She rises gracefully to her feet. In the dusk her features are solemn and more indecipherable than ever.
‘Goodnight. I’ll see you in the morning.’
I watch her walk out of sight around the corner of the barn. Stunned, I take a drink of wine and grimace.
‘God …’
It won’t win any prizes but it’s strong. I risk another sip, trying to collect my thoughts. Even though I’ve no idea what I’ll do or where I’ll go, I’ve been psyching myself up to leave because I didn’t think I had a choice. Now I have. Staying here won’t solve anything, but it’ll give me breathing space to think things through. I can at least wait until my foot’s healed before making any major decisions.
God knows, the last thing I need is to rush into anything else.
The sun has almost set, leaving only its last golden shout to echo on the horizon. I fork up some of the pork. It’s strong and gamy, cooked with garlic and so tender it falls apart. I take another drink of wine and refill my glass. Mathilde’s right: it is better with food, though that isn’t saying much. Still, the alcohol and powerful flavours give me a pleasant buzz.
At some point I realize that the depression that’s been hanging over me has lifted. I pour myself another glass of wine and look out over the wood to the distant fields. The only sound is the evening chorus of crickets. There are no cars, no people. The peace is absolute.
It’s a perfect place to hide.
London
WE GO TO brighton on the money Chloe gets for a painting. The buyer is an art dealer who’s opening a gallery in Notting Hill. He wants the painting, a cold still life of blues and purples that I privately find too sombre, for himself, and commissions another six to hang in the gallery when it opens.
‘It’s happening!’ Chloe whoops after she’s taken his call. She throws herself on me, arms and legs wrapping around mine. ‘At last, it’s really happening!’
That night we celebrate at the Domino. Chloe’s working but finishes early, bringing over a couple of bottles of cava she says are from the manager.
‘Tight bastard,’ Yasmin grumbles. ‘It wouldn’t hurt him to have given you champagne.’
Chloe’s high even without the alcohol, fizzing with plans and excitement.
‘God, I can’t believe it! He’s got contacts in Paris and New York that he says are coming for the opening! And the art critic for the Daily Mail is going to be there!’
‘I didn’t know the Daily Mail had an art critic,’ Jez mutters. Yasmin elbows him and gives him a look.
Chloe either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care. She’s swigging cava like water. ‘God, I’ll finally be able to leave this place! Paint full time and tell all the ad agencies to shove it!’
Callum has brought a gram of coke as his contribution to the party. At our table in a darkened booth, he chops out lines on the back of a magazine with the edge of a credit card.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Yasmin hisses.
‘It’s all right, it’s only a bit of blow. No one can see. Sean, you want some?’
‘No, thanks.’
I’ve never been into coke. As far as I know, neither has Chloe, so I expect her to decline as well. To my surprise, she doesn’t.
‘You sure?’ I ask.
‘Why not?’ She grins. ‘It’s a celebration, isn’t it?’
‘Chloe …’ Yasmin warns.
‘It’s OK, don’t worry,’ she says, accepting Callum’s offer of a second line. ‘It’s just this once.’
Yasmin leans over to me as I refill my glass from the bottle. ‘Don’t let her have any more.’
‘She’s just enjoying herself,’ I tell her. Yasmin is OK but sometimes she can be too intense. ‘Why shouldn’t she? She deserves this.’
‘And what if it doesn’t work out? She doesn’t deal well with disappointment.’
‘Oh, come on, Yasmin. Lighten up.’
She glares at me. ‘Are you really this stupid?’
I stare after her, surprised and stung, as she pushes back her chair and walks away. Well, somebody’s jealous, I think.
Brighton is Chloe’s idea. She’s so on edge the week before the gallery opening that her fingernails are bitten to the quick. She works at her paintings all day, literally until she has to run out of the door to take her shift at the Dom.
‘Let’s go away,’ she says, when they’ve been delivered to the gallery.
‘Suits me. After the opening we can—’
‘No, now. The waiting’s driving me mad. I need to get away now.’
The resort town is dazzling white, all sunshine and brightness after the dour sprawl of London. We hitch down rather than trust Chloe’s car, which is only good now for increasingly short distances. Buying a new one is a priority if all goes well with her paintings. She’s full of plans and ideas, convinced that the turning point in her career has been reached. In some of the wilder moments I remember Yasmin’s warning, but Chloe’s new optimism is so contagious it sweeps aside any doubts.
We stop in a seafront pub and pay a ridiculous price for beers, reckless on the promise of Chloe’s success and being on holiday. Afterwards we trawl charity and second-hand shops for picture frames that she can re-use for her own work. We don’t find any, but buy an old instant camera that comes with half a dozen peel-apart films. We use them all on the seafront, counting down out loud as we wait for them to develop, only to find blank squares of emulsion underneath. Just one picture takes, of Chloe standing in front of the pier grinning as she poses like a model. She hates it but I hold it out of her reach when she laughingly tries to snatch it away. At her insistence, we book into a B&B that’s well above our budget and eat a garlic-laden dinner in an Italian restaurant. We’re more than a little drunk when we go back to the hotel, shushing each other in a fit of giggles as we unlock our room, and then make even more noise making love.
After three days we catch the train back to London, an indulgence Chloe grandly insists we can now afford. We arrive back in the late afternoon, to the news that the gallery owner has been declared bankrupt, the gallery’s opening cancelled and all its assets seized. Including Chloe’s paintings.
‘They can’t do that! The bastards, they can’t just do that!’
I try to tell her she’ll get the paintings back eventually, but I know it isn’t just them. It’s the opportunity they represented.
‘Leave me alone,’ she says flatly when I try to console her.
‘Chloe …’
‘I mean it! Just leave me alone!’
So I do. I’m glad for the excuse to go out. I want some time to come to terms with this myself, not so much the disappointment as the shameful sense of relief I felt when I heard. Nothing is going to change after all.
I consider calling Callum but I don’t really want to talk to anyone. There’s a retrospective season of French film at an art-house cinema in Camden. Along with half a dozen people I sit through a back-to-back screening of Alain Resnais’s Muriel and Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Then the lights go up and I’m back in the here and now, in a world that seems so much less vivid than the monochrome ones I’ve just been watching.
It’s raining outside, and the buses are full of commuters on their way home. When I get back the flat is in darkness. I switch on the lights. Chloe is sitting on the floor, the torn and broken canvases of her art scattered around her. Tubes of oil paint have been squeezed and discarded, smearing everything in a rainbow frenzy. The easel holding my unfinished portrait has been knocked over, the painting stamped on.
Chloe doesn’t acknowledge me. Her face is streaked where she’s dragged her oil-coated fingers across it. I pick my way gingerly through the littered canvases, slipping a little on a patch of paint. When I sit beside her and pull her to me she doesn’t resist.
‘It’ll be all right,’ I tell her, emptily.
‘Yeah,’ she says. Her voice is the only thing in the paintsmeared room that’s dull. ‘Of course it will.’
6
THE SCAFFOLD CREAKS and sways like a tired ship. I climb the ladder one rung at a time, resting my knee on the wooden bars rather than using my injured foot. It’s not much harder than going into the loft. At the top I test the rickety-looking platform before cautiously stepping onto it, gripping the horizontal scaffolding bars for support.
The scaffold feels dizzingly high. Still, the view from up here is even better than from the loft window. Resting to catch my breath, I can see the lake down in the woods and beyond that the surrounding fields and hills. It brings home more than ever just how cut off the farm is. I spend a few more minutes enjoying that fact, then I turn to see what I’ve let myself in for.
Half of the front of the house and one of its sides is covered with scaffold. Mortar has been hacked out from between the stones, and some of them have been completely removed and left on the platform. A lump hammer and chisel lie nearby. They’re both rusted and the hammer is as heavy as a brick, its wooden handle worn smooth with use. The chisel is angled like a knife rather than having a flat blade like the one lying in the cobbles below. When I prod at the wall with it, the mortar crumbles easily. If the entire house is like this it’s a miracle it’s still standing.
Suddenly I’m convinced I’m making a mistake. I know how to mix mortar and I’ve tried my hand at laying bricks, but that was years ago. My few months spent as a labourer on a building site hardly prepared me for anything like this.
I step blindly away from the wall and catch my crutch on one of the stones scattered on the platform. I stumble against the horizontal scaffolding bar that acts as a railing, and for an instant I’m teetering out into space with nothing between me and the courtyard thirty feet below. Then I haul myself back, causing the tower to squeak and sway in protest.
Slowly, the motion subsides. I rest my head against the pole.
‘What’s happening?’
I look down. Gretchen has come out of the house and is standing in the courtyard with Michel.
‘Nothing. I’m just … checking the scaffold.’
She shields her eyes with a hand, tilting her head to look at me. ‘It sounded like it was collapsing.’
I wipe my damp palms on my jeans. ‘Not yet.’
She smiles. She’s hardly spoken to me since the afternoon I told her I was leaving, but it seems she’s finally decided to forgive me. I wait till she’s gone back inside, then sink onto the platform with unsteady legs. Christ, what am I doing?
It’s two days since Mathilde offered me the job. At first I was content just to rest and get my strength back, carried along by relief at finding an unexpected refuge. I spent most of yesterday down by the lake, making a half-hearted attempt to read Madame Bovary under the old chestnut tree on the bluff. Sometimes I was able to forget the reason I was there. Then I’d remember, and it would be like falling. Before long my thoughts were gnawing away at me again. Last night was the worst. The few times I managed to drift off to sleep I woke gasping, my heart racing. This morning, as I watched the small window in my loft gradually grey and lighten, I knew I couldn’t stand another idle day.
I’d hoped that physical work might help. Now I’m up here, though, the sheer scale of the task terrifies me. I’ve no idea where to start. Come on, you can do this. It’s only a wall.
I get to my feet and confront the house again. Nearby, two windows face out onto the platform. One of them is hidden behind wooden shutters, but the other is uncovered. On the other side of the dusty glass is an empty bedroom. There are bare floorboards and peeling wallpaper, an old wardrobe and an iron bedstead with a striped mattress. On the back wall is a dresser on which stands a framed picture. It looks like a wedding photograph; the man in a dark suit, the woman in white. It’s too far away to make out any detail, but I guess it’s Arnaud and his wife. The period looks about right, and shutting his wedding photo in a disused bedroom is about what I’d expect of him.
Careful where I put the crutch, I shuffle along the scaffold to look around the side of the house. There’s the same air of incompleteness as there was at the front, a sense of interruption. Halfway along the platform a large cup rests on a folded tabloid newspaper, empty except for a dead fly lying in the dried brown crust at the bottom. The newspaper is as brittle as parchment when I pick it up. The date on it is eighteen months ago. I wonder if anyone has been up here since the unknown builder drained his coffee cup, put it down on his newspaper and didn’t bother to come back. Maybe he had the right idea, I think, looking at how much work there’s still to be done.
There’s a commotion from behind the house. I limp to the end of the scaffold and find myself looking down on a kitchen garden. Neat rows of vegetables and cane tepees of beans form an oasis of order, beyond which is a paddock with a few goats, fruit trees and a hen house.
Mathilde is feeding chickens. As I watch she scatters a last handful of seed for them to squabble and cluck over and sets down her empty bucket. Unaware she’s being observed, her unguarded face looks tired and sad as she goes to a corner of the garden. Hidden away there is a tiny flowerbed, a bright splash of colour amongst the more practical vegetables. Kneeling down, she begins tugging up the weeds growing between them. A soft sound drifts up to me and I realize she’s humming to herself. Something slow and melodic; I don’t know the tune.
I quietly move away. Back around the front of the house, the sun is blinding. At this time of day there’s no shade on the scaffold, and my skin is already prickling where it’s uncovered. I check my watch and see it’s past noon; if I stay up here any longer I’ll fry. The metal scaffolding poles burn my hands as I transfer myself onto the ladder and slowly make my way down. As I reach the bottom Mathilde comes around the corner of the house, wiping her hands on a cloth.
‘You’ve taken a look?’ she asks. The sadness I saw on her face in the garden has gone, concealed behind the usual calm. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s, uh, a bigger job than I thought.’
Mathilde looks up at the scaffold, shielding her eyes from the sun as Gretchen did earlier. In the sun her hair isn’t so very much darker than her sister’s. It just looks as though all the light’s been taken from it.
‘You don’t have to start just yet. Not if you don’t feel up to it.’
It isn’t my health that worries me. Trying to keep my weight off my foot isn’t easy, and the climb down has set it throbbing again. But it’s bearable, and anything’s better than inactivity.
I shrug. ‘Only one way to find out.’
‘I’ll show you where everything is.’
She goes to the doorway where Arnaud confronted me a few days earlier. The warped door’s hinges creak as she opens it, letting light into what I now see is a small, windowless storeroom. A wave of cold, damp air rolls out from it, and as my eyes adjust I make out an untidy sprawl of building equipment with bags of sand and cement. Like the platform at the top of the scaffold, there’s a touch of the Marie Celeste about the way everything’s been left. A trail of cement spills from a slash in a paper sack in which a trowel still stands, while a spade protrudes from a mound of rock-hard mortar like a builder’s Excalibur. Judging by the cobwebs clinging to it all, nothing in here has been disturbed in months.
There’s a groan from the hinges as the door starts to swing shut behind us, cutting off the light. I turn to stop it, and jump as I see someone standing there. But it’s only a pair of overalls hanging from a nail. At least Mathilde hasn’t noticed my nerves. She stands to one side of the doorway, as though reluctant to come any further.
‘Everything should be in here. There’s cement and sand, and a tap for water. Use whatever you need.’
I look at the mess in the small room. ‘Was your father doing the work before?’
‘No, a local man.’
Whoever he was, he left in a hurry. I give the spade handle a tug. It quivers but doesn’t budge, stuck fast in the solidified mortar.
‘Why didn’t he finish?’
‘There was a disagreement.’
&n
bsp; She doesn’t enlarge. I go to examine the cement. Damp has made the grey powder from the split bag clump together, and when I prod the unopened bags they’re hard as stone.
‘I’ll need more cement.’
Mathilde’s standing with her arms wrapped tightly across her chest. ‘Do you need it straight away? Isn’t there something else you can be doing?’
I consider the piled bags, knowing I’m just stalling for time. ‘I suppose I can hack out more of the old mortar …’
‘Fine,’ she says, and goes back out into the courtyard.
I take a last look around the dark room with its abandoned tools, then follow her into the sunlight. Mathilde is waiting in the courtyard, and though her face is as hard to read as ever she looks pale.
‘Everything OK?’ I ask.
‘Of course.’ Her hand goes to her hair, absently tucking it back. ‘Is there anything else you need for now?’
‘Well, I’m out of cigarettes. Is there somewhere nearby I can buy some?’
She considers this new difficulty. ‘There’s a tabac at the garage, but it’s too far to—’
The front door opens and Gretchen comes out. She’s carrying Michel on one hip, and her lips tighten when she sees us. Ignoring me, she gives her sister a sullen stare.
‘Papa wants to see him.’ She lifts her chin with malicious satisfaction. ‘Alone.’
It’s the first time I’ve been inside since I asked for water. The kitchen is low-ceilinged and dark, with thick walls and small windows built to stay cool in the summer heat. There’s a smell of beeswax, cooked meat and coffee. An old range dominates one wall, and the heavy wooden furniture looks as though it’s stood here for generations. The scratched white boxes of the refrigerator and freezer look gratingly modern in this setting.
Arnaud is cleaning his rifle at a scarred wooden table. The half-moon glasses perched on his nose give him an incongruously bookish air, difficult to reconcile with the man who kicked me down the steps. He doesn’t look up, continuing to work on the rifle as though I’m not there. I catch a whiff of gun oil and what I guess is cordite as he threads a long wire brush, like a miniature chimney sweep’s, into the rifle barrel. It makes a fluted whisper as he pulls it through.