Armande laughs. `You worry too much for a boy of your age,' she tells him. `You should be raising hell, making your mother anxious. Not teaching your grandmother how to suck eggs.’
She is still good-humoured, but looks a little tired now. We have been at table almost four hours. It is ten to midnight..
`I know,' he says with a smile. `But I'm in no hurry to i-inherit just yet.’
She pats his hand and pours him another glass. Her hand is not quite steady, and a little wine spills on the tablecloth. `Not to worry,' she says brightly. ‘Plenty more left.’
We round off the meal with my own chocolate ice cream, truffles and coffee in tiny demi-tasses, with a calvados chaser, drunk from the hot cup like an explosion of flowers Anouk demands her canard; a sugar-lump moistened with a few drops of the liqueur, then wants another for Pantoufle. Cups are drained, plates cleared. The braziers are burning lower. I watch Armande, still talking and laughing, but less animated than before, her eyes half-closed, holding Luc's hand under the table.
`What time is it?’ she asks, some time later.
`Almost one,' says Guillaume.
She sighs. `Time for me to go to bed,' she declares. `Not as young as I was, you know.’
She fumbles to her feet, picking up an armful of presents from under her chair as she does so. I can see Guillaume watching her attentively. He knows. She throws him a smile of peculiar, quizzical sweetness: `Don't think I'm going to make a speech,' she says with comical brusqueness. `Can't bear speeches. Just wanted to thank you all – all of you – and to say what a good time I had. Can't remember a better. Don't think there's ever been a better. People always think the fun has to stop when you get old. Well it doesn't.’
Cheers from Roux, Georges and Zezette. Armande nods wisely. `Don't call on me too early tomorrow, though,' she advises with a little grimace. `I don't think I've drunk so much since I was twenty, and I need my sleep.’
She gives me a quick glance, almost of warning. `Need my sleep,' she repeats vaguely, beginning to make her way from the table.
Caro stood up to steady her, but she waved her away with a peremptory gesture. `Don't fuss, girl,' she said. `That was always your way. Always fussing.’
She gave me one of her bright looks. 'Vianne can help me,' she declared. `The rest can wait till the morning.’
I took her to her room while the guests left slowly, still laughing and talking. Caro was holding on to Georges's arm; Luc supported her from the other side. Her hair had come entirely undone now, making her look young and softer-featured. As I opened the door of Armande's room I heard her say: `… virtually promised she'd go to Les Mimosas – what a weight off my mind…’
Armande heard it too and gave a sleepy chuckle. `Can't be easy, having a delinquent mother,' she said. `Put me to bed, Vianne. Before I drop.’
I helped her undress. There was a linen nightdress laid out in readiness by the pillow, I folded her clothes while she pulled it over her head.
`Presents,' said Armande. `Put them there, where I can see them.’
A vague gesture in the direction of the dresser. `Hmm. That's good.’
I carried out her instructions in a kind of daze. Perhaps I, too, had drunk more than I intended, for I felt quite calm. I knew from the number of insulin ampoules in the fridge that she had stopped taking it a couple of days ago… I wanted to ask her if she was sure, if she really knew what she was doing. Instead I draped Luc's present – a silk slip of lavish, brazen, indisputable redness – on the chair-back for her to see. She chuckled again, stretched out her hand to touch the fabric.
`You can go now, Vianne.’ Her voice was gentle but firm. `It was lovely.’
I hesitated. For a second I caught a glimpse of us both in the dressing-table mirror. With her newly cut hair she looked like the old man of my vision, but her hands were a splash of crimson and she was smiling. She had closed her eyes.
`Leave the light on, Vianne.’
It was a final dismissal. `Goodnight.’
I kissed her gently on the cheek. She smelt of lavender and chocolate. I went into the kitchen to finish the washing-up.
Roux had stayed behind to help me. The other guests had gone. Anouk was asleep on the sofa, a thumb corked into her mouth. We washed up in silence and I put the new plates and glasses into Armande's cupboards. Once or twice Roux tried to begin a conversation, but I could not talk to him; only the small percussive sounds of china and glass punctuated our silence.
`Are you all right?’ he said at last. His hand was gentle on my shoulder. His hair was marigolds.
I said the first thing which came into my head. `I was thinking about my mother.’
Strangely enough I realized it was true. `She would have loved this. She loved fireworks.’
He looked at me. His strange skyline eyes had darkened almost to purple in the dim yellow kitchen lighting. I wished I could tell him about Armande.
`I didn't know you were called Michel,' I said at last.
He shrugged. `Names don't matter.’
`You're losing your accent,' I realized in surprise. `You used to have such a strong Marseille accent, but now…’
He gave his rare, sweet smile. `Accents don't matter; either.’
His hands cupped my face. Soft, for a labourer's, pale and soft as a woman's. I wondered if anything he had told me was true. For the time, it didn't seem to matter. I kissed him. He smelt of paint and soap and chocolate. I tasted chocolate in his mouth and thought of Armande. I'd always thought he cared for Josephine. Even as I kissed him I knew it, but this was the only magic we had between us to combat the night. The simplest magic, the wildfire we bring down the mountainside at Beltane, this year a little early. Small comforts in defiance of the dark. His hands sought my breasts under my jumper.
For a second I hesitated. There have already been too many men along the road, men like this one, good men about whom I cared but did not love. If I was right, and he and Josephine belonged together, what might this do to them? To me? His mouth was light, his touch simple. From the flowers outside I caught a wafting of lilac, brought in by the warm air from the braziers.
`Outside,' I told him softly. `In the garden.’
He glanced at Anouk, still sleeping on the sofa, and nodded. Together we padded outside under the starry purple sky.
The garden was still warm in the glow of the braziers. The seringas and lilacs of Narcisse's trellis blanketed us beneath their scent. Ve lay on the grass like children. We made no promises, spoke no words of love though he was gentle, almost passionless, moving instead with a slow sweetness along my body, lapping my skin with fluttering movements of the tongue. Above his head the sky was purple-black like his eyes, and I could see the broad band of the Milky Way like a road around the world. I knew that this could be the only time between us, and felt only a dim melancholy at the thought. Instead a growing sense of presence, of completion filled me, overriding my loneliness, even my sorrow for Armande. There would be time for grieving later. For the moment, simple wonder; at myself lying naked in the grass, at the silent man beside me, at the immensity above and the immensity within. We lay for a long time, Roux and I, until our sweat cooled, and little insects ran across our bodies, and we smelt lavender and thyme from the flowerbed at our feet as, holding hands, we watched the unbearable slow wheeling of the sky.
Under his breath I could hear Roux singing a little song:
V’la l'bon vent, V'la l'joli vent V'la l'bon vent, ma vie m'appelle…
The wind was inside me now, tugging at me with its relentless imperative: At the very centre, a small still space, miraculously untroubled, and the almost familiar sense of something new. This too is a kind of magic, one that my mother never understood, and yet I am more certain of this – this new, miraculous, living warmth inside me – than of anything I have done before. At last I understand why I drew the Lovers that night. Holding the knowledge close, I closed my eyes and tried to dream of her, as I did in those months before Anouk was born, of a little stranger with bright cheeks and snapping black eyes.