‘Roman?’
‘I know – pretentious, celebrity moniker. His father chose it.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘It’ll sound great when he’s older.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Five.’ She smiled. ‘Long way to go yet.’
‘Why can’t he stay with you?’
The iron-work creaked as she fidgeted in her seat. ‘It’s a custody thing.’ She took a generous swallow of the wine and waved airily. ‘I suppose you think I meet all my lovers on film sets?’
He humoured her. ‘Don’t you?’
‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘it sounds incredibly glamorous – I meet my lover on the set of a movie, we pose together on the red carpet, we trip along to the premiere in Leicester Square, we arrive together for the awards ceremonies and the announcement of the Palme d’Or. The truth is actors piss and shit like anyone else. I mean I still have to take the rubbish out, I still have to clean the crap out of the drains, I queue up to pay for my shopping at the supermarket—’
She caught the look on his face. ‘Sorry, sorry. Truth is, I went out with a costume designer, I dated a script writer – the less said about that the better – I had a fling with a director, I married the French actor …’ She hesitated a moment and when she spoke again her voice had fallen. ‘It was during the negotiations for this place that Francois told me it was over. I decided to go ahead and buy it anyway.’
Charlie apologised. ‘Don’t rake over any bad memories on my account.’
‘Bank the good memories,’ she replied. ‘Ditch the rest.’
If only it were that simple. For a second or two there was silence.
She scooped up a rock from the ground and idly threw it into the dust a few yards in front. Charlie flinched. The girls are running past him towards the front door …
‘Maman! We’re hungry! What’s for lunch?’ The older of the two is clutching a biscuit tin.
‘What have you got there?’
The girl opens the tin. Inside is a collection of curiosities: an old brooch with missing stones, a belt buckle, some loose beads and a small shiny black object, organic in appearance. The girl lays this strange black object in the palm of their mother’s hand. It is a mermaid’s purse. Maman strokes its smooth surface and touches the tips of its tendrilled corners, uncurling the delicate threads. ‘I forgot you had this,’ she says.
‘Does it really belong to a mermaid?’ The girls ask. ‘Have you ever seen one?’
‘I have,’ she says. ‘A long time ago. She didn’t realise I was watching.’
The children are awestruck. ‘What was she doing?’
‘She was singing a mournfully sad song.’
‘Why was she sad? Had she lost her husband?’
‘I think maybe she had.’ Maman wraps her arms around the girls’ shoulders and kisses them both on the tops of their heads.
She tells them to wait where they are and fetches a wooden chair from the kitchen. She places it in a patch of sunlight. ‘Hélene, you first.’ Standing behind the chair Maman takes a hairbrush from her apron pocket and begins to brush the older girl’s hair. ‘Mermaids comb their hair,’ she says, ‘while sitting on a rock.’ She makes long, sweeping strokes, the static crackling in the air and making the girl squirm. ‘Sit still! Do you think mermaids fidget when they comb their hair?’ When the brushing is finished, Hélene slips from the seat and her sister takes her place. ‘Don’t mermaids braid their hair, Maman?’
‘Sometimes they do,’ her mother replies. ‘It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘Whether they are going to school or not.’
‘Silly Maman! Mermaids don’t go to school!’
‘Of course they do,’ says Maman, ‘how else would they learn their mermaid skills?’
‘It’s quite subtle isn’t it?’ said Anne Marie. ‘The way it comes over you. I noticed you went a bit odd when we were in the Roman ruins … Only you might like to tell me who you keep looking at. Over there.’ Anne Marie jerked her head towards the rear of the garden. ‘What’s going on? What can you see?’
There were two ways the conversation could go from here: ridicule or wide-eyed interest. It was like the concept of angels: some people were willing to believe in their existence, other people considered the idea mentally defective. Which one was she?
‘There are children playing,’ Charlie revealed.
‘They are?’ She scanned the grounds. ‘Where?’
‘Between those two trees over there.’ He pointed.
‘I can see the trees …’ she agreed, ‘… but not the children. Intriguing. Got any other party tricks?’
Ah, now, that was more like it. The casual ridicule he’d been expecting.
‘It’s called “retrocognition”,’ he said. ‘It means I can see into the past.’
‘How quaint,’ she replied, lolling against the arm of the chair. ‘Most psychic people claim to be able to see into the future.’
‘You might be able to identify them for me,’ he said. ‘Judging by their hair and clothes I’m guessing it’s the 1940s. Wartime.’
‘Who? The phantom children? I wouldn’t have a clue. Valérie’s mother might be able to tell you. Although her own upbringing is a little bit hazy.’
‘How so?’
‘Parents killed during the occupation. Sensitive subject, you know.’
There was a silence while he digested this latest information. The top button on her shirt was undone and he caught sight of the slight swell of her breast and a tiny glimmer of lace peeping from beneath the material. The tingle in his loins wasn’t entirely unexpected. If he ignored it, it might go away.
‘Your skill,’ she said. ‘How did you first notice you could do it? When did it first happen?’
‘When I was quite young.’
‘Where? School? Home?’
‘Everywhere.’
‘Fascinating … But all rather far-fetched. How do you convince someone you’re telling the truth?’
‘I don’t.’ He indicated the trees again. ‘They either believe me or not. Do you believe me?’
‘Not sure,’ she said. ‘I like the idea. It appeals to me greatly, but the cynic in me says its absolute eyewash. Explain more.’
‘I can see what’s gone before, events in the past. Things suggest themselves; I get an image inside my head. Whole scenes, sometimes. It tends to happen when I’m emotionally engaged. Otherwise I’m as normal as the next person.’
‘Hm,’ she said. ‘And next you’ll be telling me you bumped into Vincent van Gogh in the avenue Hoche.’
‘It’s not usually that serendipitous. Normally I require something that gives me a direct connection, like an object or personal possession.’
Her silence spoke volumes. She tinkered with the stem of her glass. She was edging towards dismissal, he could tell. It had never been his idea to harness the gift; it was everyone else who assumed he could make use of it. As it was this ability to see into the past merely set him apart from everyone else.
‘Is it safe for you to wander around on your own?’ She mused.
‘My brother checks on me now and again,’ he replied. ‘If that’s what you mean.’
‘The Theo to your Vincent?’
He decided to adopt the light-hearted approach. ‘You know that feeling you get when you’re talking to someone and a strange expression comes over their face and you think: What did I do? Did I say something wrong? The person you’re talking to hasn’t connected with you, doesn’t quite understand where you’re coming from? Well,’ he sat back in his seat. ‘I get that a lot.’
‘And what are the girls doing now?’ Anne Marie asked.
He looked over. The garden seat is gently swinging, and two pairs of turned-in feet, hang limply over the side. The girls lie together, heads touching, arms resting on each other, clutching the dolls to their chests. They have lullabied themselves to sleep.
Chapter Five
Bouncing over potholes and rubble in the weather-
ravaged road, the boiling yellow sun, the shimmering earth, the avenues of writhing cypress trees – all familiar features from van Gogh’s paintings – flashed past the car’s open window as Anne Marie drove towards the Southern coast. He knew that it was unfamiliarity with a right-hand drive that made him think there was less room on the passenger side of the car; but when she changed gear, Anne Marie’s elbow gently brushed his arm and that, he knew, was not his imagination. Her brown skin contrasted sharply with his city white pallor, and her bangles kept sliding up and down her tanned wrists. She looked much healthier than he did.
She smiled. ‘Not far to go.’ Beneath the canopy of the cypresses, the long straight roads went on forever, but he could already see the flat salty lands of the Camargue emerging in the distance.
Beyond Arles, the marshland created by the diverging branches of the Rhône became an alien landscape of vast sky and uninterrupted horizon. The occasional glimpse of a black bull or the flocks of pink flamingo paddling through the wetlands broke up the monotony; otherwise the flat blue went on forever.
It reminded him of the Fens in Lincolnshire; it could drive you mad, this featureless, tree-less countryside. Man needed something on the horizon to anchor him, make him feel protected; this was as wide-open and free as the Wild West.
Clusters of white horses at the edge of the road turned their disinterested equine faces towards the car, challenging them to stop, daring them to fall under their ghostly spell – magical beasts circling together, nose to tail, their black nostrils stark against the grey white flanks. Now and again he saw the sleek black shape of a bull silhouetted against the rippling blue water, and the low white lozenge of an old gardian’s cabin. Eventually the only thing separating the marshy lagoon from the sky was a narrow strip of land on the horizon, and this was gradually merging with the ocean, until all became one, and he felt like they were driving straight into the sea.
The actual destination was the town Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, so called, because after Christ’s crucifixion, the three Marys – Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome, and he forgot the third – had apparently been set adrift in an oar-less boat and somehow pitched up in the Camargue where they immediately set up a convent and began to spread the word.
Anne Marie drove into the car park on the edge of the small town, parked up and then took off through the narrow streets leaving Charlie to carry the beach gear over the sand dunes. The last time Charlie had been in the south of France was in his inter-railing days: 6am ablutions in railway carriages, late-night youth hostel check-ins, or sometimes sheltering in waiting rooms when it wasn’t worth paying for a whole night’s accommodation – it had been his one big adventure before settling down with Melanie and Adam.
This was more like a real holiday: proper sightseeing, an exploration of Provence and all its wonders.
On the beach next to him, a deeply bronzed woman vigorously rubbed copious amounts of sun cream into her captive children’s arms and legs and wouldn’t let them go until their Beau Geste sun hats were firmly in place. Released at last, the young ones kicked up a spray of white sand and grit, laughing and falling and getting up again, as they raced towards the sea.
He eyed the rest of the pert-breasted women on the beach – a parade of lean limbs in skimpy thongs and bikini tops.
Phew! It was glaring, this heat.
He felt conspicuously over-dressed in a pair of baggy beige boarder shorts and a short-sleeved linen shirt. Encouraged by perspiration, his aviator shades were slipping down his nose. He wouldn’t normally do this sort of thing. He’d rather be sitting in a shady café somewhere, reading the paper.
Then he saw them. Anne Marie was approaching, holding onto her broad-brimmed sun hat with one hand and a little boy with the other. A loose pony tail kept the hair off her neck. When she reached him she spread another blanket on the ground, undid her sarong, flicked off her sandals and then sat down next to him.
The boy flumped down in the sand and immediately began to dig a hole.
Charlie leaned back on one elbow. ‘What’s wrong with Cannes or Nice?’
‘It’s quieter here. It takes slightly longer for people to recognise me. An hour at least!’
He scouted around. ‘Any sign of the paparazzi?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘but get ready to run when I say!’
Roman’s hole was well under way, the mound of excavated spoil alongside growing bigger by the second.
‘He’s very good, your boy,’ Charlie remarked. ‘Very self-contained.’
She took it as a compliment. ‘He is, isn’t he? He could spend hours like this. Just hours. This is all he needs. It’s that simple.’
‘He must be mad, your husband,’ Charlie murmured. ‘You give him a beautiful child, and then he cheats on you.’
She shrugged lightly, but said nothing.
He glanced at her, but her eyes were hidden behind her sunglasses and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
‘Do you have children of your own?’ she asked.
‘One. A boy. Lives with his mother.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Adam.’
‘Have you seen him recently?’
‘No.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘He wasn’t mine by birth,’ he said. ‘Which complicates things.’
She sucked on her teeth. ‘Francois takes fatherhood very seriously. In theory I am allowed to see Roman as much as I want. In practice however …’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I understand.’
She pulled a bottle of Evian from her beach bag and handed it over. He anticipated further probing questions but instead she said, ‘Charlie, do you go to the gym?’
He laughed out loud. ‘Me? Nooo!’
‘Only … your torso … you have the lean physique of an athlete.’
‘You’re joking, right?’ His mum had told him his limbs were as angular as the legs and hinges on a compass. ‘I swim,’ he told her. ‘Sometimes. Or I used to.’
‘Swim now, if you want,’ she said.
‘Only if you join me.’
‘No. I’ll stay here, watch you both.’
There was some sort of subtext going on; it took him a moment to work out what it was. ‘You want me to take Roman for a dip?’
‘Yes, why not? He’d like that. His boring mother does not like activity.’ Anne Marie arched her back in an attitude of laziness. ‘She prefers to read when she’s on the beach. Roman!’ Alerted, the boy scampered crabwise across the sand towards them. She spoke to him in French, implying that Charlie was about to do him a great favour by taking him for a swim in the sea. The little boy was eager, waiting, crouched in readiness, shoulders hunched. Obligingly, Charlie got to his feet, spraying sand all over the blanket. She shaded her eyes. ‘Give me your phone, it will get wet. And your shirt. I’ll look after it for you.’
‘Why don’t I strip naked while I’m about it,’ he replied.
‘Yes,’ she smiled, ‘why don’t you?’
He glanced at Roman wondering how much of this he understood. The boy’s eyes were on him; he was itching to scamper away. Charlie lobbed the phone, kept the shirt. Roman copied him, swinging the red plastic spade over his head and letting it fly onto the sand next to his mother. Then he turned, scrambled to his feet and ran for the sea.
Conscious that he was being watched, he jogged lazily after the boy. ‘Hey, wait for me!’
Roman paddled in the shallows, jumping and squealing at the water’s edge. He stumbled backwards as the waves tugged at his ankles, instinctively clutching at Charlie’s hand.
‘It’s all right! Hold onto me, we’ll wade in.’
Together they made a slow, tentative progress into the water, the sun sparkling on the ripples, the gentle tug and lap encouraging them further and deeper until the swell lifted Roman off his feet. The boy gasped, laughing as the water reached his waist and sent him bobbing like a cork. His grip tightened.
‘I’ve got you,’ said Charlie, ho
lding on as the boy’s legs floated out behind him. Roman kicked and giggled, spluttering as a surge of water swamped his mouth. ‘Relax,’ said Charlie. ‘I won’t let go.’ And together they did a sort of sea dance, bobbing and bouncing in the warm shallows, circling the waves, enjoying the swell of the sea, letting it take them gently away from the shore.
Roman babbled happily. His confidence was growing – but not so fast that he was prepared to let go. When a particularly strong swell took him, he squealed and gripped tighter.
Charlie glanced back up the beach. Anne Marie sat with her elbow resting on her knees, her hand still shading her eyes. Was she checking him out? I’m not the remotest bit buff, he thought, eyeing the muscles in his forearms where they tensed in continuous grip. ‘What’s she up to, Roman, eh? What does she want?’
The water was choppy. His arms began to tire. He couldn’t keep this up forever. He manoeuvered Roman around until they were facing the beach. ‘Too far,’ he said. ‘We’ll get swept out.’ Roman looked up. ‘Maman!’ he called. His mother waved.
‘She can see you,’ said Charlie. And she can see me, he thought, frolicking in the sea with a boy who is not my son. Her aim was precise, he mused, attacking him on the soft underside where he was vulnerable. What did she expect him to do? Collapse in her arms, a sobbing heap of self-pity? I told Melanie to take him. Don’t you see? I told her. In front of him! How could I have done that?
Sensing that Roman had had enough, he helped the boy reconnect his feet with the seabed, and guided him towards shore. Charlie’s limbs felt heavy as they breached the waves. Roman laughed at his own big ineffective strides. They dallied awhile, savouring the sensation of the currents rushing through their toes, and then padded across the wet sand and onto the dry.
‘That was fun,’ Charlie said, flopping down on the blanket. Anne Marie flung a towel around Roman’s shoulders and after a cursory rub-down he retrieved the plastic spade and set off in search of shells. She gave the towel to Charlie. ‘It’s the only one I’ve got; you don’t mind sharing it, do you?’
The Dragonfly Brooch Page 3
