Chapter 2
2
Francine was quick to take advantage of the dry spell when the rain finally stopped to get out into the garden and trim back the rambling rose over the side trellis. She was holding the shears above her head and stretching for a tall errant offshoot when her mother stepped out of her room onto the terrace.
‘Fancy a cup of tea in about five minutes?’ Agnes called. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Please. There’s a lemon drizzle cake in the tin if you fancy a slice.’ Francine glanced across at Agnes but she had already disappeared back indoors. Cutting away at the lower, overgrown tangle of rose offshoots Francine’s thoughts wandered to worries about Agnes. It was several years since there had been that stressed tone to her mother’s voice. Definitely not since she and Edwin had moved into Francine’s childhood home to live with Agnes fourteen months ago now. Was she ill? Maybe the results of a recent blood test had come back and there was a problem. Please no. The thought of her mother being ill made Francine herself feel bad. Gathering the cuttings into a green garden waste bag she dragged it up the garden towards the gate ready for Edwin to dispose of it.
Agnes carried the tea tray with its flowery china cups and saucers, slices of lemon cake on matching plates out to the terrace and sat waiting for her. Before joining her mother Francine went into the kitchen to wash her hands. The rinsed sherry glass on the draining board surprised her. Four o’clock in the afternoon and Agnes had been drinking? Something must have seriously upset her.
Agnes poured the tea as Francine sat on the wrought iron chair with its scarlet cushion. ‘Lovely to be able to sit out here again. I think spring has finally arrived after all the rain,’ Francine said. ‘Shame it didn’t arrive in time for Easter. So, what do you need to talk to me about, Maman?’ she asked before taking a sip of tea and swallowing. ‘Is it your blood test results?’
‘ Non . They are good.’ Agnes muttered something under her breath in rapid French which Francine couldn’t quite make out, and her heart sank. Agnes had a habit of reverting to her native French whenever stressed or agitated over something. Whatever she needed to talk about was clearly serious. Francine waited.
‘Uncle Theo rang me this afternoon.’
‘How is he?’ Francine was very fond of her uncle Theo. He’d been very kind to her down the years on the numerous occasions she’d met him.
‘He’s well. He rang about your father,’ Agnes said quietly.
‘Like he couldn’t ring himself,’ Francine said.
‘In this case he couldn’t. He’s had an accident.’
At the look on her mother’s face, Francine stopped herself from making another sarcastic comment. Seeing Agnes take a deep breath, Francine knew instantly why she’d needed a drink that afternoon.
‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’
Agnes nodded. ‘Yes.’
Francine stayed silent, trying to assess her own feelings. Her father was dead. The father she barely knew; the father she’d not seen since she turned eighteen, thirty-six years ago. Her childhood memories of when he had been in her everyday life had faded, distorted, into unreliable pictures of her time growing up in France before the word ‘separation’ and all its consequences had become a presence in her life. She looked at Agnes.
‘ ?a va , Maman?’ Francine asked gently. What was Agnes thinking? Her marriage might have ended many years ago but there was bound to be some sort of instinctive gut reaction to the news. Francine suspected it would be similar to her own – indifference – but in her mother’s case, it would be laced with bitterness. She knew her mother well enough to know that the love between her parents, if in fact it had even existed in the beginning, had died a long time ago with Agnes ending up hating Oscar Agistini. Even if she had tried for years to hide that hate from her daughter. Agnes’s lifelong maxim had always been ‘the past is past, it’s the future we need to worry about’.
Francine was close to her mother these days but she knew little about her life before the two of them had arrived in England. Agnes had always been one to keep private things to herself. The way people poured out their innermost thoughts on social media was unthinkable and abhorrent to her. ‘I was brought up to smile at the world and hide any grief I might be experiencing.’ It was a moral code drummed into Francine from an early age. One that she herself had unconsciously adopted and now, like Agnes, lived by.
Agnes nodded and muttered a quiet, ‘ ?a va , merci . I am happy that it is finally over. Theo offered to ring and tell you but I thought you needed to hear the news from me.’
‘How did he die?’
‘Theo said it seems he had a heart attack as he was leaving his boat in the marina after an evening of drinking with another man and he fell between his boat and its neighbour. He died before he could be pulled out.’
‘Will you go to the funeral?’
‘ Non .’ Agnes said sharply, shaking her head.
‘Do you think I should go?’ Francine asked.
Agnes glanced at her, surprised. ‘Do you want to?’
‘No. But maybe Theo would appreciate one or both of us being there.’
‘I will ask him when he rings with the details.’ Agnes paused. ‘Jasmine will need to be told.’ As always, she called her granddaughter by her full name rather than by her preferred version, Zazz, that she’d insisted on using since secondary school.
‘I’ll phone her later. Oscar might have been her grandfather but as he’s never been in her life, I doubt the fact that he’s dead is going to affect her.’
‘Such a difficult man,’ Agnes muttered.
Francine nodded. Of all the words she could think of to describe her father – difficult was probably the politest and least offensive. Bully, mean-spirited, arrogant, tyrant, the list went on. He was all of those things and more. Francine remembered the last time she’d spoken to him, about nine months ago. Ironically the two of them shared a birthday and it had been the evening of her fifty-third birthday and his eighty-fourth…
Francine, Edwin and Agnes had been celebrating at a favourite restaurant when her mobile rang. She’d been tempted not to answer it. Zazz, who had gone to Ibiza with a couple of girlfriends for a long weekend break had rung her earlier to wish her Happy Birthday, and there was no-one else likely to ring her. But they were between courses so she gave it a quick glance. Unusually, it was Oscar’s name showing on caller ID. Hesitantly Francine accepted the call and said ‘Hello.’
Loud background noise told of a party in full swing. The words ‘Happy Birthday’ may have been uttered but were impossible to understand if they were. Oscar had been drunk, his words slurred and incoherent as he shouted into the phone. In the end Francine had hung up without being able to get in a word. Conversation with a sober Oscar was always difficult, with a drunken Oscar it was impossible…
That phone call had been as unexpected as it was unwelcome and Francine felt sure there was an unknown ulterior motive behind it, although it was one she’d been unable to discover so far. Now he was dead she was unlikely to ever know the truth behind the reason for the phone call.
Francine stood up and began to place cups and saucers back on the tray. ‘I need to start dinner.’
‘I’ll come and give you a hand,’ Agnes said.
As the two of them returned to the kitchen, they heard the front door close.
‘Edwin’s home,’ Francine said, a note of relief in her voice. ‘I think I’ll ask him to phone Zazz.’