Children of Light Page 9

  The next day after church one of the convent school mothers comes up to me when I’m talking to Caitlin and says, ‘Mireille, isn’t it? Didn’t I see you yesterday in Bradford-on-Avon having tea with a strange-looking man?’ and she has that smug interfering smile of the perfectly righteous. I’m struck dumb and afraid because I have been lying to everybody all summer, committing the sort of sins they believe I will burn in Hell for.

  ‘Oh no, Mrs Davenport,’ said Caitlin, who never lies and couldn’t believe that I could. ‘Mireille was in town all day in the bookshops and came to see me in the evening with a book of poems she’d found. Mistral. All in French, which we translated together.’ Sweet Caitlin, she was so pure, of course Mrs Davenport believed her.

  ‘What would you be doing with a strange man anyway?’ said Caitlin.

  I shook my head. Gregor had given me the book. One of the poems was called ‘Mireille’.

  ‘On Monday let’s translate some more,’ said Caitlin.

  I nodded. I looked around for my mother. She was by the church door talking to Father Connelly, who looked patient and weary like he wanted to run away.

  I was afraid. Not just because Mrs Davenport had seen us. Not just because school was starting in two weeks and I didn’t want to go back, but because Gregor started talking about going to India. It was one of the places he had never been to. He had mentioned this many times. The summer was ending. He started tinkering with his van. When I went to see him I sat and watched, handed him spanners, made him cups of tea, tried to understand car manuals, but inside I was shrieking, Don’t go, don’t leave me. It was the first of September and we were sitting by the canal looking into the water. I was so full up with words and emotions I hadn’t spoken all afternoon. Gregor turned his bracelet around on his wrist.

  ‘Now, it is time for you to go,’ he said.

  ‘Mother doesn’t start cooking until seven,’ I said. ‘She won’t expect me.’

  ‘No, it is time for you to go, because it is time for me to go.’

  I opened my mouth but no sound came out. It felt like water was pouring into my mouth.

  ‘I am a traveller,’ said Gregor, ‘and now it is time for me to go. You must not be unhappy, little schoolgirl. You will forget this rough, crazy German, yes. A few months and you will meet a crazy English boy who will suit you.’

  ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘You can’t go!’

  ‘And stay here? What shall I do, little schoolgirl, talk to you all winter? Make love to you? Amuse you?’ I hated what he was saying because I didn’t see it as amusement. It was my real life, the rest was peripheral.

  ‘We can … we can …’ But of course I had no answers. I hadn’t got that far. I burst into tears. He left me there by the canal and went back to the van.

  It feels like when my father died, it feels the same. The death of dreams. I remember sitting on the wooden bridge that day looking at the fish and the clouds and my reflection and I didn’t know it but my daddy was dying. But this is different, surely, because Gregor isn’t dying he’s going away, and I’m looking at the water, the three worlds inside the water, the leaves on the surface and the clouds and I’m thinking, this is different because I can choose.

  I stand up and walk to Gregor. He’s sitting by the fire, solemn and serious, not sad, and for the first time he looks old. He’s thirty-five, he has wrinkles around his eyes, creases when he smiles. He suddenly looks very very old, like a wise man.

  He looks up at me and his eyes seem to have three depths in them as well. I’m tiny on the surface, but I want to be in the furthest depth.

  ‘Little schoolgirl, you do not seem anymore like a girl who wants a man to amuse her.’

  ‘I want to come with you to India,’ I say.

  He thinks about this. He puts his head to one side and smiles. It’s a challenge. He likes a challenge.

  ‘If you change your mind I won’t bring you home,’ he says.

  ‘And you must tell your mother.’ This makes me wince. ‘Oh yes, you must tell her you want to leave home. You must be honest. I told my mother.’

  ‘What did she say?’ I can’t imagine.

  Gregor laughs, ‘She threw a shoe at me. She said I was ungrateful and she never wanted to see me again. So she hasn’t.’

  I’m going to meet Gregor at ten o’clock in the morning. It’s a Monday. It’s a wet September morning. I’m standing on the patio looking at the fields, the black and white cows, the misty hills. My mother is in the kitchen, washing up.

  ‘Mireille, don’t stand outdoors, it’s too wet, you’ll bring the damp in. When I’m out don’t forget to change your sheets. They’ve been on that bed too long. No wonder your room smells. Open the window and air it. Mireille, are you listening? The Davenports are having a bring-and-buy. I thought I’d take some of your old dresses, you don’t wear them, they might do for some of those Costellos. Heavens above, what does she dress them in? I saw the oldest – what’s her name, Vymura? Fenicula? – wearing, can you imagine, a yellow trouser suit and she’s ginger. What a sight, and Mrs Costello, she’s always in a maternity frock whether she’s enceinte or not, it seems to make no difference. Mireille are you listening?’

  Yes, Mother, but what is there to listen to?

  ‘… and you’re off to the Costellos for the week? How you can stand it there, I don’t know, but that Caitlin is unobtrusive, I suppose. Have you packed enough bras?’

  Yes, Mother, I have packed all I need.

  I turn and watch her flit across the sitting room. She’s wearing a navy and cream suit, a handbag over one arm. Her hair is wound up in a bun. She pauses by the mirror to put on some lipstick. Crimson red. She looks at herself in the mirror from various angles. Satisfied, she picks up the bags of my old dresses. ‘I suppose I’ll see you at church on Sunday.’

  Goodbye, Mother.

  I sit on the sofa and wait until quarter to ten when my mother, Mrs Costello and everybody else is at the bring-and-buy.

  I phone up Caitlin. ‘I’m sorry I can’t come over after all.’

  ‘What a shame. I was hoping we could go to the library and find some more French poems.’

  ‘I’m going away …’ My voice starts to get shaky. ‘Caitlin, can you keep a secret?’ I want to tell somebody now, I do, I want somebody to say goodbye to me. ‘Caitlin, I’m going away with a man. Mother thinks I’m staying with you.’

  ‘Oh no, oh dear … oh, Mireille, you can’t … oh no!’

  ‘Caitlin, I am. Please don’t tell anybody.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not going to do anything sinful are you?’

  This almost makes me laugh. ‘Caitlin. Don’t tell anybody. Please promise.’

  ‘I promise. I promise. But your mother will find out, won’t she? What shall I do?’

  ‘Do nothing,’ I say. I want her to say goodbye to me. ‘Goodbye, Caitlin.’

  She is very upset. ‘Which man?’ she says. ‘When did you meet a man?’

  I want to go now. I have to meet Gregor.

  ‘He’s a gypsy. He’s a German. He was living in a van on the tow-path. Goodbye, Caitlin.’

  I run down the garden and over the bridge. I have a small holdall with a few clothes and my passport. I’m running down the tow-path, splashing in the puddles. I’m running away.

  We’re on the ferry between England and France. There is no land to be seen. Nothing except water. The ferry lurches and rocks. I start to feel sick and I start to cry.

  ‘So leaving is not so easy, is it?’ says Gregor. ‘I told you if you change your mind I won’t take you home.’

  ‘I didn’t tell my mother,’ I sob. ‘I lied. I told her I was going to Caitlin’s. I couldn’t tell her. I thought she would stop me, but I wish I’d said something now.’

  Gregor is angry. ‘You must not lie! You must never lie! You must tell people what you want to do. So what do you want to do now?’

  I think about this. ‘I will write to her,’ I say. I go to the shop and buy a postcard. It has a picture
of the ship on it. Blue and white and red with a fake-looking sky and an even faker sea.

  I sit down and try to write, but what can I say? ‘Dear Mum, I’ve gone to India with a man named Gregor. I love him. Please don’t worry about me. Love, Mireille.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sunday afternoon (cont.)

  I did a bad thing running away. I never thought for one moment I would hurt people. I thought my mother would be furious, it didn’t occur to me she would be upset, she would be distraught, she would be devastated. It’s difficult now to think I could have been like that, but I was seventeen, self-absorbed and headstrong. Gregor never felt any guilt about it, but when I came back to England with Sanclair I wanted to make things better. When the baby died I remember thinking, I know why this is, it’s my turn to hurt now.

  I remember seeing Stephen standing on the patio at The Heathers, like I used to stand, knowing he didn’t know what to say. I thought that’s what it was like for Vivienne. I was there all the time and she didn’t know what to say. Then I thought, I’m not my mother, I do know what to say. So I went out on to the patio and said, ‘Stephen, shall we go for a walk?’ How pleased he looked that I had talked to him.

  We walked, not very far, down the garden and over the bridge and up the tow-path. It was frosty and the canal was frozen over, but the ice wasn’t thick. I think it was the afternoon because I remember the sun going down, red in front of us. We chatted about nothing, everyday things, not the painful things, and he was relieved, I know. He didn’t want to talk about the painful things. We walked past my narrowboat, looking locked up and lonely. Past my father’s old office and then through the tunnel, and I thought, I’m just strolling up and down my life here.

  Then we were by the Widcombe pond and I said to Stephen, ‘I met Gregor here, he had a van, over there in the bushes.’

  ‘Really?’ said Stephen.

  I was sure I had told him that story before, but he hadn’t remembered.

  ‘I thought you met him in France?’ he said and he scratched his head and looked in the bushes as if there might still be a leftover relic of his father. I realised he had constructed his own history. Our histories are incomplete because our memory is incomplete. I assumed he must know because I knew.

  I said to him, ‘I was seventeen and I was cycling to school…’

  We sat on the bench by the lock and Stephen listened. About me and Gregor and how I ran away. ‘What a wild thing to do,’ he said. ‘I never thought of you as wild.’ Then he said, ‘It makes more sense really, doesn’t it?’ and I knew he meant about Felix and the baby. But we weren’t going to talk about that so we were quiet. We watched the ducks swimming in the puddles in the ice.

  I stopped talking about France and Gregor to Stephen because I thought he remembered; but he didn’t, he forgot. It’s the telling that makes you remember and the story changes each time you tell it. What really happened? What really happened? What I’m writing here about me and Gregor, was that how it was, or is it the story I told to Stephen by the canal?

  I’m just strolling through my history. I’m trying to make a story because if I know the beginning and the middle then I can see an ending. I’m forty-two, I want to see an ending.

  The valley’s quieter now. This is post-lunch snooze time. The sun is as warm as an English summer but not yet that burning heat that pulls me to the pool. I want some sandals. I want some shorts. I want a dress. It looks like I shall have to go to the market in Draguignan again.

  Things to buy.

  Sandals, shorts, a short-sleeve dress, sun cream.

  Espadrilles. Cherries, because they must be ripe now. There’s a few in the gully but not enough to pick. Strawberries? Strawberries in May? It’s not British, is it? Young artichokes, yes, I’d love those. Asparagus. Olives, black ones with herbs. Goat’s cheese. Salami. Brown bread because they don’t sell it in the village. Tomatoes. Fresh pasta. Couscous, mushrooms, aubergines, peppers, tapenade, Gruyère, olive oil, a piece of lamb. God, I’m hungry!

  Wednesday 11th May. Afternoon

  I’ve bought a hammock! This feels so extravagant. It was 150 francs. It’s made out of string and I’ve rigged it up on the vine terrace on the path that goes to the Ferrou and I’m in it now. It’s between two pine trees. There was a smaller tree, too. I had to cut it down, but if I put my foot on the stump I can get the hammock to swing just so. Now, this is bliss! There’s a cuckoo in the woods. It’s been warm all week and I’ve been clearing away bloody sarsparilla from behind the hut. The thorns are evil. I chucked the whole lot down the gully. I want to start clearing paths. Behind the hut is clear now and so is the front. When the first warm weather comes it’s better to be outside. Later it will be too hot to work. I bought the hammock in the supermarket.

  I went to the village to get the bus to Draguignan and there was Jeanette just going to Monoprix. She’s so insistent. Why go on a bus? Why pay more in Draguignan? The supermarket has everything, it’s so convenient, it’s so modern. They have special offers. So I went.

  It was a vast place on the ring road. I hate supermarkets. I hate the artificial air. But it was true, they did have everything. I went bonkers and bought the lot. Sandals, tins, jams, food, creosote, nails, and then I saw the hammock. Jeanette gave me a lift home. I don’t think I would have been able to carry all that lot down through the woods. I invited her in, but she had to get back to do lunch. She was curious, I could see it. She thinks I live like a pig in a sty, but in the end she wasn’t that curious. The Ferrou to her is just a hut and a pond. She’s seen it before.

  So I am now a consumer. I’ve been polluted. The myth of this place is that the locals shop in the village markets and they are all unspoilt peasants. The locals do shop in the markets, but they stock up at Monoprix. It was full of the most ordinary people. Come here, tourists, I thought, and you will see how people really live. They spend the whole morning there, and then have lunch. There were two cafés. Of course it’s not much different from a megastore in Britain. Different cheeses, more fish. Big square bars of household olive oil soap. But there’s the same bland, controlled atmosphere. You go in there to buy tomatoes and you come out with a sunhat because they’re cheap. I also bought a dress. Jeanette helped me choose it. It’s in Provençal material with a flounce round the hem. Bright red, no sleeves. I’m wearing it now. I’m swinging in a hammock wearing an almost pretty dress. What am I trying to be, seventeen again?

  I’ve been thinking how I can describe that time I spent with Gregor. I could write down all the things we did but I’ve forgotten the order now. We were going to India but there was no schedule. We drove down through France and into Spain and then Portugal. Then I think we went back through Spain, France, and into Italy. Then Yugoslavia, Greece and Turkey. It’s confused because there was no sequence. We travelled and met people, went back to their houses, stayed in one place for some weeks, stayed in other places for only a night. There’s a medley in my mind of dark bars, foreign faces and talking into the night. Sleeping in fields, sleeping under the stars. A tractor pulling us out of the mud. Where was that? Watching a field being ploughed by a horse-drawn plough. I think that was Yugoslavia. Istanbul, buying fresh melons in the street. Swimming in the bluest sea in Greece. Driving over mountains and into the morning, seeing a shepherd with his flock, and he waved to us. He had a black moustache and the widest grin. He seemed brown all over. The fishermen in Portugal cooking fish on the beach. Eating it with our fingers and coarse white bread. A bar in Lisbon, smoky, with sad wailing singing. Beautiful tiles on the outside of houses. Picking grapes. Working so hard in the heat and my fingers sore and blistered. Listening to Gregor, who had enough energy for five people, talking about the meaning of God with an Australian who had a squint.

  We travelled until April and by then we were in eastern Turkey, ready to take the Asian part of the route to India. In Europe it was easy to earn money, and if not money, a meal. Gregor could fix things, cars, machines. These were handy skills. We h
elped build a shed. That was in Spain. I was standing up the ladder handing him tiles, terracotta tiles, like the ones here. I wasn’t that high off the ground but I started to feel giddy and sick. I thought I was going to fall off the ladder, so I dropped the tile. There was shouting and screaming because it nearly fell on a small boy who was watching us. I got down off the ladder and lay on the grass and the world turned round and round. The women came close, they patted me and muttered. They smelled of sweat and garlic. I tried to hear what they were saying but it wasn’t a Spanish I had learned at school. I sat up and one gave me a drink of water. She patted my head and smiled. Then she rubbed her stomach.

  I was pregnant. I told Gregor. He put his head to one side and said, ‘Yes, yes, that was always a risk.’ And I hadn’t thought about it at all. I supposed he knew what he was doing. I realised then he didn’t know everything. Things could go wrong. Things had gone wrong.

  ‘What shall we do?’ I said.

  ‘Do?’ said Gregor. ‘We’re going to India and baby makes three.’

  He told everybody we met. Were you delighted, Gregor, your little schoolgirl, your little protegée was having your baby. Did it make you feel big? Here was something you hadn’t experienced before, fatherhood. Now you could find out all about it. But I was sick. My mouth tasted of metal and my head felt like a bag of cotton wool. I slept more in the back of the van. That winter we moved south towards Turkey, but it was hard to find work and I didn’t feel like working. The nights were cold and we often didn’t eat. Gregor was used to this but I wasn’t. We sang in bars and cafés, but there weren’t any tourists to give us money. I remember rain and cold winds, bleak hilltops and closed up villages. Sometimes, a clear sky so blue it hurt my eyes and at night a whole universe of stars.

  In eastern Turkey the people were hostile and suspicious. Children threw stones at our van. Nobody was smiling anymore. We were by the border under the slope of Mount Ararat, a perfectly shaped mountain with snow on top, in a terrain of rocks and desert, sharp biting air.