The House with Blue Shutters (8 page)

Clara and Amélie lived in, sharing one of the attic bedrooms next to Cook, who snored something terrible. The long dormitory above the stable was empty now, a place of sunlight and cobwebs. Two of Amélie’s Lesprats cousins saw to the horses and the odd jobs, though they were very superior about their real job as chauffeurs, which meant they polished the Marquis’s car when it was there and fiddled unnecessarily under the bonnet. There were Lesprats everywhere, old Camille had been one of fifteen and had had thirteen children himself, so Amélie had relations from Landi to Monguèriac. The boys had made a snug, smelly nest for themselves in an alcove off the tack room, which had a fireplace, and on Sundays they went for their dinner to Amélie’s parents in the village. Monsieur Contier, Yves’s father, was the gardener, though he was nearly as old as Papie Nadl. He was too old to farm, but he had a wonderful touch with roses, Madame said, and she was so proud of the sweetness of the d’Esceyrac melons she would often drag old Monsieur Contier out to meet her guests when they came down from Paris in the
summer. He mumbled and touched his cap, but didn’t tell them about the holy water. In fact, there were not guests from Paris so very often, Monsieur le Marquis was usually away, and Madame was often with him, fetched in a car from the station at Monguèriac and driven away to dance with the very best people in St-Germain.

Cathérine slept at Murblanc, but though she walked up with Oriane in the morning, she worked the full day, so Oriane returned alone, taking the track down through the woods to fetch William. Sometimes she would stop and sit down at the little shrine to the Madonna and leave her a posy, or just trail her fingers in the brook. It was nice to sit and think, and plan the chores for the afternoon. Cook allowed her to take some bread and a bit of cheese or sausage for William, so often they sat on the bridge over the Landine while he ate his lunch, and then they walked into Castroux. Oriane felt very grown up as she counted her own money from her own purse to pay for a few nails or a loaf from Charrot’s bakery. Sometimes she left William playing in the square and stuck her head into the kitchen of the café, where she would share a
sirop
with Betty Dubois and tell her about the doings up on the hill, how the funnel of the copper had got clogged with a ball of string, or how Charles-Louis had escaped into the drawing room and broken a porcelain figurine. Betty liked to hear about the food Cook made, though that was better when Monsieur was there because Madame liked odd meals, dry toast, a nasty sour thing called a grapefruit, the size of a football, or just a plate of steak chopped up raw with capers. Betty said it was because she was slimming. It was all the rage, slimming. Oriane liked
sirop de grenadine
, but they usually had lemon because it was cheaper
and Betty said her father would have her if he knew she was giving the other kind away for nothing.

It was a long walk home, but if there was a wagon passing, the driver would usually give them a lift up the hill, and that gave Oriane a chance for a rest before beginning the afternoon’s work. She had to be extra careful about keeping the house nice because of Mademoiselle Lafage, so she was glad on the whole that she did not have a pig. When her mother was alive, that had been one of the shames of Aucordier’s, because even the poorest people had a pig, but her father had sold their last one to a carrier before it was killed, and had hitched them both a ride to Cahors with the money. The carrier had pushed him out of his cart at the entrance to the yard five days later, covered in his own red sick, and all the pig money was gone.

Sophie Aucordier left him in the dirt for a whole day, stinking and covered in flies, but when night fell and she tried to get him to the privy to clean him off he had pulled out a plank of wood from the queasy-looking fence of the sty and broken it across her back. So when Laurent Nadl asked her if she would like a
penong
bringing back from the fair at Landi the first spring she had gone to work up at the chateau, Oriane had thought about it and said no. William always hid when the pig killer came, even from Saintonge he could hear them screaming. That autumn, when Madame Nadl kindly offered to let them share the fricassee of fresh throat meat, fried with flour and lemon, Oriane said it upset him, and they stayed at home.

The rabbits were difficult too. Oriane loved them when they were small, blind and writhing in the straw, but as they grew they became sullen, shuffling resentfully behind their

wires, snapping at her hand even when she pushed a bunch of fresh sweet grass through to them. They knew their fate, and they hated her for it. She told herself they were cruel, nibbling up their own children like that sometimes. Laurent showed her how to grab them by the soft loose skin on the back of their neck and twist the supple little throat, but the first time, Oriane dropped her rabbit and it lay screaming and rolling in the dirt of the yard until Laurent finished it off with a lump of brick. She learned to be deft and quick then, though she always had to close her eyes at the little pop of bone that meant the warm body would grow heavy and still in her hand. When she had enough clean skins, she made a cap for William, and she cooked the rabbits with vinegar and olives, or with mustard, or sliced them up for a pressed terrine. All the same, she never stopped hating the way those skinned eyes rolled at her, because they had trusted her, once.

Sunday scratched, half past three was endless. The air felt stagnant, even the water in the pool blood-warm. Nothing moved
in the valley aside from an occasional car passing at the bottom of the hill, the sound of its passage stretching the length
of the road in the stillness. Beneath the milky sky the family at Murblanc moved with a fellahin slowness, a dogged un-English
lethargy. The house knew centuries of such heat, would remain cool enough for sleep at least until the sun banked, with the
shutters closed and the thick stone walls sweating a last chill of winter. Yet some Northern inability to see light and heat
as anything other than a blessing, too precious to be squandered, kept them irritably out of doors. The Froggetts baked stoically
on their terrace.

Claudia had thought she had slept late, it had been after three again when she had got to bed, but she was disappointed when
she woke to find it was only nine-thirty. Alex, maddeningly, slept on. Richard and Oliver lay on the grass
under the chestnut tree, sighing with exaggerated boredom. Aisling had woken at the same time, and was irritable at starting
her day behind. Her first thought was that Claudia spoke perfect French. She had forbidden the boys the pool when she found
them dive-bombing the Froggett daughters. Alex and Jonathan were liverish, it was too hot to eat and there were no papers
because Aisling had missed the market. In the breathless shade they flicked resentfully at a three-dayold
Telegraph
. Aisling thought about dinner and wondered if she ought to ask the Froggetts up for a drink.

Charlotte Glover telephoned to say thank you.

‘I thought I might walk up to Aucordier’s to see how the old lady is,’ said Claudia to no one in particular, pronouncing the
name lightly, as though it had always been familiar to her.

‘Yes, you could take some cherries. They’re a bit manky, I was going to do a clafoutis, but it’s the last, they’ll do in a
basket.’ Aisling sat with a pile of recipe books with greasy yellow Post-its marking the pages.

‘I’ll come,’ said Alex.

‘Are you sure, darling? It’s very hot.’

‘Do me good.’

At breakfast, the men had listened politely to Aisling’s explanation of the adventure, Ginette’s breakdown, the arrival of
the doctor, the broken wrist. They both felt, though neither said so, that it was tiresome of Aisling to be so interested
in the neighbours, bothering over silly old women whom she would not have noticed in England. Excessive somehow and not worth
hearing about. You expected women to be kind like that, they were feminine. Richard put in that the old woman from Aucordier’s
was a witch, and that he had seen
her pissing in her artichoke patch on his way back from tennis. ‘But we loved the artichokes that Ginette brought for us,’
said Aisling mischievously.

‘I didn’t,’ declared Oliver, ‘they’re disgusting and hairy. Sick.’

Richard whispered something about Mrs Laws, the boys collapsed into their habitual huddle of wheezing sniggers.

‘There could be something in it,’ Jonathan smiled at them, ‘maybe we should try it on Mum’s tomatoes.’ Aisling swatted him
with a napkin, everyone laughed.

‘They’re nice kids, Richard and Olly,’ offered Alex as they began the climb. He was gallantly carrying the basket of cherries,
huge and bulbous, the colour of clotted blood. There was something cancerous about them, Claudia could hardly stand to look.
Her mouth was dry, but she felt a horrible gush of sour gastric juices lurch in her throat, gulped it back. She could tell
him now.

‘Do you think they get bored here?’ she asked.

‘Are you bored already?’

‘Not at all. It’s heaven.’

‘Bloody hot.’

They carried on in silence. The steepness of the hill had been disguised last night in the car, Claudia felt the pitch of
it a little in her lungs. Was this over-exertion? she thought suddenly. Alex was red-faced, she could sense him breathing
carefully through his nose so as not to let her hear him puff. His belly bulged a little over his belted shorts; released
from his scaffolding of suits and tailored shirts, Alex was soft all over, less convincingly male. Sébastien did not have
that look of peeled, grub-like Englishness. Sébastien would be wearing
jeans, ancient worn Levi’s sitting low on his tanned hips, his T-shirt would not be neatly pressed navy blue from Hackett’s,
but something overwashed to the texture of fine suede, bought ten years ago in the rue Oberkampf. In photographs, the same
T-shirt or jacket would appear over and over, a snapshot at the beach in Mexico, the magazine pictures of the Venice Biennale,
eventually arriving at Claudia’s time, the T-shirt smooth against her breasts, pulled from the tangled floor in the morning,
the corduroy jacket warming her one cold October morning in Florence. An American woman had Polaroided them kissing in the
Piazza della Signoria and shyly given them the picture. Claudia, though she knew it was not original, touched Sébastien’s
clothes like talismans when she found herself alone in the flat in St-Germain. He did not have many things so Claudia had
once been pleased by the continuity of his clothes, the way they bridged the time before she knew him. She realized now that
the presents she had given him, a black cashmere sweater, a heavy printed silk scarf, would complete Sébastien in time for
a woman whom he had perhaps not yet even met. Hopelessly, Claudia felt tears start at the back of her jaw.

‘Darling! Darling, what’s the matter?’ Claudia loathed herself for the concern in his voice. She scrubbed at her face with
a dusty balled fist, screwing up her eyes.

‘Nothing, I’m just feeling a bit dizzy.’

‘Ought we to go back?’

‘No, no, sorry, we’re practically there. I’ll be fine when I have some water.’

Aucordier’s was as lifeless as the day. Claudia knocked hesitantly at the door, this was the wrong time to come, the
two women would surely be sleeping. But Ginette appeared promptly, smiling, normal, her hair heartbreakingly twisted in plastic
rollers.

‘How are you?’ asked Claudia. ‘This is my fiancé, Alex.’

‘
Enchanté
, Madame,’ said Alex gravely. He proffered the basket with the ghost of a little bow. He is kind, thought Claudia, so kind
to me.

Ginette insisted they come in, and though Claudia was reluctant to see the room again, it was surprisingly cool, no soup,
only the vinous combination of old beams and stone. The air felt suddenly watery, smooth and greenish as a plunge into a lake
after the glare outside. Mademoiselle Oriane was on the sofa, straight backed but nodding, in a white blouse and broad dark
grey skirt. The hairnet was covering Ginette’s rollers today. On the television, Romy Schneider trilled through the Alps in
a crinoline. ‘Oh, it’s
Sissi l’Impératrice
!’ Claudia realized that she had exclaimed.

‘We love her. Isn’t she beautiful?’ Ginette looked wistful.

‘How is Mademoiselle?’ asked Claudia.

‘Oh, fine, fine.’

The night before, Claudia had left Ginette still immobile on the sofa as the doctor washed his hands, and, not knowing how
much she now recalled, given Aisling’s cleaning-lady’s claim about fits, she did not wish to confuse her with details misplaced
or provocative of embarrassment. Ginette did not seem inclined to say much.

‘And the wrist? All fine?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Well, we don’t want to interrupt your Sunday.’ Claudia tried to direct Alex to the door with her eyes, but he was
smiling expansively and indiscriminately, not attempting to keep up with the French.

‘Please, stay and have some tea.’ There was a long pause, Ginette’s mouth hovered open. ‘Very English?’ she produced in English,
and Alex beamed at the effort.

‘We’d love to,’ said Claudia, thinking with dread of the viscous foam floating on the surface of the hard water in last night’s
coffee bowl. Ginette beamed too, for much too long. She did not make any move towards assembling the tea, but remained where
she was, smiling hugely. Claudia avoided Alex’s eyes.

‘Poke her with that,’ came a voice from the sofa. Mademoiselle Oriane was alert, straining out over her bound arm with a grey
plastic-tipped crutch.

‘Go on. You hit her last night. Give her a good poke.’

‘How are you, Mademoiselle?’ asked Claudia stupidly.

The old woman set the crutch on the floor and hauled herself up with her right arm, bigger and obviously much stronger than
she had appeared slumped against the bed in that white light. Alex stepped back out of her way, she transferred the crutch
to her left armpit and jabbed at Ginette’s pink sprigged blouse with the right. Ginette’s eyes immediately refocused, the
smile melted, she blinked rapidly and said, ‘What are you doing up? Doctor told you to rest. Look, we’ve got visitors.’