Chapter 38
38
DELPHINE’S STORE/CAFé, SAINT-CHAMBéRY
‘What happened?’ Jacques asked, elbow deep in tinsel with Gerard as they both worked to support Delphine’s rummaging around in the biggest cardboard box he had ever seen. It was so large it could easily have homed all Santa’s reindeer, the sleigh, gifts and Santa himself.
‘She has gone crazy this year,’ Gerard remarked, baubles rolling out onto the floor of the shop. ‘There are three more of these boxes in my bar!’
‘Delphine, come out of the box,’ Jacques ordered. ‘Tell us what you’re looking for in there and we can find it.’
The last thing he wanted Delphine to be doing was getting overwhelmed by anything that could make her condition worse. Right now he wanted her to be in bed, resting and taking care of herself. Or, better still, letting someone else take care of her the way she usually took care of everyone else. He thought back to what Orla had said about people who worked backstage to let others shine…
‘I am not finding anything specific!’ Delphine called, voice muffled by mountains of Christmas regalia. ‘I want it all out! It all has places to go!’
With those words said she made a high-pitched gasp and an avalanche of tinsel, bells on strings, angels, Santa Clauses, and enough baubles to fill the brouette three times over rolled out of the box, Delphine coming with it.
Jacques caught her as the decorations continued to come like they were being powered out by a leaf-blower.
‘It is like a tsunami!’ Gerard exclaimed, being forced back into the shelving of tinned goods.
Finally, it stopped and there it was, a mountain of festiveness blocking the entire aisle. Why had she opened it in the middle of here? Surely taking it into her stock room would have been much more sensible.
‘Delphine,’ Jacques said. ‘Until this is moved you cannot have customers accessing this aisle. Someone will get hurt.’
‘Or lost!’ Gerard remarked, pulling an ornate Christmas cracker from his beard.
‘Ah, is that so?’ Delphine said, a twinkle in her eye. ‘Yes, I fear you may be right. Isn’t it lucky that I have you here to help me decorate?’
‘Oh, no, Delphine, I have beer arriving in an hour and I need to move my stock around. They have put off the delivery for over a week because of the weather so I cannot miss it and Saint-Chambéry cannot run out of beer,’ Gerard said, side-stepping a currently flat but very large inflatable angel.
‘Gerard—’ Jacques began.
‘You must go, Gerard,’ Delphine interrupted. ‘Jacques can help me.’
Now he saw the woman’s vision. She had deliberately unpacked this here knowing it would cause an issue that needed to be solved and that he would not be able to leave without assisting her. And Gerard didn’t need to be told twice that he could escape from this mayhem. The bar owner had untangled himself from a string of coloured lights and moved like a cheetah towards the back of the store and freedom…
‘I do want to talk to you,’ Jacques said when they were alone, the conversation from the café area and light festive music the only sounds around them.
‘I know,’ Delphine replied. ‘But you also know that this conversation will kill me quicker than any cancer. So, we will do it my way. While making this store look like a Christmas wonderland.’
She had planned this. Like she planned everything. He had no other choice, so he picked up a line of maids-a-milking.
‘Where do you want these?’
‘So, you can ask now,’ Delphine said, as Jacques, on a stepladder, tied another garland to the rafters.
‘OK,’ he replied.
‘OK,’ she repeated.
As they had begun decorating, Delphine had told him she did not want to start straight into talking about her illness, that they needed to do good work first and then she would be ready to confide in him. He knew there was no way he was leaving the shop today without getting his answers but he also appreciated how hard it must be for her. But with a whole stream of questions fighting their way to be first, what did he begin with?
‘Are you in pain?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But it is manageable.’
‘You have medication?’
‘I do.’
‘What kind?’
‘The pain-killing kind. The type that puts it in the background so I can live without it taking over everything.’
‘Whereabouts is it? Do you have to have an operation?’
‘My stomach. And nobody has to have an operation.’
‘Delphine, what does that mean?’ he asked, storming down the steps of the ladder until he was opposite her. ‘Does it mean that you can have an operation to fix this, but you are refusing to have it?’
‘There is no point. I will be away from the shop and the village for too long, the chances of it working are not high enough, then there will be more draining treatment and more time away from Saint-Chambéry so?—’
‘So you’re just going to give up and… die?’
His heart was beating in his neck, throbbing so hard it was making the skin hurt. This was worse than the cancer itself. How could someone with so much vitality decide to just let that slip away?
‘I have decided to do everything I can to live the fullest life possible until God decides it is time for me to stop.’
‘Delphine—’
‘Stop!’ she ordered, stamping her feet. ‘You can ask me anything but you cannot tell me what decision to make.’
‘But Delphine?—’
‘Jacques! Please! Have some respect!’ she shouted. Then she carried on, her voice a bit lower. ‘When you first came here, did I question why you were sitting in the church soaking wet with only a backpack? Did I ever question your decision about where to build your house or make comment about how many ways there were to lock the doors?’
‘No,’ Jacques said, picking up a line of stars. ‘But you asked me a thousand questions ranging from my mother’s favourite recipe to had I ever been chased by a bear.’
‘OK,’ Delphine said. ‘That is true. But I never ever asked you why you sometimes get official-looking letters from Belgium, or why when Tommy visits you’re torn between feeling glad and looking terrified.’
Granted, this was true. And her apparent appreciation of the situation without having any direct knowledge had always been something he held in high regard.
‘You are changing the subject, Delphine. We are talking about your illness.’
‘We are talking about my life. Mine . And my wishes, which everybody knows, have to be adhered to before anything else. Because that is the one thing a dying person should be allowed to be a bit selfish about.’
Dying person . He didn’t want her to be a dying person. She was a living person, a larger-than-life-itself person, one of his closest people. He swallowed and put a hand on the stepladder. ‘What are your wishes? Apart from to make me have Orla and Erin at my house with a fake reindeer and even faker window replacements.’
Delphine put a hand to her chest. ‘How can you say the reindeer is fake? You have seen it with your own eyes! How is it today? Settling in with your chickens?’
He shook his head. ‘It is still a male.’
‘And you have told Orla this?’
‘Not yet,’ he admitted. ‘But I am not going to carry on lying to someone I care about and?—’
‘Someone you care about.’
He watched Delphine put her hands on either side of her face, fingers resting on her cheeks like he had spilt a secret code to the enemy. Why had he said that?
He cleared his throat as he picked up another garland from the very slowly decreasing pile. ‘I care about them both having a good image of the village to take back to the UK and for Orla to write about in her magazine. Just like you said.’
‘Oh, Jacques,’ Delphine said, pushing her glasses up her nose. ‘I do not think that is it. I see you two together. It is like a fire. One minute the flames are so hot and there is passion and singeing, the next there is that warm glow of the embers that is not as hot but sometimes even more satisfying.’
Her words trickled down inside him like the glittering streamers were now trickling down from the food shelves. Was that how he and Orla were together? He couldn’t deny there were feelings there he was finding it hard to suppress. But their meeting had been planned by his friend. They had been literally pushed together…
‘I know what you are thinking,’ Delphine carried on, picking up a snowflake decoration. ‘You are thinking that I am wanting you to get together with Orla, then marry and have children that will carry on all the traditions of Saint-Chambéry for generations to come.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘No,’ Delphine said. ‘Because I am not na?ve enough to think that people will want to spend their whole lives in this tiny village when there is such a big world out there waiting to be explored.’
‘Then, what is your wish?’
‘For you to have the strength to leave here,’ Delphine said. ‘But for you to have the desire to also return sometimes.’
‘Delphine,’ Jacques said, sighing.
‘What?’ she queried. ‘I am sick! What else is there for me to do but plan for other people who do have a future?’
He didn’t want to hear this. That his friend, the person who had been more of a mother to him that anybody else, wasn’t going to be here until she was almost as old as the legend of the brouette .
‘I am not going to ask you to make me any promises,’ Delphine said. ‘Not about this village. Not about Orla.’
‘But?’ Jacques said.
‘But, think about things, Jacques. Re-evaluate. If only for an old woman’s sake.’
He knew he already was and had been from the moment all his carefully crafted routines had been turned upside down by the arrival of his brother and a reporter who had moved from the admiration zone to whatever was transpiring between them now. His mouth dried like someone had stuck it up to a Dyson Airblade.
‘I… have asked Orla on a date.’
Delphine gasped. ‘You have?’
‘Yes. And… I have no idea where to take her. Grenoble seems cliché. But Grenoble is the only place with life around here and more choice of places to eat and I do not know the best places to eat or even what food she likes and?—’
‘Jacques,’ Delphine said, smiling. ‘Listen to yourself.’
‘I would rather not listen to myself.’
‘You are excited about this. You are not thinking straight.’
‘Because I don’t do this!’ he reminded her, throwing up his hands and knocking tinsel into a pendulum swing.
‘Ah, that is wrong,’ Delphine interrupted. ‘You have done this but all the times you have done this it is because I forced you to.’
‘And might I remind you that you brought Orla here.’
‘Maybe,’ she answered. ‘But you are the one who has asked her on a date.’
He nodded, internally regrouping.
‘So, you need to not think about Grenoble,’ Delphine told him. ‘You need to think about further and wider. Use your experience. Or, perhaps, use Orla’s.’
He caught her wincing and he reached out, putting a hand on her arm. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes,’ she insisted. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Because I can do this on my own if you need to…’
‘Lie down?’ Delphine asked him. ‘I will have a long time to lie down when they bury me in the cemetery.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Jacques begged. ‘In fact, if I am going to do something for you, then I would like you to do something for me.’
‘No,’ Delphine said firmly.
‘Delphine…’
‘Ugh. What is it?’
‘If I am to think about things and re-evaluate then, I want you to do the same.’
‘That is unfair, Jacques.’
‘How so?’
She shook her head, that valiant determination always appearing at the forefront of everything she undertook. ‘Because it is different.’
Jacques put a hand on her shoulder then. ‘You do not have to do this on your own, Delphine. Isn’t that what you strive to make sure Saint-Chambéry is all about? Helping one another? Giving a place to those in need? Supporting those who suffer?’
He watched her wrinkle up her nose in disapproval. ‘Do not use me against me.’
He shrugged. ‘What choice do you give me?’
He could see she was thinking about his words, now trailing a skein of red and white ribbon through her fingers. All he needed was a bit of hope, the vaguest chance that he could get through to her, let him help her like she had helped him.
‘I will think,’ she said, finally. ‘That is all.’
A warm feeling spread through him. It was something he didn’t have before he’d walked in here. He wanted to hug her. And that kind of physical affection didn’t come easy for him. He made the tiniest movement.
‘Do not hug me!’ Delphine exclaimed, her voice breaking a little. ‘We have much to do here with these decorations!’
‘OK,’ he said, smiling. And he had much to think about when it came to his date with Orla.