This year, though, she found herself begrudgingly joining her sisters and niece for Mass and the procession afterwards, to leave gifts at the foot of the statue. Clementine personally thought the notion of dressing up like olden-day grape-pickers was at best misguided but it was something of a thrill to see Edie, who herself drew the line at dressing up, in a cloth hat and apron, skipping through the crowds with Cochon in tow, other children her own age dancing around her. She looked so normal, so happy, so part of it all. This gave Clementine great pleasure because she knew that for Edie, as it had been for her, this was rarely the case.
It was the most beautiful of crisp clear days, the white snow still thick and crunchy on the ground. The Marne looked so clean, Clementine could not help but notice. And the villagers were all smiling, sometimes even at her. Mathilde was deep in conversation with the mayor; Sophie was chatting to a good-looking young man wearing clogs; and Edie was laughing and showing the children how she had trained Cochon to stand on his back legs and beg, like a dog.
So busy was Clementine marvelling at this unfamiliar new family of hers as she trudged away from the statue that she failed to notice old Madame Monet, the hunchback who lived in the town’s narrowest house, stop suddenly in front of her, causing Clementine to lose her balance. She reeled backwards to keep from falling on the old crone, then felt the crunch of someone else’s toes beneath her heels. Spinning awkwardly around she found herself in the arms of Benoît Geoffroy.
He held her by both elbows, steadying her, looking straight into her eyes, his weathered brown ones clouded with their own dark secrets.
The village, the crowd, the gifts, the noise, the cold, it all seemed to gather up in some silent tornado and start spinning around the two of them as they stood there frozen still.
How did this happen to us? Clementine yowled silently yet again. How can all these years have passed by with nothing between us but a few stolen glances? She held her breath expecting at any moment to feel the release of pressure on her arms as he let go, but he didn’t.
He held on. Tightly, he held on.
Amélie, Clementine imagined saying. The effort of not telling him about their daughter was like a physical pain in her chest, a terrible clawing at her heart. I don’t know for sure what she looks like, she could picture herself mouthing the words, but I think she has your lips.
“Clementine,” Benoît said, as awkward as she, but still he held on.
“I need to know,” she whispered, trying to bite back the words as they escaped her. “I need to know.”
“You need to know what?”
She was making the most terrible fool of herself, she knew that. She could rescue her dignity by asking him about the blend, the vendange, his father, anything, yet her heart would not allow it.
“If you wanted me to come to the parade with you. Back then. Before …” Tears, she found, were streaming down her face. How easy it was to speak to him! What a waste of all these years worrying that it was impossible!
Up close, his hair was flecked with grey and the skin around his eyes was etched with wrinkles. Just like her he looked gnawed at by the wind, grizzled by life among the vines. And even though she had seen him this close on only a handful of occasions, every inch of him looked utterly familiar to her, the way a famous painting does when you finally see the real thing after years of looking at a postcard.
“Of course,” he answered, gripping her elbows even tighter. “Yes.”
“I shouldn’t have … if only …”
“No, it’s my fault,” Benoît said hoarsely. “I’m so —”
“Don’t say sorry,” Clementine simply could not bear it. “Please, please, don’t say sorry.”
“But I am,” Benoît told her but just as he was about to go on he dropped his hands from her arms so smartly it was as though she had scalded him. A hardness that had not been there before crept into his eyes as he looked behind her. She soon knew why: the sharp claws of a well-manicured woman dug into her shoulder.
“What is the matter with you Peine women?” Odile Geoffroy growled, spinning Clementine around to face her. “Get your hands off my husband, do you hear me? I’ve already told your stupid slut of a sister and now I’m telling you. Get your own husbands. Leave mine alone!”
“Calm down, Odile,” Benoît tried to reason with her, although he was clearly flustered. “There’s no need to speak like that.”
“My sister?” Clementine stuttered. “I don’t understand. We were just talking. I was just asking.”
“I know exactly what you were asking for too, you trollop,” Odile hissed. “Same thing your trashy sister was asking for when she turned up on my doorstep wearing next to nothing. A piece of my husband. Well, he’s not up for grabs so take some advice: back off and leave us alone or you’ll be sorry. You’ll all be sorry!”
“Odile, you’re being ridiculous,” Benoît said. “We are neighbours. We should be able to —”
“Ridiculous, am I? How dare you embarrass me like this. It’s an outrage.” Odile’s voice was indeed outraged, her double chin quivering furiously. “And as for you,” she turned on Clementine again, “you lumpy slattern, you keep your hands to yourself and tell that drunken American sister of yours to keep doing the same. He’s my husband, do you hear? Mine.”
At this, Benoît, suffused by embarrassment, took his wife roughly by the elbow and with some force turned her away, pushing her through the crowd, leaving Clementine standing there, humiliated.
“Come on, ’Mentine,” laughed Sophie, who had seen none of this, as she came up behind her. “The banquet’s in the town hall. Goose, I believe. Your favourite. And I hear Bernadette has excelled herself with kirsch soufflé and Chantilly meringues. Mathilde says the mayor —”
“Leave me alone,” Clementine cried and turning on her heels she ran home, the trampled snow now dirty and slushy beneath her feet, the villagers no longer smiling at her.
She had thought it would change her life knowing that Benoît had meant it all those years ago about the parade, that she hadn’t imagined the sparkle of promise between them. But it hadn’t changed her life at all. He was still married to Odile.
Once back at the château, Clementine crawled into her bed with a box of nougat and wept into her goose feathers for what had been lost and could never be regained.
Wept for Benoît and Amélie.
And herself.
It was a long, sleepless night.
Amour
In the morning, sick from too much sugar and too little sleep, Clementine appeared at the breakfast table, red-eyed and trembling.
The other three were already there, enjoying what looked like the remains of the soufflé.
“’Mentine, look what we —” Sophie started but Clementine cut her off.
“Just when I was beginning to get used to having you here,” she said to Mathilde, “to think you really cared for us. You had me thinking it could all work out. You really did. But how stupid could I be? It wasn’t enough the first time, was it? You had to come back and take him from me all over again.”
Mathilde was bewildered. “What on earth are you talking about? I haven’t taken anyone anywhere.”
“Benoît,” Clementine said bluntly. “Yes, Benoît. I know you’ve been over there again wearing next to nothing and trying to seduce him in front of his own wife. Odile told me all about it yesterday at the parade. She thought I was trying to do the same thing. She called me a slattern, a trollop. What have I done to deserve this, Mathilde? Tell me, will you — what?”
Mathilde coughed politely and wiped at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Edie, darling, why don’t you run outside and play with your little mule,” she suggested in an almost motherly voice.
Edie looked from her to Clementine, eyes wide with understanding that trouble was afoot, then she dropped her baguette and skedaddled out the door.
“Clementine, I think you should sit down,” Sophie suggested nervously. This was not the warm fr
iendly Clementine that had been emerging in recent months, but the bitter unhinged one of days gone by.
Clementine ignored her. “Why do you get such pleasure out of torturing me?” she asked Mathilde.
“You’ve got it all wrong, as usual,” Mathilde answered impatiently. “I may have gone over there to talk to him a few times but it was in a casual neighbourly fashion. Can I help it if that hatchet-faced wife of his jumped straight to the wrong conclusion?”
“Yes, Mathilde, you can! Why don’t you just leave him alone? He doesn’t mean a thing to you. You can have whoever you want, whenever you want, but I have wanted Benoît all my life. All my life! And I will never have him. Never.”
“So that’s what’s got your knickers in a twist,” Mathilde said. “Well, for a start, that’s nonsense. And for a finish you could snatch him away from that old witch at the drop of a hat if you put your back into it.”
“I couldn’t,” Clementine cried. “I couldn’t. You see? You just don’t understand. You can’t see that others don’t have what you have. That it’s not as easy for everybody as it is for you. That some of us live in agony, full of doubt and regret. Regret — do you know what that feels like, Mathilde, sitting there with your skinny little legs and that, that cleavage and all your vile revolting sex appeal?”
“Frankly, no, I don’t,” Mathilde said coolly, “but then I don’t spend all day wallowing around like a hippopotamus in the mud feeling sorry for myself either. Don’t blame me if you let Benoît slip through your fingers or your hoofs or whatever they are, Clementine. You’re big enough and certainly ugly enough to take that one on the chin yourself.”
Clementine lunged across the room. She would have had Mathilde’s throat between her hands and strangled the very life out of her had Sophie not jumped in between them.
“Stop it, ’Mentine,” she begged, ducking and weaving.
“Yes, pick on someone your own size, if you can find anyone barn-shaped,” Mathilde retorted rudely, holding Sophie’s hips from behind and using her like a shield. At this, Sophie pulled away, furious. “Why do you always have to make it worse?” she demanded. “Can’t you see that this is a sensitive subject? Don’t you care how much you’ve upset her?”
“By doing what?” Mathilde asked. “By having a bit of slap and tickle with the boy next door a hundred years ago? By taking him a bottle of single malt when I was desperate for a bit of stimulating company? It’s hardly a crime. I really don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of it.”
Sophie stepped away, placed a wiry little arm around Clementine’s middle and guided her back to a chair. She forced her to sit, then crouched next to her on the floor, reaching to smooth her angry ginger curls.
“She actually doesn’t know what it feels like, ’Mentine,” she said soothingly. “That’s why she can keep doing it. It’s not her fault but that’s why she can hurt you, why she can hurt Edie. She doesn’t know what it feels like.”
“Oh for God’s sake, stop talking such nonsense,” Mathilde snapped. “Hurting Clementine? Hurting Edie? I’m not hurting anybody. I don’t know what the hell you are on about.”
Sophie stopped her stroking. “You have hurt Clementine and you have hurt Edie, Mathilde.” The power in her voice was unmistakable. “Trust me. My mother left me too so I know exactly how it feels. It hurts.”
“Well, boo hoo,” Mathilde replied. “Time to get over it.”
“Just like you got over how your mother treated you?” Slowly Sophie got to her feet and looked her sister straight in the eyes. “And how have you done that exactly, Mathilde? Because you may not be the same unhappy runaway you were when you first got here but it seems to me you’re still a runaway.”
“How dare you, you little pipsqueak,” seethed Mathilde. “When you’ve lived my life then you can have an opinion on how well I’ve managed it, but until then keep your half-baked psycho-babble to yourself. My mother dumped me on whoever was nearest every time she sniffed out a new husband, once for a whole year, which means I know exactly what it feels like too, I’m just not so weak and pathetic that I show it.”
“But it’s not weak and pathetic to show it.” Sophie thrust her hands defiantly on her hips, which made her look a little like a ruffled Peter Pan. “It’s human. It’s brave. In fact, the bravest thing you could do for Edie is show her how you feel about her, Mathilde, instead of ignoring her or avoiding her the way your own mother ignored or avoided you. Can’t you see that? It’s what La Petite was trying to tell us.”
“That old crow!” cried Mathilde, but her voice showed none of Sophie’s power or control. “It’s all such drivel. I do not avoid …” She was starting to lose her composure. “She doesn’t know. It’s just that I …” Each breath was more shallow than the last, her face was crumpling, her body folding, she was coming undone right in front of them. “When I think about Edie, what I feel … oh, I don’t even … but I know that it’s just … You two idiots wouldn’t understand, but for me it’s different. I just find the whole thing totally …” Suddenly she was crying real fat heavy tears. “Unbearable. Sometimes when I look at her I just feel physically sick I’m so, so, so …” Her words dissolved into wretched sobs.
“So what?” Sophie asked softly, dropping her hands from her hips.
“Scared,” wept Mathilde. “So scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“I don’t know. Just scared, all right? Scared down to the marrow of my bones.”
“But Mathilde,” Sophie said in the gentlest of voices, “that’s love.”
“That’s bullshit!” bellowed Mathilde. “Love doesn’t make you want to hide and never be found, or pull your heart out of your chest and stomp on it. It’s not frightening. It’s not uncontrollable. It’s not bitterly fucking disappointing.”
“It does,” Clementine said almost to herself, thinking of Benoît, of Amélie. “It is.”
“It’s painful, Mathilde, because the moment you care that much about someone, you have a lot to lose and that is what hurts,” added Sophie.
“But why?” Mathilde wept. “How does it? Who would?” She was hiccuping great gulps of air, her body shaking with the pressure of trying to regain control. “What the hell’s the matter with me?” she sobbed. “What’s wrong?”
Watching such misery, Clementine found herself surprisingly overwhelmed with pity. She knew exactly what it felt like to be a prisoner to that confused jumble of feelings. Whoever would have thought she shared this, of all things, with Mathilde? She turned to Sophie and held up her hands in a gesture of helplessness.
Sophie went to Mathilde’s side then, indicating Clementine should come too. “There’s nothing the matter with you,” she said, laying an arm around her shoulders. “You just have to realise that you are better off feeling what you’re feeling than not feeling anything at all.”
In her patient embrace, Mathilde soon calmed down.
“How do you know all this?” she asked Sophie. “You’re nobody.”
“She’s not nobody,” Clementine rebuked gruffly, approaching Mathilde from the other side and laying a weathered hand on top of where Sophie’s sat on their sister’s shoulder. “She’s one of us.”
Sophie’s smile said it all, as she nestled in closer to her sister. “And you are too, you stupid woman,” Clementine added to Mathilde. “So stop your snivelling.”
Mathilde lifted her own trembling hands and laid them on top of her sisters’. The three of them stayed just like that for a while, soaking each other up amid a strangely comfortable silence.
Anybody who knew anything about the Peines would have fainted with disbelief had they peered through the kitchen window and witnessed this scene. Nobody did though. Edie and Cochon were happily playing outside and missed the whole thing, although strangely Cochon never flattened his ears and bared his teeth at Mathilde ever again.
The following morning she came down late to breakfast, receiving an exuberant “good morning” from Sophie and a sheepi
sh smile from Clementine.
“Coffee anyone?” Mathilde asked. It was not a question she had ever asked before and was not in itself important but it gave rise to one of those moments when everyone realises that something significant has changed. A layer had been peeled away that could not be replaced. It was embarrassing, slightly, because the two older Peines were not used to such exposure and felt a little naked. But it was also rather wonderful.
Mathilde poured herself a coffee and on her way to the table gave Clementine’s shoulder a squeeze.
Clementine looked up at her in surprise but said nothing.
“I’ve been thinking,” Mathilde said quietly as she sat, “about what you said yesterday about regret and everything.” She was uncharacteristically awkward but determined to proceed. “I’ve been thinking about Benoît and what he means to you, Clementine. And it occurs to me that perhaps he was more than the boy next door.”
Sophie reached across and clutched Clementine’s arm, which had frozen on the table. “Don’t be afraid, ’Mentine. Maybe you should tell her why he means so much to you. Maybe it’s a secret you’ve kept too long already.”
“Your daughter,” Mathilde said. “I should have asked you about her before.”
“Amélie,” Clementine said, staring straight ahead and nodding. “Her name is Amélie.”
“And Benoît is the father?”
Clementine kept nodding.
“But he doesn’t know?”
The nodding stopped.
“Why haven’t you told him?”
“I hadn’t even spoken to him since that day you and he …”