in her hand, and saw that her coat pockets were stuffed with costume jewellery. Lipsticks, compacts, necklaces and rings spilled from between her fingers. “Here. This is for you,” she said brightly, pushing a handful of looted treasure at me. “It’s OK. I’ve got lots more.”
Then with a smile of dazzling sweetness she was off, leaving me with chains and earrings and pieces of bright plastic set in gilt weeping from my fingers onto the floor.
Later in the afternoon I took Anouk for a walk into Les Marauds. The travellers’ camp looked cheery in the new sunlight, with washing flapping on lines drawn between the boats, and all the glass and paint gleaming. Armande was sitting in a rocking-chair in her sheltered front garden, watching the river. Roux and Mahmed were perched on the roof’s steep incline, resetting the loose slates. I noticed that the rotten facia and the gable-ends had been replaced and repainted a bright yellow. I waved at the two men and sat on the garden wall next to Armande while Anouk raced off to the river bank to find her friends of last night.
The old lady looked tired and puffy-faced beneath the brim of a wide straw hat. The piece of tapestry in her lap looked listless, untouched. She nodded to me briefly, but did not speak. Her chair rocked almost imperceptibly, tick-tick-tick-tick, on the path. Her cat slept curled beneath it.
“Caro came over this morning,” she said at last. “I suppose I should feel honoured.” A movement of irritation. Rocking: tick-tick-tick-tick. “Who does she think she is?” snapped Armande abruptly. “Marie Bloody Antoinette?” She brooded fiercely for a moment, her rocking gaining momentum. “Trying to tell me what I can and can’t do. Bringing her doctor – ” She broke off to fix me with her piercing, birdlike gaze. “Interfering little busybody. She always was, you know. Always telling tales to her father.” She gave a short bark of laughter. “She doesn’t get these airs from me, in any case. Not on your life. I never needed any doctor – or any priest – to tell me what to think.”
Armande pushed out her chin defiantly and rocked even harder.
“Was Luc there?” I asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “Gone to Agen for a chess tournament.” Her fixed expression softened. “She doesn’t know he came over the other day,” she declared with satisfaction. “And she won’t get to know, either.” She smiled. “He’s a good lad, my grandson. Knows how to hold his tongue.”
“I hear we were both mentioned in church this morning,” I told her. “Consorting with undesirables, so I’m told.”
Armande snorted.
“What I do in my own house is my own business,” she said shortly. “I’ve told Reynaud, and I told Pere Antoine before him. They never learn, though. Always peddling the same old rubbish. Community spirit. Traditional values. Always the same tired old morality play.”
“So it’s happened before?” I was curious.
“Oh yes.” She nodded emphatically. “Years ago. Reynaud must have been Luc’s age in those days. Course, we’ve had travellers since then, but they never stayed. Not till now.” She glanced upwards at her half-painted house. “It’s going to look good, isn’t it?” she said with satisfaction. “Roux says he’ll have it finished by tonight.” She gave a sudden frown. “I can have him work for me all I choose.” she declared irritably. “He’s an honest man and a good worker. Georges has no right to tell me otherwise. No right at all.”
She picked up her unfinished tapestry, but put it down again without setting a stitch.
“I can’t concentrate,” she said crossly. “It’s bad enough being woken up by those bells at the crack of dawn without having to look at Caro’s simpering face first thing in the morning. “We pray for you every day, Mother,”’ she mimicked. “’We want you to understand why we worry so much about you.” Worry about their own standing with the neighbours, more like. It’s just too embarrassing to have a mother like me, reminding you all the time of how you began.” She gave a small, hard smile of satisfaction. “While I’m alive they know there’s someone who remembers everything,” she declared. “The trouble she got into with that boy. Who paid for that, eh? And him – Reynaud, Mr Whiter-than-White.” Her eyes were bright and malicious. “I bet I’m the only one still alive who remembers that old business. Not many knew in any case. Could have been the biggest scandal in the county if I’d not known how to hold my tongue.” She shot me a look of pure mischief. “And don’t go looking at me like that, girl. I can still keep a secret. Why d’you think he leaves me alone? Plenty of things he could do, if he put his mind to it. Caro knows. She tried already.”
Armande chuckled gleefully – heh-heh-heh.
“I’d rather understood Reynaud wasn’t a local,” I said curiously.
Armande shook her head.
“Not many people remember,” she said. “Left Lansquenet when he was a boy. Easier for everyone that way.” For a moment she paused, reminiscing. “But he’d better not try anything this time. Not against Roux or any of his friends.” The humour had gone from her face and she sounded older, querulous, ill. “I like them being here. They make me feel young.”
The small crabby hands plucked meaninglessly at the tapestry in her lap. The cat, sensing the movement, uncurled from beneath the rocking-chair and jumped onto her knees, purring. Armande scratched its head and it buzzed and butted at her chin with small playful gestures.
“Lariflete,” said Armande. After a moment I realized that was the cat’s name. “I’ve had her nineteen years. That makes her nearly my age, in cat time.” She made a small clucking sound at the cat, which purred louder. “I’m supposed to be allergic,” said Armande. “Asthma or something. I told them that I’d rather choke than get rid of my cats. Though there are some humans I could give up without a second thought.”
Lariflete whisker-twitched lazily. I looked across at the water and saw Anouk playing under the jetty with two black-haired river children. From what I could hear Anouk, the youngest of the three, seemed to be directing operations.
“Stay and have some coffee,” suggested Armande. “I was going to make some when you came along, anyway. I’ve got some lemonade for Anouk, too.”
I made the coffee myself in Armande’s curious, small kitchen with its cast-iron range and low ceiling. Everything is clean there, but the one tiny window looks onto the river, giving the light a greenish underwater look. Hanging from the dark unpainted beams are bunches of dry herbs in their muslin sachets. On the whitewashed walls copper pans hang from hooks. The door – like all the doors in the house – has a hole cut into the base to allow free passage to her cats. Another cat watched me curiously from a high ledge as I made the coffee in an enamelled tin pot. The lemonade, I noticed, was sugar-free, and the sweetener in the basin was some kind of sugar substitute. In spite of her bravado, it seems as if she does take some precautions after all.
“Foul stuff,” she commented without rancour, sipping the drink from one of her hand-painted cups. “They say you can’t taste the difference. But you can.” She made a wry face… “Caro brings it when she comes. Goes through my cupboards. I suppose she means well. Can’t help being a ninny.”
I told her she ought to take more care. Armande snorted.
“When you get to my age,” she told me, “things start to break down. If it isn’t one thing, then it’s another. It’s a fact of life.” She took another sip of the bitter coffee. “When he was sixteen Rimbaud said he wanted to experience as much as possible
