Marina Kemp - Nightingale

A rare silence fell between them. Brigitte stirred bacon into her mixture, and Laure leant over to inspect it. ‘Your pigs?’

‘That’s right.’

They heard water gurgle in the bathroom upstairs; Brigitte rolled her eyes and sighed. She thought again about the nurse: she must go and check in on her and Jérôme. She’d reminded Brigitte of a doll she was given by her uncle as a young girl, which had broken too quickly. She’d been washing its hair and the head just came clean off, with a pop.

This was surely a particularly beautiful evening. As he dried himself, he looked out at his land through the bathroom window. The view was so familiar that he seldom noticed it – no more than the small portrait of Brigitte’s mother hanging in the dark corner at the top of the stairs, or the cup above the sink that held their toothbrushes. But today he couldn’t help but see: everything was a dark gold, the sun falling but still far from gone, and he could see his herdsman Paul with Thierry, the latest farmhand, still working on the perennially crumbling walls of the olive groves. In this light, only at this point of the day, the silver of the olive leaves was a dark grey – just as only in the searing heat of summer could they appear quite white. The sky was clear and insects whirred and his lone goat let out a shout like a deep hiccup.

He strode over to the window, tucking the towel neatly around his waist, and called out: ‘What are you two doing still at work?’

Paul and Thierry looked up immediately, scanning the garden, the porch, trying to find the source of the shout. They were smiling in anticipation. He waved and leant out, feeling with some satisfaction the breadth of his shoulders fill the slim window frame. ‘Over here!’

They frowned against the falling light, holding their hands up over their eyes.

‘We’re just too damn hard-working!’

‘We can’t get enough!’

Henri laughed theatrically. ‘Oh, you can’t fool me!’ They laughed too and turned back to the wall with some awkwardness, as if uncertain whether the dialogue had ended. He turned too, and his hollow guffawing echoed in his ears, foolish. As he combed his hair in the mirror above the sink he sighed deeply, and his face looked very tired and dull to him then.

‘I thought perhaps we could go out today.’

Jérôme turned to look at her, saying nothing.

‘It’s getting warm,’ she said. ‘I thought it might do you good to go outside.’

He continued to stare, wearily. Then he turned in bed to face the wall. Marguerite waited for a while, but he remained silent.

‘Would you like to?’

‘I haven’t been outside for over a month.’

‘Yes, for at least five weeks,’ she said. ‘Since before I arrived.’

‘You probably expect I don’t keep time, just lying here day in day out.’

‘No.’

‘But I do keep time. I know how long you’ve been here, I know what day it is. I’m not a prisoner.’ He forced out a little laugh. ‘I’m not Dantès, raging around his cell with whole years passing by.’

‘Of course you’re not.’

‘I employ you. You’re not here out of charity.’

‘Sir—’

‘So don’t you think if I wanted to go outside I would have told you to take me out? Or do I strike you as too meek to ask for what I want?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps you think I feel like an inconvenience to you.’

Marguerite took a deep breath, waited.

‘I suppose you think you’re on some mission to rescue a feeble old man from terrible suffering and loneliness.’ He turned then in bed, excited. He raised himself up on one elbow. ‘I suppose you’re living in your own little fairy tale. Our own little Parisian Mother Teresa comes to the countryside to care for a very sad old man who will be eternally grateful.’ A fleck of spit had collected at the corner of his mouth. ‘Perhaps they’ll strike up a wonderfully redemptive friendship and she’ll forget all about the shameful life she’s running away from and all the people who have rejected her from the day she was born until the day she scurried along to this poor old house. And then the sad little old man will die smiling in her arms, tears twinkling in his eyes.’ He licked his lips and stared. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘No.’ Marguerite started to tidy the few belongings on the table. She could feel the whump of her heartbeat; her hands were shaking. ‘I was just wondering if you wanted to go outside. I am just doing my job.’ She slammed one of the many jars of vitamins down a little too hard. ‘I know from your last nurse’s handover notes – which, by the way, were entirely perfunctory – that it does you good to get out, and that Doctor Meyer recommends it.’

‘Oh, perfunctory !’ he cried. ‘What terribly impressive vocabulary you have, Mother Teresa. Bravo. It must have been that sparkling education you got yourself at nursing school.’ She closed her eyes, and he turned back to face the wall. In a low, exhausted voice, he said: ‘Now get out please.’

She whispered the words ‘fuck you’ as she left the room. She walked straight through the kitchen and out into the garden. Now she spoke aloud. ‘ Fuck you .’ She inhaled deeply, stretched her arms above her head, felt her abdomen pulled from pelvis to ribs. ‘Fuck off and die already,’ she said, and was surprised to be overcome suddenly with laughter. She bent over to enjoy the sensation, resting her hands on her knees. She felt her hair falling around her face as she laughed. Then she straightened up and rubbed away tears from her eyes.

‘I wonder what you’ll think, Henri, when you see him. He’s gone rapidly downhill.’ Brigitte shook her head as she spoke. ‘It’s very sad.’

‘I wasn’t thinking I’d go into the house.’

‘Weren’t you? No, I suppose not.’

‘I haven’t been in for some time.’

‘No, not since – well, I don’t know when. Didn’t you have to fix his bed that time a few months ago?’

‘No, we sent Thierry to do it.’

‘That’s right.’ They had almost reached the village; Brigitte leant forward in her seat to inspect everything. ‘That roundabout is getting grubbier by the day.’

‘Hm,’ said Henri.

‘It’s really a disgrace, actually. I know the weather’s only just warming up, but there’s no excuse not to have something planted there. Remember when I planted those hydrangeas in the middle?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Well, those lasted a while at least. But I can’t be expected to come to the rescue every time something in the village needs fixing … Huh, what a surprise – I can see Fred in the Tabac, already on his second beer of the day, no doubt.’ She sniffed, was silent for a moment. ‘Laure was saying this new nurse was seen talking to Suki Lacourse,’ she said as they passed the Lacourses’ house, and she eyed Henri carefully.

‘Is that right?’ He checked the rear-view mirror, indicated to turn right out of the village.

‘Well, apparently so. I wonder what someone like that thinks she’s doing chatting up some young little nurse.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Look at the state of that tarmac,’ she said, peering out at the battered road leading to Rossignol. ‘Well, it seems odd to me. Since she thinks she’s such an intellectual .’

‘Perhaps the nurse is an intellectual too,’ he joked lightly; Brigitte snorted.

‘I should think not! She hardly seemed capable of stringing two sentences together.’

‘Oh dear. Not great company for Jérôme.’

Brigitte was silent for a moment. ‘Mind you, you don’t have to be an intellectual to be intelligent.’

‘No,’ said Henri, and he laid his hand over hers. ‘Of course you don’t.’