The Virgin Blue (30 page)

I stopped. We were both quiet.

Then she said, ‘I have had the dream too.’

‘I had it only once, about six weeks ago, back in Amsterdam. I woke up terrified and I was crying. I thought I was being smothered in blue, the blue you describe. It was strange because I felt happy and sad at the same time. Jan said I'd been saying something, like reciting something from the Bible. I couldn't sleep afterwards. I had to get up and play, like tonight.’

‘Do you have any whisky?’ I asked.

She went to the bookcase and opened the cupboard at the bottom, taking out a half-empty bottle and two small glasses. She sat back in the corner of the sofa and poured us each a shot. I considered saying something about her drinking in her condition, but didn't have to: after handing me my glass she took one sniff of hers and grimaced, then uncorked the bottle and poured the whisky back.

I gulped mine. It cut through everything: the fondue, the wine, my misery about Rick and Jean-Paul. It gave me what I needed to ask awkward questions.

‘How long have you been pregnant?’

‘I'm not sure.’ She put a hand up each sleeve of the kimono and rubbed her arms.

‘When did you miss your, your –’ I gestured at her.

‘Four weeks ago.’

‘How did you get pregnant? You weren't using anything? I'm sorry, but it's important.’

She looked down. ‘I forgot to take the pill one day. Usually I take it before I go to bed, but I forgot. I didn't think it would matter.’

I began to say something but Susanne interrupted me. ‘You know, I'm not stupid or irresponsible. It's just that –’ She pressed her hand against her mouth. ‘Sometimes it's difficult to believe there is a connection between a little pill and becoming pregnant. It's like magic, two things that are completely unrelated, that they should have anything to do with each other, it's crazy. Intellectually I can understand it but not truly in my heart.’

I nodded. ‘Pregnant women often don't make the connection between their babies and sex. Neither do men. The two are so different, it is like magic.’

We were quiet for a minute.

‘When did you miss that pill?’ I asked.

‘I don't remember.’

I leaned forward. ‘Try. Was it around the time of the dream?’

‘I don't think so. No, wait a minute, now I remember. Jan was in Brussels at a concert the night I forgot the pill. He came back the next day and that night I had the dream. That's it.’

‘And you and Jan – did you – make love that night?’

‘Yes.’ She looked embarrassed.

I apologized. ‘It's just that I only had the dream after Rick and I had sex,’ I explained. ‘The same as you. But the dream stopped when I began using contraceptives, and for you it stopped once you were pregnant.’

We looked at each other.

‘That is very strange,’ Susanne said quietly.

‘Yes, it is strange.’

Susanne smoothed her kimono over her stomach and sighed.

‘You must tell Jan,’ I said. ‘That is the first thing to do.’

‘Yes, I know. And you must tell Rick.’

‘It seems he already knows.’

The next day I looked at records in the town hall. Though Jacob's grandfather had done a thorough job on the family tree, I felt the urge to hold the source material in my own hands. I had acquired a taste for it. I sat all afternoon at a table in a meeting room, looking through carefully recorded lists of births and deaths and marriages from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I hadn't realized how established a family the Tourniers were in Moutier: there had been hundreds and hundreds of them.

These brief records told me a lot: the size of families, the age they married – usually in their early twenties – the men's occupations – farmer, teacher, innkeeper, watch engraver. A lot of babies died. I found a Susanne Tournier who between 1751 and 1765 had eight children, and five of them died within a month of birth. She died giving birth to the last. I'd never had a baby or a mother die on me. I'd been lucky.

There were other eye-openers. A lot of illegitimacy and incest were openly recorded. So much for Calvinist principles, I thought, but underneath my cynicism I was shocked that when Judith Tournier gave birth to her father Jean's son in 1796, it was recorded in the official records. Other records baldly stated that children were illegitimate.

It was strange seeing all the first names in use back then, to know that they were still being used. But among all the names – many of them Old Testament names favoured by Huguenots like Daniel, Abraham and even a Noah – I noticed there were plenty of Hannahs and Susannes, and later Ruth and Anne and Judith, but not one Isabelle, not one Marie.

When I asked about records earlier than the mid-eighteenth century, the woman in charge told me I would have to look at parish records held at Berne and Porrentruy, advising me to call them first. I wrote down the names and phone numbers and thanked her, smiling to myself: she would have been horrified by my spontaneous trip to the Cévennes and my success despite myself. This was a country where luck wasn't involved; results came from conscientious work and careful planning.

I went to a nearby café to consider my next move. The coffee arrived, presented on a doily, with the spoon, sugar cubes and a square of chocolate arranged on the saucer. I studied the composition: it reminded me of the records I'd just looked at, precisely recorded facts in clear handwriting. Though they were easier to decipher they lacked the charm and haphazardness of the French records. It was like the French themselves: irritating because they weren't accommodating to strangers, but also more interesting as a result. You had to work harder with them, so you got more out of it.

Jacob was at the piano when I got back, playing something slow and sad. I lay down on the sofa and closed my eyes. The music consisted of clear notes, simple lines of melody, like the sound was being picked out with a needle. It reminded me of Jean-Paul.

I was just dozing off when he finished. I opened my eyes and met his gaze across the piano.

‘Schubert,’ he said.

‘Beautiful.’

‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘Not really. Jacob, could you make some phone calls for me?’

‘
Bien sûr, ma cousine
. And I've been thinking about what you might want to see. Family things. There's a place where there was a mill that Tourniers owned. There's a restaurant, a pizzeria now, run by Italians, that used to be an inn run by a Tournier in the nineteenth century. And there's a farm about a kilometre outside of Moutier, toward Grand Val. We're not sure it really is a Tournier farm, but family tradition says it is. It's an interesting place anyway because it has an old chimney. Apparently it was one of the first houses in the valley to have one.’

‘Don't all houses have chimneys?’

‘They do now, but long ago it was unusual. None of the farms in this region had chimneys.’

‘What happened to the smoke?’

‘There was a false ceiling, and the smoke gathered between that and the roof. The farmers hung their meat up there to dry.’

It sounded appalling. ‘Wouldn't the house have been smoky? And dirty?’

Jacob chuckled. ‘Probably. There's a farm in Grand Val itself without a chimney. I've been inside and the hearth and the ceiling above the fire are completely black with soot. But the Tournier farm, if it is a Tournier farm, isn't like that. It has a kind of chimney.’

‘When was it built?’

‘Seventeenth century, I think. Maybe the end of the sixteenth. The chimney, that is. The rest of the farm has been rebuilt several times, but the chimney has remained. In fact, the local historical society bought the farm a few years ago.’

‘So it's empty now? Can we go see it?’

‘Of course. Tomorrow, if it's a nice day. I don't have any students until late in the afternoon. Now, where are those phone numbers?’

I explained what I wanted, then left him to it while I went for a walk. There wasn't much left to see of Moutier that Jacob hadn't already shown me, but it was nice to walk around and not be stared at. After three days here people even said hello to me first, the way no one ever did in Lisle-sur-Tarn after three months. They seemed to be more polite and less suspicious than the French.

I did find one new thing as I zigzagged through the streets: a plaque announcing that Goethe had slept at the Cheval-Blanc inn on that spot one night in October 1779. He'd mentioned Moutier in a letter, describing the rock formations surrounding it, in particular an impressive gorge just to the east of town. It was a stretch to put up a plaque commemorating one night spent there: that was how little had happened in Moutier.

I turned from the plaque to find Lucien coming toward me, carrying two cans of paint. I had a feeling he'd been watching me and only now picked up the cans and moved.

‘
Bonjour
,’ I said. He stopped and set down the cans.

‘
Bonjour
,’ he replied.

‘
Ça va?
’

‘
Oui, ça va
.’

We stood awkwardly. I found it hard to look straight at him because he was looking so hard at me, searching my eyes for something. His attention was the last thing I needed right now. That was probably why he was drawn to me. He was certainly fascinated by my psoriasis. Even now he kept glancing at it.

‘Lucien, it's psoriasis,’ I snapped, secretly pleased to be able to embarrass him. ‘I told you that the other day. Why do you keep looking at it?’

‘I'm sorry.’ He looked away. ‘It's just that – I get it myself sometimes. In the same place on my arms. I always thought it was an allergic reaction to paint.’

‘Oh, I'm sorry!’ Now I felt guilty, but still irritated with him, which made me feel even more guilty. A vicious circle.

‘Why haven't you seen a doctor?’ I asked more gently. ‘He'd tell you what it is and give you something to put on it. There's a cream – I left it at home or I'd use it now.’

‘I don't like doctors,’ Lucien explained. ‘They make me feel – maladjusted.’

I laughed. ‘I know what you mean. And here – in France, I mean – they prescribe so many things. Too many things.’

‘Why do you get it? The psoriasis?’

‘Stress, they say. But the cream isn't bad. You could just ask the doctor to –’

‘Ella, will you have a drink with me one night?’

I paused. I should nip this in the bud: I wasn't interested and it was inappropriate, particularly now. But I'd always been bad at saying no. I wouldn't be able to bear the look on his face.

‘OK,’ I said finally. ‘In a couple of days, all right? But Lucien –’

He looked so happy that I couldn't go on. ‘It's nothing. Some night this week, then.’

When I returned Jacob was playing again. He stopped and picked up a scrap of paper. ‘Bad news, I'm afraid,’ he said. ‘The records at Berne go back only to 1750. At Porrentruy the librarian told me the parish records for the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were lost in a fire. There are some military lists you could look at, though. That is where my grandfather got his information, I think.’

‘Probably your grandfather found everything there was to find. But thanks for calling for me.’ Military lists were no use – it was the women I was interested in. I didn't tell him that.