Chapter 9 #4
‘And I am sorry, too, my friend. I cannot do this for you. You are too much like Maman. And I cannot do this same thing twice. Your delivery make me feel sick.’ Manon touches her chest, shakes her head and stands before, after a tiny, strange, Japanese-style nod, she turns and walks out the door leaving Wendy wide-eyed, trying to work out what just happened.
She feels numb. She sits staring at the front door, observing Manon’s absence as she tries to think some kind of coherent thought. But there are so many different ideas vying for attention that for a while it’s all a blur.
There’s a dose of resentful ‘how dare she’, and a dash of ‘damn! I’ve lost my only French friend’.
There’s a hefty layer of ‘poor Manon’ dampening her resentment, and a touch of reasonable ‘it’s not her fault’ because she’s dealing with the trauma of losing her mother.
There’s shame of course, too, because for the first time in her life she has been accused of being an alcoholic.
There’s even a sense of confusion about why that might be, because, yes, Manon may have just delivered three boxes containing ten bottles of wine and enough food for a week, and yes, there perhaps were an embarrassing number of empties to be recycled a few days ago, but though Manon may have seen her sipping a glass or two during their sessions, certainly she has never seen her drunk.
Repeatedly Wendy reaches for her glass but interrupts the gesture every time and returns her hand to her lap until, once she has catalogued all these different thoughts and decided – her most reassuring thought – that Manon is clearly projecting her traumatic past on the situation, she consciously reaches for it, takes a sip and phones Jill.
Jill: Honey! I was just talking about you, with Bern. It’s been ages!
Wendy: Yes, we haven’t spoken since you left, have we? You forgot about me the second you walked out the door!
J: So how have you been? Did you get all that nonsense with the car sorted out?
W: Sort of. Actually no, not really. But Jill, the reason I’m phoning: do you think I’m an alcoholic?
J: I’m sorry?
W: The post lady. She’s been giving me French lessons and she just accused me of being an alcoholic!
J: Alcoholic? You? What a cheek! Though Bern pulls my leg about that all the time. He says we both are.
W: But are we? Do you think we really might be?
J: Honey, if we’re alcoholics then half the population of Britain are. Everyone I know has a glass of wine at the end of the day, and I do mean everyone. I don’t think modern life is possible otherwise. Everything’s just too awful.
W: You really think that?
J: Of course. Listen, you hold down a job, don’t you? Well, you did. For years. You’ve organised this whole sabbatical thing brilliantly, and paid for it. You’re not exactly sleeping under a bridge, honey, are you?
W: No, I suppose not.
J: I think you’re bloody reasonable, to be honest. Compared with me you are, anyway. Why on earth did… you said it was the post lady? The post lady’s told her she’s an alcoholic! Just telling Bern… Believe it or not he’s in the process of fixing two G&Ts!
W: Do you remember the girl who picked us up when we broke down? Well, it was her.
J: Right. And how did the subject even come up? Because you weren’t that drunk when we—
W: Her mother died of it, apparently. She was telling me about her and it sort of morphed into a discussion about me.
J: She died of alcoholism?
W: Yes, I think so. She and her brother found her dead when they got home from school.
J: God, that’s awful. But there you go. It’s her problem, not yours.
W: You mean she’s projecting?
J: Exactly. That’s the word I was looking for. Projecting. I bet she’s tee-total, too, isn’t she?
W: Yes, I think she probably is. I’ve certainly never seen her drink.
J: Well, there you go.
W: And I do think I could stop if I wanted to, don’t you?
J: Of course we could, but why would we want to, honey?
W: Well, quite. God, I’d get so bored. That would be the main thing. The sheer boredom of existence.
J: Exactly. Everything’s better with a G&T. You know it’s true. Anyway, enough of this misery. Tell me what’s been happening.
So Wendy tells her about the car, and how she’s been unable to rent another one because prices are sky high until after the holidays. And she tells her how she has managed to book one from 4 January until she leaves in April, and therefore only has to manage without until then.
‘But how?’ Jill asks. ‘You’re in the middle of bloody nowhere. How are you going to manage? What about shopping and stuff?’
Wendy explains about the bakery and how they’ve been delivering her orders. She does not mention (because she can’t bear to think about it) that the person doing the deliveries is the very same person she seems to have fallen out with.
‘Well, if you need me to send you food parcels, just say.’
‘No… Actually… God, you know what?’ Wendy says.
‘Some Christmas stuff would be wonderful. You know, some mince pies and a bit of Christmas cake. Marks and Sparks will do. I’ll pay you back.
And some marmalade. Oh, and a jar of Marmite.
I’m gonna be here and it’s gonna be miserable, but a mince pie or two would definitely help. ’
‘Consider it done,’ Jill says. ‘And if you think of anything else, just text me a list. I hate the idea of you up there on your own over Christmas. Why don’t you come back here?’
‘Really, I’ll be fine.’
‘I’m not convinced.’
‘I will. It’s just a day like any other day.’
‘It’s actually a whole load of days. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day…’
‘Stop. It’s OK. I’ll be fine.’
‘Well, think about it at least?’
‘OK,’ Wendy says. ‘I promise, I will.’
‘Oh and – in your box – maybe a little foie gras for the festive season?’ Jill adds mockingly.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Wendy tells her. ‘Ugh.’
The snow arrives the following morning.
Wendy has been thinking so obsessively about Manon’s accusations that she had entirely forgotten about the snow. But here it is, drifting from a grey sky in beautiful, delicate flakes.
She wraps up warmly and steps outside, raising her open mouth to the sky and revelling in the sensation as the snowflakes hit her tongue.
Gentle snowfall continues, but for most of the day the flakes melt the second they hit the ground.
It’s only when she steps outside for her final cigarette of the evening that she sees it’s starting to settle.
The bowl she’d put out for the cat is empty but dusted with snow. Damn! She’d hoped to catch it eating.
She watches a film on her laptop featuring not one, not two, but three AA meetings and notices for the first time how ubiquitous they’re becoming in modern TV. She studies the ravaged faces of the people in the scenes and thinks, No, that’s not me, thank God.
She dozes off before the end of the film and wakes just enough to stoke the fire and climb the stairs to bed, where she dreams of a cat in boots drinking whisky from a bowl and dancing an Irish jig.
When, at the end of the dream, she wakes again, the image lingering in her mind’s eye is so comic that she laughs out loud.
Someone should make it into a cartoon, she thinks.
She must try to remember the dream in the morning.
But as she slips back into sleep, she knows she most probably won’t.
On going to bed last night, she’d expected to wake up to a winter wonderland, but she can tell the second she opens her eyes this has not come to pass.
Rather than being lit by that strange icy brightness, the cabin is almost dark and the sound of the world outside is unmuffled.
She lies, listening to birdsong for a while, trying to pluck up the courage to leave her warm bed and when eventually she makes it downstairs, she sees there’s been only the lightest dusting of snow.
She stokes the fire and, while she eats breakfast, wonders what to do with her day.
A walk, then a read, and then some Netflix, maybe?
She can’t help but feel that’s rather a waste of a day, but then who is here to judge?
Who’s to say that time has to be ‘spent’ usefully, anyway?
Sometimes, managing to just about feel OK is ‘enough’.
When she steps out of the shower and opens the bathroom window to let the steam out, she gasps.
Outside, the snow is falling thick and fast – as heavily as she has ever seen.
The flakes are like massive cartoon-style fractals, and they are so dense that it’s impossible to see further than a few feet.
She dresses quickly and steps into the swirling whiteness of it all. The air is icy and fragrant with that unique metallic smell of snow, and under her feet – where more than an inch has already settled – the snow squeaks beneath the soles of her boots.
‘God, I love snow!’ she says out loud. ‘I love it!’
She nips back indoors for her phone and records a slow-mo video of drifting flakes. She’ll get a hundred likes with this video – more probably. Everybody loves snow.
She’s in the process of uploading this to Instagram when a message pops up from Madame Blanchard. There is much snow forecast, the message says. Please be économique with the électricité and let me know in case of problem.
God! she thinks. Of course! The solar panels. She crunches her way to the rear of the house and sees that they’re already buried.
She returns indoors to ensure that everything is unplugged and then sets off, crunching her way towards the bakery. The snow beneath her feet feels squeaky and delicious. Surprisingly it isn’t slippery at all.
She peers up at the white-dusted pine trees overhead and notes, beneath her feet, the tracks left by a single passing car. Just before the village she spots paw marks, too – a reminder that she needs to buy cat food.
The houses in the village look beautiful today, and she finds herself marvelling more generally at the beauty of the world and, unusually for her, feeling lucky to be alive to witness it all.
She thinks that this must be why we all love snow so much – because it makes everything seem new, and that newness, that difference, makes reality become visible again.
The world doesn’t change at all, but this unexpected shift to whiteness makes it all stand out for our tired, bored eyes.
Trudging on, she finds herself thinking about her twenty-five-year marriage and an unusually profound thought strikes her: That if they could only come up with some kind of marital snowfall, she and Harry might be able to see each other properly again, too.
The bread racks in the bakery are almost empty by the time she gets there, and the cold cabinet, usually laden with quiches and cakes, is in the process of being cleaned.
‘Hello!’ the baker says, looking up at her through glass. ‘It’s good you come today. Tomorrow we are on holidays.’
‘Holidays?’ Wendy says. ‘In December? For how long? Pour combien de temps?’
‘Until this is gone,’ the woman says, straightening, dropping the sponge into a bucket, then massaging her back while simultaneously nodding at the weather outside. ‘As you see, everyone stays home. No customers, no bread!’
Just in case, and despite yesterday’s delivery, Wendy buys as much as she can carry, choosing fresh bread, instant noodles, cat food, crispbreads and cheese.
She very nearly grabs a couple of extra bottles of wine as well to replace the two she drank yesterday, but then she remembers denying ever being able to drink two bottles and feels too ashamed to get more.
She wonders if Manon has already been in. She wonders if the baker already knows.
By the time she steps back out, the snow is four inches deep and she can no longer see where the tarmac ends and the verge begins, so, in the absence of traffic, she carves a line down the middle of the road.
As she reaches the turning towards her cabin she spots a distant car approaching, creeping around the bend.
By the time it passes she has her back to the main road, but she glances behind her to see Manon at the wheel, leaning forward, feigning concentration as she drives laboriously towards the bakery – a near miss which leaves her feeling nauseous.