The Lantern (25 page)

Chapter 14

T
here was a boy in the village I had always been friendly with. He was in my class at school. Henri claimed he was in love with me, but I never had those feelings for him. His jaw was too heavy, and his bottom lip seemed to swing pendulously. It grew worse as he aged, which was a shame. He worked on his family’s farm on the other side of the hill; they kept a large herd of goats and made cheeses, good, strong cheeses, and the smell of that always seemed to linger around him and leave savory trails in his wake. He was a musician, too, and played in the band at the fetes in the small villages in this eastern end of the valley. Unloosing his accordion to squeeze out torrents of notes, Henri was the star of the show with his fine renditions of popular songs as well as the complex, swooping rhythms of the traditional dances.

When I danced with André in our village, Henri never took his eyes off us. I was uncomfortable and flattered all at once. But then, at the end of the set, when the band was taking a break, swigging rough rosé, he leaped down and caught me by the arm.

“Sorry, so sorry,” he said to me. “But I have to do this.”

Before I could ask what he meant, he had swung for André. Blood dripped from André’s nose and formed rosettes on his white shirt.

“What are you doing? What’s going on?”

By now, other people were gathering to enjoy the spectacle.

“Ask him. Get him to tell you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

There was a tone in his voice that didn’t ring true. “André?” I asked. “What is he talking about?”

“I have no idea.”

“Roussillon. Ask him how much fun he had at the Roussillon fete last week. Go on, ask him.”

“Oh, for goodness sake, come on Béné, let’s go.”

“No, André, wait.” I couldn’t conceive that my old friend would be behaving like this for no good reason. “Last weekend you went back to see your family, didn’t you? You weren’t even in Roussillon.”

“No, of course not.” He rubbed his palm across his bloodied face.

“Yes you were. You were with a pretty woman and two small children who called you Papa.”

“What?”

“I was playing with the band. Their accordion player was sick and I was the substitute. I recognized you and watched you all night from the stage. You barely left your family’s side. You kissed your wife a few strides away from where I was having a drink and promised your work would be finished and you would be back for your fifth wedding anniversary next month.”

I turned to my fiancé, incredulous. “Is this right?”

It was obvious from his sudden sheepishness that it was, but I persisted. “I ask you again. Is this true?”

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

“So it is true!” I felt my bones melt, as if I might fall down on the spot. Other people had stopped speaking nearby, the better to take in the drama. “Then why? Why ask me to marry you? Why lead me on when you already had a wife and children back home?”

He sighed and shook his head. “Because . . . because . . . I care for you so much, Bénédicte. I could not help it, and . . . no, don’t turn away, listen to me! There’s a long story. I was pushed to marry her. Our families always wanted it, not me. Why do you think I spent so long away? Because I wanted to escape. Because I found you, and I thought there might be a way for us, if we could only find it!”

It was a pretty speech. I even found I believed some of it, probably because I wanted to so badly.

André reached out to touch me.

I drew back sharply, all too aware that we had an audience. “What are you doing? Go! Please go now! Don’t make it any worse!”

By then, some of the other men had started jeering, telling him to get out of the village. Henri put a protective arm around my shoulders.

André had no choice. He turned and walked away.

I was hollow. I felt as if my insides had disappeared and I was just a shell. The ax had fallen so swiftly, entirely without warning.

André left that night. I have no idea where he went; he just walked off into the blackness.

F
or weeks, I was inconsolable, unable to sleep or eat. I dragged myself through a dank imitation of life, in which every action seemed to require too much effort. I barely spoke, even to Maman. I retraced the paths we’d walked, and cried until it felt like there was not a drop of moisture left in me.

Then, late one night, long after I would have gone to bed if there had been any point in doing so, I saw it—the light on the path, in our secret place. I shuddered, sure I was imagining it. But as I approached, I heard my name being called in a whisper.

I jumped. “Who’s there?”

It sounded like him. It couldn’t be him.

Again, my name. Then he stepped out from the shadows by the
bergerie
.

André had returned.

I would have leaped into his arms. More than anything, I wanted to, yet I held myself in check.

“What do you want?” I asked in a small, flat voice.

“A chance to explain.”

“Please don’t lie to me again.”

“I won’t lie. And I never lied when I told you I loved you and I wanted to marry you, that you were the most lovely girl I had ever held in my arms.”

“And you never wanted to hurt me,” I said mockingly.

He protested, of course. But there was nothing he could say that could alter the situation. He was married. It was impossible.

For the second time, I sent him away.

The next morning, I found the birdcage was open, and the parakeet gone. I remember feeling glad about that, considering it an act of mercy. As André well knew, I never liked the bird, and I didn’t want it there to remind me how badly I’d been deceived.

S
o, that was how I once had a fiancé. Or, rather, to be more accurate, how I once had a lover, since there were fundamental reasons why André was never my fiancé, not really. In the space of a few cruel minutes, out under the lights of the village square, with everyone watching, he stopped being my André, and became someone else’s husband and father of two small children.

It was such an abrupt end to my dreams; and such a long time before I came to terms with it. So many different facets of the story held me back. He must have loved me—he couldn’t have faked that, the way he held me with such tenderness. It must have been an impossible situation. A genuine love story that had begun when we had least expected it. He was not a terrible person. Then again, perhaps he was just an adventurer with a glib line in explanations.

I found it hard to trust people after that.

F
unny enough, we kept the cage after the fiend flew away. I suppose we must have thought we could sell it if a dealer from one of the traveling secondhand markets ever called. It was an interesting-looking object, and strong, too. Someone might have been able to make use of it. But that was another opportunity that passed us by. As far as I know, it’s still there, by the wood store, rusting and empty.

Everyone and everything is gone, except me. Maybe if I could find the courage to step out beyond my bars . . . But, you see, I never had a reason to go.

And now they are all coming back. Perhaps it wasn’t a light on the path, after all. Perhaps it was the spirit of that parakeet trying to materialize. Now that would worry me.

Chapter 15

T
aking a deep breath, I asked Sabine, “I suppose you still haven’t managed to track Rachel down, since we last spoke? I felt a bit uncomfortable with the idea of translating her notes, as if I was taking something of hers without her permission.”

The inference couldn’t have been louder and clearer.

This was the real reason, of course, that I’d agreed to sit down and drink coffee with Sabine when all I really wanted was to be on my own with my hurt and confusion. And however wary I was of Sabine and suspicious of her motives, she was the only key I had to understanding. Rachel was the link. Knowledge was power, and what I needed was some more of it.

Sabine studied her cup before she replied. “No. Still no sign of Rachel.”

As usual, she would talk about Rachel, though.

“Rachel was a curious person.”

Did Sabine mean that Rachel was a little odd, or that she often showed curiosity? I couldn’t help but be drawn in.

“There was a story that Rachel told me once, about herself,” said Sabine. “I suppose I remember it because it’s a tale that appeals to me.”

“What was it?”

Sabine settled herself more comfortably. “Rachel liked talking to strangers, which was how this incident began. She was on a train journey, and a conversation started between her and a couple sitting opposite. They were very charming, only a few years older than she was.

“They all got on extremely well, and when the time came for her to change trains, it turned out they were making the same stop. It was lunchtime, and she had a couple of hours to kill before making her connection, so when they asked her if she would care to join them for a meal at a local café in the square, she accepted their invitation with real pleasure.

“The train pulled in. It was a small town, but more akin to a large village in atmosphere. They walked from the station to the prettiest square, shaded with plane trees, which cast dappled light over the shops and houses. It was a
place
such as one always hopes to find. The scent of newly baked bread from the
boulangerie
. Busy and friendly but not too crowded. They sat outside, where they were served delicious food and wine, all the time still enjoying a wonderful conversation, a real meeting of the minds.

“The couple even walked Rachel back to the station and waited with her until she was safely on the right train.”

Sabine paused. I was beginning to wonder what the point was.

“A few days later, Rachel was flipping through a newspaper when she saw a picture of the young couple. She was sure it was them, and the first names matched up. They had died in a plane crash, an accident in a small private aircraft, the same day as she had met them, but, oddly, the crash happened on a flight between two airfields hundreds of kilometers away from where they had eaten lunch.”

“It might have been possible, depending on timing. Or she was simply mistaken—it wasn’t the same couple,” I said.

Sabine nodded. “Of course. But now here’s the thing. For years after, Rachel carried the image in her mind of the perfect lunch in the perfect square, knowing she would have to return one day to see if it was as lovely as she remembered. The only thing she could not remember, and could not work out using even the most detailed maps, was the name of the town. And when at last there came the chance to take the same trains south, she decided to break the journey in the same town in the same way. But a connection was no longer possible. The trains ran direct to her destination. So she decided to drive.

“She approached the area where the train must have stopped, but none of the names of the towns and villages along the railway line was the right one. She drove all along the route, dipping in and out of the places that could possibly have been reached on foot from the station, but none of them opened out into that perfect square.”

“She never found it again?”

Sabine shook her head. “Never.”

“When did all this happen—just before you met her?”

“No, several years before. But it’s a poignant story, no?”

I wasn’t sure what to think. It reminded me of something. It might have been one of those apocryphal tales of
la France profonde
, like the strangers who find the perfect restaurant and eat the most wonderful pâté they have ever tasted, then disappear, only to be minced by the chef, added to the other ingredients in the ambrosial recipe, and offered to the next customers.

Was Rachel’s a true story? I didn’t think so. It had too many shades of romance. And I found it hard to believe that a seasoned journalist like her would forget the name of the town if it had made such an impression.

It was nicely open-ended, too. There was no spine-chilling detail about the couple being ten years younger at the lunch than they were in the newspaper, and it being ten years since the trains had ceased to connect at the town’s station. It was simply about the power of the imagination, and the way it can affect memory.

“It’s a good story,” I said.

A clatter from the café kitchen seemed to make Sabine refocus. “What does Dom say about her?”

It was the way she said it. Knowing. Waiting for me to catch on.

“Nothing. We don’t talk about her,” I said automatically.

“He used to get angry with her.”

“You saw that?”

“Rachel told me.”

A pause.

Sabine went on, forcefully, locking the beam of her eyes with mine: “He’s never admitted, though he pretends not to know, that she might be still here in Provence after all? But that she might be dead?”

It was a terrible thing to think, let alone to say out loud.

“What exactly are you saying, Sabine?” I said slowly.