Chapter 10
10
‘Delicious,’ I said at last, putting my spoon down with a contented sigh.
‘Told you,’ Isabel said. ‘We can always have leek soup another day.’
Felix poured the last of the wine into my glass despite my protests and I took a hefty swig of it, not wanting people (I mean come on, which people?) to notice that I had more than anyone else. At the same moment the door opened and a man walked in. The professor. Jean-Luc Fournier.
He stood for a moment, shrugging off his coat, looking around. He looked so ridiculously attractive that for a moment I lost proper coordination.
I gasped and of course the wine went down the wrong way, making me splutter all over myself and the table.
Like a couple of other customers, he looked straight at me, and even though my eyes were streaming, I could see a little smile crossed his face. Great, now I really did look like a clown.
Felix was on his way to the bar again and he stopped to do some vigorous hand shaking with the new arrival.
‘Ah, Luc. ?a va ?’ How’s it going?
‘ ?a va bien .’
They started to engage in a discussion where travaux de construction was mentioned more than once, which I think meant building work. Then there was some head shaking and a bit of French shrugging, while I mopped my eyes and took a drink of water. Then I realised I had spilt wine down my T-shirt. It was like a Rorschach Inkblot test. And it looked like either a bird or half a poodle. Flipping heck, what next? Perhaps I could tuck my napkin into the neck to hide it? Perhaps he would go away and I wouldn’t see him again. Ever. And yet there was something about him that made me feel different, acutely aware of his every movement. Aware of myself. I watched as he ran a hand over his hair, how his face creased into a smile. His broad shoulders moving under his sweater.
Then Felix was leading him over to our table and pulling out a spare chair and encouraging him to sit down. I shrank down in my seat.
‘How are you getting on? Are you over all the excitement of your arrival?’ he said. He had lovely brown eyes, and they were focused on me. Annoyingly I could feel my face getting rather warm. I hoped I wasn’t blushing.
‘ ?a va bien ,’ I said, not wanting to seem like a complete fool; I knew a lot of French once, perhaps it would all come back to me? Although O level French as taught by Miss Travis in the 1970s was probably not the same as the French actual French people speak. To them with my outdated vocabulary and precise grammar, I probably sounded like someone from a Jane Austen novel.
‘Excellent,’ he said.
At that point Louis came over holding four little glasses of something that looked like brandy.
‘ Offertes à la maison . On the house,’ he said with a broad smile.
I didn’t actually think I needed any more alcohol, but behind the bar, Paulette was waving a tea towel at us and smiling so I took a cautious sip. I think it was rocket fuel and I could feel it burning a path down to my stomach where it sat like a hot little lump on top of my meal.
‘ Eau-de-vie à la pomme ,’ Isabel said with evident pleasure, ‘apple brandy.’
‘And I am told you are Isabel’s sister,’ Jean-Luc continued, ‘I can see the resemblance.’
‘She was always the good one,’ Isabel said annoyingly, ‘I was the naughty one.’
I sent her one of my best hard looks, but it didn’t seem to register.
‘Joy was the pretty one, I was the hippy,’ she continued.
‘How glad I am that you were,’ Felix said gallantly, ‘or we would never have met. Now then, Luc is having a problem with Gaston. He was supposed to have done the last bit of plastering last week, but he didn’t turn up. Luc has asked if I can have a word with him.’
‘Your brother,’ Isabel sighed, and turned to me to explain. ‘You met him once I think, he’s nothing like Felix. Gaston takes after his mother, short with a black beard. Not that Eugénie has a beard. I always think there is a touch of the Captain Pugwash about him. Gaston is always late, so unreliable. But he gets the job done eventually. He’s very clever, really. His wife Mathilde is such a lovely person. She studied jewellery making at college and now she makes things out of old bicycle parts and broken necklaces.’
Felix and Luc then carried on discussing where Gaston might be and the best way to encourage him to turn up, while Isabel and I finished our drinks.
Then after a brief discussion, I went to pay the bill. If they were having money troubles – as seemed likely from a few comments I had picked up on – I didn’t want to add to them.
‘Now I am going to take Joy to get some bread if there is any left, and have a look around the town,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll see you back here?’
‘ Bien pour moi ,’ Felix said, pleased. Fine by me.
I saw Isabel give her husband what I can only describe as a meaningful look, and I wondered what they were up to.
‘ à bient?t, ’ Luc said. See you soon.
I wondered if I would, and for some reason I was a little bit pleased at the thought. But that was daft, wasn’t it? I thought Isabel had said he wasn’t very sociable.
We walked through the town, the early evening light casting violet shadows across the roads. It was chilly now and I shivered in my sensible jacket and thin shoes. I don’t know why I had thought I needed to dress up to go to the Sports Bar. I would have been better off in my old duffle coat and furry boots.
There was a dear little church, a small, cobbled market square, two gift shops and Felix’s bookshop, all of which were closed. The baker was still selling the last loaves of the day from his quirky shop and Isabel bought some, wrapped up in rather cute paper with the baker’s name printed all over it.
There was an estate agent with pictures in the window of maisons à vendre – houses for sale in the area. Tumbledown barns, featureless modern houses, a couple of new developments and one enormous old place, which was something like the one on Escape to the Chateau . The price seemed very reasonable and the idea of buying somewhere as an investment was quite appealing for a few minutes. I could almost imagine myself in a ballgown sweeping down the ballustraded staircase until Isabel pointed out the cost of renovating it, heating it and the additional problems of paperwork and visa requirements. Perhaps I wouldn’t do it, after all.
‘Do you still like living here?’ I said as we walked down an alleyway leading us back towards the main square.
‘Of course, but then I’ve had a long time to settle in. And we are friends with le maire – the mayor. Nothing gets done without his approval. The weather here is not that different from England, but the food is better, the local people are friendlier – or perhaps nosier. There aren’t many secrets in a place like this.’
‘Back home I hardly know my neighbours,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘and we moved into our house thirty years ago. I mean, how does someone like well, Luc, for example get on?’
Isabel chuckled. ‘I knew it. I knew you would bring him up. He’s a source of much interest around here. A handsome doctor from Paris moves into an isolated farmhouse and starts to renovate it. A lot of people would like to know more about him. There have been all sorts of rumours flying around. He was devastated after the death of his wife in a plane crash, he’s been in prison for malpractice, he was struck off for drug offences…’
‘Perhaps he just retired and wanted a fresh start somewhere?’ I suggested.
Isabel shook her head. ‘Much too boring. Anyway, now he has actually appeared and been sociable, Felix is going to invite him to dinner one evening soon, so perhaps you can find out. Use those irresistible womanly wiles to discover the truth!’
‘I don’t think I have any irresistible womanly wiles these days,’ I said, ‘not at my age.’
‘Nonsense. Of course you have. Every woman has a bit of Marilyn in her, whether it’s Monroe or Manson is the problem. But I’ll bet you fifty euros that you will discover what brought him here. So how are you feeling these days? Have you thought about, you know, dating?’
There it was again, Isabel’s ability to turn the conversation on its head.
‘No I haven’t!’ I said.
‘Well perhaps you should. Felix said if anything happened to him I was to find someone else.’
‘Easy for him to say. Do you know how hard it is for a woman in her sixties to find a man without terrible habits, dodgy health, or boring hobbies? I once went to a quiz night with some friends and got stuck with a man who talked non-stop about photographing weasels. And he asked me at the end of the evening if I would like to see his hide.’
Isabel giggled. ‘Oh, I say! Do you think he was flirting?’
‘I told him I was allergic to weasels, and that was the end of the conversation.’
‘And no news of Stephen?’
‘I don’t ask, and I don’t think Sara or John see much of him. They met the new wife, they said she had a voice like a foghorn and pushes Stephen around. Perhaps he likes it?’
He had moved on with his life, there was no doubt about that. So why hadn’t I? I was beginning to see I was stuck in no man’s land, between my old life and my future. I should stop thinking of myself as a sixty-three-year-old divorcee and start thinking of myself as a single woman. I needed to be more decisive, allow myself to find a new path, and yes, perhaps find new friends or a new companion to help me out of the rut in which I had been living.
Just as the church clock was striking five, we returned to the Sports Bar where the lights were shining out into the dusk. For a simple little establishment, it looked very inviting, and obviously others thought so too. The bar was busy with people having drinks after work. There was a young couple sitting at the ironwork tables outside, huddled in their coats and scarves, smoking, the distinctive smell drifting up into the evening, reminding me so strongly of my younger days when everyone seemed to smoke, and it was even seen as cool. How long ago it all seemed.
There was something so poignant seeing them there, they can’t have been more than teenagers. Perhaps they were at the start of a new relationship, excited to be out together. She was pretty and giggling, flicking her hair, fluttering her eyelashes at him. She was making a big fuss about being cold, snuggling her little face seductively into her scarf, pretending to be a delicate little girl when really, she held all the cards in their relationship and more than that, she knew it. He looked unsure and yet proud. Perhaps she was his first serious girlfriend. How hard it must be, being young like that nowadays, not sure about anything and yet having to pretend to be confident, streetwise. Not knowing for one second how the world, how life would treat them.
Who knew what the future would send them? How the utter confidence and carelessness of youth seemed to turn to the hesitation and invisibility of old age in a matter of moments. How liking could turn to love, how love could turn so easily to doubt.
For a mad moment I wanted to tell them, to warn them to enjoy every moment of being young and carefree and invulnerable. But my generation hadn’t listened, and probably neither would theirs.
I suddenly shivered, realising that so many years were behind me, and who knew how many were ahead. I supposed I could be classed as ‘old’ and in the years since I’d divorced, I’d started to accept that. But that evening, at that moment, watching a young girl and her boyfriend laughing together in the cold evening, it didn’t feel like it. It felt as though the world was still turning. That I could still be a part of it. Not as I had been, but as I was. It was up to me.
I looked through the windows of the Sports Bar, which were starting to cloud with condensation from the warmth within, and felt a silly flicker of something because I wondered if Luc was still in there, drinking apple brandy with Felix perhaps, talking about Gaston and the problems with workmen turning up on time. I remembered the paperwork Isabel had mentioned, the planning permissions, the legal fees and taxes. How sad that he, just like me, was dealing with living alone. Did he mind that? Was he as reclusive and full of secrets as everyone in this well-informed town seemed to think?
Just for a moment I wondered what his life was like. Where did he sleep? Did he have running water and heating? Well, he had been there for a couple of years, he must have achieved something during that time.
I realised Isabel was watching me as these thoughts went around my head.
‘What are you thinking about? Your face is a picture.’
‘Nothing,’ I said, forcing a smile, ‘I’m just tired, it’s been a long day. I think I need an early night.’