‘Last year,’ replied Rosa pertly. ‘When the generator broke down.’
Marise laughed. ‘That doesn’t count.’
That evening she was more relaxed than Jay had ever seen her. She and Rosa laid the table with brightly painted plates and crystal wineglasses. Rosa picked flowers from the garden for a centrepiece. They had foie gras on nut bread with Marise’s own wine, which tasted of honey and peaches and toasted almonds, then salad and warm goat’s cheese, then coffee, cakes and petits fours. Throughout the little party Jay tried hard to concentrate his thoughts. Rosa, under instructions not to mention their visit to Lansquenet, was cheery, insisting on her canard - a sugar lump dipped in wine – surreptitiously feeding Clopette scraps under the table, and then, when the goat was banished to the garden, through the half-open window. Marise was bright and talkative and lovely in the golden light. It should have been perfect.
He told himself he was waiting for the right time. Of course he knew there was no right time, simply a delaying tactic. He had to tell her before she found out for herself. Worse still, before Rosa let something slip.
But as the evening passed it became harder and harder to make the move. His conversation died. His head began to ache. Marise seemed not to notice. Instead she was full of details about the next phase of her drainage plan, the extension to the cellar, relief that there would still be a wine crop, though much reduced, optimism for next year. She was planning to buy out the land when the lease ran out, she said. There was money in the bank, plus fifty barrels of cuvée spéciale in her cellar, just waiting for the right market. Land was cheap in Lansquenet, especially poorly drained problem land like hers. After the bad summer prices might drop still more. And Pierre-Emile, who had inherited the estate, was no businessman. He would be happy to get what he could for the farm and the vineyard. The bank would make up the rest with a long-term loan.
The more she said, the worse Jay felt. Remembering what Joséphine had told him about land prices his heart sank. Tentatively he asked what might happen if, by chance, perhaps… Her face hardened a little. She shrugged.
‘I would have to leave,’ she said simply. ‘Leave everything, go back to Paris or to Marseilles. Somewhere big. Let Mireille-’ She bit off the rest of the sentence and made her expression resolutely cheerful. ‘But that won’t happen,’ she said firmly. ‘None of that will happen. I’ve always dreamed of a place like this,’ she went on, her face softening. ‘A farm, land of my own, trees, perhaps a little river. Somewhere private. Safe.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps when I have the land to myself and there is no lease to hang over my head, things will be different,’ she said unexpectedly. ‘Perhaps I could begin again with Lansquenet. Find Rosa some friends her own age. Give people another chance.’ She poured another glass of the sweet golden wine. ‘Give myself another chance.’
Jay swallowed with difficulty. ‘But what about Mireille? Wouldn’t she cause problems for you?’
Marise shook her head. Her eyes were half closed, catlike, sleepy. ‘Mireille won’t live for ever,’ she said. ‘After that – I can handle Mireille,’ she said at last. ‘Just as long as I have the farm.’
For a while the conversation turned to other things. They drank coffee and Armagnac, and Rosa fed petits fours to the goat through the gap in the shutters. Then Marise sent Rosa to bed with only a token complaint – it was almost midnight and she had been up for much longer than she was used to. Jay could hardly believe that the child had not given him away during the course of the meal. In a way he regretted it. As Rosa vanished upstairs – with a biscuit in each hand and a promise of pancakes for breakfast – he turned on the radio, poured another glass of Armagnac and passed it to Marise.
‘Mmm. Thanks.’
‘Marise.’
She glanced at him lazily.
‘Why does it have to be Lansquenet?’ he asked. ‘Couldn’t you have moved somewhere else after Tony died? Avoided all this… this business with Mireille?’
She reached for the last petit four. ‘It has to be here,’ she said at last. ‘It just has to be.’
‘But why? Why not Montauban or Nérac or one of the villages near by? What is there in Lansquenet which you can’t have anywhere else? Is it because Rosa grew up here? Is it… is it because of Tony?’
She laughed then, not unkindly, but on a note he couldn’t quite identify. ‘If you like.’
Jay’s heart tightened suddenly. ‘You don’t talk about him much.’
‘No. No, I don’t.’
She looked into her drink in silence.
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t interfere. Forget I said it.’
Marise gave him an odd look, then stared back into her drink. Her long fingers moved nervously. ‘It’s all right. You’ve helped me. You’ve been kind. But it’s complicated, you know? I wanted to tell you. I’ve wanted to for a long time.’
Jay tried to say that she was wrong, that he didn’t want to know, that there was something else he desperately needed to tell her. But nothing came out.
‘For a long time I had a problem with trust,’ said Marise slowly. ‘After Tony. After Patrice. I told myself I didn’t need anyone else. That we would be safer on our own, Rosa and I. That no-one would believe the truth if I told it anyway.’ She paused, tracing a complicated figure on the dark table top. ‘Truth is like that,’ she went on. ‘The more you want to tell someone, the harder it gets. The more impossible it seems.’
Jay nodded. He understood that perfectly.
‘But with you…’ She smiled. ‘Maybe it’s because you’re a foreigner. I feel I’ve known you for a long time. Trusted you. Why else should I have trusted you with Rosa?’
‘Marise.’ He swallowed again. ‘There’s something I really-’
‘Shh.’ She looked languid, flushed with the wine and the warmth of the room. ‘I need to tell you. I need to explain. I tried before, but-’ She shook her head. ‘I thought it was so complicated,’ she said softly. ‘It’s really very simple. Like all tragedies. Simple and stupid.’ She took a breath. ‘I was caught up in it all before I knew it. Then I realized it was too late. Pour me some more Armagnac, please.’
He did.
‘I liked Tony. I didn’t love him. But love doesn’t sustain anything for long anyway. Money does. Security, the farm, the land. That was what I needed, I told myself. Escape from Patrice. Escape from the city, and from loneliness. I fooled myself it was OK, that I didn’t need anything else.’
It had been all right for a time. But Mireille was becoming increasingly demanding, and Tony’s behaviour more and more erratic. Marise tried to talk to Mireille about it, but without success. As far as Mireille was concerned there was nothing wrong with Tony.
‘He’s a strong, healthy boy,’ she would repeat stubbornly. ‘Stop trying to wrap him in cotton. You’ll make him as neurotic as you are.’
From then on every peculiarity in Tony’s behaviour was attributed to Marise: the rages, the bouts of depression, the fixations.
‘Once it was mirrors,’ she said. ‘Every mirror in the house had to be covered up. He said it was because the reflection took all the light out of his head. He used to shave without a mirror. He was always cutting himself shaving. Once he shaved his eyebrows off, too. Said it was more hygienic’
When he learned Marise was pregnant Tony entered a different phase. He became extremely protective. He would follow her everywhere she went, including to the bathroom. He waited on her constantly. Mireille saw this as evidence of his devotion. Marise felt stifled. Then the letters started coming.
‘I knew it was Patrice straight away,’ admitted Marise. ‘It was his style. The usual abuse. But somehow here he didn’t frighten me. We had guard dogs, guns, space. I thought Patrice knew it, too. Somehow he’d found out about my pregnancy. The letters were all about it. Get rid of the baby and I’ll forgive you, that kind of thing. I ignored them.’