Love In Provence

CHAPTER 2

It was moving day. We were leaving France, my then husband Ollie and I. Everything was packed and ready to go. I remember the removal people fighting against the wind to close the truck’s big doors and finally succeeding. And there it was, my life in a van, heading back to the UK, just six months after we’d made the big move to France. The wind laughed and howled, teased and tormented me. I felt it chill my bones, even though it was summer in the South of France. Ollie and I were going back to how we were – or not quite: this time we didn’t have a home to call our own. And the one thing really missing? The love we had once shared was now lost somewhere between the hospital appointments and failed IVF treatments. In moving to France we had tried to rebuild something that had disappeared and couldn’t be retrieved through fresh baguettes and croissants for breakfast.

Once the adventure of the move had died down and everyday life kicked in, with the lack of internet connection, our poor French and worse DIY skills, what was left? It hadn’t been the sticking plaster on our dying relationship we’d hoped for. Instead the sticking plaster had had to be ripped off. It was the only way.

I decided not to leave. It wasn’t that our life in France didn’t work. It was our life together that didn’t work, in France or in the UK. Call it mistral madness, but as I stood on the front steps of the farmhouse, the shutters slipping loose from their moorings, with Ralph, my dog, at my side, I knew I wouldn’t follow that truck ‘home’. It wasn’t my home. My home had been with Ollie, but that had gone. Our marriage was over. He knew it and I knew it. It was just that one of us had had to say and do something about it.

I stayed on the steps until the truck had gone, followed by a furious, uptight Ollie. As there wasn’t a stick of furniture left in the house, I slept the night in the bath, my bra holding together the shutters until the wind dropped, and had big daft Ralph as a blanket. When morning came, I pulled the bra from the shutters and pushed them open on a still day, the sky bright and blue, with barely a cloud. It was a new day. I had nothing. But it was a blank canvas to start again.

Ollie went back to the UK into the waiting arms of the lover he’d left behind, when he was trying to hide from what had really been going on: she was pregnant and ready to start a family with him. I grieved for my marriage and the child I would never have as I began to bake with Proven?al lavender that had once grown in the fields of our … my farmhouse. I kept the house, he got everything else. It worked out for us both that way.

After he’d sent out my best friends to check that I hadn’t gone mad with the mistral (which they say can drive you mad) and finally realized we were better off apart, Ollie announced that his child was on the way, and I went on to … well, to become a partner in Henri’s bistro. Henri was one of the first people I was introduced to after I’d met Carine, the estate agent, and Fabien, who ran the brocante, when I started trying to make a life for myself here. Henri was a big character, running his bistro, offering a plat du jour for which locals flocked to his place at lunchtime. He ordered lavender bakes from me for the bistro when business was slow at my market stall, which gave me the start I needed. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only person he helped: he looked out for people when they needed it most.

It was because of Henri that I’m working in the bistro and that I met Stephanie. Henri and Fabien have known each other since Fabien was a young man helping his grandfather at the brocante. When his grandfather died and he took over the business, Henri became a father figure to him … and to me, to us all.

Stephanie was another he looked out for, making sure she had a hot meal whenever she needed it. After some persuasion, she finally moved onto the farm with me, escaping dreadful living conditions and a life of petty theft, with her young son Tomas. Stephanie began to work with me making lavender bakes and delivering them to Henri, then other restaurants. She sold them in the market, too.

We all helped Henri with his riverside project, delivering the plat du jour to the clearing there where people paid what they could afford, if anything, for a meal at the end of the day. Once Henri had had a heart attack, though, he knew it was time to take life a little easier. He and my friend Rhi went off travelling together, and I stepped into his shoes at the bistro, learning to make the dishes he cooked for his customers and the riverside project. I’d found my home in that little bistro kitchen. And I finally allowed myself to find love again, with a man ten years younger than me: Fabien. That mistral changed a lot three years ago.

Now I let the wind whip around me and think of how far we’ve all come in those three years and smile. Stephanie has had her second child and married her childhood sweetheart, JB, Tomas’s dad. We became a close little family, the children loving Fabien and calling him Papi. Stephanie is still running the lavender baking business, delivering to shops and restaurants and doing the weekly market. JB works with Fabien at the brocante. And I’m here, at Henri’s, where I’ve never been happier, making the local dishes he taught me. I wrap my arms around myself against the wind and turn towards the restaurant door.

Stephanie is coming out with an empty basket, her ponytail dancing in the wind.

‘I’ve put the desserts in the chiller. I have some more deliveries to make.’ She nods to the van, parked by the brocante. She’s holding two-year-old Louis’s hand, his white-blond hair whipped up by the wind, his arm covering his eyes against the dust. ‘I’ll be back to help with lunch service,’ she says, just as she does every day. Each morning until recently, Stephanie arrived at my farmhouse, Le Petit Mas de la Lavande, in her little van, painted with lavender flowers down the side, her branding for the lavender baking business. Before Louis was born she lived in the Romani caravan in the garden, which was an empty shell at the time. Just like the main house. She needed somewhere to stay and I needed to find my way through French life. I suppose we saved each other. Now she bakes early in the morning, in her purpose-built unit, makes her deliveries and comes to help me at the restaurant. I’m so proud of her.

‘à tout à l’heure,’ she says, guiding Louis along and holding her basket on her hip. With his eyes screwed shut, Louis stops, his hands to his face, refusing to move. He begins to cry.

‘Oh, Louis, doucement,’ I say, and step forward but tears are falling. I bend to pick him up. Stephanie wedges the basket back onto her hip – it was slipping off – and her bag onto her shoulder. It’s stuffed with everything a toddler needs to see him through the day. I may not have had children of my own, but I was there for Louis when he was a baby.

Louis curls into the crook of my neck and holds his fists to his eyes. No amount of cajoling will cheer him.

‘You could leave him with me,’ I say, ‘while you do your rounds.’

‘But you have work to do,’ she says. ‘Come on, Louis, we’re going in the van and you love the van.’

He shakes his head and kicks his feet. By the look of it, he’s not going anywhere until the mistral has passed.

‘Whoa!’ The familiar voice makes me smile and Fabien is jogging towards us from the brocante. He slides his arm around my waist and kisses my cheek. ‘You left early this morning, before I had even woken.’

‘I had so much to do, clearing up from last night at the riverside and getting today’s bouillabaisse on the go. It’s always busy when I cook Henri’s bouillabaisse.’ I kiss him. ‘Bonjour, good morning.’

‘Good morning.’ He kisses me back. ‘I just wish I could have said it to you in bed,’ he says quietly, with a grin.

‘Me too.’ I smile back. ‘Perhaps I could say good morning to you later.’

‘Ha!’ He laughs. ‘Or we’ll be asleep in our chairs like an old couple after a busy day.’

‘No. I’m going to cook for you, something special. Remind me what you look like! What was your name again?’

‘It’s a date!’ he says.

‘No deliveries to make this evening?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘Désolé.’

‘It’s fine,’ I try to reassure him.

‘Nothing so far today. Sales are slow. If I sell anything, I’ll have to deliver it. Or get a house clearance. But so far nothing. I think people buy less when the weather is against them,’ he says, of the wind.

‘Good,’ I say, raising my voice above the whistle as the mistral tears down the street again, like a youngster racing their bike and forgetting where the brakes are. ‘I mean, not good that you’ve had no sales today, just good that I’ll see you tonight. We have enough from the bistro right now. And soon we’ll have the harvest and the lavender to sell.’ Stephanie sells it on the market stall, in bunches and lavender bags. If we had a still we could turn it into oil. That’s the plan, when we have the time and the money. ‘In the meantime,’ I smile in the face of the wind, ‘I get to see you!’

‘It comes to something when I need to book a date with my partner!’ He chuckles, then looks down at Louis. ‘Qu’est-ce qui se passé, Del? What’s happening here?’ he says, cocking his head to one side.

‘Papi Fabien!’ Louis lifts his head. ‘Papi!’ he shouts, a smile spreading across his face as he reaches out for Fabien, who takes him into his arms.

‘Oh, we all know who’s favourite around here.’ Stephanie smiles.

Fabien has slipped into the role of surrogate grandfather effortlessly, even though he’s nowhere near old enough: he’s ten years younger than me and ten years older than Stephanie. The age gap used to worry me but not so much, these days. Life is so busy there isn’t time to think about it. Our little stuck-together family seems to work and that makes my heart swell.

‘Okay! You going in the van with your maman?’ Fabien asks, and Louis nods. ‘You’re going to ride in the van? Au camion!’ Fabien shouts, and bounces the little boy up and down. ‘I came to see if you needed help with the tables and chairs, but I see you’ve already done it.’

‘All sorted,’ I say, touched by his thoughtfulness. ‘But merci!’ That’s Fabien. Always thinking of others. I sometimes worry we forget to make time for ourselves.

‘Well, in that case, if you’re all sorted here, I’ll help Stephanie to the van, with this little man.’ He kisses Louis’s little fingers, which are tightly wrapped around his own. This family may not be conventional but I love it. Fabien kisses me gently on the lips and I wish that I was still wrapped around his warm body in bed. But life doesn’t allow for lie-ins. The bistro is busier than ever, with holidaymakers and second-home owners arriving in the town and wanting tables. I’m getting in earlier to check my deliveries – things get missed off the orders from time to time. And Fabien finds it hard to say no to house clearances, which means the brocante is full. Almost too full for people to browse. But holidaymakers aren’t here for the brocante. Sales will pick up again in the autumn, when it’s cooler, I’m sure, but for now, we’re dependent on what I bring in from the bistro. And that’s fine. Even if we’re like ships that pass in the night. We’ll make more time for us when the swifts start to leave, when the harvest is over, the visitors head home and the restaurants quieten down. I watch Fabien giving Louis a piggyback, Stephanie by his side, hurrying up the lane to the main road where the van is parked, his arm protectively around her.

I look up and down the small street, at the basket and bag shop opposite, whose proprietor has taken in everything that was hanging outside; the clothing shop, whose owner has hurried in her linen dresses on a rail, and the ceramics outlet. I grab a couple of little vases and a remaining tablecloth and turn back to the bistro where my bouillabaisse is still simmering.

‘Bonjour, Madame!’ I turn.

‘Bonjour, Monsieur.’ I raise a hand to the mayor as he passes, holding his briefcase tight to his chest as he battles towards the mairie just off the square.

‘Ah, le mistral, eh?’ He shakes his head. ‘Causing trouble where it’s not wanted!’

‘Exactement!’ I call back. ‘Let’s hope it leaves soon and takes its trouble-making with it.’

The mayor shrugs good-naturedly. ‘Le mistral always leaves chaos in its wake.’ He hurries on.

I place my hand on the brass door handle into the bistro. But not this time, I think. Life here is sorted. I’m happy. We’re all happy. This time the mistral is just passing through. ‘Do your worst!’ I say, and push open the door, drawn back to the kitchen by the enticing smell of the rich broth on the stove, and to my happy place, this little bistro kitchen where everything feels safe. I go to step into the restaurant, when a sudden huge gust, bigger than before, is trying to lift me off my feet.

‘Whoa!’ I push against the door that’s trying to slam shut. ‘No, you don’t, Mistral!’

Behind me, there’s a loud slow crack. I whip my head around to see where it’s coming from, and as I do it’s followed by an almighty crash.