A BRIDGE TO DREAMS - PART ONE

A BRIDGE TO DREAMS ©Mollie Kay Smith

PART ONE

When people in Arganeaux, the isolated village in the Pyrenees Mountains, noticed Madeleine – which was not very often as she seldom descended from the remote farm where her father reared sheep - they referred to her as ‘The Witch’.

This may have had something to do with her far from ordinary appearance. Her facial features, neither ugly nor beautiful, were sharp and her skin tanned a dark chestnut, both offset by smouldering emerald eyes, a broad mouth and a mane of hair the colour of burnt treacle.

Her affection for bulky dark clothes did nothing to betray the image and the fact that her constant companion was a black cat which she carried in her arms wherever she went contributed to the image. The fact that she addressed frequent remarks and questions to the cat did nothing to dispel the ideas.

Other people, equally uncharitable, described her as retarded and stupid. The truth was none of these. She was merely a young woman whose lifestyle had caused her to be different. Brought up since the age of ten by a shepherd whose wife ran off with a trainer of bears in a circus, Madeleine was now aged twenty-six and her life so far had not been easy.

After her mother left she became the target for the brunt of her father’s misery. His love of alcohol soon turned him into a committed drunk who rarely spoke, communicated in grunts and only then to tell Madeleine which job to do next. And he found her enough work for three.

Then later the warnings about talking to men started - as if she ever saw any. When he was on a bender, which was often, he grew maudlin until falling into a drunken stupor. She was lonely and unloved.

But, from today all that was about to change! Madeleine had made up her mind.

It is mid- morning and she is perched on a rocky outcrop high above the valley. Her body is tense as a spring about to break free; a firecracker ready to explode. Exasperation tinges her voice as she speaks to the cat.

‘It’s already ten o’clock. They should’ve been here hours ago. Where are they?’ Then, scrambling higher on the rocks and shaking her arms as if in desperation her cry floats out across the valley: ‘Will things really change after today?’

She regards the terraced countryside sloping away from her. Familiar as her reflection in a mirror it has remained unchanged since the middle ages. Breathtakingly beautiful it always reminds her of a patchwork quilt spread out under the sun to dry.

Tumble-down stone walls border fields yellowing now under the hot August sun; cows grazing in the pastures at the valley bottom are so far away they seem like toys in a child’s farmyard box.

Ten kilometres distant the church tower at Argenaux thrusts up through the heat haze; the river winding through the hillsides and under an ancient stone bridge is but a silver thread in the quilt’s design.

Madeleine doesn’t need to look behind her to know that in shaded crevasses snow still gleams white against the dark granite cliffs on the highest peaks. In winter it would creep down into the valleys cloaking everything in its smothering whiteness until spring; but for now in high summer, like Madeleine, it waits.

‘Oh! Where’ve they got to? The letter said first thing. For goodness sake will they ever come?’

The letter. Her thoughts had dwelt on little else since it arrived. The new postman complained when delivering it. ‘I’ve spent hours searching for you’ he’d moaned. ‘You need a proper address. Near Arganeaux isn’t good enough.’

Her father had read some of the letter aloud, his voice pompous for he’d said, it was important.

‘The new bridge will create revenue and bring tourists to this region. It will provide an improved future for everybody. Life will be altered for the better, changed beyond recognition.’

‘Poppycock,’ had been Madeleine’s scornful retort ,’don’t believe a word of it.’ But next day her father told her the men working on the new bridge would be based on their small-holding. This had changed her mind.

Now as she gazes out expectantly over the valley she recalls what else her father said.

'Can't deny we’ve gotta have a new bridge,' he’d muttered, 'the old 'uns rotten. But heed what I say. They're gitanes every one. Give 'em a wide berth. If I find you've as much as even talked to one I'll....’

And this was the day they would come: the reason why she is staring out over the valley, tense as a hungry eagle waiting to spy its prey.