We All Ran into the Sunlight (10 page)

‘The women all want one,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘The old women, they scoff and snort and walk past with their noses in the air. But the young women. Young women like you, my dear. You all want to be Mrs America.’

Lucie clutched hold of the woman’s sleeve.

‘Will you come? Will you come to my house for some tea, Madame? I’d so like to talk to a female. I’d so like to have someone like you to talk to.’

‘Madame, you are shaking. What is it, please?’

‘Oh God, I’m so tired, I can’t sleep.’

‘Then you must go to see Doctor Clareon. He has many things to help the women here sleep.’

Then Arnaud came into the shop. He tripped on the step and stood in the darkness, scowling.

‘We have to go, Lucie. I need to get back, to work. I have work…’

‘Yes, can I just pay for…?’

She hooked her purse out of her basket and clicked it open but Arnaud had already taken her arm. The
shopkeeper
said to pay for Mrs America next time. ‘You keep it, dearie. You go now. Go to Dr Clareon now. We don’t have to live in pain.’

Arnaud had been to the bank. On the way back from town, he drove the motorcar as if he was trying to run it into the ground. Across the heath the sky was brilliant blue. The sun shone down. Wild iris flower everywhere, deep purple skirts fluttering in the clear air. Spring was leaping. The Algerian woman was nearly due.

‘I will go to Paris tomorrow, Lucie. I don’t see that I have any choice.’

‘To see your brother?’

‘What can I do? I need money. He has money.’

‘Will they know, the men, what to do in the vineyard without you?’

‘Of course.’

Lucie came back to the fire. The nights were getting warmer now but there was still a week or so to go before they would sweep out the fireplace.

‘I think she is about to give birth, Arnaud.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘By the way she walks. Her back is aching. In two weeks she hasn’t left the chateau.’

Arnaud stood by the fire, teasing the burning vines with his foot.

‘And you?’

Lucie closed her eyes.

The water was green.

‘Not all true.’

‘Um?’

‘Not true that people can start again. Not really. I don’t think I can.’

‘What?’

‘Start again. I don’t know if I can.’

She lit the cigarette in its holder. Her hands were small. The woman upstairs, Fatima, her hands were also small. Lucie thought of the nice things, the bin on wheels, Mrs America, the hand cream in the basket, the spotlights from Paris. They were the things that kept her afloat. But she wasn’t a fool. She knew what she did. She knew there was no escape from the past. There was never anything but the baggage, and each man and woman moving beneath it; sideways, lurching forward in a brief moment of light and forgetting, tottering backwards,
collapsing
under the weight. She tried to tell him. All he said was:

‘We can’t make a baby if you won’t let me touch you, Lucie.’

‘Arnaud,’ she pleaded, but she knew of course that this was true.

Arnaud had gone to Paris. She woke in the night to the sound of someone screaming. She pulled on the brown wool dress.

Upstairs the moonlight fell on everything, seeking out corners, lifting everything in its ghostly tint. She didn’t need the candle and she blew it out, placing it carefully down on the ground at the entrance to the room.

She had reached the door at the far end of the corridor, the fifth room. The Algerians told her this room had a fine view on the garden and the old stone storehouse nestled among its trees.

Lucie took a deep breath, holding the air in, using it to try to undo the knot of fear that sat high in her chest. Her heart thumped as she pushed at the door.

‘Thank goodness,’ said the doctor, standing as she walked inside, gesturing towards the figures huddled on the floor.

‘How did you get here?’ she whispered excitedly. ‘How did you get in?’

‘One of the men came to get me,’ he said. ‘Walked all the way into town. I brought him back in the car and we came straight up here.’

Lucie was pleased to see him.

‘Two hours old,’ whispered Doctor Clareon.

‘Asleep?’

‘Both of them. Exhausted. A long labour, made much worse by her fear.’

‘Fear?’

‘It seems she can’t have a man about her now for at least seven days; she can’t pray or fast now for forty days.’

‘Were you here for the birth, Doctor?’

‘Of course.’

‘What name did they choose?’

‘Baseema.’

‘Baseema?’

‘It’s Arabic. It means “smiling”. They will sacrifice a goat in time. Give her a proper naming ceremony.’

‘A goat?’

‘They will find a goat. They will kill the goat and eat it and give the child her name.’

‘Baseema,’ whispered Lucie, rolling the name around her tongue. ‘I’ll buy them this goat, Doctor. I’ll sell
something
– anything – and buy them this goat.’

‘That would be a noble thing to do, Madame.’

‘Noble? God no, not noble.’

The doctor smiled; his eyes were kind but tired. Lucie placed her hand on the soft grey hairs at the back of the doctor’s neck.

‘Where is the husband now?’

‘He’s gone,’ said the doctor quietly. ‘He wanted air.’

Lucie felt her eyes moving all around his strong,
confident
face. Deliverer of children, kind, gentle deliverer of women.

‘Is she happy, Doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘And is it the happiest feeling of all, do you think? Does it wipe all else away?’

‘No,’ he replied, and he kissed her then, placing his hot lips very carefully, very neatly on hers.

‘I think of you so often,’ he said afterwards, and her eyes were filling up now, gazing up into his as if he might be seeing her soul at last, her sweet kindly gentle loving soul, as it should be seen here, like a nurse, in this room of birth and softness and life.

She kissed him briefly and pulled back and went over towards the sleeping mother and child. She put her fingers out to the mattress and knelt beside them with this
feeling
of strength and purpose inside, such as she had never before experienced in her short and disconnected life.

It was Lucie herself who bought the goat from the
shepherd
who walked his flock across the heath. She waited for him one bright morning and sprung out from behind the rocks. All she had was the ring she wore on her
finger
and the chain she wore around her neck. She gave the shepherd the chain and he used his rope to fashion for her a collar and lead so that she could walk the goat back to the village.

Lucie knew that the women of the village would be looking out, through the cracks in their shutters, as always, and so she approached the chateau through the vineyard, pulling the goat quite easily, while feeding it handfuls of grass from her hand. It was only her neat little round-toed shoes that suffered from the indignity of this journey, and these she was able to clean satisfactorily while the
Algerians
prepared for the ceremony.

Arnaud didn’t come. ‘Which suits me fine,’ whispered Lucie to her new friend, and she and Fatima worked all day to clear out the old junk from the storeroom in the garden so that they could eat in there if it rained.

But it didn’t rain that night of the naming ceremony and they made a wonderful fire and even the doctor came, parking his car outside the gates and walking discreetly across the courtyard and over to the garden room. He was a short man with a thick moustache but he was clever, gracious, and Lucie didn’t mind him holding her and kissing the back of her neck while they stood behind the storeroom after the goat had been eaten and the Algerians had taken the baby back indoors.

‘Just looking at you, standing there beside the fire, with the baby in your arms, Lucie.’

‘Am I beautiful?’ she asked him, and he kissed her hard then and it almost felt exciting to her, to know that her husband sat in his library deep inside the chateau and here she was outside with the doctor – kissing in the
darkness
– with the smell of a baby on her hands; new life and loveliness come to them all at last.

Within a week of the naming ceremony, Fatima was out to work in the vineyard with the men. There was a little money to be made on the land and Lucie agreed that Fatima should do it. On the Monday morning, Lucie stood in the doorway and waved her off and then she peeked into the blanket in her arms to see a little more of the honey-coloured cheek.

Dr Clareon said Lucie would never be able to have a child. But he so looked forward to her weekly consultations. He told her that she needn’t be frightened or haunted any more; this memory of cuts he could wipe with pills that would keep her feeling upbeat and alive. He also gave her something to sleep. She would need to be strong, he said, because the Algerian family needed her now to care for their child.

So Lucie focused on the child in the house, she relished the nesting; she fattened herself, and she took the pills. In the nursing chair she sung lullabies and when Baseema was sleeping she trotted up and down the stairs with
washing
, and clean towels, and cot sheets, and warm bottles of milk. She became an expert at making things last –
using
what was left of the meat to make soup and stew and thick casseroles and soon it would be harvest time and then they would be able to live more off the land. She was busy out in the courtyard too, planting fruit trees;
pruning
the fig.

‘The yield on the fig tree will be tremendous,’ she
whispered
to Fatima one evening. ‘You just wait and see how much wonderful fresh food we will have here to feed us.’

Fatima was reticent. But she was flattered by all the
attention
and her heart softened to Lucie’s advances. Soon it was easy for Lucie to spend almost all day walking around with Baseema in her arms.

‘It’s like I’ve got my own child,’ she said to the
doctor
, when she went to visit him for her weekly check-up. He checked her pulse and kissed her wrist. He checked her breathing and his fingers teased the lobes of her ears. Doctor Clareon kept the shutters closed for her Friday appointment, and Lucie sat in the chair beside his desk while he kissed her and she ran through her mind the list of all the things she would need from the shops. Once or twice he got a little carried away; his hands became hot and he asked her to stay. But then, very quickly, he righted himself. The best thing about the doctor was that he did have this self-control and that was what Lucie loved about him – he was precise with his fingers, and neat and always controlled. And so she allowed herself to be petted in his chair. She gave him fifteen, twenty minutes; sometimes he wanted thirty. And then he slipped behind the curtain and pulled it across the bed while he took his trousers down and re-emerged a better man, he said; lighter in spirit, and mind.

In the village, of course, they all knew about the Algerian child and how Lucie was fast adopting it. In the café, the men who drank with Arnaud said his wife appeared to be thriving on it. Arnaud was getting bigger. His hair was long and straggly beneath his cap. He worked all day and he drank at night. ‘When a woman is happy she cooks like a demon,’ he said to the men in the bar. And so it became known in the village that Lucie Borja had a sense of
purpose
and cooked like a demon, and she tended a fruitful garden.

One by one, at the gate, the women started to appear. They came with ices. One or two of them even came to the chateau for lunch and they went to some trouble, she could see that, to choose an outfit and style their hair.

But something wasn’t quite right. It was as if Lucie was trying too hard and the pressure she exerted made the women feel hot and thirsty. Always, she would be waiting for them, in a pristine pastel-coloured dress and cardigan, waiting for her guests on the top step, her eyes like beads. Down she would rush and come to meet them, chattering nineteen to the dozen, offering her cold little hands and compliments. Everything they said she agreed with
emphatically
, which was unsettling for these country
women
, and strange. Like children themselves they would be ushered through the hallway and out through the echoing kitchen to where the garden table was laid with a white cloth and covered in shiny fruit tartlets and sticky buns she had slaved over – and then the baby there, on display, but tucked up in a pram in the shade.

‘Non-stop, she talks,’ said the women when they got back, at last, to their houses at dusk and gathered for a quick discussion.

‘She won’t draw breath.’

‘She dashes about, in and out of the kitchen, and she does all the work herself, slaving and slaving over the food. It’s a wonder she doesn’t run herself in.’

‘Lord knows why she doesn’t use the Algerian woman, Fatima.’

‘It seems the charwoman has risen ranks in the
chateau
.’

They laughed. ‘She bathes, don’t you know; she was in the bath while we were having tea. It seems Lucie and she are friends!’

For the women, of course, in their grubby little
kitchens
, the talk lingered. Seditious and secretive as a second helping of chocolate sauce, it brought them together in an animated huddle, then drove them apart; each time the temptation strengthening their bond. And so it went on, month after month that first year and the next, shutters flipping open in the wall overlooking the chateau garden. Eyes that were trained to stay low in any case, looked once, twice, took it all in. Scarves were adjusted, shutters closed. They kept shoulder to shoulder on their way back from the post office, their baskets rubbing, their skirts swishing into each other as they whispered and veered off towards the fish van parked in the square.

For these women of the village, it was a way of
speaking
about themselves without saying ‘I’. It was a way of laughing together, warming themselves on the inside while looking appalled on the out. It was affirmation,
unification
in spite.

The truth was that life in the chateau was simple and
routine
those first few years of Baseema’s life. Fatima was a fine, hardworking woman with a sweet smile who was glad of Lucie’s kindness and companionship – the more so when her husband and his brother returned to
Algeria
to fight for the liberation of the people. The two men went to speak to Arnaud about it in his library. They told him they had no choice but to return to their village.

Financially, Arnaud was in a slightly better position by then. He was making some money at last in the vineyard, and he had joined forces with other winemakers in the hills and was proving himself among them as a robust and astute businessman. He cared little for the domestic arrangements in the house – these days the women were all on one floor and Arnaud slept alone in his study at night.

Lucie knew that her husband was quite content that she was absorbed in something that didn’t involve him. The day-to-day demands of a four-year-old kept her
cocooned
from the wider concerns of their world and for the moment at least, that suited him fine. Lucie knew too that he was relieved to have seen her finding a friend in Fatima. Four winters, four summers and the two women working together in the cold and the heat, taking care of the baby girl, telling stories to soothe her at night,
whispering
, singing, their hands moving together in the
moonlight
. One wouldn’t have known that one was the server, the other being served.

Fatima liked to sing the songs she learnt as a child. Desert songs she called them. Crooning at the sink. They rolled up their sleeves together. Lucie showed Fatima how to curl her hair. Baseema skipped in between them. Lucie loved this little girl and her soft fat cheeks more than she had loved anyone and the thought that Fatima might take her daughter back to Algeria because of the deteriorating political situation was too much for her to bear. Time and again she mentioned the benefits of a French education, and extolled the virtues of the small local school. Fatima listened and nodded a lot but it was clear that things in Algeria were not improving and at some point, she said, she and Baseema would be returning to their home.

But then, soon after Baseema’s fifth birthday, Fatima became unwell. Dr Clareon diagnosed tuberculosis, and suggested they move her out of the house and into the garden room.

It was Lucie herself who put the table and chair in there, a low bed, a vase of fresh flowers on the sill. Fatima was laid on the bed while Lucie sat at the table, arranging the flowers in the vase, her bottom pert on the chair.

From the fire the smell of sweet vine smoke filled the room. Lucie insisted on having the fire. Even in the heat of summer.

‘Surely?’ said Fatima, turning to the fire, looking aghast.

But Lucie said the doctor had told her to keep the fire burning for as long as the fever burnt. She didn’t say why. The doctor had put medications on the bedside table. And a bottle of linctus she could take in a hot tea.

Lucie sat with the patient and she thought about how grasshoppers were larger than ever that summer. Huge and monstrous; they clung to the window ledges and reached into the rooms with their antennae. Fatima
barely
noticed. Poor Fatima. So ill she got, so fast.