Muckross Abbey and Other Stories by Sabina Murray

Author:Sabina Murray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2023-03-08T17:34:46+00:00

The village of Mougins spiraled down a mountain top. Picasso had lived there and the town was devoted to art, which it manifested in increasingly bizarre civic artworks that would no doubt have made Picasso ill. Together they walked arm in arm through the cobbled paths with other gawping couples, pausing at paintings that were embarrassing in their soft cubism, in their pandering kitsch, in their even values and fields that cared not for light or life or meaning. The restaurant was in a small plaza with a fountain. Parents walked children eating ice cream. Carl didn’t like the reserved table as it was set in too far and insisted the host find one reached by the breeze, which the host did, swayed by Carl’s fluent French and the fact that he seemed a person accustomed to the best. Carl ordered a bottle of Sancerre and some escargot and foie gras to start.

“When were you last in Mougins?” she asked.

“Oh, years ago.”

“Why?”

“Why was I here?” He paused. “I was on holiday.”

“With Iola?”

“Yes. With Iola.”

“Why did you want to bring me here?”

“Because I like Mougins,” he said.

“For the art?”

“No,” he said with patience. He picked up his menu and began to look over the offerings. If there was a steak, he’d order that and ask that it come bloody. “I wanted you to see Mougins. It’s a beautiful place. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” she said. She wanted to be agreeable, then decided that being dishonest about her thoughts wasn’t worth it. “Were you on your honeymoon?”

Just then the waiter arrived with the wine and Carl was offered a glass to taste that he swirled, sipped, and approved with a subtle nod. When the waiter left, she was still looking at Carl, waiting for an answer.

“You don’t need to compete with Iola. You could not be more different.”

“And she’s dead,” she said. “But when she was alive, she was beautiful and sophisticated.”

“You are beautiful,” he said. “And you choose not to be sophisticated because you don’t see the point of it.” He was measuring his thoughts. “As you know, Iola died in a car accident. What you don’t know is that she was with another man, someone that I worked with. He was driving and they went off a cliff. His blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit.”

“Did you know about him?”

“You mean did I know about them.”

She nodded.

“Yes. I knew about them.”

She’d thought that grief had kept him vague, but now she could see a coldness in his eyes, something that Iola conjured in him. “Where was the cliff?”

“The cliff?”

“The one that they drove off.”

He was about to respond but then stopped himself.

“Was it in France?” she asked. She wondered where the thought had come from. “Was it around here?”

He seemed all of a sudden concerned. She wondered if he would get prickly, which he sometimes did when she asked too many questions, but he just looked sad. She lowered her voice comically and said, “You can’t keep anything from me, Carl.

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