Chapter Fifteen
Arriving back at the Villa Matisse in the late afternoon, I found Nicole in the salon, madly hoovering up pine needles.
‘Hello! Did you have a nice time with the girls from the mosque?’
Switching off the vacuum cleaner, Nicole wrinkled her nose. ‘I think so,’ she said but sounding so doubtful I smiled.
‘Well, only you can know.’
She pondered. ‘They are so grave,’ she said at last but with emphasis. ‘No, serious. The English word I am needing is “serious”. They are good, good women, but they are extremely serious.’
‘Ah.’
‘They find this life is serious. They are not like you – always smiling, always happy, always making the joke.’
‘Oh yeah,’ I muttered. ‘I’m a laugh a minute.’
Nicole blinked. ‘Pardon?’
‘Nothing. Sorry.’ I looked at the forlorn little Christmas tree. ‘I think he’s finished, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, looking glum. ‘He is very dead.’
‘Billy can take him away on Monday.’
‘Okay. But I am forgetting!’ Nicole cried as I made to go. ‘I find a present for you under the pins!’
The pins? ‘Oh, you mean the needles, the pine needles.’
‘Pine needles,’ repeated Nicole carefully as she always did with new English words. ‘I find a Christmas present for you under the pine needles. I put him on the table in the kitchen.’
A present for me? ‘Who is it from?’ I started to ask but, turning away, Nicole had switched the vacuum cleaner back on.
She probably didn’t know anyway, any more than I did for that matter.
Who at the Villa Matisse would give me a Christmas present?
Nicole must have made a mistake, and it was one Susan Mandeville had missed from her tottering pile.
The kitchen was warm and rosy from the one lamp burning, smelling faintly of the Welsh rarebit Nicole must have cooked for herself, having become addicted to it ever since I had showed her how to make it.
Chucking my jacket over the back of a chair, I switched on the kettle.
Then I picked up the present. It was quite small, shop-wrapped in green shiny paper with a pattern of holly berries, a ribbon tied in an elaborate bow and a little tag attached in the shape of a fir tree with Merry Christmas, Alix written on it in ink in an old-fashioned, ornate hand that could have passed for copperplate.
Nothing else, no name of the giver, no smiley face or cross for a kiss, just those three words: Merry Christmas, Alix.
It felt odd, almost spooky. Maybe somebody’s idea of a joke.
I put it back down unopened on the table.
Luc came in, staggering across the room as if his long legs were about to give way under him, and collapsed heavily onto the nearest chair.
‘Talk about bloody retail therapy!’ he groaned.
‘Oh dear,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Bad, was it?’
‘Bad? I’m traumatised. Tell me, are you a shopaholic?’
‘Can’t afford to be.’ I smiled.
‘Neither can my mother, but that doesn’t seem to stop her.’
I went to the kettle. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Tea? No, thanks. I want emergency treatment for shock.’ Chucking his phone down on the table and levering himself to his feet, he crossed to the dresser and poured a vast vodka. ‘Would you like one?’
‘No, thanks.’
The swing door to the dining room creaked open to reveal Nicole edging through it backwards, heaving the hoover after her. Opening the cupboard in the wall, she shoved the vacuum cleaner inside, closing the door quickly before all the mops and brooms could fall out, and dusted off her hands.
‘How was your day?’ Luc said to her. ‘Have you made some friends?’
She pulled an iffy face at him, waggling one hand in the classic gesture of dubiousness that I guessed she had picked up from Emma.
Divested of her hijab and back in jeans, a jumper and sneakers, Nicole looked like any ordinary teenager.
I asked her whether she wanted some supper but no, she had already eaten Welsh rabbit – ‘rarebit’ had proved beyond her, as it does with most English people – and was going to wash her hair.
With a polite nod at both of us, she toddled off, and Luc looked at me.
‘No good?’ he queried.
‘It seems the women at the mosque were not what you might call regular little sunbeams.’
‘Ah.’
‘Indeed.’
Luc sat down again and examined his vodka as if there were a fly floating in it. ‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ He sighed. ‘Difficult to get the balance right between faith and all its strictures and traditions as the same time as being a modern young woman.’
‘Very, but I think she’ll get there. She’s bright.’
‘I agree, but I suspect it takes a good deal more than intelligence.’ Taking a long pull of his drink, his eyes roved vaguely round the kitchen as if in search of an answer, suddenly sharpening as they lighted on Alphonse’s empty bed. ‘Where’s the dog?’ he cried in alarm.
I sat down opposite him with my cup of tea. ‘Jess has got him.’
‘Jess?’
‘ Yes, Jess.’ I started to explain.
***
After telling me the sad tale of the death of Luc’s wife – and, boy, was it sad; it had upset me, even though I had never met the woman – Jess made strenuous efforts to lighten the mood.
Yesterday had been hell, she said, the worst Christmas dinner possible, given some old dear had nearly choked to death on the ever-so-English Christmas pudding, accusing Jess after a helpful soul had performed the Heimlich procedure of dangerously packing the Christmas pudding with sixpences only to discover it was her own tooth she had choked on.
‘I think it might have been her remaining tooth as well,’ Jess added, which gave us both the giggles.
‘Oh, I shouldn’t mock,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘I’m seventy-two next week. It’ll come to me very soon.’
‘Are you really?’ I said in surprise. ‘You don’t look it.’
‘And what does seventy-two look like?’ she said with a smile.
‘Well, not like you for sure. You look amazing, bloody gorgeous in fact.’
And she did. Today wearing a knee-length, loose but beautifully unstructured pale-grey jersey dress, she had teamed it with grey suede ankle boots and yellow tights which showed off her fantastic legs.
Her hair framed her face in soft wings, and a richly textured yellow and silver medallion on a grey leather cord hung round her neck.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply. Then her shoulders drooped. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Alix. Whatever I look like, I can’t pretend I’m not feeling my age.’ She waved a hand at our surroundings. ‘I could do with more time off from this.’
‘Can’t your staff manage without you?’
‘Yes, of course they can. I don’t flatter myself that I’m indispensable. It’s just that…’ She broke off and bit her lip.
‘What? Tell me.’
‘Perhaps you won’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
‘Okay.’ She took a deep breath and started to speak so rapidly she was almost falling over her words.
‘I hate being on my own without Johnny, I absolutely hate it. And I don’t mean I’m lonely.
I’m not lonely, not in the true sense of loneliness.
I have friends, loads of friends, lots of people who care about me.
It’s not loneliness, it’s being alone, and that’s different.
If I take an evening off from the restaurant, I get upstairs to my apartment thinking, oh, goody, I’ll have a nice relaxing evening watching television or reading or listening to music or just faffing about, just some “me time”, you know?
Except all I do when I get there is sit on my backside thinking how desperately I miss Johnny.
Even though he could barely communicate with me in the last year or so of his life, that was better than not having him at all.
’ She paused and gave a great shuddery sigh that was almost a sob.
‘And I can’t stand it. I can’t live with it. ’
I didn’t know what to say. It struck me that Jess was suffering from grief, but she was intelligent enough to know that herself, so my saying it seemed patronising.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m still grieving and that hurts, but I will get over that in time or at least learn to live with it.
But it’s not that.’ She suddenly drew herself up.
‘Do you know something, Alix? In the last year or so of his life when Johnny was so dreadfully ill, I used to wish every day – I used to pray every day – that he would die. Not for him, for me. I prayed for his death for me. I thought it would bring relief, my relief from watching him suffer. Isn’t that terrible? ’
‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s not terrible at all.’ But she didn’t seem to hear me.
‘And yet when he eventually did die, I felt no relief whatsoever. I still don’t. I only wanted him back and I still do.’
‘That’s—’
‘No, don’t say that’s perfectly normal, please.’
‘But it is. Listen,’ I said awkwardly, ‘is there nobody you could live with, if only for a while, someone who would not just be company for you, but who would be a distraction, who would stop you thinking about Johnny?’
‘Who?’ Her expression became mildly scornful. ‘Luc? Well, I’m certainly not inflicting myself on him, it wouldn’t be fair. Oh, you mean a boyfriend, a lover, another man? No way. That would mean sex, and I don’t want bloody sex!’
‘Jess,’ I said warningly as her voice rose. On the table adjacent to us, an elderly English couple were doing their best not to listen, but their ears were flapping like yacht sails.
‘What’s the problem?’ Jess hissed. ‘Aren’t I allowed to shout in my own restaurant?’ Then she noticed the English couple. ‘Oh, bugger them. Not that I’ve had sex for as long as I can remember anyway,’ she sniffed but in a calmer tone of voice, ‘Dr Alzheimer vetoes sex.’
‘I know. I’ve heard that. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, it’s not your fault.’ She drank some wine. ‘Do you know, Alix,’ she continued, then talking in an almost chatty way, ‘I think I’m going deaf. I know I often keep talking too loudly just lately but it’s because a lot of the time I can’t seem to hear my own voice.’
‘Or perhaps because you feel there’s nobody hearing you.’