The Secrets Between Us by Laura Madeleine

Author:Laura Madeleine [Madeleine, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2018-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Paris–Nice

I lie in the darkness of the train carriage, listening to my grandmother’s voice as she tells me of her childhood in the Alpes-Maritimes, of growing up surrounded by mountains, their peaks like the blind eyes of a god, always watching. As the train leaves Paris far behind, she tells me of the bakery she was raised in. Of how she began to help in the kitchen as soon as she was old enough; of how, as children, she and her brother would scrape seeds from exotic vanilla pods or scoop honey from combs into dough, or steal morsels of dried fruit and candied nuts meant for the baking.

She tells me of how her brother grew less interested in the bakery, how he had no love for the long, taxing nights, no ability or deftness with the bread. How it was she, at sixteen, who went to work with her father full time, while her brother took other jobs instead: as a guide for the tourists in the summer, or with the local mechanic, or as a delivery boy for the bakery. How by eighteen, she was already an expert in the ancient techniques of the boulangerie, easily able to keep up with her father.

‘Tell me about the mountain,’ I ask sleepily. ‘Tell me about Saint-Antoine.’

Saint-Antoine, she says; a place of granite and wildflowers, of trees that cling stubbornly to the steepest slopes. A place where marmots cry their warnings, where goats wander, belonging to no one but themselves, and elusive chamois look on from impossible heights. It’s a place where the wind blows from the peaks, tasting of ice even in summer. A place where larches turn the mountainside gold in the autumn, like the candlelit hair of the church’s ancient Madonna. Where the water tastes of wild violets and stone.

I lie there in the swaying darkness, breathing in her descriptions. She brings alive the world of her youth, when she climbed the slopes and drank the streams, before the world found her, before she left it all behind.

‘We didn’t know.’

I must have fallen asleep, because my eyes are closed. Grand-mère’s voice scuds across the surface of my mind and for a moment, I wonder if I’m dreaming.

‘Mmm?’

‘We didn’t know,’ she says again.

I open my eyes a little. I have no idea how many hours have passed. Beyond the train windows, there is nothing but rushing blackness. In the few centimetres of light coming under the compartment door, I can see the glint of an open eye, looking up at the ceiling from the opposite bunk.

‘Didn’t know what?’ I ask groggily, hauling myself on to an elbow.

‘We were so sheltered from it all,’ Grand-mère whispers, her voice almost lost to the noise of the train on the track. ‘We kept our heads turned away, safe in our mountain refuge. We didn’t act. We only waited. Until they came.’

‘Who?’ I ask, knowing that this darkness might coax out more truth than daylight ever could.

‘Them,’ she repeats, as if it were obvious.

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