We All Ran into the Sunlight (12 page)

Veronique gasped.

Lucie had read in a magazine that if you wanted to have a baby you had to make the space for it in your house. She had painted it white, staying up most of the night, painting long after Arnaud had come up and stood there wrinkling his nose because of the smell. There was just something about the room: small and secure with the window in an alcove, old arched shutters, with one that had warped a bit; and the way the light moved through it at around four or five in the afternoon, a rich orange glow that stretched in a long, thinning triangle on the wall, then began to fade in a line and disappeared. Who knew what battles had raged around the chateau in the past? Who knew what beings had crouched in here, keeping watch on the hillside for signs of invasion? Now there was no sign of war; it was the quietest, safest room in the house and for hours, in the afternoon, Lucie sat here, rocking her thoughts in the chair.

‘My husband is on his way down from Paris, Vero. With the son of his mistress. His mistress is my sister, Marie. For years they have been seeing each other while I have been left here alone, working on my knees to keep his home clean. You think I am overdoing it. I am. But the thing is, it’s all true. I can’t have a child, Veronique,’ she said, again. ‘I can’t have a child. But when Paul comes later on today, he will have this room that was meant for mine.’

Veronique closed her eyes.

‘I’m so sorry, Lucie.’

‘I wanted it. So much.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you? Did you know this? Did the women of the village know that I was barren?’

‘Madame. I’m so sorry. I knew so little about you. We all, we know so little about you.’

And then, in the way that people turn when they get to see the vulnerable side of someone they thought was
higher
on the social scale than them, the Mayor’s wife stepped forward and kissed Lucie Borja on both white cheeks. She hugged her then and her big fat heart opened right up to receive the little bird who was so much in need of love and support and friendship. She kissed little Lucie’s head and she held her to her breast and let her cry.

They burnt the plane that night. The tail with its Nazi swastika showing had been found half buried in the woods. It was carried, in a ceremonial procession of trucks, up to the heath, where the village gathered to watch it burn in memory of those who had lost their lives fighting, or
resisting
the Vichy collaboration.

The largest paella anyone had ever seen was brought up from Canas and the couple who owned the
épicerie
in those days supplied the bread. The Café Union, as it was known back then, supplied the pastis and glasses.

When the villagers came traipsing up the hill at dusk, appearing first as miniatures beneath the pine trees,
carrying
their rugs and their babies and their bottles of wine, the air was already filling with the smell of saffron and the fish cooking in the rice. It was a party to top all others and there was music and dancing and children running around barefoot till the early hours of the morning. Meanwhile, in the centre of the turning field, on a tall bonfire, the black tail of that plane with its white insignia of fear lay fallen against the dark sky as if it had crashed into its own funeral pyre and buried its nose in the ground.

No one really knew why the tail of that plane had come to be there in the woods, nor where the rest of the plane had gone or been taken. They knew it wasn’t a fighter plane but a carrier, most likely personnel, that had veered off course before being shot down on its way in from the sea.

When Arnaud’s car pulled up at the heath that night, and the boy and the tall angular woman stepped out with him and came out to the place where all the villagers were standing in a circle round the fire, they saw Lucie chatting and laughing with everyone as if she were suddenly the most popular woman in the village.

In one of the pictures taken, Arnaud was standing in profile, the tip of a cigarette in his fingers in front of his mouth; a tall handsome man, exactly the kind of decent, honest fighting man the evening was put on to
commemorate
. And Madame Borja was standing to the left of the group, between the Mayor’s wife and the doctor, just a young woman with a band of chestnut-brown hair, a light silk shirt tucked into high slacks, smiling round the
shoulders
beside her.

The picture didn’t show the shame Arnaud was
feeling
nor the humiliation he experienced at finding his wife here, not lonesome and afraid and completely mad as he had suggested she was to Marie, when he had pleaded with her outside the apartment in Paris to come down –
please come to the country, see for yourself how mad she is, how crazy, please
! – but utterly at ease with these people, chatting, laughing with her friend Veronique on her elbow as she worked her way around.

Later Arnaud would say that Marie had simply wandered off somewhere, disgusted, he imagined, by the villagers’ behaviour, which became more and more raucous as the evening wore on, as if the black tail rising up above them was winding them up somehow, giving them an outlet for something that wasn’t quite patriotic but felt violent nonetheless.

A few of the men whipped round the edge to wake the women and children who had fallen asleep on their
blankets
.

The crowd moved towards the turning field and some of the men broke into drunken song, wartime songs, and the children rubbed the sleep from their eyes and rushed forward towards the plane, their faces lit up with
excitement
.

The young village boy they called Lollo walked on his own at the back, his hands in the pockets of his shorts, his shoulders hunched against the crowd.

It was Lollo’s thirteenth birthday, and he was used to celebrating his father’s memory, the village hero who had died as a hostage strapped to the roof of a retreating
German
truck.

People said it was because the boy was angry. The
villagers
were getting carried away with the plane, forgetting the heroes who had died for them to be free. Others said it was because he had this need to prove his bravery – he wanted to be a war hero. He waited till the fire was lit and the first of the flames began to take hold of the logs and the children were standing rapt at the front, holding their hands out to test the warmth. Lollo hurled himself onto the bonfire and scrambled up to the top in his bare feet and sat himself on the tail of the plane, straddled it and rocked himself backwards and forwards till the thing began to shake. He was holding his hand in the air like he was riding a bucking horse and people were screaming by now, some with enjoyment, others with fear. But after a few minutes, the boy hadn’t stopped and none of the people crowding round could comprehend what he was doing. The flames were leaping higher. A few of the
bigger
men came forward, shouting, trying to bat him down with their hands. But the boy didn’t come down. And the fire burnt and got more and more furious and began to lap round his legs and now everyone was screaming. It was then that two or three of the men went in to rescue him, leaping up into the flames and grabbing a piece of him, a foot, a hand, and pulling him down, him and the tail, sliding him down onto the ground and away from the fire.

Arnaud drove Lucie and Baseema and Paul back down the hill in his car. It was morning when they arrived at the chateau and the sun was coming up. Baseema was asleep before they even carried her out of the car. Arnaud laid her down in the cot bed in Lucie’s bedroom while Lucie put Paul to bed in the nursery and then went upstairs to check on Marie. She found her sister asleep in bed,
sleeping
off the journey. For a moment or two she stood and stared at her sister, who looked lovely asleep in the bed, with her hair all choppy and pixie-like on the pillow. She was glad her sister had got prettier. She was glad there was something pretty for Arnaud to put his thing into at last.

No, that didn’t worry her at all. What worried her was the effect that her sister’s boy would have on Baseema this summer. She could feel the change coming already, and she knew that soon, the child would let her down.