Chapter 9
SARAH
After Hal helps me out of Betty and onto the dried mud of the makeshift car parking area, we follow Adèle – who exudes a kind of glamour that seems out of step with the dilapidated building – to the door of an enormous barn.
‘And will you carry it on?’ I ask.
She glances at me. ‘I am not sure,’ she says. ‘Perhaps.’
‘It’s a beautiful building,’ Hal says and I look at him quizzically. Perhaps surviving almost being eaten by a dog has left him seeing the world in a more positive light. Which, as he’s already the most happy-go-lucky person I know, could end up being unbearable.
Adèle leads us into a room containing ten large barrels, stored on their sides. In the middle of the space there is a high, round table, its surface only a little bigger than a stool. There’s a cloth thrown over it and three glasses and a bowl in the centre.
‘We have seven different ciders here,’ she tells us. ‘Some of the original blends of my grandfather and some newer flavours, but all are family recipes.’
Hal seems fascinated, although it’s hard to tell whether he’s drooling over the idea of imminent cider consumption or over Adèle, who is, admittedly, stunning.
Smiling, she walks to one of the barrels and turns on its tap, pouring cloudy brown liquid into two small glasses. She hands one to each of us.
I’ve seen wine tastings on TV, watched experts swill the wine around their pretentious mouths and claim to taste hints of blackberry or a woody flavour.
But I’m not sure what we’re meant to do here.
Do people really spit the cider out? Is that what the bowl is for?
What if I spit it out and it turns out the bowl is actually there to hold bread or apples or something?
Am I meant to remark on the flavour? I can detect a hint of apple…
I watch Hal out of the corner of my eye. He swills the tea-coloured liquid around the glass, then raises it to his nose, taking a long, suspiciously theatrical sniff. ‘Mmm,’ he says.
I sniff my own glass, and it smells exactly like…
well, cider. I take a tentative sip. The liquid is sweet, with a slightly bitter but not unpleasant aftertaste.
Hal, next to me, drains his glass appreciatively so I follow suit, thankful that I let him lead and didn’t make a fool of myself by gobbing it all into the fruit bowl.
The next cider is darker, more bitter, and I can barely force myself to drink it.
But once again, Hal seems all appreciation.
Adèle is watching him, head to one side, as if summing him up, and I think the attention has brought out his inner Neanderthal.
He wants to impress her. Either that, or he really does love cider in all its forms. His glass is soon empty, but while Adèle turns to the next vat, I manage to pour a little of mine onto the straw-covered dirt floor.
Hal looks at me quizzically, but I avoid his gaze.
It’s either that or throw up all over the pair of them, and I’m pretty sure this is the least messy and embarrassing option.
The next cider is decidedly lighter and goes down decidedly more easily, so much so that I forget that I’m not meant to be drinking too much on the painkillers and ask for a second glass. Adèle obliges, seemingly happy to have our approval.
It’s only an hour later, when Hal and I stumble out into the sunlit courtyard, that reality hits. Because Hal has probably had at least six glasses of strong cider, and I’m not far behind him. Betty sits across from the house accusingly and I realise for the first time exactly what we’ve done.
‘Hal?’ I say.
He turns towards me, a lazy, contented smile spread across his daft face. ‘Sarah?’ he says.
‘How are we going to get back to the campsite?’
He seems initially confused, and it’s almost as if I’m watching his gradual realisation spread across his face in individual freeze-frames: confusion, deep thought – a montage I’m going to call The Truth Dawns – followed by horror, one painfully slow emotion at a time. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Shit.’
Adèle, exiting the barn behind us, hears him. ‘What is wrong?’ she asks.
‘I’ve been drinking,’ Hal explains as if she hadn’t been the one providing the alcohol at all. ‘And I can’t drive.’
‘Me too,’ I add, trying to be helpful. ‘And I’ve also got a broken leg.’
Hal looks down, as if he’d completely forgotten that. ‘She’s got a broken leg,’ he tells Adèle.
She’s regarding us both with a mixture of pity and annoyance. ‘Well, of course. I did wonder, but I presumed you had someone to drive you? Why did you drink so much?’
‘This,’ Hal says, slurring slightly, ‘is a cider tasting.’
‘Well, of course. I realise this!’ she snaps.
‘We drank cider.’ He adds, helpfully. ‘You must have known we were going to do that?’
‘But people do not always drink the cider. They spit!’ She mimes a spitting motion and for a moment I think she’s going to hack up a loogy onto one of his shoes. ‘I put out a bowl for you.’
Ha. HA! So I was right! But it’s a little late now.
‘Oh,’ Hal says. ‘Shit.’
‘Well,’ she says with an exasperated sigh. ‘You will have to stay here. I cannot let you drive in this condition. I will speak to my father.’
As if her words have summoned him, the overalled man appears in the doorway. Princesse is at his feet and when Hal sees the dog, he visibly stiffens.
‘Papa,’ Adèle says in a sharp tone, following with a torrent of French that wouldn’t have made any sense to me even if I had been sober. Which I’m beginning to realise more and more is not the case.
He begins to wave his arms, his face turning an almost alarming shade of red, and fires back what sounds like several angry sentences.
I recognise the words ‘étranger’ (foreigner), ‘alcool’ (alcohol), and what sounds like ‘fou’ (crazy), then give up trying to follow the spiel.
There’s something nice in relinquishing that. Let the grown-ups sort it out.
In fact, I feel a little wobbly and hobble my way over to Betty who remains unlocked, opening the door and sinking into my seat gratefully.
I close my eyes and feel the world spinning slightly as the voices outside rise and fall, only opening them a few minutes on when the driver’s door slams.
Hal is sitting next to me, his face ashen. Across the courtyard I can see Adèle and her father walking into the house. The door closes firmly behind them.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he tells me, hitting his palms on the wheel. ‘I am such an idiot.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Oh, we can stay. But we’re not to enter the house. No toilet, no shower, no proper cooking. We’re basically stuck.’
It strikes me that these would pretty much have been the conditions we’d have faced had we made it back to the campsite, but that would be letting Hal off the hook. Because he was pretty stupid, thoughtless. And this is entirely on brand.
‘Great,’ I say.
‘Sorry,’ he replies, a slight slurring in his words causing a flash of annoyance in me, despite the fact I am probably slurring too.
‘Yeah, well, this is just typical Hal,’ I tell him. ‘You don’t think things through. You just go through life, without planning. Meandering. Letting things happen. But you don’t realise that your actions affect other people too!’
‘What do you mean?’ He seems utterly incredulous.
‘Well, with Louis for example. Did you ever think to ask me if I needed a hand with the ordinary stuff? The dentist appointments, the shoe shopping, the parents’ evenings… That kind of thing? No. You just knew that I would pick up the slack and you let me, time and time again!’
This isn’t entirely fair, but I am not entirely sober. I am more than a little bit drunk on a heady concoction of codeine and cider.
Hal’s nostrils flare. ‘I would have done all of that. You only had to ask.’
This, unfortunately for Hal, is like a red flag to a bull.
‘I only had to ask! You’re his parent too!
What, do you think he didn’t ever need dental care, or an education or, I don’t know, to get his feet measured?
The point is, Hal, I shouldn’t have had to ask.
You should have worked that out for yourself! ’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But nothing. I know you stumped up the cash. I know you were a present dad, at weekends at least. But you weren’t a parent.
You weren’t a partner in raising him. Not in the real business of raising him.
That was me. That was all me!’ I notice a little fleck of spit sail out of my mouth at these words and instantly wish I could retrieve both it and the things I’ve said.
Yes, I do hold on to some resentment from the past. But I was just a kid.
He was just a kid. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to pre-empt the needs of a small child if I hadn’t been living with Louis day in, day out, with a mother to point out exactly what I was getting wrong if I so much as left a soiled nappy on for a little too long. How was Hal meant to know?
He’s looking at me, mouth open. ‘You think I was a bad father?’
I take a breath. Remind myself that we’ve got ten more days together at least.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think most people are bad or good parents,’ I say.
‘Obviously there are very bad parents. They’re easy to identify.
The rest of us, we’re just making it up as we go along.
I just wish you’d been… I don’t know. Maybe it’s not you at all.
I just wish it had been easier, that raising Louis hadn’t meant… well, giving up on my own life.’
‘You’re a lawyer. You have your own practice. You…’
‘Yeah, looks good on paper, doesn’t it?’ I am now willing myself to shut up. I just can’t see to stop my mouth flapping and the words coming out.
‘You’re not… happy?’
‘I’m OK. Lonely sometimes.’ Stop talking! Stop talking! Stop talking! ‘My life feels a bit… I don’t know… empty since Louis left. I realised how much space he took in my life, and now he’s just left… a hole.’ The last word comes out in a sob.
‘A hole for a man to fill?’ Hal asks, clearly only hearing what he’s saying as he’s saying it.
I almost laugh. Almost. But my emotions are surging all over the place. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Hal. You have to bring it down to the lowest level, don’t you?’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he snaps. Opening the door, he steps out onto the courtyard. ‘I’ll sleep outside tonight. Look at the stars or something. I need some space!’ He slams the door and I sit for a moment in a daze of confusion, not quite sure how it has come to this.
Before I can think what to do next though, a house door slams and there’s a cacophony of ferocious barking and what sounds like a tiny yelp – although it’s not clear if that’s human or animal. Princesse charges towards Hal, a ball of energy, teeth and blood lust.
Hal turns with almost superhuman speed and races towards the camper, his hand outstretched, ready to grab the handle and yank open the door to safety. I’m half-tempted to lock it, not to consign Hal to a chompy doom, but simply to avoid a small, bloodthirsty dog hurling herself into the cab.
Before I can react, Hal appears beside me in the van just in time. Princesse slams herself into the door behind him with surprising force, then begins to hurl herself repeatedly at the glass.
‘Star-gazing not quite as tempting as you thought?’ I ask.
‘No,’ he grunts. ‘Think I’ll give it a minute.’