Marina Kemp - Nightingale

‘It will get dark soon enough.’ He crossed his arms in the water, looked down at his hands. ‘Dark, dark, dark.’

‘Perhaps I could stay for a short while,’ she said, ‘and read some of our book.’

He lifted his chin, pursed his lips and gazed at his toes at the end of the bath. ‘Well, all right. If that’s what you’d like to do.’

That night, in one of her nightmares, she found a small black runt of a kitten with milky eyes; she held it in both hands, wrapped in a blanket. It shivered all over, its little chest bouncing with each heartbeat. She had to find it somewhere to sleep and regain its strength before it was too late, but she couldn’t find anywhere safe for them. There were other cats, strong cats, prowling around the barn they were hiding in.

Then she realised that the blanket was smeared with shit; it was all over the kitten too, its fur slick with it. It had collected in the delicate apertures of its ears and around its muzzle. The kitten opened its tiny mouth wide and Marguerite wiped frantically to stop the faeces seeping in.

Disorientated on waking, it was her sister’s shit-caked trousers she thought of, not Jérôme’s. Until she could wake herself properly and push her memories away, she was cleaning her sister’s small thighs and bottom; it was Cassandre’s hot head hanging dully on her shoulder, Cassandre’s hot arms wrapped around her neck.

She held her pillow to her, squeezing it as tight as she could. ‘Cassandre, Cassandre, Cassandre,’ she said, over and over, an incantation to keep her safe, as she had done so many times in the quiet of the night.

She spent the morning cooking. It was still raining, though it had abated a little. She had no urge to go anywhere. Jérôme had slept particularly badly, calling her down repeatedly to attend to him. The intervals of sleep she snatched felt febrile, and she woke every time he knocked, or every time a nightmare built to its climax, covered in cold sweat. It collected in a pool between her breasts; her back and shoulders were wet to touch.

He had not eaten his breakfast, and had fallen into a deep sleep after she took the untouched tray away. She had a dull and protracted conversation on the phone with the village doctor, going through Jérôme’s repeat prescriptions. When she had finished she went through to the kitchen and prepared a dish she’d learnt as a teenager from their au pair: chicken in a creamy sauce with rice, a sort of English poule au riz . She and Cassandre had always loved it, its delicious blandness. Then she made a tart, the lemons stinging her cuticles where they had grown rough and ragged.

There was a low fog; the rain pattered continually, punctuated by the odd torrent coming down from where it collected in the tiles above. She wondered whether the entire roof was made up of Jérôme’s tiles, since that had been his business. When she’d met his adult son for her interview, in his glistening office in Paris, he had called the family business, which had gone back for generations until Jérôme sold it, a ‘tile empire’. She smiled faintly at the thought of Jérôme as the Tile Emperor. She imagined him standing in a factory amidst piles of tiles, wearing a braided jacket with epaulettes and a gleaming black bicorn on his head. Then she remembered his feeble form in the bath as she’d read to him the night before, and stopped smiling.

She’d opened a bottle of wine to make the sauce, one of five bottles she’d found in one of the cupboards, capped in dust. Now, looking out at the greyness outside, she poured a glass for herself, and the glug the wine made brought her back to some vague memory she couldn’t place, an indefinable levity. She sat in her chair and held the glass to her nose, inhaling the earthy, foresty smell. She tried to imagine for a moment that she was in Paris. The pattering of the rain helped to hide the countryside’s absence of traffic, voices, sirens. She tried to imagine she was sitting alone in a café where no one knew her and she had nowhere to be.

‘What am I doing?’ she muttered, and then felt self-conscious, as if she were acting. A plump robin landed on the window ledge and looked in, its head cocked. I’m here, she thought, not in Paris. There’s nothing there for me. She took a long sip of wine. This is what I wanted.

She woke up to sounds in the garden. She had a headache and a stale taste in her mouth. Quickly, she got up from the armchair she had been curled up in, and as she stood all the blood in her body seemed to rush, pounding, to collect in her right temple. Pressing one cool palm against it, she heard the clinking sounds again, and a male voice. She looked around, still disorientated, and snatched up the wine bottle and glass, putting them away in a cupboard. Then she went to the door, trying to see through the drizzle and gloom.

There were two young men outside with a wheelbarrow and spades, a few large sacks of manure or earth standing beside them. They were buttoned up against the rain, hooded cagoules fastened to let only their faces show. She locked the door and let her forehead rest against the cool glass; it soothed her head.

Then another man came around the corner from the drive, and they were face-to-face through the glass. Startled, Marguerite stepped back. He jerked his head back a little, as if startled too. He wasn’t wearing his hood up, like the other two; even through the glass, and with a metre or so between them, she could see the tiny glass-like bubbles of rain covering his face and hair.

He raised his hand and smiled, signalling an unspecific question – could she let him in, could she open the door, could she come outside? Hesitantly, she unlocked and pulled the door open, not all the way, and stood in the gap.

‘I’m sorry to come unannounced,’ he said. ‘Henri Brochon.’ He said his name as if she was supposed to know it, and held a hand out to shake hers. She took it, again with hesitation. It was warm and his grip firm; she looked down quickly at their hands together, hers pale yellow against his brown.

‘I’m Brigitte’s husband.’ He paused. ‘Brigitte, the gardienne .’

‘Yes, of course.’ She held her hand to her temple again to try to stop it throbbing. The pain was spreading behind her right eye. ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting anyone.’

‘No, I’m sorry – Brigitte said she would call you. She asked me to have a look at the oak at the bottom of the garden. She said it’s struggling.’

‘Yes.’ Marguerite tried desperately to think of something to say. ‘I thought it might be dying. Do you look after the garden here?’

‘No, I’m a farmer. But I can spare the boys for a few hours. Brigitte doesn’t have permission to employ a gardener for the Lanviers, but she’s responsible for keeping the place running so we do what we can.’

‘I see.’ She wondered when she had ever said ‘I see’ to anyone. She waited, and then it occurred to her that he was waiting for her to say something. ‘Did you want something?’ she said, and then, realising that might sound rude: ‘A glass of water? Or do the –’ She hesitated to call them ‘boys’. ‘Do they want some coffee?’

‘No, they’re fine. I’m going to leave them here for a bit, so let them know if you think of anything else that needs doing. Is everything working okay in the house?’ He looked over her shoulder into the kitchen.

‘Actually, there are a couple of things,’ she said, more to break the silence than because she wanted anything fixed. ‘I’ll let them know.’

‘I can have a quick look now,’ he said, stepping forward, but she didn’t move. ‘Shall I come in?’

‘Okay.’ She opened the door reluctantly, stepped back into the kitchen. She watched as he crouched down to remove his wet boots. He wore thick, ribbed green socks. They looked very clean and new for a farmer.