The Night Rainbow A Novel - By Claire King Page 0,1
me most.
Telling Maman about the fly was a disaster, I say.
Yes, says Margot, you should have told her she was looking beautiful today.
That would have been better, I say.
Never mind, says Margot. I don’t really like tomato sauce. Shall we have a picnic?
I hear the splash of the shower coming on upstairs. On the stove, spits of tomato sauce are dancing over the saucepan and on to the floor. Some of them are flying so high they are splattering the clothes on the airer. Our clothes, saucepans and frying pans, strings of garlic and chillies and onions, dried sausages, all hanging together out of reach on S-shaped hooks with pointed ends. All getting very spotty with tomato. I get up from the table and turn off the gas.
Come on, Pea, says Margot. I’m hungry.
Outside the bright sunshine makes us squint. I have forgotten my hat and can already feel my hair heating up. Sometimes I wish it didn’t get so hot here, but Maman said that French summers are much nicer than those in England, where she came from. She said that here at least you can always rely on the sun.
We stand in the courtyard and wonder where we will go today, although the answer has been the same for two summers, one winter and a birthday. Our choosing began when Maman came back from hospital last year. She had changed from fat to thin, but she didn’t bring back a baby like she promised. She left it at the hospital, along with her happiness.
When Papa was at home things were still OK. He hugged Maman all the time and there were girl-shaped spaces in between their elbows and tummies that I could squeeze into and join in the cuddle. But when he was out working, Maman would tell us to just get out of the house and go play, and so we did. We play mostly in the low meadow, and sometimes on Windy Hill, the places that Maman used to take us on walks before the dead baby happened. Some days I still ask her to come along, but she prefers it indoors. Even though she started growing a new baby right away, it didn’t put the happiness back.
Then Papa died. One day in spring, he was driving his tractor on a hill and he fell off it and was squashed. That was tragic, the priest at the church said so, but afterwards it was a catastrophe. Without Papa here there is never a very good time to be in the house, so every day we have to decide where to go.
Sunny side or shady side? says Margot, which is another way of asking the same question.
If we go around the sunny side of the house we can take the path down through the peach orchards and across the village road into the low meadow. If we go to the shady side, and around the back of the barn, we can cross the high pasture and go sit on Windy Hill.
Shady side, I say. I want to go and see the wing turbines.
The turbines are taller than houses. They stand over on another hill in two rows, like three-wing angels with their backs to the sea, watching over the villages and the meadows. They make the electricity that goes to our light switches, so at night when I’m in bed, even when everything else is dark, I know there is a little bit of light behind my door. That stops me being afraid. The darkness is lonely, the turbines stir it away. When I watch them turning, see that they are still there, everything slows down to the steady round and round and I forget about being upset.
Pea, scolds Margot, for goodness sake, it’s midday. There is no shade on Windy Hill, we will burn up like toast and get sunstroke and melt.
I start to argue, but Margot interrupts me, which she does a lot.
Today I am the maman, she says, so you will do as you’re told.
But we haven’t been to Windy Hill for ages, I say.
Pea, look at you, you haven’t even got a hat on. We’re going to the low meadow and that’s the end of it. Margot folds her arms. Besides, we can paddle, she adds, looking down at my yellow sandals.
The stream will be cold and my feet are hot. The stream will feel good. Margot knows this. Margot knows a lot of things before I even think of them.