I arrived late the next morning for my kitchen duties. Madame winked and grinned and made some obscene gestures with her hands. What a truly wonderful woman! Of course, Oliver was full of questions about where I’d been. I made up something, but he knew that I hadn’t been with Madame, and I could feel his disappointment in me. Yet his disapproval of my homosexuality, which had previously so bothered me, now mattered not a jot. My feelings for Oliver had changed overnight. My sexual interest in him would never be reciprocated; what would be the point, after all? He figured out where I’d been and moved his bunk to the other side of the dorm. Still, nothing was said. Laura was more accepting now that I had taken my eye off Oliver. In fact, she went out of her way to help me with my assignations, arranging rides to the city for me and introducing me to other men she suspected of being gay. My summer took off in a completely hedonistic way, which now seems horribly inappropriate in light of the tragedy that was to come.
By mid-August, Laura was still complaining of exhaustion, much to the annoyance of the other workers. Everybody had complained in the beginning, but by now they were all used to it. Laura must have been quite isolated, in retrospect, her brother and her boyfriend working in the house while she labored in the fields. There were others in our group, of course, but she was closer to us than to anybody else. I was now far too busy with my new life to notice much about my little sister, though it was clear that her relationship with Oliver was fizzling out. He was spending less and less time with her and more time with the old man and the boy. Then, one day, she was carried into the kitchen in a state of collapse and the doctor was called for. Madame, as usual, took control. Oliver and I were worried, but Madame later explained to Oliver that Laura had a gastric complaint, that she would be right as rain after a week’s rest. She was installed in a turret room of the château, up two floors via a rickety wooden staircase. I looked in on her a few times a day. She was uncommunicative and tearful. I guessed that her relationship with Oliver wasn’t going well, but honestly I couldn’t blame him if he’d begun to lose interest. Her constant complaining had begun to grate on everyone’s nerves. I tried to gently broach the subject, but she didn’t want to know, saying that I “just wouldn’t understand.” She was right. I still don’t.
I tried to talk to Oliver. He maintained that Laura was simply jealous of our working conditions compared to hers. He admitted that he had tried to finish their relationship but said that Laura found it hard to accept that it was over. He claimed his work for Monsieur simply took up too much time and that Laura resented it.
It seemed clear to me that while Oliver might have loved Laura once, his love for his new “family” overshadowed that completely. Oliver chose to spend time with them rather than with her. I raised this carefully with Laura and suggested that she just give Oliver some time. It wasn’t as if he was going to stay with them forever. We would all be returning to Ireland soon enough, and although it was a strange infatuation, could she not see that it was just temporary?
Laura declared it was over, that she had no choice but to accept Oliver’s rejection of her, but refused to discuss it further. I thought there was more to it than that, but I didn’t push the issue. And then circumstances overwhelmed us to such a degree that Laura’s erratic moods were pushed to the back of my mind.
Three weeks later, the day after the harvest had started in earnest, we were all fast asleep in our dorms. Everybody was particularly exhausted, as all hands were on deck that day. My kitchen duties and Oliver’s admin ones were suspended, as there was a short enough window in which to pick the first harvest of grapes at their best. In a shattered state, I collapsed onto my bunk that night but woke some hours later in a state of disorientation. There were raised voices coming from outside. Oliver and Laura were shouting at each other; though, to be truthful, Laura was the one doing the shouting. Others stirred, and some went out to see what was going on. I had really had enough of Laura’s mood swings. She was just humiliating herself, and Oliver, and me. When I got outside, he was physically trying to remove her arms from around his neck. “You do love me! You have to!” she was sobbing, refusing to let go.
“Laura!” I called out to her sharply. She let him go then and turned to glare at me.
“Go to bed, Laura,” I whispered fiercely, “you’re making a show of yourself.”
Oliver turned, as if to walk away from me, but I stopped him. “Oliver, we need to have a conversation.” He looked uncertain but followed me back into the bunkhouse, and gradually everybody settled down again. In whispers, I began to apologize for Laura’s behavior.
“She’s not normally like this. I don’t really know what’s got into her… Maybe it’s the new environment. Maybe the work is just too hard for her.” I asked him to try to be a bit more patient with her. I understood he no longer wanted a relationship with her but asked him just to pay her a bit of attention so that she wouldn’t feel ignored. He refused to meet my eyes and kept fiddling with his watch strap. I was mortified at finding myself in this position, so soon after declaring my own feelings for him.
It was a few moments before I noticed a strange something in the air. I couldn’t place it, but instinct pushed me out of bed again and I rose carefully, unwilling to disturb the others. Oliver followed. We went out into the open air. The night was warm, but there was a distinct smell out here, and in my confusion I thought at first that someone must still be up smoking the herbal stuff. Oliver pointed toward the house. Unusually, there was little moonlight, so it was only possible to make out the bare outline of the château against the night sky, and then I heard a kind of crackling sound and suddenly I was running up the steps and I knew the smell was fire and the air was thick with it, and when I neared the top of the steps I could feel the scorching heat on my face and see that the ground floor of one wing was engulfed in flames. Oliver went to wake everyone.
If I had been more alert, if I had moved faster, if I hadn’t been so tired that day, if I had known, if I had thought about it, if I had… Jesus, I could fill the void with ifs. I started to shout, but my voice drifted meekly into the night, and I remembered that the acoustics of the place were such that I had to be actually on the terrace in front of the building to be heard.
One of my duties had been to summon the workers to lunch by ringing the bell in the tower of the disused chapel in one corner of the courtyard, and through the smoke I could see that side was unaffected by flames, so, roaring for help, I shouldered my way through the heavy wooden door and began heaving on the ancient rope until the bell was clanging frantically without rhythm in the chapel tower. The noise of the fire was loud now, cracking, spitting, groaning. I worried that there might be bedrooms directly above the salon, which was by now being consumed by a fierce and angry blaze. People began to appear out of the smoke, and all I could glimpse was a scene of chaos, confusion, and horror. I found Laura quickly, crying and clinging to an ashen-faced Oliver. I got a few of the lads to drag up the irrigation hoses from the field, but it took ages, and when they had unfurled them, it became clear they were fixed in position and didn’t stretch within ten yards of the fire. Several of the workers to my left were shouting and gesturing, trying to prize open the ancient stone lid of the disused well at the bottom of the terrace steps. Others were dragging a long-abandoned garden hose from the cave-like cellars underneath. Still others stood around, staring in shock. Then a creature appeared out of the flames, almost unrecognizable as human, but above the noise of the fire and the roars of instructions, I could hear a high-pitched woman’s voice screaming, not in the cut-glass, clean sound one hears from the archetypal heroine on TV, but an ugly, ugly shriek of yearning. I had never heard a sound like that before, and the thought of ever hearing it again fills me with dread. It was the sound of Madame’s loss, grief, and despair. Her entire body and whatever slight garment she was wearing were blackened, most of her long hair had burned away, and her head was smoldering. I grabbed her and held on tight as she tried to escape me and run into the gaping maw of the inferno, hoarsely screaming all the time, “Papa! Jean-Luc!” until she could scream no longer.