Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé (3 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Sunday, 15th August

ANY EXCUSE FOR
a carnival, père. At least, so it is in lansquenet, where folk work hard and anything new – even the opening of a shop – is seen as a break from the daily routine, a reason to stop and celebrate.

Today, it is the Sainte-Marie, the festival of the Virgin. A national holiday, though, of course, most people try to get as far away from the church as they can, spending their time in front of the television, or going to the seaside – it’s only two hours’ drive to the coast – coming home in the early hours with sunburn on their shoulders and the furtive look of domestic cats that have stayed out all night up to no good.

I know. I have to be tolerant. My role as a priest is changing. The moral compass of Lansquenet is held by others nowadays; by city folk and outsiders, by officials and the politically correct. Times are changing, so they say, and the old traditions and beliefs must now be made to comply with decisions made in Brussels by men (or even worse, by women) in suits who have never been out of the metropolis, except maybe for a summer in Cannes, or ski-ing in the Val d’Isère.

Here in Lansquenet, of course, the poison has taken some time to reach the pulse points of the community. Narcisse still keeps bees as his father and grandfather did, the honey still unpasteurized in defiance of EU restrictions – though nowadays he gives it away, flamboyantly and with a gleam in his eye,
absolutely free
, he says, with the postcards he sells at 10 euros apiece, thereby circumventing the need to conform to the new restrictions, or break with a local tradition that has remained unchanged for centuries.

Narcisse is not the only one to sometimes defy the authorities. There’s Joséphine Bonnet – Muscat, as was – who runs the Café des Marauds, and who has always done whatever she could to encourage the despised river-gypsies to stay – and the Englishman and his wife, Marise, who own the vineyard down the road, and who often hire them (off the books) to help bring in the harvest. And Guillaume Duplessis, long since retired from teaching, but who still gives private lessons to any child who asks for them, in spite of new laws calling for checks on anyone working with children.

Of course, there are some who welcome innovation – as long as they are somehow involved. Caro Clairmont and her husband are now zealous disciples of Brussels and Paris, and have recently made it their mission to introduce Health and Safety into our community, checking pavements for evidence of neglect, campaigning against itinerants and undesirables, promoting modern values and generally making much of themselves. Traditionally Lansquenet has no mayor, but if it had one, then Caro would be the obvious choice. As it is, she runs the Neighbourhood Watch, the League of Christian Women, the village Book Club, the Riverside Cleaning Campaign and ParentWatch, a group designed to protect our children against paedophiles.

And the church? Some would say she runs that, too.

If you’d told me ten years ago that I would one day sympathize with rebels and refuseniks, I would probably have laughed in your face. But I myself have changed since then. I have come to value different things. When I was younger, Order reigned; the messy, disorderly lives of my flock were a constant irritation. Now I have come to understand them better – if not always to approve. I have come to feel – not affection, precisely, but something almost approaching it when dealing with their problems. It may not have made me a better man. But I have learnt over the years that it’s better to bend a little than be broken. Vianne Rocher taught me that, and although I was never happier to see anyone leave Lansquenet than when she and her daughter moved away, I know what I owe her. I know it well.

Which is why, on the tail of this carnival, with change in the air like the scent of smoke, I can almost imagine Vianne Rocher coming back to Lansquenet. It would be so very like her, you see, to roll into town on the eve of a war. Because a war
is
coming, that is certain, and it smells like a storm about to break.

I wonder, would she sense it, too? And is it wrong of me to hope that this time she would take my side, instead of joining the enemy?

CHAPTER SIX

Sunday, 15th August

I DON’T OFTEN
return to places I’ve left. I find it too uncomfortable to deal with all the things that have changed: cafés closed, paths overgrown, friends moved away, or settled rather too permanently in cemeteries and old folks’ homes—

Some places change so completely that I can hardly believe I was there at all. In a way that’s for the best: I am spared the routine heartbreak of once-familiar places and times reduced to reflections of themselves in mirrors that we broke when we left. Some change only a little, which is sometimes harder to bear. But I have never returned to a place where nothing seemed to have changed
at all
—

Not until today, at least.

We came on the wind of the carnival. Eight and a half long years ago, on a wind that seemed to promise so much; a mad wind, full of confetti and scented with smoke and pancakes cooked by the side of the road. The pancake stall is still there, and the crowds that line the side of the street, and the flower-decked cart with its motley crew of fairies, wolves and witches. I bought a
galette
from that very stall. I bought one now, to remember. Still as good, just the right side of burnt, and the flavours – butter and salt and rye – help reawaken the memory.

Anouk was standing beside me then, a plastic trumpet in her hand. Now she stood wide-eyed and alert, and Rosette was the one with the trumpet.
Prraaaaaaa!
This time it was red, not yellow, and there was no hint of frost in the air, but the sounds and voices and scents were the same; and the people in their summer clothes – overcoats and berets giving way to white shirts, straw hats; who’d wear black in this heat? – might almost be the same ones, especially the children who bounced along in the wake of the cart, collecting streamers and flowers and sweets—

Prrraaaaaa!
went the trumpet. Rosette laughed. Today, she is in her element. Today she can run like a mad thing, swing like a monkey, laugh like a clown, and no one will notice or criticize. Today she is normal – whatever
that
means – and she joined the procession behind the cart, hooting with exuberance.

This must be the fifteenth of August
, I thought. I’d almost forgotten what day it was. I don’t really follow the Church’s festivals, but I could see her, the Mother of Christ, in plaster with a gilded crown, being carried in state by four choirboys under a flowery canopy. The boys were wearing surplices, and slightly resentful expressions. Well, it must have been hot under those robes, and the others were having much more fun. For a moment I almost recognized the face of one of the choirboys – it looked like Jeannot Drou, Anouk’s little friend back in the days of La Céleste Praline – though of course it couldn’t have been. The boy must be seventeen by now. But the faces
were
familiar. A relative, a cousin, perhaps, maybe even a brother. And that girl on the cart with the fairy wings looked just like Caroline Clairmont. A woman in a blue summer frock could almost have been Joséphine Muscat, and that man with his dog, standing too far away for me to see the face under the hat, might easily have been my old friend Guillaume.

And that figure in the black robe, standing slightly apart from the rest of the crowd in silent disapproval—

Could that be Francis Reynaud?

Prraaaaaaaa
! The trumpet was garish and off-key, like the bright red plastic of its manufacture. The black figure seemed almost to wince as Rosette scurried past, with Bam (quite clearly visible today) screaming and scampering in her wake.

But it wasn’t Reynaud. I could see that now as the figure turned to look back at the procession. In fact it wasn’t a man at all. It was a woman in
niqab
– young, from her figure, and veiled in black even to her fingertips. In this brutal heat she wore gloves, and her eyes, the only part of her that could be seen above the veil, were long and dark and unreadable.

Had I seen her before? I thought not. And yet she was strangely familiar, perhaps because of the colours that swam around her black, immobile shape; the colours of the carnival, the flowers, the streamers, the bunting, the flags.

No one spoke to her. No one stared. In Paris, where folk are so jaded that hardly anything invites comment, people still notice the
niqab
, but here, where gossip is currency, the face-veil attracts no second glance.

Out of tact? Maybe. Out of fear? The crowd parted around her on either side, allowing a space to contain her. She might have been a ghost – standing unseen in the slipstream with the scent of fried food and candyfloss distressing the air around her and the cries of children like fireworks hurled into the hot blue sky.

Prraaaaaaaa!
Oh, my. That trumpet again. I looked for Anouk, but she had disappeared, and for a moment my city senses prickled with anxiety—

Then I saw her in the crowd, talking to someone – a boy of her age. Maybe a friend. I do hope so. Anouk finds it hard to make friends. Not that she is antisocial. Quite the opposite, in fact. But others sense her otherness, and tend to give her a wide berth. Except for Jean-Loup Rimbault, of course. Jean-Loup, who has already skirted death so many times in his short life. I sometimes despair of my little Anouk, who has already endured so much loss, choosing as her closest friend someone who may not live to see twenty.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Jean-Loup. But my little Anouk is sensitive in ways I understand only too well. She feels responsibility for things that are beyond her control. Perhaps because she’s the eldest child; or perhaps it has something to do with what happened in Paris, four years ago, when the wind nearly blew us away for good.

I scanned the crowd for faces again. This time, I recognized Guillaume, eight years older, but just the same, with the dog that was a puppy when Anouk and I left Lansquenet now walking sedately at his heels, and a small group of children following, feeding treats to the little dog and chattering excitedly.

‘Guillaume!’

He did not hear me. The music, the laughter, were all too loud. But the man at my side turned abruptly, and I saw his very familiar face; the features small and sharp and neat, the eyes a chilly shade of grey, and I caught a glimpse of his colours as he turned with a look of astonishment – in fact, were it not for those colours I might not have known him without his soutane, but there’s no way of hiding who you are under the skin of the mask you wear—

‘Mademoiselle Rocher?’ he said.

It was Francis Reynaud.

Now forty-five, he has hardly changed. The same narrow, suspicious mouth. Hair slicked severely back to fight its tendency to curl. The same stubborn set of the shoulders, like a man carrying an invisible cross.

He has gained weight since I saw him last. Although he will never really be fat, there is a perceptible roundness in the region of his midsection that points to a less austere regime. This suits him – he is tall enough to need a little extra bulk – and, still more surprising, there are lines around those cool grey eyes that might almost hint at laughter.

He smiled – a shy, uncertain smile that has had too little practice. And with that smile, I understood what Armande meant when she wrote to me that Lansquenet would need my help.

Of course, it was all in his colours. His outward appearance was that of a man firmly, completely in control. Still, I know him better than most, and I could see that beneath his apparent calm Reynaud was deeply agitated. To begin with, his collar was misaligned. A priest’s collar fastens at the back – in this case with a small clip. Reynaud’s collar had slipped to one side; the clip was clearly visible. To such a meticulous man as Reynaud, this was no trivial detail.

What was it Armande said?

Lansquenet will need you again. But I can’t count on our stubborn
curé—

Then there were the colours themselves; a turgid confusion of greens and greys, shot through with the scarlet of distress. And the look in his eyes; the careful blankness of a man who does not know how to ask for help. In short, Reynaud looked as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice, and now I knew I could not leave until I knew what was happening.

And remember: everything returns
.

Armande’s voice was clear in my mind. Eight years dead, and still she sounds as stubborn as she did in life; stubborn and wise and mischievous. There’s no point trying to fight the dead; their voices are relentless.

I smiled. I said, ‘Monsieur le Curé.’

Then I prepared to ride the wind.