Love in a Warm Climate

by Helena Frith-Powell

  Agnès shakes her head and says, “It won’t last”, while wiping beads of sweat from her face.

  “Are you well?” I try again, grinning inanely. My cheek muscles are beginning to hurt. I can hear the bell in the small chapel ringing. This is one of the children’s favourite pastimes; ringing the bell, calling the faithful (or more like unfaithful in our case) to prayer.

  “Oh Madame, how can a person be well at my age and in this country?” she laments in her own rather strange mixture of French and English and possibly a third language as yet totally unknown to man. “I have arthritis, and a bad knee and a sore shoulder. You know Madame,” she leans closer to me conspiratorially: “I am over sixty. A person shouldn’t have to work at my age, but I need the money, Pierre’s pension is terrible even if his life was ruined by the war with Algeria. You give your life for your country and what do you get back?”

  She says all this extremely slowly to be sure I understand, even the English bits, then makes a zero shape with her hand and spits out: “Rien, rien du tout.”

  I try to nod understandingly resisting the urgent desire to wipe what I am sure is a little of Agnès’s saliva from my cheek.

  “And there’s no point in declaring what you earn,” she tells me. “You may as well not work; they just come and take it away.”

  The French talk a lot about ‘them’, an omnipotent, malevolent force with the capacity to ruin your life within seconds, rather like the Germans during the war. There is a saying here, Pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés: to be happy you need to be hidden. How anything can hide with her hair colour is beyond me, but maybe that’s why Agnès is always so miserable. Anyway, she can’t be more miserable than I am right now. Maybe I could shut her up by starting to cry again and explaining what’s happened. But of course I don’t. I behave in a very English way and apologise.

  “Je suis désolée, Agnès,” I say, wishing she would go away. Then she starts to tell me about the cleaning products I should be buying. I explain with the help of a pen and a piece of paper upon which I write the words shopping list that it would be easier if she would write down what she needs and then I can be sure to get it next time I go to Carrefour, the nearest supermarket.

  “Non, non, Madame Weeeeeed.” Agnès throws up her arms in despair, sending the broom flying (she refuses to use the Hoover). “C’est trop cher. Intermarché à Bédarieux, c’est beaucoup mieux.”

  I nod and agree and wonder how I ended up with the world’s bossiest and grumpiest cleaning lady. Normally I am more sympathetic, but today I am all out of sympathy.

  Eventually I get away and try to muster the energy to think of what to cook for the children for dinner. I still can’t face eating, I feel on the verge of either crying or throwing up all the time. My mind is buzzing with images of Nick and Cécile, although of course I’ve no idea what she looks like. I try to work out exactly when it began. What did they talk about? Are they together now? What are they doing? All these questions are burning holes in my brain.

  Dinner is about as relaxing as sitting in a traffic jam knowing you’re going to miss your flight to the dream holiday you’ve been saving up for for ten years. The children behave as badly as is possible. They argue with each other about everything; from where to sit to who lays the table to who can stroke Daisy the cat. They are so busy trying to kill each other that they hardly eat my lovingly prepared macaroni cheese with ham.

  I wonder if they’ve picked up on my mood and are unsettled in some way. But then I remember that they often behave this badly. Life in London for Nick must be blissfully quiet in comparison.

  “Mummy, Emily’s a nulatic.” Charlotte comes running into the kitchen from the bathroom where I have sent them all to get ready for bed while I wash up. “She’s put water everywhere.”

  “A lunatic,” I correct her.

  “Come on,” she says impatiently. I walk behind her, already dreading the mess I am going to be faced with as soon as I get into the bathroom. And now that Nick has gone there’s only me here to deal with it.

  Emily is playing slides in the bath, which consists of standing up at one end and hurling herself towards the other. Edward is squealing with delight as she whizzes past him, but is wisely not trying it himself. Charlotte is right: the girl is a nulatic.

  “Emily, stop,” I command. This has no effect whatsoever. Emily whizzes down again, splashing water everywhere. Edward giggles wildly and starts doing the same thing. Charlotte stands next to me commanding that they “listen to mummy.”

  My mother’s child-rearing theory is this: as long as they’re not causing themselves or anyone else harm, let them be. I survey the situation. They are not causing anyone or anything harm (except maybe the bathroom), but frankly, if I’m going to cope with this single mother lark, I’m going to have to take control. My mother’s theory is all very well with only one daughter, but when you have three children, and a nulatic among them, you need to be stricter.

  “Emily and Edward, STOP IT NOW,” I yell. Still no reaction. What the hell do I do, short of grabbing them and hurling them out of the bath? Drastic measures are required. I focus on the shower, the one static thing among the water and the flying children. I bend my right leg and place my foot on my left inside thigh, then lift my arms over my head and breathe. A perfect tree pose. Sarah would be proud of me. Emily immediately stops.

  “What are you doing mummy? You look strange.”

  “Not as strange as you will look with even less teeth when you do yourself in sliding around the bath,” I say, staring straight ahead of me. “Now both of you get out and let’s get into our pyjamas.”

  Emily and Edward leave the bath slowly, watching me in total silence as they grab a towel each from the towel rail. Slowly I put my right leg down.

  “That’s better,” I say, very pleased with my new Zen childcare method. I might even write a book about it – once I’ve mastered another yoga pose, that is. “Charlotte, you choose the book tonight.”

  After the book, they start acting up again. “Go to bed,” I yell at them. Ms Zen yogi has retreated to her ashram. “Just go to bed, it’s enough now.” I tell myself to breathe deeply, calmly, remind myself that I am going to have to get used to dealing with them on my own. But why do they have to be so infuriating about going to bed? It’s not like they’ve never done it before. They know it’s bedtime. They know they have school in the morning. But they come up with a hundred reasons to do anything but turning in, from not having the right teddy to needing a pee to not being tired.

  “I don’t care if you’re not tired,” I tell Edward. “Just lie down and close your eyes.”

  “I can’t,” he says.

  “Try,” I say.

  “I tried,” he says.

  “Count sheep,” I tell him.

  “Where?” he asks, sitting up and looking around the room.

  “No, in your head, pretend to count sheep in a field and then you’ll go to sleep,” I explain.

  “That’s just silly,” he replies. He has a point.

  Eventually I leave him with my ipod on listening to Take That, which seems to work better than the sheep. The girls finally promise to go to sleep if they can cycle to school in the morning. I listen at their door. Silence. That could just be a bluff, but by now I’m too exhausted to care.

  I take the phone, go upstairs to our bedroom and sit on the bed. It has started to rain. I can hear it pelting down. When the wind catches it, it crashes against the French windows in my room.

  The phone in my hand rings, making me drop it. What if it’s Nick? The way I’m feeling tonight, I might just ask him to come home. The thought of him coming home makes me cry again.

  The phone rings on. I look at the caller display. It is Nick. I suppose to speak to the kids again to see how school went.

  I leave it and collapse on the bed in a heap. I feel like I’m never going to be able to stop crying. My whole body convulses with pain and anger and desperation. If only something could make th
is go away. I just can’t stand it. My whole life is falling apart and I have no one to turn to.

  Daisy joins me on the bed and starts to purr. She has a calming effect on me and I am finally able to breathe and control my sobbing. The phone rings again. But it isn’t Nick, this time – it’s my mother.

  “Hello darling, how are you?” she asks.

  I start crying as soon as I hear her voice. By the time I am able to tell her that Nick has left, she is almost hysterical, thinking one of the children has had a dreadful accident.

  “Oh, thank God,” she says.

  “Thank God?” I wail. “My husband is having an affair and that’s your reaction?”

  “Well it’s not as if anyone has died,” she responds. “When did you last have sex?”

  “Mother!” Her question shocks me so much I stop bawling.

  “Oh don’t be such a prude, Sophie. When?”

  I can’t remember. Reluctantly I tell her so.

  “Well there’s your answer,” she says. “What man is going to hang around with a frigid wife? You girls are all the same nowadays, as soon as you’ve had your children you think that’s the end of it. It’s a recipe for disaster.”

  Why is everyone around me so obsessed with sex?

  “So now it’s my fault the bastard has walked out on us?”

  “Not entirely darling, but you have to understand that sex is crucial to men, they can’t live without it. And obviously this other woman is providing it a lot more often than ‘I can’t remember.’ I’ll come and see you soon darling, don’t worry, everything will be fine. He’ll come back, he loves the children. And the house. Are you going to stay? What are you going to do?”

  “I will probably sell it, but don’t come out, I can cope, thanks anyway.” The last thing I need is my mother pitching up telling me I should have more sex and trying to cook. “I’ll be fine. Let’s talk over the weekend.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay, darling? Shall I come out and help you?”

  “No, I’m fine thanks, really.”

  “Be brave, something will turn up.”

  We say goodbye and I lie back on the bed.

  I can’t stand it any longer. Why is it up to me to tell the children and deal with everything? I suppose he has tried to call, but still, he’s the bastard who caused all this trouble. I hate him for it, I hate him for turning my world upside down, for ruining my children’s happy childhood, for making me feel like a pile of worthless shit. I have to talk to him though. We need to make some decisions.

  My hand is shaking as I lift the phone to my ear. I feel almost sick with fear. Will some giggling woman answer the phone? It goes straight on to his answer machine. I hear his voice and I feel a pang of longing. What’s he doing, I wonder. Who is he with? Cécile and her self-waxing legs, I suppose. I hang up without leaving a message and lie back on the bed, feeling horribly lonely.

  The rain must have stopped. In the distance I can hear Frank and Lampard crowing at each other. For the first time ever I wish they’d shut up. I reach for my lavender-scented eye bag. My brain is still whirring and I can’t sleep.

  I think about our life in France so far. We’ve only just started to really settle in, to find out all the lovely things there are to do around here. The first week we arrived we drove down to a small town on the coast. We parked next to a lighthouse and went for a long walk along the beach. Nick and Edward ran ahead, passing a rugby ball to each other, while the girls made sandcastles. Emily must have done a hundred cartwheels. I even managed a couple of handstands – something I haven’t done for years. It was windy but the sun was warm and Emily went in the sea up to her knees.

  “Not a bad life, eh?” Nick said, running past me with Edward. Now I wonder if he meant that or if he was longing to be with someone else. I just don’t believe he is only having an affair for the sex. How come it has lasted so many months if that were the case? And he wouldn’t have risked everything just for that; he’s not that base, or that sex-crazed. Or is he?

  I lie awake for hours thinking about our last year together, looking for signs of exactly when Nick went off me or lied to me to be with her. I wonder if I’ll ever sleep again.

  I sense the sun begin to rise from behind my lavender-scented bean-bag and then I doze off. The next thing I know it is well after seven o’clock and my husband’s mistress is on the phone.

  Rule 7

  Know your enemy

  The French Art of Having Affairs

  “Hello, this is Cécile,” she says in an infuriatingly sexy French accent. “Nick’s…” There is a pause as she searches for the right word. “Friend.”

  I almost fall out of bed. For a moment I think I must be dreaming. I couldn’t have been more amazed if it had been Brad Pitt on my mobile phone telling me he’s dumped Angelina and their mini-crèche and wants to run away with me to Guatemala. What on earth is she doing calling me? Does she want her bra back?

  “Sorry to trouble you, but I thought you should know that Nick has been in an accident.”

  “What?” I sit bolt upright in bed. What’s happened to him? When I wished death and destruction on him for cheating on me, I didn’t actually mean it. I still love him; he’s still the father of my children.

  “He’s okay,” she says quickly. “He’ll be fine.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  There’s a moment’s silence.

  “He had a bad reaction to something he ate and passed out cold,” she says. “I’m in the hospital now. He hasn’t come round yet, but they say his condition is stable. I’ll call you as soon as I have any more news. I just wanted to let you know.”

  “Thank you,” I say. But actually, what the hell do I have to thank her for? “To be honest, I’m not feeling terribly sympathetic, as you can imagine. But I guess I should tell the children their father is ill.”

  Cécile doesn’t speak.

  I clear my throat. “Yes, our children,” I go on. “Nick and I have three children. Two lovely twin girls aged seven, Emily and Charlotte, and a little blond boy called Edward, aged five. Just in case he forgot to mention them to you. Or maybe he was so wrapped up in whatever it is you two do that he forgot he is a father of three.”

  “I did know,” she says quietly. Then it sounds like she’s sobbing. Good, I think: let her do the crying for a change.

  “You say he had a reaction to something he ate?” I ask calmly. “But Nick’s not allergic to anything as far as I know. What was it?”

  “Viiiaaggrraaaa,” weeps Cécile.

  Okay, so now I do want him dead.

  Rule 8

  Falling in love (or even lust) keeps you young

  The French Art of Having Affairs

  Sarah arrives the next afternoon in a taxi from the airport. She has our university friend Lucy with her. I start crying as soon as I see them both. Partly because I am so touched that they both made the effort, but mainly because I feel so terribly sorry for myself, for the stupid cuckolded woman they have come to console. How did I get into this state?

  So Nick’s mistress and I had a bit of a chat. She said she would keep me posted on his progress and even tried to apologise for running off with him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t plan for this to happen.”

  “You didn’t plan to run off with my husband, or to put your bra in my bag?” I asked her.

  “Neither, I mean, well, the bra was an honest mistake. It was in his bag and I didn’t take it out.”

  So just because she didn’t actually plot the whole thing from beginning to end she exonerates herself from blame. Typical scheming French woman.

  “Well, we all know the effect just leaving it had,” I say. “And you can’t pretend it’s not what you wanted.” Then I said goodbye. I figured there wasn’t much more to say. I certainly wasn’t going to give her my blessing.

  The children run out to greet Sarah and Lucy. We take the bags into the house.

  “Daddy’s living in London,” Emi
ly informs them. I have told them that Daddy is on a big work project and we’re going to take care of everything here until he gets back.

  “We’re in charge of everything,” adds Charlotte as we walk outside again, sweeping her arm across the landscape, the vineyards and the outbuildings.

  “Aren’t you clever?” says Lucy hugging them all. “And what is Mummy’s job?”

  “She does the washing and the cooking,” says Edward.

  “Lucky her,” says Sarah. “Will you show us around?”

  Sarah takes my hand and squeezes it. The children run ahead of us explaining what everything is. Frank and Lampard barely look up from last night’s rice as we walk past.

  “That’s Frank and Lampard,” explains Edward. “Like the Chelsea player.”

  “Did Daddy choose those names?” asks Lucy laughing.

  “Yes,” I say, adding quietly, “I was thinking of renaming them Traitorous and Bastard but thought that might be a bit unfair on the poor creatures.”

  Sarah looks at me. “Soph, you just can’t do bitterness, it’s not you.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You rise above it,” she replies.

  “Yes, like a peacock,” adds Lucy.

  “Can they even fly?” I ask, laughing.

  “Who cares?” answers Lucy. “They look good.”

  We walk on towards the cave. It is a chilly January day but according to Lucy it’s much brighter and warmer than the one they left behind in London.

  “How is our school?” Emily asks her. “Have you seen any of our friends? What about our house?”

  “I don’t know, darling,” she replies. “I haven’t been there. Do you miss it?”

  Emily thinks for a moment and adjusts her cat’s ears. “Well I do, but I like it here much better. I like our big house and garden and it’s usually sunny.”