'And do you want to?’

Anouk shrugged. `Maybe,' she said.

I tell myself – in the small hours when everything seems possible and my nerves shriek like the unoiled hinges of the weathervane – that my fear is irrational. What could he do to us? How could he hurt us, even if that is his intention? He knows nothing. He can know nothing about us. He has no power.

Of course he has, says my mother's voice in me. He's the Black Man.

Anouk turns over restlessly in her sleep. Sensitive to my moods, she knows when I am awake and struggles towards wakefulness herself through a morass of dreams. I breathe deeply until she is under again.

The Black Man is a fiction, I tell myself firmly. An embodiment of fears underneath a carnival head. A tale for dark nights. Shadows in a strange room.

In lieu of an answer I see that picture again, bright as a transparency: Reynaud at an old man's bedside, waiting, his lips moving as if in prayer, fire at his back like sunlight through stained glass. It is not a comforting picture. There is something predatory in the priest's stance, a likeness between the two reddened faces, the glow of flame between them darkly menacing. I try to apply my studies in psychology. It is an image of the Black Man as Death, an archetype which reflects my fear of the unknown. The thought is unconvincing. The part of me that still belongs to my mother speaks with more eloquence.

You're my daughter, Vianne, she tells me inexorably. You know what that means.

It means moving on when the wind changes, seeing futures in the turn of a card, our lives a permanent fugue.

`I'm nothing special.’ I am barely aware that I have spoken aloud.

`Maman?’ Anouk's voice, doughy with sleep.

'Shh,' I tell her. 'It isn't morning yet. Sleep some more.’

`Sing me a song, Maman,' she murmurs, reaching out her hand to me in the darkness. `Sing me the song about the wind again.’

And so I sing, listening to my own voice against the small sounds of the weathervane:

V’la l'bon vent, V'la l'joli vent

V'la l'bon vent, ma vie m'appelle

V'la l'bon vent, V'la l'joli vent

V'la l'bon vent, ma mie m'attend.

After a while I begin to hear Anouk's breathing steady again, and I know she is sleeping. Her hand still rests in mine, soft with sleep. When Roux has finished the work on the house she will have a room of her own again and we will both sleep more easily. Tonight feels too close to those hotel rooms which we shared, my mother and 1, bathed in the moisture of our own breathing, with condensation running down the windows and the sounds of the traffic, interminable, outside.

V’la l'bon vent, V'la l'joli vent…

Not this time, I promise myself silently. This time we stay. Whatever happens. But even as I slide back into sleep I find myself considering the thought, not only with longing, but with disbelief.

31

Wednesday March 19

THERE SEEMS TO BE LESS ACTIVITY AT THE ROCHER woman's shop these days. Armande Voizin has stopped visiting, though I have seen her a few times since her recovery, walking with a determined stride and with only a little help from her stick. Guillaume Duplessis is often with her, trailing that skinny puppy of his, and Luc Clairmont goes down to Les Marauds every day. On learning that her son has been seeing Armande in secret, Caroline Clairmont gives a smirk of chagrin.

`I can't do a thing with him these days, pere,' she complains. `Such a good boy, such an obedient boy one moment, and the next-' She raised her manicured hands to her bosom in a theatrical gesture.

`I only told him – in the mildest possible way – that perhaps he should have told me he was going to visit his grandmother.’ She sighed. `As if he thought I would disapprove, silly boy. Of course I don't, I told him. It's wonderful that you get on with her as well as you do – after all, you're going to inherit everything one day – and suddenly he's shouting at me and saying he doesn't care about the money, that the reason he didn't want me to know was that he knew I'd spoil everything, that I was an interfering bible groupie – her words, pere, I'd stake my life on that.’

She brushed her eyes with the back of her hand, taking care not to smudge her impeccable make-up. `What have I done, pere?’ she pleaded. `I've done everything for that boy, given him everything. And to see him turn away from me, to throw it all in my face because of that woman…’

Her voice was hard beneath the tears: `Sharper than a serpent's tooth,' she moaned. `You can't imagine what it's like for a mother, pere.’

`Oh, you're not the only person to have suffered from Madame Rocher's well-intentioned meddling,' I told her. `Look around you at the changes she's made in just a few weeks.’

Caroline sniffed. `Well-intentioned! You're too kind, pere,' she sneered. `She's malicious, that's what she is. She nearly killed my mother, turned my son against me…’

I nodded encouragingly.

`Not to mention what she's done to the Muscats' marriage,' continued Caroline. `It amazes me that you've had so much patience, pere. It really does.’

Her eyes glittered with spite. `I'm surprised you haven't used your influence, pere,' she said.

I shrugged. `Oh, I'm just a country priest,' I said. 'I don't have any influence as such. I can disapprove, but-.'

`You can do a sight more than disapprove,' snapped Caroline tautly. `We should have listened to you in the first place, pere. We should never have tolerated her here.’

I shrugged. `Anyone can say that with hindsight,' I reminded her. `Even you patronized her shop, if I remember.’

She flushed. `Well, we could help you now,' she said. 'Paul Muscat, Georges, the Arnaulds, the Drous, the Prudhommes… We could pull together. Spread the word. We could turn the tide against her, even now.’

`For what reason? The woman hasn't broken the law. They'd call it malicious gossip, and you'd be no better off than before.’

Caroline gave a narrow smile. `We could wreck her precious festival, that's for sure,' she said.

`Oh?’

`Of course.’

Intensity of feeling makes her ugly. 'Georges sees a lot of people. He's a wealthy man. Muscat, too, has influence. He sees people. He's persuasive; the Residents' Committee…’

Of course he is. I remember his father, the summer of the river-gypsies.

`If she makes a loss on the festival – and I hear she's put quite a sum into preparing it already – then she might be pressured-' `She might,' I replied mildly. `Of course I couldn't be seen to have any, part of it. It might look – uncharitable.’

I could tell from her expression that she understood perfectly.

`Of course, mon pere.’

Her voice is eager and spiteful. For a second I feel utter contempt for her, panting and fawning like a bitch in heat, but it is with such contemptible tools, pere, that our work is often done.

After all, pere, you should know.