Peaches for Monsieur Le Curé Read Online Free PDF Page B

iPod and was standing by the charred front door, and I knew that she was remembering us soaping and sanding the woodwork; buying the paint and the brushes; trying to wash the paint from our hair.
    ‘It might not be as bad as it looks,’ I said to Anouk, and pushed at the door. It was unlocked; it opened. Inside, there was worse: a jumble of chairs piled in the middle of the room, most of them charred and useless. A carpet, rolled up and blackened. The remains of an easel on the floor. A flaking blackboard on the wall.
    ‘It was a school,’ I said aloud.
    Reynaud said nothing. His mouth was set.
    Rosette pulled a face and said in sign language: Are we sleeping here?
    I shook my head and smiled at her.
    Good. Bam doesn’t like it .
    ‘We’ll find somewhere else,’ I told her.
    Where?
    ‘I know just the place,’ I said. I looked at Reynaud. ‘I don’t mean to intrude. But are you in some kind of trouble?’
    He smiled. It was a narrow smile, but this time it went all the way to his eyes. ‘I think you could probably say that.’
    ‘Did you ever intend to go to Mass?’
    He shook his head.
    ‘Then come with me.’
    Once more he smiled. ‘And where are we going, Mademoiselle Rocher?’
    ‘First, to put flowers on an old lady’s grave.’
    ‘And after that?’
    ‘You’ll see,’ I said.

CHAPTER NINE

    Sunday, 15th August
    I SUPPOSE I’LL have to explain myself. I thought I might avoid it. But if she is staying in Lansquenet – and everything points to the fact that she is – then she will hear it eventually. Our gossips pull no punches. For some strange reason she seems to believe that she and I can somehow be friends. I may as well tell her the truth before she gets too used to the idea.
    This was my thought as I followed her to the cemetery, pausing every few minutes as she and the children stopped to pick a handful of roadside flowers – weeds, for the most part – dandelions; ragwort; daisies; poppies; a stray anemone from the verge; a fistful of rosemary from someone’s garden, pushing its shoots through a drystone wall.
    Of course, Vianne Rocher likes weeds. And the children – the young one especially – lent themselves to the game with glee, so that by the time we reached the place, she had a whole armful of flowers and herbs tied together with bindweed and a straggle of wild strawberry—
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘It’s – colourful.’
    She laughed. ‘You mean inappropriate.’
    Disorderly, colourful, inappropriate, wrong in every sense of the word – and yet with a curious appeal – a perfect description of Vianne Rocher , I thought, but did not say aloud. My eloquence – such as it is – is strictly limited to the page.
    Instead I said, ‘Armande would like it.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think she would.’
    Armande Voizin’s is a family plot. Her parents and grandparents are there, and the husband who died forty years ago. There is a black marble urn at the foot of the grave – an urn she always greatly disliked, and a trough in which she would often slyly plant parsley, carrots, potatoes or other vegetables in defiance of the conventions of grief.
    It is very like her now to persuade her friend to bring weeds – Vianne Rocher had told me all about the letter she received from Luc Clairmont, and the note inside from Armande Voizin. Again, it is very like Armande to interfere – from beyond the grave! – to trouble my peace of mind in this way with memories of what once was. She says there is chocolate in Paradise. A blasphemous, inappropriate thought, and yet some hidden part of me hopes to God that she is right.
    The children sat and waited on the side of the marble trough, which has now been replanted appropriately, with rows of neat French marigolds. I sense the hand of Caroline Clairmont, Armande’s daughter – at least, by blood. I noticed a wisp of something – a weed – underneath the marigolds. I leant forward to pull it up, and recognized the impudent shoot