We All Ran into the Sunlight by Natalie Young

his finger down the boulevard towards the square as if the way was paved with gold to war.
    ‘Algeria,’ said Stephen.
    ‘You remember this?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘How long has it been?’
    ‘I remember this statue. It’s for Algeria. Remember?’
    Kate was holding her hair back; she was looking all around. Then she started off in the direction of the square. Stephen followed her. They both knew where they were going. They picked up speed and broke into a run and Kate said she felt afraid suddenly.
    ‘The past is smaller than we remember it,’ she whispered to herself as her feet carried her forward. ‘We’re blind, like dogs trying to break in, we cannot get back there.’
    ‘He’s there,’ Stephen was shouting. ‘He’s there. Look!’
    Kate saw the trestle table with the paper behind it. There was the basket man, his carrot-red hair, his huge paunch, his square block of a head, and his vest which was grey and stained on the front with a slop of something that looked as if it had been slopped over a decade ago and the vest not washed in all that time. Kate shook her head. There he was before them now and there he was back then, and the two red-haired fat men with the stained vests came together in that moment and waved their hands for the English couple who were standing in the square, staring, lonely, astonishing themselves with this gift here in the sunlight.
    ‘How long is it?’
    Stephen was laughing.
    ‘Thirteen years,’ said Kate.
    ‘Nothing has changed.’
    And then to have laughed as they did, with such amazement, such relief, as they ran forward, and flung themselves on the table and began to pick up the baskets, grabbing them from the heap one at a time. The baskets were green, and blue and yellow. And this is her, my wife, thought Stephen, grabbing a basket with a white daisy on the front and handing it to her. She’s back, my wife; this is how I remember her, he thought, and he laughed again. They could hardly carry them all; they were laughing so hard and with such relief they only partly heard the man’s voice which wasn’t French at all.
    ‘We can’t carry them,’ Stephen was saying to his wife. ‘We don’t need them all.’
    ‘It might not be him,’ she replied quietly, but she was looking in her bag for her purse by now and he could barely hear what she said. Her face was shining, laughing. The sun was breaking out from behind a cloud, blinding them; it was much too warm suddenly.
    ‘What are we doing, darling?’
    ‘I…’
    ‘Really,’ said Stephen brightly, but kindly, ‘what are we really doing?’
    And the basket man coughed and came over, his hands in the back pockets of his shorts, his face wide open and amicable and blue.
    ‘Please. Madame, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘Can I help you at all?’

     
    They left the baskets and drove back to the village in silence . Stephen checked his emails and then climbed into the bedroom for a sleep.
    Kate went back to the chateau. She felt calm here, that was all she knew. She spent time round the back of it, pulling through weeds in the garden. She sat on the steps, and the silence was almost unbearable. The size of its walls, the lack of windows, the crumbling tower. She felt it groaning around her, the ground moving beneath. She wanted to take the weight off, and go back in time.

     
    ‘I’ve seen beetles,’ she called down to Stephen when he came over later in the afternoon. ‘Big black tremendous beetles scuttling on these stones.’
    Stephen pulled his lips back in a wide, forced smile. His hands were folded behind his back. They were sleeping so well, eating delicious fresh food. They were light, inside and out. Even so, psychologically, he was treading water out here, and he felt listless, mentally soft as a result.
    ‘Are you bored?’ she said. ‘Is that what it is?’
    ‘We need to talk.’
    ‘Is that why you come here each day to find me? Can’t you look after yourself, Stephen?’
    ‘Why are you here, Kate?