The House with Blue Shutters (15 page)

Pushing the bike up the lane, a plastic bag with two
flûtes
swinging from the handlebars, Claudia had to slither into the ditch to make way for an open lorry stinking of fumes. The
truck was half full of melons, some split and oozing, and half full of skinny, ratty men wedged amongst the fruit. They wore
baseball caps and filthy T-shirts and stared down at her incuriously, slit-eyed in the sun. Jonathan said they were Albanians
or something, brought in for the harvest. As the days passed, Claudia realized that the stillness of the landscape was an
illusion. Silence sharpened as it was so often broken by tractors clanking heavy farm machinery up the lane, or along the
valley, from where the sound carried for miles. Smoking a cigarette on the balcony before she went in for her bath, Claudia
saw that the fields were full of little Brueghel figures, loading, tying, creeping across the earth. Old people worked on
through the late twilight, squat bundles in the orchards, pruning and trimming now the fruits were over, occasionally a gun
went off in the chateau wood, although the season had not begun. Claudia was absorbed, comforted. London seemed far away.

Aisling suggested that Delphine bring her sons to tea on Thursday afternoon. Madame Lesprats would be in to do La Maison Bleue
in the morning, so she could be sure it would look its best after almost a week of Froggett depredation. A
shame that the flowers were so poor in August, but she could put bunches of rosemary and lavender in the rooms, and the geraniums
on the PG terrace were lovely. It was too hot for much, but she could do that fragrant almond and orange-flower cake, thinly
sliced, on white plates. Could the Froggetts be got rid of? It was hardly fair to show Delphine around and not ask them for
tea, and anyway, they were bound to hover even if she didn’t. When she hung up, Claudia was in the kitchen rubbing a garlic
clove on slices of bread for bruschetta, wearing a loose embroidered tunic, silver on white, over her turquoise bikini. Her
bare feet were tanned.

‘Thanks,’ said Aisling. She peeled the clingfilm from a bowl of broad bean and sage purée and handed Claudia a spoon to smear
with.

‘Your friend from the chateau just phoned. She’s bringing Charles-Henri and Jules over for a swim tomorrow.’ Aisling settled
on this unsatisfactory conjugation because she did not like to say ‘Delphine’ in front of Claudia, as she had not actually
been asked to use her Christian name, but ‘The Comtesse d’Esceyrac’ sounded too overawed. What, really, should she call her?

‘That’s nice,’ replied Claudia, spreading, ‘although I don’t know her all that well. I’ve just met her a few times.’

Aisling decided on playful frankness. ‘Actually,’ she said, with an affected smile, ‘I’m a bit overwhelmed.
La plume de mon oncle
and all that. Do I say Madame d’Esceyrac to her?’

‘I should say Comtesse,’ said Claudia thoughtfully, ‘and then she’s bound to say call me Delphine. If she doesn’t, just stick
to
vous
. More to the point,’ she smiled more sincerely than Aisling had done, ‘what’s to be done with the Froggetts?’

Aisling felt grateful, though defensively so. ‘It would be nice to get to know her in her own language, so to speak.’

‘Alex and I haven’t been to the lake yet. What about a picnic lunch, a late one? We could do
pain bagnat
with the ratatouille.’

‘They’re not so ghastly, really. Wouldn’t you mind?’

‘Not at all.’ Anything to avoid mention of Sébastien. ‘I’ll go down in a minute and ask them. I’ll get the chaps to come,
too.’

They had a glass of PG white, and Aisling told Claudia about the Shirleys, last year, who had brought frozen chips in a cool
bag all the way from Hemel Hempstead.

Claudia told Aisling that Delphine’s husband had, she understood, died suddenly from cancer. Aisling was most sympathetic.

Madame Lesprats steered her navy Clio carefully around the barn at Aucordier’s and honked. Ginette appeared at the door, waved,
then stuck her head back in to say something to old Oriane. Her overall hung between her broad hipbones, which protruded like
the shanks of an old horse. She was really a few years younger than Madame Lesprats, but a glance in the rear-view mirror
was reassuring. Time had got the better of poor Ginette, but Madame Lesprats’s tightly permed hair was hennaed a nice shade
of claret, and there was something to be said for a few extra kilos after a certain age, as Cathérine Deneuve observed. Like
many of her friends in Castroux, Madame Lesprats was a devoted reader of
Oh La!
Sometimes she brought a few back copies up to Aucordier’s. Today, she was in a hurry to get on, as her son was coming to
lunch with his wife, although it would not be kind to mention that to Ginette.

Ginette got out at the top lane, from where she would go to the main house to collect the linen. Madame Lesprats continued
down the hill and turned right before the bridge, at the edge of Murblanc land. She took the gravelled path the guests used
and parked next to the Froggett car at the side of La Maison Bleue, as Madame Harvey insisted on calling it. She remembered
perfectly well when the house was no more than Nadl’s cow barn. The cleaning equipment was in a specially built cupboard under
the oak staircase – once again Madame Lesprats marvelled at English extravagance, as she tugged out the plastic bucket and
went to the kitchen to fill it. A spotty girl with sunburned shoulders was eating baguette and Nutella at the table. She said
‘
Bonjour
,’ and Madame Lesprats returned her greeting curtly, clattering a pile of washing up as she forced the bucket’s lip beneath
the tap. The girl took the hint and sloped off, carrying a book, leaving her dirty cup and a stream of crumbs. Madame Lesprats
thought Madame Harvey was foolish not to get a wipe-clean lino top, they had some lovely bright patterns in the market, and
it was so much more hygienic.

An hour later, the two women had done the bedrooms and bathrooms and changed the sheets. At least this lot were tidy. Between
them, they carried the vacuum cleaner back down the stairs and got started on the floors.

‘That Claudia’s pregnant.’ said Ginette above the wheezy drone.

‘How do you know?’ Madame Lesprats was irritated. She considered the Harveys her own private area of expertise.

‘Oriane spotted it. She fainted.’

‘That makes sense. Still, she’s getting married, isn’t she, to Monsieur Harvey’s brother?’

‘I daresay.’

‘Well, she is. Mademoiselle Oriane should keep her nose out of other people’s onions.’

Rebuffed, Ginette bent her head and continued sweeping out the empty fireplace, terrible for dust in the summer. Madame Lesprats
felt mean.

Later, at lunch, she reported to her daughter-in-law that she had asked ‘that poor Ginette’ to come with them to the
chasse loto
on Friday evening, she knew Sabine wouldn’t mind, and God knows, it will be nice for her to get out of that house. Ginette
could come on her bicycle, and afterward they could put it in the boot of the Clio and drive her home. Sabine worked in a
pharmacy at Landi. Already, in her mother-inlaw’s kitchen, with the blinds drawn and the cheese on the table, she could feel
the sharp ache between her eyes that always came when they went to the loto. She hated sitting in the
Mairie
for hours under the violent yellow strip light, smelling sweaty old women and their graveyard breath. She said, ‘Well, that
should be a change for her.’

Aisling’s table looked lovely. As the Froggetts had obediently gone off to the lake, marshalled by Claudia at two o’clock,
she considered serving the tea by the pool, but it would be nice for Delphine to see the house itself, so she put out the
plates and teacups on a white cloth spread over a corner of the big table on the terrace. Just the china, and glasses for
the boys’ lemonade; it would look pretentious, she thought, to scatter some rose petals on the white, though she had been
tempted. Lapsang with lemon, the cake and a sticky banana loaf to slice up for the children in case, though French children
loved almonds. Sitting with Delphine (who was Delphine, of course, now, she had corrected Aisling’s tentative Comtesse immediately),
Aisling thought the garden couldn’t look prettier. The tour of La Maison Bleue had been lovely. Aisling had tried to go quickly,
not wishing to bore her guest, but Delphine had seemed avid for every detail, keen to know who had done the work and how quickly,
charmed by what she called the ‘delicate’ colour scheme and how clever it was of Aisling to leave some of the original byre
in the kitchen to make a feature. The ghost of Mrs Highland shrivelled and evaporated in the brightness of Delphine’s exclamations
and the swift tap of her tongue – so lovely to hear a pure French voice and not that dreadful thick accent Aisling was worried
her boys might pick up.

Charles-Henri and Jules munched enthusiastically at both almond cake and banana loaf, and then asked their mother, whom they
addressed, extraordinarily, as
vous
, if they could return to the water. Delphine looked dubious, so Aisling suggested they carry their teacups down to be on
hand in case of fatal cramps. The French were so old-fashioned about these things. Though Delphine’s English was far superior
to her hostess’s French, they chatted in her own language, and Aisling felt she kept her end up very well, though it was frustrating
not quite to have the means of satisfying her curiosity discreetly, without appearing nosy, a trick that was difficult even
in English and impossible with the addition of the rather aggressive
est-ce que
at the beginning of a question. She tried the French method of making a statement preceded by ‘and’ with a rising interrogative
inflection, but Delphine seemed to think she was reiterating her own remarks and merely
agreed. Still, by the time the third cup of tea was drunk and the second slice of cake refused, Aisling had discovered a good
deal.

The husband had died quite suddenly last year, though Aisling did not attempt to probe into the details, moving the conversation
along after a suitable arrangement of countenance and a murmured ‘
je suis desolée
’. Where the cancer had been she couldn’t make out. Delphine lived with her children in the same apartment in the fifth, the
rue de Vaugirard, where La Maintenon looked after La Montespan’s children, so charming, poor thing, and lovely for the boys
being just across from the Luxembourg, which was much prettier than the Tuileries, didn’t Aisling think? Aisling wondered
why La Maintenon was a poor thing. She had tried to read a popular French novel about her called
L’Allée du Roi
, but had never got beyond the prologue. Clearly it was done to speak about historical characters as though one knew them
personally. Sarah Ashworth was a treasure (Aisling noticed that Delphine did not feel the need to express any obviously insincere
regrets that she hadn’t the time to bring up her children herself, which is what, Aisling thought, an Englishwoman would have
done). Charles-Edouard had insisted on an English nanny, he had had one himself, like his father Charles-Louis when the old
Marquis was with the Free French. This took a moment to unravel, particularly all the Charleses, but Aisling said how funny,
she had always had a French au pair girl for Oliver and Richard when they were still in London. Delphine said that she hoped
to spend a lot more time in the country. ‘I was married there, you know,’ she added, looking across over the roof of the guesthouse
then staring suddenly at her plate.
Aisling stood up and called to the children in the pool, making a noise.

Claudia wished Alex wouldn’t jiggle so. He wore tropically patterned swimming shorts, his flanks trembled like just set custard
above the ruched waistband. Dressed, he was fine really, compared to some of his friends, but like this – Claudia knew she
was hateful, but she didn’t seem able to stop herself. She tucked her chin forward and looked over her lower lids at her own
brown stomach. Two hollows of muscle ran either side of her navel and a clean half centimetre of space showed beneath the
bikini bottom stretched over her hipbones. The bikini was a waste, really, no need for Missoni around here. It made no difference.
She thought of the baby, she thought of Sébastien, she hated Alex. It seemed as though, if she could just be alone for long
enough, she could think her way to some resolution, knowing at the same time that this was just procrastination, there was
no answer that differed from what she had. Yet her head drummed with the want to be away from all of them, from Aisling and
her food and her enthusiasms especially. It had been a mistake to come, her pleasure in the landscape was making her weak.
She ought to have changed their plans, made Alex take her away for an expensive break somewhere she had to change her dress
a lot, and then back to London to just get on with things.

‘The boys’ were playing volleyball in the muddy shallows of the lake, Giles and the Harvey sons against Jonathan and Alex.
Wendy Froggett was reading a book about one man’s struggle to start an olive farm in Extremadura. Alice looked hot and self-conscious
with
The Idiot
. Caroline appeared to
be asleep. Claudia got up determinedly and went to the lake, avoiding the volleyball. It was brackish close to the edge, but
after a few strokes she was out of her depth, it felt cool and fresh. She dipped her head and opened her eyes to greenish
motes, stuck out her tongue to feel the softness. She flipped on to her back and propelled herself gently with her hands.
It was beautiful here, really, just the sky and the hills and the green water. Perhaps she should phone Annabelle, but to
say what? ‘Sébastien’s knocked me up so I’m marrying Alex. Don’t tell anyone.’? It would be in bad taste to inflict her secret
on Annabelle, dangerous moreover, and what could her friend actually do? Annabelle would be sympathetic, but there was no
solution she could propose that Claudia herself had not rejected. All she had to do was tell Alex, get it over with and after
that it would be irrevocable, once he thought it was his.