‘Do that, then send her my way. I’ll show her how we work over here. There’s no room for airs and graces when you’re having to clear out Vanille’s latest blockage.’
Vanille, their eldest cow, had to be ‘rectally excavated’ – as Henri put it – on a regular basis.
‘Forget Vanille’s blockages – you’d frighten her away with your egg-whisking alone, Brigitte.’
‘You bet I would,’ Brigitte cried, brandishing the whisk as if to hit Laure with it. She felt a little egg run down her forearm, and wiped it on her stomach.
‘I heard she received a visit from our local mystic.’
Brigitte looked up. ‘Not Lacourse?’
‘None other.’
‘I told you how that woman used to turn her eyes at Henri?’
‘I could never forget it,’ said Laure, who had been there at the time of that great scandal, some fifteen years ago. Nothing had actually happened, but Brigitte had never forgotten Suki’s repeated visits to the farm, the stubbed cigarette ends she found in a little pile outside the house, the swish of exotic colours and jangling of metal in her kitchen, and the woman’s wretched laugh, false as anything.
‘Well let’s hope she doesn’t get Jérôme’s nurse under her wing.’
She poured cream and milk into the bowl.
‘Look at that cream,’ said Laure.
‘Mind you, his nurse won’t have time for new friendships. Jérôme’s getting worse and worse. He can’t move himself any more.’
‘And still no sign of his boys?’
‘None. They were in touch to give me the bare details of this replacement when the last nurse couldn’t hack it any more, and that’s the last I’ve heard from them. Not that I’m surprised. I did tell them a few months back now that he wasn’t doing too well and they’d be well advised to come and see him at some point, but they weren’t having any of it. They were rather rude, if I’m honest. Told me to get on with my job, and that I was the gardienne and not their therapist.’
‘I remember. Shockingly rude.’
‘I said to Jean-Christophe on the phone – you remember, the youngest – I said, “He is your father, you know,” and he told me it was none of my business and that, as I say, I wasn’t his therapist.’ She let the whisk rest for a moment and wiped her forehead. ‘And he’s a lawyer! All that education, and still so rude.’
‘Well, I’m not surprised really – I suppose he takes after Jérôme. They’ve always thought they’re too good for Saint-Sulpice.’
‘Oh, they were such wild boys, don’t you remember?’
‘How could I not!’ said Laure.
‘Still, it’s dreadfully sad. Their father at death’s door and they won’t even come and see him.’
A rare silence fell between them. Brigitte stirred bacon into her mixture, and Laure leant over to inspect it. ‘Your pigs?’
‘That’s right.’
They heard water gurgle in the bathroom upstairs; Brigitte rolled her eyes and sighed. She thought again about the nurse: she must go and check in on her and Jérôme. She’d reminded Brigitte of a doll she was given by her uncle as a young girl, which had broken too quickly. She’d been washing its hair and the head just came clean off, with a pop.
This was surely a particularly beautiful evening. As he dried himself, he looked out at his land through the bathroom window. The view was so familiar that he seldom noticed it – no more than the small portrait of Brigitte’s mother hanging in the dark corner at the top of the stairs, or the cup above the sink that held their toothbrushes. But today he couldn’t help but see: everything was a dark gold, the sun falling but still far from gone, and he could see his herdsman Paul with Thierry, the latest farmhand, still working on the perennially crumbling walls of the olive groves. In this light, only at this point of the day, the silver of the olive leaves was a dark grey – just as only in the searing heat of summer could they appear quite white. The sky was clear and insects whirred and his lone goat let out a shout like a deep hiccup.
He strode over to the window, tucking the towel neatly around his waist, and called out: ‘What are you two doing still at work?’
Paul and Thierry looked up immediately, scanning the garden, the porch, trying to find the source of the shout. They were smiling in anticipation. He waved and leant out, feeling with some satisfaction the breadth of his shoulders fill the slim window frame. ‘Over here!’
They frowned against the falling light, holding their hands up over their eyes.
‘We’re just too damn hard-working!’
‘We can’t get enough!’
Henri laughed theatrically. ‘Oh, you can’t fool me!’ They laughed too and turned back to the wall with some awkwardness, as if uncertain whether the dialogue had ended. He turned too, and his hollow guffawing echoed in his ears, foolish. As he combed his hair in the mirror above the sink he sighed deeply, and his face looked very tired and dull to him then.
‘I thought perhaps we could go out today.’
Jérôme turned to look at her, saying nothing.
‘It’s getting warm,’ she said. ‘I thought it might do you good to go outside.’
He continued to stare, wearily. Then he turned in bed to face the wall. Marguerite waited for a while, but he remained silent.
‘Would you like to?’
‘I haven’t been outside for over a month.’
‘Yes, for at least five weeks,’ she said. ‘Since before I arrived.’
‘You probably expect I don’t keep time, just lying here day in day out.’
‘No.’
‘But I do keep time. I know how long you’ve been here, I know what day it is. I’m not a prisoner.’ He forced out a little laugh. ‘I’m not Dantès, raging around his cell with whole years passing by.’
‘Of course you’re not.’
‘I employ you. You’re not here out of charity.’
‘Sir—’
‘So don’t you think if I wanted to go outside I would have told you to take me out? Or do I strike you as too meek to ask for what I want?’
‘No.’
‘Perhaps you think I feel like an inconvenience to you.’
Marguerite took a deep breath, waited.
‘I suppose you think you’re on some mission to rescue a feeble old man from terrible suffering and loneliness.’ He turned then in bed, excited. He raised himself up on one elbow. ‘I suppose you’re living in your own little fairy tale. Our own little Parisian Mother Teresa comes to the countryside to care for a very sad old man who will be eternally grateful.’ A fleck of spit had collected at the corner of his mouth. ‘Perhaps they’ll strike up a wonderfully redemptive friendship and she’ll forget all about the shameful life she’s running away from and all the people who have rejected her from the day she was born until the day she scurried along to this poor old house. And then the sad little old man will die smiling in her arms, tears twinkling in his eyes.’ He licked his lips and stared. ‘Isn’t that right?’
‘No.’ Marguerite started to tidy the few belongings on the table. She could feel the whump of her heartbeat; her hands were shaking. ‘I was just wondering if you wanted to go outside. I am just doing my job.’ She slammed one of the many jars of vitamins down a little too hard. ‘I know from your