The farmhouse was empty. The rooms were dark. The walls and floors and ancient doors lay silent and I had a sense that the house had died too. No buzz of heat-heavy flies or creak of boards contracting as the day cooled. I turned on the lights and inspected every room.
Nothing. Nobody. Not even the old dog Juno curled up on my father’s bed. The house was deserted, except for its memories. They were there, hanging from every beam, stretched from table to chair like cobwebs, brushing against my skin, clinging to my hair.
Where was Papa?
Outside. That’s where he’d be. Stalking his land, hunting rifle in the crook of his arm, dogs at his heels, seeking out any intruder who might try to take advantage of a moonless night. I would not want to be one of the shadows that crossed his path. His feet knew every patch of grass, each channel of water, the exact placing of each dyke and tree and fence. In his head my father carried an intimate map of every square metre of his land, and yet even he could not know what was out there.
I worried for him.
*
I entered André’s bedroom. He was still in the barn. I felt like an intruder. Nothing had changed in my brother’s room and I poked and prodded into the few cupboards. I discovered a handsome wristwatch in the drawer of his bedside cabinet, with a black leather strap and gold case in art deco style. A Bulova. An American watch I’d never seen before.
It made me wonder what visitors André had received down here in his hideaway while I was running around Paris waiting and waiting to hear from him. I rummaged through his shelves and under a stack of Les Ailes aircraft magazines I came across his old copy of Les Misérables that matched mine and under it a Bible. Both well-thumbed. The touch of them triggered the memory of the Île Saint-Louis in Paris and the sound of the calm voice on the end of the telephone in Hôtel d’Emilie telling me to wait where I was.
Talk to me, André.
How can I protect you when I am in the dark?
I looked under his pillow and I felt no shame. If he would not help me help him, I must help him myself. A hymn book. I found a hymn book tucked under the neatly smoothed white cotton pillowcase. It was a dark-blue book with gold trim, its corners soft from years of handling. Years of being loved.
By my brother?
Surely not. André had no time for what he called primitive superstition. Yet here it was, where he could reach for it in the darkest holes of the night, when pain and despair engulfed him, robbing him of the man he believed himself to be, so that he turned to the soft holy hymnal for comfort.
My hand started to shake when I thought about his pain and the small navy-blue book between my fingers blurred. I replaced it where I’d found it and returned downstairs, where I made a thick soup from home-grown potatoes and white onions. I threw in fat garlic cloves and a handful of thyme and when it was ready I carried a bowl of it out to the barn, steam coiling up into the night air.
To my surprise André accepted the soup. ‘Thank you, Eloïse. It’s kind of you.’
So polite. So polite it broke my heart.
‘Go and get some rest in the house, André. I’ll sit here with Goliath.’ I glanced at the black mound. The air felt stiff with the smell of flesh.
‘Thank you for the offer, but no. I’ll remain.’
His politeness and his stubbornness sent a spike of anger through me.
‘What is the point?’ I asked. ‘Whoever did this could return, we both know that. It is dangerous and pointless to sit here all night alone.’
His face was hidden in darkness but I saw his shoulders jerk forward. ‘Have you forgotten what the bulls mean to us, Eloïse? Has Paris turned your head so quickly?’
‘Can you not see? To put yourself in danger for no reason is senseless.’
‘It is my legs that are damaged, not my mind.’
I was not sure about that. ‘Then I will sit here too.’
‘No, Eloïse.’ His tone was sharp now. ‘This is not a game that I can let you join in, the way I did when we were children. Leave me alone. I want you to go away.’
Go away. From the barn? Or from the farm? I didn’t ask. I knew the answer.
Without a word I walked away, out into the night where the air was silky soft on my skin and carried the salty scent of the marshes and the high-pitched whine of mosquitoes. I left my brother alone in the barn. With his hunting rifle. With the stench of death in every breath he took.
*
I lay awake all night. Hour after hour. Ears alert to the slightest sound, the faintest whisper, expecting the roar of a rifle at every moment. The night was long and oppressively hot. I lay naked in bed, legs tangled in the sheet, arms flung wide, and when my thoughts grew too heavy to hold inside my head I stood at the window and peered out into the blackness. Seeing shadows within shadows, imagining movement where there was none. I needed facts not phantoms so, despite Léon’s warning, I would head into town when it was light.
An hour before dawn I heard men’s voices outside, low and secretive, the words too tight together for me to catch, but I recognised them as belonging to my father and my brother, and felt a hefty kick of relief in my chest. They were safe. Both safe. Below me in the kitchen their voices rumbled for a few minutes, then I heard noises on the stairs. Unfamiliar sounds. I was slow to make sense of them, my mind sluggish with exhaustion, but the sound was slow, laborious, full of effort; a dragging, scraping, arduous sound. It was my brother hauling his damaged body up the stairs. I tried not to picture it, but failed.
I pulled on a light robe, stood close to the old oak door and didn’t breathe. I could hear his grunts of pain. The curses under his breath. I matched them with my own, curse for curse. Finally he reached the landing and the tap of his crutches on the floorboards came nearer. Tap, slide; tap, slide; tap, slide, until he was outside my door, where he halted. For four minutes he stood there in silence, no more than a hand’s breadth from me and when I could bear it no longer I swung open the door. It was a mistake. André must have been leaning against it, gathering his strength after the climb, because he stumbled into my room and would have fallen to the floor if I hadn’t wrapped my arms around him and held him on his feet.
‘I apologise,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
I continued to hold him close as he manoeuvred the crutches back under his armpits. For this moment, while I supported his weight and smelled the farm on his skin, he was my brother again. I was his sister. I let my cheek brush his, and for no more than a heartbeat I felt his body sag against mine, before he pushed himself upright and slid from my grasp.
‘André, who is Piquet?’
His eyes widened and his lips pulled back, baring his strong white teeth.
‘He came to the hospital in Paris,’ I continued. ‘Looking for you. Eyes of stone and an attitude that needed a lesson in manners.’
He almost smiled. ‘Did you give it to him?’
‘I was tempted.’
He nodded. Looked at my scar. ‘He didn’t hurt you?’
‘No. He wanted to, but his sidekick stopped him.’
His face hardened. ‘Have you seen him around here?’
‘No.’
‘Let me know if you do. Don’t go anywhere near him.’
‘Who is he?’
‘A nobody,’ he replied, and swung himself on his crutches in the direction of his room.
I noticed how strong his arm muscles had grown, bulging under his shirtsleeves to compensate for the damage to his legs. I let him go and shut the door but an ice finger touched my throat in the darkness. Piquet was not a nobody. And he could be here.
Tomorrow I would put a strong bolt on my door.
*
‘My Eloïse, ma chérie, you have come home.’
A kiss was stamped on each of my cheeks by my father’s tiny housekeeper, Mathilde. She was a small wiry woman in her mid-fifties, as skinny and fussy as one of our hens. She plonked a bowl of coffee on the kitchen table in front of me and I could smell the familiar lavender water she always sprayed on her short iron-grey curls. Alongside the coffee sat a tartine gleaming with her homemade apricot jam. The warmth of this woman could melt an iceberg. She wore a chin-to-toe cotton apron bright with sunflowers printed over it and her hair was bound up in a sunflower-yellow scarf. She brought sunshine into the dark corners of the house and I gave her the set of lavender soaps I’d brought for her from Paris. They were in fact made in a lavender distillery just up the road from here in Avignon, but I knew their fancy Galeries Lafayette box would please her.
She had been a vital part of this family ever since my mother died. My father employed her as a housekeeper, but she was far more than that to us. She bound our wounds, made us sing the ‘Marseillaise’ and above all cradled us in a love we found nowhere else. But she had her own family of four strapping lads to care for, so after two o’clock each day the child-rearing duties fell on the reluctant shoulders of our father. Had we been bulls or horses, it would have been different. As it was we either ran wild, went hungry, or worked as field-hands till we dropped.
‘Bad times here,’ she muttered, ‘I’m glad you’ve come, Eloïse.’ Her rough hand tapped my cheek. ‘Poor little one.’
‘I’m fine.’
She nodded, prepared to take my word for it. ‘They need you.’
‘Where is André?’
‘In his room.’
‘How is he?’ I asked.
‘Do you mean does he hate you?’
I nodded.
‘He says little,’ she said. ‘He reads, great mountains of books on things I’ve never heard of.’ She paused and wiped her hands vigorously on her apron. ‘When the pain allows him to, that is.’
‘Does he have visitors?’
‘Some. Not often.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I don’t know.’ She stepped forward and lifted the empty coffee bowl from my hand. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and ask him yourself?’