Читать книгу The Last Will And Testament Of Daphné Le Marche - Kate Forster - Страница 10

Daphné Amyx was eighteen and had two options available to her. Marriage or work. Marriage was possible in the village of Calvaic, but she didn’t want a pig farmer with his rough hands and crude tongue. She wanted a man like Jean Gabin, or the American actor, Jimmy Stewart who she saw in the movies at Saint Cere; and she knew that wasn’t someone she wasn’t going to find in the village.

Not that she had met the man yet, she just knew there wasn’t anything for her in the village any more and, as much as she regretted leaving her beloved mother Chantal, she knew it would be better for them both if she earned money in Paris while looking for a husband.

The day she had chosen for her reconnaissance to Paris was going to be beautiful and, as the light rose with the dawn, the garden had never looked as pretty in the growing kaleidoscope from the sunrise. Daphné felt the rising sun on her shoulders as she hung the washing on the makeshift clothesline in their back garden. Her mother’s sunflowers were facing east and sweet peas were climbing up the fence, as though greedily trying to get as much of the light as possible.

The morning and evening light was the best, she thought, as the kids danced next to their mothers in the field next to them, their little goat antics never failing to make Daphné giggle.

For a moment, Daphné felt almost nostalgic and then noted the beautifully mended holes in the nightgown she pegged to the line and let go of her sentimentality.

Rural life was hard enough, let alone for a mother and daughter who made a living from the land and making handmade soap from goat’s milk and selling it on the side of the road to the occasional tourist. Lately business had been good with the Americans who passed by. They liked the sweet little labels that Daphné had made and pasted onto the jars. She had even added some pretty linen over the lids and tied them with pink ribbon to really appeal to the customers. But then Daphné, ever the realist, pulled herself from her musing and focused on the day ahead. There was no time to be pondering the light when food needed to be put on the table.

She finished her task and walked back inside the small stone cottage, where her mother sat mending a linen sheet. The cottage was neat as a pin, and everything was polished and folded in perfect order, thanks to Chantal, Daphné’s mother.

The bus to Paris would be arriving soon, and Daphné checked her small case of soaps and lotions she and Chantal had made. If she couldn’t find a job, then she would sell the stock on the streets of Paris and return next week to try again.

She had a small overnight bag of a change of clothes and a coat belonging to her mother and would stay with the Karpinskis, who had fled Poland and had hidden in their village during the war, finding themselves unable to make their way to London.

The couple now had children and a small jewellery store in Le Marais, which they lived above and where Daphné would stay.

She picked up her case and smoothed her dark hair. ‘Mama, I’m going,’ she said to the back of her mother who stood at the kitchen sink.

Her mother turned and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Be safe,’ she said and Daphné could see the worry in her sad eyes. Losing her husband in the war meant she had little faith in the world to care for her beloved daughter. If Chantal had her way, Daphné would stay at home for ever.

‘I will be fine, Maman,’ said Daphné sincerely. She was smart, resourceful and brave and a two-day trip to Paris alone didn’t worry her like it did her mother.

‘You look very pretty,’ said her mother, admiring Daphné’s figure in the peacock blue dress which Chantal had made from fabric she had saved from before the war. Nipped at the waist, with a full skirt, the shape showed off her tiny waist and the colour complemented her sultry looks.

While Daphné wasn’t a beauty, she had an appeal that seemed to make men look twice at her. At seventeen, she knew it was sex appeal but was too shy and far too inexperienced to know its power.

She picked up her case, and kissed her mother on her weather-beaten cheek. Years of being in the garden and tending the animals had created lines on her skin yet it was soft from the goat’s milk soap and cream that she made and used.

‘I will see you on Thursday,’ she said and she smiled brightly as she went to the door. ‘Wish me luck.’

‘Good luck and give my love to the Karpinskis,’ said Chantal, and then Daphné was on her way.

* * *

The bus journey to Paris was long and slow, frequently interrupted by roaming sheep, goats, and even a family of ducks, who insisted on crossing the road in single file.

Everyone on the bus thought it charming, but Daphné just wanted to get to Paris. She knew there was something waiting for her there, but what it was, she wasn’t sure.

The only highlight was a women’s magazine that a woman had left on her seat after she had departed the bus. Such a luxury wasn’t in Daphné’s budget and the trip went quickly while she read every article and studied every picture.

When the bus arrived in Paris, it was after lunch and Daphné was tired, grimy and hungry, but she knew she didn’t have time to waste. Work was hard to come by in Paris and, as Anna Karpinski had said in her letter to Daphné, only the tenacious survived, but Daphné didn’t plan on just surviving, she wanted to thrive in the city.

Of course Anna and her husband Max were tenacious enough to have survived the war in hiding and make a life in Paris, but when Daphné arrived at their tiny shop, and she saw shabby state of their establishment and how rough the neighbourhood was, she wondered if life in Paris was as wonderful as the magazines she read at the village store claimed.

‘Daphné,’ cried Max, as she opened the door to the store, her eyes adjusting to the darkness.

‘Max,’ she said warmly and let him embrace her like her father would have.

Anna and Max had moved from house to house for three years during the war and often slept in barns or cellars. They never complained, and always worried for those who were protecting them.

It was Anna who comforted Chantal when the telegram arrived informing them that Daphné’s father had died.

It was Max who suggested goats to Chantal, and Anna who taught Chantal how to milk them and make the soap. The oil they needed was hard to come by at the end of the war, so they improvised with lard but it worked, and with some sweet lavender from Chantal’s own garden, they had something she could sell on the side of road.

‘Anna, Anna,’ Max cried up the slim staircase, and Daphné looked around the store.

Dark and dreary, filled with a few cabinets of stock, and a curtain behind to separate the back room from the store, Daphné thought this was no place she would want to buy jewellery, yet she knew Max’s work and it was beautiful.

‘How is the business?’ she asked when Max turned from the stairwell.

‘You know, hard, I do what I can with what I have,’ he answered vaguely, but Daphné read his face and knew the answer.

Her thoughts were pushed aside when Anna came down the stairs in a rush and held Daphné for a long time, occasionally pulling away to touch her face.

‘And Maman?’ she asked of Chantal, who was Anna’s mother figure as her own mother had never been heard of after the invasion of Poland.

‘She is fine, worried about me and you and if the world is going to keep turning,’ laughed Daphné.

‘Of course, she is a mother,’ said Anna and her hands gestured to her children.

Daphné had met them once when they were younger, but now she saw a smaller version of Anna and Max, with the same proud face of their mother and the ingenious twinkle in their eye from their father.

‘Peter, Marina, this is Daphné,’ said Anna gently to the boy and girl who stepped forward politely to shake Daphné’s hand.

Upstairs, Anna had created a makeshift bed on the sagging sofa, but it was warm and clean and much more appealing than the shop.

The children had been sent outside to play, and Anna warmed up some vegetable and barley soup and placed it in front of Daphné with a large chunk of rye bread.

She ate it hungrily, savouring the flavours of the sour bread and the sweet broth.

‘How is the business?’ she asked as she dipped the bread into the soup.

Anna shrugged. ‘It’s hard,’ she said and Daphné thought she looked older than her thirty years.

As Daphné wiped the remnants of soup up with her last piece of bread, she thought about the store.

‘It needs to be lighter,’ she said. ‘To show of Max’s work.’

‘But there is no way,’ said Anna. ‘The only light is from the front windows, and the street is so closed in.’

‘Then you must paint it,’ said Daphné, thinking of the light that rose over the horizon on the farm.

‘Paint it? What colour?’ asked Anna, her face bewildered.

Daphné looked around at the utilitarian space. Anna didn’t have the time or money to think beyond the practical and everyday survival. ‘Why?’

Daphné picked up her bowl and plate and took them to the small tin tub that Anna used as a sink and put them in the water to soak.

‘Blush,’ she said, ‘The colour of make-up powder you see in the magazine.’

She took went to her bag and took out a magazine, flicking to a page and finding an advertisement, showing Anna.

It was a drawing of a woman holding a glass of pink champagne, her face beautifully contoured in shades of pink.

‘Pink lightens the skin, it takes away the age lines,’ read Daphné and she looked up at Anna and smiled. ‘And it’s pretty,’ she said.

‘What sort of pink?’ asked Anna suspiciously.

‘The sort of pink you see in a woman’s face when she’s happy, when she’s been outside in the sun, but she’s not sunburned or hot, she’s warm, inside and out,’ said Daphné thinking of Chantal. Her mind wandered as she kept speaking. ‘The rose in the sky at the end of the day, that looks like old paintings of heaven.’

Anna smiled and touched Daphné’s face. ‘You mean the afterglow,’ she said.

‘Is that what it’s called?’ asked Daphné, surprised there was a name for what she was describing.

‘It’s also the colour in a woman’s face when she falls in love,’ said Anna with a smile and Daphné bit her lip in anticipation. She was ready to fall in love, have an adventure, and to bathe in the afterglow of the world.

But first a job, she thought, as she washed her hands and combed her hair, and applied a little goat’s cream to her face.

‘I am off to find work,’ she said to Anna and, after picking up her bag, she headed out the door, waving to Max as she left the shop.

Paris wasn’t so hard to navigate. She and her mother had been there before, but this was her first time alone.

She paused and thought out the arrondissements in her head and got her bearings. She needed to cross the river to get to Montparnasse, where the cafés were. She could become a waitress, she thought, as she walked with purpose across the bridge and through Saint-Germain.

Jazz musicians busked on the streets, and tourists wandered with cameras about their necks. American accents mingled with the French and Daphné wondered why on earth she thought she could have stayed in the village. Paris was the only place for her, she could feel it in her soul, and she started her job-hunting in earnest.