The House with Blue Shutters (10 page)

Oriane felt that it was precious, this between time. She picked a sage leaf from one of the huge bushes that flourished in
the shade of the old apple trees and rubbed the velvety scent on to her fingers. It was so rare to be not just alone but absent,
with no one knowing where she was and no sense that there was work she ought to be getting on with. Walking slowly, she touched
the spikes of the rosemary and closed her hand around a wizened grey apple branch, breathing deep until she felt her lungs
strain to open further in the swashy shade, spreading her arms and relishing the coolness in the soft morning shadow. She
wondered what it would feel like to slip from her clothes and lie naked in the damp grass as though it were a beautiful green
carpet. But imagine if someone came by! They would think she was as silly as William. She untied the neck of the flour sack
and fastened it again around the branch, tying the ends so the bag was raised up and her dress would not be spoiled by wet
stains. The orange flowers by the wall were still furled tightly where the sun had not reached them, treasuring their scent
inside. They would open up nicely by the time the cake was served. All the same, as she knelt to gather them, she lifted her
skirt to where the sudden white skin above her knees showed, and settled her legs apart, so the juicy grass brushed her, and
grew warm on the inside of her thighs.

The Nadls were going to the wedding in the wagon, so William could leave with them. It was a shame Cathérine couldn’t come,
but she hadn’t a half day, although the girls
might be allowed out in the evening, for the dancing. The Mass was at eleven. The bridal party, Oriane liked the sound of
that, so smart, the bridal party were to come in Monsieur Larivière’s motor car, driven by the mayor himself. There was bread
and coffee and strawberry conserve laid out under a cloth in the pantry, and three madeleines for the ladies in a saucer.
Oriane had fetched them from Charrot’s herself yesterday and told William she would lock him in the goat shed for a week if
he so much as sniffed one. Downstairs, the floor was swept and there was another jug of lavender on the table, laid with bowls
and spoons. Perhaps the best coffee cups, the wedding cups from the
buffet
, might have looked well, but they didn’t hold much and Mademoiselle Lafage was greedy for her breakfast, though she might,
Oriane supposed, feel obliged to hold back today on account of nerves.

Betty and Andrée didn’t think much of that. ‘Rubbish,’ Andrée snorted, ‘she can’t wait to get into bed with old Boissière!’

The kitchen at the café had a damp terracotta floor and smelt of spilled wine and yellow soap. It was built down into the
ground so that the only window, above the porcelain sink, looked out through fronds of honeysuckle to the bottoms of the tablecloths
airing on the washing line. Oriane was breaking eggs into every basin that could be assembled.

‘Do you think they’ve done it already?’ asked Betty.

‘In the schoolhouse on Wednesday afternoon!’

‘No, in the woods by the Virgin, with her knickers flapping in the breeze!’

‘No, at your house, while she was practising the bassoon!’

Andrée grabbed Betty from behind and pumped her hips
at her fat backside while Betty blew at a wooden spoon with her eyes screwed up.

‘She played the scale of C major to cover his huffing and puffing!’

Andrée and Betty looked like ‘Happy Families’ cards swapped around, Oriane thought. Betty Dubois, the café owner’s daughter,
looked as though she belonged in the bakery, plump as a brioche with soft pale skin and light hair, a big bosom and stomach
under her apron. Andrée, the baker’s daughter, was dark and skinny with a big nose that pecked at gossip, and small bright
eyes that gleamed like crème de cassis. Andrée was a fine cook though, she had made the
pièce montée
for the wedding the day before and it would be she, not Betty, who supervised the twenty big truffle omelettes. No one could
say that Monsieur Boissière was stingy, everyone was excited about the feast. There would be foie gras, of course, with fig
bread, then the omelettes, then capon with roast potatoes and ceps, the salad and cheese, made in the dairy at Murblanc by
Madame Nadl, then the dessert of cherries in red wine, then the tower of choux pastry and caramel decorated with the white
blossoms that Oriane had picked in the nuns’ garden. They lay on a plate in the larder covered with damp paper.

The short country term was already over, but both the classes from the school were assembled on the steps of the church with
a painted banner that said ‘
Vive Les Mariés
’ in meandering primrose letters. The Marquise d’Esceyrac attended the Mass with her little boy and graciously accepted a
glass of Monsieur Boissière’s anxiously proffered champagne. Camille Lesprats got roaring drunk, and everyone laughed about
‘Poire William’ when the
digestifs
went round.
Mademoiselle Lafage’s friend Simone had purplish lipstick and a rather revealing apricot costume, she drank Papie Nadl’s eau
de vie from a glass like a man instead of coyly dipping a sugar lump. Monsieur Larivière, who had given away the bride as
well as performing the legal ceremony, proposed the toast, looking quite the thing in his sash. Then the bridegroom seated
himself at the piano and played a soft, wandering piece whilst gazing at his red-faced wife, while all the guests respectfully
pretended to listen.

The benches were moved outside and the old ones sat down to watch the youngsters dance. Yves Contier settled himself on a
chair in the shade, important with his accordion. Papie Nadl stepped forward with his violin, but instead of nodding at Yves
to begin he raised his bow for silence. He spoke up in his high, reedy voice, ‘As we know,’ he began, coughed a little, ‘as
we all know, Madame Boissière has made her home up at Aucordier’s for the past few years. William Aucordier has made a present
for her. All by himself.’ The amiable quality of the quiet shifted a little. Oriane clenched her hands in the skirt of her
dress.

‘Go on, William,’ said Papie.

William got to his feet. There was a dribble of yellow crème patissière on his jaw. He reached out to Papie, his arms wide
and anxious, as though to receive a child, and made a little squeak. Someone tittered, and Madame Boissière frowned. William
took Papie’s violin, holding it delicately in his big raw hands, and settled it under his chin. He dipped his torso in an
awkward bow. Then he arranged his fingers around the bow and began to play. He played softly at first, his eyes closed, a
little tune that ran up and down the fret, then gathered itself,
and dipped, and soared, mounting like a bird hopping from branch to branch, pausing, swooping back, rising higher and faster
as his elbow sawed and he nodded forward into the music, pushing it on and tapping his foot until it ran under his hands like
the river in winter, and then he curbed it, softening, ending on a long full note, dying away and holding them all there,
spun for a moment a little above the dust of the square. The silence was new again. That was what was remembered of that day,
that William Aucordier astonished everyone in the village when he played the violin for the first time in his blue shirt at
the schoolmistress’s wedding.

Oriane was breathless with happiness and surprise. Papie was beaming, though he had not been the only one to wipe a tear from
his eye. ‘We had you there, eh?’ he asked everyone. ‘Oh, that’s a good one! We had you there!’ Cathérine said she had heard
music coming from the cow barn for years, but she thought Papie must be playing to William to pass the time, although it did
seem as if he was improving with all the practice. Everyone laughed and laughed, there was not a bad word to be said. Père
Guillaume said it was an example. What Oriane remembered later was the rapid flutter of the light, how it danced in the dappling
leaves of the chestnut trees, the same light the wind had pushed so cruelly around the eaves of Aucordier’s now gathered up
so wonderfully in William’s music, how it spun between the pale massed bow strings, and how it cancelled out shame.

Charlotte Glover was drawing a batch of pots from the kiln next morning when Richard Harvey appeared on his bicycle. It was
already filthy hot, but August was the busiest season for the markets, and she was making a load of the thick, brightly coloured
salad bowls that had really sold well last year. If they were popular again, she and Malcolm might be able to return home
for Christmas. ‘Mum said, can you babysit tonight?’ asked Richard ungraciously, disgusted with the description. ‘She said
to say she phoned, but there was only the answer machine and she needs to know.’

Charlotte set the blistering rack down slowly on the wall of the old pigsty. What did Aisling think she was doing, she thought
self-righteously, it was Monday morning! Lolling around in a negligée painting her nails? She was working, and so was Malcolm,
who took odd jobs in the season on English gîtes and had got up at six-thirty to drive fifty kilometres to see about the filter
in some hysterical woman’s pool. The
Glovers did not have a pool. Then she felt mean and asked Richard if he would like a glass of Orangina.

‘Is your mum going out then?’ she couldn’t help asking, wondering where it was she and Malcolm hadn’t been asked.

‘Yeah, it’s sick. We were meant to be going to see
Star Wars
, but now she’s going to drinks at the chateau,’ he pursed up his mouth to inject pretension into the last syllable, ‘and
we have to stay at home with Caroline.’

‘Caroline?’

‘Caroline Froggett. She sucks. She’s a PG and she’s got a sister, but the sister’s grown up and her parents are going too.
It’s crap, actually,’ he said, daring the semi-risk of the word.

‘Oh dear, that is disappointing. I didn’t know Aisling and Jonathan knew the chateau people.’

‘They don’t, but my mum can’t wait to have a nose. You know what she’s like. And the dogs at the chateau tried to kill Mr
Froggett, that’s Caroline’s dad, so they’re all going to have a meeting about it and drink loads of wine, probably.’

‘Well, tell your mum it’s fine, but a bit short notice. I think Malcolm’s got some videos of Monty Python, we could watch
that instead.’

‘Yeah, all right. Thanks for the drink.’

On the way home, Richard jerked his bike into a skid around the wall of the bridge, like Valentino Rossi. He and Oliver consoled
themselves for the general crapness of living in France with the thought that next year he would be old enough for a moto.
That’s if dad let him have one, because they couldn’t even have a Playstation, even though you could get the converter plug
in Landi. Also, you could buy spliff in the bar
in Castroux, which was cool, though he hadn’t actually had any spliff yet. Claudia had caught him filching a cigarette and
had been pretty cool actually, saying that if he was going to smoke he might as well do it properly, and she showed him how
to inhale in the barn. He pretended not to know how, although he’d been smoking since he was like, twelve, a year ago. Richard
definitely fancied Claudia, although her tits weren’t that big, but she was really pretty and smelt of perfume and her clothes
were all droopy and a bit see-through. He wondered if she sexed with Alex a lot.

It was a bit sad, but he actually missed school. He and Oliver boarded in England, which was fine, because he didn’t want
to go to the
lycée
in Landi with all those rubes, no way. School was a universe away. School was internet and skiing trip and sneaking into
town on the bus and it wasn’t weird to live in France because lots of people’s parents did, even though to hear his mum you’d
think they were the only English boys to speak French at all. His parents’ French made Richard cringe. He hated, detested,
loathed and despised the way they always carried on speaking unnecessarily, chatting to everyone in the shops instead of just
saying thank you and going like they would in England. The way they smiled too much and made mistakes, and those awful pantomime
actions to make up for it. French was not another world, it was just what you spoke when you played football in Castroux or
hung around the café sharing a cigarette with Jean-Luc or Kevin, who both had motos and were not at all impressed that Richard
and Oliver spent half the time somewhere else. Mum kept asking about his friends in the village, asked him to invite them
for supper, but Richard didn’t know how to explain that Kevin’s
mum would think Aisling was mad, and that they just didn’t talk about who was English and who was not, it wasn’t important.
He liked having a pool though, because only English people did, and when it was hot and there were no fucking PGs he could
say ‘Fancy a swim?’ and they’d all troop up the hill and Aisling brought down cold bottles of Coke and cake, which everyone
ate like it was nothing special, although he’d never even been in any of his mates’ houses.

Richard pumped hard up the lane, swerving tightly around the gatepost, Rossi well in the lead, wasting Biaggi. Maybe Dreary
Malcolm had that cool Monty Python with the shrubbery. He might try to neck with Caroline Froggett. She was a minger, but
she was a girl, and no one at school would know she had spots.

Claudia told herself that she felt like Tess when she discovers that Angel hasn’t read the letter. A jolly gel who introduced
herself as Sarah had appeared with a note at breakfast time, and Aisling had martialled the household into acquiescence. Claudia
knew she was being silly, she could perfectly well tell Alex at any time, if not today, tomorrow, but she had pictured the
moment so clearly that it had become talismanic. Thwarted, there was a sense of reprieve, she still didn’t have to go through
with it. Sébastien would be at his parents’ place near Biarritz. She wanted to call him, to have him come to claim her without
explanation. Biarritz was not so far away, she could get a train, appear there and just refuse to move, lots of women did
that, would do just that. The fact that Sébastien simply did not love her did not make him any less responsible. Surely they
could work out some form of a civilized, mutual life?