Jeanette was bringing in the soup, an extra large portion with a whole basket of bread.
‘Where’s mine?’ yelled the driver. ‘Or do I have to wait until summer?’
‘Shut your mouth, yours is coming. Maman, what’s wrong, are you having a fit?’
‘Jeanu, Jeanu, it’s her, from La Ferrou, who sang the songs, and the little boy with the drum …’
‘Mireille?’ said Jeanette, and she looked too, and shrieked too, and they all hugged. Macon turned off the television.
‘Look, hers is going cold and I haven’t had mine yet,’ said the van driver.
‘You be quiet, Enrique,’ said Auxille. ‘This is a miracle and I know your mother.’
‘She’s in the graveyard, where you should be.’
‘My family are in the oldest graveyard.’
‘Go and join them. God, I hate old women!’
‘Don’t insult my family,’ said Macon, loudly, and everybody looked at him. Even balding and with a paunch he was a head and shoulders higher than the driver. The man was quiet.
Auxille stood up ‘Quel miracle! Quel drame! What was it? One soup?’
‘With extra bread like hers.’
After lunch Jeanette closed the café. She wiped the tables, washed up, swept the floor and folded up the table cloths, unaided because Auxille hadn’t stopped talking once and Macon had gone into the cellar to find some celebratory wine.
The café was warm and moist and filled with a garlicky fish aroma now being attacked by bleach and cleaning fluids. Mireille rested her head against the window and listened as Auxille filled her in on the last twenty years’ gossip. The topics were the same as ever. Fecundity, hunting dogs and who had married whom. Family connections were important in St Clair.
The top family were the Villeneuves, who owned the château. They were respected but not loved. In the war they had been collaborators. They had very little to do with the village. The next family were the Cabassons, who owned the bakery. The current mayor was a Cabasson. They also owned several farms and ran the cave, the wine cellars, and the olive press. Auxille’s husband had been a Cabasson. He was a hero of the Resistance. He had been shot trying to steal wine from the cellars of the château when it was occupied by the Germans.
There were four strands of the Blancs. The best Blancs had moved away years before and now lived near Nice. The next best Blancs were Auxille’s family, who had owned the café for several generations. The third best Blancs were farmers at the château. The worst Blancs were Macon, his drunken father, his Italian mother, his no-good brothers. Other families were the Cavaliers, the Aragons, the Perrigues and the Gués. Auxille’s mother had been a Perrigues, and her mother a Cavalier. Odette, who ran the shop, was also a Cavalier, her mother a Gués, and so it went on, the whole village woven together into a knotty carpet of rivalries and jealousies. Bottom of the heap and the subject of much rumour were the people who lived in the social housing behind the mairie. Half gypsies, the unemployed, half Moroccans, and Algerians. When anything was stolen or broken, they were blamed.
Macon brought in the wine and glasses and finally Jeanette sat down.
‘So …’ she said, ‘when did you become a botanist?’ She had a habit of believing her own fantasies.
Mireille did not want to tell her or anybody else in the village why she had come. She wanted to be left alone and now she was wondering if it had been a good idea to reveal who she was. ‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘but I am interested in wild orchids. In fact, I’m making a small survey.’
‘Doesn’t Madame Cabasson’s niece’s husband-to-be know a scientist at the university?’ asked Auxille. ‘Perhaps I could introduce you.’
Mireille thought quickly. ‘How kind of you, but it won’t be necessary. It’s only La Ferrou I’m interested in, it’s just for … a nature magazine in England … it’s not scientific … but I do need peace and quiet.’
‘You’ll get that at La Ferrou,’ said Macon. ‘That’s all you’ll get.’
‘And you have no car. Can you stay for two weeks without a car?’ asked Auxille.
‘I’m going to be here until the summer.’ Mireille wanted to go back immediately to the stillness of the hut. Three pairs of incredulous eyes were already picking holes in her story. ‘The habits of wild orchids are very strange,’ said Mireille.
‘Of course,’ said Auxille and they all nodded.
‘And …’ said Mireille, definitely thinking fast now, ‘I need to rest … I need fresh air and stillness … the doctor said so.’
At the mention of a doctor Auxille and Jeanette moved close, like birds of prey. ‘You have been ill? No? You look so well.’
‘Mental …’ said Mireille, groping around for an explanation that would satisfy them. ‘Fatigue … brought on by stress … depression.’
They all stared at her. Mireille said nothing else. She hoped Jeanette’s fertile imagination would fill in the gaps. It did. ‘Your poor mother,’ said Jeanette.
‘My poor mother,’ said Mireille and her sigh of relief could have sounded like an exclamation of sadness.
‘How tragic to lose your mother. I thank the blessed Virgin that dear Maman is so well for her age.’ Auxille was in her seventies but she looked about ninety.
‘So tragic,’ said Auxille.
‘And how kind of her to remember us and send the money. I bought a pretty little carpet.’
‘And Macon drank the rest,’ said Auxille. Macon growled and drank his wine.
‘And your son? He is well?’ Jeanette changed the subject.
‘My son is a successful young man,’ said Mireille.
‘How lucky you are to be blessed with a child,’ said Auxille, glowering at Macon.
Macon ignored her. ‘Do you still play the accordion, the one my father gave you?’ He always remembered that his father had given it to Mireille.
‘I didn’t bring it with me. It was too heavy.’ She hadn’t played any music since November and this loss added to all her other losses. She desperately wanted to go back to the Ferrou.
‘What was that song?’ said Auxille. ‘How did it go?’ She began one of the old Provençal ballads. Mireille knew it and joined in. She had a splendid deep voice and eventually Auxille stopped her crackly accompaniment to listen. Mireille closed her eyes and sang to the end, a sad tale about lost love and forlorn, forgotten females. She finished. The others clapped. ‘I have to go back now,’ she said.
She was glad to be in the solitude of her hut. The light was beginning to fade now and clouds were coming down from the hills, tucking up the valleys and telling them to be quiet. But Mireille was restless. Everything she looked at reminded her of something she still had to do. Get a mattress for the loft bed. Cut more wood. Buy another lamp. In the ceramic sink the one tap dripped on to unwashed plates. There was no hot water at the Ferrou. What water there was came from a spring in the woods and it flowed into the tap, banging and complaining along the pipe. There was no toilet either. That was another job to be done. Dig a pit in the woods.
I am too old for this, thought Mireille, but she liked tiny spaces. Her houseboat in Bath had been tiny, but warm and tiny, and comfortable, with a bed taking up one end and padded seats by the table. In the hut there were no chairs, but a stone ledge along one wall. She was sleeping on this because the loft was littered with dead insects, mouse debris, and a huge spider had built a tunnel-like web under a tile and crouched in there sulking, waiting