We All Ran into the Sunlight (11 page)

As it turned out, the medication wasn’t quite strong enough to destroy the bacteria that had formed in the woman’s weak lungs.

The doctor consoled Lucie. When he came up to the chateau, he held her in the garden room and told her she mustn’t blame herself. Fatima lay in the bed like a wraith now; all the fat from her limbs was gone and only her bones seemed to be there. The weight dropped off with such alarming speed; it was as if she were being rubbed out of the picture.

‘Which she was,’ said the women of the village, as they bustled into Mass on the day after the funeral. ‘She absolutely was!’

Lucie feared the bad luck that spilled out of the
chateau
walls.

She took the child round and round the garden. They collected flowers; they ran together in the vineyard.

Lucie cried, quite quickly, in the doctor’s chair and she told him that she would always be haunted by Fatima’s sweet face in the garden room, the look in the poor
woman’s
eyes, that brown hand trying to stifle a cough. It was so hot in the room, and the sweat had burst from them both. Lucie had herself closed Fatima’s eyelids and held her hand to the open gasping mouth, she told the doctor, who kissed her and held her and wrote her another
prescription
so that she could sleep easier at night.

‘You have a job to do now,’ he said. She had to be strong and eat and get on. ‘You’re a mother,’ he told her.

‘Yes,’ she whispered, with courage in her heart.

‘That’s the only thing that matters now.’

And Lucie agreed and was consoled by this and so she allowed him to lay her down on his bed behind the curtain and she found that the pills he gave her to keep her strong took the edge off the shock and the pain of penetration and the doctor was ever so grateful for her – the little neck, the sweet Parisian face – and the first time he lay on the bed above her and thrust and thrust with his trousers round his knees and he cried out in bliss.

Soon after, Baseema was moved into the master
bedroom
and she slept now on a little bed in the window with the porcelain doll Lucie ordered from Paris.

Out they bundled on a Friday morning and when the doctor called Lucie in for her consultation, Baseema
remained
in the waiting room for close to an hour playing with her doll under the sympathetic watch of the
receptionist
.

And if anyone had asked her, Lucie would say that the doctor had only ever been a trusted and loyal friend in a place where people were mostly cold and hostile to her. Mercifully, the doctor was able to advise her on so many things. He agreed, when she voiced her fears about it, that Baseema should probably wait another year before
attending
school and that, in the meantime, Lucie should continue just to enjoy all the time that they spent together in the chateau and out in the garden. Arnaud was never around.

If there was one thing that he asked, it was that Lucie found someone in the village to take her, just on a Friday morning, so that they wouldn’t have to rush behind the curtain, leaving the child sitting quite conspicuously with the receptionist in the waiting room outside.

Lucie wasn’t able to find anyone in the village to look
after
her. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them. It was more to do with the fact that the village women had other children – their homes were small and dirty and full of noise – and she worried that Baseema might prefer it there, might become used to the noise and the activity of other
children
and that this would bring about the first in a series of psychological separations that Lucie would be unable to bear. She was a woman in her own right now. She felt pretty in her Mrs America kitchen, reaching up on points in her full swinging skirts. In the evenings she made her clothes; by day she cleaned her house and played with her child. She made food that pleased her husband; she even had the women in the village to tea. So what need had she of the doctor and his Friday morning fumblings behind the white curtain? What need had she of all those
mind-numbing
pills?

So Lucie took the last of her pills and then Friday came and she would get through it alone.

The doctor didn’t call. He was a gentleman through and through and he didn’t come at the weekend.

On Saturday night she was bright as a button and she cooked a splendid feast for Arnaud. She sat with him in the library and chatted to him while she sewed. He sat and stared at the fire, listening to the radio and
ploughing
on through his bottle of wine, barely noticing a thing. No question his wife was more attentive, was chattier to him, and sweet. No question he was being fed like a king and waited on by a woman who seemed to enjoy making herself a slave.

They listened to the wind in the trees that night. They sipped the brandy by the fire. Then Arnaud said his
intention
was to bring her sister Marie down to the village for the summer.

A fortnight later, Arnaud carried Lucie into the surgery because by then she had got so weak and frail she could barely walk alone.

The doctor was appalled. He stood up very quickly from behind his desk and his face was white as the wall.

‘She’s done this to herself,’ Arnaud whispered in the doctor’s ear. ‘She got some news she didn’t like and this was how she responded. Her sister in Paris has a son. She didn’t know.’

‘When did she last eat?’ asked the doctor, bending down beside his patient at once to check the pulse.

Lucie’s mouth was dry and cracked at the corners. When she opened her mouth, the cuts opened and bled.

‘My husband has a son,’ she said. ‘He’s coming here in the summer to stay with us.’

‘Of course it’s not my son,’ he hissed at his wife while the doctor stood as if to intervene. ‘You’re talking
nonsense
, Lucie. If you had something in your stomach…’

Arnaud picked up the pills from the chemist and he sat with Lucie in the car while she swilled them back. Then he drove his family back to the chateau and for a few days things were back to normal. Every Friday the doctor came to the chateau to see Lucie and he would adjust the
medication
as was required.

Lucie took her pills and she got a lot of rest. She kept Baseema close to her, day and night. Soon things began to feel better. It was June. It was possible that it might even be fun to have a little boy about the chateau. Someone else for Lucie to mother as perfectly as she did Baseema, another reason to get the chateau shipshape as soon as she possibly could.

Lucie had Baseema. Marie had Paul. Fair’s fair, said Lucie to herself as she hung up the bed sheets on the line in the garden. Fair’s fair, she sang to herself as she went back into the cool of her house and busied herself,
humming
, and made the lunch.

It wasn’t the nicest thing she had done, telling Arnaud about the doctor’s Friday advances but she was so
convinced
of his affair with Marie and it guaranteed her the physical freedom she needed from him while ensuring he remained in the study.

She made a room for Marie beside the study; the
children
would sleep on the first floor with her. Lucie told Dr Clareon when he came the next Friday to check her medication that her husband now knew all about what he had done to his patient in his little chair and that all that would have to stop and would never happen again. Dr Clareon looked disappointed and he breathed heavily when he checked her pulse and her blood pressure, but otherwise she was left alone.

Which meant that Lucie had almost everything she needed. She had her home and she had her child. She
began
to put on weight. From now on her husband and the amorous doctor would leave her alone. She would never be tampered with again.

July arrived with a heatwave. Marie and Paul were due to come on the day of the burning plane ceremony.

All was in perfect order. Lucie was looking forward to the village gathering up on the heath and she sang to
herself
in the kitchen as she bent over the sideboard
pounding
aubergines to a pulp. She spread these on the pastry bases. Then she sliced potatoes into flakes, which she lay in a dish she had rubbed with garlic. Then she poured milk and cream over them.

At eleven, Veronique from the house closest to the
chateau
came with a basket of seventeen eggs for the crème caramel. Veronique was shaped like a goose; long and
stiffly
necked, with a wide saggy behind. But Lucie had picked Veronique because she was more intelligent, it seemed, than most of the women in the village. She was a solid,
loyal-looking
person. And her husband was the most successful of the local winemakers, which gave her social standing and influence. With Marie and Paul on the way down from Paris with Arnaud, it was important for Lucie to put on a display to show her guests when they arrived how little she minded them being there, how happy she was in general, how well liked in the village. So Veronique was coming with the eggs for the crème caramel. They would make it together, the two of them. They would talk then and exchange all manner of intimacies, which Lucie knew would bring them closer.

Lucie went out and stood in the sunlight, one hand up to shield her eyes. The wind rustled in the branches of the olives trees.

‘Will you not take my hand, Veronique?’

‘Mais non,’
whispered Veronique, husky with fat. ‘
Mais non
, Madame. Of course…’ She smiled and moved forward and her whole body seemed to tremble with the effort.

Lucie tried to make a sweeping gesture around the courtyard and this gave Veronique the cue that she
desperately
needed.

‘I am overwhelmed by the work you have done on the chateau. It looks so elegant, Madame. All these beds laid out for flowers, a herb garden here.’

Baseema circled Lucie’s leg, one hand holding her hair back from her face.

‘These olive trees are in exquisite shape. The shutters painted so neatly. You have done exceedingly well.’

Lucie bowed her head and felt the pleasure of her own humility. She said it wasn’t the case inside the chateau but she thanked Veronique for her comments and held the woman’s arm as they went inside for coffee. The doors to the salon and to the dining room, to the library and to Arnaud’s study were all closed. But the interior was
shabby
by comparison with the courtyard and there weren’t more than three pieces of furniture for poor Veronique to lay her eyes upon as she walked through the hall and into the kitchen. Lucie felt the embarrassment, the
paucity
of it, and she wrapped her cardigan about her chest, feeling the slightness of herself around the ribcage – so little flesh, so little womanly flesh – inside all this house. It was said that Veronique’s house was stuffed to the
gunnels
with objects. Of course, Lucie would have wanted to have some more furniture, some paintings on these walls, but all the money that Arnaud brought back from Paris or made in his vineyard went on the things they needed to live on and on the outside of the chateau, which seemed so much more important to him, she explained to Veronique.

‘He also has a mistress in Paris,’ said Lucie quietly. Behind her, Lucie felt the fat woman shuddering and she led her into the kitchen where a pristine table was laid with cakes in a small mountain of perfect pastel pink. Veronique gasped and sat quickly beside the cakes. Baseema came to the table with them and Lucie poured out the coffee. ‘It’s just that my husband is under
pressure
, you know? Sometimes he needs to let it go…’

The fat woman was nodding, her mouth open, and she tried to smile.

‘We met in a restaurant in Paris. On Avenue Georges V. It was spring, and the air was cool and clean again. There was quiet on the streets. The women walked by in colourful dresses that were not made of curtains or cheap cloth. Oh Veronique, there was nothing like that spring. They leant on the arms of the ones who had returned, and smiled and laughed, as if there had never been a war at all. In the restaurant they drank Coca-Cola and ate.
Arnaud
kept saying how badly he wanted to leave Paris, you know, to give the city up and live in the country making wine. He believed it would be good for us… But I… when I arrived here I felt so strange about it all. It was so quiet. So lonely. I couldn’t believe how bleak.’

‘Yes, I find it bleak also at times. Too quiet. But we take what we have, I suppose, and we try to make the best of it.’

‘I agree,’ said Lucie, sadly.

‘I don’t envy you, Madame Borja,’ said Veronique, breathily. ‘This place. There’s so much of it to get through. Even with staff I imagine that…’

‘Veronique, I never had staff to help me. I have done this alone.’

‘But the charwoman, Madame. The North African woman. You must miss her around the house, yes?’

Lucie silenced Veronique with the cold press of her little hand.

‘My husband believes me to be useless. It’s because I can’t have a child. His punishment is that I work in this place alone. Only Baseema helps me when we are not
doing
her tuition together.’

The Mayor’s wife was looking at Lucie as if she pitied her.

‘You also tutor the child?’

‘Everything,’ said Lucie. ‘I do everything alone.’

‘I can imagine that this has been terribly hard for you.’

‘The tragedy is that Baseema doesn’t need me any more. She is growing up. And away from me. Until now it has not been a thankless task. But the girl is making friends. She doesn’t want to be with me. She wants to go to school.’

‘Which is right,’ said the Mayor’s wife, patting Lucie’s hand. ‘You must try to be a strong mother. And let the child be.’

In her mind Lucie saw the women in the room above the hairdresser’s. She was still young but her womb was rotten and grey. She closed her eyes till the feeling went away.

Veronique was looking around. ‘And where is
Monsieur
Borja now?’

Lucie went quiet then, for effect. After a moment or two she got up from the table and she asked Veronique to come with her, she had something she would like her to see.

‘Please bring the cakes, Vero,’ she said sweetly. ‘We can eat them as we go. It’s not so big as you imagined, though, is it? It isn’t as big, as formidable as you thought it would be. For a long time, you know, I was so overwhelmed, so scared to leave the kitchen. For months, we lived in the kitchen alone. I can tell you are surprised by it.’

Upstairs, they walked along the corridor that ran the length of the first floor. There was a door at the end there and the key was rusty, so small it was almost swallowed by the keyhole. Lucie pressed her fingertips on the wood and pushed at the door. There was a narrow hallway, which was empty. The walls were mottled, the ceiling damp.

‘Where are we going?’ Veronique whispered.

‘The tower you see from the village, and from the road on the hillside. It’s quite lovely, and very secret in feel. Every morning I come here, and open the shutters.’

They rounded the corner and entered a small, round space painted entirely in white. There was a cot in there, and a new pine nursing chair with a thick white cushion on it. Through the windows the sunlight poured into this perfect white space.