Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé (34 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Friday, 27th August

JOSÉPHINE BEGAN TO
explain. ‘I went to look for the boat,’ she said. ‘I thought if I found it, then maybe Reynaud—’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t. I found Roux instead. And that woman was with him.’

Roux smiled. Roux has a very engaging smile, easy and at the same time curiously reluctant, which reaches all the way to his eyes. This time there was a question there. I climbed up on to the jetty and put my arms around him. He smelt of campfire smoke and of something unidentifiable, but familiar as the sound of the wind. Perhaps it was the smell of home. I found his lips with mine; we kissed. For a time, the question was answered.

I said: ‘Don’t you
ever
turn on your phone?’

He grinned. ‘I lost the charger. And then, when I got your messages—’

‘It doesn’t matter any more. You’re here now. But where’s Inès?’

Now Roux told his tale. He’d come down by train two days ago, and had joined up with some friends in Agen. Everyone on the river knows Roux; he’s done work on practically every boat from the Garonne to the Haut-Tannes, and people trust him instinctively. They’d found the black boat downriver, moored illegally just out of Agen, with Inès and Du’a still on board. Roux had recognized it at once; he’d fixed the engine and brought it home.

‘What about Inès?’

He shrugged. ‘She said she’d been having problems here. She never meant to take the boat. But when it drifted downriver, she didn’t know how to bring it back.’

‘She told you all that?’

‘Why wouldn’t she?’

It’s true, of course; people talk to Roux. There’s something about him that invites trust. Children; animals; people in need; like the Pied Piper, he acquires followers wherever he goes. And yet, there is a remoteness in Roux that no one has ever overcome; a deep and quiet reluctance to talk about anything to do with the past; a refusal to explain himself, whatever the circumstances. Hence his refusal to discuss Joséphine, or even to mention Pilou’s existence, though he must have known that his silence would make him look guilty.

But on the river, these things are allowed. No one asks too many questions. Friendships are made on the basis of a borrowed half-can of petrol. The river has only the present; the past is left behind on the shore. Names are most often nicknames; no one has any papers. Criminal records; past mistakes; broken families; none of that counts. Life is uncluttered and simple—

I looked at Joséphine again. I thought she seemed vaguely troubled, her colours tremulous and faint. Perhaps it’s seeing Roux again, I thought, with a flicker of unease. But that was absurd; more likely she’s just anxious about finding Reynaud.

As for Roux himself—

A couple of days on the river have reawakened something in Roux. It’s hard to say what, exactly; a kind of shine that was absent so long that I barely knew it was gone. A barge on a permanent mooring is not the same as a riverboat. There are rules to be followed; charges paid; and in Paris the riverside community is of a very different kind. Here, on the Tannes, he’s free again. And the change is all the more striking in that he is unaware of it.

‘Where are Inès and Du’a now?’

‘I drove them back here in my car,’ said Joséphine. ‘Roux phoned me. I assume they went home.’

‘You didn’t see where?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Is it important?’

Anouk was watching impatiently. ‘Maman! Jean-Loup texted me!’

I hugged her. ‘I’m glad. I’m sure he’ll be fine.’

‘And we have
potatoes
!’

‘Potatoes?’ I said.

Roux indicated the campfire. ‘I found these potatoes growing wild all around the riverbank. Try one, Vianne. They’re pretty good.’

I used a pointed stick to retrieve one of the roasted potatoes. Under the charred skin, it was good; floury, sweet and slightly pink. The others helped themselves too, and we ate them sitting on the deck, and between us, Joséphine and I told him about Reynaud, and Inès, and Alyssa, and everything that has happened here since the three of us arrived—

The story took a long time. When we had finished, Joséphine went back to see to Pilou, leaving us alone again. Rosette and Anouk were already asleep, tucked up in the cabin.

The moon was starting to set, and the Tannes was blanketed with midges. Roux flung a handful of dried shavings on to the embers of his fire; the scent was sharp and immediate, lemon grass and lavender, sage and applewood and pine, like the campfires of my childhood.

I said: ‘She told me about Pilou. And how she lied to Paul-Marie.’

‘Oh.’ His eyes were unreadable.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

What could I say? I’m sorry for believing that you lied to me? For thinking that you could have led such a tortuous double life, while all the time pretending to be as open as the palm of your hand?

I shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I’ve missed you, Roux. We all have.’

He took my hand. ‘So why not come home?’ That question was in his eyes again. ‘Vianne, you don’t live here any more. You only came for a holiday. And yet, here you are, back in Lansquenet, doing all the same things that you did last time, getting involved—’

‘You think I
shouldn’t
get involved?’

He shrugged.

‘But Armande brought me here. She wrote to me for a reason. She said there’d be someone who needed my help—’

He shrugged again. ‘There always is.’

‘What do you mean?’

He looked at me. His eyes were green as gages. ‘Perhaps you’re the one who needs Lansquenet, not the other way around.’

He’s wrong, of course. I don’t need Lansquenet. But his words had opened up something in me, some secret cell of longing and grief.
Why do I do these things?
I thought. Why do I answer the call of the wind? Will there never be a time when I can be free of this restless need?

No, I’m not crying. I never cry.

We sat together on the deck. I found the place on his shoulder that fits my head so perfectly, and we sat in silence for a long time, listening to the crickets and frogs chirping among the rushes. Then, without speaking, we crept away into the shelter of the trees and made love there, in the moonlight, with the scent of green damp earth and the night settling around us. Strange, how accustomed we become to our familiar small routines; it struck me that we hadn’t made love outdoors like this since we were last here.

Then we went back to the riverboat where Anouk and Rosette were still sleeping. Roux brought blankets on to the deck, and we lay there, watching the Milky Way turning like a Catherine wheel—

It took me a long time to get to sleep. Outside, the night had fallen still. Even the frogs were silent now, and the Tannes was a misty, luminous white. I got up and sat by the campfire, watching as the sky grew pale. Roux never finds it hard to sleep, just as he never remembers what time it is, or even what day of the week. If he were a Tarot card, he would be the Fool, whistling at the sky, shoelace undone, oblivious to all obstacles – the Fool who always tells the truth, sometimes without even knowing it.

And yet, he’s wrong, isn’t he? I never needed Lansquenet. In a way I’m fond of it, but I never really belonged here. How could I? I’m a free spirit. I’ve travelled too far, seen too many things to fit into such a little space. Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. How absurd; that such a small, narrow-minded place should keep such a firm hold on my heart. What is it about Lansquenet? It’s a village like any other here along the banks of the river Tannes. Quite an ordinary place; not as attractive as Pont-le-Saôul; not as historic as Nérac. Yes, of course, it has memories; but so does Paris; so does Nantes; so do a hundred different towns, a hundred different communities. I owe nothing to any of them. If they call, I do not hear. So why is this place different? Am I still a free spirit? Or am I just a tumbleweed, blowing wherever the wind takes me?

At dawn I went back to my place on the deck and tried to get to sleep again. I must have succeeded, because when I awoke the sun was up; and Roux was gone; the children were stirring sleepily inside the cabin; and the wind had changed again.

CHAPTER THREE

Saturday, 28th August

THE WOMAN IN
black came again last night. This time she brought a flask of mint tea, and slices of cold roast lamb wrapped in some kind of pancakes. I had promised myself that this time I wouldn’t indulge in any undignified pleading, and so I took the food without a word; just looked up at her from the bottom of the steps, all but two of which are now submerged. As a result, I have to stand almost thigh-deep in water.

This seemed to make her uncomfortable. ‘The water will stop rising soon,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t rained at all today.’

I shrugged and didn’t say anything.

‘Are you all right? You don’t look well.’

In fact, I feel like hell,
père
. I have been in the same wet clothes since the day I arrived here, and God knows what bacteria are floating in the water. I think I have a temperature; I’m shivering; my hand still hurts.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I love it here.’

She eyed me over her face-veil. ‘Vianne told me what you did. How you helped Alyssa when she jumped into the Tannes. And how you didn’t tell anyone.’

Once more, I shrugged.

‘So why did you try to burn Inès’s school, and sabotage her houseboat?’

That final comment was enough to convince me that she wasn’t Sonia. Her voice is different, anyway: drier and more nasal. I said: ‘Talk to Sonia Bencharki. She knows I had nothing to do with it.’

‘Sonia? Not Alyssa?’ she said.

‘Just ask her. Tell her why I’m here. She’ll tell you what happened.’

She looked at me for a long time. ‘Maybe I will do that.’

Of course, I have no certainty that Sonia would tell this woman the truth. But I don’t have many options left. At least I’ve put some doubt in her mind.

I am not sure how this has happened to me. I always did my duty. It’s these people, these
Maghrébins
. They’re all as mad as each other. I’ve tried my best to help them,
père
, and where has it brought me in the end? I’m in the hands of a five-year-old girl, a lost cat and a woman in black. If I were not so tired,
père
, I might almost find it amusing. But I’m exhausted: what little sleep I managed to get on those two remaining dry steps was broken by dreams so vivid that they barely seemed to be dreams at all. Several times I was woken up by what seemed to be tapping at the grille; though when I went to investigate, on each occasion, no one was there. My mind must be playing tricks on me. My throat is dry. My head aches. I finished the flask of mint tea, but could not eat the food she had brought. All I want is to sleep now, possibly for ever. To sleep between clean linen sheets, my aching head on a pillow—

Dawn breaks. The call to prayer.
Allahu Akhbar. God is most great
. Those words are the first thing a newborn baby hears; the first words spoken in a new home.
Allahu Akhbar. God is most great
. And now, that half-hour’s silence before the treadmills start again and the bells ring out from Saint-Jérôme’s, where Père Henri will be saying Mass in front of my congregation—

But is it
my
congregation? The image of Père Henri Lemaître taking over Saint-Jérôme’s – replacing the wooden pews with chairs; perhaps installing a PowerPoint screen – fills me with revulsion. But that does not entirely explain the violent sense of loss that I feel; the isolation; that longing for my ordered little place in the world. Even before all this,
mon père
, I was never one of them. Even though I was born here, I never felt I really belonged. I was set apart from the rest of them by something more than my calling. Standing here in the water, it seems so obvious to me now. Karim was right about one thing: no one will miss me very much. I never really touched their hearts; I only pricked their consciences.

Why is that,
père
? Vianne Rocher might say that it is because I do not make connections. I keep my distance. Is that so wrong? A priest cannot afford to be too friendly with his parishioners. Authority must be maintained. And yet, without my soutane, who am I? A hermit crab without his shell, helpless to every predator?