Invitation to Provence (17 page)

The Gare Montparnasse teemed with people who all
looked as though they knew exactly where they were going, which was more than Clare and Franny could say for themselves. Bewildered, Clare pushed a cart loaded with her luggage while Franny clutched her only bag firmly in her hand. She’d been warned to beware of pickpockets and bag snatchers as well as French con men who were only using their Gallic charm to get hold of her traveler’s checks.

They hurried to the platform from which the superfast TGV train to Avignon would depart. Just as the train slid smoothly and quietly alongside the platform, a tall, chic young woman dressed all in black came rushing toward them, dragging a small reluctant Chinese girl by the hand.

“Which of you is Franny Marten?” she demanded in heavily accented English.
“Oui? C’est vous?”
She glared at Franny.
“Eh bien,
I am the Marten travel agent here in Paris. I am supposed to travel with this child to Avignon but I am sick with the flu. I cannot possibly go.” She paused to cough, fanning herself with her free hand. “You are in charge of this child now. She belongs to you.” And she pushed the child at Franny, then turned on her heel and walked away rapidly.

It all happened so quickly that Franny and Clare had no time even to question her. Stunned, they followed her with their eyes as she made her way rapidly through the diminishing crowd. They saw her hurry to the station café, make herself comfortable at an outside table, order coffee, and light a cigarette. There she sat reading a newspaper, her obligation and her flu over.

“Bitch!”
Clare exclaimed, astounded. Then, “Ooops, sorry.” She bent to pat the little girl’s head. “I didn’t mean that.”

Shao Lan stared down at her new shoes, shiny black and
very stiff. They hurt her feet. The plane journey had seemed endless, no one had talked to her, no one had even seemed to notice her. She’d sat bolt upright all the way, not daring to eat or drink, wondering how it all would end and if she would ever see Bao Chu again. She was frightened of the noise, frightened of being alone in a strange place, frightened of what would happen to her, a poor child nobody even noticed.

The woman who’d met her had grabbed her so firmly by the hand it hurt. “Come with me,” she’d said brusquely, whisking her past policemen and officials. They had looked for a long time at the papers she carried in the plastic envelope strung around her neck, and she’d hid her face, clutching the woolly lamb closer. Now the woman had left her with more strangers. She didn’t know where she was or who they were or what was to happen, but she was determined not to cry. She did not want to lose face.

Franny looked at the small girl staring down at her shoes. She was wearing a skimpy coat that looked as though she’d grown out of about a year ago, and her shiny black hair had been lopped into jagged bangs. She looked exactly like one of her hurt, bewildered animals at the clinic. Suddenly, the child threw her a quick, darting glance and Franny saw that her eyes were bright blue. Her name was written in bold letters on the plastic packet around her neck.
SHAO LAN CHING
, it said, and in brackets after it
(MARTEN).

“Poor baby, she looks like a little refugee,” Franny said.

“She’s no refugee. Don’t you realize she’s another Marten, heading for the family reunion.”

“Oh my god, then of course she must be my
cousin
!”
Franny hunkered down and took the girl’s chin in her hand, lifting her face so she could see her properly. “Hello, Shao Lan,” she said gently. “I’m your cousin Franny and this is your new friend, Clare. We’ll take care of you now. Don’t worry about anything. Okay?” But Shao Lan looked silently down at her shoes.

“Do you think she speaks English?” Franny asked doubtfully, and Clare said she’d bet she didn’t understand a word.

Taking Shao Lan by the hand, Franny picked up her little plastic case, shocked by how small it was, barely big enough for a doll’s clothes. They boarded the train and sank into their comfortable seats, glad to be on their way at last. Shao Lan ignored them. She closed her eyes as the train sped through the countryside. All she wanted was to be back home with grandmother in their room on Hu Tong Road. She thought about running away.

F
RANNY WAS WONDERING
what the Château des Roses Sauvages would be like and whether her Aunt Rafaella would like her, and what it would be like living in a French village. It’s just a dream, she reminded herself. In a few weeks it’ll all be over and you’ll be back to being the nice Dr. Marten, the kindly vet in Venice Beach, California, paying your mortgage on time and loving other people’s animals because you don’t have time to spare for one of your own. And avoiding men so as not to make another mistake.

W
HEN THE TRAIN FINALLY
pulled into Avignon, the skies were gray, rain threatened, and a cold, gusty wind whipped at their legs. Franny buttoned Shao Lan into her skimpy overcoat, then she pulled on her sweater, hunching her shoulders against the wind. She watched Clare, who was pacing like an irritated panther, her black hair blowing horizontally, searching for the car that was supposed to meet them and take them to the château.

“It’s no good,” said Franny, shivering by now. “They must have forgotten us or got the wrong date or something. We’ll have to rent a car and drive there ourselves.”

At the car rental a stern woman in a crisp white shirt and a silk scarf printed with the firm’s logo informed them brusquely that no cars were available.

“But there must be cars,” Franny said frantically, because by now she was frozen as well as worried. “Please check your computer again.”

The woman checked. “Well,” she said reluctantly, “perhaps there is something. A car was just returned, but it hasn’t yet been examined and cleaned.”

“We’ll take it,” Clare said, “just show me where I sign,” and she winked at Franny as she handed over Marcus’s credit card.

Half an hour later they were in a too small red Fiat that smelled of French cigarettes and heavy perfume. It was so small they had to stack most of Clare’s suitcases next to Shao Lan, squashed into the backseat. Franny drove and Clare read the map. It took them an hour to find their way out of the maze of one-way streets. All the signs seemed to say
TOUTES DIRECTIONS,
and whichever road they took just seemed to lead them deeper into suburbs. By some accident or miracle—depending on which way you looked at it, Franny said, disparaging Clare’s map-reading abilities—they found themselves on the right road, but by now the rain was slicing sideways across and the windshield wipers were struggling just to keep afloat.

“Shit,” Clare said, then clapped a shocked hand across her mouth, glancing back at the child. “Do you think she heard?” she whispered.

“We’ll never know. That child is never going to speak,” Franny said, peering wearily through the murk. She didn’t know how it could get any darker, but somehow it had. She braked at a stop sign and felt the car pull to the left. “Uh-oh,” she muttered as lightning illuminated the sodden landscape and thunder rolled. Then Shao Lan screamed and they turned, surprised, to look at her.

“At least now we know she has vocal cords,” Clare said, turning back and holding a flashlight over the map, praying they were on the proper route because they hadn’t passed a gas station in forever and there wasn’t even a house along this godforsaken road.

The car gave another little jiggle, pulling to the left, and again Franny straightened it out. Then suddenly the engine stalled and they were aquaplaning, teetering on the edge of a
ditch before the car finally settled, with a
whoosh
like a relieved sigh, the right way up but on the wrong side of the road.

There was a long silence. Franny had the wheel in a death grip. She stared terrified through the windshield. “Jesus,” Clare said, shaken. “I didn’t bargain for this. Are you sure this
is
Provence?”

Franny thought of the much-anticipated blue skies and sunshine, the scents of the famous countryside, the wonderful old château, the food and the wine. She glared at the gloomy reality outside. She was jet-lagged and exhausted and in the middle of nowhere in a storm. “Our cell phones won’t work here,” she said. “We’ll just have to wait for a passing car and thumb a lift.” She took two Snickers bars from her bag and offered one to Shao Lan, who simply turned her head away. “It’s okay, baby,” Franny said persuasively, “it’s just good American chocolate.”

Clare bit angrily down on the other Snickers bar. “God, Franny you sound like a forties movie,” she said, “the victorious American troops winning over the foreign kids with chocolate bars and the women with nylons!”

“First child I ever knew to turn down chocolate,” Franny said. “Do you suppose she’s not feeling well?”

“I hope she’s not going to throw up.” Clare licked the chocolate off her fingers, feeling better.

Lights flickered through the rain and they almost fell out of the car in their hurry, jumping up and down in the middle of the road and waving their hands over their heads. “Stop. Stop! Oh please stop!” they yelled. Lightning flashed again and thunder crashed right after it and they clutched each other screaming.

The pickup truck slowed to a cautious crawl and a man with thick gray hair and a round, lined face stuck his head out the window. A sweet aroma drifted toward them from the back of the truck.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”
he yelled over the wind.

“La voiturearrêtée.”
Franny said, finding a couple of words of schoolgirl French.

“Merde.”
The driver got out and stood in the pouring rain, arms folded, regarding their car with a frown.
Vous avez de la chance. Vous auriez pu finir dans un fossé.
You’re lucky not to end up in the ditch.
Où allez-vous?
Where you go?” he added in English.

Franny shoved the sopping hair out of her eyes. “We go to Marten-de-Provence,” she said, and all of a sudden he beamed at them.

“Ah, eh bien, vouz êtes les Martens, n’est-ce pas?”
He held out his hand and Franny shook it, praying he would just say, Please get in my truck. But instead, while they stood with the rain streaming down their faces, he introduced himself.

“Je suis Philippe Allier, marchand de fruits et légumes dans le village de Marten. C’est un plaisir, mesdames, de vous rencontrer. Et pour Madame Rafaella, j’ai l’honneur de diriger la famille au château. Eh bien, mesdemoiselles, venez vite.”

He darted across the road, plucked Shao Lan out of the car, carried her back and installed her in the truck’s passenger seat. He fastened the seatbelt, wiped the rain tenderly from her face, and closed the door. Then he ran back to their car again and began pulling out the luggage.

Clare winced when she saw her expensive suitcases sitting in the puddles in the middle of the road, but she said
nothing. They helped Monsieur Allier load everything into the rear of the pickup next to the Cavaillon melons.

“Okay,
mesdames.”
Allier dusted his hands and held up the tarpaulin.
“Montez avec vos valises, puis nous irons vite au château.”

Franny and Clare didn’t need to understand French to know that they were to ride under the tarp with the melons in the back of the truck. They climbed in, hunkering down behind the cab out of the wind, then Monsieur Allier covered them with the tarp and they were off.

C
LARE SHOVED THE TARP
away, gasping for breath, almost asphyxiated by the sweet smell of the melons that rolled and bumped against their legs.

“Classy way to arrive at the ancestral château,” she yelled over the sound of thunder as Monsieur Allier drove up a hill into a dark little village. Franny’s heart sank. Plastic chairs and tables were stacked under the café terrace, the festive buntings dripped sadly, and the welcome sign dangled forlornly.

Then they left the village behind and were driving under an avenue of trees. Wet leaves shaken by the wind splattered down and stuck to their faces and their hair. “Like
Babes in the Wood,” Clare muttered through chattering teeth.

Then Monsieur Allier made a sudden left along a lane studded with pointy trees so tall their tips disappeared into the mist. A brilliant blue flash of lightning zigzagged to earth near a steel gray lake and in front of them sprawled a large, dark house.

Monsieur Allier opened the window to the back of the truck.
“Alors, le Château des Roses Sauvages,”
he said, circling the parterre garden and coming to a stop in front of the stone steps leading to the massive front door.

Franny stared doubtfully at the house. It was in complete darkness. Her eyes met Clare’s, and she knew they were thinking the same thing. Could this really be the right place? She glanced at Allier, busy unloading their luggage. Maybe he was a madman. He could have brought them here to kill them.

“Les lumières ne fonctionnent pas à cause de l’orage,”
Allier explained. They looked dumbly at him.
“L’électricité… Phut
…” He flung his hands in the air.
“Demain tout va marcher.”
He piled the luggage on the steps and opened the passenger door, bowing courteously as he offered Shao Lan his hand. To Franny’s surprise, she took it and descended daintily onto the gravel driveway.

“Bien, ma petite,”
Alliers said, patting her head fondly.
“Je ne veux pas déranger Madame Rafaella et ses invitées.”
He shook their hands politely.
“Bonnes vacances, mesdemoiselles, et bonne chance. Je vous verrai à la soirée.”
Then, rain dripping off his long nose, he climbed into the pickup and, with a quick wave, swerved around the turning circle and jolted, melons bouncing, back down the drive.

Franny took Shao Lan’s hand. It felt cold. “What if no one’s here?” she whispered to Clare. “What if we’ve come to the wrong place?”

“Why are you whispering?” Clare whispered back, then she giggled.

“Well, I guess there’s only one way to find out.” Franny put her finger on the bell and pressed hard.