I was nervous about accepting someone into my home as my father’s new girlfriend, since my parents had had a long, passionate love affair and I couldn’t imagine Jack with anyone else. But I found that this awkward moment lasted no more than two seconds, which was all the time it took for me to realise that Cecily was charming, open and funny. She too had had a long and loving marriage. It seemed very normal that they should be together. I soon decided that Cecily was an unexpected bonus in my father’s life, and she was quickly drawn into the family circle.
Both she and Jack were in tremendous form and extremely high spirits. She was teaching him the rudiments of bridge but they told jokes and entertained the children as a necessary diversion from the intense concentration that was needed. Laughter and gaiety reigned in our house as the old jokes were trotted out and my children fell about holding their sides just as Kate and I had when we were young. Only on extremely rare occasions does Jack allow his serious side to surface. He should have been a Zen Buddhist or a Rastafarian; he has always been very cool and relaxed about any problems in life. Incredible for someone who started life in the Jewish slums of Glasgow.
Their mirth and high spirits were much needed, but sometimes I also needed some peace and quiet to do my accounts away from the prying eyes of my father. Jack wanted to pick cherries and Cecily wanted to make jam. Claire’s next-door neighbour, Roland, owned the vast tracts of cherry fields that surrounded Claire’s little rented cottage. I resorted to the bush telegraph system and asked Claire to ask him if extra hands could be employed to help with the harvest of the Big Blacks, and if payment could be made in cherries.
The cherry fields had belonged to Roland’s family for decades. His father had farmed these fields and now, as Roland neared his fiftieth birthday, it was he who was in sole control. He gave the impression that he was the type of farmer who would prefer to be sitting in the shadows of a haystack, a shaft of wheat in his mouth, dozing in the midday sun ruminating about the philosophy of life.
The family’s land spread across the sunny slopes of St Saturnin les Apt; like all of the region’s farmers, they also had large tracts of land in other areas so that if and when the hail ruined the crops in one area, the devastation would not be complete. Roland spent all of his year looking after his trees so that once a year the crop could be harvested and the cycle would recommence. The fields were divided up into the different varieties of cherries. The white cherries were taken to the enormous fruit factory in Apt, where they were turned into glacé fruit for confectionery. The reds were sent to large markets all across Europe, ready for jam making or table presentation. The last fields to be picked were the enormous Grosses Rouges (Big Reds), far too good to turn into jam, but outstanding for table presentation. These were the Rolls Royce of cherries.
Gentle words had come back from Roland via Claire that it was a business he was running, not a seniors’ holiday camp. There was no problem if Jack would like to pick a small bucket of cherries for himself, but not the cherries needed for the trays at the market; there was a certain amount of skill needed and unfortunately there was no time to explain how to pick and sort.
Some people from the village and the neighbouring areas were employed as seasonal workers to finish off the harvest. Many mothers worked in the fields as it gave families the opportunity to supplement the funds needed to go on their annual August holiday. Our neighbours, the Two Ladies, were in the fields, as were Claire’s older children, who from the age of seventeen had worked as often and as long as possible in order to increase their paltry living allowance and help pay for their studies in Grenoble.
Even Patrick and Claire were employed in the cherry fields. Although Patrick was a self-employed electrician, he was an integral part of the team during the weeks when the carpet system was in operation. This method could only be used in certain fields, ones where robust trees were appropriately spaced in large, wide alleys. He drove the tractor that pulled a metal rod over six metres in length on which there was a roll of green closely woven plastic fabric. The long rod was laid out beside each tree: a slit in the fabric allowed the carpet to be laid around the tree, covering a large area on the ground. A thick heavily padded collar was wrapped around the tree and then attached to the machinery, pulling it taut. The vibrations from the machinery caused the cherries to fall gently to the ground. The carpet was then rolled up onto the rod, spilling the cherries into a trough where the young workers stood, verifying that there were no marks or imperfections on the produce. The cherries were packed into plastic crates and then onto a forklift truck that took the crates to the cold room behind the farmhouse. In the coolness of early evening Claire would spend hours grading the cherries into the correct wooden crates lined with fancy paper, fruit down, stems up — all pointing the same way. Every day during the harvest, in the pitch dark well before sunrise, the truck was loaded and driven to the fruit and vegetable wholesale markets in Châteaurenard, on the southeastern fringes of Avignon — a good forty minutes away. By six o’clock, Roland’s crates of perfect cherries would be ready for auction at the markets and he would be free to join the other farmers in conversation over a steaming cup of coffee and a freshly baked croissant.
Early in the harvest I had worked in the cherry field for an insignificant two hours — perhaps not even as much as that. Nothing was going to get in the way of the celluloid images I had of myself, starring in a Provençal landscape, floating through the cherry trees laden with bright red globes dressed in a light cotton dress, apron and a pretty scarf knotted around my hair, swinging my woven straw basket. The harsh reality hit home as the midday sun climbed high in the sky; the clock hands seemed to freeze in time as the furnace-like heat became completely unbearable. Mouthfuls of bruised and non-marketable cherries and the incessant noise of the tractors served only to make me feel ill and incapable of work. Roland had rolled his eyes skyward when he saw my pathetic harvest of cherries and banished me to the trees in the distance, where he did not have to be infuriated by my ineptitude and I could go about my fantasy in private without harm to his product.
Emails to the Latin Lover were becoming increasingly spasmodic, short and even curt. The huge distance between us was widening. We both struggled under the constraints of maintaining a relationship where distance and time were major components. As always, my sister Kate nailed it on the head: ‘You’re a masochist. Wake up to yourself. What do you think, that he is waiting for you patiently to come home to Sydney to his little love nest that you visit every couple of months? Don’t you get it? Raymond is wonderful and caring, but he just doesn’t love you enough. Get over him. Move on. Turn the page. How much clearer do you want me to spell it out? You live in different countries, even in different hemispheres. How on earth do you expect it to work?’
Only after hours of reflection about how much we really loved each other did it dawn on me that I, too, loved Raymond a lot less these last few years. I had left Sydney with little idea of how to steer my family’s future as a single parent; now, three years down the track, I had built up a business and started to put down roots in a foreign land. The children were happy, extremely well liked and growing like weeds. Whatever my failings, I had to be doing something right — with or without a man by my side. I had faced the fact that I would prefer to have a solitary life rather than be shackled to someone with whom I did not, quite frankly, share a common goal. When it came to the future, Raymond and I were not even looking in the same direction.
Raymond was on his way to visit us for his mid-term break in July and I had promised myself that during this holiday we would have a proper adult discussion about commitment and love. A boots and all, out in the open type of discussion to clear the air. My heart was yearning for true love, but as always my head was screaming that everyone was right: I was flogging a dead horse. Raymond regarded us as lifelong friends who happened to have a great sex life together. I wanted something more than that. Something had to give and that something would be him. I needed a con
crete expression of his commitment in some form or another. Enrolment in a Latin course in an English university that was close to an airport so that he could visit regularly, with the cheap fares between England and France, would be more than acceptable. Having children to educate, a business in France and a particularly difficult temperament, I was not prepared to compromise my position one iota.
Now that I had that clearly in my mind, I tried to think of the best time and place to have the Big Discussion. Obviously it wouldn’t be at Sarah’s 50th birthday party, which was to be held the evening Raymond was due to arrive. Sarah, a member of the local English-speaking community, was the epitome of a modern Englishwoman. Jane Austen might have had a great deal of influence on her forebears, but Sarah was too busy to be caught whimpering or simpering about life over cups of tea in the garden. She never displayed any known vices in public: no rude words passed her lips, there was no excessive eating or drinking and no smoking. On a regular basis she exercised her labradors, Fat Freddie and Lazy Daisy, partly for their own good and partly for her own. She constantly watched her weight and adamantly stuck to diets — one to prepare for summer and then one for winter. She had only been married once, had three perfectly acceptable good-looking nearly adult children and the two sweet-natured labradors. In short, she and I had absolutely nothing in common except for the dogs but I, like all of her acquaintances, held Sarah in high regard.
Since her real birthday in May, plans for the big party had been in constant revision. At long last the mid-July date had arrived, and the weather was going to be perfect. The marquee had been erected beside the pool, the dance floor installed. The lawn had been mowed into a green carpet, lights dangled in the trees, and candles were ready to be lit and flicker romantically along the dry stone walls.
Raymond had had the trip from hell to wing his way to us in France: a delay of several hours in Singapore followed by an unscheduled emergency stop in Frankfurt, followed by a further delay in Marseille. By the time he arrived, thirty hours after leaving Sydney, he could barely talk or stand upright, due to severe jet lag, tiredness and drunkenness. This time it was he who was coming for a quick Winter Escape of seventeen days; already he felt as though most of them had been spent on the plane. It was out of the question to take him to Cavaillon to hire a bow tie and black suit for the James Bond theme party. He wanted to sleep for twenty-four hours, not sit in a poorly fitting penguin suit. Leaving him snoring in bed at home while I went as a single guest was becoming an increasingly attractive idea. The writing was on the wall: our relationship was Doomed to Destruction. Unfortunately, after a short nap, Raymond decided to accompany me to the party, which turned out to be hideous mistake. Already drunk and disorderly, he rapidly became out of control; mistaking a young brunette for me, he declared his amorous intentions before passing out cold at the table.
Once again, I found myself out of step with Mother Nature and love. July was truly one of the most jaw-dropping times in the Luberon. There is the heat of summer, with cicadas singing, heralding the beauty that is about to unfold: the swollen heads of lavender bursting into colour, the patchwork of bleached fields of shorn wheat alongside those that still ripple with washed-out yellow wheat waiting for harvest, the oversized sunflowers and the grapevines groaning under the weight of abundant leaves and the beginnings of purple grapes. It is in July that suddenly the clear summer light turns the Luberon hills a deep shade of purple at sunset. The light reverts back to a wonderful glow after the heat of a summer’s day.
In the midst of all this beauty, work went on. While I put on loads of sheets to wash, Claire sat at her machine sewing her latest set of creamy linen armchair covers. We spent more and more time working together, and the conversation flowed as she told me more and more about her marriage at eighteen and divorce at thirty. Her formative years were spent in wealth and privilege but that changed when her parents separated and her mother followed her heart by running off with her true love. Claire’s mother’s family disapproved so strongly that all contact with her was severed. Hard times and disaster followed when Claire’s stepfather, Mr True Love, walked out the door into the arms of another. History repeated itself when Claire was seventeen: she went from dux of her year to dunce when she, too, followed her heart, dropped out of school and married her True Love. Claire came to bitterly regret turning her back on her education, and as a result was now passionate about schooling. Her children — and now mine by association — had to excel in every test, every exam and every project. Education was everything. She set a punishing workload and expected everyone to keep pace with her. Her mind was quick, analytical and clever — that made her the perfect associate in my burgeoning business.
Sometimes I wondered why I continued with a business that was only just limping along, teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and giving me more grief than financial gain. There was no end to the toil. Fluffy white towels would come to the laundry sometimes covered in boot polish — or in one case grass stains, where a client had cleaned his golf clubs. Clients continued to call about washing machines that did not work when they weren’t even plugged in.
‘Don’t forget I have to deal with the huge amount of garbage that clients leave behind. Remember that time when the clients left bags of week-old dirty nappies in the garage and mashed banana all over the cushions?’ Claire’s eyes crinkled up with laughter.
‘Well, what about the nasty stuff I find under the beds!’ I was not going to be outdone by Claire. Working in such close contact with the evidence of people’s hygiene, it was sometimes very difficult to maintain a sense of humour. But after we swapped some of the worst horror stories, Claire pointed out we had been really blessed in the most part with fantastic clients who loved and truly appreciated the properties, often bursting into tears when they arrived and saw the bunch of roses and bottle of wine that greeted them. I was a little out of sorts, Claire suggested, and on the whole the season was progressing quite well and there had been no major hiccups.
After we had run through the list of things to do by the end of the week for the new clients, Claire turned her attention to things closer to home. She could no longer stand by watching me eat myself up with indecision and confusion. I was red-eyed from silently sobbing into the incessant piles of ironing as I tried to sort out my emotional life. Raymond needed to be extricated from my life just as Place de la Fontaine needed to be sold. The solution to my problems was evident, she said. Over the bales of washing, she told me the story of the Poisoned Right Arm; a story that I was sure she had made up, though she said it was a tale passed down in Provençal folklore. A snake bit a woman one day in the forest. There was no medical assistance and the woman struggled as best she could, tying her right arm up in a tourniquet and pressure bandages. As time went by the wound would heal and then suddenly pus would ooze out and the wound would open again. It was no good. The arm was slowly poisoning her whole body. She has to take the decision to either die with the arm or save herself by cutting off the arm. She oscillates between the choices, confused and cross at her indecisiveness. One morning she wakes up and she knows that it is time to cut the arm off. The woman cuts off her arm, recovers, and learns with great surprise that her left arm is very strong and that her life is different but healthier without the other arm. At night she often feels as though her right arm is still there, but after time that absence is barely felt.
My love and admiration for Claire was immense, but I couldn’t listen to her anecdotes about poison and love. She was of the opinion that it took at least two full years for the poison to work itself through after the loss of something that had been akin to a marriage. Tears were now coursing down my cheeks: ‘Don’t meddle in my affairs, Claire. I do not have a poisoned arm. I have Raymond and I will amputate him when I am good and ready. Let me tell you that it will be this week, not in two years’ time!’
Whether or not this is what Claire had intended, I was now determined to end my relationship with Raymond as soon as possible. Maybe I ha
d enough poison in my system? Maybe it was just time? My temper tantrums, black moods and general meanness gave Raymond an idea that all was not well with me and that something nasty was brewing. Most of his time was spent in the company of the children or with Kit, drinking large quantities of beer while watching sport at the bar down in Apt. His holiday was coming to an end and as yet nothing special had been arranged for the children’s long summer holiday in August. A quick and inexpensive trip to Paris seemed to fit the bill. Before Raymond’s departure we could spend a couple of days seeing the sights, something that everyone would enjoy.
Paris in summer is traditionally said to be stifling hot, airless and unpleasant. It is empty of all Parisians, who have packed their cars and driven down to Provence or the Côte d’Azur, leaving only the tourists wandering around in the vain hope of finding some shade under the large leafy plane trees that line the boulevards or luxuriating in a short reprieve in the coolness of the large halls in the Louvre or the Musée d’Orsay. That is August — but sometimes you can be lucky and get a few days of bearable weather, which is what we had. We walked from one monument to another, across the streets of Paris, back and forth across the Seine, zigzagging our way past the lost tourists clutching maps in their sweaty hands, finding places of interest and out of the way galleries that had a famous painting or sculpture which called for an hour’s visit to enrich our cultural experience.
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