Marina Kemp - Nightingale

‘Poor you,’ said Cassandre. ‘That sounds so stressful.’ She had learnt the word ‘stressful’ from Marguerite, and used it constantly.

‘It is. And Monsieur Clerc’s an imbecile, and the boys in my class are even bigger imbeciles.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘Enjoy primaire while you can.’ Cassandre nodded, wriggling down further under the covers. ‘How’s your homework, Cass? Are you revising hard enough?’

‘I think so.’

‘You’re a little brainbox.’

‘Hmm, I don’t know.’

‘Well, I do. You’re a brilliant little geek. I bet you get the highest marks in your year.’

The toad started rattling again and Marguerite opened her eyes, back in Jérôme’s quiet house. She sat completely still, treasuring the memory but also aware that she was inventing the conversation. She always did this: she let her younger self become her ideal of Cassandre’s older sister. Always guiding, always supportive. Would she really have been so kind that night? She remembered the slamming of doors, her father coming into the room to declare that their mother had left them all. It was the first time she’d done this, and they didn’t know better than to doubt its permanence. She remembered Cassandre crying and her father’s willowy frame disappearing back into the darkness; she remembered holding her little sister and drying her tears, eventually getting her to sleep. But she couldn’t remember whether she’d sung.

‘Please say I sang, please say I sang.’ She closed her eyes and shook her head to banish the thoughts and images. She lay back down, leaving the lamp on, hoping that Jérôme would call her down to tend to him. ‘Please say I sang.’

Jérôme was sick all morning. He refused, over and over, to sit up to vomit, and dragged his weight down in her arms when she tried to force him to. She had to give up, pulling him instead to the very side of the mattress so he could retch sideways into the bin. He hadn’t eaten much the night before and there was next to nothing for him to bring up. A senseless, repetitive heaving went on throughout the morning, punctuated by protracted groans like a woman in labour.

As the hours wore on she started to feel angry at the sheer relentlessness of his vomiting. She was rough with him when she pulled him repeatedly onto his side, and almost shouted when he disobeyed her instructions.

‘Do you want to choke on your own vomit? Do you think that would be enjoyable?’

He in turn was obstructive and difficult, but she caught a look sometimes in his eyes that was fearful. In regret, she would lower her voice and cool his forehead, but then the heaving and the refusal to get into the right position would start again and her frustration would flare.

Finally the gaps between retching were longer than twenty minutes, but she still didn’t dare leave his room. She let him lie back and close his eyes, and then she sat at the bedroom table, exhausted. She needed to eat, but she couldn’t face getting up. She couldn’t even face cleaning the bin out; it sat by the side of the bed and the room stank. Jérôme started to snore, a faint and reedy sound.

She was startled by a loud knock coming from the kitchen; so too was Jérôme, who snorted and opened his eyes, glassy and distant, before falling back to sleep. She picked up the bin, taking it from the room as she walked through the house to the kitchen.

‘Shit,’ she said under her breath as she saw Suki’s face peering through the glass of the kitchen door. She tried to smile as she opened the door but it couldn’t have been convincing.

‘Is it a bad time?’ Suki asked.

‘Well, quite, yes,’ she said, letting her come in. ‘Hold on a moment.’

She turned, taking the bin out into the utility room. She took her time to rinse it out with hot water and bleach. You don’t just turn up, unannounced, on someone’s job, she thought. When she had finished rinsing it out, she took it back into Jérôme’s room, setting it down by the bed. Then she turned him, finally malleable with sleep, onto his side. His mouth gaped.

She smelt Suki’s smoke before she came back into the kitchen.

‘Can you take that outside?’ she said. It came out harshly, rudely. ‘It floats through the house,’ she said, more softly.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Suki. She opened the kitchen door and stood there, gazing at Marguerite. Half in shade and half in sunlight, she looked more beautiful than Marguerite had realised she could. ‘I think I’ve come at a bad time and you’re cross.’

‘I’m sorry to seem that way. I’m just very busy. Jérôme’s not well.’

‘Of course.’ She reached down to open the little violet bag that hung by her hip, and took out a folded piece of paper. She handed it over. ‘Have a look,’ she said.

Marguerite unfolded it: it was a flyer for a spring fête in the village. There were bad illustrations of lambs and ducklings with big eyes and long eyelashes.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Suki said. ‘Why is Suki giving me an invitation to a ghastly spring fête, I can’t think of anything worse. Right?’

‘Well, not ghastly.’

‘Marguerite!’ Suki let her head fall back to look at the sky. ‘Don’t be so polite! I know perfectly well you would have no interest in a village fête.’

She looked at her, raising an eyebrow in a way that seemed rehearsed, imitated perhaps from someone onscreen.

‘Okay, it doesn’t exactly sound like my kind of thing,’ she said.

Suki watched her for a moment. ‘I know I’m sort of foisting myself on you,’ she said, ‘and you have absolutely no wish for my company.’

Marguerite started to protest but she raised her hands to stop her.

‘Stop, don’t say anything. But I’m going to keep trying, because I don’t think it’s right that you’re out here in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no company whatsoever. Apart from Lanvier.’ She rolled her eyes and took a last, concentrated drag on her cigarette, little lines appearing around her lips as she sucked. She dropped the butt onto the ground beside her and stamped it out, leaning against the doorframe. ‘The reason I’m here is because I need your help.’

‘Aha,’ said Marguerite. She stood. ‘Coffee?’

‘Badly needed, yes please.’

She took the kettle to the sink, closing her eyes as she let the water run. She heard cupboards open and close; when she turned, Suki was busying herself shaking coffee into a large, beaten-up cafetière Marguerite had never used.

‘I have an instinct for where things are kept,’ she said, smiling. ‘That had to be a cups and cafetière cupboard. Just as I bet you keep saucepans in that one, down there. Am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘You see? It’s like I have an instinct for good housekeeping but no knowledge of how to implement it. You’ve seen my place, it’s a total bombsite.’

‘It’s a great location.’

‘Yes and no. I love being able to spy on everyone. And I can avoid them all, I simply wait for the coast to be clear before I walk out the door. But on the other hand, I’m stuck right in the thick of it. I get so claustrophobic there. Sometimes I picture a huge hand coming down and tearing the house from its foundations and carrying it thousands of miles away.’

‘Where would it take the house?’ asked Marguerite. ‘The giant hand.’

‘Iran. The mountains. Lorestan province.’ The kettle clicked and steam rose; Marguerite made to pick it up but Suki reached out to stop her. ‘You mustn’t pour it when it’s still boiling. It should be about 85 degrees. I’ll do it.’

Marguerite stood back as Suki removed the kettle lid and together they watched the steam escape and thin. Suki took it from its perch, lifted it high above the cafetière.