The Night Rainbow A Novel - By Claire King Page 0,73
people need time to be sad on their own.
Like Maman.
Claude shakes his head. Yes and no, he says.
I have to make Claude feel better. Margot says people die to make way for the other people, I say, so maybe it’s the same with dogs. Maybe Merlin is making way for a puppy?
Claude smiles slightly and Margot puts her thumbs up to me. It was a good thing to say.
I’m sure he was, says Claude, but still, he was my friend; I’m going to miss him.
When I am a dog, I won’t die, says Margot.
You might.
No. I won’t. I will be the kind of dog who lives for ever.
Pardon? says Claude.
Nothing, I say. I point to his hand, the stack of photographs. In the top one the girls are in Claude’s garden. They have dark shiny hair and blue dresses.
Who are they? I ask. And how did they get to ride on your bikes?
Claude’s face looks just like Maman’s when we found out that Papa had died. And when you are that sad it is called having a broken heart.
OK, he says, I’ll tell you a story. He is standing in the middle of the room, looking out of the window. We sit on the white tiles at his feet. Those little girls are called Emeline and Sophie, and those two little red bikes? They belonged to those two little girls. Once, he says, there was a farmer’s son, quite handsome, who fell in love with a beautiful princess. They got married, and the princess had two children, Emeline and Sophie. They were the most beautiful girls in the whole land and the man and his family were very happy. They lived in a small palace, with a beautiful garden that the princess liked to plant with flowers and vegetables. They had everything they needed.
Claude’s voice is very faint. I open my mouth to ask a question but he interrupts me.
One day, he says, in the summer, they decided to take a picnic to the beach. Emeline and Sophie were wearing dark blue dresses with white at the bottom, near their knees. They are wearing the dresses in that photograph there, but you can’t see the white at the bottom. It was a beautiful summer, and there were lots of holidaymakers that year. The roads were very busy. Some people were in too much of a hurry. There was a big accident with smashed-up cars, and those two little girls never got to the beach.
Were they hurt?
They died. The lady too. And the man was broken.
Were the little girls very old? I ask. Claude is crying, I have never seen a grownup cry like this before, he is crumpled like paper.
Not very old at all, he says. And I make the joins in my head, because their bikes are not very big either.
I go over to Claude and hug his legs. He crouches down so that I am standing between his knees, and he hugs me back, properly. Quite hard, in fact. I pat his back gently, the way Papa used to do with me. Claude shivers all over, as though he had stepped out into the cold, and lets go of me. He walks over to the window.
It happened a long time ago, he says, before you were born. If they were still alive they would be ladies, not much younger than your maman. They might even have had their own children.
I do not know what to say to this. I know Maman was a little girl once upon a time because there were spiders and bees and wasps but no scorpions and a garden with a swing. She had snickets and paddling pools and she ate rocks.
Did they eat rocks? I ask.
Rocks?
Yes, rocks on sticks? Like bonbons? Maman did, in the olden days.
Claude’s eyebrows do a dance. No, no rocks, he says. In fact Emeline – the little sister – you remind me a lot of her.
So, can we ride their bikes? says Margot.
No one says anything. Claude begins to roll up a cigarette. His grandfather clock tick-tocks, loud in the space between the words. There won’t be an answer to the bike question today.
OK then, we shall tell you the news that you have missed, announces Margot, standing up and putting herself in front of the television, which is turned off. First, she says, the evening primroses died and so Maman did not like them.
We threw the dead flowers in the bin, I say. Claude looks up.