Children of Light Read online

  Dark-suited men with donkeys, hooded women and tangled-haired children who followed us asking for money. It felt so foreign. French, German, Spanish, nobody spoke these languages. We had to haggle over prices. Food was scarce. What did these people live off? Bread and goat’s meat? We were waiting to cross the border but I was full of despair. I didn’t want to have my baby by some roadside tea house with villagers standing and watching. I was six months pregnant. The baby turned and kicked inside me.

  I pleaded with Gregor. Let’s go back to Spain. Let’s find a place by the sea and wait until the baby’s born. Please, let’s find somewhere familiar. He didn’t change his plans for anyone, but I cried for nearly two days. What I was afraid of more was that he would leave me. Then in the night he got up and started the van. I was asleep. I woke up and we were moving. ‘Where are we going?’ I said, thinking he was trying to sneak me over the border.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gregor, ‘but I’m going to find you a house to have your baby.’

  It’s April and we’re still in Turkey. We’re in Cappadocia, near the cave city and the hot springs of Pamukkale. The countryside is extraordinary. Boulders on top of weathered spires of rock. Miles and miles of twisted rock formations, but the land is green and it’s spring. The caves and the rocks are pulling at my memory and I’m thinking of the Ferrou, the great rock with the split. We’ve been staying in a peach tree grove for a few days and the trees are in flower. Beyond us is the strange moonscape of Cappadocia and I’m thinking, trees and rocks and a little hut below a village. Water in the tap. Food in the market. Jeanette and Auxille coming out of the café. I’m looking over the beautiful weird landscape thinking of the Ferrou, and the baby inside me moves and stretches as if it too can feel my thoughts. I want to go home. I wake up Gregor, who is asleep like a bear in the van. ‘I know where we can go,’ I say.

  ‘Was ist? Was ist?’ he mumbles. He turns over and grunts, then he sits up.

  ‘Schoolgirl, let the old man sleep!’

  He looks at me. He has not seen me so excited and animated for months.

  ‘I know where we can go,’ I say, ‘I know where the key is. There’s a little hut in France. I know how to get there.’

  We arrived in early May. We didn’t go to the village but straight to the hut. I remembered the way, the turns and twists of the road I had not been down since I was ten. We walked up through the terraces. I can see myself, pregnant, clambering up the path, excited, but nervous in case the hut isn’t there anymore, and Gregor in front of me, turning round to help me.

  Then I see it. The rock and the hut on the rock and we’re walking along the terrace towards it. It’s just as I remember, it’s just the same. If my father was there waving at us I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m crying now because it’s what I want. Gregor’s already looking for the key. I tell him it’s under a stone at the back and he’s found it. He’s opening the door. He enters the black space and I daren’t go close in case he’s disappointed, but he comes out all smiles and stretches out his arms to welcome me. He’s hugging me and I’m crying. He’s saying, ‘See, we have found a home, now you must start smiling.’ But I’m not sad, I’m relieved and happy. I’m so happy.

  Is this the same night? Gregor’s made a fire and brought the bedding up from the van. We’re sleeping on the floor. We’re making love. Yes, I do remember this. I’m naked and pregnant and it’s all a bit awkward, arms, legs, and my big belly, but we’re making love and I feel blissful. Gregor’s beard is tickling me and he grunts in my ear like this: huh, huh, huh. I’m holding his shoulders. His shoulders are hairy too, and his back. He feels like a carpet and the baby inside me feels squashed up and slightly surprised at this intrusion because we haven’t done this for ages. I hold on to Gregor and it’s like a strange dance where he doesn’t miss a beat once. Huh, huh, huh. I hold tighter and it feels like we’re tumbling round and round in space.

  Is this the next day? We’re sitting outside the café and here is Jeanette, older and plumper, but I recognise her immediately, and there are Auxille and Macon. I look at Jeanette and she looks at me and I say, ‘Jeanette, c’est moi, Mireille!’

  She throws up her hands and shrieks, ‘Maman, viens ici!’ and we’re all shaking hands and hugging.

  Gregor and Macon, later, drunk as lords and singing, and Auxille too, starts to sing, one of the songs her grandfather taught her. Gregor listens, slaps the table and shouts ‘Splendide!’ and we all join in the chorus. We’re all singing late into the night. Is this what really happened? It’s what I remember. It’s what I want to remember. Gregor, I’ve forgotten so much. You are the only person who would remember and you always said to me, don’t look back, keep going forward. Have you forgotten as well? If I asked you, what would you remember?

  I showed you the Ferrou on a day as hot as this, but by the water it was shady and cool. You bent down, cupped your hands and drank. Then you stood up and looked at the great rock.

  ‘Now I understand, little schoolgirl, why you wanted to come here.’

  Mireille left her journal and walked through the woods to the gully. No birds sang there. The pool was as still as a mirror. She knelt by the side and touched the surface lightly with her finger tips. Ripples ran across, breaking the reflection into fragments, but, underneath, the water was as still and dark as it had ever been. It was too cold to swim.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  For the rest of the week Mireille worked clearing paths along the terraces. By Friday it was possible to walk unhindered up into the woods, to the Ferrou, by way of the hammock and down into the gully. The sun was high in the sky and the noises from the farm had stopped. The sun made the countryside static. With the spring rain and wind there had been a feeling of movement, of change, as clouds fell and lifted, hiding and revealing, but the sun made the air hang. It was only the progression of it across the sky that altered the view, creating shadows from different angles. With the sun, anything in the shade was darker and anything in its light was intensified to the point of being almost dazzling.

  Mireille worked in the sun. Freckles joined up across her shoulders and face. She wore shorts and a loose shirt. Her hair had lost its straight-across cut and was curling now towards her shoulders. It made her seem both younger and older at the same time. Younger, because she had a youthful figure and a way of moving that was still like an adolescent, whose legs and arms have a will of their own, and older because with whiter hair and browner skin she was like an old peasant woman.

  Late afternoon and the sun moved towards the village. The shadows in the valley were the darkest green now, nearly indigo, and the light was as golden as treacle. Mireille threw the last of the clearings into the gully. The water would rot down any debris; it was the only place to put garden rubbish. Fires were out of the question. When it was dry the land was like a tinderbox. She had never seen a forest fire and she didn’t want to.

  At the hut she took a tub of water outside, stripped off and washed herself down. The water stung, she had bramble scratches on her arms and legs, but it was wonderful to be clean. Inside the hut she stuck her head under the tap and washed her hair. She had learned to live like this with Gregor. How to keep clean with one tub of water. How to cook a meal in one pan. Wash clothes when it was sunny. Collect rainwater in buckets.

  Dressed in her pyjamas she sat at the table. On it were jam jars full of wild flowers and their smell filled the hut. She had had enough of outdoors for one day.

  Friday 13th May. Early evening

  The orchids are nearly over. I noticed this today when I was clearing a path up to the woods. I am going to have to make up another excuse. So much for my scientific survey. I didn’t even find out the botanical names. But in the village it seems to be accepted I’m staying here for a while. If people don’t want you around they soon let you know. I don’t know why I’ve been working so hard. It feels like I’ve settled in. Money isn’t a problem yet, but by the end of the summer it will be. I must remember it’s possibl
e to live on next to nothing. This is how I lived with Gregor and I don’t remember ever being hungry. I don’t remember going without anything. I don’t remember feeling poor.

  Gregor loved the hut. We made it like it is now, with a bed, pots and pans and a table.

  I’m very pregnant and hanging the washing outside today. Gregor’s making some stools out of pine wood. There’s salad, bread and salami on the table.

  Gregor hasn’t had a home for years, only his yellow van, but here we are cooking, eating, sleeping, finding things for the hut. This is our little home and we are as happy as squirrels in a tree.

  In the evening we go up to Le Sanglier and chat to Macon and Jeanette. Gregor’s French isn’t as good as mine but talking to Macon it doesn’t matter. ‘ça va? ‘Bien!’ ‘Encore du vin?’ ‘Eh alors!’ Macon says there might be some work, he could do with some extra help. Gregor is German, but he’s only half German and he knows how to drink. I talk to Jeanette. Auxille is in the kitchen making dinner. There’s always customers at La Sanglier. Jeanette wears a white apron over her dress. How lucky I am to be having a baby, she says. She and Macon, well, they tried, and there was nothing wrong with her, it made her depressed at first, but now she’s busy with the café and Maman will let her do the cooking soon. But it’s a shame because she has no sisters and Macon’s family, they aren’t the best of friends, it would be nice to be an auntie.

  Perhaps my baby will be a boy. Then won’t my mother be pleased?

  Gregor says I mustn’t tell lies but I have told another one. I told Jeanette my mother knows I’m here. That she said we could live in the hut. Gregor doesn’t know this. He can’t follow Jeanette’s twanging French, and Macon has no interest in the ins and outs of families. Jeanette talks about my parents a lot. How stylish and elegant they were. When she talks about them I want to cry because my father’s dead and I have run away from home and my mother will probably never talk to me again. Jeanette says I must write to my mother and tell her the news in the village. She would love to write herself but she knows her handwriting is poor and it is an embarrassment to her to write to a woman as chic as my mother, and isn’t she concerned that her daughter, still so young, is going to take a baby to India?

  I nod and smile and drink my wine. Gregor and Macon have been joined by Gués, a bus driver who lives on the road to Lieux. There’s going to be a boules match on Sunday, perhaps Gregor can come and watch, and does he know anything about carburettors? He doesn’t look too German. Odette is closing up the shop. She looks across the square at Gregor, then at me. Unsuitable husbands, pregnant young girls. She’s seen it all before.

  I was going to have the baby in the little hospital in Rochas. I had been there several times already. The doctor poked and prodded me, but I wasn’t scared because Gregor was there. The hospital was old-fashioned with metal-framed windows and echoing corridors. There was a large cedar on the lawn outside. Nobody was quite sure when this baby was due. I had been given three different dates. I wasn’t afraid of giving birth because Gregor would be with me. When he was in Alabama a black woman had gone into labour on the bus, and had her child at the back of a diner on the highway. He had held her hand the whole way through. ‘As soon as she saw that baby, she forgot the pain, oh yes, that is how it will be for you.’ And I believed him.

  I enjoyed that last month. I felt dreamy and detached. I stayed at the hut basking in the sun like a melon, huge and ripe. I swam in the Ferrou, the water taking the weight away from me until I felt light and agile again. In the hut I filled the tin trunk with all the things I would need. Nappies, little baby clothes. I knew nothing about babies, but I don’t remember this bothering me. I don’t remember anything bothering me.

  It was midsummer day 1972. Gregor left the hut early in the morning. He was working with Macon at the farm by the château. I think they were building a wall. I had my breakfast outside. I remember this because it was a hot day. The sky was completely blue, pure cobalt, even in the morning. I could see the mountains, so clear, it was as if I could see every peak. I sat there for hours. Then, I suddenly felt energetic. I had done nothing more active over the last month than walk to the Ferrou and back. Yes, I would clean out the hut. I swept the floor. I washed the floor. I aired the bedding. I scrubbed the table. It was wonderful to be so busy, but it was odd, it was like it was happening to somebody else, like it was when I was looking at the mountains. I put the mattress back on the sleeping platform.

  There’s sweat running down my face and down between my breasts. My belly feels tight and uncomfortable and there’s a wetness between my legs. I think it’s blood, but it’s not, it’s just wetness, perhaps it’s sweat. I’m so hot now, all I can think about is being cool. The hut isn’t cool, the only place that is cool is the Ferrou.

  I’m walking to the Ferrou and it’s taking me a long time. My back aches. My legs don’t seem to work. I’m getting pains now like cramp, like period pains but worse. When they come I have to stop and lean against a tree. I want to put my feet in the cold water. I want to lie on the grass. I know I have to get there.

  I splash myself with cold water. I want to swim but I feel so heavy I know I’ll sink to the bottom. I thought I saw my father at the top of the rock. The sun is shining into the pool. When I look at the water I see the sun. I know it’s started now and I’m scared. I’m scared to look up at the rock. I’m on my hands and knees on the grass and each time the pains come it feels like I’m falling off the rock. I just have time to scramble up then it starts again.

  And now I’m splitting. I’m splitting in two and I’m sure I’m dying. I do look up, at the wet split down the rock and I’m crying. I’m crouching by the water which is still and the sun has moved. It’s no longer a pool of light, it’s a pool of dark. Then it starts again …

  Sanclair was born by the side of the pool. Nobody knows this. I didn’t tell Gregor and I’ve never told Sanclair. This is my secret. He was born and I thought he was dead because he didn’t cry. I was frantic. I was going to dunk him in the cold water, placenta and all, because I thought it might revive him, but then I looked at him and he looked at me. He had such clear eyes. He had fair hair and he was breathing with a sort of gurgle. I picked him up and wrapped him in my skirt. He was still looking at me, taking it all in. He looked so old and wise and young and new and so utterly and completely beautiful. It felt like I was holding a piece of the sun. I’ve fallen in love twice in my life and that was the first time. This is my secret.

  I must have walked back to the hut because then I’m in bed. I’ve cut the cord with a kitchen knife and tied it with my shoelace. I don’t know what to do with the placenta so I’ve left it on the table. Sanclair is crying now, loudly, and I’m laughing. ‘What a noise you make.’ He hasn’t got a name yet. I put him against my nipple and he starts to suck. Then Gregor comes back.

  It all goes crazy and we’re laughing and crying at the same time. I forget to tell him it happened at the Ferrou. Somehow it doesn’t seem to matter now. What is real is this squeaking bundle of pink whose cries are becoming louder. Gregor thinks he ought to get the doctor because the baby is here two weeks before anybody’s dates.

  He comes back with old Doctor Perrigues, who enters the hut and exclaims, ‘I didn’t think people still lived like this!’ He redoes the baby’s cord. I need a few stitches. He says we must keep as clean as we can. He says the baby is a fine size. He wishes us well and takes the placenta away. And now it’s quiet. Gregor is cooking. The baby is asleep and I’m so tired I want to sleep as well.

  It’s strange writing this when I had a baby only six months ago and my belly still feels soft and sometimes my nipples are tender. That birth was so different. I was in hospital wired up to a machine because the heartbeat was irregular. The winter baby. Sanclair’s eyes were full of the sun and the blue sky, but that baby had dark eyes like the bottom of the pool. He had dark hair. He looked at me once and it was like looking into nothingness, like looking into infinity.

 
Saturday morning

  Last night I dreamed I was at Bellevue. It’s not a place I dream about much. But I dreamed I lived there with Felix. He was in the sitting room smoking dope with his friends and I was in the kitchen cooking. Somehow we had become respectable. Dog-ear and Paignton wore suits and Rosebud was in a little cocktail dress like my mother used to wear. I think we were going to have a dinner party. Yes, and Pammy was there too, because we had a baby. Pammy came down the stairs to show us the baby who was all dressed up in an old-fashioned embroidered nightie. In the dream I started to think, but this isn’t real because I haven’t got any babies. This baby looked so real. It had pink cheeks and dark hair and was wide awake, looking at me with blue eyes. I wanted to hold it and kiss it and cuddle it. I put out my arms and Pammy gave me the baby. I put its cheek against mine and I smelled that fresh skin baby smell. They have such soft skin. I felt so happy. I wanted it to be real.

  Shit.

  I’m sad this morning. When I woke up I started crying. I’m feeling better now but floppy like a rag. I’ve just read what I wrote last night and it didn’t seem real either. Surely, surely I didn’t really have Sanclair up by the pool. That is so fantastic. Then I walked all the way back to the hut? When I read it, it sounded ludicrous. All these years I haven’t questioned it, but now I’m living in the reality of it. The brambles, the rocks, the ants. I think I must have dreamed it. I think I must have made it up. I lived here for four years with Gregor. I think of them as the four happiest years of my life, but when I try to remember, it slips away. I remember vivid patches, but in between I can’t find anything of substance. I see the same pictures again and again. Me and the baby. Me and the baby. Laughing. Singing. Happy. In the sun.

  Gregor was right when he said, don’t look back because when you do the pictures you remember are just like reflections in water. One poke of reality and they start to quiver.