Chapter 3

The drawing room was a huge space. It was stone walled and wood panelled, and the left hand wall was covered in dark tapestries that were indistinct in the sparse light. It was so large, in fact, that it felt slightly out of proportion; the vaulted wood ceiling swept a little too low for the size of the room. It was dimly lit, with an elaborate lamp upon one table by an old sofa where Sylvie sat with Marc, leafing through a magazine as Marc smoked and nursed a brandy glass. There was a smell of wood smoke from the large stone hearth on the inner wall, that was throwing a dancing glow into this, otherwise unlit, end of the room.

The right hand wall was windowed with tall arches of diamonded glass that sparked and glowed with the reflections of the fire and lamp, but were otherwise a velvet black, and the central two windows were open. I could see little through them, but had the sense of a cloister beyond, and that they did not look out on to open country, but to some enclosure. I tried to orient myself in relation to the house layout, but was a little lost: I had not imagined that such a large room would fit the Manoir when I had seen it from the outside.

Apart from the sofa and half dozen thickly upholstered chairs, covered with blankets and cushions, what furniture there was was much like the furniture in the rest of the house: wooden, old, heavy, and dark. On the left hand wall was another cabinet, serving as a bar: it was loaded with bottles. Laure put the coffee tray there and then poured, handing the cups to me, to take around. When everyone was served, she gave me a cup and a glass of brandy, which I didn't feel it polite to refuse, and waved me airily to a chair by the fire, between Jacques and Marie. She took the fourth, slumping into it, lounging back and throwing a leg over one of the arms, stretching her other leg on to a cushioned footstool in front of her chair.

The fire was built of two large logs, although the lower one seemed to have nearly burnt itself out, its remains still retaining an ashen, skeletal memory of its shape in its sullen glow, but on the point of collapse. The newer one was in full flame and its light coloured us, and I could feel its heat through my trainers and on my knees, though we were sitting well back from it. Over the hearth, the shield that I had seen on the gates that afternoon was reproduced in painted stone.

I sniffed the brandy: it hit me as powerfully as the taste of the wine had, but where the wine had prompted serenity, eagerness, hunger and contentment, this set off feelings of excited dread. It smelt woody, fruity, sumptuous and, somehow, ancient. It pierced my mind, seeming to almost bypass my nose: I had, for a second, the most vivid sensation of being out in woods, under the starlit sky, naked, surrounded by life.

Laure had noticed my reaction and smirked. Marie turned her head to look at me.

"You should try it, Piers. It is the old Cognac."

I felt a resistance and, to put off the moment when I needed to drink, I asked,

"Yours?"

"No,"she said, "we do not make cognac here, but it is from the estate of friends, a little way to the south. They share our gifts and we share theirs."

She continued to watch me, so I put the glass to my lips, almost dreading another bout of disoriented stimulation. The second the honey-textured liquid touched my lips, my brain leapt into another state of heightened awareness: the crackle of the log, the smells - wood of wood smoke, of tobacco, of the night air, and even the smells of Jacques, Laure and Marie - sweat and scent and breath and Laure's languid excitement - teemed into my brain. My consciousness swooped upward, making a sickening weight in my gut, and I heard...

... "I will crown you King of the Summer and take a son from you." Marie said, her lithe, slender body glowing in the light of a low, full moon.

... "I will eat with you, fuck with you, dance with you, laugh with you," Laure said, her golden, rich body glowing in the rosy light of dusk.

... "I will fight you to the death," Marc said, his hairy, softening body dripping in a rain-swept night.

... "I will lead you to what you need to find," Jacques said, his wrinkled, muscled body burning in the midday sun.

I heard no words from Sylvie: only her sobbing, from far away.

I experienced a plunging jolt, similar to the accelerated halting of sensation one feels after receiving a punch to the jaw. I sat very still, not wanting to see the faces of my companions. If I registered their awareness of what I had just felt, I would have to accept its reality, but if I stayed in my own narrow awareness, I could explain it as an illusion; some trick of my long, tiring, over-stimulated day.

I concentrated upon the sight of the flames, and forced my awareness to review all the strange and enlightened experiences of the extraordinary day. I focussed on the good and the promising, shying away from what had jarred with what I believed to be the proper way of the world; the true and natural way of things. Marie: her sublime depth and beauty, and the promise of love that I had felt in her quietness, her shy, embarrassed demonstrativeness. Laure: her ampleness, and the promise of joy I had tasted in her sense of exhibitionist fun. The food: I hadn't simply imagined its magic. I had been hungry, yes, but the joy it had inspired, and the shared orgy of joy, had not simply been a product of a long day and a hard walk. I thought of Marie by the window in the attic room; of Laure standing before the glowing window; and then of the house itself and how it had woven itself into the chasm of my longing nature in a few short hours. I pictured the light through the stained glass above the main door, and how it smeared itself across the dark wood of the great entrance hall with the imperturbable certainty of a perfect clock; of the portraits in the dining room; of the lavender on the window sill of the bathroom: all these were images for which travellers set out; the sort of memories to comfort the returned voyager when they had settled to parenthood, mortgage, and work. The magic was what I had hoped for but not dared dream of, and to fear any of it appeared self-defeating and stupid.

Still, I was in some sort of shock or trance. I watched the fire more closely, focussing only on it. A new crack had appeared in the burning log and it was releasing a jet of gas that burned sabreblade-shaped, up around the curve of the log. It was steady, smooth, perfect; its illusory permanence an image of my newfound hopes.

A sharp crackling, colder and more mechanical than that of the fire, sounded farther back in the room, behind us, then dissolved into the piano chords of the opening of a jazz album my father liked to play to impress visitors with his taste. I had not noticed a record player, but Marc had obviously started one up. The chords led on to a muted horn and a rough sax playing an obvious melody in unison. It was a famous and widely admired recording, but it sounded crude and irritating in the textured stillness of the drawing room. Beside me, Jacques tutted, and called back,

"Monsieur! You have disturbed a sacred reverie!" and Marie shouted,

"Step-father! You are an ignorant oaf!"

I shifted, looking up, at Jacques, at Marie and then, at Laure. Each face expressed irritation; even Laure's.

Marie leaned over her chair arm to me.

"My step-father is a pig. Please, forgive him."

Laure slipped out of her chair to lean on her footstool towards us, her hands on the floor.

"We loved your beautiful vision, Peeurce. We recognise you now. You are one of us."

I wanted to ask what had happened to me, but to do so would have been to side with Marc. The irritating, contrived jazz floated around the room. I looked at the fire, searching for the jet, but it had burnt out.

An air of irritation settled over our end of the room; embarrassment and defensiveness emanated from Marc and Sylvie. I didn't hate Bebop jazz, but it was an unfortunate choice: the safe soundtrack for arty bohemians in London and, it seemed, in Paris, where Marc felt he belonged. It was entirely out of place in the Manoir. Its defiant, affected, American poise seemed to be rebuffed by the solidity and settled presence of the ancient house. It clanged and its echoes were absorbed with a sense of tolerant disdain by the overpowering silence of the air.

After a while, recalled to myself, I looked round at Marie. I felt a need for conversation; a lifeline to ground me and bring me back to the here and now: I had had enough mystical experience for one evening. Something she had said after dinner had interested me, and it came to me then what I had wanted to ask her.

"Did you say you were going to Paris tomorrow?"

"No. Did I? My step-father is going to Paris. Not me."

"I thought you said you you needed to make an appearance in Paris."

Marie looked across at Laure, who had reclined back into her chair, her legs over one arm, her beautiful denim-clad bottom on display to the room. She shrugged.

"He has felt our power," she said to Marie, "He has shared his vision of us."

Marie leaned towards me and spoke quietly, almost fiercely.

"Listen, Piers. My step-father will travel to Paris, to pursue his dreams of power and potency and influence, but I work a more subtle influence, given to me by my Mother, and my Mother's Mother and a thousand mothers before them.

"I must register for my classes, and be seen at them, and I can do that, without leaving here. I do not need a train, or a telephone; nor a broomstick, or a cauldron, or a ball made of crystal. Do you believe that I can do this, Piers?"

The education at a minor English public school has many gaps, but one of the things it does equip one with is the strength to control one's responses. I did, in fact, believe that Marie could work some sort of magic, but I did not think it was so wondrous any more. More, I was annoyed by her theatricality: as in love with her as I was sure I was destined to be, at that moment, she was annoying to me. So, I just shrugged, and said,

"Of course. If you say you can, then I believe it."

She seemed to detect some trace of my reserve, because she turned away, dismissing me. I couldn't respond more warmly: the cold aftershock of my vision was shaking my core and I was so, so tired.

I took a slow, deep breath, and closed my eyes. Sleep gathered about me like a cloud.