Jeannette was late, of course. Katherine had told her specifically that she wanted to catch the late-afternoon light for the first couple of drawings, the color sketches that would help her decide the composition of the new painting. Doing one at the quiet riverbank, with its deep green grasses and the rich bark of the horse chestnut trees was an inspired idea, and she itched to get started. She had dug out a skirt of some stiff old cotton that Jeannette could slip on over her habitual shorts as she sat. The billowing fabric and Jeannette’s flyaway curls would make such a lovely contrast to the stillness of the setting. But it was already a half hour later and the light wasn’t coming into the glade at the perfect angle.
She turned as she heard footsteps. “Ah, there you are, child,” she began, then stopped as the stern face of Mme Pomfort came into view. “You startled me,” she said with a short laugh. “I have asked Jeannette to model for me and I thought I heard her.”
“Model?” The way she said it made Katherine nervous. Surely the old woman didn’t think Katherine was going to ask Jeannette to take off her clothes?
She jumped up from her stool to explain, holding out the skirt. “As an eighteenth-century shepherdess, you see. Isn’t this pretty? I found it at a brocante last year. I love the old rose color.”
“Why you encourage that child, I cannot understand,” Mme Pomfort said, standing with her feet apart and her hands clasped in front of her torso. “She is a thief. She will come to no good. No one in that family ever does.”
“She’s only a child,” Katherine said, smiling to soften the fact that she wasn’t agreeing with the town’s arbiter of acceptance. “She needs some good examples, people like you, for example, to show her how to behave.”
“Nonsense. She is already throwing herself at that nasty American boy, and only the other day trampled my geranium plants with her bicycle and rode away when I called out to her. She is of bad stock. Those boys are ruffians already. I know they steal my beans and tomatoes. And her father, well, no one speaks to him unless it is to try and recover something he has stolen. You should not encourage her,” she said again.
Katherine fiddled with her pastels. She had already set out a handful of the colors she wanted to use. What should she say? It appeared Mme Pomfort was waiting, would wait as long as it took, perhaps for Katherine to pack up and retreat back to America, leaving the village to itself. At that moment, sounds of raised voices reached into the concavity of the river’s edge, followed immediately by a sprinting Jeannette, two of her youngest brothers and, bringing up the rear, Jean, the father, dressed in dusty pants and a sleeveless undershirt, a cigarette hanging from his lips.
“Bonjour, Madame,” Jeannette called out as she skidded to a halt next to Katherine and quickly kissed her cheeks. She looked sideways at Mme Pomfort but made no other move to acknowledge her.
“Hey, Madame,” Jean said in a rough voice, taking the cigarette out and waving it, “je jeux vous parler.” He took a few sliding steps down the side of the gully as he spoke, and jabbed his finger in her direction.
“You want to talk to me?” Katherine said, confused, thrusting the costume skirt at the teenager, and instinctively gathering the expensive pastels as the little boys crowded up to her, chattering to each other and reaching for her large pad of paper.
“What you want with my girl, eh? You want her to pose for you, you must pay.” He swaggered close enough that Katherine could smell his sweat and the wine on his breath. “What kind of posing? No clothes? I don’t like that for my girl.”
“No,” Katherine said, as much to the little boys who were trying to pull out sheets of her expensive paper as to the father. Jeannette was grinning at everything and nothing and pulling the skirt up over her hips. Mme Pomfort was standing like a stone. “No, I mean, yes, certainly with clothes on, like she did for the last painting. She was a shepherdess in that one too.” She realized Jean had probably not seen the painting, which was still on an easel in the studio while she decided if it was finished. “Boys, here,” she said, snapping a precious pastel crayon in two and handing a piece to each along with half a sheet of the precious paper, not sure how else to quiet their manic attack on her art supplies. “Go over there and draw the tall yellow flowers.”
Mme Pomfort now stirred. “You see, Mme Goff? To get along here, you must not ally yourself with these … these people.” She glared at Jean, who seemed to see her for the first time. Because she was speaking in rapid French, Jean could not miss the insult.
“Ah, it’s you, Madame. I heard that you told Emile I stole his garden tools. You are a troublemaker, you know?” He advanced on her, shaking the fist in which he held the cigarette, as he denounced her as a busybody. “You would do well not to slander me that way, if you get my meaning.”
The old woman drew herself up as tall as she could, standing her ground as solidly as a boulder, staring him straight in the eye. Even though Katherine couldn’t be completely sure because the two were speaking so fast, she was confident insults were being traded at machine-gun speed. When she noticed that the corners of Mme Pomfort’s closed mouth had turned so far down they made the shape of a crescent moon, Katherine decided the doyenne of Reigny society was winning, and she wasn’t surprised that it was Jean who backed off marginally.
“You are a disgrace, you and your family,” Mme Pomfort hissed, “and no one around here will have anything to do with you, you understand?” She turned to glare at Katherine. “Prennez-garde, Madame.” Then, having warned Katherine to watch out for her disreputable neighbor, she spun on her heel and marched up the slope, leaving silence behind.
Jeannette peered at the departing woman with watchful eyes and a thoughtful expression, then shrugged the rest of the way into the skirt, which covered her down to the ankle. The little boys paid no attention, being thoroughly engaged in trying to fold their drawing paper into boats. Even Jean was silent for a beat before turning back to Katherine.
The gist of his demand seemed to be that Jeannette was missed at home and that he, Jean, couldn’t work if she wasn’t there to take care of the boys. Since the boys in question were more likely to be nosing around the mairie, the village’s business office, or trying to steal candy from the café’s meager display than to be sitting at home, Katherine wasn’t moved. She had a hunch any money he managed to wrest from her would get spent on wine the same day. When Jean saw that she wasn’t going to cave easily, he called his brood and demanded they all go home. The boys went easily, laughing and knocking into each other, waving their pastels like the spoils of war. Jeannette said something fast to her father, who shouted at her but left without repeating his order.
“Well, cherie,” said Katherine in the quiet that followed. “I don’t know about you, but my bucolic mood is gone for today. I’ll take the skirt back—yes, I’ll bring it next time we try this—but today’s not a day for painting, desolée. Tell you what, though,” she said as she folded the travel easel and slipped the pad of paper and box of pastels into it, “I would be glad to pay you a model’s hourly rate. It’s quite small, the trouble for models through the ages, but if I give you euros, can you keep them for your schoolbooks or clothing?”
The girl’s assurances burst out and she danced ahead of Katherine up to the road, her face alight with excitement. It saddened Katherine to know that the girl’s future was laid out for her in such a negative way by the tiny society of Reigny-sur-Canne. It bothered her even more to know she, Katherine, was already bending to Mme Pomfort’s will in thinking to herself that she would arrange her small support for the girl so no one else knew about it.
* * *
As she trudged up the garden path and toward her little studio building, a leaky nineteenth-century add-on to the main house that had been a shed before she claimed it for her work, Katherine heard a woman’s voice coming from her living room. Adele, perhaps come to find sympathetic company? No, she heard a throaty chuckle. Betty Lou, then, which made sense since locals never paid an impromptu call on her. Still outsiders after three years, and now Mme Pomfort would be watching to make sure she cut her ties with Jeannette.
As she dumped her art supplies and made her way back to the house, she realized Adele hadn’t called with updates about Albert’s death, or even news of a funeral date. Adele wasn’t much of a friend, in all honesty. Why had she called, then, when she was so upset?
Michael was sitting in the wooden chair he always occupied in the crowded living room, where he played for hours on end. Sometimes Katherine thought he was singing to pacify the universe, an endless lullaby to keep it from crashing down on their heads in case the money ran out or one of them became too homesick to continue in a foreign land where everything except lying low cost too much money. They had agreed that as long as they owned their little house outright and didn’t eat at restaurants they could make do here a lot better than in California. So they had persevered, stretching his settlement money as far as they could, short of making the dogs give up their bones. She wondered if that accounted for the sad, fretful tune he was playing and that Betty Lou was humming.
“Kathy.” Betty Lou stopped when Katherine came into the room, and boomed at her. “This insanely talented husband of yours was telling me you’re having a show at a gallery next week in that place with the steep hill and the drop-dead gorgeous church at the top. We were over there the other day looking for some vineyard that was written up in J.B.’s wine magazine, but got lost, I swear for the third time in a week. All these little back roads are pretty as can be, but they do look the same, don’t they? Anyway, that’s fantastic. Two stars in one family. We’ll come to the opening, wouldn’t miss it.” She beamed up at Katherine from the chaise into which Katherine had intended to collapse.
“Thanks,” Katherine said. “Vézelay has a fascinating religious history, with lots of church politics mixed in. But the gallery is way up the cobblestone street and I live in fear no one will trudge up the hill, and I’ll be forced to consume an entire case of wine and all the pâté we’re bringing.” She laughed to cover up the truth of her words.
“You’re both amazing,” Betty Lou said, shaking her head.
“I don’t know about that,” Katherine said, bending to give Betty Lou the traditional French greeting before realizing the singer didn’t understand what she was doing. “May I get you something?” she said.
“No, I have to go. I thought I’d say hi while J.B. went to get a newspaper at your café. I want to tell Mike that J.B. thinks we’re ready to record the first couple of songs. We’ll lay down some tracks and let my genius husband tinker with them to see how they come out. I’m feeling real good about how it’s coming along. This new song of Michael’s is dynamite. I’m thinking we should postpone our little trip to the Riviera long enough to capture the good stuff while the energy’s still there, you know?”
Michael hadn’t said anything about energy, or the Hollidays leaving, so she only smiled and wheeled back to the kitchen. Yes, five ten, cocktail time. The small glasses were dirty so she took a larger one and filled it, hoping it wouldn’t attract Michael’s attention. Hell with that. She’d had run-ins with two of Reigny’s nastier people in a short time while he was up here singing away with his new musical partner.
Thirty minutes later, Betty Lou waved as she pulled out of the driveway and Michael sat on the patio rather than go back into the stuffy room, where vintage damask drapes made it snug in winter but sweltering in July. Katherine reclaimed her upholstered chaise and tried to let the day’s frustrations slip out of her tense body. No painting done, run-ins with the neighbors she had seen, and no contact with the few who did include her. Of course Penny wasn’t really a resident, and would fly off when the nights got longer and the need for company was greater. When Penny wasn’t here, Yves didn’t visit or include them in any social activities, assuming he had any in Reigny.
Emile, bless his pointy little head, dropped by now and then, usually in a state of upset over something. The mail truck had run over his rock garden, the mayor had threatened to shut down the pétanque court if the players couldn’t control their noisy arguments. Reminded of Emile, she pulled herself up and went outside, where Michael was strumming softly and chewing on his cigarillo.
“Darling, all this distraction about Albert made me forget about Emile’s intention of playing rock music with you at the Reigny fête. Has he talked with you yet?”
“Not going to happen.”
“Well, that’s easy to say, but have you said it to him? He’s going to be massively disappointed, you know. Maybe one number, to be neighborly?”
“If he asks, I’ll tell him. He’ll be wanting to sing, too, and you know he can’t hold a note.”
“I do know,” she said, remembering Emile’s voice ringing out at the Christmas program in the little church, not merely off-key but always too slow or too fast, or both. “Poor Emile, he must have a role, and he does have his heart set on sharing the stage with the famous Michael Goff.”
“I’ll talk with him if he comes to me about it. I promise to be nice. Doesn’t he play the accordion? Maybe he can do some French cabaret songs.”
“Oh, he hates that idea. Says he’s too young to sing those old-fashioned pieces. Believe me, I tried that already. I wonder if there are any rock songs that feature accordions?”
“Spare me,” Michael said, laughing. “The problem isn’t the instrument, I guess. It’s Emile; he’s not a musician. He’s a retired dentist.”
Katherine paced. “That’s not the point. It’s not like you’re going to record with him. It’s for a day—no, not even that, an afternoon—and he’s been a good neighbor to us.”
“He has?” Michael laid down his guitar, placed his hands on his knees, and squinted up at his wife. “I seem to recall him delivering a long lecture on how not to exit the driveway in a way that would leave tire tracks near his yard. And I distinctly remember the time he and his buddies got drunk and threw beer cans at our roof. You didn’t think he was such a great neighbor then.”
“Poor Emile. You know he’s lonely, he’s never been married, and he wants to be liked. We all want to be liked, don’t we?” A picture of Mme Pomfort, her mouth turned downward in the mother of all frowns, flashed into Katherine’s head, and she sat down abruptly. “Oh dear, I think I’m doomed around here, Michael, I really do.” She took a long sip of her wine and proceeded to tell him about Jean and Mme Pomfort and the ultimatum.
When she finished, Michael picked up his guitar again and started playing some chords quietly while he talked. “The old lady has a point. Get anywhere near that guy and it winds up being trouble. I know you like the girl, although I’m positive she took your iPod last fall. She’s in and out of the house all the time and never announces herself or asks if it’s convenient.”
“I don’t think many teenagers would, my love.”
“And she lies. J.B. said she told Brett her father used to be a policeman, which is a joke.”
Now Katherine laughed. “It’s a stretch, I’d agree, but there’s no one else to talk to. I try, but all people do is look sideways at us in the café or the market. We’ve been here three years, Michael, and I miss having a friend.”
“What about Penny and that idiot Yves? They hang around here all the time. And this summer there’s Betty Lou and J.B. No one’s gossiping about us, especially now that Albert’s dead.”
“How would you know what they’re saying? You don’t speak a word of French. For all you know, they could be saying we murdered him.”
“Maybe you should make friends with that English writer. At least she speaks the language, and she doesn’t have any friends either, as far as I can figure out. If you really don’t like it here, come up with another plan and I’ll make it happen—as long as it’s not L.A. again. But if you complain too much about Reigny, you sound like Penny.”
Stung by his words, she gulped her wine and looked up into the pear tree. “I’m going to heat up the ratatouille and sausage,” was all she said, and she jumped up and took off for the kitchen.