The French for Love

by Valpy, Fiona

  I pull myself together, reminding myself that I am, after all, my mother’s daughter. What’s happening to me? I’ve always been so self-controlled but these days life seems to be shaking my foundations to the very core. Better have something to eat; it suddenly feels like a very long time since I stopped at a motorway service station for lunch.

  I make some scrambled eggs and take my plate outside, with a glass of the wine that Mireille brought me, sinking down thankfully onto a bench on the terrace, bathed in evening light. Suddenly I feel exhausted from the journey with its eventful ending in the ditch. I feel drained, too, with carrying the weight of grief for so long, and wrung out by all these memories that are still so vivid, replaying themselves with such clarity.

  The last time I sat on this terrace was with Liz, and I think back to that last visit here, tacked on to the end of my last buying trip. What a lot of endings, although I’d been so blissfully unaware at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

  It had been a long couple of weeks on the road, criss-crossing the Loire and Bordeaux in my selfless quest to seek out delicious bargains for the clients of Wainright’s, an independent wine merchant’s with a handful of shops dotted strategically on high streets in small towns across Sussex and Hampshire, when I finally arrived here for a few precious days’ holiday.

  I turned into the lane between the vines—without incident on that occasion—and then up the dusty drive, and brought the car thankfully to a halt in the courtyard, where pots of blue grape hyacinths and creamy narcissus were in bloom. At that time of year the bright geraniums were still clustered on every windowsill inside the house, safe from the winter frosts.

  I’d turned off the car engine, suddenly realising how exhausted I was. It wasn’t only the driving that was tiring, remembering to keep on the right side of the road, navigating from one wine farm to the next; speaking French non-stop takes its toll as well. After I started work for Wainright’s, I’d realised I needed to learn business French, another matter altogether from the French I’d been taught at school, and I did some crash evening classes. I’m pretty good on the technicalities of winemaking too, but normal, everyday, conversational French is still hard work. I’ll be chattering along fairly fluently and then suddenly an unknown phrase will loom up like a linguistic brick wall and I’ll have to resort to miming or leafing through my pocket dictionary in a flurry of frustration. So it was something of a relief to be back in English-speaking territory once my business trip was over.

  As I’d clambered out of the car, the kitchen door had opened and Liz emerged to greet me with arms outstretched. ‘Gina, darling,’ she exclaimed, ‘you look as though you need a good meal and an even better night’s sleep. Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place!’ I hugged my aunt warmly and remember being struck by a sudden feeling of frailty about her. It was easy to see it now, again with hindsight; something had changed. She’d always been slim, which went with her quick, busy energy, but I hadn’t seen her for nearly a year and she’d looked fragile and more bird-like than ever with her bright, sharp-eyed glance and neat cap of cropped white hair.

  ‘Now,’ she continued, holding me at arm’s length to take a better look at me, ‘what’s first? I think a shower and unpack and then a nice glass of something chilled and white? You look exhausted.’

  I’d brought my bag in from the car and as I entered the kitchen, the big black cat appeared to wind himself around my ankles. ‘Hello Lafite.’ I put my bag down and bent to stroke his glossy coat. ‘You’re looking extremely well.’ His deep purr reverberated and he butted his broad head lovingly against my hand.

  Liz showed me to the guest bedroom. Not that I’d needed to be shown the way of course; it was thoroughly familiar from my many stays with her over the years. I’d settled myself in, hanging my work jackets in the wardrobe and unpacking clothes creased from weeks on the road.

  When I came through to the kitchen half an hour later, a delicious smell greeted me, and Liz, pushing a casserole back into the oven, straightened up from shutting the door. ‘Coq au vin,’ she’d said. ‘Hope that’s okay.’ She knew it was one of my favourites. Her recipe was the perfect comfort food, the syrupy juices suffused with earthy flavours of wild mushrooms and fragrant thyme. ‘Now,’ she turned to the fridge, ‘where’s that bottle of wine? Shall we take our glasses out to the terrace? The sun’s just going down but let’s catch the last half hour.’

  The terrace is on the west of the house, the other side from the courtyard. Even though it was still only early March then, there was warmth in the suntrap of its stone paving against the wall of the house. We’d sat on this same bench, facing the setting sun.

  I remember, too, that a magpie had fluttered down from the branches of an oak tree onto the grass, almost immediately followed by a second one. ‘Two for joy,’ I said. ‘Very apt at this precise moment. You taught me that rhyme. How does it go? One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy. Five’s for silver, six for gold... And I forget what seven is?’

  Liz smiled. ‘Ah, seven. Seven for a secret never to be told. All of life is there really, in that one simple rhyme.’ She took a sip of her wine, musing for a moment. ‘Clever birds, magpies. But they can be cruel and ruthless too. Which reminds me,’ she’d said, eyebrows raised in an expression of mock innocence, ‘how is that complete bastard Ed these days?’

  ‘Aunt Elizabeth, really!’ I protested feebly, my heart not in it as she well knew.

  ‘Well, what a spineless shit, carrying on behind your back like that. I hate to say it, but I didn’t really take to him that time you brought him here last year. Too smooth for his own good. And not nearly good enough for you, if you ask me. Although, of course, you didn’t and I’d never have dreamt of saying so at the time. And what was all that nonsense about the family name?’ she continued, warming to her theme, comfortingly outraged on my behalf. ‘A load of pompous rubbish he used to go on about.’

  ‘I know,’ I sighed. ‘Edmund Wilberforce Cavendish. He was named after a bachelor uncle in the hope that he’d inherit some huge family pile. The funny thing is, though, the old bloke ended up marrying some glamorous divorcée at the eleventh hour. She had three children and he left the whole lot to them instead. So Ed ended up with nothing.’

  ‘Well it serves him right,’ retorted Liz, still briskly indignant. She paused, then said, a little more gently, ‘Did you really love him?’

  I’d hesitated, contemplating how to answer her question. ‘I don’t know if it was love exactly, but I’d become very used to having him around. It certainly wasn’t a grand passion, but you can’t hang around forever waiting for the love of your life to come along, you know. I did think we were probably going to get married eventually...’ I tailed off, hearing how half-hearted that sounded.

  My good friend and former fellow wine buyer at Wainright’s, Annie Mackenzie, has a theory that the difference between good wine and mediocre wine is the same as the difference between good sex and mediocre sex: to be good, it has to engage the mind as well as the senses. Talking to Liz on that warm spring evening, Annie’s theory popped into my mind and it suddenly struck me that Ed had been more of a bottle of plonk than a Grand Cru. More plonker than prince, now I come to think of it.

  ‘Well, you deserve far better than that,’ Liz retorted. ‘The love of your life is exactly what you should be waiting for. Don’t settle for anything less.’

  ‘But what if the right man doesn’t come along? What if I never have children? I always imagined I would, but that clock’s ticking fast these days. What if I don’t meet anyone in time?’

  ‘Then you will live a happy and fulfilled life on your own,’ Liz said firmly. ‘It’s not that bad, you know.’

  ‘Is that what you did? Decide not to settle for anything less than the man of your dreams, I mean? Did he just never come along?’

  Liz had reached down to deadhead some daffodils growin
g in a pot beside us. It was a nonchalant gesture, but it struck me as maybe just a little self-conscious too, like she was avoiding meeting my eye. ‘Oh, I met the man of my dreams all right. But it was complicated. In fact so complicated that it was impossible. And yes, after that I did decide that I could never settle for second best. But that’s way back in prehistoric times now.’ From her brisk change of tone I knew she was firmly fending off any further questions. ‘It’s far too late for an old dinosaur like me. But you are a mere spring chicken, with everything going for you and time still on your side, so just hang on in there. What are you now? Twenty-seven?’

  ‘Twenty-eight and counting. It’s funny, while Ed was around I took it for granted that we’d have children eventually, but since he left, it feels like the alarm’s gone off on my biological clock. I’d never really thought about it much before, but now that having children with Ed is something that’s never going to happen for me, it’s as if my body’s suddenly taken over and I want a baby so badly it hurts. Perverse or what? I suppose it’s human nature, isn’t it, wanting what you can’t have.’

  ‘Well, I know the right man for you will come along. And anyway you have your career as well of course. How long have you been at Wainright’s now? Must be getting on for ten years isn’t it? Do you think you might want to make a move at some stage?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I frowned and took another sip of my wine. ‘I love the company and I love what I do—and I was perfectly happy to keep jogging along until recently. I suppose because I thought Ed and I would be starting a family before too long. Under those circumstances, I’d have been content just ticking over at work. Easier to balance the whole motherhood thing too. But now all that’s changed of course.’

  ‘Ah, the eternal compromise of the working mother,’ said Liz sagely. ‘In my day you had to choose, but these days I thought you could have it all—the fulfilling career and the clutch of perfect children too.’

  ‘Hmm, I suspect the reality is still a little trickier to achieve, whatever it may look like on the pages of the glossy magazines. Anyway, I now appear to have neither.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing to stop you applying for other jobs, is there? Any prospect of a promotion at Wainright’s?’

  ‘Only if Harry throws in the towel. As a France specialist, I’d need to go for his job. Or sell my soul and go over to the dark side. New World wines,’ I explained as Liz looked at me quizzically. ‘No, I’d have to look elsewhere to stay with French wines, and there are fewer of those jobs about these days. The New World is where the growth is now. Although the whole sector is battling a bit in the current climate. Sales are down across the board.’

  ‘Well, I’m pleased to hear you’re remaining loyal to your roots in spite of the challenges,’ Liz had raised her glass with a nod of approval.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Ah, yes, the eternal wisdom of hindsight. Our conversation rings especially hollow now that I have no job whatsoever.

  I take a sip of wine, holding up the glass to admire its colour in the last rays of evening sunshine. The bottle Mireille brought to welcome me to my new home is a Clairet, the local rosé. I remember helping Dad refill the bird feeder in our garden in the autumn, and hear him saying, ‘Look at those bullfinches, Gina. A good rosé should be the same colour as their stomachs—precisely that gentle coral pink.’ This wine is a bolder colour, more the orange-red of a robin’s breast, and its chilled, dry complexity is thoroughly refreshing.

  It was with Dad that I learned to taste wine. He made his living as a wine writer and became editor of Carafe magazine, so wine was always a feature at the dinner table in our house. From an early age he encouraged me to taste, in tiny quantities to be swirled around the mouth before spitting into a crachoir. Part of the delight in my childhood was to watch him send a perfectly aimed stream of wine into the spittoon with a nonchalant elegance which completely belied the crudity of the action, elevating it to performance art.

  He made me think about the different layers of flavours in each wine and encouraged me to describe what I could taste. ‘Don’t be bashful,’ he’d say. ‘There’s no right and wrong. It’s a personal thing. Do you like it or not? If so, why? If not, why not?’ He would bring a handful of small jars through from the spice rack in the kitchen and hold each one under my nose. ‘Think about what you can smell. That’s cinnamon—remember it. And this one that smells like sweaty socks is cumin—you’ll often find a whiff of it in some of the very best wines. Along with just a hint of horse manure.’ I would giggle at the thought of sweaty socks and horse manure and my mother would tut disapprovingly.

  When I had applied for a job at Wainright’s as a sales assistant (‘Get in on the shop floor, literally,’ said Dad. ‘It’s the only way to learn if you’re serious about getting into the wine trade’), probably the name had helped. ‘Gina Peplow, eh?’ said Harry Wainright at my interview, peering sharply at me over his glasses. ‘Any relation to David?’ But if a spot of nepotism had helped me get my first job, ever since then I had worked hard and earned my subsequent promotions to shop manager, buying assistant and finally buyer in my own right.

  I miss my father terribly, even though it’s been over a year...

  He’d died much as he had lived, in a quiet, gentlemanly, considerate manner, falling silently to the ground in the back garden of my parents’ home in West Sussex. A massive heart attack, the doctors explained. Out of the blue. Nothing anyone could have done. My mother was her normal poised self when she’d phoned to tell me, and her cool, remote manner made me wonder, not for the first time, whether she had ever really loved him.

  We scattered his ashes at the edge of our garden, where our boundary gives onto neighbouring fields and the view southwards across the rolling slopes of the Downs, beside the bench where he used to come and sit to watch the sky turning from blue to rose to black on summer evenings, as swallows swooped and flitted overhead.

  I blink to clear the pooling tears from my eyes and give myself a little shake mentally. If I start crying now, for my father and for Liz, I just might not be able to stop. I lift my face to allow the warmth of the setting sun to dry the dampness on my cheeks. Finishing a last mouthful of my supper, I brush some crumbs from the table onto the terrace for the birds to come and peck at tomorrow morning.

  Lafite sits on the wall cleaning his whiskers and I suddenly feel a deep calm descend, the tension in my neck and shoulders relaxing as I watch the sky turn the same colour as the wine in my glass. The last swallows flit by, catching a few final flies in the warm evening air before slipping into their nests under the eaves for the night.

  Despite my exhaustion at the end of such a long day, for the first time in a very, very long while I feel at peace. Now that I’m finally here in France, it feels as if I’ve been able to put down a heavy load that I’ve been carrying. The sorrow of loss, the pain of betrayal and the terror of an uncertain future are all behind me now. And despite the fact that I’m so alone here, somehow I don’t feel as lonely and abandoned as I did back in England. Perhaps I’m going to enjoy rural life.

  In the oak trees an owl hoots gently.

  I raise my glass. ‘Thank you, Liz,’ I whisper.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A Gentleman Caller

  To-Do list:

  •Clean house

  •Sort out Internet connection

  •Order books on reading list for Master of Wine course

  •Food shopping

  •Weed garden

  •Take car to car wash to get rid of mud from yesterday’s close encounter with ditch and Blue Pickup Guy

  •Remember to ask Mireille about Blue Pickup Guy.

  Time goes by, as Madonna observed in one of her more philosophical moments, so slowly. Especially when it’s two in the morning and the prospect of sleep has become as unlikely as the prospect of a reliable man or a steady job. Despite the fa
ct that I’m exhausted after the long drive, I toss and turn all night, my mind abuzz with a jumble of thoughts and memories in the unfamiliar darkness of Liz’s bedroom. I’m a fully paid-up, card-carrying insomniac these days, ever since Ed left. And then losing Liz and being made redundant in swift succession thereafter haven’t exactly enhanced my state of mind.

  Keep taking deep breaths and letting go, I remind myself. And speaking of letting go...

  Coming back to the office after Liz’s funeral, my mind had still been in France. The sunshine and birdsong of the French countryside seemed more real than the grey English sky and the Monday morning roar of high-street traffic.

  I’d settled down at my desk, trying to focus on work. The office door banged open and Annie crashed into the room, breathless and laughing at some exchange she’d just had with the staff in the shop downstairs. She’s the buyer for New World wines and is as voluptuous, brash, loud and warm-hearted as many of the wines in her portfolio.

  ‘Hooray, Gina, you’re back! Did it all go okay?’ She hugged me warmly. ‘Got time for a drink after work tonight? I need to tell you all about the most gorgeous man I’ve just met.’

  ‘I like the hair,’ I said. Annie changes her hair colour about as often as she changes her men. Which is very often. When I’d left the previous week, she’d been a redhead. She was now a dramatically dark brunette. But with Annie Mackenzie, one always senses that blondeness is never very far away.

  I settled down to work and, on automatic pilot, I opened my emails and realised I was reading one from Ed. ‘So sorry to hear of your aunt’s death—saw her obit. Presume you must be in France. Thinking of you. Love E.’