Joanne Harris - Five Quarters of the Orange

I received two letters; one from Yannick and one addressed to me in Laure’s writing. I read the first with growing unease. In it Yannick was plaintive and cajoling: he had been going through a bad time. Laure didn’t understand him, he said; she constantly used his financial dependency as a weapon against him. They had been trying for a child for three years without success; she blamed him for that too. She had mentioned divorce.

According to Yannick, the loan of my mother’s album would change all that. What Laure needed was something to occupy her mind, a new project. Her career needed a boost. Yannick knew I could not be so heartless as to refuse…

I burnt the second letter unopened. Perhaps it was the memory of Noisette’s flat, factual notes from Canada, but I found my nephew’s confidences pitiful and embarrassing. I did not want to know any more. Undaunted, Paul and I prepared for a final siege.

This was to be our last hope. I’m not sure what we expected-it was only sheer obstinacy that kept us going. Perhaps I still needed to win, just as I had that last summer at Les Laveuses. Perhaps it was my mother’s harsh, unreasonable spirit in me, refusing to be beaten. Give up now, I told myself, and her sacrifice would have been for nothing. I fought for both of us, and thought that even my mother might have been proud.

I had never imagined that Paul would prove such an invaluable support. Watching the café had been his idea, just as it was he who discovered the Dessanges phone number on the back of the Snack-Wagon. I had come to rely heavily on Paul in those months, and to trust his judgment. We often sat guard together, a blanket tucked over our feet as the nights drew colder, a pot of coffee and a couple of glasses of Cointreau between us. In small ways, he made himself indispensable. He peeled vegetables for the evening’s cooking. He brought in firewood and gutted fish. Even though visitors to Crêpe Framboise were rare-I stopped opening altogether midweek, and even on the weekend the presence of the Snack-Wagon discouraged all but the most determined customers-he would keep watch in the restaurant, wash dishes, mop floors. And nearly always in silence, the comfortable silence of long intimacy, the simple silence of friendship.

“Don’t change,” he said at last.

I’d turned to go, but he kept my hand in his and I couldn’t pull away. I could see raindrops gleaming on his beret and against his mustache. Behind us, I could hear music from the café.

“I think I might have got something,” said Paul.

“What?” My voice was rough with weariness. All I wanted to do was to lie down and sleep. “For God’s sake, what now?”

“It might be nothing.” Careful now, with a slowness that made me want to scream in frustration. “Wait here. Just want to…you know…check something.”

“What, here?” I almost shrieked. “Paul, you just wait a-”

But he was already gone, moving with a poacher’s speed and silence toward the taproom door. Another second, and he was gone.

“Paul!” I said furiously. “Paul! Don’t think I’m going to wait out here for you! Damn you, Paul! ”

But I did. As the rain soaked into the collar of my good autumn coat, creeping slowly into my hair and dribbling cold fingerlings between my breasts, I had plenty of time to realize that no, I hadn’t really changed all that much, after all.

Cassis, Reinette and I been waiting for over an hour when they arrived. Once we were outside La Rép, Cassis, shed all pretense at indifference and watched avidly through one of the smeared windowpanes pushing us back when we tried to take our turns. My interest was limited. Until Tomas arrived there could be nothing much to see, after all. But Reine was persistent.

“I want to see,” she wailed. “Cassis, you mean thing, I want to see! ”

“There’s nothing there,” I told her impatiently. “Nothing but old men at tables and those two tarts with their mouths painted red.” I’d only caught a glimpse at the time, but how I remember. Agnès at the piano and Colette with a tight green wrap-over cardigan revealing thrusting breasts like cannon shells. I still remember where everyone was, Martin and Jean-Marie Dupré playing cards with Philippe Hourias-fleecing him, as usual, by all appearances-Henri Lemaître sitting by the bar with an everlasting demi and an eye to the ladies, François Ramondin and Arthur Lecoz, Julien’s cousin, discussing something furtive in a corner with Julien Lanicen and Auguste Truriand and old Gustave Beauchamp on his own by the window, beret pulled down over his hairy ears and a stub of a pipe jammed between his lips. I remember them all. With a struggle I can see Philippe’s cloth cap lying on the bar next to him, I can smell the tobacco smoke-by then the precious tobacco was heavily laced with dandelion leaves, and stank like a green-stick fire-and the smell of chicory coffee. The scene has the stillness of a tableau, the golden glow of nostalgia overridden by the dark-red flare of burning. Oh, I remember. I only wish I didn’t.

When at last they came, we were stiff and bad-tempered from crouching against the wall and Reinette was almost in tears. Cassis had been watching through the doorway and we had settled under the smeary window. It was I who heard them first, the distant sound of motorbikes getting closer on the Angers road, then blatting down the dirt track with a muffled series of small explosions. Four bikes. I suppose we should have expected the women. If we’d known how to read Mother’s album we should certainly have anticipated their arrival, but we were profoundly innocent in spite of everything, and the reality shocked us a little. I suppose it was because as they entered the bar we could see that these were real women-tight twinsets, fake pearls, one carrying her pointed high-heeled shoes in one hand, the other fumbling in her handbag for a compact-not especially pretty, not even very young. I’d expected glamour. But these were only ordinary women like my mother, sharp-faced, hair held back with metal grips, backs arched to an impossible camber by those agonizing shoes. Three ordinary women.

Reinette was gaping.

“Look at her shoes!” Her face, pressed against the smeared glass, was pink with delight and admiration. I realized that she and I were seeing different things, that my sister still saw movie-star glamour in the nylon stockings, the fur collars, crocodile handbags, fluffy ostrich feathers, diamond-cluster earrings, elaborate hairstyles. For the next minute she continued to murmur to herself in tones of ecstasy. “Look at her hat! Ohhh! Her dress! Ohhh! ”

Cassis and I both ignored her. My brother was studying the boxes that had been brought on the back of the fourth motorbike. I was watching Tomas.

He stood slightly aside from the rest, one elbow against the bar. I saw him say something to Raphaël, who began to draw glasses of beer. Heinemann, Schwartz and Hauer settled themselves at a free table near the window with the women, and I noticed old Gustave drew away to the other side of the room with a sudden expression of disgust, taking his glass with him. The other drinkers behaved much as if they were used to such visits, even nodding to the Germans as they crossed the room, Henri giving the eye to the three women even after they sat down. I felt a sudden, absurd stab of triumph that Tomas remained unescorted. He stayed at the bar for a while, talking with Raphaël, and I had chance to watch his expressions, his careless gestures, his cap pushed back at a jaunty angle and his uniform jacket left hanging open over his shirt. Raphaël said little, his face wooden and polite. Tomas seemed to sense his dislike, but to be more amused than angry. He lifted his glass in a slightly mocking way and drank Raphaël’s health. Agnès began to play the piano, a waltzy tune with a brittle plink-plink on one of the high notes where one of the keys had been damaged.