village. It was the ground floor of a large house owned by the third best Blancs. A sun terrace ran the whole length of it. Grapes grew up the walls and on to the roof of the terrace. Green bitter grapes with large floppy leaves, I was told they would be ripe in October, but I ate them anyway. Below the house was a small swimming pool, which my mother sat by all day long and occasionally slipped into like a lazy snake. If I talked to her she smiled as if she had just woken from a blissful dream. The Blancs upstairs were an elderly couple who did all our washing and cooking with the energy of people who had been energetic all their lives. Only illness or death would stop them. I watched them as they hoed the garden, hung out the washing, and wondered what they thought of my mother whose biggest decision of the day was whether to wear a green or a blue bikini.
My father spent most of the day at the Ferrou. He was relaying the floor of the hut, which was to become part of the new house, he imagined. This was the year of the new houses. The Heathers would be ready for us to move into when we returned. The plans for the Ferrou kept changing. The modern building became more traditional. The mock pool feature more natural, the terraces of olive trees more unaltered.
I walked from the flat down to the Ferrou. Down the track and through the woods. At first I had left markers in case I got lost, white stones, twigs pointing like arrows, but now I knew the way I didn’t hurry. I had a picnic lunch for myself and Hugo in a little rucksack. I skipped and told myself stories. I hid under trees and waited to pounce on passers-by, but there were none. I put snail shells in my pockets. I listened to the cicadas in the woods and, far away, the churchbells.
I’m running down the track because I’m late and Daddy hasn’t had his lunch yet. He sees me bouncing along the top terrace. I’m wearing red shorts and a white T-shirt now very dusty, but I like it, I feel wild and ferocious like a pirate. He’s waving at me. He’s dusty too, with trickles of sweat down his face, and his shirt is sticking to him. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I say, but he says, ‘Are you, my special girl? I didn’t notice.’ He has made a table out of a few planks. We sit on the ground and eat. He looks at the bottled water I’ve brought and laughs, ‘Here is the best water in the whole valley but they think I still need some in a bottle,’ and he pours the lot over his head. We both laugh. He says, ‘Go into the hut and fill it up with real water.’ I turn on the tap. The water comes out with a gurgle then a gush. I fill the bottle to the brim and take it to him. He drinks it. He says, ‘It tastes like nothing on earth,’ and he hands the bottle to me. I drink it as well and it’s true, it doesn’t taste like ordinary water because it has a taste, a strong taste, a bit chalky, a bit fizzy. I look at Daddy. His face is brown from the sun, not brown like Mummy but darker, and the freckles are getting bigger like mine do. His hair is dusty. His eyes are blue like the sky. He has a dirty mark on his cheek I don’t want to rub off. He shows me the floor he has done. One half is tiled, the other half is still mud. There’s a pile of wet cement outside and he must go back to work or it will get too hard. I don’t go back to the flat. I go through the woods to the pool. It’s a hot day but the water is still cold. Nobody is looking. I take off my clothes and slip into the water. It’s so cold it makes me gasp. The bottom is stone and falls away suddenly, so I have to swim fast and panicky. The water gets up my nose and I kick my legs. Then I stop panicking because I’m floating. The water is holding me up. I lie very still and stretch out my arms and legs. I’m floating on the pool. I put back my head and the water sings in my ears.
It was there I learned about water, how it can hold you up, how it can fill you, how it can sink you. When I felt brave I held my breath and sank down with my eyes open. What did I see? What strange shifting half shapes did I see in the twilight of the few seconds I plunged under?
It’s early evening now. There are no spectacular sunsets here because the sun sets behind the village. But it rises over the mountains. If I get up early enough I will catch the pink and the gold. I like the evenings. The valley becomes still. Did I imagine it or was that two swallows? It’s definitely becoming warmer. The sky is cloudy, holding in the heat, and for the moment there is no wind. For dinner I made omelettes with wild asparagus.
Alan Crawford came to stay and my parents became busy with poolside drinks and barbecues. I wasn’t allowed down to the Ferrou on my own, so I sulked in the garden. Alan Crawford had sandy hair and eyelashes. His face was red. I didn’t like the way he smelled. I didn’t like the way he dived into the swimming pool with a splash. I didn’t like the way he and my father were always laughing. I didn’t like the way he called my mother ‘Viv’. I went to the village. I walked round the streets, looking up alleyways and over walls into gardens. I peered into the church. I hung around the square, kicking dust with my sandals. It was Jeanette’s dogs who saw me. She had kept two of the puppies, shaggy spaniels with high-pitched barks. They rushed up and started sniffing me.
‘Bas les pattes, bas les pattes!’ shouted Jeanette, but the dogs didn’t scare me. ‘Oh, the little English girl. Where are your parents?’
‘They are having a party,’ I said. ‘For grown-ups.’
‘Oh, the poor little one.’ She sat next to me and squeezed my hand. ‘Let us go and see Maman and see if she has any bonbons.’ She wore an apron dusty with flour. The dogs licked my knees and made me giggle. All of a sudden I felt happy.
Auxille was sitting outside the café darning a sock. The café was empty. It was late afternoon. The air was droopy like the leaves on the plane trees. They gave me sweets wrapped in coloured paper, lemonade in a long glass and slabs of dark brown nougat. Jeanette brushed my hair and put a red ribbon in it.
‘When I was a girl,’ said Auxille, going back to her sock, ‘my grandfather told me the stories of the shepherds.’
She told me stories all afternoon. Stories I’d never heard before, of princes, love-sick shepherds, saints with strange names, lost princesses and troubadours …
There was once a troubadour called Avelard and he was the finest minstrel in the region. Princes would pay a fortune to have him sing at their courts. But Avelard belonged to nobody. He came and went as he pleased.
There was a prince married to a beautiful princess and they lived in the grandest palace in the Maures. Now, this prince had the best of everything, the best food, the best wine, the best company at his tables, but he did not have Avelard. And this is what he wanted most of all. One day a thin-faced shabby man appeared at the palace gates and asked to sing at the prince’s tables. Grudgingly the guard let him in. After all, perhaps he could at least make the prince laugh. But there was something else about this man, his confidence, his sense of purpose, his piercing blue eyes, that also persuaded the guard.
That night at the banquet the man sat with the servants, ate the poorest food and said nothing. There were plenty of entertainments, musicians, clowns, jugglers, story-tellers. At the end of the feast the prince said, ‘Where is this man who has asked to sing for us?’ and without a word the man stood up, took up his mandolin and started to sing.
What silence fell over the banquet, for the man sang such sad songs, played such touching melodies that every person down to the meanest kitchen boy was moved.
The prince and the princess were enthralled. They urged the troubadour to sing on late into the night. Finally the prince said, ‘Please, please, tell me your name,’ and the man said, ‘I am Avelard.’
Wasn’t the prince overjoyed! He showered the man with gifts and money, but all the man wanted was food and a quiet room. His insistence on simplicity unnerved the prince because he realised he could not buy this person. As the months passed, the reputation of the prince’s court grew. The finest minds, the most learned people were to be seen there, and at each banquet Avelard sang to them.
Then one day the time came that the prince most dreaded. Avelard went to see him and said, ‘I have enjoyed
