Remember Me... (77 page)

‘But there was the terror of you also. She thought you might not give her any money. She thought you might abduct Marcelle. When you sent a parcel for Marcelle, she would not go to Banon, the post office there, to collect it because . . . she said it might be a bomb. Alain collected it and then she was overcome with pleasure that you had sent Marcelle such a present, but what she wanted, Joseph, was a letter from you saying you wanted to live together again. She wrote all the time in her notebooks, and letters to you, which she was afraid to post. What she longed for was for you to arrive, just like that, to come to La Rotonde out of the sky and I can see her now, standing on that balcony and looking out into the countryside as if by looking alone she could bring you back to her. It broke my heart.'

Isabel stubbed out the cigarette.

‘Véronique made her give up smoking to strengthen her character, she said. I thought that it was stupid. Then the time came when Alain had to return to his laboratory in Marseilles, Louis and Véronique had to go back to Paris. I said I would stay with her but Véronique and Louis considered that Natasha would be better in England and certainly Marcelle would be happier with her friends and it was time for her to return.

‘Louis and Véronique were our dear friends, Joseph, and they remained our dear friends until their death but they were wrong. The night before the flight Alain and I came to La Rotonde and tried to change their minds. Our voices were so loud that Marcelle must have heard us and poor dear Natasha sat between us, looking from Louis then to me and then back to Louis, so sweetly, trusting us. I think now that her beautiful soul was broken. She was helpless. We should never have let her go, poor darling. We abandoned her . . .'

She let go of his hand and now Joe turned away. His chest ached from holding in the sound of sobbing. Natasha . . .

‘There is one final matter,' said Isabel. ‘I collected some of her writings after she left, to keep them safe for her. Many of them were illegible or unfinished. And all of them in English, Joseph: for you.

‘But they were too sad, I thought. I gave them to Véronique who, I think, destroyed them. Save for a few lines. They are in this envelope. I have waited for the right time. Now it has come.'

She handed him one of her elegant envelopes, well sealed, and then, without fuss, embraced both Helen and Joseph and wished them ‘
bon voyage
'.

After Isabel left, Joe and Helen walked leadenly up through the spiralling village towards La Rotonde, where he had agreed to meet Marcelle. Helen left him alone and went to buy some lavender.

The sky was blue and without cloud from horizon to horizon. The men playing boules nodded as he passed by and he sought out a quieter path, outside the mediaeval wall, and with increasing weariness he walked up the hill through the cypress trees. Isabel's words had felled him. Natasha was everywhere about him in La Rotonde. The village seemed to hold her spirit and at every turn on this terrible walk away from Isabel, he dreamed to see Natasha, alive, the smile. ‘Please be there,' he asked her, ‘just for one moment together.'

‘When I reached La Rotonde I sat where Natasha and I had last sat together, one night, so many years ago now. As I waited for you, I got out my notebook. There were very few people around at this hot time
in the afternoon but I wanted to cut myself off and I knew that if I seemed to be absorbed in writing, I would not be disturbed.

‘The notes made there are the basis for these final sentences. I have tried my best to bring Natasha home to you who now look so much like her. Many times I feel that I have not done justice to her, to a life so much purer than mine. Time is said to heal all wounds. Well, it doesn't always, Marcelle; in some cases it deepens them. I wanted you to know what I know about your mother, my wife. This account is yours, to do with as you wish.

‘The biggest thing of all is loss. Not to see her again, never to hear her, to be alive when she is not alive . . . Time is passing faster for me now, year by year more quickly, and sometimes I find I say, “It will not be long now.”'

He sat in the shade on the steps of La Rotonde and waited. Eventually he saw Marcelle down the path in the distance, the sun behind her. He closed his notebook. She looked up, saw him and smiled and then she waved as she walked towards him and brought Natasha with her.

He got up from the bed and went across the cool tiles to the window and looked again at what Isabel had given him.

Natasha had copied out some lines from Christina Rossetti. They were scrawled in uncharacteristically hectic loose handwriting.

Remember me when I have gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand,

Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

And then the scrawl slid into a violent tangle of lines and shapes, wordless; nothing but pain.

The shutters were ajar. He opened one of them wide and looked at the diamond stars, the fathomless darkness, and listened to the night sounds of Provence.

She is out there now, he thought, in the infinite and unbearable space of memory.