Chapter 9 #2
The first reminders that he was in the adult world, where almost anything and everything could go wrong if you weren’t careful, came about an hour into this drive.
Traffic was slowing. Cars were parked haphazardly along the grass verges and, unexpectedly, it turned out to be several ancient-looking tractors that were causing disruptions.
A road into the town of Valensole was blocked and a policeman directed Angus to take the car off the main road and into the town.
Tilly was scrolling on her phone.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘How could I have forgotten? Today’s the lavender festival.
’ She looked over her shoulder at the traffic built up behind them on the one-way street and then at the map she had open on her phone.
‘We can’t go back. Try the next turn to the right,’ she said. ‘We might be able to bypass the chaos.’
But the street Angus turned into was full of people that were dressed in traditional costumes – the men in white shirts and waistcoats and wide-brimmed black felt hats, and the women in colourful long dresses and aprons with shawls around their shoulders and white bonnets on their heads.
People shouted and waved at him and he had to stop.
Tilly called out, asking for directions for somewhere they might be able to park and a man clearly took pity on her and they had an animated conversation.
She took some cash from her satchel and he pointed to an alleyway.
‘We can park in there,’ she told Angus, ‘until the festival starts winding down in a couple of hours when the main parades will be over. There’s not much point trying to get through before then.’ She offered him a hopeful smile. ‘You never know, you might enjoy this. It’s very Provencal.’
But Angus could feel muscles tightening in his jaw as he followed the directions and tucked the car into a small space between two buildings. He didn’t want to enjoy this. He felt trapped instead of free now. And what about the car?
‘Is it safe here?’ he asked.
‘Put the roof up again and lock it. It should be fine.’ Tilly was taking the scarf off her head.
She folded it carefully, tucked it into her satchel and climbed out of her seat with a graceful movement that suggested she had planned this all along and she was quite confident he was going to appreciate it.
Angus gritted his teeth. That was extremely unlikely.
He didn’t do impetuous and, if it was forced on him, he was quite capable of hating every minute of it.
This aspect of Tilly’s personality that made her always look on the bright side of anything was already tiresome.
He had a very different manner of coping with adverse events.
He identified the problem and amplified it so that he could develop plans to try and mitigate any further complications.
Tilly simply minimised the problem and then tried to twist it into becoming an advantage.
She hoped for the best rather than preparing for the worst. They really couldn’t be more opposite, could they?
Like two sides of a coin.
Could that be why it was starting to feel as if the company of someone like Tilly – which he would never, in a million years, have considered searching for – was something he hadn’t even known was missing from his life?
* * *
Merde!
This was not going well.
One look at his face and Tilly knew she needed to get Angus out of the throng of people flowing towards the town centre.
Right now he was a grumpy-looking island in a crocodile of small children, all in traditional clothing, holding hands in pairs as they were led down one of the narrow cobbled streets.
‘Look,’ she directed, pointing to a copper vessel as round as a pregnant belly, which was glowing in the sunlight.
It had an onion-shaped lid with a stalk that became the graceful curve of a swan neck that grew narrower as it curved upwards and then swooped down to big copper bucket.
With the metal stand under the main pot it was as tall as Angus.
‘What on earth is that?’
‘A distiller,’ Tilly said. ‘It’s extracting lavender oil.’
‘I can smell it,’ Angus said. ‘It smells old. And not very nice. It reminds me of my grandmother. And her hankies.’
‘’Ankies?’ It was not a word Tilly was familiar with.
‘A handkerchief. What everybody had before tissues were invented. To blow your nose into.’ His face told her he wasn’t a fan. ‘So unhygienic,’ he added.
Tilly just stared at him until he caught her gaze. She loved the scent of lavender.
He had the grace to look vaguely apologetic at his negativity. ‘My grandmother died when I was very young,’ he said, ‘but what I remember was how fierce she was. She would take a handkerchief out of her pocket as soon as she saw me and scrub my nose with it.’
‘Ah… I understand. Let’s get you away from the smell of your grand-maman.’
They didn’t get very far past a crowded café, with people lingering at the tables having finished their lunches, and then stalls selling lavender-scented soap, essential oil and bunches of dried flowers.
People began pressing themselves against the buildings on either side of the street to allow room for a roving band, a group of colourfully dressed musicians – a rainbow of orange and red, yellow and green – led by a tambourinaire, beating his long drum with one hand and playing a small, piping galoubet flute with the other.
Another man was playing a fiddle, someone else was juggling bright-coloured balls and a woman was towering above them, with a long skirt covering her own feet and billowy harem pants on the stilts that she was, amazingly, managing to dance on.
Tilly joined in with the clapping of the people around her.
Angus didn’t.
Around the next corner, on the steps of a church, they found the children who had passed them earlier engaged in a demonstration of a traditional folk dance. Several people were playing flutes to accompany them.
‘Oh…’ Tilly caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she watched the smallest children, who were no more than about three years old, trying to keep up with the dance steps. ‘They are adorable.’
Angus looked as though he’d stepped onto a different planet. ‘But what are they doing? Why are they wagging their fingers at each other and making those faces?’
Tilly laughed. ‘It’s a variation on a dance called the “Branle des Lavandières”. It’s a story about a fight between the village washerwomen. When they do the hand clapping it’s supposed to be like the wooden boards that they used for the washing. I remember learning this at school. It’s fun.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Angus shook his head. ‘Those recorders they’re playing. Don’t they hurt your ears?’
They were close to the centre of town now.
It was crowded and hot and it smelled like lavender everywhere.
Tourists were standing still taking photographs and videos and children ducked in and out chasing each other and shouting.
Music from the folk group was competing with someone nearby with a piano accordion.
It was vibrant and noisy and joyous – like the best festivals to be had in France always were – but Tilly had to feel sorry for Angus.
He hadn’t grown up with occasions like this and he looked as if he was expecting his fierce grandmother to appear at any moment and scrub his nose with her lavender-scented mouchoir.
‘Come on.’ She touched his arm. ‘Let me find you a cool drink.’
There were people just getting up from a table on the edge of a café by the main square, close to a fountain that had four tired-looking stone lions spitting water into the basin below them, and Tilly grabbed a seat fast, signalling to the waiter as she sat down.
‘Would you like a cold beer?’ she asked.
‘What are you going to have?’
‘It’s summer,’ Tilly said. ‘And hot. I’m going to have a rosé wine that comes with a jug of ice.’
‘I’ll have that too.’
The wine was so pale it was barely pink.
It was crisp and dry and icy-cold after it was poured into a glass full of ice cubes.
They’d ordered a charcuterie board as well and ate slices of saucisson and jambon cru, olives, goat’s cheese and fresh figs as they sat and watched the activity in the square around them.
People in their traditional village clothing were gathering in groups, to the delight of the tourists with their cameras.
The music became louder with a man taking up position beside the fountain and starting to play his drum and flute.
Tilly recognised the music of the signature dance of Provence – la farandole – and saw women and children reaching for each other’s hands to start the process of making the human chain that would wend its way through the streets like a ribbon, being led into loops and spirals as they stepped and hopped and flicked their feet into the air.