‘Je suis Luc,’ he says as I stand there mutely. ‘Luc Martin.’ He pushes his hair out of his eyes and steps forward to shake my hand the British way.
‘It was Luc who did the pool,’ you say jubilantly. ‘His English is really good.’ You glance furtively at him to see if he’s gratified, but he’s still studying me. I wonder what he’s been told about the neighbour who left her house abandoned for so long.
‘Luc. Of course. You’re grown up now. You were a little boy last time I saw you.’
He smiles, slightly abashed, and you look from me to him, trying to work out what I’ve said.
‘It was very good of you to do the pool, but how did you know we were coming?’
His smile slips. ‘Oh, it was my dad,’ he says, after a pause. I notice for the first time that his hair is damp, his shorts too. He must have been swimming before you got down here. I don’t know whether I mind about that or not.
‘Yeah, it was him,’ he says, more definitely. ‘He heard you were coming back. He thought we should get it cleared out and filled up.’ He ruffles his hair, and the gesture is so like Laurent at the same age that I inwardly sway, thrown out of time again.
‘I should give you something for doing it.’
He shakes his head, relaxed again now. ‘It’s fine, I like coming here. And Papa wouldn’t let you anyway. If I wasn’t here, he’d have me working in the fields and I’d much rather be doing this.’
‘Well, all right, if you’re sure. Thank you. How is Laurent? And your mother, of course.’
Annette Martin had never liked me. When we were young and at school together, she was jealous that Laurent preferred me, that I was his childhood sweetheart – she wanted him even then. Later I think it was because I went off to London and found myself an Englishman, as though I considered myself something special, too good for the men at home. We all tried to be friends for a time: when Élodie was small your father and I must have crossed the field that separated our properties half a dozen times, Élodie in a sling across Greg’s back, the sun canted low over the neat rows of vines.
One night, trying to make small-talk, I confided in her that I was exhausted from the nights of broken sleep that came with a small baby. She and Laurent didn’t have any children then – Luc came along later. She was unsympathetic. ‘Did you assume you would be different from every other woman with a newborn, then?’ she said, as she brushed past me on her way to the dining room where the men were sitting. She had spoken too quietly for them to catch it. She flirted shamelessly with Greg that night, though it was obvious he found it embarrassing.
I blink, back in the present, and see that Luc is regarding me with an appraising eye. Normally you’d be embarrassed by how distracted I seem but you’re too busy gazing at him to notice. I can’t blame you: he’s beautiful in that way boys sometimes are, just for a year or two before they coarsen into manhood.
I think he’ll probably be your first proper crush and don’t know how that makes me feel. Mainly nostalgic, I think – for your babyhood; for the me I was when I felt like that about Laurent; for the time before Greg and I lost our way. Before any of it.
1969
Her eyes were a dark foggy blue when she was born. There was nothing unusual in that, quite the opposite, but I didn’t know any babies and so that colour was new to me. It made me think of the word ‘unfathomable’, not only in the way of oceans deep beyond calculation, but the other, more abstract meaning, too. Unknowable. An enigma.
While she spun and swooped inside me, I knew she was tethered; an extension of myself. Now she’s been out in the world for a few months, I understand that she’s an entirely separate person, even if she does rely on me for her survival. Lately, I have had the strangest sense that she resents me for this dependence, though she can’t yet lift the weight of her own head.
In many ways, motherhood remains as mysterious and elusive a state as it was before I entered it. I had assumed I would be her everything: the hazy figure her eyes searched for, the voice that instantly soothed her. I had thought instinct would take over, that it would be all joy and exhaustion and fierce protectiveness for someone so helpless. And there is all that. I just hadn’t anticipated the force of her, the self-contained strength of her presence. Sometimes I feel I have to court her, win her approval.
A couple of weeks ago, her left iris began to change. A speck of amber, like a coin winking from a well, has spread until there’s no newborn blue remaining. The other is stubbornly unchanged, though I check it every day. Regardless of colour, there’s never any expression in them. They seem unable to latch on to me or anything else that moves. I worry about this so much that I take her back to the hospital to get her sight checked.
‘They’re absolutely fine,’ says the doctor I’ve waited two hours to see, the receptionists shooting me disapproving looks because I haven’t done things in the proper order. ‘Nothing to worry about. Although …’ He tails off, his head on one side.
‘What?’ I say too quickly, trying to decipher his expression.
Élodie is lying on her back, on a small foam mattress dotted with pictures of sailboats. The doctor doesn’t reply and we both watch her in silence, though I don’t know what we’re waiting for.
After an interminable minute, he picks up one of Élodie’s tiny feet. ‘Babies are always moving. Have you noticed? They’re always on the go. It’s part of the reason they need so much sleep, so many feeds.’ He lets the foot drop. ‘I’ve never seen a baby so still.’
‘Is that bad?’ I say, resisting the urge to pull at his sleeve when he pauses again.
‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ he says eventually, with a glance at his watch I don’t miss. ‘She’s probably just a bit behind. Did she come early?’ He moves away to his desk to check her notes.
‘No, she was two days late.’ I pick her up to put her back in her pram and she’s heavy, inert, boneless, not like something so newly brought to life. ‘Could there be something wrong with her development, do you think? Is that what you mean?’
Another look at the watch. He closes her folder. ‘Madame Winters, it’s natural for new mothers to worry. Your baby is perfectly healthy. Her sight is excellent. Go home and ask your husband to run you a nice hot bath. Have a glass of wine.’ He smiles and we’re dismissed.
‘Do you think I’m an hysteric?’ I ask Camille that night, on the phone. Greg is not there to run me a bath. I’ve taken to ringing my sister every few days.
‘Of course not,’ she says, as wearily as I’d hoped she would. Unlike the deep discussions Greg and I have about parenthood late into the night, I find her dismissiveness comforting. ‘You need to do less thinking and sleep more. You need to get out, too. Bring her to Paris for a few days.’
But I don’t go. I tell myself that I haven’t the energy but it’s not that. I don’t want to witness something of my own unease creep into my sister’s face. In a strange way, I’d rather think it was just me.
1993