Marina Kemp - Nightingale

Henri pulled the truck into Jérôme’s driveway. Rossignol was tired: the once-proud arch stretching high above the gates was covered in rust, the grey paint it used to wear peeling in small patches like sunburnt skin.

‘Wait here for a moment,’ said Brigitte. ‘I’ll just check they’re both around and awake. If I don’t come out in a few minutes, you can presume they are, of course. And pick me up on your way home?’

Henri turned in the driveway and stopped by the tall cypress tree in its centre. It had always been there, as far as he knew. As a boy and young man he had come here often to play with Jérôme’s sons: Marc, Thibault, little Jean-Christophe with his ears like large mushrooms. Henri and his friends would race here from the village on bikes, small stones and flint spraying under their wheels.

He remembered going on expeditions with Thibault, his classmate; they would tie bandanas around their foreheads and take large, pronged skewers into the wild forest around the Lanviers’ land. ‘We’re hunting boar!’ they’d shout to Thibault’s brothers, refusing to take Jean-Christophe with them despite his pleading. ‘You’re not big enough yet JC. They might kill you.’

Rossignol had been larger, and grander, and more remote than anyone else’s house. When they were teenagers, the surrounding forest was a good place to smoke cigarettes and weed, and get drunk. There was a pool in the garden, long since out of use, into which they’d jump from what felt like lethal distances, hurling themselves in at their most acrobatic angles and dunking each other a little too long.

Yet always hanging over this idyll was the shadow of Jérôme. His sons were terrified of him, even the impossibly grown-up-seeming Marc, whom the whole village seemed to worship. Henri remembered Jérôme coming out to the pool sometimes, in his Speedos, and all the boys falling silent.

‘A race?’ he’d challenge them. ‘Who’s man enough for that?’

He’d smile, look around, accept his reluctant contestants. Though not tall, he seemed to the young boys preternaturally strong and fit. And he was, indeed, a faster swimmer – by a breath – than Henri, who was the fastest of them all.

He liked Henri; Henri sensed he approved of him. And so Henri, feeling a little disloyal, liked him back.

‘My father’s a fucking cunt,’ Thibault said once, kicking a wall, fists curled tight by his side and tears in his eyes. Henri felt he could neither agree nor disagree, and said something non-committal; perhaps ‘all parents are’. But Thibault had insisted: ‘No, you have no idea. My dad’s a proper cunt .’ Then he’d stared accusingly at Henri. ‘You don’t think so because he likes you. You’re exactly what he wishes I was.’ And Henri had had to lie.

Brigitte hadn’t come out. Henri turned on the engine and made to drive the truck back out onto the road, but he stopped at the sight of a figure standing by the gateway, squinting at him. It was the new nurse, he realised, though he had thought her a teenage boy at first glance. She was younger than he’d imagined, standing long-limbed and straight in plain, even scruffy clothes, her eyes narrowed as she stared at him in the bright sunshine.

He started to wind down the window to introduce himself, but she was already walking swiftly towards the house, keeping a distance from his truck. As she turned the corner of the house to get to the back door, she was the eerie vision of a teenage Thibault.

She stood for some time inspecting all the pastries behind the glass. There were glossy chocolate and coffee éclairs, vile-coloured marzipan pigs and frogs that she and her sister used to long for as children. The millefeuilles were impressive, delicately layered and squidgy. There were dark jam tarts, criss-crossed with glistening strands of pastry. It all made her feel a little sick.

She pointed at a pile of fougasses .

‘Are they plain?’ she asked the young woman at the till.

‘Yes.’

‘No, Julie,’ interjected the main boulangère , tutting as she looked up from her magazine. She had been reading it standing up, leaning forward onto the counter. Like a hen, thought Marguerite, with her small head, short cropped hair and unusually wide hips. And she blinked a lot, and stared, and jerked her little face just like a chicken. ‘That’s the garlic and rosemary.’

She watched Marguerite as she paid. Marguerite could feel her small bright eyes on her back as she left, pulling up the hood of her cagoule against the rain.

She thought vaguely of going to sit in the library, for something to do, and realised that she was startlingly bored. She couldn’t sit anywhere to eat because everything was wet, so she stood under the awning outside one of the closed shops. It appeared to sell pet accessories, exclusively: there were leopard-print dog and cat beds, pink and red and blue collars studded with shiny paw prints. She turned back to the road, the tarmac black with rain. The fougasse tasted good. Small crumbs of pastry scattered down her front.

She felt, as always in this village, that she was being observed, though there was hardly anyone around in this weather. And then she heard a whistle. She looked towards it and saw Suki dressed all in black, standing in the doorway of the grand house on the corner, her shoulders a little hunched in the cold. She was beckoning to Marguerite, who could do nothing but cross the street and join her.

‘What are you doing out here?’ Suki said instead of greeting her. She pushed the door open. ‘Come in, come in.’

Inside, the house was dark. Suki led her through a gloomy hallway to the salon , switching on table lamps and standing lights. There were strings of coloured bulbs across the old mantelpiece.

‘Sit down,’ she said, gesturing towards the sofa. ‘Will you have tea?’

‘I really can’t stay.’

‘Of course you can.’ She walked out of the room, and Marguerite heard her opening and closing cupboards. ‘Do you like Persian tea?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

The salon was a mess. There were heavy, faded curtains in the same mushroom velvet as the sofa and armchairs. Magazines were piled in columns on either side of the fireplace; there were cardboard boxes around the place filled to bursting, with various words scrawled on them: HOME VIDEOS, PHOTOS MISC., JOURNALS. There were at least eight lamps in a bizarre array of styles: ornate silver antiques, brightly coloured ceramics, a plain beige sphere that could have cost five euros from Auchan. The bookshelves were crammed with cheap-looking paperbacks and chaotic rows of figurines.

‘I’m sure you’re thinking, What a mess ,’ Suki said as she walked in. Deftly, she kicked magazines off the coffee table to clear a space for the silver tray she was carrying. There was a bowl filled with sugar cubes, a teapot and two matching glasses. The set was exquisitely decorated: dark blue and gold, with tiny pink roses. ‘Persian tea is the best in the world. But I’m sure you know that.’

She sat down in the armchair opposite Marguerite, tucking her feet beneath her. She lit a cigarette, exhaled. ‘So, you never came to visit me,’ she said.

‘Sorry – I’ve been so busy with Jérôme.’

‘No apologies,’ she said, raising her hands. ‘You’re under no obligation.’ She looked around the room. ‘A little different from Rossignol, hm?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t live without clutter. It must be in my blood or something. It drives Philippe insane.’

‘Is that your husband?’ asked Marguerite.

‘The one and only.’ Suki stood to pluck a photo frame from the mantelpiece, which she handed to Marguerite. She started to pour the tea, all the time balancing her cigarette between two immaculate fingers, its long train of ash undisturbed.