Chapter 5
FIVE
LUCY
Lucy had booked a room online at Jojo’s as she’d waited at the airport for her flight; she wasn’t ready to sleep in her grandparents’ flat.
When Papi had died ten years before, Lucy had found it hard too, but Mémé had held her hand and they had gone upstairs together.
But now that she had lost Mémé as well, she couldn’t bear the thought of going into the flat by herself, let alone staying there.
Besides, she had no idea if the beds were made up. And what would she do if the water was turned off? And Jojo’s rooms had looked gorgeous in the listing, as if they had escaped from a French farmhouse.
Like many buildings in Cordeval, several floors rose above the bar, each with antique wooden shutters. It had traditional metalwork balconies that burst with cascading red geraniums and were hazy with purple lavender in terracotta pots.
Tonight, the quiet, fairytale French hotel had burst into life.
Music boomed and fairy lights chased each other around the front door, and balloons and streamers filled the wide glass windows.
Revellers had spilled out of the door and onto the pavement, where a dark-haired man was enthusiastically playing an old upright piano.
Everyone from Cordeval seemed to be at Jojo’s, ranging in age from a toddler in a frilly dress brandishing a teddy bear to a grand, white-haired lady with a walking stick.
They were laughing and topping up their glasses; some of them were dancing.
A huge black, shaggy dog, which looked more like a bear, wagged its tail as it wandered from group to group to be fussed.
Just as she was wondering where to start, a woman with silver streaks in her blonde hair caught Lucy’s arm and pulled her into the middle of the party.
She had no idea who these people were, but they were greeting her warmly with their bonjours, and suddenly there was a glass of wine in her hand.
‘Whose birthday is it?’ she asked in French, turning to the man at the piano. He was good-looking in that easy French way, with stubble on his chin and unruly dark hair that looked as if it’d been perfectly ruffled by a stylist.
‘Birthday?’ His fingers still moved across the keys and, though she couldn’t see his eyes behind the lenses of the sunglasses he was wearing, Lucy got the feeling that he was looking at her.
‘It’s not a birthday; we’re celebrating a true local legend.
’ Then he reached out to pick up a glass of red wine that rested at the far end of the piano keyboard and lifted it high into the air. ‘To Madame Arielle!’
‘Madame Arielle!’ everyone around them chorused, smiling broadly and raising their glasses too.
Lucy stared in astonishment.
‘Arielle Pascal?’ she asked the pianist as the cheers died down. She spoke in French, with a slight Normandy accent that she’d picked up from her grandparents on her visits as a child. ‘But that’s… she was my grandma.’
The man at the piano put down his glass and sprang to his feet as he called, ‘Everyone, Arielle’s granddaughter’s here!’ He pushed his sunglasses up into his hair. ‘We didn’t expect any family!’
Lucy smiled as the revellers cheered again.
She realised she’d seen the man around Cordeval before, on her visits to her grandparents, coming and going from Jojo’s.
She’d thought back then that he was attractive, and he still was.
And now she remembered that he’d been at Mémé’s funeral, but his was one face among what felt like the whole village.
‘I wasn’t expecting a party,’ she replied. ‘Mémé would’ve loved this!’
She wished she had known; she would’ve tried to get Dad to come.
They’d been across to Cordeval only a couple of weeks before, for Mémé’s funeral.
Lucy’s Uncle Michel had come up from Nantes with his wife, and her cousins had come too.
And there were all her other cousins, the children and grandchildren of Arielle’s brother, Etienne, who had arrived from Lyon.
Lucy loved their family get-togethers, and usually came to Cordeval once or twice a year, or more often if she could, but until yesterday she’d been busy preparing to get married.
There’d been so much to sort out for the wedding, on top of work, that she’d only come for the funeral and had headed back to London before the end of the wake.
She could feel a tight knot in her chest made of threads of anger and despair. She’d given up so much for the wedding. To think that the man she was supposed to marry, Andrew, had— Lucy forced the thought away.
‘I had no idea. I needed to come here… on business,’ she said. She glanced across the road to the bookshop and instantly felt hot with guilt. She quickly looked away.
‘This was Arielle’s birthday,’ an old lady said.
She was tiny, with a sharply cut crop of white hair and blue eyes that sparkled with merriment.
With a smile for the man who had played the piano, she laid one hand gently on Lucy’s arm.
‘She and I always got royally drunk on her birthday; it’s a best friend’s job to keep up the tradition.
’ The lady held out her hand. ‘I’m Beatrice. And this is my grandbaby, Sébastien.’
Lucy put her glass down on the top of the piano and took Beatrice’s hand. She had seen her at the funeral too.
She felt a pang that she hadn’t remembered Mémé’s birthday, but her brain had been filled with wedding plans.
Now it was just filled with the thoughts of the wreckage of her future.
There would be no wedding and she would miss the Paris fashion preview she should’ve been attending that afternoon; that would take some explaining.
‘Beatrice, it’s great to meet you.’ She smiled at Sébastien. ‘And you, too, Sébastien! I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk at the funeral. I… had to leave early. Funnily enough, I’ve actually booked a room here!’
‘Miss Pascal!’ Sébastien exclaimed. ‘Late-notice booking all the way from London!’
‘That’s me,’ Lucy replied, smiling even though she didn’t want to dwell on why she was suddenly in Cordeval.
She felt something wet against her hand and looked down to see the dog’s questing nose brushing her fingers.
Lucy fussed the dog as she went on, ‘You can call me Lucy, though. It’s all a bit unexpected, but I’m so pleased I found your place, and right opposite the bookshop, too. ’
‘The best spot in town,’ Sébastien assured her. ‘Best booze, best food, comfiest beds.’
Beatrice chuckled. ‘And the most handsome host.’ She laughed. ‘Come and meet everybody!’
Suddenly, Lucy’s arm was looped through Beatrice’s, and they threaded through the party.
She introduced her to everyone, even Galette, the huge dog, because everyone there had a connection in some way to Mémé.
She’d let them spend whole afternoons in the bookshop without expecting them to buy anything.
She’d patched up their clothes and cooked them their favourite meal, and had never expected anything in return.
Mémé’s life had been completely different from Lucy’s.
There were no flights to Paris for fashion shows, no celebrity champagne receptions, no fiancé who lived in an expensive townhouse.
But everyone who met her seemed to be staring into her, as if they were looking for a piece of Arielle inside her.
Lucy wondered if anyone at the party knew Mémé’s secret. Surely no one was still alive who had been in the secret book club they’d held during the occupation? But maybe some of them had been told stories about it.
Something squeezed Lucy’s heart and she felt as though an enormous wave was crashing over her head, like the ones that ran along the wide beach at Clarenville. There was so much she didn’t know about Mémé, and now it was too late.
Lucy’s gaze wandered through the open door of Jojo’s, over the wooden tables with their checked cloths, over the polished zinc bar, until it caught on a wall of photographs at the back.
Old sepia photos of Cordeval, she supposed, the village that her grandma had known ever since she was a little girl. Perhaps she’d be in one of the photos?
Lucy drifted away from the party into the bar.
There were a couple of older men at a table, wearing berets and drinking beer.
But Lucy didn’t really see them. As she went to look up at the wall of photos, at first she saw nothing but a blur of grey as her tears threatened to fall.
She drew them back and then ran her gaze across the images.
Some of the photos were so old that the women were in skirts that touched the ground, and Lucy had trouble trying to find people and places she’d recognise.
She spotted the harbour, with men in oilskins and thick jumpers, sitting along the wall fixing their nets.
Then she saw a side street with a row of shops, and she peered close, hoping she’d see the bookshop.
But instead she saw the bakery, with two little boys standing outside in shorts, one of them armed with a baguette.
She remembered going to the same bakery to fetch baguettes for Mémé and Papi when she’d stayed with them.
‘You’ll find your grandmother in plenty of our photos.’ Sébastien was at Lucy’s elbow. ‘She was a village favourite.’
Lucy glanced up at Sébastien, his dark, twinkling gaze roaming the collage of photos. It was as if he’d read her mind.
‘I was hoping I’d find her somewhere!’ She passed her gaze across more photos, and then realised she’d found Jojo’s bar.
It looked like it’d been taken sometime in the 1950s, if the women’s New Look wide skirts and heels were anything to go by.
Lucy spotted Margot and Emil at a table, and then a girl who had to be Mémé as a teenager, wearing capri pants and a stripy top.
Her brother, who looked like a miniature version of Emil, was sipping an Orangina.
‘That’s her with her mum and dad, and her brother. And then… do you know who they are?’
A glamorous woman looked out from the photo, wearing a wide black skirt paired with a cream-coloured jacket, which Lucy thought was a Dior ‘Bar’ suit.
Her glossy, black hair was piled high under a wide hat.
What a revolution that couturier had started.
Standing beside her was a young woman with short hair and jeans rolled up at the cuffs, wearing a loose checked shirt. Could one of them be Esther?
‘I do.’ Sébastien smiled. ‘You’ve met one of them. That’s Granny Bea, looking like trouble.’ He touched his fingertip to the young woman in jeans. ‘And the movie star next to her is Jojo, Bea’s mum. The lady who turned this place from a Nazi drinking den into the classy joint we’ve got today.’
Lucy felt a sudden chill. ‘I had no idea there was a Nazi bar right across the road from the bookshop! So this is Jojo… she’s so glamorous! And Granny Bea was quite the tomboy, wasn’t she?’
And, Lucy realised, doing some quick sums in her head, Granny Bea was doing very well for a woman in her nineties; sharp as a tack and still full of energy.
But there was no Esther in the photo. She had to be somewhere.
‘Nazi bar on the main street, Hermann Goring taking the waters and a whole lot of drugs up at the spa…’ Sébastien said it with a casual shrug. ‘We’ve even got a rusted-out tank on the beach, in case you ever forget there was once a war on.’
Lucy had seen it when she was a child and had wondered why, although every other scar from that awful time had been wiped away, no one had ever moved the tank off the beach. Perhaps something needed to be left to remind people of what had happened there.
‘Papi and Mémé didn’t really talk about the war,’ she said, ‘but they were only babies when it happened. I’ve just opened a letter Mémé wrote to me; she mentioned Margot ran a book club during the occupation. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard anything about it?’
‘Yeah, Gran was a member,’ Sébastien replied. ‘She’s got a million stories. Get her on the red wine and she’ll talk your ear off!’
Lucy chuckled. ‘Fantastic!’ She looked back down the length of the bar and could see Beatrice in the midst of the crowd. She would have to talk to her when they could sit down and Lucy could hear all her stories properly. ‘I just don’t know why Mémé didn’t tell me about the book club before.’
‘Better to look forward,’ was Sébastien’s conclusion.
‘And Arielle was too busy with the shop to look back.’ He leaned closer to the wall of photographs, his eyes scanning the images that he must’ve seen a thousand times or more, then stood back again.
‘But if you want to get to know Cordeval, this wall should give you plenty to go at.’
There was so much to take in. And Lucy, who’d been surviving on nerves almost all day, was beginning to flag.
‘I suppose I’ll be staying for a little while,’ she told Sébastien.
‘I’ll have to keep looking at your photos.
Thanks so much for holding a party for my grandmother, it means the world to see how much everyone loved her.
I better head up to my room now, though. It’s been a long day.’
She and Sébastien had a shared past, and she felt a warmth between them.
With Lucy’s London life in tatters, just chatting about the old photos had reminded her that she had an existence beyond the big city.
Discovering a connection with someone she’d never really spoken to before made her feel less alone.
‘I put you on the front, so you can look out at Arielle’s place,’ Sébastien told her with a smile.
‘Breakfast is any time after eight and it’s home-made croissants, so if I were you I wouldn’t want to miss it.
’ He picked up her suitcase. ‘Dinner’s usually pretty good here too, if I say so myself.
’ He glanced back at her as they headed through the bar and admitted, ‘I’m the chef, after all. ’
‘Home-made croissants sound amazing – I definitely won’t be missing those! You cook, you play the piano, is there anything you can’t do?’ Lucy teased. A strand of his dark, tousled hair had fallen forward across his face.
‘I’m not much good at sewing a button on.’ He laughed. Then he added, ‘And when I was six I jumped off the tank on the beach to prove that I could fly and broke my arm instead.’
Lucy laughed, feeling the tension of the day falling away. She was glad she’d come to Cordeval; she’d always been happy here.
Sébastien led her up a flight of old, winding stairs to the door of her room.
There were more photos of old Cordeval on the walls of the stairs, and even a colour one, which featured a little boy with a shock of dark hair on the beach in an Asterix T-shirt, holding hands with a younger version of Beatrice.
They said goodnight. The friendly warmth in Sébastien’s voice was a balm for Lucy; it soothed her more than he could know.
It wasn’t a bad way to end a day that had almost torn her apart.