Read Online We All Ran into the Sunlight by Natalie Young - Free Book Online Page B

Her eyes had begun to glaze. She watched the fire blaze and hiss through a twisted olive branch and reach for the next one above it. It licked with a soft green flame then finally took hold.

     
    We must help ourselves. These were the words she heard first in the morning, as if her question had been left hanging in the room, watching over her, waiting for her to rise, to the day, to the house, to this fact of married life. She stirred and felt the life come back into her limbs and she found she was not so cold beneath the blankets and the dust and dirt had not got into her lungs; she felt well slept, almost clean.
    She pushed open the shutters. Marie wouldn’t have cared about the blankets and the lungs. Marie would have slept in her boots, a cigarette tip dormant in her hand. A warm light stole into the room. Her eyes travelled slowly down the steps and out into the courtyard. Across the pale stripe of the sky there were small fingers of yellow cloud.
    Arnaud got up from the mattress and took his brandy bottle from the table. He took a swig or two from what was left and then pulled on his trousers and coat.
    ‘There is work to be done.’
    ‘Arnaud, chéri, I….’
    ‘I’m going out to the vineyard…’
    ‘But what about breakfast?’
    ‘What is there to eat?’
    ‘Some bread. The jam.’
    ‘We need more food. There is money in the wallet, not much. You will hopefully find an épicerie in the village.’
    But the village gave up none of its secrets, not today, nor any morning that she walked quickly out of the chateau gates and through the square, peering in through the window of the café with its broken pane of glass, past the church and along the small passageways in search of a baker, a grocery store, even a stall selling fruit. She took each possible pathway through the village, down alleys reeking of urine, over cobbles worn smooth, past groups of cats licking their fur and sitting in groups in the first light of the sun.
    The villagers themselves were suspicious. Doors were opened quietly; faces appeared and looked around in the air behind her, their sad eyes asking nothing nor giving anything away. Their doors were closed quietly, firmly; shutters on the upstairs balconies drawn in.
    ‘Because the people here are afraid, Madame,’ said the Mayor that afternoon, standing in the courtyard.
    Arnaud walked towards them both slowly. He shook the Mayor’s hand.
    ‘Monsieur Borja, allow me to present myself…’
    The Mayor pulled a bandaged hand from the pocket of his short brown trousers and held it out.
    ‘He has brought us wine, Arnaud. Two casks. I’ve put them in the kitchen…’
    Arnaud wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm. In this light, after his day outside, he looked ruddy and calm.
    ‘Welcome.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘My pleasure.’
    Lucie smiled and looked at the ground.
    ‘The Mayor was just explaining to me, Arnaud, why the villagers do not come out of their houses, and no one will help me with provisions.’
    ‘We have all been disturbed by the war,’ said the Mayor, addressing only Arnaud. ‘Now people just want to get on with their lives.’
    ‘But I was just asking if anyone might sell me something to eat, some clothes perhaps, some sheets for the mattresses, an old quilt.’
    ‘Madame, have you come here with no clothes?’
    ‘One suitcase. But I walked all the way to the town today , Monsieur, and I was able to buy some food.’
    ‘You let me know if you have a problem with rats in the chateau. They are pests… they come in from the fields and eat everything.’
    ‘I’m not scared of rats, Monsieur,’ said Lucie, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking. There were rats in Paris during the war. In the end we had to borrow our neighbour’s cat to eat the rats. When we all got terribly hungry one week there was a suggestion we should eat the cat.’
    The Mayor coloured. He had thought her prissy in her crepe and petticoat. Now she stood before him in