Tourists would visit the town on Wednesdays for the market, a cobbled
square stalled with vegetables from the local farmers, men and women trying to
sell clothes they can afford to live without, the lamps and pictures they have
cleared out of the homes of their deceased.
Michéle’s husband works in the
boucherie. He wears a white coat and white rubber boots. He comes home bloodied
from hosing down the back room, and wiping his hands on the over-sized pockets
after slicing the remnants from the bones for the mincer.
When their youngest daughter,
Monique, told them she was engaged to be married, they congratulated her and
then privately shared their relief. Soon they could start trying to save for
themselves.
Michéle wanted the wedding
present to be something special. The newlyweds had arranged to live in a small
house in the middle of a dull street on the outskirts of the town. An area
where tired young husbands and fathers dragged home heavy in the dark of late
evenings.
On the day of the wedding Michéle
carefully handed a large, neatly-wrapped present to her daughter.
The next day Monique took down
the faded curtains from the front window and a few hours later, when her
husband was home to help, a pair of white lace curtains with a pattern of
shells appeared. Beautiful fan-shaped shells, with detail of the ridge paths
and rippled edges, arranged in uneven groups as though washed up on shore on a
beach.
Quickly the curtains became a
talking point in the town. Women queuing for their vegetables asked if their friends
had seen them, and over the next weeks footsteps could be heard slowing down as
they passed the house to look at this fancy new display.
And then it wasn’t long before
the curtains in other windows were replaced. The Tabac owner’s wife hung a lace
display of butterflies in her window, pleased with the neat rows of delicate
wings.
The lace maker, an old woman who
had learned the craft from her mother and thought that her retirement was as
good as secured, was suddenly popular amongst the younger townsfolk. They invited
her to coffee, offered pastries, and invariably ended up discussing designs and
dates.
She made curtains of birds on
twigs reaching for berries, an ocean of leaping dolphins, an ocean scene where
large yachts and smaller, distant ships sailed above a band of fish and the
floor of shells and coral.
The lights of sitting rooms all
around the town cast shadow shapes across the footpaths.
Tourists
came to walk the course of the designs that the town had become renowned for.
None of them passed the simple window of Monique’s house.
* * *
Three more days of this and I might be the 33,213rd person to rate the book on Goodreads but I'm not sure what my star count will end up at. According to My Books I've written 78 reviews and rated 154 books with an average of 3.68 stars and it's interesting to see that apparently in the 133 days of 2016 I haven't read a single book which isn't true because I can tell you that I devoured Everywhere I Look (Helen Garner) and A Loving, Faithful Animal (Josephine Rowe) and they were only published recently so My Books just shows that I haven't bothered to track any of the reading that I've done this year but it will soon. I'll make my small contribution to the (now it's already 33,214 ratings that have A Little Life at 4.26 stars) in just three more days.
