We All Ran into the Sunlight (29 page)

18th April 2007
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: Baseemapé[email protected]
Subject: Daniel

I have loved Daniel Borja for almost all of my life, Ma. I know who he is and what he is like. He may have been around the world and seen all kinds of things and he seems, when you talk to him now, like the most easy-going man on earth, but in his heart he’s a flaker. He won’t be tied down
because
in his heart he doesn’t believe in anything. He’ll never commit himself; he won’t sign up. He doesn’t trust.

I knew that he would simply up and run for the hills. That’s life, Ma. We can’t change.

And sometimes I think how strange it is that everyone – you, me, Frederic, Lucie, Arnaud Borja, even Kate Glover – we have all loved him so much, and we still love him, yet he is like the empty heart at the centre of us all. He is what binds us
together
. And yet who is he? What does he do for us? Into him we have all thrown so much of ourselves. And then sat in the silence that follows when
nothing
comes back to us. We shout; he doesn’t echo. He is already gone. He runs and runs and yet he is carried by all of us.

Sylvie x

P.S. Yes, I have spent some of the money. I have bought all that I need for the nursery and I spared no expense. It is like a dream in that room now. A brand-new cot and a brand-new mobile, and beautiful curtains and sheets and a desk of
drawers
which is handpainted with little white
butterflies
. Kate is thrilled with it too. Almost all of her rooms are painted white like this. And we keep all the shutters open and all the internal doors shut so that each and every time when you come into a room you are almost blinded.

29th April 2007
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: Baseemapé[email protected]
Subject: Hi Ma

I’m sorry to hear about Paul Borja having died. Was it cancer? Had he had it for a while?

And thanks for sending Lucie’s journal. I know that Kate is keen to read it, though I did tell her that you found it mostly unreadable. I can’t see what there would be of interest in it, anyway. Didn’t you say that all she did all those years was sit up there in an annexe room above Paul’s flat
going
on and on about the past?

Ma, what a time it’s been. Aside from the impending birth, there is so much to do in preparation for our first guests in August. Two of the rooms are booked already and the first of the landscape courses has already got five students booked in for the second week in August. Kate and I will take it in turns to go to the classes I expect – though, as you can imagine, there will be a huge amount to do back at the ranch. It’s getting warmer up on the heath in the day now and the light is good, still clear. I will remember this for when it comes to the painting class for next year. Kate is really obsessed with it all. For now, though, she is only expected to draw.

(Did I tell you I cut a lovely thick fringe? Should have done it years ago!)

But I’m far too busy for idle chit-chat these days! I’ve set up an office in a corner of the chateau kitchen and brought the PC over. We’ve got a faster internet connection too, which is excellent for our marketing.

As for the bump, well goodness me! I had no idea at all that I would feel this enormous and there’s no question that it will be a relief when this baby is at last born and I have my body back to myself again! I’ll keep you posted.

xSylvie

29th June 2007
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: Baseemapé[email protected]
Subject: pictures of Ruby

Dear Ma

I thought you would like to see these pictures Kate took out in the garden this morning. Everyone in the village thinks that she is the most beautiful baby anyone has ever seen. The doctor tells me that the birthmark will just fade in time so we don’t need to worry too much.

I am absolutely flat out, Ma, what with this and the business. But thanks so much for your help and for your kind words.

Love

xSylvie

P.S. Kate read the journal. She said it was really interesting.

16th August 2007
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: Baseemapé[email protected]
Subject: Re: pictures of Ruby

Dear Ma

Here are some more pictures of Ruby that Kate took in her nursery. Doesn’t she look so sweet when she is sleeping? You will see that I moved things around a little in her room. I think it looks better with the wardrobe against the back wall now.

It has been a strange time with this very hot weather. At the beginning of August the temperature began to soar and the leaves dried out around the fountain. Kindly, Sandrine from the shop was able to take Ruby out in the pushchair for a few afternoons walking up and down the avenue of trees, which allowed me to take a break from her and from the guests and just lie on my bed upstairs and listen to the cicada throbbing in the trees, not stopping until nine or ten at night – such a sound that I have wondered, lying awake in siesta time, how the visitors would ever
concentrate
on their painting. Yes, it has been so hot… I have cooked and cleaned and organised picnic lunches. And I have noticed all the time Kate spends sitting out in the courtyard chatting to the guests, and carrying on with that old tutor the way she does. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t jump her, the way she carries on. It’s a relief to think that the courses will soon be at an end and then she will be able to spend a bit more time with me and with Ruby.

But all in all we are well. This morning I was wearing the long black linen dress you sent me. I had to change after lunch because I got so much milk on me but it was nice to see that it does fit! Everything else in my wardrobe is way too small.

This afternoon I wanted to take Ruby for a walk and photograph the houses in the square with the doorways and the paint peeling off the shutters and the roses bobbing gently on the balcony. The brochures we are putting together had come out very expensive on the first quote but I decided to take this aspect of the business into my own hands and spend some more of the money that Daniel sent on marketing.

How very clear and uncomplicated is this way of life, Kate said to me when we first started work on the chateau. And how very real. How lucky, she said, that we were born here where things were so much clearer – clear from the beginning. I thought she was being horribly patronising when she said this. So then we had this big debate about how people like her romanticise life in these villages when in reality it’s not
romantic
at all. But the thing is, Ma, I begin to know what she means as I walk about in the streets here with Ruby and sit outside the café in the square where everyone stops to lean into the pushchair and talk to me and my baby and asks how we are.

I breathed very deep here this afternoon. Of the air and the roses and the dusty smell of these houses, of the people sleeping back to the
beginning
of time, their hearts full of the sun and
human
kindness. And I wrote this down in my notes for the brochures, Ma. Because it just seemed so right. ‘Full of the sun and human kindness.’

2nd October 2007
From: sylviepé[email protected]
To: Baseemapé[email protected]
Subject: Re: pictures of Ruby

Dear Ma

October now and the square is deserted. The
fountain
is working properly again but the pool is full of leaves. The shop hasn’t changed hands, but they have got rid of the old people’s clothes and started selling other things like towels and bath mats at the front of the shop. I suggested to Kate that we bought some for the chateau bathrooms but she didn’t like the quality and so she decided to buy them from England online. For the New Year they will have a box of fireworks on the counter in the shop. This morning we heard that an old
winemaker
from the next village died falling under the wheels of his tractor, and there will be a funeral on Tuesday.

The grapes have just about been gathered now and the Spanish kids who came for the harvest have gone back home, which, as always, is a relief to all the residents because they were more noisy than ever this year and no one liked them hanging about in the square. It’s mostly the old people here who are not very tolerant. I was discussing this with Kate, you know, and she said, well, whose world is it anyway? It’s not about land, though, is it? It’s just humans getting irritable with each other and trying to survive with the old problems of weather and money. But still, there is this
tolerance
issue. The Mayor told me that things are only going to get worse and worse with the suburb situation in Paris. There are not simply not enough jobs.

But dad is getting a shift or two in the café. And I am cleaning as much as I can.

It was a hot summer, this year, people said. But not too bad.

Some new parking spaces have been marked up outside the church. A baby has been born to Marie and Guy’s daughter who has come to live in no. 15 on the square. I hope that she and Ruby will be friends.

Nothing else has changed. Nothing anyone could write to anyone about. The village is quiet, with that blue in the mornings and that air of tranquility that Kate tells me she first fell in love with. Just wait till she finds all the mice coming in off the fields…