Chapter 41
France, 2016
MAGGIE KNEW PHIL DIDN ’ T like Mungo from the start.
It wasn’t what she said during that weekend. At least not initially. It was what she didn’t say.
They’d only flown from London on the day of the party. He’d had to oversee the completion of a client’s house the day before, which meant they couldn’t fly any earlier, and he had to be back at his desk on Monday morning so they’d agreed the one night away. It was short but at least Mungo would finally see the place that meant so much to her, and more importantly meet Phil.
They arrived to find Le Figuier as frenetic as a festival site. Tents and teepees of varying sizes had been erected in the olive grove, strings of fairy lights zig-zagged between the trees, people hurried in front of the chateau carrying orange gas canisters, straw bales, crates of beer and speakers, and a huge banner painted in wobbly capital letters was strung between bedroom windows across the front of the hotel: ‘ BON ANNIVERSAIRE MADAME PHIL’.
They found her in the kitchen, directing orders like a general on a battlefield – the wine needed to be put in buckets of ice; the glasses had to go out; someone needed to fetch someone else from the airport; Mateo, the Argentinian in charge of the lamb asado , needed a drink, so could another person ferry him a cold beer.
As soon as she saw Maggie standing in the doorway of the kitchen, she whooped for joy and shouted over the heads of everyone else. ‘Stop what you’re doing! The most important guest of all has arrived.’ Phil opened her arms and pulled Maggie into her linen apron, then thrust her back and reached for her hand. ‘Let’s see it then, let’s see this whopping thing. My God, that is a stone.’
Then she looked up and smiled broadly over Maggie’s shoulder. ‘Presumably you’re a drug dealer, to be able to afford such a rock?’
Mungo held out his hand. ‘How do you do, I’m Mungo. Thank you awfully for having us.’
‘Not at all,’ Phil replied smoothly.
There was something about even this first encounter, which Maggie registered as strange. Phil was a hugger, but accepted Mungo’s hand and shook it instead of folding him into her arms, which she did with almost everyone else (Maggie had seen her do this with strangers after just a few minutes of conversation). It was as if his reserved Englishness made Phil stand-offish, and Maggie didn’t like it; she wanted the two people in front of her to love one another as she did.
‘Shall we take our bags up?’
‘Yes, darling, and then let’s have a drink. Back downstairs straight away please, I want to talk to you about everything.’
‘Quite full on, isn’t she?’ Mungo remarked as Maggie led him up the back staircase.
‘Phil?’ she checked, although she knew who he meant, and it made her sinking feeling worse.
‘Yes, I can see what your mother was talking about.’
She decided to try and not mind this. She wanted the weekend to be perfect. ‘Shall we unpack later? Let’s go down so I can give you the tour.’
‘One minute, let me just …’ Mungo opened his overnight bag and retrieved his toiletries bag before spraying his legs and arms with insect repellent, and she felt grateful that this was out of sight because it was the sort of action that Phil would have viewed as prissy.
They returned downstairs to find her on the terrace overlooking the pool, frowning towards the deep end where a hairy man in a vest was sweating as he heaved a speaker around, meaty arms clasped around it like a boulder.
‘No, Franck, not there, back a bit. And another bit, and then left. No, my left. Yes, that’s probably right.’ Phil spun around. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘Looks good to me,’ Maggie replied, squinting in the afternoon sun at the makeshift bar that was being built by another bearded stranger at the shallow end.
‘That’s Lars, remember Lars?’
Maggie started shaking her head, then stopped. ‘Lars who was here that summer? The first summer?’ She thought back to the trip when she was nine. When Le Figuier was a ruin without windows and had tentacles of ivy growing up the banisters, and she hung out with the eccentric collection of her aunt’s friends who were restoring the chateau.
‘The very same, and Tom and Gabriele are over there somewhere painting car park signs.’
It was classic Phil. She could have spent more on a glamorous party. At that stage, she could have afforded the sort of party that ended up in the social pages of a glossy magazine. She could have organized a professional company to come and lay out a dance floor, to erect lights and set up tables with tablecloths and matching chairs in the olive grove. Instead, she’d gathered her oldest friends and put out trestle tables and a homemade banner for a celebration that looked more like a barn dance. Ringo and Paul watched, confused, from underneath an olive tree.
‘I was going to put the donkeys in the barn but I didn’t want them to miss the fun. No, over there, Jeremy!’ she shouted at another man staggering from the house with several bags of ice in his arms.
Then she turned back to Maggie and Mungo. ‘Now let’s get you both a drink. You must be parched. And then I want to hear all about you, Mungo, and the proposal please. How intensely romantic to do it in the restaurant, I loved the sound of that. Take this, and Mags, my darling, here you go. Do you want ice, Mungo? I pretend it’s hydrating.’
He waved his hands in protest. ‘No, thank you. I’m a purist when it comes to wine.’
‘Fine, let’s sit. Now, tell me everything. Franck! That’s fine there now.’
Maggie smiled, relieved. This was more like it: Phil in full charm mode.
Mungo embarked on the proposal story. Five months on, he had perfected the retelling as if an actor on stage and Maggie had heard it at least a dozen times. But she knew he enjoyed telling it so she was happy to sit back and let him talk of the proposal, of his secret messages to Asma in the restaurant, his advance booking of the violinist and the photographer, and the summoning of their parents and friends so they could share the moment.
‘And Maggie, darling?’ Phil asked, switching her attention to her niece. ‘Were you totally bowled over?’
‘Yes,’ she replied, before reaching for Mungo’s hand. Phil’s eyes had narrowed, focused on her like an owl.
‘Well, how wonderful,’ her aunt replied, before turning back to Mungo and asking him about his job, where he came from, where his parents came from and where he lived.
‘Have I passed the test?’ he joked.
Maggie looked anxiously at her aunt. She’d stayed quiet while they talked, content to be sitting on the terrace at her favourite place in the world, but she’d be even happier with the knowledge that Mungo had Phil’s approval.
‘Yes, just about,’ Phil replied, before her face lifted with a sudden idea. ‘How about you have your wedding here? Look how well we do a party.’ She stretched one arm towards the pool.
‘We’d love that, thank you,’ Maggie said quickly, not wanting to offend her aunt, ‘but, actually, we’re doing it at Mungo’s house.’
‘In my family church,’ he added.
‘So church, marquee, caterers. The whole caboodle. Mum and Dad are beside themselves,’ Maggie said, rolling her eyes.
‘I’ll bet,’ Phil replied.
‘September. It’s in your diary, right?’
‘Absolutely it is, and never mind, just a thought. Now, darling, tell me what’s going on at the restaurant. Have you found another site?’
Yet despite this conversation, and despite Phil’s assurance that Mungo had passed the test, that night Maggie still couldn’t shift her sense of unease.
It was the perfect June evening. The smell of lamb roasting over the asado mingled with the smell of lavender from the flower beds. As the sun set, the sky turned a pale blue, then a pale pink before a more ferocious red over the distant hills. The croak of the cicadas fought with the sound of Phil’s two Peruvian friends, playing their guitars beside the bar.
The fairy lights twinkled between the olive trees while Maggie and Mungo moved between clusters of people, talking to those who knew her, giving her enthusiastic hugs before she introduced them to Mungo.
Every now and then, she heard Phil’s loud, hooting laugh over the throng of guests, and as those around her moved to fetch another drink or moved to talk to someone else, she’d catch glimpses of her aunt’s pink dress and blonde hair swaying around her back. Her glass, Maggie also noticed, was constantly refilled by one of the local teens who’d been roped in to help pour drinks and carry platters of salami around.
After a couple of hours of drinks, the lamb was ready and guests moved back and forth from the fire, piling their plates with the meat that had been roasting and basted for hours, moaning when they first tasted it. The laughter became louder. Empty bottles of rosé gathered underneath a tablecloth.
‘Are you having a good time?’ Maggie checked at one stage, when Phil slid an arm around her waist.
‘I am, darling, but I want to talk more to you. You absolutely have to leave tomorrow?’
‘I’m sorry. But can we sort out another date? We could come out for longer after the wedding?’
Phil made a sad face. ‘Darling, could you not come out for a spell before? Like the old times? Come and work with your poor old aunt in the kitchen?’
‘You’re not old! You’re fifty. And we’re trying to save up time for our honeymoon.’
‘Where’s he taking you?’
‘Not sure. It’s a surprise, although I’m slightly worried it might be Scotland because his family go every year.’
Phil opened her mouth to say something when there came a loud shout from the terrace outside the dining room, and everyone turned to see two teenagers holding a vast chopping board, on top of which sat a cake.
Maggie squinted as they staggered closer. The cake was a replica of the hotel – a sponge Le Figuier, covered with icing and decorated with edible flowers around its door and roof. There were fondant trees in front of it, and perfectly piped windows and, standing on the gravel made from crushed biscuits were two toy donkeys.
Phil clapped her hands together. ‘Who did this? Own up immediately, who made this piece of magnificence?’
From among the crowd, there came murmurs and pointing until Madame Desmoges was pushed forward, smiling bashfully.
‘Madame D,’ Phil said, reaching an arm around her shoulder while still gazing at the cake, ‘I hardly want to eat it. Merci , merci de tout .’
She looked up and smiled at the crowd gathered in a semicircle around the trestle table. ‘Now look, I’m not going to make a long speech because I’ve realized, by the grand old age of fifty, that time is precious, especially time spent with your favourite people in the world. But I can’t let tonight go without thanking a few people. Firstly, Audrey, for putting up with the months of planning that has gone into this weekend, for sorting out the bedrooms and dealing with the endless emails …’
Maggie’s eye was drawn to movement across the olive grove on the dance floor. Four guests had gathered at the edge, armed with instruments, and appeared to be tuning up. Behind the bar at the other end of the pool, two teenagers were opening bottles of beer and pouring glasses of Champagne. Glancing back to the olive grove, Maggie smiled at the entertained faces listening to her aunt, all here to celebrate her and this place, under the fairy lights to the soundtrack of cicadas. Could she persuade Mungo to get married here? Could they manage to organize that between now and September? Everything about Le Figuier meant love to Maggie, and it would be more romantic than a chilly marquee in Hampshire. She glanced up at her fiancé and decided she’d broach it tomorrow.
‘And that’s nearly it, apart from to say to everyone who’s travelled from across the globe to be here, thank you very much. Especially to my darling niece, Maggie, who’s managed to make it from London with her new fiancé, Mungo, so I want to add my congratulations to them and say that I hope life brings them everything they expect.’
At the outbreak of applause, and as heads turned to look at her, Maggie smiled even though Phil’s tone had unsettled her. There’d been an edge to her words. What was it? Could it be jealousy? Jealousy that someone else was now so important in Maggie’s life? Or perhaps it was the amount of wine that Phil had drunk? She’d witnessed her aunt’s drinking for long enough to know that it could make her melancholy.
‘Now that’s quite enough from me. Please will you all keep drinking,’ Phil shouted over everyone, ‘and have some of this magnificent cake and …’ She paused and let out a hiccup. ‘Whoops, apologies. What was I saying? Oh, yes, keep drinking and let’s make this the best party that this place has ever seen.’
‘Is she quite all right?’ Mungo murmured.
‘In celebratory mood, I think. I might suggest a wat—’
But her words were drowned out by the sound of guitar chords from the dance floor.
‘Do me the honour?’ Mungo lifted Maggie’s hand in the air.
‘I will, I promise, can I just go and grab my scarf from upstairs?’
‘You may, my darling, but hurry back and we can practise for our big day.’
He squeezed her hand then released it, and Maggie skirted around the pool and up the lawn towards the hotel. Gangs of people sat at different tables in the dining room, others were smoking at the bar. In the kitchen, teenagers were drinking from beer bottles and laughing while rinsing plates.
She slipped up the back stairs, rifled through her overnight bag for her scarf and wrapped it around her shoulders. The music was audible from here and she suspected it wouldn’t stop before it got light, if she knew her aunt. Coffee. She’d make one for herself and one for Phil. That would help. Caffeine for her; hydration for her aunt.
But as she reached the top of the back stairs, she saw her aunt coming up them. ‘Hello, I was coming to find you. I thought I’d have a coffee. Do you want one?’
‘No, darling.’
‘Or a water or—’
‘Maggie, stop, you sound just like your mother.’
Phil pushed past her. Her lipstick was smeared; her kohl had smudged like sooty fingerprints under her eyes.
‘That’s unfair.’ She turned and stood in the doorway of her aunt’s bedroom.
Phil sat down at her dressing table and reached for her eyeliner pencil.
‘I’m only trying to make sure you have a good night.’
‘I don’t need looking after, Maggie darling. I need …’ Phil leant forward in her seat and ran a pencil underneath one eye.
‘What?’
Phil lowered the pencil and turned on her stool. ‘I need you to think harder about getting married to that man.’
She frowned. ‘What?’
‘You’re marrying your father.’
‘What? Phil, no I’m not. You’ve barely spoken to Mungo, how can you poss—’
‘I’ve spoken to him enough, darling. And he’s a nice man, exactly the sort of person Veronica would want you to marry. Says the right things, looks the right way. Wears a signet ring. All very correct , I’m sure. But he’s not for you.’
Maggie couldn’t reply immediately. She couldn’t find the words.
‘I don’t want to upset you, but I’ve been watching him and he’s simply not the one for you.’
‘How can you tell?’ Maggie managed to murmur. ‘You don’t know him. He’s kind, and he’s funny, and clever, and he makes me happy. No, more than that, he makes me feel safe .’
Phil let out a short laugh. ‘They all do that at the start. That’s why we fall for it.’ She turned back to the dressing table and reached for her lipstick. ‘All I’m saying is, if you marry that man, you’ll turn into your mother. You’ll lead a stupefyingly dull life.’
It was the casual way she said this that angered Maggie. How dare Phil lecture her about men, of all things? How dare she so easily dismiss her fiancé after so little time with him? What did she know, having spent less than an hour in his company? And what did she know about a stable life, either? She’d never known that. She’d never seemed to want that. And what was so wrong if Maggie did?
‘What, and I should try and turn out like you instead?’
Phil’s hand paused in front of her mouth.
‘I should spend my life alone, drinking to make up for it?’ Maggie knew it was cheap, but she felt stung, betrayed by the person whose opinion she’d always sought. Ironically, this was why Phil’s words cut so deep, and she flailed around for a stronger defence while pushing away any acknowledgement that her aunt had landed on her own deeply buried fear, that she was simply settling for the safe option. But she couldn’t allow those thoughts to creep in now; it was too late. She had to carry on and bat them away.
‘Maggie.’ Phil turned on the dressing table stool. ‘Maggie, listen. If I’d said yes to the first man that proposed to me, my life would have been completely diff—’
‘What if I don’t want your life? What if I don’t want to end up alone?’
‘Not being married doesn’t mean you’re alone, and you can do so much more, darling. You can do it all. You opened your first restaurant by the age of twenty-five. I never did that! But if you marry him, it’ll be a different life. You’ll have to make sacrifices, more sacrifices than him, and I cannot watch you throw it all away unless he’s really worth it. Please listen, Maggie, please think harder about marrying him. Please don’t turn into your mother, for god’s sake.’ She stood and staggered towards a glass on her bedside table.
‘I’d rather turn into my mother than turn into you,’ Maggie said fiercely, before turning and making her way outside.
They left early the next morning, Maggie pausing for just long enough outside her aunt’s bedroom door to see her passed out on her back: arms splayed above her head, mouth slack and inhaling deep, rattling breaths.
It was the last time she ever saw her.