Nightingale

His own home had been very dull by comparison. Without siblings, each room was his to enter; there was no friction, no chaos. His mother, adoring, intuitive, had few reprimands for the son she admired without reservation. His father, the best farmer for miles, was a largely silent presence. When Henri wasn’t studying, his father taught him, often wordlessly, how to set the cows up for milking, how to nurse suckling runts, how to lop the heads off chickens. The sound of animals and machinery, but little else, had suffused their home. How exotic, then, had Rossignol seemed: the three brothers always fighting or laughing, the great quantities of food consumed, the crude jokes, farts and burps. The chaos would be punctuated and compounded by Jérôme’s high-octane outbursts, his fist slamming against the table and doors banging closed after him. Amidst all this Céline Lanvier moved calmly with her slow, gentle force.

He put his tools down and tried the gas ring he’d just fixed; it hissed briefly and then burst into controlled blue flame. A beautiful, electric blue. He turned the gas off and took his tools over to the lamp to rewire the plug, a quick and easy job that most women he knew would have managed with ease.

When he was finished, he put the tools away and the nurse appeared, as if she had been waiting just outside.

‘It’s all done,’ he said, putting on his jacket and boots.

‘Thank you.’

‘Do let Brigitte know if anything else comes up. It’s our job to keep the place going. I’m sure you’re busy enough with your patient.’

‘Yes, of course.’

He waited for a moment, wondering if she would say anything else, but she simply looked back at him, very serious.

‘The boys will be here for a little while so if you think of anything else, just let them know.’

‘Thank you.’

She turned and started to busy herself taking tins out of a cupboard. Henri watched her for a moment, the muscles of her arms flickering under the skin as she moved. He let himself out.

He stood in the drizzle, watching Thierry and his younger brother, Rémy, working in the distance. He let his vision blur a little, trying to imagine they were the young men he had seen so many times here in the past. Marc Lanvier, Jean-Christophe, Thibault. But the Rossignol of his childhood was a place of sunshine and heat; he found it difficult to reconcile that with the grey scene in front of him.

‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours, okay?’ he called out, and they turned and called back, faces small in their hooded jackets. He walked back to the truck quickly, and thought about the nurse as he started the engine and drove out. The place was so cut off, Jérôme so difficult, and she so young. He couldn’t imagine what she was doing here.

‘Who was here?’

Marguerite placed a slice of the lemon tart by Jérôme’s bed, and he stared at it.

‘What’s that?’

‘Lemon tart.’

‘It looks vile.’

‘You don’t have to eat it.’

He picked at it with his fingers, tasted it with a laboured show of reluctance. ‘Who was here?’

‘When?’

‘You know when. I heard a man’s voice. I heard you talking to a man.’

She remained silent, took his free arm to take his blood pressure. She always enjoyed the puffing sound of the pump. It reminded her of blowing up balloons.

‘Well?’ he snapped.

‘Monsieur Brochon came here.’

‘Henri! He was in the house!’ Jérôme smiled, his mouth full of tart, and she watched him carefully. It was the first time she’d seen him look somewhere near happy, even fond. ‘A great man. Why didn’t you send him in?’

‘He didn’t ask.’

‘Well, that’s because he will have presumed I was resting. Next time, send him in. This is my house, you know.’

‘I know.’

He eyed her as he chewed. ‘Handsome man, Henri, isn’t he?’

She turned to put the cuff and pump away. ‘Your blood pressure’s a little high today,’ she said.

‘Isn’t he?’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘You must have noticed.’

She took the empty plate from him, brushing crumbs of pastry from his belly onto it.

‘So the tart wasn’t quite so vile,’ she said and he scowled.

‘Disgusting,’ he said. ‘Far too sweet.’

She rolled her eyes as she walked out of the room.

‘Woman!’ he shouted after her, but she ignored him, entered the kitchen and ate a large slice of tart standing up by the counter. It was delicious.

4

Henri leant against the fence, watching Cédric as he examined Vanille. At eighteen, Vanille was his oldest cow and the only one to have a name. She had not been able to produce milk for many years, but Henri couldn’t let her go. ‘He loves that old thing more than me,’ Brigitte would often chide, which irritated him because his loyalty to Vanille felt more elemental than sentimental. It might sound ridiculous – he could guess perfectly well what Paul, or indeed anyone, would think if he knew – but she was the last link between the farm he had now and the farm he had inherited when his father retired. The place had done well under her vigil. It had mutated and expanded, a little colony of industry; Vanille and the house itself were the only things that remained the same.

And now she was ill – slothlike, heavy, sad. He looked at Cédric, trying to read his face. Henri had no instinct for sickness.

‘It’s not a blockage this time,’ Cédric said after a while. ‘I can’t find anything up there.’

The men stood in silence for a little while. Henri stepped towards Vanille, resting one hand on her head. She didn’t flinch, looking up at him blankly, her eyeballs marbled pink.

‘Probably just time she went on her way,’ Cédric said. Henri let go of her head, resting his palm under her muzzle for her to smell. ‘She’s what, fifteen by now?’

‘Eighteen.’ Henri looked into his friend’s eyes. They were still their old, deep blue, but Henri noticed his wrinkles now, how deeply they were scored. They had been two of the brightest boys at school; Henri could still remember clearly Cédric going off to Grenoble to study veterinary science, how glamorous that had seemed. ‘It couldn’t be urinary?’

‘Her piss ran normal.’

‘Ah.’

‘How many productive years did you get out of her?’

‘A lot. Ten, perhaps?’

Cédric whistled. ‘You’re lucky to get more than three these days.’ He laid his hand gently on Vanille’s back. ‘She’s done you proud.’

‘My girls are all right. They’re not a bad lot.’ Henri looked at the rest of the herd, grazing calmly, indifferent to the two men.

‘Well,’ Cédric said, packing up his things, ‘I’m afraid I can’t find anything. It might be cancer but let’s call it old age. At this point it’s the same thing really.’

Henri nodded. ‘Nothing we can do?’

‘I wouldn’t say so.’ The vet ran his hand again over the big knuckles of her spine and smiled gently. ‘They won’t get much meat off her.’

‘Oh, I won’t bother with all that.’ Henri stroked one of her ears; she stood there dumbly, not even grazing. He couldn’t send her away to die.

‘Are you staying out here?’ Cédric asked, and Henri nodded. ‘I’ll see myself out. Send my regards to Brigitte. I’ll see you soon.’

They shook hands and Cédric turned and started back towards the farmhouse. Henri watched him go, his figure dark against the pale morning. He turned to Vanille and stroked her muzzle again.

‘You pretty old thing,’ he said. Then he climbed over the gate; he had to get to work.

The air was warming already: it would be hot work today. The cicadas had started, he hadn’t noticed when. It was the same each year, their chorus insinuating its way into the fabric of the days without fuss or ceremony. Once it was there, it was difficult to imagine how silence sounded without it.

Henri turned back as he walked to look at Vanille; she was still watching him. She knew.

‘Good God,’ Jérôme said when she brought his breakfast. She had barely slept in the night, imagining sounds and the sly movement of human shapes against the black shadows of the trees outside her room. Jérôme was already sitting up in bed, a manoeuvre he managed with difficulty alone; unlike her, he appeared to have had an unusually good night, calling only once for pain relief. ‘You look like you’ve spent the night in a cave.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and he laughed. The sound – a real laugh, not a harsh little bark for effect – was so surprising that she turned from arranging his medication to look at him. He was smiling, his eyes bright, a different creature altogether from the day before.

‘But you have slept well.’

‘Very well,’ he said, tugging at the sheets with a little excitement. ‘Like a baby.’

She watched him as he ate, the grinding cogs of his old jaw as he chewed. Sunlight poured through the window onto the foot of his bed. The wind had blown away the rain; the clouds dotting the sky outside were white and bilious.

‘Today, I’ll go outside,’ he said when he’d finished.

‘Fine,’ she said. She thought with weariness of the effort it would entail. ‘Of course.’

‘It looks like a good day.’

‘It’s pretty sunny,’ she said. ‘It might be a bit cold, but I’ll bring blankets.’

‘And it’ll do me good. As you say.’

‘Yes. We can go after your nap.’

‘Why wait?’ he said brightly. ‘Let’s go now.’

She brought his wheelchair into the room. It was old-fashioned, more like a grand piece of garden furniture than a wheelchair. She could imagine it carrying young wartime convalescents around country houses in England, or frail, wealthy women in resorts in Switzerland. Marguerite was accustomed to sitting patients up in their chairs for eight hours a day, or as long as their skin could take it; it was crucial to prevent pressure sores and the build-up of fluid in immobile chests. But Madame Brochon had dismissed her request for a modern chair – another thing for which she had apparently not been allocated expenses – and Marguerite relied on bed positioning and the armchair in the bedroom to keep Jérôme upright.

When she wheeled it into the room he scowled, his first unpleasant look of the day. ‘I don’t need that thing!’

Marguerite stopped. She felt drunk with exhaustion. ‘How else do I take you out?’

‘You help me walk, it’s no different to taking me to the bath or the lavatory. Take the armchair out instead, I’ll sit in that. I hate this contraption, I don’t need it.’

She lifted him from the bed and they shuffled together through the corridor, the utility room, the kitchen, stopping occasionally so that he could rest against a wall or surface and she could catch her breath. His arm around her neck made her stoop, the long bone of his forearm tight against her throat.

When they got out of the house, he stopped, looking up, breathing hard. The sunshine fell white on his face. They continued to shuffle together, until they reached two particularly old-looking olive trees.

‘Here,’ he said. She lowered him to sit on the edge of a terrace wall while she went back into the house to fetch the armchair in which she often dozed in the kitchen. She set it down between the two trees and lowered him into it, laid blankets over his lap and chest, asked if he needed a hat.

‘I want to feel the sun on my face,’ he said.

Marguerite was warm and breathless from exertion. It was still a little windy; the breeze cooled her skin and rustled the silver leaves of the olives. She laid another blanket over the ground by his chair and sat down.

‘This is where the washing used to hang,’ he said quietly. She looked at him; he looked calm, gazing at nothing.

‘Yes?’

He didn’t respond. She wondered what ghosts he was seeing right now. A woman, his children, his own younger self. Friends, visitors, maybe lovers. Then she let herself think of home for a moment. Frances, their English au pair, hanging washing in the large spare bedroom. Marguerite hanging a towel over the tops of two chairs so that she and Cassandre could sit under their own little roof; Frances singing funny-sounding songs to them in English, ‘Little Miss Muffet’, ‘Hickory Dickory Dock’ with its guttural heft. Marguerite and Cassandre playing escargot on their large balcony, taking care to wash the chalk off the ground before their mother came home. Hopping, marking their own squares with their initials, Marguerite always winning. MD, MD, MD, CD, MD.

She looked at Jérôme and wondered about his own painful memories. A man like him must have reams of them. She thought of the son who had interviewed her for the job: evasive, hasty, a little pleased with himself. That unique combination of infallible politeness and unidentifiable rudeness that she had come to recognise in nearly everyone with a privileged background, a background like her own.

He hadn’t made a secret of his dislike for his father, though he hadn’t openly mentioned it. He’d emphasised that the job wouldn’t be easy, that Jérôme had had many nurses leave and that they needed someone who would stick it out. He’d also emphasised that there would be no one else around, no one at all. Marguerite had wanted the silence then, though she was aware now that she had underestimated it. She’d also needed the money – the salary they were paying more than justified the fact that the job was 24/7, without respite.

And of course, crucially, it was far away from Paris. Her mother and father hadn’t tried to contact her when she’d been nursing in Picardy, but they had known she was there. Now – unless they made a little effort, which she doubted they would do – they’d be gratefully unaware that she was here in the Languedoc, surrounded by miles of rural silence, with a dying old man for company.

‘I have three sons, you know,’ Jérôme said, and Marguerite sat up; she felt eerily as if her thoughts had permeated his.

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I suppose you met the youngest, Jean-Christophe.’

‘Yes.’

‘The lawyer.’ He looked at her. ‘I’ll bet he could barely give you five minutes of his time? It’s a strange way to work, being paid by the minute. I’m not sure it can do anything except make you think your company is too valuable to share around.’

Marguerite nodded. She had often thought this about her own father.

‘And then I have two others. Marc and Thibault. Three sons and me, can you imagine what it was like when we all lived under one roof?’ He smiled wryly. ‘Poor Céline.’

‘Was Céline your wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘The only woman in a house full of boys.’

He shot her a glance, his softness dissolved. ‘Well, I’m sure it was fine. She had nothing to complain about, nothing at all.’ He looked at her again, checking for a response, and Marguerite nodded. ‘I gave her this house – you might not believe it now, but it was very grand. And I gave her everything she could ask for.’

‘I’m sure,’ Marguerite said.

‘Oh, she had nothing to complain about. You get all kinds of women – and men now, too – complaining, complaining, complaining. Giving a woman a great house, giving your kids skis and expensive bicycles and language tuition, that’s not enough. They’ll still find something to complain about.’ He shook his head, frowned. ‘But not Céline. She never complained, not once.’

Marguerite had cooled down a little; she pulled a blanket around her shoulders.

‘Are you warm enough?’ she asked.

Jérôme turned to look at her again. ‘If you ever get married,’ he said, ‘you’ll do well not to listen to any of the crap you pick up in magazines and on television. What men want is a woman with sense and patience. We might think we want the red racing car but we don’t really, not in the long run. We need an engine that will keep us going.’

‘That isn’t a very romantic metaphor.’

‘What do you know about metaphors?’ he snapped. ‘Or romance.’

‘I know plenty about both,’ she said, irritated, but her words sounded foolish as soon as she’d spoken them. A child trying to show her parents that she’s grown up. Jérôme merely grunted.

‘Really. Well, your literature teacher must have been terribly disappointed when you chose to become a carer.’

‘I’m a nurse.’

‘What a difference.’

Marguerite closed her eyes tight, breathed deeply to try to quieten the thudding in her chest. Then she opened them. ‘Was working in a tile shop intellectually demanding?’

Jérôme’s neck bulged as he turned to stare at her. His eyes were wide; an immediate colour had spread across his face. ‘Would you like to repeat that?’

‘No.’

‘I’m asking you to repeat it.’

‘I don’t think you misheard me.’

He blinked. ‘Have you forgotten that you’re working for me?’

‘No, I haven’t.’ She felt the insult of tears forming; she was too exhausted for confrontation. But she couldn’t face backing down. ‘That’s why I don’t think it’s right that you should insult me constantly.’

‘Well! I don’t think it’s right that you should answer back. Don’t forget, just one word from me and you’ll be gone, out of here.’

‘With pleasure,’ she said, very quietly.

‘What did you say?’

She didn’t answer and he watched her, intently, his shoulders up near his ears. She ignored the crawling of an insect on her neck, determined not to look away, and there was total silence between them as they stared. Then a magpie rattled and Jérôme broke his stare, let out a harsh little laugh. ‘You’re funny,’ he said. ‘You know I was just teasing you? You mustn’t let me get under your skin.’

‘I don’t.’

‘I was just having a joke.’

‘Okay.’

He was watching her again, eyes sharp above his smile.

‘And as I’m sure you know, I didn’t “work in a tile shop”. I owned an extremely profitable business.’

Marguerite didn’t reply; she shrugged the blanket from around her shoulders, warm again from the adrenaline. She felt the thud in her chest subside, slowly.

Jérôme laughed again, a laugh that didn’t seem wholly forced.

‘A tile shop,’ he repeated. ‘You’re very funny.’

The milking clusters detached from the cows’ udders and withdrew, clanking and swinging. Henri sanitised the cows’ teats, pink and engorged, thin lines of milk still trickling from them like the white sap from figs. He opened the gate for the cows to move slowly out, lowing and nodding as they walked, and then he called Thierry in from the yard to hose the parlour down. When the young man had taken over, Henri pulled off his thick rubber gloves and rinsed them. He would change out of his milky overalls before he saw to Vanille. He didn’t want to taunt her with the smell of her youth.

Back in the house, he changed into a fresh shirt and jeans and sat in the study to get some paperwork done. It wasn’t urgent, but he needed delay. He went through the accounts for perhaps fifteen minutes until he knew he could no longer put it off. Then he stood up, walked straight out of the house, taking his shotgun, glimpsing Brigitte through the kitchen door and ignoring her as she called out. He strode out to the pasture, where the cows had already settled back into grazing.

Thierry sat with the calves now, feeding them formula, and he looked up and then down at the gun. His head bobbed back slightly, like a tic, and he looked at Henri questioningly, with some alarm, opening his mouth to speak. Henri didn’t acknowledge him.

He held the gun behind his back as he approached Vanille, only now slowing his pace. She blinked.

‘Come on, my beautiful lady,’ he said. ‘Beautiful lady.’ He let her smell his hand, and she rubbed it. ‘Come on,’ he said more loudly, even tersely, so that Thierry might hear. Then he led her away, her awkward, rocking gait making him tread more slowly than he could bear. He needed to do it now, could already feel his resolve slipping. Now Thierry had seen him, he had to go through with it. He couldn’t turn around and wait until tomorrow.

She was docile, infinitely trusting; he got her with ease into the old stable nestled at the corner of the next field. Standing there beside her, he had to wipe tears from his eyes and cheeks.

‘You bloody fool. Get a grip.’

He kissed her head and took it in his hands, turning it so that she was facing out of the doorway, out to the fields. She stared out obediently, not turning even when he loaded the gun. Her cheeks sagged like old elastic; she nodded a little, reflexively. He cocked the gun, took the barrels to her head and pulled the trigger. She dropped in an instant, heavy as concrete. He didn’t look at the ground. A fine mist of warm blood settled over his face.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, pressed until it hurt. Then he wiped his face with his sleeves and strode from the pen, passing Thierry as he made for the house.

‘Call the knackerman to come and get rid of that,’ he said, gesturing behind him. He didn’t look at him, or the cows, or down at the blood he imagined must cover his body. He sensed a silent terror around him, suffusing the pre-twilight air. Everything was silent. Even the cicadas stopped suddenly, for just one second.

Brigitte set his dinner in front of him: lamb and potatoes, and a tall glass of water.

‘Busy day?’ she asked, but he didn’t respond. ‘I’ve finished the feed orders for the pigs and chickens. I found a new merchant, we’ll be saving a couple of hundred euros a year.’

‘That’s great,’ Henri said, getting up from the table to get another beer from the fridge. She watched him, glanced down at the bottle in his hand as he opened it. ‘Three beers isn’t very much, Brigitte.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

‘Good.’ He sat down and took a long draught straight from the bottle. She didn’t like that but he knew she wouldn’t say anything. Ordinarily, she might tease him – ‘farmer by name, farmer by manners’ – but he knew that she knew not to do that tonight. He almost wanted her to try.

They sat in silence for a while as she started to eat. When Brigitte felt uncomfortable, she affected a daintiness as she ate that annoyed him. As if the bald eagerness of her darting fork could be mitigated by the small volume of food she picked up each time; or this rare show of delicacy, the repeated wipes of her napkin to each corner of her lips, make her appear less greedy.

‘How’s Paul’s shoulder?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know, he was in Montpellier today.’

‘Well I do hope he’s seen a physio.’ He could hear the moistness of her chewing. ‘I wonder how Thierry’s mother is.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s been ill.’

‘What, with a cold or something.’

‘Not a cold, Henri. She’s had scarlet fever.’

‘Scarlet fever?’ He leant back and let his chair tip backwards, which he knew she hated. ‘What is this, the nineteenth century?’

She frowned; she became embarrassed when he brought up any period of history she couldn’t remember from school. As far as he could tell, that left them with only the most superficial smattering of the Revolution to discuss with any ease.

‘Well that’s what it was,’ she said. ‘Laure says she’s been awfully ill. I did mean to go round there with some things but you know how busy it’s been these last few days.’

‘Why any busier than usual?’

Brigitte put down her fork and let out a little sigh. ‘I’ve been going through all the re-orders, Henri! It’s taken a long time. I’ve done them all, we’re up to date.’

Henri shrugged, took a mouthful of potato and washed it down with beer. He didn’t often drink more than one beer and he felt a little drunk already. He let his chair tip back again.

Brigitte took refuge in her food. ‘I’ll take her something tomorrow if I get a chance.’

‘I’m sure she’s fine. Maybe it’s a good thing; she might have lost a bit of weight at last.’

‘Henri!’ cried Brigitte immediately, and she looked hurt. Now he had a rise, he regretted his callousness. It was too easy.

‘That wasn’t kind,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘I take it back.’

‘I should jolly well think so,’ she said, and he was freshly irritated.

‘But it’s true. She’s grossly overweight.’ He stood up, pushing his plate away.