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Elodie and Jacques were elated.
In February, though, Elodie woke up and she knew something wasn’t right. There was blood on her sheets. She started to cry. Jacques called for the doctor, who tried to reassure her that a little blood wasn’t anything to be concerned about.
‘It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, the important thing is to just keep calm.’
She tried to but it was hard.
Over the course of the next few days the spotting continued, and despite everyone’s assurances she knew she was miscarrying, yet she thought that perhaps if she stayed still, very still, she could stop it from happening.
Jacques didn’t know what to do, apart from hold her as she stared anxiously at the walls.
When the cramping began she started to howl, and that’s when he fetched Grand-mère. She stayed with Elodie all throughout the night as her body began to prepare to give birth, the contractions ripping her apart, as she cried for the poor lost soul. It was a little girl. They named her Rose and buried her in the garden.
For weeks afterwards, Elodie found it hard to do anything, apart from cry, and remember to breathe in and out.
‘When will it get better?’ she asked Grand-mère one day as she lay with her head in the older woman’s lap, while she stroked her hair as she cried.
‘Little by little, ma petite, every day it will get a little bit easier, in the beginning the tears fall every hour, then every other hour, and then perhaps just once a day, and then perhaps just a few times a week… until you put yourself back together again, better, but not quite the same.’
Grand-mère had lost three babies and one grown daughter, so she knew better than most. She was right too. In time, Elodie got stronger and when Jacques returned to the island, she felt better. But what Grand-mère said was true: she was not quite the same.
Their lives became lived in the seasons, full of joy and love, yet sprinkled through with pain. Over the next three years, she had four more miscarriages, each one as devastating as the last. Grand-mère was there each time to help guide her back to life. Jacques said that perhaps they should stop trying, and she at last agreed.
Grand-mère’s cough, which had never truly gone away despite all the best tinctures and remedies, had grown increasingly worse in recent months. When Jacques was away she stayed at the farmhouse and sometimes the noise woke her. It was a violent wet sound and she pushed her to see a specialist.
The older woman waved away her concerns. ‘I’m just getting older, ma petite. It happens in the mornings and evenings, otherwise I’m fine. Right as rain.’
Elodie wasn’t convinced, and together they went to go and see a different doctor to their usual one in the larger town of Gourdes. Doctor Christophe Bonnier was a tall man with grey hair and kind, hazel eyes. He performed an x-ray and when he came back with the slides, Elodie could see it on his face. They sat in his office while he spoke, but the only words she heard ricocheted around her skull.
Lung cancer.
When they got home, they walked to the river, and the two held hands. Every now and then tears leaked unbidden from Elodie’s eyes. ‘You’re still young, not even seventy yet.’
Grand-mère shut her eyes, willing the tears away. Then she patted her hands. ‘I have lived a good life, ma petite, a beautiful one, and thanks to you the last part of it has been the best.’
Elodie’s lip quivered. ‘Don’t say it like that.’
‘What?’
‘Like it’s the end.’
Grand-mère blew air out of her cheeks, then bit her lip. ‘Ma petite, I can’t live forever.’
Elodie’s face crumpled. Grand-mère gathered her up in her arms. ‘I have no plans to die today or even tomorrow, ma petite, we will make the most of this time, d’accord? We will not be sad. We will make summer in our hearts – like Jacques’ favourite poem, alright?’
Grand-mère was true to her word, and though she grew thinner, she made an effort to be just as lively as she had always been.
When it happened, in 1937, it was on a late-summer’s day at the river. They’d gone down, slowly, and painstakingly, each step a trial. It was their usual morning ritual, except that it had become a different one, over the past few months, where they sat on the banks and watched the willows as they swayed in the breeze. Grand-mère leaned on her shoulder before she passed.
And afterwards it would be winter for a long time to come.
