Free Reflections of Sunflowers by Ruth Silvestre Page B

blanket.
    ‘Would you like to start at the top?’ Kitty enquired. She led me not to the grand staircase, but up the winding back stairs. Up and up we went where I discovered eight more bedrooms on the top floor, which I had never seen. We peered out of the high windows, one giving a view down onto the lake, another onto the top branches of the great dark cedar trees below. In another of the rooms was a light well, like a small counter built over a glass panel in the floor through which one could see into the room beneath. I wondered why it was there, how many people had looked down through it over the years and what they had seen. On we went, up another small wooden staircase into the great wooden belfry.
    ‘We’d better not ring the bell,’ she giggled. ‘The boys kept on doing it yesterday.’
    We had heard nothing up at Bel-Air. Clearly the call of the peacocks, now long disappeared, had carried further than the sound of the bell.
    ‘And now,’ she said dramatically, ‘I’ll take you to see the bats.’
    Back we went down the dark narrow staircase, ducked under a low doorway into the sculleries at the back of the kitchen, and she carefully pushed open a small metal door. ‘You can just look,’ she whispered, very seriously.
    The bats, like a row of upside down very dirty, grey handkerchiefs, hung from the low ceiling.
    Kitty put her finger to her lips. ‘We mustn’t disturb them,’ she said closing the door again.
    I wondered how much of all this Kitty would remember when she grew up, but before the summer was out her father had decided that he wasn’t cut out to spend months, if not a couple of years, in rural France and she and her family left for home.
    Preparations were in hand for the village fête to be held that Saturday. The new committee, which included Véronique, was still finding its feet. After the joining of the two opposing factions in the commune under the new mayor, it would take a few years it seemed, for the summer fête to regain its former glory. It was to be a smaller affair, held in the playground of the school, but Raymond made a special journey to the chateau to make sure that ‘
les Anglais
’ were invited tobook their places. And reminded that they must bring their own plates, glasses and cutlery. The day before the fête, I was surprised when Thomas offered to come shopping, until I saw him solemnly deciding in the supermarket which gel he should buy to make the front of his hair stand up. The next evening, although the sun had almost gone down before we left for the village, he put on his sunglasses and tried hard to look cool in his brand-new shirt. He and Kieran eyed the local girls but were soon racing around with the boys in the field behind the school. Tables were arranged in the playground, which is not particularly large as there are usually only about a dozen pupils in the school.
    The evening began as always with unlimited aperitif, a very potent Sangria. Mme Renée, and Mme Barrou, who, for as long as I can remember, have been stalwarts of all preparations for village affairs, from fêtes to weddings and funerals, had at last taken honourable retirement. They sat at their ease with their husbands, while the younger generation served the first course which was, inevitably, generous portions of rice salad with tuna, hardboiled egg and sweetcorn. Raymond always leaves the sweetcorn. ‘
C’est pour les bêtes!
’ he declares.
    He knows perfectly well that maize grown for human consumption is a different variety but still refuses to try it. Many local farmers grow edible maize. The flowering plumes are more silvery and the foliagemore delicate, but Raymond still cannot bring himself to eat it. He also won’t eat broad beans, yet he adores ‘
soupe de fèves
’. Broad beans are for making soup and that is that. Mike adores broad beans and tells him how delicious they are eaten fresh. Raymond shrugs; ‘
Oui, c’est possible
,’ he says with a shrug, ‘
mais une