Read Online The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Deborah Lawrenson
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season: “If you must walk, you wear a bright coat and go before lunchtime or even at noon, while the men and dogs are eating and drinking in their ramshackle blinds. After lunch, you don’t venture out. Not far north of here, a hunter has already killed a Sunday cyclist.”
La Provence , the local newspaper, reported that the tragic event had been caused by une balle perdue . The words for “stray bullet” sound almost playful to an English speaker’s ear: just a lost ball.
It didn’t take long to get to the ruined chapel. It’s hardly more than two parallel walls covered in ivy, stems as thick and twisted as trees. Oaks grow in the nave, which is open to the skies. A first glimpse of a red roof made me quicken my pace.
The house was clad in tangerine stucco, too new and too bright to be a long-term fixture in village history. My heart was thumping uncomfortably (I couldn’t understand why) as I approached the steel gates at its entrance. It was a low, modern building, fairly charmless, surrounded by a neat garden with a pool. All this was visible through the wire-mesh fence that topped a stone wall.
There was no car in the driveway. The sage-green shutters appeared to be tightly closed. The place had the air of a holiday villa, closed now for the winter.
Clearly, there was no one around to ask. I hadn’t passed a soul on the track down. The only confirmation that I was not alone on the hillside was the intermittent sound of hunters’ salvoes.
A postal delivery box on the gate pillar offered the sole indication that I had come to the right place. On a label the size of a Band-Aid was the name MAUGER in capitals, written by hand in black felt pen.
I hesitated.
Standing by the wall, unsure how to proceed, I stared into the property as if trying to see some trace of Dom, impossible though I knew that was.
Was this really a place that he and Rachel once rented for vacation? It seemed so unlikely, such an odd choice for a man who loved the time-honored quirks of Les Genévriers, its atmosphere and views. This house occupied a dull position on a lower slope of the hill, with no views. The village on its proud rock was hidden by a bank of ill-placed trees. The place was uninspiring, the kind of villa he routinely dismissed. Why on earth would he have come here?
If he had come here, I reminded myself.
Trailing along the garden walls, rooted in shallow crevices, ivy-leaved toadflax was beginning to run rampant. On the other side of the fence, the land was cut back primly, a dull, flat area of grass with few trees. It told me nothing.
I retraced my steps up the hill, feeling sheepish. Of course, Dom was right. The woman at the lunch had made a mistake.
Chapter 3
I sleep downstairs under a vaulted ceiling, hoping the arch will bear the weight of the creaking house and protect me. In what is now my bedroom, a traditional three-person country bench stands by the window, piles of junk on its rush seats. My few clothes are folded carefully in Maman’s lovely walnut chest of drawers.
Maman always seemed to love Pierre the most.
Pierre, who laughed at others’ concerns, and whose insolent grin grew more and more a permanent feature of his handsome face as he reached manhood, though Lord knows it was better to be his sister than one of his women.
“He’s a boy,” she’d say, and the pride in her voice made it painfully clear that the fact would forever obscure his shortcomings. I didn’t understand then about mothers and sons; or about only sons and the continuation of the name, of the line, of the work on the land. At the time, I could only wonder, in abject frustration, how it was that she had not noticed his casual cruelties, his lies, and his acts of contempt.
It was all such a long time ago, yet in so many ways the circle is closing. I feel closer to the past now than I did twenty years ago. Bats have recolonized the lower rooms. My clothes are torn and patched, and I care as little as I did when I was a
La Provence , the local newspaper, reported that the tragic event had been caused by une balle perdue . The words for “stray bullet” sound almost playful to an English speaker’s ear: just a lost ball.
It didn’t take long to get to the ruined chapel. It’s hardly more than two parallel walls covered in ivy, stems as thick and twisted as trees. Oaks grow in the nave, which is open to the skies. A first glimpse of a red roof made me quicken my pace.
The house was clad in tangerine stucco, too new and too bright to be a long-term fixture in village history. My heart was thumping uncomfortably (I couldn’t understand why) as I approached the steel gates at its entrance. It was a low, modern building, fairly charmless, surrounded by a neat garden with a pool. All this was visible through the wire-mesh fence that topped a stone wall.
There was no car in the driveway. The sage-green shutters appeared to be tightly closed. The place had the air of a holiday villa, closed now for the winter.
Clearly, there was no one around to ask. I hadn’t passed a soul on the track down. The only confirmation that I was not alone on the hillside was the intermittent sound of hunters’ salvoes.
A postal delivery box on the gate pillar offered the sole indication that I had come to the right place. On a label the size of a Band-Aid was the name MAUGER in capitals, written by hand in black felt pen.
I hesitated.
Standing by the wall, unsure how to proceed, I stared into the property as if trying to see some trace of Dom, impossible though I knew that was.
Was this really a place that he and Rachel once rented for vacation? It seemed so unlikely, such an odd choice for a man who loved the time-honored quirks of Les Genévriers, its atmosphere and views. This house occupied a dull position on a lower slope of the hill, with no views. The village on its proud rock was hidden by a bank of ill-placed trees. The place was uninspiring, the kind of villa he routinely dismissed. Why on earth would he have come here?
If he had come here, I reminded myself.
Trailing along the garden walls, rooted in shallow crevices, ivy-leaved toadflax was beginning to run rampant. On the other side of the fence, the land was cut back primly, a dull, flat area of grass with few trees. It told me nothing.
I retraced my steps up the hill, feeling sheepish. Of course, Dom was right. The woman at the lunch had made a mistake.
Chapter 3
I sleep downstairs under a vaulted ceiling, hoping the arch will bear the weight of the creaking house and protect me. In what is now my bedroom, a traditional three-person country bench stands by the window, piles of junk on its rush seats. My few clothes are folded carefully in Maman’s lovely walnut chest of drawers.
Maman always seemed to love Pierre the most.
Pierre, who laughed at others’ concerns, and whose insolent grin grew more and more a permanent feature of his handsome face as he reached manhood, though Lord knows it was better to be his sister than one of his women.
“He’s a boy,” she’d say, and the pride in her voice made it painfully clear that the fact would forever obscure his shortcomings. I didn’t understand then about mothers and sons; or about only sons and the continuation of the name, of the line, of the work on the land. At the time, I could only wonder, in abject frustration, how it was that she had not noticed his casual cruelties, his lies, and his acts of contempt.
It was all such a long time ago, yet in so many ways the circle is closing. I feel closer to the past now than I did twenty years ago. Bats have recolonized the lower rooms. My clothes are torn and patched, and I care as little as I did when I was a
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