Chapter 12
I try to read the email properly, but the words keep jumbling as tears spring to my eyes.
If I thought I couldn’t feel any worse, any more stupid, well, now I do.
I slam down the lid of the laptop. What does it matter what it says?
I can read the word ‘declined’ clearly enough.
And, all of a sudden, I can feel self-pity piling in on me.
Could things not have gone my way, just this once?
I stand up and feel drawn to head outside where the rain seems to be passing.
I grab my zip-up fleece from the hook beside the door, pull it on over my dress, wind a scarf around my neck and walk slowly to the lake’s edge.
I stand with my arms wrapped around myself.
The fisherwoman is still there. I scan the water’s edge for the kingfishers but can’t see them.
I go to the corner of the lake where the canoe is, then walk onto the path, pulling the fleece tighter around me.
The sun is starting to push away the clouds but there’s still damp in the air, raindrops hanging on branches and leaves.
I walk along the worn path, over the big rocks, with no idea where it leads.
I can see the big flat stone where the fisherwomen meet.
Beyond that, the path peters out. It’s more rocky and, on the other side of the lake, dense with trees.
I decide to turn back, not wanting to interrupt her fishing or her thoughts, but she turns to me with a smile.
‘ Bonjour ,’ she says, as she does every time she sees me. There is something very comforting about the routine of it, even if we don’t know each other.
‘ Bonjour ,’ I reply, with a smile. ‘You’re still here,’ I find myself saying. ‘Even with the rain.’
‘I am,’ she replies, in English, as I watch a tug on her fishing line.
‘Grab that.’ She points to the purple plastic bucket next to her fishing bag.
I bend and hold it out as she reaches down for a net beside her.
I watch as she pulls the fish from the water, hands me the net and, without saying a word, I catch the creature in it, laughing with delight, as does she.
I’m still laughing as she puts down her rod and removes the hook, before dropping the fish into the bucket of water.
‘Do you eat them?’ I ask.
‘Yes. But we only take what we will eat. Just enough.’ She tilts her head. ‘Would you like coffee? Or something stronger?’
‘Coffee would be lovely,’ I say, ‘if you’re sure I’m not interrupting you.’
‘Not at all. I am Geneviève,’ says the woman, holding out her hand, and I smile as I take it. She nods, prompting me.
‘I’m Juliet,’ I reply.
‘ Enchantée .’ She pours me coffee from her flask and some for herself.
‘Have a seat.’ She offers the camping chair, which I accept. I sip the coffee, looking out over the lake to the trees beyond. It’s as if time has stood still. Nothing else matters.
Beside us there is a little waterfall, clearly from a river feeding into the lake from the rocks above. A stream flows from it too.
‘The brown trout like it here,’ she tells me.
‘There are beehives in the woods,’ she adds, sipping from her cup and pointing across the water with her free hand.
‘On hot days you can hear the buzzing. And further up the lake, you have to go up,’ she points to a rocky outcrop, where the water is tumbling down, ‘climb over it and back down the other side,’ she says about the waterfall.
‘It’s not too hard and beyond that is a place perfect for swimming. ’
We lull back into silence and then I say, ‘You spend a lot of time here.’ I’m watching two dragonflies dancing across the water in the sunshine.
‘I like to be here. The peace,’ she says. ‘I started fishing when I was ill. I had cancer. It kept me … in the moment.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I’ve been through the same thing,’ I say.
She nods. ‘If you want to join us, you’d be welcome.’
‘ Merci .’ I smile. ‘I found the same kind of peace in baking. I just felt centred. Like nothing else that had happened or might happen was in my mind, just the baking. I would be awake in the night, feeling the dread of it spreading or coming back, and find myself thinking about buttercream icing, Christmas flavours for muffins or what to do with the jars of marmalade I’d made. ’
We stare out over the water.
‘It’s whatever brings you peace. This place is very peaceful.’
‘It is,’ I say, looking back at the mill, loving seeing it from this new perspective.
‘Some of the women who come here have had the illness. Others have been touched by it, by their loved ones, family members having it, maybe caring for them, or losing someone to it. Coming here, learning to fish, it is a rest from it. It’s somewhere we can relax, focus, eat and laugh.’
‘That’s perfect,’ I say.
She holds the fishing rod, gently moving her hand and the line in the water.
‘And so you are living here now. How do you like it?’
I let out a long sigh. ‘My visa has just been declined.’
‘Oh. And that makes things difficult now with you staying?’
I nod. ‘Yes. Without it, I have just four weeks before I’ll have to return to the UK . I wanted to open a salon de thé here at the mill but it seems I’ve got a lot of things wrong already since I’ve been here. Put my faith in the wrong people.’
She reloads her hook with bait and then, with a flick of her wrist, launches the line into the air. It lands with softness, precision and a tiny plop.
‘Sometimes you need to stand in the rain,’ she says, ‘to see things more clearly. The best catch comes after the rain.’
I sip the last of my coffee. I’ve made a proper mess of all this, I think, looking out at the dragonflies finally meeting and flying together.
Geneviève sips the last of hers. ‘I have wine if you would like some, or a sandwich.’ She points at the baguette sticking out from her bag. ‘ Jambon, beurre ?’
I raise a hand. ‘ Merci. Très gentille ,’ I say. ‘It’s kind of you, but …’ I look at the baguette again. ‘Where do you buy your baguette from?’ I ask.
‘From the vending machine, these days. It’s a shame.
The boulangerie was very good but there weren’t enough people here to make it pay.
Then the owner, he shut very suddenly and left.
And it never reopened. A couple of people tried, but it didn’t last. They left very quickly.
We wonder what it will be next, if anything.
There is nothing left in the village. Laurent tries hard to keep the tabac going but numbers in the village are low.
He’s a good man, but I wonder how much longer he will manage. ’
Laurent, the man I’d more or less accused of hiding drugs in the mill. My cheeks flame. Another mistake in my rush to feel I was at home and had life here sussed. My toes curl. It wasn’t Laurent after the drugs, but Claude.
‘I may owe him an apology,’ I say quietly, and she doesn’t reply, just watches her line, gently tugging at it.
Then she says, ‘It can take time to see how things work,’ she says, and although I turned down her offer, she adds, ‘Let’s eat.’ She lights a small gas burner, sits on a nearby rock and prepares the fish she’s caught on a small wooden board with a sharp knife.
I watch, intrigued, as she fillets it and prepares it for the pan, with bubbling butter, the scent of garlic rising.
Then she covers it in a spritz of lemon juice and showers it with freshly chopped herbs, tears off chunks of bread and puts one on each plate.
She takes the cork from a bottle of white wine and pours me a glass.
I thank her, and am given a small plate of the freshly cooked fish with the hunk of baguette on the side.
It smells amazing. I take a sip of the cold white wine, then put the little stubby plastic glass down next to me and use the bread to scoop up a mouthful of the buttery fried fish.
She brings out a tomato from her bag, slices it on the chopping board, then does the same with a pink onion.
After drizzling them in oil, she offers the board to me to help myself.
I have the fish, the tomato salad and bread on my plate and it feels like a feast. Something so simple yet so perfect.
‘It’s delicious,’ I tell her as the steam fills my nostrils.
‘You must savour food and wine … like life,’ she says, and I couldn’t agree more.
I wanted to enjoy life. To love what I was doing.
Life, I’d come to realise, was precious, and short.
It wasn’t that my life was awful. It wasn’t.
But I wanted more. I wanted to feel alive.
Things had changed in me. I had changed.
I had my appetite back, and not just for food and wine or cakes.
I had a dream. Why not go for it? A silly little dream, some might say, but it was my dream.
And now, just like that, it’s been taken from me.
‘And there, after the rain, comes sunshine,’ she says, and points. It’s the kingfishers. They’ve come out from their hiding places and we watch the flashes of blue darting to and from the lake.
‘You know,’ she says, sipping her wine, ‘it’s said seeing a kingfisher brings luck and positivity, like Nature’s way of saying, “Good things are coming!” A sign of peace and prosperity.
Seeing a kingfisher means it is time to leap into something new, especially if fear has been holding you back.
Or so I read,’ she says, looking straight ahead, holding her glass of wine.
I sip mine. ‘You may be right. I needed to stand in the rain for a while. I think I know what I have to do.’
‘Then that is a good thing,’ she says with a smile.
‘Life had become very routine,’ I find myself saying.
She says nothing but I know she’s listening.
‘A series of routines. Contented ones. Only I wasn’t content.
But my husband was. And that’s fine. Then, with the treatment,’ and I run my hand over my wavy hair, ‘there were more routines. Doctors, hospitals, nurses, down days. Once I was in remission, he wanted life to go back to how it was before. But I needed something different, something new. I needed to take a risk, go on an adventure. I had to do this for me. After all the treatment, I am in control of my day …’
She nods in understanding and tops up our glasses.
‘Getting the all-clear has lit a fire in me. To do the thing I’ve always dreamt of, and if I fail … I fail. It’s better than the alternative.’
‘It really is,’ she says, and I know she understands, because she has been there too.
I finish the wine and stand up from the camping chair. ‘I have no idea if I can, or if it’ll work, but …’ Suddenly the fire in my stomach is fanned by my humiliation and frustration.
She sees another tug on her line and I pick up the net. She pulls in another fish, I catch it, and we put it into the bucket.
‘You have to be patient sometimes to get what you want. Change your bait. Take them by surprise. Just wait, bide your time. Stand in the rain.’ She smiles at me.
Something inside me rises up and rages. I’m angry with the illness, angry for what a young woman like Annie is going through.
And I’m determined not to let it ruin everything.
Feeling the heat now, I pull the scarf from around my neck.
I’ve promised Annie she’s coming out here and I’m going to make that happen.