Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
‘There’s no such thing as ghosts,’ I told myself, calmly, having woken to strange noises in the building again.
I blamed it on the wind, making a mournful sound as it whirled down through the chimney, but I knew in my gut that there was more to it than that.
The wind was just the messenger. I turned on the light and sat up in bed.
I wavered between feelings of fear and curiosity, before finally deciding that I had to confront whatever this was.
Like Madame Moreau said, it was an old building and even if it did hum with the echoes of past residents, there was no reason to feel afraid.
They were people once. With lives. Just like Mum.
The thought was sharp as a nail. I still found it hard to think about her death.
I took out a notebook and began jotting down some random thoughts.
I used to keep a journal when I was younger.
It had provided me with a safe space to pour out my thoughts when I didn’t want to burden my parents or worry them.
I began to wonder why this ‘haunting’ was happening to me and as I did, the words on the page began to flow.
Maybe my fear was misplaced grief. Perhaps I’d been haunted by my inability to grieve properly for my mum.
I was caught in a web of so many different emotions, guilt, resentment, sorrow, self-pity …
it was hard to deal with one without pulling on the strings of the others.
I was exhausted, mentally and emotionally.
It was understandable that the stress had caused me to see things that weren’t there.
It was time to face the unseen and prove to myself that I had nothing to fear.
So I got up, put on my dressing gown and went down the stairs.
How wrong could I have been; I was terrified.
The fleeting courage I had found immediately deserted me.
I mean, who goes out of their way to vanquish a ghost?
Stupid people in horror movies, that’s who, and we all know how they end up.
It was too late to turn back, so I just had to get on with it and trust that my newfound theory was true.
Crouching in my usual space below the sink (light years from my Parisian dream), I lifted the grate and searched below for any sign of life – or death, as the case might be.
I saw Madame Moreau and Manu working diligently as before, although I could hardly hear their voices over the loud thumping of my heart.
I began to have my doubts about the ‘presence’ I had seen the other night, for they seemed to be alone.
Then, just as before, a flickering image appeared by Manu’s side and an overwhelming sense of fear bloomed in my chest. I thought I would pass out again.
I had to concentrate on my breathing, trying to slow it down, and as I did, I prayed to my mother for courage and understanding.
I tried to remember what I had felt upstairs in my room – whoever they were, this person was alive once.
Just a normal person with their own hopes and fears.
I held my hand on my chest and felt my heart rate begin to decelerate.
As I began to calm down a little, I lay flat on the ground (which, in a toilet, is a huge sacrifice of personal hygiene) to get a better look.
The man, for he was dressed like a man, appeared to be real.
Yet, the more I forced myself to watch, the more he seemed slightly opaque.
There was a dim glow to his skin. Otherwise, he was moving around like an ordinary person.
That’s when I realised, to my amazement, that he appeared to be in the process of kneading bread.
There was no dough in his hands and he didn’t appear to be touching anything, but his actions were that of a baker kneading dough.
Looking across at Manu, I could see him mimicking every move the man was making, the only difference being that Manu’s hands were actually connecting with something.
Then I heard Madame Moreau speak from the shadows.
‘That’s it, now you will be able to bake bread like a true Moreau!’ she said, her voice breaking with pride, or sadness, or both.
I stayed there for another fifteen minutes, having brought my trusty notebook to take notes so I wouldn’t be second-guessing myself later.
I had to plan my next move very carefully.
It was clear that Manu knew what I had been doing in the toilet that night, and yet as far as I knew he had said nothing to Madame Moreau.
In a way, I intuited that he wanted me to find out, but as to why, I did not know.
I would not confront them until I did some digging of my own.
While living above a haunted bakery might take a little getting used to, I wasn’t prepared to run away just yet.
* * *
I waited for Manu till the end of the day, when the streetlamps popped on, one by one, and he returned to the bakery on his scooter. As was his routine, he began emptying all the leftover bread into a box for delivery to the homeless shelter.
‘Why don’t I go with you?’ I suggested. By this stage I was accustomed to his and Madame Moreau’s complete lack of enthusiasm regarding anything I said. If there was one thing I had learned in this country, it was to just barge your way through instead of waiting for an invite.
Manu sort of sniffed and looked out at the scooter. He had a point; I couldn’t see myself riding on the handlebars.
‘Why don’t we walk, eh … marcher? I’m sure it’s pas loin,’ I said. ‘It’s not too far, is it, Madame Moreau? And I can help to carry some of the boxes.’
Instead of her usual shrug, I almost detected what might have been considered a smile. Perhaps I was breaking down her walls after all. With that, off we trudged through the cobbled streets.
‘So, you’re interested in becoming a baker, then?’ I asked Manu, starting the proceedings with a little small talk.
‘Oui.’
‘And you are learning from the baker I saw in the basement last night?’ I let the sentence hang there until he worked it out.
‘You saw … ‘im?’ he asked a little hesitantly.
‘I saw something, and I definitely wasn’t dreaming,’ I said, matching his frankness. ‘Ce n’était pas un rêve.’
‘S’il vous plait … do not speak of last night to Madame Moreau,’ Manu blurted, in surprisingly good English.
Up until that moment, I had doubted my own sanity.
Each time that image of the ghost standing there (or hovering there) crept up, I felt slightly weak and spent the entire day afterwards explaining it away.
Lack of sleep, a play of shadows, even having a nervous breakdown seemed a preferable alternative to what I knew in my gut to be true.
‘I’m not sure what I saw,’ I replied honestly, ‘but I think I deserve an explanation.’
Neither of us spoke for a while. Manu led the way and took a right turn by the side of a large church I hadn’t seen before.
At the back, there was something of a hall with a line of windows lit up warmly from the inside and a queue of people extending out the door.
Manu greeted some of the people in the queue and quite chivalrously let me go in ahead of him.
I hadn’t really thought about where we were going, my mind had been so fixed on getting answers out of him.
But now that we had arrived, I was both surprised and humbled by what I saw.
It was like a canteen with lots of tables set up for dinner, and at the top of the room there was a counter manned by volunteers handing out bowls of steaming soup and a main dish of some kind of casserole.
A priest spotted Manu and came out from behind the counter to greet us.
‘Bonjour, Emmanuel,’ he greeted him by his full name. ‘T’as amené une petite amie?’
‘Père Bernard, je vous présente Mademoiselle Lane,’ Manu spoke respectfully. ‘Elle est irlandaise,’ he added almost as an excuse for any upcoming blunders I would make.
In that vein, I wasn’t entirely sure of the etiquette and whether I was supposed to kiss him, but thankfully, as I put the boxes down on a table, he took my hand and shook it.
It didn’t help that I suddenly forgot all my French, which I was wont to do on social occasions, but again he took the initiative.
‘?a vous pla?t, la vie ici en France?’
Did I like living in France? Well, it was a work in progress.
‘Oh, oui, je suis très contente ici.’ It wasn’t a lie exactly, my life in France was growing on me in some ways.
‘Father says, it is our responsibilité to protect the forgotten,’ Manu said, filling in the blanks for me.
And these people were forgotten. Many of them were immigrants, who looked as though they had little more than the clothes on their backs.
As we walked back to the bakery later, I had a whole new set of questions for Manu.
‘Those people back there,’ I began, ‘they’re not French, are they?’
He eyed me up for a moment before answering. ‘They come from many different places. They are refugees.’
‘And you and Madame Moreau help them?’
He nodded in response.
‘Are you two related?’ I pressed on, aware that this was really none of my business, but at the same time, I felt as though I was being drawn into something and had a right to know.
‘C’est ma grandmère,’ he said.
‘Grandmother?’ I repeated unnecessarily. I let it sink in for a while. I couldn’t understand why they hadn’t just told me that in the beginning. Perhaps something had happened to Manu’s parents, Madame Moreau’s son or daughter, and that was why she was looking after Manu.
‘Grandmère says that, as Roma, it is our duty to ’elp those who are on the outside.’
I knew nothing about Roma gypsies or their culture. All I knew from Ireland was the traveller community and the discrimination they faced every day, negative stereotypes diminishing their rich culture.
‘So, can you tell me what really happened last night? Does it happen every night?’
He was obviously uncomfortable talking about it, but he seemed more concerned about me blabbing my suspicions to Madame Moreau than what I would do with the information. Still, he was guarded.
‘It’s OK, Manu,’ I said, feeling a rush of maternal feeling towards him.
‘Vous n’êtes pas obligé de tout me dire maintenant.
We can talk about it later,’ I assured him.
It was clear he wasn’t ready to talk to me about it and I wasn’t sure how ready I was to hear it.
It was enough to know that I wasn’t going crazy and Madame Moreau’s secret was safe between us for the time being.
On that mutual ground, we parted for the night, but my curiosity still tugged at me.
I couldn’t help but wonder where, or rather when, the apparition was coming from.
Had something happened in the town’s history, or perhaps the building itself?