The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [112]
Marshall arose and crossed the room to study the portrait, a framed drawing.
“It’s you,” he said. “That’s how I remember you. That’s how I see you now.”
In the drawing, made with free-flowing charcoal lines, she was lovely and delicate—her twinkling eyes, the teeth he loved.
She shook her head and stared at her hands, folded in her lap.
IT SEEMED NATURAL that they would lie in each other’s arms that night. It was what they both wanted. They needed to be together. Physical comfort was what he had to offer her, not words. He sank into her, in her downy bed, alighting smoothly, rushing and then slowing, and she was affectionate and generous. For a long time afterward, they clasped each other tightly. They couldn’t get close enough. He had no sense of what came next.
“It is warm with you,” she said.
“I want to protect you.”
“You are good to me.”
“You are nice to hold.”
“Just hold me.”
49.
WHEN MARSHALL AWOKE NEXT MORNING, SHE WAS NO LONGER beside him. It was late, past nine. The kitchen was cleared of last night’s dishes, and the cat was at the door. He found a box of pellets for the cat, a striped gray thing with a notched ear, and filled her dish on a shelf on the terrace. When Bernard greeted him with an elegant bow, Marshall talked to him like a friend. The day was calm and clear. The chickens were out, scratching in a patch of grass. A horse whinnied. Annette’s car was absent from its spot in the recess of a building in the courtyard. He heard a car pass on the street. A 727 flew over. The captain would have taken off from Bordeaux and was gaining altitude. Perhaps he was on his way to Berlin, or Düsseldorf.
The aftereffects of the wine and cognac made Marshall feel fuzzy. His eyes were burning. He could not stop thinking of Annette curled up with her mother, her mother near death. He imagined lice-infested hair, rat-bitten skin, rags, bodies stacked in dirty, crowded beds. In the shower, he sobbed. He shaved with his new electric razor, but there was no mirror near the outlet.
Hearing Annette’s car, he crossed the courtyard to close the gate behind her.
She greeted him then with a smile and kisses.
“I had to go early to the market,” she said, retrieving a large basket from the seat beside her. “I had to check for the peaches, and the freshest fish arrives on Tuesdays.”
Her hair was feathery around her face, and she appeared well rested. He carried the basket inside for her, and she began unloading it on the worktable in the kitchen.
“It was too early for the peaches,” she said. “But I found sweet cherries!”
“Georgia peach,” he said. “In the States peaches grow in Georgia. A pretty girl in Georgia might be called a Georgia peach.”
“That’s nice. Would I have been a peach if I were a girl in Georgia?”
“Of course. You are always a peach, no matter where or when.”
They were giddy.
“ISN’T THE BREAD LOVELY? Do you want some bread?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Do you want butter?”
“Yes, please.”
“And confiture? I also have croissants, two kinds. Sit.”
“Yes.”
“You Americans like butter on your bread around the clock, but we have butter on the bread only at breakfast.”
“I know. I’ve been to France a time or two.”
“And I didn’t know you were here!”
Her lively gaze shifted around the terrace—to the ivy-covered wall, to the stone steps where the cat was washing her face, then to Marshall’s face. The coffee she gave him was strong and satisfying. He drank it in small sips. He was enormously lucky—to be here, in this place, with her. He wanted to take care of her. What was a man for but to offer protection and security to a woman? He breathed deeply.
50.
THROUGHOUT THE DAY SHE CONTINUED THE TELLING. HER French was too fast for him, so she indulged him by speaking English. In the kitchen, in the chicken house, in the field with the horses, she spoke—insistently, passionately. Walking down the lane to the river, they guided each other, arms around each other’s waists. He was holding her in a half embrace even as she was launching a carrot at a horse or drying a bowl in