Трейси Шевалье - The Virgin Blue

Jacob had washed the shirt for me in Moutier. The blood had mostly come out, but left a rusty outline on the back. I thought it wasn't noticeable unless you looked for it, but Mathilde spotted it immediately when I put it on. I caught her raised eyebrows and craned my neck to look down at my back.

‘You don't want to know,’ I said.

She laughed. ‘A life full of drama, eh?’

‘It wasn't like this before, I promise!’

Mathilde glanced at her watch. ‘Let's go, Monsieur Jourdain will be waiting for us,’ she said. She opened the hall closet, took out the gym bag and handed it to me.

‘You really called him?’

‘Listen, Ella, he is a good man. He has good intentions. Now that he knows your family really was from the area, he'll treat you like a long-lost niece.’

‘Is Monsieur Jourdain the man who called me Mademoiselle? With the black hair?’ Sylvie asked.

‘No, that was Jean-Paul. Monsieur Jourdain was the old man who fell off his stool. You remember?’

‘I liked Jean-Paul. Will we see him?’

Mathilde grinned at me. ‘Look, this is his shirt,’ she said, pulling at one of the shirt tails.

Sylvie gazed up at me. ‘Then why are you wearing it?’ I blushed and Mathilde laughed.

It was a beautiful day, hot in Mende but crisp and cool the further into the mountains we drove. We sang all the way there, Sylvie teaching me the songs she'd learned at her camp. It felt strange singing on our way to a burial, but not inappropriate. We were bringing Marie home.

When we pulled up to the mairie in Le Pont de Montvert, Monsieur Jourdain appeared immediately in the doorway. He shook hands with all of us, even Sylvie, and held on to my hand for a moment. ‘Madame,’ he said, and smiled at me. He still made me nervous; maybe he knew that, for his smile had a desperate air, like a child who wants to be accepted as an adult.

‘Let's have coffee,’ he said hurriedly, and ushered us down to the café. We ordered coffees and an Orangina for Sylvie, who didn't stay long at the table once she discovered the café's cat. We adults sat in awkward silence for a minute before Mathilde slapped the table and cried, ‘The map! I'll just get it from the car. We want to show you where we're going.’ She jumped up and left us alone.

Monsieur Jourdain cleared his throat; for a second I thought he was going to spit. ‘Listen, La Rousse,’ he began. ‘You know I said I would try to find out about some of the family listed in your Bible?’

‘Yes.’

‘ Alors , I found someone.’

‘What, a Tournier?’

‘Not a Tournier, no. Her name is Elisabeth Moulinier. She is the granddaughter of a man who lived in l'Hôpital, a village not far from here. It was his Bible. She brought it here when he died.’

‘Did you know her grandfather?’

Monsieur Jourdain pursed his lips. ‘No,’ he said shortly.

‘But – I thought that you knew everyone around here. Mathilde said so.’

He frowned. ‘He was a Catholic,’ he muttered.

‘Oh, for God's sake!’ I burst out.

He looked embarrassed but stubborn too.

‘Never mind,’ I muttered, shaking my head.

‘Anyway, I told this Elisabeth you would be here today. She is coming to see you.’

‘That's -’ What is it, Ella? I thought. Great? Do you want to be connected with this family?

‘That was kind of you to arrange it,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

Mathilde returned then with the map and we spread it out on the table.

‘La Baume du Monsieur is a hill,’ Monsieur Jourdain explained. ‘There are some ruins of a farm, here, you see?’ He pointed to a tiny symbol. ‘You go now and I will bring Madame Moulinier to you there, in an hour or two.’

When I saw the car parked at the side of the road, dusty and battered, my stomach lurched. Mathilde, I thought. She does love making phone calls. I glanced at her. She pulled up behind it, trying to look innocent, but I could see the trace of a self-satisfied smile. When she caught my eye she shrugged.

‘Why don't you go on ahead?’ she said. ‘Sylvie and I will have a look at the river, won't we, Sylvie? We'll come find you later. Go on.’

I hesitated, then picked up the gym bag, a shovel and the map, and started up the path. Then I stopped and turned around. ‘Thanks,’ I said.

Mathilde smiled and waved a hand at me. ‘ Vas-y, chérie .’

He was sitting on the crumbled remains of a chimney, his back to me, smoking a cigarette. He was wearing the salmon-coloured shirt; the sun gleamed in his hair. He looked so real, so at home with himself and his surroundings that I almost couldn't look at him, it hurt so much. I felt a rush of longing for him, to smell him and touch his warm skin.

When he saw me he flicked his cigarette away but remained sitting. I set down the bag and the shovel. I wanted to put my arms around him, press my nose into his neck and burst into tears, but couldn't. Not until I had told him. The effort to keep from touching him was almost unbearable, and so distracting that I missed his first words and had to ask him to repeat them.

He didn't repeat them. He just looked at me for a long time, studying my face. He tried to remain expressionless, but I could see it was a struggle for him.

‘Jean-Paul, I am so sorry,’ I murmured in French.

‘Why? Why are you sorry?’

‘Oh.’ I linked my hands behind my neck. ‘There's so much to tell you, I don't even know where to begin.’ My jaw began to tremble and I pressed my elbows into my chest to keep myself from shaking.

He reached over and touched my bruised forehead.

‘How did you get this?’

I smiled grimly. ‘From life.’

‘Tell me about it, then,’ he said. ‘And about why you are here with that.’ He nodded at the bag. ‘Tell me in English. You speak in English when you need to, and I speak in French when I need to.’

I'd never thought of doing it that way. He was right: it would be too much to say what I had to say in French.

‘The bag is full of bones,’ I explained, crossing my arms and resting my weight on one hip. ‘Of a girl. I can tell from the size and shape of the bones, plus there are remains of what looks like a dress, and hair. I found them under the hearth of a farm they say was the Tournier farm for a long time. In Switzerland. I think they're the bones of Marie Tournier.’

I stopped my halting explanation and waited for him to challenge me. When he didn't I found myself trying to answer his unspoken questions. ‘In our family names have been passed down even up to the present. There are still Jacobs and Jeans, and Hannahs and Susannes. It's like a commemoration. All the original names still survive, except for Marie and Isabelle. Now I know you'll think I'm making something out of nothing, and with no proof, but I think that meant they did something wrong, they died or were shunned, or something. And the family dropped their names.’

Jean-Paul lit a cigarette and drew on it deeply.

‘There are other things, the kind of evidence you'll be suspicious of. Like her hair, the hair there in the bag, is the same colour as mine. As mine turned when I came here. And when we were lifting the hearthstone and it fell back it made this noise I've heard in my nightmare. This big groaning boom. Exactly the same. But mostly it's the blue. The bits of dress are exactly the blue I dreamed of. The Virgin blue.’

‘The Tournier blue,’ he said.

‘Yes. It's all coincidence, you'll say. I know how you feel about coincidence. But there's too much of it, you see. Too much for me.’

Jean-Paul stood up and shook his legs, then began pacing around the ruin. He walked all the way around it.

‘This is the Mas de la Baume du Monsieur, yes?’ he asked when he returned to me. ‘The farm listed in the Bible?’