Chapter 47
47
‘Is Delphine sick?’
Jacques jumped at Orla’s question. She and Hunter were in the hallway as he came in. He’d lingered a bit outside, made sure his motorbike was put away properly, the chickens and the reindeer were OK. Tommy had left him to it, interested only in riding the motorbike, not the aftercare. And now his heart was thumping from the immediate confrontation he hadn’t been ready for.
‘What?’ he asked, petting his dog.
‘Oh, Jacques,’ Orla said, shaking her head. ‘Don’t lie to me. I’ve had absolutely enough of men lying to me. Particularly when someone with your history should be much better at it.’
He swallowed. Perhaps the fact she could read him was a good thing. Maybe it meant he could finally be normal, not a tightened up, buttoned down clone of him who didn’t show an ounce of emotion. But then he wondered why she was asking? Had something happened? Was Delphine OK? They had only just come from the village.
‘Is she OK?’ he asked Orla as Hunter retreated into the kitchen.
‘That’s what I’m asking you.’
‘Yes, I know,’ he said.
‘And? Or are we back to me having to ask permission to ask questions?’
‘OK, OK,’ he said. ‘Just tell me she hasn’t called here. That she doesn’t need help right now.’
‘No, she hasn’t called here.’
‘OK,’ he said, shrugging off his coat and stamping his boots on the mat.
‘So?’ Orla carried on.
‘She has asked me not to say anything to anybody,’ Jacques said, hanging up his coat.
‘So it’s true!’ Orla gasped. ‘She has cancer?’
‘Wait, what?’ How did Orla know that?
‘Erin saw some pills in her bag and looked them up online. She also said Delphine has an awful cough.’
She had a cough now? When had that started? Did it mean she was getting worse? He was already walking toward the kitchen before he even realised it. And when he started pouring the whisky that was on autopilot too. He passed her a glass then took a slug of his.
‘She says she will not have an operation that could save her life.’
‘What?!’
He nodded. ‘She says that she would rather have this one last Christmas with everything perfect, with the people she cares about, than go through any pain and time at the hospital when the operation may not be a success.’
‘But that’s crazy!’ Orla exclaimed. ‘And operations on these types of things are so much more successful these days!’
‘You have met Delphine. You know how she can be.’ He leaned against the kitchen counter. ‘She knows her own mind.’
‘Hmm,’ Orla said, shaking her head. ‘Well, she hasn’t seen how forceful I can be when I think there’s a reason to be.’
He saw the fire in her eyes, the hot determination, like the passion he had seen reflected back when she had moved on top of him. He swallowed, the whisky burning his gut.
‘We need to do research,’ Orla said, slapping her hand to the counter. ‘We need to find out exactly what she’s facing and then we find out the facts and statistics. When people are presented with evidence it’s much more difficult to decide the other way.’
Like with his job. The risks he’d had to take to get absolute proof so there was no get-out clause for the gangs he had infiltrated.
‘And there’s so much more to wellness these days! When I was in the Amazon rainforest I spent time with this family who had managed to create all kinds of alternative medicines and I mean so seriously effective that a pharmaceutical company wanted to do research and, you know, perhaps if we talk to Delphine about natural treatments then she will be more open to it.’
Hope . Orla was spreading hope right now. And that was another thing that was at the heart of all her writing. He sighed, pulling out a chair and sinking down into it like his body was suddenly full of heavy mountain rock.
‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’ Orla asked him. ‘Because you can’t want this woman who cares so much about you to have one last Christmas and cease to exist? I mean, tell me I’m wrong, but she’s pretty much the only thing that’s been stopping you from turning into Howard Hughes.’
‘You are right,’ he answered, staring into his glass.
‘Then, what’s the problem? We should go now. Back down to the village. Talk to her.’
He shook his head. ‘Because if we went down there now and told her all these things, that would be for us and not for her. She has said this to me herself.’
‘Well, OK,’ Orla said, pulling out the chair opposite him and sitting in it. ‘I can see where you’re coming from but, you know, sometimes when people are presented with a new angle, a different perspective, then they have an opportunity to change their minds.’
‘I think the English word for this is “coercion”, no?’
‘I think that’s a bit of an extreme take on it.’
He looked up at her then. ‘I have spent a lot of time running around the edge of coercion, Orla. At the end of the day, no matter what we might think is for the best, people have to be able to make their own choices. Be it good or bad.’
‘I know that!’
‘Do you?’
‘Of course!’
‘Like when you are putting Band-Aids across your parents’ marriage? Or when you are telling Erin how she should feel about the man in her phone?’
He watched her eyes cloud over at his words, the fire extinguishing like the flame of a candle when it’s snuffed. He hadn’t wanted to do that, he had wanted to jump on the wave of her enthusiasm and ride it with her.
‘You think we shouldn’t try to help people? Isn’t that what you’ve also done in your job?’
‘I didn’t say we shouldn’t try to help.’
‘Then what?’
‘Just that, “helping” is very different to “fixing”.’
‘You think I’m a fixer.’
‘I think you find it hard to accept that sometimes, no matter what you do, people have to be allowed to make mistakes, to make bad choices, to fail even.’
‘Oh, right,’ Orla said. ‘So you feel qualified to make these statements now just because we’ve slept together?’
He shook his head, inhaling through his teeth. ‘Not at all. But at least you are acknowledging that it happened.’
‘I didn’t ever not acknowledge it,’ she clarified. ‘I just chose not to parade it around my impressionable sixteen-year-old sister.’
‘Because you think it was something you should hide and be ashamed of?’
‘Because we haven’t known each other very long and I don’t do that sort of thing and I’ve been trying to tell her not to think about doing that sort of thing with the Albanian in her phone.’
‘Fixing,’ Jacques said.
‘You’re really annoying me now!’
‘Good! Because I have come to realise what is missing from all of your articles in the magazine!’
‘Oh, right, so now you’ve finished attacking my plaster-giving personality, you’re going to start on my career? You said you loved my writing!’
She got up from the chair and looked like she was either going to leave the room or attack him with something from the fruit bowl. It didn’t matter either way. He was committing to this.
‘You only write about what’s good.’
‘That’s not true!’ She had leaned on the table and spat the words at him.
‘Yes, it is true. And I don’t know if that’s the inspirational, beautiful picture-painting that you’re told to write, that perhaps your writing in its purest form is then censored somehow but?—’
‘What?’
‘The people and the animals and the extreme places you write about must have elements of hardship to their stories.’
‘Of course they do!’
‘Then why do you only give the tiniest glimpse of that? Surely the more difficult the journey the stronger the happy conclusion will feel.’
‘I write about difficult journeys all the time!’
‘But you never connect with that part of it,’ he told her. ‘Your words wash over it and bring people away from bad stuff and draw readers’ attention to the communities rising, or the animals reproducing, or the environment changing for the good.’
‘If you want to read about how the world is all going to end only a few hundred years from now I can direct you to a very different publication.’
‘You’re not listening to me.’
‘And you’re just deflecting. Like you’ve done since I arrived. Anything to take the attention off you and your identities and your inability to face up to reality.’
‘It takes one to know one? Is that not the saying?’
‘Oh, so you think we’re alike now?’
He stood up, moved around the table until he was closer to her. ‘I think we both hide how we feel so we do not hurt anyone else but ourselves.’
‘Not listening now,’ Orla stated. ‘And I don’t have time for this. I stayed up to ask you about Delphine, I’ve done that and you disagree. You’ve slated my writing which is the one thing I take pride in and you’ve described me as someone who wallpapers over things instead of facing them head on and?—’
He couldn’t help himself. In an exact replica of the move he had made when she first came to his home, he had her flat on her back and silent on the table in a millisecond.
‘You know I think your writing is incredible,’ he told her, leaning over and close. ‘It’s brought the outside world to me here in Saint-Chambéry.’ He smoothed a hand down her hair as she looked up at him. ‘But you shouldn’t be scared to show the cracks, along with the repair and the resolution.’
She was shaking a little as she replied. ‘No one wants to see the cracks.’
‘Yes, they do,’ Jacques told her. ‘That’s what I’ve only just realised. When I’ve started to want to know how you got broken. It’s those unaffixed parts spiralling away from everything else that makes things interesting.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, Orla. And it’s finding out how that feels, to want to know the parts of someone that aren’t perfect, that has made me see that I need to learn how to show those pieces of myself too.’
He was staring into her eyes now, seeing someone very different to all the other times he’d looked before. She was vulnerable in this moment, as raw as he had seen her. And he liked seeing that honesty reflecting in her eyes.
‘And you want to show me those pieces?’ Orla asked.
‘Yes.’
‘But what if I can’t show you mine?’
‘I think it’s maybe a work in progress for us both. But that’s OK.’
He was shaking a little as he lowered his mouth towards hers.
‘Whoa! Looking away!’
It was Tommy coming in and Hunter leapt up with a bark. Jacques backed up, turning to face his brother as Orla straightened herself.
‘What’s up?’ Jacques asked him.
‘It’s Erin,’ Tommy said. ‘She’s texted me. She told me not to say anything but, you know, she’s freaking crazy so…’
‘Keep talking,’ Jacques ordered.
‘She’s gone,’ Tommy said bluntly.
‘Gone?’ Orla exclaimed. ‘Gone where? She was in our room an hour ago.’
‘She’s gone to meet Burim.’