Unravelling Oliver(15)

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 towards the house. Unusually, there was little moonlight, so it was only possible to make out the bare outline of the chateau 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 library, 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 prise 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 smouldering. 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.

The entire east wing of the house was engulfed in flames which licked and grabbed at falling timbers, tiles and masonry. Later I was to find out that the boy Jean-Luc often used to sleep in a cot bed in his grandad’s room on the first floor of that wing. I imagine it was an hour before the fire tenders came from the town, but time means little in the face of the elements; it’s an artificial construct that means nothing to the four winds. They pay no heed to ticking clocks. The firemen forced us back and finally took control. They were organized, and I admit that my reaction to their arrival was one of relief, although hope had been long vanquished by the flames.

There was nothing left of the east wing at the end of that night, bar the exterior walls. Through the flame-filled windows, I could only see the night sky and some collapsed roof beams. There was no hope for either of them. Poor Madame – her past and her future utterly wiped out in the unkindest way possible.

It was only after I had deposited Madame into the ambulance, completely broken and still convulsed by silent sobs, that I noticed Oliver was standing behind me, still, silent, his face a mask, his hands shaking as if independent of his wrists. He was in a state of shock.





7. Véronique


Oliver Ryan’s name has been in the headlines in the papers here over the last month or two. I have refused to take part in any more media interviews. I cannot help but feel responsible for his attack on his wife. It is tragic, but every time his name is spoken, I automatically think first of the harvest of 1973, and I feel the pain as sharply as I felt it almost forty years ago.

One does not forget the worst time of one’s life, no matter how hard one tries. I have spent so many years wishing to change things. What if one had done this, what if one had done that … But the ache is still there. Time does not heal. It is a lie. One just gets used to the wound. There is nothing more.

But I must make sense of all this, before it slips through my fingers. One must go back to my father’s time to explain everything. One would want everything to be clear.

Papa was made old by la guerre, much older than his years. I was a small child at the time of the war, and did not understand anything except that there was a constant stream of visitors to our estate for a certain period. I know now that they were Jewish families protected by my father from the Préfet of Bordeaux in the Vichy regime. It has since been revealed that this civil servant ordered the deportation of 1,690 Jews, including 223 children, from the Bordeaux region to the transit camp at Drancy, near Paris, and then on to death camps in the east.