Belle

by Lesley Pearse

  She smiled then and visibly relaxed. ‘Why don’t you take off that wet raincoat and I’ll make us both a cup of tea?’

  She went into a little room at the back of the shop, and called out to him, ‘Are you still on your farm?’

  Etienne hung his coat on a hook by the door, and brushed back his wet, fair hair with his hands. ‘I am, but I also do a little translating, that is the reason I came to England, to meet with a company I have done work for in the past,’ he called back.

  ‘So your life is about more than chickens and lemon trees now?’ she said as she came back into the shop. ‘Please tell me you have kept to the straight and narrow?’

  Etienne put his hand on his heart. ‘I promise you I am a pillar of polite society,’ he said, his voice grave but his eyes twinkling.

  Belle giggled as if she didn’t entirely believe him.

  ‘Do you doubt my word?’ he said with a boyish grin. ‘Shame on you, Belle, for having so little faith in me. Have I ever lied to you?’

  ‘You once told me you’d kill me if I tried to escape,’ she retorted. ‘And you later admitted that wasn’t true.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with women,’ he smiled. ‘They always remember the little, inconsequential things.’ He reached out and touched a pink-feathered hat on a stand, marvelling that her determination and talent had paid off. ‘It’s your turn to tell the truth now. Is your marriage all you hoped for?’

  ‘Much more than I hoped for,’ she said, just a little too quickly. ‘We are very happy, Jimmy is just the very best of husbands.’

  ‘Then I am happy for you,’ he said, and gave a little bow.

  Belle disappeared to the back of the shop once more and reappeared with two cups of tea. She sat on a stool behind her counter and Etienne sat down on one of the chairs.

  ‘And what about you?’ Belle asked. ‘Do you have a lady in your life?’

  ‘No one special enough to settle down with,’ he replied.

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  He smiled. ‘Don’t look like that, not everyone wants marriage and stability. Especially now, with war threatening.’

  ‘It won’t come to that, surely?’ she said.

  ‘I think it is only weeks away.’

  ‘That’s all men talk about these days,’ Belle sighed.

  Etienne smiled. Women in France made the same complaint. ‘And what do women talk about?’

  ‘In here it is mostly about fashion, children and domestic things, but we are all worried our men may have to join up and fight. I don’t see why England has to get involved, it’s nothing to do with us.’

  He shrugged. ‘France is more vulnerable than England. We may be invaded, you are safer here across the Channel. But enough of war, tell me about your family. You say your mother helped you get the shop. Does she live near here, and how are Mog and Garth?’

  ‘Things are better with my mother, but she lives over in King’s Cross and I only see her about once a month. Garth and Mog are very happy, they were made for one another. But why don’t you come home with me and meet everyone? I know they’d be delighted.’

  Etienne looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. ‘All things considered, I think it is best I do not meet them. When you moved here you also left the past behind.’

  Belle wanted to protest, but she knew in her heart he was right. On the day she married Jimmy she had firmly closed the door on her time in America and Paris. Etienne may have opened it again by coming to see her, and she was glad he had, but Jimmy might not see it that way.

  ‘Maybe you are right. But what about Noah?’ she asked. ‘You will surely go to see him, you became such good friends? Lisette is expecting a baby and they have a lovely home in St John’s Wood now.’

  ‘I am having lunch with him tomorrow, near his office,’ Etienne said. ‘We will always be friends, but I don’t call at his home; we both feel Lisette needs no reminders of the past, especially now.’

  Belle gave a rueful smile. ‘Respectability has a high price. Noah and Lisette come to see us now and again, we have all been to their home too. But we are always careful to avoid talking about how and why we met. Sensible as that is, it also prevents us from being really close.’

  ‘Does the past affect your relationship with Jimmy?’ Etienne asked, his eyes boring into her, daring her to lie to him.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘It’s like having a splinter in your finger which you can’t get out, and you can’t help touching it.’

  Etienne nodded in understanding. ‘For me too. But in time a splinter works its way out and the hole it leaves will become filled with new memories.’

  Belle laughed suddenly. ‘Why are we being so gloomy? All of us – you, me, Jimmy, Mog and Lisette too. We all have so many good things now, far more than we ever expected. Why are humans so perverse that they choose to dwell on previous bad times?’

  ‘Is it the bad times we dwell on, or the beautiful moments that lifted us up during those times?’ Etienne asked, raising one eyebrow quizzically.

  Belle blushed, and he knew she remembered only too well the moments they’d shared. She changed the subject quickly, moving on to ask him about his farm. Etienne found little funny stories to tell her about it to lighten the mood.

  Then Belle got off her stool and began tidying up the shop. ‘If you’re sure you really don’t wish to come and meet Jimmy, I must close the shop and go home,’ she said. ‘We always like to have a meal together before he opens the bar for the evening.’

  Etienne got to his feet and took his tea cup out to the tiny kitchen. ‘Yes, of course, it must be difficult to have a family life with a bar to run. And I have a train to catch.’ He reached for his wet coat and put it back on.

  ‘I think you should leave before me,’ Belle said apologetically. ‘I don’t want anyone remarking that I was seen walking down the street with a stranger.’

  He understood what she meant, and he suspected she wouldn’t tell Jimmy he’d called in.

  ‘I found what I was looking for,’ he said softly, taking her hands in his. ‘That you are happy and secure. If France goes to war, as it surely will, I may never get back to England again. Stay happy, love Jimmy with all your heart, and I hope one day I will hear through Noah that you have a whole brood of children.’

  He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them. Then turned quickly and walked out of the door.

  As the door closed behind Etienne, Belle murmured, ‘Au revoir.’ Her eyes prickled with tears for there was so much more she would have liked to say to him, so much more she wanted to know about his life.

  She’d done her best to erase Etienne from her mind: how hard it had been to say goodbye to him in Paris, the yearning she had felt for him for so long after. Why did he have to drive that particular splinter back into her now?

  She had told him the truth. She and Jimmy were very happy. Jimmy was her best friend, lover, brother and husband all rolled into one. They shared the same goals, they laughed at the same things, he was everything any girl could want or need. He had healed the horrors of the past and in his arms she had encountered exquisite tenderness and deep satisfaction, for he was a caring and sensitive lover.

  Yet she couldn’t help but ask herself why, if everything was so good for her, did she feel there was something missing in her life? Why, when she read about suffragettes in the newspaper, did she feel envy that they had the guts to stand up for rights for women in the face of hostility? Why did she feel a little stifled by respectability? And above all, why was it that Etienne’s voice, his looks and his lips on her hand still had the power to make her shiver?

  She wished she could have told Etienne how wonderful it was to see him again, that he had been in her thoughts so often over the last two years and that she owed him so much. But a married woman could not say such things, and neither could she encourage him to stay in her shop any longer. Blackheath was a village, people were small-minded and nosy, and there would be plenty of them glad
to gossip about seeing a handsome man talking to Belle in her shop.

  She shook herself out of her thoughts, replaced some hats on their stands, dusted off the counter and picked up some stray tissue paper from the floor. Opening the drawer in which she kept the day’s takings, she emptied the money into a cloth bag and pushed it into her reticule. She secured her straw hat to her hair with a long hat pin, flung her cloak over her shoulders and took her umbrella from the stand.

  Standing by the door, she paused before turning off the lights, and reminded herself of when she opened her shop for the first time. It had been a cold November day, just two months after Mog and Garth’s wedding, and she and Jimmy were due to be married just before Christmas. Everything had been new and shiny that day. Jimmy had indulged her by buying the small but expensive French chandeliers and the glass-topped counter. Mog had found the two button-back Regency chairs and had them re-upholstered in pink velvet, and Garth’s present to her was paying the two decorators who had done such a fine job of turning the dingy little shop into a pink and cream feminine heaven.

  She had sold twenty-two hats that first day, and dozens of other women who came in to browse had since been back to buy. In the eighteen months that the shop had been open, there had been fewer than seven days in total when she hadn’t sold one hat, and those were all in bad weather. The average weekly sales worked out at fifteen hats, and though it meant she had to work very hard to keep up with the demand, and use an out-worker to help her, she was making a very good profit. During the summer she’d bought in plain straw boaters and then trimmed them herself, and that had proved very profitable. Her shop was a resounding success.

  ‘As is everything in your life,’ she reminded herself as she turned out the lights.

  Etienne went straight to the station, but having found he’d just missed a train and had twenty-five minutes to wait for the next one, he stood at the window by the ticket office and looked at the Railway Inn nearby.

  He had never quite understood English public houses: the rigid opening hours, men standing at the bar drinking huge quantities of beer then staggering home at closing time, as if they could only face their wives and children when drunk.

  French bars were far more civilized: they weren’t seen as a kind of temple to get drunk in, for they were open all day and a man wasn’t considered odd if he drank coffee or a soft drink as he read the newspaper.

  The Railway at least looked inviting, with its fresh paint and sparkling windows. He could imagine on a cold winter’s night it was a warm, friendly haven for men to gather in.

  As he looked at it, a big man with red hair and a beard came out of the front door. He was wearing a leather apron over his clothes, and Etienne guessed that this was Garth Franklin, Jimmy’s uncle. He was looking up at water spurting out of a broken gutter and running down the front of the building, and he called out to someone inside, presumably asking the unseen person to come and look too.

  A younger man joined him, and Etienne knew immediately that this was Jimmy, Belle’s husband. He was bigger than Etienne had imagined, as tall as his uncle and with the same broad shoulders, but clean-shaven and with darker red hair, more auburn than fiery red. The pair, who looked like father and son, stood there gazing up, discussing the broken guttering, seemingly oblivious to the rain.

  Then Jimmy turned suddenly, his face breaking into a joyful smile, and Etienne saw it was because he’d seen Belle coming towards them.

  She was struggling to hold the umbrella over her and keep her cloak around her shoulders, but she ran the last few yards towards the men. As she reached them, her umbrella tilted back and Etienne noted that her smile was as bright as her husband’s.

  Jimmy took the umbrella from his wife with one hand and with the other he caressed her wet cheek, then he kissed her forehead. Just those small, tender gestures told Etienne how much the man loved her.

  He had to turn away. He knew he should feel at peace to realize Belle was truly loved and protected, but instead Etienne felt only the bitter pangs of jealousy.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Belle

  Chapter One: London 1910

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty: 1911

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine: Epilogue