Chapter 5: Breakfast

I awoke to Laure's voice in my head:

Wake up, Peeurce. We have made croissante and you have to go with Jacques and M. C.

Dazed from too little sleep and the lingering effects of alcohol, I was halfway to the bathroom before the events of the previous night came back to me. I had obeyed the summons without questioning that I had heard the voice of someone not present: like the raptures of the dinner table and the brandy, and the visions I had experienced with Laure the night before, it felt like a natural occurrence whose wonder I could not appreciate until after the event. It was only while I was in the bathroom that I fully registered that I had lost my virginity only hours ago: such a momentous adventure seemed no more than a natural part of the curious altered reality I had entered.

The shower went some way to clearing my hangover. I was regretfully conscious, as I soaped myself, that I was washing away the traces of Laure's body; the scents that her organs had secreted and smeared onto me. Magic, I thought; magic in its most carnal and commonplace form.

As I dried myself, my thoughts turned to the bathroom around me. It did not receive any direct morning light, but it was bathed with gentle morning shadow; soft, sepia and loving light. It seemed like a different space to the one that had fed my paranoia on the way up to bed, and yet, there, by the cistern, had been the shadow that had looked as though it might slick away from the wall and grow a mouth, and the window, now lavendar-blue, had been a tunnel from the primal pit; the access for many-legged horrors.

Despite my newfound manhood, such terror seemed only at bay, rather than banished. It was a part of the richness of this place, that it held dread as well as ecstacy but, bathed in a new, savage yet joyful glow.

With only a towel to cover my nakedness, I climbed the stairs again. In my room, I threw the towel on the bed and took a deep breath. I belive that, for intelligent people, true satisfaction with life is a rare exprerience: in my room in the Manoir, at that moment, I experienced it.

The morning was golden, like a picture from a children's book. I opened the windows and stepped out, naked, onto the roof. The morning sun was behind the roof to my left, and the woods, and the hills beyond, were glowing a profound pink, diffused by a slight mist rising from the trees. My body felt a delicious chill in the air, but a summer chill, that was delicate and temporary.

From beyond the line of the roof, to my right, the sound of a rhythmic splashing reached me. Someone was swimming. Without considering it, I stretched my senses, and a vision of Marie, wearing a rather dated swimming costume, ploughing through the water of the pool behind the box hedge in the garden, formed in my mind. Her long, sleek, otter-form made a neat wake in the water; pink light sparkled in the ripples she made.

I shifted my inner vision, searching the house, and located Laure, in the kitchen with Elodie, laughing and discussing my performance and my body. I felt no shame: the knowledge that I had escaped my virginity in the night whooshed through me again, and yet, it wasn't the greatest source of joy, or wonder, or change, that I felt in myself. My ability to reach out beyond my physical being, my extra sense, that had thundered into me through the previous evening, felt like a growth even more momentous than having, at last, experienced sex; all the more wondrous for having been entirely unsought. I experienced a rush of love for Laure, and for Marie, and even Jacques, and for the fox that had struggled back to its set and was sleeping now, beside its mate and their pups, healing in the dark, beneath the roots of a yew tree.

I searched further and found the opulent bedroom where Marc was pulling himself, achingly, from his bed, picking his nose, and then masturbating his flaccid sex as he staggered to the bathroom. Sylvie slept on, but I shyed away from their presence, ashamed, for the first time, of this newfound power. I stretched out for a more amenable awareness and found it: Jacques was in the stables with the two horses whose snores I had heard in the night. Smiling again, I drifted into myself and turned back into the room.

I dressed and crept downstairs, uncertain of what reception I would encounter. I met no one on the stairs or in the hall and went through to the kitchen. At the door, I stopped.

Elodie was beating something in a large bowl, raising a shining cloud of dust as her wooden spoon spun, and she saw me first, and said something in that Poitevin dialect to Laure, who was collecting pots from the table to be washed. Laure looked up at me, and her smile was even broader, even more dimpled than it had been when I had first seen her, only the evening before, although it seemed a month ago: I stopped in my tracks and grinned stupidly at her.

I was frozen by the sight of her. Suddenly, the fact of our lovemaking seemed even more miraculous; a marvel beyond thought: I felt incredibly self-conscious, not knowing how to behave.

"Come. Sit." she said, waving me to the table.

I hadn't noticed Jacques sitting at the table, but he broke my trance by bidding me good morning. I recalled myself and said good morning in return. He pulled out a chair for me and I sat. He had a bowl of coffee in front of him, and a plate with a chunk of bread on it. There was a jar of jam and a pat of butter on the table. Jacques smelt faintly of the stable, and the scent of hay and horses and the scents of bread and coffee mingled in a beautiful but almost sickening way: my senses felt suddenly far too sharp to cope with the richness of these stimulants.

Laure put a bowl in front of me and filled it with coffee. I would have preferred tea, but, as I should have expected, when I lifted the bowl and inhaled the scent, it was exquisite, like an archetype of coffee on a sunny morning. She and Elodie sat down opposite us, and Elodie pushed the bread board with a couple of rough baguettes on it, over to me, smirking knowingly.

"I hope you slept well, Monsieur," Jacques said, and Elodie broke into a grin again. I was acutely uncomfortable, not knowing how to behave; feeling exposed and ridiculous. I thanked Jacques, and said yes, I'd slept very well, and broke myself a piece of bread.

"Eventually, he slept, Jacques," Elodie said. "This one," she slanted her head to Laure, "was wandering in the night."

Jacques seemed to take it in his stride, Laure shrugged at me, with a smile. Soothed by her lack of discomfort, I helped myself to jam, and dipped my bread in my coffee as she was doing. It was wonderful. The jam was fig, and the coffee was rich to the very edge of sharpness without a hint of bitterness. I ate in silence, enjoying the light lancing low into the kitchen, shining off surfaces and highlighting Laure's hair and her beautiful smooth cheek.

"We will leave in half an hour," Jacques said, as he filled his pipe. "The Duc has had his coffee and will be here any minute."

I had a mouth full of bread and jam, so I nodded my understanding. I wasn't really looking forward to the expedition: I wanted more than anything to stay in the Manoir, holding on to the sense of magic, and feasting on Laure's company. I let my sense drift around the kitchen, taking in everything, and then, without effort, I found that I could still extend my senses, even when I was in their company. I was aware of Marc and Sylvie moving through the house; her to the drawing room; him towards us. I saw the yard, bathed in morning sun, although it was behind me, and the rough lawn, the morning dew already mostly evaporated from it. I sensed again, with relieved affection, the fox that I was beginning to regard as a friend, in its den, asleep and healing, curled up with its mate and their cubs. I saw the two horses; great, shaggy-hooved beasts, skipping and kicking around their paddock in celebration of the glorious morning.

We heard Marc in the corridor and then he came in to the kitchen. He said good morning and dipped a finger in the jam. He was dressed in a suit but with a black turtleneck jumper rather than a shirt and he had a well-worn leather flight bag with him. He looked sinister, but in a self-conscious way. He leant against the kitchen counter and lit a cigarette then threw the packet over to Laure.

The smoke built up rapidly in the air, a layer shining quicksilver in the light from the open door. I was finding it unpleasant and got up, taking a chunk of jam-smeared bread with me, to go and lean on the door frame. The courtyard was half in shadow, half stark with dusty-blue bright morning glare. A cockerel lurched its pompous way across the cobbles, head jerking sharply forward with each step in censorious alertness. I let a tendril of awareness slip into its head and was overcome by laughter: it had the same mix of self-satisfied outrage that I associated with my father's recently-acquired Tory friends; like a retired colonel in a supermarket, affronted by the manners of the people from the estate who refused to acknowledge his authority.

"You dare to laugh at De Gaulle!", Marie said. I turned. She was right behind me and, for all my supersenses, I had completely missed her approach. She was wearing a towel, knotted above her chest, and she smelt of water and sunlight. Despite the straps of her swimsuit, the nakedness of her shoulders gave me a pleasant jolt and I felt acutely aware of her physicality, if not of her inner self.

That, I realised, was what made Marie stand out in the Manoir: the others were visible to my inner sight, but she was opaque, as if she possessed a greater solidity. In the way of commonplace empathy, the sort of insight with which I might have read anyone before I experienced the first rush of magic during dinner the night before, I could read her, judge her reactions, make guesses about what she was feeling or thinking; expressing or concealing. But, I did not feel attuned to her in the special way that I did with all the others, even Marc, for whom I was developing an ingrained dislike. Her presence did not shine on my senses when I reached around the environment of the Manoir. I had seen her swimming, as a disturbance in the water and the air, but I had not felt her, as I could feel Laure, or Jacques, or Marc, Sylvie or Elodie.

I returned her gaze, remembering that this was the girl who had told me the night before that she could travel without travelling; that she had the power to be in two places at once, and that she would make me her king. If the power I seemed to have gained, to read the space around me, and enter the consciousness of other creatures, was not a delusion, then the possibility of her possessing she magic she claimed appeared more real. I couldn't escape the knowledge that Laure had said Marie would seduce me, or that, with her face close to mine, I was conscious of her sylphic beauty; the glowing clarity of her skin; the shine in her nut-brown eyes.

"Put the boy down, Child," Marc said, irritably. "He looks terrified." He was still leaning against the counter, his cigarette making rococo ribbons in the air around him. His posture was casual but I felt the tension in him, and he knew it. His jealousy, and his lust, were written upon his spirit as his love of good living, and particularly of good wine, was written upon his skin and his frame. I was surprised, and mildly disgusted, to realize that his lust was directed as much at me as at Marie. I had thought him overbearing and possessive and a little bit creepy, and had had no doubt that his feelings for his step-daughter were complicated by his grotesque self-regard, but I had not picked up his desire towards me.

With an inner shudder, I glanced at Laure, who smoked her cigarette with an air of apparent indifference. I could not be sure I hadn't imagined it, but I felt, something, from her; a slight inner sign, like the squeeze of one's hand by a lover, reassuring me. Jacques puffed at his pipe, serene and indifferent, as if he expected everything, and was distressed by nothing, and it came to me that, if I could feel them, they could read my feelings.

"Excuse me," I said, and then, to appear a little less abrupt, "I must check my laundry." And I retreated across the courtyard, conscious of amusement, sympathy, pity and vengeful dislike, all directed at my retreating back, from the shadowy, smoke-filled kitchen.