by Claire King
Maman came here on holiday too, once upon a time. She said she was looking for peace and quiet. But instead she found Papa and stayed for ever. Whenever Maman told me about meeting Papa – and I made her tell me about it a lot – she would turn pink and smile so hard that tears squeezed out. Even before he died. Papa was her handsome prince, she said.
Maman is pushing through the crowds belly first. She has her hands on it, so no one bumps the baby, but it looks as though someone has tied a string to her belly button and is pulling her along. As she marches through them, people step away from her, making a bubble of air around us like a cage.
There are some children from my old nursery school. I wave at them as I am tugged past and shout, Coucou! But they don’t wave back. They start to laugh.
Papa was an orange but we are apples, I say.
You know why you are super-clever? says Margot.
I’m not.
You are.
Why?
Because you can speak all the languages and they can only speak one.
I can’t speak all the languages, I say. What about Spanish?
Well then most of the languages.
We have come to a corner where a man is roasting chickens on spits. The air is full of roasting flavours and the corner is blocked by people huddling by the stand just to taste the chicken smell, even if they aren’t going to buy one. We have never bought one of these chickens but I am sure I know how delicious it would be. I slow down, letting the saltiness fill my mouth and my ears eat up the sizzling sound. Maman grabs me by the hand and pulls me away.
As we turn the corner, there is Claude. He is standing with Merlin at the butcher’s van. The butcher is wrapping up meat in white paper parcels. Merlin is staring at it, then he sniffs the air and turns his head my way. When he sees us he barks a loud hello and wags his flappy tail.
Claude turns too and looks over in our direction then says something to Merlin. He looks at Maman, then at me and Margot, then back at Maman. He smiles half a smile. He looks like he wants to be friendly but thinks Maman might bite him. With the head she has on her today I am afraid she might.
He needn’t worry, because Maman doesn’t see him at all; she is following her list. As we pass by him I look up. He is turning back to the butcher to pay for his sausages, but not before winking at Margot and me.
At the market we have a routine. It means we do the same things every week. We get our meat first and it goes in the bottom of the basket. Then we go to the vegetable stall and we buy something green, depending on the weather. In the summer that means courgettes and artichokes, green beans and peas in pods. After that we go to Marcel the fruit man under his stripy yellow awning. He is quite fat with white hair and a red face and an apron covered in seeds and juice. And he has one gold tooth. His wife is there too. She is thin and happy-looking and doesn’t say much. As Marcel juggles plums into brown paper bags, for weighing, she is arranging the fruit and bringing out new trays of things from the back of a white van.
While Maman is choosing between different kinds of plums and apricots, round tomatoes on vines or the ones that look like small red pumpkins, we stand in the queue – there is always a queue. Margot decides on one kind of fruit and does counting; she can count all the numbers, which is clever but quickly becomes boring. What’s worse, if someone buys some of whatever she is counting she has to start again. I just like to press my nose close to the fruit displays to breathe in the warm, ripe smells. Marcel always notices me and comes to tell me how beautiful I am.
Today there is a cantaloupe cut open on top of the others, green on the outside but orange on the inside. I can smell the honey-sweetness from far away. I put my face so close to it I could reach out and catch the juice on my tongue. My nose is tweaked.
Hello, green-eyes, Marcel says, how are your curls today? Hey, Dolly (he calls me that, but it’s not a good nickname: I am not a dolly at all, I am a five-years-old girl). Hey, Dolly, what would you like from Marcel today? Usually he gives me apricots or slices of peach and a pinch on the cheek. Today Marcel hands me a nectarine, which I share with Margot. Marcel laughs and says, You’d better get home, Dolly, there’s going to be a storm.
When Maman has chosen, he changes his voice to a more special one and says to her, Hello, Madame, how are you today? Then he nods at her belly and says, Can’t be long now!
Maman, as usual these days, does a smile that is not a smile and says, Hello. She looks up at the sky, which is getting dark.
After fruit we buy green olives, scooped into a clean jar that Maman pulls out from her basket. Then we go for cheese, usually goat’s cheese because that was what Papa always asked for, and then to the baker’s for tomorrow’s croissants. When Maman was cheerful she would buy us a treat to share, a pain au chocolat or a brioche, but today we just get the croissants and hurry away.
Come on, says Maman, let’s get a drink before we go home.
Ooh yes, says Margot, I would like a glass of lemonade, please, with an ice cube and a pink straw.
But that’s not what Maman means. In the middle of the village square is a fountain where pigeons take their baths in the pools at the base. All around its sides, dark metal fish spurt water out of their mouths and we catch it in ours, Maman too. The holiday people look at us strangely, as though we are savages to drink the water, but you can tell that they would like to join in. Maman splashes it on to her face and neck and I copy her. The cool water feels perfect against my summer skin.
As we go back up the lane to the house, Maman is huffing and puffing. She has one hand on her basket and the other on her back. Every few steps she is swapping hands. Now it is Margot and I who are leading the way and Maman who is trailing behind. Even without the sun, the day is turning very hot and we are all sweating. About halfway up, Maman stops and just sits down on the path. She takes off her shoes and rubs her feet which are big and very pink. She breathes like this: her-hoo, her-hoo, her-hoo.
It takes us a long time to get her home, and when we walk into the kitchen, Maman puts down the basket and drops into a chair. I get her a cold drink from the fridge and then lay out everything on the table for our market-day lunch: bread and butter with salt on, slices of tomatoes, cheese and olives. Maman drinks her drink and watches me without smiling. She is holding her head up with one hand, her elbow on the table.
I’m sorry, Pea, she says at last. I think I’m going to go and have a lie-down. I watch her drag herself upstairs without eating a bite.
Shall we eat, or go and play? says Margot.
Both, I say grumpily. First, lunch. I’ve been hungry ever since the chickens.
I make two plates of food, with all our favourite things. I put more salt on the bread than I should and leave off the cheese. I find a bottle of fizzy drink in the pantry and manage to get it open. I eat my tomato like an apple, getting the juice all over my dress, and I use my fingers for the olives, licking off the oil and going back into the jar for more without washing my hands. When we have finished eating I leave the food uncovered and we go out to play without clearing the plates.
Children from the village used to come here all the time, to play in the fields. They made dens, and tree houses, and the big ones sometimes left bottles and litter. Our barn has its back turned to the fields, with one round eye looking out to the high pasture and the wing turbines. Around the edges of our courtyard we have a lot of fruit trees: a small bundle of apple trees that maybe once were an orchard, two pomegranate trees, a fig tree and a quince tree next to each other, an olive tree on its own and a great big cherry tree.
The fruit game started with the quince tree. The quinces are no good at all to eat, and anyway the tree is sick and all the fruit goes brown and bobbled. The summer when I was three years old some boys from the village picked all the quinces from the tree and threw them at the back of the barn, trying to score goals through the ox-eye. Most of the fruits rotted around the bottom of the barn, only a few got in. Papa found them near his tractor and lau
ghed. Funny game, he said.
In autumn they started on the pomegranates. We don’t pick many to eat or sell; they usually just burst open on the tree. Then the magpies peck at the jewels inside until the fruits fall off and smash. The boys had got better at the fruit game and a lot of the pomegranates went through the hole. The ones that didn’t exploded on the wall, the seeds making a glittery red carpet by the barn. Papa grumbled as he swept up the mess.
The next spring the boys took cherries off the tree, all the ones they could reach. The fruit was too good to waste so they ate the cherries then tried with the stones, either throwing them or spitting. But the stones were no good for that so they started using the unripe apples. It was just after Maman came home from the hospital, which was bad luck for the boys because Papa exploded.
Enough is enough! he shouted at them. I had never heard him shout before, not once.
We eat those apples, he said. They are not toys, and neither is my barn. Go and find something useful to do with your weekends, and if I ever catch you taking my peaches I will really give you something to be sorry for.
The boys never came back, so last year’s pomegranates fell off the trees as usual and there were plenty of cherries on the tree that I could knock off with the mop. But it had been nice to have other children up here even if they weren’t my friends. Sometimes now the fruit looks lonely.
Margot, I say, I have the darkness and it’s cloudy. We can go to Windy Hill. I don’t say it like a question because I am not feeling in a very good mood.
That’s OK, says Margot, and takes my hand.
On Windy Hill there are pine trees and poplar trees, fig trees and oaks. It smells of salt, herbs and animals’ skin and now, in summer, it smells like the earth is cooking. There are gorse bushes with yellow flowers that look like purses and smell like coconut. In between the big boulders there is lavender and rosemary, which you can chew if you are hungry.
Today there is a strong breeze that feels delicious in my hair and I stand for a while letting myself be blown and staring out at the turbines. The ground is hard and stony here and not comfortable to sit on. Even in spring, when the poplar trees throw off swirling balls of fluff that make a soft white carpet on the hill, when you would think it would be nice to sit down on it, the stones come through and leave purple-red bruises on your legs.
Out behind the wing turbines you can usually see the sea if you squint a little bit. If you use your imagination you can even see pink flamingos wading through the étangs on stick-legs, grazing the salty water for their food. If you come here early in the mornings you can see the sunrise, turning everything from grey to rosy.
Nothing is rosy now, though. Not blue either. The sky is low-down swirls of grey and the air is warm and heavy. We can’t stay too long, I say.
We haven’t seen good clouds for ages, says Margot. Let’s see what there is.
So even though these ones are dark and low and not very pretty, I unstick my eyes from the turbines and start to name them.
Elephant, dragonfly, house, I say.
Sausage, robot, knickers, says Margot.
Then she begins on the clouds right above her, tilting her face up so far she nearly falls over backwards.
Oh! Lie on your back, she says.
No, it’ll hurt!
Go on, just try, she says. And she lies down in the scrubby dirt.
I lie down beside her, our feet touching and the ground digging into my back, and we stare up at the gloomy sky.
By lying like this the clouds blowing fast overhead don’t look like animals any more, but monsters. In the distance there is a rumbling of very quiet thunder which makes it even worse. We lie here scaring ourselves until a giant purple-black cloud sails up, making its shadow right over us and bringing a cold wind with it that whips up the dust, sharp on to my face. But I am busy thinking. There is a strange mistiness under the cloud, as though parts of it are breaking away and flying off in the wind. I am trying to figure out what it is doing when a piece of the sky hits me between the eyes.
To begin with I think the boys have come back and are throwing peach stones at us, until I see the chunk of ice at my feet, which is unusual. I sit up and shout, Hey! But no one is there. A second one hits the top of my head, and then another smacks me on the back. Now big lumps of ice are falling all around. It starts off as a pattering, but quickly becomes a smashing and a clattering of icy stones, bouncing off the rocky hill, and my less rocky head. Where they hit my bare arms and legs it stings and burns.
Come on! says Margot, pointing at a big fir tree nearby. We dash under the umbrella of branches, pressing ourselves up against the trunk. The branches are thick and spread wide from the trunk but the ice is coming in sideways and snapping around my feet.
The sky suddenly lights up in a big flash, a crack of thunder booms and I can’t help my tears.
Don’t worry, says Margot, it won’t last long.
I don’t like it.
It will go past soon, Margot says. You saw how hard the wind is blowing.
But the sky is dark all around and so many hailstones are falling so fast that I can’t see anything beyond the tree.
Margot, I want Maman, I cry.
Hang on, Pea.
There is another flash of bright white light and a smashing like cymbals by my ears. I think about climbing up into the tree, but there are no footholds, the needles are spiky and blowing in the wind. I hug myself against it closer, pressing one ear to the scratchy bark and covering the other with my hand. Margot presses up behind me. She starts to sing.
I hear thunder! I hear thunder! Hark, don’t you? Hark, don’t you? Pitter patter raindrops, pitter patter … she stops without finishing the song.
Through the thinning shower of ice, a shadow appears on the path. It is moving quickly towards us, with one glowing white eye and a black coat flapping in the wind. It’s a storm-witch! I scream. But it keeps on coming and I don’t know what to do. I keep screaming as it gets closer and closer. Then I see. It is not a witch at all, but Claude, holding a coat over his head and staggering towards us, fast.
What are you doing here? I shout, because Claude belongs to the meadow not Windy Hill. But he doesn’t answer. He grabs my arm hard, pulling me away from the tree and under his coat-roof. Through panting breaths he says, Go!
The thunder seems to be all around now, the skies growling angrily as we stumble through the pelting ice across the high pasture and down a dirt track. But it is not the one that leads to our house.
It’s the wrong way! I shout, but Claude says nothing.
We are moving too fast for me to shout in his ear. I am holding on to Claude’s T-shirt and being sort of dragged along. I am not at all happy, but before I have a chance to concentrate properly on what I would rather be doing we are arriving at a big stone house. I recognise it – it is the one we saw this morning from the road. Claude is not taking us to the house, though, but towards a barn next to it. As he rattles the latch on the big wooden door, another crack of thunder shakes my feet and the sky lights up as though someone has lifted its lid off. At last the door swings open and I am shoved inside. I stand at the entrance feeling dizzy and ready to cry again.
Are you OK? Claude asks.
We nod, miserably. Although Claude is a grownup, he doesn’t seem to know what to do next. For a minute he is just standing there, panting like a dog. The hailstones are thumping down on the roof and on the wooden shutters where the windows would be. Claude throws the raincoat down on to the stone floor of the barn and turns to close the door.
Have you got any towels? I ask him.
He keeps his back to me and doesn’t answer. Then he turns and stares hard.
Could we have some towels, please? I ask again.
Claude looks around. Right at the back of the barn are some bales of hay stacked up against the wall.
Sit down over there, Pea, he says. I’ll find something. And he goes back out into the storm, slamming the door behind him.
Let’s have a look around, while he’s gone, says Margot.
I daren’t, I say. What if he comes back? He told us to sit here.
Not me, just you, she says. I’m not scared. And she hops down from the hay to go exploring. I follow her with my eyes.
Against one wall there is a big pile of logs, stacked neatly in rows. Margot sniffs at them, but I can smell them from here. They smell like just the firewood we have at home, which is chopped-up oak trees. By the door where we came in there are two sacks of dog food, some paint tins with drippy lids, white and yellow, and a stack of black buckets. Margot looks in the buckets and shrugs. Empty.
On the other wall there is an old armoire by the shuttered window and lots of tools hung up on nails, just like Papa has at home: saws and knives, spades and rakes and hammers.
The hay takes up half of the other wall, and then in the space that is left, not far from where I am sitting, is a corner cluttered with big things that wouldn’t hang up on nails. Margot stops by the corner and points.
Look, Pea! Look!
There is a wheelbarrow, a ladder, some ropes and tarpaulins and right at the back there are two shiny little red bikes.
Chapter 5
Can we ride on them? The bikes have taken my mind off the bruises coming up on my neck and back.
Claude, who has just walked back through the barn door holding towels, looks over at the bikes.
Ah, he says. Listen, we’d need to ask your maman first. He passes me a towel and I wrap it around me. He drapes another one over my head so I look like I’m getting married.
She won’t mind, says Margot.
