Trespass. Part 16

She went out at first light, when the valley was still deep in shadow.

She didn't need a notched stick or a knotted rope; she measured with her eye. She remembered Raoul Molezon once telling her: 'The wind sucks up the water. The mistral especially. It's thirsty for the river.' Audrun's heart galloped to see how fast the river was going down.

She watched the TV weather forecasts. She saw the temperatures indicated in red: 38, 39, 41... The kind of heat in which people died. They suffocated in airless apartments, or contracted sunstroke, or expired from dehydration, or were burned alive in forest fires, trying to rescue their animals or their possessions. No end in sight to the heatwave, said the forecasters. No respite from water shortage, despite the wet spring. All leave for the region's fire-fighters cancelled, the canadair canadair planes put on twenty-four-hour alert. Infernos feared in the Cevennes. planes put on twenty-four-hour alert. Infernos feared in the Cevennes.

Infernos feared.

For fifteen years until it ended, until Serge ended it by dying there had been an inferno inside Audrun. Fifteen years. Her youth burned away inside her, in agony, with no one to tell, no one to come to the rescue. Not even Raoul Molezon. Because how could she tell him tell any man about that shame, that branding branding? She couldn't. Not even when Raoul came to meet her outside the rayon factory that day, came courting her in fact, buying that gla.s.s of sirop de peche sirop de peche while he drank his beer and told her she was beautiful. She felt that she loved him, but she was too disgraced and shamed by what she'd done to risk showing him what was in her heart. while he drank his beer and told her she was beautiful. She felt that she loved him, but she was too disgraced and shamed by what she'd done to risk showing him what was in her heart.

Put the girdle on, Audrun.

So sweet it is, that bit of your p.u.s.s.y I can see underneath it.

See what it does to me? See?

Your brother's the same. Big as a snake, he gets. Eh?

We can't help it. It's your fault for being who you are.

She thought Raoul loved her. On that day, he seemed to caress her with his tender brown eyes. She longed to reach out and touch his hair, his mouth. But she knew it was impossible. Everything was impossible and so she had to say it: 'Don't come to meet me again, Raoul. It's better if you don't.'

And he'd looked so sad, it was unbearable.

It's your fault for being who you are.

A car stopped outside her gate. She stood at the window of her kitchen, peeling white onions for her supper, watching.

Two middle-aged strangers got out and looked all around them. Then the man began walking towards her door, while the woman hung back, as though embarra.s.sed or afraid.

Audrun rinsed her hands and took off her flowered overall and smoothed her skirt and went to the door very calmly, and the man stared at her; an agitated kind of look.

'Can I help you, Monsieur?' she said.

He was a foreigner. He spoke French, but with some ugly accent or other. He said he'd been told by agents in Rua.s.se that there was a mas for sale beyond La Callune the Mas Lunel but the agents wouldn't bring him here, because apparently the vendor had changed his mind, so he... he and his wife... had decided to drive up and take a look for themselves... just in case...

Audrun stared at the foreigners. There was something about the man, a kind of worn and lean look, which reminded her of Verey.

She smiled at him. 'The Mas Lunel belongs to me,' she said.

'Oh,' said the man. 'We were told there was a Monsieur-'

'My brother,' said Audrun. 'He works the land. It suits me to let him live up there. I prefer my small modern house, you see.'

'Yes, I see. But is the mas still for sale? We love the proportions of it, the outlook... Our name is Wilson. This is my wife...'

The anxious woman stepped forward and held out her hand and Audrun took it. Then she said sweetly: 'My situation has changed. This happens unexpectedly in life, n'est-ce pas n'est-ce pas? So I've decided not to sell. The house has been in my family for three generations. So now I'm going to restore it. Perhaps I'll end my days there? Who can say?'

They looked crestfallen. They asked if she could be persuaded to change her mind.

'No,' she said. 'Other things have changed, but my mind will not change.'

They both turned and stared longingly at the mas and Audrun could see it in their eyes, a will to possess it. They said they'd been looking at houses in this part of France for a long time and tomorrow they were leaving for England...

Audrun contemplated their ordinariness. She wondered how these colourless, mute people had made so much money that they could waltz down to the Cevennes and buy themselves a second home. And she thought, I don't know how money is made. I've never known. All Bernadette had was what we grew on the terraces or what we could exchange for the things we grew; all I had was what I earned in the underwear factory, and all I have now is my little state pension that, and what I can grow in the potager. potager.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Nothing here is for sale.'

The Wilsons drove away. The moment they'd gone, Audrun saw Aramon limping down the drive towards her. He looked like a scarecrow, with his trousers held up at the waist by a piece of string and his hair dirty and wild.

'Who were those people?' he asked. 'What did they want?'

Audrun looked away from him. She knew she could make him sweat by saying they were friends of Verey's, but at that moment Marianne Viala appeared at Audrun's gate.

Marianne kissed Audrun. Then she turned to Aramon and said: 'You don't look well, mon ami mon ami.'

'I'm not well,' he said. 'Something's poisoning me. I may have to go to the hospital.'

'You should should go,' said Marianne. 'And you shouldn't drink, Aramon, if your stomach's not right...' go,' said Marianne. 'And you shouldn't drink, Aramon, if your stomach's not right...'

'Who were those people?' shouted Aramon again. 'Tell me who they were.'

'Foreigners,' Audrun said. 'They just stopped to ask the way.'

'The way to where?'

'To Rua.s.se.'

'Rua.s.se? Their car was facing in the wrong direction.'

'Yes,' said Audrun. 'I set them on the right road.'

He stood there, twisted up with fear. At the corner of his mouth was a fleck of white foam. Marianne Viala looked at Audrun questioningly, then reached out and laid a hand on Aramon's arm.

'You should take better care of yourself, Aramon,' she said. 'But listen, I've got a favour to ask you.'

Aramon's eyes darted left and right, left and right, and Audrun knew what thought those darting eyes hid: Don't ask me favours. I'm too ill, too tired, too frightened, to grant them. Don't ask me favours. I'm too ill, too tired, too frightened, to grant them.

'Yes?' he said. 'Well?'

'Jeanne wants to bring her cla.s.s up here tomorrow, after they've visited the Museum of Cevenol Silk Production at Rua.s.se. She's bringing packed lunches for the kids and she wants a nice shady spot for their picnic, so I thought about your lower terraces if you didn't mind them on your land. It's only a small cla.s.s and-'

'On my land?' he said. 'Where, on my land?'

'I said: on your lowest terrace, the gra.s.sy plateau below the vines...'

'I can't have kids poking about on my property. I told you, I'm not well. I can't have the worry of it.'

'They won't "poke about". They're just going to eat a picnic.'

'Kids. I can't endure that...'

'You can have the picnic on the other side of the road,' said Audrun quietly. 'On my land. Near the wood.'

'Oh,' said Marianne. 'But I thought... if Aramon didn't mind... they could combine the picnic with looking at the dry-stone walling of the terraces. They might do some drawing, and-'

'No!' said Aramon, and he threw Marianne a look of anguish. 'I don't want anybody near anything. I'm tired of strangers. I want to be left alone!'

Aramon turned away from them abruptly and began his slow walk, hobbledehoy, hobbledehoy, hobbledehoy, hobbledehoy, back towards the mas, and in silence the two women watched him go. back towards the mas, and in silence the two women watched him go.

When he was out of hearing, Marianne said: 'Is he dying?'

'Well,' said Audrun. 'Let's say that time's caught up with him.'

Time.

A flickering out of each and every moment before it had been properly lived as though time were a whirlwind, a mistral, blowing everything to kingdom come this was what Anthony Verey had had to contend with for years ever since his business had begun to fail. Then, sitting in his back office, that morning in spring, he'd caught sight of the black silk thread hanging from the Aubusson tapestry, that black thread escaping from the head of the malevolent witch, and he'd held it between finger and thumb and understood at last what waited for him: death unfurnished death unfurnished.

And so a certain day had arrived.

On this inevitable day, Anthony found himself sitting on a mahogany-framed armchair ('Probably French, c.1770. With padded cartouche back. Arms and seat on cabriole legs') and he was looking around at a handsome room in an unfamiliar, lonely house, with a view of empty sky at every window.

His gaze settled and moved on, settled and moved on. The room was aesthetically pleasing there was nothing ugly in it. But it was here in this place, in this almost-beautiful room, sitting on this expensive chair, upholstered in charcoal-grey-and-white damask, that Anthony Verey felt it pinching and pulling at his frame: final defeat. final defeat.

He sat very still. So still, he could hear the thud of his own heart. The room had a high beamed ceiling, painted a soft shade of blue-green. Near him, was a tall stone cheminee cheminee ('Modern. Sandstone. In the English Georgian style. Simplified lines and moulding') and in the fireplace a half-burned piece of wood, resting on a pile of ash. ('Modern. Sandstone. In the English Georgian style. Simplified lines and moulding') and in the fireplace a half-burned piece of wood, resting on a pile of ash.

With his dispa.s.sionate, collector's eye, with some distant part of himself still alive in this present, Anthony admired the room, its proportions, its flicker of grandeur, its place in a house that stood so alone. For a little while, he was able to distract himself from his feelings of collapse by imagining the Swiss couple who'd put this room together: lawyers or professors, educated people, a couple with a full address book which connected them, perhaps, to many different worlds. People on whom life had smiled. And yet they'd hung on to their souls. They weren't vulgar. They weren't afraid of silence.

But then, when a certain amount of time had pa.s.sed, they'd understood what Anthony understood: that this house exposed exposed them in too terrible a way. It sat too high on a pitiless plateau, unguarded, unprotected with a precipice at its feet. The wind bent the pines planted to give it shade and shelter, bent them and bowed them. them in too terrible a way. It sat too high on a pitiless plateau, unguarded, unprotected with a precipice at its feet. The wind bent the pines planted to give it shade and shelter, bent them and bowed them.

The trees were still just alive. They clung to the stony soil, still, clawed into it with their obstinate roots, but they couldn't s.h.i.+eld the house or its occupants. The dome of sky held everything here in its grip. Here, at night, you'd find no retreat from the icy stars. The universe would reach down to you. And everything that you'd been, tried to become, hoped fondly yet to be: all this, in its folly and delusion, would be revealed to you as though there were no decency or honour in any of it.

Perhaps you could light a fire in the grate, huddle near it, grasping at small comforts: wine and memory. But always, round and round you, would expand the void. You'd see yourself as though from a vast height: the way you crawled from one purpose to the next, endlessly starting and giving up, endlessly hoping and repenting, endlessly lost...

Anthony gripped the arms of the chair. He looked down at the charred log on the mound of ash. He could no longer hold on to his musings about the Swiss couple. What came instead to his desolate mind was an image of Lal, tripping into this s.p.a.cious room, always so light on her feet, wearing perhaps that lavender dress she'd worn the day she climbed the ladder to his tree-house and eaten brandy snaps filled with whipped cream...

He looked up. Yes, there she came, his beloved Lal, insubstantial as candyfloss, and then something caught her eye: the sight of the half-burned piece of wood on the dead ashes and she skipped over to it and knelt down in front of it and said: 'Oh, do look, darling! Doesn't that silly old stick remind you of someone? What a scream, hey? A stick! A stick! Doesn't that remind you of you?' Doesn't that remind you of you?'

Despite the insult (or was it only a joke? With Lal you never really knew), Anthony longed for his mother to stay with him. In his reverie, he got up from the chair and took her hands and then put his arms round her and held her close to him and buried his face in her golden hair and said, 'Stay with me, Ma. Please. Don't leave me in this place.'

'Oh, all right, darling,' she said. 'All right. I'll stay. If I must. I'll hold on to you.'

But she escaped from his arms and went back to the fireplace and knelt by it, and then she did something awful: she crawled onto the mound of ash, and lay down, lay down in the ash, holding the half-burnt log close against her breast.

'Don't, Ma...' said Anthony.

There was ash in her hair, in the folds of her dress, on her slender legs, on her naked feet. He reached down, to try to pull her up, but she wouldn't be moved.

'Ma...' he pleaded. But she lay there, laughing, clutching the stick. She just lay there laughing her silvery laugh and said: 'I've got you now, Anthony. See? That's what you always wanted, wasn't it? I've got you close to me!'

He begged and begged her: 'Ma, get up. You're covered in ash. Please...'

But she'd never heard a single thing he'd said in his whole life. And she couldn't hear him now.

Anthony walked slowly round the room, trailing his fingers over the surfaces of furniture that he admired, but found this admiration tempered, as though even these these beloved beloved kind of things held no importance for him any more. kind of things held no importance for him any more.

He went outside. He was awed by the vast bowl of hills that spread round him, from horizon to horizon. The wind was so strong that the car was rocking where it stood on the gravel driveway. And he thought, If I walked to the edge, the northern edge of the plateau, where the mistral pulls hardest against gravity, I'd only have to wait a few moments before I'd be hurled away. I'd be pitched into the darkness where, soundless, voiceless, Lal lies waiting.

And then it would be over.

It would be over.

There would be no more dallying and flirting with the future, in any of its ever-changing, ever-mutating versions. I would simply be lifted up by the wind and thrown down on a bed of ash.

And I would accept.

Jeanne Viala settled herself and the children in Audrun's little field, close to the oaks that grew at the edge of the wood.

The cla.s.s had been attentive and well behaved in the Museum of Cevenol Silk Production. Even Jo-Jo, with his short attention span, had seemed to be interested in the exhibits and all the children had completed quite good drawings of the different stages of silkworm-rearing: the incubating of the eggs in pouches secreted against the human body; the spreading of the worms in the magnaneries; magnaneries; the devices used to keep rats and ants at bay; the gathering of mulberry leaves; the the devices used to keep rats and ants at bay; the gathering of mulberry leaves; the montada montada of the grown worms, five centimetres long, into the sprigs of heather; the spinning of the coc.o.o.ns; the boiling alive of the emerging moths inside the coc.o.o.ns as the threads were unwound... of the grown worms, five centimetres long, into the sprigs of heather; the spinning of the coc.o.o.ns; the boiling alive of the emerging moths inside the coc.o.o.ns as the threads were unwound...

Only the Parisian girl, Melodie, had seemed unhappy. Her drawing, reluctantly undertaken, had consisted of dark lines up and down and across the page. When Jeanne Viala asked her what this was meant to be, Melodie had replied in a strangled voice: 'Les flats. All the dead worms.' All the dead worms.'

And then, in the middle of the picnic, which was so pleasant under the great dark trees such a happy moment, in fact that Jeanne would have liked to share it with her new boyfriend, Luc, who worked for the Fire Service Melodie had got up and run off, without permission, without even looking back when Jeanne called her.

Jeanne had decided to let her go. She knew these terraces. The child couldn't come to any harm. The land lay well below the road. The way to the river was impa.s.sable because, for years now, Aramon Lunel had ignored the directives of the commune on river-bank maintenance. And Jeanne didn't want to leave the whole group, to go running after one child. She hoped Melodie would soon reappear. Jeanne had packed bottles of cherry Yop for dessert and she would tempt her with one of these to sit down again.

The other children stared at Melodie as she ran off. Stared and stared.

'She didn't like the silkworms,' said Magali. 'All she likes is dancing cla.s.s and violin violin!' And the others laughed at this, and Jo-Jo burst out: 'She thinks she's better than us, just because she used to live in Paris, silly cow.'

'Stop it, Jo-Jo!' said Jeanne. 'I won't tolerate that kind of talk.'

'She's a Jew, anyway,' mumbled Stephanie. 'Hartmann's a Jewish name.'

'What did you say, Stephanie?' said Jeanne. did you say, Stephanie?' said Jeanne.

'Nothing...'

Jeanne Viala set down her bottle of Evian water. She held up her hands in an embracing gesture. 'Listen, everybody,' she said. 'Please everybody stop talking and listen to me. Jo-Jo, that includes you. Now I want to remind you that in this country we are a tolerant people. You know what tolerant means? It means that we accept people into our community and into our hearts, no matter what their background is, or their religion, or what city they've come from. And this means please listen very carefully this means that we don't bully bully anybody or call them names. Is this understood? I would really like to know that you've all understood this.' anybody or call them names. Is this understood? I would really like to know that you've all understood this.'

The children were silent, every one. Jeanne shook her head in a sorrowful way. 'The way Melodie Hartmann has been treated in this cla.s.s is... disappointing. Her home was in Paris. There's nothing wrong with that. She's trying to adapt to her new surroundings. But you're not giving her the chance-'

'She doesn't "adapt", said Magali. "She just keeps telling everybody how brilliant her school in Paris was.'

'She's homesick, that's all,' said Jeanne. 'If you'd all make an effort to be more friendly to her, her homesickness would disappear. So, as from today, I want you all to make a resolution. Are you listening? Stephanie? As from today, I want to see kindness shown to Melodie. All right? Real kindness. Let her into your games. When she gets lost, help her. OK? I really hope everybody is understanding this?'