Caravaggio's Angel by Ruth Brandon Read Free Book Online Page A

find it here. The obliterating hand of nil nisi bonum saw to that.
    The necessary phone call to Madame Rigaut loomed ineluctably. But if I didn’t make it, my new line to Joe – that tender shoot – would wither irretrievably. Manu’s bit of paper seemed for one horrendous moment to have vanished, but proved, after a short panic, merely to have slipped inside a lurking file. However, when I rang the number, the woman who answered told me, in an accent so broad I could only just make out what she said, that Madame Rigaut was not home.
    I said I’d been very much hoping to speak to her, and wondered when she’d be back.
    In a week, said the woman. She was staying with her son.
    I thought: her son’s dead. But of course she had another son – Manu’s father. ‘The Minister?’
    ‘The Minister.’
    That, at least, was one question answered. I said, ‘I’m going to be in Meyrignac in a couple of weeks. Do you think she’d be able to see me then?’
    The woman, who must have been a housekeeper – no secretary would speak so broadly, she pronounced ‘madame’ as three distinct syllables – said, ‘You can try, madame.’ And we left it at that.
    Meyrignac’s nearest airport was Bergerac. Joe offered to stand me the ticket, but I was interested in art, not politics. If any interesting facts turned up – interesting, that is, to him – then fine. But this was my trip, not his. In any case, the fare was so cheap that even my exhibition’s tiny budget would probably stand the strain.
    The day before my departure I called Madame Rigaut again. This time she answered the phone herself. In a dry little voice thin with age she agreed that yes, she would be home the day after tomorrow, and that yes, I could, if I wanted, come and talk to her then about the Surrealists.
    ‘It’s kind of you to see me, madame. I know it’s not a good time for you.’
    ‘Frankly, at my age it all feels much the same,’ she said. ‘Bad, mostly. I don’t have a great deal to tell you. I hope you realize that.’
    I assured her I was happy to take my chances, and we agreed that I would call on her at 10 a.m. the day follow-ing my arrival.
    The south-west was a part of France I’d never been to, but airports are airports – the same wherever you go. Bergerac’s was smaller than most, a tin shed and a tent set amid flat fields of maize and sunflowers. But it possessed a car hire shack, at which in theory I’d made a reservation. Although Meyrignac had a train station, and was only fifty kilometres distant, there was no direct line from Bergerac. I’d have to change at Libourne, then wait three hours for a stopping train. We arrived just after ten; taking the train I’d arrive in Meyrignac at three, an average of ten kilometres an hour. It would almost be quicker to walk – far quicker to cycle. But there was no bike hire counter, so a car it had to be. I signed for the smallest vehicle on offer – a Fiat Panda – checked the route on the map, and set off into the shining countryside.
    Unlike England’s permanent traffic jam, the roads seemed almost empty, and on the back lanes into which I soon turned there was no traffic at all, give or take the odd tractor. A perfumed waft blew in the open window from a field where new-mown hay lay in neat green rows. I stopped the car, got out and luxuriously inhaled the fra-grant, fume-free breath of summer. High in the sky two big hawks rode the updraughts, calling to each other like lost souls. An oak wood at the field’s edge photosynthesized in the sunshine. I was filled with an unfamiliar feeling that I couldn’t at once name, but which I eventually identified as calm.
    A little less than an hour later, I arrived at Meyrignac. When I got there, I could see why there’d been no cars on the road. They were all here. Tuesday was market day, and the only free parking space almost on the town’s edge, beside the station – not that that placed it very far out. The station itself was