The rain that flattened her hollyhocks during the night drifted off with the sunrise. Steam rose from the garden and snails glided across the stone steps in glistening lines. Katherine’s shoes were wet from an hour spent tying up the tall flower stalks before breakfast. “I don’t know why I bother,” she said to Michael. “I suppose one might say it was vanity. Everyone else’s hollyhocks will be a mess.”
“Do we have to go to Serein today?” Michael said, putting his treasured Gibson acoustic guitar back on its stand. “We got enough cheese to last a week at the market yesterday and I know you’ll want me to drive you over to some other flea market next weekend. I want to work on a new song.”
“Between the lunch guests and the dogs, the cheese is pretty well gone, which is a tragedy given that it was so expensive. Anyway. L’Isle-sur-Serein’s vide-grenier is huge, one of the biggest flea markets all summer, and I read that they’re having a carnival ‘avec géants du Nord.’ You know, giant puppets? I told your friends we would show them a bit of the local color.”
“They’re not friends, Kay, so much as they’re possible business partners. And they haven’t shown any interest in rustic ceremonies as far as I can tell.”
“Well, yes, but that’s the point, darling. They should be interested. Ancient village customs and all that. We agreed we’d meet at the river, near the statue of Saint Somebody-or-Other at noon.”
“I could live without the parade. Last year’s was more than enough.”
Katherine laughed as she pulled on dry shoes, stood up, and executed a quick tap step. “I know, really silly. Reigny’s fête will be more sophisticated and we won’t have a parade, thank heavens.”
Michael grunted. “You’d have to dig bodies up from the graveyard to get enough people for a parade here.”
“Don’t be ghoulish, darling. It makes my skin crawl. After all the recent drama here, I don’t have the appetite for anything other than some mindless fun.”
* * *
Two hours later, Katherine had walked purposefully, if slowly, down one long street in the medieval town that backed up to a river shallow in the summer. Along the way, she had accumulated a black-fringed shawl warm enough for the coming winter days, two old books with illustrations worth studying, and a pincushion studded with round-headed pins. “Perfect,” she said, holding it up in triumph. “Only one euro.”
Michael wandered over to a table piled with what looked to Katherine like rusty junk, but which turned out to be the hiding place of a small table vise and a hammer. “But Michael, you have at least four hammers in the shed already,” Katherine said, puzzled.
“You can never have too many hammers.”
“Well, it looks as though this man did,” she said, waving her arm toward the piles on the table. She reminded herself that she already had several black shawls and that perhaps it would be best not to make an issue about hammers. It’s the fun of finding treasures, after all, she thought as she hurried to keep up with his long strides.
At noon, they were sitting under chestnut trees on the stone wall overlooking the river, looking for the Hollidays. At twelve fifteen, Michael got up. “Can we go now? If they’re here, we’ll bump into them, but I’m hungry.”
The little café across from the river was busy, but they squeezed into a corner table under the awning and had the plat du jour, nine euros’ worth of salad and a bit of chicken under sauce, decorated by a small boiled potato. Still no sign of the Americans, and the sound of a loudspeaker and raucous singing was coming closer. Katherine gathered up her purchases and they picked their way down the steps and into a large crowd moving sluggishly along the street next to the river.
Two crude, ten-foot-tall puppets led the villagers, their papier-mâché faces and sloppy costumes causing laughter and applause. “What are they supposed to be?” Michael said.
“Women, maybe saints? Although they don’t look very holy to me,” Katherine said.
Behind the figures was a rudimentary float, a truck with an open back on which two old men dressed as women sat holding on to the equipment that was providing the sound. They held up wineglasses as they sang, or, rather, yelled, along with the music.
“Can you make out what they’re singing?” Katherine said, as much to herself as to Michael. The quality of the speakers was so bad—loud and fuzzy—that Katherine couldn’t catch the words of the song. The live chorus belting out the words on the street in back of the truck wasn’t much better. But it was a parade, and parades always made her want to rush into the crowd and become part of the moment. She straightened her back, tilted her head to one side, and began a jaunty shuffle and riff step in her hard-soled boots, hampered by the flea market finds she was holding. Grinning at the passing crowd, she was feeling part of the fun until a pinch-faced woman standing nearby looked sharply at her, and the moment was spoiled. She stilled her feet and felt, as she was wont to do when faced with seeming disapproval, foolish and old. The feeling didn’t go away when the woman took off down the street in the opposite direction from the raggedy rows of cross-dressing men.
The dancers were exclusively men dressed as bizarre parodies of females. The large group danced in formation, having rehearsed some vague choreography that called for periodically waving one leg in the air in unison and throwing their arms high above wigged heads. Most of the heavily made-up men carried old-fashioned pocketbooks, which were either slipped into their armpits or swung wildly around their heads when they raised their arms, causing bystanders to duck and howl with laughter. Wine had been drunk and inhibitions set aside, and the result, Katherine decided, was not what she looked for in a summer fête.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her arm and she almost lost the pincushion.
“Mme Goff,” roared a six-foot-tall character in a red wig, a tentlike dress, and a frightening smear of brilliant orange lipstick.
Squinting, Katherine looked up at the clownish figure. Could it be—yes, it was—the nice mechanic who had brought their Citroën back to life at least twice last year. “Is that you, Nick? Look, Michael,” she said, determined not to be stuck with a drunken car repairman on her own. But Nick-the-Female had already broken contact and was prancing across the road, joining hands with another fellow and shouting out the refrain of the song with glee.
Looking at the goods being offered from people’s closets and attics was impossible in the chaos and she was about to suggest to Michael that they give up and go home. But at that moment a particularly loud uproar from the bystanders made her turn. A young man, swarthy and muscular behind his platinum tresses and five-o’clock shadow, had begun a flirtatious dance with someone on the sidelines. The dancer grinned, tossed back his mane of ill-fitting hair, and stroked his huge false breasts, which were set, Katherine noted, so high on his chest as to be a joke in themselves. He shimmied over to his target on high-heeled shoes, mincing as the tight skirt hobbled his normal movements.
Whomever he was pretending to romance reached out and grabbed at the breasts. The dancer mugged in pretend horror, holding his handbag up as if to hit the lecher.
“Michael, look. Isn’t that Brett fooling around with the guy in drag?” At this moment, in the heat of the afternoon and with the adrenaline of the crowd feeding him, the teenager’s cheeks were flushed, his lips were rosy, and his hair flopped over his forehead. He reminded Katherine of the surly models that decorated perfume ads for scents with names like Perversion and Trouble. The bystanders clapped and the dancer skittered back, still smiling and waggling a finger to admonish his would-be seducer as he melted back into the line of dancers moving down the street in a loose rhythm, shouting out their song. “Betty Lou and J.B. must be around. We should say hi.” But Michael was half a block away, moving in the other direction.
“Too crowded,” was all he said over his shoulder. Katherine didn’t protest. He was right, and, anyway, once her husband made up his mind, he was unlikely to budge. The route away from the parade was quieter, and Katherine had time to consider buying a hat (too loose on her head), a pair of gloves (too tight on her hands), and a pair of garden boots (so large she couldn’t take a step in them) before the tables set up against the stone houses tapered off and then disappeared.
Later, as they wove their way among the cars parked in someone’s field, Katherine saw a knot of teenagers clustered near the far corner, screeching with laughter. “It’s the Hollidays’ boy again. What’s he doing?” she said, reaching out to tap Michael’s arm. The boy had taken off his shirt, his hair had fallen onto his face, and while she watched, he upended a beer bottle and drank deeply. Someone in the group whooped and tried to grab the bottle, but the boy lifted it out of reach with one hand while lowering his other shoulder and butting the other kid. All of a sudden, the chatter turned into something more urgent.
“Michael,” Katherine began.
“No, Kay.” Obviously, he had seen it too. “They’re old enough to deal with it themselves. From what J.B. and Betty Lou say, he’s due for a lesson. J.B. will be around somewhere.” He unlocked their car, slid into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. She had no choice but to duck into her seat.
As they pulled away and bounced down the makeshift lane between the cars, she twisted her head to watch the group. A shoving match had broken out and she got a glimpse of the bare-chested American boy glaring at someone. Then she saw J.B., immediately recognizable by his Hawaiian shirt, heading over to the group. A few other people in the vicinity had turned to watch.
“Poor Betty Lou,” Katherine said as they left the town behind them and zoomed along a narrow back road between plowed fields. “I don’t envy her.
“I meant to ask you. You said Betty Lou’s music isn’t popular anymore. Then why is she making another album?”
“It’s the style that’s gone out of fashion—country music without rock. Still, she’s the best of her kind still recording, and she has a core of fans who’ll buy anything she puts out. She’s an icon, like Tammy Wynette or Dolly Parton. J.B. and I are trying to persuade her to move a little toward country rock. She’s a pro and she still has a great sound.”
Katherine heard the warmth in her husband’s response and a little voice inside her wondered if it was too late to take singing lessons. Michael respected her for her commitment to painting, but it was hard to tell if he liked the work or was merely being supportive of her for trying. She picked at the fringe of her new shawl. “Then I guess we’ll be spending more time with them?”
“I wouldn’t mind getting a shot at recording something with her,” Michael said, “but I have to wait and see. We need more time before J.B. says we’re ready, if he ever does.”
Katherine opened her mouth but couldn’t figure out what to say. She was afraid of sounding too eager and making him feel worse later if it came to nothing. Again. Still, her husband and the singer were spending a lot of time together, in the intimate way musicians do when they’re making music. Fortunately, Betty Lou was not as pretty as her voice. Michael had always liked pretty women, and the fact that he was five years his wife’s junior, which hadn’t mattered a thing when they fell in love, had begun to make her a little self-conscious at odd moments. She reached up and smoothed her hair away from her forehead, lifted her chin, and sat up straighter. Yes, she wanted Michael to have another chance. He had suffered more than he would admit. But she had an uneasy feeling about these summer visitors who seemed destined to be part of their lives, at least for a few months. She would be careful not to ally herself too closely with them. Mme Pomfort would be watching.