Chapter 33
33
DAY FIVE
Now
Jesse walked Minnie to the passenger side of the beaten-up Fiat 500 on the driveway and opened the door.
‘Thanks!’
Minnie thought the car had been decorative when they’d arrived in last night’s twilight; it looked old and dusty, but it started with a chug, and Jesse deftly turned it around as if he had a thousand times, and drove down the gravel track to the road.
She put on her cat-eye sunglasses and stretched her arms, letting one reach out of the open window towards the sky. This was the life. Morning sunshine. Fresh air. A new dress. A chi-chi car. She leaned on her arms on the ledge of the open window and looked at her reflection in the wing mirror; her hair was now shaggy in the wind. She narrowed her eyes and imagined she were the star of a 1950s film, going on an adventure with a beautiful guide. Her dress even looked the part.
Jesse and Minnie headed south until a citadel emerged from a sea of cherry orchards and vineyards, with a village perched below them, that looked down onto more villages below that.
A picture-book outline of a medieval enclave emerged: a church, grey stone rooftops tinged pink and peach, the colour of unpainted plaster.
‘This is beautiful!’ Minnie gasped, feeling rejuvenated. She looked to Jesse, and then to his hand changing gear. She yearned to wrap her fingers around his.
Jesse wound into Ménerbes village and put on his own sunglasses as he pulled up outside a smooth cream house with shutters the same vivid verdant shade of the cypress tree that leaned languidly against one wall.
‘What’s this?’
‘A house I love. I think you’ll love it too.’
Minnie already knew she would.
‘Shall we have a look?’
‘I’d love to.’
They got out of the car and walked towards stone steps to an open terrace, leading to the grand cream house. It was stunning. Minnie spun around as she walked and imagined she were playing another role. That this was their house; that they had Ida and their own children running through it in a future sphere. That he went to harvest fruit and paint the view, and no one broke each other’s hearts or died suddenly.
Get a grip.
They walked through a little courtyard. A small fountain emitted a comfortable trickle.
He’s married.
Jesse ran his fingers under one of the jets.
This is just a game.
‘Who lives here?’ Minnie worried they were intruding on another family.
‘Oh, it’s a museum now, but it belonged to Dora Maar.’
‘Who?’
‘She was a filmmaker, an artist, a photographer. She was part of Picasso’s scene – she was his lover.’
Hairs tingled on the back of Minnie’s neck as Jesse said lover and she put her palm across it, in the hope he wouldn’t notice.
‘Picasso bought her this house.’
‘Interesting,’ Minnie said as she raised her chin. Her family had had a robust discussion about Picasso during their Father’s Day dinner, after her brother Anthony had brought their dad a print and Lillia had said he was a cultural appropriator and a misogynist. Picasso, not Anthony.
Was he a misogynist? Would his paintings pass the Bechdel test were there a measure for art? Minnie raised the issue quietly as they walked in and Jesse stopped to ponder it. He too had read the recent tide of change, although his thoughts were interrupted by a friendly woman in a black dress and red lipstick, whose face lit up when she saw Jesse.
‘ Ahhh, Jesse, tu es de retour! Salut! Comment vas-tu? Tout va bien? ’
‘ Oui oui, Hélène, ?a me fait plaisir de te voir. C’est une de mes amies de Londres, Minnie. Est ce qu’on peut regarder un peu la maison? ’
The woman smiled at Minnie.
‘ Bien s?r! Nous avons une conférence qui commence dans une heure, vous pourriez peut-être rester pour ?a? ’
‘ Ahhh merci, mais on ne peut pas rester longtemps, on part vers Arles, mais merci. ’
The woman looked at Minnie again and nodded.
‘ OK, on se retrouve bient?t pour boire un verre, oui? ’
Jesse said yes and they hugged each other fondly, while the woman went to greet a man who was arriving to give a lecture.
‘She was nice.’
‘Yeah, she manages the place.’
‘And we’re just allowed to walk around?’ Minnie asked.
‘It’s a museum, but they also run lectures and artist workshops. They used to let me come here and sketch when I was young. Not that we didn’t have a beautiful view up in Gordes, but… it was just nice to meet some like-minded people. Share some inspiration. Most tended to be painters and I moved more into design, but… Hélène’s always been cool. We used to hang out.’
‘It’s lovely. I think I might find a lot of inspiration here…’ Minnie said appreciatively as she peered into a drawing room and all the characters on its walls.
In one study an older man greeted Jesse in French and they talked for a few minutes while Minnie concentrated on a letter Dora Maar had written to a lover. As she tried to read the notes next to the letter, as she tried to decipher what was being said, she listened to the men gliding between French and English so seamlessly, it was as if neither noticed which language they were speaking. It sounded sexy. Jesse was sexy, and Minnie felt completely thrown by how all-encompassing this felt. Only weeks ago she had been crying over JP in Tony’s office. Was she that shallow?
The man clearly knew Jesse’s family, and when Jesse thanked him for letting them look in this room today when they had an event on, he said, ‘No problem!’ and for Jesse to pass on his wishes to his mother.
After half an hour they had seen all the rooms, as well as prints of Picasso’s portraits of Dora Maar, and they needed to get out of the way, so Jesse led them back to the car.
‘God that was stunning!’ Minnie declared, as they took one last look at the house basking in the sun. ‘Definitely the sort of place I’m going to get when I buy…’ Minnie said with a wink.
‘Definitely the kind of place I’ll move into when I’m not crashing at my mate’s house,’ Jesse replied, in self-deprecation, as if he thought he was the world’s biggest loser.
Minnie wondered why her parents had never bought a holiday home in France or Europe. They had the means, but they had everything they ever wanted in the house by the Heath. Objects to fascinate them and love in abundance.
Jesse got them back on the road, winding down the valley to the sun-baked city of Arles, the landscape in front of Minnie turning from greens to browns but looking strikingly familiar, although she couldn’t put her finger on why.
They saw a Roman amphitheatre come into view, dusty and timeless. The Rhone sparkling under the early afternoon sun. Minnie rubbed suncream onto her pale shoulders, careful not to get any on her sundress.
‘This is gorgeous, Jesse, and so different to where we’ve just come from.’
‘Lovely isn’t it? It’s been a hub since Roman times. My dad loved coming for dinner and getting engrossed in the history here. “Heart of the cultural conversation my son,” he’d say to me after one pastis too many. With a sparkle in his eye.’
Minnie smiled; it was the first time Jesse had seemed relaxed talking about his dad. She nodded and looked out of the window.
‘Van Gogh lived and painted here…’
Minnie sat up. ‘Oh really?’
‘Yeah more than two hundred works.’
‘Perhaps that’s why it looks familiar; I’ve already seen this place in the National Gallery,’ Minnie mused.
‘Maybe. Gauguin and Gucci blew through here too.’
‘Gucci?’
Jesse nodded.
‘Gucci took over the city with a Cruise show in 2019. I did some typography for the show notes.’
‘Oh wow.’
She glanced across at Jesse’s shoes on the pedals of the tiny car. They were battered Birkenstocks not Gucci loafers, and she loved him all the more for it.
Minnie’s phone beeped five times, chiming with incoming messages, one after the other.
‘Ahh, and I have signal again.’
‘Come on, let’s park up.’
As Jesse paid for the parking, Minnie got out and glanced at her messages, replying to her mum and to Hilde, but not to JP, who had messaged again, to ask how the audition had gone in Paris. The thought of where to begin in fashioning a reply made her feel slightly nauseous, on several levels.
Jesse’s phone chimed too, and he looked at it, and at a plane overhead, before pocketing his car key and leading Minnie towards the direction of town. It would have been the most natural thing for him to hold out his hand and lead her, but he couldn’t.
Get a grip.
She’s still in love with a slimy man.
They ambled through shady medieval backstreets and sun-drenched squares, all a thousand hues of cream, stone and rust, grey buildings with blue shutters peppered throughout.
‘So where are the Van Goghs?’ Minnie asked. ‘Is there a museum?’
‘There is… but it doesn’t have any Van Gogh canvases…’ Jesse laughed.
‘What?’
‘You will genuinely have seen more in the National Gallery.’
Minnie pouted.
‘But walk along this street in a few hours and it will look very familiar under the stars.’
Minnie stopped and looked back and forth. The ochre street cafe with a blue doorway. The balcony above the awning. It looked like a corner from Café Terrace at Night , except the sun was capturing it.
‘No way!’
She looked around and noticed tourists taking photos.
‘It is.’ Jesse smiled. ‘Just picture swirls of stars above and you’re there.’
‘Can we come back later?’
‘We can do whatever you want.’ Their eyes locked again.
She was desperate to take his hand.
Don’t be silly.
Minnie and Jesse walked the city at a sleepy summer pace, stopping for crepes on a pretty square, ambling along the river, visiting the Musée Réattu, where they saw some Picassos and a letter Van Gogh had written to Gauguin, lamenting his psychological state in the months before he cut off his ear and handed it to a prostitute during a psychotic episode.
It was everything Minnie had hoped for, for her afternoon in Paris, only now she was in a southern cultural hub. Which seemed more… Jesse. Golden. Laconic. Creative.
‘My dad loved this city,’ Jesse said, as they walked around the Amphitheatre. ‘He said it had three golden ages: the Roman era. The art boom of the late 1800s. And today.’
By the time they collapsed at a small wooden table in the Hotel Nord-Pinus, both Jesse and Minnie had the feeling that today was special, that they were on the cusp of something new and exciting.
‘So, esteemed tour guide, what are we doing here?’
‘Pastis,’ Jesse declared. ‘It’s a little Provence tradition. A pre-dinner pastis. Have you ever tried it?’
Minnie thought of the array of bottles behind the counter on the wall at Alpine NW1 and all the lock-ins she had enjoyed there, but pastis seemed out of reach from her drunken memories.
Jesse ordered in French and they waited, Minnie looking around the room in awe, Jesse sitting in proud contentment, until the waiter came back with two pretty glasses.
He poured yellow liquid straight from the bottle and added what looked like water – but it could have been another spirit for all Minnie knew – with unassumed flair.
Minnie’s eyes widened. ‘Fair dos. They do drink in style.’
‘If this place is good enough for Picasso and Hemingway…’
‘Hemingway? No way.’ Minnie told Jesse she had played Maria in an adaptation of For Whom the Bell Tolls at Mountview and Jesse raised his glass and said ‘ Santé !’ to that.
Minnie took a sip.
‘Hmmm, that’s actually good.’
‘It’s called a Mauresque around here. Pastis, water and orgeat syrup.’
‘What the hell is orgeat syrup?’
‘Almond, sugar and rosewater or orange blossom – I think this one has orange in it.’
Minnie sipped and concurred.
‘So why did you keep this so close to your chest at cocktail school? You could have taught Thomas a thing or two.’
‘He’d have strung me up for trying to steal his thunder.’
They laughed, took another sip and locked eyes. This was not part of the game. Their raised hands touched, and then their little fingers, and then they put down their glasses and entwined all the fingers of their right hands, pulling their chairs into the table with their left. They slipped in together so naturally, they both knew the game was over. Their faces drew together, dreamy contemplation unwavering. Lips tentatively urging closer. Until a text went off on Jesse’s phone, tucked away in his shorts, and he jumped.
‘Shit! Sorry, I have to check it… in case… Ida…’
‘Of course!’
They released each other’s fingers and Minnie looked around the bar. It was filling with the buzzy and the beautiful. Vibrant locals starting their weekend in style on a Friday afternoon.
Jesse looked at his phone and his face dropped. He put a palm to shield his eyes.
‘What is it?’
He let out a sigh and whispered a quiet fuck at his screen.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Hannah.’
Minnie’s heart sank.
‘I had a weird call from her on Wednesday night.’
Minnie frowned, and wondered why Jesse hadn’t mentioned it on the train when she had told him about her call from JP. But then, what right did she have to know? She didn’t even know what the hell was going on with his marriage.
‘What’s up?’
‘I’m meant to be having dinner with her in London… in about four hours.’
‘Oh.’
Minnie’s eyes prickled and she didn’t want to acknowledge why.
‘So what are you going to do?’