by Liz Nugent
By then, technically speaking, I oversaw everything to do with the estate, the château, the orchard, the olive grove, and the winery, with terrific support from our friends and neighbors, but on a practical level I had appointed local managers Max and Constantine to run each division, friends and neighbors that we trusted. It amuses me now when I think about it, to realize that we were operating not unlike a kibbutz, or a commune in the English sense of the word, although I insisted that the family eat separately in the house each evening while the workers ate outdoors. I was adamant that the workers would not stay in the house overnight. Everything else was shared. I actively encouraged Papa to let me take control, and I think he passed over the reins with relief and slipped into a graceful retirement. He did, however, insist on taking Jean-Luc’s education in hand. Jean-Luc was to start school in the autumn and his papi was determined that Jean-Luc would have a head start.
The role that I relished more than any was feeding the workers and I appointed myself as head of the kitchens, a task probably more menial than Papa would have liked for me, but it was the job that I wanted and the one in which I excelled. After the war, when we were left without servants, Tante Cecile had rolled up her sleeves and learned how to feed us good and nutritious food, and I learned my craft from her. She taught me all the basics of good rustic cuisine, and I prepared simple and wholesome meals for all our workers, relying as I did on my neighbors Max and Constantine to keep order in the fields and orchards.
• • •
Oliver and Laura were the first of the Irish workers that came to my attention. They were a very beautiful couple. Somebody ought to have painted them. He was astonishingly good-looking for an Irishman. Instead of the pale blotchy complexion of the others, his skin was smooth and his eyes full lashed and shining. His girlfriend, Laura, was also dark haired and clear skinned and very petite. I had many of the local girls working in the fields, but I wondered if this girl might be too delicate for such work.
Oliver spoke French well and translated for the others, and Papa quickly began to rely on him as the spokesperson for the group. Since the time of his incarceration, Papa had developed a tremor in his right hand and his handwriting had suffered. He asked Oliver for help with some paperwork. Oliver took an interest in Jean-Luc too, and before long the three boys had bonded completely, regardless of the barriers of age, language, and experience. Papa requested that Oliver be assigned as his assistant, and I, never having refused Papa anything before, conceded as usual. The relationship between them was extremely close, extraordinarily quickly. It was as if Papa and Jean-Luc had found the one they had long been searching for. I thought then that I had been wrong to deny my son a father, that Papa would have enjoyed having a man around the house, so while I was not altogether happy about this sudden friendship, I tolerated it for Papa’s sake. I did not know why Oliver had formed such a close bond with them. Presumably, he had a father of his own, but I admit to a little jealousy at having to share mine.
I was not the only person feeling jealous of this new bond. Oliver’s girlfriend was furious about Oliver’s promotion. He began to take his meals with the family in the house, at Papa’s insistence and against my wishes, and Laura seemed particularly jealous of the fact that Oliver obviously preferred the company of an old man and a boy to hers. Jean-Luc adored him. Oliver played the rough-and-tumble games with him for which Papa had grown too old. When I eventually persuaded Jean-Luc to go to bed, Oliver was always included in his chatter of the day. I thought of Pierre and what a wonderful father he could have been, had he known of his son.
Laura had a brother called Michael, who had turned up one morning out of the blue at the kitchen door to offer assistance with bread making. It was a serendipitous moment for all concerned, except for Ann Marie, who was startled to see a big, pasty-faced Irishman in the kitchen and got such a fright that she fell over and broke her arm. Ann Marie was my Girl Friday in the kitchen, if one can justifiably describe a seventy-seven-year-old as a girl. She had been working for the family since the first war, and I had asked for her help in the kitchens the previous summer, and we worked well together. She related to me the stories of my mother’s legendary beauty and her generosity. I am constantly aware of how much I have to live up to with the legacy of my parents’ goodness. On that day in 1973, Ann Marie was finally persuaded for the first time to take a leave of absence while her arm healed. A seventy-seven-year-old bone, however, does not heal easily and I knew I must do without her for some months.
Michael, oblivious to the fact that he was the cause of the accident, was quickly enlisted, as lunch was to be served for thirty people at twelve o’clock, while poor Ann Marie was taken off to the hospital. Luckily, Michael was clever, and as cooking is about demonstration and repetition, the language problem did not become an issue. However, I was astounded by how little he knew about food, how few ingredients he even recognized. Maybe it was true what they said about the Irish, that they ate only potatoes. Michael learned quickly, and, what is more, he enjoyed it and was flamboyantly enthusiastic about every aspect of the process. I could not be certain that there was not some other agenda though, and one or two times I caught him looking at me as if I were a kind of unknown ingredient that he was not sure whether to peel, boil, or plant.
One day, he flicked my hair out of my eyes rather clumsily, and it came to me suddenly that perhaps he had some kind of inclination to be a hairdresser, so I allowed him to play with my hair for a while. How stereotypical, I thought, a gay hairdresser. He was, quite obviously, gay.
His French was still quite halting, but when I precociously asked him about his sexuality, he had no problem understanding and crumbled instantly, weeping copiously. I realize now that this was his “coming out” and that my words opened a floodgate of guilt, repression, and confused identity. I ascertained that he was in lust with his friend Oliver, who was dating his sister Laura. Catastrophe. I assured him that I would tell nobody and arranged for him to meet with Maurice, our neighbor, who was openly gay and spoke some English. I hoped that Maurice would be able to counsel Michael, so I was quite cross with him when it soon became apparent that he had taken Michael to a gay nightclub. I thought that might be rushing things, but what business was it of mine? They were adults, after all.
So now I knew Oliver and Michael well enough. Laura was the person who connected them, and soon she made her presence felt in my life too. She was a lovely girl, perhaps a little spoiled, but she hated the fact that Oliver and Michael were in the house and that she only saw them in the evenings, while all day long she was left with the others in the orchards, so when she collapsed one day and was stretchered up to the house, I was suspicious, to put it mildly, thinking that this was a ploy to get into the house and attract some attention. But she was pale and sick. I was right to be suspicious, but not in the way that I thought. I took her to the doctor in the village, and with her consent, he told me that Laura was pregnant. I was initially annoyed. This was my first year taking migrant workers, and first there was the trouble with the Africans and now this. These employees were my responsibility, and clearly her thoughtless behavior meant trouble. There have always been ways to avoid pregnancy, and I am not talking about abstention. I tried to be calm when I spoke to her. She was very tearful and afraid that I would throw her off the estate. I was not sure what to do. She begged me not to tell Oliver, fearful that this would spell the end of their relationship, although it was apparent to me that the relationship was practically over anyway. He had fallen in love with my family instead. I did not know what advice to offer Laura, so I offered none. She was from a strict Irish Catholic family. Despite the family chapel on our estate, Papa had raised me without a faith and without a need for the guilt in which other Catholics seemed to like to indulge. The options that might have been open to a faithless Frenchwoman would have been unthinkable to an Irish teenager. Laura was only nineteen years old, but she had to make her own decisions. Her brother Michael was concerned. She li
ed to him, telling him that she had some gastric flu. I allowed her to stay in the château for a few days but then sent her back to the fields. I left it to her to make her choices. Just a few weeks later, I no longer cared. Not just about Laura, but about anything.
• • •
During the war, Papa ordered one hundred gallons of paraffin for the lamps in the wine cellar so that the Jewish families who stayed there would not have to spend their waking hours in complete darkness. It was delivered at night by a friend in the Resistance who had good contacts in Paris. I know my father sold my mother’s jewelery to pay for it, as gold was the only reliable currency at the time. When the house was raided in 1944, the Germans at first thought it was petrol and tried to fuel their trucks with it, but of all that they had destroyed in the house, the only thing they left behind were the cans of paraffin, discarded in a lean-to shed adjacent to the library in the east wing of the château. Papa’s bedroom was directly above the library. By 1973, the entire building had long since been wired for electricity. It had crossed my mind at some time to dispose of the oil, but my father, who had lived through two wars and was more conscious of rationing than me, insisted that we hang on to the oil, in case of another war or a simple breakdown of electricity, which he still did not entirely trust. It was a particularly dry and dusty summer. On the ninth of September 1973, it had not rained for eighty-four days and temperatures were well above average for the time of year.
Jean-Luc alternated between sleeping in my room or his papi’s. His own bedroom was rarely used. Both Papa and I had a small cot bed perpendicular to our own at the foot of our beds. It was very common at the time in French homes. If Papa was telling Jean-Luc a particularly good bedtime story, Jean-Luc could not be persuaded to return to my room. Sometimes the stories were a little bit scary and the walk from Papa’s room in the eastern side of the house to mine in the west wing was too much of a challenge for him. Papa would read until Jean-Luc nodded off, and then, as it seemed a little cruel to move him as he slept, we would let him spend the night there.
I do not know what started the fire. My father’s pipe, a cigarette, a stray ember from the charcoal oven, we will never know. My memory of the night is quite unclear; I was woken by a noise like a strong wind rushing through the hallways, and then the sound of shouting. I thought I must be dreaming. Even when I got out of bed and looked out the window and saw the east wing in flames, it was so unreal and absolutely unexpected that I still did not comprehend how much of an emergency it was. I wandered through the smoke-filled hall in my nightdress before I fully understood the horror before me. When I was shocked out of sleep, I was disorientated and lost my sense of direction, but as I ran along the gallery toward what I thought was the east wing, the searing heat and smoke drove me back. I began to shout for my beloved father and son, but the only response I heard was a hiss and a crackle and the splintering and spitting of wood. I became hysterical and batted my way into the flames to get across the gallery to the eastern side of the house, but the floor beneath me was smoldering and I could smell my singed hair. When I realized I was at the top of the burning staircase, I knew I could go no farther. I do not know how I burned my hands so badly. At the time, I did not even feel the pain. I do not recall how I got from the upper gallery to the courtyard, but I remember being restrained there by Michael as I kicked and bit him, trying to get away from him to rescue the only people in the world that I loved.
I did not know it then, but I later came to understand that Jean-Luc and his papi died of smoke inhalation, probably in their sleep. It is something of a comfort to me, as I spent months afterward in the nightmare of imagination wondering if they had to watch each other burn to death, screaming for my help, after desperately trying to save each other.
The chaos of the night comes back to me in small pieces: the surprising sound of my own screams; the grasping arms of Michael and Constantine, who held me back from the flames; the smell of the fire and my own sweat; the women from the dorm crying; the men taking control and becoming important, busy men of action. Quite separately, I remember secretly pregnant Laura hysterical and clinging to Oliver, who seemed not to know she was there.
I was heavily sedated in the days that followed. I have no memory of the funerals, but they tell me I was there. I stayed in the house. The western side was structurally unaffected; there was some smoke damage, but it was minimal. The thick stone walls between the east wing and the hallway stopped the fire from reaching my side of the house. The kitchen, salon, and my bedroom, among others, were intact. Hundreds of people came and went, bringing food, prayers, reassurances, blessings, and shared experiences of loss, but it was weeks before I began to see that my future was exactly what Papa had always feared for me.
Some of the laborers left shortly after the fire, apologetically bidding farewell: it was obvious that we could not pay them. The vineyard was abandoned, but the Irish students stayed for another month. Most of them had come to France for the experience rather than out of financial necessity. Michael was wonderful and readily took control of the kitchen. I had no interest in anything, and my hands would take time to heal. The others did their best to clear the wreckage of the east wing. They had to return to college then, as they had already missed the first weeks. Oliver was in shock and barely spoke to anyone. I admit that I resented his grief because I felt he had no right to it. He had known them for a matter of months, but they were my life, and I felt bitter anger every time I saw him sitting absently on the terrace steps with his head in his hands as Laura tried to cajole him back to life like one of our vines.
When it came to their leaving, Laura asked me if she could stay. She confided that she had told Oliver about the pregnancy in a moment of desperation, hoping that it would shock him into some reaction, but that Oliver did not want to know and insisted that he would never be a father again. Again? What did he mean, “again”? Laura explained that Oliver had a game with Jean-Luc where Jean-Luc and he pretended to be father and son and that my father had taken part. I do not know if this was true, but maybe Oliver really felt that he had become Jean-Luc’s father in a way, and Papa’s son too. It was a foolish game, but finally I understood his pain and grief, and without ever speaking of it, I forgave Oliver.
I told Laura she could stay. I did not think that she would be with me for a whole year or that she too would die soon afterward. So much death.
18
* * *
MICHAEL
Laura’s moods were erratic in the months following her return from France. My parents were concerned. She returned to college that October of 1974, but dropped out again in November. And then, in the first week in December, she went missing.
I got a phone call in the restaurant on a Thursday morning from Mum to ask if I knew where she was. She’d gone to bed the previous night at about ten o’clock, but when Mum called her that morning, there was no answer. Her bed had not been slept in and nobody had heard her leave the house. We called around to friends and neighbors, but nobody had seen or heard from her. When she still hadn’t returned on Friday morning, my mother was out of her mind with worry. Laura had been very calm when my mother last spoke to her on Wednesday morning, to the extent that Mum thought Laura had turned a corner. They’d talked about going shopping for a new pair of boots on the weekend. Mum had seen a pair that she liked and thought they would suit Laura. Mum said they’d go into town together to a particular shop on Saturday. Laura said she was looking forward to going back to college and getting back to normal, admitted that the year in France had been a bit of an ordeal, and said that she should have come home with me. Mum reassured her that everyone understood, that once she got back into a routine, things would fall into place. We made Mum go over that conversation again and again, every mundane detail, but could find nothing sinister or disturbing about it. Except that the brand-new boots that Mum had admired were later found in a box in Laura’s wardrobe, but not in Laura’s size. In Mum’s size, bought and paid for on Wed
nesday afternoon.
We started calling hospitals on Friday morning. How often does it happen, I wonder, that a person turns up in the hospital amnesiac and unidentified? Not often enough, I imagine, for those of us looking for them. On Friday afternoon, the police came to take statements. They wanted to put her photograph in the newspapers. The most beautiful photo I had was one I’d taken in France with my Agfa Instamatic. We had all been drunk. Laura was leaning her head on Oliver’s shoulder. He was naked from the waist up. Her eyes were closed, and about one-quarter of her face was hidden behind several wineglasses in the foreground. But she was smiling in the photo, as if she knew a secret that nobody else did. We agreed it was not suitable for publication, and Dad found a photo from Christmas the previous year, where she looked happy but serious. My parents were terrified of the glare of publicity that was about to descend. We are private people and to them, my sister’s breakdown was dirty laundry.
The sun continued to rise and set, the grandfather clock ticked its metronome of misery in the hallway, cars drove past, and children could be heard laughing as they passed our gates, but there was a gaping hole in the center of our lives, a huge question mark without an answer. The photo was due to be published in the newspapers and broadcast on TV on Monday, but on Sunday afternoon the police called and asked Dad to come down to the station. We knew there had been a development, but Dad refused to let Mum accompany him. I waited with Mum while he was gone, and we speculated on what the breakthrough might be, both of us terrified of uttering what we already knew, as if by saying it, it made it real.