A Children's Story

Flies at a Feast

The direction from which you approach Avalon colours your impression. My companion Gwen had chosen well and drove me through the valley below the ancient Burgundian town from where we glimpsed its precariously sited limestone buildings through the trees. The smell and sounds of summer were an additional enticement. The town is near the continental watershed; to the south the Rhone flows towards the Med and something of that warmth and lightness is sensed on the wind. To the north is, well, the north. Gwen had become pivotal to my stay in the area although I had met her only the day before. How to ride the deep swell I felt rising? How to approach her?

The old town is on the most prominent cliff above the river. The streets are paved with slabs of deeply rutted stone dating back centuries and bordered of course by tourist shops. Gwen was a sculptress and had an affinity with stone. This became a feature of our visit as she pointed out latent shapes lying in the stones along with masons’ marks and small fossils. We sat drinking coffee beneath an old film poster of ‘La Dolce Vita’. Would champagne follow?

She had dressed carefully for this our second date. A broad - rimed straw hat set off her strawberry blonde hair and a flowing printed skirt flattered her maturing curves. Life burgeoning long after her children had left. I felt I pleased her as a companion too. She made a comment about my name being appropriate. Arthur and Gwen; I was sure we were heading for something magical.
We had come to Avalon so she could show me her masterpiece (her words) displayed in the ancient Romanesque church just off the market square. The sculpture was in the narthex, between the arched door and the font, the part of a church not regarded as sacred. Her work could be seen from the road and the clatter of feet on the pavement mixed with the murmur of a party of school-aged children being shown round by a couple of nuns.

For the most part visitors paid little attention to her stone and glass sculpture. It is a magnificent representation of Christ’s ascension to heaven placed high up towards the stone vaulting. First you notice the wounded feet, expressive like a woman’s. The elongated body is represented by a transition to lighter stone interleaved with more and more glass towards the head which is seen only as a bright outline entering another dimension, which of course is the point. The longer I looked the more I felt its power, and hers.

Gwen and I took the direct approach and fell easily into each other’s life. Returning to Scotland I made arrangements to move to Burgundy and in less than a couple of months I was with her again. Our time together would not be much longer than that. She told me about a particular virus she had but I had not thought it would kill her. Life is a series of watersheds but they are not often clear at the time.

In our short new life we were never apart, literally. This was largely because her house was in a small hamlet and there was simply nowhere to go beyond the garden which and the small courtyard where she worked obsessively with mallet and chisel. Under the stars in the evening and the sun in the garden, lying in arms together, over coffee and wine, over walks and over her shoulder as she turned stone from one form of the sublime into another, we learned much of each other’s life. In a beautiful unhurried meandering way she became as familiar to me as the moon which shone most nights on our months of bliss.
When she died I met both her children. They arrived together a few days before the funeral but it was clear that the togetherness was unusual. Under French law the house and contents were automatically theirs. They had the sculptures valued and arranged for them to be sent to Paris. They offered to sell the house to me at a fair price. Very quickly though the two girls started circling each other looking to impose differing views about their mother. I had no right to keep the ring or the knowledge to do so, other lives being so obscured.

For Marine, the younger by three years, their childhood had been full of wonder whereas for Chantal it had been a trial. Marine remembered bright holidays and money for treats. Chantal had been old enough to understand her parent’s violent break up and had blamed Gwen. She remembered her mother’s growing addictions with obvious pain and more than a hint of lasting despair. What Marine remembered as playful freedom whilst Gwen developed her art, and her many artistic friends, Chantal had thought of as painful neglect.

I learned that they had been removed by the authorities and placed with their father in Paris. They spoke little of him but I imagine things went well enough as both have professional jobs. Whilst growing up they received occasional reports from their mother’s battlefield of a life. But later, when the artist she been most involved with died in Morocco, Gwen had cut herself off. She emerged some years later as a considerable artist free of her demons. This situation continued for a few happier years and Marine and Chantal were both occasional visitors at the studio. They had known of my arrival but had not thought of asking my name, no doubt thinking I wouldn’t last. They hadn’t been told of her illness.
As soon as Gwen was in the cemetery her daughters seemed uneasy with me and disconcerted by each other. Following their mother’s instructions I lead them to a corner of the courtyard and got them to sit on some partly worked stones which would now never change shape. Bewildered Chantal smoked whilst Marine pouted. I took a spade and then a brush and over quite some time uncovered an incised marble slab. They silently read:

The Long Wave
“The childhood you give your children
is not the childhood either you or they
or their children think it is.”

Emotionally moved daughters decided to stay another day. I drove them to Avalon by the flat, depressing road along the plateau behind the town passing petrol stations, mini-marts and the cheaper houses. I sought a contrast with their mother’s masterpiece which neither of them had seen. I bought them a drink at the café with the poster of ‘La Dolce Vita’. I don’t know what they made of it, if anything. It was bitter/sweet for me of course. I didn’t mind, or if I did I ignored the fact, that my grief was not considered. Gwen had made me aware of the deeper wave within me. Afterwards I lead them to the church and watched them standing beneath the achievement of their mother. This was art speaking to them beyond the facts. I sensed tears, both of them speechless.
Next to the sculpture were several large notice boards linked together. They were covered with drawings by Sunday school children, young ones at that. The colourful depictions of their little world of smiling hopeful faces, angels and families alike in simplicity and acceptance made us all see how much is hoped for, how much is lost and yet how much remains. The children’s stories made our concerns seem, for a moment, to be no more than flies at a feast.

The next day as they started their trip back to Paris we were all three of us smiling like Bhuddas. I began to wonder if I could somehow transform the half-worked stones in the corner of the courtyard.