Page 2 of The Strawberry Thief
The priest was standing outside the church, looking surprised at the falling snow. The priest’s name is Francis Reynaud. I didn’t like him when I first came, but now I think perhaps I do. AndReynaudmeans ‘fox’, which is silly, because anyone can see he’s really a crow, all in black, with his sad little crooked smile. But I do like the church. I like the smell of polished wood and incense. I like the coloured window glass and the statue of Saint Francis. Reynaud says Saint Francis is the patron saint of animals, who left his life to live in the woods. I’d like to do that. I’d build myself a house in a tree, and live on nuts and strawberries. Maman and I never go to church. Once, that might have caused trouble. But Reynaud says we don’t have to go. Reynaud says God sees us, and cares for us, wherever we are.
And now here comes the spinning snow, from a bright blue lantern sky. A sign – maybe even an Accident. I spread my coat like wings, and call – BAM! – to make sure he knows it isn’t my fault. Reynaud smiles and waves his hand. But I can tell he doesn’t see the flash of colours across the square. He doesn’t hear the song of the wind, or catch the scent of burning. These are all signs. I see them all. But I can tell he doesn’t know. Snow, out of a clear blue sky. Someone will be dead by dawn.
2
Saturday, March 11
There she goes. How strange she is: my winter child; my changeling. Wild as an armful of birds, she flies everywhere in an instant. There is no keeping her inside, no making her sit quietly. She has never been like other girls, never like other children. Rosette is a force of nature, like the jackdaws that sit on the steeple and laugh, like a fall of unseasonal snow, like the blossom on the wind.
Women – mothers – like Joline Drou or Caro Clairmont do not understand. The dread of having adifferentchild is more than they can imagine. Nearly sixteen, and still Rosette cannot speak in the normal way. To them, it makes my child a burden; pitiful; less than whole. To them, she isPoor Rosette, as I amPoor Viannebehind my back; left with that child to bring up alone, and the father so shockingly absent.
But Caro and Joline do not know how Rosette looks at me when I kiss her goodnight; or how she sings to herself in bed; or how she can draw any animal or bird, or living creature. All they see is a little girl who can never grow up, and this, they think, is the saddest thing. A little girl who can never grow up will never fall in love, or be married, or get a job, or move away to the city. A little girl who can never grow up will be a burden forever, and her mother will never be able to go on that round-the-world cruise she had planned, or take up exciting new hobbies, or socialize at the country club. Instead she will be doomed to stay here, in sleepy Lansquenet-sous-Tannes; hardly the kind of place in which you’d hope to stay forever.
But I am not Caro Clairmont, or Joline Drou, or Michèle Montour. And the thought of being rooted in one place, never to be blown away, is a dream I have cherished all my life. Small dreams are all I’ve ever had; small dreams are all I hope for. A place in which the seeds I sow will grow into something I recognize. Clothes hanging in a wardrobe. A table, scarred with familiar marks. An armchair, moulded to my shape. Maybe even a cat by the door.
You see, I am not demanding. These things are surely achievable. And yet, whenever I think that maybe I have silenced the wind’s incessant demands, it begins to blow again. The weather changes. Friends die. Children grow up and move away. Even Anouk, my summer child, with her little messages and phone calls every Sunday – unless she forgets – her eyes already alight with the thought of other places, new adventures. How strange. Anouk was always the one whowantedto settle down, to stay. Now her orbit has shifted, and it ishisstar she follows. It was inevitable, I know, and yet I sometimes find myself wishing, darkly wishing—
But not with Rosette. Rosette is mine. Aspecialchild, says Caro Clairmont, with the pious expression that so belies the genuine disgust she feels. She must be a burden, thinks Caroline. A daughter who will never grow up; a child who can never be normal. She has no idea that this is precisely what makes Rosette so dear to me.
A cat crossed your path in the snow, and mewed. The Hurakan was blowing.
No. I turn away from the memory. The winter of the cat in the snow, the gilded cage, and the circle of sand. I did what had to be done,Maman. I did what mothers always do. I have no regrets. My child is safe. And that is all that matters.
I check my mobile phone. I have taken to carrying one since Anouk moved back to Paris. Sometimes she sends me a photograph – a little window into her life. Sometimes she sends me text messages.Adorable blue-eyed husky outside the Métro station!Or:New ice cream shop at Quai des Orfèvres!It helps to know I can speak to her, or hear from her at any time, but I try not to be demanding, or show her that I am anxious. Our phone calls are light and amusing: I tell her about my customers; she tells me about the things she has seen. Jean-Loup is studying at the Sorbonne; Anouk, who could have studied too, has taken a job in a multiplex cinema. They live together in a rented bedsit in the 10tharrondissement. I can imagine it perfectly: an old building, with damp in the walls and cockroaches in the bathroom, much like the cheap hotels we stayed in when Anouk was small. She could have stayed here and worked with me in thechocolaterie. Instead she has chosen Paris – Anouk, who never wanted anything else but to live in a place like Lansquenet.
I go back into the kitchen. There aremendiantscooling on a sheet of greaseproof paper; little discs of chocolate, scattered with pieces of crystallized fruit; chopped almonds and pistachios; dried rose petals and gold leaf.Mendiantswere always my favourites; so simple to make that even a child – even Anouk at five years old – was able to make them unsupervised. A sour cherry for the nose; a lemon slice for the mouth. Even hermendiantswere smiling.
Rosette’s are more complex, almost Byzantine in their design; the little pieces of crystallized fruit arranged in ingenious spirals. She plays with buttons in the same way, lining them up against skirting-boards, making intricate patterns of loops and foils across the wooden flooring. It is part of the way she sees the world; how she represents its complexities. Caro looks wise and talks about obsessive-compulsive disorder, and how common it is in those children she likes to callspecial, but there’s nothing disordered about Rosette. Patterns – signs – are important.
Where has she gone this morning, so quiet and so purposeful? It is cold; the hard blue sky ringing with the frozen wind from the Russian steppes. She likes to play by the side of the Tannes, or in the fields down by Les Marauds, but most of all she likes the wood that runs alongside Narcisse’s farm, a wood to which only she is allowed access, without risking the wrath of the owner.
Narcisse, who owns the flower shop opposite thechocolaterie, and who supplies fruit and vegetables to markets and shops along the Tannes, is gruffly, fiercely fond of Rosette. A widower of thirty years, he has chosen to adopt her as a surrogate granddaughter. With others he is often dour to the point of rudeness. But with her he is indulgent; telling her stories, teaching her songs, which she sings without words, but with the greatest enthusiasm.
‘My strawberry thief,’ he calls her. ‘My little bird with the secret voice.’
Well, today the little bird is off exploring the new-fallen snow. It will not last, but for now the fields are seamed in white, with the peach trees all in blossom. I wonder what Narcisse will say. Snow as late as this is a curse to fruit trees and to growing crops. Perhaps that is why his shop is still shut, even though the weekend is often the best time to sell flowers. Eleven-thirty, and the stragglers at the end of the service have all gone home to their families in the unexpected snow, their Sunday coats and berets and hats all scattered with white feathers. Even Reynaud will have gone home by now, to his little house on theAvenue des Francs Bourgeois, and Poitou’s bakery on the square is getting ready to close for lunch. Above, the sky is blue and hard. No sign of a cloud. And yet the snow continues to fall, like thistledown on the wind. My mother would have called it a sign.
I, of course, know better.
3
Wednesday, March 15
It happened overnight,mon père. They found him in the morning. He hadn’t been to open the shop, which he always does on a Sunday, and the girl who runs it on weekdays had gone to his house to find him there, sitting in his chair on the porch, eyes still open, cold as the grave. Of course, he was close to eighty, but even so, a sudden death always comes as a surprise, even for one to whom it should be neither a shock nor a cause for grief.
Not that Narcisse would have cared much whether I grieved for him or not. He was never a churchgoing man, and made no secret of his contempt of me and all I stand for. But his daughter, Michèle Montour, is an enthusiastic member of my congregation, even though she and her husband Michel live on the other side of Agen. They’re always polite and respectful to me, though I can’t say I like them very much. She is one of those women Armande Voizin used to call ‘Bible groupies’, all smiles in church, but cold and sour when dealing with the socially deprived.
Michel Montour is a property developer, and drives an off-road vehicle that never seems to go off-road. Both of them like money, which I suspect is why they appeared in Narcisse’s life two years ago, and why they were so suddenly and graspingly attentive. Before that, Narcisse never saw them, or mentioned he had a daughter at all. And although for those two years Michèle had called every Sunday afternoon, fussed over his health, brought him chocolates, I do not think Narcisse believed her sudden show of affection. He may not have liked me very much, but he was a good judge of character. Dour, with a dry and somewhat surprising sense of humour that often came out in his dealings with the river-folk and with the little community of Les Marauds – those immigrants and transients, to whom he gave permission to camp and work and live rent-free on his land. His dealings with Michèle and Michel were drily cordial, nothing more. He was never under any illusions. The woman was after his money.
I suspect that when Michel and Michèle gain possession of that land, their interest in Lansquenet will cease. The friends they have made in the village are merely social acquaintances. Their eagerness to be part of my church – like Michèle’s visits to thechocolaterie– was simply a means of building the right kind of profile in the village. Narcisse had made it very clear that he wanted his farm to be cared for. He wanted his flower shop to remain part of our little community. Now that Narcisse is gone, so has the need to keep up the pretence. The farm will be broken up; the shop let; the land sold off for development. This is what happens. A lifetime’s work dismantled in less than the time it takes to harvest a crop.
Or so I had assumed,mon père. But Narcisse has surprised me. Of all the people he could have asked – friends, neighbours, family – to be the executor of his will, I am the one he has chosen, much to the annoyance of Michel and Michèle, who must have thought their inheritance more or less assured. However, even I did not know the details of Narcisse’s will until it was read today in Agen, just after the old man’s funeral. A very simple, quiet affair held at the crematorium, with as much ceremony as the short service would allow. That was what he wanted, said Michèle Montour disapprovingly. Of course, she would have preferred something more becoming to her status. Perhaps the chance to wear a new hat, to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief. Instead, her friends – the Clairmonts, the Drous – disdained the civil ceremony, and only Narcisse’s friends were left – the river folk from the barges, the men and women of Les Marauds – to honour the old man’s passing.
These are the people I never see in my church on Sundays: people with braided hair and tattoos; people in kurtas and hijabs. And of course, Vianne and Rosette, both of them dressed in bright colours, as if in defiance of death itself.
Roux was not there. He avoids the town, preferring to stay in Les Marauds. His boat is moored down by the old tanneries, where the river folk have their community, lighting bonfires on the bank and cooking their meals in cast-iron pots. There was a time when I might have been resistant to these visitors. I recall the man I used to be with shame. But Roux has not forgotten him, and keeps as far away as he can. Were it not for Vianne and Rosette I think he would leave the region for good. He has never had a home, or stayed in any one place for long. But he liked Narcisse, who gave him work and shelter when no-one else in Lansquenet would, and so I was surprised when he did not make an appearance.
Nor was Roux at the reading of the will. Being Roux, he only receives what mail he chooses to receive, which means that anything with an official stamp fails to arrive, or is quietly dumped in one of the bins by the edge of the Tannes. Only Michel and Michèle Montour were with me at the solicitor’s office in Agen, in genteel expectation of a quietly anticipated surprise. Instead, there was stupefied silence, followed by raised voices, then by a storm of incredulous questions, all directed at me, of course, as Michel and Michèle demanded to know how I had managed to trick poor Papa into leaving a valuable asset to a man who didn’t even have a bank account or a house to his name—
