I shrugged. “I really don’t know. Why, Josephine, have you any idea who it was?”
Quickly: “No. But if someone did know — and didn’t tell…” She let the phrase falter miserably. “Would he — I mean — what would…”
I looked at her. She refused to meet my gaze, rolling the apricot absently, over and over across her hand. I caught a sudden glimpse of smoke from her thoughts.
“You know who it was, don’t you?”
“No!”
“Look, Josephine, if you know something…”
“I don’t know anything.” Her voice was flat. “I wish I did.”
“It’s all right. No one’s blaming you.” I made my voice gentle, coaxing.
“I don’t know anything!” she repeated shrilly. “I really don’t. Besides, he’s leaving, he said so, he isn’t from here and he should never have been here and…” She bit off the phrase with an audible click of her teeth.
“I saw him this afternoon,” said Anouk, through a mouthful of brioche. “I saw his house.”
I turned to her in some curiosity. “He talked to you?”
She nodded emphatically. “Course he did. He said he’d make me a boat next time, a proper wooden one that won’t sink. That is, if the bussteds don’t set that one afire as well.” She manages his accent very well. In her mouth the ghosts of his words snarl and prance. I turned away to hide a smile.
“His house is cool,” continued Anouk. “There’s a fire in the middle of the carpet. He said I could come whenever I liked. Oh.” She put a guilty hand to her mouth. “He said as long as I don’t tell you.”
She sighed theatrically. “And I did, Maman. Didn’t I?”
I hugged her, laughing. “You did.”
I could see Josephine looking alarmed.
“I don’t think you ought to go into that house,” she told her anxiously. “You don’t really know that man, Anouk. He could be violent.”
“I think she’s all right,” I winked at Anouk. “As long as she does tell me.” Anouk winked back.
Today there was a funeral — one of the old people from Les Mimosas down the river — and business was slow, out of fear or respect. The deceased was a woman of ninety-four, says Clothilde at the florist’s, a relative of Narcisse’s dead mother. I saw Narcisse, his one concession to the occasion being a black tie with his old, tweed jacket, and Reynaud, standing starkly in the doorway in his black and white, his silver cross in one hand and the other extended benevolently to welcome the mourners. These were few. Maybe a dozen old women, none of whom I recognized, one in a wheelchair pushed by a blonde nurse, some round and birdy like Armande, some with the almost translucent thinness of the very old, all in black, black stockings and bonnets and headscarves; some in gloves, others with their pale twisted hands clasped to their flattened breasts like Grunewald virgins. I saw mainly their heads as they made their way to St Jerome’s in a tight softly clucking group; among the lowered heads the occasional grey-faced glance, bright black eyes flicking suspiciously at me from the safety of the enclave whilst the nurse, competent and resolutely cheery, pushed from the back. They seemed to feel no distress. The wheelchair-bound one held a small black missal in one hand and sang in a high mewing voice as they entered the church. The rest remained silent for the most part, bobbing their heads at Reynaud as they passed into the darkness, some handing him a black-bordered note to read out during the service. The village’s only hearse arrived late. Inside, a black-draped coffin with a lone spray of flowers. A single bell sounded flatly. As I waited in the empty shop I heard the organ play a few listless, fugitive notes, like pebbles dropping into a well.
Josephine, who was in the kitchen taking out a batch of chocolate-cream meringues, came in quietly and shuddered. “It’s gruesome,” she said.
I remember the city crematorium, the piped organ music — a Bach toccata — the cheap shiny casket, the smell of polish and flowers. The minister pronounced Mother’s name wrong — Jean Roacher. It was all over within ten minutes.
Death should be a celebration, she told me. Like a birthday. I want to go up like a rocket when my time comes, and fall down in a cloud of stars, and hear everyone go: Ahhhh!
I scattered her ashes across the harbour on the night of the Fourth of July. There were fireworks and candyfloss and cherry-bombs blatting off the pier and the sharp burn of cordite in the air and the smell of hotdogs and frying onions and the faint whiff of garbage from the water. It was all the America she had ever dreamed of, a giant amusement-park, neons flaring, music playing, crowds of people singing and jostling, all the slick and sentimental tawdriness she loved. I waited for the brightest part of the display, when the sky was a trembling eruption of light and colour, and I let them drift softly into the slipstream, turning blue-white-red as they fell. I would have said something, but nothing seemed to be left to say.
“Gruesome,” repeated Josephine. “I hate funerals. I never go to them.” I said nothing, but watched the silent square and listened to the organ. At least it wasn’t the same toccata. Undertakers’ assistants carried the coffin into the church. It looked very light, and their steps were brisk and barely reverent on the cobbles.
“I wish we weren’t so close to the church,” said Josephine restlessly. “I can’t think with that going on right next door.”
“In China, people wear white at funerals,” I told her. “They give out presents in bright red packages, for luck. They light firecrackers. They talk and laugh and dance and cry. And at the end, everyone jumps over the embers of the funeral pyre, one by one, to bless the smoke as it rises.”
She looked at me curiously. “Did you live there too?”
I shook my head. “No. But we knew plenty of Chinese people in New York. For them death was a celebration of the dead person’s life.”
Josephine looked doubtful. “I don’t see how anyone can celebrate dying,” she said at last.
“You don’t,” I told her. “Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.” I took the pot of chocolate from the hot plate and poured two glasses.
After a while I went into the kitchen for two meringues, which were still warm and treacly inside their chocolate envelopes and served with thick creme Chantillyand chopped hazelnuts.
“It doesn’t seem right, doing this, at this moment,” said Josephine, but I noticed she ate anyway.
It was almost noon when the mourners left, dazed and blinking in the bright sunshine. The chocolate and meringues were all finished, the dark kept at bay for a little longer. I saw Reynaud at the doorway again, then the old women went away in their minibus — Les Mimosas lettered on the side in bright yellow — and the square was back to normal again. Narcisse came in when he had seen off the mourners, sweating heavily in his tight collar. When I gave him my condolences he gave a shrug.
“Never really knew her,” he said indifferently. “Great aunt of my wife’s. Went off to Le Mortoir twenty years ago. Her mind was gone.”
Le Mortoir. I saw Josephine grimace at the name. Behind all its mimosa sweetness, that’s all it is, after all. A place in which to die. Narcisse is merely following convention. The woman was long dead already.
I poured chocolate, black and bittersweet. “Would you like a slice of cake?” I offered.
He deliberated for a moment. “Better not while I’m in mourning,” he declared obscurely. “What kind is it?”
“Bavaroise, with caramel icing.”
“Perhaps a little slice.”
Josephine was looking out of the window into the empty square. “That man’s hanging about again,” she observed. “The one from Les Marauds. He’s going into the church.”
I looked out of the door. Roux was standing just in the side doorway of St Jerome’s. He looked agitated, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other, his arms clasped tightly around his body as if he were cold.
Something was wrong. I felt a sudden, panicky certainty. Something was very wrong. As I watched Roux turned abruptly towards La Praline
. He half-ran into the doorway and remained there, head lowered, rigid with guilt and misery.
“It’s Armande,” he said. “I think I’ve killed her.”
For a moment we stared at him. He made a helpless awkward little gesture with his hands, as if to ward off bad thoughts.
“I was going to get the priest. She doesn’t have a phone, and I thought perhaps he…” He broke off. Distress had thickened his accent so that his words were exotic and incomprehensible, a language of strange gutturals and ululations which might have been Arabic, Spanish or verlan, or an arcane melding of all three.
“I could see she — she told me to go to the fridge and — there was medicine in there…” He broke off again in increasing agitation. “I didn’t touch her. I never touched her. I wouldn’t —” He spat the words out with an effort, like broken teeth. “They’ll say I attacked her. I wanted to take her money. It isn’t true. I gave her some brandy and she just…”
He stopped. I could see him struggling to maintain control.
“It’s all right,” I told him calmly. “You can tell me on the way down. Josephine can stay with the shop. Narcisse can phone the doctor from the florist’s.”
Stubbornly: “I’m not going back there. I’ve done what I could. I don’t want…”
I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him after me. “We haven’t got time for this. I need you with me.”
“They’ll say it was my fault. The police…”
“Armande needs you. Now come on!”
On the way to Les Marauds I heard the rest of the disjointed tale. Roux, feeling ashamed of his outburst in La Praline the previous day, and seeing Armande’s door open, decided to call on her and found her sitting half-conscious in her rocking-chair. He managed to rouse her enough for her to speak a few words. Medicine…fridge…On top of the refrigerator was a bottle of brandy. He poured a glassful, forced some of the liquid between her lips.
“She just — slumped. I couldn’t get her to come round.” Distress ebbed from him. “Then I remembered she was a diabetic. I probably killed her trying to help.”
“You didn’t kill her.” I was out of breath with running, a stitch cramping my left side. “She’ll be all right. You got help in time.”
“What if she dies? Who do you think’ll believe me?” His voice was harsh.
“Save your breath. The doctor will be here soon.”
Armande’s door is still open, a cat wound halfway around the frame. Beyond it the house is still. A piece of loosened guttering spouts rainwater from the roof. I see Roux’s eyes flick to it in sudden, professional appraisal: I’ll have to fix that. He pauses at the door as if waiting to be invited in.
Armande is lying on the hearthrug, her face a dull mushroom colour, her lips bluish. At least he has put her in the recovery position, and one arm pillows the head, neck at an angle to free the airways. She is motionless, but a tremor of stale air between her lips tells me she is breathing. Her discarded tapestry lies beside her, a cup of spilled coffee forming a comma-shaped stain on the rug. The scene is strangely flat, like a still from a silent film. Her skin beneath my fingers is cold and fishy, her dark irises clearly visible beneath eyelids as thin as wet crepe. Her black skirt has ridden up a little over her knees, revealing a crimson ruffle. I feel a sudden flare of sorrow for her arthritic old knees in their black stockings and the bright silk petticoats beneath the drab housedress.
“Well?” Anxiety makes Roux snarl.
“I think she’ll be all right.”
His eyes are dark with disbelief and suspicion.
“She must have some insulin in the fridge,” I tell him. “That must have been what she meant. Get it quickly.”
She keeps it with the eggs. A tupperware box contains six ampoules of insulin and some disposable needles. On the other side a box of truffles with La Celeste Praline lettered on the lid. Otherwise there is hardly anything to eat in the house; an open tin of sardines, a piece of paper with a smear of rillettes, some tomatoes. I inject her in the crook of her elbow. It is a technique I know well. During the final stages of the disease for which my mother tried so many alternative therapies — acupuncture, homoeopathy, creative visualization — we eventually fell back on good old morphine, black-market morphine when we couldn’t get it on prescription, and though my mother loathed drugs she was happy to get it, with her body sweltering and the towers of New York swimming before her eyes like a mirage. Armande weighs almost nothing in my arms, her head rolling loosely. A trace of rouge on one cheek gives her a desperate, clownish look. I press her cold, rigid hands between my own, loosening the joints, working at the fingers.
“Armande. Wake up. Armande.”
Roux stands watching, uncertain, his expression a blur of confusion and hope. Her fingers feel like a bunch of keys in my hands.
“Armande.” I make my voice sharp, commanding. “You can’t sleep now. You have to wake up.”
There it is. The smallest of tremors, a leaf fluttering against another.
“Vianne.”
In a second, Roux was on his knees beside us. He looked ashen, but his eyes were very bright.
“Oh, say it again, you stubborn old woman!” His relief was so intense it hurt. “I know you’re in there, Armande, I know you can hear me!” He looked at me, eager, almost laughing. “She spoke, didn’t she? I didn’t imagine it?”
I shook my head. “She’s strong,” I said. “And you found her in time, before she lapsed into coma. Give the injection time to act. Keep talking to her.”
“OK.” He began to talk, a little wildly, breathlessly, looking into her face for signs of consciousness. I continued to rub her hands, feeling the warmth returning little by little.
“You’re not fooling anyone, Armande, you old witch. You’re as strong as a horse. You could live for ever. Besides, I’ve just fixed your roof. You don’t think I did all that work just so that daughter of yours could inherit the lot, do you? I know you’re listening, Armande. I know you can hear me. What are you waiting for? D’you want me to apologize? OK, I apologize.” Tears marbled his face. “D’you hear that? I’ve apologized. I’m an ungrateful bastard and I’m sorry. Now wake up and —”
“…loud bastard…”
He stopped mid-sentence. Armande gave a tiny chuckle. Her lips moved soundlessly. Her eyes were bright and aware. Roux cupped her face gently in his hands.
“Scared you, did I?” Her voice was lace-thin.
“No.”
“I did, though.” With a trace of satisfaction and mischief.
Roux wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “You still owe me money for the work I did,” he said in a shaky voice. “I was only scared you’d never get round to paying me.”
Armande chuckled again. She was gaining strength now, and between us we managed to lift her into her chair. She was still very pale, her face half-collapsed into itself like a rotten apple, but her eyes were clear and lucid. Roux turned towards me, his expression unguarded for the first time since the fire. Our hands touched. For a second, I caught a glimpse of his face in moonlight, the rounded curve of a bare shoulder against grass, a lingering ghost scent of lilac…I felt my eyes widen in stupid surprise. Roux must have felt something too, because he stepped back, abashed. Behind us I heard a soft chuckle from Armande.
“I told Narcisse to phone the doctor,” I told her with a pretence at lightness. “He’ll be here any minute.”
Armande looked at me. Knowledge passed between us, and not for the first time, I wondered just how clearly she saw things.
“I’m not having that death’s-head in my house,” she said. “You can send him right back where he came from. I don’t need him telling me what to do.”
“But you’re ill,” I protested. “If Roux hadn’t come along you might have died.”
She gave me one of her mocking looks. “Vianne,” she said patiently. “That’s what old people do. They die. It’s a fact of life. Happens all the time.”
“Yes, but —??
?
“And I’m not going to Le Mortoir,” she continued. “You can tell them that from me. They can’t force me to go. I’ve lived in this house for sixty years and when I die, it’s going to be here.”
“No-one’s going to force you to go anywhere,” said Roux sharply. “You were careless with your medication, that’s all. You’ll know better next time.”
Armande smiled. “It isn’t quite that simple,” she said.
Stubbornly: “Why not?”
She shrugged. “Guillaume knows,” she told him. “I’ve been talking to him quite a lot. He understands.” She sounded almost normal now, though she was still weak. “I don’t want to take this medicine every day,” she said calmly. “I don’t want to follow endless diet-sheets. I don’t want to be waited on by kind nurses who talk to me as if I were in kindergarten. I’m eighty years old, for crying out loud, and if I can’t be trusted to know what I want at my age —” She broke off abruptly. “Who’s that?”
There is nothing wrong with her hearing. I heard it too, the faint sound of a car drawing up on the uneven pathway outside. The doctor.
“If it’s that sanctimonious quack, tell him he’s wasting his time,” snapped Armande. “Tell him I’m fine. Tell him to go find someone else to diagnose. I don’t want him.”
I glanced outside. “He seems to have brought half of Lansquenet with him,” I remarked mildly. The car, a blue Citroen, was packed with people. As well as the doctor, a pallid man in a charcoal suit, I could see Caroline Clairmont, her friend Joline and Reynaud crammed together on the back seat. The front was occupied by Georges Clairmont, looking sheepish and uncomfortable, silently remonstrating. I heard the car door slam, and the peewit-shrill of Caroline’s voice soaring above the sudden clamour.
“I told her! Didn’t I tell her, Georges? No-one can accuse me of neglecting my filial duty, I gave my all for that woman, and look how she —”
A quick crunch-criss of steps across the stones, then the voices flared into cacophony as the unwanted visitors opened the front door.