Cupid's Arrow (5 page)

We had a lovely lunch: fresh bread and butter and cheese, with thick slices of the ham (which was like a prosciutto sort of thing), along with a salad of lettuce and tomatoes and herbs from the garden. For dessert we had sweet juicy strawberries and whipped cream. There was also some really nice apple juice. I love food and so does Mum and we eat pretty well normally but, I tell you, that simple lunch was one of the nicest meals I'd ever had. Everything tasted so fresh and delicious. It all looked beautiful too, like a still-life painting, Mum said, as she put the big blue china plates out.

After lunch, she went straight off to the library to start burrowing about. I said I wanted to explore the house and garden a bit more. She said okay, but that I shouldn't poke about too much, and I should keep out of Raymond's bedroom and his study. I wasn't planning to go near there anyway, because I'd finally learnt, from a casual remark of Boron's before he left, that the study was where the poor old guy had died, and I had no intention of going into that murder room, not now or ever!

I had a quick glance up into the attics, but they were just small whitewashed rooms with low ceilings and skylights instead of windows. One of the rooms was set up like a very basic kind of bedroom, the other rooms were for storage, with piles of boxes and trunks and things in them. I went back downstairs and looked into the Brown Room, as I knew the Red and the Blue rooms belonged to Raymond and Oscar. But the door of the Blue Room was ajar and I could see a little way into it, so I just took a quick peek. It was much tidier than the downstairs study, and had blue patterned curtains, a four-poster bed, a blue Persian carpet and a big chest of drawers with several photos on it. One was of Raymond. I recognised his face from the book jacket photos, even though he looked much younger in this photo. By his side was another young man, who looked a fair bit like him. I guessed he must be his younger brother, Oscar's father. There was also another old photo of a family group, but most of the other photos were much more recent, and they all showed the same person: a strikingly beautiful woman with pale skin, black hair and dark blue eyes, in all sorts of poses and settings. Nicolas Boron hadn't said Oscar was married or that a woman might be living here with him, but then we hadn't asked. In fact I had no idea how old he was. Anyway, I would find out soon enough.

I closed the door gently and went back to my exploring. The Brown Room had some interesting little bits and pieces in the drawer of its bedside table: old restaurant menus and tickets to concerts, little shells and old postcards and things like that, stuff you might intend to stick in a scrapbook or something, but have somehow never got round to and just stuck in a drawer and forgot.

I closed the drawer and went downstairs to the bottom floor. There wasn't much to look at in the formal living room, apart from some nice old photos of Raymond and his family when he was young, and three beautiful old oil paintings, which even I could see must be worth a bit. Then I had a look at the stuff in the informal living room. There were a few crime novel paperbacks in English on the shelves there which I could read, as well as some history magazines. There was also a whole shelf of books on arms, armour and weapons and another one on castles and ancient buildings, which I guessed he must use as research for his books. I had a bit of a go on the piano, too – I'm not that great at playing, but I've had lessons for a couple of years, and I quite enjoy mucking about on it. And it was a beautiful piano, with a really sweet tone. Raymond had lots of music stacked on a shelf beside it – mostly jazz sheet music. I tried out one or two pieces, they were quite fun, but not very easy, so I soon gave that up and made up a tune of my own instead. I called it
Bellerive,
and I dedicated it to Raymond's memory. . .

I was thirsty again by this time so I went back into the kitchen and had another glass of apple juice. I went into the pantry again and looked at all the jars and bottles on the shelves, noticing now that they all seemed to be homemade things: jams and sauces, bottles of fruit and vegetables, gleaming and appetising and all labelled. Well, you wouldn't run out of food round here, even when it was winter and the vegie garden didn't produce as much as it was doing right now. This was a real country pantry, that was for sure.

On another shelf, further in from the pantry door, was a row of books. Cookbooks, by the look of them. I pulled one out but pulled too hard and a whole lot of them came tumbling down, scattering book jackets and recipes written on loose bits of paper that had been shoved into their pages. I scrambled around on my hands and knees, feeling guilty, and pulling it all back together when I suddenly saw, pushed at the back of the shelf, a small, thin book with a black plastic cover. An address book, I thought at first: it looked like the type you can carry around with you, in your bag or even your pocket.

I pulled it out, and opened it. It wasn't an address book, but a small sketch book with stiff white pages. On the first page, in a loose flowing hand that I recognised as Raymond's, was written:
Recette pour Gateau Moka.
A cake recipe. But there was nothing else written there, so I turned to the next page: but it was stuck down to the next. It wasn't until I'd turned to the next page after that one that I came to the next bit of text. Strangely, it was written in English:

Last night, I dreamed I was back in the forest. I was on my horse again and the path was dark and narrow but now I was sure it would be different.

And then the words broke off. There was a picture, a sketch in fact, rather like the one in the library, but a lot less good, if you know what I mean. Better than I can sketch but that's not saying much. Certainly not the work of a real artist.

I turned to the next page. The words had started again, but were sort of broken up:

Horse gone ... run run – they are there. Faces. Teeth. Claws. Run. Run!

And then another sketch of someone running through undergrowth. Long hair. Perhaps a knight wearing a tunic and leggings? Or maybe it was a woman in a dress seen from the back? It was hard to tell. There were trees closing over the person's head. I stared at the sketch. It was much better than the first one. As though someone different had drawn it. The writing was the same, though. Loose, flowing; Raymond's, at least I thought so.

This page was glued to the next one. I had to turn two to get to the next bit.

Faces. Faces watching leering grinning waiting. I say I am dreaming but they don't go away.

Different writing, this time. Spiky, hard. And here was a sketch in that unformed hand again, grinning devilish faces with rolling eyes and sharp teeth, the sorts of faces you see in nightmares, merciless, blank, inhuman, unstoppable. They were badly drawn but I shivered nevertheless. I've seen faces like that before in the dark corridors of the night. I turned over the page and there was another sketch. This one took up two pages (though, once again, underneath it were two other pages stuck together). There was a young man – you could see it was a young man now – in tunic and armour, standing near a wall in which was set a door. His hand was on the door handle, and around and behind him was the dark forest, but in front of him was the wall and over it you could see light and brightness. His face was touched with that bright light.
Home at last,
read the words under the sketch, and I knew then that the dream – or whatever it was– must have ended happily and that the wicked faces hadn't got him.

I looked at that picture for quite a long time, then I flipped through the rest of the pages. They were blank, though one or two were glued together, and you could see smudged, faint ink lines through them, as if someone had tried their hand at another sketch but failed. So I closed the notebook and slipped it into my shirt pocket. I can't explain really why I did that, why I didn't leave it where it was, but there was something about that book and the dream it told that touched me very deeply. It reminded me of those pictures in the library but, more than that, also of my own dreams, the good one of the green road and the door in the wall but also the bad one of that hunt through the forest. It also reminded me of what Raymond had said in his letter, the one Mum had read out to me, that we were both dreamers and seekers. Was this book one of the things he'd intended for me? I felt suddenly very close to him, very close to tears, but with a certain sort of weird thrill too.

Was it Raymond's dream that was being described, or someone else's? Two people had written and drawn this thing, this illustrated dream story. But why had it ended up at the back of the cookbook shelf? Had someone – Raymond, or someone else – deliberately hidden it there, or had it simply been forgotten? There'd been no hint in his letter. Oh well, it was likely I'd never know, and I didn't know who to ask about it anyway. Maybe I'd work it out later.

I went out into the garden and wandered around a bit, first among the vegies and berries, picking a strawberry and raspberry here and there. Not that I was hungry, but just because they were there! Then I had a squiz at the orchard, picked a couple of peaches and ate those, ambled down further into the park area, finding all kinds of little flowers and things along the way. I sat under a big old oak tree for a little while, watching ants and bees, and was starting to feel a bit sleepy when all of a sudden I turned my head and saw, gliding through the longish grass just metres away, a slim, quick body that moved like a single rippling muscle. I don't know whether it was me or the snake that got the biggest fright, because I jumped up like a jack-in-the-box, shrieking like a lunatic and, even though snakes are supposed to be deaf or something, I reckon that one got its ears cleaned out pretty well. Anyway, the snake took off and so did I, rushing as far away from it as I could, down towards the bottom of the garden, where the ground sloped gently to the river. The water looked so inviting. I took off my sandals and paddled in the shallow water, sending sparkles of drops into the air, just like I used to like doing when I was a little kid and we went for camping holidays by the river in the old goldfields not far from the city. I used to think that I might find gold in the water and I would paddle earnestly about for hours, pouncing on every bit of glitter that winked up at me. I found some fool's gold but never the real stuff. Fool's gold was so pretty and it coated your toes with tinsel, just like you'd emptied tubes of that glittery stuff you buy for craft projects.

Anyway, there was plenty of glittery stuff in this water too but not fool's gold, just little white river stones that looked like diamonds underwater. Although, when you pulled them out and they dried out, they looked like boring old pebbles. I wandered along the river bed, turning up pebbles and leaves. Once a couple of little silver fish swam past my ankles. Another time, I saw a red squirrel leaping from branch to branch on a tree that overhung the river-bank. I was glad I didn't see any more snakes.

The sun was beating down now and the water was a lovely temperature and I started thinking that maybe I could take off my shirt and skirt and go for a swim in my bra and undies – well, a bath really, the water was too shallow for swimming. I looked around – I'd wandered a fair way away from the house – it was hidden around a bend in the river – and I had gone in the opposite direction to the village. There was not a person to be seen anywhere. It was all totally quiet.

A little way up the river, there was a nice sheltered bit, willows overhanging it. I thought it'd be safe there. No-one would see me, even if they walked close by. I waded quickly there, took off my clothes, carefully lay them on the grass near my sandals, making sure Raymond's little notebook was well-protected, and headed gratefully back to the water in my underwear.

It had been a really good choice of place, because the water was deeper here. It was just heaven getting right into it, putting my head underwater, blowing bubbles, kicking out from the edge, splashing about and generally acting like a kid. I swam round and round my little waterhole, and then lay on my back and watched the blue sky through the willow leaves, and thought how cool it was to be here and how amazing the whole thing was and how when I got back to the house I might even pinch Mum's Blackberry and write an email to a couple of people back home ...

All at once I heard a rustle. Really close. Someone – or
something –
was coming! I didn't have time to get out and put my clothes back on. So I just dived down into the water but I couldn't hold my breath for long so just had to crouch in the water up to my neck and hope whoever it was would just pass by. Or maybe it was an animal – not something big and scary like a wild boar or a wolf (were there even any wolves left?) but a squirrel or a rabbit or something. Oh, not a snake. Not a water snake. Did they have water snakes in France? Help.

All these ridiculous thoughts flashed into my mind like lightning but the main thing was I felt really dumb, crouching in the water trying to protect my semi-nakedness, though really it was similar to me wearing a bikini. Still it feels kind of different when you're in bra and pants though, doesn't it?

I heard the rustle again, then a soft male voice, calling,
Ici, ici, Patou,
and then a scratching, scrabbling noise. A moment later, a boy and a dog came down the river path straight towards the willow hole. They hadn't seen me yet, but I could see them. The boy was tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in a grey T-shirt, black jeans and black sneakers. He had long, gleaming, straight brown hair tied back in a ponytail. I couldn't see his face properly, but I thought he looked about my age, maybe a bit older. The dog was one of those thin, elegant, long-nosed grey things, like a greyhound only smaller – whippets, I think they're called. It was nosing along in the bustling, happy way dogs do. In half a mo it would have nosed out my clothes. Then it would nose out me. And then ... no, no, I couldn't wait for that to happen, to be caught cowering like an idiot. So I called out, very loudly, in my bad French, 'Hello. Please, please go away.'