At the Edge of Summer (8 page)

“This was always one of my favorite places to come as a boy when Maman and Papa were arguing. I'd steal away with something from the kitchen and a stack of history books and hide out here until things quieted down.”

“Did they fight often?”

“As often as anyone, I suppose.” He went to where his coat lay spread beneath the tree. “Maman would shout that Papa wasn't paying her enough attention, Papa would shout back that she clung too close, like a vine of ivy—that's exactly what he used to say—then Maman would declare that she'd have to tattoo her breasts like a Samoan islander before he'd notice her.”

I wonder if he'd realized he'd used the word “breast.” I pushed on my suddenly hot cheeks with one hand. “Astonishing.”

“Of course, the rows only lasted as long as that. They'd shout, they'd cry, but then Papa would come to sit next to Maman on the sofa and everything would be forgotten. He always said that she fought as well as any French woman. He was quite admiring.”

“So they weren't real arguments, then.”

“What is real? The fights came when one of them had something to say to the other.” He shrugged. “Sometimes Papa can be too preoccupied and sometimes Maman can be too smothering.”

“My parents never fought.” It wasn't, I supposed, a Scottish thing to do. I shrugged like he had, hoping I looked as casual. “Really, they just quietly ignored one another.”

I followed him back towards the plane tree, in front of a larger cave entrance carved over the top with
143 Carrière
in rough, blocky letters. The clearing around the tree was grassless, covered over with leaves from last autumn. A solemn owl guarded over us from above.

“What is this place?” I asked, this corner of the woods filled with cool air and violets. Along the edges of the stones, poppies and purple-blue cornflowers clustered in the spots of sun. It smelled like rain and snow and summer all run together.

“Le Bois des Fées.” He shook the leaves from his coat and spread it down again for me. “At least that's what I always called it.”

“What does that mean?”

“The Fairy Woods.” He lowered his voice dramatically. “Where little boys are tossed down wells like wishes.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Bede dashed in and out of the clearing, stopping to sniff the orange peels as he passed.

I dropped to my knees onto Luc's brown jacket and sat. “And in ‘The Fairy Woods,' are the caves for trollish treasure?”

“Not caves.” He tossed a stick for Bede. “Quarries.”

“For stone?”

“This area here around Enété village, it was a quarry centuries ago. All of the white stones you see in the houses between here and Soissons, they came from the ground beneath us.”

“The stones of Mille Mots?” The château, aching white above the river. “They came from here?”

“I hope so.” He dug into his rucksack and pulled out a pair of small Spanish oranges. “Brindeau farm, on the ridge above here, is older than that. It used to be an abbey farm back in the days of Charles the Wise. At some point the monks discovered the granite below and it was a quarry ever since.”

I dug a fingernail into the orange peel. “Did they run out of stone?”

“Papa says that they ran out of stonecutters. He blames Napoleon.”

“Who doesn't?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Well, if we're talking about those who supported his decision to—”

“We're not.” I bit into a section of orange and caught the drip of juice from my chin with a thumb. “One of us isn't at university.”

He grinned at that and opened a canteen.

“What's inside, then?” I peeled off another section of orange and rose up on my knees. “Medieval chisels? Skeletons?”

“Oh, I don't know.” He dribbled water on his hands.

“You haven't found one yet?”

“No, I mean I don't know.” He shook his fingers and then wiped them on his trousers. “I've never been inside.”

“What?” I dropped the rest of my orange. “That's ridiculous.”

The quarry was fronted by a wall of carefully squared blocks. Around the edges of each block, though, were neat rows of grooves, evidence of the medieval stone masons and their tools. Sunlight pushed through the doorway, onto a packed dirt floor. Beyond, still darkness.

I scrambled to my feet.

“Clare, no!” He jumped up, too, and caught my hand.

He didn't say anything for a moment, just held my hand. A rabbit darted from the bushes, across the clearing before the quarry entrance. I couldn't hear a thing other than my heart in my ears. His fingers were still damp.

“Is it haunted?” I finally asked.

He ducked his head and let go of my fingers. “No.”

“Then why can't I go in?”

“It's dark. The ceiling might fall in.” Again he wiped his hands on the sides of his trousers. “It might be full of wolves.”

He stood so straight and still, shoulders tight. Either he was terrified of caves or he was terrified to let me go. Not since Nanny Proud had anyone worried about me like that.

“Don't worry. I refuse to meet a wolf.” I straightened my straw hat. “I'll only be a minute.”

Inside the cave, it smelled like fresh earth, the way I imagined it would smell if you were buried alive. The very thought made me breathless. “Hallo!” I shouted back into the dark. Not even a flutter of bat wings answered.

I walked back into the cave as far as the light went. It bled into little galleries off the main one, but I couldn't see a thing. I turned into the first and walked with my hands outstretched until I felt cold, damp stone. Counting steps, it didn't seem very big. Maybe the size of the dining room at Mille Mots.

“Clare!” I heard Luc call. “Be careful!”

I was careful. More than he knew. If for a moment I stopped being careful, everyone would see how un-grown-up I was. How, every night, I cried into my pillow. My heart ached with missing my father. It had never stopped aching with missing my mother. If for a moment I stopped being careful, everyone would see that I wasn't as strong as I wished I was.

I leaned against the wall. Limestone crumbled in my hair. Something about all of this darkness pressing in around me was comforting. It was the gray and the black that I missed in all the color of France. In the cave, the dark embraced me.

A tear dripped out, then another, then I was turning my face to the wall. The limestone caught my tears, but echoed back an errant little sob.

“Clare?” Luc called.

With a fingernail, I scratched C.R. in the soft limestone. Then thought about how he taught me to taste France, how he wrote me letters from Paris, how he stood outside right now, worrying about me when no one else did, and added L.C.

When I emerged back into the bright, Luc hadn't moved from where I'd left him. Terrified of caves, then.

His face grew sober. “It's so dark in there. I shouldn't have let you go in alone.”

How could I explain that was exactly what I needed? How that moment alone in the wild dark somehow made me feel less alone? “But it was lovely,” I said. “It
is
lovely.”

He shifted on his spot on the leaves and violets. “You never said, why did you follow me today?”

His eyes, I noticed, were brown like almonds. “Because I didn't want to be quietly ignored.”

H
e didn't quietly ignore me after that.

As summer stretched, we were outside as often as we could be. Sometimes the light-speckled chapel courtyard, sometimes the bank of the river, sometimes the woods or the caves. But most often it was the chestnut tree on the back lawn, within sight of Mille Mots. I'd sit, drawing, Luc would lie, reading. When the shadows swung to afternoon, he'd sneak into the kitchen past the dozing Marthe and bring me pilfered pastries or bread and jam or bowls of almost-ripe apricots. He gave me my first taste of coffee and, when his mother wasn't looking, my first taste of coffee with brandy. I fell asleep each night full of dreams, and Luc, he didn't miss a weekend home.

I never saw him draw again, though. It was one of the few secrets he had from me. “I'm not very good,” he always said. “You should see me play tennis.” Though I never did, I begged him to show me. “Come and watch when I play in the Olympics,” he'd tease.

But I wondered where his drawing pad was, the one he'd closed so quickly when I caught him at the Brindeau caves. I wondered if he'd ever sketched me again.

“Why should I say?” he asked one Saturday morning as we sat beneath the chestnut tree. “You won't tell me what you sketch.”

“Yes, I did. The château.”

“But that was weeks ago.”

“And it's still the château. Again.”

“Surely there is no shortage of other subjects. The Aisne? The chestnut tree? Marthe and her birds?” He winked. “Or are you waiting for the subject to choose you?”

I ignored that. “Your papa, he gave me some lessons.”

“Let me guess.” He poked his pencil in his book to mark his page. “Fruit?”

“Far too much fruit.” I frowned down at the page. Monsieur Crépet's slow, patient lessons were about shapes, lines, shadows, highlights. The little table in the rose garden was always set out with fruit bowls overflowing. “I don't know if I'll ever be able to look an orange in the eye again.”

“Well, then.” He took an apricot from the fruit dish. “Here.” He tossed it. “Draw that.”

“Really?” I gave him a flat stare. “More fruit?”

“You must be an expert by now.” He leaned back on his elbows, his book forgotten. “Show me.”

“This is ridiculous. I already told you, I'm tired of—”

He waved off the rest of my complaint. “Clare, just try.”

It was only a circle; it shouldn't have been too hard. If there was one thing Monsieur Crépet was insistent on, it was circles.

Yet Luc was not as patient as his father, not nearly as forgiving. For every one I drew, he found some fault. “Too lopsided.” “Too regular.” “Too shadowed.” “Clare, where is the fuzz? Where is the stem? Look closer.” For ages I drew sphere after sphere, shading and stumping. “Try the cross-hatching,” he'd say or “Use the flat of your pencil.”

Finally I threw my pencil across the grass in disgust. “I don't want to draw an apricot. I want to draw an orchard full of apricots. I want to draw wagons and ladders and girls in striped skirts filling baskets with them.”

He retrieved my pencil. “Monsieur Monet didn't wake up one morning to paint Fontainebleau Forest.”

I rolled my shoulders. “He might have.”

Luc recited with the air of someone who had heard it all before. “Monsieur Monet studied for many years to learn how to hold his brush, how to turn his hand to make a leaf, how to blend colors to dapple a forest floor.” He sat back down and stretched out his legs. “And he never threw his pencil.”

I crossed my eyes at him.

He ignored that. “Papa started me on fruit, too. You learn so much about shape.”

“Now I can see why you decided to be a tennis player instead,” I grumbled. “There's no passion in shape.”

“Then tell me.” He held up a finger. “What do you want to draw?”

“I told you, I only know how to—”

“Not ‘can.' ” He sat up. “Want to.” He leaned forward. The sunshine filtering through the leaves sent shards of gold across his face. “If you could draw anything in the world right now, what would it be?”

The cicadas sang.

“You,” I said softly.

He froze. I wondered what answer he'd been expecting.

But of course it was him. Though I knew he was older, a man to my mere decade and a half, I couldn't help but think of him when I fell asleep each night and when I woke in the morning. I'd look out my window as the sun exploded over the horizon, just on the chance that he was down there playing tennis. I wanted to begin my day with a glimpse of his face.

I wouldn't be at Mille Mots forever. Soon someone would come to get me, I knew it. Mother, I hoped, or maybe Grandfather. When I left, I wanted a reminder of Luc to take with me.

But here he sat, frozen, almost fearful.

I read once that in some corners of the world, where tribes lived untouched by modern life, it was forbidden to take someone's likeness. Either drawing or photographing, to capture someone's face, you might accidentally capture their soul.

I sharpened my pencil. “I've never done this, you know. You could end up looking like a Martian.”

This seemed to make him nervous. He wiped his brow. “When drawing a face, the shapes are the most important.” He cleared his throat. “It's like a skeleton. If you have it right underneath, the rest will follow.”

I turned to a fresh page in my sketch pad. “You don't always have to be a teacher. Sometimes you can just be a friend.” I propped up the pad on my knees.

He dipped his head. “I'm sorry.”

“Head up and sit still!”

Silence stretched, though less companionable than our usual quiet. Even the insects were subdued. A green chestnut fell.

“Do you—” I began, as he said, “Have you—”

He nodded. “Go ahead.”

I hesitated. “Luc…do you think my mother thinks of me?”

He didn't answer directly, but instead asked, “What made you think of that?”

I pulled my braid over my shoulder. “I'm never not thinking of it.” I adjusted the sketch pad. “But she used to sit with her paintbrush outside under a tree, like this.”

A bee buzzed near his ear, but he didn't flinch. I sketched the bee into my drawing.

“Is that why I always find you out here, under the chestnut tree?”

“That, out here, I'll feel closer to her? That I might capture a little of whatever she always tried to capture?” My pencil traced the curve of his face. “Maybe.”

“What would she paint when she was outside?” He smiled. “Buildings?”

If she painted, she never showed me. All I saw were those empty canvases. “I don't know.” I'd watch her from the window, all dressed in pink and perched on a stool before her easel. Nanny Proud would let me watch as long as I liked, but Miss May would pull me away by the hair. “But she looked so lovely and so
happy
out there in front of her easel. Inside the house, with Father, she never looked happy.”

He stretched, but kept his head still.

“It was almost as though she loved the idea of being an artist as much as she loved creating. She loved to set up her easel just so, to sharpen her pencils, to hold her palette.”

He brushed a blade of grass from his shoe. “She missed her days at the School of Art?”

“She missed a lot of things, I think.”

His gaze slipped sideways and he was quiet. “I'm sure she still does,” he said finally. “Miss things.”

I couldn't trust myself to voice my hope. Instead, I let the scratching of my pencil and the coppery buzz of cicadas fill the silence, until Luc cleared his throat.

“Your turn.” I remembered. “What were you going to ask earlier?”

“Your grandfather, have you heard from him?”

“No.” I kept my gaze on the sketch. “He's off playing with languages somewhere.”

“Didn't he raise your mother? Maman said that when they were girls, playing on the banks of the Tummel, it was Monsieur Muir alone up there at the big house.”

“Exactly. He's already raised one child. Why would he want to raise another?” My pencil dug into the paper. “Mother always said that he wasn't very good at it anyway. That he kept to his work and left her to the nannies and governesses.” So much like Father, who hardly ever came out of his study after Mother left, who rarely came to see me recite in the schoolroom. And yet I had the comfort of knowing he was
there,
that he was looking out at the same stars I was. “Anyway, it's been six years since we've seen each other. We're practically strangers.”

“So are you and I,” he pointed out.

“And yet I'd stay forever, if you asked me.”

The impulsive sentence hung between us. A thrush took up singing somewhere above. For half a moment I wondered if he
would
ask me.

I cleared my throat, smudged a line on my drawing. “Would you like to take a look?” Without waiting for his answer, I flipped the sketch pad around.

I waited with fingers tight on the corners of the pad, watching him. Already I could see errors and I knew he could, too, the way his eyes tightened in the corners. He was thinking of polite things to say.

“This is silly.” I tried to turn it back, but he caught the edge of the pad, his fingers brushing mine.

“No, it's quite good.”

“It's not.”

“This is only your first time, after all.”

“You're lying and I should stick to buildings and fruit.” I moved to tear it from the book, but he stopped my hand.

“Okay, the lines beneath. The shapes.” He lifted my hand from the paper and put the pencil back under my fingers. “The circle behind the apricot.”

His fingers were warm. “That's all?”

“Start there.”

I squinted down at the paper, erased, drew, erased again. It took shape, almost. He watched, patient. Finally I threw down the book. “It's not…never mind. Why am I even trying this?”

He picked it up. “Stop being frustrated.”

“Stop being nice. I'm not an artist. I'll never be Mother.”

“No. But you're Clare.” He took my pencil and used the back end to trace the lines of my drawing. “It's the cheek, right there. And see the line of my jaw? It's not that round. You're almost there.”

“Lines and circles, lines and circles,” I murmured under my breath. The bones underneath. “Let me see.”

Eyes closed, I leaned forward and put my hands flat on his face.

I think he stopped breathing.

I know that, for a split second, I did.

I had more important things to worry about right then. Like the fact that my heart was near to pounding out of my chest. That his cheeks were soft and rough, all at once. That he was close enough for me to feel his breath on my face. Close enough that I could kiss him.

I opened my eyes. He watched me. His were brown, ringed with gold. “So that's your face,” I said softly. I licked my lips. “I understand now.”

I counted three heartbeats, three seconds of wishing, three seconds where I thought that he really would lean forward.

“When you didn't want me to draw you earlier…”

“Yes?” he asked.

“…were you afraid to be captured to paper?”

He exhaled. “I'm already caught.”

His eyes looked everywhere on my face. Beneath my fingers, his cheeks were warm. I could see the light catch on his eyelashes. His lips moved.

I was counting breaths, one two three, when I heard her.

“Luc!” Madame's voice carried all the way from the house.

He didn't move, didn't even seem to hear her. He closed his eyes.

“Luc René Rieulle Crépet!”

His eyes flew open, wide, guilty. He jerked back, leaving my hands empty in the air. I could still feel the warmth of his face.

Madame strode across the lawn. She wore a tall turban of brilliant blue silk and looked as imposing as a voodoo priestess. As she approached the chestnut tree, I scrambled to my feet.