Marina Kemp - Nightingale

She felt Laure watching as she applied her method to sheet after white sheet. ‘Amazing how you do that,’ she said.

‘It’s a handy trick.’

She smoothed one, adding it to the tidy pile.

‘So how many double sheets have we got between us?’ asked Laure. ‘Fifteen?’

‘Fifteen white, and a further two or three if I throw in pink and blue too. We could use the coloured sheets for the flower-arranging stall?’

‘That’s an idea.’ Laure wrote down the figures in her book.

‘And an old one for face-painting, because it’ll get stained, however washable those paints claim to be.’ Laure nodded, and Brigitte kept folding.

‘I’m looking forward to the flower-arranging,’ said Laure. ‘I can’t wait to trample over Anne-Marie’s dismal collection again.’

‘Why does she even bother entering? You beat her every year. It’s embarrassing.’

Brigitte was the judge for the fête’s flower-arranging competition, so she didn’t enter – which was just as well, since she suspected she might outdo Laure’s arrangements. Laure’s were very pretty – lavish, abundant, scrupulously tidy – but Brigitte simply had a greater variety to work from. The farm gardens were filled with them.

‘Speaking of embarrassing,’ said Laure, rooting through her sewing basket to find pins for corsages, ‘Madame Lacourse is entering again. You know that, don’t you?’

Brigitte looked quickly at Laure, who didn’t look up, still looking for something in the basket. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? I had no idea.’

‘I thought you knew,’ Laure said casually, taking a spool of blue ribbon from the basket and holding it against a band of blue elastic. ‘Not quite the right shade,’ she said quietly, frowning; then she looked up and blinked. ‘Are you bothered? She’ll make a fool of herself, like usual.’

‘Well, I just would have liked to know.’

‘Of course. I presumed you would know.’ She looked very serious, then. ‘Do you mean she didn’t apply to you?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

Now this was something; everyone in the village applied to Brigitte and Laure with their stall ideas – they had to do so by the end of February so that due planning could be done. And everyone knew to write to them both.

‘Oh. That’s odd – she applied to me pretty early. She was one of the first, actually. I presumed she would have written to you too.’

‘Apparently she doesn’t think I’m important enough.’

‘Oh you know it’s not that,’ said Laure. ‘She’s threatened by you, Brigitte, she always has been.’

‘Well,’ said Brigitte. She hadn’t folded the last sheet quite right; she felt distracted. She shook it out and started again. ‘What’s the stall, anyway?’

‘She hasn’t named it yet. As far as I can make out from the description, it’ll be a load of her shabby old knick-knacks from Timbuktu to God knows where.’

Brigitte was stuck. She needed Henri at the fête; she had asked him expressly to leave the farm in Paul’s hands that day, since she needed him to oversee her stalls while she judged the flower-arranging and artichokes, and to help set up in the morning. But still, though she trusted him, she didn’t like the thought of Suki’s stall attracting his attention, or the possibility that it might give them a chance to chat. At least fifteen years had passed since Suki’s obsession, but it still unsettled Brigitte. She hated the woman’s make-up, her painted nails and swaying walk. She hated her cigarettes, her air of sophistication. And while Henri had assured Brigitte that he didn’t find the woman attractive either, she remembered just once or twice witnessing his interest in what Suki had to say. She would ‘drop by’ when she knew his day would be winding up, and sit in their kitchen keeping his attention as he stood by the counter, drinking his beer. She could talk about poets and philosophers and films – things Henri found interesting that Brigitte could never find the time to care about. There was no one in the world but Suki who could get under Brigitte’s skin like that.

‘Don’t worry about it, Brigitte. I’m sure we can make her stall as successful as last year’s,’ Laure said, smiling. Brigitte laughed.

‘You’re awful,’ she said, but she felt relieved.

‘Poor girl,’ said Thierry.

‘Yes, poor girl,’ said his brother. ‘She looked like she was having a breakdown.’ He laughed, not unkindly.

‘I didn’t think Parisian girls swore like that. I should have covered your ears, Rémy. I don’t think you’ve even heard those words before.’

‘Shut up,’ Rémy said, grinning.

‘It was kind of hot actually. Boss?’ he asked, leaning forward between Rémy and Henri’s seats.

‘What?’

‘Is the old man really that bad?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean does he make everyone have a nervous breakdown?’

‘No,’ Henri said. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘It’s just, she looked pretty wound up.’

‘Be quiet,’ said Rémy, looking at Henri. ‘It’s not funny.’

‘Not funny at all, an attractive young woman all on her own, all wound up with no one to vent her frustration onto …’

Rémy laughed and Thierry continued, encouraged. ‘She must need a shoulder to cry on. Boss, do you have Monsieur Lanvier’s number? I could call to just, you know, check everything’s okay.’

‘I said don’t be stupid,’ said Henri, too crossly. Rémy’s smile dropped; Thierry fell silent. Henri sensed their confusion, but he didn’t care. The expression on her face had been one of torment, and Henri was reminded once again of a teenage Thibault, kicking gravel in the driveway at Rossignol, staring out of the gates, eyes glazed with a vision of some other life.

At home, he walked straight through the kitchen, barely acknowledging Brigitte and Laure as they greeted him. He walked through to his study and closed the door and sat down, staring at the wall. He’d been rude to the women, unreasonable with Thierry and Rémy. But it was intrusive, the boys joking about something even he was not qualified to understand. They didn’t know the Lanviers or the nurse, had no right to comment.

He leant back in his chair, closing his eyes. He was bored, and frustrated, and the inevitable prospect of masturbation depressed him. He must be the most prolific wanker in the whole of the Languedoc, he thought; literally, the biggest wanker. Handsome Henri, who could have had his pick of all the women, had chosen instead to spend a life of loyal devotion to his right hand. Granted, he cheated occasionally on this life partner, the odd furious fuck coming between them – but deviation only made their relationship stronger, less suffused as it was with sordidness and shame.

He opened his eyes, turned to see his face reflected in the glass of the painting beside him. He didn’t recognise his expression as his own: the grim half-smile, the tired eyes. He sighed and unfastened his trousers and let himself wank quickly, without enthusiasm. Then he cleaned himself carefully with a tissue, screwed it into a ball and threw it into the bin. Brigitte wouldn’t be best pleased when she emptied the bin out, but she could think what she liked. He’d given up caring.

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