‘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.
Henri leant against the fence, watching Cédric as he examined Vanille. At eighteen, Vanille was his oldest cow and the only one to have a name. She had not been able to produce milk for many years, but Henri couldn’t let her go. ‘He loves that old thing more than me,’ Brigitte would often chide, which irritated him because his loyalty to Vanille felt more elemental than sentimental. It might sound ridiculous – he could guess perfectly well what Paul, or indeed anyone, would think if he knew – but she was the last link between the farm he had now and the farm he had inherited when his father retired. The place had done well under her vigil. It had mutated and expanded, a little colony of industry; Vanille and the house itself were the only things that remained the same.
And now she was ill – slothlike, heavy, sad. He looked at Cédric, trying to read his face. Henri had no instinct for sickness.
‘It’s not a blockage this time,’ Cédric said after a while. ‘I can’t find anything up there.’
The men stood in silence for a little while. Henri stepped towards Vanille, resting one hand on her head. She didn’t flinch, looking up at him blankly, her eyeballs marbled pink.
‘Probably just time she went on her way,’ Cédric said. Henri let go of her head, resting his palm under her muzzle for her to smell. ‘She’s what, fifteen by now?’
‘Eighteen.’ Henri looked into his friend’s eyes. They were still their old, deep blue, but Henri noticed his wrinkles now, how deeply they were scored. They had been two of the brightest boys at school; Henri could still remember clearly Cédric going off to Grenoble to study veterinary science, how glamorous that had seemed. ‘It couldn’t be urinary?’
‘Her piss ran normal.’
‘Ah.’
‘How many productive years did you get out of her?’
‘A lot. Ten, perhaps?’
Cédric whistled. ‘You’re lucky to get more than three these days.’ He laid his hand gently on Vanille’s back. ‘She’s done you proud.’
‘My girls are all right. They’re not a bad lot.’ Henri looked at the rest of the herd, grazing calmly, indifferent to the two men.
‘Well,’ Cédric said, packing up his things, ‘I’m afraid I can’t find anything. It might be cancer but let’s call it old age. At this point it’s the same thing really.’
Henri nodded. ‘Nothing we can do?’
‘I wouldn’t say so.’ The vet ran his hand again over the big knuckles of her spine and smiled gently. ‘They won’t get much meat off her.’
‘Oh, I won’t bother with all that.’ Henri stroked one of her ears; she stood there dumbly, not even grazing. He couldn’t send her away to die.
‘Are you staying out here?’ Cédric asked, and Henri nodded. ‘I’ll see myself out. Send my regards to Brigitte. I’ll see you soon.’
They shook hands and Cédric turned and started back towards the farmhouse. Henri watched him go, his figure dark against the pale morning. He turned to Vanille and stroked her muzzle again.
‘You pretty old thing,’ he said. Then he climbed over the gate; he had to get to work.
The air was warming already: it would be hot work today. The cicadas had started, he hadn’t noticed when. It was the same each year, their chorus insinuating its way into the fabric of the days without fuss or ceremony. Once it was there, it was difficult to imagine how silence sounded without it.
Henri turned back as he walked to look at Vanille; she was still watching him. She knew.
‘Good God,’ Jérôme said when she brought his breakfast. She had barely slept in the night, imagining sounds and the sly movement of human shapes against the black shadows of the trees outside her room. Jérôme was already sitting up in bed, a manoeuvre he managed with difficulty alone; unlike her, he appeared to have had an unusually good night, calling only once for pain relief. ‘You look like you’ve spent the night in a cave.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and he laughed. The sound – a real laugh, not a harsh little bark for effect – was so surprising that she turned from arranging his medication to look at him. He was smiling, his eyes bright, a different creature altogether from the day before.
‘But you have slept well.’
‘Very well,’ he said, tugging at the sheets with a little excitement. ‘Like a baby.’
She watched him as he ate, the grinding cogs of his old jaw as he chewed. Sunlight poured through the window onto the foot of his bed. The wind had blown away the rain; the clouds dotting the sky outside were white and bilious.
‘Today, I’ll