Chapter 16
16
We had enjoyed a very late night after Felix opened a bottle of Eddu Breton whisky, given to him by one of his suppliers to try and tempt him to stock a range of notebooks.
I wasn’t a great lover of whisky, but I was prepared to give it a try.
‘Listen, I will read you the tasting notes,’ Felix said, ‘“ complexe , floral, with heather and rose. Chocolate and smoky notes, with a hint of pepper.”’
He swirled the golden liquid in his glass and took a sip.
‘It’s very good,’ he said at last, ‘very good indeed.’
Isabel looked at the label. ‘And 43 per cent proof. So even if I didn’t like it, I probably wouldn’t remember.’
‘I like it,’ I said, ‘it’s sort of smooth, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Isabel said holding out her empty glass, ‘let’s try again.’
The evening then passed into a blur, which as I recall ended with Felix trotting out to the storage shed, finding the accordion behind the tractor, and trying to play La Vie en Rose on it and sing. Very badly. Despite that, it was fun. And I think I laughed more than I had in a very long time. I had to go out of the room at one point, my sides aching, and Antoine had followed me, hoping for treats.
Isabel looked thoughtful as he finished. At least we thought he had finished; it might have been that he just got fed up with it.
‘Is that it?’
‘ Bien s?r , yes, that is it,’ Felix replied.
‘It’s hardly Sacha Distel, is it? It reminded me of the time I got Chou’s tail caught in the barn door,’ she said, ‘that was very complex too. With several high notes. A combination of a yowl and a shriek. No hints of heather though.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said, dropping the accordion onto his foot. It made a wheezing, grumbling sound that set us both off laughing again.
‘You are right, chèrie , I don’t,’ Isabel said, blowing him a kiss.
‘I hope you agreed to stock the notebooks,’ I said, wiping away my tears with a tissue.
‘I can’t see the point. Who needs such things?’
‘Any woman you talk to,’ I said, ‘I have at least ten notebooks.’
‘So you don’t need any more then,’ Felix said, his tone indicating that he had proved his point.
I gave a spluttering laugh. ‘We don’t buy them to write in, we like to have them, in case we want to write in them.’
‘S’true,’ Isabel nodded, ‘and the nicer the notebook, the less likely I am to write in it. They are for special things, not just shopping lists.’
Felix gave this some thought. ‘I have seen your shopping lists; you usually leave them on the table by mistake when you go out.’
‘We get them as presents, we give them to friends as presents,’ I said.
‘But why?’ Felix was genuinely puzzled, or perhaps it was the whisky.
‘Because we do,’ I said, ‘and that’s all there is to it.’
Felix shook his head slowly, trying to understand.
‘So when you get another one, do you think “hurrah, what a lovely notebook,” or do you think “oh dear, I already have ten”?’
‘Always hurrah,’ Isabel said, ‘and then I put it with the others, for when I need them. Eventually, the right moment will present itself.’
‘I bet you ten euros you will sell them all. Especially if they have gold swirly bits on the cover or peacock feathers. And if they have a little magnetic clasp, even better,’ I said. I stabbed the air with a finger for emphasis.
I was surprised to hear myself talking like that, expressing an opinion, trying to convince someone I was right. Having my feelings seriously considered. It made a change. Perhaps it was the whisky. Maybe it was just me feeling more confident than I had in years.
‘Well, okay, but I will never understand women,’ Felix said, picking up the accordion, ‘now shall I play something else?’
Isabel had slumped over at a slight angle, and she struggled upright in her chair.
‘I will give you ten euros not to, chèrie . Fifteen if it will convince you.’
After that we had a late start to the following day, and so we were sitting at the breakfast table having waved Felix and his headache off to work, when there was a familiar rap on the kitchen door, and Eugénie came in. She looked very chic in tailored trousers, a white sweater (no dogs in her house then; I wasn’t sure I would ever get the splatters of concrete out of my jeans) and a checked blazer, while we were still in our dressing gowns.
I think she was appalled at our slovenliness.
‘ Que se passe t-il ici ?’ What’s going on?
Well, I suppose she had a point, it was nearly ten o’clock.
‘Coffee, Mamie ?’ Isabel said sweetly.
Eugénie sat down at the table and gave a gracious nod.
‘You always look so elegant,’ I said, trying to persuade her out of her evidently bad mood. In fact, I didn’t think I had ever seen her wear the same outfit twice.
She looked at me with a meaningful expression and tapped the side of her aquiline nose.
‘I have – how would you say…? – contacts. Now then, the reason for my visit. That wooden box of pralines I gave you. I would like them returned. Charles wishes to see them and perhaps try one.’
Isabel and I pulled the same agonised expression, which said that this would not, and could not happen.
‘I’m not sure where they have got to,’ Isabel said.
At the same moment I blurted out, ‘We’ve eaten them all, I’m afraid. Ages ago. They were very good though.’
Having given the unacceptable answer, Eugénie focused her gaze on me. ‘You have eaten them? All of them?’
I nodded. ‘But… that was quite a long time ago,’ I added, ‘and it wasn’t just me.’
She took a sip of her coffee and stared at the far horizon, while behind her Isabel rolled her eyes and pretended to hang herself.
‘I’ve never known such greed,’ Eugénie said at last.
‘Well, you did give them to us,’ Isabel said.
‘To have . Not to eat ,’ Eugénie said, ‘do you know that gift was over one hundred euros? I looked them up. You have made me feel very unwell. I need some medication. There is some seriously wrong with me, my heart is fluttering.’
‘Sorry,’ we said in unison.
‘I still have the box,’ I said, knowing somehow that I was treading on dangerous territory but unable to stop myself, ‘it was too nice to throw out. I was going to do something clever with it.’
My voice faded at the look in Eugénie’s eyes. I think I knew how the dogs felt.
‘Ah yes,’ Eugénie said, her voice silky and slightly dangerous, ‘I know how this will go. I will set my table with my best china, which was left to me by a dear friend in her will. It is Sèvres in case you wanted to know. Chateau de Fontain Bleu pattern. Charles will arrive at six because il est toujours en avance , he is always prompt. He and I will have a Dubonnet frappé and he will admire my hair. He notices such things. Then we will eat our supper by candlelight, I am going to make pasta. He has new teeth that will not cope with anything challenging. Afterwards we will perhaps talk about the old days, and he will pay me some extravagant compliments, which I will enjoy. Then I will make coffee, pour a small glass of cognac for each of us and say, “Look Charles. Look at this empty box. Joy assures me you can do something clever with it.”’
I slumped a little, feeling very foolish.
‘Perhaps you’d like a biscuit?’ Isabel suggested, with a weak smile.
‘I will tell Charles what has happened to his wonderful gift. My evening is in ruins. Instead of discussing his chocolates I suppose I will have to listen to him singing.’
‘Can he play the accordion?’ I blurted out, trying not to laugh at the memory of Felix the previous evening.
Isabel widened her eyes at me.
Eugénie sniffed. ‘I don’t know, and I have no wish to find out. I will take one biscuit now if it is offered.’
Later that day, we made our way to the barn and began making it look beautiful. At least that was the intention.
I pulled out the table, which newly polished with several coats of beeswax, looked wonderfully rustic. Then Isabel began bringing out all her treasures while I set the scene with the garlands of blue and cream bunting, several strings of fairy lights and the old, enamelled petrol signs which – having done some research – I was sure were worth more than the twenty-euro price tags Isabel had stuck on them.
I put out a few of the little milk bottles with red and white paper straws stuck into them, a couple of decorated tin plates, some faience pottery dishes, embroidered tablecloths and napkins and a slightly battered wicker hamper made a charming pretence of a school picnic on a side table.
‘It’s awfully good,’ Isabel said when we stopped for a drink of water, ‘I’d buy it all, I swear I would.’
‘Daft thing, you already did,’ I laughed.
‘Yes, but do I really want to sell these things? Couldn’t I just keep a few?’
‘And put them where?’ I said, ‘all your cupboards are full. And that’s not what you are trying to do here. You’re trying to make a profit.’
Isabel picked up a little china figurine of a hunter with his dog and stroked it regretfully.
‘I suppose so. Now then the watering cans, what shall we do with those?’
We lined them up, and I filled some with greenery, others with dried flower heads. Then I tied some of the scraps of lace ribbon around some of the handles, and tricolour ribbons, left over from some Bastille Day celebration, around others. It looked really colourful and attractive.
There was a small, wooden cupboard painted with flowers that Isabel had found in a skip and repaired. We put that by the entrance and, to hide the worst of the scratches, propped the door open with a cast iron doorstop in the shape of a cat. Then we filled it with artfully draped linen sheets and embroidered hand towels.
‘Marvellous,’ Isabel said, ‘much better than I could have done. Now we deserve a treat for all that hard work. Let’s pop into town and buy something nice for dinner. The supermarket stays open until seven. And on the way I want to stop off somewhere.’
‘Where?’
‘You’ll see. It’s a surprise.’
We locked up the barn, gloating over our new display, Isabel picked up a sturdy brown paper bag of tiny new potatoes she had collected, and then we drove up the drive, turning left when we would normally have turned right.
‘I’m not sure I like your surprises,’ I said after a few minutes, ‘I remember my tenth birthday when you gave me a frog in a shoebox.’
Isabel laughed. ‘But you still remember it after all these years, don’t you? I bet you’ve forgotten all the bath cubes and handkerchiefs you were ever given.’
‘Stephen gave me three tins of undrinkable tea and a new iron for Christmas once,’ I said.
Isabel roared with laughter.
‘Romantic fool,’ she said, ‘didn’t he know you should never give any woman a present with a plug?’
We turned off again after a mile, and headed down a rutted road with grass growing down the middle, until we reached a gateway, and Isabel drove confidently in.
‘You’ve brought me to a building site?’ I asked, looking around at the cement mixer, the random piles of stone and the skip, filled with pieces of broken wood.
‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Surprise.’
As we got out of the car, Luc came out of the front door, in the familiar blue boiler suit, which was splattered with white paint, and I felt myself blushing.
‘What on earth are you playing at?’ I muttered.
‘Felix had the idea,’ she said.
‘Look, I’m just going to say something stupid, I know I am.’
‘Naughty! We don’t use that word, don’t you remember what Vanessa said?’ Isabel grinned. ‘And anyway sisters and friends don’t let you do stupid things alone. Hello there, Luc, I promised you some of my new crop, so here you go. Potatoes from Potato Farm.’
She handed over the paper bag and stood looking hopeful.
‘Can we come in and see how you are getting on?’
Luc looked at first bewildered and then slightly worried.
‘Of course,’ he said, stepping to one side. ‘But please be careful, some of the paint is still wet.’
Inside there was the crisp, clean tang of new plaster and paint, and underneath, the more subdued smell of old stone. A small hallway led into a large room painted a restful green, where there was a wood burner tucked into the chimney breast already set with paper and logs. It would just take a match to start the fire, and in minutes the thick stone walls would ensure that the room would be warm and welcoming. Two candlesticks on a large wooden beam above it served as a mantelpiece. There were shelves built into the alcoves on either side, empty, but ready for his books.
I could easily imagine the room furnished with a comfortable sofa, perhaps a leather armchair next to the fire where he would sit in the evenings, reading a book perhaps, a glass of whisky on a small table next to him.
The floor was still covered in canvas dust sheets and there was a folding workbench in the middle of the room with an impressive toolbox on top of it.
Stephen had possessed something similar, because he said a man should have such a thing, but I don’t remember him ever really using it. Other than to put a couple of nails in the wall to hang pictures. This sort of activity was on another level.
Actually, I had always thought that simple DIY was something I would quite like to do, but Stephen had insisted it was his job, which meant that more often than not it wouldn’t get done. Perhaps when I got home, I would watch some YouTube videos and at last fix the window blind in the bathroom that kept falling down and replace the grouting behind the sink. Why shouldn’t I? It couldn’t be that difficult.
‘I hope we are not interrupting anything,’ I said.
‘Not at all, I’m delighted to see you both,’ he replied, ‘I would shake hands but…’
He shrugged and held out his hands that were spotted with paint. He pulled a rag out of his pocket. His hands were large and tanned, a graze across the back of one, the hands of a man who didn’t mind getting them dirty. I watched as he wiped the paint off, almost mesmerised by it.
Isabel nudged me back to awareness.
‘So you’re making progress,’ she said, ‘do show us what you’ve been doing.’
He took us through, under an archway and into the kitchen, where he apologised for the mess and muddle although it looked fine to me. Just for once, I felt absolutely no urge to get a cloth and do any wiping or cleaning. That was a new feeling.
It was fitted with pale, painted cabinets and a stone worktop. Everything looked new and fresh. And well planned. I’d wanted to change my kitchen back home for years, the badly designed layout, the dark wood that I had never liked, but I never had. It seemed too much of an effort, not to mention the expense. And yet as I ran one hand across the smooth surface, feeling the dust and tiny fragments of grit under my fingertips, I realised that I could organise this sort of thing if I wanted to. I wondered how he had managed to get this huge worktop in, no YouTube video could deal with that.
‘I put the cabinets in myself, but I had help with the stone,’ he said in answer to my unspoken question, ‘a firm from Morlaix, who were very good.’
‘And what else have you been doing?’ Isabel said.
For a moment I was terrified she was going to ask if we could all take a look around upstairs. I imagined his embarrassment as we poked our heads around doors, looked at his camp bed, or perhaps a mattress on the floor, with his clothes spilling out of suitcases and bags.
‘The bathroom is finished,’ he said, ‘and there are three bedrooms where once there were two. You can take a look if you like. I will make tea.’
While his back was turned, Isabel took me by the shoulders and mouthed ‘ stay there’. I mouthed back ‘no’, and she gave me one of her looks and raised her eyebrows in a menacing way. And then she went off, her footsteps echoing up the wooden stairs, leaving me in the kitchen watching as Luc filled the kettle and opened cupboards to find three mugs.
‘I still don’t know where everything is,’ he said apologetically, ‘and everything gets covered in dust.’
‘That will settle for months, I expect,’ I said, ‘I know what it was like when we had a bathroom put in. I mean we already had a bathroom, but it was bright turquoise and absolutely hideous. I needed sunglasses to go in there. It’s not like we had a tin bath hanging on the wall, it wasn’t as bad as that. And the loo didn’t flush properly, we had to jiggle the handle in a particular way.’
Oh yes, that’s a really good topic of conversation, I thought.
‘Ah, so you know about these things. And did your husband do the work?’ he asked.
I laughed at the very thought of Stephen with an electric drill in his hands.
‘Ex-husband, and no, he wasn’t that sort of man, we used some local builders. They were excellent. They did a good job. It’s difficult to find good workmen these days, don’t you find? I’m always afraid they will take the money, and then run off with the job half done. Although, my ex-husband was good at keeping them to schedule. That sort of thing. He used to do spreadsheets. And he was always interfering.’
I was aware I was babbling on, talking a lot of nonsense. Why had I mentioned a tin bath? And a loo that didn’t flush? He would think I was crazy.
The kettle boiled and he made the tea, even using a proper teapot, which wasn’t something I thought French people went in for.
‘A habit I developed when I was working in London,’ he said in answer to my enquiring look, ‘my friend sends me over proper tea bags occasionally.’
So he had worked in London, that would explain his excellent English, and he had a friend who sent him tea bags.
He took a milk jug out of the fridge (he had a milk jug?) and passed it over to me. I wondered what on earth Isabel was doing upstairs, and inwardly cringed as I imagined it. Was she poking about? Being nosey as she usually was? There were only three bedrooms and a bathroom up there, it wasn’t as though she was exploring Downton Abbey and had got lost in some endless corridor.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and took a sip, ‘that’s the best cup of tea I’ve had since I came over. Isabel only seems to drink coffee.’
He looked pleased. ‘You are welcome to tea anytime.’
Well that was unexpected. Was that some sort of invitation? Perhaps it was.
He opened a tin that looked as though it had once contained biscuits, and then closed the lid and put it down again.
‘Sorry, I seem to have run out. So what have you been doing since you came here?’ he asked. ‘Have you been enjoying yourself?’
Yes, I supposed I had.
‘I’ve been helping Isabel get the holiday g?tes ready for the spring visitors. And she has a barn filled with brocante , which I have been helping her with. You know, making it look nice, so that people can see what she has in the best way.’
‘Good, that sounds like fun,’ he said.
There was a loud thump from upstairs and we both looked up at the ceiling. What was she doing? Was she rummaging through his cupboards, if he had any? Had she knocked herself out on a beam and fallen to the floor unconscious?
I went to look out of the kitchen window at the view down to the river, and of course beyond it the distinctive outline of Potato Farm with the two chimneys. Maybe he stood and looked out and pondered what we were doing, just as I did with him.
‘I wonder what Isabel is up to,’ I said at last, ‘I can’t believe she has got lost.’
‘I expect she has a plan,’ he said.
‘Nothing she has told me about,’ I said.
He looked down at his feet, slightly uncomfortable, or perhaps nervous?
‘The truth is, Felix told me that you are on your own – he thought I should ask you out to dinner. I’m guessing Isabel is giving me some space to do so, trying to encourage me.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’
I gave a careless laugh to disguise my feelings. Even Felix was in on this. I think I felt slightly annoyed, and yet there was something exciting about it too.
He smiled. ‘Silly, isn’t it?’
What did he really think?
I thought about going out with him, trying to imagine him in some smart clothes, a suit and tie perhaps and me in an elegant outfit. I liked the idea of that. But I probably didn’t have an elegant outfit with me. Perhaps I would have to buy something. I tried to control my thoughts, he hadn’t even made the suggestion, I was three steps ahead of myself.
‘Anyway, you don’t like people,’ I said foolishly. ‘I’m told you prefer to be left alone.’
‘I did for a while, for my own reasons. But now, well…’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘You are an interesting woman, I’ll admit that. But?—’
But I don’t find you attractive , was the unspoken end to that sentence.
It was on the tip of my tongue to laugh, to correct him, to tell him that I wasn’t at all interesting. That after I retired from teaching, my life had been filled with other people being interesting while I did the washing-up and the ironing. I’d sorted out family squabbles and problems. I’d helped with babysitting and sewing on name tapes to school uniforms, that sort of thing. Just for once I found the pause button and didn’t say any of that.
Then I wondered what it was about me that made him come to that conclusion in the first place. I believed I was kind, evidently had some artistic talents if my sister’s praise was any indication, I was a good cook and I liked to look after people, but was I interesting?
‘Oh dear, I’m making a mess of this,’ he said at last.
‘No, not at all.’
I tried to sound as though I didn’t care, but all of a sudden, I realised I did.
I would have enjoyed having dinner with him, getting to know more about him, maybe even making friends with him. But now the possibility seemed remote.
How did women manage this sort of thing? I knew nothing about the rules of dating for people my age. Not that this was dating, but it was the closest I had come to it for a very long time. And I’d blown it. Not so long ago I would have felt relief, but at that moment, I didn’t. There was something about him I liked, and it wasn’t just his good looks, or his dark eyes, or the way he smiled.
‘Would you like more tea?’ he said.
Probably not because then I would need the loo, but it would have been nice to carry on chatting to him, finding out more about his plans for the house and the neglected garden.
At that moment we heard Isabel coming back down the stairs, far more noisily than was probably necessary. She came into the kitchen with an innocent look on her face.
‘You’ve done a lovely job up there. The bathroom is glorious. Nothing like it used to be.’
The moment between us was broken, and for some daft reason I felt a bit annoyed with her.