He was shaggy all over, his dark eyes glinting at me from deep inside his matted fur. “Thank you for finding me,” I said to him. “Merci.”
“Merci merci,” came an echoing voice from the door. The man who stood there filled the doorway. He was holding a glass of water, but he did not seem to want to come into the room, and kept repeating “merci” over and over again. The dog got up and walked over to him, tail high and waving. But he paid it no attention. The man’s eyes were fixed on me, unwavering, unblinking. There was nothing alarming about his gaze. It was steady, not staring. He was scrutinising me, I felt, much in the same way as I was examining him.
Everything about him was long and tall. His arms hung loose at his sides. He had sloping shoulders under his blue jacket, and huge hands, I noticed. There was light in the room only from the flickering fire and from the oil lamp on the table where the woman had been writing, so I could not see his face that well. He did not seem to want to talk, but simply stood there, considering me. I said nothing, because I could not think of anything to say. I turned to gaze into the fire.
The woman with the silver hair came in a while later, carrying a tray. “This is Lorenzo,” she said. “He does not say much. He speaks more with his eyes, don’t you, Renzo?”
“Renzo,” he said, coming slowly towards me. “Renzo Renzo.” He was tapping the side of his head as he spoke; and then, breaking into a sudden loud laugh of delight, he bent down and picked up my hand, but not to shake as I supposed. He lifted it to his nose. He was smelling my hand. His face was close to mine then, his nose almost touching my hair. He was smelling that too, then stroking it, and smelling his own hand afterwards.
“You must not worry. It is how he gets to know people,” the woman explained. “You will find he is friendly to everyone who is kind. And he is never friendly to those who are not. He thinks you are kind, so you must be. Lorenzo is never wrong about people.
“Oh, pardonnez-moi – I am so sorry. I am being most impolite,” she went on. “I am Kezia, Kezia Charbonneau. Lorenzo and I, we are like brother and sister, you could almost say. But we are best friends. Meilleurs amis. We grew up together, and now we look after each other, and the farm, and the flamingos, don’t we? N’est-ce pas, Renzo?”
But this Lorenzo was not listening. He was still occupied totally with examining me, bending over me, his eyes peering deep into mine. I never saw eyes kinder nor more intense than his. He seemed to be seeking out my soul. It was troubling to me at first – no one had ever looked at me like this before. I was unsettled also by the hugeness of his presence so close to me, but there was an overwhelming sense of tenderness about him that banished all fear. He was no threat to me, but he was strange. He seemed like a middle-aged man, but had the open face of a boy.
Kezia set the tray down on the table beside me. The soup smelled wonderful, and there was bread and cheese beside it.
“Eat, Vincent, eat,” she told me. “Mangez.”
“Mangez mangez,” Lorenzo echoed, and lifted his arms slowly, making great wings of them, and then he was honking just like a flamingo.
“This he always does when he is happy,” Kezia said, smiling. I noticed her earrings then, like golden crescent moons they were, shining in the light of the fire. “Sometimes I think he is half Lorenzo, half flamingo,” she went on. “He can walk like them too, talk like them. You will see.”
“Flam flam!” Lorenzo was saying, clapping his hands excitedly. “Flam flam!” And then suddenly he was waving at me, saying goodbye. He turned away, opened the front door and left.
“Before he goes to bed, he has to see his beloved flamingos,” Kezia went on, “the ones he has rescued, mostly young ones, chicks, fledglings. He looks after them in his shed, feeds them. There are other animals in there too. It is like a hospital. He likes to spend a little time there in the evenings with them, to say goodnight. Now, you must eat your soup, Vincent, before it gets cold.”
She sat down again in her chair, watching me and smiling approvingly when she saw how much I was enjoying the soup. It was warming me from the roots of my hair down to my toes.
“You will stay with us until you are strong, Vincent,” she said. “Lorenzo and me, we shall look after you, make you better. To him, you are like one of his lost fledgling flamingos, and to me you are a welcome guest. We shall not put you in his hospital shed, I promise you. He keeps it as clean as he can, but the creatures he looks after in there, they do smell, and you would not like it. You shall stay here in the house, by the fire. Between Lorenzo and me, we shall make you well again, you will see.”
She smiled at me. “Vincent. It is a good name,” she went on. “Français aussi, vous savez. It is a French name also.”
“Where am I?” I asked her, looking about me.
“On a farm,” she told me. “On a farm far out in the marshes, in the middle of nowhere, you could say, a few kilometres down the road, along the canal from a little town called Aigues-Mortes. Do you know this place? Have you been there?”
I shook my head. I was still bewildered, my head full of so many questions. “How come you speak English so well?” I asked her.
“Ah ça, c’est une histoire. That is a story, Vincent, a long story, one that I might tell you when I know you better. First, we have to make you well again. You must have lots of sleep, and peace and quiet. You will stay here with us for a few days and rest.” She reached out and felt my forehead again. “You have a fever still. We shall have you better again, but it will take time. You cannot hurry a fever. No more questions. Sleep well. Dormez bien.”
I don’t think I had ever been properly ill before this in all my life. I had had a day or two off school with coughs and colds, but mostly with invented illnesses to avoid some lesson or test I didn’t want to have to face. This was different. This was the real thing. My head ached, my legs ached, every part of me ached. I seemed one moment to be shivering uncontrollably with cold, and the next I was pouring with sweat – often both together. Night and day, I hovered on the cusp of sleep. In and out of my dreams, the wind seemed always to be blowing, whistling down the chimney, rattling the windows and shaking the shutters. And whenever I woke it always took some time for me to remember where I was now, what had happened, how I had got here. I still had little idea where I was.
But each day, whenever I woke, the faces I saw around me were becoming more familiar, more reassuring. One of them, either Kezia or Lorenzo, was always nearby, somewhere in the room, keeping an eye on me, waiting for me to wake. And, more often than not, Ami would be lying there by the fire, or would be sitting right by me, eyeing me through his fur. Kezia might be sitting in her chair opposite, mending clothes or writing in her notebook. When Lorenzo was there, he would be close to me, his hand resting often on my hair, his eyes closed. Sometimes I would wake up and find him blowing gently on my forehead, humming softly to me. When he noticed I was awake, or saw my eyes open, he would at once spring to his feet, clapping his hands with delight, calling to Kezia to come. Often,
