JOSÉPHINE MUST HAVE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT HIM AT LAST. JAY found people becoming more friendly. Many of them greeted him as he passed, and Poitou in the bakery, who had spoken to him only with a shopkeeper’s politeness before, now asked about his book and gave him advice on what to buy.
‘The pain aux noix is good today, Monsieur Jay. Try it with goat’s cheese and a few olives. Leave the olives and the cheese on a sunny window-ledge for an hour before you eat them to release the flavours.’ He kissed his fingertips. ‘That’s something you won’t find in London.’
Poitou had been a baker in Lansquenet for twenty-five years. He had rheumatism in his fingers, but claimed that handling the dough kept them supple. Jay promised to make him a grain pack which would help – another trick of Joe’s. Strange, how easily it all came back. With Poitou’s approval came more introductions – Guillaume the ex-schoolteacher, Darien who taught the infants’ class, Rodolphe the minibus driver who took the children to school and brought them home every day, Nénette who was a nurse in the nearby old people’s home, Briançon who kept bees at the other side of Les Marauds – as if they were merely waiting for the all-clear to indulge their curiosity. Now they were all questions. What did Jay do in London? Was he married? No, but surely someone, héh? No? Astonishment. Now suspicions had been allayed they were insatiably curious, broaching the most personal of topics with the same innocent interest. What was his last book? How much exactly did an English writer earn? Had he been on television? And America? Had he seen America? Sighs of rapture over the reply. This information would be eagerly disseminated across the village over cups of coffee and bottles of blonde, whispered in shops, passed from mouth to mouth and elaborated upon each time in the telling.
Gossip was currency in Lansquenet. More questions followed, robbed of offence by their ingenuousness. And I? Am I in your book? And I? And I? At first Jay hesitated. People don’t always respond well to the idea that they have been observed, their features borrowed, their mannerisms copied. Some expect payment. Others are insulted by the portrayal. But here it was different. Suddenly everyone had a story to tell. You can put it in your book, they told him. Some even wrote them down – on scraps of notepaper, wrapping paper, once on the back of a packet of seeds. Many of these people, especially the older ones, rarely picked up a book themselves. Some, like Narcisse, had difficulty reading at all. But still the respect for books was immense. Joe was the same, his miner’s background having taught him from an early age that reading was a waste of time, hiding his National Geographics under the bed, but secretly delighted by the stories Jay read to him, nodding his head as he listened, unsmiling. And though Jay never saw him read more than Culpeper’s Herbal and the odd magazine, he would occasionally come out with a quote or a literary reference which could only have come from extensive, if secret, study. Joe liked poetry in the same way he liked flowers, hiding his affection almost shamefacedly beneath a semblance of disinterest. But his garden betrayed him. Pansies stared up from the edges of cold frames. Wild roses intertwined with runner beans. Lansquenet was like Joe in this. There was a thick vein of romance running through its practicality. Jay found that almost overnight he had become someone new to cherish, to shake heads over in bewilderment – the English writer, dingue mais sympa, héh! - someone who provoked laughter and awe in equal doses. Lansquenet’s holy fool. For the moment he could do no wrong. There were no more cries of Rosbif! from the schoolchildren. And the presents. He was overwhelmed with presents. A jar of comb honey from Briançon, with an anecdote about his younger sister and how she once tried to prepare a rabbit – ‘after over an hour in the kitchen she flung it out of the doorway shouting, “Take it back! I can’t pluck the damn thing!” ’ and a note: ‘You can use it in your book.’ A cake from Popotte, carried carefully in her postbag with the letters and balanced in her bicycle basket for the journey. An unexpected gift of seed potatoes from Narcisse, with mumbled instructions to plant them by the sunny side of the house. Any offer of payment would have caused offence. Jay tried to repay this stream of small kindnesses by buying drinks in the Café des Marauds, but found he still bought fewer rounds than anyone else.
‘It’s all right,’ explained Joséphine when he mentioned this to her. ‘It’s how people are here. They need a little time to get used to you. Then…’ She grinned. Jay was carrying a shopping bag filled with gifts which people left for him under Joséphine’s bar – cakes, biscuits, bottles of wine, a cushion-cover from Denise Poitou, a terrine from Toinette Arnauld. She looked at the basket and her grin widened. ‘I think we can say you’ve been accepted, don’t you?’
There was one exception to this new-found welcome. Marise d’Api remained as remote as ever. It was three weeks since he had last tried to speak to her. He had seen her since, but only from a distance, twice in the tractor and once on foot, always at work in the field. Of the daughter, nothing. Jay told himself that his feeling of disappointment was absurd. From what he had heard Marise was hardly going to be affected by what happened in the village.
He wrote back to Nick with another fifty pages of the new manuscript. Since then progress had been slower. Part of this was to do with the garden. There was a great deal of work to be done there, and now that summer was in sight the weeds had begun to take over. Joe was right. He would need to sort it out while it was still possible. There were plenty of plants there worth saving, if he could only clear the mess. There was a square of herbs about twenty feet across, with the remains of a tiny thyme hedge around it. Three rows each of potatoes, turnips, globe artichokes, carrots and what might be celeriac. Jay seeded marigolds between the rows of potatoes to eliminate beetles, and lemon balm around the carrots for the slugs. But he needed to consider the winter’s vegetables and the summer’s salads. He went to Narcisse’s nursery for seeds and seedlings: sprouting broccoli for September, rocket and frisée for July and August. In the cold frame he had made from Clairmont’s doors he had already seeded some baby vegetables – Little Gem lettuces and fingerling carrots and parsnips – which might be ready in a month or so. Joe was right, the land here was good. The soil was a rich russet, at the same time moist and lighter than across the river. There were fewer stones, too. The ones he found he slung onto what would become his rockery. He had almost finished restoring the rose garden. Pinned into place against the old wall the roses had begun to swell and bud; a cascade of half-opened flowers dripping against the pinkish brick to release their winey scent. They were almost free of aphids now. Joe’s old recipe – lavender, lemon balm and cloves stitched into red flannel sachets and tied onto the stems just above the soil – had worked its usual magic. Every Sunday or so he would pick a bunch of the most open blooms and take them to Mireille Faizande’s house in the Place Saint-Antoine after the service.
Jay was not expected to attend Mass. En tout cas, tous les Anglais sont païens. The term was used with affection. Not so with La Païenne across the river. Even the old men on the café’s terrasse viewed her with suspicion. Perhaps because she was a woman alone. When Jay asked outright, he found he was politely stonewalled. Mireille looked at the roses for a long time. Lifting them to her face, she breathed the scent. Her arthritic hands, oddly delicate in comparison with her bulky body, touched the petals gently.
‘Thank you.’ She gave a formal little nod. ‘My lovely roses. I’ll put them into water. Come in, and I’ll make some tea.’
Her house was clean and airy, with the whitewashed walls and stone floors of the region, but its simplicity was deceptive. An Aubusson rug hung on one wall, and there was a grandfather clock in the corner of the living room which Kerry would have sold her soul for. Mireille saw him looking. ‘That belonged to my grandmother,’ she said. ‘It used to be in my nursery when I was a child. I remember listening to the chimes when I lay awake in bed. It plays a different carillon for the hour, the half and the quarter. Tony loved it.’ Her mouth tightened, and she turned away to arrange the roses in a bowl. ‘Tony’s daughter would have loved it.’
The tea was weak, like flower water. She served it in what must have been her best Limoges, with silver tongs for the sugar and lemon.
‘I’m sure she would. If only her mother were a little less reclusive.’
Mireille looked at him. Derisively. ‘Reclusive? Héh! She’s antisocial, Monsieur Jay. Hates everyone. Her family more than anyone else.’ She sipped her tea. ‘I would have helped her if she’d let me. I wanted to bring them both to live with me. Give the child what she needs most. A proper home. A family. But she-’ She put down the cup. Jay noticed that she never called Marise by name. ‘She insists on maintaining the terms of the lease. She insists she will stay until next July, when it expires. Refuses to come to the village. Refuses to talk to me or to my nephew, who offers to help her. And afterwards, héh? She plans to buy the land from Pierre-Emile. Why? She wants to be independent, she says. She doesn’t want to owe us anything.’ Mireille’s face was a clenched fist. ‘Owe us! She owes me everything. I gave her a home. I gave her my son! There’s nothing left of him now but the child. And even there she’s managed to take her from us. Only she can talk to her, with that sign language she uses. She’ll never know about her father and how he died. She’s even fixed that. Even if I could-’
The old woman broke off abruptly. ‘Never mind, héh!’ she said with an effort. ‘She’ll come round eventually. She’ll have to come round. She can’t hold out for ever. Not when I-’ Again she broke off, her teeth snapping together with a small brittle sound.
‘I don’t see why she should be so hostile,’ said Jay at last. ‘The village is such a friendly place. Look how friendly everyone’s been to me. If she gave people a chance I’m sure they’d welcome her. It can’t be easy, living on her own. You’d think she’d be pleased to know people were concerned-’
‘You don’t understand.’ Mireille’s voice was contemptuous. ‘She knows what sort of welcome she’d get if she ever showed her face here. That’s why she stays away. Ever since he brought her here from Paris it’s been the same. She never fitted in. Never even tried. Everyone knows what she did, héh. I’ve made sure of that.’ Her black eyes narrowed in triumph.
‘Everybody knows how she murdered my son.’