The governess, Mademoiselle Cleret had vanished. She must have been listening to her wireless, because Cook said that when
they went to look for her she and her little trunk of starched collars were quite gone, and the baby howling alone in his
crib. Everyone laughed a bit at Amélie Lesprats, who could not conceal her disappointment at not being taken instead, though
no one except her vain self had expected that she would leave with the family. The Marquise had departed with just her own
maid and the boy. Monsieur Mons the valet was to take those servants who were leaving to the station at Monguèriac in the
wagon. There was just himself, Cook, and Clara, who was returning to her family in Lyons. Amélie had packed her suitcase ready,
she had been nurserymaid after all, and she was convinced that Madame wouldn’t be able to dispense with her, and that she
would soon be kicking up her heels in Monte Carlo. Now she was just going along the valley to her parents, like Cathérine.
‘What did you think Madame would be wanting with you anyway on the Côte d’Azur?’ asked Cathérine nastily, and Amélie cried
into her apron and said well, at least it would have been a bit of life. Clara embraced them all and said that she would write,
so not to mind. But when Cook and her bundles had been helped into the wagon and they had waved goodbye to cold, silent Monsieur
Mons, the three girls sat down suddenly on the terrace steps and looked at one another.
‘I suppose we’d better get on,’ said Oriane.
They trooped back into the house. Monsieur’s instructions had been quite clear. Everything was to be covered in dust sheets
and the carpets rolled, the china and the glasses and all Madame’s pretty knick-knacks to be wrapped and put in the big trunks
Monsieur Mons had dragged down from the attic. The windows to be washed and covered with paper, the shutters closed and locked.
Cook had said they might as well help themselves to the preserves, she and Clara would take what they could carry, but there
was no sense in leaving them because you never knew. Monsieur Mons heard that and looked as though he might have something
to say, but Cook had given him a look. She did not finish speaking. Oriane was to fold all the linens with mothballs and lock
them in the laundry room in baskets, along the drying racks, not on the damp floor. The curtains were to come down and be
stored in sacks, the saucepans swaddled in newspaper, the candles sorted into boxes, the whole house was to come to pieces
as though it were a spring cleaning, but not be put back together.
In the salon, Cathérine sat down on a sofa. She arranged her dress fussily, reclining backwards, and spoke in French, in a
refined voice, ‘Oh, my head is dreadful with this heat!
Cathérine, do fetch me a tisane.’ Amélie giggled, but Oriane felt dismayed.
‘Cathérine, get up! What if someone sees?’
‘Who’s going to see?’ said Cathérine in her usual voice. ‘They’ve buggered off to Monte Carlo and left us.’ She continued
in her Marquise tone, ‘Oh, really, the crowds at Monte this year were quite dreadful!’
Emboldened, Amélie sat in an armchair. ‘I thought we might try Deauville this season,’ she announced. Oriane couldn’t help
it. ‘No, look, you’ve got it wrong.’
The cigarette box was on the table, she took one, lit it with a match from the silver stand attached to the ashtray, pursing
up her mouth and blowing a feather of smoke towards the ceiling, ‘We find that Monte is still more select, my dear.’ Cathérine
and Amélie helped themselves too, and they lolled there, smoking, bored ladies on a hot afternoon.
Cathérine jumped up. ‘Come on,’ racing into the hallway, her clogs clattering strangely on the newly naked stone of the staircase.
When they followed, panting and laughing to the door of the Marquise’s bedroom, she had the wardrobe open and was throwing
clothes on to the bed. She had a fur stole wrapped around her shoulders and a pale blue hat with a mauve silk ribbon jammed
on her head.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘you have this, Amélie!’
‘Oh, we can’t!’
‘Yes we can.’ Cathérine’s face was set, this was a test of loyalty. She had kicked off her clogs and was trying to work her
foot into a pale pink suede dancing slipper. Amélie obediently undid her apron and skirt and stepped into the matching evening
gown. The satin strained at the back and
her bodice showed under the delicate shoulder straps, but she grabbed a forlorn powder puff from the dressing table and minced
about, swishing the train and dabbing beige dust at her nose.
‘And this is for you, Oriane!’
A bunch of fabric the colour of milky coffee landed in Oriane’s arms. It was a silk negligée, trimmed with chocolate-coloured
lace. Oriane put her arms through the wide sleeves and tied the thick, slippery sash.
‘Those shoes simply won’t do, my dear,’ said Cathérine the Marquise, ‘do try a pair of mine!’
Oriane ducked as they hurtled towards her. She stooped, gathering the silk carefully where it pooled around her ankles, stuffed
her toes into the tiny yellow slippers figured with scarlet flowers. She went up to Amélie at the mirror and peered over her
shoulder, then unfastened her hair. It fell down her shoulders, darker than ever against the creamy fabric. That looked right.
‘I’m going to tell my brother!’ hooted Cathérine. ‘That would get him going, seeing you like that!’
‘Would it?’ asked Oriane foolishly. She thought no one had guessed that Laurent Nadl was sweet on her. Her glance slid swift,
involuntary, to the Marquise’s big carved wooden bed.
‘Look at her, the dirty cow,’ shrieked Amélie, ‘she can’t wait!’ She tittered coarsely, rolling her eyes, and Oriane felt
cold. She began to unfasten the negligée.
‘Come on, now,’ she said quietly, ‘we’d best get on.’
Next day, the girls continued their work scrappily as the d’Esceyracs departed around them. William was behaving very
hard. He said all his words in French and looked at Monsieur’s face like Oriane had told him. Madame had a hat with a feather,
which startled him, and there was a big clock near the wall that fizzed and muttered so he wanted to lay his ear on the fragrant
wood and listen to the beat of its polished heart. He contented himself with resting one fist behind his back in his open
palm and flicking his fingernails secretly in counterpoint to the clock’s clicks, ssi-tum, ssi-tum, like blood throbbing from
a chicken’s neck when Oriane killed it with the little knife that looked round but was very sharp so he mustn’t touch it,
except it didn’t slow down like the chicken. Perhaps one ssi-tum escaped from his lips, but that was nothing serious like
Oriane said when he did things that were bad but weren’t really bad. The clock room was big and had long windows that showed
the lawn and the woods, not Papie’s house because that was lower down, but Monsieur pointed and said, ‘That’s your farm, isn’t
it, William?’ so William saw that it looked much the same as it did when he was there, the big barn and the grey square roof,
except smaller. It was hard to leave the clock, but Monsieur said he had a special secret to show him, and they went together
right through the windows and across the scratchy grass that was full of footsteps.
Monsieur had one big box and William had another. He had to carry it very carefully, like his violin. They went down to a
clearing where there was a little house with a pointy roof, then down again through the wood where the brook was, with the
statue of the lady who was in the church too. The bridge crossed the brook where the water was muddy and crowded, humming
with thorns. Monsieur scrambled underneath, holding back the branches. William did not want
to go there, it was dark and nasty, but the box was so heavy and Oriane would be angry if he did not, so he followed Monsieur
to a damp, chilly hollow where a few tumbled bricks crawled with lichen. In the wall was a little door. For sure, William
would not go in there. He shook his head and began to bounce the box in his arms until Monsieur put down his own and took
it from him. Monsieur took out a little bottle of oil and rubbed it on a key, then he disappeared inside. William climbed
back up the bridge and waited in a patch of sunshine.
They went back to the big house where Monsieur put the key in a little cupboard that smelt of horses. It looked like the baby
of Papie’s cupboard, all over flowers and dancing creatures. ‘Shhh,’ said Monsieur and put his finger to his lips.
‘Shhh,’ said William, so hard it made bubbles of spit.
William liked the next part much better, when they broke the bottles. They made a wonderful noise, some of them were green
and they smashed deep and sad but the best ones were yellow and made a huge spluttering burst. Breaking things was very bad,
but no one came to shout at Monsieur ever ever. Yellow and black wine ran into the ground as Monsieur cracked the bottles
over the mounting block in the empty stable yard. It smelt like Mademoiselle Lafage’s wedding and a bit like Papie in wintertime.
William was allowed to break them too, he swung the bottle up and whammed it against the stone which was all purple now and
threw the splinters into the pile, a beautiful church noise like tiny bells.
‘That’s right, William,’ said Monsieur, and laughed, but it was not a happy sound, more like the thudding gasp of the green
glass tearing on the stone. There were two bottles left.
He had one bottle as a present. Monsieur cracked the other one carefully, just the neck, so that it was jagged but still whole.
He held it out so William could see the label. ‘This is an Haut-Brion,’ he said, ‘and it was made in 1913.’ He tipped back
his head and poured a little of the wine carefully into his mouth. ‘Do like me,’ he said, so William opened his mouth too
and it was filled with wine.
‘Shall we have a toast, William?’ William wasn’t sure he hadn’t done something bad, so he just kept quiet.
‘Never mind, you’re a good boy. Go home now.’
They said goodbye and William remembered to take off his cap. As he set off down the track to Murblanc he heard the last bottle
crack once, like a gunshot. He wished Oriane could have seen how he said ‘Merci Monsieur’. Maybe he would break the last bottle
on a rock, just to hear that noise again, but that could be a shame because it was a present. He gave it to Papie, even though
at Murblanc they had real wine from a jug. Papie said he was pleased all the same and while he waited for Oriane to fetch
him home William had a piece of clafoutis with cherries and a stick to scrape on Madame Nadl’s washboard as much as he liked.
Oriane went home by the village road with Amélie and Cathérine. They were to leave all the keys to Monsieur Larivière at the
Mairie
, so Amélie could take them as she was nearest. There was nothing to stop them leaving through the main door, but somehow
that didn’t seem right after their long day of work had worn out the giddiness, so they came out as usual on the kitchen side,
solemnly, stretching their arms and rubbing the backs of their damp necks. They took
turns to carry Amélie’s suitcase, bumping it along the swathe of grass in the middle of the avenue where the twilight was
hot and green. Nothing was different outside, the scent of the woods came up to them as though the thick air had deliquesced
into the soil. Their clogs stirred autumn.
‘Do you think they’ll come back, then?’ asked Amélie timidly.
‘Them?’ Cathérine was scornful. ‘I daresay, when it’s all over. Leaving us stuck here in the meantime. What do you expect?’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Oriane, though she believed it. ‘Laurent says—’
‘Laurent thinks he knows everything because he’s been to the pictures in Monguèriac. They’re here, and they’ve won and we
lost. We have to put up with it, that’s all, see?’
It was true that Oriane did not feel she had the right to say much. She had never seen a film or a newsreel at the pictures.
She hadn’t even been to Landi. Mademoiselle Lafage had sometimes read
La Dépêche
out loud when she lived with them but Oriane had not bought a copy since the wedding, it was a waste.
It seemed sad, suddenly, that none of them really knew anything at all.
‘We’re best off minding our own business,’ added Cathérine, as though she knew what Oriane was thinking.
They reached the bottom of the hill in silence and left Amélie at the bridge. They watched her for a while, dragging the scuffed
case up the hill. The light was growing blue now, thickening around her.
‘They put people like William in prison, you know,’ Cathérine announced, ‘they round them up and take them
away for good.’ She could be like that, cruel because she was clever.
The wine dried slowly on the cobbles of the stable yard. Even after several hours when the moon came up, little rivulets ran
stickily between the stones, showing a red bonfire of razors where the glass sparkled as its light caught the edge of the
heaped shards.
When Delphine d’Esceyrac telephoned on Wednesday evening, Claudia had still not told Alex. Murblanc contained them, they moved
into a rhythm. Claudia continued to rise early, and took one of the bicycles across the river into Castroux for the bread.
Olly and Richard were pleased to get out of a chore that, for them, had neither novelty nor charm. Breakfast was on the terrace,
and Aisling suggested, every day, some sort of activity for the visitors, a drive to the cathedral at Albi or the lovely old
square at Monguèriac, but they were not bored, they saw no reason to go rushing about. Aisling was happy that her house drew
them so, that they were content to remain within its orbit. Alex helped Jonathan in his potterings; they were building a low
wall around the herb beds with pretty, pinkish local bricks, a cache of which Jonathan had found buried when the
fosse
was dug. The pool was PG territory in the morning, but they spent most of the afternoon there, chatting, reading, snoozing.
As it got cooler, everyone took a
turn at watering, and Claudia helped Aisling to gather the salads and herbs for the evening. The leaves of the lettuces were
delicate, translucent, straining in the dry red earth. While they had drinks, the boys disappeared into the village for an
hour or so, and they ate at nine, with music and wine in the cool, thick jugs.