Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé Read Online Free PDF

and the wind that blows across from the hills strips the land of moisture. By the time we arrived, the four of us, the shadows were already lengthening, with only the top of Saint-Jérôme’s tower still shining in the sunlight. The bells were ringing for Mass, and people were making their way to church; old women in black straw hats (with the occasional ribbon or bunch of cherries to relieve half a lifetime of mourning); old men in berets that gave them the look of schoolboys slouching to class, grey hair slicked hastily back with water from the pump in the square, Sunday shoes capped with yellow dust. No one looked at me as they passed. No one looked familiar.
    Reynaud glanced over his shoulder at me as he led the way to church. I thought there was something reluctant in the way he approached; although his movements were as precise as ever, he somehow seemed to be dragging his feet, as if to prolong the journey. Rosette had lost her exuberance, along with the plastic trumpet, discarded somewhere along the way. Anouk was walking ahead of us, iPod earpiece in one ear. I wondered what she was listening to, lost in a private world of sound.
    We passed the corner of the church and stepped into the little square, and faced the chocolaterie ; the very first place Anouk and I had ever really called home —
    For a moment neither of us spoke. It was simply too much to register: the empty windows, gaping roof, the ladder of soot climbing the wall. The smell of it was still half fresh – a combination of plaster, charred wood and memories gone up in smoke.
    ‘What happened?’ I said at last.
    Reynaud shrugged. ‘There was a fire.’
    In that moment he almost sounded like Roux in the days that had followed the loss of his boat. The warily uninflected tone, the almost insulting neutrality. I wanted to ask if he ’d started the fire – not because I believed he had, but just to break his composure.
    ‘Was anybody hurt?’ I said.
    ‘No.’ Again, that apparent detachment, though behind it his colours howled and spat.
    ‘Who lived there?’
    ‘A woman and her child.’
    ‘Foreigners,’ I said.
    ‘Yes.’
    His pale eyes held mine almost like a challenge. Of course, I too was a foreigner, at least by his definition. I too was a woman with a child. I wondered whether his choice of words had been intended to convey something else.
    ‘Did you know them?’
    ‘Not at all.’
    That, too, was unusual. In a place the size of Lansquenet, the parish priest knows everyone. Either Reynaud was lying, or the woman who had lived in my house had managed the near-impossible.
    ‘Where are they staying now?’ I said.
    ‘Les Marauds, I think.’
    ‘You think ?’
    He shrugged. ‘There are lots of them now in Les Marauds,’ he said. ‘Things have changed since you were here.’
    I was beginning to think he was right. Things have changed in Lansquenet. Behind the half-known faces and the houses and the whitewashed church; the fields; the little streets staggering down towards the river; the old tanneries; the square with its strip of gravel for playing pétanque ; the school; the bakery – all those landmarks that had seemed to me so comforting when I arrived, with their illusion of timelessness – all now coloured with something else; a shadow of disquiet, perhaps; the strangeness of familiarity.
    I saw him glance at the church door. The worshippers had all gone in. ‘Better get your robes,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to be late for Mass.’
    ‘I’m not the one saying Mass today.’ His tone was still perfectly neutral. ‘There’s a visiting priest, Père Henri Lemaître, who comes on special occasions.’
    That sounded rather odd to me, although, not being a churchgoer, I was reluctant to comment. Reynaud offered no further explanation, but remained, rather stiffly, at my side, as if awaiting judgement.
    Rosette had been watching with Anouk. Both seemed unable to keep their eyes from the chocolaterie . Anouk had taken off her