We All Ran into the Sunlight Read Free

courtyard and Arnaud had tried to get in that way to get some water to put out the fire. Now she turned after her husband and followed him in, running her hands on the wall in search of the light switch. But the light was already on in the bathroom. Light like at the circus. And the legs were hanging behind her head. She turned. She could hear Arnaud moaning, bending over, his head in his hands. The feet were there, like long brown rats dangling from the ceiling. He wasn’t wearing shoes. And he wasn’t wearing any socks. It was only his jeans torn around the ankles, and they were stained with oil and engine fuel.
    The old couple backed out of the bathroom together and separated. Lucie’s legs were moving beneath her nightdress to the outside tap to turn on the hose. She bent to collect up a handful of gravel, her thought to throw something at the fire; if she could find the strength, Saint Perpetua , to throw a handful of these little stones.
    Then silence. A deep and total silence. And an odd numbing sensation, a fizz, like lemonade, up to the brain. Lucie hit the ground, which smelt of dry limestone rock. She lay on the ground and the base stones of the chateau rose up like boulders on the overgrown grass.

 
     

T HE E NGLISH C OUPLE
     
     

Canas, South-West France, February 2006
    It felt like a steal, this happiness. It felt like something only people much younger or much more in love were entitled to have.
    Kate kicked her shoes off and pulled her jumper up over her head. In the bedroom of the village house they’d rented , Stephen was sitting up against the headboard, his eyes roving gladly as he watched his wife move with her hands on her hips. She was self-conscious; she looked down at herself and the shiny bob of her dark hair spilled forward revealing the back of her neck. She had found the string of beads at the market in town. Pink and purple, they were cheap and childish, and they released something in both of them.
    It was a damp Friday afternoon. The rain had stopped but the sky hadn’t cleared and now water spurted from the gutter and flicked against the window pane. Inside the house it was softly lit and cosy with the candles they’d dotted about. Kate was laughing, at Stephen trying to flatten himself on the small bed, and at herself now; she was trying to do a belly dance. She was a thousand miles from work and London; she was a thousand miles from her mother. Coming away had been her idea. It was Stephen who suggested the South-West of France. It had taken them two weeks to unwind. Kate had made a promise not to do anything, not to think, not to worry about anything. Let go, was her mantra, and simplify.
    Stephen’s neck was coloured from walking in the countryside , his jeans were stained with spitting wine. There was no mobile reception in the village; no television in the house, no radio. He did calculations in his head, stopped taking the fish oils and vitamin B. Kate kept saying how we need so little, and on his bedside table these days there was nothing at all.

     
    Life in Canas was simple. It was perfect. It was waking late in an old wooden bed, cups of coffee, driving the 4x4 on the hills, their faces peering; just rocks and blue sky. The air chill in the evening, Stephen wrapped his wife in a sheepskin rug, made love to her in front of the fire.
    They slept off London like dogs dreaming, reflexes shuddering, sounds being released.
    From time to time they drove to the coast and walked together on the sand, their hands buried deep in the pockets of their jeans.
    In the afternoons, they read yesterday’s papers and the wine was poured. They took photographs, made films of the room, panning the camera round till they found each other, smiling, arms on the back of the sofa, heads tilted, serene.
    On Saturday morning they went to market for the poussin and the vegetables. Kate said she could feel herself unravelling; her spirit coming loose. She gazed out of the window at the sunlight