Книга - Children of Light

Children of Light
Lucy English


As with her successful debut SELFISH PEOPLE, Bristol based Lucy English’s second novel, set in Provence and Bath, features a bohemian heroine, and describes an ongoing rebellion within a family of each generation against the last.Mireille is the daughter of architect Hugo Devereux and Vivienne, his beautiful immaculate Grace Kelly lookalike wife – a slave to convention where her daughter is bohemian, elegant where Mireille is messy. When Hugo embarks on a project in the South of France in the Sixties the family moves to Provence for a while and Mireille discovers La Ferrou at the end of a path through the woods, in a clearing – a massive split brooding rock beneath which is a magical pool, a natural basin in the rock.Back in England, rebelling against Vivienne, Mireille becomes a hippy teenager and runs away, pregnant, with Gregor, her gypsy lover, to live in a hut by La Ferrou. But when, after five years, Gregor continues on to India to find his Guru and becomes a Child of Light, Mireille, penniless with their son Stephen to support, returns to England to introduce her wild little child to his conservative grandmother. However, Stephen finds an affinity with Vivienne that Mireille never had and rebels against his mother and her lovers, and her unconventional life on a houseboat in Bath.







CHILDREN OF LIGHT





Lucy English









Copyright (#ulink_218515fb-4dbf-5526-9f6a-9b7d5af92dc3)


Fourth Estate

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Copyright © Lucy English 1999

First published in Great Britain in 1999 by Fourth Estate Limited

Extracts from ‘Magali’ are from Memoirs of Mistral by Jean Roussière.

The right of Lucy English to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9781841151168

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007483235

Version: 2016-01-07


FOR MY PARENTS

BECAUSE THEY

INTRODUCED ME TO PROVENCE




Contents


Cover (#u01301262-304c-5e99-b528-88e8f6c8da43)

Title Page (#u7e38122d-d1b3-57da-928c-f6ba8ec9d6e0)

Copyright (#ucb005775-a00a-568c-b6ae-2b98aff54e9c)

INTRODUCTION (#u53403346-7650-5fdb-9ea3-8cff554dfc36)

ROCHAS (#ud1cc8fd6-aaab-5be1-a5fe-9ef5727e36ed)

CHAPTER ONE (#u0d073588-78e5-505f-bab6-c081033238d9)

CHAPTER TWO (#ue618351e-d7cb-567c-9169-f780540f01c7)

CHAPTER THREE (#u5bfbb20e-6f6c-520e-92f0-e0a145f91a34)

CHAPTER FOUR (#u5f5f20a1-489b-59a0-a9ab-9bfdbdf0ffed)

CHAPTER FIVE (#ub8d2624f-3f54-58d1-8a91-1df9a536dd0a)

CHAPTER SIX (#u39b61e49-0f7d-5a99-b8f0-ad0088af8502)

ST CLAIR (#u3d34e4fc-b208-5c7d-8590-a32faad30467)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#u8c7030e0-e76d-52f7-90be-003ec79f6fe4)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#u97e11dcf-a0dc-59d7-bf2c-19e372757ac3)

CHAPTER NINE (#u10d553a5-8f0c-559b-ad33-753dbd7eddfd)

CHAPTER TEN (#u481aefbb-31b5-58a4-bb6d-5924a1244be8)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#u78d2f23a-3030-55a9-b596-bc78de2ad9f2)

CHAPTER TWELVE (#u75d6d03c-a616-5081-825b-c5b6be67ffde)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#ued35b278-0a6d-5835-acf5-985b59ca39a4)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#u16ec3be9-1f8f-55bb-8f25-d75b52b4228d)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#u499ce00e-2381-5703-beb1-dd0e105f93a0)

LIEUX (#uedac9bf5-5c20-59dd-b018-302a50c194eb)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#u3b61b6d0-32ca-5e36-b682-705b114fd23b)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#u880cc703-1f0c-5178-8487-847864571236)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#ub6b01ddb-40b1-54ab-a358-7673615b749c)

CHAPTER NINETEEN (#u684acf85-f493-5c83-8fc7-4e0fae1c5cfc)

CHAPTER TWENTY (#ue8a8d63a-f953-5364-86dd-d3a950283837)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#u1dc56657-8458-5acc-9d39-17e184489a46)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#ufe994c64-c7f6-5d4b-93df-f37834f4773c)

LA FERROU (#ueb801c7a-e18c-5fdc-8eac-ce9ea34f027e)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#u341f3750-2a0e-5919-8c8e-f470e9d8fb78)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#u9b17275a-e829-58dd-a965-6e596079b342)

About the Publisher (#uce2db26c-88c1-5b6f-b176-d67b01aa3057)




INTRODUCTION (#ulink_482e4a34-de6f-52e0-b75f-8677d3fef6af)


A bus stopped in a village in the south of France and a woman with grey hair descended. She wore walking boots and tough, practical clothes. She hauled a large rucksack on to her shoulders, but she was out of season. The village was shut like a mussel on a rock. She didn’t walk away but watched the nearly empty minibus drive out of the village and back down the hill. The village looked over a valley to another, almost identical village, whose houses clung to the sides, which rose to a church tower. All around were steep wooded hills of dark green pine. A white tumble of clouds fell out of the whiter sky and hung in the valley like a lost baby. A sudden squall of wind and a flash of rain, the mother sky wailed with grief, then it fell too and the whole valley became a swirling mist of wet cloud. It was March.

Wednesday

Dear Stephen,

I’m sorry we parted on such bad terms. I know it seems crazy what I’m doing but I feel so much better now that I’m here. It took me much longer than I expected. The railway no longer runs to Draguignan and I had to bus it. I was afraid I would arrive in the middle of nowhere in the dark, but I managed to reach St Clair by early afternoon. Oh, Stephen, Jeanette still runs the café. I think she recognised me but I was tired and I didn’t want to talk. The village is different, it’s nearly all holiday homes, much smarter, there’s no weeds growing in the walls. I wonder how many real villagers are left. I didn’t see any.

You were wrong about the hut being derelict. You see, it’s not England here. If you left a place in England for 20 years the brambles and the damp would take over, but here the summers are so dry they scorch plants to the ground. The pine trees are taller. The one near the hut is quite large, but that will give some shade in the summer. When I opened the door it was just as I left it, a cup on a hook, the pans hanging on the walls, the candle in the window alcove. Nobody has been here. There’re so many huts in this valley, each olive plot has one, I suppose they don’t attract attention. Can you imagine this? In England a forgotten house would get trashed, but there is nobody down here, absolutely nobody. It’s such a strange feeling.

I’m writing to you in the morning. I’m still in my sleeping bag, sitting up at the table. The loft bed smelled so much of mice I slept on the floor. I couldn’t sleep at first, I felt alone and stupid, I kept remembering what you said, ‘Why on earth do you need to go back there?’ It was also freezing. I will have to wait until May until it gets warmer. I’m writing this with my gloves on. I’m wearing two jumpers and my jeans. My first task when I finish this is to find some more wood. I got a little fire going last night but it didn’t do much. Up in the woods behind the hut a big tree has come down. I managed to saw off some of the branches. I will have another go today. I remember it does eventually get cosy in here. The saw and the axe were in the tin trunk, a bit rusty but they do work. I’m making plans already. I want to put a cannise up, a sunshade. Now, that has rotted away and is in shreds round the back. I reckon that by the summer this place will look so smart. I can clear the scrub out the front and make a place to sit under the tree. Last night I could hear that tree like a whisper and that’s what got me to sleep. It’s all you can hear, the wind in the pine trees. In the early morning it rained and now it’s so fresh outside, cold and bright. I want to go walking. It’s the time of year for orchids, pink spotted ones, bee orchids, lizard orchids. I shall walk to the village later and post this and see if I can find any. The cherries are in blossom. It’s so very beautiful. People miss this when they come in the summer, the grass is cracked and brown and there’s no flowers. In a few weeks the fields will be flower filled. I remember they used to be dazzling. The water is just boiling on my camping stove, thank you for lending me that, it will be most handy until I get the stove going properly.

Please write to me care of Jeanette Blanc at Le Sanglier. She will be delighted to get my letters, I’m sure. Oh, Stephen, I feel so alive I cannot tell you. I’m still sad and I will be for a long time yet. I miss Felix so much and I miss you, but in England I felt so numb.

With all my love,

Mireille

She wriggled out of her sleeping bag and made a cup of coffee. There were two windows in the hut, but only one was unshuttered, consequently the inside was in half light. Through the tiny window a beam of sunlight shone so brightly it seemed solid, slicing across the stone floor and on to the table. Dust particles danced in it like joyous faeries. Mireille put the cup to her face to feel the warmth and smiled. She felt unwashed and crumpled, but it was a feeling she associated with being young, when her hair had been thick and dark, curling down her back, and soft. Her hair, though grey was still soft, cut straight round her ears. She looked at her jeans and knobbly walking socks. When she was young she used to wear a bright red gathered skirt with a yellow ribbon round the hem and an embroidered shirt, deep midnight blue. An amber necklace which held pieces of insects.

She went outside. In the sunlight the wet pine trees smelled strongly of resin. The clouds raced fast in the sky, white puffy clouds like washed flock blotting and unblotting the sun. Then, there they were, the mountains, like clouds themselves, white and indistinct in the far distance, but only for a moment before the real clouds blew into the valley and obscured them.

Later, she walked to the village, not up the overgrown track but down the terraces to a small road. On the other side on level ground was a large olive grove, well tended, its trees clipped and neat and the grass underneath cleared away in a circle around each trunk. Beyond the field was a farmhouse and beside it two pencil-like cypresses, dark bottle green. This was the last dwelling place, past here the road petered out into another track, which picked its way through dense woods to Rochas, the third village in the area. But Mireille didn’t go that way. She followed the road to St Clair.

Near the village plenty of stone huts had been converted to holiday cabins, cabanons, some simple and rustic, others flagrantly pretentious, with coloured shutters, stripy awnings, brass lamps and even swimming pools. They were all empty. Of her own hut nothing could be seen except a glimpse of the rock it sat on. In her absence the tree cover had effectively removed it.

Six hairpin bends took the main road from the valley floor to the top of the hill and the small road joined it at the fourth. From here it was a steep, long haul. The locals drove round the roads as if pursued by the devil and every time a car came down she had to jump into the verge. She arrived panting and with aching legs.

The entrance to the village was a tree-lined road guarded by the statue for the heroes of the Resistance. A sturdy modernist woman with large flat feet. Her torch, held high, looked like a triple-whip ice cream cone. She had been placed at the far end of the boules yard, slightly too anatomically correct to be any nearer the church. Mireille rested on the wall of the boules yard to get back her breath. The village of Lieux was in a patch of sunlight, suddenly golden and shining. Behind it rose the high dark ridge, the end of the empty plateau of the Canjurs which spread all the way to the Gorge du Verdon. Lieux was the last village before this wilderness.

The plateau was owned mostly by the military. From far away she could hear the whump of shell fire. The dogs in the village started barking.

The café was busy. French people eat lunch whether it’s March, January or June and that morning there had been a mini-market in the square. Two vegetable stalls, a cheese van and a butcher. At this time of year Jeanette’s customers were traders. In the winter she served one dish and today it was bourride, a garlicky fish soup. Her mother helped wash up and serve and at the back of the café, as usual, the huge Macon drank beer and watched television.

Jeanette’s mother, Auxille, was a tiny old woman with thin, dark hair. She wore a Provençal apron in much the same material as her daughter’s flouncy dresses. She was as nosy as her daughter and twice as uninhibited about showing it. Mireille came out of the post office and went towards the shop. As she crossed the square they both rushed out to look. Their comments were quite audible.

‘I’m sure she’s a scientist, a botanist perhaps, she looks like one. She’s not American, she speaks French too well. She could be Canadian.’ In her hand was a glass of lager for one of the van drivers.

‘She won’t like Odette’s prices,’ said Auxille. ‘The Villeneuves should have told her about the market. I got a fine piece of lamb.’

‘But they get deliveries from Lieux.’

‘Perhaps she’s buying newspapers.’

‘Where’s my beer then?’ called out the driver. ‘And I want the soup.’

‘Tais toi!’ shouted Jeanette.

‘Here she come,’ said Auxille and opened the door as Mireille was reading the board outside. ‘It’s a fine soup today, a good thick soup.’

Mireille sat in the café under the eyes of Auxille, who stood by her table like a perching raven. The van driver grumbled. ‘Tourists, when they start arriving who cares about us?’

Jeanette banged his lager down next to him. ‘She’s a Canadian, you idiot, she can understand you. And let me tell you tourists are more gentil, and they tip better.’

‘Encore de bourride,’ called out Auxille. Auxille smiled sycophantically and Mireille smiled back. She knew this little game. She was not going to speak first.

‘So …’ said Auxille. ‘You’re the Canadian botanist.’

Mireille laughed out loud. ‘I wondered what you would make of me,’ she said in English. ‘No, I’m not. I’m British.’

‘Can this be right? The Villeneuves don’t have British friends, surely.’

‘I’m not at the château,’ said Mireille, still laughing.

‘The British people are the Gregsons and they don’t come until May. Their place is empty. I know this. Madame Cabasson’s niece looks after it.’

‘I’m at La Ferrou,’ said Mireille.

Auxille retied her apron. ‘There’s nothing at La Ferrou, an old hut and a spring …’

‘It’s my home,’ said Mireille.

Auxille stared at her closely. She put her hands to her mouth. ‘It cannot be! The Blessed Jesus and his Virgin Mother!’

Jeanette was bringing in the soup, an extra large portion with a whole basket of bread.

‘Where’s mine?’ yelled the driver. ‘Or do I have to wait until summer?’

‘Shut your mouth, yours is coming. Maman, what’s wrong, are you having a fit?’

‘Jeanu, Jeanu, it’s her, from La Ferrou, who sang the songs, and the little boy with the drum …’

‘Mireille?’ said Jeanette, and she looked too, and shrieked too, and they all hugged. Macon turned off the television.

‘Look, hers is going cold and I haven’t had mine yet,’ said the van driver.

‘You be quiet, Enrique,’ said Auxille. ‘This is a miracle and I know your mother.’

‘She’s in the graveyard, where you should be.’

‘My family are in the oldest graveyard.’

‘Go and join them. God, I hate old women!’

‘Don’t insult my family,’ said Macon, loudly, and everybody looked at him. Even balding and with a paunch he was a head and shoulders higher than the driver. The man was quiet.

Auxille stood up ‘Quel miracle! Quel drame! What was it? One soup?’

‘With extra bread like hers.’

After lunch Jeanette closed the café. She wiped the tables, washed up, swept the floor and folded up the table cloths, unaided because Auxille hadn’t stopped talking once and Macon had gone into the cellar to find some celebratory wine.

The café was warm and moist and filled with a garlicky fish aroma now being attacked by bleach and cleaning fluids. Mireille rested her head against the window and listened as Auxille filled her in on the last twenty years’ gossip. The topics were the same as ever. Fecundity, hunting dogs and who had married whom. Family connections were important in St Clair.

The top family were the Villeneuves, who owned the château. They were respected but not loved. In the war they had been collaborators. They had very little to do with the village. The next family were the Cabassons, who owned the bakery. The current mayor was a Cabasson. They also owned several farms and ran the cave, the wine cellars, and the olive press. Auxille’s husband had been a Cabasson. He was a hero of the Resistance. He had been shot trying to steal wine from the cellars of the château when it was occupied by the Germans.

There were four strands of the Blancs. The best Blancs had moved away years before and now lived near Nice. The next best Blancs were Auxille’s family, who had owned the café for several generations. The third best Blancs were farmers at the château. The worst Blancs were Macon, his drunken father, his Italian mother, his no-good brothers. Other families were the Cavaliers, the Aragons, the Perrigues and the Gués. Auxille’s mother had been a Perrigues, and her mother a Cavalier. Odette, who ran the shop, was also a Cavalier, her mother a Gués, and so it went on, the whole village woven together into a knotty carpet of rivalries and jealousies. Bottom of the heap and the subject of much rumour were the people who lived in the social housing behind the mairie. Half gypsies, the unemployed, half Moroccans, and Algerians. When anything was stolen or broken, they were blamed.

Macon brought in the wine and glasses and finally Jeanette sat down.

‘So …’ she said, ‘when did you become a botanist?’ She had a habit of believing her own fantasies.

Mireille did not want to tell her or anybody else in the village why she had come. She wanted to be left alone and now she was wondering if it had been a good idea to reveal who she was. ‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘but I am interested in wild orchids. In fact, I’m making a small survey.’

‘Doesn’t Madame Cabasson’s niece’s husband-to-be know a scientist at the university?’ asked Auxille. ‘Perhaps I could introduce you.’

Mireille thought quickly. ‘How kind of you, but it won’t be necessary. It’s only La Ferrou I’m interested in, it’s just for … a nature magazine in England … it’s not scientific … but I do need peace and quiet.’

‘You’ll get that at La Ferrou,’ said Macon. ‘That’s all you’ll get.’

‘And you have no car. Can you stay for two weeks without a car?’ asked Auxille.

‘I’m going to be here until the summer.’ Mireille wanted to go back immediately to the stillness of the hut. Three pairs of incredulous eyes were already picking holes in her story. ‘The habits of wild orchids are very strange,’ said Mireille.

‘Of course,’ said Auxille and they all nodded.

‘And …’ said Mireille, definitely thinking fast now, ‘I need to rest … I need fresh air and stillness … the doctor said so.’

At the mention of a doctor Auxille and Jeanette moved close, like birds of prey. ‘You have been ill? No? You look so well.’

‘Mental …’ said Mireille, groping around for an explanation that would satisfy them. ‘Fatigue … brought on by stress … depression.’

They all stared at her. Mireille said nothing else. She hoped Jeanette’s fertile imagination would fill in the gaps. It did. ‘Your poor mother,’ said Jeanette.

‘My poor mother,’ said Mireille and her sigh of relief could have sounded like an exclamation of sadness.

‘How tragic to lose your mother. I thank the blessed Virgin that dear Maman is so well for her age.’ Auxille was in her seventies but she looked about ninety.

‘So tragic,’ said Auxille.

‘And how kind of her to remember us and send the money. I bought a pretty little carpet.’

‘And Macon drank the rest,’ said Auxille. Macon growled and drank his wine.

‘And your son? He is well?’ Jeanette changed the subject.

‘My son is a successful young man,’ said Mireille.

‘How lucky you are to be blessed with a child,’ said Auxille, glowering at Macon.

Macon ignored her. ‘Do you still play the accordion, the one my father gave you?’ He always remembered that his father had given it to Mireille.

‘I didn’t bring it with me. It was too heavy.’ She hadn’t played any music since November and this loss added to all her other losses. She desperately wanted to go back to the Ferrou.

‘What was that song?’ said Auxille. ‘How did it go?’ She began one of the old Provençal ballads. Mireille knew it and joined in. She had a splendid deep voice and eventually Auxille stopped her crackly accompaniment to listen. Mireille closed her eyes and sang to the end, a sad tale about lost love and forlorn, forgotten females. She finished. The others clapped. ‘I have to go back now,’ she said.

She was glad to be in the solitude of her hut. The light was beginning to fade now and clouds were coming down from the hills, tucking up the valleys and telling them to be quiet. But Mireille was restless. Everything she looked at reminded her of something she still had to do. Get a mattress for the loft bed. Cut more wood. Buy another lamp. In the ceramic sink the one tap dripped on to unwashed plates. There was no hot water at the Ferrou. What water there was came from a spring in the woods and it flowed into the tap, banging and complaining along the pipe. There was no toilet either. That was another job to be done. Dig a pit in the woods.

I am too old for this, thought Mireille, but she liked tiny spaces. Her houseboat in Bath had been tiny, but warm and tiny, and comfortable, with a bed taking up one end and padded seats by the table. In the hut there were no chairs, but a stone ledge along one wall. She was sleeping on this because the loft was littered with dead insects, mouse debris, and a huge spider had built a tunnel-like web under a tile and crouched in there sulking, waiting to creep over her face in the night. A gust of wind rattled the door and blew ash down the chimney. She felt completely alone.

She put on her waterproofs and walked up into the woods. Behind the hut the land was more rocky and if it had ever been terraced, this had been long lost to the pine trees; but there was a path. It led to a gully thick with cherry and apple trees and a dense jungle of sarsparilla. In the summer this was the only green place when the rest of the land was scorched brown. The path followed the water up the hillside. She could hear it trickling over the rocks, the sides of the gully steeper here, the trees on each side taller and darker. It felt like the hill was crowding in. The path stopped in a clearing. There was a pool, a natural basin in the rock.

It was a dark, cold place and unbelievably still. She had forgotten how still it was here, sheltered from the wind. The pool was about ten foot across and when she looked into the water it seemed shallow, but it wasn’t, she knew. It was deep enough to swim in, but swimming was the last thing she was thinking about. The water looked like liquid ice. Three worlds in one. A thin skin with leaves and pieces of twig floating on it. The rocky sides and the visible stony bottom of the pool. It looked so near, but it wasn’t. It looked so still, but it wasn’t. The water coming out of the spring was always flowing out of the pool and down the gully. And the third world. The sky on the water, her dark silhouette, the trees behind her perched up the hillside, and in front of her the massive, split, brooding rock that was La Ferrou. She looked up, out of the water, at the rock itself, creamy pale limestone, the cleft running down it as black as Satan’s foot. The head of the pool, the source of the water. She had dreamt about this place. When the water lapped against her houseboat in the night, she was here. At The Heathers, when the fountain outside her window dripped into her dreams, she was here. And over the last few months, when she couldn’t cry but lay on Stephen’s sofa under a travel rug. She was crying now because it was all water. The mist above the Roman baths and the clouds coming down the valley. This valley, and the valley in England by the river and the canal. That life was lost now, like her babies. The one who used to play here and throw stones in the water and her winter baby, who opened his eyes just once, and he had such dark eyes, like the bottom of the pool. He was lost and she was lost with him.



ROCHAS (#ulink_19c44c89-8611-5169-9ac1-9453b8d57089)




CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_56319c60-5b31-53f1-b837-7b2e7e4964bc)


A letter had arrived. Jeanette practically ran out of the café when she saw Mireille. She had not been seen much over the previous two weeks. Studying the orchids, Jeanette told anybody who would listen. But there she was by the largest plane tree, putting her shopping into her rucksack.

‘A letter! A letter!’ panted Jeanette, waving it in the air. ‘From England. Your son? Your husband?’ Mireille looked up, her expression that of somebody who hadn’t expected to be spoken to. She was dirty. She had mud on her hands and bits of twig in her hair. In fact she resembled Macon after a day’s work, which was so rare now that Jeanette had forgotten how dirty a person can get.

‘For me?’ said Mireille.

‘Four days ago it arrived, and we were waiting for you. You were not at the Tuesday market and I said to Macon, do we deliver it to her? But who can find La Ferrou these days, it is so overgrown.’ She handed over the letter reluctantly. It had been the source of much conversation in the café. If it had been in French she might well have been tempted to open it. ‘From your son? A relative?’ Mireille looked at it and put it into her pocket.

‘What about lunch? Today it’s a good piece of chicken with wild mushrooms.’ At the café door Auxille was shaking out a cloth and looking obviously in their direction. Odette and her daughter were arranging newspapers outside the shop and doing the same.

‘I won’t stop, thank you,’ said Mireille. ‘I’ve been making my hut more habitable. It’s taking up a lot of time.’

‘On your own? You should have asked Macon. No wonder you look so tired.’

‘Do I?’ and Mireille smiled, a pale version of her usual dazzling one. ‘It’s finished now, but thank you.’

‘On Saturday we go to the market in Draguignan. They have everything there. There would be room for you.’

‘I do need a cannise,’ said Mireille slowly, ‘and some cooking pans, and some rope …’

‘Then it’s settled. Meet us by the café at eight. When we come back we shall have lunch.’ She still didn’t go but stood there smiling furiously in her navy and pink dress, like a sturdy, gaudy, hot-house plant. All this for the contents of a letter, thought Mireille.

She took the letter out of her pocket and opened it. The frisson of anticipation coming from Jeanette was almost audible. She read it. There was a pause between her reading and relating the contents to Jeanette. Jeanette took this pause to be the translation from English to French, not Mireille’s attempt to alter it completely. ‘He says he’s very well. He wishes me a good holiday and he sends his love to everybody in St Clair. He’s been windsurfing recently and he had dinner with his girlfriend’s parents. That’s about it.’

‘Ah …’ said Jeanette, hoping for more but already creating a suave sophisticated young man having a candlelit banquet in a castle. The girlfriend’s parents were aristocrats, surely.

‘I’ll see you on Saturday,’ said Mireille.

She was furious. Not with Jeanette. She crunched down through the woods like a wild boar. In her hut she threw the letter on to the table. It was some minutes before she could pick it up again. Perhaps she had misread it. Perhaps she had somehow mistaken what had been said and turned it into an insult.

Dear Mum,

What on earth do you think you are doing? I thought you were having a two-week break and now you say you’re staying there until the summer. What’s got into you, have you lost it completely? There’s plenty of things you should be sorting out here. What about the house? What about your job? I know you’ve been upset and all that, but staying in a hut isn’t going to make it better. I’m sure it’s idyllic but you must remember I have no memories about that place, so describing it in detail does nothing for me. When you next contact me please give me some definite arrangements.

Love,

Stephen

She screamed out of the door and across the valley as if her vehemence could be carried on the wind all the way to England and slap Stephen around the face. ‘I know you’ve been upset and all that.’ That bit got to her the worst. She sat down to write him an immediate reply but could get no further than the first sentence, which she changed many times. ‘How could you? How dare you. Why are you so arrogant?’ She sat with her arms on the table. Through the door she could see the sky, the clouds changing it from blue to grey to white. A band of sunlight falling on the floor, appearing and disappearing with the regularity of dance. She tried on another piece of paper. ‘You do not know what this place means to me.’ When she wrote this her eyes filled with tears, because no, he didn’t know. The distance between them was much greater than anything geographical.

Stephen. He was tall and blond, like Gregor had been, and with hazel eyes, also like Gregor’s. He was confident and well-spoken. He was the first to shake somebody’s hand. He liked windsurfing and rock climbing. He drove a red Astra. He liked fixing things. He liked the Lake District. He worked for a computer software company. He liked information. He liked facts. He liked order. Yes, she had to remember that, even as a little child he had collected snail shells and put them in neat rows by the hut. Other young men didn’t change their socks and lived happily in festering nests of used handkerchiefs and beer cans, she knew that. But Stephen was immaculate. The Heathers was like that now. Big bright prints. Black and chrome Italian lighting. Dark blue cups and plates. A red blanket on one arm of the sofa. We are alike, she thought, and looked round her own hut, although he might not have seen the connection. Pans hanging on the wall and the floor scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed. The loft swept and rid of unwelcome arachnids. Her sleeping bag on a red blanket she had found in the bottom of the trunk. By the sink a dark blue tin mug.

Dear Stephen,

I am not mad, but please accept that I need to be here. You do not know what this place means to me and yes, you are right, I can’t describe it to you. I will stay here until June, then I will let you know what I’m going to do.

It wasn’t enough, but she felt something final about writing it. She had sent her mother a postcard after she left home. ‘I will not be back for some time. Do not worry about me. Love, Mireille.’

She put the letter in an envelope and sealed it. She knew what she was saying. Leave me alone. It was something she had never said to him before. She started another letter.

Dear Stephen,

And this time I shall call you Sanclair, because that is your real name and I named you after the village. I know you remember nothing about this place but I remember it. I wish you did remember. When you swam in the Ferrou, you were never scared of the water, you would have crawled right in if I hadn’t stopped you. You were so fearless. Nothing scared you. Even a late summer thunderstorm that shook the hut and the rain beating like boots on the roof. You sat there on the floor with big wide eyes and your mouth open, not afraid, but awed. Gregor said, ‘It’s the sky gods having a party,’ and he took you outside to see the lightning flashing in great forks across the valley, and you both came back wet and shivering. I had to stoke the stove up and you were chattering with cold. You said, ‘So big!’ and stretched your arms out. ‘So big!’ For days after you looked up at the sky, waiting for another storm. I wish you could remember. We all slept up in the loft and took it in turns to tell stories. Can’t you remember Gregor’s, about the man with the lame donkey and the boat to the Scottish islands? The blind woman in the Sudan who could tell her family’s history for generations? My stories were Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, Peter Pan, and the tale of Avelard, the troubadour. When it was your turn you told such funny things, big monsters, sky gods and the old woman with a lump on her nose. Your world was so small. The hut, the village, the Ferrou, your red shirt, your floppy rabbit. Then I would see you playing and I could see your world was endless. A tree was a wizard, a stone was a lump of the sky. You played by the Ferrou, talking to nobody, talking to somebody, a muddled up French and English. Sanclair. You started off here and I wish you could remember because it must have affected you, to be a child in the woods. I will not send you this letter.





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