Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé Read Free Page B

FOR a carnival, père. At least, so it is in lansquenet, where folk work hard and anything new – even the opening of a shop – is seen as a break from the daily routine, a reason to stop and celebrate.
    Today, it is the Sainte-Marie, the festival of the Virgin. A national holiday, though, of course, most people try to get as far away from the church as they can, spending their time in front of the television, or going to the seaside – it’s only two hours’ drive to the coast – coming home in the early hours with sunburn on their shoulders and the furtive look of domestic cats that have stayed out all night up to no good.
    I know. I have to be tolerant. My role as a priest is changing. The moral compass of Lansquenet is held by others nowadays; by city folk and outsiders, by officials and the politically correct. Times are changing, so they say, and the old traditions and beliefs must now be made to comply with decisions made in Brussels by men (or even worse, by women) in suits who have never been out of the metropolis, except maybe for a summer in Cannes, or ski-ing in the Val d’Isère.
    Here in Lansquenet, of course, the poison has taken some time to reach the pulse points of the community. Narcisse still keeps bees as his father and grandfather did, the honey still unpasteurized in defiance of EU restrictions – though nowadays he gives it away, flamboyantly and with a gleam in his eye, absolutely free , he says, with the postcards he sells at 10 euros apiece, thereby circumventing the need to conform to the new restrictions, or break with a local tradition that has remained unchanged for centuries.
    Narcisse is not the only one to sometimes defy the authorities. There’s Joséphine Bonnet – Muscat, as was – who runs the Café des Marauds, and who has always done whatever she could to encourage the despised river-gypsies to stay – and the Englishman and his wife, Marise, who own the vineyard down the road, and who often hire them (off the books) to help bring in the harvest. And Guillaume Duplessis, long since retired from teaching, but who still gives private lessons to any child who asks for them, in spite of new laws calling for checks on anyone working with children.
    Of course, there are some who welcome innovation – as long as they are somehow involved. Caro Clairmont and her husband are now zealous disciples of Brussels and Paris, and have recently made it their mission to introduce Health and Safety into our community, checking pavements for evidence of neglect, campaigning against itinerants and undesirables, promoting modern values and generally making much of themselves. Traditionally Lansquenet has no mayor, but if it had one, then Caro would be the obvious choice. As it is, she runs the Neighbourhood Watch, the League of Christian Women, the village Book Club, the Riverside Cleaning Campaign and ParentWatch, a group designed to protect our children against paedophiles.
    And the church? Some would say she runs that, too.
    If you’d told me ten years ago that I would one day sympathize with rebels and refuseniks, I would probably have laughed in your face. But I myself have changed since then. I have come to value different things. When I was younger, Order reigned; the messy, disorderly lives of my flock were a constant irritation. Now I have come to understand them better – if not always to approve. I have come to feel – not affection, precisely, but something almost approaching it when dealing with their problems. It may not have made me a better man. But I have learnt over the years that it’s better to bend a little than be broken. Vianne Rocher taught me that, and although I was never happier to see anyone leave Lansquenet than when she and her daughter moved away, I know what I owe her. I know it well.
    Which is why, on the tail of this carnival, with change in the air like the scent of smoke, I can almost imagine Vianne Rocher coming back to Lansquenet. It would be so very like