Читать книгу Nightingale - Marina Kemp - Страница 10

She stood for some time inspecting all the pastries behind the glass. There were glossy chocolate and coffee éclairs, vile-coloured marzipan pigs and frogs that she and her sister used to long for as children. The millefeuilles were impressive, delicately layered and squidgy. There were dark jam tarts, criss-crossed with glistening strands of pastry. It all made her feel a little sick.

She pointed at a pile of fougasses.

‘Are they plain?’ she asked the young woman at the till.

‘Yes.’

‘No, Julie,’ interjected the main boulangère, tutting as she looked up from her magazine. She had been reading it standing up, leaning forward onto the counter. Like a hen, thought Marguerite, with her small head, short cropped hair and unusually wide hips. And she blinked a lot, and stared, and jerked her little face just like a chicken. ‘That’s the garlic and rosemary.’

She watched Marguerite as she paid. Marguerite could feel her small bright eyes on her back as she left, pulling up the hood of her cagoule against the rain.

She thought vaguely of going to sit in the library, for something to do, and realised that she was startlingly bored. She couldn’t sit anywhere to eat because everything was wet, so she stood under the awning outside one of the closed shops. It appeared to sell pet accessories, exclusively: there were leopard-print dog and cat beds, pink and red and blue collars studded with shiny paw prints. She turned back to the road, the tarmac black with rain. The fougasse tasted good. Small crumbs of pastry scattered down her front.

She felt, as always in this village, that she was being observed, though there was hardly anyone around in this weather. And then she heard a whistle. She looked towards it and saw Suki dressed all in black, standing in the doorway of the grand house on the corner, her shoulders a little hunched in the cold. She was beckoning to Marguerite, who could do nothing but cross the street and join her.

‘What are you doing out here?’ Suki said instead of greeting her. She pushed the door open. ‘Come in, come in.’

Inside, the house was dark. Suki led her through a gloomy hallway to the salon, switching on table lamps and standing lights. There were strings of coloured bulbs across the old mantelpiece.

‘Sit down,’ she said, gesturing towards the sofa. ‘Will you have tea?’

‘I really can’t stay.’

‘Of course you can.’ She walked out of the room, and Marguerite heard her opening and closing cupboards. ‘Do you like Persian tea?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

The salon was a mess. There were heavy, faded curtains in the same mushroom velvet as the sofa and armchairs. Magazines were piled in columns on either side of the fireplace; there were cardboard boxes around the place filled to bursting, with various words scrawled on them: HOME VIDEOS, PHOTOS MISC., JOURNALS. There were at least eight lamps in a bizarre array of styles: ornate silver antiques, brightly coloured ceramics, a plain beige sphere that could have cost five euros from Auchan. The bookshelves were crammed with cheap-looking paperbacks and chaotic rows of figurines.

‘I’m sure you’re thinking, What a mess,’ Suki said as she walked in. Deftly, she kicked magazines off the coffee table to clear a space for the silver tray she was carrying. There was a bowl filled with sugar cubes, a teapot and two matching glasses. The set was exquisitely decorated: dark blue and gold, with tiny pink roses. ‘Persian tea is the best in the world. But I’m sure you know that.’

She sat down in the armchair opposite Marguerite, tucking her feet beneath her. She lit a cigarette, exhaled. ‘So, you never came to visit me,’ she said.

‘Sorry – I’ve been so busy with Jérôme.’

‘No apologies,’ she said, raising her hands. ‘You’re under no obligation.’ She looked around the room. ‘A little different from Rossignol, hm?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t live without clutter. It must be in my blood or something. It drives Philippe insane.’

‘Is that your husband?’ asked Marguerite.

‘The one and only.’ Suki stood to pluck a photo frame from the mantelpiece, which she handed to Marguerite. She started to pour the tea, all the time balancing her cigarette between two immaculate fingers, its long train of ash undisturbed.

The photograph showed a younger Suki grinning up at a plain, bored-looking man in a suit.

‘He looks – nice,’ said Marguerite.

‘Fat,’ Suki said immediately. ‘He’s so damn fat now. That was taken when he was still young and handsome.’ She smiled, finally flicking ash into a little dish. ‘Drink your tea.’

Marguerite took a sip.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Suki said. ‘Of course, the water should be heated in a samovar. That’s the traditional way. But now tell me how you’re liking your new job. Or is it new? You’ve been here some time, I suppose.’

‘Almost six weeks.’

‘Six weeks! What do you do all day? Aren’t you bored?’

‘No – it’s very busy.’

‘I suppose that’s a good thing. Keeping busy. Well, six weeks isn’t long enough to get really, truly sick of the place. I moved here in ’84. So what’s that, eighteen years now? I’m no use at maths. All I know is that it’s been a long time.’

‘Where did you live before?’

‘Marseille. Tehran, then Hilversum in the Netherlands, then Marseille. So I was used to life in a big city. I’m like you, I’m a city girl by nature. I’m not made for all this.’ She gestured at the window behind her and grimaced. ‘How old do you think I am?’

‘Oh, I never get this question right.’

‘Guess!’ she insisted. ‘I won’t be offended.’ She lifted her chin, turned her face a little.

‘Twenty-nine,’ said Marguerite, lying.

‘Thirty-eight!’ she cried. ‘People are always tricked by my skin, I don’t have any wrinkles. Even though I smoke like a chimney, I’ve got not a single wrinkle. It’s genetic.’ She leant forward for Marguerite to inspect her face, pulled with one finger at the skin around her eyes. Her eyeballs were a little pink. ‘See?’

There were lines, of course, but it was true that her skin was smooth. It seemed polished. Marguerite leant back so Suki didn’t inspect hers.

‘Anyway, so I married Philippe when I was twenty and came to this little dump. He was very rich, and handsome – you’ve seen the photo – and I thought I was going to have a terribly romantic life in the countryside. Instead, I sit here all day whilst he works in a technology park. A technology park!’ She smiled, looking down at her hands. Her nails were the palest pink, immaculately painted. ‘It’s not quite the glamorous set-up I had imagined, as you can see.’

‘Well, look at my set-up,’ said Marguerite. ‘I’m aware it’s not what most people would choose.’

Suki lit another cigarette. ‘And no doubt Jérôme treats you like absolute crap,’ she said.

‘No, he’s fine.’

‘Okay, I know what you’re like. You’re not going to admit it. Very professional. But everyone knows that he’s a tyrant.’ She topped up their glasses. ‘Just a little more,’ she said. ‘And I suppose you’ve met the gardienne? Brigitte?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And?’ She looked sharply at Marguerite. ‘All your evil spinster great-aunts rolled into one, right?’

‘Well …’ She paused. ‘She’s quite stern.’

Then she thought of the woman’s visit two days before and felt freshly irritated. Brigitte had walked around the ground floor, inspecting how clean it was. She had peered at the food in the fridge and cupboards, enquired into Jérôme’s diet, asked questions about his medication that were nothing to do with her.

‘Actually, she’s terrible,’ she said, and Suki threw her head back and laughed.

‘Still waters run deep,’ she cried. ‘I knew you couldn’t be as sweet as you seem. You’re right, of course. She is terrible. She can’t stand the sight of me. In fact, she can’t stand the sight of any good-looking female – that’s probably why she’s nasty to you.’

‘I really doubt that.’

‘Stop being modest. Look at you! So young. What are you? Twenty-five?’

‘Twenty-four.’

‘And look at your little waist!’ She reached forward as if to pinch Marguerite’s waist, but Marguerite wrapped her arms around herself. ‘Are you naturally slim or do you diet?’

‘I really can’t stay,’ she said.

‘Won’t you wait for the rain to stop?’

‘I really can’t, I have to cook Jérôme’s dinner. It’s getting late.’

‘Don’t be silly. I’ll give you a tour of the house.’

She stood up and took Marguerite’s glass from her hands, putting it down on the table. Then she took one of her hands – her own were smooth, warm from holding the glass – and started to take her through to the kitchen.

Marguerite resisted, pulling her hand out of Suki’s grip.

‘Please, I would love to see it next time. But Jérôme will wake up and he might be in pain. I have to be there.’

Suki pursed her lips and cocked her head to one side. Then she smiled. ‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘But make sure next time is soon.’

Marguerite was glad to get out of the heat and gloom. In the sullen white light and rain, her stomach uncomfortably full of pastry and tea, she walked home at her briskest pace, almost a jog. The forest on either side of her dripped and crackled like fire.

She could hear Jérôme as soon as she opened the back door, banging repeatedly on his headboard. She dropped her wet jacket and ran through to his room, the stench of shit hitting her before she entered. It was formidable, a wall of smell.

She breathed hard through her mouth as she took him in her arms and raised him up onto his feet. He was wailing quietly, his mouth puckered.

‘Let’s get you to the bathroom.’

‘Where were you?’ he cried as they shuffled towards the door.

‘Getting food from the village.’

‘I don’t understand it, I just woke up and it had happened.’

‘It can happen to anyone.’ She lowered him onto the bidet, removed his pyjama bottoms and was hit afresh by the stench, its unmistakable acrid sweetness. She tried not to look as she folded them roughly, flinging them into the sink. She wiped and cleaned him in the bidet, something he could usually do himself. But he was limp, leaning forwards onto her, his face between her shoulder and neck. His head was very heavy.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said again.

‘Don’t worry. These things happen.’

He was silent, letting her take his full weight. When she had cleaned him, she pushed him back gently so that he leant against the wall.

‘Are you feeling all right? Can you sit like this while I get you clean pyjamas?’

He didn’t answer. He sat there with his mouth drawn down, staring at the floor.

She took away the soiled pyjamas, threw them in the battered, ancient washing machine in the utility room. The smell still hung everywhere. When she went back into the bathroom, he would not look at her.

‘Would you like a bath?’ He nodded slowly. He sat there, naked from the waist down, knees knocked together, hands in his lap as if to cover himself. She wrapped a towel around his shoulders and pulled him up to stand again, very gently, so that he could sit more comfortably on the disintegrating wicker chair in the corner of the room.

‘Strong,’ he whispered.

‘I’m sorry?’

He paused. ‘I said you’re strong, for a girl.’

She smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose.’

She turned the taps on at full force. She fetched vanilla essence from the kitchen and dropped it into the rising water. When the tub was full, she helped him in, folding a towel under his head as he rested back.

‘I’ll be right next door, making dinner. Just call if you need anything.’

He was silent for a moment, but as she left the room he cleared his throat. ‘I suppose the sun is starting to set.’

She stopped. ‘Yes.’

‘It will get dark soon enough.’ He crossed his arms in the water, looked down at his hands. ‘Dark, dark, dark.’

‘Perhaps I could stay for a short while,’ she said, ‘and read some of our book.’

He lifted his chin, pursed his lips and gazed at his toes at the end of the bath. ‘Well, all right. If that’s what you’d like to do.’

That night, in one of her nightmares, she found a small black runt of a kitten with milky eyes; she held it in both hands, wrapped in a blanket. It shivered all over, its little chest bouncing with each heartbeat. She had to find it somewhere to sleep and regain its strength before it was too late, but she couldn’t find anywhere safe for them. There were other cats, strong cats, prowling around the barn they were hiding in.

Then she realised that the blanket was smeared with shit; it was all over the kitten too, its fur slick with it. It had collected in the delicate apertures of its ears and around its muzzle. The kitten opened its tiny mouth wide and Marguerite wiped frantically to stop the faeces seeping in.

Disorientated on waking, it was her sister’s shit-caked trousers she thought of, not Jérôme’s. Until she could wake herself properly and push her memories away, she was cleaning her sister’s small thighs and bottom; it was Cassandre’s hot head hanging dully on her shoulder, Cassandre’s hot arms wrapped around her neck.

She held her pillow to her, squeezing it as tight as she could. ‘Cassandre, Cassandre, Cassandre,’ she said, over and over, an incantation to keep her safe, as she had done so many times in the quiet of the night.

She spent the morning cooking. It was still raining, though it had abated a little. She had no urge to go anywhere. Jérôme had slept particularly badly, calling her down repeatedly to attend to him. The intervals of sleep she snatched felt febrile, and she woke every time he knocked, or every time a nightmare built to its climax, covered in cold sweat. It collected in a pool between her breasts; her back and shoulders were wet to touch.

He had not eaten his breakfast, and had fallen into a deep sleep after she took the untouched tray away. She had a dull and protracted conversation on the phone with the village doctor, going through Jérôme’s repeat prescriptions. When she had finished she went through to the kitchen and prepared a dish she’d learnt as a teenager from their au pair: chicken in a creamy sauce with rice, a sort of English poule au riz. She and Cassandre had always loved it, its delicious blandness. Then she made a tart, the lemons stinging her cuticles where they had grown rough and ragged.

There was a low fog; the rain pattered continually, punctuated by the odd torrent coming down from where it collected in the tiles above. She wondered whether the entire roof was made up of Jérôme’s tiles, since that had been his business. When she’d met his adult son for her interview, in his glistening office in Paris, he had called the family business, which had gone back for generations until Jérôme sold it, a ‘tile empire’. She smiled faintly at the thought of Jérôme as the Tile Emperor. She imagined him standing in a factory amidst piles of tiles, wearing a braided jacket with epaulettes and a gleaming black bicorn on his head. Then she remembered his feeble form in the bath as she’d read to him the night before, and stopped smiling.

She’d opened a bottle of wine to make the sauce, one of five bottles she’d found in one of the cupboards, capped in dust. Now, looking out at the greyness outside, she poured a glass for herself, and the glug the wine made brought her back to some vague memory she couldn’t place, an indefinable levity. She sat in her chair and held the glass to her nose, inhaling the earthy, foresty smell. She tried to imagine for a moment that she was in Paris. The pattering of the rain helped to hide the countryside’s absence of traffic, voices, sirens. She tried to imagine she was sitting alone in a café where no one knew her and she had nowhere to be.

‘What am I doing?’ she muttered, and then felt self-conscious, as if she were acting. A plump robin landed on the window ledge and looked in, its head cocked. I’m here, she thought, not in Paris. There’s nothing there for me. She took a long sip of wine. This is what I wanted.

She woke up to sounds in the garden. She had a headache and a stale taste in her mouth. Quickly, she got up from the armchair she had been curled up in, and as she stood all the blood in her body seemed to rush, pounding, to collect in her right temple. Pressing one cool palm against it, she heard the clinking sounds again, and a male voice. She looked around, still disorientated, and snatched up the wine bottle and glass, putting them away in a cupboard. Then she went to the door, trying to see through the drizzle and gloom.

There were two young men outside with a wheelbarrow and spades, a few large sacks of manure or earth standing beside them. They were buttoned up against the rain, hooded cagoules fastened to let only their faces show. She locked the door and let her forehead rest against the cool glass; it soothed her head.

Then another man came around the corner from the drive, and they were face-to-face through the glass. Startled, Marguerite stepped back. He jerked his head back a little, as if startled too. He wasn’t wearing his hood up, like the other two; even through the glass, and with a metre or so between them, she could see the tiny glass-like bubbles of rain covering his face and hair.

He raised his hand and smiled, signalling an unspecific question – could she let him in, could she open the door, could she come outside? Hesitantly, she unlocked and pulled the door open, not all the way, and stood in the gap.

‘I’m sorry to come unannounced,’ he said. ‘Henri Brochon.’ He said his name as if she was supposed to know it, and held a hand out to shake hers. She took it, again with hesitation. It was warm and his grip firm; she looked down quickly at their hands together, hers pale yellow against his brown.

‘I’m Brigitte’s husband.’ He paused. ‘Brigitte, the gardienne.’

‘Yes, of course.’ She held her hand to her temple again to try to stop it throbbing. The pain was spreading behind her right eye. ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone.’

‘No, I’m sorry – Brigitte said she would call you. She asked me to have a look at the oak at the bottom of the garden. She said it’s struggling.’

‘Yes.’ Marguerite tried desperately to think of something to say. ‘I thought it might be dying. Do you look after the garden here?’

‘No, I’m a farmer. But I can spare the boys for a few hours. Brigitte doesn’t have permission to employ a gardener for the Lanviers, but she’s responsible for keeping the place running so we do what we can.’

‘I see.’ She wondered when she had ever said ‘I see’ to anyone. She waited, and then it occurred to her that he was waiting for her to say something. ‘Did you want something?’ she said, and then, realising that might sound rude: ‘A glass of water? Or do the –’ She hesitated to call them ‘boys’. ‘Do they want some coffee?’

‘No, they’re fine. I’m going to leave them here for a bit, so let them know if you think of anything else that needs doing. Is everything working okay in the house?’ He looked over her shoulder into the kitchen.

‘Actually, there are a couple of things,’ she said, more to break the silence than because she wanted anything fixed. ‘I’ll let them know.’

‘I can have a quick look now,’ he said, stepping forward, but she didn’t move. ‘Shall I come in?’

‘Okay.’ She opened the door reluctantly, stepped back into the kitchen. She watched as he crouched down to remove his wet boots. He wore thick, ribbed green socks. They looked very clean and new for a farmer.

‘There’s a lamp I can’t work – here,’ she said, leading him to the standing lamp in the corner of the kitchen, by the chair she’d been sleeping in just a few minutes earlier. She eyed the rumpled blanket and indented cushions, hoping he wouldn’t notice. ‘I’ve changed the bulb, but I think the whole thing might be broken.’

He nodded. ‘Anything else?’

‘Well, I can only get two of the gas rings to work on the cooker.’

She didn’t want to tell him the other things now; they seemed insignificant and intimate. A broken chair in her bedroom that she didn’t need to sit on anyway; the wardrobe door that had come off its hinges and that she had just left resting against the wall instead.

‘Let me have a look at these then.’ He walked out of the kitchen, into the house, and she scanned the surfaces quickly, wondering how it looked. He came back with a toolbox she hadn’t known existed. He didn’t look at her but got straight to work on the gas rings and she waited there, unsure what to do. She couldn’t leave the kitchen, she couldn’t just sit there doing nothing. She switched the kettle on: an old, yellowed electric kettle like the one her au pair had brought from England.

‘Would you like coffee?’ she asked to his back.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ he said, turning only briefly to speak. He bent over the cooker, fiddling with something. He was tall, his shoulders broad; the kitchen felt very small then. She turned and opened a cupboard, rearranging things that didn’t need arranging. The kettle’s foolish crackling and rumbling started to rise steadily towards boiling, the sound dominating the room. Henri removed his jacket, turning to hang it carefully over a chair. His sweater was also green, green like his eyes and his socks. She wondered if he matched them intentionally.

Finally, the kettle clicked and steam rose. She made a cup of tea she didn’t want.

‘I’ll be right back,’ she said, and left the room. She didn’t look in on Jérôme; if he was awake, she didn’t want to have to explain that there was someone in the house. She went to go upstairs but realised Henri might have to come and find her when he had finished, so instead she sat at the bottom of the stairs and blew into the cup. Steam met her face; she closed her eyes.

It was always strange to be back in the house; practically nothing had changed. Henri could remember countless breakfasts at this kitchen table, when he had stayed the night as a young boy. Madame Lanvier made elaborate breakfasts for her household of males, and she gave the boys coffee. Henri hadn’t liked the taste but had drunk it nonetheless because it made him feel mature. He would never have been allowed coffee at home, not at that age.

The kitchen was just as tidy now as it had always been under Madame Lanvier’s constant domestic surveillance. He couldn’t remember her without picturing her wiping surfaces or washing things. When he was very young, he had watched her hang the family’s washing on three lines in the olive groves. He remembered standing against the warm stones of the house, watching her bend heavily to take white sheets from the basket, standing to hang them, very slowly, smoothly, even rhythmically. When she had gone back to the house, he had run over and hidden between the walls of hanging sheets. He’d stood there in a cool, dazzlingly fragrant tunnel of white, until he heard Thibault calling him to some game or other.

His own home had been very dull by comparison. Without siblings, each room was his to enter; there was no friction, no chaos. His mother, adoring, intuitive, had few reprimands for the son she admired without reservation. His father, the best farmer for miles, was a largely silent presence. When Henri wasn’t studying, his father taught him, often wordlessly, how to set the cows up for milking, how to nurse suckling runts, how to lop the heads off chickens. The sound of animals and machinery, but little else, had suffused their home. How exotic, then, had Rossignol seemed: the three brothers always fighting or laughing, the great quantities of food consumed, the crude jokes, farts and burps. The chaos would be punctuated and compounded by Jérôme’s high-octane outbursts, his fist slamming against the table and doors banging closed after him. Amidst all this Céline Lanvier moved calmly with her slow, gentle force.

He put his tools down and tried the gas ring he’d just fixed; it hissed briefly and then burst into controlled blue flame. A beautiful, electric blue. He turned the gas off and took his tools over to the lamp to rewire the plug, a quick and easy job that most women he knew would have managed with ease.

When he was finished, he put the tools away and the nurse appeared, as if she had been waiting just outside.

‘It’s all done,’ he said, putting on his jacket and boots.

‘Thank you.’

‘Do let Brigitte know if anything else comes up. It’s our job to keep the place going. I’m sure you’re busy enough with your patient.’

‘Yes, of course.’

He waited for a moment, wondering if she would say anything else, but she simply looked back at him, very serious.

‘The boys will be here for a little while so if you think of anything else, just let them know.’

‘Thank you.’

She turned and started to busy herself taking tins out of a cupboard. Henri watched her for a moment, the muscles of her arms flickering under the skin as she moved. He let himself out.

He stood in the drizzle, watching Thierry and his younger brother, Rémy, working in the distance. He let his vision blur a little, trying to imagine they were the young men he had seen so many times here in the past. Marc Lanvier, Jean-Christophe, Thibault. But the Rossignol of his childhood was a place of sunshine and heat; he found it difficult to reconcile that with the grey scene in front of him.

‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours, okay?’ he called out, and they turned and called back, faces small in their hooded jackets. He walked back to the truck quickly, and thought about the nurse as he started the engine and drove out. The place was so cut off, Jérôme so difficult, and she so young. He couldn’t imagine what she was doing here.

‘Who was here?’

Marguerite placed a slice of the lemon tart by Jérôme’s bed, and he stared at it.

‘What’s that?’

‘Lemon tart.’

‘It looks vile.’

‘You don’t have to eat it.’

He picked at it with his fingers, tasted it with a laboured show of reluctance. ‘Who was here?’

‘When?’

‘You know when. I heard a man’s voice. I heard you talking to a man.’

She remained silent, took his free arm to take his blood pressure. She always enjoyed the puffing sound of the pump. It reminded her of blowing up balloons.

‘Well?’ he snapped.

‘Monsieur Brochon came here.’

‘Henri! He was in the house!’ Jérôme smiled, his mouth full of tart, and she watched him carefully. It was the first time she’d seen him look somewhere near happy, even fond. ‘A great man. Why didn’t you send him in?’

‘He didn’t ask.’

‘Well, that’s because he will have presumed I was resting. Next time, send him in. This is my house, you know.’

‘I know.’

He eyed her as he chewed. ‘Handsome man, Henri, isn’t he?’

She turned to put the cuff and pump away. ‘Your blood pressure’s a little high today,’ she said.

‘Isn’t he?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘You must have noticed.’

She took the empty plate from him, brushing crumbs of pastry from his belly onto it.

‘So the tart wasn’t quite so vile,’ she said and he scowled.

‘Disgusting,’ he said. ‘Far too sweet.’

She rolled her eyes as she walked out of the room.

‘Woman!’ he shouted after her, but she ignored him, entered the kitchen and ate a large slice of tart standing up by the counter. It was delicious.