"The Winter Ghosts" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mosse Kate)

Madame Galy’s Vigil

I slept all of that day and into the evening. Or rather, I drifted in and out of a twilight state. I was aware of comings and goings, shapes, blurred faces, the sound of kindling and a striking match, the maid laying a fire.

I woke fully only twice. First, when Madame Galy placed a bowl of soup and bread beside the bed and waited until I had eaten it all. The second time, when she returned to administer a second draught of the bitter white medicine. Some kind of traditional remedy? I never knew and hardly cared.

‘What time is it?’

‘Late,’ she replied, placing a cool hand on my forehead. Why she should take so much trouble over a stranger, I did not think to ask. She felt some kind of responsibility to me, I could see, as a guest in her establishment. Even so, this was over and above the call of duty.

But Madame Galy’s maternal ministrations were not enough to stop the fever from taking hold. Some time in the evening, my temperature began to rise dangerously. Every muscle, every sinew flexed and tried to fight it, but my natural defences were too weak and I was powerless to do anything other than hope to ride the fever out.

My skin was alternately burning and clammy with sweat. I tossed and turned in the bed, like flotsam on a storm-wracked sea, plagued by dreams and delusions. Angels and gargoyles, ghostly apparitions, long-since deserted friends waltzed in and out of my head, to the sounds of a fairground carousel, then Für Elise, then a ragtime step.

For hours, so Madame Galy later told me, things hung in the balance as my temperature climbed higher and higher. Certainly, I oscillated between beauty and horror. A skeletal hand pushing up from beneath freshly turned earth, blossom dying on the bough. The backs of my parents’ heads, impassive and deaf to my need for them to love me. George smiling at me, in the orchard and by the stream, but then stepping just out of reach and turning away when I called out to him. Barbed wire and mud and blood, chlorine gas, a world of unimaginable pain.

The fever broke at about three o’clock in the morning. I felt it slink away like a mongrel with its tail between its legs. My temperature dropped. I stopped shaking and my skin, sticky with fever, returned to normal. For the first time in hours, I found myself surrounded by the reassuringly mundane features of the everyday world. A chair, my trousers draped over a clothes horse, a table, the last lick of flames in the grate and Madame Galy snoring quietly on the chair beside me. Wisps of grey hair had worked their way loose from her severe plait, and I caught a glimpse of the pretty girl she once had been. I could think of no occasion when my own mother had taken such care of me. Without waking her, I reached out my hand and laid it briefly over hers.

‘Thank you,’ I whispered.

Then a kind of peace fell over the room. In the still and sleeping house, I could hear the whirring and chiming of the clock in the hall downstairs. I placed my arms above the counterpane, a stone knight on a tomb, and turned to the window. I wondered if Fabrissa looked out into the same night. I wondered if she might have come to enquire after me. I had set at her feet what little of myself I had to give, ragged fragments, and yet hoped that she might love me. Had it scared her off? Was she lying awake now in the dark, thinking of me as I thought of her?

A ribbon of moonlight made its way between the shutters and painted a line across the floor. I watched the moonbeams dance, slowly shift, as the hours passed and the world continued to turn. I thought of what I would say to her when I found her. Of the beauty of small things. Of the way a bird takes flight, its wings beating on the air. Of the blue flowers of the flax blossom in summer and a parish church decorated by plough and corn at harvest time. Of notes climbing a chromatic scale. Of the possibility of love.

Later, I fell asleep. And this time, when I slept, I did so without dreaming.

When I woke again, it was morning. Madame Galy had gone. The chair was back against the wall as if it had never been moved. Physically, I was done in, but I felt all right – in fact, better than I had for some time. And I was ravenously hungry.

I sat up, debating whether to get up or wait a while longer. I wasn’t certain of the time. Just as I had decided that I would wash and dress, there was a light tap on the door.

‘Come in.’

Madame Galy came into the room, my laundered shirt over her arm, and carrying a breakfast tray.

‘I have brought you something to eat,’ she said.

I smiled and smoothed down the covers.

‘That’s kind of you. I seem to have quite an appetite this morning.’

I was touched by the way she found things to busy herself with in the room, while surreptitiously checking that I ate every scrap. Toasted bread, salted ham and an egg sliced perfectly in two. When I tried to thank her for her long night’s vigil, she brushed my gratitude aside. But a pink glow suffused her homely features and I could see she was pleased.

‘Your letter was delivered to your friends in Ax yesterday afternoon, monsieur. The boy can go again tomorrow once you know how things stand with your motor car.’

‘Thank you.’ I wiped my hands on the serviette. ‘You said there was someone who could help?’

She nodded. ‘Michel Breillac and his sons will be here at ten o’clock.’

‘What time is it now?’

‘It is nearly nine.’

‘Splendid. I can easily be ready within an hour.’

Concern flashed across Madame Galy’s face when she realised I intended to accompany them.

‘I do not think it would be wise, monsieur, after what you went through last evening. It is barely above freezing. Better to give Monsieur Breillac directions and leave it to him. He is a capable man.’

It seems extraordinary now that I would have contemplated an expedition after so serious a fever. But in truth, I believed the delirium had left me somehow stronger, restored. I felt invigorated, more complete in body and mind than I had been for some time.

‘I’m quite recovered,’ I said with a smile. ‘On top form, in fact.’

She shook her head. ‘It would be better to rest for one more day. You should not overtire yourself.’

‘It will be fine,’ I said firmly.

Supervising the salvage of my poor little saloon stranded up in the hills was not, of course, my primary concern. Madame Galy said she did not know Fabrissa, so I had to find someone who did. That could not be achieved by kicking my heels in the boarding house.

‘Very well, monsieur,’ she said, though I could see she thought me foolish. ‘Ten o’clock.’

After she had left, I flung back the covers and got out of bed. The floorboards were chill beneath my bare feet, but the ground held steady. I splashed cold water on my face and did my best to smooth down my errant hair. I ran my hand over my raspy chin and regretted the lack of a razor, but did not want to seek out Madame Galy once more, for fear she would renew her efforts to dissuade me from accompanying the Breillacs.

I finished dressing and pulled on my Fitwells. The leather of the sturdy old boots had contracted in the heat from the fire, but they were comfortable enough. I rummaged in my trouser pocket and retrieved my cigarette case and matches, then threw open the windows and looked out at the white place de l’Église.

I plunged my hand back into my pocket. Nothing. I balanced my cigarette on the sill. I frowned. After I had offered the yellow fabric cross to Fabrissa and she had refused it, I could have sworn I’d tucked it away. I tried the other pocket, but it was also empty. Just balls of fluff and a spent match.

Had I mislaid it on the way home? Since I had no recollection at all of how I had made it back to my room, it seemed the likeliest explanation, though I was disappointed.

‘No matter,’ I said to myself, shutting the window.

I was certain, you see, that I would find her.