Jay grimaced. His head was beginning to hurt again. He swallowed. ‘Look, I should be getting back,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Rosa …’
She nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very good with her. You can’t imagine—’ Jay couldn’t bear her gratitude. He ran all the way back to the farm.
HE SPENT ANOTHER HOUR GOING OVER POSSIBLE HIDING PLACES. He knew he should never have left her. Rosa was a mischievous child, subject to all kinds of whims and fancies. She might even now be hiding from him, as she had often hidden during his first weeks on the farm. All this might easily be her idea of a joke. But as time passed and Rosa was nowhere to be found, he began to consider other options. It was all too easy, for example, to imagine her climbing the banks of the Tannes and sliding in, being taken downriver for a couple of kilometres to be washed up against a mudbank, or even as far as Les Marauds. Easy, too, to imagine her simply wandering off down the road to Lansquenet, perhaps being picked up by some stranger in a car.
Some stranger? But there were no strangers in Lansquenet. Everyone knew everyone else. Doors were left unlocked. Unless … Suddenly he remembered Patrice, Marise’s stalker from her Paris days. Surely not – in seven years. But that would explain many things. Her reluctance to come into the village. Her refusal to leave the place which had become a safe haven for her. Her fierce protectiveness of Rosa. Could Patrice have somehow traced them to Lansquenet? Had he been watching the farm, waiting for an opportunity to make his move? Could he be one of the villagers themselves, keeping close, biding his time? The idea was ridiculous, pure comic-book fiction; the kind of thing he himself might have written, aged fourteen, on a lazy afternoon by the canal. All the same he felt his chest contract at the thought. He imagined Patrice looking a little like Zeth, grown taller and meaner with age, his tribal cheeks thinner, his eyes mad and clever. Zeth, with a real shotgun this time, waiting at the gate with that look of mean appraisal in his eyes. It was ridiculous but it seemed very possible then, a logical conclusion to the rest of that summer, to Joe’s final disappearance, to the way events had slipped back relentlessly towards that last October and to Pog Hill Lane. No more ridiculous, in any case, than the rest of it.
He thought of taking the car, but rejected the idea. Rosa might be hiding in a bush or by the roadside, too easy to miss for even a slow driver. Instead he walked along the road towards Lansquenet, stopping occasionally to call her name. He looked in ditches and behind trees. He detoured to a welcoming duckpond, which might possibly have tempted an inquisitive child, then to a deserted barn. But there was no sign of her. Finally, on reaching the village, he tried his last realistic option. He made for Mireille’s house.
The first thing he noticed on arrival was the car parked in front: a long grey Mercedes, with a smoked-glass windscreen and hire-car plates. A gangster’s car, he thought, or that of a game-show host. Heart pounding in sudden realization, Jay made for the door. Without pausing to knock, he opened it, calling harshly, ‘Rosa?’
She was sitting on the landing in her orange jumper and jeans, looking at an album of photographs. Her Wellingtons were parked by the door. She looked up as Jay called her name, and grinned. Relief almost brought him to his knees.
‘What did you think you were playing at? I’ve been looking everywhere for you. How did you get here?’
Rosa looked at him, unabashed. ‘But your friend came to fetch me. Your English friend.’
‘Where is she?’ Jay could feel the relief washing away into black rage. ‘Where the fuck is she?’
‘Jay, darling.’ Kerry was standing in the kitchen doorway, very much at home with a glass of wine in one hand. ‘That’s hardly the kind of language you want to be using in front of a child in your care.’ She gave one of her winsome smiles. Behind her stood Mireille, monumental in her black house-dress.
‘I called to have another word with you, but you’d gone out,’ explained Kerry sweetly. ‘Rosa answered the door. She and I have been having a lovely talk, haven’t we, Rosa?’ This last utterance was in French, presumably to include Mireille, who stood wordlessly behind her. ‘I have to say you’ve been frightfully secretive about everything, Jay darling. Poor Madame Faizande had absolutely no idea.’
Jay glanced at Mireille, who was watching, hands crossed over her enormous bosom.
‘Kerry,’ he began. She gave another of her hard, brilliant smiles.
‘Charming reunion,’ she remarked. ‘You know, I’m beginning to understand what you see in this place. So many secrets. So many fascinating characters. Madame d’Api, for example. Madame Faizande has been telling me all about her. Not quite the way she comes across in your book, though.’
Jay looked upstairs at Rosa. ‘Come here, Rosa,’ he said quietly. ‘Time to go home.’
‘You’re very popular here, by all accounts,’ said Kerry. ‘I imagine you’ll be quite the local hero when Pastures New takes off. Give the place a boost.’
Jay ignored her. ‘Rosa,’ he said again. The child sighed theatrically and stood up.
‘Are we really going to be on television?’ queried Rosa smartly, stepping into her Wellingtons. ‘Maman and you and everyone? We’ve got a television at home. I like Cocoricoboy and Nos Amis Les Animaux. But Maman doesn’t let me watch Cinéma de Minuit.’ She made a face. ‘Too much kissing.’
Jay took her hand. ‘No-one’s going to be on television,’ he told her.
‘Oh.’
‘I don’t think you’ll have the option,’ remarked Kerry blandly. ‘I have the makings of an excellent programme already, with or without you. The artist, his influences, you know the thing. Forget Peter Mayle. Before you know it people will be flocking here to Jay Mackintosh Country. You really ought to be grateful.’
‘Please, Kerry.’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake! Anyone would think I had a gun to your head. Anyone else would give their right arm for this kind of free publicity!’
‘Not me.’
She laughed. ‘I always did have to do all the work myself,’ she remarked cheerily. ‘Meetings, interviews. Getting you to the right kind of parties. Pulling strings. And now you’re turning your nose up at a terrific opportunity – for what? Grow up, sweetheart. No-one finds gauche endearing any more.’
She sounded so like Nick that, for a moment, Jay had the dreadful conviction that they were in it together, that they’d planned it between them.
‘I don’t want people rushing here,’ he said. ‘I don’t want tourists and burger bars and souvenir shops springing up in Lansquenet. You know what that kind of publicity does to a place.’
Kerry shrugged. ‘Seems to me that’s exactly what this place needs,’ she said reasonably. ‘It looks half dead.’ She scrutinized her nails for a second, frowning. ‘Anyway, it’s hardly up to you to decide, is it? I don’t see anyone turning business away.’
She was right, of course. That was the worst of it. The momentum sweeps everything away in front of it, welcome or not. He imagined Lansquenet, like Pog Hill, relegated to the growing ranks of things which only existed in the past.
‘Not here. It’s not going to happen here.’
Kerry’s laughter followed him down the street.
61
MARISE ARRIVED AT SEVEN AS USUAL, CARRYING A BOTTLE OF wine and a closed wicker basket. She had washed her hair, and for the first time since he’d known her she was wearing a long red skirt with her black sweater. It made her look different, gypsylike, and there was a touch of colour on her lips. Her eyes were shining.
‘I feel like celebrating,’ she announced, putting the bottle on the table. ‘I’ve brought some cheese and foie gras and nut bread. There’s a cake, too, and some almond biscuits. And some candles.’
She brought out two brass candlesticks from the hamper and stood them on the table.
Then she fixed a pair of candles into the sockets.
‘It looks nice, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘I can’t remember when we last had dinner by candlelight.’
‘L
ast year,’ replied Rosa pertly. ‘When the generator broke down.’
Marise laughed. ‘That doesn’t count.’
That evening she was more relaxed than Jay had ever seen her. She and Rosa laid the table with brightly painted plates and crystal wineglasses. Rosa picked flowers from the garden for a centrepiece. They had foie gras on nut bread with Marise’s own wine, which tasted of honey and peaches and toasted almonds, then salad and warm goat’s cheese, then coffee, cakes and petits fours. Throughout the little party Jay tried hard to concentrate his thoughts. Rosa, under instructions not to mention their visit to Lansquenet, was cheery, insisting on her canard – a sugar lump dipped in wine – surreptitiously feeding Clopette scraps under the table, and then, when the goat was banished to the garden, through the half-open window. Marise was bright and talkative and lovely in the golden light. It should have been perfect.
He told himself he was waiting for the right time. Of course he knew there was no right time, simply a delaying tactic. He had to tell her before she found out for herself. Worse still, before Rosa let something slip.
But as the evening passed it became harder and harder to make the move. His conversation died. His head began to ache. Marise seemed not to notice. Instead she was full of details about the next phase of her drainage plan, the extension to the cellar, relief that there would still be a wine crop, though much reduced, optimism for next year. She was planning to buy out the land when the lease ran out, she said. There was money in the bank, plus fifty barrels of cuvée spéciale in her cellar, just waiting for the right market. Land was cheap in Lansquenet, especially poorly drained problem land like hers. After the bad summer prices might drop still more. And Pierre-Emile, who had inherited the estate, was no businessman. He would be happy to get what he could for the farm and the vineyard. The bank would make up the rest with a long-term loan.
The more she said, the worse Jay felt. Remembering what Joséphine had told him about land prices his heart sank. Tentatively he asked what might happen if, by chance, perhaps … Her face hardened a little. She shrugged.
‘I would have to leave,’ she said simply. ‘Leave everything, go back to Paris or to Marseilles. Somewhere big. Let Mireille—’ She bit off the rest of the sentence and made her expression resolutely cheerful. ‘But that won’t happen,’ she said firmly. ‘None of that will happen. I’ve always dreamed of a place like this,’ she went on, her face softening. ‘A farm, land of my own, trees, perhaps a little river. Somewhere private. Safe.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps when I have the land to myself and there is no lease to hang over my head, things will be different,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘Perhaps I could begin again with Lansquenet. Find Rosa some friends her own age. Give people another chance.’ She poured another glass of the sweet golden wine. ‘Give myself another chance.’
Jay swallowed with difficulty. ‘But what about Mireille? Wouldn’t she cause problems for you?’
Marise shook her head. Her eyes were half closed, catlike, sleepy. ‘Mireille won’t live for ever,’ she said. ‘After that – I can handle Mireille,’ she said at last. ‘Just as long as I have the farm.’
For a while the conversation turned to other things. They drank coffee and Armagnac, and Rosa fed petits fours to the goat through the gap in the shutters. Then Marise sent Rosa to bed with only a token complaint – it was almost midnight and she had been up for much longer than she was used to. Jay could hardly believe that the child had not given him away during the course of the meal. In a way he regretted it. As Rosa vanished upstairs – with a biscuit in each hand and a promise of pancakes for breakfast – he turned on the radio, poured another glass of Armagnac and passed it to Marise.
‘Mmm. Thanks.’
‘Marise.’
She glanced at him lazily.
‘Why does it have to be Lansquenet?’ he asked. ‘Couldn’t you have moved somewhere else after Tony died? Avoided all this … this business with Mireille?’
She reached for the last petit four. ‘It has to be here,’ she said at last. ‘It just has to be.’
‘But why? Why not Montauban or Nérac or one of the villages near by? What is there in Lansquenet which you can’t have anywhere else? Is it because Rosa grew up here? Is it … is it because of Tony?’
She laughed then, not unkindly, but on a note he couldn’t quite identify. ‘If you like.’
Jay’s heart tightened suddenly. ‘You don’t talk about him much.’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
She looked into her drink in silence.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t interfere. Forget I said it.’
Marise gave him an odd look, then stared back into her drink. Her long fingers moved nervously. ‘It’s all right. You’ve helped me. You’ve been kind. But it’s complicated, you know? I wanted to tell you. I’ve wanted to for a long time.’
Jay tried to say that she was wrong, that he didn’t want to know, that there was something else he desperately needed to tell her. But nothing came out.
‘For a long time I had a problem with trust,’ said Marise slowly. ‘After Tony. After Patrice. I told myself I didn’t need anyone else. That we would be safer on our own, Rosa and I. That no-one would believe the truth if I told it anyway.’ She paused, tracing a complicated figure on the dark table top. ‘Truth is like that,’ she went on. ‘The more you want to tell someone, the harder it gets. The more impossible it seems.’
Jay nodded. He understood that perfectly.
‘But with you …’ She smiled. ‘Maybe it’s because you’re a foreigner. I feel I’ve known you for a long time. Trusted you. Why else should I have trusted you with Rosa?’
‘Marise.’ He swallowed again. ‘There’s something I really—’
‘Shh.’ She looked languid, flushed with the wine and the warmth of the room. ‘I need to tell you. I need to explain. I tried before, but—’ She shook her head. ‘I thought it was so complicated,’ she said softly. ‘It’s really very simple. Like all tragedies. Simple and stupid.’ She took a breath. ‘I was caught up in it all before I knew it. Then I realized it was too late. Pour me some more Armagnac, please.’
He did.
‘I liked Tony. I didn’t love him. But love doesn’t sustain anything for long anyway. Money does. Security, the farm, the land. That was what I needed, I told myself. Escape from Patrice. Escape from the city, and from loneliness. I fooled myself it was OK, that I didn’t need anything else.’
It had been all right for a time. But Mireille was becoming increasingly demanding, and Tony’s behaviour more and more erratic. Marise tried to talk to Mireille about it, but without success. As far as Mireille was concerned there was nothing wrong with Tony.
‘He’s a strong, healthy boy,’ she would repeat stubbornly. ‘Stop trying to wrap him in cotton. You’ll make him as neurotic as you are.’
From then on every peculiarity in Tony’s behaviour was attributed to Marise: the rages, the bouts of depression, the fixations.
‘Once it was mirrors,’ she said. ‘Every mirror in the house had to be covered up. He said it was because the reflection took all the light out of his head. He used to shave without a mirror. He was always cutting himself shaving. Once he shaved his eyebrows off, too. Said it was more hygienic’
When he learned Marise was pregnant Tony entered a different phase. He became extremely protective. He would follow her everywhere she went, including to the bathroom. He waited on her constantly. Mireille saw this as evidence of his devotion. Marise felt stifled. Then the letters started coming.
‘I knew it was Patrice straight away,’ admitted Marise. ‘It was his style. The usual abuse. But somehow here he didn’t frighten me. We had guard dogs, guns, space. I thought Patrice knew it, too. Somehow he’d found out about my pregnancy. The letters were all about it. Get rid of the baby and I’ll forgive you, that kind of thing. I ignored them.’
Then Tony found out.
‘I told him everything,’ she said wryly. ‘I thought I owed it to him. Besi
des, I wanted him to understand that we were safe, that it was all in the past. Even the letters weren’t coming as often. It was dying down.’
She sighed. ‘I should have known better. From then on we lived a siege. Tony would go into town once a month for supplies, that was all. He stopped going to the café with his friends. That was no bad thing, I thought. At least he was sober. He hardly slept at night. He spent most of the time on guard. Of course, Mireille blamed me.’
Rosa was born at home. Mireille helped deliver her. She was disappointed Rosa wasn’t a boy, but there would be plenty of time for that later. She expressed surprise that Rosa looked so small and delicate. She gave advice on feeding, changing and care. Often the advice came close to tyranny.
‘Of course, he’d already told her everything,’ Marise remembered. ‘I should have expected it. He was incapable of hiding anything from her. In her mind I quickly became the villain of the story, a woman who led men on then expected her husband to protect her from the consequences.’
A fierce cold sprang up between the two women. Mireille was always at the house, but rarely addressed Marise directly. Whole evenings would pass, with Tony and Mireille talking animatedly of events and people of which Marise knew nothing. Tony never seemed to notice her silence. He was always cheery and animated, allowing his mother to fuss over him, as if he were still a boy instead of a married man with a newborn baby. Then, out of the blue, Patrice came to call.
‘It was late summer,’ Marise recalled. ‘About eight in the evening. I’d just fed Rosa. I heard a car on the drive. I was upstairs and Tony went to the door. It was Patrice.’ He had changed since the last time she had seen him. Now he was plaintive, almost humble. He did not demand to see Marise. Instead he told Tony how sorry he was about what had happened, that he had been ill, that only now had he been able to face up to that fact. Marise listened from upstairs. He had brought money, he explained, 20,000 francs. Not enough to pay for the harm he had done, but perhaps enough to start a trust fund for the baby.