Marcus has found refuge at the café Chez Antoine in Nice’s vieille ville. This is his low water mark. Running away from his life in London has buttered no parsnips but it has presented him with the unavoidable reality that if he does not at least try to get above the high water mark he will surely drown. It is now up to him to act…
Saturday, 20th August
Woken by the clanging of the bell calling the faithful to Mass at the church across the small piazza, Marcus unzipped the sleeping bag and went to the window. Above and behind the peaks and troughs of red tiled roofs rose the hill topped by the cemetery where he had met Marthe and the children. Because of her he had slept on a bed rather than the beach and been well fed in return for a few hours of work. He had delayed his return until Monday as Clareto had told him Antoine would remain in hospital over the weekend and that if he stayed, Mathilde would let him have the room until Monday.
The temptation to crawl back into the sleeping bag was countered by a sense of obligation to Mathilde. That was at least one promise he ought to honour. He went down in search of somewhere to wash and shave and found Mathilde had already opened the café. Immediately she asked him to go to the boulangerie to collect her order. The girl with sad eyes and rebellious hair escaping her headscarf loaded him up with an armful of long loaves and a basket of pastries, all warm and fragrant, giving him a sideways look that might have been a smile or a smirk. Marthe had given him a similar look. What was wrong with him? Did he smell?
As soon as he had returned with the basket of pastries, Mathilde sent him to the market. She clearly didn’t trust his linguistic ability as she gave him neatly written notes to give to various stall-holders. He returned with three heavy bags and she rewarded him with coffee and warm flaky croissants, bringing him a grey shirt and blue serge dungarees neatly folded. They were her son’s she said, who was in the navy. They were not a perfect fit but, after a wash and shave, he felt presentable.
The café was quiet. Mathilde was gossiping with two women on a bench under the plane tree in the piazza. Marcus had finished washing up, cleaned the kitchen and was sweeping the café as two figures appeared in the open doorway. He knew it was the girls from their shape against the light and the halo effect of sun on Lizzy’s curly blonde hair.
“Bonjour Marcus”
“Hi Marthe… Lizzy… can I get you something?” he mumbled, moving the broom from one hand to the other, feeling as if Mathilde’s hand-me-downs were horribly unfashionable.
“Deux cafés au lait s’il vous plait garçon,” Marthe said, fixing him with a look he could not fathom as the other girl turned away.
He went behind the counter and examined the gleaming chrome Gaggia. He had watched Clareto the night before and Mathilde that morning, but still had no idea how to use it to make coffee. A burst of rapid French announced Mathilde’s arrival. She hustled Marcus out from behind the counter, saying something to the girls as she tended the Gaggia. Both girls laughed. It felt like grown-ups talking over the head of a child.
“She said you should sit with us outside and she will make the coffee,” Lizzy interpreted.
Marthe laughed, adding: “she says you must entertain us.”
“You want me to sing and tap-dance?” Marcus blurted, blushing as he realized that what he had intended to be a joke probably sounded aggressive.
“Can you?” Lizzy fixed him with a look that skittered between scorn, mirth and incomprehension.
“No… I can’t do very much, really...” He followed the girls out into the sharp Mediterranean sunlight that gave peeling paintwork and cracked stucco the vibrancy of a full life lived honestly.
“You shouldn’t undersell yourself.” Lizzy looked away, towards the women under the plane tree. the angle of her head and the reflection on her glasses meaning he couldn’t see her eyes.
“I was just being honest.” Why did he feel so uncomfortable? He pulled a third folding chair to the table. “If Mathilde hadn’t let me stay I’d be on my way back now.”
“Well Marcus, you’re here.” Lizzy sighed, looking him straight in the eyes, “I think you are trying to avoid talking to us – why?”
He felt in his pockets for cigarettes, remembered he had smoked his last by the English church and forgotten to buy more. What to say? Try being honest? Mathilde brought the coffees on a zinc tray and went back to join her friends under the plane tree.
“You’re right, in a way I mean, it’s just I don’t have anything interesting to say…”
“Dat is niet waar, toch?” Marthe asked quietly, shaking her head as if sad.
He understood the sense if not the actual meaning of her words. She was demanding honesty of him. “I’m going back to London on Monday. Thanks to you I have a roof over my head; I like working here; I like talking to you both, but there’s a lot of noise in my head and I don’t think you really want to hear…”
“You don’t know that.” Lizzy seemed to flinch at the sharpness of her tone and continued more gently: “We’re not ogres, Marcus. Maybe you could try to trust us?”
“I’d like that…”
Her response had stung him because he recognised a truth in it. Was it about trust? It was true he did not give trust easily. She was pointing at something he knew to be true – his wariness, his doubting of friendly overtures bound up in a painful yearning to accept, to be accepted.
He had to shift the spotlight or he’d start whining. “What brought you to Nice?”
“We’re au pairs,” Lizzy replied. “We met at French classes, and the kids we look after go to the same school…”
Just then a three-wheeler delivery truck puttered into the square. A man, who looked to Marcus as though he had walked off the screen in Pépé le Moko, shouted something to Mathilde who seemed to swear back at him as she stood up. The women she had been with cawed like crows. The signage on the van read ‘Maurice Palomer, Vins, Champagnes, Spiriteux’. Marcus guessed that at least some crates and boxes in the back of the little truck were for Mathilde.
He stood up. “Sorry, I have to help Mathilde.”
As he carried crates and boxes in and brought out crates of empties, he stole glances at the girls. They were both fair haired although Marthe’s was flaxen and straight while Lizzy’s was curly with reddish fire in the gold. They were holding hands across the table, talking quietly, intimately. How he envied the girls their closeness. As he passed them, one or other would glance and smile. Mathilde and the driver were talking and laughing. The man’s comfortable intimacy as he talked with Mathilde was counterpointed by an abrupt efficiency as he indicated to Marcus what to take, ticking items off his list.
As Marcus was returning with the last crate of empties an old couple came up the steps and stopped. They were looking towards the café: tourists, probably. “Bonjour, puis-je vous aider?”
“Ah, oh, mercy. Nous… umm…” The woman’s spectacles suggested American.
“Welcome to Chez Antoine. Would you like to sit inside or outside?”
“Oh, thank you. Outside please.”
Marcus enjoyed making a fuss of seating these Americans, knowing the girls were watching. He returned with glasses, a carafe of water and menus. “It is a little early for lunch but Madame’s bourrido is on the stove and I can recommend it. Can I get you something to drink – there’s a local white wine goes well with fish?”
The woman took the menus and handed one to the man. She looked at Marcus and asked “where you from son? We’re Gallaghers from Boston.”
“London…”
“Is that Arkansas or Texas?” the man asked.
“England… I’ll give you a few minutes to look at the menu. Would you like to try the wine?”
Jean Gabin had puttered away in his truck, Mathilde was back laughing with the women under the plane tree, the Gallaghers were discussing the menu with the girls and Clareto had arrived. “Come. I show you the Gaggia. Is not difficult.”
Fortunately, Clareto instructed him slowly and clearly and, like a child, he followed her through his introduction to the mysteries of the Gaggia. It wasn’t as difficult as he had feared. The Gallaghers liked the white wine and accepted his recommendation of Mathilde’s bourrido. He tested his Gaggia skills by making the girls another coffee and gained their approval.
As one o’clock arrived so did customers and the café filled. The girls, who had been chatting with the Gallaghers, recommending places to go, things to do, told him, and the Gallaghers, that they were going to the beach.
Lizzy was smiling enigmatically. “After Mass on Sunday there’s a lunch,” she said all in a rush, the expression in her eyes veiled by reflections in her glasses. “Do come. You’d like my uncle.”
Marthe surprised him by hugging him quickly. “She mean the English church,” she said quickly, shooting a glance at Lizzy.
“Are you called Montaillard?” Marcus asked, remembering the name on the sign board and trying to understand why she was inviting him.
Lizzy half shook her head. “Father Gerard is my mother’s brother.” She seemed about to turn away and then faced him. “Please come to the lunch” she said, leaning into her words. “Mass is at eleven… but you don’t have to come to that, I’ll wait for you after.”
Marcus watched the girls walk away, linking arms at the head of the steps and disappearing into the old town. What was that about? he asked himself. Was this Fate telling him he ought to have gone into the church and asked for charity?
Mathilde’s laugh made him turn. “She like you,” she said, waving her hands around her head to pantomime curly hair. “You go. Is not many Sunday here.”
So the woman understood more English than he had thought. Had she been eavesdropping? “I’ll finish in the store-room.”
“No. I have a system. You help Clareto.”
Just as well, he thought. If she had a system it had not been obvious from the disorganized state of the stock! Did Lizzy like him? How could Mathilde know? Maybe women had special antennae for that sort of thing. More likely it was just being charitable. If her uncle was the vicar (would an English church in France have a vicar?) that was most likely. But why had she called him ‘Father’ Gerard? And she had called the Sunday service ‘Mass’. Was it High Church? Incense and Oxford Movement?
The Gallaghers left him a decent tip. He was enjoying the hustle and bustle of the café. Just a few tourist types, but otherwise mostly sweaty locals with raucous voices, impenetrable accents and acrid cigarettes talking about football, the price of fish or the wrongdoings of people who lived in big villas on the hill, none of which he could understand.
By three only a few remained while he cleared, and swept, washed dishes and scrubbed pans. Mathilde went to see Antoine at the hospital and Clareto went home to her cats. It would all get busy again, but for two hours or so he could enjoy a strange sort of peace. Maybe he would go to the church tomorrow. Why not? She had asked him and Mathilde had encouraged him. The rest of his life would start again on Monday but for the rest of this weekend he would try to enjoy the moment.
Sunday, 21st August
Woken by the church’s bell, Marcus collected Mathilde’s order from the boulangerie, forcing himself to smile at the sad-eyed girl. Rewarded with a warm shy glance and hearing another customer call her Madaleno, he decided next time he would too. Mathilde was opening the café when he returned and he made their coffee under her watchful scrutiny. Apparently he had remembered his instructions well and she favoured him with a smile.
The cafe busied as the time of Mass approached. While the women went into the church with heads covered, many in enveloping black, their men lingered around the café talking to the few who sat at the tables with a coffee or a pastis or an anisette and smoking pungent unfiltered cigarettes. Marcus enjoyed the aroma but was resolved to fight his craving. He had managed a whole day without a cigarette. He had little money and was too proud to cadge. Could he last another day? Would he go to the English Church? Did the girl really want to see him again?
Mathilde seemed to sense his indecision. “Va à l’église, la fille t’attend!”
The men who lingered around the café all looked at him in ways that suggested he would be thought less of a man not to go. The decision made for him, he ran to wash and shave and put on his own clean clothes. Nevertheless, he hung back outside the church. Those going in seemed dressed in their Sunday finery. But Lizzy had invited him. He couldn’t walk away. He must go in! He followed several paces behind a couple with two children, passing from Mediterranean brightness into the familiar Gothic gloom of an English parish church.
A hatchet faced lady with agate eyes behind a veil stood at a table loaded with prayer and hymn books. She held out the books in gloved hands. “Welcome to Holy Trinity,” she said, fixing him with a look as sharp as needles.
“Marcus! You came…”
Marcus turned towards the voice. Lizzy’s wild curls were mostly constrained by a black beret; the prayer and hymn books clutched to the jacket of her suit. It was just like the one Sophie had worn on their first date. Jaeger he guessed. Banish those thoughts! He forced himself to smile as he had in the boulangerie. He was again rewarded.
“I did,” he replied, adding unnecessarily, “Mathilde gave me time off,”.
“This young man is a friend of yours, Elisabet?” The hatchet face was softened by a slight upward curving of thin lips. “You go and sit with him; he looks interesting.”
Marcus wondered many things. Why did she say he was interesting, was that a deprecation of his jeans and tieless shirt? Who was this frightening woman? Her English was as sharp as her physiognomy yet her suit, some sort of fine stuff that its sheen suggested could be silk, was cut like Dietrich might have worn in her films back in the Thirties. And the name she had used for Lizzy sounded exotic – Hungarian? Polish? Then the girl slipped her arm through his he and he had to suppress a flinch. Had she felt it? What would she think of him? Why was she being so familiar?
“It’s alright Marcus,” Lizzy said with a reassuring squeeze of his arm. “Madame Orsova is the daughter of a Duke and second cousin to a German Prince. Doesn’t have two pennies to rub together but she’s a lot of fun when you get her talking.”
Lizzy led him to the second pew from the pulpit, which was empty. Marcus felt a scruffy urchin next to Lizzy’s Jaeger suit. He sat quietly watching an acolyte in white surplice lighting the tall candles on the altar while another, much older, seemed to be checking that everything was as it should be. They both withdrew.
A family, American to guess from their accent, shuffled past them into the pew, parents hissing instructions at the three children. He could almost hear his own parents admonishing him for some social or sartorial gaffe. He checked the hymn numbers and looked around at the congregation. The church was at least two-thirds full. Many were of Madame Orsova’s generation, the women in suits with hats, gloves and veils, the men in lightweight suits, shirts and ties. Perhaps a third were around their forties, most with children but there seemed few around his and Lizzy’s age and only he appeared disreputably dressed. He picked up the prayer book, leafing through it, wondering which of the many forms of service would apply that day.
“I know it can be confusing...” Lizzy said, offering him her open Prayer Book. “Just follow what it says on the page.”
Her book was bound in white leather and obviously well used. He held out the book he had been given. “Can you find the place for me?”
A bell rang. The congregation stirred in its seats and began to get to its feet. The organ began to play. The clergy, servers and choir processed behind a silver cross singing what Marcus assumed must be the Introit, but couldn’t be sure as he had been at a school with a minimalist Methodist liturgy. The cross was carried by a thin youngish man followed by an older man swinging a silver censer, wreaths of incense drifting over the congregation. The man fascinated Marcus: his bald head and hunched shoulders made Marcus think of a tortoise. Behind him the priest, Father Gerard, Lizzy’s uncle, wonderfully attired in richly embroidered vestments moved with impressive solemnity followed by a less richly attired priest carrying a huge bible in what seemed to be an ornate golden binding – it must weigh a ton. The other servers and choir, all in crisp white surplices followed singing in what Marcus was certain was Latin.
The medieval solemnity of it enwrapped Marcus. Time and place no longer mattered, his cares and worries faded. Although he didn’t know exactly what was going on, Lizzy prompted him when he lost his place, enjoying the theatre of which he felt he had become a part.
“Come on!” Lizzy whispered, elbowing him halfway through the second verse of the first hymn. “Just open your mouth and let the words out”
“See, not so bad is it?” she said as they sat down.
Indeed it wasn’t. She was sitting so close that their shoulders and hips almost touched. He couldn’t move as he was between her and the father of the American family. She smelled faintly of lavender. He liked the way her knees just peeped out from under the hem of her skirt. They were nice knees. She had nice wrists too, and long fingered hands. She poked him again to indicate they had come to a point in the service where he was expected to do something. This was very uncomfortable! Why was she teasing him?
He focused his attention on the prayer book. Compared with his experience of Methodist services, this was intricately ritualistic. He liked it. It drew him in. Gave him a focus. He relaxed into the next hymn, the tune and words were familiar. His mind wandered. Would he contact his parents when he returned to England? They had moved into their new house. Would there be a place in it for him if he asked? He could imagine his mother’s cold questioning. She had expelled him because he’d screwed up at school.
That was almost exactly a year ago and since then he’d screwed up the job at the bank; he’d hurt Sophie because of Pip, who had then dumped him. He couldn’t hold down a job and then ran off to France with no plan! Oh! it was all such a mess. He couldn’t face his mother – anyway, she would be off to join Dad in less than a month and if she hadn’t let him stay in her house on his own before, she surely wouldn’t this time.
The preparations for the Eucharist distracted him. It was even more elaborate than at the Catholic Church in Cambridge where it felt like the business of the day rather than a theatrical performance with audience participation. When it reached the point where sidesmen stood beside the pew and the occupants filed out, Marcus felt strongly that he couldn’t take Communion (even though he knew that technically, as a Confirmed Methodist, he was allowed) but when the sidesman stepped back beside their pew he stood up, intending to let Lizzy, and the American family beyond him, pass by. Yet it was easier to surrender. follow those who had issued from the pew in front. To take his place, kneel, accept the host and then the wine. And then he crossed himself. As he walked back to the pew he wondered why. Others along the line had, and it had felt right. Was it, perhaps, a response to the peace he had felt? Gratitude for Marthe’s arranging a place for him with Mathilde? The comfort of being there with Lizzy?
Lizzy brought him back to the service with a gentle poke. “You will stay for lunch?” she said as they stood for the final hymn.
“I have to get back to Mathilde…” Why was this girl so eager for him to stay? He was well aware that he needed some sort of help to extricate himself from the hole he had leapt into, but he had been brought up to distrust, perhaps even resent, charity.
“Oh, come on. You won’t have to stay long…”
The swell of the organ reminded Marcus to open the hymn book at number 416, Saint Peter the Apostle. He didn’t recognize words or tune but tried to follow the congregation’s enthusiastic singing. At the first line of the fourth verse (How oft his cowardice of heart) his voice faltered. At the fifth verse (O oft forsaken, oft denied,/forgive our shame, wash out our sin…) tears pricked. Lizzy leaned her shoulder against his arm. Had she heard the break in his voice? Give in! A voice, his own intuition he knew, spoke quietly. You need help: accept it.
“Give me a hand collecting up the hymn books?” Lizzy asked as the congregation began filing out.
He forced himself to straighten. Her responding smile turned a mundane task into a childish game of hunt the hymn book, each vying to collect the bigger armful.
They delivered their trove of books to the table by the door. “Who is this lovely young man,” Madame Orsova asked, arranging the books they dumped in front of her.
“He’s a stray. My friend found him in a cemetery.”
Madame Orsova turned from Lizzy to Marcus. “So you’re a stray…”
Marcus felt a thrill as Madame Orsova’s diamond bright eyes looked into his, inexplicably revealing herself as the beauty she must once have been. The last of the congregation was shuffling slowly towards the exit. Shouldn’t he just join them and melt away into the sunshine? But her eyes, or rather the young woman behind them, held him. He felt tears scalding his eyes. He nodded and turned away.
“Stop running!”
Whether those words had been the voice in his head or the old woman with the books, he couldn’t tell. There was no reason for her to have said that. She didn’t know him. Yet perhaps she did. He had run away to the South of France not because of Brigitte Bardot but because, although not a beautiful girl, he had sympathy with her Juliette. That flash of Madame Orsova’s eyes told him she understood that Juliette better than ever he could. He went to make one last sweep of the pews. Lizzy was waiting for him when he returned.
Outside, two ladies in cream linen suits stood behind a table clothed in white like a secular altar serving wine to the crowd gathered in garrulous knots. “They are the Misses Elspeth Montcalm and Euphemia Dubarry,” Lizzy whispered as they passed. “Absolutely batty. Elspeth owns a winery and several vineyards and Euphemia writes poetry and paints, quite well actually. Come,” she said taking him firmly by the arm, “I want you to meet uncle Gerard before lunch,” and led him into the vicarage.
He felt trapped but did not want to run. He walked willingly out of the sunshine into the gloom of the vicarage. The girl knocked on a door. The Reverend Montaillard, dressed in a severe black cassock, seemed to fill the doorway.
“This is Marcus,” Lizzy said. “You offered to talk to him if he came.”
Marcus followed as he stepped back into a room with a desk, two armchairs, book-lined walls and a window looking out onto the convivial gathering in the cemetery. Oher than the bright sunlight outside, it might have been the vicar’s study in a rural parsonage.
“Lizzy’s worried about you.” The priest indicated two armchairs either side of a typically English fireplace and waited until Marcus was seated. “She’s like her mother. As a child, my sister was always bringing home birds with broken wings and orphaned kittens. She thinks you have a broken wing but I see an orphaned kitten. Tell me something about yourself – what brought you to Nice?”
Marcus shut his eyes and sank into the leather, a thousand possible explanations jostling for attention. He could concoct a reason, but it wouldn’t be the truth. He was in Nice because he couldn’t face the truth. He was fearful – but of what? Why did he not know what he was afraid of? He looked at the priest who was filling his pipe from a leather pouch. He knew that the man would sit there and smoke as many pipefuls as was necessary until Marcus either ran or gave him an honest answer.
“Failure…” Tears of relief pricked his eyes.
The priest struck a match, held it to the bowl, seemed unsatisfied, tamped the tobacco and struck another match. This time he blew grey-blue smoke towards the ceiling, examined the glowing tobacco in the pipe’s bowl and only then looked at Marcus.
“Failure?” he echoed. “How old are you – eighteen? nineteen?”
“Nineteen…”
“Nineteen…” Again the priest echoed him. “No longer a child, not yet an adult… What makes you who you are?”
That was a ridiculous question! He had already answered it in a word. Did this man want to roast him over the coals of his shame? But… did failure really define him? He failed because he hadn’t tried. But that wasn’t completely true either. He thought back to the last two terms at school. Of course he had failed the exams, and he knew why. The man was relentless!
“I had a place to study Medicine. All I needed was two Ds to add to the B I already had. I knew I should have studied harder… but I didn’t. I gave up trying. I didn’t study at all...”
The priest drew on the pipe and let smoke leak from his mouth, wreathing his head. “Why?”
“I…” The explanation he’d given himself, and retailed to his mother and then his father, had been that he wasn’t any good at Physics or Chemistry. Yet he knew that he could have bought study guides; analysed past papers; constructed model answers, which he hadn’t. “I didn’t think I was good enough.”
“Good enough for what?”
The priest’s gaze made him uncomfortable. He had to say something. “I don’t know… probably… I’ve never really been good enough for my parents…”
“How do you know that?”
“My mother threw me out a year ago…” Marcus spoke as if to dismiss the priest’s interest, yet could not camouflage the rasp of anger and a tremor of some other emotion.
“Why would a mother do that?” The gently enquiring tone was like a scabbard to a stiletto. Marcus felt that the priest was waiting for an opportunity to draw and stab.
“You’d have to ask her.” He could not defend his mother’s actions yet neither could he condone them. “I felt it was justified because I’d brought it on myself…”
“Since I can’t ask her, Marcus, I’ll ask you – what had you done to justify her action?”
Marcus breathed in the pipe smoke. He didn’t want a cigarette yet was aware of feeling in his pockets. What did he know about his mother? The pipe smoke reminded him of his grandfather. Of the parlour with the bright fire and the radio intoning football results. There was not much joy in that house. He and his brother read and drew and told each other stories. But the adults - grandfather, mother, father – seemed always to be standing with their backs to each other.
“I think she was disappointed by the men in her life. Her father, then her husband and now me.”
The priest turned the pipe in his hands, put it in his mouth and then took it out again, examining the bowl. “My niece likes you. She thought I might help you. But I think I know someone who could be of more use. He’s a Canadian psychologist. If I make an appointment, would you go and see him?”
Marcus wanted to refuse, but Lizzy had wanted to be helpful and this priest seemed to care. He had to say something. “I can’t afford anything like that…”
“Armand does not charge for an initial consultation…” The priest knocked out the pipe in the ashtray beside him. “But… come and have lunch! My niece will be waiting.”
Marcus has a choice - to accept or to reject Father Gerrard’s offer of referring him to the psychologist. Marcus wants to refuse because that is how he has been conditioned. But he is nineteen not nine and is free to make his own decisions. He accepted Marthe’s help because he was lost and she offered a way forward. Mathilde needed help in her café while her husband is in hospital and Marcus was willing to exchange labour for a roof. He does not understand why Marthe and Lizzy might want to help him but he has enough sense to accept the help and be grateful. Marcus does not doubt Father Gerrard’s altruism, and yet his childhood has condition him to be wary. He is intelligent enough to recognise the conflict within yet not emotionally mature enough to trust himself. The balance will be tipped if he decides to trust the two girls and accept any help Armand may be able to offer…