Page 40 of Vianne

They call it La Ville Rose , on account of the terracotta bricks that make up so many of the buildings.

That day it didn’t look rosy at all; under the persistent rain it was as grey and cheerless as any other strange city filled with tourists and students and people at work, and strangers and casual labourers and refugees and lost souls.

I was already feeling grubby. Travelling attracts a certain special kind of grime; the kind that gets into everything.

And I was gritty with sleeplessness and already homesick for Marseille, where the markets would be waking up all around the Vieux Port, and stray cats slinking from the Butte, and the bells ringing out from Notre-Dame under the Virgin’s mantle sky.

I recovered my travel bag from between the seats and got off the bus into a rain that was thin and cold and somehow inescapable.

Why does it always feel so strange, arriving in a new town?

I should be used to it by now. The sadness of being in transit; the unfamiliar smells; the altered sound of the traffic; the indifferent crowds.

I have seen so many towns; so many railway stations and bus depots.

And people are not so different. Everywhere in the world there is kindness or indifference, anger, suspicion, comfort.

This town will be like that. Here – at least for as long as I stay, for a night or a week – will be home.

And yet it doesn’t feel that way. Home still feels like La Bonne Mère.

Perhaps I’m still grieving my mother. I tell myself I need to grow up.

No one is coming to save me. But I feel cold and lost today, and not at all ready for what’s to come.

Oh, Maman. I wish you were here. I miss her more than words can say.

If only she had known that on the day I tried to escape from her.

If only I could have told her that she would be with me forever.

But for now, I need a place to stay. For now at least, I have options.

Nearly two thousand francs in cash, earnings from La Bonne Mère, as well as tips from my regulars.

Bar work pays well when you’re a witch. Charm the coins from their pockets, ’Viane.

Let your smile reflect the sun . Except that I don’t feel like smiling right now.

Right now I feel alone and afraid. Inside me, Anouk is a nautilus, curled up in silence.

In less than six months I will see her. I will be able to speak to her.

I will teach her everything I know about being in the world.

We will build a home in a tree, or in an abandoned cottage.

We will eat berries and woodland fruits, and sleep on a bed of sweet summer hay.

We will be the best of friends. I will be such a good mother.

But that’s the child in me dreaming. For now, the practicalities.

A bed for the night. A meal. A job. Everything costs more than you think.

My two thousand francs will not go far. One step at a time, Vianne.

It has been hours since I last ate. There’s a café near the bus station: its name is Café Pamplemousse , and a café-croissant costs eight francs.

I wash myself in the bathroom, and brush my travel-tousled hair.

The croissant is stale and overpriced; the coffee makes me feel nauseous, but I fill my pockets with sugar cubes.

The middle-aged woman behind the bar gives me a suspicious look.

I know how I look to her; laden, unkempt, dishevelled, as if I have slept in my clothes.

My smile reflects nothing but sadness. I’d like to ask her if she knows of a boarding-house or a cheap hotel, but I already sense her hostility.

She is tired-looking; grey-blonde; maybe fifty-five years old. She does not return my cautious smile.

Suddenly, her face comes alight. Another customer has entered. It must be a regular, because the woman behind the bar greets her with what looks like genuine pleasure.

‘Sophie! The usual?’

‘ Salut , Cécile!’

The woman is polished, professional. Smooth dark hair to her shoulders.

Grey pinstriped skirt-suit, well-cut enough to reveal a neat figure.

Patent black shoes, too high to walk in comfort.

She must work nearby, I think. She doesn’t like to walk in those heels.

No wedding ring. There’s someone, though.

Those shoes have a kind of eloquence. Her usual is café-croissant , with strawberry jam from a little jar.

The croissant looks fresher than mine was: Cécile looks after her regulars.

Suddenly I don’t want to go back out into the cheerless rain.

I want to sit here for a while. I put down my bag, which suddenly feels unusually heavy.

Cécile looks at me with suspicion. ‘You can’t stay here without ordering.

’ Her voice is very different to when she was speaking to Sophie. ‘I’m not a waiting room, you know.’

It shouldn’t have made me angry. I’ve heard that tone so many times, in so many different places.

But today I am feeling raw, as if I am missing a layer of skin.

Perhaps it’s the hormones of pregnancy, or the changing seasons, or homesickness, or just this terrible fatigue that feels like so much more than mere sleeplessness.

I clench my teeth and fork the sign against malchance behind my back.

‘I’ll have another coffee.’

‘Five francs.’ She gives me a look that would sour beer.

I reach for my purse, which has fallen to the bottom of my bag.

It springs open as I pull it out, spilling small change over the floor.

The woman in the high-heeled shoes looks at me from her table.

I pick up the coins, my face burning. The last coin has rolled beneath the table at which she is sitting.

If it were a ten-centime piece, maybe I would have left it there.

But it’s a silver five-franc piece. Too much to abandon.

I say: ‘Excuse me,’ and reach for the coin, on my knees on the pitch-pine floor, which has not been cleaned in a long time. A wine stain like an open eye stares at me accusingly. Another joins it, alarmingly bright. And another.

That isn’t wine. I lift my hand to my face to find that my nose is bleeding. The woman at the bar gives a cry of mingled surprise and disgust. I struggle to my feet, the coin under the table forgotten. Blood falls in fat red drops from my nose down the front of my shirt.

‘I’m sorry.’

I shouldn’t apologize. And yet I feel compelled, somehow. I have always been sensitive to the discomfort of others. I try to pinch my nose, but the blood refuses to be silenced. It trumpets its presence, exuberant; splashes onto the pinewood floor.

The woman at the bar says: ‘That’s enough. Get out of here. Take your bloody nose elsewhere.’

There’s no point in getting angry. And yet it’s so unfair.

The voice of my younger self in my mind is raw with unspoken anger.

We didn’t do anything wrong, Maman. Why are people like this?

Is it our skin, our hair, our clothes, our scent of other places?

Is it simply that they are afraid, and that we are different?

I turn to face her, unspeaking. My nose is still bleeding heavily.

My head feels like a helium balloon, tugged and tumbled by the wind.

Cécile’s colours are threaded with disgust and indecision.

That, and a kind of entitlement, that says: I belong here.

You don’t. I look a little closer into the woman’s colours.

Not at what she wants me to see, but at what she is trying to hide.

I wouldn’t normally do this – Marseille should have taught me that – but today I am not in a normal place.

That sense of missing a layer of skin, the blood from my nose that wouldn’t stop, the sense that to her, somehow, I might as well be invisible—

What do you see, Vianne? What do you see?

I see a girl in a hospital room. I see a woman living alone. I see some self-importance; some loneliness; some aggression. I see guilt, and fear, and regret. Most of all, though, I see loss – a very familiar kind of loss – and that kills my anger.

I say: ‘It wasn’t your fault, Cécile.’

She bristles. ‘What are you talking about?’

I said: ‘You were fifteen. Only a child. They all decided what was best for you and her, between them. They thought you’d get over it, that you’d forget. They never knew about the times you lay awake, feeling her inside. The dreams you had of the two of you. The secret name you gave her.’

‘What’s this?’ Her voice rises suddenly. ‘Who have you been talking to?’

I should have looked away by then, but somehow I couldn’t stop myself. Perhaps it was fatigue, or distress, of that blood that wouldn’t stop. I held out screaming, scarlet palms like those of a bloodstained oracle.

‘You called her Ondine , in your dreams. In life, you never saw her. Nothing but the sheet they held over you, to hide her. You never held her in your arms. You have no proof she was even there, except for those silvery marks on your skin, which faded with time to a dappled brown, and the memory of her fading cry, right at the end of the corridor. But you never forgot her. And you never forgave yourself for letting them take her away from you.’

Cécile sags like a ruptured balloon. I see her jellyfish colours blooming and fading fretfully.

Sophie in the patent shoes is frozen in place, hesitant.

I sense she is struggling to cope. So many things need attention.

The dropped coins; the blood on the floor; the breakfast coffee growing cold; and now, Cécile at the counter, and the girl with the nosebleed saying those things, those bewildering things—

Suddenly I feel very dizzy. Maybe it’s the nosebleed, or the fact that a stale croissant is the only thing I’ve eaten today.

But I feel somehow divided , like a river forking towards the sea.

On one side, a bowl with my name on the rim.

On the other, the Man in Black. But which is Vianne? And is Vianne me?

The lights in the café seem very bright; the sound of the rain is deafening.

And I can still feel her memory, which has somehow become my own, with all the midwives clustering around the wailing parcel, ready to repackage it and send it out to someone else, to someone who deserves her, and I feel a sudden conviction that I am about to lose my child, that this is the price you have to pay for misusing our kind of gift—

‘Help me,’ I said, and sat suddenly on the floor, pulling the tablecloth after me.

The words seemed to float around my head like a cloud of butterflies.

‘Please help me. I’m pregnant. My baby—’ And then, for the second time that year, I passed out on the floor of a backstreet café, with the taste of blood in my mouth, and the sound of the autumn rain like thunder in my temples.