Read Birdsong for Free Online

was based on her long widowhood and the large collection of missals, crucifixes, and mementos of pilgrimage she had collected in her bedroom at the Bérards’ house. With her blackened mouth and harsh voice she seemed to embody a minatory spiritual truth, that real faith is not to be found in the pale face of the anchorite but in the ravaged lives of those who have had to struggle to survive. Sometimes her laugh seemed more ribald or full-blooded than holy, but in her frequent appeals to the saints she was able to dumbfound her listeners by invoking names and martyrdoms of the early church and its formative years in Asia Minor.
    “I’m proposing an afternoon in the water gardens next Sunday,” said Bérard. “I wonder if I might interest you in joining us?”
    Azaire agreed enthusiastically. Aunt Elise said she was too old for boating and managed to imply that such self-indulgence was not appropriate for a Sunday.
    “I should think you’re pretty handy with a boat, René?” said Bérard.
    “I’ve got a feel for the water, it’s true,” said Azaire.
    “Listen to him, the modest old devil,” Bérard laughed. “If it wasn’t for all the evidence to contradict him, he wouldn’t even admit to being any good at business.”
    Azaire enjoyed being cast in the role of self-effacing joker thatBérard had created for him. He had devised a way of inhaling sceptically when some talent of his was mentioned and following the hissing intake of breath with a sip from his glass. He said nothing, so his reputation for wit remained intact, though not to Stephen, who, each time Azaire modestly rolled his eyes, remembered the sounds of pain he had heard from the bedroom.
    Sometimes from the safety of the sitting room he would fix his eyes on the group and on the vital, unspeaking figure of Madame Azaire. He didn’t ask himself if she was beautiful, because the physical effect of her presence made the question insignificant. Perhaps in the harshest judgement of the term she was not. While everything was feminine about her face, her nose was slightly larger than fashion prescribed; her hair had more different shades of brown and gold and red than most women would have wanted. For all the lightness of her face, its obvious strength of character overpowered conventional prettiness. But Stephen made no judgements; he was motivated by compulsion.
    Returning one afternoon from work, he found her in the garden, pruning an unchecked group of rose bushes, some of which had grown higher than her head.
    “Monsieur.” She greeted him with formality, though not coldly.
    Stephen, with no plan of action, merely took the little pruning shears from her hand and said, “Allow me.”
    She smiled in a surprised way that forgave his abrupt movement.
    He snipped at a few dead flowers before he realized he had no proper sense of what he was trying to do.
    “Let me,” she said. Her arm brushed across the front of his suit and her hand touched his as she took the little shears from him. “You do it like this. Beneath each bloom that’s died you cut at a slight angle to the stem, like this. Look.”
    The brown petals of a formerly white rose fell away. Stephen moved a little closer to catch the smell of Madame Azaire’s laundered clothes. Her skirt was the colour of baked earth; there was a dogtoothed edging to her blouse that suggested patterns or frippery of an earlier, more elaborate age of dressing. The little waistcoat she wore above it was open to reveal a rosy flush at thebottom of her throat, brought on by the small exertion of her gardening. Stephen imagined the different eras of fashion and history summoned by her decorative way of dressing: it suggested victory balls from the battles of Wagram and Borodino or nights of the Second Empire. Her still-unlined face seemed to him to hint at intrigue and worldliness beyond her obvious position.
    “I haven’t seen your daughter for a day or two,” he said, bringing his reverie to a halt.