Luc had been wedded to his work. His gruelling shooting schedules, his travels, business trips, his family estate, his mother: all had demanded of him and had contributed to the diminishing of their social life and their time together. With no child to absorb her attention, Jane had turned her energies to starting up her small business, her translation work, in an attempt to build an independent existence, to keep herself occupied when Luc was absent. She had a sufficient number of friends in London. A circle of loyal girlfriends. A few from her university days, another from her time as an interpreter, a long-term chum, Lizzie, from her schooldays, who had already been in touch after reading an obituary.
Their lives … Luc’s cut short at fifty-five, Jane seven years his junior, still in her forties. What can a woman, a recently widowed woman, creeping towards fifty hope to build of her future when her husband, her only true love, has been taken?
Those same friends would be generous with their condolences now, heartbroken for her. ‘When you’re feeling up to it, we must meet for lunch.’ One or two would invite her to their country houses, their cottages in Norfolk or Dorset, for a night or two, a weekend. ‘Poor you, what shocking news. Don’t sit alone. Come and visit.’ But, in the end, she was alone. Jane Cambon, née Sanderson, startlingly, was about to face her future with no one at her side, no dreams on the horizon. Dashed, snatched from her: all her mental pictures of a present and a future that, in her imagination, had always contained Luc.
Only a sick abstracted father to anchor her to her past.
‘Jane! Come in and close that door or I’ll lock you out!’
‘Yes, Clarisse, I’m coming.’
As she stepped back inside, out of the cold night air, she thought back to Luc’s funeral, and the woman with Dan who’d looked so familiar. Was she going mad or could that possibly have been Annie? The little girl with the daisy chain on her head all grown-up? Matty’s daughter, of course, seated alongside her parents and brothers in the church. Luc had never mentioned that Matty and Claude’s girl had married or had a son. But perhaps he had never known.
13
That evening in the main house, with Luc’s mother as her sole companion, the mood was stultifying. The spacious room felt stuffy, claustrophobic, and the faded furnishings, once so elegant, were now old-fashioned, the sofas sagging, the chair legs scuffed. Two women locked together in silence, save for the creaking and settling of the old wooden beams and the tap-tap of Clarisse’s club-headed walking stick when she struggled to her feet to cross to the kitchen and replenish the ice for her drink – several hefty measures of gin – then back to the dining room. Jane did not rise to help her. She left Clarisse to get on with it.
For decades, the two women had circled one another, quietly blaming each other for their losses. Clarisse held that no girl, and certainly not one from Jane’s lowlier background, was good enough for her gifted son (‘He inherited his love of the arts from me’), while Jane had her own reasons for her unforgiving stance.
But Clarisse was a fighter. What did she care about Jane’s animosity? Even now, seated at the dining-table, no trace of emotion on her still striking features, she passed the evening playing Solitaire. Her clawed arthritic hands were lifting and sliding the cards up and down, snapping them back and forth as she mumbled or – could it be possible on such an occasion? – hummed to herself.
‘What a turnout, eh? Nothing less than my Luc deserved, of course.’
Solitaire was a fruitless pastime that irritated Jane who preferred a book. One lay alongside her on the couch but she had barely turned its cover.
‘What are you reading?’
Sometimes Clarisse’s questions were uncanny, as though she had access to Jane’s innermost thoughts.
‘Le Carré.’
‘Any good?’
‘I haven’t really started it. My mind’s not on it.’
‘What are your plans?’
‘Plans?’
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Jane. Your plans.’ Cards tossed to the table, red nails scratching mottled flesh. ‘Are you intending to stay here?’
Jane took a breath. ‘I’ll be leaving the day after tomorrow.’
‘Why don’t you stay for a bit, keep me company?’
Wary of where this might be leading, Jane got up and crossed to the mantelpiece. ‘I must go back.’ Matty had laid a fire when she cleared away the leftovers from the funeral meal. Jane reached for the box of matches and struck one. Her hand was trembling.
‘It is what Luc hoped for.’
Jane stared into the kindling flames, anger and pain igniting in equal measure within her. Beyond the windows, an explosion of zigzag lightning, followed moments later by the crash of thunder. The storm was gaining momentum and it was approaching. ‘What … what did Luc hope for?’
‘That you and I would make our peace and – who knows? – rebuild the estate, the wine business. Work alongside one another.’
Then he had hoped for too much, Jane yelled inside herself. She did not believe Luc had envisaged any such future. He had certainly never hinted at such a cosy scenario. No, she would not stay. ‘There are matters I want to discuss with you,’ he had said on more than one occasion, refusing to elucidate.
‘Which matters?’
‘I prefer they wait till we meet,’ had been his response. ‘We do need to talk.’
‘Let’s talk over Christmas.’
He could not have been referring to a working alliance between Jane and her mother-in-law. He would have known, guessed at her refusal.
‘It’s not possible for me to stay, Clarisse.’
‘I think you’ll find that there’s more here for you than you’re aware of. If you stop running away.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You will need to find it out for yourself.’
The anger was gaining heat. ‘Another of your cryptic games?’
‘You are cold, Jane, and heartless.’
‘Heartless? Last year, I was hopeless and irresponsible. I was incapable of any constructive act, according to you, and, most importantly, I was not good enough for your son. I was the one who single-handedly destroyed your vintage, remember? And now you suggest we run the estate alongside one another, like a pair of old pals. Widows united.’
Clarisse leaned forward, pressing a black-lace bosom growing round with age against the card table, and yanked a packet of Camels towards her. She drew out a cigarette and lit it, dragging on it hard. ‘Well, Jane, you are no stranger to acts of destruction, you surely must admit that.’
‘Go to Hell, Clarisse.’
‘We are both there, my dear.’
‘I’m going up to my room. It’s been a long day. Would you like me to drive you back to the cottage or are you intending to stay in one of the spare rooms tonight?’
‘This was Luc’s home, Jane. I offered it to him, and that included you. Mine is down the lane and I have my own transport.’
‘Well, then, if you don’t mind, I’ll say goodnight.’
Jane lay on the cotton coverlet on their double bed, staring at the static fan on the ceiling, tears burning her cheeks. Anger and pain swirled within her. Shoes cast off, stockinged feet, still clad in her black, she was listening to the storm. The wind howled and hissed while the rain stalked and beat against the house. Branches snapped, thudding earthwards, as the gale, the thunder and lightning, gained momentum and whipped beyond the walls, illuminating the room, then thrusting it into darkness. A part of her would have welcomed a brief spell here surrounded by countryside, to quell her emotions. A sojourn of a week or two during which she could remain close to Luc. She wasn’t ready to let him go, wasn’t capable of it. And the fact that he would be here for ever, far from her, accentuated her loss. Clarisse had won on that score. ‘My Luc’. She had her son for ever at her side. To be close to him, Jane must stay. But her desire to be shot of the memories, the past, the guilt, to begin anew, a life without Luc’s mother, the ghosts of his family, was an e
qually strong pull. She felt the need for a clean slate, even if the decision to move on, to start again elsewhere, contravened Luc’s expectations, his instructions from beyond the grave. Plans he had purportedly discussed with his mother, but never with Jane, his wife.
‘Give me a sign,’ she whispered to him now.
It was after nine the following morning when Jane went downstairs. Nobody was about. Matty had laid the table in the dining room for one and lit the fire. A heated pot of coffee awaited her on the sideboard. She helped herself to scrambled eggs and toast, and chewed her way through the lukewarm food in a mechanical fashion. When had she last eaten? Unable to swallow a morsel, she had played with a fillet of fish at the funeral gathering the previous day. Beyond the rattling windows, the wind was still busy. Rain skittered down the panes. Silence within, save for the long-case clock ticking in the hall and the rain buffeting the glass. The storm had not yet abated, though it was lessening.
From where she sat, alone at the highly polished mahogany dining-table, she could log the damage: lifeless branches and terracotta shards from fallen flowerpots strewn across the dead-of-winter lawn. Claude would have his work cut out clearing up the detritus. Later in the morning, when the thundery weather had passed, if it passed, she would walk up to the village, to Luc. When she returned, she would offer to give Claude a hand outside. Activity to keep herself occupied until it was time for her departure. Back to an empty home.
At close to midday, thankful to be out of doors, to breathe the cool damp air, she stumbled down the long, curving driveway, breasting the force of the wind, hopping over rivulets of rain, runnels through spongy banks of fallen pine needles. Two rows of giant Cedars of Lebanon, interspersed with straight-boled Corsican pines, flanked her path. Their massive arms reached out as though in song. Drips were falling from their rain-soaked branches. They pounded her shoulders, seeped into her hair and lashes: Nature’s tears mourning her loss.
Beyond the iron gates, she swung right onto the route nationale. Walnut loved this walk, skirting the lower boundaries of Les Cigales, pausing constantly to sniff and wee at the roots of tree trunks. Where was he? She missed him so. Had he been at Luc’s side during those three unexplained hours? Had he witnessed Luc’s death, tried to save his master? A heroic act sometimes seen in films. Had he fled from the scene of the accident? If he had died with Luc, wouldn’t Roussel’s team have found traces of him?
The questions never left her alone.
Twenty minutes later, she had entered deep countryside, la France profonde, with its long, straight avenue of plane trees. At the second crossroads, she turned right and began to hike the steep gradient towards Malaz. The sharp cry of birds overhead, shifting and fluttering in the boughs of pine and plane trees, seemed to call a warning. Beyond Malaz, the serpentine ascent would be punctuated by stone villages and secret hilltop towns, all the way into the lower Alps, but she was stopping in Malaz. Puffed from the climb, she paused to catch her breath and to enjoy the distant sea views from the outskirts of the village.
Malaz was a community of some six hundred inhabitants. In summer the numbers swelled to upwards of two thousand. Germans, Dutch, Nords and British descended, arriving with carloads of children and instant coffee to occupy the empty homes rented for extortionate sums as holiday lets. In Malaz, properties hugged tightly up against one another in streets that were narrow and tortuous to protect against the mid-year’s scorching heat.
But this was late January. The land was drenched and unsettled after the overnight tempest. Branches broken, wind-sweep in the gutters, water streaming southwards, puddles swelling in the sinking uneven pavements or cobbles along root-torn ruelles where every façade was painted a different shade of ochre. Mud. Little traffic. No tourists. The sharp, clean air reeked of rotting leaves, of woodsmoke from chimneys. Multi-generational Maralpin families snug in front of open fires and bowls of bubbling pot au feu. Secure in their togetherness, relieved of the ‘foreigner’ for several months to come. She envied them their kinship, their cosy intimacy. She had rarely felt more battered, more lost at sea.
Leaves were falling around Jane’s marching feet, the few that had remained on the deciduous trees. She thrust her gloved hands deep into her pockets and hiked on, wondering whether she would ever feel warm again.
The familiarity of Malaz, which was closed for lunch when she reached its cobbled maze, calmed and embraced her. Past happinesses. Today, quartets of men huddled in the only open café playing cards. Black-eyed Arabs, smoking, cradling brightly coloured soft drinks, watched her through the windows, their gaze impenetrable.
Almost all her memories of moments spent here included Luc, even from her very distant past in the early seventies, the first of her childhood summers in this long-ago Gallo-Roman land with Peter, her father. Over on the ferry from Dover together, on an exploratory trip before his first interview at Les Cigales, her father had rented rooms for the pair of them in an auberge in Malaz. Les Amis du Château had been the name of the boarding house …
14
Early July 1971
Jane and her father dropped their battered cases on the bed.
‘Our lucky day, eh, Janey? Only two single rooms left and we’ve nabbed them.’ Father and daughter had walked in off the street, hot and flustered, desperate for a place to stay, and had been given adjoining rooms by one of the middle-aged women who owned the hostelry. ‘Les Amis du Château. You know what that means?’
Jane shook her head.
‘Friends of the Castle. That’ll be us soon, if all goes according to plan. The French call all their big houses castles.’
‘Fingers crossed, Dad.’
‘We’ll move your things into your room later, after our meeting, all right? We’ve no time to unpack now.’ Peter winked and flung off his crumpled shirt, hastily throwing on a paisley one, ironed and neatly folded by his wife, Vivienne, before they’d left Kent. They hurtled back down the stairs without even washing their hands, as Jane’s mother would have insisted they do. How dizzy with happiness Jane felt. She was six years old, seven in October, and here she was in a foreign country with her dad doing just as they pleased. It was daft that her mum felt seasick on boats. She was missing all the fun.
Peter dropped the key at Reception and requested confirmation of his directions to Les Cigales while Jane waited outside in the sunshine.
‘On holiday?’ asked one of the two female proprietors, a bulky salmon-lipped woman.
‘Les Cigales? Why would you want to be going there?’ interrupted the other.
Peter swiftly outlined the reason for his presence in the neighbourhood.
The women shook their heads. One fingered a silver cross hanging on a chain around her neck. ‘Most of us from over this way keep our distance from that place. They’re an ungodly pair, those two.’
‘Fancy that.’ Peter was refolding his map, biting back his amusement.
‘Sisters-in-law they are, but we’ve heard say they’re “witches”.’
‘Witches? Good Lord! I’d better watch my step.’
‘They settled here from Algeria after the war, flashing their money. Colonials. Nothing good ever came from that lot.’
‘There’s a boy too, no father.’
‘Younger one claims she’s widowed.’
‘A widow in her mid-thirties, rather unlikely, I’d say. And the other, the sister-in-law, she’s a spinster.’
The women shook their heads gravely as though nothing was to be done about such blatant immorality.
Peter silently dismissed the tittle-tattle. ‘We’ll see you later.’ He scooted outside to his daughter in the blinding heat, and they climbed into his red Ford Cortina shooting brake. He was smiling to himself, pondering the remarks of the old biddies. Witches! Who talks of witches in 1971?
The two females he was about to meet were potential employers. That was all that mattered to him. This was a desperately sought-after opportunity for the Sandersons, a chance for Peter to secure employme
nt from abroad, to learn a new trade and escape the doldrums of Edward Heath’s Britain and the redundancy he had been forced to take more than a year earlier.
‘On the dole, but resilient’ was how he described himself, but his jaunty exterior belied his concerns and he was worn down, depressed by his financial struggles.
Back on the road, the Cortina twisted and turned, descending the country lanes towards the coast. They were running late. Jane was attempting to decipher the directions from the handwritten letter Peter had received a month earlier.
‘Left here, now sharp right. Head down the steep hill, it says. Then we should be on the route nationale and the entrance is directly off that. Set back, its says.’
‘You’re a good little reader.’ Peter praised her as they slowed, searching for the gates to the vineyard estate, still hoping to be punctual for his first appointment with the proprietors and wine producers, Madame and Madame Cambon. ‘If I get this job, you can travel with me every holiday and learn a bit of French. It’ll give you a head start at school.’
‘Here it is! Look, Les Cigales,’ cried Jane, triumphantly.
A pair of imposing iron gates stood open. Peter swung left, and they made a winding ascent up a driveway lined with tall trees that seemed to go on for ever. The air was filled with heavenly scents from unrecognizable climbers in full bloom. A hot silence embraced them.
‘Let’s hope I get the job …’ Peter had spoken under his breath as he switched off the engine. In spite of his earlier haste, he stayed put, drumming on the steering-wheel.
The Forgotten Summer Page 12