Wild Lavender (4 page)

I stepped up to the door and lifted the knocker, letting it go with a timid thud. I looked up at the salt-encrusted windows but there were no lights in any of them.

‘Try again,’ suggested one of the women. ‘She’s half deaf.’

I was too shy to look at the woman but I took her advice. I grabbed the knocker and swung it. It hit the wood with a bang so forceful that it rattled the window frames and ricocheted along the street. The women laughed.

This time I heard a door opening inside the house and feet clumping down stairs. The latch clicked and the door swung open. An old woman stood in front of me. Her face was all
angles with a beaky nose and a chin so sharp I could have tilled the vegetable garden with it.

‘There’s no need for such noise,’ she scowled. ‘I’m not deaf.’

I stepped back, almost tripping. ‘Aunt Augustine?’

The woman examined me from the part of my hair to my feet and seemed to come to a displeasing conclusion. ‘Yes, I am your Great-Aunt Augustine,’ she said, folding her meaty arms over her bosom. ‘Wipe your boots before you come in.’

I followed her through the parlour, which contained a worn rug, two chairs and a dusty piano, to the dining room. A table, a glass cupboard and a sideboard were crammed into the space. Paintings of seafaring adventures clashed with the striped wallpaper. The only natural light came from the adjoining kitchen’s window. There was a fringed lampshade dangling over the table and I expected Aunt Augustine to turn the light on for us. But she didn’t and we sat down at the table in the gloom.

‘Tea?’ she offered, pointing to the pot and the mismatched cups next to it.

‘Yes, please.’

My throat was parched and my taste buds sprang to life at the thought of a soothing tisane. I could almost taste silky chamomile gliding over my throat or the refreshing snap of rosemary against my tongue.

Aunt Augustine grabbed the pot handle with her gnarled fingers and poured. ‘Here,’ she said, pushing a cup and saucer towards me. I eyed the dark liquid. It had no aroma and when I sipped it I found that it was cold and tasted like stale water. It must have been left over from the morning or even earlier. I drank the tea because I was thirsty, but tears pricked my eyes. Couldn’t Aunt Augustine even make me a fresh pot for me? Part of me had dared to hope that she might be more like my father and less like Uncle Gerome.

Aunt Augustine sank back in her chair and tugged at a hair on her chin. I squared my shoulders and sat up straight, determined to give her another try. Surely she
understood that we were both Fleuriers, each other’s flesh and blood. But before I could open my mouth, she announced, ‘Three meals a day. And watch what you eat, you’re not a guest.’

She pointed to a piece of paper nailed to the doorframe. ‘The others leave their names on that to let you know if they will be in for their meals. Monsieur Roulin is always in, and
that one
upstairs is never in. But I wouldn’t have such a person to the table anyway.’

‘That one?’ I asked.

Aunt Augustine rolled her eyes to the ceiling and I followed her gaze. But whereas I saw only cobwebs, the scowl on her face gave me the impression she was referring to something evil. The ominous ring of ‘that one’ lingered in the air.

‘Now,’ said Aunt Augustine, snatching my empty cup away and placing it upturned on its saucer, ‘I’ll show you to your room. I want you up at five o’clock tomorrow to go to the fish markets.’

I hadn’t eaten anything since my sausage on the train, but I was too afraid to say that I was hungry.

My room was at the back of the house and directly off the kitchen. The door was warped, and when I pushed it open the trim scraped the floor. I could see by the semicircular scratch on the boards that this was its usual pattern of movement. My heart sank at the sight of the cement walls. The only furniture was a rickety-looking chair in the corner, an armoire and a bed, the cover of which was spotted with mildew. Through the grime on the barred window I could make out a lavatory shed and a herb garden in need of weeding.

‘I’ll be back in an hour to explain your duties,’ said Aunt Augustine, closing the door behind her. She was not like a relative at all. She was nothing more than an employer.

On the back of the door was a list of chores. The paper it was scribbled on had turned yellow with age.
Clean tiles with linseed oil and beeswax. Beat bed linen. Mop floor…
I wondered how long it had been since anyone had done
those things or a maid had occupied this dingy room. I lowered myself into the chair and stared out the window, tears rolling down my cheeks when I compared the warmth of my father to the coldness of my great-aunt. I glanced at the sagging mattress. The simple bed I’d had at home suddenly seemed like a divan fit for a queen. I closed my eyes and imagined myself lying in it, curling my knees to my chest and disappearing into a foetal ball.

The first meal I had to prepare was lunch the following day. The kitchen was as depressing as my bedroom. The flagstones and the walls held in the chill, which was made worse by the draught blowing through a cracked window pane. Aunt Augustine squeezed herself into a straw chair to supervise me, her swollen feet submerged in a pail of warm water. I poured in a few drops of lavender oil, telling her that it would soothe the inflammation. The scent wafted up and fought against the mouldy dishcloth stink of the kitchen. I imagined the lavender fields rippling in the breeze, their layers of purple swishing in the dappled sunlight. I could hear my father softly singing ‘
Se Canto
’, and was about to join him for the chorus when Aunt Augustine broke the spell: ‘Pay attention, girl!’

I lifted a pan off its hook. The handle was greasy and inside the bottom was encrusted with food. I swiped it with the dishcloth when Aunt Augustine wasn’t looking. I’d hated it when she’d sent me to the cellar earlier to fetch some wine. The door to the
cave
creaked open and all I could see was a web with a black spider hanging in it. I removed the spider with a broom and crept into the airless space with only a lamp to guide me. The cellar reeked of mud and there were rat droppings on the floor. My skin crawled and I jumped from imagined nips. I was terrified of being bitten by a rat because Marseilles was legendary for its diseases, a hazard for any port city since the days of the plague. I had grabbed the first two dusty
bottles I saw without even bothering to check the contents.

I collected water from the pump outside the kitchen door then peered into the basket of vegetables on the bench. I was surprised by the quality of the produce. The tomatoes were still firm and red for so late in the season, the aubergines were weighty in my hands, the leeks were fresh and the black olives looked succulent. In the dirty kitchen, the fragrance of good produce was as welcome as an oasis in a desert.

Aunt Augustine sensed my admiration. ‘We have always eaten well here. I was famous for it. Of course, I am not the cook I once was,’ she said, holding up her clawed hands.

I studied her, trying to find the woman behind that grim face, the fiery young girl who had disobeyed her parents and run away with a sailor. It lingered in the set of her broad shoulders and her manly chin, but in her eyes I saw only bitterness.

Once I had assembled the ingredients, Aunt Augustine shouted her instructions above the sounds of the steaming pots and hissing pans. At each step I had to bring the food to her for inspection: the fish to show her that the skin was cleanly off; the potatoes to prove that I had mashed them properly; the olives to demonstrate that they had been finely chopped despite the bluntness of the knife; even the garlic to show that it had been crushed to her specifications.

As the cooking progressed, Aunt Augustine’s face became flushed. At first I thought it was because nothing I did seemed right.
Take that back, you’ve shredded those leaves just like a peasant. Too much oil, go and wipe it for goodness sake. How much mint did you put in this? Did you think I was asking you to make mouthwash?
I thought it was a lot of fuss from a woman who couldn’t be bothered to serve fresh tea. But as the temperature of the room rose, and her instructions became more frenzied, I saw that the blush in her cheeks was the inner passion I had searched for earlier. She was a conductor whipping her notes of fried fish, butter
and rosemary into a gastronomic symphony. And the aromatic vapours seemed to draw the lodgers from their rooms. I heard voices and footsteps coming down the stairs almost half an hour earlier than the specified time for lunch.

When the table was set there were five of us in all. Besides Aunt Augustine and myself there was Ghislaine, a middle-aged woman who worked as a fish vendor, and two male boarders: Monsieur Roulin, a retired sailor; and Monsieur Bellot, a junior teacher at the boys’
lycée
. Monsieur Roulin had a gap where his two front teeth should have been, his hair had retreated to a few wisps on the back of his sunspotted neck and his left forearm was missing, sliced off at the elbow joint. He waved the puckered end of his stump, speaking in a voice that sounded like an engine in need of oil. ‘It’s nice to have a young lady at the table. She is as dark as a berry, but pretty nonetheless.’

I smiled politely, understanding from my position at the lower corner of the table, near the kitchen door, that I was a servant and should not put myself forward in the conversation.

Monsieur Bellot pulled at his earlobe and said nothing beyond ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. During the meal, which Monsieur Roulin declared was the best they had eaten in months, Monsieur Bellot’s face changed from puzzled to dreamy to stern, as if he were carrying on some animated inner dialogue. Whatever Monsieur Roulin lacked, Monsieur Bellot seemed to have double in quantity: his teeth were long like a donkey’s, his hair was a wild halo around his head, and his limbs were so long that he didn’t need to stretch to pick up the water jug even when it was at my end of the table.

Ghislaine was seated next to me. I was surprised that someone who worked at the fish markets could smell so clean. Her skin gave off the mild scent of a fresh peach and her hair smelt like the rich olive oil used in Marseilles soap. Her eyes crinkled into a smile when Monsieur Roulin caught me looking at his stump and cried out, ‘A shark as big as a cruise ship off the coast of Madagascar!’

I sensed from the laughter and exchanged glances of the others at the table that the story wasn’t true. The angle of the amputation was too clean and had either been the result of an accident with a machine or surgery performed by a doctor. I hadn’t been looking at his stump with repugnance, just interest. The gnarled scar of my father’s eye had taught me that a warm heart was not changed by outer disfigurement.

After I had washed the dishes Aunt Augustine set me to the other daily chores, including emptying the bucket upstairs with the lid on it into the lavatory in the courtyard. Then she ran her finger along the sideboard in the dining room and examined the streak of dust collected on the tip. ‘Dust from the ground floor up,’ she said, as if I were somehow to blame for the slovenly state of the house. ‘Do Monsieur Bellot’s room first, then sweep Ghislaine’s floor once she leaves for work. Monsieur Roulin’s room is cleaned by his daughter. Don’t worry about the fourth floor.
She
doesn’t want her things “interfered with”.’

She?
So I could put a sex to the mysterious being on the fourth floor, the mere mention of whom seemed to cause Aunt Augustine discomfort, although she didn’t mind taking her money for rent.

‘I rest in the afternoons but I’ll be back down to supervise supper,’ Aunt Augustine said, grabbing the banister and inching her way up the stairs.

The kitchen floor was gritty under my feet when I went to fetch the broom. I cringed at the thought of cooking another meal in that unsanitary room. Despite Aunt Augustine’s instructions to start with the dusting, I cleaned the kitchen first. I filled a bucket with water and heated it over the stove, then scrubbed the table and benches with soapy water, trying to picture the secret guest upstairs as I worked. At first I imagined a shrivelled woman my aunt’s age, bedridden and with a hollow, ailing face. She was a former rival, either in love or gastronomy, who had fallen on bad times and Aunt Augustine was leaving her to languish in dirt and starvation. As I progressed to cleaning
the floor, the old woman’s face softened and the wrinkles disappeared. One of her legs withered and she transformed into a crippled woman from a rich family who was ashamed of her affliction and paid Aunt Augustine to keep her. My mind ticked over. Perhaps she was a relative—an unknown Fleurier—whom Aunt Augustine kept hidden away and refused to acknowledge as her own flesh and blood.

I was so rapt in my fanciful scenarios and the
chhh! chhh! chhh!
sound my scrubbing brush made on the flagstones that at first I didn’t register a door creaking open, then slamming shut. Then I heard someone humming. My hand stopped mid-motion and I looked up. The voice was light and hopped from note to note like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower. It was the kind of rolling tune that an accordion man would play at a fair. In rhythm with the humming, footsteps skipped down the stairs.
Tap! Click! Tap! Click!
The steps of a woman but too light to be Aunt Augustine or Ghislaine. The footsteps reached the landing. I could make out the tinkle of jewels and a rattle like rice being shaken in a canister.

I leapt up and brushed down my hair and skirt. My apron and hem were soaked through, but I couldn’t resist the chance to see who it was. I squeezed the water out of my apron and wiped my shoes on the rag that I had been using to mop up, and ran towards the front room. But as I crossed the dining room my heel snagged on the carpet. I tripped and crashed into the sideboard, scattering the cups and saucers but luckily not breaking any. I righted myself and straightened the china, but reached the parlour a second too late. All I caught was a glimpse of an ivory beaded dress swinging out the door. A hint of ylang-ylang lingered in the air.

The breeze off the ocean was reddening raw in December, as were my fingers from sloughing the layers of dust and grime off the shelves, cupboards and floorboards of Aunt
Augustine’s house. My muscles were stiff and my shoulders ached from dragging heavy furniture to reach dust balls and swiping at cobwebs that had hung from the cornices for years. Ghislaine nodded her approval at the polished parlour and the gleaming bathroom tiles, still reeking of the bleach I had used to kill the mildew wedged in the grout. Aunt Augustine merely jutted out her chin and said, ‘The door knobs are tarnished and I can still see the scum stain in the bath.’ I tugged up the frayed cuffs of my winter dress and knelt to scrub, polish and soap all over again, too afraid of my aunt to tell her that parts of her house were so dilapidated that no amount of sponging and sprucing could fix them up.