She put the phone down.
Twisting the gold band until it hurt, she worked her wedding ring off. For weeks afterwards she was unable to stop probing the bare stem of that finger. Its absence felt strange, just as its newness had been, the first time she had slipped on the precious metal of Richard’s promises.
IV
ANNICK POURED THE wine.
Below the Bar Vidourle, the river was a glassy green. Sprightly weeds grew on gravel spits further down, beyond the Roman weir which stilled the flow below the terrace where they sat.
‘Did you know this was his favourite place for a drink?’ she asked, the carafe of rosé poised in mid-air.
Her black-rimmed stare seemed to burn Melissa’s face. She was intense company, superficially friendly – and certainly generous in agreeing to talk – but slightly discomfiting. Melissa knew she did not look particularly well. Two sleepless nights had left her nauseous with the realisation of what had happened. But better to do this, than to dwell any more on Richard.
‘There’s a photograph of him sitting here in his biography – with Arielle Urbain,’ said Melissa, making an effort to keep her voice level. Holding a coherent conversation in French in this state felt like catching fish in bare hands, the words slithering out of her grasp.
‘You could be right,’ said Annick thoughtfully. ‘Do you mind?’ She waved a cigarette as she was about to light it.
‘By all means . . .’ Melissa couldn’t feel any worse.
Annick took a deep draw and exhaled. In natural light dry lines crinkled her skin under the strong make-up.
‘His last great love.’ Her tone was dry.
‘Arielle?’ asked Melissa.
‘That’s right.’
‘Is she a friend of yours?’
Annick paused. ‘We speak sometimes.’
‘Does she live here?’
‘No, in Paris. She is his literary executor in France. She does good work in keeping his books in print here. Julian always said he thought his work sounded better translated into French.’
‘The British love all things French.’ Melissa managed to smile.
‘But they don’t know France, and they don’t want to.’
‘I’m not sure that’s always the case.’ She was thinking of all the summers here, making friends, gradually becoming part of the village, learning the language and the local stories, the characters and the points of reference.
Annick shook her head and flicked her fingers. ‘No one is happy here at the moment. The only ones who are happy are the foreigners. In this region, they like the cheap wine – but do they know that the farmers are getting less and less for it? For some, the price has gone down so much that they have stopped making it. Haven’t you noticed how poor the villages seem? That’s because they are, not because they are putting on a show for the tourists!’
She drew heavily on her cigarette, and continued. ‘The only people who can be happy are those who don’t care that we have riots because there are not enough jobs for the young people. So many who are well-qualified are going abroad to work – London! They would prefer to work there. They see there are more opportunities, while France is run into the ground.
‘The government says there is not enough money to keep on the old French way, but this is what we want. What is possible and what is not? They always find money when they have to.’
This was clearly a raw nerve.
She was right, though, about the joy of expatriate life: the absence of any political responsibility. The reinvention of the self in each new place, for each new audience: new country; new life. What Adie did.
‘You must have been very young when you met Julian Adie,’ Melissa steered her back.
‘I was twenty-three. It didn’t feel so young at the time.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘It was very close to where we are sitting here, as a matter of fact. I was walking along the embankment. I must have been out doing my shopping. I was not long married, and took pride in my attempts to look after my husband and new apartment. It was that building we lived in, just over there, with the balcony.’ She inclined her head gracefully to indicate which one.
‘Your husband – Gilles?’
She sucked hard on the last third of her cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray. ‘No,’ she said in the way Melissa was beginning to recognise as characteristic. It was a simple statement of fact, expressed without impatience or annoyance. She blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘A short, silly marriage.’
‘But you are married to Gilles Barreau now?’
Her eyes were slits. ‘No, we are not married. But we have been together for a long time.’
Finding a friendly line was crucial. But Melissa was making a clumsy job of it by taking this one.
‘Sorry. Please go on.’
‘Julian was already at his morning pastis right here, where we’re sitting. I recognised him. Everyone knew him. I had recently read one of his books and went up to tell him I had liked it. That was the start.’
‘When you say, the start . . .’
‘We began an affair which suited us both. No commitment, only pleasure.’
Melissa was startled that she was telling her so much so soon.
‘When was this, what year? Can you recall?’
‘I recall precisely. It was 1975. We were together, in our way, for eight years.’
It occurred to her that Annick’s openness could be an indication of how used she was to telling this story.
‘I can tell what you are thinking,’ went on Annick. ‘He was married. Or rather he married Marie Basselin during that time. But we continued to see each other. Yes, that was the case.’
But Melissa wasn’t surprised. It was Adie’s ideal made real: he wrote; he drank; he had a wife; and he had other women.
‘His wife knew.’
‘Julian never bothered to hide what he was doing.’
‘And what about your husband?’ Melissa pressed on recklessly, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and intrusive. But Annick was not clamming up, telling her to stop, nor did Melissa have the impression that she was revealing any secrets.
‘He knew – maybe a bit less.’
The husband who had not even merited a name. Melissa swallowed hard. Barely below the surface was her own misery, her own situation. Richard was like them. I should find out what I can, learn how to survive . . . It was only an affair. Nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps I could learn a lot about relationships from these people . . .
Melissa must have betrayed her unease, because Annick shook her head. ‘There was no unpleasantness. Mostly it was not serious. It meant nothing.’
Her tone echoed Richard’s voice in Melissa’s head. So why do it then, if it meant nothing? she wanted to ask, but did not. If only I could be more like these people, perhaps I would be happier.
The movement of water below was a faint whisper. Melissa felt warm air on her face, perhaps too warm, as Annick shrugged and said, ‘There was an understanding, on all sides. Julian and I were happy.
‘He was exciting and brilliant, and tender and unpredictable. I loved him.’
Once again the biography was wrong by omission. By missing out Adie’s long involvement with Annick, a whole dimension had been passed over, hidden just like her mother might be hidden between the lines of the official narrative.
‘Did you ever know anything about an English woman friend of his, an artist called Elizabeth Norden who had a house over at St Cyrice?’
Was that a flicker of change in her expression? Or perhaps she was picking up on the tension in Melissa’s posture.
‘I knew about her.’
‘What did you think?’
‘It was not a good story – for any of us.’
‘Tell me.’
Annick hesitated. ‘She appeared one day, out of the blue. She did not understand how it worked.’
Melissa kept quiet, willing her to go on.
‘When I asked him, he
said they had met in Greece.’
A pause.
‘That’s right,’ said Melissa.
‘They must have had some kind of relationship.’ Annick shrugged expressively. ‘But it was all over a long time before she arrived here. He was no longer interested – he did not want to see her.’
‘That’s all?’
‘What do you mean?’
Melissa swallowed hard. ‘Was there anything that had happened, in the past – in Greece – that may have involved her?’
Another pause. ‘She made him angry for some reason. And he could be . . . changeable, you know. Sometimes he was violent. Threatening. His rage – it was like a compression of all the bad times, the slights, the feeling of being ignored, it just hummed there, heating up – and then the safety valve wouldn’t be able to contain the pressure and it would blow.’
‘He attacked her?’
‘No, no. Not her. He would not see her, as I said.’
‘So he took it out on other people then?’ It was not a nice thought.
Annick inclined her head in a wry admission of it.
‘What did –?’
Annick cut across the question. ‘I remember she was pretty. Very English. Blonde hair down to here,’ she chopped her shoulder with a flat hand. ‘I had no idea that she was going to cause trouble.’ She made a little noise in her throat to convey how wrong she was, then narrowed her eyes. ‘Funny . . . she came asking about Julian, just like you. Later there were many, but then . . . it was just the beginning of people coming to look for him.’
‘When was this?’
‘It was . . . sometime in my first year with him.’
‘So . . . 1975.’
‘I suppose so.’
She frowned and seemed to be looking closer.
Was Annick making the connection? Alexandros, after all, had spotted the similarity.
And she had been so frank, it seemed the only reasonable thing to do. ‘She’s – she was – my mother,’ said Melissa.
Annick received the news impassively. Nothing would surprise her, she implied with a tilt of the chin.
There was something else, though. A dread that had begun growing and curdling in her gut.
‘Annick, have you been approached by a Dr Braxton? He’s a biographer. He is researching a new version of Adie’s life.’
She lit another cigarette and sucked on it deeply.
‘Dr Martin Braxton. An American academic from the University of Michigan,’ prompted Melissa.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He has been here.’ Did she sound bored? Unsurprised? Used to answering all these intrusive questions from strangers?
Of course Braxton would have been here. If she had managed to get this far so easily, and speak to Annick, then it was impossible to imagine that Braxton had not done so too.
‘Can I ask you . . . when was this?’
‘A few months ago.’
‘Did he ask you about Elizabeth Norden?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Exactly what I told you. I know what I know.’
‘And what else do you know about Elizabeth Norden and Julian Adie?’ asked Melissa in a quiet voice.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know what it was that made him react like he did. All I know is what I saw and heard.’
‘Which was?’
‘He turned on his daughter. His younger one – Hero – was out staying with him for her summer holidays. They say he beat her. He was too drunk to stand when I saw him, and incoherent with anger. The housekeeper tried to restrain him, and he lashed out at her too. Then he disappeared, driving into the hills on the wrong side of the road.’
She stared into the distance. They were silent for a short while.
‘You know that Dr Braxton is researching Adie’s darker side, his capacity for violence, the bad relationships with women . . . He says he has found some scandal – did he tell you that?’
She removed a flake of tobacco from her lower lip with the utmost delicacy. ‘He did not tell me that . . . in so many words.’
‘The thing is . . .’ Melissa hesitated. ‘I don’t know whether Dr Braxton is to be trusted.’ There, it was said.
Annick was unfazed.
‘I have always told the truth as I saw it where Julian Adie is concerned. There is nothing to be gained from changing now.’
Traffic noise on the road behind the café seemed a long way away.
‘Dr Braxton seems certain that my mother was part of some . . . bad episode involving Julian Adie,’ said Melissa.
‘Ah,’ she said calmly. ‘That is always possible.’
‘What do you mean – exactly?’
‘Only what I say.’
Melissa was trembling. ‘Do you know of any precise event that Dr Braxton has in mind?’
‘No.’
‘Nothing at all that you might have—?’
‘No,’ said Annick.
There was not much more to say. They parted having agreed to stay in contact, but Melissa left wondering whether Annick had really told her all that she knew. In the end, she had said very little. But she had confirmed what, until now, had only been a supposition: Elizabeth had been in contact with Julian Adie in Sommières. No doubt she would tell Dr Braxton, and with that same disingenuous manner she had just displayed, that Melissa Norden had come looking for her and what was discussed.
On the way back to the car, Melissa stood and stared up at the house Annick had pointed out, where she had once lived in an apartment with her husband. It had a pretty balcony, with a view of the river. Melissa wondered what other stories since had played out within its walls.
This had all been going on during those summers at St Cyrice, and she had had no idea what Elizabeth had been doing or thinking. Melissa felt faintly disembodied, as a tear trickled down one cheek. She was starting to believe that everyone else, even virtual strangers, knew her mother better than she did.
Back at the car, parked close to the narrow street which led up to the arts centre, she unlocked the door, then propped her arms on the roof and stood a while. She shouldn’t be driving. She had not intended to drink all that wine with Annick, but now that she had, she would have to wait before getting back on the road.
She locked the car door again, and began walking aimlessly.
A sandwich at a café in the square seemed a good idea, but when the baguette filled with cheese arrived, she had no appetite. She forced down a few mouthfuls, listlessly absorbing her surroundings. Shops were closed for lunch. Shutters were drawn tight. What went on behind them? She felt as if she were floating above the scene, in it but somehow not part of it.
A blur of pink pulled her out of her reverie.
Pink and white stripes.
Melissa chewed faster, then put down her sandwich. That distinctive, ridiculous jacket. Braxton’s, she was sure of it. She was on her feet. Then she was running to the corner where she was sure he must have turned.
There was no one there.
Her soles clattered on polished stone as she entered the church. It was dim, and empty. Outside she scanned the steps leading up to the castle. She saw and heard nothing. ‘Dr Braxton?’ she shouted. No response.
If it was him, what was he doing now – and who was he talking to? What had he found out about her mother that she had not?
A queasiness accompanied her back to the table. Why was it that every man she encountered seemed to have an ulterior motive, be a philanderer or be purely selfish? How could you trust any of them?
But then, it was possible that her trust even in her own mother had been misplaced. If Braxton was right, she had been wrong about Elizabeth too. She had never really known her own mother. Light-headedness threatened to overwhelm her. Melissa fought the sensation that she might black out.
She could never feel certain again. So was it possible? Could Elizabeth really have been the kind of person who could cover up a suspicious death – or worse?
/>
V
‘I’VE BEEN FINE on my own,’ said Melissa. ‘Felt a bit strange at first, but it’s all right. Really.’
‘So long as you are OK.’ Leonie did not sound convinced.
Melissa lay down full length on one of the shabby sofas. She felt exhausted – but grateful that Leonie had rung.
‘You sound . . . tired.’
‘I am tired. I lie awake thinking at night. That’s what I do most – it seems to take up a lot of the time.’
‘Do you think you might be depressed?’
Melissa grimaced. ‘I’ve certainly wondered. Perhaps I am. But in fact, what I feel mainly is relief that Richard has gone. That it really is over.’
Now she could deal with the hurt, knowing this time the split was irrevocable. All the compromises, the holding back, the pretending, were resolved.
‘Even when you were giving him one last chance, you knew it wasn’t right, didn’t you? That you were short-changing yourself.’
‘You’re right about distance. I knew when I was in Corfu that there was no going back – but then that’s exactly what I did.’
‘There you are then.’
‘But somehow when I was back in England, I let myself be reeled back again. God, how pathetic does that sound! I’m angry with myself. How could I have put myself in that position, where was my self-respect?’
She could just see Leonie in her office in London, rolling her eyes. ‘Richard is a great manipulator, you know that. He always was. Even at the start of it, we all used to think –’
A wave of annoyance tipped over. ‘What, you used to sit around discussing how awful Richard was? You and who else used to think?’
‘It’s not like it sounds. But – look, I can say this now. I should have said it long before. Richard played you. He played on your insecurities, knowing that once he had you, you dreaded the end of the relationship. He didn’t so much want you as want to be in control of you. All that business with Sarah – what a massive ego boost for him! Both a mistress and a wife ripping her hair out over him! No wonder he wanted it to carry on a bit longer. He’s emotionally stunted, wants constant reassurance of his worth. And what did he ever give you emotionally?’
‘That’s a bit simplistic,’ said Melissa. She was not going to have her marriage dismembered with quite such savagery. ‘There was more to it than that. Well, in the beginning—’
Songs of Blue and Gold Page 24
