Читать книгу The Soldier’s Wife - Margaret Leroy - Страница 15

I put together a meal with some food that hasn’t been touched by the burglars—a loaf of bread I forgot to throw out, a tin of corned beef. After we’ve eaten, I walk up to Les Ruettes to bring Evelyn back home. Millie comes with me. The rain has stopped and the sky is starting to clear. There are still great banks of cloud that look as solid as far countries, but now between the heaps of cloud, there are depths and reaches of blue. The hedgebanks are drenched, and the air is rich with musky, polleny scents—wild garlic, wet earth, violets. I breathe in gratefully. The foxgloves brush against us like hands, and there are pale briar roses, each holding a drop of clear water. The little ferns that love the damp flicker like green tongues of flame.

As we near the door of Les Ruettes, Alphonse slinks out from behind a glasshouse and circles around Millie, arching, purring resonantly.

Frank le Brocq comes to the door, a cigarette clamped between his lips. He’s wearing his check cloth cap; he takes it off when he sees me. A splinter of amusement floats in his eye.

‘We saw you come back. Cold feet?’ he says.

‘Yes. You could put it like that.’

I feel awkward. There’s something shameful about returning like this: it suddenly feels like an act of cowardice—not a reasoned decision, more a failure of nerve.

He takes a long drag on his cigarette and looks me up and down, in his appraising way that I don’t quite like.

‘That cat of yours wouldn’t settle,’ he tells me. ‘He kept going back to your house. Cats are like that, cats are territorial creatures. A bit like you lot.’ He grins.

Millie picks up Alphonse and wraps her arms around him.

‘Did you miss me?’ she says.

The cat rubs his head extravagantly against her.

‘Look, Mummy, look, he knows what I’m saying. He really missed me,’ she says.

Frank stands aside, and we go into the kitchen. Angie is kneading dough on her table; she greets us with a smile. Evelyn is on the settle where I left her, still sitting upright on the edge of the seat.

‘Vivienne.’ There’s a puzzled look in Evelyn’s face, as though her life is a knotted tangle she can’t begin to undo. ‘Well, you didn’t take long.’

‘We’re taking you back home,’ I say. ‘We changed our minds. We didn’t go in the boat.’

‘Least said, soonest mended,’ she says.

I feel a little surge of unease. She often gives me this feeling now—that the things she say sound normal, yet somehow they don’t quite make sense.

I turn to Angie.

‘Thank you so much …’

‘Don’t you worry, Vivienne. I was more than glad to help out … Let’s hope you made the right decision,’ she adds, a little doubtfully.

‘Well, time will tell,’ I say vaguely; then think that I owe her some explanation, after everything that she has done for me. ‘The thing is—it was such a little boat. And it’s such a long way …’

We walk back slowly down the lane. I take Evelyn’s arm to help her. A bird calls with a sound like a pot being scraped, and the moist air is cool on our skin. Millie tries to carry Alphonse, but the cat wriggles down and scampers off through the fields, heading for Le Colombier. Millie slips her hand in mine.

‘I’m glad we came back home,’ she says, her voice fat with contentment. ‘I didn’t really want to go. It’s nice here, isn’t it, Mummy?’

‘Yes, sweetheart.’

But even as I say it, a little tremor goes through me. Above us the clouds retreat, regroup, creating new shapes in the sky—new countries, new islands.