Children of Light Read online

  ‘Shut up, Julian.’

  ‘Will you cry out in ecstasy like you did this afternoon, I wonder.’

  ‘Shut up!’

  He lowers his voice to a velvet whisper. ‘And next week and the week after when you’re back in your shed washing his underpants in cold water, will you remember how I took you in the wine cellar?’

  I can hear a car coming up the drive. Julian moves closer to me. ‘You arch little wench, your German is never going to know, is he?’

  I wanted Gregor to walk through the door and see immediately I had betrayed him. I wanted him to shout, ‘What have you done?’ I wanted him to be suspicious and ask me why I was at the château and not at the Ferrou. But it wasn’t like that.

  They all came through the door and Gregor was the last. He saw me and hugged me. ‘I have so many things to tell you, yes, I went to St Paul de Vence. I saw a film about the Baba. Miriam and Shula and Badouin, they saw it too. I think our lives have been changed, I must tell you, yes.’

  We ate our dinner and everybody was talking, not about the exhibition but about the Baba.

  ‘He is just the most fabulous man I have ever seen …’ said Miriam.

  ‘He radiates wisdom and tranquillity …’ said Shula.

  ‘His eyes are so deep and wide …’ said Miriam.

  ‘How do I say this? I felt when he spoke, yes, he was speaking just for me …’ said Gregor.

  ‘Julian, I have to tell you, he does have the most extraordinary effect,’ said Badouin.

  ‘What a pity I didn’t go. Things have been dull around here.’ And he shot me a mocking glance.

  In bed I wanted Gregor to hug me and hold me and make love. I wanted to be back in our little safe hut, but Gregor wouldn’t stop talking.

  ‘Yes, I must go and see this man, this Baba. I must see him for myself. Yes, we must all go to India …’

  I pulled the sheets around me. ‘Gregor, I don’t want to go to India,’ I said and then I knew it was all over.

  I want to stop writing this and start my day. It must be lunchtime now. I’ve been picking at the bread on the table and now there’s none. That was a stupid thing to do. I’m not going to walk to the village in this rain. If it doesn’t stop tomorrow I’ll have to, I’m running out of food. I wish I had a car now.

  I wish I had a car so I could drive up into the mountains and breathe that clean, pure air. I wish I had a car so I could go to Castellane. I’ve never been to Castellane. I wish I had a car so I could go anywhere. I wish I could stop feeling I have to keep writing this. I wish I could stop feeling bad about what I’m writing. When I write it, I remember how it felt. I was feeling then that awful sense of inevitability when something is finishing, is ending and there’s nothing you can do about it. It feels a bit like giving birth, that oh-my-God-here-we-go feeling. Knowing it’s going to be awful but at least with a birth you have a lovely baby at the end of it.

  Sometimes.

  I’ll put that a different way. With a birth you hope, you believe, there’s going to be a lovely baby at the end of it. What it felt like at the end of that summer was like giving birth to a dead baby.

  I don’t remember many details about the last month. I know I didn’t go to the château. I stayed here with Sanclair and the puppy, called Dou-dou. I know what happened. Badouin offered to pay for everybody to go to India and he would go too. He had had a good exhibition. He was feeling generous. I know that Julian decided to go as well. Perhaps he didn’t want to be left out. I know all these things. I’m trying to remember. I can see myself hanging up the washing and Sanclair playing with Dou-dou on the rock rose terrace. It has been raining but the sun is now out and the grass is becoming just a bit green again. Over the hills clouds are gathering. The yellow van is parked down on the road. Where is Gregor?

  I’m in bed and Sanclair and the puppy are both in the little bed on the floor. I’m not asleep. My feet are cold. I’m thinking about Julian. I’m thinking about the room of mirrors and watching ourselves copulating on the chaise longue. I’m thinking of the grand table, the silver candlesticks, the bowl of fruit on the sideboard. Gregor is there and he’s not with me. I climb down the ladder and light the lamp. Sanclair wakes up, all sleepy. He says, ‘ça va, Maman?’ and I say, ‘My feet are cold, I’m going to find some socks.’ He says, ‘Dou-dou and I can warm you,’ and he picks up the drowsy puppy and climbs up the ladder. Under the sheets Sanclair is as warm as a hot-water bottle and the puppy sniffles in my ear. Sanclair starts to snore now, very softly like the wheeze of an accordion. These are comforting noises.

  Gregor is going to India for three months, then he will be back. Is this the last day? Is this the last week? He’s playing with Sanclair and the puppy by the Ferrou. It’s still warm enough to swim but the leaves on the trees are turning yellow now and the days are shorter.

  They’re splashing and shouting. If Gregor shaved off his beard you could see how alike they look. Something about the way Sanclair laughs sounds like Gregor. An easy laugh that isn’t cynical or sneering. They’re out of the water now and sitting in the patch of sun. Sanclair knows his papa is going away but it doesn’t mean much. He’s been away before. Gregor is drying Sanclair down and he’s squeaking like the puppy. Then Gregor puts his hands on his hips and looks up at the rock, which at the moment is casting a shadow across the pool. My father looked at the rock like that. The sun is rising above the rock, soon it will be shining right into the water. I know what Gregor is thinking.

  ‘Yes, that would be most interesting …’ says Gregor and walks towards the rock. I get up and rush towards him, but Gregor has already started the climb. He holds out his hand to Sanclair like my father did to me. I was too scared to accept, but Sanclair isn’t.

  ‘Oh, be careful!’ I wail, an unwelcome voice, and they pay no attention. I watch them. Gregor bare-chested, going first, going slowly towards the split and then up it. Sanclair behind him looking very small, in red shorts and sandals, pushing his hair out of his eyes and looking up. Don’t look down, Sanclair. I’m as scared as I was when Hugo climbed the rock and now there’s two of them. The two people I love the most. I watch as they move. Gregor slow and methodical but Sanclair as agile as a monkey. He swings himself up. He has no idea of the danger, it’s just exciting.

  Then they’re at the top, both of them. Gregor picks up Sanclair and puts him on his shoulders. I can hear Sanclair shouting, ‘Regardes les montagnes! Regardes! Regardes!’

  The puppy next to me starts barking and Gregor’s laugh is booming out across the valley. ‘We are on top of the world. We are on top of the world!’ He puts Sanclair down and they are holding hands. I can see their reflections on the surface of the water, as still as a mirror. I want to be up there with them, but I know I could never climb the rock.

  When they come down I’m waiting for them. ‘I’m going to go up there every day!’ says Sanclair.

  ‘Not on your own, never climb on your own,’ says Gregor.

  ‘Maman can come with me,’ says Sanclair.

  ‘I don’t like heights,’ I say apologetically. ‘I feel dizzy. I get scared.’

  Sanclair is puzzled. ‘But you get as high as the mountains. You get higher. You get as high as the clouds.’

  ‘She likes the ground and the water, don’t you, my little schoolgirl?’ He hasn’t called me that for weeks and we look at each other. Our eyes connect. He’s sad to go too, but how many times has he moved on? How many people has he left?

  ‘This is a special place here,’ says Gregor, ‘and I will always remember it. Thank you.’

  Old Man Henri said that on the votive painting. Thank you.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The rain stopped and evening was coming down into the valley. The grass and the trees were heavy with rain. The paths down the hillside were wet streams of mud, gurgling into drains when they reached the road, and darkness followed them. The clouds drifted apart like thin material wearing thinner, and in between were bright stars, at first one or t
wo, then gradually more, until there were only a few threads of clouds and a whole embroidered lining of starry night. The valley was quiet. A pheasant clucked, disturbed in the forest, a dog barked at the farm. Behind the trees the hut was invisible. Just the thinnest chink of light escaped through the shutters, but there was no other indication that the hut wasn’t as black and as lonely as the rock it sat on.

  Tuesday. Evening

  Tomorrow I will go out, rain or no rain. I’m beginning to feel stir-crazy. Sanclair used to play in the rain and didn’t care if he got wet. I’ve done everything I needed to do and now what is there to do? What is there to do down here? I didn’t think I would feel like this. Bored. No, I’m not bored, I’m restless. I want something to happen. A big event. A little event. Perhaps I’m not as solitary as I thought I was. When I lived on the narrowboat, at first the other canal people annoyed me. I could hear them, talking, playing music, cooking. Then I got used to it. I could tell which noise was whose. That was Barney and Rosebud calling for their cat. That was Jim on his bike. That was the Bigbys pumping out the bilge. And the bonfires where Barney’s crew used to hang out playing strummy guitar music and that damned didgeridoo. God, it used to drive me nuts! Now I listen and I hear nobody.

  They all went to India. They had a leaving party at the château and I didn’t go. I don’t remember saying goodbye to Gregor. I remember sitting here as I am now, at night with the lamp on the table, listening to the door creaking, to Sanclair and the puppy snoring, to the wind in the trees. Listening for the sound of people, but there weren’t any people.

  I remember the colours of that autumn, the yellows and the golds and the first chill in the air. Chopping up wood for the stove. Carrying shopping up from the car. Doing things that Gregor had done with ease but which seemed to take me three times longer. Getting colder at night. Singing in the café but for fewer and fewer tourists. How would I make money? How would I live for three months right into the winter until Gregor came back? Feeling hungry. Despairing at Sanclair’s appetite. How could I feed him? How could I feed the dog? Jeanette, Auxille, Odette, they all watched me, sympathy mixed with nosiness to see what would happen to me.

  I was sitting outside the café on one of the warmer October days, wondering if I had enough money for another coffee, when Jeanette came to talk to me.

  She showed me a photograph. ‘Look, I found it in a drawer when I was throwing out old things. I thought I would become thinner as I got older, like Maman, but that is not the case. But perhaps it is better to have good bosoms.’ Jeanette’s good bosoms were hoisted up for the world to see. She was in her thirties then and still outstandingly attractive. She had not lost her curvy plumpness. Only her hands were ageing, cracked and wrinkled from too much washing-up. She gave me the photograph. It was a black and white snapshot of my mother and father and myself outside Le Sanglier. Looking at it was like a slap round my face. My glamorous parents. My mother smiling, my father relaxing in white and me, ten years old, skinny and scowling with messy hair. Three people long gone. I gave the picture back. I didn’t want to look at it.

  ‘Oh no!’ said Jeanette. ‘Send it to your mama. Tell her how pleased I was to find it. I have so many photographs she can keep this one. A souvenir of St Clair.’

  I looked at it again. My mother with that hard, bright smile. My father suppressing a laugh. What were they saying to each other? ‘Hugo, darling, that French tart wants to take a picture. Do you think she knows how?’ ‘Shh, Vivienne, not so loud.’ ‘Come on, Hugo, sit up straight, all she really wants is a picture of your trousers …’

  My mother in a cream, blue and red suit, taking jumble bags to the bring-and-buy. Another autumn.

  Sanclair came and sat next to me. ‘Is that Papa in India?’

  ‘No, this is your grandmother.’

  ‘Madame Blanc’s my grandmère. Can we go to the farm?’

  ‘This is your real grandmother. This is my mother. This is my father and this is me.’

  ‘That isn’t you. You don’t look like that.’

  ‘A long time ago.’

  Sanclair looked at the picture closely. ‘Your mama is smart. Your papa doesn’t look like my papa. Can we go and see them? Will they give me presents?’

  ‘My papa is dead. My mama lives in England.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a mama and papa … why are you crying?’

  I couldn’t stop. I wanted to see my mother. I had run away and left her alone and now I was alone. I deserved it. Jeanette hugged me. She was the nosiest person in the world apart from Auxille, but at that moment she didn’t ask me any questions and I was glad she didn’t.

  ‘Young girls need their mothers,’ said Jeanette. I wondered if finding the photograph had been so accidental, but I didn’t care. She was hugging me and comforting me in a way my mother never had.

  That night I wrote to Vivienne. It took me ages. I wrote, ‘I’m sorry I ran away. I now have a little boy called Sanclair. We have been living in the hut. Gregor has gone to India for three months. Please write to me c/o Le Sanglier, St Clair,’ and I sent her the photograph.

  She did write. The answer came on an expensive card with roses on the front. All it said was, ‘Darling Mireille, please come home.’

  She stopped writing. She opened the door and stepped outside. Away from the beam of light from the door she could see the clouds had lifted. She looked up and between the branches of the pine trees curved a whole sky full of shimmering stars.

  ‘So big!’ she said and stretched out her arms.

  LIEUX

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Saturday 21st May. Afternoon

  I’m writing this in the square in Lieux. There are two cafés next to each other. One is more expensive and has red tablecloths and I’m in the other one. The chairs and tables spill out around the fountain. Here, as in St Clair, plane trees make the square cool and shady. It’s hot now and it’s been like this all week. Lieux is the prettiest village of the three. It’s on a hill, but it’s built round five different squares each with its own fountain, and when it’s quiet, like it is now, there is always the sound of water. Channels of it run down the streets. Just down the road is a public drinking fountain where the locals fill up their bottles. There’s an elegant white statue, which is possibly Roman, and an engraved plaque from the last century in the most pompous French, telling everybody about the medical benefits and the curative properties of the water. Lieux is a smart little place. The houses have wrought-iron balconies filled with flowers. At the windows are white lace curtains and the doors are huge and heavy with great brass door knobs. Old people retire here for their health. Wealthy people have holiday homes here. A tiny spa town. There are two excellent patisseries, a feu du bois baker’s, a butcher’s, a greengrocer’s, and a store selling local produce. The church is grand and inside there’s a golden ceiling. Right on the top of the hill is a ruined castle and a high wall runs round the village, a reminder that this place has riches worth protecting. Lieux makes me laugh. It’s only a step away from dingy Rochas, but there’s more gold jewellery in the square than in any of the shops in Draguignan. I’m sure that by August it will be just like the abbey square in Bath. All tourists with cameras.

  Today there was a market on one of the lower squares and now I’m loaded up with essentials like strawberries, artichokes, tapenade, olives, cheese, local honey and rye bread. Jeanette thought I was mad coming here, she says the prices are dreadful. I’m waiting for the bus back. It’ll be here in two hours. I’m in no hurry.

  All this week I’ve been out walking, nowhere in particular, just up and around the tracks in the valley. Four days of sun and the rain has completely disappeared. The cherries are ripe on the trees now. I found a whole orchard by a deserted farmhouse and helped myself. Red sweet cherries, delicious and forgotten. Roses are flowering on the walls in the villages. Dark pink and red roses, heavily scented. Summer has started.

  I didn’t come here much with Gregor. I think it was too expensive
for us. Our crazy singing would have gone down like a lead balloon. Lieux is beautiful, but it’s as much fun as a rest cure. Some of the people here look as if they were fossilised before they even knew how to smile. My mother liked it here.

  I drove back to England at the beginning of October 1976. With the mattress in the van so we could sleep in the back. I thought I would be away for a few months. Sanclair cried because we had to take Dou-dou back to the farm, but we will be back, I said to him and Madame Blanc, and Jeanette and Auxille, Odette, the post office, the baker’s. We’ll be back when Gregor comes back.

  It took a week to get to England. As I drove off the ferry England looked so quaint. Men in uniforms telling us where to go. It all seemed small and petty. England was dry. There had been a hot summer and even in October the grass was still scorched and trees prematurely yellow and fading. I wanted it to be green, misty and moisty. I had had enough of the sun. Sanclair, who had been asking questions all through France, slept the whole way from Southampton. As we got nearer to Bath it felt like I was the only one returning home. The prodigal daughter. The bad girl coming back to mother. Sanclair was still asleep. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon and I knocked on the door of The Heathers. There was a long pause before my mother opened it. We looked at each other, I think in disbelief. She seemed to have shrunk. She seemed so small. She was wearing a pale green silk shirt and her hair was up, but it was grey and there were deep lines on her face, across her forehead and at the sides of her mouth. The change hit me like a mallet. She wasn’t beautiful anymore.