Chapter 15
15
I would have been happy to start sorting out the barn that day after we had collected Eugénie who had been looking very pleased with herself, her white hair having been given a fresh, faintly apricot rinse and set into a rigid-looking French pleat.
Isabel was having none of it.
‘Remember that poem by Rudyard Kipling we had to learn for speech day? “If you can fill the unforgiving minute, tumpty tumpty tum” . Well I would say fill the unforgiving minute with a nice sit down, a good book and a few biscuits. There will always be another unforgiving minute coming along later.’
‘I see the boys have poured the concrete at last,’ I said, ‘I saw them early this morning from my bedroom window.’
‘See? I told you they would, they are good boys really. And how are your two getting along? Any updates?’
‘I had a long email from Vanessa. They have had heavy snow, but the roads get cleared in no time. John is working hard, she has had lunch with a couple of the company wives, who are called Betsy and Tatiana. I expect they spent the whole time pushing salad around their plates and complimenting each other. Vanessa would have loved it. The girls are horrified because they have to wear tartan kilts as part of their school uniform, but Bunny is thrilled that she has a real celebrity’s daughter in their class.’
Isabel took down a couple of the bin liners and prodded about inside them. ‘Anyone we know?’
‘I can’t remember, apparently he is in a band and the girl gets delivered to school by a chauffeur and a bodyguard every morning. Sara says she is doing well, the girls are fine, too, and she has started divorce proceedings. Marty is outraged. She sounded quite upbeat actually.’
‘Right then, so nothing for you to fret about,’ Isabel said, ‘you did exactly the right thing.’
I nodded. ‘I suppose I did. Now then, let’s have a look in these boxes.’
I ripped off the packing tape and opened the cardboard flaps.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, that stuff was from a house clearance,’ Isabel said, ‘and I got there late, and only got a few things. They were a job lot because the trader wanted to finish for the day. No Fabergé eggs or old masters.’
Inside was a lot of what I think could only have been described as junk. Some kitchen utensils, a couple of iron doorstops, an old biscuit box filled with bits of glass jewellery, and a couple of painted, tin buckets and spades. The sort of thing any French child might have taken to the beach in the 1960s. I opened another box, which was filled with much the same sort of thing. Remnants of someone’s life that had once meant a great deal to the owner but had now ended up in my sister’s shed. If that wasn’t a life lesson, I didn’t know what was.
‘I hope you didn’t pay a lot for all this,’ I said.
‘A few euros, I think. Nothing much.’
We worked away for a couple of hours, putting some things back into the boxes and others into piles to be transferred to the display barn and then predictably Isabel got bored and wanted to do something else.
‘Let’s go and see how the concrete is coming along,’ she said, ‘it should be setting by now, surely.’
Outside we found Pierre and Sylveste standing admiring the new concrete base, which looked very smooth and smart. A big cement lorry had come and gone that morning, disgorging the contents into the structure they had created. We stood respectfully admiring it, it looked very professional, and I was impressed.
‘Oh, it is nothing,’ Pierre said modestly, lighting his roll-up, ‘the drainage was all done, and then the compacting and the gravel and sand. And we used up some old flagstones too. Then we built these wooden shutters to get the right shape, we just need a few days without rain for it to finish setting properly although it’s firming up nicely. We’re going to prop a canvas over it too this evening, just in case it rains. I’m really pleased with it.’
Sylveste chimed in. ‘And we just need to keep the dogs off it – non! Antoine! Marcel! Non! Stop them ! ’
Unusually quiet, the two dogs had snuck up behind us and were watching. Marcel had moved forward to give the concrete a sniff and had raised one paw, trembling over the surface. Antoine was just a dog’s length behind him.
We all adopted the same rather ineffective position; knees bent, crouching, and holding out warning hands towards the pair of them, making encouraging noises.
‘I told you to shut them in the house,’ Sylveste hissed at his brother.
‘And I told you to,’ Pierre hissed back.
‘It’s okay, I’ll get them,’ Isabel said confidently, and took a step forwards.
It was too late.
A pigeon flew low over our heads, hotly pursued by Antoine and Marcel, who barking with joy chased after it, straight through the setting concrete, leaving a pattern of paw marks across the middle.
‘ Je te l’ai dit, idiot ! I warned you!’ Pierre shouted.
‘ Ne me blame pas !’ Don’t blame me. The perennial cry of the older brother. ‘Look out! Catch them!’
Splattered with cement from the dogs’ flying paws, Isabel stood helplessly, calling to them and for one moment they both stopped, paws planted in the concrete, looking at her with interest, presumably wondering what the four of us were up to and were there any treats to be had.
Isabel succeeded in catching hold of Marcel’s collar and Antoine followed but then he doubled back to see what Pierre was shouting about and ran across the concrete again, causing further mayhem and another fresh set of paw prints.
Marcel meanwhile broke free and did some zooming around on his own, barking at the pigeon who had landed in the branches of a nearby tree. Unfortunately, one of the cats was already up there, having an afternoon nap, and it took a swipe at the pigeon causing it to fly off again in a flurry of feathers. Marcel followed it down the field and onwards, barking all the way, while the cat slipped off the branch, dangled meowing and complaining, until it fell into the bushes below with a startled yowl. This new excitement caused Marcel to do a speedy U-turn and he raced back through the concrete yet again, his paws slipping.
‘Blasted animals,’ Pierre shouted at him, ‘ arrête ca ! Stop it!’
Unexpectedly, Marcel stopped obediently in the middle of the churned-up concrete, tongue lolling, one front paw raised. I put both hands over my mouth in horror, and then I couldn’t help myself, I burst out laughing and after a moment Isabel joined in.
At last we caught both of them and Isabel washed their paws and fur under a hosepipe while I hung onto their collars. The water was cold, and I don’t think either dog appreciated our efforts. It was a process, which meant that, of course, there was a lot of vigorous shaking from them both, and all four of us were soaked.
Pierre and Sylveste meanwhile shouted a lot of abuse at the dogs and each other. Luckily, it was all in rapid fire French and I couldn’t follow what they were saying. We dragged the dogs off, roughly towelled them dry and shut them up in the house while the young men set to work, trying to smooth out the surface again.
‘It’s going to be underneath a shepherd’s hut, no one will see if it isn’t perfect,’ Isabel said encouragingly.
‘You won’t be saying that when it starts to crack,’ Sylveste grumbled.
‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ I said, still trying not to laugh.
Behind him the cat slunk back into the barn, its belly low against the ground.
‘And I bet it’s going to rain later,’ Pierre added gloomily, ‘ c’est un désastre – a disaster.’
‘It will be fine, I have absolute faith in you,’ Isabel replied, wringing water out of the sleeves of her coat.
Pierre and Sylveste glowered at each other and carried on smoothing out the paw marks.
‘Let’s go and get changed, and then you know what I always say; if in doubt, make food. I’ll sort out some sandwiches for them, that always cheers them up,’ she said.
The following day, Pierre and Sylveste, having called in to inspect their work, pronounced themselves reasonably satisfied, removed the tarpaulin and drove away, still not really speaking to each other.
We spent the morning sorting out more of Isabel’s junk finds and then I took out my laptop. The broadband was surprisingly good in some rooms of the house, particularly the sitting room, which was a long, low-beamed room with an enormous inglenook fireplace at one end.
Isabel finished clearing up the lunch and came to see what I was doing.
‘Just doing some research on a couple of things that we found this morning in the brocante, ’ I said.
She pulled a face. ‘You’re wasting your time. And I can assure you if you did find a lost Leonardo da Vinci, we don’t have many art collectors dropping in on the off chance.’
‘Still, it’s worth checking,’ I said.
‘At least the g?tes are finished. We should go and get them ready after lunch; the first visitors arrive in a week according to Felix’s new spreadsheet. You were so clever making him do that. Want to help?’
‘Of course,’ I said.
We found umbrellas and coats and went out to see what state they were in.
I was pleasantly surprised. They looked pretty much as I remembered, two tiny farm workers cottages that had been renovated some years ago when Isabel decided she wanted to make some money from the holiday makers. The paint had been freshened up and there were new blue and white curtains at the windows. It just needed a bit of dressing up to make them look appealing.
Isabel made up the beds with crisply ironed bed linen and I hoovered and dusted. The kitchens were fairly well stocked with enough basic crockery and cutlery for two people in each, but it all looked as though it had come from the nearest supermarket.
‘Why don’t we put some of your finds in here instead?’ I said. ‘You have all that rather nice china, all the floral plates and cups. We would only have to find a few matching ones. It would look more rustic and appealing. And then I can put in some of the ornaments you couldn’t sell last year. A vase or two, with some flowers. And I saw some lovely brass candlesticks in a box in the attic, which I could polish up and put on that sideboard. And I noticed two rather nice lampshades decorated with shells. They’ve obviously never been used. I could replace those boring ones on the bedside lamps if you like?’
‘Okay,’ Isabel said, ‘but that would mean I can’t sell them.’
‘You can tell your guests that all the decorative things are for sale if they like them. And then we could replace them with new things for the next people. That way you would have twice the chance of selling things.’
Isabel agreed this was a good idea and we set to.
By the time Felix returned at about six o’clock, we had just about finished our work, and Isabel was delighted with what we had achieved and dragged him out to have a look.
‘Very good,’ he agreed, ‘but I liked it the way it was before as well. C’est chic , very fancy. ?a a l’air – seems very girly.’
‘I don’t suppose men would even notice,’ I said, ‘but your female visitors will. And I think they will like it.’
‘I notice lots of things,’ Felix protested, ‘particularly how beautiful my wife is, and also how hungry I am.’
‘You have no soul,’ Isabel grinned.
We went back inside, and Isabel brought out a defrosted coq au vin out from the pantry where she had hidden it away from the dogs and put it into the oven.
‘How is business?’ I asked Felix.
He pulled a face. ‘Not too bad, because some of the holiday makers are starting to call in. But today was quiet and Lisa has broken up with her boyfriend, so she is misérable . It won’t encourage the customers in to see her sad face behind the counter. She says she wants to go and see her mother in Nantes, but I don’t want to be there on my own, it gets boring on days like today.’
‘You could always do a stocktake,’ Isabel said as she set the table, ‘or get your papers in order for the accountant.’
Felix gave a groan. ‘What I could do and what I want to do are two separate things.’
‘I could come and help you,’ I offered impulsively, which surprised me and both of them I think, ‘Isabel and I have sorted out the g?tes ready for the first visitors, and we have been through the brocante , we are going to make the barn look pretty tomorrow, but that won’t take more than a day.’
Felix looked more cheerful. ‘If you’re sure. I have a delivery of books in English arriving one day this week, which you could sort out, if you didn’t mind? Je suis daltonien – I am not good with colours.’
‘He means colour blind,’ Isabel explained.
‘Absolutely, I’d love to help out. And Isabel wanted some time in her greenhouse, which I can’t help with, because my gardening ability is nil. So it would work okay.’
‘Good idea,’ Isabel agreed, ‘when I go to help out in the bookshop?—’
‘You are no help at all,’ Felix interrupted, ‘you just sit there reading the paper and telling customers they could go to the public library in Morlaix for free.’
‘I only did that once!’ Isabel protested.
‘I don’t tell your customers they could stay at home for free, do I?’ he said.
‘It’s not the same at all! You are ridiculous!’
‘You’re impossible,’ he said.
‘You are!’
Felix went behind her to fetch a bottle of wine from the fridge and slapped her bottom as he went past.
‘And you are a bad wife who does not feed her husband!’
‘ Tu es un cochon gourmand ! A greedy pig!’
I watched my sister and her husband squabbling and just for a moment it triggered a memory in me. I had been party to a lot of bickering when Stephen and I had been married, but then I realised that – as they always did – Isabel and Felix were doing it with humour, that they didn’t really mean anything by it, and this was just a part of their relationship. Underneath it all they thought the world of each other. How lovely to feel that way, even after so many years together. It made me a bit wistful, and it made me smile too.
I was beginning to realise that I had missed out on something like this in my own marriage. I must have been mad to put up with it. No wonder my children took me so much for granted; their father certainly had. Well not any more.