Englishwoman in France

by Wendy Robertson

  Father and son stood watching the tall man make his winding way through the harbour-side buildings and the clusters of dwellings, then on up the straight road to the gate of the Governor’s house.

  ‘What is he called, the Corinthian?’ asked Tib, giving in, as he usually did, to his father. ‘Apart from Corinthian?’

  ‘His name is Modeste,’ said the Governor. ‘And do not be mistaken, Tibery, he’ll be your teacher. The Empress has made up her mind and that’s that. You remember the Empress? She once brought you a pomegranate.’

  THREE

  The Great Bear

  Now you’re asking yourself how, years before, I came to find myself alone with Siri. Well, I can only say it was love at first sight. He was a great bear of a man: tight blond curls and a face that was slightly too long; shadows under the eyes. He had the look of a fallen angel and looks don’t lie. My friend Mae pointed him out – well, I thought she did – across the length of the Three Stars, our first stop on our Friday night flight into the town.

  Locally known as The Stars, it was a rare pub where drinking was the real business and the business of food was only secondary. The fire at the end of the bar blazed a century’s welcome. No cheap beer or half-price cocktails here: just crooners like Nat King Cole – already old-fashioned – undercutting the chatter in the bar and lounge. The only choice of drinks was one of three beers on the pumps, or unnamed red or white wine from boxes.

  On this crucial night Mae shouted into my ear, ‘New face!’ She nodded towards the crowd by the fire. She gulped her red wine quickly, thirsty for that first hit of the night.

  I peered down the bar but failed to see the man she was interested in. My eyes were stopped by those of another man at the end of the bar. He raised his glass and nodded, as though we were old acquaintances. The sound in the pub receded for a second, then surged up again.

  ‘You know him?’ said Mae, still concentrating on the man by the fire.

  ‘Never met him,’ I said in her ear, meaning the second man. She gulped down her wine. ‘Let’s go!’ I was only too happy. I wanted to get away from this man. Even then I knew he was too powerful, too right for me. Mae grinned, grabbed her handbag and dragged me out of the pub, ready for action.

  Mae and I always went out like this when I came home from London. It was a sentimental journey – reliving our young days when everything was a truanting adventure. Mae still did the ‘Saturday night out’ thing but my life, since I deserted the North for college in London, had moved on. I soon learned that in London every night could be Saturday. Every night could be party night.

  When we were young, Mae was always the leader of our escapades. But these days I was more sure of myself – living and working in London had seen to that. But tonight the sight of this fallen angel had shaken me. I wondered whether he was real. Mae knew I was fleeing, but she thought I was fleeing the man by the fire. I’d learned to be careful now, kept quiet about seeing people who weren’t there. Despite, or because of, making my living by astrology I’d come to know my gift as ordinary, even mundane. So far in my life this skill, these insights, had never managed to knock me sideways like this.

  That Friday night our second pub call was at the White Swan – just called The Swan – where the music was post-punk. As usual it was packed with people and humming with the subdued roar of talk – twenty-somethings speaking on broadcast over the music and battling to be heard. We always went there to meet our friend Spelk, whom we’d known from primary school as a tiny mewling spelk of a boy and who was now, as Mae always said, a six-foot-six mewling log of a man. Spelk was meeting us at the Swan before we went on to the Blue Lagoon, known simply as the Lagoon, the best place to dance in Priorton on Friday nights.

  Metamorphosed from the ballroom of the Marlborough Hotel, the Lagoon had been turned into a hot disco when the otherwise snobbish owners realized that disco was where the money was to be made. Now they turned a blind eye to the plethora of drugs that were part and parcel of the Lagoon experience. There was money in it, after all.

  Spelk had rung Mae to say he’d be late, so we perched on stools at the bar and ordered a drink. Then I felt hot, and my skin burned. Heat was radiating from my left-hand side. I turned to see the tanned face of the fallen angel. ‘All right?’ he said. So he was real. Not dead. I didn’t smile. I just nodded and turned back to Mae.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. ‘Don’t you know it’s rude to turn your back on people?’ His voice in my ear. No anger in it.

  Mae’s painted brows raised behind her fringe. I blinked, took a breath and turned back again to face him. His eyes were very, very blue.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ he said.

  ‘We’re waiting for someone,’ I said, standing back to include Mae in the conversation.

  ‘Well,’ he said, smiling,‘have one with me while you’re waiting.’ He nodded at the girl behind the bar, who obligingly brought two new glasses.

  ‘So, who might you be?’ asked Mae, scowling slightly.

  ‘I’m Ludovic,’ he said.

  ‘Ludovic?’ she said scornfully. ‘Isn’t that a board game?’

  ‘My father wanted Charles and my mother wanted Ludovic.’

  ‘And your mother won!’ said Mae, laughing now.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I ended up with both names. People call me by both names.’

  I relaxed. How ordinary was that? You couldn’t have a fallen angel called Ludovic Charles. Too silly. ‘I’m Stella – Estella really,’ I said.

  ‘But very honoured people call her Starr,’ Mae put in.

  ‘Hey, you two!’ Here was Spelk, six-feet-six of arms, legs and spiky hair. ‘Sorry . . . late . . .’ he gasped. ‘Spilled paint on the floor. She made me clean it up.’ She was the sister-in-law in whose house he was forced to live. He punched me on the shoulder and kissed my cheek very hard. I could smell beer. ‘Cool, Starr! Home again is it?’ he said.

  It turned out that Spelk wouldn’t stop for a drink.

  ‘What I want is to get down the Lagoon, to score, and to dance. I want to get her outta my head.’ Spelk was known for throwing shapes that were out of this world. The long arms and legs helped.

  Mae gulped down her drink and jumped down from her stool. ‘I’m in,’ she said.

  ‘Let Starr stay and finish her drink,’ said Ludovic. ‘The two of us’ll come on to the Lagoon after.’

  ‘Spelk!’ I said. ‘This is Ludovic. He’s not a board game.’

  Mae put her arm through Spelk’s. She looked at me, then up at the stranger. ‘Right then!’ she said. ‘We’ll go. See you there.’

  We watched as Mae and Spelk made their way out of the door before turning back to our drinks. ‘You live in the town?’ he said. ‘Can’t remember seeing you here before. I’ve seen your friend and her giant at the Lagoon. But not you.’

  ‘I always used to come here,’ I said carefully. ‘But I work in London. Not been home since Easter.’ I caught sight of myself in the bar mirror. Hair too dark, ironed flat and shining. Long eyes – at Mae’s insistence – over painted. Skin too white, bones too sharp. ‘But you were never here then, as far as I can remember.’

  ‘Recent arrival,’ he said. ‘After Easter.’

  I looked at him through the bar mirror. He was thick-set, a full head taller than me, and his curly hair was too long for the present-day fashion. But the bones on his face were finely drawn and his blue eyes were smiling. His skin was weather-beaten without being ruddy. He was older than me – perhaps as much as thirty. Then I could smell salt and hear somewhere the jingle of boats bobbing in a harbour. ‘Are you a sailor?’ I said suddenly.

  He laughed out loud at this. ‘Not bad! I’m no sailor but I do sail. I love sailing. My father was a sailor.’

  ‘What do you do, then?’

  ‘Funny thing, isn’t it?’ He shook his head. ‘How people always try to pin you down by what you do. Like they need to put you in a frame before they really see you?’ His voice was soft and deep,
definitely not local. South-west, perhaps.

  I turned to look away, across to the table under the window where two couples were tucking into scampi and chips. Behind one of the men I could see the shadow of an old woman standing with her hand on his shoulder. In fact I could see right through her to the street outside. There was no reflection of her in the glass.

  ‘Well?’ I insisted. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘All right,’ Ludovic said. ‘I have this unit on the Oak Tree Estate. I build narrowboats.’

  This got my attention. ‘A unit? Narrowboats? Here? But we’re miles away from the sea.’

  ‘These babies are not sea-going. Well, not generally. My boats are for rivers and canals.’

  ‘How can they get to a canal? From here?’

  He laughed. ‘Very big lorries. Low-loaders.’ He made a wide gesture with his hands, like a man describing a fish he had caught. ‘We even sell them abroad.’

  I scowled at him. ‘You build them? Do you paint them? Don’t they come with pictures on?’

  ‘Well, I don’t do it all myself. I have a lad to help me with the build. I get painters in to paint them. The decorative stuff I do myself. Like tattoos.’

  ‘Tattoos?’ I was still scowling. ‘But why here? Why build boats here?’

  ‘I wanted to do it. Thought I could.’ He shrugged. ‘And it’s cheap here. It’s what they call a special area. They give you good allowances for setting up.’

  I couldn’t think of any response to that, so I finished my drink and jumped off my stool. ‘I’ll have to go. Mae and Spelk’ll be watching for me.’

  ‘The Lagoon? Do you really want to dance?’

  ‘When I come back home I always go dancing with Mae at the Lagoon. We always have.’ I paused. ‘Anyway. You come as well if you want. The disco’s good.’

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t dance, Starr. It passed me by. Seems really strange to me, dancing. Out of control.’

  That got my interest. Everybody dances, don’t they? ‘So you don’t like that? To be out of control? Doesn’t fit, somehow. Someone who paints boats, not being able to dance.’

  He shrugged. ‘You build boats on your own. It can be a one-man job. I like it that way.’

  I picked up my handbag – black patent, borrowed from the prop room at the magazine, very much envied by Mae – and slung it over my shoulder. ‘Gotta go. Mae’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Stop!’ he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘I want to show you something.’

  ‘What? What will you show me?’

  ‘It’s a surprise.’

  I ignored the alarm bells that jangled right through me, resounding from my pelvis right up into my throat. What did I know about just how far this angel had fallen? ‘Go on then,’ I said. ‘I like surprises.’ The words just popped into my mind. In truth, I didn’t like surprises, not then. Despite my tendency to see dead people, my life – apart from reading the stars for money – was full of comfortable predictability: nice boyfriend on the lower echelons of London law, nice nights out at mid-price restaurants, nice weekends with croissants and the newspapers.

  What was I doing, saying I liked surprises?

  ‘Good!’ Ludovic took my arm and his hand seared my skin. He led me out of the pub into the market place with its lollipop lights, its newly planted trees and cobbled thoroughfare. Priorton was a funny old place. At weekends the market place would throw off its daytime elegance, eschew its listed status and become the bawdy centre of nightlife in the district. Pretty, half-dressed girls (Mae and me among them) would totter from pub to disco on towering high heels, trailed by boys, less pretty but luminous in crisp white tee shirts that showed off their muscles. In between pubs and the final destination of the Lagoon, we would pick up a couple of kebabs to keep us going, only slightly uneasy under the bland gaze of policemen – some no older than us – standing in pairs around a big black van.

  Ludovic led the way. Soon we left behind the half-dressed girls, the muscular boys and the policemen and came to the ornate gates of Prior’s Park. I looked up at him. ‘What surprise? I know this place. Anyway the gates are locked. Unlocked at dawn, locked at dusk in summertime. See that notice by the gate? Not that you can see it just now. Dark, isn’t it?’

  He drew me to one side, to a narrower gate. ‘But this gate’s open. See? People live there, inside the big gates. In the Prior’s Hall, and in those little houses. They have to get in, don’t they?’ The gate creaked as he opened it and pulled me through. He took my hand and walked faster, making me race. Our feet crunched on the gravel as we ran past the Prior’s Cottages then made our way alongside the high wall of the Prior’s Hall to the broad farm gate that led into the park.

  I wrenched my hand from his, breathing heavily. ‘Where’s this surprise? I’ve been here hundreds of times.’

  He opened the farm gate and pulled me through. ‘Ah, but I bet you’ve never been here in the dark, have you?’ He shut the gate behind us. ‘And you’ve never been here with me.’ He took my hand again. ‘When I first came here I thought this place was magic, full of surprises. The park may be no surprise to you, but in the dark, I’m telling you, it’s total magic.’

  I looked around. The lights in the town were in the dim distance and the wooded park before us was enfolded in the dark. I could feel the great age of the massive trees in the foreground as clearly as if I were counting their rings. I could hear the murmuring river below. I used to play here when I was small. Tonight I could sense the great ridge beyond the river where as a child I’d once watched the roots of great trees on the High Plains reaching down and tangling with the riverside shrubs.

  In my mind’s eye I could see the greensward winding through them, leading onto the high road beyond. I remembered a time when I was eleven, blackberrying there with Mae and I could see this very old road, buried beneath this greensward. It was on this unseen old road that I saw a carriage with horses. And a cart hauled by an old horse with a pony tied on behind. And a man trudging along with a backpack. I told Mae that this was a road from olden times and she told me that it was just a bit of green and I should get lost and stop being such a mad hen.

  Now Ludovic’s hand tightened round mine. ‘Well? Are you game?’

  I let him lead me onwards. We walked through the park to the Deer House that stands on a promontory above the river: a hollow colonnaded structure with a tower at one end. Now, with the light and the sounds of the town almost gone, I could smell the dried, burnt-off smell of the autumn and hear the occasional flutter in the undergrowth.

  ‘Here we go!’ said Ludovic. He opened the battered wooden door to the tower and pulled me in.

  In all the times I played here with Mae as a child, I’d never been inside this place. As children we found it forbidding, like a witch’s castle. Inside it was pitch black and smelled of rotting leaves. But looking upwards in the roofless tower I could see the belt of Orion the Hunter, in the bowl of lighter night sky.

  Halfway up the tower wall was a platform. ‘That’s for us,’ said Ludovic.

  ‘You must be joking,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘It’s possible. I tried it. You do it rock-climber style.’

  He made me face the wall and stood behind me. I could feel his chest against my shoulder blades, his thighs against mine. Then he took my hands and made me reach up and curl my fingers into stone crevasses. He reached down and slipped off my shoes and showed my feet where to grip. So we went up the wall, he like a crab’s shell on my back. He smelled faintly of sweat and turpentine and his breath was like honey on my cheek.

  After some hauling, gasping and giggling we were standing upright on the platform in the darkness. I peered through a narrow arrow slit into the mantle of darkness outside, making out the giant trees which were like the very core of darkness. A delicious orgasmic wave rippled through me from my heels to my head and I could sense every living being who’d ever stood in this spot, from eighteenth-century gardeners, back to seventeenth-century rev
ellers, back to Roman camp followers, back to Celtish men in hoods following one after another in a line. The place was teeming with them. My head was aching with their presence on the surface of my time.

  Ludovic gripped my arm tight. ‘Look! North!’ he said. Northwards, where the polluting lights of the town had stopped staining the night, the sky had retrieved its dense black and the stars were intense points of light. Orion, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades and Pisces were all there, shapely in their dispensation. It seemed the Gods were here with us. A privileged audience for the night’s events.

  I shivered.

  He put his arm round me and hugged me to him. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘It’s all right.’

  His cheek was soft against mine, not rough like I’d expected it to be. He put up a hand and combed back my hair with his fingertips. I turned my face to him and kissed the corner of his mouth. He moved his cheek and his lips were burning on mine. He had one hand on my throat, weaving its way under my shoulder straps. ‘Such soft skin!’ He spoke against my lips and I wanted more, much more of him. So much more.

  I pushed his shirt collar to one side and felt his collarbone with my finger tips. His skin was hot, burning. He let out a groan and in a single action, loosed himself from his shirt. Now my fingers were tracing the muscles on his chest and he was easing off my top and we were skin to skin. In that moment I knew my father and my mother. In that moment I knew how I had been made.

  In my life up till then I’d made love with quite a few men and relished the experience in a languid fashion, exploring my feelings and satisfying my curiosity. It was a natural, enjoyable process, like having a good meal. And I was often hungry. When I first went to London I even lived with a guy for a month or two. But he was keener at playing houses than playing lovers and soon became very dull. He was quite hard to shake off, however, and went on to play the stalker for a while.