She would make poule au pot for Jérôme’s dinner. Infirmity had made his appetite weak, but his eating habits carried the shadow of a once-greedy man: in spite of himself, his eyes widened when she brought in a plate of something he liked. He would gobble fast, with relish. She thought of him as she stood there surrounded by her vegetables, carefully unsheathing spring onions and slicing celery and scattering peppercorns. The chicken still held many of its feathers, which she plucked one by one, with care, thinking of Jérôme’s delicate white flesh.
She had started to doze, sitting in her chair in the kitchen as the stock bubbled, when the sound of a car in the driveway startled her. A door slammed, footsteps ground on gravel. No one visited the house; without thinking, she rushed to lock the door.
But it was Suki’s face that appeared at the window. She was dressed in a deep, violent magenta, out of place against the silver-greys and greens outside.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ she said, smiling as Marguerite let her in. ‘I’ve caught you off guard.’ She studied Marguerite’s face for a moment. ‘You’ve been asleep.’
‘No, just – thinking,’ she said, rubbing her face.
‘Something smells nice.’ Suki walked past her into the kitchen, approached the cooker and peered into the casserole. ‘Poule au Pot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Lovely.’ She turned and leant back against the kitchen worktop, smiling, as if she had been there hundreds of times. Marguerite didn’t know what to say. She wanted her quiet kitchen back.
‘Can I get you something – a glass of water?’
‘Oh, please don’t trouble yourself. Actually, I can’t stay long.’ She took a pack of cigarettes out of her bag, and turned to light one on the gas hob. ‘I was just passing, and thought I’d come to say hello and see how you’re getting on.’
No one passed by the house.
‘I’m fine.’
She thought of the cigarette smoke floating through into Jérôme’s room.
Suki cocked her head to one side. Her expression wasn’t quite friendly, as if it held a challenge.
‘Yes? Well, anyway, I thought I’d say hello. And I thought, you’re an outsider, I’m an outsider.’ She gesticulated vaguely.
‘Are you new to the village?’
‘Not any more, though I often think I may as well be. I’ve been here – oh, a long time now. But I’m not from around here originally. Guess where I’m from?’
Marguerite sat down. She didn’t want conversation, didn’t want Jérôme to be woken by the noise; she wanted to go up to her room and crawl into bed and go back to sleep. And she hated guessing games, the ennui she felt when she contemplated their boundlessness.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Guess!’
‘Pakistan?’
‘Well, no – Iran. But the right continent, at least. You must be the only person who hasn’t guessed Algerian or Tunisian. Everyone just presumes I’m maghrébine. Maghrébine! Shit …’ She rolled her eyes, exhaling a long plume of smoke. ‘Oh, can I smoke in here?’
But she was stubbing it out already, in the sink.
‘I have to go, I was just dropping by. But you must visit me. I live right next to the doctor’s surgery.’
‘I can’t really leave Jérôme.’
‘What, you never go into the village? Not even to the library?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Next time, drop by for a coffee. Not before noon, I never wake up before noon.’ She walked to the door. ‘Goodbye …?’
‘Marguerite.’
‘That’s right. Goodbye, Marguerite.’
She expected to find him asleep when she went into his room to get the book. It was the hour after his lunch; after eating, he almost always fell asleep immediately, as suddenly as a child pretending, his mouth mordantly slack. But today he was lying with the sheets right up to his chin and his eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. She thought that his look was one of deep fear.
‘Don’t you know how to knock?’ he snapped.
‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I—’
‘You what?’
‘I thought you’d be asleep.’
‘I see. And so you just wanted to skulk in here and watch me sleeping?’
‘Of course not.’
‘What did you want then?’
‘I wanted to take the book for a few hours.’
‘And do what?’
‘Read it.’
‘Without me?’
‘We’d still go back to where we left off.’
‘But then you’d be reading those passages twice?’
‘Well—’
‘Do you think you’re humouring me? Is that what you think you’re doing?’
‘Of course not.’ She braced herself for his next question but he looked suddenly weary.
‘I’m having some pain.’
‘Where?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘I can’t give you more Tramadol.’
‘Dolophine.’
‘I can’t give you that either.’ He groaned. ‘Let me give you a massage.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I’m not.’
He opened one eye, looked at her warily and closed it again. There was silence, and then: ‘All right.’
She approached the bed, pulled the sheet down gently from his chin to his stomach and rubbed her hands together to warm them. Then she pressed his shoulders down, firmly. She didn’t rub his skin, she pressed it: his shoulders, his slipped pectorals, the large crown of his thorax. She hummed quietly as she worked.
‘Your hands are cold,’ he mumbled, his eyes still closed. And then, ‘You’re always humming.’
‘Does it annoy you?’
He didn’t answer for a while. She moved her hands to his head, pushed and pressed each side slowly and heavily.
And then, so quietly she could barely hear it, he said: ‘No. Not really.’
She lifted his thin left arm, wrapped it in the blood-pressure cuff.
‘And?’ he asked when it released.
‘Fine today. In fact, a little lower than usual. Perhaps you’re relaxed from the massage.’
‘Hmmm,’ he said. And then, meticulously casual, he said: ‘You’re Parisian, of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you leave Paris?’
She sighed as she removed the cuff, the tear of the Velcro the only other sound in the room. ‘Why not? It’s very beautiful here.’
‘But boring. Very boring. Why would you leave Paris to come here? At your age? On your own?’
‘Because I wanted to.’
‘But why?’