and eating sugared waffles out of a bag.
‘But look at this. What do you think?’ Jeanette unwrapped a large painting. It was an idealised Alpine scene complete with mountain goat and a patch of Alpine flowers. ‘To go over our fireplace. Maman saw it. Now, her mother’s father was a shepherd who used to go to the high pastures every June.’
Mireille thought it was hideous but Auxille didn’t wait for her answer. ‘And what have you bought?’ she asked, having a good look at Mireille’s shopping. ‘A hunting knife? A cooking pot? A blanket? Nothing to wear?’
‘And this,’ said Mireille, and put a lavender plant on the table. She also had the cannise, rolled up like a carpet.
‘Maman, what does she need clothes for? She lives in a hut,’ said Jeanette.
On the way home Jeanette insisted that Mireille stay with them for the whole weekend and whatever protest Mireille put up about orchids or not having enough decent clothes was loudly quashed. In the end she agreed. Jeanette and Auxille responded with the glee of two spiders finding a large fly in their web. Even Macon found the idea entertaining. They didn’t have many guests. Surely this was a reason to celebrate.
The Blancs lived in a flat above the café. In St Clair the old houses were divided up in strange ways, like interlocking puzzles. People’s kitchens jutted into other people’s bedrooms and, once inside, it was difficult to make out who or where the neighbours were. The Blancs’ flat was no exception. The main living area contained the dining table, the sofa and the television. It overlooked the square and was the most pleasant room, although it was small and overstuffed with furniture. A sideboard was positively littered with photographs of nephews and nieces, silk flowers and china ornaments. There was a massive old fireplace surrounded by brown glazed tiles. It was never used as a fireplace, but Jeanette kept her copper cooking pans hanging there. They were never used either, but had once belonged to Auxille’s mother. A small patch of old Provence among the spanking new. The kitchen, at the back, seemed to be cut into the rock and had no natural light. A huge beam ran across the ceiling and looked as if it could carry the weight of three houses, not one. The bedrooms were down winding stairs, Jeanette and Macon’s with a large bed, a quilted shiny pink bedspread and a brown tiled floor, Auxille’s no larger than a cupboard, with one tiny window and an airless lavender smell of old woman. Mireille was to sleep on the sofa, which, when Macon tugged it enough, creaked itself into a bed. During the day the Blancs lived in the café. It was only at night they sat upstairs.
Macon, in front of the television, was nodding into a post-dinner stupor. Auxille and Jeanette washing up, both talking loudly about unconnected topics and Mireille straining to hear them above the noise of the television. Outside young men shouted to each other across the square. A dog started barking, then another, then another. Macon’s old hound momentarily twitched its ears.
On Easter Sunday they went to church. Jeanette dressed up in twice as much jewellery as when she went to market. Auxille in black, Macon in a suit, and Mireille with backache and a headache. The church was cold and badly lit. It had been recently painted but still managed to look faded and crumbling. Large ugly paintings of gesticulating saints hung above the side altars. In a chapel the statue of the Virgin Mary held a bright pink Jesus in front of a wall crammed with votive paintings depicting various tiny miracles. A runaway cart that didn’t squash anybody. A wheel falling off another and nobody hurt. A baby in a wooden cot and its equally wooden mother praying to the statue in the sky. 1808. 1854. 1873. 1902. Mireille read the dates. The priest, youngish and vigorous, was doing his best to rouse the congregation with his sermon, but they were there, he knew, only to look at each other and gossip afterwards. 1865. 1918. Plenty of those. A soldier returning up a track to be greeted by his family. 1926. 1935. But whoever had painted that one still hadn’t learned about perspective. The last one was 1945 and showed the village decked out with flags. They were in the middle of the offertory now. Jeanette was craning her neck to see who had made it to church and who hadn’t. Macon was nearly asleep. Auxille was the only one who was holy, whispering through her rosary prayers with a look of detached peace on her face. Mireille looked at the paintings again and one caught her eye. The rock at the Ferrou, badly painted but recognisable by the black split down it. The sun above it and underneath the words: ‘Thank you. 1942.’ Thank you for what? She would ask Auxille.
But after mass there was no time for questions. Jeanette introduced Mireille to the rest of the villagers, who stayed outside the church shaking hands with the priest and complaining about each other. She described Mireille variously as ‘an expert on orchids’, ‘a journalist’ and ‘the daughter of the famous British architect’. Having a guest had given Jeanette an exalted sense of status, and, despite her orange and pink dress, bare legs and those red shoes, she still managed to look like an important guest at a garden party.
Then it was lunch! And that was going to take all afternoon. A gigot of lamb, hard-boiled eggs and a salade sauvage. Local red wine, coarse but not unpalatable, and Macon even turned the television off. They ate in the closed café, the tables pushed together and covered with the best linen.
‘… and did you see Madame Cabasson’s niece …’ said Jeanette, serving up. ‘Pink cheeked, and how plump she looks. I’m sure she’s pregnant.’
‘And he’s a policeman,’ said Auxille.
‘And wasn’t that the Villeneuve’s youngest daughter near the back in green with a smart hat? She must be getting married soon but she will get married in Paris for sure. Did I hear she became a lawyer? Mireille, more salad, it’s good for the digestion.’
‘Was that picture of the Ferrou given by Old Man Henri?’ asked Mireille, but neither Jeanette nor Auxille could remember such a picture. The church fittings were not the reason why they went there.
‘During the war there were many miracles,’ said Jeanette. ‘Our Lady spared many lives,’ and she blessed herself to revere this fact.
‘But not your father’s,’ said Macon into his wine glass. ‘Your parents were married five years before they had you. Now that is a miracle.’
‘Hold your tongue on this holy day!’ snapped Jeanette, but Auxille hadn’t heard. She was telling Mireille about her grandfather. ‘Old Man Henri was a shepherd from the Maures and every year he used to take the sheep up to the Alpine pastures.’ She looked fondly at the new painting now balanced above the fireplace. ‘But one year he was resting with the flock near the river at Lieux and a village girl came down to wash the clothes (they did that then), and what a picture she was, dark hair, rosy cheeks, a true Provençal, and just fifteen …’
Mireille had heard this story before and so had Jeanette and Macon, hundreds of times.
‘That’s the carpet I bought with your mother’s money,’ said Jeanette, pointing to a patterned rug on the floor. ‘Your mother, I remember her so well. What a lady. Très gentille. Très sympa. Très élégante …’
‘Of course he had to give up being a shepherd, because my grandmother’s father said he would never let his daughter be married to one … he became a carpenter but he liked the open air too much, he walked for hours in the hills … but when she died during the war, an appendix complication and they couldn’t get a doctor, he wouldn’t live in the village again. He bought the land at the Ferrou and lived like a hermit.’
‘Of course, if they had built that house, that mansion, you might have married a French boy, a cousin of the Villeneuves’, but that wasn’t to be and now the Ferrou is a wilderness. Who can find it? It is forgotten.’ She was becoming poetic.
‘… and he lived like a hermit until he died and he didn’t want company, and he didn’t
