Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé Read Free

and sleeps more than is good for her. She needs to get away for a while – as do we all, I realize. And Paris is dreadful in August; a ghost city, crushed in a fist of heat; shuttered shops, streets bare of everything but tourists, with their rucksacks and their baseball caps and the traders who follow like swarms of flies.
    I told her we were going south.
    ‘To Lansquenet?’ she said at once.
    I hadn’t expected that . Not yet. Perhaps she read my colours. But her face lit up at once, and her eyes – which are as expressive as the sky, with all its variations – losing the squally, ominous look that seems habitual nowadays and shining with excitement, just as they did when we first arrived in Lansquenet, eight years ago. Rosette, who mimics everything Anouk does, was watching closely, awaiting her cue.
    ‘If that’s all right,’ I said at last.
    ‘Cool,’ said Anouk.
    ‘ Coo ,’ said Rosette.
    A ricochet on the oily Seine signalled Bam’s approval.
    Only Roux said nothing. In fact, since Armande’s letter he has been unusually silent. It is not that he has any particular affection for Paris, which he tolerates for our sake, and because he regards the river, and not the city, as his home. But Lansquenet has not treated him well, and Roux has never forgotten it. He still bears a grudge for the loss of his boat, and for what happened afterwards. He has a few friends there – Joséphine is one of them – but on the whole he sees the place as a den of small-minded bigots who threatened him, burnt his home, even refused to sell him supplies. And as for the curé , Francis Reynaud—
    In spite of his simplicity, there is something sullen about Roux. Like a wild animal that can be tamed, but never forgets unkindness, he can be both fiercely loyal and fiercely unforgiving. I suspect that in the case of Reynaud he will never change his mind, and as for the village itself, he feels nothing but contempt for the tame little rabbits of Lansquenet, living so quietly by the bank of the Tannes, never daring to look beyond the nearest hill, flinching at every breath of change, at the arrival of every stranger—
    ‘Well?’ I said. ‘What do you think?’
    For a long time Roux stayed silent, looking into the river, his long hair hanging in his face. Then he shrugged.
    ‘Maybe not.’
    I was surprised. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten to ask what he felt. I’d assumed that he too would welcome the chance of a change of scenery.
    ‘What do you mean, maybe not ?’
    ‘The letter was addressed to you, not me.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
    ‘I could see you wanted to go.’
    ‘And you’d rather stay here?’
    He shrugged again. Sometimes I think his silences are more articulate than speech. There’s something – or someone – in Lansquenet that Roux doesn’t want to revisit, and I knew that no amount of questioning would make him confess to anything.
    ‘It’s OK,’ he told me at last. ‘Do whatever you have to do. Visit the place. Put flowers on Armande’s grave. And then come home to me.’ He smiled and kissed my fingertips. ‘You still taste of chocolate.’
    ‘You won’t change your mind?’
    He shook his head. ‘You won’t be there long. And besides, someone has to look after the boat.’
    That was true, I told myself: but still, it makes me uneasy to think that Roux prefers to stay behind. I had assumed we would travel by boat; Roux knows all the waterways. His route would have taken us down the Seine and through a maze of canals to the Loire, and from there towards the Canal des Deux Mers, the Garonne, and at last into the Tannes, through locks and lifts, fast water and slow, past fields and castles and industrial estates, watching the water change as we go from broad to narrow and back again, from oily to green, fast-moving to slow, brown to black to yellow to clear.
    Each river has its own personality. The Seine is urban; industrious; a highway crammed with barges piled with