Bella... A French Life (26 page)

“I know a little girl who would want these for dressing up her dolls,” I say.

I lied: I want to keep the bow and the ribbon as a remembrance of this man. These will go into the box where I keep other such knick-knacks in remembrance of things past: sugar lump wrappers from when Jean-Louis and I had coffee after dinner in restaurants; pine cones and conkers from when Jean-Louis and I took autumnal walks in the Tuileries Gardens. A booklet of matches from the hotel where he and I had stayed in Rochers-de-Naye.

Colin’s gift is a selection of exotic fruit: a still-life of yellow, green, orange and red fruits I have never seen before.

“May I?” Colin asks.

He takes the smallest item from the basket, a tiny, crispy, bell-shaped fruit, and carefully, as if it is fragile, places it onto the palm of my right hand.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Come,” he says, “it can be sticky, so I will open it for you.”

He loosens the outer part of the fruit, a husk as thin and crispy as paper, and he holds up a perfectly round yellow berry.

“Come,” he says again.

Holding the fruit by the tiny stem underneath it, he brings his hand up to my mouth. Keeping my eyes down and on his hand, like a baby who has seen its mother’s nipple, I open my mouth.

His fingers brush against my lips.

“Oops, sorry.”

He lets go of the berry and it drops onto my tongue.

With my tongue, I roll the berry around in my mouth and, next, I bite into it. I chew slowly, my eyes on Colin’s: they are anxious, waiting for my response. The taste on my tongue is not one of sweetness but acidity. Refreshing mellow acidity.

Somewhere in the night, an owl hoots.

He flicks his head towards the bay window behind us.

“A storm is on its way.”

We are only a few centimetres apart: I am still holding the hand with which he had fed me the berry. Quickly, I let go of the hand.

“Delicious,” I say of the berry.

I give a step away from him.

“It is a gooseberry.”

“So, that’s a gooseberry! My mother used to tell my brother and I about the gooseberry tree which stood in the garden of their home when they were children. She used to tell us what a little hardy tree it was. They never watered it or trimmed it and each summer it produced the sweetest berries. My father said in Germany it was called a
Stachelbeere
. The thorn berry. There were a few people in his life who were thorn berries.”

“
Stachelbeere
?
Stachelbeere
? Good name.”

“I too have … had them in my life,” I say.

“I too have had them.”

“But no longer?”

He shakes his head.

“They are still there but I’ve come to ignore their existence.”

“Lucky man. I cannot ignore my thorn berries.”

“Bella, I hope my presence here … here at Le Presbytère is not a thorn berry. Will not be a thorn berry.”

His eyes are bearing a strange look. I cannot interpret it. Or can I and I do not want to acknowledge its message?

“Let’s have our tea, Colin,” I say.

“Sure,” he says. “Let’s.”

-0-

There is the patter of rain on the tiles of the porch outside.

Colin is spreading apricot jam over a
madeleine
. I am glad I bought not only the
palmiers
but also
madeleines
as this is his third.

“I found Paris somewhat noisy this visit. Don’t get me wrong, I adore the place, but it has become noisy,” he says.

“If you are not used to noise …”

“But, oh, let me tell you about your friend,” he interrupts me.

“Friend?”

“I said on the phone I met a friend of yours …”

“Oh yes. A lawyer, I think you said? A lawyer and his wife.”

“Jean-Louis Gasquet. Jean-Louis and Colette Gasquet.” 

Colette.
This name Jean-Louis could never say. Did not say, until at the end, when she had walked back into his life, and he into hers, and out of mine.

Cool night air is blowing into the room from somewhere: badly fitting windows have always been a problem here at Le Presbytère. I begin to shiver. What did Jean-Louis tell Colin? How much does Colin know?

“How did you meet?” I dare ask.

“A lawyer friend asked me along to a dinner at the Gasquets. There were eight of us. It was all rather grand.”

“In an apartment in Paris?”

“No. The Gasquets’ house in Fontainebleau. It was Colette’s mother’s house. The old lady passed away a year ago so the couple had some work done to the house, had it modernised and spruced up, and it’s really beautiful. Close to the chateau it is.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, when Jean-Louis heard I was staying in … the village … what’s its name … he said he knew it well, that he had stayed at a guest house above the village quite a few times …”

“At Le Presbytère?”

He nods.

“Do you remember him?”

I shake my head.

“Not really. Guests come and guests go.”

“I think he stayed here when your mother was still alive. He didn’t know she had passed away, but he did say he had heard that her daughter, Bella Wolff, had left Paris and was running the guest house.”

“I can’t remember … meeting him here.”

“No, he said he had met you in Paris at the hospital where you had worked …”

“Chartreux. I worked at Chartreux Hospital,” I say unnecessarily.

“That is it, yes. He said you were in charge of the maternity section at the hospital and his sister gave birth to her first child there. That was when he met you.”

“That means there is even a smaller chance of me remembering him because babies were born there every day.”

“Of course.”

Shall I dare ask him what Jean-Louis had said about me? And what Colette had said about me?

“What more did he say?” I ask.

“He said you were charming. I agreed. Of course. And he said Le Presbytère is the best guest house he has ever stayed in; the reception he received was wonderful, the scenery from its windows exquisite. I agreed. Of course. His wife told me she had not met you. The name, she said, rang a bell though.”

“Thank you for the compliment, Colin,” I say.

Overhead a plane passes.

I have never had time for a man who kisses and then tells.

-0-

In my room I switch on only the bedside lamp. Its shade is pink and decorated with the sequined outline of the face of Marilyn Monroe. I had still bought the lamp in Paris, so it also stood on my bedside table in my Latin Quarter apartment. Jean-Louis, on first seeing it, thought it the most inelegant thing he had ever seen, and my reply was that he was the most elegant thing I have ever seen.

I loved that man. Oh God, how I loved that man.

-0-

I think of something. There are books in my library room which were gifts from Jean-Louis, and books I gave him and which he left here. We wrote silly little notes to one another in these books and as Colin said that he would like to go over the books in the library room, I need to remove all books which will reveal I did indeed know Jean-Louis and the nature of our relationship.

Like a thief, I tip-toe to the library room.

Again I switch on only a lamp, the one that stands on the desk in the room. Its light forms a pinkish circle over the desk. I know the titles of the books I will have to remove, and as quiet as I can be, I take them from the shelves and drop them into an overnight bag I have brought from the bedroom.

What memories there are in a few lines scribbled in a book.

Bean brain, here’s a book which will teach you that an Einstein is not a grand piano. Stupid as you are, I love you all the same, very much and for always. Jean-Louis
 

-0-

Chapter Twenty-Nine

One remembers beginnings. And one remembers endings. My father always said what one must remember is what had been between the two. “Beginnings become endings, Bella, if it were not so, life would be too good. Remember that.”

My mother used to contradict him. She used to say there was no such thing as endings. She said each ending was a beginning of something else.

On the day of my father’s funeral, getting back to Le Presbytère from ‘my’ rock, the mourners, having eaten and drunk their fill, and only dirty plates and empty bottles standing on the tables which Honorine and Martine had set out in the garden, I wanted to ask her whether she still believed this, but I recalled her eyes when she dropped the red rose onto my father’s coffin. They told me she had come to realise an ending was just that: an end.

The ending of Jean-Louis and I began with chickenpox.

-0-

It was one of those days at Chartreux Hospital when all births had gone well. It was seven o’clock and I was off duty, but sitting in the staff room chatting to our nurses. The telephone rang: reception had transferred a call to the staff room. Nurse Bonnec took the call and passed the receiver to me.

“Darling,” said the voice of Jean-Louis, “What do you know. Both the girls have chickenpox, so I am calling to cancel our outing for this weekend.”

He told me he had to lend a hand with the girls.

“Be careful, that virus is contagious,” I told him.

“For God’s sake, Bella, what do you expect me to do? My daughters are ill. They need me.”

He and I were going to spend the weekend in Nice. We were going to drive down in the Porsche after work to return on Sunday evening.

“Jean-Louis, I will phone the hotel and cancel.”

“I’ve done so.”

“You might have checked with me. I might have gone down to Nice all the same.”

“With who?”

“That,” I told him, “is for me to know and for you to find out.”

I had taken Monday off, so I decided to fly to London, see the sights, eat some fish and chips, have a bacon-and-egg breakfast each morning at a café in the park on Russell Square, near to the hotel where I always stayed.  I went to London and I watched the squirrels play on the lawn in that park and I took a few photos and I returned to my hotel and sat at the window and told myself I did not need Jean-Louis, I did not need a Jean-Louis in my life.

On the Tuesday, back in Paris, and at the hospital, I all the same waited for a call from him, but it did not come, and I did not hear from him until it was weekend again.

He phoned.

“Darling,” he said, “the girls are better.”

“That’s good.”

It was Saturday morning and I had just come in from a solitary walk along the Seine. It was autumn, but still warm, and young boys and girls in swimwear lay on their backs, tanning, on the banks of the river.

“Bella, I will see you tonight? Around seven. Is that alright?” Jean-Louis asked.

“Alright.”

“We’ll go grab a bite to eat somewhere.”

“Alright.”

-0-

“Bella, I missed you!” said Jean-Louis.

We were sitting on a leafy terrace in a courtyard of a small but expensive restaurant on Rue Saint-Louis on the Ile Saint-Louis.

He reached across the candle-lit table and stroked my arm.

“Come on,” he said, “say you missed me too.”

“What are you going to order for us, Jean-Louis?” I asked.

“Oh, to hell with you woman! Be like this if you want to be like this and see if I care!”

He asked the wine waiter to bring us a bottle of
Moët et Chandon
.

“Don’t say anything about it being costly,” he said, turning to me.

He ordered grilled steak and French fries for us.

“I hate to wait in restaurants,” he reminded me.

The steak was tender with a taste of garlic and herbs from Provence.
The Moët et Chandon
exquisite. We finished the bottle.

Leaving the restaurant, Jean-Louis put an arm around my waist.

“I did miss you too, Jean-Louis,” I told him.

He drew me to him and buried his face in my hair.

“That’s my girl!”

We went to sit on one of the cement benches on one of the banks of the river. In front of us was Notre Dame Cathedral, dark and silent, the sky above it decorated with stars.  Not far from us sat a man, obviously homeless, his legs hanging over the edge of the bank. A breeze carried the odour of his unwashed body towards us.

“Shall we go?” I asked.

“No. I want to talk to you.”

“You can do so while we’re walking home. To my place, that is.”

“No, I want to talk to you on neutral ground.”

He touched my face, stroked my hair.

“What do you want to talk about, Jean-Louis?”

The homeless man got to his naked feet and hobbled off, the night’s breeze sweeping his stink into our nostrils.

“Bella, this past week, and last weekend too, I stayed with the girls’ mother. It was to help out with the girls. At her apartment that is.”

He inhaled deeply like a smoker who had tried to stop the habit but was capitulating.

“And?”

“It went well. The visit. Surprisingly well. The girls were … in their element … despite the fact that they were itching like mad. They were happy to have their dad home again. Both their dad and their mom with them.”

A pigeon flew over our heads, his wings fluorescently white as it caught a beam from a lamp behind us on the bank. On the river, a tourist boat sailed by, rippling the water. Some of the boat’s passengers stood on the deck. They waved to us. We ignored them.

“Shall we be off?” I asked.

“Yes, let’s go.”

We reached the Saint Michel Métro station, there where, on our first date, we had listened to the hippies chant
Hare Krishsna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.
 

“I’ll take the Métro here,” said Jean-Louis.

I nodded my agreement.

It was after midnight. From behind the open windows in buildings around us ceiling lights threw faint circles of blue-grey light onto the pavements.

“Come, let me hold you for a moment,” said Jean-Louis.

-0-