The Rainbow Bridge

by Aubrey Flegg

  Louise did her utmost to keep up, feeling that Gaston was still holding her in his mind, as if in this moment of crisis he needed her support. Eventually she arrived in a wide cobbled yard where lean-to sheds housed unfamiliar agricultural instruments. An ancient labourer, his face as dark and as wizened as a walnut, was leading Gaston’s horse away. Through open doors she glimpsed dark interiors with huge vats and barrels, and something that might be a winepress. There was a feeling of suspended activity. The whole yard had the air of a place that should be full of men, and of comings and goings.

  A door into the house stood open. Louise could hear voices within. A short passage opened out into a vast kitchen, divided by a table that Louise was sure could seat twenty men. The voices came from a small group of people clustered near the fireplace where copper pots gleamed and flickered in the firelight. Gaston, his back to her, had his arms around a tall, distinguished-looking woman, his mother surely. And the man in stockinged feet who was watching them fondly must be his father. A girl stood in the shadows, observing the reunion. A kitchen wench perhaps? No, Louise decided, this girl was here of right. The girl waited until Gaston had greeted both his parents and then stepped forward.

  ‘Welcome home, Gaston,’ she said. Gaston turned and saw her for the first time. Louise could feel his thrill of recognition, like the electric crackle you get when you run your hand over silk. Where had she seen that profile before? It looked as if Gaston was going to give her a hug, but then he changed his mind.

  ‘Mademoiselle Colette,’ he said with a little bow.

  ‘Well, don’t I get a kiss too?’ she asked, holding up a cheek. ‘And why didn’t you answer any of my letters?’ she queried when he had bent and kissed her.

  ‘Oh, but I have received none,’ he said defensively. ‘We were never in one place long enough for them to find us.’

  ‘And your right hand … has it been cut off?’ Gaston looked at his hand. Then he blushed brick red. ‘Or did you just forget, like the day you forgot to wave to me under the mulberry tree?’

  ‘I … I did write…’

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘Yes, just twice,’ he said lamely. Louise was watching, trying hard not to feel jealous, envious of this girl’s easy familiarity. ‘Are you still helping Papa in the vineyards?’ Gaston asked. The girl was smiling now; she had had her say. It was Madame Morteau who said acidly:

  ‘And ruining her complexion in the process. If her poor mother …’

  ‘Now, now, my dear,’ said her husband. ‘We’ve been into all that.’ The girl … Colette… came up to Gaston, and took his hands briefly. An apology, perhaps, for her attack about his letters. Then she dropped her head, and in that movement Louise recognised the girl that Gaston had shown her, sitting under a gnarled old tree. So, that was what had happened: he had forgotten to wave and felt guilty about it.

  The full extent of the disaster in the vineyards only emerged after hours of discussion. Gaston and his father talked and argued while his mother supervised the cooking and the household chores, joining them from time to time to correct something that had been said. Colette was included, but was mostly silent. Pierre came in with Louise’s portrait. He put it up at one end of the kitchen, where the light was poor, but it was out of the way. No one paid any attention to it, except Colette, who wandered over and looked at it for a while. Papers were brought out and parchments flattened with work-hardened hands. Spectacles were taken on and off, gold coins were produced, counted, and declared too few. Colette offered her few jewels, but Madame refused to even contemplate such a breach of trust with Colette’s ‘poor mother’. And all the time, one single letter, whiter than the rest, lay conspicuously in the middle of the table.

  Darkness fell. All but Gaston had retired to bed. He sat slumped at the end of the table. Louise emerged and sat in silence. Then, in a low voice, she said:

  ‘What’s happened, Gaston?’

  ‘It’s the Count, damn him … Remember I told you how he owns our vineyards? When the Revolution took place, rather than fleeing the country like most of the aristocracy, he decided to stay and embrace the people’s cause. I respected him when he appeared sensibly dressed, with just a cockade in his buttonhole, at the grape harvest, but now it seems that he has been selling us out, just to save his skin. I never thought that the Terror, which was just beginning, might be a danger to us, but apparently the Count did, and has been working very hard to keep his head at any price.

  ‘Well, the Count has kept his head, but it’s we who’ve paid the price. Since I left he has been busying himself among the shopkeepers and lawyers and doctors and blacksmiths that make up the region’s commune, and they now accept him as one of their own. Apparently one of his ways of showing solidarity with the cause has been to “donate” the wine that gave us our income to the “citizens” of the Revolutionary Council of the region. No sales means no income for us. Now the vineyards have begun to disappear, acre by acre, finding their way into the hands of these influential bourgeois – the people who might otherwise demand our dear cousin’s head at the guillotine. As a reward for his citizenship, he has now been appointed the caretaker of his own chateau. Plus ça change … nothing changes, does it?’

  ‘What about your mother’s entitlement?’ Louise asked. ‘You said that there’d be a letter waiting for you here.’

  ‘Yes, there it is,’ he indicated the envelope on the table. ‘After half a page of compliments and salutations and expressions of his great love and esteem, he regrets however that, since the time of Mother’s settlement, the price of the land has doubled.’

  ‘Has it?’

  ‘Not at all. I think he doubled it to make his gifts seem bigger. But if he lets us have it at its real value, the very people he wants to impress will say he has cheated them.’

  ‘Well then, pay the price, whatever it is, otherwise you are slaves!’ Louise felt her hopes slipping away. She could grow to love this old farmhouse, she liked the look of Colette, and she wanted them all to be happy here together. Above all, she wanted Gaston to be out of the army and away from war.

  ‘It’s no use, Louise,’ Gaston waved wearily at the strewn table. ‘We’ve been through our books and checked everything. You see, as tenants we own nothing, and our savings are running out. Father is not good at accounts. The long and the short of it is that the Count sees our house and acres as a last desperate card for him to play. If, by some change in fortune, he finds himself facing the guillotine, the whole house of cards will collapse, and we are at the bottom of the pack. The winery will be finished because the new owners all think that they can make wine themselves.

  ‘I will ride out tomorrow and tell him that we refuse to pay. I’ll give him a piece of my mind too while I am at it. Now for bed. All this discussion has exhausted me.’

  Gaston did visit the Count, but he refused to tell Louise anything about it. She guessed that he had scorned the Count’s demands, and had given him an earful at the same time. Later that day the papers were cleared away and the family took their places around the end of the huge table for the serious matter of a late dinner. Louise had noticed how, even yesterday at the height of the crisis, all discussion was suspended when food was brought to the table, and conversation subsided to a murmur as they addressed their meals. The fare was simple but ample: soup, bread, a steaming stew, and wine poured from a jug – sipped, rolled in the mouth, and then swallowed – often with a low word of comment or appreciation.

  Two weeks passed and the household fell into what Louise imagined was its regular routine. Gaston spent time out in the vineyards with his father and with Colette, who seemed to have a role in the winery. But all was not well. Though Louise was not invited on his daily round, Gaston had not forgotten her. In the evening he would sit hunched and tense at the table, nursing one glass of wine too many, until Louise would relent and take her place opposite to him. Eventually she decided to address the topic that had been on her mind.

  ‘Tell me about Colett
e, Gaston,’ she said. He reached to top up his glass, but put the bottle down again.

  ‘She’s an orphan, you know …’ he began, and then told Louise about the girl’s background and how they had taken her into their family. ‘When I left to join the hussars she was a pale little creature hardly looking her fourteen years. A year later, when I got home on leave she had changed into the beauty you see today.’ Gaston was staring into the distance. Then he smiled, ‘I was bowled over, Louise, intoxicated, we both were. For the whole month of the grape harvest we snatched every moment we could get together. It was an enchantment. But when I set out after the holiday, I would soon be a sub-lieutenant on active service, so I put her from my mind.’

  But not completely, thought Louise.

  ‘Then, two weeks ago, you and I rode in together. I was seriously considering buying myself out of the army, to help at home. I had come to hate civil war and it seemed a nice idea to settle down here with my family, including my pretty little ‘cousin’ Colette. What I did not expect was that I would walk into this kitchen and that Colette would walk out of the shadows and I would know then, and with absolute certainty, that this was the woman that I wanted to be my wife.’

  Louise hoped her face did not betray her pain. She hadn’t wanted even to share Gaston, now it seemed as though she would have no part in his love. How could she bear to be a bystander to his happiness?

  Gaston sat silently, then he stood up and started walking about the kitchen. ‘And then came the second surprise … that letter … the Count, my real cousin, dashing the cup from my grasp as I was lifting it my lips.’ His voice rose bitterly. ‘Damn the Count, damn and blast him forever. Father says that we are all part of the one vine, with the roots in the chateau and the fruit out here in the sun. Maybe… but that vine is coiling itself about our necks, it is strangling us, Louise. We must cut it through!’ Gaston slashed down with an imaginary sabre as he spoke.

  ‘I can’t tie Colette to me with no prospect that I can support her, and soldiers aren’t exactly bankable commodities.’ He sat down again, his shoulders slumped. ‘I have orders to return by the end of the week … the usual spy scares. It will be you and me again, Louise, we must take to the road and make what we can of life.’ Then, abruptly, he changed the subject. ‘Oh, by the way, the boys have asked if they can have your portrait to show to the men in the bunkhouse. Most of them have joined us since the Dutch campaign. Is that all right?’

  It wasn’t all right. Louise felt battered and emotionally bruised. One minute her place was being usurped by Colette, the next she had Gaston to herself again; she didn’t know what to feel. And now she was to be ‘loaned out’ for the men’s entertainment. She didn’t like the way Marcel looked at her, but she couldn’t really object; the cadets had guarded her faithfully all the way from Holland, so perhaps they had a right to show her off if they wanted to. And just now she needed to get away from Gaston to think.

  The plates remained to be cleared from the kitchen table, but Colette was staring at Gaston, watching and thinking. He had explained his orders and how he would have to leave in the next two days. You really want to go, don’t you? she thought. You and your boys, and your picture. She knew that something profound had happened between him and her, something far deeper than the carefree love that had burst over them at the time of the grape harvest, but now she could feel him withdrawing. Surely the problem with the Count could be sorted out, and didn’t he know she would wait … wait for him forever? Was he against her working in the fields with Papa? She noticed how he kept looking over to where the picture had stood. She wanted him to look at her. Suddenly her reverie was broken by the sounds of a sharp altercation outside. Footsteps were pounding down the passage towards them. The corporal burst in, saluted Gaston hurriedly, bent to his ear and gasped in a low voice.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, but young Colbert and Beauchamp are setting up for a duel, sir.’

  ‘Good God, the fools!’ Gaston was out of the door, sending his chair clattering on its back, before the corporal had time to move.

  It was late by the time the boys had been silenced, sentenced, and bound to keep the peace. The family, including Colette, had gone to bed; Gaston sat alone, his head in hands. Louise’s portrait stood again at the end of the kitchen, slightly askew. She came over and sat beside him. He shook his head and said, half to himself:

  ‘Young Pierre, of all people, drawing on Marcel and challenging him to a duel! You heard him do it?’

  ‘Yes, Marcel was making suggestions about me; it wasn’t the first time. Pierre picked up something, a glove I think it was, and slapped Marcel in the face. That’s when they started shouting.’

  ‘Pierre was defending your honour? But Pierre’s no fighter, he’ll always hold back on the telling stroke. Not so Marcel, he’ll deliver his stroke, even against a friend. I sometimes wish I’d never recruited Pierre; did I tell you that his family have all died in the Terror? I can’t send him back to Normandy even if I wished to.’

  ‘Gaston,’ Louise said contritely. ‘It’s my fault, I should never have allowed Pierre to talk to me.’

  ‘We’ll leave tomorrow. Once we are on the move again the boys will be all right.’

  But Louise had reached her decision. ‘Gaston, I’m not coming with you. No, let me finish … I’m just a source of tension among the boys. Also, I like it here. Leave my picture behind, and I’ll be waiting when you come back. I feel now as though my place is here. Leave the army, Gaston, as soon as you can, and then come back here; bring Pierre with you, and make something useful of your life.’

  ‘You know that’s what I want, Louise, but at the moment it looks as if my army pay will be needed here more than my labour in the vineyard. But it will very strange not to have you by my side.’

  The small troop left the following morning, with both Pierre and Marcel reduced to the ranks. If they noticed that Louise’s portrait had been left behind, neither of them dared mention it to their Lieutenant.

  CHAPTER 12

  A Meeting of Minds

  Over her long years of solitude Louise had found that children, in particular, would stare at her portrait with a curious intensity. That was how Colette’s stare felt; it pulled at Louise. She could feel the girl searching for her, wondering what was the meaning of this picture that Gaston had brought home. Madame Morteau was for hanging it in the parlour, out of the way, but Colette had persuaded her to leave it where it was for the moment. It was a connection with Gaston, though she wasn’t sure if she was quite comfortable with it. The green of the girl’s silk dress glowed in the permanent dusk of the kitchen, and the light that had slanted through the windows of the Master’s studio in Delft a hundred and forty years before seemed to brighten that corner of the room. When taking a break from her work in the house, or after coming in from time spent with M. Morteau among the vats and barrels, Colette would stop and gaze for a few minutes at the portrait. Sometimes it was just to explore the quiet restfulness of the Dutch interior, but at other times her eyes would be drawn to the face of the girl in the portrait. Louise could feel the chemistry beginning to work between them; the girl’s curiosity about her was mounting, and this in turn was creating the energy that Louise needed to make contact with her.

  And one day Colette spoke to her. ‘Who are you, then? And why do you look at me like that?’ It was sharp, and Louise was hurt; all she had been doing was trying to reach out to the girl. Colette moved away, and now her back was turned, and the moment was lost. Why had the Master painted her to look so demanding, Louise lamented? But as she did so another thought crept into her mind. Had she, in her heart of hearts, been as welcoming to Colette in her thoughts as she might have been? Was she jealous of her? It would have been nice – she had to admit – to have found that the girl she had seen in Gaston’s mind was just a little bit of fluff, or better still, one like that spirited little chambermaid in Brussels who had fended him off with a warming pan. Someone for Gaston to play with while he found more wo
rthy companionship in Louise. She smiled ruefully.

  She reckoned that Colette must be a little older than she, seventeen perhaps. In terms of colouring they were opposites. While Louise was fair, Colette’s dark brown hair fell to her shoulders. Her deep-set eyes were black and her skin, though not burned, had the sheen of the sun on it. She was wearing a simple dress – not coarse like those of the workers – but a working dress nonetheless. Louise found her thoughts adjusting to the situation. She remembered Kathenka, the Master’s young wife in Delft, who had become like an older sister to her. It was silly to be jealous. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all three of them could somehow co-exist together? In a happier state of mind, she began to scheme.

  She knew now that Colette could be touchy. The trouble was that she seemed to have no one she could talk to. Madame Morteau tried hard to be ‘Maman’ to her, but the older woman seemed to have a genius for saying things that sparked the girl’s temper. Colette did seem, however, to have a deep and genuine liking for M. Morteau, and would seek refuge with him among the vines whenever the atmosphere in the house became tense. Perhaps Louise should try to be more like him: patient and understanding, and let Colette come to her by herself?