The Virgin Blue

4 – THE SEARCH

Iran back to the office, clutching a postcard of the Tournier painting. Rick was sitting on a high stool at his drawing board, a Tensor lamp picking out his cheekbones and the arrow of his jaw. Though he was staring at the sketch in front of him, his mind had clearly moved beyond the paper. He often sat for hours, visualizing in detail what he had just designed: fixtures, electrical systems, plumbing, windows, ventilation. He imagined the whole thing and held it in his head, walking through it, sitting in it, living in it, combing through it for faults.

I watched him, then stuffed the postcard in my bag and sat down, my elation ebbing. Suddenly I didn't want to share my discovery with him.

But I should tell him, I argued with myself. I will tell him.

Rick looked up from the board and smiled. ‘Hey there,’ he said.

‘Hey yourself. Everything OK? Structure sound?’

‘Structure sound so far. And good news.’ He waved a fax. ‘A German firm wants me to present to them in a week or two. If it comes off we'll get a huge contract. This office will be busy for years.’

‘Really? What a star you are!’ I smiled and let him talk on about it for a few minutes.

‘Listen, Rick,’ I began when he had finished, ‘I found something at a museum nearby. Look.’ I pulled out the card and handed it to him. He held it under the spotlight.

‘That's the blue you were telling me about, right?’

‘Yes.’ I stood behind him and wrapped my arms around his neck. He stiffened momentarily; I checked to make sure none of the psoriasis was touching his skin.

‘Guess who it's by?’ I rested my chin on his shoulder.

He started to turn the card over but I stopped him. ‘Guess.’

Rick chuckled. ‘C'mon, babe, you know I don't know anything about painting.’ He studied it. ‘One of those Italian Renaissance painters, I guess.’

‘Nope. He's French.’

‘Oh, well, one of your ancestors, then.’

‘Rick!’ I punched him on the arm. ‘You looked!’

‘No, I didn't! I was just joking.’ He turned the card over. ‘This really is one of your relatives?’

‘Yeah. Something makes me think so.’

‘That's great!’

‘It is, isn't it?’ I grinned at him. Rick slid an arm around my waist and kissed me while reaching around to unzip my dress. He had peeled it down to my waist before I realized he was serious. ‘Hang on a minute,’ I gasped. ‘Let's wait till we get home!’

He laughed and grabbed a stapler. ‘What, you don't like my stapler? How about my straight-edge?’ He twisted the Tensor spot so the light bounced off the ceiling. ‘My mood lighting doesn't turn you on?’

I kissed him and zipped up my dress. ‘It's not that. I just think we should – maybe this isn't a good time to talk about it, but I've been thinking I'm not so sure about the baby thing. Maybe we should wait a little longer before we try.’

He looked surprised. ‘But we made a decision.’ Rick liked to stick to decisions.

‘Yeah, but it's been more traumatic than I'd expected.’

‘Traumatic?’

‘Maybe that's too strong a word.’ Wait a minute, Ella, I thought, it has been traumatic. Why are you trying to shelter him from this?

Rick was waiting for me to say something else. When I didn't he sighed. ‘OK, Ella, if you feel that way.’ He began to gather up his drawing pens. ‘I don't want you going through with it unless you're sure.’

We drove home in a funny mood, both of us excited for different reasons, both chastened by my bad timing. We had just passed the square in Lisle when Rick stopped the car. ‘Hang on a second,’ he said. He jumped out and disappeared round the corner. When he returned a minute later he tossed something into my lap. I began to laugh. ‘You didn't,’ I said.

‘I did.’ He smiled mischievously. We'd often joked about the forlorn condom machine on one of the main streets and the kinds of emergencies that would make anyone use it.

That night we made love and slept soundly.

The day Jean-Paul returned from Paris I was so distracted at my French lesson that Madame Sentier began to tease me.

‘Vous êtes dans la lune,’ she taught me. In turn I taught her, ‘The light's on but nobody's home.’ It took some explaining, but once she got it she laughed and went on about my drôle American humour.

‘I never know what you will say next,’ she said. ‘But at least your accent is improving.’

Finally she dismissed me, assigning extra homework to make up for the wasted lesson.

I hurried to catch the train back to Lisle. When I got to the square and looked across at the hôtel de ville, though, I was suddenly reluctant to see him, like the feeling you get when throwing a party and an hour before the guests arrive you want to back out of it. I made myself walk across the square, enter the building, climb the stairs, open the door.

Several people were waiting for help from the two librarians. They both looked up, and Jean-Paul nodded politely. I sat down at a desk, disconcerted. I hadn't expected to have to wait, to tell him with so many people around. I began working on Madame Sentier's assignment halfheartedly.

After fifteen minutes the library cleared a little and Jean-Paul came over. ‘May I help you, Madame?’ he asked quietly in English, leaning over, one hand on my desk. I'd never been so close to him and as I looked up, caught the particular smell of him, of sun on skin, and stared at his jaw line peppered with stubble, I thought, Oh no. No, not this. This is not what I came here for. A quivery panic rose in my stomach.

I shook myself and whispered, ‘Yes, Jean-Paul, I have -’ A slight movement of his head stopped me. ‘Yes, Monsieur,’ I corrected myself. ‘I have something to show you.’ I gave him the postcard. He glanced at it, turned it over and nodded. ‘Ah, the Musée des Augustins. You saw the Romanesque sculpture, yes?’

‘No, no, look at the name! The name of the painter!’

He read aloud in a low voice, ‘Nicolas Tournier, 1590 to 1639.’ He looked at me and smiled.

‘Look at the blue,’ I whispered, touching the card. ‘It's that blue. And you know the dream I told you about? I figured out even before I saw this that I was dreaming of a dress. A blue dress. That blue.’

‘Ah, the blue of the Renaissance. You know there is lapis lazuli in this blue. It was so expensive they could only use it for important things like the Virgin's robe.’

Always a lecture ready.

‘Don't you see? He's my ancestor!’

Jean-Paul glanced around, shifted on the desk, looked at the card again.

‘Why do you think this painter is your ancestor?’

‘Because of the name, obviously, and the dates, but mostly because of the blue. It matches perfectly with the dream. Not just the colour itself, but the feeling around it. That look on her face.’

‘You did not see this painting before you had the dream?’

‘No.’

‘But your family was in Switzerland by that time. This Tournier is French, yes?’

‘Yes, but he was born in Montbéliard. I checked, and guess where that is? Thirty miles from Moutier! Just inside the French border. His parents could easily have moved from Moutier to Montbéliard.’

‘There was no information about his family?’

‘No, there wasn't much about him at the museum, just that he was born in Montbéliard in 1590, spent some time in Rome, then came to Toulouse and died in 1639. That's all they know.’

Jean-Paul tapped the postcard against his knuckles. ‘If they know his birth date they will know his parents’ names. Birth and baptism records always list the parents.’

I gripped the table. Rick's response was so different from this, I thought.

‘I will look for information about him for you.’ He stood up and handed me the postcard.

‘No, I don't want you to,’ I said loudly. Several people looked up and the other librarian frowned at us.

Jean-Paul raised his eyebrows.

‘Monsieur, I will do it. I will find out about him.’

‘I see. Very well, Madame.’ He bowed slightly and walked away, leaving me feeling shaky and deflated. ‘Damn him,’ I muttered, staring at the Virgin. ‘Damn him!’

Jean-Paul's scepticism affected me more than I wanted to admit. When I discovered the painter it didn't occur to me to find out more about him. I knew who he was; my gut feeling was all the proof I needed. Names and dates and places would make no difference to that certainty. Or so I thought.

But it only takes one comment to cast doubt. For a couple of days I tried to ignore what he had said, but the next time I went into Toulouse I took the postcard with me and after my lesson headed for the university library. I'd been there before to use their medical books but I'd never ventured into the arts section. It was packed with students studying for exams, writing papers, talking in stairwells in excited tones.

It took longer than I'd expected to find out anything about Nicolas Tournier. He was part of a group of painters called the Caravagesques, Frenchmen who studied in Rome in the early seventeenth century, copying Caravaggio's use of strong light and shadow. These painters often didn't sign their works, and there were long-running debates about who had painted what. Tournier was mentioned briefly here and there. He wasn't famous, though two of his paintings were in the Louvre. The little information I found was different from what I'd read at the museum: the earliest source listed him as Robert Tournier, born in Toulouse in 1604, died around 1670. I was only sure it was the same painter because I recognized the paintings. Other sources gave different dates again and corrected his name to Nicolas.

Finally I pinpointed three books that were the most up-to-date sources. When I looked for them on the shelves they were all missing. I talked to a hassled student behind the information desk who probably had his own exams to study for; he looked up the books on his computer and confirmed that they'd all been taken out.

‘It is very busy now, as you can see,’ he said. ‘Maybe someone is using them to research a paper.’

‘Can you find out who has them?’

He glanced at the screen. ‘Another library has requested them.’

‘In Lisle-sur-Tarn?’

‘Yes.’ He looked surprised, even more so when I muttered, ‘Bastard! Not you, I mean. Thanks very much.’

I should have known Jean-Paul wouldn't sit on his hands and let me do it myself. He was too intrusive to stay away, too intent on proving his own theories. The question was whether or not I was willing to chase after him to find out more.

In the end I didn't have to decide. Up the street from the Lisle train station I ran into Jean-Paul on his way home from work. He nodded and said ‘Bonsoir,’ and before I could think I blurted out, ‘You've got the books I've been looking for all afternoon. Why did you do that? I asked you not to look into him for me but you're doing it anyway!’

He looked almost bored. ‘Who said I do this research for you, Ella Tournier? I was curious about him, so I look for myself. If you want the books you can see them at the library tomorrow.’

I leaned against a wall and crossed my arms. ‘All right, all right. You've won. Just tell me what you found out. Hurry up and get it over with.’

‘You are sure you don't want to see the books yourself?’

‘Just tell me.’

He lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew out toward his feet. ‘OK. Maybe you find out today that there is not so much information on Nicolas Tournier for a long time. But in 1951 was found a record of his baptism, in July 1590 in a Protestant church in Montbéliard. His father was André Tournier, who was a painter from Besançon – that is not so far from Montbéliard. His grandfather was called Claude Tournier. The father, André Tournier, came to Montbéliard in 1572 because of religious troubles – maybe because of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. Your painter, Nicolas, was one of several children. There are mentions of him in Rome between 1619 and 1626. Then a mention of him in Carcassonne in 1627, and in Toulouse in 1632. For a long time they thought he died later in the seventeenth century, after 1657. But in 1974 was discovered his will with the date 30 December 1638. He died probably soon after.’

I studied the ground and was quiet for so long that Jean-Paul grew restless and flicked his cigarette into the street.

Finally I spoke. ‘Tell me, were baptisms back then performed right after the birth?’

‘Usually, yes. Not always.’

‘So it could be put off for some reason, right? The date of baptism doesn't necessarily indicate the date of birth. Nicolas Tournier could have been a month or two years or ten years old when he was baptized for all we know. Maybe he was even an adult!’

‘That is not likely.’

‘No, but it's possible. What I'm saying is that the source doesn't tell us exactly. And his will has that date you mentioned, but that doesn't mean we know when he died. We don't know, do we? Maybe he died ten years after making it.’

‘Ella, he was ill, he made his will, he died. That is what usually happens.’

‘Yes, but we don't know for sure. We don't know exactly when he was born or when he died. These records don't prove anything. All the basic details about him are still open to question.’ I paused to suppress the rising hysteria in my voice.

He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. ‘You just don't want to hear that this painter's father was André Tournier and not any of your ancestors. No Etienne or Jean. But he was not from the Cévennes or from Moutier. He is not your relative.’

‘Look at it this way,’ I continued more calmly. ‘Until recently – until the 1950s – they didn't know anything about him. They got all his vital statistics wrong except for his last name and the city he died in. Everything else was wrong: his first name, his birth and death dates, where he was born, some of his paintings which turned out to be by other painters. And all of this wrong information was published; I saw it at the library. If I hadn't found out there were more recent sources I'd have all the wrong information about him. I'd even be calling him by the wrong name! Even now art historians are arguing over which paintings are his. If they can't get that basic information right – if it's all got to be based on speculation, where a baptism equals birth and a will equals death – well, that's just shifting evidence. It's not concrete, so why should I believe it? What does seem concrete to me is that his last name is my last name, that he worked only thirty miles from where I live, that he painted the same blue I dream about all the time. That's concrete.’

‘No, that's coincidence. You are being seduced by coincidence.’

‘And you by speculation.’

‘That you live now near Toulouse and he lived in Toulouse does not mean that you are relatives. And the name Tournier is not so unusual. And that you dream of his blue – well, it is a blue easy to remember from a dream because it is so vivid. It would be harder to remember a dark blue, no?’

‘Look, why are you trying so hard to prove he's not my relative?’

‘Because you are basing all your proof on coincidence and your guts rather than on concrete evidence. You are struck by a painting, by a certain blue, and because of that and the painter's name is yours you decide he is an ancestor? No. No, I shouldn't have to convince you that Nicolas Tournier isn't your relative; you should be convincing me that he is.’

I've got to stop him, I thought. Soon I won't have any hope left.

Maybe my face reflected this thought, because when Jean-Paul spoke again his tone was kinder. ‘I think maybe this Nicolas Tournier is no help to you. That maybe he is, what is it you say, a red fish.’

‘What?’ I laughed. ‘A red herring, you mean. Maybe you're right.’ I paused. ‘He's taken over, though. I can't even remember what I was going to do about this ancestry business before he appeared.’

‘You were going to find lost-long relatives in the Cévennes.’

‘I might still do that.’ The look on his face made me laugh. ‘Yes, I will. You know, all your arguing just makes me want to prove you wrong. I want to find out proof – yes, concrete proof that even you'd agree with – about my “lost-long” ancestors. Just to show you that hunches aren't always wrong.’

We were both quiet then. I shifted from one hip to the other; Jean-Paul narrowed his eyes at the evening sun. I became very aware of him standing with me on this little street in France. We're only separated by two feet of air, I thought. I could just -

‘And your dream?’ he asked. ‘You still see it?’

‘Uh, no. No, it seems to have gone away.’

‘So, you want me to call the archives at Mende and warn them you are coming?’

‘No!’ My shout made commuters' heads turn. ‘That's exactly what I don't want you to do,’ I hissed. ‘Stay out of it unless I ask for help, OK? If I need help I'll ask you.’

Jean-Paul raised his hands as if he had a gun pointed at him. ‘Fine, Ella Tournier. We draw a line here and I stay on my side, OK?’ He took a step back from the imaginary line, and the distance between us increased.

The next night while we were eating dinner on the patio I told Rick I wanted to go to the Cévennes to look up family records.

‘You remember I wrote to Jacob Tournier in Switzerland?’ I explained. ‘He wrote back and said the Tourniers were from the Cévennes originally. Probably.’ I smiled to myself: I was learning to qualify my statements. ‘I want to have a look around.’

‘But I thought you found out about your family already, with the painter and all.’

‘Well, that's not definite, actually. Not yet,’ I added quickly. ‘Maybe I'll find something there to prove it.’

To my surprise he frowned. ‘I suppose this is something Jean-Pierre cooked up.’

‘Jean-Paul. No, not at all. The opposite, if anything. He thinks I won't find anything.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘I have to go during the week, when the archives are open.’

‘I could take a couple days off, come with you.’

‘I was thinking of going next week.’

‘Nope, can't go then. It's crazy at the office now with the German contract. Maybe later in the summer when it's quieter. In August.’

‘I can't wait till August!’

‘Ella, why are you so interested in your ancestors now? You never were before.’

‘I never lived in France before.’

‘Yeah, but you seem to be investing a lot in it. What do you expect to get out of it?’

I intended to say something about being accepted by the French, about feeling like I belonged to the country. ‘I want to make the blue nightmare go away,’ I found myself saying instead.

‘You think by finding out about your family you'll get rid of a bad dream?’

‘Yes.’ I leaned back and gazed at the vines. Tiny green clusters of grapes were just beginning to appear. I knew it made no sense, that there was no link between the dream and my ancestors. But my mind had made the connection anyway, and I stubbornly decided to stick with it.

‘Is Jean-Pierre going with you?’

‘No! Look, why are you being so negative? It's not like you. This is something I'm interested in. It's the first thing I've really wanted to do since we got here. The least you could do is be supportive about it.’

‘I thought the thing you really wanted to do was have a baby. I've been supportive about that.’

‘Yes, but -’ You shouldn't just be supportive about something like that, I thought. You should want to have it too.

Lately I'd been having a lot of thoughts that I censored.

Rick stared at me, frowning, then made a conscious effort to relax. ‘You're right. Of course go, babe. If it makes you happy then that's what you should do.’

‘Oh, Rick, don't -’ I stopped. There was no point criticizing him. He was trying to be supportive without understanding. At least he was trying.

‘Look, I'll go for a few days, that's all. If I find out something, great. If I don't, it's no big deal. All right?’

‘Ella, if you don't find anything, I'll take you to the best restaurant in Toulouse.’

‘Gee, thanks. That makes me feel a lot better.’

Sarcasm was the cheapest form of humour, according to my mother. My remark was made even cheaper by the hurt look in his eyes.

The morning I left it was crisp and bright; there had been thunderstorms the night before, clearing the tension from the air. I kissed Rick goodbye as he left for the train station, then got in the car and drove off in the opposite direction. It was a relief to go. I celebrated by playing loud music and opening both windows and the sun roof to let the wind whip through me.

The road followed the Tarn up to Albi, a cathedral town full of June tourists, then headed north away from the river. I would meet up with the Tarn again in the Cévennes, climbing backwards to its source. Beyond Albi the landscape began to change, the horizon first expanding as I climbed, then narrowing as the hills closed in around me and the sky turned from blue to grey. The poppies and Queen Anne's lace along the road were joined by new flowers, pink jack-in-the-pulpit and daisies and especially broom, with its sharp, mouldy smell. The trees grew darker. Fields were no longer cultivated but left as meadows and grazed by tan goats and cows. Rivers got smaller and faster and louder. Abruptly the houses changed: light chalk stone became hard brown-grey granite, and roofs were more angular, tiled with flat slate rather than curved terracotta. Everything became smaller, darker, more serious.

I closed the windows and sun roof, turned off the music. My mood seemed to be linked with the landscape. I didn't like it, looking out at this beautiful, sad land. It reminded me of the blue.

Mende crowned both the landscape and my mood. Its narrow streets were surrounded by a busy ring road that made the town feel hemmed in. A cathedral squatted in the centre, two different spires giving it an awkward, unplanned look. Inside it was dark and grim. I escaped and, standing on its steps, stared at the grey stone buildings around me. This is the Cévennes? I thought. Then I smiled at myself: of course I'd assumed Tournier country would be beautiful.

It had been a long drive from Lisle; even the bigger roads curved and climbed, requiring more concentration than straight American highways. I was tired and in an uncharitable mood, which wasn't improved by a dark, narrow hotel room and a lonely supper in a pizzeria where the only other customers were couples or old men. I thought about calling Rick, but knew that instead of cheering me up he would make me feel worse, reminding me of the gap that was growing between us.

The departmental archives were in a brand-new building made of salmon and white stone, and metal painted blue, green and red. The research room was large and airy, the tables three-quarters full of people scrutinizing documents. Everyone looked as if they knew exactly what they were doing. I felt the way I often did in Lisle: as a foreigner my place was on the edge, where I could watch and admire the natives but never take part myself.

A tall woman standing at the main desk looked over and smiled at me. She was about my age, with short blond hair and yellow glasses. I thought, Ah, thank God, not another Madame. I went up to the desk and set down my bag. ‘I don't know what I'm doing here,’ I said. ‘Please can you help me?’

Her laugh was the most unlikely shriek for such a quiet place.

‘Alors, what are you looking for?’ she asked, still laughing, her blue eyes magnified through thick lenses. I'd never seen someone wear thick glasses so stylishly.

‘I have an ancestor named Etienne Tournier who may have lived in the Cévennes in the sixteenth century. I want to find out more about him.’

‘Do you know when he was born or died?’

‘No. I know that the family moved to Switzerland at some point but I don't know when exactly. It would have been before 1576.’

‘You know no birth or death dates? What about for his children? Or grandchildren, even?’

‘Well, he had a son, Jean, who had a child in 1590.’

She nodded. ‘So the son Jean was born between, let's say, 1550 and 1575, and the father Etienne twenty to forty years before that, say, from 1510. So you're searching between 1510 and 1575, something like that, yes?’

She spoke French so fast that I couldn't answer right away: I was wading through her calculations. ‘I guess so,’ I replied finally, wondering if I should mention the painter Tourniers as well, Nicolas and André and Claude.

She didn't give me the chance. ‘You want to look for records of baptism and marriage and death,’ she declared. ‘And maybe compoix also, tax records. Now, what village did they come from?’

‘I don't know.’

‘Ah, that's a problem. The Cévennes is big, you know. Of course there are not so many records from that time. Back then they were kept by the church, but many were burned or lost during the religious wars. So maybe you will not have too much to look through. If you knew the village I could tell you immediately what we have, but never mind, we'll see what we can find.’

She ran through an inventory of documents held there and in other records offices in the département. She was right: for the whole region there were only a handful of documents from the sixteenth century. The few records left must have survived arbitrarily. It was clear that the likelihood of a Tournier turning up in the books would be entirely down to luck.

I ordered the relevant sets of records held in the building that fell between the dates she mentioned. I wasn't sure what would appear: I'd been using the term ‘record’ loosely, expecting some sixteenth-century equivalent to my own neatly typed birth certificate or marriage licence. Five minutes later the woman brought over a few boxes of microfiche, a book covered with protective brown paper, and a huge box. She smiled encouragingly and left me to it. I glanced at her as she went back to the desk and grinned to myself at her platform shoes and short leather skirt.

I began with the book. It was bound in greasy off-white calfskin, its cover painted with ancient music and Latin text. The first letter of each line was enlarged and coloured red and blue. I opened it to the first page and smoothed it out; it was thrilling to touch something so old. The handwriting was in brown ink, and though it was very neat, it seemed to have been written to be admired rather than read: I couldn't read a word. Several letters were virtually identical, and when I finally began to make out a few words here and there, I realized it didn't make any difference – it was all in a foreign language.

Then I began to sneeze.

The woman came over twenty minutes later to see how I was doing. I had gotten through ten pages, finding dates and little by little picking out what seemed to be names.

I looked up at her. ‘Is this document in French?’

‘Old French.’

‘Oh.’ I hadn't thought of that.

She glanced down at the page and ran a pink fingernail over a few lines. ‘A pregnant woman drowned in the River Lot, May 1574. Une inconnue, la pauvre,’ she murmured. ‘These deaths are not so useful to you, are they?’

‘I suppose not,’ I said, and sneezed on the book.

The woman laughed as I apologized. ‘Everyone sneezes. Look around you, handkerchiefs everywhere!’ We heard a tiny sneeze from an old man on the other side of the room and giggled.

‘Take a break from the dust,’ she said, ‘Come for a coffee with me. My name is Mathilde.’ She held out her hand and grinned. ‘This is what Americans do, yes? Shake hands when they meet?’

We sat in a café around the corner and were soon chatting like old friends. Despite her rapid-fire delivery, Mathilde was easy to talk to. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed female company. She asked me a million questions about the States, California in particular.

‘What are you doing here?’ she sighed at last. ‘I'd go to California in an instant!’

I tensed, trying to think of an answer that would make it clear I hadn't simply followed Rick to France, as Jean-Paul had implied. But Mathilde went on before I could answer and I realized she wasn't expecting me to explain myself.

She wasn't at all surprised that I was interested in distant ancestors. ‘People look into family history all the time,’ she said.

‘I feel a little silly doing it,’ I confessed. ‘It's so unlikely I'll find anything.’

‘True,’ she admitted. ‘To be honest, most people don't when they're searching that far back. But don't be discouraged. Anyway the records are interesting, aren't they?’

‘Yes, but it takes me so long to understand what they say! All I can really find are dates and sometimes names.’

Mathilde smiled. ‘If you think that book is hard to read, wait till you see the microfiche!’ She laughed when she saw my face. ‘I'm not so busy today,’ she continued. ‘You keep reading your book and I'll look through the microfiche for you. I'm used to that old handwriting!’

I was grateful for her offer. While she sat at the microfiche machine I tackled the box, which Mathilde explained was a book of compoix, records of taxes on crops. It was all in the same handwriting and almost incomprehensible. It took the rest of the day to look through. By the end I was exhausted, but Mathilde seemed disappointed that there wasn't anything else to look at.

‘Is that really all?’ she asked, flicking through the inventory once more. ‘Attends, there's a book of compoix from 1570 at the mairie in Le Pont de Montvert. Of course, Monsieur Jourdain! I helped him take inventory of those records a year ago.’

‘Who's Monsieur Jourdain?’

‘The secretary of the mairie.’

‘You think it's worth the trouble?’

‘Bien sûr. Even if you don't find anything, Le Pont de Montvert is a beautiful place. It's a little village at the bottom of Mont Lozère.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Mon Dieu -I must pick up Sylvie!’ She grabbed her bag and pushed me out, chuckling as she locked the door behind me. ‘You'll have fun with Monsieur Jourdain. If he doesn't eat you alive, of course!’

The next morning I started early and took the picturesque route to Le Pont de Montvert. As I began to climb the road up Mont Lozère the landscape opened out and brightened while also growing more barren. I passed through tiny, dusty villages where the buildings were made entirely of granite, even down to the tiles on the roofs, with hardly a touch of paint to distinguish them from the surrounding land. Many houses were abandoned, roofs gone, chimneys crumbling, shutters askew. I saw few people, and once I got above a certain point, no cars. Soon there were just granite boulders, broom and heather, and the occasional clump of pines.

This is more like it, I thought.

I pulled over near the summit at a place called the Col de Finiels and sat on the hood of the car. After a few minutes the automatic fan cut out and it was wonderfully quiet; I listened and could hear a few birds and the dull roar of the wind. According to my map, to the east across a small pine forest and over a hill was the source of the Tarn. I was tempted to go and look for it.

Instead I drove down the other side of the mountain, zigzagging back and forth, until one last turn brought me coasting into Le Pont de Montvert, passing a hotel, a school, a restaurant, a few shops and bars on one side of the road. Paths branched off the main road, winding among the houses built up the hill. Above the tops of the houses I could see the roof of a church; a bell hung in the stone belfry.

I caught a glimpse of water on the other side of the road, where the Tarn ran, hidden by a low stone wall. I parked by an old stone bridge, walked onto it and looked down at the river.

The Tarn had changed completely. No longer wide and slow, it was twenty feet across at most and racing like a stream. I studied the pebbles in deep reds and yellows gleaming under the water. I could hardly tear my eyes away.

This water will flow all the way to Lisle, I thought. All the way to me.

It was Wednesday, ten a.m. Jean-Paul could be sitting at the café, watching the river too.

Stop it, Ella, I thought sharply. Think of Rick, or don't think at all.

From the outside the mairie – a grey building with brown shutters and a French flag hanging limply over one of the windows – was presentable enough. Inside, though, it looked like a junk shop; the sun streamed through a fog of dust. Monsieur Jourdain was reading a newspaper at a desk in the far corner. He was short and plump, with bulging eyes, olive skin and one of those scraggly beards that peters out halfway down the neck and blurs the jaw line. He eyed me suspiciously as I picked my way through battered old furniture and stacks of paper.

‘Bonjour, Monsieur Jourdain,’ I said briskly.

He grunted and glanced down at his paper.

‘My name is Ella Turner – Tournier,’ I continued carefully in French. ‘I would like to look at some records you keep here at the mairie. There's a compoix from 1570. May I see it?’

He looked up at me briefly, then continued reading the paper.

‘Monsieur? You are Monsieur Jourdain, yes? They told me in Mende that I should speak to you.’

Monsieur Jourdain ran his tongue around his teeth. I looked down. He was reading a sports newspaper, the pages open to the racing form.

He said something I didn't understand. ‘Pardon?’ I asked. Again he spoke incomprehensibly and I wondered if he was drunk. When I asked him once more to repeat himself, he waved his hands and flecked spit at me, unleashing a torrent of words. I took a step back.

‘Jesus, what a stereotype!’ I muttered in English.

He narrowed his eyes and snarled, and I turned and left. I sat fuming over a coffee in a café, then found the number of the Mende archives and called Mathilde from a pay phone.

She shrieked when I explained what had happened. ‘Leave it to me,’ she counselled. ‘Go back in half an hour.’

Whatever Mathilde said to Monsieur Jourdain over the phone worked, because although he glared at me he led me down a hall to a cramped room containing a desk overflowing with papers. ‘Attendez,’ he mumbled, and left. I seemed to be in a storage room; while waiting I poked around. There were boxes of books everywhere, some very old. Stacks of papers that looked like government documents lay on the floor, and a big pile of unopened envelopes was scattered on the desk, all addressed to Abraham Jourdain.

After ten minutes he reappeared with a large box and dumped it onto the desk. Then without a word or glance he walked out.

The box held a book similar to the compoix in Mende, but even bigger and in worse shape. The calfskin binding was so ragged it no longer held the pages together. I handled the book as carefully as I could, but even so bits of corners crumbled and broke off. I hid the fragments furtively in my pockets, worried that Monsieur Jourdain might find them and yell at me.

At noon he threw me out. I'd only been working an hour when he appeared in the doorway, glared down at me and growled something. I could only work out what he meant because he tapped his watch. He stumped down the hall to open the front door, shutting it behind me with a thud and drawing the bolt. I stood blinking in the sunlight, dazed after the dark, dusty room.

Then I was surrounded by children, streaming out from a playground next door.

I breathed in. Thank God, I thought.

I bought things for lunch in the shops just as they were closing: cheese and peaches and some dark red bread the shopkeeper told me was a local specialty, made from chestnuts. I took a path up through granite houses to the church at the top of the village.

It was a simple stone building, almost as wide as it was high. What I took to be the front door was locked, but around the side I found an open door, the date 1828 carved over it, and stepped inside. The room was full of empty wooden pews. Balconies skirted the two long walls. There was a wooden organ, a lectern and a table with a large Bible lying open on it. That was all. No ornamentation, no statues or crosses, no stained glass. I'd never seen such a bare church. There wasn't even an altar to distinguish the minister's place from the people's.

I went over to the Bible, the only thing there with a use beyond the purely functional. It looked old, though not as old as the compoix I'd been looking at. I began to leaf through it. It took awhile – I didn't know the order of the books in the Bible – but at last I found what I was looking for. I began to read the thirty-first psalm: J'ai mis en toi mon espérance: Garde-moi donc, Seigneur. By the time I reached the first line of the third verse, Tu es ma tour et forteresse, my eyes were full of tears. I stopped abruptly and fled.

Silly girl, I scolded myself as I sat on the wall around the church and wiped my eyes. I made myself eat, blinking in the bright sun. The chestnut bread was sweet and dry, and stuck in the back of my throat. I could feel it there for the rest of the day.

When I got back Monsieur Jourdain was sitting behind his desk, hands clasped in front of him. He wasn't reading his paper; in fact it looked like he was waiting for me. I said carefully, ‘Bonjour, Monsieur. May I have the compoix, please?’

He opened a filing cabinet next to his desk, pulled out the box and handed it to me. Then he looked closely at my face.

‘What is your name?’ he asked in a puzzled voice.

‘Tournier. Ella Tournier.’

‘Tournier,’ he repeated, still scrutinizing me. He twisted his mouth to one side, chewing the inside of his cheek. He was staring at my hair. ‘La Rousse,’ he murmured.

‘What?’ I snapped loudly. A wave of goosebumps swept over me.

Monsieur Jourdain widened his eyes, then reached over and touched a lock of my hair. ‘C'est rouge. Alors, La Rousse.’

‘But my hair is brown, Monsieur.’

‘Rouge,’ he repeated firmly.

‘Of course it's not. It's -’ I pulled a clump of hair in front of my eyes and caught my breath. He was right: it was shot through with coppery highlights. But it had been brown when I'd looked at myself in the mirror that morning. The sun had brought out highlights in my hair before, but never so fast or so dramatically.

‘What is La Rousse?’ I asked accusingly.

‘It's a Cevenol nickname for a girl with red hair. It's not an insult,’ he added quickly. ‘They used to call the Virgin La Rousse because they thought she had red hair.’

‘Oh.’ I felt dizzy and nauseous and thirsty all at once.

‘Listen, Madame.’ He rolled his tongue over his teeth. ‘If you want to use that desk there -’ He gestured toward an empty desk across from his.

‘No thank you,’ I said shakily. ‘The other office is fine.’

Monsieur Jourdain nodded, looking relieved that he wouldn't have to share a room with me.

I began where I'd left off, but kept stopping to inspect my hair. Finally I shook myself. Nothing you can do about it right now, Ella, I thought. Just get on with the job.

I worked quickly, aware that Monsieur Jourdain's new tolerance could only be relied on for so long. I stopped trying to work out what the taxes were being levied for and concentrated on names and dates. As I got toward the end of the book I became more and more despondent, and began making small bets to keep myself going: there'll be a Tournier in one of the next twenty sections; I'll find one in the next five minutes.

I glared at the last page: it was a record for a Jean Marcel, and there was only one entry, for châtaignes, a word I'd seen often in the compoix. Chestnuts. The new colour of my hair.

I heaved the book into its box and walked slowly down the hall to Monsieur Jourdain's office. He was still sitting at his desk, typing fast with two fingers on an old manual typewriter. As he leaned forward a silver chain swung out of the V in his shirt; the pendant at the end of it clanked against the keys. He looked up and caught me staring at it. His hand moved to the pendant; he rubbed it with his thumb.

‘The Huguenot cross,’ he said. ‘You know it?’

I shook my head. He held it up for me to see. It was a square cross with a dove with outspread wings attached to the bottom arm.

I set the box on the empty desk opposite him. ‘Voilà,’ I said. ‘Thank you for letting me look at it.’

‘You found anything?’

‘No.’ I held out my hand. ‘Merci beaucoup, Monsieur.’

He shook hands with me hesitantly.

‘Au revoir, La Rousse,’ he called as I left.

It was too late to go back to Lisle, so I spent the night at one of the two hotels in the village. After supper I tried calling Rick but there was no answer. Then I called Mathilde, who had given me her number and made me promise to give her an update. She was disappointed that I hadn't found anything, even though she knew the odds were against me.

I asked her how she got Monsieur Jourdain to be nicer to me.

‘Oh, I just made him feel guilty. I reminded him you were looking for Huguenots. He's from a Huguenot family himself, a descendant of one of the Camisard rebellion leaders, in fact. René Laporte, I think.’

‘So that's a Huguenot.’

‘Sure. What were you expecting? You mustn't be too hard on him, Ella. He's had a difficult time lately. His daughter ran off with an American three years ago. A tourist. Not only that, a Catholic too! I don't know which made him angrier, being American or being Catholic. You can see how it's affected him. He was a good worker before, a smart man. They sent me over last year to help him sort things out.’

I thought of the room full of books and papers I'd worked in and chuckled.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘Did you ever see the back office?’

‘No, he said he'd lost the key and there was nothing in it anyway.’

I described it to her.

‘Merde, I knew he was hiding something! I should have been more persistent.’

‘Anyway, thanks for helping me.’

‘Bah, it's nothing.’ She paused. ‘So, who's Jean-Paul?’

I turned red. ‘A librarian in Lisle, where I live. How do you know him?’

‘He called me this afternoon.’

‘He called you?’

‘Sure. He wanted to know if you had found what you were looking for.’

‘He did?’

‘Is that such a surprise?’

‘Yes. No. I don't know. What did you tell him?’

‘I told him he should ask you. But what a flirt!’

I flinched.

I took the scenic route back to Lisle, following the Tarn through winding gorges. It was an overcast day and my heart wasn't in the drive. I began to feel carsick from all the curves. By the end I was wondering why I'd bothered with the trip at all.

Rick wasn't in when I got home and there was no answer at his office. The house felt lifeless, and I moved from room to room, unable to read or watch television. I spent a long time examining my hair in the bathroom mirror. My hairdresser in San Francisco had always tried to get me to dye my hair auburn because he thought it would go well with my brown eyes. I'd always dismissed the suggestion, but now he had his way: my hair was definitely going red.

By midnight I was worried: Rick had missed the last train from Toulouse. I didn't have the home phone numbers of any of his colleagues, the only people I could imagine him being out with. There was no one else I could call nearby, no sympathetic friend to listen and reassure me. I briefly considered phoning Mathilde, but it was late and I didn't know her well enough to inflict distressed calls at midnight on her.

Instead I called my mother in Boston. ‘Are you sure he didn't tell you where he was going?’ she kept saying. ‘Where were you again? Ella, have you been paying enough attention to him?’ She wasn't interested in my research into the Tournier family. It wasn't her family anymore; the Cévennes and French painters meant nothing to her.

I changed the subject. ‘Mom,’ I said, ‘my hair's turned red.’

‘What? Have you hennaed it? Does it look good?’

‘I didn't -’ I couldn't tell her it had just turned that way. It made no sense. ‘It looks OK,’ I said finally. ‘Actually it does look good. Kind of natural.’

I went to bed but lay awake for hours, listening for Rick's key in the door, fretting about whether or not to be worried, reminding myself that he was a grown-up but also that he always told me where he would be.

I got up early and sat drinking coffee until seven-thirty when a receptionist answered the phone at Rick's firm. She didn't know where he was, but promised to get his secretary to call the moment she got in. By the time she called at eight-thirty I was wired with coffee and slightly dizzy.

‘Bonjour, Madame Middleton,’ she sang. ‘How are you?’

I'd given up explaining to her that I hadn't taken Rick's name.

‘Do you know where Rick is?’ I asked.

‘But he is in Paris, on business,’ she said. ‘He had to go suddenly the day before yesterday. He'll be back tonight. Didn't he tell you?’

‘No. No, he didn't.’

‘I'll give you his hotel number if you want to call him there.’

When I reached the hotel Rick had already checked out. For some reason that made me angrier than anything else.

By the time he got home that night I could barely speak to him. He looked surprised to see me, but pleased too.

I didn't even say hello. ‘Why didn't you tell me where you were?’ I demanded.

‘I didn't know where you were.’

I frowned. ‘You knew I was going to the archives in Mende to look up records. You could've gotten in touch with me there.’

‘Ella, to be honest I haven't been sure what you've been doing for the past few days -’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘- Where you've been, where you were going. You haven't called me at all. You weren't clear about where you were going or how long you'd be away. I didn't know you'd be back today. For all I knew you wouldn't come back for weeks.’

‘Oh, don't exaggerate.’

‘I'm not exaggerating. Give me a break here, Ella. You can't expect me to tell you where I am if you don't tell me where you are.’

I scowled at the ground. He was so reasonable and so right that I wanted to hit him. I sighed and said, ‘Right. Sorry. I'm sorry. It's just that I didn't find anything and then I came back and you weren't here and oh, I've drunk too much coffee today. It's made me queasy.’

Rick laughed and put his arms around me. ‘Tell me about what you didn't find.’

I buried my face in his shoulder. ‘A whole lot of nothing. Except I met a nice woman and a crotchety old man.’

I felt Rick's cheek shift against my head. I pulled my head back so I could see his face. He was frowning.

‘Did you dye your hair?’

The next day Rick and I strolled through the Saturday market, his arm draped around my shoulders. I felt more relaxed than I had in two months. To celebrate the feeling and the fact that my psoriasis seemed to be receding, I wore my favourite dress, a pale yellow sleeveless shift.

The market had been getting bigger and bigger each weekend as summer approached. Now it was the busiest I'd ever seen it, filling the square completely. Farmers had come with truckloads of fruit and vegetables, cheese, honey, bacon, bread, pâté, chickens, rabbits, goats. I could buy candy in bulk, a housecoat like Madame's, even a tractor.

Everyone was there: our neighbours, the woman from the library, Madame on a bench across the square with a couple of her cronies, women from a yoga class I was taking, the woman with the choking baby and everyone I'd ever bought anything from.

Even with so many people around I spotted him immediately. He seemed to be arguing ferociously with a man selling tomatoes; then they grinned and slapped each other on the back. Jean-Paul picked up a bag of tomatoes, turned around and almost ran into me. I jumped back to avoid getting tomato all over my dress and stumbled. Rick and Jean-Paul each grabbed an elbow and as I regained my balance they both stood holding me for a second before Jean-Paul dropped his hand.

‘Bonjour, Ella Tournier,’ he said, nodding at me and raising his eyebrows slightly. He was wearing a pale blue shirt; I felt a sudden urge to reach out and touch it.

‘Hello, Jean-Paul,’ I replied calmly. I remembered reading somewhere that the person you address first and introduce to the other is the more important person. I turned deliberately to Rick and said, ‘Rick, this is Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul, this is Rick, my husband.’

The two men shook hands, Rick saying Bonjour and Jean-Paul Hello. I wanted to laugh, they were so different: Rick tall, broad, golden and open, Jean-Paul small, wiry, dark and calculating. A lion and a wolf, I thought. And how they distrust each other.

There was an awkward silence. Jean-Paul turned to me and said in English, ‘How was your researches in Mende?’

I shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Not too good. Nothing useful. Nothing at all, in fact.’ I wasn't feeling nonchalant, though: I was thinking with guilt and pleasure that Jean-Paul had called Mathilde and I hadn't called him back; that Jean-Paul's awkward English was the only thing that revealed inner turmoil; that he and Rick were so different from each other; that both were watching me closely.

‘So, you go to other towns for doing this work?’

I tried not to look at Rick. ‘I went to Le Pont de Montvert too but there wasn't anything. There isn't much left from that time. But anyway it's not so important. It doesn't really matter.’

Jean-Paul's sardonic smile said three things: you're lying, you thought it was going to be easy and I told you so.

But he didn't say any of this; instead he looked intently at my hair. ‘Your hair is turning red,’ he stated.

‘Yes.’ I smiled at him. He had put it just the right way: no questioning, no blame. For a moment Rick and the market disappeared.

Rick slid his hand up my back to settle on my shoulder. I laughed nervously and said, ‘Anyway, we have to go. Nice to see you.’

‘Au revoir, Ella Tournier,’ Jean-Paul said.

Rick and I didn't speak for a few minutes. I pretended to be absorbed in buying honey and Rick weighed eggplants in his hands. Finally he said, ‘So that's him, eh?’

I shot him a look. ‘That's the librarian, Rick. That's all.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yes.’ It had been a long time since I'd lied to him.

I was coming back from a yoga class one afternoon when I heard the phone ringing from the street. Running to answer it, I managed an out-of-breath ‘Hello?’ before a high, excited voice spoke so rapidly that I had to sit down and wait for it to finish. At last I interjected in French, ‘Who is this?’

‘Mathilde, it's Mathilde. Listen, it's wonderful, you must see it!’ ‘Mathilde, slow down! I can't understand what you're saying. What's wonderful?’ 120

Mathilde took a deep breath. ‘We've found something about your family, about the Tourniers.’

‘Wait a minute. Who's “we”?’

‘Monsieur Jourdain and me. You remember I mentioned working with him before, in Le Pont de Montvert?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I wasn't working at the main desk today, so I thought I'd drive out and visit, see that room you told me about. What a garbage can! So Monsieur Jourdain and I began going through things. And in one of the boxes of books he found your family!’

‘What do you mean? A book about my family?’

‘No, no, written in the book. It's a Bible. The front page of a Bible. That's where families wrote down births and deaths and marriages, in their Bibles, if they had them.’

‘But what was it doing there?’

‘That's a good question. He's been terrible, Monsieur Jourdain. Imagine letting valuable old things like that lie around! Apparently someone brought in a whole box of old books. There's all sorts of things, old records from the parish, old deeds, but the Bible is the most valuable. Well, maybe not so valuable, given its condition.’

‘What's wrong with it?’

‘It's burnt. Most of the pages are black. But it lists many Tourniers. They're your Tourniers, Monsieur Jourdain is sure of it.’

I was silent, taking it in.

‘So can you come up and see it?’

‘Of course. Where are you?’

‘Still in Le Pont de Montvert. But I can meet you somewhere in between. Let's meet in Rodez, in, let's see, three hours.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I know. We can meet at Crazy Joe's Bar. It's right around the corner from the cathedral, in the old quarter. It's American so you can have a martini!’ She shrieked with laughter and hung up.

As I drove out of Lisle I passed the hôtel de ville. Keep going, Ella, I thought. He has nothing to do with this.

I stopped, jumped out, ran into the building and up the stairs. I opened the library door and poked my head inside. Jean-Paul sat alone behind his desk, reading a book. He glanced up at me but otherwise didn't move.

I stayed in the doorway. ‘Are you busy?’ I asked.

He shrugged. After the scene in the market a few days before, his distance wasn't surprising.

‘I've found something,’ I said quietly. ‘Or I should say, someone else has found something for me. Concrete evidence. Something you'll like.’

‘Is this about your painter?’

‘I don't think so. Come with me to see it.’

‘Where?’

‘They found it in Le Pont de Montvert, but I'm meeting them in Rodez.’ I looked at the floor. ‘I want you to come with me.’

Jean-Paul regarded me for a moment, then nodded. ‘OK. I'll close early here. Can you meet me at the Fina station up the Albi road in fifteen minutes?’

‘The gas station? Why? How will you get there?’

‘I'll drive there. I'll meet you and then we can take one car.’

‘Why can't you just come with me now? I'll wait for you outside.’

Jean-Paul sighed. ‘Tell me, Ella Tournier, you have never lived in a small town before you live in Lisle?’

‘No. But -’

‘I tell you when we drive.’

Jean-Paul pulled up to the gas station in a battered white Citroën Deux Chevaux, one of those cars that looks like a flimsy Volkswagen Beetle and has a soft roof that can be rolled back like a sardine can. Its engine makes an unmistakable sound, a friendly churning whine that always made me smile when I heard it. I thought Jean-Paul would have a sports car, but a Deux Chevaux made sense.

He looked so furtive getting out of his car and into mine that I laughed. ‘So, you think people will talk about us?’ I remarked as I pulled onto the Albi road.

‘It is a small town. Many old women there have nothing to do but watch and discuss what they see.’

‘Surely they don't mean anything by it.’

‘Ella, I will describe to you the day of one of these women. She gets up in the morning and has her breakfast out on her terrace, so she watches everyone who goes by. Then she does her shopping; she goes to all the shops every day and talks to the other women and watches what other people do. She comes back and stands in front of her door and talks to her neighbours and watches. She sleeps for an hour in the afternoon when she knows everyone else will be asleep and she will not miss anything. She sits on her terrace for the rest of the afternoon, reading the newspaper but really watching all that passes in the street. In the evening she goes for another walk and talks to all her friends. There is a lot of talking and watching in her day. That is what she does.’

‘But I haven't done anything in public for them to talk about.’

‘They will take anything and twist it.’

I took a curve wide. ‘There's nothing I've done in that town that anyone could possibly find interesting or scandalous or whatever it is you're implying.’

Jean-Paul was quiet for a moment. Then he said, ‘You are enjoying your onion quiches, yes?’

I stiffened for a second, then laughed. ‘Yeah, quite an addiction, really. I bet the old gossips are really shocked.’

‘They thought that you were, that you were -’ He stopped. I glanced at him; he looked embarrassed. ‘Pregnant,’ he finished finally.

‘What?’

‘That you were having a craving.’

I began to titter. ‘But that's ludicrous! Why would they think that? And why would they care?’

‘In a small place everyone knows everyone else's business. They believe it is their right to know if you are having a baby. But anyway they know now that you're not pregnant.’

‘Good,’ I muttered. Then I glared at him. ‘How do they know I'm not pregnant?’

To my surprise Jean-Paul looked even more embarrassed. ‘Nothing, nothing, they just -’ He trailed off and fumbled with his shirt pocket.

‘What?’ I began to feel sick with disgust at what they might know. Jean-Paul pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Do you know the machine for selling Durex just off the square?’ he asked at last.

‘Ah.’ Someone must have seen Rick buying them that night. God, I thought, what haven't they sniffed out? Does the doctor broadcast every visit? Do they go through our garbage?

‘What else have they said?’

‘You do not need to know.’

‘What else have they said?’

Jean-Paul gazed out the window. ‘They notice everything you buy in the shops. The postman tells them about every letter you receive. They know when you go out during the day, and they notice how much you go out with your husband. And, well, if you do not use your shutters they look inside, too.’ He sounded more disapproving of me not closing my shutters than of their looking in.

I shivered, thinking of the choking baby, of all those shoulders turned against me.

‘What have they said specifically?’

‘You want to know?’

‘Yes.’

‘There was the quiches and the craving. Then they think you are pretentious because you bought a washing machine.’

‘But why?’

‘They think that you should wash by hand the way they do. That only people with children should have machines. And they think the colour you painted your shutters is vulgar and not right for Lisle. They think you lack finesse. That you should not wear dresses without sleeves. That you are rude to speak English to people. That you are a liar because you told Madame Rodin at the boulangerie that you lived here when you didn't yet. And you picked the lavender in the square, and no one does that. In fact that was their first impression of you. It is hard to change that.’

We drove in silence for a few minutes. I felt tearful but wanted to laugh too. I had only spoken English once in public, but that counted for much more than all the times I spoke French. Jean-Paul lit a cigarette and opened his window a crack.

‘Do you think I'm rude and lack finesse?’

‘No.’ He smiled. ‘And I think you should wear dresses without sleeves more often.’

I blushed. ‘So did they have anything nice to say about me?’

He thought for a moment. ‘They think your husband is very handsome, even with the -’ He gestured at the back of his head.

‘Ponytail.’

‘Yes. But they do not understand why he runs and they think his shorts are too short.’

I smiled to myself. Jogging did seem out of place in a French village, but Rick was impervious to people's stares. Then my smile faded.

‘Why do you know all this about me?’ I asked. ‘About quiches and being pregnant and shutters and washing machines? You act like you're above all this gossip, but you seem to know as much as everybody else.’

‘I am not a gossip,’ Jean-Paul replied firmly, blowing smoke at the top of the window. ‘Someone repeated it to me as a warning.’

‘A warning of what?’

‘Ella, it is a public event every time you and I meet. It is not right for you to meet me. I was told that they are gossiping about us. I should have been more careful. It does not matter about me, but you are a woman, and it is always worse for a woman. Now you will say that it is wrong,’ he continued as I tried to interrupt, ‘but whether right or wrong, it's true. And you are married. And you are a stranger. All these things make it worse.’

‘But it's insulting that you feel their judgment comes before mine. What's wrong with seeing you? I'm not doing anything wrong, for God's sake. I'm married to Rick, but that doesn't mean I can't ever talk to another man!’

Jean-Paul didn't say anything.

‘How do you live with this?’ I said impatiently. ‘With this gossipy village life? Do they know everything about you?’

‘No. Of course it was a shock after big cities, but I learned to be discreet.’

‘And you call this discreet, sneaking off to meet me like this? Now we really do look guilty.’

‘It's not exactly like that. What offends them most is when it's in front of them, under their nostrils.’

‘Noses.’ I smiled in spite of everything.

‘Noses, under their noses.’ He smiled back grimly. ‘It is a different psychology.’

‘Well anyway, the warning hasn't worked. Here we are, after all.’

We were silent for the rest of the journey.

The cover was burned half off, the pages charred and unreadable, except for the first. Written in a spidery hand, in faded brown ink, was the following:

Jean Tournier n. 16 août 1507

m. Hannah Tournier 18 juin 1535

Jacques n. 28 août 1536

Etienne n. 29 mai 1538

m. Isabelle du Moulin 28 mai 1563

Jean n. 1 janvier 1563

Jacob n. 2 juillet 1565

Marie n. 9 octobre 1567

Susanne n. 12 mars 1540

m. Bertrand Bouleaux 29 novembre 1565

Deborah n. 16 octobre 1567

Four pairs of eyes rested on me: those of Jean-Paul, Mathilde, Monsieur Jourdain – who to my surprise was sitting next to Mathilde drinking a highball when we walked in – and a small blonde girl perched on a stool with a Coke in her hand, eyes wide with excitement, introduced as Mathilde's daughter, Sylvie.

I felt a little sick, but I clutched the Bible to my chest and smiled at them.

‘Oui,’ I said simply. ‘Oui.’