Once again, I did not know what to say to her. She is black, I said finally, and at first she did not realize what I was saying. Then she looked into the baby’s face and suddenly sat up, held the child out from her and stared. She said I was wrong. I told her she must have known this was possible. I gently asked her who the father was. ‘Oliver,’ she insisted over and over again, until I realized that she must have convinced herself that it was true.
My relationship with Laura changed then. I admit that I tried to keep my distance from the child. I was still raw from losing my own child and was afraid to get close. Laura must have known I did not believe her, and while I did not care if she slept with a black man or a green one, it annoyed me that she continued to pretend. She suggested that the baby’s colour might fade after a few days … a week … two weeks … and that her true Caucasian nature would appear soon. Did she really think I could be fooled? That the baby’s facial features could change? As I suspected, she bonded with the baby, who she named Nora after her mother, but every day she played the charade of waiting for the dark skin to fade, directing earnest prayers to the Lord Almighty to speed the process. I decided to ignore the race issue, but wondered if Laura might be losing her mind. I was concerned about her.
After some weeks, I gently suggested that it might be time for her to make contact with her family and go home. Laura was extremely anxious now, more than before; bringing a child home to Ireland as an unmarried mother may have been brave, but bringing a black child home would cause a major scandal. France was fairly multicultural even back in 1974 because of the colonies, although more so in the bigger cities, but from what I could gather there was virtually no ethnic immigration into Ireland in those days. I suggested that a mixed-race child might be isolated growing up in Ireland. Again, she insisted that Nora was not mixed race and, exasperated, I let it go.
Another two months passed, and Laura had made no decision; it seemed as if she was actually waiting for the baby to turn white. Eventually, I had to ask her to leave. It may seem cold of me, but I had my own issues of grief to deal with and, to be honest, having a beautiful child in the house again unnerved me. I was jealous and bitter. I gave her the address of the Sacred Heart convent in Bordeaux and found a social worker who might deal with her case. Laura became more desperate and even suggested that I could adopt her baby and that she could come back every summer to visit. I was adamant that this was out of the question and angry with her for being so insensitive, and our friendship cooled significantly.
Nevertheless, I was sad to see her go in the end and she wept a little as I drove us to the station with little Nora in her arms. At the station I kissed them both and wished her well, but even then I was not certain what she would do. I asked her to keep in touch and let me know where she was, and promised that I would never reveal her circumstances to anybody. That was the last I heard of her until I received the devastating letter from her brother Michael before Christmas that same year.
Laura was dead, and clearly it was a suicide. It was obvious from the letter that the family knew nothing of the baby. Michael wrote to me looking for answers, wondering if Laura had been acting strangely, if I knew of any particular trauma that might have happened to her, whether I knew of any reason why she might have wanted to take her life. Among his many tortured theories, he speculated whether Laura could have been pregnant and miscarried.
I gave my reply much consideration, and thought that maybe the family had a right to the truth, but what good would it have done them? I had learned from my friend in Bordeaux that the baby had been handed over for adoption, but Laura had not kept in touch in the intervening months. Even if Laura’s family knew, even if they wanted the child, it would have been too late. I wrote a letter telling some truth but withholding the bigger truth: I was shocked to hear the news; I knew nothing of a miscarriage; Laura was a wonderful person who was deeply missed by all at Chateau d’Aigse; she was a fantastic help to me personally in getting over my own loss. I told them to be proud of such a brave and beautiful girl. I sent my condolences to the family and passed on my best wishes to Oliver too.
My father visited me in a dream the night I posted the letter. In the dream, we both knew he was dead and yet it was peaceful and natural for us to be chatting as we used to. He told me to start again and not to allow the past to destroy my future. I must begin to live once more, and not permit the tragedies of the previous fifteen months to blight my chance of happiness. He touched my cheek the way he did when I was a child and kissed the top of my head twice, one kiss from him and one from Jean-Luc.
To try to rebuild Chateau d’Aigse or to sell up and move away? There seemed no way for me to start again on my own. The vineyard, the orchard, the olive grove had not been tended since the fire, but I had neither the inclination nor the energy. The money and the kindness of our neighbours could not be relied on indefinitely either. They felt they owed a debt to my father, but that generation was ageing now and the younger ones owed us nothing, although I knew I would not be refused help if I asked for it.
I eventually decided to sell up, and planned to move to a town my cousin lived in, perhaps forty kilometres from Clochamps, but the day after the estate agent posted the notice in the paper, I had a visitor.
I had not seen Pierre since the week that Jean-Luc was conceived. I had made myself forget about him as best I could. Up until now, he had kept his word and stayed away, but news had filtered through to him in Limoges from his uncle that a minor scandal had followed roughly nine months after Pierre’s visit. His uncle had warned him to stay away and not to get involved for fear of disgracing his own family. They knew that I had raised this child with my father until the fire killed Papa and my boy, and that now I was on my own. Pierre and his uncle guessed he must be Jean-Luc’s father, and Pierre very much regretted that he’d had no part in his life. He had sought a divorce from his wife, who, he was sure, was having an affair with a local magistrate and had left him, taking their twin girls with her. He had never stopped thinking of me, had written several times over the years and then torn up the letters, still loved me with all his heart, he said, and that I was his first love.
I was astonished that a long-held fantasy could come true, and when this sweet and gentle man offered to care for me, and adore me, I could not resist because love and care were the things I now craved, and to get them from the man who I had not dared to think about for seven years was the answer to a dream. He was shocked and disturbed when I admitted I had chosen him as a father, and wept bitter tears that he never got to meet his son, and what could I do but apologize for my deceit. Gradually, as I related the stories and anecdotes from the brief life of our son, I began to heal and Pierre got a sense of who his boy had been. I assured Pierre that Jean-Luc was as beautiful as his daddy.
This time, with nothing to prove and nothing to lose, I allowed Pierre into my life as I could share my grief and return his love, and we have grown older and closer to the point that he is now my life. We were not blessed with another child of our own – it was too late for me – but I have a wonderful relationship with Pierre’s two girls, who come every summer now and bring their own children and help with the cookery school.