What kind of elephant? she asked.
How many kinds do you know? Petit Christophe asked back.
Petit Christophe often answers questions with other questions and the answer is always crimped inside his question like a walnut within its hard shell. It is always difficult to pry that answer out, but his questions frequently make her laugh.
Cap tries to imagine the tongue of a whale without success.
She switches to a calf’s tongue, which is easier, which she has often seen. She thinks of how it resembles a gigantic slug or perhaps a monstrous snail without its shell, slimy and slick, but with a leathery blister-crowded skin. That is what she thought when Petit Christophe first brought one home. Cap did not even want to touch it, but Marie-Claire told her: ‘Calf’s tongue is a delicacy. A supreme delight.’ Marie-Claire taught her what was required.
Cap thinks of how the tongue must be soaked for such a long time, six hours, and how the water has to be changed several times, and then how the pink slug has to be boiled and simmered for an hour at least, with an onion and some garlic cloves in the pot, and how she has to keep skimming the grey foam from off the top. She wonders why the tongue is not green on its upper side, given how often the leathery muscle has turned grass into weedy swamp soup. She has asked Petit Christophe about this. ‘Why doesn’t a calf’s tongue turn green?’
‘Why doesn’t yours?’ he responded, tickling her. ‘You eat spinach, you eat green beans. Why doesn’t your tongue turn green?’
She giggled. ‘You are so silly,’ she said. ‘But where does the foam come from when I’m boiling it? And why is it grey?’
‘When you watch cows chewing grass, what do you see?’
‘There’s foamy stuff coming out of the sides of their mouths.’
‘Exactly. That drool gets stored in their tongues with all the grey dust from the field. That’s what you are boiling out.’
Cap decides she does not want to eat calf’s tongue anymore.
If Petit Christophe brings another one home, she will still have to prepare it for her father. After the tongue-slug has been boiled forever and forever and then cooled, she has to peel it. The skin of a calf’s tongue makes her think of Monsieur Monsard’s neck. Both are covered with tiny pimples and blisters. Both make her want to throw up.
Both make her think about what happened to the husband of Marie-Claire and what happened to her own mother and to the mother of Petit Christophe. She wants to know and she doesn’t want to know what things were done to her father.
She thinks about peeling the butcher’s neck from his hairline to the top of his collar. How can the butcher and her father sit in the same church and receive the sacrament at the same time? Then she remembers: Monsieur Monsard does not go forward for the sacrament.
‘Why doesn’t he?’ she asks her brother.
‘Why do you think?’ her brother says. ‘He has a guilty conscience, that’s why.’
‘Is that why you won’t make confession or take the sacrament anymore?’
‘Yes. But I can’t tell the priest because I don’t trust him. Remember that Papa doesn’t know what I know. No one knows anything. Nobody talks. And everyone has to go on living in this village.’
‘Michel knows that you know. And everyone knows what happened to the husband of Marie-Claire,’ Capucine objects. ‘And if you saw the Boche with Papa in the slaughter yard, then Papa must know it was the butcher –’
‘People know,’ Petit Christophe acknowledges. ‘But nobody wants to know and they want to forget. The priest knows. Monsieur Monsard knows. Michel knows. Papa knows. But they keep on trying not to know.’
Cap would like to peel Monsieur Monsard all the way down to his heels. She imagines the butcher’s tongue on their kitchen table, how she would slice it, extra thin, and then sauté it, and then feed it to the dogs.
‘P’tit Christophe,’ she whispers in church, ‘did la comtesse know?’
‘Shh,’ her brother warns.
The countess is accepting the host on her outstretched tongue. The priest puts his hand on the blue boy’s head and blesses him. Like Cap, the blue boy has not yet made his First Communion. He is too young.
As la comtesse and her son are returning to their pew, Cap and her father move forward. Petit Christophe leaves the church. His footsteps, on the long stone walk to the west door, sound loud. Cap wonders what Father Boniface is thinking. She is level with the countess and her son. For a moment, the boy raises his head and his eyes meet those of Capucine. Two seconds pass. They can see themselves in each other’s eyes and Cap can hear the boy’s voice replaying itself in her head. You’re the gardener’s daughter, you don’t have a mother, you don’t bathe and you don’t wash your hair, you are dirty and wild. The insult feels as rank and sharp as a freshly dropped cow pat. She pulls her eyes slanty with her fingers and pokes out her tongue. She notes the nervous way the boy looks swiftly at his mother. She notes his relief (the way his shoulders go slack) when he realises that his mother did not see.
At the altar rail, Cap finds herself kneeling between her father and Chantal Monsard. Monsieur Monsard does not leave the church but he does not come forward for the sacrament either. Nor does his son Michel. (At least, Cap’s brother tells her later, at least they acknowledge they are in a state of mortal sin. They know what they have done.) On the other side of Chantal is her mother. Chantal has been confirmed; Cap receives only the hand of the priest on her head, but she has a close-up view of all the tongues stretched out, waiting for the wafer as for manna from heaven.
The tongue is not an attractive part of the body, Cap thinks. She will never eat calf’s tongue again. She will not soak it or boil it or peel it. In particular, she will never slice it again.
She watches all the tongues of St Gilles tasting the body of Christ. They are swallowing His flesh and blood.
In the slaughter yard, Petit Christophe sees so much blood every day. He sees stone channels flowing with blood. Perhaps that is why he can no longer bear to watch it being drunk, let alone drink it himself. Perhaps his reaction is no different from how Capucine feels about calf’s tongue. Perhaps he is remembering what he saw in the killing yard when the Boche did things to their father. Why did this happen in the slaughter yard? Her father never goes there, had no reason to go there, so the trap must have been carefully laid.
Did the butcher invite her father for pastis and then suddenly …?
Afterwards, outside the church, the gardener and the butcher nod to each other but do not speak. Petit Christophe and Chantal stand talking under an oak. Cap can see that the two fathers do not like this and nor does Michel, Chantal’s brother, who no longer lives in St Gilles but comes home on weekends. He is a big surly young man who works at the motorcycle plant in Tours and whose own moto leans against the oak.
There is a roar and a belching of black exhaust and another moto blasts through the quiet. This is Olivier, friend and fellow worker of Michel Monsard. They are both employed on the assembly line in the same factory and live in the same boarding house in Tours. Olivier guns his moto so close to Chantal that she and Petit Christophe are forced to scramble aside. Olivier doffs his cloth cap and offers his pillion seat to Chantal.
She hesitates.
It is known that Olivier has been courting Chantal and that her father and her brother approve. Chantal looks from Petit Christophe to Olivier and back again. She lowers her head, afraid to decide. Olivier guns his moto and roars off in the direction of Tours. Michel Monsard jumps onto his own moto and follows.
Cap is only partly watching her brother and Chantal. She is waiting for the countess and the boy in blue to come out of the church. Now she can see them below the great rose window, the cobalt and crimson circle that is scattering colour and light on the priest. Father Boniface stands in the arched entry of the western facade, below the sculpted Apostles, watching Petit Christophe and Chantal and the motos heading back towards Tours. The priest startles when the countess touches his arm. He bows
slightly. The countess never lets go of her son’s hand.
Cap does not remember making a decision or moving from her father’s side but here she is, close enough to the boy to touch his blue dress, close enough to touch his mother and the priest.
‘You should apologise,’ she says to the boy. ‘You said I was dirty and wild. And you should also apologise, Madame la Comtesse, for telling him that.’
Neither Father Boniface nor Madame la Comtesse seems able to speak. They look as stunned as though one of the stray churchyard cats has made a statement in impeccable French. Cap and the boy in the blue shift lock eyes but Cap cannot read what the boy’s eyes say.
‘Capucine!’ her father calls. ‘Madame la Comtesse,’ he says, nodding politely. ‘I ask your pardon. She is an impetuous child without a mother.’
‘It is nothing, Monsieur le Jardinier,’ the countess says, leading her son away.
‘Bravo!’ Petit Christophe whispers in her ear, tousling her hair. ‘Come to the butcher’s tomorrow. Bring a basket and I’ll fill it with offcuts and bones. Rib bones, leg bones, perfect for soup.’
‘But no calf’s tongue,’ Cap warns. ‘I don’t want any more tongue.’
‘Your own tongue will get you into quite enough trouble, ma petite soeur,’ her brother says.
5.
On her park bench, Cap is still staring at the white envelope which someone slid under her hotel door that morning, the envelope which contains an unsigned note. She does not need to read the note again. For some reason, doubtless to do with superstition or vague atavistic anxiety, she does not wish to reopen the envelope, but she makes her way around the northern shore of the lake to the boathouse restaurant. She settles at a table in the outdoor bar and orders a small dish of olives and a glass of wine. ‘Someone will be joining me,’ she explains. ‘I won’t order lunch until then.’
‘No problem,’ the waiter assures her. ‘Chef’s special is garlic shrimp.’
Because of the autumnal chill, and because the terrace is in shadow, Cap huddles in her jacket and watches the slow gliding of the rowers and boats. The air is fragrant with garlic and herbs and grilled fish and steamed vegetables and she is back in St Gilles, back in the gardener’s cottage, back in the kitchen where the peeled potatoes are gently bumping against each other in boiling water. When they are cooked Cap spears them one by one with a long-handled fork and places them in a blue ceramic dish. They are new potatoes, quite small, freshly harvested, and they look like delicate eggs in a nest. A tiny fog of steam rises from them. Cap tosses a slice of butter into the cobalt bowl and watches it melt. With a wooden spoon, she stirs the potatoes until each looks like a golden egg. She chops parsley and rosemary and lavender and sprinkles the clippings over her buttered jewels. They are really too beautiful to eat, but Papa will love them.
Her hands wrapped in a rag, Cap opens the oven door and slides out the roasting pan. Three rabbits huddle against each other in the way of children spooning their little bodies in a cot. The vessel is so hot that the rabbits twitch and flinch from contact with the searing sides of the pan. Cap moves slowly and carefully towards the oak slab of the kitchen table where the cooling rack stands. Any minute now her father will appear in the doorway, smeared with dirt, weary, and ravenous for supper.
There it is: the sound of boots being scraped at the door.
She sets the heavy pan on the table, but when she turns it is not her father she sees. It is the boy in the blue dress. He is clasping and unclasping his hands. He blinks rapidly. ‘I came,’ he says.
For several whole seconds, Cap is too astonished to speak. Then she asks: ‘Came for what?’
‘To apologise.’
‘Oh. That’s …’ Cap is not prepared for this. What she has really wanted, she suddenly knows, is not to get an apology, but to make the mother and the boy feel buffeted, to shock them, to wind them. She wants them to sense that they are not immune to being treated with disdain, not immune to being scraped, not immune to contempt. She wants them to know what that feels like.
‘And to see the secret entrance to the cellars,’ the boy adds.
‘Ah …’ Cap grasps the edge of the kitchen table to steady herself. ‘That. I made that up. I was joking. There’s no secret entrance.’
‘Oh.’ The boy seems crestfallen. ‘Maman thought there might be.’
‘No. There isn’t. You told your mother what I said?’
‘No,’ the boy says with nervous urgency. ‘No. I didn’t. Maman says there have always been stories. There was supposed to be a tunnel from the church to the chateau from before the Revolution. It was supposed to end in our cellars, but if it did it got destroyed in the First World War. Maman never believed the stories anyway, but when you said … I thought perhaps they were true.’
‘No,’ Cap says. ‘No. They’re just stories. Everyone in the village tells those stories.’ She takes a handful of the boy’s dress. ‘Is it silk?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve never felt silk before.’ She lets it slip between her fingers. ‘It’s so soft. But aren’t you ashamed to wear a dress?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why do you do it?’
‘My mother is too sad if I don’t. She made a vow.’ He takes a deep trembling breath. He speaks nervously, too softly, into the fragrant silence of roasted rabbit. ‘I believed you,’ he accuses, in some anguish, as though a terrible betrayal has occurred. ‘You said there was a secret cellar. You promised you’d show me if I came outside the wall.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Cap does feel compunction. She feels complicit. She feels the way she feels about the soft dead rabbits before she skins them and puts them in the oven. ‘I lied to you. You were so … I wanted to trick you outside the courtyard. But you ran away.’
‘Because Maman called me. She could see me from the house and I’m not allowed to talk to you.’
‘What would she do to you?’
‘She wouldn’t do anything. But she would be sad and I don’t … Her sadness is heavy, it is very heavy, it is like a … like something I can’t carry. So I can’t talk to you.’
‘You’re talking to me now.’
‘I know. But it’s dark and no one can see us.’ The boy in the blue dress bites his lip. ‘I climbed out my window,’ he explains, part plaintive, part boasting, part resentful. Just look at the trouble I’ve taken. And all to please you. He is trying very hard not to cry. Cap cannot quite decide whether she is full of exasperation or full of guilt for lying to him twice. She thinks that maybe she liked him better when he was giving orders and being a shit.
‘You’ll have to climb back in through your window,’ she says.
It is immediately clear that such a consequence has not occurred to the boy in advance. He puts his hands to his cheeks. He looks stricken.
Cap studies him, puzzled. ‘Are you afraid of your mother?’
The boy’s eyebrows buckle upwards, deeply startled. ‘No, no,’ he says emphatically. ‘No!’ He stamps his foot. For a moment, the imperious son of the chateau is back on stage. ‘My maman is in the Dictionnaire de la noblesse –’
‘Yes,’ Cap says. ‘You told me. So you had better climb back in through your window.’
‘I don’t know if I can reach.’
Something about his intense anxiety touches Cap. ‘I can help you. You can climb on my back.’
‘Maman might see us.’
‘In the dark? Anyway, what if she does? I’m not scared of her.’
‘I don’t like to make her sad,’ the boy confesses. ‘She is always sad, my maman.’
‘Why is she sad?’
‘I don’t know, but I think it is my fault.’
Cap frowns, trying to unpuzzle the boy. She asks suddenly: ‘You want to stay and have supper with us? With me and Papa?’
The boy’s face changes. It is animated by a hungry look that has nothing to do with food. His eyes glitter.
‘It’s potatoes and roast rabbit,’ Cap offers.
Something about this statement makes the boy uneasy. He turns away. ‘I’ve eaten supper already,’ he says.
‘Don’t you like rabbit?’
‘Maman says your father is a poacher. He is trapping our rabbits.’
‘Nobody owns rabbits,’ Cap says.
‘Maman says she should report him to the gendarmerie in St Gilles, but she will turn a blind eye because –’
‘How dare you! The gendarmerie don’t have enough food for their children. They need the rabbits my father gives. He is a fine braconneur, my papa. Go!’ She points to the door. ‘Let your maman snitch on my papa. The gendarmes, like the dogs, are our friends, tu con!’
‘Who’s going to snitch on me?’ The great bulk of Christophe le Jardinier darkens the doorway. ‘And who’s a stupid asshole here?’
‘He is!’ Capucine says.
The boy is visibly trembling. ‘I came to apologise,’ he pleads.
Cap’s father laughs, an amused, gentle, friendly Gargantuan kind of laugh. ‘What’s all this then?’ He lifts the frail slip of the girly-boy with his hands – he might have been picking up a kitten – and holds him at eye level. ‘Well, if it isn’t the Vanderbilt cub,’ he says. ‘You poor little sod.’ He sets the child down. ‘Your maman and I were children together. What’s your name?’
‘His name is Gwynne Something Something Something,’ Capucine says.
‘My name is Gwynne Patrice de la Vallière Vanderbilt,’ the boy says.
The Claimant Page 17
