Chapter 32
32
DAY FIVE
Now
Showered, fresh and wearing her new white and blue striped sundress, Minnie bypassed Caryn on a phone call to someone in English, in the living room, and went to look around the gardens while she waited for Jesse. The view from the edge of the orchard was even more spectacular than the view from the terrace: wider, more expansive. Cypresses, sunflower fields, lavender tones, all in one mythical landscape. She inhaled so many vibrant scents all at once it was hard to differentiate them. Combined and bottled, they would smell of summer, like the perfumes across the province in Grasse. A scent of tomatoes started to permeate, and Minnie followed her nose to the greenhouse, where jewelled red orbs peeped out from behind abundant leaves. She went inside the elegant glass structure and touched a tomato so ripe it came off in her hand.
She sniffed it.
‘Incredible.’
If Minnie were to conjure the perfect tomato, this is what it would look, feel and smell like.
‘Ah, you’re here!’ Jesse said as he saw Minnie, black bob slicked back and damp, her new sundress swinging above golden espadrilles, large tomato at her nose. ‘Mum sent me to get some figs… the high ones. Want to help me before we go?’
Minnie’s face was almost obscured by the giant red fruit.
‘This is insane!’
‘I know right. I’m always saying, they should sell their fruit at the market too. But they give most of it away, at the end of the driveway. What they can’t fit in pies or salads anyway.’
They.
It hung in the still air between them.
‘Come on, grab a basket,’ he said, nodding to a stack on the floor at the edge of the greenhouse.
In the orchard stood three strong and fecund fig trees, ready to release their bounty from beneath frilled leaves. Jesse picked those he could reach from standing while Minnie held the basket, then he got a ladder from the greenhouse.
‘You want to summit or do you prefer to keep your feet on the ground?’
Minnie looked down at her dress.
‘I’d better be the base…’ she said, as she put a solid foot on the bottom step and made way for Jesse to go up. As he climbed she watched his muscular, tanned calves tighten and tilt with each step. A perfect specimen. She wanted to touch his skin with her fingertips, to loop her arms around him and anchor herself to him. She shook her head and looked up.
‘I love figs, in all forms,’ he said as he reached out to pick one. ‘Salads, jam, tarts… my mum makes the most amazing fig tart.’
‘I bet.’
‘Do you know how my dad liked to eat them best though?’ Jesse said, looking down at Minnie, who shielded her eyes from the sun.
‘How?’
‘Fig fucking rolls. You know those biscuits, packaged up like little parcels. Dry as.’
‘Hahaha, fair dos, they are good.’
‘He always got me to bring him a pack of fig rolls from England when I came over. When he had this!’
‘Crazy.’
Jesse stretched his strong arms to the sky while he grabbed each treasure, putting some in the basket on the top step, carefully handing others down to Minnie to put in hers, their fingers brushing each time.
‘I think that’s it,’ he said as he started to step back down. Jesse sighed, balancing the weight of the basket with the precariousness of his footing. He turned too fast, his head started spinning, from the sunshine and the height, and he sat suddenly halfway down the ladder.
‘You OK?’ Minnie asked, startled by Jesse’s sudden lack of balance and his abrupt stop.
She took his basket and placed it on the floor next to hers.
‘Jesse?’ She went up a few steps and put a hand on each side of the ladder, on either side of him. ‘Are you OK?’
He blinked rapidly for a few seconds and shook his head. He looked dizzy.
‘Jesse?’ Minnie asked with more alarm.
He nodded, his eyes still closed.
‘Yeah, weird, just started spinning out.’
‘It’s pretty hot already.’
He looked at the greenhouse as he tried to gather himself. He blinked rapidly as he glanced out at the valley, as if he were trying to focus.
‘We don’t have to go sightseeing you know, we can hang here. I think I’d be happy hanging here.’
‘No, no it’s cool,’ Jesse said, looking back to Minnie. He hadn’t realised how close she was to him, standing between his legs. One hand now on his shoulder, the other on his bare knee. He hadn’t noticed the concern in her eyes. ‘Honestly, totally fine. I just… I don’t know…’
Minnie was astute enough to know.
‘It’s OK, Jesse, it’s OK.’
He shook his head as if trying to shake off any trace of a tear that might come. He felt embarrassed.
‘You’re OK.’
She looked at him intently, reassuringly.
‘It’s just… it happened there. In the greenhouse. I don’t think I’ve been in there since… until today. It just hit me.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘It’s not OK,’ he said with a half-smile.
She stroked his leg and squeezed it.
‘Fig fucking rolls…’ he said to himself with a wry smile. ‘Come on, let’s get going.’
Caryn was off the phone and reading a newspaper by the time Jesse handed her the basket. Her eyes lit up with the possibilities of the harvest.
‘Thank you, darling,’ she said, ‘I’ll put them in the kitchen.’
‘I can do it…’ Jesse said, heading back inside.
‘Are we going on the moped?’ Minnie asked, following him. ‘Shall I change?’
‘Do you want to take my car,’ Caryn called, over her half-moon glasses. She and Minnie waited for answers as Jesse came back out.
‘We’ll go by car, if you’re sure?’
Caryn nodded.
‘Great,’ Minnie said, shaking her now-dry hair.
‘Want to come, Mum?’
‘No, you know what, I’m going to send some emails. Pitch some features ideas to old editors.’ She looked at Minnie, almost as if Minnie had suggested it.
‘Oh, brilliant.’
Minnie saw a flash of relief flit across Jesse’s face. Some normality might be creeping back into his mother’s life.
‘Got everything?’ he asked.
Minnie opened her arms and palms out as if to say take me as you see me .
‘Well I don’t really have anything else, so yes!’