Whispering in French

by Sophia Nash

  I forced myself to breathe deeply several times. “Well, I will promise you this, as much as I wish I could protect you from the truth, if Jean-Michel and Antoinette manage to hold on to it and pass it to me, we will be lucky if Madeleine Marie isn’t blown up by Basque terrorists since, according to some, they’re convinced I’d sell it to a rich foreigner. The Basques in the region would never let that happen. And that’s the nice version of this villa’s future.”

  I had to give him credit, my grandfather didn’t argue with my vision of the future.

  “Go on all you like,” he said, wiping his nose with a tissue, “you would never sell it.”

  I shook my head, which was as thick as Jean’s. “I made an appointment with Sotheby’s and they’re coming on Tuesday to give us an estimate. You can either be involved or not.” So much for trying to love him. Maybe I could get him to hate me as much as I hated myself. At least it would be a feeling. Any emotion was better than none. And what better place to start than with anger? That whirling, churning molten lava in the mind where all things are rendered charred and broken, and something new is born. Some say anger is the truest emotion we possess. I’ve never seen it lead to anything good, but there was still time to dabble in the dark arts.

  Jean du Roque turned his visage back to the window, revealing that beak of a nose all du Roques possessed—even the Americanized ones. Resignation—the grayest of states— flooded him, and his shoulders drooped.

  Chapter Five

  Whispers from the Garden . . .

  Sometimes one had to eat one’s vegetables instead of the earthy velvet of Mr. and Mrs. Slug. Sadly, spring grass was on the menu today. Then again, it’s what one got when one overindulged. It had been such a delightfully fruitful period the last dozen moonrises. The sun had shone, the moon had waxed to its fullest before slowly melting into its backbone.

  And I was blissfully alone. I’d forgotten how lovely solitude was.

  I was even learning to bear the cycle of the Wing Beaters, who, aside from their blasted morning revelry, settled to groom their feathers in the gnarled branches of the plane trees during the heat of the day. It had been a Season of the Slug like no other. Gleaming little tidbits had awaited me every night under the tender calla lily leaves. Yes, it was paradise.

  I keep trying to hold on to memories of before I came here, but they have become so gray and small and sometimes curl into the air and float away. The only thing I remember with clear-cut precision is that orange Yowler. Or rather her scent.

  It was hard to say if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I had no desire to see her, but heaven above, how I liked her interesting perfume. Self-anointing only lasted so long. Have you never experienced the confusion of involuntary behavior? No? I have it every time some scent overtakes the boundaries of my brain. I loathe dealing with anything or anyone. We are alone all our lives, so why become embroiled with anyone or anything else . . . unless it involves Master Slug, our inborn duty to instill our history on others, or the whimsical, destructive little nasal obsessions known only to my family. No one is perfect, right?

  Turning over a dry iris stalk, I spied none of the telltale trail of holes of my favorite breakfast, elevenses, lunch, and dinner. It was ridiculous. The sky was brightening and, Lordy, a respite in the shade of the slate hidden beyond the scarlet bougainvillea seemed delicious. I gnawed on a few strands of grass and felt very sorry for myself. Well, at least I could stop worrying about my girth getting in the way of my drawstring in the event of an attack from the Barkers next—

  Dear Lord. That perfume swirled about, leaving me dizzy and nauseous. Turning too quickly, my head felt like it was still spinning when I saw that orange swath of velvet padding toward me. Dropping down on her haunches a few feet from me, her diamond eyes narrowed, and those whiskers twitched in a rhythm completely at odds with her tail.

  “Y-hello,” she said, unfurling her tongue to lick her neck in a leisurely fashion.

  Transfixed; my drawstring flickered and failed to deploy.

  “Can’t you speak? I thought you more intelligent. At least above an insect,” she continued, not looking at me.

  “I-I . . . of course I can speak,” I replied. “What’s an insect?”

  She ate a blade of grass or three. “How can you not know what an insect is?”

  I stood my ground.

  “Very well. It’s anything with six legs and usually four wings. You know what legs and wings are, don’t you?”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Well, then how can you not know what an insect is?” She sniffed the ground and then made a most impolite yakking noise. “You do know what I am, right?”

  “A Yowler,” I answered instantaneously.

  “Mon Dieu,” she said. “Do you know what you are?”

  “I’m me, of course.”

  “No. Your breed. Your pedigree. Your station in life. Your raison d’être. It’s very important to know these things. How can you not know these things?”

  A peculiar feeling washed over me. Something dark and discomforting lurked in the gap between what I knew and what I ought to know. I dug in my thin, little heels. “I’m me and you’re you and that’s all that’s important.”

  “Hmmm . . .” she purred. “Okay. But I’m a cat. And I’m a very rare type. You’re a hedgehog, or hérisson in French. I’m trilingual. Fluent in Animalese, French, and English. Again, very rare. I have an enormous IQ.”

  Hedgehog. It sounded so familiar. I didn’t want to be anything but me though. And who in hell knew what an IQ was? “What’s your IQ?”

  “My pet, who is merely fluent in French and English, keeps telling me I have an IQ of a moron. And everyone knows morons are brilliant.”

  Whatever a moron was, I didn’t trust it. I don’t trust anything anyway. Except an unusual scent. I trusted that 150 percent. I took a step closer and sniffed the air as inconspicuously as possible. I was beginning to feel that burning sensation on my tongue and the uncontrollable desire to salivate and self-anoint took over.

  “What are you doing?” Her diamond eyes flipped wide.

  I spread a few more drops of drool over my quills. “Don’t you know anything about hedgehogs? I thought you said you were a moron.”

  “Well, I’ve only ever seen one other hedgehog. Twenty-seven moons ago. Dead as dead in the garden on the other side. Reeked of dog slobber. The ones next door. Those Boxers have champion pedigree lines dating back to the beginning. Although privately, I see zero IQ in them. All bark, all bite, and no brain. I am, by the way, a ginger tabby. Very rare, you see, since almost all ginger tabbies are male. In addition, I have a distinct mackerel pattern inherited from a wild ancestor. I am sauvage. Very brave. Very wild. Very rare. Important.”

  The way she licked her privates looked fairly pedestrian to me. “I see.” I wanted to trundle away. I really did. My head hurt. All that jabbering about IQ and naming things that didn’t need names. And all that scent. I retreated to the only topic that was not only safe anywhere and everywhere but also a requirement. “So, what is the history of this place? I’ve come from across the water.”

  “Fascccinating,” she replied, with a little purring sound. “Then we will have much to discuss.” She took three steps closer and again settled her haunches on the ground while gathering her memories. “All was good before the Bonjours took over the earth as all creatures know, great and small—”

  “Who are the Bonjours?”

  “You’re not going to interrupt me are you? Very impolite. Is that a hedgehog trait?”

  “Forgive me.” I did know the rules regarding imparting history, which required a singsong poetic retelling of our ancestors’ experience followed by a more relaxed recounting of the recent past. It was just her aroma that was throwing me off my game.

  “The Bonjours are the tall ones, who all look alike. They cover their bodies with lots of different things so they can tell each other apart.”

  “Right. The Two-Leggeds, th
at’s what hedgehogs call them. Roger.”

  “I’ll continue.” She sighed, exasperated. “All was good before the Bonjours took over the earth. Mice, moles, fish, and fowl were plentiful”—she crinkled her nose as if deciding if she should explain the species—“just as foe were plentiful too. Then we made a damned deal with the Bonjours, who gave some of us shelter and food in exchange for our families and freedom. It was a bad bargain. Yes?”

  “Yes,” I encouraged. So far it was the same here as over there.

  “Many wars came and went and nothing good came of them other than culling the herd of Bonjours, who caused disease wherever they went.”

  “Ditto on the land I came from across the water.” Now was when it would get interesting, I was sure.

  “In the last war here, the Fifty-Two Moons War, there was great destruction. Many creatures big and small were killed. Many Bonjour-made structures were damaged. But many helmeted Guten Tags with Shepards, who were worse than those Boxers, left behind solidly built structures. Those empty, secret places are great hiding places if one needs them. In fact”—she licked her paw and polished her face—“there is an enormous one under this house, although you must go over the cliff, and swing behind the hanging vines to find it.”

  “Good to know. Thank you,” I replied.

  She looked at my little hands and feet and sniffed. “I wouldn’t try it if I were you.”

  “Any other local history I should know?”

  “No.” She groomed her long nose with her paw again, expertly navigating her long whiskers. “But, the Bonjours have many customs.”

  “Do tell.”

  “They like to play where the fish live. A lot. Especially with boards. Bizarre if you ask me. And they take hours to eat and drink in large groups, and sometimes stumble and fall afterward. Their music is terrifyingly bad; they regularly have something called fetes and parades in the village. But they redeem themselves at the Festival of the Sardine. You know what a sardine is, don’t you?”

  I said nothing.

  “A fish. The best fish in the world. Salty, small, perfect in every way. Cats love them as much as the Bonjours love something called foie gras. Don’t ask what that is because it will make you cry.”

  “All right,” I replied, “but do they have a Festival of the Slug?” I could barely breathe for hoping. “Or even a Festival of the Snail?” Close enough.

  “Mon Dieu, non. Who would like that?”

  Again I said nothing.

  “Oh, I see,” she said softening. “Is that the way of it for you?” She continued without waiting for an answer. “Well, then. Perhaps I should invite you to dine tonight chez moi after the sun dips. My pet maintains a lovely garden filled with them. And, in fact, I loathe stepping on them and would appreciate you culling the slimy herd.”

  “I would be delighted,” I said far too quickly. What had come over me? I never spent time with anyone. It just wasn’t natural. I liked being alone. It’s the only thing I do extremely well.

  “But a caution.”

  “Do tell.”

  “In the middle of the night, my pet sometimes meets the old Bonjour living here in the allée hidden behind the stone potting shed.”

  “Allée?”

  Her whiskers flickered. “Alley.” She looked a bit annoyed. “If you’re going to stay here then you should learn French. That is if you want to become a moron.”

  This obsession with morons and IQs was making me feel very small and very uncomfortable. Then again, at least she wasn’t trying to eat me. And in the animal world this was excellent at promoting good fellowship, something mother had never taught in any of her lullabies.

  Chapter Six

  Every afternoon, the chaos of the acres and acres of gardens surrounding the villa beckoned me. It was a far different place than what I remembered from my childhood. Then, the borders had been manicured, the pea gravel pathways raked, and sharply trimmed boxwoods had framed each flower bed. Now not one gardener in the region was willing to set a trowel here given the legendary nature of Jean’s ability to hire but not pay. And since the account at Bank of Kate was in the four digits, and requests to Antoinette, otherwise known as the wildly fun and fickle, yet financially savvy person I called Mother, had been met with a silence as thick as the weeds choking the flowers, I began cleaning up section by section of the enormous garden my mother’s almost namesake, Marie Antoinette, would have loved, given the number of low, geometric patterned boxwoods on long terraces—very like those found at Versailles. At least there were very few slugs and snails here now, unlike my teenage years when they’d reigned supreme under every stalk.

  Just before the gloaming hours, when memories gathered to wuther the mind, and blame and shame hid tricks in every corner, vulnerability—that lead player in the game—battled assumptions and the what-ifs until a small madness began to swirl in the breeding grounds of my mind. I knew why. It was so obvious. I’d reached the armies of lilies growing helter-skelter in their beds. Early bloomers, late bloomers, every shape and every color invaded the senses. And as the soft, sun-warmed fragrance of the calla lilies—her favorite—enveloped me, a gale of guilt flooded the bloodstream and fear was born.

  Would my daughter ever come back to me? Should I want that for her? I blindly groped for something solid to grab onto to stop my mind from being swept away like the leaves swirling in a vortex in the wind. I reached out and gripped the peeling and spotted trunk of a plane tree, and it felt ancient and solid as I stood up.

  I missed her with a vengeance bordering on selfishness. It had been too long since I’d seen Lily, and the repeated playing of her old voicemail messages has grown stale and artificial just like the memory of the house in Darien, Connecticut, where she and I had endured the good, the bad, and the ugly in the cavernous, soulless McMansion that was currently listed for sale now that a decorator had finished staging it.

  But Lily and I had made a deal. I was not to reach out to her. My duty was banishment to the sidelines of her ruined life. And my punishment was reliving it.

  My gaze traveled to the back, less-grand entrance of the ivy-covered villa, and I arched against strained muscles, forcing thoughts of my daughter back into the distant chamber of my mind. Madeleine Marie was like a grande dame, by turns beautiful in her aristocratic old bones and bearing, yet bankrupt from decades of hard living and little thought to the future. She oversaw the haunting beauty of the Bay of Biscay, the cradle and boat of Basque civilization, and the gathering place for what seemed to be a surf-loving league of nations.

  She was my temporary holding cell.

  Inside, the peeling, gilded wallpaper, leaky plumbing, unreliable electricity, and perpetual scent of mildew were daily reminders of the impermanence of life itself. Loneliness, whose icy fingers burrow into the crevasses of solitude, had taken up residence in this relic, and it seemed the very walls echoed whispers from my ancestors—some gay and some forlorn—but all telling me I didn’t belong here.

  I didn’t belong anywhere, really.

  Giving up on the sprawling gardens, I leaned the much battered iron tined rake against a stone potting shed, and forced myself to follow the newfound routine I’d suggested to countless clients: exercise. There was just time for a walk to the sea to swim before dinner.

  I darted up the four flights of the spiral staircase that resembled a lady’s ringlet of more than a century ago to don a slightly mildewed shorty wetsuit. On the descent, one could spy small brass openings for letters on the wooden wall panels of each landing, dusty from disuse. For centuries, ancestors had dashed off notes and letters, slipped them in the mail shoot to be collected and delivered by liveried servants and horse-drawn post carriages. These remnants would all be gone soon.

  Tomorrow the listing agent from Sotheby’s was coming, and at the end of the week was an appointment to check out a retirement residence with spacious apartments and a host of activities. Viewing a few small rental cottages dotting the region was also on the agend
a.

  The shortcut over the cliff to the beach was steep, rocky, and required negotiation with a very long knotted rope near the end. Carrying flippers and a towel didn’t help. I rarely won the negotiation and had the skinned knees and elbows to prove it. The only people who used this route were impatient surfers, adventurous adolescents, and, apparently, foolhardy American divorcées. The only good thing about the descent was that it took twenty-two minutes instead of thirty-seven minutes by cliff road to reach sea level. I’d timed it in the era of counting bells. The ascent was another experience altogether, and brought new meaning to the words crazy impossible. I wasn’t sure what had come over me in the last few weeks, but I felt like an ugly stubbornness was taking root each day I failed the hand-over-fist routine on the return trip. Or maybe it was just anger. I’d lost all ability to untangle the rare emotions I let out of the cubicles in my head.

  This late afternoon, as the sun leisurely slid across a still, azure sky toward the sea, I spied Major Soames clad in trunks and a long-sleeved plaid shirt on a course that would eventually migrate to my path. Convenient. The guy had been as scarce as sleep in a maternity ward.

  He fell onto the path two dozen steps behind me. I stopped and turned to wait for him.

  “Madame,” he said, touching his fingers to his head in a mock salute.

  “Major.”

  He motioned to the path ahead with a sweep of his hand. The hard look in his eyes proved he wanted as little conversation as possible. And if it were not for the kindness of Jean’s best friend, I would be happy to oblige.

  “Going for a swim?” I finally managed.

  “That’s the idea,” he replied.

  “Better than tea and biscuits,” I said.

  “Indeed.”

  “How is your uncle?” Man, this guy was closed off.

  “Well.”

  I retrieved a flipper that had slipped from under my arm. “And your family in the UK?”

  “Well, too.”

  We trudged on again in silence a few moments, until I turned around to face him. “Is there something I’ve said or done that has offended you, major?”