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INTRODUCTION

A bus stopped in a village in the south of France and a woman with grey hair descended. She wore walking boots and tough, practical clothes. She hauled a large rucksack on to her shoulders, but she was out of season. The village was shut like a mussel on a rock. She didn’t walk away but watched the nearly empty minibus drive out of the village and back down the hill. The village looked over a valley to another, almost identical village, whose houses clung to the sides, which rose to a church tower. All around were steep wooded hills of dark green pine. A white tumble of clouds fell out of the whiter sky and hung in the valley like a lost baby. A sudden squall of wind and a flash of rain, the mother sky wailed with grief, then it fell too and the whole valley became a swirling mist of wet cloud. It was March.

Wednesday

Dear Stephen,

I’m sorry we parted on such bad terms. I know it seems crazy what I’m doing but I feel so much better now that I’m here. It took me much longer than I expected. The railway no longer runs to Draguignan and I had to bus it. I was afraid I would arrive in the middle of nowhere in the dark, but I managed to reach St Clair by early afternoon. Oh, Stephen, Jeanette still runs the café. I think she recognised me but I was tired and I didn’t want to talk. The village is different, it’s nearly all holiday homes, much smarter, there’s no weeds growing in the walls. I wonder how many real villagers are left. I didn’t see any.

You were wrong about the hut being derelict. You see, it’s not England here. If you left a place in England for 20 years the brambles and the damp would take over, but here the summers are so dry they scorch plants to the ground. The pine trees are taller. The one near the hut is quite large, but that will give some shade in the summer. When I opened the door it was just as I left it, a cup on a hook, the pans hanging on the walls, the candle in the window alcove. Nobody has been here. There’re so many huts in this valley, each olive plot has one, I suppose they don’t attract attention. Can you imagine this? In England a forgotten house would get trashed, but there is nobody down here, absolutely nobody. It’s such a strange feeling.

I’m writing to you in the morning. I’m still in my sleeping bag, sitting up at the table. The loft bed smelled so much of mice I slept on the floor. I couldn’t sleep at first, I felt alone and stupid, I kept remembering what you said, ‘Why on earth do you need to go back there?’ It was also freezing. I will have to wait until May until it gets warmer. I’m writing this with my gloves on. I’m wearing two jumpers and my jeans. My first task when I finish this is to find some more wood. I got a little fire going last night but it didn’t do much. Up in the woods behind the hut a big tree has come down. I managed to saw off some of the branches. I will have another go today. I remember it does eventually get cosy in here. The saw and the axe were in the tin trunk, a bit rusty but they do work. I’m making plans already. I want to put a cannise up, a sunshade. Now, that has rotted away and is in shreds round the back. I reckon that by the summer this place will look so smart. I can clear the scrub out the front and make a place to sit under the tree. Last night I could hear that tree like a whisper and that’s what got me to sleep. It’s all you can hear, the wind in the pine trees. In the early morning it rained and now it’s so fresh outside, cold and bright. I want to go walking. It’s the time of year for orchids, pink spotted ones, bee orchids, lizard orchids. I shall walk to the village later and post this and see if I can find any. The cherries are in blossom. It’s so very beautiful. People miss this when they come in the summer, the grass is cracked and brown and there’s no flowers. In a few weeks the fields will be flower filled. I remember they used to be dazzling. The water is just boiling on my camping stove, thank you for lending me that, it will be most handy until I get the stove going properly.

Please write to me care of Jeanette Blanc at Le Sanglier. She will be delighted to get my letters, I’m sure. Oh, Stephen, I feel so alive I cannot tell you. I’m still sad and I will be for a long time yet. I miss Felix so much and I miss you, but in England I felt so numb.

With all my love,

Mireille

She wriggled out of her sleeping bag and made a cup of coffee. There were two windows in the hut, but only one was unshuttered, consequently the inside was in half light. Through the tiny window a beam of sunlight shone so brightly it seemed solid, slicing across the stone floor and on to the table. Dust particles danced in it like joyous faeries. Mireille put the cup to her face to feel the warmth and smiled. She felt unwashed and crumpled, but it was a feeling she associated with being young, when her hair had been thick and dark, curling down her back, and soft. Her hair, though grey was still soft, cut straight round her ears. She looked at her jeans and knobbly walking socks. When she was young she used to wear a bright red gathered skirt with a yellow ribbon round the hem and an embroidered shirt, deep midnight blue. An amber necklace which held pieces of insects.

She went outside. In the sunlight the wet pine trees smelled strongly of resin. The clouds raced fast in the sky, white puffy clouds like washed flock blotting and unblotting the sun. Then, there they were, the mountains, like clouds themselves, white and indistinct in the far distance, but only for a moment before the real clouds blew into the valley and obscured them.

Later, she walked to the village, not up the overgrown track but down the terraces to a small road. On the other side on level ground was a large olive grove, well tended, its trees clipped and neat and the grass underneath cleared away in a circle around each trunk. Beyond the field was a farmhouse and beside it two pencil-like cypresses, dark bottle green. This was the last dwelling place, past here the road petered out into another track, which picked its way through dense woods to Rochas, the third village in the area. But Mireille didn’t go that way. She followed the road to St Clair.

Near the village plenty of stone huts had been converted to holiday cabins, cabanons, some simple and rustic, others flagrantly pretentious, with coloured shutters, stripy awnings, brass lamps and even swimming pools. They were all empty. Of her own hut nothing could be seen except a glimpse of the rock it sat on. In her absence the tree cover had effectively removed it.

Six hairpin bends took the main road from the valley floor to the top of the hill and the small road joined it at the fourth. From here it was a steep, long haul. The locals drove round the roads as if pursued by the devil and every time a car came down she had to jump into the verge. She arrived panting and with aching legs.

The entrance to the village was a tree-lined road guarded by the statue for the heroes of the Resistance. A sturdy modernist woman with large flat feet. Her torch, held high, looked like a triple-whip ice cream cone. She had been placed at the far end of the boules yard, slightly too anatomically correct to be any nearer the church. Mireille rested on the wall of the boules yard to get back her breath. The village of Lieux was in a patch of sunlight, suddenly golden and shining. Behind it rose the high dark ridge, the end of the empty plateau of the Canjurs which spread all the way to the Gorge du Verdon. Lieux was the last village before this wilderness.

The plateau was owned mostly by the military. From far away she could hear the whump of shell fire. The dogs in the village started barking.

The café was busy. French people eat lunch whether it’s March, January or June and that morning there had been a mini-market in the square. Two vegetable stalls, a cheese van and a butcher. At this time of year Jeanette’s customers were traders. In the winter she served one dish and today it was bourride, a garlicky fish soup. Her mother helped wash up and serve and at the back of the café, as usual, the huge Macon drank beer and watched television.

Jeanette’s mother, Auxille, was a tiny old woman with thin, dark hair. She wore a Provençal apron in much the same material as her daughter’s flouncy dresses. She was as nosy as her daughter and twice as uninhibited about showing it. Mireille came out of the post office and went towards the shop. As she crossed the square they both rushed out to look. Their comments were quite audible.

‘I’m sure she’s a scientist, a botanist perhaps, she looks like one. She’s not American, she speaks French too well. She could be Canadian.’ In her hand was a glass of lager for one of the van drivers.

‘She won’t like Odette’s prices,’ said Auxille. ‘The Villeneuves should have told her about the market. I got a fine piece of lamb.’

‘But they get deliveries from Lieux.’

‘Perhaps she’s buying newspapers.’

‘Where’s my beer then?’ called out the driver. ‘And I want the soup.’

‘Tais toi!’ shouted Jeanette.

‘Here she come,’ said Auxille and opened the door as Mireille was reading the board outside. ‘It’s a fine soup today, a good thick soup.’

Mireille sat in the café under the eyes of Auxille, who stood by her table like a perching raven. The van driver grumbled. ‘Tourists, when they start arriving who cares about us?’

Jeanette banged his lager down next to him. ‘She’s a Canadian, you idiot, she can understand you. And let me tell you tourists are more gentil, and they tip better.’

‘Encore de bourride,’ called out Auxille. Auxille smiled sycophantically and Mireille smiled back. She knew this little game. She was not going to speak first.

‘So …’ said Auxille. ‘You’re the Canadian botanist.’

Mireille laughed out loud. ‘I wondered what you would make of me,’ she said in English. ‘No, I’m not. I’m British.’

‘Can this be right? The Villeneuves don’t have British friends, surely.’

‘I’m not at the château,’ said Mireille, still laughing.

‘The British people are the Gregsons and they don’t come until May. Their place is empty. I know this. Madame Cabasson’s niece looks after it.’

‘I’m at La Ferrou,’ said Mireille.

Auxille retied her apron. ‘There’s nothing at La Ferrou, an old hut and a spring …’

‘It’s my home,’ said Mireille.

Auxille stared at her closely. She put her hands to her mouth. ‘It cannot be! The Blessed Jesus and his Virgin Mother!’

Jeanette was bringing in the soup, an extra large portion with a whole basket of bread.

‘Where’s mine?’ yelled the driver. ‘Or do I have to wait until summer?’

‘Shut your mouth, yours is coming. Maman, what’s wrong, are you having a fit?’

‘Jeanu, Jeanu, it’s her, from La Ferrou, who sang the songs, and the little boy with the drum …’

‘Mireille?’ said Jeanette, and she looked too, and shrieked too, and they all hugged. Macon turned off the television.

‘Look, hers is going cold and I haven’t had mine yet,’ said the van driver.

‘You be quiet, Enrique,’ said Auxille. ‘This is a miracle and I know your mother.’

‘She’s in the graveyard, where you should be.’

‘My family are in the oldest graveyard.’

‘Go and join them. God, I hate old women!’

‘Don’t insult my family,’ said Macon, loudly, and everybody looked at him. Even balding and with a paunch he was a head and shoulders higher than the driver. The man was quiet.

Auxille stood up ‘Quel miracle! Quel drame! What was it? One soup?’

‘With extra bread like hers.’

After lunch Jeanette closed the café. She wiped the tables, washed up, swept the floor and folded up the table cloths, unaided because Auxille hadn’t stopped talking once and Macon had gone into the cellar to find some celebratory wine.

The café was warm and moist and filled with a garlicky fish aroma now being attacked by bleach and cleaning fluids. Mireille rested her head against the window and listened as Auxille filled her in on the last twenty years’ gossip. The topics were the same as ever. Fecundity, hunting dogs and who had married whom. Family connections were important in St Clair.

The top family were the Villeneuves, who owned the château. They were respected but not loved. In the war they had been collaborators. They had very little to do with the village. The next family were the Cabassons, who owned the bakery. The current mayor was a Cabasson. They also owned several farms and ran the cave, the wine cellars, and the olive press. Auxille’s husband had been a Cabasson. He was a hero of the Resistance. He had been shot trying to steal wine from the cellars of the château when it was occupied by the Germans.

There were four strands of the Blancs. The best Blancs had moved away years before and now lived near Nice. The next best Blancs were Auxille’s family, who had owned the café for several generations. The third best Blancs were farmers at the château. The worst Blancs were Macon, his drunken father, his Italian mother, his no-good brothers. Other families were the Cavaliers, the Aragons, the Perrigues and the Gués. Auxille’s mother had been a Perrigues, and her mother a Cavalier. Odette, who ran the shop, was also a Cavalier, her mother a Gués, and so it went on, the whole village woven together into a knotty carpet of rivalries and jealousies. Bottom of the heap and the subject of much rumour were the people who lived in the social housing behind the mairie. Half gypsies, the unemployed, half Moroccans, and Algerians. When anything was stolen or broken, they were blamed.

Macon brought in the wine and glasses and finally Jeanette sat down.

‘So …’ she said, ‘when did you become a botanist?’ She had a habit of believing her own fantasies.

Mireille did not want to tell her or anybody else in the village why she had come. She wanted to be left alone and now she was wondering if it had been a good idea to reveal who she was. ‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘but I am interested in wild orchids. In fact, I’m making a small survey.’

‘Doesn’t Madame Cabasson’s niece’s husband-to-be know a scientist at the university?’ asked Auxille. ‘Perhaps I could introduce you.’

Mireille thought quickly. ‘How kind of you, but it won’t be necessary. It’s only La Ferrou I’m interested in, it’s just for … a nature magazine in England … it’s not scientific … but I do need peace and quiet.’

‘You’ll get that at La Ferrou,’ said Macon. ‘That’s all you’ll get.’

‘And you have no car. Can you stay for two weeks without a car?’ asked Auxille.

‘I’m going to be here until the summer.’ Mireille wanted to go back immediately to the stillness of the hut. Three pairs of incredulous eyes were already picking holes in her story. ‘The habits of wild orchids are very strange,’ said Mireille.

‘Of course,’ said Auxille and they all nodded.

‘And …’ said Mireille, definitely thinking fast now, ‘I need to rest … I need fresh air and stillness … the doctor said so.’

At the mention of a doctor Auxille and Jeanette moved close, like birds of prey. ‘You have been ill? No? You look so well.’

‘Mental …’ said Mireille, groping around for an explanation that would satisfy them. ‘Fatigue … brought on by stress … depression.’

They all stared at her. Mireille said nothing else. She hoped Jeanette’s fertile imagination would fill in the gaps. It did. ‘Your poor mother,’ said Jeanette.

‘My poor mother,’ said Mireille and her sigh of relief could have sounded like an exclamation of sadness.

‘How tragic to lose your mother. I thank the blessed Virgin that dear Maman is so well for her age.’ Auxille was in her seventies but she looked about ninety.

‘So tragic,’ said Auxille.

‘And how kind of her to remember us and send the money. I bought a pretty little carpet.’

‘And Macon drank the rest,’ said Auxille. Macon growled and drank his wine.

‘And your son? He is well?’ Jeanette changed the subject.

‘My son is a successful young man,’ said Mireille.

‘How lucky you are to be blessed with a child,’ said Auxille, glowering at Macon.

Macon ignored her. ‘Do you still play the accordion, the one my father gave you?’ He always remembered that his father had given it to Mireille.

‘I didn’t bring it with me. It was too heavy.’ She hadn’t played any music since November and this loss added to all her other losses. She desperately wanted to go back to the Ferrou.

‘What was that song?’ said Auxille. ‘How did it go?’ She began one of the old Provençal ballads. Mireille knew it and joined in. She had a splendid deep voice and eventually Auxille stopped her crackly accompaniment to listen. Mireille closed her eyes and sang to the end, a sad tale about lost love and forlorn, forgotten females. She finished. The others clapped. ‘I have to go back now,’ she said.

She was glad to be in the solitude of her hut. The light was beginning to fade now and clouds were coming down from the hills, tucking up the valleys and telling them to be quiet. But Mireille was restless. Everything she looked at reminded her of something she still had to do. Get a mattress for the loft bed. Cut more wood. Buy another lamp. In the ceramic sink the one tap dripped on to unwashed plates. There was no hot water at the Ferrou. What water there was came from a spring in the woods and it flowed into the tap, banging and complaining along the pipe. There was no toilet either. That was another job to be done. Dig a pit in the woods.

I am too old for this, thought Mireille, but she liked tiny spaces. Her houseboat in Bath had been tiny, but warm and tiny, and comfortable, with a bed taking up one end and padded seats by the table. In the hut there were no chairs, but a stone ledge along one wall. She was sleeping on this because the loft was littered with dead insects, mouse debris, and a huge spider had built a tunnel-like web under a tile and crouched in there sulking, waiting to creep over her face in the night. A gust of wind rattled the door and blew ash down the chimney. She felt completely alone.

She put on her waterproofs and walked up into the woods. Behind the hut the land was more rocky and if it had ever been terraced, this had been long lost to the pine trees; but there was a path. It led to a gully thick with cherry and apple trees and a dense jungle of sarsparilla. In the summer this was the only green place when the rest of the land was scorched brown. The path followed the water up the hillside. She could hear it trickling over the rocks, the sides of the gully steeper here, the trees on each side taller and darker. It felt like the hill was crowding in. The path stopped in a clearing. There was a pool, a natural basin in the rock.

It was a dark, cold place and unbelievably still. She had forgotten how still it was here, sheltered from the wind. The pool was about ten foot across and when she looked into the water it seemed shallow, but it wasn’t, she knew. It was deep enough to swim in, but swimming was the last thing she was thinking about. The water looked like liquid ice. Three worlds in one. A thin skin with leaves and pieces of twig floating on it. The rocky sides and the visible stony bottom of the pool. It looked so near, but it wasn’t. It looked so still, but it wasn’t. The water coming out of the spring was always flowing out of the pool and down the gully. And the third world. The sky on the water, her dark silhouette, the trees behind her perched up the hillside, and in front of her the massive, split, brooding rock that was La Ferrou. She looked up, out of the water, at the rock itself, creamy pale limestone, the cleft running down it as black as Satan’s foot. The head of the pool, the source of the water. She had dreamt about this place. When the water lapped against her houseboat in the night, she was here. At The Heathers, when the fountain outside her window dripped into her dreams, she was here. And over the last few months, when she couldn’t cry but lay on Stephen’s sofa under a travel rug. She was crying now because it was all water. The mist above the Roman baths and the clouds coming down the valley. This valley, and the valley in England by the river and the canal. That life was lost now, like her babies. The one who used to play here and throw stones in the water and her winter baby, who opened his eyes just once, and he had such dark eyes, like the bottom of the pool. He was lost and she was lost with him.