When we finally arrive at Sarah Merryweather’s party, there are already half a dozen people there. As she opens the door of the old farmhouse, we are immediately in a large, cosy, terracotta-coloured kitchen, filled with the smell of Indian food cooking, which is instantly exciting. (Decent Indian food is impossible to get in the French countryside and therefore an enormous treat whenever it pops up.) Sarah Merryweather is friendly and asks how I know Jon – a question that I can answer honestly and without guilt. ‘We are friends,’ I say. ‘We met in the Liberty Bookshop ages ago. And since Jennie, his girlfriend, had to go back early for work, he brought me to your party instead.’
After getting me a drink, Jon melts away into the crowd that the party has quickly become and does not talk to me after that. I am beginning to wonder if he even really wants me as a friend. Perhaps, in the light of the Darla incident, he doesn’t want people to talk and he is trying to keep his distance. But I am perfectly happy as I mingle with the guests at the party. It is a mix of local French and English and like a New Year’s Day audit of the people I have met over the past twelve months: several people from the Entente Cordiale conversation group at the Liberty Bookshop, including Florence Coppinger, who talks a lot and exclusively in English; a lovely lesbian couple from Yorkshire who I met when they were trying to find a home for an abandoned bull terrier; and a chap called Jo The Hoe (so-called because he seems to do just about everyone’s garden). In addition to the full-timers, there are the part-timers – those who arrive for Christmas, Easter and summer holidays, temporarily widening the social circle of those of us who have decamped to France permanently – as well as a good turnout from among Sarah’s French neighbours. The only people missing are Desmond, Elinor and Miranda.
Unfortunately, I am cornered by Florence Coppinger. ‘Hello, dear,’ she says, all crisp consonants and crystal enunciation. ‘How nice to see you.’ She enquires briefly about my New Year’s Eve before proceeding to complain bitterly about hers, which was spent at a ‘Murder Mystery’ evening with the Civray Singles group. ‘I was given the role of a dowager aunt,’ she says, and I bite my lip to stop a smile (talk about typecasting). ‘I was told to dress the part but it was frightfully badly organised. Such a waste of money.’
I look wildly around the room, hoping for rescue. Once Florence Coppinger has locked you into a monologue, you’re looking at up to an hour of nodding commiseration at her latest woes. I spot Jon talking to an attractive woman in her twenties. She is throwing her head back and laughing at whatever he is saying, and I wish I was standing there too. Instead, Florence is telling me that she isn’t looking forward to the coming year very much as she still hasn’t met a man and she has to have an operation on her varicose veins.
Jon manages to avoid me for most of the three hours that we are at the party. Every time I look across the room he is the centre of some little group, chatting, pushing his hair back from his face and looking completely happy. Only when Darla and Geoffrey arrive does he come over and join me. ‘Would you like another drink?’ he asks.
‘I’ll get it,’ I say, and when I return he is in deep conversation with Geoffrey. I wonder what they are talking about given that Geoffrey normally doesn’t speak.
‘So,’ I say to Darla. ‘What’s this about me having an affair with Jon Wakeman? What on earth did you tell Jennie that for?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ she says in her slow drawl. ‘I told her that you both slept together at my house. I kinda meant it as a joke but she didn’t see it that way.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘I know. I know. Hey, hands up! I was drunk. I’ve already been hauled over the coals for this. I guess I was trying to disguise the fact that I’m after him myself. Anyway, I eventually convinced her that Miranda was the threat. Not you.’
‘Oh, that’s very nice of you! So she thinks Miranda and Jon are having an affair?’
‘Yeah. I told her that Miranda was after him. You should be pleased. It takes the heat off you.’
‘But Jon and I are not having an affair.’
‘Betcha ya’d like to though,’ she says with a mischievous grin. ‘I know I would.’
‘Where is Miranda anyway?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Darla.
Jon comes over. ‘Maybe it’s time to get going?’ he says.
It is raining as we drive home and, even though it’s only 5.00 p.m., already dark. ‘So are you missing Jennie?’ I ask, emboldened by three glasses of red wine and the velvet embrace of darkness as we drive down the narrow deserted lanes back to Villiers.
‘I love her a lot,’ he says and I am surprised at how deflated I am by this news. There is a long pause and then he adds. ‘But to be honest, we’re more like brother and sister.’ This is certainly an unexpected revelation. Even more unexpectedly, he turns and winks at me. ‘There,’ he says. ‘At least you now know the truth.’ On the car radio the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, one of my all-time favourite songs, is playing.
‘Would you like to come in for a drink?’ I ask, when he pulls up in the narrow street outside my house. ‘Why not?’ he says. Inside, I close the shutters, draw the red silk curtains and switch on the red lamps on the side tables. I also light a few candles on the mantelpiece. While I open a bottle of wine, he gets the wood-burner going. Whereas I have to resort to lighting charred sticks of kindling over and over until they take, he soon has flames dancing off the logs. It’s such a shame that he only wants to be friends. Here we are, sitting by a roaring log fire in a candlelit room, on New Year’s Day, the pink light casting a flattering glow on our faces, having just got back from an excellent party. I hand him a glass of wine and sit down next to him.
‘Thanks for taking me to Sarah’s party,’ I say. ‘I really enjoyed it.’ Then, thinking I’ve got nothing to lose, I ask the question that I didn’t dare ask in the car. ‘What did you mean about your relationship with Jennie being more like brother and sister?’
‘Well, for a start, we don’t live together. She is in the UK and I am here.’
‘Well, only temporarily. Did you speak to her about that over Christmas?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But look, let’s not talk about all that now.’
Instead, we talk about Miranda’s no-show. ‘It’s a little strange,’ I say. ‘I thought she was really looking forward to it. Miranda never misses a party if she can help it.’
‘I hope she’s OK. I worry about her,’ says Jon.
‘I suppose I’d better go home,’ he says after we have been chatting for a while.
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ I say. There is a meaningful pause. And then suddenly, I don’t care if he has a girlfriend or not, there is something I have to know. Encouraged by the revelation about his relationship with Jennie, I put my wine glass down and move towards him. I am expecting him to put his hand up to stop me, pull away, deliver the ‘I’m flattered, but…’ speech. Then at least I will know. He doesn’t pull away. He moves towards me and kisses me with a passion that takes me by surprise. I have my answer.
‘I have wanted to do that for ages,’ he says eventually.
‘You have?’
‘So badly.’
My heart jumps off a high wire at this news, performs several backward somersaults and a triple cartwheel.
‘Really?’
‘That night that we spent at Darla’s? Do you want to know the real reason why I couldn’t sleep?’
‘You said I was snoring.’
‘All night I lay there, thinking how much I’d like to be in the same bed as you.’
‘I was thinking the same thing.’
‘But you didn’t seem at all interested. You got into bed fully clothed, remember? And zipped yourself inside a sleeping bag. I thought to myself, Wow, this is a girl who is taking no chances. And anyway, I already had a girlfriend.’
‘You still do.’
It all seems very surreal. Since moving to France I’ve certainly had my fair share of unexpected declarations of love, mostly from unstable or cheating people, but this one makes my heart leap. ‘But how can you love me? You’ve only known me properly for such a short time,’ I say, struggling not to sound too euphoric.
‘It doesn’t matter how long I’ve known you,’ he says. ‘I love you. The night of that party in Anzac, I was watching you dance with Desmond all night and I was really, really jealous. I wanted you for myself.’
‘But you spent the whole night talking to Miranda.’
‘And I was pissed off that I wasn’t talking to you.’
‘And you didn’t seem that keen to dance with me.’
‘It looked like you were having more fun with Desmond. I even asked Miranda if there was anything going on between the two of you.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She said no, you were just good friends and that Desmond was enormously fond of you. But I was still jealous. And that day when we bumped into him at the Christmas market and you flung your arms around him, I was so pissed off.’
‘But I thought you only wanted to be friends with me. That’s what you said and I took you at your word.’
‘I know, and I immediately regretted it and thought what a bloody pillock I’d been to say that. And then as I walked around the Christmas market with you, all I could think of was how much I wanted to hold your hand. The very first time I saw you in the Liberty Bookshop, I wanted you.’
This was certainly news to me. The first time I met him in the Liberty Bookshop, he had treated me like I had something contagious.
‘But you weren’t even very friendly,’ I say, incredulous.
‘Because I assumed you were taken.’
‘But didn’t it occur to you that I was always in the Liberty Bookshop or Café du Commerce alone?’
‘Yeah, but you just didn’t look available. And then Gérard in the wine shop mentioned you had a husband and a boyfriend – a French one – so I didn’t know what to think. But when you walked into that bar in Bléssy on your own that night, I just thought, Wow!’
‘But even today at the party, you hardly spoke to me. It was like you were trying to avoid me.’
‘But you were always talking to someone. I realised how I felt about you over Christmas and I just didn’t think you felt the same way.’ He shifts uneasily in his seat. ‘Plus I haven’t sorted out things with Jennie yet. I have to treat her fairly.’
Ah yes, Jennie. Suddenly, I feel very guilty. I just kissed someone else’s boyfriend.
‘On New Year’s Eve, I dropped her Bordeaux airport and all I could think about was getting back to you. I drove as fast as I could, hoping to make it to the Libertys’ party as I thought you were going to be there. And when you weren’t I was so disappointed. Then driving to your house this morning, I saw two magpies in a field. And it seemed like an omen.’
‘What kind of omen?’
‘Well, you know what they say about magpies?’
I shake my head. ‘No I don’t.’
He laughs and pulls me closer. ‘Sometimes, you are so blonde.’
‘So what do they say about magpies?’
‘One for sorrow, two for joy.’
‘Well, I’ve got a confession to make too. A lot of the drama about not being able to cope with the turkey was just a ploy to see you on Christmas morning.’
‘I think this is the best Christmas and New Year’s Day of my life,’ he says.
I am thinking exactly the same thing.
‘But there’s one other thing that I really have to know,’ I say.
‘Ask me anything you want.’
‘Why on earth do you have an annual pass to Monkey Valley?’
‘I like Monkey Valley,’ he says, with a grin. ‘No, seriously, I thought the pass might be useful for guests at the B&B.’
I want Jon to leave now in case he changes his mind or tells me that this is all a wind-up. Plus I need time to take it all in. ‘Look, this is all so unexpected,’ I say. ‘You still have a girlfriend and I need time to think this through.’
‘I understand,’ he says. We decide that he will come over for dinner tomorrow evening. I kiss him goodbye and after he’s gone I turn the lights off and lie in the dark, the better to watch the flames of the fire leap and curl around the logs.
Chapter 21
Gone
Miranda, who usually sounds subdued in the mornings (usually as a result of the bottle of white wine she has imbibed the night before), is in astonishingly good spirits when I call early the next day to tell her about Jon. ‘I’m thrilled skinny for you, darling, I really am,’ she says. ‘He is such a lovely guy.’
I also tell her the unfortunate news that his girlfriend thinks that Miranda is chasing him. ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ she says. ‘I’m used to gossip. But what’s he going to do about his girlfriend?’
‘He’s going to go back to the UK and tell her in person that it’s over. But he wants to leave it for a week or so as he thinks it’s a little cruel to do it so close to the New Year.’
‘Oh dear,’ says Miranda.
The first week of the year consists of a series of unforgettable evenings. Jon and I staying in by the crackling log fire. Jon and I going out: to the bar in St Secondin, to the market in Poitiers (where we go ice-skating on the slushy, fairy-lit rink that has been hastily erected in front of the town hall) and walking in the forest, which glistens with a post-Christmas icing of white frost. He calls me ‘his darling minx’ and he takes me to dinner in the Routier at Vivonne, where we eat steak and chips surrounded by French and Portuguese truck drivers (it might not sound very romantic but it is the best steak and chips for miles around) and he takes me to play pool in a nearby bar.
Lying on the sofa by the fire, we jokingly plan our wedding, which we decide will be a simple, hippy-style affair: I see myself barefoot in the field behind his house with flowers in my hair. We will have lashings of pink Laurent Perrier and steak frites. ‘Minx, you are just so absolutely adorable,’ he tells me over and over. ‘I love your big cheeks and smiling eyes.’
I am happy but suspicious, as I cannot stop thinking that all of this is just too good to be true. There is also the problem of what to do about Jennie. Jon tells me that they had many conversations over Christmas debating whether or not to end the relationship – so it’s unlikely to come as a shock to her – but we both agree that it is kinder to her if he makes a clean break as soon as possible. And so, in the second week of January he returns to the UK to tell Jennie that their relationship is over.
And he doesn’t come back. I hear nothing from him for a week and then I get the phone call that changes everything: ‘I am so sorry, Karen,’ he says. ‘I won’t be coming back to France. I have decided to stay in the UK indefinitely. I don’t know when I will be back.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘So no wedding in a field in November then. No flowers in my hair. No steak frites or pink Laurent Perrier.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ he says. ‘In fact, it looks like I’m going to have to sell the house in France.’
‘Can you at least tell me what’s made you change your mind?’ I ask.
‘It’s probably best if I don’t,’ he says. ‘I am really, really sorry. I would never have wanted to hurt you. But I think it’s best if you don’t wait for me.’
Surprisingly, I am very calm. It is like I have been expecting this. All along it felt a little surreal, like it was too good to be true. And it’s not like I haven’t been here before. I stay in bed for two days, trying to figure out what made him change his mind so abruptly – the obvious answer is that he has decided to make a go of it with Jennie – but I can’t make any sense of it. I call Miranda, my fairy godmother, who I know will h
ave something to say that will cheer me up, but she is not at home. I leave half a dozen messages over three days but she does not call back so I call Darla and Geoffrey, who live in the same village, to see if they know where she is. ‘Haven’t you heard the news?’
‘What news?’
‘She’s run away with Desmond to the Côte d’Azur.’
‘What?’
‘They’ve been having an affair.’
‘An affair?’
‘You didn’t know? I thought it was an open secret?’ says Darla.
‘Oh my god!’
I did of course have my suspicions but they were so open about everything, I figured that they were just good friends. But then I think of all the times that Desmond and Miranda showed up on my doorstep unannounced, laughing and giggling together. I think of them dancing together in my sitting room on Christmas Day; Desmond’s protectiveness towards her; and all the joint expeditions to Lidl. And I think of Miranda’s behaviour on New Year’s Eve. How could I not have noticed? It would also explain Desmond’s dislike of Jon, whom he must have feared as competition for Miranda’s affections – particularly when Jon showed up at Miranda’s house the morning after the Anzac dinner. Desmond, after all, would have been behind those closed shutters when he called.
‘How’s Elinor taking it?’ I ask, struggling to process the implications of this information.
‘I don’t know,’ says Darla. ‘No one has seen her.’
Shocked, I get in my car and immediately drive over to the hamlet where Elinor lives, to check that she is OK. There is another car, with French registration plates, parked outside the house. The dog goes ballistic behind the big iron gates and then Elinor appears wearing a slinky purple skirt and black lace top, several ropes of coloured beads around her neck. A cloud of Guerlain perfume – I recognise it as Shalimar, the perfume worn by Miranda – hangs heavily in the air around her and her long blonde hair falls with abandon around her shoulders. She does not look or smell like a woman whose husband has just left her. Nor does she look particularly pleased to see me.
Tout Sweet Page 30
