much and wheezed in his sleep. She didn’t open her eyes. He was still beside her in her dream, where she was waiting for him to wake up and start coughing, but she didn’t want to wake him up. Dreaming about sleeping. It seemed a peculiar thing to do. She missed him. It was a physical ache that was difficult to smooth away, much worse than the baby, which was like being given a present and having it snatched from her. Missing Felix was worse because she knew him. He infuriated her. He went to bed far too late. He woke up far too late with a ‘Fuck! Is that the time?’ There was always something he hadn’t done, something he should have done two hours ago. Why hadn’t he seen a doctor about his chest? Why had he smoked so much and why was his life so bloody chaotic? But in the morning, when she was awake and he wasn’t, she felt tender towards him.
Felix was beautiful in an odd way. He had long fair curling hair, masses of it. His face was angles and hollows. His eyes, which were slanting, were grey-blue. He didn’t look like an angel because angels don’t growl when they’re angry and forget to wash. He looked like a spirit from fairyland. A changeling, furious to be living with humans. He would disrupt them whenever he could. He would turn up at her narrowboat and sit by the stove, warming his hands. Long and bony, a philosopher’s hands. She knew he hadn’t eaten anything and he was tired. He would say, ‘Can I read you something?’ and out of his pocket came a crumpled bundle of paper, and he read one poem, then another. Strange poems with not much sense, like thoughts don’t make sense but have images and words which connect. This planet, love and community, and the goddess, something he saw on the street the week before, something he felt at a party, in a dream. But when he read he put so much into it, it seemed to make him flicker and glow like a candle at night. The closer she stood the more warmth she could feel.
She opened her eyes and she was looking up at the terracotta tiles, lapped over each other, holding out the rain, which was coming down now in a torrent. It would keep her inside. She turned round to the imagined Felix, still sleeping. ‘I won’t wake you,’ she said, because she wanted him to stay peaceful in her mind. She crept down the ladder and lit the stove. She put the pot of coffee on and a pan of water so she could wash. The hut was gradually getting warmer. She lit the oil lamp and it gave out a soft light over the floor and the rough-cast walls. The coffee began to bubble and the smell of it filled the hut. She poured the liquid into a bowl, sat at the table and dipped in bread. Dark bitter coffee and chunks of baguette. A peasant breakfast. Tomorrow she would go to Draguignan.
Friday morning
Felix, this is a letter for you. There’s so much I never told you. You needed to talk about yourself. I was going to tell you so many things but in the end there wasn’t time. I’m glad I told you about the Ferrou. Do you remember, I said to you, ‘You must find a place to go to in your mind,’ and you said, ‘Like where?’ Sad, and grumpy and hopeless. And I said, ‘I know this place in France,’ and when I told you, I could see you could see it. You were walking up the track and towards the great rock and the pool. I could see you looking into the pool and holding your breath. Afterwards you said, ‘Take me there.’ I was cautious because this is my special place, but I knew you needed some sort of vision, some sort of future and I said, yes.
You are here with me now in this room, so I will take you to the Ferrou.
I want to find the beginning of this place. I can think of events, but they seem so random. When I first came here I felt, I am meant to be here. I was nine. Vivienne and Hugo were here and Jeanette, chattering away, but they have disappeared in my memory and there is only me standing with such awe and such fear. I looked up at the cleft in the rock, at the sun shining above it and into the pool dazzling me. Firewater. When I touched the water I thought it would be hot, but it wasn’t, it was cold.
Here’s a memory. I’m in the top class of the prep school. The children in the first class look like babies and I can hardly believe I was that small. I’m as tall as my mother and I feel like an oaf. Felix, you once said to me your mother couldn’t see you for what you were. I don’t think my parents saw me at all. I was dressed. I was washed. I was given food and talked to, but I wasn’t a person. I was a pet, sometimes irritating, sometimes delightful but most of the time forgotten about. When I left home I was angry about this. I was so angry I wanted to forget about them. I wanted to eradicate them. Especially my mother.
My mother sat there at social functions like a sorbet, but afterwards tore each guest to pieces. They were fat, ugly, badly dressed. My father laughed because she was funny; she was a great mimic, she could capture a person’s tone of voice, or their posture, and she found it funny too. It sent her into shrieks of laughter. When she laughed like that it terrified me. One day she would laugh about me, I knew it. I could already hear her: ‘That Mireille, with the freckles, that beanpole, darling, socks with sandals, did you ever, have you ever seen such a specimen (people were always specimens to my mother)? Have you ever seen such a frump!’ I felt ashamed. By my mother’s shallowness and also by my father being taken in by it.
Hugo was ambitious. With Alan Crawford he became involved in property development in the south of France. After St Tropez had become fashionable the whole coast from there to Nice was gradually submerged under ugly holiday apartments. My father’s name was Devereux, and his grandparents were French. He spoke French, he understood French ways. He saw a way to make money and didn’t hesitate. I used to believe I was like my father because I knew I was entirely different from my mother, but now I know I was so different from both of them. What they ate, what they wore, what they bought was of paramount importance. My mother was so status-conscious she would throw away her curtains, have a baby, move house, if it would improve her standing in the eyes of other people. She was an excellent acquisition for my father.
I am silent and shy. I read in my spare time. I am learning to read French and I can speak it. I pray every night. Please God, can I have a friend? I want a friend but I don’t know where to start. It’s nearly the end of the summer term, it’s hot and we have lessons outside in the playground, but Miss Tanner is lethargic and the pupils are half asleep. She tells us we will go on a trip to the Roman baths and all the class go, ‘Oh no, not again!’ But I have never been. My parents have never taken me. They only take me to places where they want to go. I have been to France more than seven times. I have been to Nice, Cap Ferrat, Toulon, Menton, Grasse, Cannes. When I say these names to my schoolmates their eyes widen. They have been to Torquay, Weston-Super-Mare, Dawlish, Paignton.
When we go to the baths Miss Tanner gives us a long speech about Romans, watercourses, hydro systems. Underground and indoors it’s hot and sticky. I can make no sense of the stones. Then we are herded out to the great baths, and there they are. The golden pillars, the greeny water. The steam rising. The water pouring out from the spring into the basin, a constant gush of water. I have seen this before, of course I have, at the Ferrou. Again I feel that shiver. I put my hand into the stream of water, expecting it to be cold, but it isn’t, it’s warm. Not hot like a tap, but warm like a pond of water on a beach, like a cup of thé citron left on a café table. The temperature of tears.
Here’s another memory. Going back now. I’m wearing a white cotton dress, white socks and black sandals. I’m sitting on a wicker chair outside a café. The chair has a band of green around its edge. It’s an uncomfortable chair and sticks to my legs. I’m drinking citron pressé out of a long glass, trying to keep the spoon out of my nose. I’m so hot. I’ve never been as hot before and we are in the shade. The café is in a street. There are people everywhere, talking, and I don’t understand because it’s French. A smell in the air of fish and scent from the purple flowers that trail over the wall. All colours are brighter. Hugo is in white, so bright I can hardly look at him. He is laughing. His sleeve is rolled up and his arm is brown. He is talking French. My mother is in the shade, dressed in mint green like an ice cream but one frozen so hard it won’t melt. She is wearing dark glasses. She crosses and uncrosses her legs. She is smoking a cigarette, slowly, like somebody who wants to enjoy all of it. Then Hugo jumps up and comes round the table and kisses her forehead. Her expression does not change, but they hold
