Bella... A French Life (12 page)

Would there be anything good about it?

-0-

“I think I am falling in love with you, Bella,” Jean-Louis said after we had been seeing each other for six weeks, and were spending a second weekend at Le Presbytère.

“Fair enough, Jean-Louis, you’re not on your knees pledging undying love to me to only change your mind the moment we are on the highway driving back to the reality which is Paris,” I replied.

“And what is the reality which is Paris?”

“The Paris air is polluted,” I replied flatly, deliberately not wanting to admit to him -and to me - he is not a free man, free to go down on his knees to ask me to marry him.

“Come on, Bella, be serious. Do you at least fancy me?” he asked.

“A little.”

I had tried to sound casual about it.

“Fair enough,” he said, echoing my words of a moment earlier.

“I’m being silly, Jean-Louis, don’t take notice of what I say,” I apologised.

“I love it when you are being silly, Bella. There is so much promise in your silliness. So, you fancy me a little, as you say. Perhaps it is a fancy which will deepen, deepen to
really like
and then to
crazy about
and then to ...”

“Ok! That’s enough!” I interrupted him.

“Now you are angry!”

“Nope.”

“Bella, my dear Bella,” he said, “I know I am not free - not for the going on my knees stuff.”

“So let us change the subject,” I snapped.

I threw my hands, palms facing him, up in the air and he shook his head.

“Bella, changing the subject will be dodging the subject. What I want to say is this: I do plan to get a divorce but - but there is the future of the girls I must think of. I can’t imagine ... losing them, not that I will, I suppose, but they may just hate me should their mother and I finalise our separation, if you follow what I am trying to say. Bella, I do sincerely wish us to have a future, to be committed to one another. This - you and me - is not just a fling as far as I am concerned. I do not know: is it just a fling for you? I do not know.”

“I suggested we change the subject, Jean-Louis,” I snapped yet again.

“So this
is
just a fling?”

I shook my head.

“I do not indulge in flings.”

He was then the one who threw his arms up in the air.

“Oh forget this! I am going to walk down to the village. Are you coming with me?”

I did not go with him. He stayed in the village for several hours and when he returned my mother pointed out to me that she could smell wine on his breath.

“A man who drinks at the least little differences, Bella, is a man you give the boot to.”

“What difference are you talking of, Mother?” I asked her.

“Differences. Plural. His wife. His children. He might have removed his wedding band - I know he was wearing one until quite recently because the mark is still on his finger - but, as sure as the fact that I am standing in front of you here now, is the fact that he is still bound to them. The wedding band’s gone, yes, but it has been replaced with a mental shackle. This is always what happens when marriages break up.”

“Bella, was that our first argument?” asked Jean-Louis.

Our weekend over, we had driven back to Paris and to my apartment.

“I do not know what you are talking about,” I replied.

“Oh, sure you do,” he said, his face flushed with anger.

He did not stay with me that night, and he slammed the door on leaving, and I was angry with myself.

Hell, I am a silly cow
, I said to myself.

-0-

Chapter Sixteen

I choose the White Room for Colin. It is two rooms from mine and like mine it has a bay window overlooking the front garden.

“You ought to be comfortable in here.”

He stands in the doorway, his briefcase on the floor behind him.

“I would have been equally comfortable in the ‘Tony from Colorado’ room, but thank you, Bella.”

The White Room is, as its name implies, all in white; walls, bedspread, sheets, pillowcases, cushions, curtains. The other bedrooms have other colour schemes - pink, yellow, lilac - but I cannot picture this man in a room with pink, lilac or yellow walls and bedspread. And sleeping between pink sheets. Sometimes, I give this room to a young couple, and always to a honeymoon couple, but it is not a bridal room, because the elderly and old like it as much as the young ones.

I start making the queen-sized bed. I have silk sheets for the bed, but these I always reserve for the honeymooners. Knowing a man often cuts his face when shaving and wishing to protect my white towels, I hang navy-blue ones in the en-suite bathroom. I set out a range of Yves Rocher men’s toiletries on the bathroom shelf:
Aztec
after-shave balm, anti-perspirant deodorant and eau de toilet. I accidentally press the spray dispenser on the eau de toilet container and a mist of the scent of cedar and ginseng envelopes me.

Through the window I can see Colin has started to unload the sidecar. I have been curious about the sidecar’s contents and now I see he is carrying
Tesco
plastic shopping bags, all filled with books and cassettes, into the house. He takes a cassette player and a recorder from the sidecar. It would be interesting to know what music he likes, presuming these are music cassettes. Jean-Louis liked - I suppose he still does - women singers: Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Madonna. “How can you possibly like James Brown?” he used to ask me when I always asked him to put James Brown’s
Sex Machine
on the player when driving back to Paris from a weekend in Normandy.

I hear Colin come upstairs; light, rhythmic footsteps.

“Here!”

He stops at the door.

“I am giving you
so
much trouble, Bella.” He walks towards the bathroom and looks into it. “I could not have asked for a nicer set-up. Mind you I like the ‘Tony from Colorado’ room downstairs too.”

“You will be better off here.”

“Thank you, dear Bella!”

He walks over to me as if he wants to touch me, but he abruptly comes to a halt as if he is on his motorcycle and has run into a red light.

I step back and out of his reach should he change his mind.

“When you have moved all your things up here, come down and sign the registry please.”

He says he will.

-0-

It is Thursday and therefore market day.

I leave Colin to allow him to settle into the White Room and I go and change because I will be driving down to Sainte-Marie-sur-Brecque to shop. I have made a mental list of what I will be buying for his - our - meals. I may even call in on Gertrude to ask her if she could not perhaps one evening come up to Le Presbytère to cook something really nice, something special, for him - for us.

I slip into one of my sleeveless cotton summer frocks: the rain, gone, and the wind, calmed, the air has warmed up somewhat. For a change I wear heels, a pair of open-toed sandals I had bought when I was still at Chartreux Hospital but have not worn for a while.

What about some jewellery? I would not want to look like a Christmas tree, no, but a bracelet would not be out of place, and I ought also wear something around my neck because the frock is rather low-cut and I wish to cover the cleavage.  For the first time in a while I search through my jewellery box. Lifting the lid
When the Saints Come Marching In
starts to play. I hope Colin will not hear the music because he may wonder what I am up to. I choose a bracelet and necklace set of large pink plastic beads made by hand by some unprivileged women somewhere in Mexico and which I bought in Paris on the Butte Montmartre. The full-length mirror in my wardrobe tells me the necklace indeed covers a large section of the bare skin of my throat and the cleavage and this pleases me.

On my way out, I stop outside the White Room.

“Colin, I’m driving down to the village for some provisions.”

He is standing at the dressing table in front of the bay window, his back to the door.

He turns round.

“I will guard the fort in your absence, General.”

He raises his right hand, his fingers together, his thumb tugged against the hollow of his hand, his forearm straight and horizontal to the floor, and with the tip of his forefinger he touches the outer edge of his right eyebrow. He is saluting me.

He has again put his typewriter on the dressing table. When I get back I will suggest we put a writing desk in the room. There is one in the packing room down in the basement which we can carry upstairs.

My Frida Kahlo courtyard is wet after the rain and I make sure not to step into a puddle of water or to let water from the hanging baskets of ferns drip onto me. I do though walk right into one of the palm trees and I become entangled in its dripping wet drooping branches.

“Bugger!” I swear out loud.

Feeling ridiculous and fearing I also look it, I swing round to see whether Colin is at the window and watching. Indeed, he is still standing at the window, a smile across his face. Or rather, he is suppressing laughter. He salutes me yet again; the same gesture as before.

He must have looked gorgeous in the dark-blue uniform of the R.A.F.

I wonder if he piloted planes. Bombers? Would he have agreed to bomb Hiroshima?

Oh shit Bella Wolff, pull yourself together.

-0-

It is a fine morning. It seems the storm, like a laxative, one of those chocolate-flavoured ones we gave patients at Chartreux Hospital to clear their stomachs, has cleared the air. The
pré-salé
pasture land is vividly green, the sky and the sea both sapphire blue in the brilliant sunshine. Having neither my period nor am I pregnant, I dismiss Gertrude’s warning about the dangers of a draught and I turn the Merc’s front windows down. I wonder if Colin is watching the road from the White Room’s window. I know guests do always find the view from Le Presbytère irresistible and spend long minutes just standing by a window looking out. Should he be doing so, he will see the Merc, so I stick my left hand out the window and I wave like someone waving the checkered flag at the start of a Formula One race. Should he be watching and mentions the waving, I can always say I had seen a farmer and waved to him.

As always, I park on Rue Charlemagne. As my shopping list is long, I have brought along my shopping trolley, which is on wheels. Whenever I go out shopping with my trolley I always feel good. I feel good again now. I feel good because I take the trolley only when I have to buy several things because Le Presbytère is open and I have a full house. In other words, I am not eating alone.

And, as always, I start my shopping excursion at the Vaybee.

Father Pierre is standing at the bar. He is dressed in black flannels and a black shirt with white buttons, the top two unbuttoned, and revealing dry, bushy grey hair.

He greets me with a smile.

“Miss Wolff, we do not see you half as often as we wish to.”

The royal ‘we’. Indeed he always says ‘we’ and I always wonder who is included in the ‘we’. God? Or maybe just a couple of Jesus’ Apostles?

He puts the glass of red wine from which he is sipping down on the zinc-top of the bar and holds a hand out to me.

“Father!”

I shake the offered hand of which the nails are too long and cut into my skin. It is far from noon so I wonder what he is doing at the Vaybee already.

“Mrs Celeste is on holiday. Gone to her son in Lille. Frascot is kindly allowing me to lunch here each day,” he says as if mind-reading is his forte.

Frascot, his white plastic apron spotted with grease, steps through the door leading from the kitchen.

“Miss! Marketing, are you?”

“Marketing, Frascot.”

“A long list?”

He points to my trolley.

“A long list. I’ve a guest staying.”

“... nice ...”

That was neither a statement nor a question.

I finish the black coffee in the small black cup Frascot has placed in front of me without me having had to ask for it and I bid both him and Father Pierre, who has finished his wine and has just motioned to Frascot to fill up the glass, a good day. I wonder if the priest is paying for the wine and whether he will be paying for the lunches he will be having while Mrs Celeste is on holiday. I make a mental note to ask Fred when he comes round to Le Presbytère to do the gardening. He ought to be coming over the weekend because he says he cannot trust me with ‘his’ garden.

I stop at the Janviers’ stall first. I hand Mrs Janvier my list of the fruit and vegetables I need and leaving my trolley with her for my purchases, I move on to the Legros’ stall. This morning Mrs Legros is not wearing her red dress but a brown woollen skirt and red blouse.

“What it’s to be on this glorious day, Miss?”

I hand her my list. She reads it out loud like a small child still learning to read. I have chicken, guinea fowl, duck, rabbit, sirloin steak and lamb cutlets listed. Mr Legros, slicing thin steaks from a block of bloody meat so large it could only have been cut from a horse’s flank - yes, the Legros also sell horse meat - looks up.

“I say! I say! Your brother and family come to stay?”

I ignore the question.

“
Ooh la la,
Miss! Healthy appetite you have there!” he says.

“She’s got her family over, do you not Miss,” Mrs Legros tries again.

“No, Mrs Legros, there is a guest at Le Presbytère.”

“I thought you close in winter, Miss,” says her husband, still carving up the large carcass.

“I do, but an English writer needs a couple of months to finish a book, and so friends of his asked me if he could stay at Le Presbytère.”

“A man! A couple of months! Well, I say!
Ooh la la!
Is he nice, Doc?” asks Mrs Legros.

“Mrs Legros,” I say, “the man is a paying guest therefore whether he is nice or not is neither here nor there.”

“All the same, Miss, a nice man is even nicer than the nicest
steak tartare
.
Ooh la la
!”