Late Summer in the Vineyard

by Jo Thomas

  ‘How much would we get for this?’ the wiry colleague comes in and holds up Mum’s jewellery box. ‘There’s nothing in it of any value. Oh, hang on . . .’ He opens the drawer at the front and pulls out my mum’s gold wedding band and I can see Dad wince.

  ‘That’s Dickie. He’s with me,’ Graham says, seeing my shocked face. ‘Look, anything you can give me, I can get this lot off your back, just for a bit. It’s the least I can do. You saved my arse that day after school. Made me realise I wasn’t going to let myself be bullied again. I’d like to give you a chance, too. I’d hate to see you and your dad have to leave.’ He looks at Dad.

  ‘Here,’ I reach for my bag and, with shaking hands, hand him the collection envelope. ‘Take this.’ I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  ‘Put it back, Dickie,’ Graham says firmly. Dickie goes to argue but, with one look from Graham, changes his mind, drops the ring back in the jewellery box and takes it back upstairs.

  ‘You sure?’ Graham checks with me about the envelope.

  ‘Wait!’ I grapple in my bag again for my purse and pull out my last tenner. ‘And this.’ I empty the last of the coins from my purse into his hand.

  ‘OK,’ Graham nods. ‘I mean, it doesn’t really come close on what you owe, but it’s something. I’ll give them this, and then this,’ he waves the notice with red lettering all over it, ‘I’ll put this to the bottom of the pile. Should buy you a couple of months, three at the most . . .’

  ‘Thank you,’ I hear my voice say though it doesn’t sound like me.

  He heads for the door, his shoulders practically touching the walls either side of the hall. He calls to Dickie to leave.

  ‘Bye, Emmy. It was nice to see you again,’ he says, turning, and then smiles and shakes my hand. ‘And good luck.’

  ‘And you,’ I say as relief washes over me, followed very quickly by a cold, chilling feeling.

  I wrap my arms around myself, standing protectively at the front door. I watch as his blue van drives off over the speed bumps down the road. Graham holds up a hand to wave.

  Suddenly I feel like my world is teetering on a cliff edge. I have to make sure they don’t come back again. I have to make this right. But I have no idea how, no idea at all.

  ‘Madame, Madame!’ I shout, and wave my arms around like I’m at a Take That concert, trying to attract Gary Barlow’s attention in the midst of thousands of other possessed fans. The midday sun beats down on the back of my head, making me dizzy and reminding me I’m in south-west France. A small town called Petit Frère, to be precise, on the banks of the Dordogne. It’s a long way from Bristol Airport, where I started out first thing this morning with my boss’s words still ringing in my ears:

  ‘I’m giving you one last chance, Emmy. I mean it, don’t blow it.’ And I don’t intend to, believe me.

  ‘Madame!’ I call again, perspiring in my non-crease navy suit, waving and then pointing to the old, worn, leather purse left on the bench beside the fountain in the middle of the square. But the old lady just glances round at me, glares and hurries on. The fountain is spouting water into the pool at its feet, but even its gentle splashing doesn’t make me feel any cooler. Just beyond the fountain there is a sandy boules pitch, right by the riverbank where a leaning weeping willow brushes its boughs across the surface of the fast-moving water. There are benches either side of the pitch, and three old men in short-sleeved shirts are sitting on one under the shade of a plane tree. Around the outside of the square are shops, including a boulangerie – a baker’s – and an épicerie with fruit and vegetables laid out under a green and white sun-bleached awning. People are buying their lunchtime loaves and the warm smell of bread is wrapping itself around me. There’s a busy café too, with round silver-topped tables outside and men in overalls smoking, and drinking small cups of coffee and glasses of cream-coloured, cloudy liquid.

  I look around hopefully for someone to come to my aid and help give the purse back to the old lady. But everyone seems just to be staring at the four of us like we’ve arrived from another planet and, quite frankly, that’s how it feels.

  The woman had stopped at an empty bench by the fountain to rearrange her shopping between her two baskets, distributing the weight more evenly, no doubt. She’d put down her purse whilst doing so and then left it behind on the bench.

  I look towards the épicerie for help, hoping someone’s seen what’s happened. An assistant is busy serving a young mum with a toddler in a pushchair. She hands the child a big round peach and they all coo in delight when the child takes it and bites into it with relish.

  I can smell the ripe strawberries on the table outside from here. Why don’t strawberries smell like that back home? In fact, everything about here smells different. The hot coffee, baking bread, even the tobacco smoke from the café and the hot sun on tarmac roads. Every breath tells me I’m in France, even if I still don’t quite believe it yet myself.

  I hold my hand up against the early September sunlight, looking in the direction of the old lady as she hurries up through the square, snatching quick glances over her shoulder, deftly side-stepping shoppers and disappearing between lunchtime gatherings. She’s nearly out of sight.

  ‘Excusez-moi, Madame,’ I call again, waving, still holding one arm over my eyes against the blinding sun. ‘Vous avez oublié votre . . .’ I rack my brains, reaching into the dark recesses of my mind for the right words. But GCSE French was a long time ago and this is the furthest I’ve travelled since going on holiday to West Wales with my best friend, Layla, and her family. This is south-west France at the beginning of September and, quite honestly, it’s the last place I expected to be right now, with the last group of people on earth I’d want to be here with.

  My three work colleagues look at me and shrug. We all work at the same place, but not together. Not until today, that is. A carefully selected group of Cadwallader’s call centre employees . . . and me. We’ll be living and working together for the next twelve weeks. Which right now seems like an eternity. A pang of homesickness twists my guts.

  Cadwallader’s is run by Trevor Cadwallader. Trevor lives and breathes the world of telesales. He runs the telesales for small companies: knitwear producers in remote Scottish islands, a client shipping cleaning products from a warehouse in Weymouth. Trevor will sell anything, for a cut.

  Making sales makes Trevor happy. We have a brass ship’s bell by Trevor’s desk we have to ring when a big order is secured. Trevor likes to keep a happy and motivated workforce. At the end of every week there’s usually a collection round the office for something or other: an engagement, a hen party, a stag party, a wedding. Trevor sends someone out to buy cakes, cava and a voucher. It’s always for the same people.

  Last week it was Candy and Dean’s engagement. Dean and Candy are the golden couple at Cadwallader’s. Top selling agents, both of them. I think this will be Candy’s fourth engagement collection. I’m thirty-five and I’ve never had an office collection. But frankly, I’m just lucky to be holding on to my job. If it hadn’t been for a stroke of luck – if that’s what you can call it – I wouldn’t be here at all. These twelve weeks are a training course for the four of us to be the sales team for a small wine company who have signed up to Cadwallader’s. I know nothing about wine except for what’s on special offer each week at my local supermarket. All I know is, I need a miracle bigger than the loaves and fishes to get me out of the mess Dad and I are in right now, and this could just be it. If I can’t pay off those mortgage arrears we’ll lose the house. I can’t afford to mess this up.

  I watch the short, bent old lady, dressed head to toe in black despite the scorching sunshine, turn and scowl at me once more before quickly opening the door to her small battered Renault Twingo, putting her baskets in, getting in after them and starting the engine.

  A voice in the back of my head tells me not to draw attention to myself. N
ot to get involved. I’m here for work and I need to fit in. But I can’t just let her drive off without her purse.

  I take a deep breath.

  ‘Madame,’ I call again, and rush over to the bench, pick up the shiny, worn purse and wave it, trying to catch her eye. Then I run towards her, still waving, round the fountain and up the square. The stares from the café follow me and my cheeks burn.

  ‘Vous avez oublié . . . vous êtes . . . vert vieux dame et vous êtes . . . le sac, je pense,’ I stutter as she throws me another scowl through her open car window, then spins the steering wheel and shoots out of her parking space at speed, past me and on to the road by the river, past a war memorial, over a humpback bridge and out towards the neighbouring town, set on a hilltop in the distance.

  ‘I think,’ says Nick, in his public school accent, coming to stand beside me, ‘that you just told her she’s forgotten that she’s an old green bag!’ Nick’s in his early thirties, usually works in advertising for tourist guides and maps, and frankly sounds like a bit of a know-it-all. Candy, standing behind him, snorts and laughs like a hyena, and Gloria, the fourth member of our party, looks visibly embarrassed by my faux pas, dips her head shyly and steps into the shadows of the plane trees.

  ‘Shit!’ I can see it’s going to take a while for my French to come back. I turn slowly and look around at the staring eyes of the men in flat caps, sipping pastis and smoking outside the café. So much for not drawing attention to myself.

  Double shit, I think. ‘Now what am I going to do?’ I say, mortified. I look down at the battered purse. My feet have barely touched French soil and I’m already getting involved with other people’s problems when I should be keeping my head down.

  ‘Maybe,’ Gloria says, stepping out of the shadows, ‘you could see where she lives. She’ll need her purse. I know I would.’ This is the most Gloria has said to me since we arrived. Possibly in her mid-fifties, she’s wearing a short-sleeved cotton dress, her cardigan over her arm, her handbag across her body, and carrying a small battery-operated fan, which is permanently directed at her face. She looks hot.

  I can’t help but wonder why Gloria is here. Maybe she’s been sent to keep us all in order. God knows, it looks like we need it.

  ‘Don’t be long.’ Nick looks down his nose and through his big round glasses. ‘We need to have lunch and meet at the Featherstone’s offices, back there by two.’ He points down the road by the river. ‘Look.’ Down a side street opposite the church, tables are outside on the pavement beneath a red and white awning. The tables are covered in matching checked tablecloths and are laid with knives and forks and tulip-shaped glasses. It looks wonderful, and I can just picture a lovely shady lunch there. Then I remember I really can’t afford to go eating out in restaurants. I’m here to earn money, not to spend it. My heart dips in disappointment as we go over to look.

  ‘Es-car-gots . . .’ Candy reaches up and puts one hand on her large-rimmed sun hat as she peers at the blackboard on the pavement outside, then has to tug at the front of her floral dress, which is straining at the seams and struggling to keep her big, round bosoms from rising up like dough balls.

  ‘Wassat?’ She screws up her nose and then looks to Nick, who momentarily looks terrified by the struggling bosom and takes a step back. Then he throws back his head and laughs loudly, like a fog horn, attracting more looks from the café and from a single diner, sitting outside the restaurant. He’s eating hungrily and drinking from a large wine glass, which now has just an inch of wine in the bottom. He’s dark skinned, with dark, unkempt hair and a bandana round his head. An earring dangles from his ear. In a sleeveless T-shirt under an open shirt, he doesn’t look like he’s dressed to come out to eat. He’s friendly with the waiter when he brings him more bread to dip into the deep brown sauce on his plate. My stomach rumbles, reminding me I haven’t eaten since Dad insisted on the two Weetabix I had this morning before I left home. I’m glad he did.

  ‘Snails!’ Nick finally tells Candy, and her mouth drops open in horror. Nick’s laughter and Candy’s shriek makes the lone diner look up again and then smile, before tucking back into his bread and sauce.

  ‘No, really? Beurgh! It’s true? They really do eat snails?’ Candy’s face screws up and Nick rolls his eyes and shakes his head. ‘Disgusting,’ she adds with finality.

  The knot of homesickness twists in my guts again. But however hard this is going to be, I have to stick it out. Twelve weeks isn’t that long, I tell myself. A demon voice in my head tells me that it’s actually three months and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, telling it to go away. It’s just twelve weeks, I repeat. I open my eyes again to the bright light. Why then does it feel like a life sentence? And why am I worrying about whether or not I’m going to make it out the other side?

  My phone trills. I grapple for it amongst the papers in my bag, and fall on it, desperate to hear a voice from home.

  ‘Hello, Dad? Yes, everything’s fine,’ I say as the homesickness twists tighter. ‘I’m having a great time,’ I lie, trying to sound bright. I don’t tell him I’ve just insulted an old woman, I don’t know the other sales agents, and if they knew who I was they’d hate me, anyway. I don’t fit in and I want to come home.

  ‘That’s good, dear. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. This is a great opportunity for you. Trevor must think very highly of you.’ I can practically hear his heart squeezing.

  ‘Oh, no, nothing like that, Dad.’ I turn away from the others, who are still discussing the lunch menu, and walk towards the river. Two swans gently circle the weeping willow. ‘Let’s just say I was in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘Well, make the most of it.’ I hear a catch in his voice and it’s my heart that squeezes now.

  ‘I have to go, Dad,’ and that catches in my throat, too. ‘I’ll call tonight.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me,’ he says again. But I do as he hangs up with a clatter.

  A huge tennis ball forms in my throat and bobs up and down. I go to push the phone back into my bag, alongside my copy of the bailiffs’ bill, and the electricity bill I picked up off the mat this morning. I sigh deeply. I have no idea what we’re going to do. If only I could get a chunk of cash together; pay off some of the arrears. A mad thought grabs hold of me and I pull my phone back out and scroll through my contacts. My thumb hovers over my sister, Jody’s, number and just for a moment I wonder whether to press the button and make the call. But thinking about Dad’s voice, how frail he sounded, I decide against it.

  Dad hasn’t worked for years now. It’s just him and me at home. Jody lives in Cheshire. We don’t see much of her – well, actually we don’t see her at all. She married young, a promising footballer. Until he was injured on a skiing holiday. Then he went into business. Like I say, we don’t see her, or her boys. I think that’s what hurts Dad so much. She’s happy and settled, and that’s all I ever wanted for her. But we haven’t spoken in a long time. A lot has changed since the skiing accident. I’ve tried to put the past behind us, but looking down at these letters filling my bag, my head, my heart, I can’t forgive, I just can’t. I feel a surge of fury on Dad’s behalf bubble up in me.

  I shove the phone deep into my bag, scrunching down the brown envelopes. Fired up by life’s unfairness, I march towards the shop from where the old lady came with her shopping.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Nick calls after me.

  ‘To ask in the shop if they know where she lives.’ I march into the shop. ‘Um, excusez-moi . . .’ I hold up the purse but have no idea what I’m going to say next. ‘The old lady, she’s forgotten her purse,’ I say slowly in English with a slight French inflection, and feel really stupid.

  ‘Ah, Madame Beaumont,’ says a short, rotund man, wearing a green and white apron. He nods and then shrugs, pulling his mouth back into a grimace.

  ‘Yes, it’s her purse. I will take it to
her,’ I reply loudly, walking my fingers across the palm of my hand to demonstrate.

  The shopkeeper picks up a wooden box of flat, white peaches and walks past me, their perfume taunting me as he takes them to the table outside the shop.

  ‘It’s OK, I’m not deaf, just French,’ he says dryly, turning to look at me through his thick milk-bottle-bottom glasses.

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry.’ My cheeks burn with embarrassment again. Candy, who has followed me here, snorts with laughter again, and my shoulders droop again.

  ‘You are on holiday?’ The shopkeeper asks in stilted English, as he gets another box of peaches. The smell of them makes my stomach roar this time and my mouth actually water. A tall, wiry woman frowns as she rings money into the till and then barks orders at a younger woman with a dark ponytail, sweeping up at the back of the shop.

  ‘Oh, no, we’re here to work, for three months,’ Candy fills him in. It’s just twelve weeks, the voice in my head corrects her. ‘We’re with Featherstone’s. We’re sales reps, here to learn about the wine and then sell it back in the UK,’ she tells him.

  The tall woman practically snorts.

  ‘Then, bonjour. I am Monsieur Obels and this is my wife, Madame Obels. This is our daughter, Isabelle, who works in the shop,’ he says by way of formal introduction. ‘Welcome.’

  Candy cuts straight to the chase, with no such formal introductions.

  ‘Actually, can you tell us where would be a good place to eat?’

  The shopkeeper looks bewildered, having obviously exhausted his English phrases.

  ‘Isabelle?’ he calls, and beckons. The younger woman smiles and steps forward to answer.

  ‘Well. There’s Le Papillon, just on the corner on the square; they do three courses at lunch, with wine for twelve euro. A lot of the workers go there.’