show you,’ said Auxille and we walked round the back of the hut through the woods and towards the gully.
‘Good God,’ said my father and even my mother was quiet.
I’m standing by the pool looking up at the rock and the split down the rock, towards the great stone basin full of clear water like glass. The sun shines above the rock and into the water, dazzling me. I feel shivery and strange. I feel very young and very old. The water and the sun are all I can see. I put my hand into the water, thinking it’s going to be hot, but it isn’t, it’s cold. It makes me shiver more.
Saturday. Early evening
Today I walked to Rochas. I wanted to get moving again. I felt so stiff and old. I remembered walking there with Gregor once, with Sanclair on his shoulders. It seemed to take no time at all. We had a drink in the hotel and then walked up to the church to show Sanclair the crib. He was about two then. Didn’t he love it, pressing his face to the glass and saying, ‘Monster!’ when the train popped out. A sunny day, don’t I remember it, blue sky and wild flowers everywhere. It must have been May. Today it took me two hours, and I shall write this again in case I ever think about walking there in the future. It takes two hours to walk to Rochas. A tough walk along a barely visible track. Deep in the woods. There’s no view and the last bit is past the sewage works and a rubbish tip. I don’t like Rochas, with its big ugly church and the houses snaking up to it. It has stayed decayed. St Clair was always pretty, sitting in the clouds, and Lieux with its fountains and houses of flowers is in every guide book of the region, but nobody goes to Rochas. I sat in the hotel café and drank Pernod, not outside because it had started to rain, but in the dingy bar room. Was that the same group of men that used to pester my mother? It could have been.
Rochas is dirty. I’d forgotten that. It’s not a picturesque decay but one of neglect. The young people have gone away. There are houses for sale, but they won’t become holiday homes. The streets are always in shadow because of the rock. It was worse in the rain. I walked up to the church and felt like I did with my mother. The church was being renovated. It was a shell of stone with cement-mixers and scaffolding at the front and that smell of cement that makes me think of so many things: the building site at The Heathers, my father relaying the floor at the Ferrou, Stephen laying the patio in his new house, the bull-dozers and diggers on the by-pass. As the rain poured, brown rivers of mud ran down the hill. The great doors had been taken away and the church looked more like a tomb than ever. I was thinking about my father.
It was the last summer I spent with my parents in France and the one I remember most clearly. Do we all have a time we remember, that holiday, that special holiday when the world becomes magic and exciting and there we are, alone, exploring it? My parents bought the Ferrou but they didn’t stay there. They rented a flat in the village. It was the ground floor of a large house owned by the third best Blancs. A sun terrace ran the whole length of it. Grapes grew up the walls and on to the roof of the terrace. Green bitter grapes with large floppy leaves, I was told they would be ripe in October, but I ate them anyway. Below the house was a small swimming pool, which my mother sat by all day long and occasionally slipped into like a lazy snake. If I talked to her she smiled as if she had just woken from a blissful dream. The Blancs upstairs were an elderly couple who did all our washing and cooking with the energy of people who had been energetic all their lives. Only illness or death would stop them. I watched them as they hoed the garden, hung out the washing, and wondered what they thought of my mother whose biggest decision of the day was whether to wear a green or a blue bikini.
My father spent most of the day at the Ferrou. He was relaying the floor of the hut, which was to become part of the new house, he imagined. This was the year of the new houses. The Heathers would be ready for us to move into when we returned. The plans for the Ferrou kept changing. The modern building became more traditional. The mock pool feature more natural, the terraces of olive trees more unaltered.
I walked from the flat down to the Ferrou. Down the track and through the woods. At first I had left markers in case I got lost, white stones, twigs pointing like arrows, but now I knew the way I didn’t hurry. I had a picnic lunch for myself and Hugo in a little rucksack. I skipped and told myself stories. I hid under trees and waited to pounce on passers-by, but there were none. I put snail shells in my pockets. I listened to the cicadas in the woods and, far away, the churchbells.
I’m running down the track because I’m late and Daddy hasn’t had his lunch yet. He sees me bouncing along the top terrace. I’m wearing red shorts and a white T-shirt now very dusty, but I like it, I feel wild and ferocious like a pirate. He’s waving at me. He’s dusty too, with trickles of sweat down his face, and his shirt is sticking to him. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I say, but he says, ‘Are you, my special girl? I didn’t notice.’ He has made a table out of a few planks. We sit on the ground and eat. He looks at the bottled water I’ve brought and laughs, ‘Here is the best water in the whole valley but they think I still need some in a bottle,’ and he pours the lot over his head. We both laugh. He says, ‘Go into the hut and fill it up with real water.’ I turn on the tap. The water comes out with a gurgle then a gush. I fill the bottle to the brim and take it to him. He drinks it. He says, ‘It tastes like nothing on earth,’ and he hands the bottle to me. I drink it as well and it’s true, it doesn’t taste like ordinary water because it has a taste, a strong taste, a bit chalky, a bit fizzy. I look at Daddy. His face is brown from the sun, not brown like Mummy but darker, and the freckles are getting bigger like mine do. His hair is dusty. His eyes are blue like the sky. He has a dirty mark on his cheek I don’t want to rub off. He shows me the floor he has done. One half is tiled, the other half is still mud. There’s a pile of wet cement outside and he must go back to work or it will get too hard. I don’t go back to the flat. I go through the woods to the pool. It’s a hot day but the water is still cold. Nobody is looking. I take off my clothes and slip into the water. It’s so cold it makes me gasp. The bottom is stone and falls away suddenly, so I have to swim fast and panicky. The water gets up my nose and I kick my legs. Then I stop panicking because I’m floating. The water is holding me up. I lie very still and stretch out my arms and legs. I’m floating on the pool. I put back my head and the water sings in my ears.
It was there I learned about water, how it can hold you up, how it can fill you, how it can sink you. When I felt brave I held my breath and sank down with my eyes open. What did I see? What strange shifting half shapes did I see in the twilight of the few seconds I plunged under?
It’s early evening now. There are no spectacular sunsets here because the sun sets behind the village. But it rises over the mountains. If I get up early enough I will catch the pink and the gold. I like the evenings. The valley becomes still. Did I imagine it or was that two swallows? It’s definitely becoming warmer. The sky is cloudy, holding in the heat, and for the moment there is no wind. For dinner I made omelettes with wild asparagus.
Alan Crawford came to stay and my parents became busy with poolside drinks and barbecues. I wasn’t allowed down to the Ferrou on my own, so I sulked in the garden. Alan Crawford had sandy hair and eyelashes. His face was red. I didn’t like the way he smelled. I didn’t like the way he dived into the swimming pool with a splash. I didn’t like the way he and my father were always laughing. I didn’t like the way he called my mother ‘Viv’. I went to the village. I walked round the streets, looking up alleyways and over walls into gardens. I peered into the church. I hung around the square, kicking dust with my sandals. It was Jeanette’s dogs who saw me. She had kept two of the puppies, shaggy spaniels with high-pitched barks. They rushed up and started sniffing me.
‘Bas les pattes, bas les pattes!’ shouted Jeanette, but the dogs didn’t scare me. ‘Oh, the little English girl. Where are your parents?’
‘They are having a party,’ I said. ‘For grown-ups.’
‘Oh, the poor little one.’ She sat next to me and squeezed my hand. ‘Let us go and see Maman and see if she has any bonbons.’ She wore an apron dusty with flour. The dogs licked my knees and made me giggle. All of a sudden I felt happy.
Auxille was sitting outside the café darning a sock. The café was empty. It was late afternoon. The air was droopy like the leaves on the plane trees.