The Forgotten Summer

by Carol Drinkwater

  Jane had flung her father’s hands off her. ‘Get away from me. I hate you, hate you!’ she had screamed, recoiling, slamming the door, thundering down the stairs, shrieking, yelling, feet pounding to her own room where she had locked herself in, fighting her desire to throw up, shutting out the memory of the disgusting vision of her naked father buried in the creamy thighs of Clarisse.

  Some sort of a scene ensued overhead. A chaos of footsteps and heated voices, then a bumping on the stairs, followed by a thud, a furious wail of pain and a string of expletives.

  Clarisse had fallen down the stairs and, it later turned out, broken her ankle.

  Jane had not emerged from her room. She had stayed in the dark on the floor by her bed, stiff-backed, cross-legged, listening to the commotion, with her arms wrapped around herself, weeping and howling, her heart breaking.

  Her heart was breaking for the absence of Luc, who had gone away when she needed him more than ever, but most of all she was crying for the loss of her father. A part of her life was over for ever; it would never be the same again. Her father as idol had been toppled.

  Early the following morning, while the doctor was ministering to Clarisse, Jane and her father had slung their belongings into the car and departed. No one had appeared to see them on their way. As Luc was in Paris, Jane was never given the opportunity to say goodbye to him.

  That bleak autumn back in England, Jane had been wretchedly miserable. During those ensuing cold winter months, she watched her father take on another persona, become a different man. He was never less than kind to her, his only daughter, his only child, but he grew curt and short-tempered in the home, as though he were carrying a heavy burden. Jane’s mother, who knew ‘the truth’ by then because Jane had forced it upon her, had pined silently. Jane, angry, brokenhearted, churning with teenage angst and irrational emotions, had blamed her mother, blamed her for staying at home, and had spat out her vision of the scene in gory detail, fact by fact.

  As the days grew shorter and darker, Vivienne withdrew, crawling further into a silent world of her own. Until, eventually, she was diagnosed. From then on, she disappeared beyond reach. She had inhabited a shrivelled, decreasing universe where only the cancer was alive within her and nothing, no one, could draw her back, not even Jane or Peter.

  15

  The present

  The Malaz church bells were striking three as Jane approached the lychgate. She stepped through onto the paving stones and almost lost her footing. The path was brown with rotting leaves and slippery from the torrential downpour. Luc’s grave was to the left at the furthest extreme of the cemetery, dipping beyond the hill’s summit.

  When Jane reached the hole she found that, not unexpectedly, it had been filled in. It was a hump of sodden soil. Just that. It smelt peaty. She pulled off her gloves, tossed them to the ground and touched the red-brown earth, caressing it. There were small stones mixed in with the recently created mound, but no grass. It looked bald compared to the others around it, bald and swollen. Directly beside Luc’s plot was his aunt’s with its engraved headstone: ‘In loving memory of Isabelle Cambon. Born in Algeria, died in France.’

  Such spare language to sum up a life. Jane would want more for Luc. There was nothing yet, of course, no indication of the presence of the rare and gifted soul who had been laid so recently to rest. She would be obliged to discuss the choice of the stone and wording with Clarisse.

  Luc’s identity lay in the messages that accompanied the drenched bouquets and wreaths. Jane slipped off her raincoat and laid it out on the soft sodden grass, then spread herself on it beside her husband. Except that she wasn’t beside him. If she could have lifted up the layers of earth, like bedding, and crawled beneath them to lie close at his side she would have done so. The earth was keeping them apart.

  ‘Will I ever be able to reach you, to touch you again?’ she whispered.

  The air about her was fragrant with the smoke of fires. ‘Can you smell it too?’ she asked him. She wanted to talk to him, would give the world to. But there was just silence, save for birds overhead. She reached for several of the notes and cards.

  ‘Shall I read them to you, Luc?’ The ink on many had been smudged during the overnight storm and had left flowers destroyed and several messages partially illegible. ‘Here, what does this one say? Maybe you can understand it better than I.’ She deciphered what she could but only a few meant anything to her until she found one that sent a wave of alarm through her, like an electric shock. It was attached to a bouquet of cream roses browning at the tips of the tight, unopened, unspoiled petals. She stared at the signature, handwritten in black ink, and re-read it. ‘Notre cher Luc, nos vies sans toi ne seront plus jamais les mêmes. Nous t’aimerons toujours. A. P. x’

  Our lives without you will never be the same again. We will always love you.

  ‘A. P.’ or ‘A’ and ‘P’? ‘Our lives …’ so two mourning friends.

  ‘Did you ever talk to me of A and P, Luc? A. P. I don’t remember them.’

  Had she been introduced to anyone the day before with those initials? There had been so many, such a crowd of faces, such an onslaught of sympathy. She couldn’t recall. Why, of all the condolence cards laid out sopping here, did this one send an arrow of dread through her heart?

  A and P?

  Jane sat up, shivering without her coat, muddied fingers unconsciously twisting her wedding ring back and forth. More than anything, she longed to reach out and take Luc’s hand. To lift it up and hold it between hers, smell his warm flesh, kiss his fingertips as she had so often done during his life when he was sleeping and she had lain awake, watching him. ‘I can’t recall you ever speaking to me of anyone who fits “A” and “P”. Both of whom loved you so deeply.’

  The sun was nudging through, sliding the clouds apart, slipping free. It was strong and clear after the wash of rain. She felt a tinge of warmth drift across her face. Was it Luc’s hand stroking her, buoying her, easing her knot of pain, reassuring her that he was still at her side, that she had nothing to fear?

  Possibly ‘A. P.’ was shorthand for a more general group? ‘Our’ as in a group of friends. Clarisse was Luc’s sole remaining relative, as far as Jane was aware. Unless there were living relations in Algeria. ‘A’ and ‘P’. Might they have been colleagues, work associates, fellow film-makers who admired his oeuvre and his courage? Who loved him to the extent that their lives would never be the same again?

  ‘As my life will never be the same again, Luc. Why, why did you have to go?’

  Might Clarisse be able to identify ‘A’ and ‘P’ or would she use Jane’s ignorance as a point against her, underscoring her vulnerability? No, she would not ask Clarisse. She tucked the card back among the withering flowers and then, as an afterthought, slipped it into her pocket. She would find their identities for herself.

  16

  London, three weeks later

  Jane stared at herself, making a face – tongue out, sunken blue eyes wide – in the mirror in the Ladies at the Wolseley restaurant on Piccadilly. She was paper-thin, pale as milk. A stem, barely a flower. An ambulance, snarled up in the West End traffic beyond the window, was flashing its impatience, its periwinkle light pulsing. It gave her appearance a ghostly hue. She sighed and fussed at the collar of her light-green sweater, delaying her return to the table. She would rather not go through with this meeting, but it couldn’t be avoided. Robert Piper had telephoned her the day before, insisting they have lunch, that it couldn’t wait another moment. His tone had been short-tempered because she’d been avoiding him, not returning his calls.

  She had seen hardly a soul since her return to London, almost three weeks earlier, other than Lizzie, her friend from schooldays: she had taken the train from the south coast to buy Jane tea at Blakes in South Kensington. Lizzie, widow and twice divorcee, an artist of moderate talent who dressed like a hippie from the late sixties, was employed by Hastings Borough Council in the Arts and Museums Department. Jane had done
her best to wriggle politely out of the invitation but Lizzie being Lizzie had coerced her and they had spent most of the afternoon struggling through small-talk, sipping endless cups of tea, until Lizzie had started to harry Jane about beginning anew. ‘Move to the coast. There’s quite a lively dating scene growing up around our way. I’ve met someone …’

  Jane felt fragile, spaced out, and so alone in her echoing home, wandering like a phantom from room to room in search of Luc. She was only able to function, as far as she was functioning at all, in isolation, in hibernation, talking to him, trying to resurrect him, rarely answering the phone, working furiously through the black hours of insomnia translating a series of guide books. When she slept, it was on his side of the mattress. She drank her coffee from his favourite mug and she wrapped herself in his sweaters.

  It was the middle of February, close to two months since Luc’s death. The initial shock of his passing, the explosion in the gut, had settled into a pain that was seeping deep, running through her arteries, always on the lookout for new corners to insinuate itself. Grief was closing her down, paralysing her. Coming out to meet Robert today, as much as she bucked against it, was a step towards pulling herself together and into the daily stream of life.

  She took a deep breath and tracked unsteadily to the table where Robert was seated, drinking his way through a bottle of wine. He looked her over, staring into her face, and frowned.

  ‘I won’t mince words with you, Jane,’ he announced, once they had ordered and the main courses had been served. ‘This is the last conversation I want to be having with my friend’s widow, but it has to be broached.’

  ‘What is it, Robert?’

  ‘There’s no easy way to break this to you, Jane.’

  Her eyes were on his face, her pulse racing. She couldn’t handle more bad news. ‘Oh, Robert, please, just say whatever it is and get it over with.’

  ‘Luc has left his affairs in a lamentable state.’

  ‘Affairs?’

  ‘Finances.’

  Jane was taken aback. Luc had been exacting in the accounts he kept. It was she, Jane, who was more extravagant. No, not extravagant, but sloppier about keeping receipts, recording figures. Neither of them had ever been frivolous with money and Luc had earned decently from his films. Hadn’t he? In fact, she didn’t really know. All his income went through his film company, most reinvested in the next project. They didn’t have a house kitty, they shared whatever was available at the time. If they went out for dinner, either might pay, but they rarely ate in expensive restaurants. Luc usually bought the tickets when they went to the cinema or a club because some of those receipts he could claim against his tax. Her own income was modest. She had a little saved for holidays and clothes, a deposit account with close to ten thousand pounds in it, but not much else. Luc paid the mortage on their flat.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘He has left debts that total over two hundred thousand sterling. On top of which your mortgage payments have not been met for over six months and there is a high rate of interest accruing on them.’

  Jane stared in disbelief at the man opposite her.

  ‘You’ll need to make some rather unpalatable decisions and then act fast.’

  ‘But what about his life-insurance policy? Won’t that cover the worst of it? Our mortgage, for instance, that’ll be cleared, surely.’

  ‘There is no policy. Please, Jane, before you start jumping up and down, let me explain.’

  Jane felt her heart pound. Her mouth was dry and metallic.

  Robert pressed his fingers together. A gesture that brought to mind a childhood rhyme to do with churches and steeples. Jane couldn’t recall it now. Her forehead was breaking out in a sweat. She felt sticky and impatient. She had no reason to doubt Robert. She trusted him. He had been more than Luc’s lawyer. The pair had been close friends since their university days in Paris where Robert had been studying French and European droits, specializing in company and commercial law at the Panthéon-Sorbonne.

  ‘There is a policy, Robert. I’m – I’m sure of it.’

  ‘By the time Luc decided to confide in me about his situation he had already made the decision to cash in his life insurance. I strongly advised him against it. He refused to listen. The funds were sunk into his debts, but they made little real impact. The fact is he was weeks away from bankruptcy.’

  Jane sat in the crowded restaurant opposite Robert, staring at her untouched fish: sea bass in a champagne sauce. It had the appeal of custard poured over a bed of cotton wool. Her head was spinning. ‘Are you sure?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I had no idea … not a clue … He never talked about it, but you know Luc … knew Luc. He was never one to tell the world … Jesus.’

  ‘I suspected you weren’t aware of what was going on.’

  ‘What do you advise?’

  ‘He remortgaged your London home to release cash but, as I said, the payments are gravely in arrears. The mortgage company has written twice, warning of an impending repossession order.’

  ‘But his death?’ Jane felt a treacherous lump rise into her throat. She took a sip from the untouched glass of white wine on the table in front of her. ‘Luc’s death surely means that the flat is covered by the mortgage insurance.’

  ‘Alas, there was no mortgage protection plan in place.’

  She was drowning, sinking beneath the reverberating buzz of conversation, corks being drawn, the clatter of crockery all about her, and there was no seabed. Not only had she lost her beloved husband, it was now looking as though she was about to lose everything they had built together.

  ‘What should I do?’

  ‘I’ll speak to the mortgage company and beg a little time. Distraught widow and all that.’

  Jane winced at this description of herself.

  ‘I suggest you get the flat on the market and sold as soon as you can. Accept any decent offer. Don’t wait, hoping for better. If you do, it will cost you more in the long run. Depending on the usual delays and unforeseen expenses, the sale, once the debts have been cleared, should still leave you with a modest lump sum.’

  ‘A modest lump sum. What does that add up to?’

  ‘Sufficient for a small studio or one-bed somewhere.’

  Jane was incredulous. ‘Is there no alternative?’

  ‘Unless you have substantial capital tucked away, no. Most of the financial commitments died with Luc but you’ll need to cover certain other liabilities. At the very least, the mortgage payment arrears and interest.’

  ‘Totalling?’

  ‘From memory, I’d calculate in the vicinity of a quarter of a million.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I don’t want to pull a figure out of thin air. I’ll have to look it up. As I said, some of the debts died with him but certainly not the loan against your property, and there appear to be one or two other commitments. Personally, I think you’re far better to cut your losses and begin again.’

  Robert made it sound as simple as chopping vegetables.

  ‘But who does he owe these large sums of money to?’

  ‘Banks, loan companies, a couple of which you won’t want to cross. They are merciless. I’ve been sending out letters, assuring them that Luc’s estate has every intention of settling its affairs honourably, but these guys are lethal and they’re not patient.’

  Jane was wrestling with the breadth of this news, struggling to take it on board. ‘What was he doing with the money? What could he have been spending it on? Unlike you, we don’t own a boat. Well, there’s his old family fishing vessel in the South of France but certainly not a state-of-the-art yacht. He wasn’t interested in cars, he worked hard, never let up … Are there film investment arrears, shortfalls? Can we sell the rights to his films?’

  Robert gave a half-hearted shrug that Jane took to mean her guess was as good as his and that he had no magic formula to fix this mess. ‘I think the finance on this last film was proving tricky. He was probably funding most of it.’

&nbs
p; ‘And his family estate in France, is that at risk too?’

  ‘I understood from Luc that it belongs to his mother and he owned a share. He wasn’t able to use it as collateral. Possibly you might have some claim on his part, but those French Napoleonic laws are sticky to negotiate and I’m not qualified, not au fait with the ins and outs of French inheritance matters, to deal with it. However, the likelihood is that anything of the estate he owned would go to Luc’s children first, of which there are none and after, back to his mother.’

  ‘He co-owned it with Clarisse,’ confirmed Jane. ‘He inherited his aunt’s half. I don’t know who is the proprietor of the wine business, which in any case seems to be floundering, but the land and properties were fifty per cent his. But while Clarisse lives, she has the deciding voice.’

  Robert listened, sipping his wine. ‘I think she has no alternative but to offer you a home. Luc assured me that, even in the event of his premature death, if the London flat was lost, you would be taken care of. My guess is that, legally speaking, Luc’s share reverts to Clarisse, but you’re entitled to reside there. I could get one of my Parisian associates, who specializes in family bequests, to dig into it for you. Let me know if you want me to give him a call.’

  ‘Luc never mentioned any of this.’

  ‘The bottom line, the good news, is that the French home and vineyards are in the clear.’ Robert smiled, but she caught a fleeting glimpse of pity in his solid features.

  ‘Is there something else, Robert? Something you’re not telling me?’

  Robert frowned, shook his head.

  ‘I mean, besides assuring you that his wife was not going to be thrown out on the street, what else did Luc tell you? Did he say what all this money was for?’

  ‘Jane,’ Robert moved his hand across the table and ineptly patted hers, ‘if I knew …’

  ‘Surely, as his friend, you must have been concerned. Jesus!’ Jane lifted her fingers to her face and choked back tears. How much worse was this going to get? ‘There seem to be holes in his life, gaps that I cannot stitch together. Luc, we’re talking about Luc. I’ve known him since I was six and I’m beginning to feel as though I never knew him at all. Every day I relive memories from our past – it’s all I do – and I cannot equate them with the man who was taken from me last December. My Luc seems to have disappeared into thin air and I want him back. Oh, Robert … I’m so sorry. A and P, do those initials mean anything to you?’