Englishwoman in France

by Wendy Robertson

  Then, still with his hands on his father’s head, Tib closed his own eyes and muttered the prayer he had learned with Modeste. He made the mark on his father’s forehead. Then he stood back, and stood up straight at his mother’s side.

  They all waited.

  Helée breathed in deeply, let out an enormous sigh, leaned his head back on his cushions, and seemed to sleep. They stood there waiting for half an hour. An hour. Then Helée sat up, opened his eyes and blinked. He turned his head left and then right. He blinked. He could see! He stood up beaming and clapped his son on the shoulder. He even embraced his wife. ‘I said to you many times, my son. The Empire will be proud of you yet.’

  Modeste and Tib went upstairs to a tiny corner room off the eyries where they did their work and gave thanks to Jesus the Nazarene for the curing of Helée, who, even though a pagan, was a man of virtue and common sense.

  TEN

  Madame Patrice

  Having worked at my charts half the night, I drag myself from my bed earlier than usual the next morning. As I make my way down two flights of winding stairs at the Maison d’Estella the bell of St Etienne informs the whole town, as it has for hundreds of years, that it’s eleven o’clock. Hedged around with the chitter of swifts and the occasional faux-baby wail of the seagulls, the house itself is silent. It’s bright and hot today. Billy must have been pleased when he woke up.

  I know that my visitors woke much earlier today. At eight o’clock I sat bolt upright in bed, groggily aware of the rumble and shriek of the voices of men and children. I threw myself back on my pillow and stayed where I was. I finally made it downstairs to find a note in Mae’s scrawling hand on the kitchen table. Off to Sête to suss those fab beaches! And look for bikes. Mmmmmmmmm.

  Philip has left me my breakfast covered in a cloth – croissant, cheese, ripe pear, coffee in a flask. I sit down and eat it as though he’s still here, watching me, calling me Estella. At one time I used to hide the food he made for me and not eat it. I got very thin, but started to eat off very small plates and kind of grew out of that. It seems now that the last fragile tendril of our relationship is his making food and my eating it. But these days we rarely eat together, just as we rarely sleep together.

  Last night he and Mae and the others ate their supper together in the courtyard. Billy brought my food up to my eyrie – some kind of mussel stew with green beans in a vinaigrette dressing on the side. On the tray beside it was a lovely crystal glass with a small pichet of rosé wine.

  Billy had put the tray down on my work table, stood watching as I pulled up my chair, then he stayed there, massive rugby arms folded. ‘I bet you’re sick of being asked how you are,’ he said.

  I poured myself a good slosh of wine. ‘You bet!’ I replied with some feeling.

  He hesitated, then took off his spectacles and wiped them. They must have steamed up as he laboured his way up all those stairs with my tray. ‘You know you shouldn’t put pressure on yourself, Starr. It takes people years to get over . . .’ He caught my look. ‘Of course I know one never really gets over these things. Perhaps the most one can expect is to get back on some kind of an even keel. Get some kind of basis to start over again, you know.’ He hesitated again. ‘One has to do that, merely to survive.’

  I was already shaking my head. ‘I don’t want to start over again, Billy. Not without her, my Siri.’ I like Billy and I was trying really hard not to sound soppy. But my heart still hurt so much. ‘Look! I need to see her, then I may be able to start over.’

  He looked at me quietly for a moment. ‘I do respect all this stuff of yours, Starr, but . . .’

  ‘You think it’s a load of old sewage.’

  ‘Not exactly.’ He stared at me for a moment. ‘But wishing for something you can’t ever have could stop you going on at all, Starr.’

  Somewhere, somewhere in my soul I felt he must be right. I’ve been looking for Siri for so long now. ‘But if I don’t see her what reason is there? To go on?’

  He watched me, his eyes troubled. Finally he said, ‘So . . . how’s the medication helping?’

  I smiled faintly at him. ‘I’m down to the minimum, seeing as you ask. You don’t have to worry that they be my chosen method.’ I was seeing again the boy diving into the water. ‘I am Pisces. Water is my medium.’

  ‘You won’t do that on my watch, I’m telling you, girl.’ He pantomimed scowling grimness but there was no doubting his seriousness.

  I shovelled some food into my mouth. ‘I was on the canal, you know, today.’

  ‘I know love; I was here when you came back with Phil. Remember?’

  ‘I saw this boy jump into the water.’

  He blinked. ‘Christ, Starr! You’re not thinking of jumping, are you?’

  His perplexed tone made me smile. ‘I wouldn’t say that. But there was this boy on the boat with red hair and he jumped. And he had this man with him. I saw them clear as day. I saw it! But Philip said I hadn’t seen them. He insisted they weren’t there.’

  Billy shook his head and sighed. He put his arm round me and hugged me then turned to go. ‘Remember, Starr, we don’t all see the same things. Remember that. Just forgive the rest of us for the things we don’t see.’ He stood there and finally the words came out of his mouth. ‘So you’re really all right?’ I gave him a look. He defended himself. ‘Sorry! Mae said I had to ask. The old girl feels hurt that you’re blanking her. I told her you must be basically OK because at least you’re still working.’

  I shrugged. ‘And even that’s only possible because I work on my own. Me and my machine and the sky above.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  I dug my fork into the green beans. ‘You can tell Mae I’m all right. I’m as all right as I ever will be. With all this . . . stuff.’

  I waited until the door shut behind him, pushed the plate away and started on the cheese. Billy’s a true Taurus – a builder and restorer, a self reliant caretaker of the people around him, restoring them to health and well-being. Kind and honest as the day is long, easy to be with, very touchy-feely. Mae wrote me a letter when they met, saying he was a roaring bull on the rugby field and gentle as a lamb off it. There’s no science in what I do but when I see as good a match as this, I think there may be something in it.

  But all that was last night. This morning I am alone and the house is peaceful. I’m not being watched by anyone, even Billy. In the kitchen here it’s cool, although the clear blue sky above the tall house opposite tells me it will be warm today. The clouds have gone.

  Now fully awake, I decide I’ll go earlier down to the library, to use their broadband to file my copy. I want to leave time later to walk by myself down to the canal. The alleys are cool canyons folded under the bright, hot blue of the sky. Some boys kicking a ball shoot it in my direction and call out for me to stop it. I step to one side and let it roll past me. I have reason to hate footballs. Further along, I step into a doorway to avoid an oncoming motorbike which – with scooters – is the only transport that works in these narrow ways in the old town.

  At the end of the alley I step from the cool of the buildings to the oven heat of the market square. At the corner is the sprawling Café Plazza. I sit down at an empty table. I can’t remember the last time I stopped anywhere for coffee, here or at home. My seat is at the back. No-one will notice me here. The café is crowded, busy. I sit there with the sun on my neck, my head shaded by the canopy. It feels familiar. I might have sat here a thousand times before. I even call up some French. ‘Un café et un verre d’eau, s’il vous plait.’

  ‘Oui Madame!’

  The waitress is young and shapely, with a wide gold belt that clinches her tight black tee shirt. Then I do this other thing that I’ve never done since Siri was taken. I start to watch the world around me, to attend to what is being said. Now I have one skin less and I can see, hear and feel all of it at once.

  Some local men at the bar behind me are arguing and talking in the deep local accent; in front of me are
three generations of a Spanish family with dark strong looks, the grandmother heavy and slack on her chair. They gesticulate and talk as they watch their children play football in the square. Local Gitan people – gypsies – from the old town are deep in conversation, looking serious about their business; an affluent looking couple in designer sailing gear are eating what looks like a mountain of ice cream; three young women share confidences over glasses of wine that glitter in the sun, their toddlers in strollers beside them and tumbling about their feet.

  The waitress brings my coffee, with the bill on a saucer beside it. The coffee is strong and full of flavour.

  An elderly couple, well dressed in the bourgeois fashion, sip red wine. On the table beside them are oysters in a smartly labelled box. On top of this is a fancy wrapped cake, ready to take home for their afternoon treat. I notice a small girl with hair so shiny that it’s slipping from its ribbon. Her brown feet are tucked into glittery sandals. Siri! Oh my Siri. I clutch my coffee cup too tightly.

  I notice a man with an orange leather crossover bag carrying a poodle in his arms like a baby. It strikes me how well the young French women walk – straight backs, hips jutting slightly forward. I wonder if they have deportment lessons in their lycées. I have a vision of a line of girls walking on tiles, with books on their heads.

  These images whirl together, hitting me all at once; the clatter and noise swells and recedes in my ears. That’s when I notice this old woman sitting at the next table. She has a straw boater planted straight on top of her grey-blonde pony tail and wears neat blue jeans and a battered white linen jacket. She’s pointing to a little white dog beside her feet. I can’t hear her words but she’s pointing at the dog, chastising him the way people do when they don’t really mean it.

  The dog ignores her and wanders across to lift up his storybook face to look at me. I’ve no idea what you do with a dog. I lean down and scratch his neck. ‘Now then, doggie!’ I say, my own ridiculous statement ringing in my ears.

  The old woman catches my glance and smiles. ‘English?’ she says.

  I nod and smile back. She’s not so easy to read. Her neatness, her composure, her nut-brown skin are all distinctly un-English. ‘Et vous?’ I say politely.

  ‘I am English also.’ She allows a trill of laughter to escape her small neat mouth. She sounds French. ‘But in France forty years now so I sound neither one nor the other.’

  ‘Forty years?’ It’s been so long since I’ve been curious about any stranger.

  ‘I came here in sixty-eight to Paris, to demonstrate with the students. I never managed to leave, I’m afraid. We had such a smashing time, despite the throwing of stones.’ She’s right about her accent. It is neither one thing nor another.

  ‘But you live here in Agde?’ I say. ‘It’s a long way from Paris.’

  She nods. ‘It’s a long story, I’m afraid. After the démonstrations I sailed a boat down here on the rivers and canals with two of my new French friends who were also at the démonstrations. I married one of them and he became a professeur here at the Lycée. So I stayed and taught here as well.’ She shrugged. ‘Hélas, he is gone now, my Etienne. But we were a long time together.’ A small smile crosses her face.

  I want to lead her away from her sadness. I look through the café crowd at the square with its heroic statue. ‘This is a very mysterious place,’ I find myself saying.

  A smile lights up her face. ‘Ah, you see this? Everyone does not see it. Agde is a place of all the ages. It is simply lovely. Do you know that they’re digging down near the quayside just now? You will not believe it, my dear. A very large hole which shows you five cities layered down there, one on top of the other.’ She counts them on her fingers. ‘The Greek city, the Roman city and the layer of charred wood where the Spanish – I think it was the Spanish – burned the town. All time is here, my dear, right back to six hundred years before even Christ walked the earth.’

  I sit there relishing this old woman’s love for her town as it purrs through her strangely accented voice. My whole body is tingling like a struck bell at what she is saying. My glance moves behind her across the square to the road at the edge of the promenade, where the traffic is slowly moving down to the roundabout.

  Suddenly a boy on a mountain bike charges on to the square in front of us and makes three circuits of the statue, finally making it rear, like a horse. Then he stands up on the pedals and bumps it down the steps on to the road, his hair streaming behind him. Men shout at him and cars beep their horns.

  I stand up and catch a flash of red hair before he vanishes down a side street opposite. I sit down with a thump and turn back to the old woman. ‘Did you see him? Did you see the boy?’ I demand.

  She raises a brown pencilled brow. ‘Who? Le garçon aux cheveux rouges? Riding the bicyclette like a stallion? Of course I saw him.’ A smile hovers around her thin lips. ‘A boy of adventure. Like Swallows and Amazons. Do children still read those books in England?’

  I could hug her but I don’t. ‘You really saw him, Madame?’

  ‘Of course I saw him, my dear,’ she said quietly. ‘Un garçon aux cheveux rouges. Riding une bicyclette.’

  I feel happiness, exultation running through my veins like quicksilver. If this is mad I want to be mad.

  Now she stands up and picks up her wicker basket. ‘We have to go to the market, Misou and I,’ she says, pulling on crocheted gloves. She shoulders her basket, scoops up the dog and walks across to her bike, the old sit-up-and-beg type, manacled to a bollard. Something scratches at the back of my mind, begging to be remembered: something about a bike and a bollard. But I can’t reach it. She puts Misou in the basket in front and ties her basket to the back pannier. Then she stands astride the bicycle, her eyes shaded from the bright sun by her small straw hat. Despite her nut-brown skin she looks now as English as Miss Marple.

  I go to stand beside her. ‘Thank you for the conversation, Madame,’ I say. ‘It was interesting.’ I hold out my hand. ‘I’m called Starr.’

  She takes her hand from the handlebar, leans across and squeezes mine. ‘Patrice Léance,’ she says. ‘Around here they call me Madame Patrice. You may call me that, my dear. Now Misou and I go to the market.’ She puts a foot on the pedal and pushes off, her legs in her English tee-bar sandals flexing their muscles.

  I watch her leave, then I walk across the square and down the side street where I had seen the boy vanish. There is a mountain bike thrown down outside a tattoo parlour. I peer through a window and a muscular man shoos me away as though I’m a stray cat. He reminds me of Siri’s headmaster, containing his anger as he drove me away from his school that morning and had words with Philip about me frightening the children.

  Siri . . .

  Giving up the ghost, I go to the library, file my copy, return to the house to dump my laptop, then make my way down to the quayside to look for this five-city hole in the road that Madame Patrice told me about.

  Later, when I get back to the house they are all there in the courtyard, a tangle of bicycles against one wall. Billy’s face is bright red from the sun. Mae has her hair under a tight turban.

  Philip’s face lights up when he sees me. ‘You’ve been out, Estella?’ he says. ‘Walking about in the sun?’

  ‘Always good at the obvious, our Phil,’ says Billy heartily.

  I nod, keeping cool. ‘Must have been out, Phil. Here am I coming through the gate.’ They’re all looking at me. ‘I give in. I went to the café and wandered down by the harbour.’

  Mae examines me from head to foot.

  I put up a hand. ‘If you ask how I’m feeling, Mae, I’ll sock you,’ I say.

  ‘There’s fresh coffee,’ says Philip. ‘Shall I pour you one?’

  I look warily round the courtyard. ‘Kids are siesta-ing,’ says Mae, lighting a cigarette. ‘Don’t you worry your little head about those two!’

  ‘No need for that, Mae,’ says Billy.

  She laughs, ruffles his hair, and leans across to pull m
e down into the seat beside her. ‘Come in, Starr! Sit with us. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed my dear old Stella.’

  Now I can feel her, the old Mae, plump, naughty and sparking, telling fortunes with the cards and sneaking round the back of the labs at school for a smoke, making me laugh about the gross impossibilities of the diaphragm we’d just been shown in a sexual health lesson in school.

  Philip thrusts a pot of coffee at me and I take a sip.

  I shake my head at Mae. ‘You shouldn’t be smoking, Mae.’

  She shrugs. ‘Billy tells me that once a day, every day. Now I’ve got prim Miss Olga telling me off. But do I take any notice of these experts? No siree! Of him? Of her?’

  Billy rolls his eyes. ‘My girl’s got a death wish!’

  So for a short time, until the children wake from their siesta shrieking and wailing, it’s just a bit like the old times – the four of us sitting round talking in a desultory fashion about odd things in the news and Mae’s battles with the Town Hall over her council tax.

  Even from the other side of the table I can feel Philip relaxing. At one point he looks across at Mae and she winks at him. She thinks she’s cheered me up. I leave them to their winking and go on explaining to Billy how the syndicating of the column works, and how those astrology gurus say my style makes the column a ‘one-off’ and that makes it sell in the strangest of places.

  But all the time, inside myself, I can feel this singing, this fizzing. All three of them are sitting there thinking I’m calming down, forgetting about Siri, but it’s quite the opposite. Haven’t I seen the hole in the road now, that shows the lines of five cities? Haven’t I seen the boy who swam in the canal? What’s more, my new acquaintance Madame Patrice saw the boy too. And that means something. I’m certain of it.

  ELEVEN

  Nightingales

  Next morning I wake up as usual with Siri in my head and this gnawing, terrible space in my stomach. But then this strand of wonder creeps into my mind that Madame Patrice might be there at the café and I get out of bed.