Mireille listened to both of them. Perhaps the painting made sense now. Thank you for peace and quiet. Thank you for a life away from the rattle of the village. Thank you.
Wednesday. Afternoon
I didn’t get back home until Easter Monday and even then Jeanette was pressurising me to stay another night. But I couldn’t. I wanted to get back here. I love the smell of this place, wet earth and plaster and always the pine trees. Opening the door is like smelling a lover when you first embrace him. At Jeanette’s I could hardly sleep. The room was so stuffy and the bed wobbled when I turned over. God! Am I so hardy again I need to sleep on wooden planks with a hefty draught under the door? I like Jeanette and Auxille and even Macon. They drive me nuts, but I know they are honest and kind and I appreciate it. I’m writing this in bed because when I got back I was sick. I’ve had a bad stomach since. I wasn’t used to all that food. It seems a shame that Auxille’s cooking should land up so rapidly in the pit in the woods. I didn’t want it that way. I wanted to feel that their generosity could at least linger in my body and do me good. I’m now on a diet of bread and a herbal brew I made out of lime-flower tea with lemon and celery leaves. It’s pretty revolting. I’ve been too ill to saw up wood and the hut has become cold again. I must remember not to leave here for too long because once the stove goes out the temperature drops rapidly. I want it to get warmer outside because then I can bathe in the Ferrou. I’m longing to do this. Even in the hottest summer the water makes me gasp. I’m thinking about Old Man Henri. He lived here until he died. Is that what’s going to happen to me? I have made no plans to do anything else. I’m thinking about history now. Every place has a history. Every person has a history and this place is part of my history and I am a part of this place, with Henri and before him with whoever was the first person who stood by the Ferrou and touched the water. It’s a history impossible to trace, but I feel part of the line when I stand there. And I felt it when I was nine.
My parents were bored with the coast. The phenomena of St Tropez did not interest them. My mother would never have been seen dead in bare feet, hipster jeans and a shirt tied in a knot to show off her midriff. She called them ‘dirty bohemians’ and Brigitte Bardot was a ‘silly, dirty bohemian’. I think it was more that they realised they were not young any more. Hugo Devereux, the brilliant young architect, and his beautiful wife. They believed this even though they were in their thirties. They believed it at their parties in Bath. They believed it when The Heathers was being built. But that summer they couldn’t believe it because the young had all gone to a little fishing village and were hanging out on the beach.
We went inland in a hired car. It started out as day trips with a picnic packed by the hotel. I had only seen fashionable resorts and I thought all of France was like that. Hotels with shutters. Large houses with tiered gardens and swimming pools. All French people were like my father’s clients, who were mostly British anyway, with skin the colour of polished pine and manners as well tailored as their clothes. But we went inland to tumbledown villages perched on the tops of hills, where old women wore black and shuffled by in worn-down espadrilles. A man in navy workclothes and a peaked hat was followed by a small dog. Where the bars were smoky and the only food they served was croque monsieur. My mother hated it. She fanned herself with the map. She sat in the car for the picnic because of the ants. She remained conspicuous, with her pastel clothes, golden blonde hair and tiny frame, where all the other women were sturdy, busty in cheap floral dresses. My father loved it. He was an architect and he loved buildings. Squashed-up stone houses. Dark cavernous churches. Forgotten eighteenth-century mansions with crumbling façades and that shabby, shabby grandeur that’s impossible to imitate. It was his idea to go further north.
I remember this journey in fragments. It was August and although the heat wasn’t as stifling as it was by the coast there were no swimming pools to dip into. The car was an oven and I was a currant bun cooking on the back seat. Wherever we stopped was dry. Even the leaves on the trees were dry and the grass snapped when I stood on it. The ants marched over my shoes and up my legs. The ground smelled strong and aromatic. There were pine trees with huge cones and I collected them. I kept them on the back seat and poked my fingers in between their smooth wooden spires. We drove through canyons and gorges. Past cliffs of gnarled grey rock. Past huge boulders. Past ravines that fell to fast rivers hundreds of feet below. Round scary hairpin bends and up hills to small towns, dusty in the evenings. The smell of cooking filling up the streets. The golden light making the fronts of houses look like gilded books. The hotels were empty. Big uncomfortable beds with stiff white sheets. Huge creaking furniture and shutters with heavy iron clasps.
We’re in Rochas. It’s a village on a hill where everything is on a hill. We’re staying in the only hotel. It’s a flat building with sixteen windows. I’ve counted them. The bar downstairs opens on to a square with a fountain. The fountain doesn’t gush but trickles water out of four spouts into a basin thickly green with weed. Do not drink this water, it says. Eau non potable. But I did yesterday and now I wonder if I will get ill. The chairs and tables are under a blue and white canopy and that is where my mother is sitting, reading Vogue and drinking Pernod. My father is not here. He is looking at land because now they want to buy some land and build a holiday home so we won’t have to stay in hotels. He’s been away nearly all week. There is one shop that sells postcards and ice creams. There’s another that sells bread and cakes, but it’s only open in the morning and the afternoon. Rochas is built on a rock. The houses are on one side and the rock is on the other. The streets go round and round like a maze. People hang washing out of their windows and lines go right across the street.
They have windows full of geraniums and canaries in cages. Everything seems to be up in the air. On the ground hot dogs flick their tails in puddles of water from the washing.
I want my father to come back. I have breakfast with my mother, hot chocolate and croissants, then we sit in the square. She reads her magazine. I play jacks and look at the fountain. She drinks Pernod, which smells like aniseed. The men in the bar look at her but she doesn’t look back. She smokes a menthol cigarette and drinks more Pernod. We have lunch, a toasted sandwich, and my mother doesn’t eat hers. She says the sun takes away her appetite. Then we have a siesta because the sun gives her a headache. I stay in my room and draw pictures. I can’t sleep. I open the shutters. There’s an iron rail across the window and I lean on it. The men in the bar look up at me now. I go back to bed. The bed’s all white. The sheets are the sea and my finger is a boat sailing up and down it. It’s getting hot because I left the shutters open. I will get told off.
The clocks are striking four and my mother comes in. She’s wearing something different and she smells of perfume. ‘You didn’t close the shutters,’ she says and looks out of the window. The men start to whistle.
‘Get dressed,’ she says and slams the shutters closed. She brushes my hair to try and make it go flat. Her hair is tied back in a scarf. We have a drink in the bar, lemon tea in glass cups. The dogs are lying in the shade and panting. My mother looks at her watch. It will be days before Daddy comes home.
We go for a walk. There is only one walk, to the church. We walk in the shadows and the houses are like cliffs. A window opens and somebody flaps a duster. We walk up the steps, up the back of the rock.
The church is at the top. There’s a small square in front of it with trees and benches but it’s boiling hot. The church is black and its door is open like a mouth waiting to swallow us.
Inside it’s freezing. I can’t see anything even though the lights are on. We walk up to the altar and my mother starts to laugh. ‘God, it’s tacky in here.’ I’m sure you’re not supposed to laugh in churches. The altar is covered in statues of angels blowing trumpets, painted gold, and a huge
