One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [53]
We awoke to a hazy pink dawn, the sun streaming through the van windows. I sat up and pushed aside one of the shirts I’d hung as a makeshift curtain. Stall holders had begun to set up trestle tables under the plane trees. Some just spread a blanket on the ground, loading it with piles of brica-brac, whilst others used the backs of their ancient Citroën vans to display their wares. Above, swinging from the trees, a huge banner bore the legend ‘23ème Fréjus Brocante’.
An hour later the sky was sailor blue, and Seffy and I hustled to our café for breakfast. The same toothless madame beamed in delight – not at me, I realized, as she played with Seffy’s bare toes – and the bar began to fill up. Old men drifted in for their pastis or café cognac, girding their livers before a hard day’s work, sometimes in the fields, but more often playing cards outside, or a strenuous game of boules.
The stalls were now fully loaded: pagodas of books, lamps, pitted mirrors, coronas, candlesticks and commodes wobbled perilously. Entire domestic histories, it seemed, were reduced to one table, whilst the ubiquitous Louis Quinze chairs with shredded silk upholstery – looking faintly embarrassed to be outdoors and not in a salon – stood by. As the church clock chimed eight, I lifted Seffy carefully into the pram. Happily, after a huge bottle of milk warmed in the microwave by madame, his eyes closed like a doll’s and I shot round the stalls. I bought quickly, but, I hoped, shrewdly, trusting my instinct.
Feeling rather pleased with myself I awarded myself a break at eleven o’clock, a cup of coffee, thinking I’d earned it. I’d wake Seffy for a feed, I determined, and then have another look: make sure there was nothing I’d missed. As I went towards our usual café, I paused at a shop to buy an English newspaper. That’s when I saw it.
FOREIGN SECRETARY KILLED IN TERRORIST ATTACK
As I picked it off the stand I remember feeling a great throb, a rush of blood. I stared at the photograph: a wreck of a bus. Read the first few lines. But the realization that he was dead was not immediate. I felt only terror, and a desperation for the terror to end. I read his name again; ‘Dominic Forbes, 36’. I began to shake violently. My knees gave way and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on the floor. A baby in a pram began to wail beside me. My baby. But I couldn’t get up. Someone crouched beside me: a helping hand was on my arm, then another. A girl’s face, the French girl’s, Françoise, close to mine. Her voice, urgent: ‘Are you all right?’
I couldn’t speak. The newspaper was still clenched in my hand. Consternation was intense in the background now. Large Frenchwomen were flapping around offering advice, a small crowd was gathering, gesticulating, their voices shrill. Françoise was helping me to my feet and leading me away, one hand pushing the pram, another supporting me. We went towards a café, an umbrella in the shade. I sat dumbly. She ordered me a drink, a pastis, one for her too, but I couldn’t drink. My eyes kept going back to the paper. I felt the blood drain from me, felt cold without it. I remember covering my mouth with my hand as I screamed. Françoise reached across the table to seize my arm in alarm, her eyes wide, but the scream had relieved the first terrifying pressure of the truth, the first shock of certainty. I felt both trembling hands cover my eyes as I wept noisily. I remember Françoise lifting a wailing, frightened Seffy from his pram to soothe him as I cradled my head to the table, catching my breath in great heaving sobs that seemed to come from the centre of the earth.
I don’t remember much about the following sequence of events, except