Delphine was sitting on her bed waiting for him, when Colin arrived at the hospital. She was wearing Michael’s lavender grey tweed hat sideways on her head and the sight of it made him wince. She took one look at him and the expectancy went out of her. She didn’t ask about Amandine and he didn’t say anything. Disconsolately, she accompanied him through the corridors.
“We have to follow the green line on the floor and when that stops we follow the yellow dots,” he explained, “All the way to the exit. How are you feeling?” He saw the beginnings of a Gallic shrug. “You’re looking much better.”
“I’m OK…” she said in a small voice, her bottom lip protruding. She tucked her hand into his.
The yellow dots took them all the way to the car park where she stopped, squinting up at the sky, which was infused with a sulky colour that promised a change of weather: grey clouds lanced with the last shafts of light. She looked up, a critical frown on her face.
“Papa told me that the rays of the sun are the souls of the dead climbing up to heaven,” she said. No names were mentioned; no mums, no worn monkeys were referred to. “Is it true?” she asked, turning to him.
Colin bit one side of his lip and then, for good measure, the other. “Well,” he said prudently, “I don’t think we should rule anything out.”
“I think it is not possible,” she stammered, her voice choking as she turned on her heel and walked off.
“Wait a moment! He had to hurry to catch up with her. “Wait – I’ve got something for you – a treat – when we get back to the boat.”
She glanced at him as if he’d been stringing her a line all this time, making promises he couldn’t keep; as if he’d let her down.
“Just you wait and see!” He sort of understood; he thought he did: this new unhappiness lighting the blue touch paper of her other sadnesses. As they neared the port de plaisance he overtook her and sped on ahead, so that he was able to greet her at the Dragonfly with a flourish.
“There!” he trumpeted. He’d put the cabin door table up and sitting on a plate in the middle of it, plush with cream, was a magnificent cake in the shape of a swan. “I’ll bet you a euro you can’t finish it!”
Holy God, there were tears in her eyes.
“Amandine doesn’t like–” she responded automatically and then broke off.
“Three euros?” he offered, as a single tear fell. “Five?”
~~~
Had he been able to sleep at all the previous night, Colin would have woken with a woman in his arms for the first time in Lord knows how many years, but as it was he kept himself awake, entranced by the feeling of Tyler’s head nestled under his chin, scared that if he took his eyes off her for a moment she might disappear. There was also the question of limited space. Some strange scrupulousness and a need to hold and be held prevented either of them from rolling over on to Delphine’s empty bed. Gallantly, he insisted that she sleep on the inside of his tiny bunk, which left him a narrow strip on the edge and on the couple of occasions when he was close to nodding off, a sense of his precariousness swiftly woke him.
They made love, and they made love again, and he thought that he could easily die from happiness. When he came, he found that he was weeping, and he couldn’t let her see.
Around dawn, she stirred too. “Colin?”
“Hmmm.”
“Just checking…” she whispered, and kissed his chin, and went to sleep again. He feasted on the rainwater scent of her hair fretted with silver, drawing out one dark curl to its full extent and coiling it round his finger.
“Colin?”
“Hmmm.”
“Are you looking at me?”
“Would I do that?”
“What time is it?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Well, I do, quite…”
“Because if you do, both of us will have to get up and one of us – probably you – will have to go naked onto the deck to give me enough space to look for my watch.”
“Forget I asked.”
“Though actually, I mustn’t be late for the hospital…” With elaborate leaning and stretching (and kissing; with elaborate kissing) he managed to locate his watch on the floor under some clothes. “Seven thirty. Loads of time…”
“Colin?” She tilted her head back to bring him into focus. It was a while before she spoke. “What’s happened, this – thing, between us, well it is just… a thing, isn’t it? Only–” She smoothed her hand along his jaw and up to his temple and he had to struggle to keep at bay the plummeting feeling in his stomach. “Only… I’m not really a people person, you see.”
With tremendous concentration, straining to keep the tremor from his voice, he said, “Yes, I see.”
“And you are such a great guy…”
He stared up at the bottom of the shelf above his bed, not answering.
“And it’s really important that we are clear and honest with each other…”
“Why? Why aren’t you a people person? That’s if you don’t mind me asking…”
She fanned herself with the corner of the sleeping bag. “Is it hot in here, or is it me?” she said nervously. “Because I’ve been hurt in the past.”
“God, Tyler! We’ve all been hurt. Nobody gets off scot-free.”
“–and I don’t want to be hurt again.”
“Well, fair enough.” He wondered how brusque he sounded; probably not as brusque as he felt, rattled by this giving with one hand, with one strong, beautiful hand and this taking away with the other all at the same time. “I don’t want to be hurt, either. But I wouldn’t imagine either of us is lying here planning how much pain we can inflict, and how…”
“No-o.”
“I know I’m not,” he leaned up on one elbow, the better to see her. “I want to make you happy. I want you to make me happy.”
“It sounds like a pretty neat equation, when you put it that way,” her doubtful laugh tailed off. “Have you had other… like, relationships, since… you know…?”
“One serious but failed attempt,” he scratched his cheek, “And a couple of false starts.”
“What went wrong?”
“I was still in love with my wife. I loved her for an awfully long time.”
“Being a victim is such a great role to play – you get all the good lines, the big scenes,” agreed Tyler dryly. “But if things didn’t work out before, for either of us, who’s to say that this time…?”
He thought hard before he replied, “Because we’re different people now.” He paused, testing out the credibility of what he had said. “I’m different.”
“Different, how?”
“And my guess is that you are different too.” He touched the tip of her nose. “I’m less certain about things and more grateful,” he kissed her nose where he had touched it, “Maybe that’s a promising combination.”
Distractedly, she kissed him back. “Why?” she demanded. “Why’ve you changed?”
His arm was getting tired; his hand was crackling with pins and needles. He laid his head upon her breast bone. “Are you interviewing me for the post?” he asked.
She twisted so she could look down at him. “Kind of,” came her blunt reply. “Is that OK?”
He was listening to the flooding of her heart, the breathy flow of blood. “I’ve stopped blaming Sally, that’s the main thing. I’ve loosened up a bit – spending time with Delphine would thaw the hardest heart.” He reached up and touched one corner of Tyler’s mouth and then the other, teasing out her smile. “And yes,” he said, “Being interviewed is fine, as long as I get the job,” and he kissed her smile before it could disappear.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she sighed a moment later, “This – what we’re doing here, now – it’s lovely…”
“It is lovely. It’s very, very lovely.”
“It is…” she nested closer to him.
“Well, in that case, we could just go on doing it, a little bit at a time and if it keeps being lovely…”
“Even though you do have Delphine to look after…”
“I do, but sadly, she’s not mine to keep. I’m going to have to give her back at the end of the summer.”
“And we come from different countries…”
“But we both like being in France.”
She nodded. He watched her lips part, trying to anticipate what she might say next, then in watching, completely lost the thread and kissed her again.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said weakly, “I’m not against doing this,” so he kissed her one more time, “In principle…” and then again, “But I just think it’s important,” and again, “That we are honest with each other right from the start.”
Colin flinched, but he was in too deep to turn back now, ready to drown; he told himself he hadn’t lied to her – her mouth, his mouth, their mouths – he had been honest in what he’d said – her throat, the thrill of her pulse, beating – he just hadn’t told her the whole story – her brown arms, her slender legs ensnaring his, all the mysteries of her skin – but he would. Of course he would. He’d tell her everything, when the time was right.
~~~
They set off along the canal in the middle of the morning, with the Yonne dithering beside them, heading off in one direction and then doubling back, neurotically indecisive. The weather couldn’t make up its mind either, oscillating between drizzle and a thin scarf of mist, and Colin and Delphine sat side by side under the fishing umbrella, speaking only a little, lost in their own damp abstractions. Now that his lack of sleep was catching up with him, what had happened the previous night seemed like a sweet hallucination, brought on by an excess of emotion in the aftermath of Delphine’s accident and he found himself closing his eyes to picture it all again, to make it real.
“Colin!” Delphine said crossly, snatching the tiller from his grip. “Regardez–”
“What? Sorry?”
“You cannot sleep and drive. It is not possible, practiquement. We nearly hit the bridge.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. Sabrina Fair was gliding beneath the central arch, a narrow fit, and he could see Tyler in silhouette in the wheelhouse; he stared at her outline just to make sure of her. “I’m sorry,” he said to his granddaughter, but his eyes lingered, following the ripple of their wash back to the peniche, always back to the peniche, like a refrain his gaze returning.
Marshalling himself, he took the tiller from her. “Right!” he declared, making a statement of intent which Delphine didn’t acknowledge. She was lost in some inner landscape too and although her limbs were folded close, there was a lopsided look about her, as if, without Amandine, her centre of gravity had shifted.
“Are you hungry?” he tried not to think about the swan-shaped cake, which she had picked at but he had ended up feeding to the ducks. “Because if you are, I thought we could stop at the next village – Tyler says it’s market day there.”
She didn’t answer and as they put-put-puttered along he couldn’t help reflecting that the various hazards between Paris and the butter-melting south were as nothing, navigationally speaking, compared to the perils of conversation: what can be spoken about, what can be alluded to and what must never be mentioned. Why can’t I just ask her? he thought, hating his own ineptitude, the way he fiddled about in the shallows for fear of floundering right over the barrage. Straight out? Why can’t I just ask her what happened? He cleared his throat. “The book says–” he began, kicking himself.
Her shoulders sagged.
“The book says there’s an excellent brocante in a village called Asnois – a real Aladdin’s cave – and I’d like to take you there so that you can choose something that you like.” He took a deep breath, “Because I’m very sorry that I couldn’t find Amandine.”
She turned to him and for a moment her face was undefended, so that he glimpsed the extent of her anguish.
“It doesn’t matter about Amandine,” she answered briefly, retreating from him.
“Well, I was very fond of her and I didn’t know her half as well as you did,” he ventured, conscious of the complicated currents now in flood, “Are you missing your Mum, too?” he said, steering the small craft of their chat close to the weir’s edge.
She looked at him as if he didn’t get it, as if he didn’t get it at all.
“And Papa?” he went on recklessly. “I miss Papa, all the time.”
“Yes,” she said dully. “All the time.”
Colin swallowed. “Did they argue – ever?” His voice seemed to go up an entire register and he couldn’t bring it down again. “Did they used to…?”
Delphine held out her hand so that the drips falling from one of the spokes of the umbrella formed a little pool in it. She watched each raindrop as it broke the surface tension.
“Did you ever hear them… talking, saying things… shouting – perhaps; or even fighting?”
She tipped the rainwater onto the deck and wiped her hands together until they were dry, a gesture that was more theatrical than practical, and then she bent her wide-eyed gaze upon him, as if she were trying to discern if he really wanted to hear what she had to say. “I heard Maman panting, once,” there was something ruthless in her tone. “In their bedroom. She was panting as if she was running somewhere very fast. And then she cried out. I did wonder if something was hurting her. Then Papa cried out too, although I don’t think he’d been running.”
“Oh,” he remarked, feeling himself flush.
“I didn’t go in to see.”
“No.”
They measured out the silence, negotiating terms.
“How far is it to Asnois?” she asked, politely.
Colin found himself back in the shallows, “Not far.” He was uncertain of what he had achieved, except perhaps to have been reprimanded by a nine-year-old. “Do you think you’d like to visit that junk shop?”
Delphine regarded him, her innocence undiluted. “If I will be honest I would prefer to have a pet…”
~~~
The three of them walked to the village in the loose embrace of the rain, which was fine yet persistent.
“Is it far?” asked Delphine.
“Not far,” he said.
“A couple of miles,” said Tyler, who had never had children and was ignorant of the essential etiquette of half-truths and evasions, “but there’s a bridge where we can play Pooh sticks and maybe when we get to the market they’ll have a crêpe stall and we can eat crêpes with honey and chocolate,” she added, because she meant well.
“And… guimauve?” asked Delphine. “I don’t know the name for it in English.” Amandine’s preferences, a feature of so many of these exchanges, resonated quietly between them.
“Guimauve? Sure you can have guimauve. You can have double guimauve if you want. Whatever it turns out to be…”
The market was all but closed when they arrived at the little town. A lad was whistling as he piled crates of unsold vegetables onto the back of a truck, scattering torn pieces of lettuce and the outer leaves of cauliflowers; the butcher was cleaning the pavement round his stall, sloshing water over it then brushing hard until filmy blue membranes were aggregated into fat and gristle, clogging the gutter. Someone was loading cheap trainers back into their cardboard boxes.
“I probably need some trainers,” said Delphine in a speculative aside. “I cannot wear flip-flops in winter. It is not possible.”
“Well it’s not winter yet,” replied Colin, robustly ignoring the rain spurting down on them. The smell of fried onions began to mingle with the wet weather whiff of the inside of his cagoule.
“I love French cuisine, but andouillettes? I don’t get them, do you?” said Tyler, hurrying past the catering van.
Delphine was holding out for her crêpe.
They watched the raindrops plop into the empty buckets from the flower stall, disturbing the discarded petals of Sweet William. All around them they could hear the drag and snap of trestles being dismantled and the churn of engines as vans reversed. Leaving the market behind, they headed down the main street. The boulangerie shut up shop as they approached and the three of them stood under the overhanging roof of a haberdasher’s, dolefully eyeing some embroidery kits.
“We could go and look at a lavoir,” suggested Colin, “The book says there are two of them…”
“What’s a lavoir?” asked Tyler.
“… and at least they can’t be closed.”
“It is like a launderette,” answered Delphine in unreconciled tones of despair.
“A mediaeval wash house,” explained Colin who, given that their options were currently limited, took it upon himself to lead the way.
The lavoir offered little consolation. Its dark timbers, their grain an ancient and inaccessible text, supported a tiled roof that seemed to be entirely held together by moss. Loose spools of spider’s web trailed from the rafters and abandoned birds’ nests frayed in high corners. The pool itself, fed from an invisible spring by a dented leaden pipe, was a perfect oval, its limestone rim worn away by ancient knees. He contemplated the water, twists of green algae dispersing through it like washed blood. Tyler stooped to fish out a beer bottle. The air of neglect was as penetrating as damp.
Sensing that if he didn’t do something radical the afternoon would become irretrievably steeped in melancholy, Colin seized Delphine by the hand, “Come on – we can’t get any wetter!” and he jumped in, pulling her after him, and started to run up and down. The water was shin deep and he kicked a sparkling arc up into the shadows and as it scattered and fell Delphine’s expression changed from disbelief to astonished delight and she started to scoop water into the air, whole armfuls bursting over her head, chasing him round and round.
“Come on in, the water’s lovely!” he yelled as he went sloshing past Tyler.
“Have you ever had campylobacter?” she answered doubtfully, “The germs in here probably go back five hundred years.”
“At least,” he shouted, making flakes of plaster and grit and hardened mediaeval bird shit pepper down on them from the eaves. He held her gaze for a moment, asking her and then to make his point, reminding her…
“What the heck!” she leapt in and started batting fat handfuls of water at him.
Under cover of the grown-ups having gone stark raving mad, Colin grabbed her by the wrist and started to whirl her round. The two of them spun in drenching circles, creating spray as bright as sparks, a liquid Catherine wheel.
“Stop, stop!” laughed Tyler and panting, he released her, unbalancing their small constellation, sending them off at unpredictable angles. They flopped down on the limestone rim with its patient erosions, catching their breath, a subversive glow keeping them warm. Staring at his saturated shorts, he gave a little snort of amusement and Tyler looked at him and giggled and then stopped herself. Without warning, a gale of laughter came soaring out of her and then he began to laugh as well.
“What are you laughing at?” asked Delphine in a quiet voice. Deliciously helpless, Colin couldn’t answer her and though he wanted to get a grip on himself – needed to – he couldn’t for the life of him sober up.
“Stop, stop!” gasped Tyler, clutching at her side, “Oh, stop!”
But Colin didn’t want to stop, he wanted to go on laughing, laughing like this at nothing and everything, laughing until he was spent, he wanted to go on laughing till he cried.
Like musketeers, the two of them swaggered wetly through the town, with Delphine trailing behind. By some fluke or oversight the boulangerie had opened up, but when he saw the state of them the baker came hurrying to the door, barring their way. Puddles formed around them as they chose cakes from the window.
“I bring them to you,” he wiped his hands fastidiously on his apron. “Attendez.”
They made their way back to the Nivernais, all the colours of the countryside running together. Colin started to sing snatches of a hymn – the golden evening brightens in the west – but neither of the others joined in.
“You can’t sit under your umbrella in this…” said Tyler when they reached the canal, looking at the strumming rain, “You folks will catch your death and besides, I have radiators,” she played her ace with a gleam in her eye.
“Radiators, eh?” With a twinge of guilt he looked at Delphine, whose level stare seemed like a small test. Then, contemplating the stern horizon, he told himself defiantly that Tyler was right, they’d catch their death in this downpour. “Well, maybe just for a little – while it’s so heavy – what do you think?”
Delphine glowered at him long enough for him to understand that if this was a test then he had scored forty percent maybe, barely a pass, that he was in the could do better category of the grandparental league table. Yet to be in the league at all was rather mystifying, when he considered that a few weeks ago he had been living in the kind of sustained solitary confinement that solidifies the heart, makes mutton of it, and now here he was, a man who had a social circle – almost – and competing demands on his attention. He scratched his chin and water ran down his wrist inside the sleeve of his anorak. “I’ll just get some dry clothes for us to change into…” he said, as if the decision had been made on purely pragmatic grounds.
Snug in the cabin of Sabrina Fair they filled the first few moments’ silence by discussing radiators, “I have a diesel boiler,” Tyler explained, “and they run off that. It saves draining the domestic battery – God, I’m boring myself – am I being too much of a techie?”
Colin was watching her making the tea with a sidelong sense of wonder: heating the water, filling the mug, putting the tea bag sachet on the side, but never mind that. I love it when you’re techie, he thought to himself, be as techie as you want, I can take it.
Steam lipped at the windows; there was the scent of wet hair in the air and little by little he became aware that Delphine’s pout had settled in for the duration. “Do you want to play cards?” he asked, suddenly remembering his obligations, and he tweaked the brim of her hat. “We could teach Tyler Damn It.”
She scowled at him. “Damn It’s boring…”
“Or Spit?”
“Spit’s–”
“I know–” Tyler interrupted inspirationally. She picked up the beer bottle she had fished out of the lavoir, which she had brought home with her because she couldn’t find a bin to put it in. “Let’s send a message in a bottle. I’m going to draw a picture of the three of us in the rain and perhaps you could write the message,” she said to Delphine, “And there’s sure to be an old cork in the trash, so we can plug it up and throw it over the side when we’ve finished…” She produced paper and pencils from a drawer. “Here we go!”
Stiffly, Delphine reached for a pencil. She stared at its sharp point.
“What will you do, Colin?” demanded Tyler, now that her organisational blood was up.
“I thought maybe I could watch the two of you – be on hand to answer any questions, that kind of thing…”
“Or maybe you could be cork deputy…?”
“Maybe I could…” But he did watch them – her – he watched her. He watched her sitting next to his granddaughter; he watched the swift movement of her hands as she sketched something, then rubbed it out and sketched again, chattering all the time to Delphine, relieving her of the awkward freight of conversation,
“D’you know what? I find people really difficult to draw. I really do. I guess I’m not really a people person. I like landscapes. You look like a people person to me – I’ll bet you are. I’ll bet you draw really neat people. How’s that message of yours coming along? Have you thought what you’re gonna say…?”
Her voice faded out as he focused all his energies on willing her to glance his way and when she did look up and smile, he jumped. She didn’t speak. Her smile widened, not flickering this time, and his mouth moved a fraction as if in answer, although he had no idea what he might say. Phrase by phrase, in stealth, a silent dialogue began. They talked of kissing, of the slow stroke of tongue on skin, of clothes sliding, of the delicate violence of touch.
They never drew breath.
“I’ve finished!” Delphine slammed the pencil on the table.
Colin blinked as if coming into the light. He took in the child’s downcast face and the clench of her jaw. She appeared poised for action and yet withheld and as he clocked the danger signs, he wasn’t sure if it was rage or misery that was building in her.
“I’d better find you a cork…” he said circumspectly and then, while they sealed up the bottle with the message and the picture inside it, “Will you tell me what you said?”
She shook her head.
“Is it to Papa?” he asked with a kind of lazy intuition that he recognised too late was a substitute for proper interest. He swallowed and found the imagined taste of Tyler was still in his mouth.
Delphine didn’t answer.
Quite right, he chided himself. She’s no fool. She knows when she’s been short changed. “You don’t have to,” he said awkwardly, “Even though I’d really like to know. Look–” he wiped some steam from the window with reluctant fingers, as if the cleared glass provided a view into his own shortcomings. He didn’t want to leave and yet he knew it wouldn’t be quite right for him to stay. “The rain’s easing up. It’s time for you and me to go.”
He disciplined himself to keep his gaze neutral, to say goodbye to Tyler and take his granddaughter by the hand. Together, they wandered mournfully along the riverbank to the next bridge and he was conscious of the slight sounds of the countryside drying out: a single drop falling, a leaf shifting as it lost its weight of water. Along the wooded bank a silver birch was caught in the flare of evening light, its white trunk illuminated fleetingly, before being extinguished for the night.
He had to lift her up onto the parapet of the bridge so that she could throw the bottle in.
“Do you like being with me?” he asked her, all of a sudden. He could feel the small case of her ribs, her thinness. Her answer mattered to him.
Delphine thought for a moment, weighing his question, making her choice. She cocked her head to one side. “What day is it today?”
“Let me see, it must be… Saturday – yes, it’s Saturday.”
She twisted round to look at him and then, with a generosity that made him feel ashamed, she said carefully, “Well, if it’s Saturday, then I like being with you very much.”
“I’m sorry–” he blurted out. “I’m very – sorry.”
She was watching the bottle, already collared with a strand of weed. “De rien,” she whispered, innocent of the extent of his transgressions.