Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé Read online

  ‘I’m sure your mother wouldn’t care. They all just want to know you’re safe.’

  Fiercely, Alyssa shook her head. ‘You don’t know my mother. People think my father’s the tough one, but that isn’t true. My mother would rather see me dead than have me bring shame into the family.’

  I said, ‘I’m assuming this isn’t about you licking a jam pot before the sun sets.’

  Alyssa gave a reluctant smile. ‘I suppose you think that’s stupid.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, not at all.’

  ‘But you don’t believe in religion.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I believe in lots of things.’

  ‘You know what I mean—’

  ‘Of course I do.’ I made her sit down at the table. Between us, the rows of jam jars shone like Chinese lanterns. ‘I’ve met a lot of believers, one way or another. Some of them were honest and good; others used their religion as an excuse to hate other people, or to impose their own rules—’

  Alyssa sighed. ‘I know what you mean. My mother’s obsessed with little things. But she never wants to hear about the things that are really important. It’s always don’t sleep on your stomach, or don’t wear make-up, or don’t talk to boys, or don’t wear that, don’t eat that, don’t say that, don’t go there. My grandfather says Allah doesn’t care what you eat or what you wear as long as your heart’s in the right place and as long as we care for each other.’

  ‘I like your grandfather,’ I said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Alyssa. ‘But since he and my father fell out, I don’t see him much any more.’

  ‘Why did they fall out?’ I said.

  ‘My grandfather doesn’t like niqab. He said the girls shouldn’t be wearing it in school. He doesn’t like Sonia wearing it. She never used to wear it before.’

  ‘So why does she wear it now?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe she’s like your friend,’ she said. ‘Maybe she has something to hide.’

  I thought about what Alyssa had said as she and I prepared for tonight. The pancakes would be easy, but the batter, made to an old recipe, with buckwheat flour and cider instead of milk, needed to rest for a couple of hours. Eat them on their own, or with salted butter, or sausages, or with goat’s cheese, onion marmalade, or duck confit with peaches. I remembered making them for Roux and the river-gypsies, the night their boats were set on fire. I remember it so well; the column of sparks from the bonfire leaping up like a firecrake; Anouk, dancing with Pantoufle and Roux – Roux as he was then, laughing, telling jokes, long hair tied back with a piece of twine; barefoot on the jetty.

  Joséphine wasn’t there, of course. Poor Joséphine, in the tartan coat she wore whatever the weather; hair designed to hide her face and the bruises that so often settled there; poor, suspicious Joséphine, who trusted no one, least of all the river-gypsies, who did as they liked, and travelled all over the river, reinventing themselves as they pleased wherever they moored their houseboats. Later, when she had escaped from Paul-Marie and his abuse, she began to understand the price of that freedom; Roux’s boat, gutted and burnt; his friends moving on without him; the hatred of our village folk for those who abide by their own rules, see stars more often than streetlights, who do not pay taxes, or go to church, or fit into the community. An outcast herself, she warmed to that. Childless, he brought out the mother in her. I thought they could be more than friends, and yet—

  You wanted him yourself. Where’s the harm in that, Vianne?

  The voice is not that of my mother this time, or even of Armande Voizin. It’s the voice of Zozie de l’Alba, who sometimes still reappears in my dreams. Zozie de l’Alba, who saved my life because she wanted it for herself; Zozie, the free spirit, the stealer of hearts; and her voice is harder for me to ignore than all my other whisperers.

  You wanted him. You took him, Vianne. Joséphine didn’t stand a chance.

  Because Zozie, for all her guile, traded more in truths than lies. She showed us reflections of ourselves; showed our secret faces. There’s darkness in everyone, I know that; I’ve fought against it all my life. But until Zozie, I’d never known how much darkness I carried inside; how much selfishness and fear.

  The Queen of Cups. The Knight of Cups. The Seven of Swords. The Seven of Disks. My mother’s cards; their dreamy scent; their faces, so familiar.

  Is Joséphine the faded Queen? Should Roux have been her Knight? And am I the Moon, unstable, two-faced, spinning her web between them?

  At three o’clock in the afternoon, Anouk and Rosette came home, with Pilou, all laughing and breathless from the wind.

  ‘Pilou has a kite,’ said Anouk, while Rosette echoed her words exuberantly, in sign language. ‘We flew it downriver, the three of us and that crazy dog. Honestly, what a mutt. At one point he actually jumped into the river, trying to grab hold of the kite’s tail, and we all ended up having to drag him out, which is why Rosette has weed in her hair and everyone else smells of wet dog.’

  ‘That isn’t fair,’ protested Pilou. ‘Vlad is not a mutt. He is a highly intelligent, highly trained Kite Retriever, descended from the fabled Fishing Dogs of ancient China.’

  ‘Dog fish,’ said Rosette. ‘Fish dog. Kite fish.’ And she did a little dance with Bam around the kitchen.

  Alyssa had fled upstairs again as soon as she heard the dog barking.

  Anouk said: ‘It’s all right. It’s only Vlad. You can come out. He won’t bite you.’

  For a moment, I was sure Alyssa wouldn’t come downstairs. But finally curiosity overcame her shyness. She came to sit on the landing, looking down through the banisters. Pilou shot her a passing glance, but seemed more interested in the basin of pancake batter on top of the stove.

  ‘Is that for tonight?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. Do you like pancakes?’

  Pilou nodded vigorously. ‘Cooked outside, on an open fire, like the river people used to make. With sausages and cider, of course.’

  ‘Did you see much of the river people? I thought they’d stopped coming here,’ I said.

  ‘They did, when I was little,’ he said. ‘Too much trouble in Les Marauds. I guess my father went with them.’ He shrugged and went back to his investigation of what was cooking in the oven.

  Once more, I thought of the Queen of Cups. I searched for Roux in Pilou’s face, but saw nothing I recognized. Curly hair, bleached by the sun; round face; snub nose. An air of Joséphine, perhaps, in the eyes, but nothing of Roux – and yet, like Rosette, he loves to paint.

  I remembered the abstract painting in the bar at Joséphine’s, and the look in her eyes when she spoke of Pilou’s father. Except that she hadn’t spoken of him, I remembered suddenly; she had simply said that Pilou was hers, and no one else’s. It’s what I used to say myself when people asked about Anouk’s father; and yet, to hear it from Joséphine troubles me – more, perhaps, than it should.

  ‘When’s your birthday?’

  He looked surprised. ‘The seventeenth of December. Why?’

  Rosette’s is the twentieth of December. So close. So very close. But what would it matter anyway, if what I suspect turned out to be true? Roux doesn’t care that Anouk is not his. Why should this be different? And yet, the thought that Roux might have known, might have hidden that knowledge for eight years – four of which he’d spent right here in Lansquenet, working on farms and on his boat, renting a room from Joséphine—

  The Knight of Cups has something to hide. His face is marbled with shadows. The Queen holds her cup too languidly, as if it contains something that sickens her. The children have gone upstairs, with Vlad. They are surprisingly silent. I leave them to their game and go out with my phone into Les Marauds.

  Once more, there is no message from Roux. His phone is turned off. I write:

  Roux, please get in touch! I need—

  Of course, I didn’t send it. I’ve never needed anyone. If Roux wants to get in touch, he will. Besides, what would I say to him? I have to see him face to face. I have to read
his colours.

  The weather is turning. I felt it before, talking with Omi in Les Marauds. The wind is as strong as ever, but now the angel-faced clouds have dirty feet. A drop of rain falls on to my face as I reach the top of the hill—

  The Black Autan is on its way.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Monday, 23rd August

  WELL, OF COURSE I can’t tell you what she said. Confession – be it official or not – is a secret that cannot be betrayed. But she was pale as the Host when she finished her story, and nothing I could say seemed to give her comfort.

  ‘I don’t know what to tell her,’ she said. ‘She was so proud of what I’d become. The world was opening up for me. I was ready to spread my wings. And now, I’m just like everyone else. Living in the same place, running my café, getting old—’

  I said I didn’t think she looked old. She shot me an impatient glance.

  ‘All the things I hoped to do. All the places I hoped to see. She reminds me of all that, she did it all, and it makes me feel—’ She clenched her fists. ‘Oh, what’s the use? Some people spend the whole of their lives sitting waiting for one train, only to find that they never even made it to the station.’

  ‘You did your duty,’ I told her.

  She made a face. ‘My duty.’

  ‘Well, yes. Some of us have to do that,’ I said. ‘We can’t all be like Vianne Rocher, moving from place to place all the time, never belonging anywhere, never taking responsibility.’

  She looked surprised. ‘You disapprove.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ I told her. ‘But anyone can run away. It takes something more to stay in one place.’

  ‘Is that what you’re going to do?’ she said. ‘Will you defy the Church, and stay?’

  I pointed out, rather tartly, that this was supposed to be her confession, not mine.

  She smiled. ‘Do you ever confess, Monsieur le Curé?’

  ‘Of course,’ I lied. Well, not quite a lie. After all, I confess to you. ‘We all need someone to talk to,’ I said.

  She smiled again. She smiles with her eyes. ‘You know, you’re easier to talk to when you’re not in your soutane.’

  Am I? I find it harder, somehow. The uniform of office makes everything so simple for me. Without it, I feel anchorless, a single voice in the multitude. Does anyone really care what I say? Is anyone even listening?

  We found Vianne in the garden, trying to light the barbecue. She was wearing jeans and a sleeveless blouse, her long hair tied with a yellow scarf. She had managed to find a relatively sheltered place out of the wind, but the air was sultry with unshed rain, and the little paper lanterns that she had hung around the garden had mostly blown out.

  She greeted Joséphine with a kiss, and smiled at me. ‘I’m glad you’ve come. You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?’

  ‘No, no. I only came to—’

  ‘Don’t give me that. You’ll be telling me you’re too busy with your parish duties next.’

  I had to admit that I was not.

  ‘Then eat with us, for heaven’s sake. Or don’t you have to eat?’

  I smiled. ‘You’re very kind, Mademoiselle Ro—’

  She punched me on the arm. ‘Vianne!’

  Joséphine said: ‘I’m sorry, Monsieur le Curé. If I’d known she was going to be violent, I wouldn’t have brought you along.’

  Vianne laughed. ‘Come in and have a glass of wine. The children are inside.’

  I followed both of them into the house. I found myself feeling both puzzlement and something else, something I could not identify. But it was good to sit by the stove in Armande’s old kitchen, a kitchen that now seemed more than usually crowded, due to the presence of four children and an unruly dog, playing some kind of boisterous game around the kitchen table.

  The game, which seemed to involve a great deal of shouting, some coloured crayons, barking from the dog, pieces of drawing paper and lots of exuberant miming from Rosette, was enough to disguise my entrance for a few minutes, and gave me time to recognize Alyssa Mahjoubi among them – Alyssa Mahjoubi changed almost beyond my recognition; in Western dress – a blue shirt and jeans – her hair cut into a lopsided bob at the level of her jaw. Most striking of all, she was laughing – her small, vivid face lit up with the excitement of the game, all memory of her escapade apparently gone from her thoughts.

  I was sharply reminded of the fact that, at seventeen, Alyssa is still very much a child – even though, at much the same age, her sister was already married. At seventeen, balanced on that precarious walkway between adolescence and adulthood, the world is a crazy obstacle course; paved one day with broken glass, the next with apple blossom. Close enough to touch Eden, yet all we want is to leave it behind. I caught Vianne’s expression and wondered if she too was thinking the same thing. Her daughter is only fifteen, and yet there is a wildness in her eyes, a promise of roads to be travelled, of sights to be seen. What was it Joséphine said? Some people spend the whole of their lives sitting waiting for one train, only to find that they never even made it to the station. Anouk is at the station. I sense that any train will do.

  She turned, as if she had read my thought. ‘Monsieur le Curé!’

  Everyone turned. For a moment Alyssa looked startled, then a little defiant.

  I said: ‘I haven’t told anyone. And I won’t, unless you want me to.’

  She looked away with a shy smile. It is a characteristic gesture that she shares with her sister; a dipping motion of the chin, a turn of the head slightly to the left, a lowering of the eyelashes, now echoed by the gentle sweep of the newly bobbed hair across her face. She is extraordinarily beautiful, in spite of – perhaps because of – her youth. It makes me slightly uneasy, as feminine beauty so often does. As a priest, I am not meant to notice. And yet, as a man, I always do.

  ‘I’m reinventing myself,’ she said. ‘I let Anouk and Rosette cut my hair.’

  Anouk grinned. ‘It’s a bit shorter on one side,’ she said. ‘But I still think it looks pretty cool. What do you think?’

  I said I was no judge. But Joséphine embraced her and said: ‘You look adorable.’

  Alyssa smiled. ‘You did it, too. You reinvented yourself,’ she said.

  A shadow flickered across Joséphine’s face. ‘I did? Who told you that?’

  ‘Vianne.’

  Once more, that look; like a cat’s paw of wind on the surface of the Tannes. ‘I suppose you could say that,’ she said. ‘Now, what about those pancakes?’

  The cry from the children that greeted this was enough to mask the awkwardness, at least from Alyssa, although I thought Vianne might have sensed something, somehow. She has a curious affinity with secrets unspoken, stories untold. Her eyes, which are dark as espresso, can sift the shadows of the human heart.

  I looked around the living room. Something has changed here since Vianne arrived, which I cannot identify. Is it the light from the candles that stand on every surface, or the little red sachets for good luck that hang from the frame of every door? Could it be the incense that burns – the creamy scent of sandalwood – or the smell of scorching leaves from outside, or the pancakes fried in butter, or the spiced sausages on the barbecue?

  ‘I hope you’re hungry,’ said Vianne Rocher.

  Unexpectedly, I was. There was rain in the wind, and so we stayed indoors for the meal, though Vianne cooked most of it outside, where the smoke would blow away cleanly.

  There were pancakes, of course; and sausages; and duck confit and goose-liver terrine; and sweet pink onions, fried mushrooms with herbs, and little tomme cheeses rolled in ash; and pastis gascon, and nut bread, aniseed bread, fouace, olives, chillies and dates. To drink, there was cider and wine and floc, with fruit juices for the children and even a dish of leftovers for the dog, which later curled up by the fire and slept, occasionally twitching its tail and muttering vague obscenities between its teeth.

  Outside, the Autan wind gained strength, and we began to hear the rain smacking against th
e window glass. Vianne threw more logs on to the fire; Joséphine wedged the door closed and Anouk began to sing a song I’d heard a long, long time ago, a sad old song about the wind and how it always takes its due:

  V’là l’bon vent, v’là l’joli vent—

  She has a sweet, untrained little voice; and seems surprisingly ready to sing, without a trace of self-consciousness. Rosette joined in with her usual zest, and Pilou accompanied them both by drumming on the table-top with more enthusiasm than skill.

  ‘Come on, Alyssa,’ said Anouk. ‘Join in with the chorus.’

  Alyssa looked awkward. ‘I can’t sing.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Anouk. ‘Come on!’

  ‘I mean, I can’t. I don’t know how.’

  ‘Everyone can sing,’ said Anouk. ‘Just like everyone can dance.’

  ‘Not in our house, they can’t,’ she said. ‘Well, at least, not any more. I used to sing when I was small. Sonia and I both used to do that. We used to sing along and dance to music on the radio. Even my grandfather did, before—’ She lowered her voice. ‘Before she came.’

  ‘You mean Inès Bencharki?’ said Vianne.

  Alyssa nodded.

  That woman again. ‘Her brother is very protective,’ I said.

  ‘He’s not her brother,’ Alyssa said. There was a world of scorn in her voice.

  I looked at her. ‘Who is she, then?’

  She shrugged. ‘No one really knows. Some people say she was his wife. Some say she’s his mistress. Whatever it is, she still has some kind of hold over him. Before the fire, he used to go to her house all the time.’

  I looked at Vianne. ‘Did you know this?’

  ‘It had crossed my mind.’

  I drank some wine. ‘How is it,’ I said, ‘that you get to know more about this village in a week than I’ve managed to do in years?’

  I must have sounded resentful. Perhaps I was; it’s my job to know what happens in my parish. People come to me to confess – and yet, in that chocolate shop of hers, Vianne Rocher heard more than I ever did. Even the Maghrébins talk to her. In eight years, nothing has changed.