The Winter Ghosts

  I walked a little faster. The impasse de l’Église led to a labyrinth of winding, cobbled back streets, each apparently identical and giving no indication as to where they might lead. I knew I was heading in the right direction, but though Madame Galy had marked the correct passageways to take, it was not clear which was which. And while people had left their lights burning in houses in the square, here in the old quartier it was very dark indeed. The houses were all shuttered and the windows hidden.

  I lit a match and peered at the map, trying to orientate myself in relation to the place de l’Église and the church, before setting off again. I found myself at a crossroads, which was not marked on Madame Galy’s map. I wasn’t usually such a dolt, but the lack of street signs and the slinking mist weren’t making it any easier.

  Then I heard voices, fragments of conversation, laughter, splinters of sound carried through the narrow alleyways on the night air. I folded the map and put it in my pocket, deciding to trust my instincts instead. I picked up the pace, following one path, then another, until I saw light ahead and abruptly emerged from the warren of little streets.

  Straight ahead of me was a large rectangular building, much like the old wool market in Tarascon. Night had stripped it of colour, but it resembled all the other municipal town halls I’d seen in the southern towns through which I had passed. The ubiquitous pale limestone of the Pyrenees and the sloping roof made it appear both modest and imposing at one and the same time.

  A colonnade ran along the front with three high arches. Shallow steps stretched the width of the building. The dust of the passing years seemed to have accumulated in the nooks and crevices of the stone. Substantial wooden double doors in the centre stood open, spilling out a rectangle of welcoming yellow light into the December evening.

  Anticipation fluttering in the pit of my stomach, I climbed the steps and found myself in some kind of entrance hall. It was barely warmer inside than out. Ahead of me was a huge door, some ten feet high or more and decorated with carvings of fruit and heraldic symbols, subtle shapes and images on the dark wood.

  I took off my coat, marvelling at the seriousness with which the citizens of Nulle approached their annual celebration. For rather than the usual collection of evening jackets and coats and stoles, there were rows of cloaks in plain blues and reds and greens and browns hanging on the black iron hooks. My overcoat looked oddly modern and fussy in such company.

  I took a few deep breaths to steady my nerves, then tugged sharply down to straighten my tunic, and walked through the door with as much confidence as I could muster.

  The heat hit me. A warm fug of people and roaring fires and conviviality. Noise, too, deafening after the stillness of the old quartier, a cacophony of laughter and chatter, the clattering of dishes and waiters moving to and fro. I stood quite entranced on the threshold, mesmerised by the scene laid out before me. The air was thick with smoke from the open fire burning at the far end of the room, a thousand candles scattered light and shadow from metal sconces on the walls, ever shifting, ever dancing. I scanned the hall, hoping to catch sight of Madame Galy, but there were too many people to pick out just one in the crush.

  As my eyes adjusted, I got the measure of my surroundings. The hall was twice as long as it was wide with a high, vaulted ceiling. The stone walls were bare, no paintings or photographs or ornamentation of any kind. A long refectory-style table stood across the top of the room and two more lined the walls, each covered with heavy white cloths and surrounded by benches. Only at the top table were there chairs.

  Then, floating above the polyphony, a descant to the obligato of the crowd, a single thread of music. The distinctive open chords and plain melody of a vielle. Moments later, a clear, treble voice began.

  Lo vièlh Ivèrn ambe sa samba ranca

  Ara es tornat dins los nòstres camins

  Le nèu retrais una flassada blanca

  E’l Cerç bronzís dins las brancas dels pins.

  I did not understand the words but I caught their spirit and somehow knew he sang of the mountains, of winter, of the snow and the pine trees. An old ballad in an antique language. All the time he was singing, the music held me in its spell, filling my head with images and emotions that had been long absent. My eyes pricked with tears.

  Once, years ago, I’d tried to explain to George what I felt when I listened to a choir sing, when I heard the reverberation of the plainsong in the upper echelons of the cathedral or the stalls of our little country church in Lavant, but he didn’t understand. Music never moved him and although he would sit and listen to me play the piano for hours, I knew his thoughts were elsewhere. He sat there for me, not for himself.

  ‘Monsieur, soyez le bienvenu.’

  The voice startled me back to the present. I turned to see a man with a shock of copper hair and an open, thoughtful face smiling at me.

  ‘Hello, thank you.’ I held out my hand. ‘Frederick Watson. Madame Galy said I should look in. I’m lodging there for a day or two.’

  ‘Guillaume Marty.’

  Since he did not offer his hand in return, though his expression was welcoming, I let mine drop.

  ‘Wonderful turnout,’ I said.

  ‘All who can be are here, yes.’ He nodded. ‘Please. Follow me. I shall find you a place to sit.’

  Marty was dressed as a priest or a monk in some kind of religious get-up, but the long green robe did not seem to inhibit him and he moved quickly through the crowds. He wore sandals on his feet and a leather belt around his waist, from which hung a scroll or rolled parchment. He looked utterly the part. Again, I marvelled at the lengths to which the inhabitants of this tiny village had gone to make sure the evening went off well.

  As we made our way through the hall, Marty was stopped many times. Two smiling sisters, Raymonde and Blanche Maury, dressed in royal-blue robes with red stitching around the neck and cuffs; Sénher Bernard and his elderly wife; the widow Na Azéma, as she was introduced, her hair covered by a grey veil pinned beneath the chin; Na and Sénher Authier, the latter a large gentleman whose high colour and broad arms suggested eating and drinking were his vocations in life. After several more such introductions, I realised that Na and Sénher were a local form of madame and monsieur. I noticed a woman who looked very like my landlady, and was on the point of waving when she turned and I realised it was not her.

  ‘Is Madame Galy here?’

  ‘I do not believe I have seen her.’

  The contrast between the feelings of sadness that had come over me when I’d first entered the village and this convivial gathering could not have been more marked. Here, in the Ostal, the sense of community and camaraderie was tangible. Everyone was smiling and nodding as we passed, offering friendship.

  Guillaume Marty stopped and indicated I should sit at one of the few remaining spaces on a bench. I threaded myself in, all clumsy elbows and knees. When I turned to thank him for seeing me right, he had already disappeared again, swallowed up by the crowd. I leaned back and glanced up and down the room, but could see the green robe nowhere.

  ‘Queer that he didn’t say goodbye,’ I murmured. ‘Pity.’

  I turned my attention to my immediate dinner companions. To my right was a man of about my age, with rough brown hair the texture of straw, thick black brows and dirty fingernails. He sat hunched over the table. His dark tunic, belted at the waist, was stained with grease and red wine and meat, a map of the meals he had eaten. His eyes flickered with curiosity, quickly masked. I smiled and he nodded a half-greeting, but did not speak.

  I turned to my left.

  If I were a wordsmith I could, perhaps, begin to do justice to my first impressions of the girl who sat beside me. As it is, a plain description will have to do. She was the sort of creature that Burne-Jones or Waterhouse might have painted, exquisite and perfect, and I, untouched by beauty for so long, felt my heart take flight. Her dark hair tumbled in loose curls around a porcelain face, unspoiled by powder or rouge. A wide, pretty mouth, also left
as nature intended, made even more appealing by laughter lines at the corners.

  She must have felt the intensity of my gaze, clearly, for she turned and stared back at me. Clever, grey eyes rimmed by long lashes. I gawped like an idiot.

  ‘Frederick Watson,’ I said, finally remembering my manners. ‘Freddie. My friends call me Freddie.’

  ‘I am Fabrissa.’

  That was it, that was all she said. But it was enough. Already, her voice was familiar to me, beloved.

  ‘What a charming name,’ I said. My brain seemed disconnected from the rest of me. ‘Forgive me, I’m . . .’

  She smiled. ‘It is difficult in unfamiliar company.’

  ‘Quite,’ I said quickly. ‘One doesn’t know what to expect.’

  ‘No.’

  She fell silent and, thankfully, so did I. I took a mouthful of wine to steady my nerves. It was a harsh rosé, with something of the bite of dry sherry, and it made me cough. She affected not to notice.

  I was grateful for the activity around us. It gave me the chance to observe Fabrissa without being too obvious, sending sly little glances her way. Looking, then turning away. Gradually, I took in every detail of her appearance. A long blue dress, fitted at the shoulders and tapered at the waist. Sleeves, wide at the cuff and decorated there, and at the neck, with a repeated pattern stitched of white, interlocking squares. It matched the pattern on her embroidered belt - a girdle, I suppose - which was blue and red against a white background. The overall impression was plain, yet elegant, nothing trying too hard to make a statement. No fuss. Dazzling in its simplicity.

  Slowly, we managed to find a way of talking to one another, Fabrissa and I. With the help of the sour, rich wine, my pulse slowed to its usual rhythm. But I was aware of every inch of her, as if she were giving off some kind of electric charge. Her white skin and blue dress and her hair the colour of jet . . . I felt awkward in comparison, and took refuge in innocuous questions, managing, against the odds, to keep my voice steady and calm.

  Servants were circulating with tureens. When the lids were lifted, billows of aromatic hot cabbage and bacon soup were released, steaming leeks and herbs, which they ladled into dust-coloured bowls set at each place.

  There seemed to be no sense of one course being distinct from another. Flat grey platters appeared, heaped with broad beans in oil, mashed turnip, whole chickens, mutton and salted pork. On the opposite side of the room, a waiter carried high on his shoulders a wooden board bearing six trout, their silver scales glistening.

  Fabrissa explained each new dish for me, local specialities, recipes I’d never encountered before. One was a peculiar compote of what she told me were medlars, an ugly fruit that had to be harvested and then ripened off the tree. It had the texture, the stickiness of honey. Another common winter dessert, she explained, was made from the flower-buds of cardoons. Blanched and then wrapped in cloth, they were buried in the ground before being dug up and mixed with honey to make a smooth paste.

  Other than food, I can remember little of what we talked about in that early part of the evening. Everything is hazy, filtered through the warm fug of wine and conversation. Inconsequential, but such agreeable conversation to me. I cannot even remember if she spoke to me in French, or I to her in English, or moitié-moitié, a duet in two languages. But, even five years later, I can still taste the tang of the salt pork on my tongue, still savour the rough, woody texture of the broad beans, slippery in oil, still feel the gritty texture of the bread, like crumbled cake, between my fingers.

  And still I hear the song in my mind, though I never caught sight of the troubadour. His voice floated through the hall, up into the rafters, into every stone corner and dusty cobweb. I remember marvelling that he could sing for so long, with a tone so even and unbroken, and I believe I said so. I think I might even have tried to tell her of the musical aspirations I’d once had before the War intervened and Father decided it was not a suitable career for his son. But I drew back from such confidences. I wished neither to burden her, nor to reveal myself as a man disappointed in life. Instead, I asked her to tell me the story of the ballad, and when she had, in return I explained the accompaniment, how one note worked upon the other to provide its own harmonies.

  So time passed and yet did not move at all. And, for me, enchanted as I was, the world had shrunk to her slim white hands, the promise of her tumbling black hair, her grey eyes and her clear, sweet voice.

  ‘Are you an honest man?’ she said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  I started, taken by surprise both by the question and the grave tone in which she asked it. It was so different from the lightness of our conversations before that I hardly knew what to make of it.

  But I answered. Of course I answered.

  ‘I would say so,’ I said. ‘Yes.’

  Fabrissa then tilted her head to one side in that distinctive way of hers and looked at me.

  ‘And a man who can tell true from false?’

  I paused as I considered how to answer. Ten years of voices in my head, of memories that were more real, more vivid, than the world outside my window. Ten years of living with George at my side. All this would suggest I was very far adrift from reality, that I was incapable of distinguishing true from false. But at that moment, sitting with Fabrissa in the warm companionship of the Ostal, the answer was obvious.

  ‘Yes. When it matters, then, yes. I am.’

  She smiled, a broad and hopeful smile. And I, poor slave, felt a thousand emotions explode inside my head. I was lost. Bewilderingly, heart and soul, lost. Still she stared at me, as if seeking the answer to some question she had yet to ask.

  ‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘I can see it.’

  A whistle slipped silently from between my lips. I felt as though I had passed some kind of test. A modern Gawain setting out from the Round Table, the conditions of his quest met. I was aware of her gaze upon me, weighing up the man I was. I could see she was considering and reflecting, I could see the movement in her eyes. But on the outside she was still, so very still. I tried to be the same, though nerves were sloshing in my stomach like bilge water in a scuppered rowing boat.

  The moment stretched between us. The shapes and sounds and smells of the room, all the guests in it, faded away. Then Fabrissa shifted position on the bench and the enchantment was broken.

  ‘Tell me about him,’ she said.

  The ground fell from under me, like a trapdoor beneath the hangman’s noose. A sudden, sharp drop, then the jerk of the rope.

  How did she know? I had said nothing. Hinted at nothing. I did not want to talk about George, not even to Fabrissa. Especially not to Fabrissa. I did not want her to see me as the wretch I believed myself to be, but rather the man I had been for the past hours in her company.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said, more sharply than I intended.

  She smiled. ‘Tell me about George.’

  Still I pretended not to understand.

  ‘Freddie?’ she said quietly. Her hand slid across the rough white cloth, a little closer to mine. Her fingernails were the colour of pearl.

  I took a sharp intake of breath. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I . . .’

  How to explain? I stumbled for an excuse.

  ‘It’s all been said.’

  ‘Maybe only the wrong things have been said.’

  Her hand was so close to mine now that we were almost touching. I noticed how the gold ring she wore on her right thumb was too big for her. It rested on the knuckle, as though surprised to find itself there.

  ‘Talking doesn’t help.’

  The space between her skin and mine crackled. I dared not move. Dared not let the tips of my fingers stray towards hers.

  ‘Talking did not help,’ I repeated, the words dry in my throat. I glanced at her. She was still smiling, not with pity, but with compassion, curiosity. I felt something crack inside me.

  ‘And could it be you talked only because oth
ers required it of you? Maybe? But it is different here. Things are different. Try.’

  ‘I did try,’ I snapped back, appalled at how immediately the sense of being unfairly judged returned. Mother had accused me of not wanting to get well, Father too. I could not bear it if Fabrissa thought the same. ‘No one believed me, but I did try.’

  Whether by design or accident, her hand brushed against mine as she withdrew it from the table and placed it in her lap. So intense, so profound was the sensation, I felt as if I had been burnt.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Try again, Freddie,’ she said.

  And in those three quiet words, three simple words, somehow there was a promise of an entire life to be lived if I could only take the chance.

  I can still recall the sense of possibility that came over me then, a kind of lightness. Every sinew, every muscle, every vein in my body seemed suddenly to vibrate, to be alive. If I could find the courage to speak, she would listen. Fabrissa would listen.

  I took a deep breath and then slowly, steadily, exhaled. Finally, I began to talk.

  Stories of Remembrance and Loss

  ‘I remember everything about that day,’ I said. ‘Every tiny detail. The smell and the texture of it, every second before and after the knock at the door.

  ‘I was in the nursery toasting bread. Cross-legged on the floor, a slab of butter ready on an old green china plate. It was September, but with the promise of autumn to come. The purple leaves on the copper beech were turning and there was condensation on the inside of the windows in the early morning. The fire had been lit for the first time since the previous winter and there was the bitter, musty smell of singed dust in the chimney.

  ‘On the wall above my bed was pinned a hand-drawn map of Europe printed by the Manchester Guardian. It was covered with red crosses, my attempt to mark each place the Royal Sussex Regiment had been - at least, where I imagined my brother’s division might be. Where George might . . .’ I stopped, the stab of memory too sharp.