by Daisy Waugh
‘Don’t,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’
‘Oh.’ She stopped mid-turn, so accustomed to doing as she was told. She stood in the middle of her bar, uncertain how to proceed. ‘Sorry,’ she said, turning back towards him again, arms still wrapped around herself. ‘Sorry. You’re probably in a tearing hurry. Sorry.’
‘Mais non, Daffy. Je veux dire –’ he said quickly. He’d been on the point of paying her a flirtatious Gallic compliment; of telling her she looked lovely as she was or something – which she did, almost, if she weren’t so scrawny. But she looked so terrified, standing there, he changed his mind. ‘I have just come to see you are OK, after last night. I was worried.’
She beamed at him, extraordinarily touched.
‘Goodness. Goodness, Jean Baptiste. I can look after myself! You don’t need to worry about me!’
‘I suppose he is still here, of course?’ asked Jean Baptiste. He glanced upward, at the bedroom shutters above him, thrown open at some point in the night. ‘But he has been well enough to open his shutters?’
‘Skid?’ she said, wrinkling her nose – and then laughing self-consciously. ‘Skid…’ she said again, feeling the word on the back of her teeth, ‘is still asleep. He’s coughing a lot. I don’t know if that has anything do with…what you did. But I heard him walking around last night. I dare say he’s fine. I’m only worried he’ll want to sue or something…Anyway, I was just making coffee. Would you like some? I mean…café? Tu…veux…café?’
‘Merci. Je veux bien,’ he said slowly. ‘Nous nous apprendrons, n’est-ce pas, Daffy? You will teach me English, OK? And I will teach you some French.’
So each morning Jean Baptiste has taken to arriving at seven o’clock with a bag of warm, fresh croissants from the boulangerie opposite, and Daffy has been dressed and waiting for him, with coffee brewed and a breakfast table laid out on the front terrace. And for half an hour, while Skid slumbers above them, and before Jean Baptiste starts work on Emma’s poolside hacienda, they have been each other’s teachers. It is, of course, the highlight of Daffy’s day. More than that. It’s the single thing that gives her the strength to continue.
This morning he asks her (as he asks her every morning) whether she’s received any news from England. Yet again she shakes her head. ‘Mais Timothy est très…occupé, of course. You see. Et James est très très content at his school, you see. They really don’t have time…And, as we say in England, “no news is good news”!’
‘Tu es courageuse.’
‘Not really…I say to myself – Just so long as they’re happy. That’s what matters, isn’t it, Jean Baptiste? That’s what really matters…although James would love it here.’
They are in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to brew. Daffy glances around at the small room; the grey linoleum flooring, the rough white plaster walls, the twenty-year-old oven, the ramshackle shelves above it, piled high with beaten-up old saucepans. She looks through the open door to the bar. Everything about the Marronnier is shabby, unpretentious, old-fashioned: the antithesis of all she’s been surrounded by for ten unhappy years. Timothy would hate it.
She turns to Jean Baptiste, standing at the oven, lighting himself a cigarette. ‘Jean Baptiste, I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ she begins tentatively. ‘Sorry. I know you’re busy. With Emma’s hacienda and finishing your own place and everything else. But I was wondering…if you might possibly be able to help me with the renovation work?’
He looks up from his lighted cigarette. ‘It is already very beautiful this place. But it has some bad damp, I think.’
‘Yes. Yes,’ Daffy says keenly. ‘I really don’t want to change much…But the damp, you know…James wouldn’t give two hoots, of course. But Timothy doesn’t like the damp. And perhaps an extra bathroom upstairs. For Timothy, when he comes. He’s ever so fussy about bathrooms…And then, you know, just some nice clean paint.’
‘And the bar –’ Jean Baptiste adds, thinking aloud. ‘It is looking a bit tired, I suppose.’
‘Yes, but I like that,’ she says quickly. ‘It just needs a good scrub, and I can do that. I mean, the whole place needs a jolly good scrub. But I love it looking sort of…like it’s been here for ever. I think it’s beautiful…’
He smiles at her. ‘Tu as raison,’ he nods. ‘Maybe some paint on the – comment ça se dit – les volets?’
‘The shutters. Yes.’
‘Shutters. But of course it’s a beautiful place. It would be dommage to change the character so much.’
‘Well, yes. That’s what I’m trying to say. Thank you. I mean – it has so much character, doesn’t it? It’s perfect already, really. I think so. If I had my own way I wouldn’t change a thing. Give the place a good clean, and that’s about it. I don’t give a fig about the damp. Not really.’
He shrugs. ‘…Et alors, Daffy?’
She looks pained. ‘Only Timothy said…Timothy sort of said – Well he saw pictures when he made the purchase and he told me it had to be absolutely completely redone, sort of thing. He’d be terribly angry, I think, if I didn’t sort of…change it.’
Jean Baptiste bites back his own laughter. ‘Mais Daffy,’ he reminds her gently. ‘Timothy n’est pas là. He’s not here, Daffy. How can he be angry if he’s not here?’
‘No. He isn’t…I mean I know he isn’t here at the moment, obviously. He works terribly, terribly hard…’
‘Yes. As you say.’
She hesitates. ‘…But the fact is, Jean Baptiste, I don’t think he’ll ever be here – if I don’t make it comfortable for him. It has to be modern and everything or he won’t come. He won’t let James come…And I can’t bear it. I mean I can bear anything, really. Being here, and Timothy not really…Everything.’ She stops, struggles to pull back the tears but it’s too late. She covers her face. ‘Only I can’t bear it if he won’t let me see James!’
Jean Baptiste crosses the room. He sits down at the table beside her. He says nothing, just sits there, waiting, and somehow she allows her head to drop onto his shoulder. He puts an arm round her after that, and for a while she can’t stop crying. Daffy hasn’t felt anybody’s arms around her for so long. ‘Sorry,’ she sobs, ‘I’m so sorry. God – Jean Baptiste –’ she tries to laugh. ‘You’re so kind. I’m so sorry. Here I am, this idiotic English girl. Tipping up in your village…You must think I spend my entire life in tears!’
‘No, no,’ he murmurs. ‘Au contraire, Daffy. It is not easy for you. You are very courageuse. I think you are very, very brave girl.’
‘I’m not. I’m pathetic! I’ve done nothing since I got here. Nothing. Except miss my little boy, and write to him and write to him and ring the school and I know they never pass on the messages…And I just hide away in this kitchen, waiting…I don’t even know what I’m waiting for any more…’
‘Eh bien.’ Gently, he pulls her away from him. ‘Perhaps you are right. It’s time you do something for yourself, Daffy. I will help you with the renovations. Whatever you want, when I have finished Emma’s hacienda. We start with the damp, I think. But now it’s time you open your business. Montmaur is missing her bar. You cannot keep her closed for ever.’
She looks at him, terrified. ‘But I can’t!’
‘But of course you can!’
‘…But…I don’t – I can’t – I mean –’
‘Allez,’ he says. ‘Today you must to open all the shutters, cleaning all the bar, all the glasses and so on. Tomorrow, I drive the van to Bordeaux.’ He glances at her pistachio trousers, the same trousers she’s worn every day for nearly three weeks, scrubbed clean and hung out to dry every night. Apart from a pink linen skirt she somehow managed to get oil onto, and the silk evening dress she wore to Emma Rankin’s dinner, they are the only clothes she brought out with her, and there are no clothes shops in the village. ‘I take you to LeClerc hypermarché.’
‘A hypermarché!’ Daffy cries, all her troubles briefly forgotten.
‘And y
ou can buy clothes. I think you need them. And we get some things for the house and the bar. OK?’
‘…Crikey…’ She wipes her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t mind doing that with me, Jean Baptiste? I would have gone myself, only my – It sounds so pathetic, but I just knew I’d get lost. And then, you know, if I got lost it wouldn’t be like getting lost in England. I couldn’t just ask someone, because of course how would I understand the answer, and then I wouldn’t know who to call –’
‘Mais enfin!’ he exclaims. ‘Dis-le en français, Daffy!’
She laughs. ‘…Merci beaucoup, Jean Baptiste,’ she says, grinning at him. ‘J’aimerais bien venir avec toi demain. Tu es très très gentil. Je n’ai jamais visité un vrai hypermarché en France. Mais j’ai compris qu’ils sont merveilleux!’
He stares at her. ‘Amazing,’ he says in astonishment. ‘How did you do that?’
She giggles. ‘I’ve been practising. I talk to the animals in French all day. They must all think I’m barmy!’
‘You learn very fast. It’s incredible.’
‘Well,’ Daffy shrugs modestly. ‘I haven’t had much else to do, except hide away from Skid…’ She giggles again. ‘I talk to the animals all day, and I talk to myself in French all night, trying to get it right. I dare say Skid thinks I’m a bit mad, too…Not that I care,’ she adds as an afterthought. It surprises her. She’s never not cared what a person thought of her before. ‘Honestly! I couldn’t care less!’
Jean Baptiste glances at his watch, swallows back the rest of his coffee. He’s expected at Emma’s. She’ll probably be in bed, waiting for him, and there will be a second breakfast laid out for them both on a table by the bedroom window.
Jean Baptiste has not told Emma about his friendship with Daffy; she’d only be difficult about it, he thinks. And spiteful. In truth, he has grown a little tired of Emma recently. The joys of her white muslin bed have been wearing thin – ever since she accused him, in her soft, spiteful French, of having an affair with Maude Haunt. He had denied it, of course, with some irritation, and she’d laughed her soft, spiteful laugh, apparently reassured. It occurred to him at that moment, as she reached across her large white bed and pulled him towards her naked self, that Emma Rankin was always the same; that nothing changed with her. Always soft. Always spiteful. Always delightful. She never showed him anything more – Unlike Daffy, with all her rough edges, her horrible trousers…Who seemed to reveal something more of herself every day…He glances at her now. She’s sitting there, face still tear-stained, but with eyes shining and two spots of high colour on her cheeks. She looks happy, he thinks. Hopeful. He smiles at her. ‘Tu es belle ce matin, Daffy,’ he says suddenly.
‘What?’ It makes her jump. In confusion, she catches her arm on the saucer of her coffee cup, and coffee spills down her front, all over her pistachio lap. ‘Ohhhh goodness! Oh goodness, look what I’ve done!’
Jean Baptiste just laughs. ‘Allez,’ he says, picking up his cigarettes, bending down to kiss her on either cheek. ‘A demain. I will see you tomorrow. In the morning we go to LeClerc, and in the evening you open the bar, OK? And you tell to Skid to get out – or he must start to pay you some money.’
‘Oh God,’ she says, shoulders sagging again. ‘I’m just so worried. If he sues or something. Or he tells the police about how you – you know. Lamped him one!…I don’t really like to mention money or anything. Just in case…’
‘Fine. I will talk to him.’
‘No! No you mustn’t. Jean Baptiste, I’ll deal with it. I promise. I have to. It’s my problem, and I know I have to deal with it…But just not yet.’ She smiles, takes a long, deep breath, offers a small, self-mocking laugh. ‘I don’t want to be any more feeble than I have to be,’ she says. ‘But…just let me deal with one thing at a time.’
GRAND OPENING
So the Marronnier finally opens, almost three weeks after Daffy arrives in the village. Jean Baptiste’s gentle push the previous morning turned something in Daffy’s mind, made her realise she couldn’t continue in a state of aimless suspense for ever. It lent her hope. She would, she declared to herself in a burst of courage, try to build a life for herself out here, whether she wanted one or not. She would try. And one day, with her new life, she would go to fetch her son, and she would bring him home with her, whether Timothy wanted it or not. One day…
It was the thought of James, more than anything else, which fired her into action; the thought that somehow making a success of her bar would bring her a step closer to being with him. In the twenty-four hours since Jean Baptiste suggested the reopening, she’s achieved more than she has in three weeks of living in France. She set to work immediately he left her, rolled up her pistachio trousers and cleaned like a woman possessed. She’s scrubbed the place from top to bottom (excepting Skid’s room, which she’d never go near). She’s polished the glasses, wiped down the smoky walls, scoured the veneer bar-top until it gleams. In the hypermarché she bought half a dozen brightly coloured posters, which she’s clipped into frames and hung between newly cleaned windows, all along the bar’s newly cleaned walls. She bought vases, too. And after Jean Baptiste dropped her back at the Marronnier she ventured out beyond the village with her new pair of secateurs, to fill them all with great bunches of wild flowers. The effect is not dramatic. It’s still the same worn French village bar. But it shimmers now, with colour and freshness. It has never looked so welcoming.
That evening, dressed in flip-flops, white cotton skirt and plain white T-shirt, all from the hypermarché in Bordeaux, Daffy stands proudly behind her newly cared-for bar, and waits. And waits. Jean Baptiste had promised to be there by five, to buy the first drink. But by half past he still hasn’t arrived. Neither has anyone – except Skid, still yawning from his day’s kip. Skid’s perched himself on the stool in front of her and ordered four glasses of pineau, without offering to pay for any of them.
‘Looks like your fortune-hunting knight has forgotten to turn up this evening.’
Daffy ignores him.
‘He’s probably giving one to old Emma. Probably can’t get away.’ He snorts. ‘The old girl’s insatiable. Or she was.’
Daffy ignores him.
‘…Who’s richer, do you suppose? Your husband, or Emma’s? Of course it could be you. But to the outsider…Lady Emma would seem like quite some prize. Don’t you think?’
Again, Daffy ignores him.
‘…Well. Anyway…Looks like I’m going to be your only customer,’ he says after a dull silence, during which Daffy once again straightened the row of very straight bottles behind her.
Skid watches her fussing with the bottles. He finds it inexplicably irritating. ‘They look fine,’ he snaps. ‘Forget about them, for Christ’s sake…Are you going to offer me a drink on the house, then? As it’s the opening night. I think you and I ought to celebrate.’
‘On the house?’ she snaps suddenly, and stops. She laughs, embarrassed. ‘Skid – I don’t like to be rude –’
‘Then don’t be.’
‘– But you’ve been staying here now for over a fortnight and I haven’t actually seen a penny from you yet –’
He blinks, a little surprised. ‘But you haven’t asked,’ he drawls. ‘Basic lesson in running a business, poppet. You have to present a person with the bill before you can start bitching at them for not paying it.’
‘Well – I’m going to. I’m going to. I’ve been keeping tabs of everything.’
‘Excellent,’ he smirks. ‘Give me a bill then, and I’ll be more than happy to pay it. In the meantime, I think you ought to offer me a drink on the house. Since I’m your only customer and this is your opening night.’
She hesitates. ‘Actually – Skid…I was going to say…’ She can feel her heart thumping beneath the thin white T-shirt. But he’s right. How can she run a business when she’s too frightened of her only customer to be able to ask him for money? It’s not money she wants from him anyway. What she wants is for him to leave. ‘I was wonde
ring…how long you were planning to stay here…’
‘Why?’ He stares at her. ‘Is it very inconvenient to have a guest in your hotel, Daffy?’
‘No. Of course not, Skid.’ She pretends to laugh. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Don’t be silly?’
‘I mean. I just meant – It doesn’t matter, anyway…It’s only…’ Daffy has no idea what Skid gets up to during his long absences from the hotel, but he tends only to be at the Marronnier to sleep, leaving for an unknown destination as soon as he rises, sometime after lunch, and returning to the hotel in the early hours, drunk, she assumes, from the racket he makes stumbling up the stairs to his room. Once he brought a woman back, and fucked her very noisily, so that Daffy could hear him from her room at the other end of the corridor. ‘Of course, it’s lovely having you here,’ she says hopelessly, withering beneath his cold stare. ‘I was only wondering because – Oh, God. It doesn’t really matter. I just thought…You know…Well it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. I just – sort of – hope you don’t want to stay here for ever…’
After a short silence he fishes in his jeans pocket, pulls out a measly €5 note and slaps it onto the counter. The fact is he doesn’t quite know how long he’ll be staying. If he’s waiting for anything, which he is not really any longer, then he’s probably waiting for the Haunts to come through. Somehow. He hasn’t entirely given up on getting new ID yet. But clearly he needs more ammunition. Which involves effort on his part; something he’s never had in prodigal supply. In the meantime, lovely Emma Rankin handed him a further wodge of cash only the day before yesterday, and since he’s currently staying – and drinking – at the Marronnier free of charge, he can see no obvious reason to move on.
‘Daffy,’ he says, shoving the €5 across to her. ‘If you won’t give me a drink on the house, I’m obviously going to have to buy one myself. Which is faintly tragic. Nevertheless, I’ll have a large glass of pineau, please. I want to drink to your hotel’s excellent fortune, even if nobody else in the village wants to. And also to your very good health.’