daughters? What about the remaining quarter? Who gets that? And if you tell me it’s tiny Tonto here,” she flicked her perfect hairdo in Cochon’s direction , “I will snap your head off at the neck and kick it into Epernay.”
“Under French law,” Christophe was backing towards the hall now, his flat feet itching to break into a run, “your fatherwas entitled to leave the remaining quarter to whomsoever he chose.”
“And whomsoever did he choose, you silly little twerp?”
“He chose his grandchildren,” Christophe answered, fervently hoping there would never be any, and before they could turn on him, he was gone.
Clementine and Mathilde stayed on opposite sides of the kitchen table, each frozen in their separate thoughts. Clementine’s future, so rosy only hours before, had turned back to the same grey sludge as her past. Greyer perhaps. More sludgy, definitely. She had to share her world with not just the heinous Mathilde but an entire other sister? And their children? “La-a-a-a!” She couldn’t help herself. “La-a-a-a!”
Mathilde, who had been so confident of holding the upper hand, was visibly rocked by this news of a wild-card sibling. The opportunity to come back to Saint-Vincent-sur-Marne had provided her with an escape hatch precisely when she needed one but the added complication of a surprise Peine she did not require. As for the subject of children? She could almost let loose a few “La-a-a-as” of her own.
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped instead, getting up and going to the kitchen cupboards. “What do you have to drink around here?” Cochon slunk around the outside of the room to get away from her, his dark eyes radiating suspicion.
Clementine ignored them both. The appetite that had abandoned her upon finding out her birthright had been carved into pieces returned most enthusiastically when she learned that her particular piece was little more than a sliver. Overwhelmed by hunger she went to the ancient refrigerator and pulled out a lump of mouldy goat cheese and the crumbling remains of the
citron
tart she had been on her way to replace when her life had turned to ruin. Mathilde, meanwhile, found a bottle of Olivier’s pastis and poured herself a healthyslug. She knocked it back in a single mouthful and poured another.
“How can you eat at a time like this?” she asked, grimacing, as she watched Clementine combine the cheese and tart and head it towards her mouth.
“I told you not to speak to me,” Clementine replied. “But since you mention the time,” she indicated the clock (it was not yet midday), “only wastrels and whores drink before lunch.”
“Aren’t you forgetting your father?”
“
Your
father,” Clementine shot back.
Mathilde knocked back another swig. “Yes,” she said sourly. “Our father. Who art in heaven.”
La racine
Olivier Peine, when it came down to it, was all that Clementine and Mathilde had in common and it wasn’t much to be getting on with for many reasons, not the least being that their separate experiences of the same person had been a million miles apart.
Mathilde had spent just four weeks out of her 35 years with the man, whereas Clementine had been stuck with him ever since her mother’s death when she was a baby. The circumstances of this tragic passing were never discussed, in fact Olivier would not allow any mention of her name (Marie-France) nor did he possess a single picture of her. To Clementine she was little more than a secret rarely whispered word:
Maman
, a blurry hummingbird of a presence that fluttered vaguely in the darkest recesses of her memory.
She could dimly recall other bustling shadows from her early years in the world: a grandmother who smelled of lavender and wet socks and whose sudden demise plunged the House of Peine even deeper into gloom; a whiskery old priest who never spoke at more than a murmur; a kindly neighbourin whose doughy bosom Clementine’s toddler cheek had nestled.
Mostly though she
“Under French law,” Christophe was backing towards the hall now, his flat feet itching to break into a run, “your fatherwas entitled to leave the remaining quarter to whomsoever he chose.”
“And whomsoever did he choose, you silly little twerp?”
“He chose his grandchildren,” Christophe answered, fervently hoping there would never be any, and before they could turn on him, he was gone.
Clementine and Mathilde stayed on opposite sides of the kitchen table, each frozen in their separate thoughts. Clementine’s future, so rosy only hours before, had turned back to the same grey sludge as her past. Greyer perhaps. More sludgy, definitely. She had to share her world with not just the heinous Mathilde but an entire other sister? And their children? “La-a-a-a!” She couldn’t help herself. “La-a-a-a!”
Mathilde, who had been so confident of holding the upper hand, was visibly rocked by this news of a wild-card sibling. The opportunity to come back to Saint-Vincent-sur-Marne had provided her with an escape hatch precisely when she needed one but the added complication of a surprise Peine she did not require. As for the subject of children? She could almost let loose a few “La-a-a-as” of her own.
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped instead, getting up and going to the kitchen cupboards. “What do you have to drink around here?” Cochon slunk around the outside of the room to get away from her, his dark eyes radiating suspicion.
Clementine ignored them both. The appetite that had abandoned her upon finding out her birthright had been carved into pieces returned most enthusiastically when she learned that her particular piece was little more than a sliver. Overwhelmed by hunger she went to the ancient refrigerator and pulled out a lump of mouldy goat cheese and the crumbling remains of the
citron
tart she had been on her way to replace when her life had turned to ruin. Mathilde, meanwhile, found a bottle of Olivier’s pastis and poured herself a healthyslug. She knocked it back in a single mouthful and poured another.
“How can you eat at a time like this?” she asked, grimacing, as she watched Clementine combine the cheese and tart and head it towards her mouth.
“I told you not to speak to me,” Clementine replied. “But since you mention the time,” she indicated the clock (it was not yet midday), “only wastrels and whores drink before lunch.”
“Aren’t you forgetting your father?”
“
Your
father,” Clementine shot back.
Mathilde knocked back another swig. “Yes,” she said sourly. “Our father. Who art in heaven.”
La racine
Olivier Peine, when it came down to it, was all that Clementine and Mathilde had in common and it wasn’t much to be getting on with for many reasons, not the least being that their separate experiences of the same person had been a million miles apart.
Mathilde had spent just four weeks out of her 35 years with the man, whereas Clementine had been stuck with him ever since her mother’s death when she was a baby. The circumstances of this tragic passing were never discussed, in fact Olivier would not allow any mention of her name (Marie-France) nor did he possess a single picture of her. To Clementine she was little more than a secret rarely whispered word:
Maman
, a blurry hummingbird of a presence that fluttered vaguely in the darkest recesses of her memory.
She could dimly recall other bustling shadows from her early years in the world: a grandmother who smelled of lavender and wet socks and whose sudden demise plunged the House of Peine even deeper into gloom; a whiskery old priest who never spoke at more than a murmur; a kindly neighbourin whose doughy bosom Clementine’s toddler cheek had nestled.
Mostly though she
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