The French for Love

by Fiona Valpy

  Published by Bookouture

  An imprint of StoryFire Ltd.

  23 Sussex Road, Ickenham, UB10 8PN

  United Kingdom

  www.bookouture.com

  Copyright © Fiona Valpy 2013

  Fiona Valpy has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  eISBN: 978-1-909490-08-6

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For Carin, my sister

  ACKNOWLEGEMENTS

  Thank you to all the people who have helped me with the writing of this book and especially to Oliver Rhodes and Emily Ruston for taking me on at Bookouture, and for their enthusiastic encouragement and support.

  Of course all the characters in this story are entirely fictional but the Thibault brothers’ very high standards of expertise and craftsmanship were inspired by our ‘Super Stonemasons’, the Feltrin brothers and their team, who have worked miracles to help us create our dream home in France. (And there really is a stonemason called Pierre.)

  I am very grateful to those brave souls in the winemaking world who let me loose on their vines and in their cellars: Eric Bonneville and his team at Château L’Enclos, Jacqui and Jean-Michel De Robillard, and especially Pierre and Marisol Charlot whose Château des Chapelains in St André-et-Appelles is the inspiration for so much in this book.

  Thanks to all at the Confrérie des Vins de Sainte Foy Bordeaux who honoured my husband and me by awarding us the title of Chevaliers of the appellation, and to Florent Niautou in the oenology lab at St André-et-Appelles for sharing his passion for winemaking with us.

  And finally, my love and thanks go to my family. But most of all to my sister Carin, who encouraged me to keep writing in the face of despair, builders’ dust and writer’s block. This one’s for you.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  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

  EPILOGUE

  A note from Fiona

  About Fiona

  CHAPTER ONE

  New Beginnings

  To-Do List:

  •20 mins Pilates—daily

  •Practise taking deep breaths and letting go—ongoing

  •Drive to France

  •Send off application for Master of Wine course, first step on the path to brilliant and fulfilling new job financing life of glamour and fun

  •Find suitable man for love and children, NB not another cheating rat like Ed - ongoing.

  Turns out doing Pilates in a ferry cabin the size of a sardine tin is a physical impossibility, so I go up on deck instead to stretch my legs and watch St Malo materialise through the early morning mist. I take deep breaths of sea air as I stride the length of the ship, killing two birds with one stone on the To-Do list and preparing myself for the day’s drive ahead. I’m retracing the homeward journey I’d made in the early spring, after that last stay with my Aunt Liz. Only now, weirdly, my homeward journey is in the opposite direction.

  Back in Arundel, my flat is let on a year’s lease to a young couple unable to get financing to buy their own home now that the banks have stopped lending. A year ago they’d have been handed a hundred percent mortgage with no problem at all. A year ago I was still in my nice safe job. A year ago Ed and I were still together. A year ago Liz was there in her house, my journey’s end.

  An awful lot can happen in a year.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,’ I sing along with the car radio. Well I should know. Losing things seems to be a bit of a theme in my life right now. I tick them off on my fingers, tapping on the steering wheel in time to the music. First my father died. Then my boyfriend dumped me. Then my aunt died. And now I’ve lost my job. Free as a bird. And it’s scary as hell. My Filofax sits beside me in the passenger’s seat, the last reassuring vestige of the control that I thought I had over my life. My daily To-Do lists used to fill a page comfortably but now I struggle to cover a few lines. It’s important to keep the routine going though. I’ve always been someone who thrives on structure and so even if my life is in total disarray I’m determined to maintain standards, keeping my British upper lip as stiff as possible at all times...

  As I swing onto the autoroute, heading south away from the grey skies of England and northern France towards the bright summer sunshine of the south, I feel as though I’m stepping out of the old black-and-white movie of my previous life and into the full technicolour of a new beginning. The clouds are like the curtains in a theatre, drawing back to reveal—what? I have no idea what life holds for me here. But I offer up a silent and heartfelt message of thanks to Liz for leaving me her house. And giving me this chance.

  Liz was my favourite aunt. Actually, she was my only aunt, but she’d have been my favourite even if I’d had others. You may have heard of her—Liz Chamberlain became something of a celebrity in the swinging sixties when she made a name for herself with her photography. Her iconic portraits of rock stars and artists are still re-printed from time to time (especially, it has to be said, accompanying obituaries these days). But she moved to the depths of rural France at the end of the seventies and completely turned her back on the glamour and buzz of her London life, becoming a bit of a recluse. She never lost her eye for beauty, although she turned her camera lens from celebrities to the countryside surrounding her new home, picking up commissions to take photos for books on the wines of Bordeaux and the landscapes and wildlife of southern France. Her passion waned with the advent of digital photography as, she said, the challenge and artistry had gone. ‘It’s the end of an era.’

  As I drive south towards my new home, the car crammed with my worldly belongings and a dozen packets of chocolate HobNobs (essential survival rations), I can hear Liz’s voice. Perhaps her spirit is with me on the journey. That thought calms me a bit and gives me confidence as I leave behind my familiar, safely under-control life in England for the unknown here in France.

  A fresh start. I suppose that’s something we don’t often get in life, a completely clean slate. Although to be honest, the blankness of that clean slate is just a little terrifying when you’ve been used to having your days filled by a full-time job, with a steady salary and a busy social life on which to spend it.

  I’ll need to create a new structure for myself out here, I decide. A healthy and balanced lifestyle of exercise, good diet, wine only in moderation (although admittedly that one could be tricky, given that I’m going to be living in one of the biggest and best wine regions of the world), and some serious studying for my Master of Wine qualification. I will use this opportunity as a sabbatical for some intensive self-improvement, returning to England tanned, toned and well-qualified, with a newly acquired air of French sophistication, in order to relaunch myself into my stratospheric career in the London wine trade. And then that slimy toad Ed Cavendish will be sorry he chucked me for the younger and better-endowed—f
inancially anyway, her figure’s nothing to write home about—Camilla.

  Calm, deep breaths, I tell myself as I turn off the autoroute and onto the road that runs past St Emilion to Sainte Foy La Grande. Item 2 on my To-Do list. Why does Letting Go take so much effort?

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I’d hardly been back a fortnight, after that last buying trip to France in the spring, when the call came. I realised that I’d known this was coming, but had been studiously ignoring it. Like a child who puts their hands over their eyes believing that if they can’t see the monster, the monster can’t see them.

  I was sitting at my kitchen table as my mother told me the news of my aunt’s death, my Saturday morning shopping list in front of me. Bread, it said. Eggs, milk, washing-up liquid. Frozen in shock and grief, the words burned themselves into my dry eyes, mundane and meaningless. Mum’s voice over the phone was calm and composed, and for a moment I thought I’d fallen through a hole in time and was listening to her telling me of my father’s death a year before. She’d been so cool and collected then too, and it upset me how remote she seemed from him, in death as in life; their marriage had always appeared to be more one of convenience than passion.

  But I forced myself to listen to the words she was saying this time and they were different.

  ‘A neighbour found her yesterday afternoon. A stroke they think, very sudden. Celia Everett called to tell me. She and Hugh are being wonderful getting everything organised at that end, which is a huge help as their French is so good and they’re on the spot. The funeral should be towards the end of the week. Apparently Liz left instructions.’

  My throat and chest felt constricted with the crushing pain of grief and loss. It hurt to speak.

  ‘She knew it was coming,’ I said dully. A sudden vision flashed into my mind of Liz in her study during my last visit, sorting through piles of papers. And then I remembered the heaps of clothes in her bedroom, and a roll of black bin bags. A spring clean, she’d said. And I thought of the vintage top she’d insisted on giving me, now hanging in my wardrobe, and a sob escaped me like an air bubble rising up from the deep ocean floor.

  ‘Oh, Gina, darling,’ said my mother. ‘I know how much she meant to you. Stay where you are, I’m coming over.’

  I placed the phone carefully on the table in front of me, its outline swimming as my tears fell, blurring the ink on my Saturday morning shopping list beside it. I was still sitting there, numb and shivering, when Mum rang the doorbell half an hour later. The world had become a colder place without my aunt in it.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Not much further to go now. I negotiate the series of roundabouts on the ring road that skirts Sainte Foy and then take the road that winds up the hill towards the rambling stone farmhouse, which perches on the edge of the ridge above the broad valley of the Dordogne River. It’s going to be strange living in Liz’s house—I still can’t think of it as mine. But even if it is a bit daunting doing this journey on my own, it’s still a lot less traumatic than the last flying visit had been, with Mum, for Liz’s funeral.

  The cremation had been arranged for the Friday afternoon and we were met at Bergerac Airport the evening before by Hugh Everett. ‘Of course you’ll stay with us,’ Celia had insisted during one of the many phone calls she and my mother had exchanged over the course of the week. I would have far preferred to stay in Liz’s house, but that idea was swept briskly aside by the formidable organisational taskforce (Sussex and Gironde branches) that had taken charge of matters.

  As we sat in beautifully upholstered (Sanderson chintz) armchairs in the Everetts’ beautifully decorated (Farrow and Ball) sitting room, sipping gin and tonics out of beautifully sparkling (Edinburgh crystal) glasses, Celia clasped a hand to her own beautifully upholstered (cashmere and pearls) bosom and sighed deeply. ‘Such a shock for us all, a terrible loss. And especially hard for you, Gina; we know how close you were to Liz and how fond she was of you.’ She paused and looked across at Hugh, who had just sat down on the sofa beside Mum and was in the process of taking a long and thankful draught of his drink. ‘Darling,’ she prompted, ‘I think you have something to tell Gina?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Hugh turned to me. ‘Liz had everything extremely well organised. A while ago she asked me to be an executor of her will, and I’m pleased to tell you, Gina, that she has left her entire estate to you. Not that it amounts to that much—it’s really just the house and its contents. She had a little money invested to give her an annuity, and her state pension of course. And there’s the occasional royalty from her books and photos, but that’s just a trickle these days. The house is worth a bob or two though if you want to sell. Needs a bit doing to it, of course, but around here you can usually find an expat looking for a project to take on.’

  It was all moving too fast for me to take in. My immediate reaction was, ‘No way am I selling Liz’s house,’ but then I pulled myself up short. ‘But, Mum, shouldn’t some of this come to you?’

  ‘Oh, darling, that’s so sweet of you, but no. I really don’t need more than I have. Your father left me very comfortably provided for, as you know. Of course Liz wanted you to have this, and quite right too. Just think what it would mean if you sold the house. You could use the money to pay off the mortgage on your flat, or to move up the property ladder and invest in something a little more desirable. It’s a lovely opportunity.’

  My aunt’s dead body was lying in a funeral home a few miles away and her own sister was sitting there, in the lamplit warmth of Celia’s elegant drawing room, coolly talking about selling her house and it being a ‘lovely opportunity’. I love my mother dearly, but honestly, at times she can be so cold. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that she and Liz are—were—sisters, the one so warm, funny and bohemian, living a rather hermit-like life tucked away in the depths of rural France, and the other such a reserved and proper Sussex matron, with a penchant for social Bridge and designer handbags.

  I felt my face flushing and my eyes filling with angry tears at my mother’s heartlessness as she’d prattled on about selling the house. Celia may be sharp and sometimes overbearing, but she’s also kindly and perspicacious and she’d seen how wretched I was feeling. ‘Well now,’ she patted my arm, ‘there’s more than enough time for you to think things over. You don’t have to make any decisions in a hurry and anyway it’ll take a while for the notary to sort out all the paperwork. Let it sink in for a while. We’ll keep popping in to check the house now and then, and of course Liz’s neighbour, Madame Thibault, keeps an eye on the place. She’s taken Lafite in, you know. Apparently the old cat was sitting beside Liz’s body when Mireille Thibault found her, as if he was watching over her until help arrived. It was really very touching.’

  I remembered Mireille. Liz had introduced me to her the last time I stayed with her. ‘Come and meet my lovely neighbour. Mireille Thibault, my niece, Gina Peplow.’

  A tiny, very upright lady dressed in black had shaken my hand, her face an etching of deep wrinkles that creased even further with her warm smile. ‘Liz has told me a great deal about you,’ she said.

  ‘Mireille lives in the house just up the lane,’ explained Liz. I’d nodded, having noticed the small stone cottage set amongst plum trees on our walks to forage for mushrooms or gather blackberries from the thickets of brambles that sprout exuberantly along the verge here and there.

  ‘Yes, and now I must be getting back,’ she’d smiled. ‘Two of my grandchildren will be arriving any minute and if I don’t get there first they’ll eat the whole of the cake I’ve made. They’re always starving when they come out of school. Goodbye, mademoiselle; enjoy your stay with your aunt.’ She’d hugged Liz and disappeared off up the drive.

  Back in the Everetts’ sitting room, those memories of my aunt and her neighbour had seemed almost more real than that strange and strained evening without her.

  In a daze of emotional exhaustion, I’d choked down supper and then taken myself off to bed. Despite all the little comforting
touches Celia had provided—a vase of fresh flowers, a bottle of mineral water, some relaxing bath oil—I felt empty and un-comforted. Lying under the quilted coverlet in the Everetts’ second spare room (my mother was down the hall in the main guest suite), I spent a sleepless night, wishing I was in Liz’s spare room—my spare room now—so that I could have felt closer to her on that last night her body was on the Earth.

  The crematorium was as drab and depressing as these places are the world over. Liz had left very specific instructions, and Hugh and Celia had arranged everything accordingly. The coffin was the plainest pine, but I placed an armful of scented white lilies on it, my farewell gift to my aunt.

  When we entered the room where the service was to be conducted, my eyes swam as I made out a crowded blur of faces. Despite Liz’s directive that her funeral was to be small, with no fuss, she couldn’t deter the many friends, both French and English, who had turned up to see her off. I caught sight of Mireille Thibault, waiting patiently to one side as a few of the assembled throng came up to offer their sympathies. She put her arms round me in a warm embrace, saying nothing, and for the first time since hearing the news of Liz’s death I felt comforted. Overwhelmed, I stayed in the circle of her arms for a minute until, patting my back gently, she pulled back and her bright, wise old eyes looked into mine. ‘You’ll be coming to the house this weekend?’ she asked. ‘Come and knock on my door. Lafite will be pleased to see you.’

  ‘Are you coming back to the Everetts’ after the service? They’re having a reception and you’ll be most welcome.’

  ‘Thank you, but no. I’m just going to say my adieus to Liz here and then go home. But I’ll see you tomorrow. Bon courage, my dear.’

  And courage was exactly what I needed half an hour later, as the coffin slid silently through the curtain and my beloved aunt was gone...

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Lost in my thoughts, I nearly miss the turning into the lane between the vines. I swerve at the last moment, just making the turn.