Extract from 'French Sand'

Maurice du Chazand was attracted, in his own dispassionate way, to the English woman, Melanie Hodges. He had heard that she was separated from her husband – also English, it appeared – probably for a native woman – some of these natives were very lovely – but he kept his distance for unless she was seriously separated and getting a divorce there was no point in becoming involved. He was, albeit in a passive sort of way, on the look-out for a wife. He had done six years in Africa, two in the Gilbert Islands and now had three years’ work in Noumea. After that his wish was to retire early – he would be forty-four next year – to his vineyards in the Medoc, preferably with a wife. Back in his little town of Lesparre he assumed Francine le Grand was still waiting and hoping he would marry her – and if the worst came to the worst, he would – ( but he had never really fancied those huge child-bearing hips or her jam-making mother) – for she would make a good faithful wife who would doubtless produce a couple of children, who was of good local stock (her father was Monsieur le Maire) and whom he had known since school days. In the meantime if he could meet a pretty young woman like Melanie Hodges, that would be so much better. He took it all very seriously. He most certainly didn’t want to grow old alone and – even though old age was still a long way off – all this needed careful consideration.

I am accustomed, he wrote to his brother, to an active social life, to an international entourage, to not only mixing with people from all over the world and all walks of life but also with all sorts of tastes and aspirations. I dread the thought of settling down with a woman who has no conversation and who knows nothing beyond cooking and coffee mornings. I would not be happy. Our dear Francine le Grand is most charming, very kind, but I would rather find something a little more exotic – or at least a little different.

You write, his brother replied, almost as though you are choosing a new car!

This was a coincidence for du Chazan had just had a car shipped over from France. It had cost him a small fortune for it was a new Citroen, pale beige in colour with good cream-coloured leather upholstery. It was smooth and stream-lined and after all those years in the Congo, where he drove only landrovers, and sometimes pretty rough ones at that, made a more than welcome change. On arrival in Noumea he had been disappointed to find that most cars on the island were imported from Australia, usually Holdens or sometimes big old American cars. Not that he was a car man, he told himself, but it was most satisfying to seat himself in the comfortable Citroen with its hydraulic suspension and clean lines.

So du Chazan watched the Hodges woman discreetly. He didn’t mind about the little boy – he was of no particular interest and seemed healthy and intelligent. Du Chazan made a few casual and polite enquiries here and there from the other employees of the Commission. The Hodges woman had been abandoned, which was better than an agreed separation for it put her in the “right” somehow, and there was a rumour that another child was involved, not hers.

Sitting with his coffee on the Commission verandah, du Chazan often saw Melanie flit back and forth out of Hurst’s office. Fairly small (which suited him for he was not a big man) with long dark hair back-combed in to a chignon as was the fashion, she had pretty legs and occasionally he could glimpse a centimetre or two of lace petticoat under the full starched skirt. Something about her attracted him more than any other available woman in Noumea – and there were not many – and du Chazan settled back patiently to await the outcome.

His wait was brought to an abrupt end when the Hodges man was killed.

French Sand is a novel set in the South Pacific in the 1960s.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are on Kindle and Amazon, or can be ordered from most big book stores and libraries. More about Catherine Broughton, to include her sketches and stories from all over the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk 

Extract from 'A Call from France'

“A Call from France” by Catherine Broughton.

“How do you say un bouc in English?” asked Debbie.

“A ram,” I replied.

“And the moutons ?” chimed in Bernie

“Sheeps,” Max told him.

“Sheep,” I corrected him, “it is sheep, whether one or several of them.”

We looked over the domaine several times, wandering through the huge, dark, empty rooms and round the dilapidated gardens. An ancient stone wall, some two metres in height, surrounded the entire plot of land – three or four acres – crumbling away in places. Ivy grew in dark green leafy strands through the broken stones and in parts the stinging nettles and brambles were so high you couldn’t see the wall at all.

“The garden was once lovely,” Euan commented.

He indicated an old stone bench hidden by overgrown shrubbery.

“Somebody once loved this place,” he said.

Here and there were the wild remains of trimmed and shaped hedges, roses, flower beds, stone urns, decorative trees and shrubs of all sorts. Lilac and forsythia spread haphazardly across what used to be lawn, and there were huge clusters of irises and even some agapanthus – which I hadn’t seen growing wild since South Africa – and all the while the sheep wandered lazily around, chumping at the grass. Most of the shutters had fallen off, or were hanging dubiously. The sturdy iron gates had rusted. The entire place was heaped with fascinating ancient features, from the wells and iron hand-pumps in the grounds, to the weedy remains of a vineyard. There were a couple of massive ancient stone sinks, dating back to the 1600s, lying in the bushes, clearly flung out during a “modernization” period before World War Two. The entire place was hugely romantic and we liked the idea of being near the sea – barely three miles away – and nearer Royan and Oleron, places that were lively if only in the summer. We both longed and longed for company and action of some kind.

“You really want to go back home,” Euan said, putting an arm over my shoulders.

“Yes, I do. I want to go home. But I don’t mind giving it one last shot. We’ve been here …” I counted, “ six years. I’d rather just pack up and go home, but if we can’t afford a house in England, this will do.”

“You could put up with a chateau in France, could you?” he asked, grinning.

I looked up at the crumbling building. The Chateau des Cypres. There was something about it that attracted us both. Only people like us could possibly take it on. There were several big old stone barns in varying forms of dereliction. Euan could turn his hand to any kind of DIY, anything at all.

Funnily enough I read an article at the hairdresser’s this morning about a house that had been renovated in Yorkshire and the writer (a woman) said “our friends thought we were mad to take it on”. Yet, by our standards, that house in Yorkshire was in perfect order.

The babes seemed happy with the move and it would also mean that they wouldn’t have to board at school because we were relatively close to Clion. We tried hard to not talk about “going home” in front of the babes, fearing it might upset them at some level. All three were so French in many ways.

“Come on, then!” Euan called out to the children, “time to go!”

“Ice-kweeem!” volunteered Bernie ..

“I expect so,” said Euan and helped him to strap himself in to the car. Debbie and Max turned away from the ram and sauntered towards us. I heard afterwards that you must never turn your back on a ram or a billy goat. He just calmly walked up behind Debbie and butted her in the back. With a cry of astonishment and alarm she fell forwards onto both knees, straight on to the stone path. I rushed forward.

“C’mon! Quick!” I grabbed her under the arms, frightened the ram was going to somehow attack. But he sauntered off back to the sheep almost as though he had his nose in the air. Debbie wailed and wailed.

“Max! Get in to the car!” I yelled, still frightened.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Euan, ever calm, came over and helped Debbie onto her feet.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

She wailed and wailed.

“Debbie!” I said more sternly, “we need to know if you are hurt.”

“My back! My knees!”

I turned to Euan.

“She went down with quite a whack,” I said.

Debbie hobbled between us to the car where she eased herself in to her seat, still crying loudly. We looked at her knees. She had been able to get up and move with no problem so we judged there was nothing broken. The knees weren’t even scratched.

“She’s shocked,” I said.

“C’mon Baby,” Euan cajoled her, “it’s not as bad as all that. I expect that was a nasty fright, but you’re not hurt.”

The wailing continued.

“Cry quietly,” I said to her in desperation.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist.  Her books are available from Amazon or Kindle or can be ordered from most big stores and libraries.  For more of Catherine’s work, to include her sketches and entertaining blogs, go to http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Extract from 'Saying Nothing'

Then an overwhelming anger consumed him.

The guests at the funeral had all gone and Prisca and one of the maids were quietly tidying things away.  Marie-Carmen lay on her bed in the darkness, too tired to cry.  Ignacio went into the garden where it was cool.  As he walked away from the house, down the path towards the little lake, as he passed the peacocks and the tall stately trees, he filled up with a fury that made him clench his fists and grind his teeth.

He had tried so hard.  He knew right from wrong; he had fought to keep a balance.  He had protected Miguel and his daughter yet had never compromised the police.  He was clever and quick, yet Miguel was dead.

The feeling of anger remained with him throughout the night, and, for the first time ever, he had no wish to make love to his wife.  The anger was still there in the morning.  It remained with him for months on end until el Mdrino’s son died.  For a few hours he had felt the euphoric satisfaction of revenge. Then he felt nothing.

But like him, Marie-Carmen didn’t want to talk about the past.  She watched the shadows flit over her husband’s face and he, in turn, saw the memories of pain and loss through her dark eyes.  He would never let her know the truth.   An involuntary shudder ran down his spine and he was for a few seconds completely unable to shake away the vision of the murder, the blood, the scream.

Marie-Carmen squeezed his hand again.

“Come on, eat!” she said with urgency in her voice.

The giant prawns were succulent and Ignacio forced the conversation onto other matters.  Marie-Carmen wanted to go shopping in Madrid; Malaga was useless, she said.  She’d got no clothes –  why do women always say they have no clothes?  And suddenly he wanted to see her without any clothes, as she was last night, dark hair spread out over the pillow, white thighs, legs open to receive him, laughing up at him.

“Watch me come!” she had said, “watch me die!”

*****

 Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle (and other e-book formats) or can be ordered from most libraries and book shops.  More about Catherine Broughton, to include her entertaining blogs and short stories from around the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

An extract from my novel - 'Saying Nothing'

Instinctively she knew that she must say nothing.

Seconds passed.  She smelled sweat, wine, coarse tobacco.   The pavement seemed to move.  A man was pushing her, a rough-skinned hand over her mouth.  She lashed out, stiffened, flailed her arms uselessly, tried to scream, tried to defend herself against something that was totally alien .… she had no idea who or what …. or where, or why …… there was something horribly wrong here.  Somebody, something, was horribly wrong  ……..   she tried bite the hand that was over her mouth.

She felt herself pushed in to a vehicle, landed heavily on her knees, attempted again to to cry out, and she sensed the hot night air, the stars, and heard – foolishly – a bird in a tree, making song in the Spanish night.  

“Cierra la puerta!”

Movements.  A car door.  Men shuffling.  Terror was like a cold cloth around her neck and mouth.

She realized she must be in the back of a van. She heard the engine, she felt the gear change and the picking up of speed.  Had she gone mad ?  She couldn’t think.   Shock made her stupid.   She searched around frantically in her mind, convinced she had got something wrong somewhere, this was a joke ……….. and yet she knew that it wasn’t.

What the ………. ?!

As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness she saw that there were two other occupants.  They sat silently opposite her, watching her.   Two men, obscure in the darkness and smelling of the wine and tobacco she’s been aware of on the pavement.  They hung on to the side of the van as it heaved and rattled on the uneven road, their faces non-committal, black eyes, unshaven jaws, an odor of sweat about them, expressionless.

She realized she was neither bound nor gagged.

“ What d’you want with me ?”

Her voice shook as she spoke.  The brown eyes looked at her, lips closed.

Catherine Broughton is a novelist, a poet and an artist. Her books are available on Amazon and Kindle, or can be ordered from most big book stores.  ”The Man with Green Fingers”, a novel set in Cyprus is her best seller.  More about Catherine, to include her entertaining blogs from around the world, on http://www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Wine in the Medoc

Wine Festival in the Medoc
By Catherine Broughton
written for “Food and Drink” magazine 1997.

On a swelteringly hot August day Bruce and I, accompanied by George, our Great Dane, left the cool refuge of our campsite under the tall seaside pines, and made our way to a wine festival at Lesparre.
We have been in France nearly nine years, we said, and we still don’t know anything about wine except that we like to drink it.

Lesparre is a fairly uninteresting little town situated in the central Medoc, north of Bordeaux. The countryside in generally flat and uneventful and there are no architectural features of any note. For many hundreds of years this area was accessible only for those travelling north out of Bordeaux, or by boat from Blaye, for the east of the Medoc is separated from the rest of France by the Gironde estuary and is cut off at its northernmost tip near the Pointe de Grave at Royan. To the west lies the Atlantic Ocean.

In the sixties a ferry service was installed from Blaye, and another from the Pointe de Grave started soon afterwards. This opened the area up and it is now a successful and accessible tourist location, boasting mile upon mile of golden beaches and some of Europe’s biggest dunes.

The elite holiday resort of Cap Ferret lies at the southernmost tip, and the coast meanders up through sweet-smelling pine forests, dotted with naturist beaches, fanned by the Atlantic and drenched in an unbroken sun.
The Medoc is essentially a plain which extends some 80kms (50 miles), yet despite its isolated position it has for centuries produced some of the best Bordeaux red wines. The grapes are grown especially along a strip of gravely soil and the most famous wines are the Chateau Latour, the Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, also Chateau Lafitte and Chateau Margaux.

The word “chateau” has nothing to do with the building, for it can often be a simple farmhouse or even an ugly warehouse, with no resemblance at all to our romantic idea of a chateau. It is frequently an old monastery, or on the site of an old monastery or similar. This is because in medieval days monks tended the vines due to the need for wine during mass. It was not until fairly recently, during the early 1700s when bottles and corks started to be used, that wine could be kept for long periods. And with the keeping of it evolved the connoisseur.

The heat was such that we walked on the shady side of the street. George hung his head, uncomfortable in his black coat, and lolloped along beside us. There was almost nobody about and the grey stone buildings sweltered under the blasting light. A few rows of limp flags hung across the streets and a dozen or so signs indicating that there was a wine festival on stood propped at the side of the pavement. Even the usually essential (and undeniably dreadful) voice on the loudspeaker was missing…it was so hot that this crucial aspect of French festivity had gone off for a doze.

The stands lined either side of the little Place du Marche, the wine growers talking quietly among themselves, a couple of dogs stretching in the shade, Lesparre church standing imposingly at the far end. A handful of hot spectators commented on the size of George and asked if it was okay to touch him; a few tasted the wine.
The first stand was the Chateau Hourbanon which boasted thirteen hectares of prime vine country just south of the town. The grapes, the sign told us, are carefully picked, still done by hand during the vendange, from fine old plants and then transformed into wine in the good old way in oak caskets in dark cellars.

“It’s too hot,” said the young Hughes Delayet, owner of the Chateau Hourbanon, “nobody wants to taste wine. Everybody is on the beach.”

Well, we want to taste some, we told him.

Hughes poured out a couple of glasses.

“This is a Chateau Hourbanon ’95,” he told us, “which was a very good year. The climate was excellent, plenty of sun and adequate rain. A ’95 wine will be at it’s best in five years’ time, though it is also very good to drink now.”

Indeed it was.
He then poured another.

“This one is a ’93,” he explained, “and you will see the difference. It is a good wine but it will not keep more than a year or two and it is best drunk now.”

“Was 1993 a bad year then?” I asked.

Hughes threw up his hands in horror.

“Madame!” he exclaimed, “in this business we never say a bad year! We say a small year- une petite annee.”

I stood corrected and sipped the wine. Following his example we swilled the wine round the glass, grasping the glass by the stem as he did. We had learnt that holding the glass by the bowl is the first sign of a person who knows nothing about wine, for the heat from ones fingers can alter the delicate balance in the temperature of the liquid. Holding his glass up to the light Hughes explained about the robe as the wine swept round the sides of the glass. True enough, the ’95 wine left a hue of deep scarlet and the ’93 did not.
Ah-ha! We said.

We did not seem to be expected to spit the wine out though we noticed to our consternation that a couple of others were doing so at a nearby stand. With a little “ttch” sound the spit landed neatly into a large copper bowl.

“Are you going to be all right?” Bruce whispered to me, “this heat and this wine-?”

“I’ll cope,” I replied, ready to taste a drop more.

“How does the Medoc wine compare to the Californian,” I asked, “or Australian?”

“Those are good wines,” replied Hughes earnestly, though we all know that no true Frenchman ever thinks that anything other than French wine (or French food for that matter) is any good. “They are designed, however, to correspond with the tastes of the clients, which will vary from country to country and also as fashion dictates. The Medoc is less technical; it has a quality which it keeps at all costs regardless of fashion or of the country to which it is being sent.”

I listened with interest. He explained the growing process and I was surprised to learn that vines are often forty or fifty years old, and can last up to eighty years or more. The quality of the wine improves each year as the vine grows older. Although the manufacture of each individual wine may vary slightly it follows a fairly standard pattern: the grapes are crushed and this produces “grape must” which then ferments in vats usually with additives to prevent the wrong kind of yeast growing. The temperature has to be carefully controlled, which is why wine is usually in cellars where the temperature remains constantly cool. Fermentation takes some time with the “free-run” wine drawn off during the process and before it is “racked” which is when it is separated from the yeast sediment. It is stored on its side to keep the cork moist and must be protected from light, vibrations and extremes in temperature.

“How about extremes in temperature if the grapes are still on the plant?” I asked.

Hughes explained that a bad frost can ruin a crop for many years. Conversely an excessively hot summer will only improve things providing the plants have enough water. In the old days straw used to be stacked up around the plants to keep the frost off, and some vineyards would even light small fires at odd intervals to keep the plants from freezing.

“I can remember as a small child hearing the alarm bell ringing in the night to warn the chateau that there was a frost,” Hughes told us.

One last thing fascinated me.

“Why do we often see rose bushes in with the vines?” I asked.

“In the days of the Crusades,” he told me, “a man returned from the Holy Land to find his wife in bed with his best friend. The man was so angry that he killed both his wife and his friend and threw their bodies out of the window into the vineyard below. In the morning the bodies had gone but two rose bushes grew there instead. That is why we plant roses.”
“And the real reason?” I asked, smiling at his quaint story.

Hughes poured a little more ’95.

“It is because rose bushes and vines suffer from the same diseases but the rose manifests the disease much sooner. This way we can tell when a vine is likely to need treatment.”

Less romantic but logical.

“Would your dog like some water?” asked Hughes suddenly.

“Well, yes, thanks – you would wouldn’t you George?”

“George? An excellent name! It was my father’s name.”

“Ah – and was he a wine producer too?”

“Oh no,” said the owner of the Chateau Hourbanon, “he was a dentist.”

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The Precious Child

Klara carried the pail of milk across the yard and in to the kitchen. Her steps were heavy. The creamy white liquid swirled around in the timber bucket. The smell made her nauseous, but then throughout all her pregnancies, everything seemed to make her nauseous. Whether this was a good sign or a bad one, she had no idea. All she knew was the terrible pain and sweat of childbirth, only to have the baby die.

Her only living child, having lost three babies, was Olphus. Dear, sweet, precious precious child, he was playing outside right now, and she could hear him chatting to himself as he ran around amid the chickens and the ducks.

She had taught herself to not think about the two little ones she had lost to diphtheria. And sweet little Otto to ….. what had killed him ? He seemed healthy enough when he was born, yet he lived only a few days. The familiar tightening sensation in her throat made its way around her neck, like an iron grip, for there is no grief like the grief of a mother. This baby, however, like his good strong brother Olphus, would be fine. She prayed for it to be so.

She was not one to lament nor to complain, and her grief and fear were worked out of her as she scrubbed and wiped and chopped and cooked, but most of all as she watched her little boy grow. She went over to the open door and stood leaning against the wall for a while in the sunshine. In the far distance she could just pick out the sky-line of Linz and, beyond the town, Postingberg Mountain. In the foreground were flat fields, and a narrow road leading to their little farm. Parked to one side of the track was a cart and horse which she knew belonged to the vet, Herr Keppler. Frau Morrin in the village had told her that the vet was going to get one of those new things – an auto – and that may or may not be true. She honestly didn’t care. The calf was not growing as it should. More expenses. Less money.

Klara sighed heavily. She could hear Olphus round at the side of the house, involved in some solitary game.

She placed the pail on the table and, using a finger, she picked out a few bits of straw and flicked them on to the table.

She was a tidy woman and kept the small farmhouse as clean and neat as she could with her limited possessions and money. Sitting on the stool to rest for a moment, she shuffed off her clogs and rested her elbow on the scrubbed oak surface of the table. The hem of her dress was damp from where it had trailed on the floor as she milked the cow, and her fingers were red from hard work. She so wished that her husband had stayed in his job at border control. He had set off every morning clean, returned clean – if bad-tempered – and had brought home a regular pay packet. This farming idea was madness, and both of them were constantly exhausted.

“No more children, my husband ….” She had tried to reason with him. “I cannot bear it. We have our son, let us be happy and grateful for that.”

She never used the pet-name Olphus in front of her husband if she could help it.

But he didn’t listen. Did these men ever listen ? When they have their man-needs, nothing stops them, does it ? They don’t care – he certainly didn’t – about her pain. She felt the sudden tiny movement, the first kick of the new baby. Just live, my little one, she prayed, her hand on her swelling tummy, just live, that’s all I ask of you. The century was drawing to a close ..… another six years and it would be the year 1900. Surely that was an omen ? Surely it meant that her children born now, hereafter, would be well and live and not succumb to the illnesses of babies. This new little one, she was sure of it, would see the century turn.

She got up and went to the door. Olphus was running – did he ever tire ?! – between the sheds, a stick in his hand. He waved when he saw his mother.

“Would you like some milk?” she called out.

The child rushed over, his face red with exertion, and waited as his mother filled a wooden bowl with warm, frothing milk.

“Still warm from the cow,” he announced, and wiped the milky moustache off his face with his sleeve.

“Don’t go where I can’t see you,” Klara reminded him. “Keep away from the top field. Stay near the house.”

But Olphus was already at the other side of the yard. Klara rinsed her hands under the kitchen pump, recently and ingeniously installed indoors, in the kitchen, over a copious stone sink. Absently, she wiped her hands on her apron as she slipped back in to her clogs and went out to the vegetable patch. She was vaguely aware of Olphus still terrorizing the chickens.

In the vegetable patch she spent some thirty or forty minutes weeding, plucking unwanted greenery from between the carrots, and pulling up spring onions. The vegetables she wanted for the evening meal were flung in to a basket at her side, and she made her way steadily, her pregnancy not sufficiently advanced for the labour to create back ache, up each row and slowly, carefully, back again. She had never much liked the outdoors, but nonetheless took a pride in her vegetable patch. There was a slight breeze and it was pleasant pottering away. Olphus has fallen silent, clearly having tired of the fowl. She hoped he was reading. He was a clever boy. Very clever, actually. She smiled. She could hear birds, and country sounds and, for a while, she was relatively happy.

Back in her kitchen she washed her hands and prepared some carrots for the evening meal. Olphus did not come in again for his habitual slice of bread and cheese, but she supposed the milk had sufficed him. Out in the barn she filled a bucket with potatoes and carried them to the sink. She would bake them as they were in the fire. She usually lit the fire an hour or so before it got dark. Her eyes wandered to the sky where she could see the afternoon was well advanced. Her heart sank – and she felt guilty for it – when she realised that her husband would soon be in from the field. She hoped he didn’t bring the vet in with him but, in case he did, she tidied her hair and put on a clean apron.

It was as she was tying the apron that the silence struck her. She went to the door.

“Olphus?” she called out in to the yard.

He had been reading a good hour by now, if that was what he was doing. Little else kept him so quiet for so long. She turned and went to the bottom of the ladder and called up in to the loft.

“Olphus?”

At first she was not really worried. A little perplexed, perhaps, but not truly concerned. He was a noisy, energetic child, and his proximity was always abundantly clear – his shouting, or even singing (he sang very nicely), never out of ear shot. Klara took the pail of milk over to the churn. She then went outside to fetch in the washing.

“Olphus?” she called again.

Feeling slightly cross now, she shoved the basket of washing through the kitchen door and marched firmly around the shed, calling for her son as she did.

“Papa will be back soon!” she called. That would make him reappear hastily!

Panic was an enemy she fought. It would not be the first time she couldn’t find him. He was usually discovered deeply involved in some little farmhouse chore, or his nose in a book, or engrossed in a game. There were few other children for him to play with when he was not in school, but sometimes a lad from a neighbouring hamlet would saunter by. That was it. Of course. The naughty boys had almost certainly gone in to the woods. Once when Olphus had gone missing she had found both boys in a dug-out in the woods, playing cowboys and Indians. On another occasion she found him – he’d have been about three at the time – sitting in the rabbit hutch, an arm around one of the rabbits.

Klara’s husband returned just as it was getting dark, the vet with him. Dutifully Klara poured each man a glass of beer. Neither of them spoke to her and she started to light the fire. Her eyes kept wandering to the window where night would soon be closing in.

“Excuse me,” she said politely, and went outside again.

Both men nodded absently at her.

“Olphus!” she called. “Come on in now! Come and say guten abend to Herr Keppler!”

Her call was greeted by silence, and the silence started to weigh heavily on her. If she told her husband that the boy was missing she risked ridicule in front of the vet; and – worse – Olphus would be beaten by his father. She never held with the beatings. She walked briskly round the house and the outbuildings, calling as she went. It was possible he was now hiding knowing that he would get a beating as soon as the vet had gone. By now it was very dark, and Klara knew that, although her son was a tough little fellow, he would want his supper and the candlelight.

“Is that your son you are calling for, Klara?” asked the vet when she returned to the kitchen.

“Yes ….. yes – I cannot find him.” She tried to sound light-hearted and gave a nervous little laugh. She noticed the thunderous look on her husband’s face. Oh yes, poor little Olphus would be beaten all right.

“Has he been gone long?” asked the vet. He rose to his feet, looking intently at her.

“I mean, I don’t want to worry you, Klara, but the gypsies are about ……..”

“Du lieber gott!” Klara’s hand flew to her mouth. “He has been missing two or three hours now – I thought he was reading ……”

“You foolish woman!” thundered her husband. “You know the gypsies are here at this time of year!! First you let our children die, then you lose one!”

“Calm, my friend,” the vet put his hand reassuringly on the other man’s arm. “Becoming angry does not help. Do you have a lantern ? We should first check the grounds.”

The two men set off, the light from the small lantern swinging eerily in the darkness. Klara could sense her child’s fear, and he would be so frightened – frightened of his father, frightened of the dark – Lord, don’t let it be that the gypsies have taken him! Don’t let it be!

After some twenty minutes or so – the farm was not large – the vet came back in and announced that he was going down to the village to ask the policeman to go to see the gypsies. They were camped in the valley by Johannes-am, barely two miles away. On reflection, he explained to Klara, it would surprise him if they did indeed have the boy and remained in the area. More likely he was stuck up a tree.

By midnight five villagers had joined the search. Carrying their lanterns, they spread out across the fields and made their way slowly over to the woods, calling as they went. A half-moon hung in the dark sky, casting reflections on the shadows, and shadows within the dark recesses under the trees and by the copses. A fox barked. At around two in the morning three more villagers joined the search, and one went home. He nodded sadly at Klara as he left. She watched him retreat in to the dimness, and knew that something dreadful had happened to her precious precious child. The grief this time would surely be too much to bear.

“No ….. no ……. “ she cast about her for something to help the situation, somewhere obvious to look, something excellent to do ….. but her mind was blank and her heart was filled with a terrible, heavy dread. No, never, never had he been truly missing like this …….. She scurried aimlessly between the house and the yard, calling him. A light drizzle started and an ominous damp pervaded the night air. Clouds moved in over the moon and it was totally dark.

One by one the villagers retreated to their own homes. Klara’s husband returned, muddy and looking grim. He collapsed in the chair by the fire and kicked off his boots.

“You’re a stupid bitch,” he growled at her, “ a truly stupid bitch!”

“He’s a little boy …….. just a child ……….. six years old ……..” her voice broke and she struggled not to sob. “You can’t stop looking …….”

Sometime just before dawn Klara fell asleep, sitting there on the stool at the kitchen table. She slept for a half hour and was suddenly alert and awake. She had heard something. There was movement outside in the yard.

“Olphus ?!” she rushed to the door. But it was one of the villagers, Olaf, back to see if the boy had been found. He shook his head grimly.

He set off across the field to where there was an old well. His wife had suggested it. The well had not been used for a long time and, for safety, had been filled in with rocks years ago. But, his wife had pointed out, the rocks may well have shifted over time and Olphus was just a small child and could easily slip and slide down between them.

His wife turned out to be right. In the fading light and subsequent darkness of the previous evening, nobody had been able to see the child lying there, his legs hidden in the dark hole and his upper body wedged between the rocks. Olaf shouted. He ran back to the edge of the field and shouted again.

“He’s here! He’s here!”

The boy appeared to be dead.

Grimly, Olaf and the boy’s father set about the grisly task of removing the body from its trap. Several ribs seemed to be broken, and the child was unconscious, but he was alive. Barely alive, but alive. It was all Klara asked for at the moment. She laid out a pallet on the floor by the fire for him. She sank to her knees and sobbed.

The doctor had been in the village barely a fortnight and didn’t know the family.

“He’s very weak,” he announced finally after spending some time over the inert little body. He tried to smile reassuringly at Klara. “He needs to regain consciousness, and that could be days …….. and he cannot be fed till he regains consciousness, or he will choke”. He rubbed his hand over his forehead. He saw dead children all too frequently, and the boy would probably die. He had been outside in the wet for a long time, and he was injured in several places. It was a tragedy, especially so for this family. He had heard all about Klara’s dreadful losses, and apparently this child was very bright. Could have grown up to be something great. Lord only knew the world needed people who were bright …… “Keep him warm, speak to him, try to bring him round. And when he does, feed him only a little at a time, keep him still till you are certain that he has recovered.”

But it was obvious the boy would die.

He took some papers out of his briefcase and sat down at the table.

“OK,” he said, “I need some details for the case book.” He turned to Klara’s husband who sat down at the other side of the table. Klara ignored them and held her son’s chilly hand.

“ Your wife’s first name is Klara – correct ?”

“Yes.”

“And you are ….?”

“Alois.”

The doctor wrote this down next to the address.

“And the child’s name is ……… Olphus …….?”

“Nah – that’s my wife’s name for him. Stupid name. She wanted him called Adolphus, you see.”

“Ah – so what is his name ?”

“Adolph.”

The doctor wrote this down too.

“And his family name is the same as yours I take it …?”

“Yes. Hitler ”

THE END

www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

Hospital Conversation

I was in hospital with a broken leg after a skiing accident in Austria. These things happen. Ho hum.

Glancing around the ward at the listless bodies lying or sitting in various states of boredom, my eyes met those of another woman, aged something around seventy. She was in the bed opposite me, a big pink nightie rucked up to display swollen legs. She was horribly overweight, and she half-heartedly raised her hand in greeting to me. She smiled cheerily and despite her weight I could see the remnants of the pretty woman she had once been. Her name was Gwen.

“I broke my leg,” I said, eager for conversation, “how about you ?”

She was crippled with rheumatism, she explained, and had been bed-bound for several years, slowly eeking out her life in and out of hospitals. Her great weight had taken its toll on her heart and she was breathless as she spoke, not that it seemed to deterr her.

“Course,” she said, “it was the barges what done it.”

“The barges?” I asked.

“Yeh. That’s how it all begun, see. Now me heart’s bad. Them barges was very damp.”

“Barges?” I asked again.

“Oooooh yes, duck, lived all my life on barges I did. Right up till when my Frank died.”

“Frank ?”

“My husband, Frank. Died on our last barge. Hadn’t the heart to stay on. Nah …. got given a council flat. Aw, it’s all a long time ago now. Haven’t talked about it in years.”

She looked out of the window where a grey January rain drizzled down against the window pane. A dismal view of a leafless tree and a brick wall looked back in at her.

“Cor, yes, it were damp. And that’s a fact. Didn’t think nothing about it at the time; it was only later I realized how damp it was and how it was going to do me in. But when you’re young you don’t do you ? You just don’t worry about stuff.” A short coughing spell interrupted her, but when she had got her breath back she continued.

“Moored up mostly in Whistable. I was born there on that first barge. Had six kids she did, my mum. You imagine that! Raising six kids on a barge ! Humph ! Young people these days they don’t know nothing.”

There was an acquiescing grunt from another bed as somebody agreed.

“The barge was eighty foot long,” continued Gwen, warming to the subject, “and there was timber holds where the grain was stored, almost always corn or wheat. That was my dad’s job, you see, lovely man my dad. Only fifty when he died. Lung cancer. Used to roll his own fags, he did, said it was good for him. Didn’t know no better then, did we? Thought it truly was good for us. Cor! I remember me dad rolling an extra fag to ease his sore throat!” She laughed a little, and looked at the bed next to her.

” He had to load up the wheat in Whitstable and then set off along the Medway to wherever ….. always a full day’s journey, never less. To Chatham and Dartford mostly. Loading and unloading. Sometimes we had to wait for the lorries to come and unload the grain – sometimes we’d wait all night. Sometimes the lorries was already there. They’d take the grain off to the farmer, see. That was how my dad got paid. Then we’d turn around and come all the way back again, over and over, day in and day out, rain or shine. We never thought nothing of it. To us kids, that’s just the way it was.

We lived in the stern. That’s the back end, see. It was so cosy. On the left was a kitchen range – a coal fire with a little chimney and a tiny oven with a sorta hot plate ontop. Imagine ! My mum she’d cook for all of us on that! On the left was a recess with a bed in it, just enough for two adults, just barely. Then there was a seat which opened out in to a bed where four of us kids slept. On the right there was another recess with a pair of bunk beds. The table was fixed to the wall and got folded up out the way when it wasn’t in use. Handy, see ? Everything had to be handy.

There weren’t no privacy. By the time I could think things out I knew all about the facts of life I did, what with mum and dad being that close. Ooh, I can remember her shoving him off, I can, saying to him “you leave me alone, we don’t want no more babies”. Don’t think he took no notice. Poor old mum. And the toilet, well that was just a bucket, wasn’t it ? A bucket with a lid. We’d do almost all our doings, big and small if you get my drift, in the bushes as we went along. A barge is slow, you see, so it was never no problem. And then if we needed to do more in the night – well, we used the bucket. Mum and dad too. Never bothered any of us. ‘Course there was another bucket for the rags, see. That’s what we used in them days, when us females had our monthlies. That’s what my mum called them. The monthlies. Soak the rags in cold water, then rinse them out in the river, dry them as best we could, and use them again. Never thought nothing of it. It was just the way it was. Never threw out old clothes. If they couldn’t be mended – cor we was always mending, always mending! – then we’d use them as rags. Anything would do, wouldn’t it ? None of them posh things girls have these days.

My baby brother was born there on that barge. He come out quick. Funny thing to say but I didn’t know my mum was expecting, see. I’d of been about …. lemme think …. about ten I s’pose. He only lived four or five days. I remember my poor mum, dear oh dear, another mouth to feed, but when that baby died she cried and cried. She shouted at my dad “don’t you never touch me again!” I didn’t know what she meant, well not exactly, but afterwards – years later – I learnt that there’s been two others what had died after a few days. Very hard. Life was very hard. No wonder my mum didn’t want no more babies. We wrapped the little body up in some canvas sacking, normally for the wheat. I went with my dad to take it to the morgue. He had to fill in a form and I had to help him, see, seeing as he couldn’t read or write. No questions was asked, not that I know of. It was the first time I was properly aware that my dad loved me. He patted my head, see, patted my head, and said to the man at the morgue that he’d still got me, his girl. Don’t know where they buried the little corpse, never asked.”

Gwen fell silent for a while as the memory of the dead baby drifted in and out of her mind’s eye.

“I was sixteen when I met my Frank. He was eighteen. He’d got his own barge seeing as his dad had died. Seemed so posh to me, no kids running about, just him and his old mum, no pile of old clothes and food. It was only when I went on to Frank’s barge that I realized how ours stank – oil and deisel and fish and sweat. It always smelt. I noticed it after that. Mum wasn’t a clean woman, nor tidy. Everything was a mess, but I’d never noticed it before. I always kept my own barge nice, as best I could. Only had the once child so it was a lot easier. Kept it tidy. It was not crowded and it didn’t smell.

Me and Frank we got wed in a bit of a rush. In them days – phew – my dad would have taken a strap to Frank if he’d known! – he was already ill, by then, lung cancer got him. I had my Doreen in the hospital. Had to pretend she come early, which was silly because everybody knew the truth. But in them days we kept up appearances in our own way. Now it don’t matter – my grand daughter, Tracey, she’s got two – yes two – and not a husband in sight.

In the summer months my Frank employed a man to help him. Wick and Cabbage. That was his name. Wick and Cabbage. Now that’s a funny name, innit ? He was a bit of a dip – that’s what we used to say – a bit of a dip, not much up top. No talk, just grunts. He often sat in Nelly – that was the little boat we towed behind – with his feet in the water. Said he was washing them. Must of had the cleanest feet in Kent ! Stayed with us for years and years. Must have been twelve years or more, just in the summer. Disappeared one day. Just went off, no fight nor nothing, just wandered off and never come back.

We was happy, me and my Frank, and our Doreen. I didn’t want no more kids and Frank – well, he was dead careful about it, if you get my drift – used one of them rubber things, always. We’d both seen my poor mum and how she worked. Wanted better for ourselves and for our Doreen. Mum died on the barge a few weeks after my dad. Well, she was all worn out, she was. Worn out. Frank sold the old barge and divided the money up between us six kids. Didn’t come to nothing much, but it seemed a lot at the time. The war started then, course. My three brothers went off to war. Killed, all three of them. One died in a Jap camp. Died of hunger as I understand it. The others died at sea. I was glad mum wasn’t around to see it. She’d have grieved something rotten. My two sisters both went to live with an aunt up Birmingham direction. You wasn’t here yesterday, was you ? That was one of my sisters, Margot, come to visit me. The other one is dead. Carol, she was called. Died last year. Cancer. Only sixty-four.

Course by the time Doreen was six she had to have some schooling, and it made everything dead complicated sometimes, Frank and Wick and Cabbage off in the barge and, if they wasn’t back by nightfal Doreen and me we’d have to kip on somebody else’s barge.
We all had to muck in as best we could, there was a war on.

Then, just a few days after the end of the war, my Frank died. Survived the bombings, then died. Seemed so wrong, all wrong. He got caught up, see, caught up between the barge and the jetty. Don’t know what happened. One of them stupid accidents you can’t believe. Snapped his neck anyhow. Lord, did I grieve. I can still picture him now, hanging there, off the edge. Took me a good long while to recover. Thought I never would. Sold the barge and got given a council flat, me and my Doreen. ”

Gwen stretched her huge frame and took a sip of water from the glass at her side.

“Life moves on, dunnit ?” she said. “You got to just get on with it, no point in mopeing. But I do feel bitter about my Frank. That wasn’t fair, it truly wasn’t. But life’s not about fair, is it ……….?”

After I was discharged from the hospital I went to visit Gwen two or three times. She was not alone. Sometimes her grand daughter and two off-spring had just been in, or were due to arrive, or Doreen, or Margot. Then one day I went in and saw that Gwen’s bed was empty and had been stripped. I stood staring at it for a while, but I didn’t ask.

The End

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An Unlikely Couple

Adela was a big woman. She was born big, she said. She had no idea whether or not this was true but, as she had no mother to ask, she assumed it to be so. Big people are generally big babies, she reasoned. At thirty-two she had got used to her size and, although she certainly wouldn’t object to being miraculously transformed in to a a delicate and petite little lady, she no longer worried about it.

She turned slowly in front of the mirror, pulling her tummy in as tightly as she could and straightening her jacket over the plain, dark green skirt. In doing so she puffed her chest out and her small breasts protruded very slightly between the lapels. At six feet tall she had worn flat shoes since she had finished growing when she was fifteen or so; her feet were a size nine and even if she had wanted to wear high heels she would not have been able to for the choice was very linited. She was not fat, she was just big. She had the large bone structure of a man and her hands, though the finger nails were carefully painted pearly pink, were like hams, big and strong and confident, exactly like her father’s.

There was, however, a quiet beauty to her, especially there, behind the eyes. She had been told this several times and could see it herself for although her lashes were not long, nor her eyes large, there was a depth to the velvet brown colour, a liveliness and a shining that, she knew, made her lovely. She always wore a little make-up – just mascara and a touch of eye shadow, a hint of pale lipstick and, of course, some blusher, for she had a sallow skin that tanned quickly in the summer to a rich dark gold. She twisted her head this way and that in front of the mirror, examing the short pony tail and the effect of the Amber high light she had just used.

Adela had started making her own clothes when she was a teenager, dashed out with surprising ease on an electric sewing machine that her father had bought her one Christmas. She had learnt that making her own things was by far the quickest, easiest and cheapest way of by-passing the XXL counters in the shops and, as a result, she boasted a wardrobe packed full of smart – if not colourful – garments.

She had once asked her father about her size, several years ago, when he seemed in a good mood. Although he was never in fact in a bad mood, it was difficult to catch him in a good one.

“Your birth weight?” he had replied rhetorically. “Well, I dunno. You was fit and well, thassall.”

The clear and gutteral remains of his Polish accent were heavily littered with London jargon and East End Grammar. He sat at the kitchen table, where he always sat, his elbows on the plastic cloth, rubbing one hand lightly over his five o’clock stubble. He had a habit of tilting a little on his chair and many a chair had been flung out after only a couple of years’ use because of the weight of the big Pole on it, as he tilted back and forth, always causing the rear legs to crack and then break. He was an untidy man but allowed his only child to clean and tidy-up around him, tut-tutting as she went and nagging at him to at least take his boots off. He couldn’t really see the point in all her cleaning and wiping and washing, but was vaguely aware that it would be a dull old apartment with no woman in it, wedged as it was between two large buildings just off the main road. He didn’t think about it but, had he thought about it, would have been glad of the flowers Adela put on the table, and the smell of beeswax, and the glasses and tumbles all lined up neatly on the shelf.

Adela often tried to picture her mother, even now, after all these years. They seemed an unlikely couple, her parents, the big rough Pole with his heavy jaw and gruff manner and the little Spanish dancer – for she had surely been a dancer – with her olive skin and small feet.

“Is there no photo, dad?” she asked, “a picture of me when I was a baby? Or a picture of my mother?”

“No, no, nothing.”

“But when you got married, dad – surely you had a photo taken ?”

He shrugged his big shoulders. He never talked about Isabella and didn’t like to be questioned about her.

“Aw …… it was right after the war ….. difficult times …..”

“I just find it impossible that you seriously have no photos at all !!”

Adela found this almost insulting.

“I mean, surely your wedding and my birth were …. well, EVENTS ?”

Her father turned away and busied himself cleaning his boots for the factory in the morning. Even if his overalls were dirty – and they almost always were – he made sure his boots were clean. Something about a man having clean boots, he said.

Adela watched him silently. He was always doing something, head down, busy hands, at the kitchen table. Even when the telly was on he kept busy, repairing something or oiling something, and keeping just one eye on the programme.

“I’d just have liked to have seen a photo of my mother,” said Adela, sighing heavily, “or of me when I was a baby. Most people have photos, you know. I don’t imagine I look anything like my mother, do I ?”

“No, you don’t. You look like your grandmother – my mother.”

“A big Polish woman?” Adela asked, smiling encouragingly.

“A strong woman, a farm woman.”

He was silent and Adela waited in case he said something else.

“It took five of us to carry her when we buried her,” he added, his eyes fixing on the wall opposite as the memory flit through his mind.

“……..And my mother …….?”

“She was small. Small and dark. Carried her by mesself when she died.”

Adela knew that this had perhaps gone too far, and that darkness overcame him, the one she had feared as a child for it made him remote, like a stranger, as if he didn’t love her any more or even want her anywhere near him. Far back in to her early childhood, as far back as she could remember, her father would sit engulfed in his own darkness, sometimes for an entire day and on in to the night. That her mother had died was bad enough, but that she had died when she was only two and could not remember her, was intolerable.

“Dad, I’m sorry ……” she began.

“S-okay,” he said, placing his palms flat on the table in front of him, as though making a decision, “it’s only nat’ral you’d want to know.”

A bus going by made the window panes rattle and somewhere in the apartment below a child creid and a mother scolded, background sounds that they had both heard all these years, nothing changing except the varying seasons as they passed by outside the window.

“She was a pretty woman,” he volunteered suddenly.

“Tell me about how you met,” Adela almost whispered, afraid to spoil this.

“Humph! We met, thassall. Met in a queue. Queing up for bread. Rationing, you see.”

“Were you all refugees in the queue?”

“Well, I dunno, do I? I was, she wasn’t. Don’t know about the others, do I?” He tilted his chair back and forth. “She – Isabella – your mother – come to England after the war. Said she wanted to better herself. Came with an aunt. Died, she did, the aunt – before you was born.”

Well, that fugures, though Adela, fighting sarcasm. Couldn’t possibly have a living relative, could I? Aloud she said:

“And did she better herself, my mother ? What did she do ?”

“Worked in a factory. Put handles on drawers. Didn’t better hesself, no.”

“Why not?”

He looked up suddenly and grinned.

“Married me, didn’t she? Married me, then you was born.”

“Was she …..” Adela was suddenly emabarrassed, “was she pleased to have me ……..?”

“Course, course she was. We both was. Midwife come here. You was born over there.” He jerked his head in the direction of his bedroom, at the big olak bed that had been there for as long as Adela could remember.

“Did she die there too?” Adela whispered.

“Yeh ….. she died there.”

He suddenly started picking bits of mud and tar off his boots, using a small penknife, and the bits flicked on to a sheet of newspaper he had spread on the table. Silence filled the room. After a while Adela started peeling potatoes for their evening meal. Usually she would chat lightly – tell him what she was cooking , when they would eat, whether or not she was going out with her friends afterwards. He hardly ever answered and they sat at the table to eat, and they would watch the telly as they did so. At a loss for something to say, yet hoping perhaps he would say more himself, Adela tried to move quietly, almost as though she was afraid of jarring him. She had always, all her life, trodden carefully around him and his grief, very sensitive to his loneliness and his inability to start again without Isabella. Imagination had run riot when she was a girl, so that she pictured her mother as a stunning beauty and her death as a tragedy ……. but she was aware these days of feeling slightly cross about it all …… it was high time to put an end to the awkwardness. She imagined that if they’d had relatives of some sort it would have been easier. Had she had an aunt she could have asked, or a grandparent …… but there was only her father. They lived in a closed-in world of near silence; affectionate and happy enough, but quiet. He had never been a talker. He had some friends at work and he was part of a darts team. In recent months she had noticed that he had started to smarten-up a bit before going out, sometimes o the pub with his mate Jeff, sometimes elsewhere. He was never gone long and was frequently back in before her. He never asked where she went. She knew it was not lack of concern on his part; he just knew she was sensible and safe.

“Dad,” Adela finally broke the silence, “there is something I want to talk to you about.”

Sensing the importance of his daughter’s remark, the big Pole put his knife down again and once more laid his palms lfat on the table in front of him. He looked at her fondly, unable to guess what she wanted to discuss with him, but some inner parental instinct telling him it was about a man.

“Yes, Adela?” he asked.

“I’ve met a man,” she said immediately, confirming his instincts.

“Well, that’s good.”

“That’s why I wanted to know a bit more about my mother ….we have no family, do we? Id’ like a family. Ricardo – that’s his name – has a huge family. We’d like to ahve kids one day – soon, we hope.” She spoke in a rush, having finally broached the subject. “We see each other every day, dad, he works in the hotel. He’s a waitor. And guess what – he’s Spanish!”

If this news shocked or upset him, her father didn’t show it. He smiled very slightly, still watching her closely. He waited for her to say more.

“I’d like to invite him round,” she ploughed on, “I’d like you to meet him. He’s really nice, dad. He has a huge family – eight sisters and one brother! Grandparents, uncles, aunts, and loads and loads of cousins. Mostly in Madrid, but several here. I’ve met lots of them.”

“That’s good,” he said again.

“We’ve been seeing each other for over a year, dad. But I felt you wouldn’t want me to ask him back here ….”

“No, no, that’s OK, you go ahead and ask him back here, Adela”.

Suddenly she felt like a schoolgirl. It seemed so silly now, after all those months of worrying about how he would take it, and now here he was perfectly all right about it.

“I was worried you’d be annoyed,” again she spoke in a rush, wanting to say all the things she had kept to herself. “I badly want to get married and have children …. but I’ve been worried about leaving you ….”

“Ah! My lovely Adela!”

Her father’s sudden exclamation startled her.

“Of course! Of course I want you to be married ……… but you never seemed to have man friends …….. I want grandchildren, lots of them!”

The tension went out of the air and they were both laughing. She hadn’t seen him laugh like that for years, and even then only very rarely. He had laughed with her at the zoo once, and once when she was very little and he was getting her out of the bath. He was not a man prone to laughter.

“I’m really relieved. Ricardo – well, he’s not like you. For a start he’s really short.”

“Short?”

“Yes, short. He’s way shorter than I am. And way thinner. But it doesn’t matter to us. We get along fine. We make an unlikely couple, but we get along fine.”

“Well, that’s all that matters,” he said, “and I’m glad to hear you have a man in your life.”

“I’d have told you ages ago,but you never asked,” said Adela. “I mean, it got sort-of awkward somehow …. you assumed I was with girl friends …..” She breathed in deeply as if taking a gulp of fresh air. “Things will be different now. I shall introduce you. His family will love you. e don’t have to leave, you know, we could live here with you after we’re married.”

“Oh, no …..” he looked at the floor. “It wouild be best if we find you another apartment.”

Adela was astonished.

“Dad! I wouldn’t dream of just leaving you all alone ……!”

“Ah, Adela, my dear child. I will not be alone. You see, you have just assumed that I, when I go out, am with my men friends …..eh ?”

THE END.

www.turquoisemoon.co.uk

The Gun

The Gun.

Afterwards I felt I should have noticed the men who had lowered the coffin. I didn’t take any notice of them at all, yet they must have been there, done it. I couldn’t say if they were young or old, or something in between, yet they had come along and done their job and somebody somewhere had paid them for it. I should have noticed.

They stood around the grave, looking down at the frozen earth. Their breath made white puffs in the air and nobody stayed long. My black dress and coat were inadequate against the cold and, with the crowd, all his clients, almost the whole little town, I retreated with the surge and within twelve hours I was home.

The centre of France is so cold in the winter. Bitterly cold. In the summer the heat gets trapped on to that central plateau, like a furnace of thick, stifling air, so that all effort is too much effort …….. but in the winter the wind whips up off the Atlantic on one side and off far away Siberia on the other …… and the frozen temperature is sanwiched there, almost tangible, till some trickle of sunlight filters through, and some bird shiveringly emits its tiny song …… and the cold fades out and recedes, like spilt ink blotted up on an old school desk.

Years ago now. God knows, it’s all years ago now.

When I was first there I used to say that there was a kind of Bronte beauty to that central plateau. I was lying. Even then, I lied. There is nothing beautiful about it. Black and icy, brown and ragged, the countrside unfolds like a dark old cloak, so sombre that the very loneliness is to die from.

Well, of course, the local people don’t say that. Pierre should have known better. You have to have been born there, and your fathers before you, to be local. Lord knows, you have to have died there.

I met him at a “brocante” one sunny spring Sunday in the village of Clion-sur-Indre. The main road from Chateauroux up to Tours, and thence to Paris, blasts through that little town and the big “brocante” sign invited people to stop and browse, as indeed it did me. In those days the French didn’t realize what a wealth of bric-a-brac and antiques their “brocantes” harboured, and it was ideal hunting ground for me. I had been in the business no more than three or four years at that time. I specialized in antique porcelaine, but anything unusual interested me. At the end of each trip my aim was to have filled my van ready for the market in Portobello and the Lanes in Brighton. I did quite well out of it. I took no more than five days on each trip, doing my round from as far inland as Bourges, but no further east, west as far as Chateauroux, then back up the main road to Tours, Orleans, Paris and home. Periodically, and depending entirely on time and weather, I would travel north-east via Chatellerault to Poitiers, and this was also an excellent route, dotted with down-at-heel little “brocantes” of one sort or another, small flea markets and second hand shops. Limoges, La Rochelle, Saintes ……. I knew all those places before the tourists discovered them …..

He was standing at a stall, the sun shining on to the back of his head, his hands in his pockets, a woolen scarf flung casually around his neck, his jacket open. He bent forwards slightly as he examined the gun. He didn’t touch it. There was a small frown between his eyes and I realized he had no idea what he was looking at.

It was a beautiful old flintlock, circa 1630. The beech wood handle was inlaid with intricately carved ivory depicting a ship on one side and a floral design on the other. It was in excellent condition. It was very cheap, ridiculously cheap, exactly what I liked.

“Is it real?” I heard him ask.

“Mais oui!” exclaimed the owner, an elderly man with an unshaven jaw, and he then launched in to a long story about how his grandfather came to own it. Pierre listened politely.

I waited, holding my breath, for the right moment. My hand ready, I watched Pierre’s face and, the second his gaze moved off to another object (a ghastly orange vase – art deco has since become popular, but it wasn’t then) I leant forwards and picked up the gun. It was a beauty.

“Not only is it real,” continued the old man, “but there is gunpowder in it too!”

This made Pierre look round. He smiled at me. He inclined his head slightly. Aged in his early thirties, his face was handsome, clean-shaven, strong-boned. He had the poise and expression of an educated man. His hands, now out of his pockets, were fine and white, the hands of ……. I wondered ….. a doctor, a lawyer. No taller than I, Pierre oozed a sexuality that stuck me forcibly and it was the first – and the last – time I immediately felt a powerful sexual attraction to a man.

Later, after we had made love, in the sleepy fog of post-orgasm exhaustion, he told me that he had felt the same.

Pierre lived and worked in Loches. He was a notaire and, as was the way in those old backwater French towns, he had the social status of a god. I only twice ever went to the room that was his office, situated on the ground floor of a huge old stone pile of a building, once when I met him and once when I left him.

The property was what he called a “Maison de Maitre” – the master’s house. A huge entrance hall with a fleur-de-lys tiled floor, a few notice boards and several leather arm chairs were dotted about. This was his waiting room. Off one side was his secretary’s office and to the other his own, modern and bright. On the mantelpeice was a large photo of a house and another of a young woman with very short blond hair. He saw me looking.

“That is my home,” he said, pointing to the ivy-covered walls in the picture. It was magnificent. “And this was my girl-friend. She died in a car crash a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry …..”

“Not at all.” He put the photo in a drawer. “It is high time I moved on.”

From the hall a wide stone staircase led upstairs. We made our way slowly up, looking at the portraits that hung there, mostly very dusty.

“My forefathers,” said Pierre. “This house was built in 1680 and has always belonged to us. We have not lived in it since I was a boy – it is too big and requires too much maintenance.”

It was beautiful. A small mullioned window on the stair looked out onto an overgrown garden, and the landing boasted huge oak floorboards, now slightly musty for lack of care. There was very little in the way of furniture.

“So you use this building just for your office?”

“Yes. We maintain the roof and walls and perhaps one day we will restore it. But for now it is just my office.”

We made love amid the eiderdowns in a big old four-poster bed which had probably seen the births and deaths of Peirre’s gransfathers. I had never done such an impetuous thing before and I doubted Pierre, careful and organized, had either. There was no candlelit dinner, I didn’t even know his full name. Our love-making was total. We had been together for a thousand years. We were brand new to each other. We couldn’t get enough of our very passion, or of its very sating. I loved his body. lean and firm, he lay back on the tousled bed in the darkening room and we listened to the sound of passing traffic in the street below, and watched our reflections in the grey mirror over the fireplace opposite.

I was soon to know that mirror off by heart. Every blemish, every fissure in the ornate frame, every black age spot, every angle of the marble fireplace. I was soon to know every crevice in that room, each piece of furniture. Even the dust was sacred, a witness to our love and our love-making. I loved him.

Thus it was that my trips to France became more frequent and the route took on a solid sameness that soon grew comfortable in its familiarity. Usually, however, I stayed in Tours where – Pierre explained – there were plenty of restaurants to go to and museums and galleries to enjoy. My hotel was on the park, overlooking children on swings in the background, and framed by magnificent trees that brooded quietly as summer came and then turned imperceptibly in to autumn, and then winter was back.

Pierre never stayed all night with me. People were old-fashioned back then. He worked long hours. He took the French two-hour lunch breaks and we would sit up on that huge old bed above his office, like naughty school children, eating baguette and cheese and drinking red wine. Our sex was frantic, frenetic, as though we were trying to top-up before I went away again.

Pierre was totally against my moving permantently in to the area. After it was all over I could see why, of course. But at the time I was hurt. He kissed me. He said he wanted me to get to know France much better before I took such a big step. I had yet to meet his family. His family would expect us to marry. I shall buy you a big ring, he said, and kissed my ring finger. More importantly, not only his family but the whole little town would be aghast at their notaire marrying an English girl. We must take it very slowly, he said. Very slowly. Very carefully.

Odd that. My family were not perturbed about me marrying a Frenchman. Sure, they’d have preferred a nice local boy, but a French notaire was fine. I showed them photos of Pierre. My mother said he looked nice. I wanted to bring him to England to meet them. I had a photograph of myself professionally taken.

“Put it on your desk,” I told him.

“But of course!” he said. “Then I can see you every day!”

I loved his old-fashioned charm. He still lived with his parents somewhere on the other side of Loches. He often devoted Sundays to them, sometimes Saturdays too. During the winter he liked to go hunting with his father. I understood and respected that. I spent my time looking round premises in Tours – somewhere suitable for my antiques shop, I thought, with perhaps a large flat over it. For Pierre was right about that – Loches would stifle me, once we were married, and a flat over my shop would be excellent for me during the week. Perhaps I’d be able to persuade him to buy a house somewhere half way between Loches and Tours. That would be ideal. I dreamt on. I made plans. There are few things as wonderful as being in love with a man who is in love with you.

For his birthday I decided to give him the gun.

I drove down to Loches early afternoon even though we had arranged to meet there the next day. I love surprises. Nice ones. I picked up a cake en route. We’d eat it on that big old bed. We’d take off all our clothes and sit naked and eat the cake. I wished I had a thermos. I could have made tea. That would be so English, I though. English tea and cake in the big old French bed. I smiled to myself. Even though he didn’t understand antiques, he’d be pleased with the gun. I parked. It was raining. I went up those three first steps and opened the huge heavy door. I listened. I could hear his secretary on the phone. I looked at my watch. I’d never met her. Usually I came later, when I knew she had gone off to lunch. I listened more. I listened at his door too. Silence. I knocked on the secretary’s door and went in. She sat at her desk.

“Where is Maitre Rullier?” I then asked the secretary. She was startled. Had not heard me come in. She was in her fifties. I was inordinately glad about this. Silly. She wore a cheap top with a hideous brooch. There was a smell of cigarettes.

“Monsieur will not be in till this evening after we have closed,” she told me primly. “Did you have an appointment ?”

“Yes,” I lied. “But I am early – he is not expecting to see me till this evening.”

“You will have a long wait, I’m afraid. He is very rarely out, but today is not only his birthday but it is also Madame’s birthday and their fifth wedding anniversary – all on the same day! They always spend the day together and go somewhere nice”.

“I’ll wait for a while ……” I went back in to the hall and sat down on the nearest chair.

I waited. I flicked through magazines. I combed my hair. I studied the wall opposite. I rubbed a bit of mud off a shoe. I could hear a clock ticking somewhere. I thought about what she’d just said, that secretary with the hideous blouse and the cigarettes. It took an eternity to sink in. These things do, you know. I rose slowly. I went in to his office.

On the mantlepeice was the photo of the blond girl with very short hair. I picked it up. I carried it in to the secretary.

“Is this Pierre’s wife?” I asked her.

“Why, yes – did you go in to his office ?! Madame, you must not! It is private!” She snatched the photo from me and scuttled over in to Pierre’s desk. “Please do not go in there again, Madame,” she said sternly, “this is the waiting room here. You must wait here.”

So I did. That’s where I waited. At around five-thirty the woman left, flicking on the light as she did so. She said she had telephoned Monsieur who had confirmed that I could wait. I went up to the bedroom. I waited. I wrapped in gun in the eiderdown. And waited.

The wind whips in off the Atlantic, far away now. The graveyard must be frozen in winters like this. I only ever think of it in winter. Frost on the stone. No, there is no Bronte beauty to it. As I said, it was a lie.

THE END

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