Following the wall of the building, she found the refectory door unlocked and went in.
“It’s closed. Are you looking for something?”
The place was unrecognizable without its tables and chairs. Reels of electric cable lay around on the floor.
“Can I help you?” the electrician asked, screwing a switch into place.
“Yes . . . no. That is, I was a student here long ago . . . at the boarding school. I just wanted to look.”
“Ah, yes, but it’s closed. The holidays, see?”
“Of course. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to bother you. Do you happen to know if it’s possible to get through that little door at the back there?”
“The door to the cellar? I don’t know. But there’s a bunch of keys hanging from the nail there. If you want to try it. . . . Here, you can borrow my flashlight. It’s in the toolbox there.”
The third key she tried opened the lock. Helen turned the beam of the flashlight on the darkness and went down the stairs. Once at the bottom, she went along the tunnel. Its ceiling was covered with dusty cobwebs. The door of the detention cell, torn down and smashed to pieces, barred her way. She stepped over it. A smell of mold met her nostrils. The bunk was broken too, lying flat on the floor. A rusty bucket with holes in it lay in a corner.
There was no picture left, no Sky, nothing.
The birds had flown away. All of them.
The hardest moment, and Helen hadn’t expected it, was when Octavo had to turn the key and lock up Paula’s little house behind him. Neither of them could hold back their tears on the steps outside.
But they talked cheerfully on the drive back, telling each other about their lives and recalling the past. “Do you remember about going to Random?” asked Helen. “And a fox — a foxess?” Octavo, who had forgotten, roared with laughter. He was an amusing man, very vivacious.
He dropped Helen at her home in the middle of the night. They parted, promising to see each other again from time to time and talk about Paula. Helen slipped quietly into her sleeping house, but as she opened her bedroom door, another opened at the end of the corridor, and her daughter came out.
“Can’t you sleep, darling?”
The little girl shook her head. She was twisting the front of her nightdress and wasn’t far from tears. “I had a bad dream, Mama, and then you weren’t there.”
Helen took her in her arms, put her back to bed, and sat beside her to reassure her. She stroked her daughter’s hair and talked to her quietly.
And it seemed to her that the love she had received from Paula flowed into her caressing hands and her voice, and she in turn was passing it on, a love as powerful as the river.
“I’m back now, ” she said. “Go to sleep, my beauty, go to sleep. Everything’s all right.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank several people who have accompanied me through the writing of this noveclass="underline" Thierry Laroche of Gallimard Jeunesse, for his helpful and always friendly comments; Jean-Philippe Arrou-Vignod of Gallimard Jeunesse, who reassured me about the darker side of the story; Dr. Patrick Carrère for his advice on medical subjects; Christopher Murray, musician, for his equally valuable help with musical matters; Rachel and my children, Emma and Colin, who all three give me the inestimable gift, constantly renewed, of being there for me.
And finally I would like to express my great gratitude to the memory of Kathleen Ferrier, the British contralto, whose voice and whose story both moved me deeply and have gone into this story. But for her, this novel would not have been written.
JEAN-CLAUDE MOURLEVAT was born in Ambert, France, in 1952 and started his literary career in the theater. Today he is considered one of the major children’s fiction authors in France, where he has been awarded many literary prizes and his stories have become classics. Winter’s End is his first novel for young adults.