CHAPTER 43
The meeting with the Direction at the school had, with the benefit of hindsight, been amusing in a very perverse way. Pascale and I had sat down, facing the board of six Directors across a table which bore coffee and small vienneses, and a mantle of politeness and courtesy had been drawn across the affair as a cloak against night chills.

There were accusations. Of course, there was no substance to them, I was a good and proper teacher, and there was no suggestion that I could or would have, in any way…What suggestions? Which accusations? In the end, they had settled upon a cushion of ‘reputation’ and ‘to avoid unpleasantnesses’, which rather failed as a strategy once my mentor began to berate them for such crimes as betrayal and cowardice. We left, in the end, without satisfaction, and Pascale’s nose inclined upwards, and she held that pose until she was seated behind the controls of her car. Laughter then seized her.

“Sophie, their imaginations! What things they might do with all that energy directed correctly! Oh, and that accusation, in the WCs…”

She fell once more into laughter. I knew what she meant, of course, the claim that I would ease myself before the little girls of my class, but standing, my skirts raised to allow…and of course, I had to join her in the laughter. I had lost my place, my children, my very mission in life, but my new strength took me onwards to a new goal. I gave Pascale an embrace, and the kiss, and my new life continued as it was destined to. I gave my best to my students, as they deserved, and I tried my hardest to give back to the people around me the love and joy they continued to surprise me with.

Maggie came round, one day in May, as the late Spring invasion of the English tourists was starting to come to a peak, and she looked at her feet, and the walls, and the sunflowers that were starting to climb once more, and there was pink to her face and a smile of nerve and perhaps fear.

“Sophie…?”

I stood and went to her, and we embraced, for I knew, and all I needed to ask was in one word.

“When?”

Her tears came freely then, but they were tears of utter happiness and delight. “November, my sweet sister. It will be in November, so that I shall sit my tests, my examinations, and we shall have our Summer, and then…oh, my darling one, you will have to be older, for aunts are old and severe, no?”

And so she was slapped on the leg, and I assured her there was no envy. That night, I lay in my bed, in my sunflower house, the place of my rebirth twice over, and sleep did not claim me for some hours. I was not a maternal woman. I did not urge to deliver my own child, although the facility was something I had despaired over. I displaced motherhood to my vocation, delivering what I could to young minds, young hearts, but nevertheless, just to have had the option, the choice that Maggie’s body gave her, that would have been wonderful beyond words.

I still had moments, I have them yet, where despite the changes to my form, the life I have lived, indeed the knowledge that has always resided in my heart of who and what I am, the voice has always whispered ‘Fraud’ and ‘Liar’. That voice is not that of Forgeron, or any of his type, but my own. It is very difficult to mount an argument with oneself, and so I simply tried to ignore its calls to me. At night, though, and especially after Margot’s news, it was a stern fight.

There was a celebration, of course, and absolutely everyone was there, even Fatima with her new husband. How had that happened, how had we missed so much? Time was escaping me, it seemed, my life so filled with incident and reward that I must occasionally place foot to ground and cry halt.

She was slightly embarrassed over her Mehmet, but Elle and Maggie seized her and we took her into the garden of the old house for confrontation and interrogation. Maggie was foremost for once, which was evidence of how Rollo had brought the shy girl forward into maturity.

“Well? Who found this man?”

Fatima smiled gently, but to her feet. “My parents had some men they wanted me to meet, and I said no, that I would not be sold as the lamb on the slab, but they insisted. I must have a man, of substance and status, and I said, with the deepest respect and greatest love, Papa, I said I will have a man of decency and honour, of soul and heart”

Elle pushed forward. “And? Where did you find this man, this Mehmet?”

Fatima laughed, then, laughed freely and happily. “Oh, my friends, that is the funniest thing! One of the suitors my parents brought to me, he was not bad, and he was an accountant, but there was no spark there, but because he does not have the permit to drive his brother brought him and…”

There was a look on her face, and Elle started to laugh. She turned to Maggie, struck a pose with the back of her hand to her forehead, and in a dreamy voice murmured “And he is how old? Tell me he is free!”

We all laughed at the memory, though we needed to tell Fatima, and Elle’s arm was slapped by my sister, and as the laughter eased Fatima quietly said “And his shoes are size 49…”

They had wed in Tangiers, the whole affair a whirlwind of joy, it seemed, and as the brother was a doctor in Rouen, and the introduction had almost been done by her parents, all honour was satisfied. Abdullah had apparently spent some time researching Mehmet’s background, and pronounced himself satisfied.

“He was so pompous about it” said Fatima, “So stern-faced and rigid, and then, oh my brother, then he laughs and says, well, as there was no evidence against him I had nothing that I needed to hide for my sister’s happiness, and, oh my friends, yes, it is wonderful!”

And Spring moved to Summer, the early part, and once more there was a basket of meats brought to the sunflower house, for Gaston had succeeded well with his Bacca. There was a note, this time, from his father, and it simply said that I had shown him that his family could stand higher than they had, reach further, and would I, could I, if the boy could perhaps gain a place at the University…

That was the answer to that small night voice. That was my vindication, my motherhood.

I left the sunflowers under the watchful but wayward eyes of Marck before July, as the academic year ended and the beach called my name, and gathered Maggie and her growing life to me for the trip south. We had made an adjustment in our minds, and that was simple: as we were sisters, then Roser must also be grandmother to Maggie, and therefore this baby would be her great-grandchild. Which naturally meant that our parents must be considered her stepchildren, and Jaume---oh, an idea can only go so far before it becomes a little silly, but there was enough love there to share among all, and it came from all directions.

Cobwebs and string, once more. I had grown to love the immodesty of the Summer sand, much to Roser’s amusement, and Maggie was only just beginning to show her promise, so we took our days in the sun as enthusiastically as ever. I still loved the swimming, the mask over the eyes and the fish flashing in the sunbeams cutting through the clear water, but the rest was always a delight. My mother’s name was not only over the door and written on the card, but apparently spoken of through the town and further, further than I had realised, for when we arrived I was shown one thing, before I had even placed my baggage in my room. It was small, it was on the sign of the hotel, and it was a star, from Michelin.

My mother beamed a huge smile at me. “Not bad for an old floor sweeper from Normandy, no?”

That was a real moment of awakening for me, the realisation that in my focus on my own little world of children and study, the rest of the world continued to turn, other lives were lived. Fatima, my parents, Maggie, they all had their news and their wonders to share. My life was indeed good, and so much better for the other lives that crossed mine. There would be another, I knew, in November.

Rollo joined his wife just as I embarked upon the journey home for my English pupils, and I watched their greeting to each other with a heart that would never grow cold to their display of their absolute love for each other. Always, always there was a little shiver of sadness in me, a memory of a tall blond, but it was not to be. I had my students, I had my vocation. I was fulfilled. I was also amused, of course, for my English were as intense as ever, as drunk as I remembered, and as frantic in their search for copulation. I would sleep in my little cell, marked and unmarked papers spread on the floor, and listen to the sounds of the night. An owl, in the distance. The squeal of the tyres on the tramway. The soft thump-thump-thump of sexual congress in some room on my floor. There were, it seemed, certain eternal truths.

I returned home after the last students had gone, and it was as if I had returned in time. The sunflowers were down, that word was on the door. Marck was there within an hour, and this time he brought a friend, and there were professional photographs taken and a dusting of silver powder on the door. Marck had an edge to his mood.

“The piece of a cunt is out, Sophie. He has been released. Perhaps M. Mouth needs to be introduced to M. Baton”

They left, in the end, and I clung to my new confidence. Family, friends. I was not alone, even though Rollo and Maggie were with my parents, so far away. I had a glass of wine, and bathed, and settled to a book. At eleven that night, there was a hammering at my door, and I caught the smell of burning. I rushed to open it, and there was something alight on the doorstep, some newspaper or other. I went to stamp out the flames…

I threw the shoes away, in the end, as I could not erase my memory of the dog faeces they had filled the paper with.