Трейси Шевалье - The Virgin Blue

‘Oh.’ I felt dizzy and nauseous and thirsty all at once.

‘Listen, Madame.’ He rolled his tongue over his teeth. ‘If you want to use that desk there -’ He gestured toward an empty desk across from his.

‘No thank you,’ I said shakily. ‘The other office is fine.’

Monsieur Jourdain nodded, looking relieved that he wouldn't have to share a room with me.

I began where I'd left off, but kept stopping to inspect my hair. Finally I shook myself. Nothing you can do about it right now, Ella, I thought. Just get on with the job.

I worked quickly, aware that Monsieur Jourdain's new tolerance could only be relied on for so long. I stopped trying to work out what the taxes were being levied for and concentrated on names and dates. As I got toward the end of the book I became more and more despondent, and began making small bets to keep myself going: there'll be a Tournier in one of the next twenty sections; I'll find one in the next five minutes.

I glared at the last page: it was a record for a Jean Marcel, and there was only one entry, for châtaignes , a word I'd seen often in the compoix . Chestnuts. The new colour of my hair.

I heaved the book into its box and walked slowly down the hall to Monsieur Jourdain's office. He was still sitting at his desk, typing fast with two fingers on an old manual typewriter. As he leaned forward a silver chain swung out of the V in his shirt; the pendant at the end of it clanked against the keys. He looked up and caught me staring at it. His hand moved to the pendant; he rubbed it with his thumb.

‘The Huguenot cross,’ he said. ‘You know it?’

I shook my head. He held it up for me to see. It was a square cross with a dove with outspread wings attached to the bottom arm.

I set the box on the empty desk opposite him. ‘ Voilà ,’ I said. ‘Thank you for letting me look at it.’

‘You found anything?’

‘No.’ I held out my hand. ‘ Merci beaucoup, Monsieur .’

He shook hands with me hesitantly.

‘ Au revoir, La Rousse ,’ he called as I left.

It was too late to go back to Lisle, so I spent the night at one of the two hotels in the village. After supper I tried calling Rick but there was no answer. Then I called Mathilde, who had given me her number and made me promise to give her an update. She was disappointed that I hadn't found anything, even though she knew the odds were against me.

I asked her how she got Monsieur Jourdain to be nicer to me.

‘Oh, I just made him feel guilty. I reminded him you were looking for Huguenots. He's from a Huguenot family himself, a descendant of one of the Camisard rebellion leaders, in fact. René Laporte, I think.’

‘So that's a Huguenot.’

‘Sure. What were you expecting? You mustn't be too hard on him, Ella. He's had a difficult time lately. His daughter ran off with an American three years ago. A tourist. Not only that, a Catholic too! I don't know which made him angrier, being American or being Catholic. You can see how it's affected him. He was a good worker before, a smart man. They sent me over last year to help him sort things out.’

I thought of the room full of books and papers I'd worked in and chuckled.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘Did you ever see the back office?’

‘No, he said he'd lost the key and there was nothing in it anyway.’

I described it to her.

‘ Merde , I knew he was hiding something! I should have been more persistent.’

‘Anyway, thanks for helping me.’

‘Bah, it's nothing.’ She paused. ‘So, who's Jean-Paul?’

I turned red. ‘A librarian in Lisle, where I live. How do you know him?’

‘He called me this afternoon.’

‘He called you ?’

‘Sure. He wanted to know if you had found what you were looking for.’

‘He did?’

‘Is that such a surprise?’

‘Yes. No. I don't know. What did you tell him?’

‘I told him he should ask you . But what a flirt!’

I flinched.

I took the scenic route back to Lisle, following the Tarn through winding gorges. It was an overcast day and my heart wasn't in the drive. I began to feel carsick from all the curves. By the end I was wondering why I'd bothered with the trip at all.

Rick wasn't in when I got home and there was no answer at his office. The house felt lifeless, and I moved from room to room, unable to read or watch television. I spent a long time examining my hair in the bathroom mirror. My hairdresser in San Francisco had always tried to get me to dye my hair auburn because he thought it would go well with my brown eyes. I'd always dismissed the suggestion, but now he had his way: my hair was definitely going red.

By midnight I was worried: Rick had missed the last train from Toulouse. I didn't have the home phone numbers of any of his colleagues, the only people I could imagine him being out with. There was no one else I could call nearby, no sympathetic friend to listen and reassure me. I briefly considered phoning Mathilde, but it was late and I didn't know her well enough to inflict distressed calls at midnight on her.

Instead I called my mother in Boston. ‘Are you sure he didn't tell you where he was going?’ she kept saying. ‘ Where were you again? Ella, have you been paying enough attention to him?’ She wasn't interested in my research into the Tournier family. It wasn't her family anymore; the Cévennes and French painters meant nothing to her.

I changed the subject. ‘Mom,’ I said, ‘my hair's turned red.’

‘What? Have you hennaed it? Does it look good?’

‘I didn't -’ I couldn't tell her it had just turned that way. It made no sense. ‘It looks OK,’ I said finally. ‘Actually it does look good. Kind of natural.’

I went to bed but lay awake for hours, listening for Rick's key in the door, fretting about whether or not to be worried, reminding myself that he was a grown-up but also that he always told me where he would be.

I got up early and sat drinking coffee until seven-thirty when a receptionist answered the phone at Rick's firm. She didn't know where he was, but promised to get his secretary to call the moment she got in. By the time she called at eight-thirty I was wired with coffee and slightly dizzy.

‘ Bonjour, Madame Middleton ,’ she sang. ‘How are you?’

I'd given up explaining to her that I hadn't taken Rick's name.

‘Do you know where Rick is?’ I asked.

‘But he is in Paris, on business,’ she said. ‘He had to go suddenly the day before yesterday. He'll be back tonight. Didn't he tell you?’

‘No. No, he didn't.’

‘I'll give you his hotel number if you want to call him there.’

When I reached the hotel Rick had already checked out. For some reason that made me angrier than anything else.

By the time he got home that night I could barely speak to him. He looked surprised to see me, but pleased too.

I didn't even say hello. ‘Why didn't you tell me where you were?’ I demanded.

‘I didn't know where you were.’

I frowned. ‘You knew I was going to the archives in Mende to look up records. You could've gotten in touch with me there.’

‘Ella, to be honest I haven't been sure what you've been doing for the past few days -’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘- Where you've been, where you were going. You haven't called me at all. You weren't clear about where you were going or how long you'd be away. I didn't know you'd be back today. For all I knew you wouldn't come back for weeks.’

‘Oh, don't exaggerate.’

‘I'm not exaggerating. Give me a break here, Ella. You can't expect me to tell you where I am if you don't tell me where you are.’