The Virgin Blue (19 page)

The woods around Moutier were so big that she knew of places where no one went. She took the kid to one of these spots, built a shelter of wood and hay, fed it and looked after it for a whole summer without anyone knowing.

Except for one. She was letting the kid suck at a sack filled with its mother's milk one day when Jacob stepped out from behind a beech tree. Squatting beside her, he put his hand on the kid's back.

— Papa wants to know where you are, he said as he stroked the kid.

— How long have you known I come here?

He shrugged and played with the kid's hair, flattening it one way and then the other.

— Will you help me look after it?

He looked up at her.

— Of course, Maman.

His smile was so rare that to see it was like receiving a gift.

This time she was ready when she heard the pedlar's whistle. The pedlar smiled broadly when he saw Isabelle. She smiled back. While she and Hannah looked at his linen Jacob climbed up and began to show him his pebbles, passing on her message in a low voice. The pedlar nodded, all the while admiring the strange shapes and colours of the stones.

— You have a good eye,
mio bambino
, he said. Good colours, good shapes. You look and you say not much, not like me! I love my words, me, but you, you like to look and see things, yes? Yes.

When he began to recite messages his eyes lit on Isabelle and he snapped his fingers.

— Ah, yes, I remember now! Yes, I find your family in Alès!

Despite themselves, even Etienne and Hannah looked up at him expectantly. He warmed to his audience.

— Yes, yes, he said, waving his hands elabourately. There I see them in the market of Alès, ah,
bella famiglia
! And I tell them of you and they are happy you are well.

— And they are well? Isabelle asked. And there is a baby?

— Yes, yes, a baby. Bertrand and Deborah and Isabella, now I remember.

— No,
I'm
Isabelle. You mean to say Susanne. Isabelle had not thought the pedlar could make a mistake.

— No, no, it is Bertrand and the two girls, Deborah and Isabella, just a baby, Isabella.

— But what about Susanne? The mother?

— Ah. The pedlar paused, looking down at them and stroking his moustache nervously. Ah, well. She died giving birth to the baby, you see. To Isabella.

He turned away then, uncomfortable at passing on bad news, and busied himself in sorting through leather harness straps for a customer. Isabelle hung her head, eyes blurred with tears. Etienne and Hannah left the crowd and stood silently at a distance, heads bowed.

Marie took Isabelle's hand.

— Maman, she whispered. Some day I will see Deborah. Won't I?

The pedlar met Jacob later, further down the road. In the dark the exchange was made, goat for blue. The boy hid the cloth in the woods. The next day he and Isabelle shook it out and stared for a long time at the block of rippling colour. Then they wrapped the cloth inside a piece of linen and hid it in the straw mattress Jacob shared with Marie and Petit Jean.

— We will do something with it, Isabelle promised him. God must tell me what.

In the autumn they harvested their own hemp crop. One day Etienne sent Petit Jean to the woods to cut thick sticks of oak which they would use to beat the hemp. The others set up trestles and began bringing out armfuls of hemp from the barn to lay across them.

Petit Jean returned with five sticks over his shoulder and the nest of Marie's hair.

— Look what I've found, Mémé, he said, holding out the nest to Hannah, the red catching in the light as he turned it.

— Oh! Marie cried out before she could stop herself. Isabelle flinched.

Etienne glanced from Marie to Isabelle. Hannah studied the nest, then Marie's hair. She glared at Isabelle and handed the nest to Etienne.

— Go to the river, Etienne ordered the children.

Petit Jean set down the sticks, then reached over and pulled Marie's hair as hard as he could. She began to sob and Petit Jean smiled, with a look that reminded Isabelle of Etienne when she first knew him. As he walked away he held his knife by its point and flicked it away. It lodged neatly in a tree trunk.

He is ten years old, she thought, but already he acts and thinks like a man.

Jacob took Marie's hand and led her away, looking back at Isabelle with wide eyes.

Etienne said nothing until the children were gone. Then he gestured at the nest.

— What is this?

Isabelle glanced at it, then looked at the ground. She did not know enough about keeping secrets to know what to do when they were revealed.

So she told the truth.

— It is Marie's hair, she whispered. She has been growing red hair and I pull it out in the woods. The birds took it to make a nest. She swallowed. I didn't want her to be teased. To be – judged.

When she saw the look that passed between Etienne and Hannah her stomach felt as if she had swallowed stones. She wished she had lied to them.

— I was helping her! she cried. It was to help us! I didn't mean any harm!

Etienne fixed his eyes on the horizon.

— There have been rumours, he said slowly. I have heard things.

— What things?

— The woodcutter Jacques La Barbe said he thought he saw you with a kid in the woods. And another found a patch of blood on the ground. They are talking about you, La Rousse. Is that what you want?

They are talking about me, she thought. Even here. My secrets are not to be secrets after all. And they lead to other secrets. Will they find out about them too?

— There is one more thing. You were with a man when we left Mont Lozère. A shepherd.

— Who says that? This was a secret she had kept even from herself, not allowing herself to think about him. Her secret secret.

She looked at Hannah and suddenly knew. She can talk, Isabelle thought. She can talk and she is talking to Etienne. She saw us on Mont Lozère. The thought made her shiver violently.

— What do you have to say, La Rousse?

She kept silent, knowing words could not help her, fearing more secrets would fly out if she opened her mouth.

— What are you hiding? What did you do with that goat? Kill it? Sacrifice it to the devil? Or did you trade it with that Catholic pedlar looking at you like that?

He picked up one of the sticks, grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the house. He made her stand in a corner while he searched everywhere, throwing down pots, stirring the fire, pulling apart their straw mattress, then Hannah's. When he reached the children's mattress Isabelle held her breath.

Now the end has come, she thought. Holy Mother, help me.

He turned the mattress over and pulled out all the straw.

The cloth was not there.

The blow was a surprise; he had never hit her before. His fist knocked her halfway across the room.

— You won't drag us down with your witchery, La Rousse, he said softly. Then he picked up the stick Petit Jean had cut and beat her till the room went black.

6
THE BIBLE

E
ither the smoke or the cold air from the open window woke me. When I opened my eyes I saw the orange button of a lit cigarette, then the hand holding it, draped over the steering wheel. Without moving my head I followed the arm up to the shoulders and then to his profile. He was looking out over the steering wheel as if he were still driving, but the car was stationary, the engine dead, not even ticking the way it does when it's first switched off. I had no idea how long we'd been sitting there.

I was curled sideways in the passenger seat, facing him, my cheek crushed against the coarse weave of the headrest; my hair had fallen over my face and stuck to my mouth. I glanced between the gap in the seats; the Bible was on the back seat, wrapped in a plastic bag.

Though I hadn't moved or spoken, Jean-Paul turned his head and looked at me. We held each other's gaze for a long time without saying anything. The silence was comfortable, though I couldn't tell what he was thinking: his face wasn't blank, but it wasn't open either.

How long does it take to overcome two years of marriage, two more of a relationship? I had never been tempted before; once I'd found Rick I'd considered the search over. I had listened to my friends' stories about their quest for the right man, their disastrous dates, their heartbreaks, and never put myself in their place. It was like watching a travel show about a place you knew you'd never go to, Albania or Finland or Panama. Yet now I seemed to have a plane ticket to Helsinki in my hand.

I reached over and placed my hand on his arm. His skin was warm. I moved my hand up over the crease of his elbow and the ring of cloth where the sleeve was rolled up. When I was halfway along his upper arm and not sure what to do next, he reached over and covered my hand with his, stopping it on the curve of his biceps.

Keeping a firm grip on his arm, I sat up in my seat and brushed the hair from my face. My mouth tasted of olives from the martinis Mathilde had ordered for me earlier in the evening. Jean-Paul's black jacket was draped around my shoulders; it was soft and smelled of cigarettes, leaves and warm skin. I never wore Rick's jackets: he was so much taller and broader than me that his jackets made me look like a box and the sleeves immobilized my arms. Now I felt I was wearing something that had been mine for years.

Earlier, when we were with the others at the bar, Jean-Paul and I had spoken to each other in French the whole evening, and I'd vowed to continue to do so. Now I said, ‘
Nous sommes arrivés chez nous?
’ and immediately regretted it. What I had said was grammatically correct, but the
chez nous
made it sound like we lived together. As was so often the case with my French, I was only in control of the literal meaning, not the words' connotations.

If Jean-Paul sensed this implication in the grammar, he didn't let on. ‘
Non, le Fina
,’ he said.

‘Thank you for driving,’ I continued in French.

‘It's nothing. You can drive now?’

‘Yes.’ I felt sober all of a sudden, and focused on the pressure of his hand on mine. ‘Jean-Paul,’ I began, wanting to say something, not knowing what else to say.

He didn't respond for a moment. Then he said, ‘You never wear bright colours.’

I cleared my throat. ‘No, I guess not. Not since I was a teenager.’

‘Ah. Goethe said only children and simple people like bright colours.’

‘Is that supposed to be a compliment? I just like natural cloth, that's all. Cotton and wool and especially – what's this called in French?’ I gestured at my sleeve; Jean-Paul took his hand off mine to rub the cloth between his finger and thumb, his other fingers brushing my bare skin.

‘
Le lin
. And in English?’

‘Linen. I've always worn linen, especially in the summer. It looks better in natural colours, white and brown and –’ I trailed off. The vocabulary of clothes colours was way beyond my French; what were the words for pumice, caramel, rust, ecru, sepia, ochre?

Jean-Paul let go of my sleeve and rested his hand on the steering wheel. I looked at my own hand adrift on his arm, having overcome so many inhibitions to get there, and felt like weeping. Reluctantly I lifted it off and tucked it under my arm, shrugging Jean-Paul's jacket over my shoulders and turning to face forwards. Why were we sitting here talking about my clothes? I was cold; I wanted to go home.

‘Goethe,’ I snorted, digging my heels into the floor and pushing my back impatiently against the seat.

‘What about Goethe?’

I lapsed into English. ‘You would bring up someone like Goethe right now.’

Jean-Paul flicked the stub of his cigarette outside and rolled up the window. He opened the door, climbed out of the car and shook the stiffness from his legs. I handed him his jacket and climbed into the driver's seat. He slipped on the jacket, then leaned into the car, one hand on the top of the door, the other on the roof. He looked at me, shook his head and sighed, an exasperated hiss through gritted teeth.

‘I do not like to break into a couple,’ he muttered in English. ‘Not even if I can't stop looking at her and she argues with me always and makes me angry and wanting her at both the same time.’ He leaned in and kissed me brusquely on both cheeks. He began to straighten up when my hand, my bold, treacherous hand, darted up, hooked around his neck, and pulled his face down to mine.

It had been years since I'd kissed anyone besides Rick. I'd forgotten how different each person can be. Jean-Paul's lips were soft but firm, giving only an indication of what lay beyond them. His smell was intoxicating; I pulled away from his mouth, rubbed my cheek along the sandpaper of his jaw, buried my nose in the base of his neck and inhaled. He knelt down and pulled my head back, running his fingers through my hair like combs. He smiled at me. ‘You look more French with your red hair, Ella Tournier.’

‘I haven't dyed it, really.’

‘I never say you did.’

‘It was Ri –’ We both stiffened; Jean-Paul stopped his fingers.

‘I'm sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn't mean to –’ I sighed and plunged ahead. ‘You know, I never thought I was unhappy with Rick, but now it feels like something isn't – like we were a jigsaw puzzle with every piece in place, but the puzzle frames the wrong picture.’ My throat began to tighten and I stopped.

Jean-Paul dropped his hands from my hair. ‘Ella, we have a kiss. That does not mean your marriage falls apart.’

‘No, but –’ I stopped. If I had doubts about me and Rick I should be voicing them to Rick.

‘I want to keep seeing you,’ I said. ‘Can I still see you?’

‘At the library, yes. Not at the Fina station.’ He raised my hand and kissed its palm. ‘
Au revoir, Ella Tournier. Bonne nuit
.’

‘
Bonne nuit
.’

He stood up. I shut the door and watched him walk over to his tin-can car and get in. He started it, beeped the horn lightly and drove away. I was relieved he didn't insist on waiting until I left first. I watched till his tail-lights winked out of sight at the end of the long tree-lined road. Then I let out a long breath, reached to the back seat for the Tournier Bible and sat with it in my lap, staring up the road.

I was shocked at how easy it was to lie to Rick. I had always thought he would know right away if I cheated on him, that I could never hide my guilt, that he knew me too well. But people see what they look for; Rick expected me to be a certain way, so that was how I was to him. When I walked in with the Bible under my arm, having been with Jean-Paul only half an hour before, Rick glanced up from his newspaper, said cheerfully, ‘Hey, babe,’ and it was as if nothing had happened. That was how it felt, at home with Rick clean and golden under the light of the reading lamp, far away from the dark car, the smoke, Jean-Paul's jacket. His face was open and guileless; he hid nothing from me. Yes, I could almost say it hadn't happened. Life could be surprisingly compartmentalized.

This would be so much easier if Rick were a jerk, I thought. But then I'd never have married a jerk. I kissed his forehead. ‘I have something to show you,’ I said.

He threw his newspaper down and sat up. I knelt beside him, pulled the Bible out of the bag and dropped it in his lap.

‘Hey, now. This is something,’ he said, running his hand down the front cover. ‘Where'd you get it? You weren't clear on the phone about where you were going.’

‘The old man who helped me in Le Pont de Montvert, Monsieur Jourdain, found it in the archives. He gave it to me.’

‘It's
yours
?’

‘Yeah. Look at the front page. See? My ancestors. That's them.’

Rick glanced down the list, nodded and smiled at me.

‘You did it. You found them!’

‘Yes. With a lot of help and luck. But yes.’ I couldn't help noticing that he didn't inspect the Bible as closely and lovingly as Jean-Paul had. The thought made my stomach knot with guilt: these comparisons were completely unfair. No more of this, I thought sternly. No more of this with Jean-Paul. That's it.

‘You know this is worth a lot of money,’ Rick said. ‘Are you sure he
gave
it to you? Did you ask for a receipt?’

I stared at him, incredulous. ‘No, I didn't ask for a receipt! Do you ask for a receipt every time I give you a present?’

‘C'mon, Ella, I'm just trying to be helpful. You don't want him changing his mind and asking for it back. You get it in writing, you won't have that problem. Now, we should put this in a safe deposit box. Probably in Toulouse. I doubt the bank here has one.’

‘I'm not putting it in a safe deposit box! I'm keeping it here, with me!’ I glared at him. Then it happened: like one of those one-cell creatures under the microscope that for no apparent reason suddenly divides into two, I felt us pulling apart into distinct entities with separate perspectives. It was strange: I hadn't realized how together we'd been until we were far apart.

Rick didn't seem to notice the change. I stared at him until he frowned. ‘What's the matter?’ he asked.

‘I – well, I'm not going to put it in a safe deposit box, that's for sure. It's too valuable for that.’ I picked it up and hugged it to me.

To my relief Rick had to go on his German trip the next day. I was so shaken by the new space between us that I needed some time alone. He kissed me goodbye, oblivious to my inner turmoil, and I wondered if I was as blind to his internal life as he seemed to be to mine.

It was a Wednesday and I badly wanted to go over to the café by the river to see Jean-Paul. Head won over heart: I knew it would be better to leave things awhile. I deliberately waited until I knew he'd be safely buried in his paper at the café before I left the house on my daily rounds. A chance encounter on the street around so many people fascinated with our every move was distinctly unappealing. I had no intention of playing out this drama in front of the town. As I approached the central square Jean-Paul's depiction of Lisle and what it thought of me came flooding back; it was almost enough to make me run back to the privacy of my house, and even use the shutters.

I made myself keep going. When I bought the
Herald Tribune
and
Le Monde
, the woman who sold them was perfectly pleasant, giving me no strange looks, even remarking on the weather. She didn't seem to be thinking about my washing machine, shutters or sleeveless dresses.

The real test was Madame. I headed resolutely to the
boulangerie. ‘Bonjour, Madame!
’ I sang out as I entered. She was in the middle of talking to someone and frowned slightly. I glanced at her audience and found myself face to face with Jean-Paul. He hid his surprise, but not quickly enough for Madame, who eyed us with triumphant disgust and glee.

Oh, for Christ's sake, I thought, enough's enough. ‘
Bonjour, Monsieur
,’ I said in a bright voice.