Виктория Холт: The Judas kiss

They would recognize the beauty of Francine in the statues and they would buy them, and I am sure preserved them and remembered for a long time enchanted afternoons when they were waited on by a beautiful girl who served them wine in a flower-trimmed glass.

So we lived in those long-ago days, never thinking beyond the moment, rising in the morning to the sunshine and going to bed at night deliciously tired out after days of pleasant activities. It was fun, though, to sit in the studio and listen to the rain as it pelted down. "This will bring out the snails," Francine used to say; and when it was over we would go out with our baskets and gather them. Francine was an expert at picking out those which could be sold to Madame Descartes, the Frenchwoman who kept the inn on the waterfront. She would instruct me not to pick those whose shells were soft because they would be too young. "Poor little things, they have had no life yet. Let them live a little longer." It sounded humane, but of course Madame Descartes wanted only those which were edible. We would take them to the inn and receive a little money for them. A few weeks later, when the snails had been taken out of the cage in which they had been kept, Francine and I would go along to the inn and Madame Descartes would give us a taste of them. Francine thought they were delicious cooked with garlic and parsley. I never really fancied them. It was a ritual, however—the end of the snail harvest—and therefore I went solemnly through it with my sister.

Then there was the vine harvest, when we donned wooden shoes like sabots and helped in treading out the grapes. Francine joined in with verve—singing and dancing like a wild dervish, her curls flying, her eyes shining, so that everyone smiled at her and my father said, "Francine is our ambassadress."

Those were the happy days and it never occurred to me that they could change. My mother was growing weaker but somehow she managed to conceal the fact from me. Perhaps she did from my father too, but I wondered whether she did from Francine. But if it did occur to my sister she would have dismissed it as she always did anything she did not want to happen. I sometimes thought that life had bestowed so many gifts on Francine that she believed that the gods were working for her too, so that she only had to say, "I don't want that to happen," and it wouldn't.

I remember the day well. It was September—wine harvest time—and there was that excitement in the air which always heralded it. We would go, Francine and I, and join the young people on the island to begin our stamping on the grapes to the tunes from Verdi's operas which old Umberto would scrape out on his fiddle. We would all sing lustily and the old people would sit and watch, their gnarled hands clasped on their black laps and the light of reminiscence in their rheumy eyes, while we danced until our feet were weary and our voices grew more and more hoarse.

But there was another harvest. One of the poems I liked best was called The Reaper and the Flowers.

There is a Reaper whose name is Death And with his sickle keen He reaps the bearded grain at a breath And the flowers that grow between.

Francine explained it to me; she was good at explaining things. "It means young people sometimes get in the way of the sickle," she said, "then they get cut down too." It seems significant now that she should have been one of those flowers which grew between. But then it was our mother who died, and she was like a flower. It was not time for her to die; she was too young.

It was terrible when we found her dead. Francine had taken in the glass of milk she had every morning. She was lying quite still and Francine said afterwards that she went on talking for quite a while before she realized my mother was not listening. "Then I went to the bed," said Francine; "I just looked at her and then I knew."

So it had happened. All Francine's magic could not hold it off. Death had come with his sickle and taken the fair flower which grew between.

Our father was as one demented. He was very much the artist and when he worked in his studio making those beautiful women who had a look of my mother or my sister, he had always seemed far away. We always laughed at his absent-mindedness. Francine bustled about the studio keeping us all in order. Our mother, for a long time, had been too ill to do very much; she was just there—a benign presence and an inspiration to us all. She had talked to visitors and made them welcome and they all enjoyed that; and as long as Francine was there everything held together.

Now she was gone, Francine took over completely. She talked to the visitors and made them feel they were getting bargains. I don't know how we should have got through that year without her. When our mother was laid to rest in the little cemetery close by the olive groves we should have been a desolate household but for Francine. She became in a sense the head of the household, although she was only fifteen years old. She shopped; she cooked; she kept us going. She refused to take any more lessons with the Butterfly, as she called Antonio, but she insisted that I should. Our father lived with his stone but his figures had lost a certain magic which they had had before. He didn't want Francine to pose for him. That brought back too many memories.

The gloomy months began to pass and I felt a change in myself. I was at that time ten years old but I ceased to be a child.

Our father talked to us during that time. It was in the evenings when we would sit on the green slope which ran down to the sea, and as the darkness fell we would watch the sheen of phosphorescence which came from the shoals of fish and were like will of the wisps on the water ... eerie and yet comforting in a way.

He talked about his life before he came to the island. Francine had been curious about it for a long time and had gleaned a little information which she had extracted from him or our mother during their unwary moments. We often wondered why they were so reluctant to talk about the past. We were soon to discover. I suppose everyone who had lived in Greystone Manor would want to escape from it and even forget he or she had ever been there. For it was like a prison. That was how our father described it, and later I was to understand.

"It's a fine old house," said my father, "a mansion really. Ewells have lived in it for four hundred years. The first Ewell built it before the reign of Elizabeth. Think of that."

"It must be strong to stand up to all that time," I began, but Francine silenced me with a look, and I knew she meant that we must not remind our father that he was thinking aloud.

"They knew how to build in those days. Their houses might have been uncomfortable, but they could stand up not only to the weather but to attackers."

"Attackers," I cried excitedly, only to be silenced again by Francine.

That was when he said, "It was like a prison. To me it was a prison."

There was a deep silence. Our father was looking back right over the years to when he was a boy, before he had met my mother, before Francine was born. It was hard to imagine a world without Francine.

Our father was frowning. "You children have no idea," he said. "You have been surrounded by love. We have been poor, yes. It has not always been a comfortable life—but love there has been in abundance."

I ran to him and threw myself at him. He held me very tightly in his arms. "Little Pippa," he said, "you have been happy, yes? You must always remember Pippa's song. We named you for that, Pippa.

'God's in his heaven-

All's right with the world.'"

"Yes," I cried. "Yes, yes."

Francine said, "Go and sit down, Pippa. You're interrupting Father. He wants to tell us something."

Our father was silent for a while and then he said, "Your grandfather is a good man. Make no mistake about that. But sometimes good men are uncomfortable to live with—for sinners that is."