Chapter 28
28
MONDAY
‘So, here we are…’ Lucie announced as she rolled the car to a halt in the dusty, gravelly car park.
She had left the coast very early this morning, picking Deva up at Maison Violette not long after 7a.m. so they could get onto the road to the convent well ahead of the holiday traffic, and they’d made good time. On the journey, Deva had told her so much about the Abbey, she didn’t think any tour guide was going to be able to tell them more.
Now, here they were parked up in front of the mighty Aubazine Abbey, where Coco Chanel and her sister, Antoinette, were just little girls when they were dropped off by their father after the death of their mother. They would stay here, looked after by nuns, until they each reached the age of eighteen.
Lucie looked over at her nephew in the passenger’s seat. It would be fair to say that Deva had made quite the effort for this trip. And already, he was looking in awe and almost overwhelmed by the moment.
He was wearing his black suit trousers and his smart black shoes, then on top, one of Lucie’s silky blouses and the vintage cream Chanel tweed jacket that he had liberated from one of the boxes under the bed at her father’s house. He had also added a large sparkling brooch, several pearl necklaces, and smoothed his hair down into the short Chanel-homage bob. He carried the black Chanel handbag, while Lucie toted the cream one, which Deva had lovingly cleaned up and polished after its Bastille Day adventures. He had also insisted on blasting them both with his bottle of No 5.
‘I think we’re ready,’ Lucie announced.
‘I can’t decide if I want to tune in to the tour guide or take my headphones and listen to my Coco playlist as I go round,’ Deva told her, an anxious look on his face.
Once again, he was as twitchy and nervy as he had been at the Place Vend?me in Paris, when she and Zoe had worried that he wouldn’t get out of the car.
‘Take your headphones,’ she told him encouragingly. ‘The tour might be in French, so no one will mind if you decide to tune out and listen to the music instead. You do you, remember. Where would the world be if Coco hadn’t done Coco?’
At those words, he turned and gave her a smile that assured her she’d said the right thing.
She opened the car door on her side, got out and was relieved to see that he did the same. Then they went to the entrance, paid for the tickets, and climbed the steps into the imposing building.
As soon as they set foot inside, it was so obvious to see all the rustic, but classically beautiful, influences that had followed Chanel her whole life. The walls, floors and staircases were all built of solid, creamy limestone, while the beams, benches and tables were pale scrubbed wood.
‘She had an exact replica of this staircase built in her house in the south of France,’ Deva whispered.
When they stood together in the high, vaulted chapel, Deva pointed out the simple black and white stained-glass windows with designs that could not have looked more like the famous interlocking Cs.
‘Look at that,’ he whispered to her. ‘I think of her as a little girl gazing up at that window every day, seeing her initials and dreaming about how she’s going to be not just an orphan girl, but someone important. Somehow, she knows that the world will recognise her initials and she has no idea how this is going to happen, but her ambition is huge.’
The guide walked them past cupboards of folded white linen, and everywhere was the smell of incense and the scent of lavender from bags of the dried herb and from the fields beyond the Abbey.
It was all magnificent and abundant in scale, but also pure, scrubbed clean and humble.
The silence of the stone corridors, the cleanliness, the purity and simplicity were awe-inspiring. The abbey was hundreds of years old, but Lucie could see that it was also as timeless and contemporary as a Scandi-inspired Pinterest page. Walking around, taking it all in, she was beginning to feel all kinds of inspiration of her own bubbling up.
When she was ready, she would go back to interior design, she decided as she took her phone out to capture the creamy flagstones in this corridor. But she wouldn’t do things that were flashy or gimmicky like before, no. She would focus on solid, lasting, timeless, classic design. The very best materials, the most pared-back looks. Black, earthy tones, cream, white, wood, stone – all the wonderful neutrals. The name ‘Classically Yours’ came to mind. And for the first time in months, maybe even years, Lucie felt properly excited about going back to the work she was meant to be doing.
It was a wonderful visit and totally inspiring for them both. Afterwards, they had to sit in the car and talk it over. Lucie telling Deva how profoundly beautiful she’d found it and Deva sitting with a look of almost tearful rapture on his face.
‘And how about your mum?’ Lucie asked him when they’d shared all their thoughts about the Abbey. ‘Have you two been able to make it up at all? Is she getting over her shock at The Dress?’
‘I was really worried that we would fall out forever,’ he admitted, ‘but I’m just not going to freak myself out about it any more. I have to be me. The way Coco had to be Coco. That’s just fact, Auntie L. Fact,’ he declared firmly. ‘She’ll come round because she loves me. It might take her a while, but I think in my heart, she’ll come round. This is me. This is who I have to be.’ He turned to smile at her and for a brief moment, their eyes made contact, before his gaze moved slightly and seemed to look at her face, but not directly into her eyes. As if he was doing something he’d been taught to do but didn’t really want to.
‘It’s OK, Deevs. If you want to look up and all around while you talk, it’s fine. It’s just me.’
‘OK… so,’ he began, ‘I’m going to stop learning about finance and start studying musical theatre. I’m going to sing better, dance better, go to auditions. Toughen up as a performer. Learn how to handle rejection and get better and better every single day. Commit to the craft,’ he said, then added, ‘Think about all the thousands of hours Coco spent here, sewing sheets, embroidering napkins, darning and patching old clothes before she started to create her hats, then her jersey tunics and only much later did she move on to lace gowns and those still unmatched jackets made from cashmere-spun tweed. I’ve got to start the acting and singing equivalent of hemming sheets, until my stitches are immaculate.’
‘I am so proud of you,’ Lucie told him, trying to hold back the happy tears that his words were provoking. ‘Really proud. You go for it, Deva. And like you say, your family will come round.’
‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘What are you going to do next? And was that really your new boyfriend?’
‘Ha…’ She laughed and felt a little jolt of excitement at the thought of Clark. ‘I’m going to be with my dad for the next few… months, hopefully. Then I’m going to launch a new interior design business, totally inspired by the convent… And hopefully, yes, I will be spending some time with Clark. The aim, Deva, is to get out of this safe little cocoon I’ve built around myself.’
These words made Deva laugh. ‘Safe little cocoon… That’s exactly it. Exactly! Down with safe little cocoons!’
Then they drove to the hospital and tracked Pete and Fikru down. Fikru, looking frail and skinny, was lying fully dressed on his hospital bed, while Pete was seated on the plastic chair beside him, his collection of plastic bags at his feet.
At the sight of them, Pete smiled brightly and jumped to his feet.
‘Hello, Miss Lucie and Deva!’ he exclaimed.
There was enough phone signal in the ward for them to be able to use the internet and find enough phrases in Pete’s language to work out that they were planning to leave today. They were going to walk and maybe hitchhike, if they could, with the aim of getting to the north coast and then on to the UK. From what Lucie could make out, they had an uncle in London, who had something to do with cars or garages, and he was going to help them.
‘Not France.’ Pete was shaking his head. ‘Not French, we have no families here.’
‘But is Fikru ready to leave?’ Lucie asked, looking at the frail boy stretched out over the bed. He didn’t look ready to get up and walk about the ward yet, let alone start walking, or hitchhiking to England.
‘Fikru is good,’ Pete declared, and Fikru managed a cheerful smile.
And now, the solution seemed obvious to Lucie.
‘You and Fikru’ – she pointed to Pete and his brother in turn – ‘drive in the car with me’ – she pointed to herself – ‘to Calais.’
When this had filtered through to them, Pete dissolved into smiles of gratitude and explained it in excited terms to Fikru. Fikru managed a smile but was too tired out to do much more.