‘Grand,’ I said.
The daily struggle continued. Madame would catch me watching Oliver at the centre of his new family with Monsieur and the boy. Bad enough to have my own sister as competition, but now I had Madame Véronique’s family too. I wondered if she was also jealous of the time her father and son spent with Oliver. She would smile sympathetically, but then thrust her comb into my hands. I suppressed my jealousy, buried myself in my new role and learned as much as I could in the kitchen.
A couple of days later, Madame introduced me to Maurice, a burly odd-looking vegetable producer who owned a farm at the top of the hill. Maurice’s English was better than Madame’s. He intimated that Madame had told him I was un homo. He said he was also gay and that he could bring me to a nightclub in Bordeaux where I could meet other gay men. I was puce with embarrassment, but he laughed heartily and took me away to be deflowered by the divine Thierry – a cross-dressing pig farmer from Saint-émilion. The scales fell from my eyes that night. I realized that I belonged to this strange community. I fitted into this world. I still have dreams about waking up beside Thierry.
I arrived late the next morning for my kitchen duties. Madame winked and grinned and made some obscene gestures with her hands. What a truly wonderful woman! Of course, Oliver was full of questions about where I’d been. I made up something, but he knew that I hadn’t been with Madame, and I could feel his disappointment in me. Yet his disapproval of my homosexuality, which had previously so bothered me, now mattered not a jot. My feelings for Oliver had changed overnight. My sexual interest in him would never be reciprocated; what would be the point, after all? He figured out where I’d been, and moved his bunk to the other side of the dorm. Still, nothing was said. Laura was more accepting now that I had taken my eye off Oliver. In fact, she went out of her way to help me with my assignations, arranging lifts to the city for me and introducing me to other men she suspected of being gay. My summer took off in a completely hedonistic way, which now seems horribly inappropriate in light of the tragedy that was to come.
By mid August, Laura was still complaining of exhaustion, much to the annoyance of the other workers. Everybody had complained in the beginning, but by now they were all used to it. Laura must have been quite isolated in retrospect, her brother and her boyfriend working in the house while she laboured in the fields. There were others in our group, of course, but she was closer to us than to anybody else. I was now far too busy with my new life to notice much about my little sister, though it was clear that her relationship with Oliver was fizzling out. He was spending less and less time with her and more time with the old man and the boy. Then, one day, she was carried into the kitchen in a state of collapse and was brought to the doctor. Madame, as usual, took control. Oliver and I were worried, but Madame later explained to Oliver that Laura had a gastric complaint, that she would be right as rain after a week’s rest. She was installed in a turret room of the chateau, up two floors via a rickety wooden staircase. I looked in on her a few times a day. She was uncommunicative and tearful. I guessed that her relationship with Oliver wasn’t going well, but honestly I couldn’t blame him if he’d begun to lose interest. Her constant complaining had begun to grate on everyone’s nerves. I tried to gently broach the subject, but she didn’t want to know, saying that I ‘just wouldn’t understand’. She was right. I still don’t.
I tried to talk to Oliver. He maintained that Laura was simply jealous of our working conditions compared to hers. He admitted that he had tried to finish their relationship, but said that Laura found it hard to accept that it was over. He claimed his work for Monsieur simply took up too much time and that Laura resented it.
It seemed clear to me that while Oliver might have loved Laura once, his love for his new ‘family’ overshadowed that completely. Oliver chose to spend time with them rather than with her. I raised this carefully with Laura and suggested that she just give Oliver some time. It wasn’t as if he was going to stay with them for ever. We would all be returning to Ireland soon enough, and although it was a strange infatuation, could she not see that it was just temporary?
Laura declared it was over, that she had no choice but to accept Oliver’s rejection of her, but refused to discuss it further. I thought there was more to it than that, but I didn’t push the issue. And then circumstances overwhelmed us to such a degree that Laura’s erratic moods were pushed to the back of my mind.
Three weeks later, the day after the harvest had started in earnest, we were all fast asleep in our dorms. Everybody was particularly exhausted as all hands were on deck that day. My kitchen duties and Oliver’s admin ones were suspended, as there was a short enough window in which to pick the first harvest of grapes at their best. In a shattered state, I collapsed on to my bunk that night but woke some hours later in a state of disorientation. There were raised voices coming from outside. Oliver and Laura were shouting at each other, though, to be truthful, Laura was the one doing the shouting. Others stirred, and some went out to see what was going on. I had really had enough of Laura’s mood swings. She was just humiliating herself, and Oliver, and me. When I got outside, he was physically trying to remove her arms from around his neck. ‘You do love me! You have to!’ she was sobbing, refusing to let go.
‘Laura!’ I called out to her sharply. She let him go then and turned to glare at me.
‘Go to bed, Laura,’ I whispered fiercely, ‘you’re making a show of yourself.’
Oliver turned, as if to walk away from me, but I stopped him. ‘Oliver, we need to have a conversation.’ He looked uncertain but followed me back into the bunk-house, and gradually everybody settled down again. In whispers, I began to apologize for Laura’s behaviour.
‘She’s not normally like this, I don’t really know what’s got into her … maybe it’s the new environment, maybe the work is just too hard for her.’ I asked him to try to be a bit more patient with her. I understood he no longer wanted a relationship with her, but asked him just to pay her a bit of attention so that she wouldn’t feel ignored. He refused to meet my eyes and kept fiddling with his watch strap. I was mortified at finding myself in this position, so soon after declaring my own feelings for him.
It was a few moments before I noticed a strange something in the air. I couldn’t place it, but instinct pushed me out of bed again and I rose carefully, unwilling to disturb the others. Oliver followed. We went out into the open air. The night was warm, but there was a distinct smell out here, and in my confusion I thought at first that someone must still be up smoking the herbal stuff. Oliver pointed towards the house. Unusually, there was little moonlight, so it was only possible to make out the bare outline of the chateau against the night sky, and then I heard a kind of crackling sound and suddenly I was running up the steps and I knew the smell was fire and the air was thick with it, and when I neared the top of the steps I could feel the scorching heat on my face and see that the ground floor of one wing was engulfed in flames. Oliver went to wake everyone.