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‘Itwasreligion, you know.’
‘Was it? I suppose it was. It made me cry. I’d have to wipe my eyes in my jumper before I sat up.’ She put her palm flat on the glass screen. ‘Requiscat,’ she said, under her breath.
‘What did you say?’ asked Ronan.
‘Oh, nothing,’ she blinked away tears. ‘Isn’t it weird,’ she said, ‘to think we’re standing a few inches from Oscar Wilde’s bones?’
‘What remains.’
* * *
They walked on, turning back to face downhill. The cemetery lying below them looked more like a forest, holly and yew standing firmly green among the fallen leaves. Farther along the path, a figure appeared. It might have been a beach umbrella, but it turned out, as they drew closer, to be a tiny, elderly woman wearing an oversized yellow sun hat, a thing that belonged on the Riviera and looked even more out of place when compared to her prim mauve suit. She took a few steps in their direction, then turned, walked away, stopped and turned again. Her face – what little was visible beneath the hat – was crumpled in distress.
‘Je peux vous aider, madame?’ Ronan stepped towards the woman, offering help. His voice was moderated, gentle, practised at kindness.
At one time, Claire had wondered if that kindness was a front, a shield that he held up to the world for protection. Maybe it had started as a guard against the bullies who would have picked on the ginger kid. He hardly needed protection now – with the size of him – but the kindness was built into Ronan, such an innate and effortless part of him that he would have had to fight himself to be anything else.
The old lady put her hand out to rest on his arm. She babbled frantically, near hysterically, far too fast for Claire to grasp the meaning.
‘La tombe de la môme Piaf?’ Ronan repeated the words to her.
‘Piaf,’ said the woman, tears standing in her eyes.
‘Édith Piaf! Yes.’ Claire flicked pages. ‘We can find her.’
The woman held on to Ronan’s arm, leaning on him as they clambered over plots, talking all the time. Though Claire could hardly catch a word, Ronan nodded sympathetically and made vague, French-accented clucking noises. Looking down a long row of unremarkable graves, Claire spotted one at the end that was piled high with fading flowers. A woman, younger than their charge, though not young either, was kneeling to add a bunch of orange chrysanthemums to the pile. Even from a distance, Claire could see that she was very chic, in a tailored green dress, but standing out at her shoulder was a sunflower as big as a plate. Piaf’s fans must have a penchant for statement accessories, thought Claire, just as Madame le Chapeau stopped in her tracks. With her arm still on Ronan’s, and patting Claire’s shoulder, she thanked them both politely.
‘J’irai seule,’ she said, dismissing them. She would go alone.
With one hand, she tapped her walking stick along the gravel, the other was clasped to her heart.
‘A reunion of some sort,’ concluded Ronan as they carried on.
Claire could tell he’d got an emotional boost from being helpful. ‘You were nice to her,’ she said.
‘No more than you,’ he said. ‘I’m getting a bit hungry. I bet we can find a shortcut if we leave the path.’
Claire looked doubtful.
‘Trust me,’ he said.
The Doors of Perception
It was overgrown, darker and wilder in this part of the graveyard. Weeds grew out of empty urns. Lichen spread over damp angels, ivy climbing around their feet. Sepulchres leaned this way or that, pulled sideways by gravity, or lifted by the ever-stretching network of roots. How much of the substance of those bodies was still in the ground, Claire mused, and how much of them had been absorbed by those trees? She took her chestnut from her pocket, held it in the palm of her hand. It seemed possible, likely even, that the atoms of the chestnut had once belonged to walking, talking humans.
‘Do you know what?’
‘What?’ Ronan held back a branch for her.
‘It’s entirely possible that this chestnut contains an atom of Oscar Wilde.’
‘Watch out.’
A kerbstone, half-buried under maple leaves, caught Claire’s toe and sent her stumbling to the ground.
‘Ouch.’
She landed on her knees, with palms flat on a tombstone. It rocked, tilted, revealed a hollow, gaping space below. The conker rolled away in front of her, across the tombstone and into the hole. She leaned over to look through the gap, but there was nothing but blackness. It might have been an arm’s length to the bottom of the grave. It might have been six feet. It might have been more.
