The House with Blue Shutters by Lisa Hilton Page B

know,’ said Aisling in English, meaningful on the word ‘right’.
    ‘Should we lift her back?’
    Mademoiselle Oriane had closed her eyes. With an arm each beneath her shoulders, they pulled her up until she half sat on
     the bed. She winced, her left arm dangling, Aisling slung her legs around, covered the horrible lumpen feet with sheet and
     blanket. Their swiftness was tender. Claudia fetched a glass of water and propped it to the slit of mouth. ‘Is that better,
     Mademoiselle?’
    Aisling unbent. ‘We’d better wait for the doctor. It’s a good half-hour drive from Landi. I’ll make some tea.’ Ginette was
     silent on the sofa, clutching her half-empty glass tightly, her eyes far away.
    ‘What about her?’ asked Claudia.
    ‘Just shock, I suppose. I don’t think it’s serious. She comes to help Madame Lesprats sometimes, at our place. Madame Lesprats
     always calls her “pauvre Ginette”.’ Aisling was setting a pot of water to boil, pushing aside a saucepan from which a bone
     and a lump of carrot protruded.
    The large room, hard in the neon, was floored in turquoise lino. Aside from the bed and the sofa, there was a fridge under
     the angular wooden staircase, a formica table covered in a wipe-clean plastic cloth printed with sunflowers, and four wooden
     chairs, a calendar from the church in Castroux on the wall next to the fireplace, a television half covered in a crocheted
     pink doily on a huge dark
buffet
, and a small folding table with a vase of plastic lilies and a framed photograph of a black and white young man with a Proustian
     moustache. There was too much space, like a set in a theatre before the actors come on, and a strong thick smell of soup.
     Around the fireplace, saucepans and casseroles were piled, neat but homeless, and the table was set with two striped coffee
     bowls, an orange plastic dish of white sugar cubes, and two teaspoons, ready, Claudia supposed, for breakfast. She had never
     seen such a poor room, a room whose sparseness had nothing artful in it, whose shabbiness was merely shabby, not deliberate
     or bohemian or charming. She had never been so stupid as to believe that there was anything picturesque about poverty, but
     the room grated at her nonetheless, in a way it would not have done if it had been squalid. It was ugly, and the ugliness
     was painful, the calendar with its photograph of a nun at Lourdes was painful, the orange bowl was painful.
    Aisling had appropriated the coffee bowls and filled them with boiling water, into which she unenthusiastically dunked two
     Lipton tea bags. Claudia always associated those yellow labels with France, the way Lipton tea always left a white scum on
     the surface of the water.
    ‘It’s a shame, isn’t it?’ Aisling continued in English, following Claudia’s eyes. ‘It could be a wonderful house. I don’t
     knowwhy she doesn’t sell it. The
maison de retraite
at Teulière is really wonderful, they have a marvellous time going on coach trips and playing boules. She could get a fortune
     for it you know, there’s the barns too, but you know what the French are like.’ She paused, then added in an accusing tone,
     ‘I didn’t know you spoke French.’
    ‘I’ll look out for the doctor, then.’ Claudia took her tea to the doorway and looked down the hill for headlights.

1934–9
    Propriety put the rout to Père Guillaume’s good intentions. Mademoiselle Lafage, the schoolteacher, let it be known that she was looking for lodgings in the village as the Board had seen fit to appoint a master to the schoolhouse, and it was not decent that two unmarried people should share their quarters. Mademoiselle Lafage knew her rights, and applied to the
bureau
in Monguèriac for a boarding allowance. If the Board wanted to throw good money after bad, it was their own affair. Mademoiselle Lafage thought that no schoolmaster would be any more capable than she of prodding knowledge into the lumpish heads of the bigger Castroux