‘And did you get those tea-bag things?’
‘I did. And I think the single woman could be a buyer, too. Get their plates in ten minutes. Time for a quick fag.’
Zoe went out the back door to smoke.
Sara stirred the custard. And poured it into a jug. Waited.
Thinking. Thinking what? she thought. Nothing too much. Zoe came back in.
‘The devil makes work for idle hands,’ she said. Her mother looked offended. ‘It’s an English expression.’
‘Oh. Meaning what?’
‘Let’s get their plates.’
Sara almost fell into her chair by the stove. Breathless. ‘Mamman? You alright?’
‘No.’
‘They’ll need the cheese.’
‘You take it.’
‘You’re not alright?’
‘No.’
‘What is it?’
‘I need a moment.’
‘What? What is it?’
‘A moment to myself. They’ll need the cheese, daughter.’
Zoe took the cheeseboard through to the table and her guests. Her mother had been fine. Grouchy but fine. She’d served all the dinners, gathered the plates and now she was in her armchair, white.
A ghost.
Sara, gripping hard into the oak of her chair. Her knuckles white as Jacques’ shroud. Thirty-four years since.
You who hoped your heart would persist long enough to see a grandchild. Never mind Zoe was everything but maternal. You, whose heart is thrashing with some of that thought now.
And of an unending, unrequited love. For the father of the man now eating at my table, down that corridor.
That ghost. Who had walked back through the years and through the door and she’d served him soup and meat and only as she took his dinner plate and he turned to compliment her, in easy almost local French, had she properly seen his face and now here she was – an ashen teenager in an ancient body, gasping.
Why?
Why was Jacques’ son-ghost here? No idea. But no accident.
Zoe reappeared, carrying the pudding plates and leading with concern. Questions lanced at her. I don’t need nosey now. Sara raised her eyes, found her daughters’ and said, ‘Leave me until I choose to speak. Please’.
And glory-be-to-blood Zoe moved to make the pot of English tea.
No accident. Hold that thought while you wait for the silence.
Sara heard the kettle, listened to the tea being made, the pot being warmed, the tea being brewed, the trolley being laid just so.
She felt a last glance from her child and the kitchen was hers again.
No accident, impossible. For him to be here. Impossible.
Simone is dead. He’s come to find something?
Simone is dying? He’s been sent to find – his father? Sara snorted. Sad, but possible. Simone doesn’t know. She never knew.
I have to ask him. Or he will ask me. I won’t ask him.
I might.
Slow down heart. I need to see all this through.
Someone, probably someone dead, needs me to see this through. So slow. Down. Heart.
This heart that last pounded like this when I hoped and I did pray, yes I did, I stopped and I knelt in the lane and I prayed I had a half-brother to that man alive inside me. Seeding inside me as I walked back from Janatou, walked back from that – our one bed time.
And the memory of that one intimacy is why this heart races.
Races beyond this corpse’s years.
That damned deaf God who didn’t hear my prayers. Or ignored them.
O but Jerome would laugh so loud.
And now, this copy of the father is eating my food. As he would have done had I grown him.
Were he mine.
I have sixty-eight years and I shake. I can shake. Still.
Should I be grateful? Scared. Pleased? To be chaotic, like this? Why should I be anything other than what I am – shaken? Hard. The past walks over me. Why?
I don’t know.
Round the room the business of scrutinising Zoe’s property lists began. Sue sorted a manageable pile of what-they-could-afford as Roy rolled an impeccably neat ciggie and settled with the others to read.
Zoe, serving digestifs, had difficulty keeping an entirely steady hand as Jack placed by the side of his chair her descriptions of two chateaux; Bessonie – which needed Work – and La Putine, which didn’t; but either sale would give Zoe change from a new car..! The noisy man and his wife were looking at family sized places and Enid, good as her word, was sifting out the smaller, more isolated places. Her choices would need builders and work. Or, Zoe had learned not to pre-judge, she might even do it herself. And if not, well, both the Commune and the Departement were sprinkled with English artisans.
She re-filled glasses, answered questions, made polite suggestions and mentally began to plan a route to please everyone at least once.
‘Three in the morning, nice lunch, three in the afternoon, is best. Tomorrow and Sunday...’
A room full of nodding agreement.
When Enid joined Roy and Sue in wanting to view Le Sireyol Zoe jiggled her itinerary to include it in the afternoon and asked her, ‘And is it only that one?’
‘Well, no...’
Jack Bentley caught something in the tone of those two tiny words.
Enid lowered her voice, ‘What I’m really looking for is something like that.’ She nodded at the two photos and the line drawing.
‘Ah.’ Zoe’s business face slipped to reveal someone younger.
Enid took a reasonable risk. ‘You took them? You did the drawing?’
‘Yes, both. I did.’
Unlike me, Enid saw, this woman makes no secret of her pride. ‘They’re lovely.’
‘Thank you.’
Nor of enjoying being flattered. ‘It’s a lovely place,’ Zoe said.
‘Is it...?’
Enid let the question hang, obvious.
To her surprise, and Jack’s, this bright woman didn’t pick it up. Enid, curious now, had to add, ‘Is it – occupied?’
‘No. Not for years and years.’
‘Ah. Then…’ Enid turned to directly face Zoe, ‘Would it be possible to see it?’
Neither of them noticed Jack place his papers on the floor, openly listening now.
‘Well, yes, that is possible, yes – but...’ Enid watched the younger woman choose her words, before settling on, ‘It’s not a property I can sell.’
‘Oh?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I like stories.’ Enid said.
Zoe looked at Enid as if for the very first time – seeing the individual and not just a potential customer. She drew an upright chair alongside Enid and sat down, drawing the room’s full attention. Especially as she too now lowered her voice.
‘I could take you to see it...’
Enid sensed unexplained caution. ‘Would you mind?’
‘No. Frankly I’d love to see it again. I’ve no idea what state it might be in, mind you.’
Enid waited. And watched Zoe come to some decision in her head before she said, ‘We could put it at the end of the day tomorrow...’
Enid smiled her appreciation, then said, ‘I sensed a ‘but’ – earlier?’
‘I will – make some calls to clarify the situation. There are complications. It may be possible it can be purchased. I’ll find out.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure. My job.’
Both women smiled.
Zoe turned to Jack. ‘And for Monsieur Bentley?’
He had indeed picked out both of her huge sprawling chateaux.
Zoe managed an only ever-so-slightly strangled, ‘Uh-huh. We can see one first thing and the other in the afternoon.’
Draining his cognac Jack stood, ‘If you’ll all excuse me I believe I need some shut-eye.’
‘Jet-lag, you’ll have.’ Jim nodded at his own statement.
‘That and this very fresh air, for sure, yea
h. See you all for breakfast. What time, Zoe?’
‘Eight-thirty all right for everyone?’ General agreement.
‘Recommend me a book, please. Not au fait with my European authors.’
Enid watched Zoe give the man a ‘let-me-think-what-would-suit-you’ look, and watched him share a warm relaxed ‘how-do-you-see-me?’ grin with her.
‘In French or English?’ she asked and he said, ‘Either.’ She moved to a shelf and handed him one.
‘Colette? O.K... I sure don’t know her.’
‘I liked it.’
‘Women’s stuff? Put you to sleep good style will that!’ Jim said.
Janet said, fondly, ‘Don’t mind Jim, brandy always makes him jovial.’
Enid dressed for bed and thought about that house, the ‘long story’ and the ‘complications’. ‘Un-occupied for years and years’ she’d said.
She told herself how ridiculous it would be to put all her eggs in this first basket.
She turned over. ‘I am excited,’ she thought. And turned over. ‘I’m excited on this side, too.’
An owl hooted. She thought, ‘I’d hoot too if I could.’ A dog barked.
‘So, even if the house isn’t available, there could be a story. To pinch.’
She giggled at the thought, and her use of that silly word and how young the giggle made her feel.
The church clock struck a half-hour.
‘And live alone in the bee-loud glade…’ she thought. ‘The French bee-loud glade...’
Along the corridor the book lay untouched as Jack stared again at his mobile phone – ‘No available service.’
He looked at the contents of his suitcase. Comprehensively unsuitable.
OK. I wasn’t to know, he thought.
‘Nearly home, Mamman,’ he said, placing the tiny urn on the floor by his bedside table.
Finally in a bed in France, he turned his thoughts to Sara and the shock he had given her and what he ought to do about that.
And sleep.
85
Sara declined to serve her breakfasts. Zoe had the good sense to respect whatever was troubling her mother. For now.
The food was enthusiastically demolished, swilled down with gallons of copiously sweetened tea, and topped off with endless toast and jam.
‘Who had coffee and a croissant, then?’ asked Sara.
‘The American and the single woman. Why?’
‘Wondered, that’s all.’ Sara grunted. The French speakers, she noted.
Zoe booked a table for seven for lunch and checked all the food preferences for their evening meal.
Jim and Janet would follow in their camper-van if Zoe would promise not to drive, ‘Like a Frenchman.’
She replied she would drive like a French Woman and had her smile ready in place for his inevitable, ‘Well, int that worse?’
The chill in the morning air would lift with the sun rising into the almost cloudless sky. En avant.
As Zoe swung the Espace down towards Bessonie, checking her mirrors for Jim and Janet, Enid reflected that no-one could not but be beguiled by this countryside. The sky was indeed clearing into an emotive cliché – that shade of blue you had to associate with The Impressionists. Puff-ball clouds grinned their assent at the idea of moving to and living within this landscape.
Zoe took the left-hand turn out of the woods near Le Fau, and the plain spread out suddenly, a green and brown squared quilt, all the way to Aurillac, and the Puy Marie soared five thousand metres, still clutching at its glittering white underskirt ski-slopes, even in May.
‘Gorgeous,’ she heard Sue say.
‘What’s the town, Zoe?’ Roy asked.
‘Aurillac. Good shopping. Very.’
They crossed a stream, through a hamlet too tiny to have a name and passing the incoming village sign, Zoe pulled up in front of the gate-posts guarding the fifteenth century Hugenot Chateau de Bessonie. The morning sun gleamed into its vast sandstone facing wall, and danced across the slate-grey tiles of the four huge corner turrets and with an almost insolent flick of the wrist Zoe cut the engine, turned to Jack and quietly said, ‘Voilà.’
Only Janet heard Jim’s, ‘Bugger me sideways.’ Which, she reflected, was probably as well.
The double-iron gates were so heavy, took that certain amount of force to push them open, that an odd respect fell upon the group. ‘Is that like a church?’ Roy asked, of a white-stone chapel nestling in a frame of elder trees.
‘The family chapel; added in the nineteenth century,’ Zoe said. ‘It’s part of the property,’ she added.
Unnecessarily, thought Enid, but perhaps she’s nervous. God, if she sold this…
‘How many rooms, Zoe?’ Jack’s voice was crisply business-like. So was Zoe’s. ‘Seventeen. Shall we?’
She produced a suitably ancient iron key, fitted it into the lock and using both hands, turned it and the right-hand oak door, the wood grey now with five hundred years of weather in and on it, creaked open.
Zoe clicked a master-switch down and an ornate circular chandelier, framed from a wagon wheel and so a good three feet wide and at least ten feet above their heads illuminated the threadbare and fading tapestries that covered two of the walls.
Directly facing the front door, a huge window displayed the sprawling grounds and a family of ducks hesitating on the edge of a lake large enough to have a rowing-boat tied to a mooring.
‘Well now...’ Jim’s tone of voice was reverent.
‘When Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo,’ and Zoe had all their attention immediately, ‘his most favoured commander and friend, Marshall Ney, fled here to hide. He carried a jewel-encrusted sword which he supposedly gave to the Gendarmerie of Aurillac in return for their turning a blind eye. He lodged in what has since become a small library. If we go this way...’
‘Is the sword in there?’ Sue’s eyes were – Enid’s mind flashing back to a University room with Lyndy – out on stalks.
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Zoe. ‘Only the history.’
Jack couldn’t not enjoy the blatant mix of envy, shock and even some anger from people who couldn’t credit they were in the company of someone they imagined capable of affording this fabulous monstrosity. Both Roy and Jim privately promised themselves they’d clock the asking price when they got back to Zoe’s lists.
As Zoe locked up Jim blustered, ‘Nice little bed-sit that. Now show us summat proper eh, Zoe?’
Savadat, Jim and Janet’s first choice, was indeed a smaller beauty.
Zoe nodded to the land between the south-facing veranda and the glittering wee stream. ‘Vegetable garden.’
It was, like all the land, beautifully laid out. Zoe dared a glance at Janet and was rewarded by her approving and enthusiastic face. Jim caught Zoe’s eye and his mouth straightened and his jutting chin invited Mademoiselle Estate Agent to open t’house. She did. What looked to Roy like a beautifully worked walnut staircase led upstairs, but Zoe began by throwing a door to their left open, revealing a huge and gloriously sun-lit kitchen dining room. The vast dominating table and its four benches, Roy was sure, were oak.
‘If we come here,’ he whispered to Sue, ‘I’ll be on me bloody mettle.’
‘We can’t afford this!’
‘No, I mean – round here. That’s craftmanship.’
Enid guessed now his trade was artisanal. Making sense of the feel of his handshake.
Roy and Sue and Enid had picked out Le Sireyol. One of only four properties in an isolated farming hamlet.
Simplicity, French rural style. House, barn, and a well.
In front of the barn and sloping down to the front of the house was what might, with work, become a lawn.
‘That needs mowing badly,’ announced Jim, and Enid snorted a brief but blatant giggle.
Everyone stopped and waited.
Hugely embarrassed she waved away their attention.
‘No, it were summat I said, weren’t it?’ Enid looked at Jim.
‘Only a mis
placed adverb. I do apologise.’
‘Go on. Please, Miss. I’ve been guessing there’s school ma’am in there somewhere…’
‘Quite right. Thirty years. A reflex, Jim. I believe the sentence could have been constructed, ‘This lawn badly needs mowing.’’
‘O right. No detention nor lines?’
Enid smiled. ‘I apologise. Please accept it and let us look at this house.’
‘Fair enough. Zoe?’
The house was a sturdy stone box. Both Jack and Enid thought – it’s the same design as the one on Zoe’s wall. A bog-standard turn of the century farmhouse. The headstone confirmed it; 1900. Roy pointed out the barn’s headstone was 1876.
‘Mm,’ Zoe agreed, ‘Either the farmer made his living space in the barn, with his herd, or, more likely, lived elsewhere for twenty years or so.’
Zoe opened the front door and flies rose, disturbed in their sunbathing.
Enid liked the place.
Long views, secluded, south facing. Quiet.
When Jim and Janet went upstairs to see the grenier Jack whispered, ‘That was elegantly handled…’
Enid was startled but responded, ‘Thank you.’ And added, ‘I surprised myself.’
‘And isn’t that always a pleasure?’ he said.
Lunch at The Hotel du Tourisme in Latronquiere was pleasing enough.
Enid picked at her salad.
She was no DIY person but Roy and Sue, who she thought were, had been intrigued by Le Sireyol.
The fifteen-minute drive to La Putine had spectacular views down the valley ridge on one side and endless serene pastured peace on the other.
Set a hundred metres back off the road, and commanding the sharp cliff-edge, it was easy to see why the chateau had been built in that strategic position. Nothing could approach it without being seen.
‘An important point for a supporter of the King in the seventeenth century, when it was built.’
Zoë pointed to the sloped roof of the tower. ‘At one time there was a turret, similar to the ones at Bessonie, but after The Revolution the homes of the bourgeoisie had their turret-tops symbolically guillotined.’ Six pairs of eyes stared. ‘I’m also told that’s a local myth and it’s much more to do with paying less tax. In rural France, either or both or neither are possible.’
The Solider's Home: a moving war-time drama Page 20