I’m writing to you in the morning. I’m still in my sleeping bag, sitting up at the table. The loft bed smelled so much of mice I slept on the floor. I couldn’t sleep at first, I felt alone and stupid, I kept remembering what you said, ‘Why on earth do you need to go back there?’ It was also freezing. I will have to wait until May until it gets warmer. I’m writing this with my gloves on. I’m wearing two jumpers and my jeans. My first task when I finish this is to find some more wood. I got a little fire going last night but it didn’t do much. Up in the woods behind the hut a big tree has come down. I managed to saw off some of the branches. I will have another go today. I remember it does eventually get cosy in here. The saw and the axe were in the tin trunk, a bit rusty but they do work. I’m making plans already. I want to put a cannise up, a sunshade. Now, that has rotted away and is in shreds round the back. I reckon that by the summer this place will look so smart. I can clear the scrub out the front and make a place to sit under the tree. Last night I could hear that tree like a whisper and that’s what got me to sleep. It’s all you can hear, the wind in the pine trees. In the early morning it rained and now it’s so fresh outside, cold and bright. I want to go walking. It’s the time of year for orchids, pink spotted ones, bee orchids, lizard orchids. I shall walk to the village later and post this and see if I can find any. The cherries are in blossom. It’s so very beautiful. People miss this when they come in the summer, the grass is cracked and brown and there’s no flowers. In a few weeks the fields will be flower filled. I remember they used to be dazzling. The water is just boiling on my camping stove, thank you for lending me that, it will be most handy until I get the stove going properly.
Please write to me care of Jeanette Blanc at Le Sanglier. She will be delighted to get my letters, I’m sure. Oh, Stephen, I feel so alive I cannot tell you. I’m still sad and I will be for a long time yet. I miss Felix so much and I miss you, but in England I felt so numb.
With all my love,
Mireille
She wriggled out of her sleeping bag and made a cup of coffee. There were two windows in the hut, but only one was unshuttered, consequently the inside was in half light. Through the tiny window a beam of sunlight shone so brightly it seemed solid, slicing across the stone floor and on to the table. Dust particles danced in it like joyous faeries. Mireille put the cup to her face to feel the warmth and smiled. She felt unwashed and crumpled, but it was a feeling she associated with being young, when her hair had been thick and dark, curling down her back, and soft. Her hair, though grey was still soft, cut straight round her ears. She looked at her jeans and knobbly walking socks. When she was young she used to wear a bright red gathered skirt with a yellow ribbon round the hem and an embroidered shirt, deep midnight blue. An amber necklace which held pieces of insects.
She went outside. In the sunlight the wet pine trees smelled strongly of resin. The clouds raced fast in the sky, white puffy clouds like washed flock blotting and unblotting the sun. Then, there they were, the mountains, like clouds themselves, white and indistinct in the far distance, but only for a moment before the real clouds blew into the valley and obscured them.
Later, she walked to the village, not up the overgrown track but down the terraces to a small road. On the other side on level ground was a large olive grove, well tended, its trees clipped and neat and the grass underneath cleared away in a circle around each trunk. Beyond the field was a farmhouse and beside it two pencil-like cypresses, dark bottle green. This was the last dwelling place, past here the road petered out into another track, which picked its way through dense woods to Rochas, the third village in the area. But Mireille didn’t go that way. She followed the road to St Clair.
Near the village plenty of stone huts had been converted to holiday cabins, cabanons, some simple and rustic, others flagrantly pretentious, with coloured shutters, stripy awnings, brass lamps and even swimming pools. They were all empty. Of her own hut nothing could be seen except a glimpse of the rock it sat on. In her absence the tree cover had effectively removed it.
Six hairpin bends took the main road from the valley floor to the top of the hill and the small road joined it at the fourth. From here it was a steep, long haul. The locals drove round the roads as if pursued by the devil and every time a car came down she had to jump into the verge. She arrived panting and with aching legs.
The entrance to the village was a tree-lined road guarded by the statue for the heroes of the Resistance. A sturdy modernist woman with large flat feet. Her torch, held high, looked like a triple-whip ice cream cone. She had been placed at the far end of the boules yard, slightly too anatomically correct to be any nearer the church. Mireille rested on the wall of the boules yard to get back her breath. The village of Lieux was in a patch of sunlight, suddenly golden and shining. Behind it rose the high dark ridge, the end of the empty plateau of the Canjurs which spread all the way to the Gorge du Verdon. Lieux was the last village before this wilderness.
The plateau was owned mostly by the military. From far away she could hear the whump of shell fire. The dogs in the village started barking.
The café was busy. French people eat lunch whether it’s March, January or June and that morning there had been a mini-market in the square. Two vegetable stalls, a cheese van and a butcher. At this time of year Jeanette’s customers were traders. In the winter she served one dish and today it was bourride, a garlicky fish soup. Her mother helped wash up and serve and at the back of the café, as usual, the huge Macon drank beer and watched television.
Jeanette’s mother, Auxille, was a tiny old woman with thin, dark hair. She wore a Provençal apron in much the same material as her daughter’s flouncy dresses. She was as nosy as her daughter and twice as uninhibited about showing it. Mireille came out of the post office and went towards the shop. As she crossed the square they both rushed out to look. Their comments were quite audible.
‘I’m sure she’s a scientist, a botanist perhaps, she looks like one. She’s not American, she speaks French too well. She could be Canadian.’ In her hand was a glass of lager for one of the van drivers.
‘She won’t like Odette’s prices,’ said Auxille. ‘The Villeneuves should have told her about the market. I got a fine piece of lamb.’
‘But they get deliveries from Lieux.’
‘Perhaps she’s buying newspapers.’
‘Where’s my beer then?’ called out the driver. ‘And I want the soup.’
‘Tais toi!’ shouted Jeanette.
‘Here she come,’ said Auxille and opened the door as Mireille was reading the board outside. ‘It’s a fine soup today, a good thick soup.’
Mireille sat in the café under the eyes of Auxille, who stood by her table like a perching raven. The van driver grumbled. ‘Tourists, when they start arriving who cares about us?’
Jeanette banged his lager down next to him. ‘She’s a Canadian, you idiot, she can understand you. And let me tell you tourists are more gentil, and they tip better.’
‘Encore de bourride,’ called out Auxille. Auxille smiled sycophantically and Mireille smiled back. She knew this little game. She was not going to speak first.
‘So …’ said Auxille. ‘You’re the Canadian botanist.’
Mireille laughed out loud. ‘I wondered what you would make of me,’ she said in English. ‘No, I’m not. I’m British.’
‘Can this be right? The Villeneuves don’t have British friends, surely.’
‘I’m not at the château,’ said Mireille, still laughing.
‘The British people are the Gregsons and they don’t come until May. Their place is empty. I know this. Madame Cabasson’s niece looks after it.’
‘I’m at La Ferrou,’ said Mireille.