French Kisses

by Jan Ellis

  “But it’s his house,” said Charlie from the back seat.

  “Yes, yes it is. Partly. But it’s your home.” Rachel could feel some of the earlier enthusiasm start to fade. “And Dad wants us to be happy.”

  They drove on a little further in silence apart from the crunching and pinging of stones hitting the car.

  “Okay.”

  Rachel looked at her daughter. “Okay?”

  “If Dad says it’s okay, then okay.”

  Rachel turned and smiled. “That’s great. Good. Cool!” She felt relieved and surprised by how much the guest house scheme had come to matter to her in just a few short hours. “I’ll ring Dad later and see what he says. I’m sure that it won’t be a problem.”

  She waited until after supper when Charlie was out at a neighbour’s and Alice had retreated to her room before ringing Michael. She said that she had something to ask him and could he come over for coffee to discuss it?

  The next morning he turned up at the house looking tanned and relaxed with a big grin on his face. The baby had been born a week before and it was clear that he was still full of adrenaline. Rachel could see that it was a good time to speak to him about the guest house because all his attention was focused on becoming a father again.

  After she had listened to a full report about the health and well-being of the new arrival, Rachel outlined the plan.

  “I think that’s a marvellous idea, Rach,” said Michael, beaming. “It will give you something to do when the children are at school.”

  “You mean apart from painting my toenails and watching daytime television?” God, he was infuriating. “I do already run a business you know!” Rachel was trying – and failing – to keep her temper. “You really can be a patronising bastard sometimes.”

  No one admired Rachel’s prints and paintings more than Michael, but he worried about her financial sense: she was successful but he had always managed the money aspect for her. He was also very good at the promotional side of things and every home they went into seemed to have a print of hers on the wall or a greetings card propped up on a book shelf.

  Some years before Michael had even got Rachel a commission to do some book illustration, but that work had dried up when publishers turned to artists who could create designs on computer more quickly and cheaply than she could manage.

  “My work is important enough to feature in Belle Dimanche magazine, or have you forgotten that?”

  Michael’s smile indicated that he hadn’t forgotten it and was still amused – as they had both been at the time – by the description of her as a leading British artist who had been compelled to move to France because of the superior food and weather. In fact, Rachel had never worked as a print-maker in England, but the magazine was not about to let facts stand in the way of a good story.

  “That is not what I meant Rach and you know it,” he said, soothingly. “I just think that it would do you good to have a new focus in your life.”

  Can this man be any more patronising, she asked herself. Yes he can, she thought, as he patted her hand and smiled his drippy smile.

  “And I will help, of course,” he added. “Once the baby is a little bit older and life has got back to normal again.”

  My goodness, you really have no idea, Rachel thought to herself. Instead she smiled and poured him more coffee.

  “That’s a very kind offer, but I think Amelie might need you more than I do.”

  Michael shook his head and looked serious. “This is important for you and the children, Rach, and I won’t let you down.”

  She couldn’t help herself as the word “Again” slipped from her lips.

  Michael looked hurt.

  “Okay, sorry! Thanks for the offer. I’m sure we’ll be fine, but it’s good to know that you are prepared to help in between changing nappies and wiping up sick.”

  Michael chuckled. “You forget that I have been through it before.”

  He really was exasperating.

  “I’m hardly likely to forget that! I was there too, remember?”

  “What I mean to say is that I’ve got experience of the whole baby thing, so nappies hold no fear for me.”

  Rachel could tell that nothing was going to dent his conviction that he was going to sail through late fatherhood unscathed and still have the time and energy to help his ex with a brand new venture. She decided to smile sweetly and say nothing.

  Taking her smile as a sign of encouragement, he kissed her, swallowed the last of his coffee and drove back to Amelie and the baby.

  Chapter 4: Summer 1997

  After Michael had driven off, Rachel sighed as she picked up the coffee things and put them in the dishwasher. Drying her hands she noticed a photo at the back of the dresser, where it had slipped under a shelf and was half hidden behind some mugs. Somehow it had survived the whirlwind that had followed Michael’s desertion of her, when she had flown through the house, tearing up photos and throwing mementoes into a black sack before hurling them into the dustbin.

  She picked up the photo and peered at it. It showed her and Michael standing by a pile of rocks in a field, squinting into the sunshine. They were both wearing grubby jeans and Michael had his long blond hair – now long gone – tied into a low pony tail and was holding a scythe. She was wearing a floral top and gardening gloves and was smiling at the camera. Before she turned over the photo to check the date, she knew what it would say: ‘summer 1997’.

  She had met Michael in her early twenties when they were both on their gap years. Unlike many of her friends who had gone off to Thailand and India, Rachel had decided to stay in Europe and to work on her French.

  Michael – who had embraced the ‘drink-your-way-around-the-world’ option with gusto – washed up broke in Marseille and was gradually hitching back across Europe to Yorkshire. He had got as far as Chevandier when he heard that locals in a nearby village had got funding to restore their mediaeval walls and were looking for willing volunteers to help in return for living expenses, food and the corner of a warm barn to sleep in.

  Rachel had signed up because she was interested in history and decided that it would look good on her CV to have been involved in a community project. Their companions were an assortment of other young Europeans, one or two local kids and an American pretending to be Canadian. As the only Brits on the project, they naturally fell in together and Rachel provided Michael with a shoulder to cry on when his then-girlfriend dumped him for one of the East Germans in the group.

  They all worked side by side under the direction of Guillaume, a civil-engineer who broke a few hearts that summer. They rose early to clear the ground and move stones before the sun got too hot, swam in the slightly smelly pond in the afternoons, and had long, political discussions in a mixture of languages over campfires in the evening.

  It was here that Rachel discovered her talent for drawing, and would often wander off with a sketch book and some watercolour crayons to capture an especially beautiful sunset.

  Sometimes Michael would join her, which she put up with so long as he promised not to chatter. He was fascinated by Rachel’s intense concentration as she captured a scene in a few fluid marks. When she was satisfied with the work, they would walk back to the group and sit and smoke and – if they had any money – split a pack of beers.

  It was Michael who first realised that he was in love. They had been clearing nettles and pulling out weeds near a particularly crumbly section of the wall when a large stone broke free and grazed the length of Rachel’s shin. Her cry of pain and alarm cut Michael to the core and he had an intense feeling that he wanted to protect her.

  At the time, this had involved running to fetch Guillaume and helping to carry Rachel to the village café where she was numbed with brandy as pieces of grit were carefully extracted from her damaged leg with tweezers.

  By late August, the project was coming to an end and everyone was making plans: the East Germans were getting a train Prague; the American was heading north to star
t a post-graduate degree at the Sorbonne; the Spanish boys had linked up with the Austrian girls and were all going south to find bar work at the coast.

  Rachel didn’t know what she was going to do, but she was sure that she wasn’t ready to go back to England – not yet, at least. She didn’t know what Michael’s plans were. Since the accident his behaviour towards her had changed – he had become distant and no longer joined her when she went drawing. She was sad and puzzled that Michael now avoided her, realising that she missed his friendship.

  It was a fortnight after the accident that he came to search her out where she was trying to paint the lichens that grew over the famous wall. Her heart skipped as he came bounding over, assuming that it was to say his goodbyes. Instead, without saying a word, he grasped her by the shoulders and kissed her full on the mouth. Startled, she pulled back, gasping.

  “Michael, what are you doing?”

  He had stepped back and was pacing up and down with his hands on his hips.

  “I’ve figured out what was wrong with me,” he said, dragging his hand through his hair. “It’s because I love you. I’m sorry, I didn’t know and then . . .” he broke off to kiss her again – “. . . and then, you had the accident and I couldn’t bear it.”

  He smiled and frowned and kissed her again, and this time she didn’t pull away.

  “You’ve done something to me, Rachel.”

  He looked at her the way he had never looked at her before, as if he was trying to commit every detail of her eyes, her mouth, her nose, her skin to memory. Then he threw his head back and laughed. “I love you!”

  Rachel couldn’t help laughing as well, as relief and excitement and surprise bubbled up inside her.

  “Well, I am pretty fond of you too, of course.”

  For a second, Michael looked anxious. “God, you do love me too, don’t you? I don’t think I could hack it if you didn’t feel the same.”

  She put her hands to his face and kissed him gently.

  “Do you know what? I think that I might love you too.”

  With that, she took his hand and led him to a barn at the edge of the sunflower fields where they made love on a pile of canvas sacks until evening fell and the bats began to swoop and dive above their heads.

  Now, as she stood in the kitchen with the photograph in her hands, she wondered what would have happened if she had gone back home they way she should have done. Lots of girls in her situation had fallen in love during their gap years, but most of them did the sensible thing and returned to their normal lives.

  Instead, she and Michael had decided to stay in France at the end of the project. She managed to blag her way into a college that taught English to local business people and he got a job as an assistant in the estate agents that he would eventually own. They stayed in Pelette and bought an empty farmhouse for peanuts from Monsieur Seurat and set about restoring it with the help of friends they had made in the village.

  The first winter had not been easy, but they were young enough to enjoy reading by the warm glow of paraffin lamps and washing in water hauled from the well, carried with chattering teeth back to the house and warmed on top of a wood burner.

  To begin with, some of the locals had kept their distance, sure that the young couple would give up and go home. But eventually, seeing how determined the pair were, their neighbours had dug around in their attics for unwanted furniture to help the couple to furnish the place. The result was what Rachel’s friends in England were calling ‘shabby chic’, although at her house the emphasis was very much on the shabby.

  Their daughter Alice had come along almost immediately and Charlie had followed a couple of years later. Having two small children at home made it difficult for Rachel to work every day at the college. It was then that Michael had suggested that she sell her sketches.

  She had started in a small way, selling bits and pieces in the village shop. The turning point had been when Michael had come home one evening with the postmaster, Monsieur Lambert, in tow. Beaming from ear to ear, Michael had explained that he had encountered George Lambert on his way to the municipal tip with a hand-printing press and had offered to take it off his hands for 300 francs. Rachel had thrown her arms around Monsieur Lambert’s neck and kissed him, making him blush with pleasure.

  Rachel’s eyes watered and she felt a lump in her throat. God, where had the time gone? That must have been at least ten years ago. And how had she let them drift apart when she and Michael had been such good friends and passionate lovers?

  A persistent tap, tap, tap on the kitchen door brought her back to reality and she wiped her eyes on a tea towel.

  “What’s done is done, eh ladies?” she said to the chickens as she slid the photo into a drawer, put a bowl with kitchen scraps into her basket and walked out into the garden.

  Standing by the coop, feeding the chucks, she could see the roof of a small red car as it wound its way up the road towards the house. It was driven by a smart woman in her fifties who waved a lazy arm out of the car window as she screeched to a halt in the courtyard.

  “What’s this I hear about babies?” she shouted, before switching off the engine.

  Wiping her nose, Rachel smiled and walked over. “It’s true. Michael is a daddy again. Little Olivier has made his appearance and mother and baby are both doing well, so I’m told.”

  Margot got out of the car and hugged her friend. “And how are you?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Oh, you know. I’m fine. Come in and have tea and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “And cake,” added her friend, holding up a box from the local patisserie.

  Margot was one of Rachel’s oldest friends. She and her husband Hervé had bought a house in the village from Michael, soon after he had taken over the estate agency business. They had moved down from Normandy with their two boys and completely transformed the crumbly old house into a warm, welcoming home. Then, six months after the work was completed, they were out hiking when Hervé dropped dead from an undiagnosed heart condition.

  The two families were already close and Michael had felt terribly guilty, as if it was entirely his fault that Hervé had left the rolling fields of the north for the hillier country of the Rhône-Alpes.

  Her friends had expected Margot to pack up and head back to Caen, but the boys had already settled at school so they all stayed put. She was an attractive woman and over the years Margot had had affairs but had never remarried. Recently she had developed a steely demeanour that some people found off-putting, but underneath it she was kindness itself and Rachel counted her among her closest friends. She found Margot’s hard-bitten attitude a healthy counter-point to Jilly’s determined optimism. Despite their different approaches to life, the three women were good friends and it was Jilly who had sent Margot over to see how Rachel was coping with news of the baby’s arrival.

  Once inside the house, Margot went straight to the dresser, selected some plates and carefully lifted the delicate cakes from their box. “So. Tell me everything.”

  Rachel put out the tea things and cutlery. “Ooh, bagsie the apricot tartelette.”

  “All in good time, my dear. Bring me up to date with the news first.” She looked at her friend and frowned. “Have you been crying?”

  Rachel nodded, pulled opened the drawer and placed the photo of the smiling young couple on the table.

  Margot picked it up and studied it. “You and Michael, I assume?”

  “I just found it and it got me thinking again about us and where I went wrong.”

  Margot sighed. “You didn’t go wrong, Rachel. You just grew up and grew apart. Take this,” she said, handing her a plate.

  Rachel put the fruit tart on her plate, licking her fingers. Margot selected a chocolate millefeuille. For a moment the women were silent while they teased apart the pastries with their forks.

  “So, go on.”

  Rachel took a sip of tea and wiped a buttery flake from her lips. “I know you’re right. People change over tim
e.”

  “But?”

  “But I still feel that it was my fault that I couldn’t hold things together.”

  Margot added a pink macaron to her plate and sighed. “Utter nonsense.”

  Rachel grabbed a mini éclair. “Is it? My life is a complete disaster area while Michael’s has just started all over again.”

  Margot put down her napkin with an air of exasperation. “You are responsible for your own happiness, Rachel – no one else. You must stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  Rachel stopped with her fork mid-air, shocked by her friend’s sharp tone.

  Margot patted her hand. “Forget Michael,” she added, more gently. “He has a new life now and you know what they say: you won’t find the right love until you let go of the wrong one.”

  “Who says that?”

  Margot shrugged and took a sip of Earl Grey. “I read it in a magazine at the dentist’s. But it’s true – it’s time for you to go back out into the world.”

  “And find a new love, just like that?”

  “Maybe not love, not at first anyway. But a new man, for sure.”

  “Ha! Where am I going to find one of those in Pelette? The only available men around here are single for a good reason.”

  “That, my dear, I will leave to you. Now, would you like to share the fig tartelette?”

  “Where do you put it all?” asked Rachel, laughing.

  Margot looked at her flat stomach. “It’s a matter of evolution. Over many centuries we French have developed the ability to eat patisserie and not gain weight. Of course, being perennially anxious and smoking too much also helps.”

  Rachel patted her belly. Although splitting from Michael had taken pounds off her, she was still curvier than Margot who was all smooth lines and sharp edges. “I guess I’m just not anxious enough.”

  “I’m very glad to hear it.”

  “But you are right Margot . . .”

  “When am I not?” she responded with a shrug, placing a sliver of tart on each of their plates.

  “It’s time that I gave up on Michael and made a new start.”