, carrying a book, leaving her dirty cup and a stream of crumbs. Madame Lesprats thought Madame Harvey was foolish not to get a wipe-clean lino top, they had some lovely bright patterns in the market, and it was so much more hygienic.
An hour later, the two women had done the bedrooms and bathrooms and changed the sheets. At least this lot were tidy. Between them, they carried the vacuum cleaner back down the stairs and got started on the floors.
‘That Claudia’s pregnant.’ said Ginette above the wheezy drone.
‘How do you know?’ Madame Lesprats was irritated. She considered the Harveys her own private area of expertise.
‘Oriane spotted it. She fainted.’
‘That makes sense. Still, she’s getting married, isn’t she, to Monsieur Harvey’s brother?’
‘I daresay.’
‘Well, she is. Mademoiselle Oriane should keep her nose out of other people’s onions.’
Rebuffed, Ginette bent her head and continued sweeping out the empty fireplace, terrible for dust in the summer. Madame Lesprats felt mean.