Children of Light Read online

  That’s how it started. I sat on the grass and above me were elderblossoms. He gave me tea in a blue tin mug. He had brown arms and a silver bracelet. I said, ‘Are you a gypsy?’ and felt stupid, but he smiled, his eyes still calm, and there was a glint in them, a twinkle of mischief. He said, ‘Why? Are you?’

  This is Gregor. Half German. His mother lives in Berlin. He never knew his Russian father. His mother married again when he was fifteen and he left home and has not been back since. He didn’t tell me this by the canal. What he said was, ‘I am a traveller. I’m a seeker for the truth and I will go on travelling until I have found the truth, but what I am finding is that there is not one truth, there are many truths.’

  When he said this I felt like I did when I stood in front of the Ferrou. Awed and so shivery I had to put my tin mug down. I had been told there was only one way, my mother’s way. Dresses, houses, things, and now incorporated into Catholic stuff from school. One God, one church, one nation, but I knew, I knew, I couldn’t believe this. Gregor was looking at me intensely. He had a way of looking that made me feel transparent. He said, ‘I think you understand, yes?’

  He said, ‘I have come to Bath to see the famous hot water that comes out of the ground already warm, you know this place, yes?’

  And I said, all flushed, ‘But there are other places where the water comes out completely cold.’

  Gregor laughed and laughed. ‘You are a schoolgirl but already you are making connections. Oh, you are a thoughtful little schoolgirl.’

  I felt very stupid. I said, ‘I’ve only been to France. I’ve never been anywhere else.’

  Gregor laughed even more. ‘But you travel in the mind, oh yes, you travel all the time.’ I blushed and blushed because that was true.

  I don’t remember what we talked about, but we talked about everything. Everything I had always wanted to talk about but there was nobody to tell it to, not even Caitlin, who believed in God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family, the Devil and Hell. She was afraid of Hell, but I wasn’t. It sounded like an exciting place to me and it wouldn’t stop me sinning.

  ‘Do you live in your van?’ I asked and he showed me. The little bed, the mugs on hooks, a tin trunk, a leather coat. He had been to Israel, Greece, Spain, Norway, Finland, America when he was eighteen, Morocco last year and recently Ireland and Scotland.

  ‘What do you live off?’ I asked, sitting on his bed. There were no windows in the van, but the evening light coming through the back door was warm and soft. It seemed like the only way to live, in a tiny space with an ever-changing view.

  He said, ‘I can work, I can fix things, I can work in bars, I can make things, you understand, yes?’

  ‘Are you staying long?’

  He smiled and took the tin mug off me. ‘That is for me to say. I know when it is time for me to go. Now it is time for you to go, don’t you think so?’

  I wheeled my bike up the garden path towards The Heathers. I could see my mother on the sofa, watching television. Suddenly, she and the house seemed insignificant. I was late. She would be cross with me.

  Gregor, I was seventeen and I was bold enough to stop and talk to a strange man. Did you see my boldness, did you see my longing to escape? Did you see that I was as restless and dissatisfied as you had been when you were fifteen, and as unhappy? Did you want to help me? I’ve never asked you this. Did you want to help me or were you just flattered because a pretty seventeen-year-old wanted to talk to you?

  I’m writing this in the hut where we lived together and where I had your baby. Is it true that if I hadn’t met you my life would have been so different? You took no credit. You said I made my own choices, you said you didn’t encourage me. But you stayed by the canal for nearly two months. You found work washing up in a café. Do you think you stayed because you enjoyed the company of a convent schoolgirl who was a fledgling who was ready to fly?

  I’m standing by the window in my room at The Heathers listening to the fountain, and I can’t sleep because I know something has happened and is happening. ‘A’ levels, college, jobs, they’re not important because I know there is a different way of living and I want it. I want it. It’s a longing, it’s a hunger and I’m impatient. Through the window on the breeze I can smell the elderflowers, musty and female. I don’t want to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Saturday 7th May. Evening

  The baker’s niece got married today. I went to see the end of it outside the church. The mistral is still raging. Her veil blew over her face and all the guests grabbed on to their hats and skirts. The happy couple looked like most young marrieds, awkward and bemused because the parents and in-laws were in charge. This was a Cabasson affair. The mayor was there, a short skinny man in a shiny suit, but you can tell he knows he’s important by the way he holds up his head. Everybody wants to talk to him. The baker’s wife looked splendid in powder blue. You would have thought she was the bride’s mother. I think the bride’s mother was another fat lady in a dress that looked suspiciously similar to the one Jeanette saw in the market. I sound like my mother, what a specimen. I didn’t join in. Who needs my congratulations? I sat outside the café with Jeanette and Auxille, who weren’t invited to the reception but were behaving as if they were.

  I saw the Gregsons. I can spot British people. For a start they are usually taller than the villagers. They wear summer clothes when no one else does. Mr Gregson in a pale blue shirt and cream trousers. Mrs Gregson in a lacy blouse and long blue skirt hanging on to a straw hat. I didn’t like the look of them. Suave. Opulent. Smug. Their loud voices and bad French coming in snatches on the wind. Auxille and Jeanette wanted to follow the wedding party up to the mairie, perhaps they hoped they’d get invited at the last minute. Some chance, that lot are far too snooty. Instead I went to the graveyard to see Eugénie’s grave.

  I’d forgotten about the graveyard. It can’t be that I never went there. It has a high wall around it and the entrance is through a metal door. It was sheltered from the wind. There were two cypress trees inside like sentinels. It felt like a peaceful place. The tombs are extraordinary. Big stone slabs like altars with whole families bunged in them and on the top, not real flowers, but china ones. In Britain they’d get nicked but here the china wreaths have stayed. Dark red, blue and purple stylised roses. Sometimes white for a young woman. Sometimes a single flower. I spent ages looking at the tombs. The oldest ones surrounded by metal fences, like hospital beds. Do they sleep peacefully in there, the Cabassons, the Gués, the Blancs, the Perrigues, the Cavaliers? Their bones mingling together, relatives who in life hardly talked to each other. Is there a feud going on under the slabs? The Villeneuves had what looked like a tiny chapel with engraved glass windows and inside were wreaths made of wire and tiny beads. All decayed. No Villeneuve has been buried in the village since 1952. Eugénie’s grave was a dug-out one on the ground, shared with Hilaire and next to them his brother Victor. The earth was piled on top. There were no ceramic flowers yet, but pots of geraniums and hydrangeas. Bright bold flowers. On Victor’s grave was a photograph behind glass. He was just a boy, dressed in his best suit with the same dark face of the youths who screech around on motorbikes. Old Man Henri was under the cypresses in a grave with five Cabassons. On top was a photograph of his wife and a woman who had died in her twenties. No explanation, but she looked pale and sickly. I didn’t feel sad in this graveyard. Most of its incumbents were well over seventy. It seemed a fitting place for them to land up. It was more personal than graveyards in England, not like a graveyard at all, more like an old people’s home and for once they’re all quiet, for once they’re not chattering.

  I’m thinking about that wretched crumbling crematorium in Bristol. It rained the whole time and then it was sleeting. They put the gas heaters on but the chapel didn’t get warm. The graveyard outside was overgrown and untended, massive Victorian monuments covered in ivy. During the service I couldn’t bear to listen to the Christian stuff so I walked in the rain up behind t
he chapel. It was like a wood, bare winter trees and dark cedars, part of the original planting. I thought, yes, Felix would like this place, he could walk here and be invisible.

  The wind is making the door bang and the lamp flicker. It’s hard to see what I’m writing. My parents are in a graveyard overlooking Bath, neat and municipal. The baby is up there too, in a corner with other babies. It’s a bit pathetic, rotting fluffy toys and other mementoes, all going mouldy. It doesn’t work in England, does it, leaving things outside? They always rot in the rain.

  Rain. Wet dripping trees and cycling through puddles up the tow-path. It’s July and I’m panicking because when school finishes I won’t have an excuse to see Gregor. Nobody knows. I see him on my way to school and on the way home. He works in the evenings. In the morning we have a cup of coffee together and in the afternoon, tea. We talk. We don’t kiss, but lately I’ve been thinking I want to. I like looking at his brown arms. Once he had his shirt off. He’s muscled and strong. He has blond hairs on his chest and a line of hair coming up his belly. Coming up from his trousers. I like his feet. He has bare feet often, and they look like feet that are used, not hidden away in socks. He says, ‘Here she is, my little schoolgirl, tell me what have you been thinking?’

  I’ve been thinking I want to stay with you in your van. I want to put my head on your chest and listen to your heart beating. I want you to stroke my hair. I don’t tell you this.

  I was seventeen and I had never had a boyfriend. I didn’t want one. I didn’t want to dress up and flirt. Caitlin and I, we both knew that in the tussle and tumble of the mating game we would be left last, like not being picked for the netball team. We discussed it often. We decided we were better off. We could wait until college then we would meet boys who were more mature. We liked that idea, ‘more mature’. I didn’t tell her about Gregor.

  We kept doing the same things. Her coming to my house, me visiting her on a Saturday. Meeting after church on a Sunday. But I began to feel this was just the skin of me, the real me had wriggled out and was sliding through the grass towards Gregor. What I found most strange was that nobody seemed to notice they were talking to a discarded skin.

  It’s August and the trees are heavy and green. The cows move slowly in the fields beyond the canal. St John’s wort and willowherb grow by the banks. When I say to my mother, ‘I’m going for a walk now’, she nods and smiles. She’s weeding the garden. She’s thinking about becoming a Catholic and Father Connelly from the church is giving her instruction. He’s tall and has an angular, craggy face. He’s vaguely handsome. I’m sure becoming a Catholic will take a long time.

  I run down the garden to the bridge. I’m wearing dark green cotton flares and an orange scoop-neck blouse with drawstring sleeves. My mother hates it. She says it makes me look like a folksy bohemian. But I love this blouse, it’s soft, faded and comfortable. I’m growing my hair. I run down the tow-path feeling wild and messy and free like I used to when I ran down the path to the Ferrou. And there is Gregor.

  When I leave it’s like stretching something that stretches and stretches until it snaps and there I am alone on the patio, looking for my mother. A few hours with Gregor. The other hours in the day have no meaning for me.

  I’m in my bed and I can’t sleep. It’s two o’clock in the morning and Gregor will be back from work. It’s humid and the air feels like soup. I open my window and I can smell water, the water of the fountain, but I want to smell the canal water, especially at night. Cold smelling. Dark smelling. I want to smell Gregor. He smells of smoke and coffee. What does he smell like after a night’s work? Detergent? Onions? Bleach? I’ve never been to see him at night. I can’t sleep. The moon is huge and pink coloured like a blood orange. The sky is indigo and faded like tissue paper. I’m not used to going out at night, but I climb through the window. My orange blouse pulled over my nightie, my school shoes and socks. I look odd I know, perhaps I can pretend I’m sleepwalking. But no sleepwalker runs as fast as I do. The tow-path is dark and I can’t see where I’m going. The moonlight has turned the world to a grey silver and the water shines. It’s an eerie world, still and quiet. I think I can see people, but they’re only bushes and shadows. I’m frightened but I’m not going back.

  Gregor’s van has no lights on, and now I’m worried in case he isn’t there. I tap on the window, whispering (I don’t dare to shout), ‘Are you there, are you there?’ Then the door swings open suddenly and he’s shining a torch at me. I shield my eyes, and now I think he’s cross, but he’s laughing. ‘What’s this, a nighthawk? A ghost? What creature is this?’

  I sit on his bed and he’s still laughing. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I say apologetically.

  ‘You don’t work, you don’t know what it is to be tired. So now I must talk to you, all night, yes?’ He makes coffee and we drink it, sitting on his bed. ‘So what shall we talk about my little traveller? What do you want this old man to talk about?’

  ‘I don’t mind if we don’t talk,’ I say with a dry throat and a voice squeezed to a whisper.

  ‘Now what is this?’ asks Gregor, turning to me and fixing his eyes on me, and when he looks at me like that I know I have no secrets.

  ‘I want to make love,’ I say and in saying it I feel daft because I have no idea how to.

  ‘Well, well,’ says Gregor and smiles in a bemused way, and we both look at each other. I hope he knows what to do because I’m shaking like a leaf.

  He puts his arms around me and hugs me and my heart skips and does a cartwheel. It feels like I’ve just come home, to my real home.

  This is strange. I can’t remember what it was like. I remember sitting in church the next day squeezing my knees together. Feeling blissful, feeling I loved everybody. Father Connelly, my mother, Caitlin, her family and the whole congregation. I was soaring up to the roof with the angels. I remember running back up the tow-path and the sun was just coming up soft golden and the fields were misty. I remember my bed smelled of me and was so soft I fell asleep right away. A candle flickering in Gregor’s truck, wax dripping down the side. He held my hand and we listened to nothing.

  I’ve had sex since that was exciting and powerful, I felt like an animal. This was with Julian. With Alan and Tony it felt matter of fact, something grown-ups did, and with Felix it was magical, almost mystical, but I can’t remember with Gregor. At the hut in bed we talked a lot, we held hands. I suppose sex was part of it. It was friendly.

  The lamp is flickering now, not because of the wind but because it has nearly burned down. There is less banging outside. I think the wind has dropped.

  Sunday 8th May. Lunchtime

  It’s warm. I’m sitting on the rock rose terrace. This morning I made a seat out of planks of wood and stones. This is the driest terrace and the sunniest. It also has the best view of the valley. The seat is reasonably comfortable. I found the wood some weeks ago behind a house that was being renovated in the village. Perhaps you could say I stole it. Living with Gregor made me more flexible about other people’s property. I would never call him a thief, but if he saw something he thought might be useful, he took it. I’m grateful to him for this attitude. On my walks to and from the village I have so far found a length of rope, a wooden crate, a frying pan and a broken candleholder.

  Sunday is the noisiest day in this valley. At the farm below they’re cutting the grass with a loud machine, whining and whirring. Dogs are barking. Voices of people who sound like they’re having a large family lunch. Four cars went up there this morning. I can’t see anybody. The trees block the farm. They sound like they are just at the foot of my land although it’s more than half a mile away. If I shouted and sang would they hear me? Can they see me chopping wood? Surely they can see the smoke from my chimney. People are so nosy here I’m amazed nobody has come up to look but nobody has. Every time I’ve walked up to the village along the path I’ve not met a soul. People have more cars. The land is less cultivated. I’m living in a place that nobody wants to make the effort to discov
er.

  I’ve lived in other houses, The Heathers, my boat, but this is where my heart is. I felt this when I was ten and that’s why I wanted to come back. This is where I asked Gregor to take me.

  We’re walking to Bradford-on-Avon, up the old canal path. There is no reason to go other than to make the journey. It’s late August and the countryside is overblown and heavy. Some of the trees are beginning to turn yellow. Flowers are in seed, willowherb fluff blows on to the water. The clouds are heavy too, white with grey undersides like fat fish, not swimming but floating.

  Gregor has shaved off his beard and this, I think, makes him look more majestic. He wears blue trousers and sandals and a red shirt. I love the colours he wears. Always bright. I have a scarf in my hair and beads round my neck. My mother thinks I’m at the shops. On the way, Gregor sings a Moroccan song he’s learned and I sing a madrigal. Then we get silly and I’m singing nursery rhymes, hymns and Christmas carols and he’s singing German drinking songs. We’re singing like this as we come into Bradford-on-Avon. Golden stone, sweet pretty houses and baskets of flowers. Oh dear, people are looking at us, what dreadful hippies we are, but we laugh more and go and have tea in an old-fashioned tea room by the bridge. We eat as many scones with cream as we can. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy. Every minute with Gregor is an adventure. But there’s things I don’t see, other people looking at us, other people judging us.