The Forgotten Summer

by Carol Drinkwater

  They exchanged bises companionably, but she avoided his direct gaze. It was not out of embarrassment, but the sight of this perennial figure so open with his grief brought back the ghosts of summers past, and those memories cut Jane to the quick. Her own grief was too raw to indulge in his nostalgia, to listen to reminiscences of Luc as a child: the evenings Matty as a teenage girl from the village had cycled over to baby-sit the boy for pocket-money; the adolescent Luc harvesting at Claude’s side in the olive groves; Luc at their wedding … A roll-call of the years Claude and his country wife had been in the employment of the Cambons and during those years had been instrumental in Luc’s development.

  Jane had already played audience to a wealth of stories narrated to her before and after the funeral. Memories recounted and shared by the dozens and dozens of faces she could not put names to, whose owners she only vaguely recognized. Somehow, back then, almost six months earlier, numbed by shock, she had managed to play her role, to hold it together, but today she was floundering. As the numbness had begun to thaw, her grief had opened up and it was raw.

  She needed time alone, time for her own recollections, to cherish and polish her personal pictures of Luc. Beyond the commiserations and warm-heartedness of others, well-meant as their intentions were, Jane craved seclusion. If she couldn’t curl up and die, disappear entirely, then she craved solitude and later, when she was stronger, a compass to guide her forward. She was directionless and might soon be penniless. Luc had left her in dire circumstances. Any day she might receive Robert’s call to confirm the sale of their London flat. In some ways now, its release would be a relief, a lessening of financial burdens, closing the door on memories, but what would remain? Nothing. Wilderness, desert, and she was terrified of that trek forwards alone. With Luc’s death, the roof had blown off her world and now the walls, their home, were to be removed as well.

  She was tired of hearing ‘how sorry we are’ and ‘such a marvellous man’. There was no one, it seemed, who’d had an inkling of the trouble Luc had been in. He had carried the weight of his debts alone. Jane needed to understand what had led him to the financial abyss he had been grappling with and she needed a plan. How was she to rise above the deprivation she was inheriting?

  ‘Madame?’

  ‘Sorry, Claude, what did you say?’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. What were you saying?’

  ‘Clarisse … er, Madame Cambon told us you were on your way. I’ve been expecting you to telephone, to give us your flight details. It would have been a pleasure to collect you from the airport, and lend a hand with your cases. How are you, Jane?’

  ‘Oh, you know … I mean … as well as I can be, under the circumstances.’

  ‘Matty and I … feel his loss too …’

  Silence.

  ‘Are you here to stay?’

  ‘No, no, just a day or two. Collecting belongings, you know, and then, then …’ She took a deep breath and swung her attention elsewhere, eyes welling with cursed tears. She coughed. ‘My case is still in the car, Claude, if you would be so kind. I’ll go and unlock the house. Thank you.’

  ‘Of course, Madame.’ He looked chastened.

  Damn it! Her tone had been more brusque, more aloof, than she had intended. She was very fond of the old fellow, very fond. She and he had a history together too. And she had not even enquired after his or Matty’s health.

  She made her way to the back door, the kitchen entrance, slipped her key into the lock and stepped inside. In spite of the warmth outside, the small pantry felt chilly, unlived-in. The shelves were bare, empty, scrubbed wood. She shivered, pulling her cardigan tightly about her as she made her way tentatively, passing the laundry rooms, the larger pantry, also bare as far as she could see, and through to the breakfast room.

  Even the communal spaces reeked of damp, of developing mould, of life having crept away, but in spite of Clarisse’s harsh cutbacks, dearest Matty had obviously been into the house and given it a damn good clean. The downstairs areas, at least. The floors, walls, ceilings, even the cracks, all had been cleared of cobwebs and the usual invasion of creepy-crawlies Jane and Luc had encountered whenever they’d returned after an absence, but it was sterile. The house lacked life, activity. It lacked that wonderfully uplifting smell of baking, of warm fresh bread and quiches, of fruits and vegetables picked that morning from the garden, still wearing a light dusting of earth, laid out in the larder on sheets of greaseproof paper, ready to be transformed into salads or soups.

  It lacked music. Luc loved music. If he were beside her now, he’d be slipping Brad Mehldau or Amy Winehouse into the CD player. One evening, long ago at the Cobden Club in London, they’d chanced upon a session by the young unknown Amy Winehouse. Jane hadn’t been to a music venue since their Trois Mailletz outing the previous autumn. ‘Music gives life to everything,’ Luc used to say. But since he’d died, she could tolerate only silence. The screaming silence in her head.

  In happier years, the breakfast room was where the family had congregated. Once upon a time, in winter and during the olive and grape harvests, when Isabelle had been alive, the house had been stuffed to bursting with guests’ laughter and energy. In summer, all meals were taken out of doors in the shade of a magnificent Magnolia grandiflora, with its waxy, white flowers, from the southern United States, or at the iron table overhung by a quintet of fig trees, strategically planted to cast neat midday shadows the entire length of the south lawn border.

  Jane laid her hand on the wooden refectory table. She stroked its oiled surface with her fingers. Her touch released echoes, reverberations. Uproarious laughter from bygone days. Jazz on the gramophone. Dancing cheek to cheek. This room, this house, was a repository of memories, but not all were untroubled. There had been days when sparks flew, when the cries had been ominous, the discoveries heart-breaking … How she had wept, rent by disappointment and shock that night when she had found her father with Clarisse …

  She withdrew her hand smartly, as though it had been singed, and passed through into the hall, with its low-hanging glass chandelier and the familiar pendulum swing of the pot-bellied grandfather clock. The air gave off a resinous perfume: cedarwood and beeswax furniture polish. There Jane lingered, picturing herself tiptoeing behind her father on that initial visit. Clarisse’s musky perfume, the daffodil-yellow dress hugging her curvacious buttocks, conducting them into a world shuttered from sunlight. Clarisse, stroking and lifting the fat pearls hanging about her neck, had welcomed the child Jane and her father with a red-lipped smile.

  Predatory.

  Jane’s thoughts crashed back to the present and she stepped in a clumsy semi-circle, deliberating about which direction to take next, which room to enter. Loss had rendered her indecisive even when faced with the simplest choice. Every step into her future was clouded by vacillation. Four open doors, four uninhabited living areas, excluding the kitchen spaces, awaited her occupation, and she dithered. Rooms in stillness, lying in wait, watchful.

  Each, generously proportioned, exuded its history: sunken seats in scruffy sofas now hidden beneath baggy white dust sheets, a used pack of cards stacked and waiting for hands to cut and shuffle it on the card table in the petit salon; regiments of books lining the walls of the library, growing dusty behind finger-printed glass; used grates, sooty dampers, a marshmallow-roasting fork forgotten in the hearth. She and Luc had once made love on the carpet in front of that hearth. His naked body crossing the room by firelight …

  The fading scents, the cold embers of the last fires burned in these chimneys, which would have been when? The gathering after Luc’s funeral?

  Had anyone besides Matty walked these floors since? Did Clarisse ever come here? Did she creep through these rooms alone, listening to her own footfall, searching for ghosts while trying to recall music fading beyond earshot? This must be as painful for his mother as it was for Jane. She felt a twinge of sympathy for her.

  When Jane had telepho
ned Clarisse from London, once her flat had been made ready and put on the market, and had tentatively proposed a visit, Clarisse had not been overjoyed. ‘I knew you’d call again sooner or later,’ had been her bald response. ‘It’s almost a month since you bothered to pick up the phone, but you’re welcome to come whenever you want.’ And with that she had replaced the receiver.

  Jane asked herself now whether she shouldn’t drive up the lane directly and pay a call at Cherry Tree Lodge before she settled her belongings in their bedroom. It was polite to make her arrival known, put on a brave face and suggest they had dinner together that evening. But her heart sank at the prospect. What was there to say to one another? Besides recriminations. Still, it had to be done. Common courtesy. Her mother-in-law was the boss here, after all.

  She had almost forgotten Claude and her bags. She stepped towards the front door, unlocking it from the inside. There on the gravelled driveway, hat now folded and stuffed beneath his braces on his left shoulder, Claude had closed the boot of Jane’s hire car. Her overnight bag, plus two empty cases ready to be filled with her bits and pieces, were under his arms and at his feet. She left the door wide open and hovered, surrounded by the drawing rooms. Not since she had been a child, visiting for the first time, had the house seemed so daunting, so overwhelming.

  Claude jogged on aged legs to the porte-cochère and paused, puffing, dropping the cases at his feet. ‘Where do you want these?’

  ‘Thanks, Claude. Just dump them here inside the door. I’ll deal with them later.’

  Hands free, the old gardener tugged his straw hat from beneath his braces and twisted it in his hands. ‘I switched the electricity back on. The fridge is functioning and the house lights, both interior and exterior, are all in order. I replaced several bulbs, and Matty put a baguette, a jug of olive oil and a bag of coffee in the large pantry for you. I picked you a bowl of cherries.’ He grinned. ‘They’re a little underripe but I know that’s how you like them. Oh, and I purloined a couple of bottles of estate wine, the finest, from out of the store, too.’ He winked. ‘I’m sure you’ll be in need of a good glass or two and she won’t miss them. She’s hardly got a clue what’s in there any more.’ He shook his head.

  ‘That’s very thoughtful. Thank you so much, Claude.’ She shuffled forward to hug him, then found herself frozen mid-step, arms dangling uselessly.

  ‘Matty also popped in with a spot of dinner for you. She said to tell you it’s in a dish in the kitchen and you only need to stick it in the range to heat it. Lamb, and there’s one of her apricot and tomato chutneys to go with it. I’ve left the receipts for all the purchases and the light bulbs on the dresser in there as well. If you need me, you’ll have to use your phone. The main one’s dead. They’ve cut the line, disconnected it. Mail is on the dining-table. It does include a fair number of bills, I’m afraid. Anything else?’

  ‘Thank you both for your kindness, Claude. Merci beaucoup. Madame Cambon must have overlooked the phone bill.’

  ‘She told us to leave all the bills for you, that you’d be settling them. Luc always paid the utility bills for this house, she said.’

  ‘Did she?’ Jane took a deep breath. Did that include the upkeep of the pool and the maintenance of the gardens? She and Clarisse would need to discuss the arrangements. She wasn’t intending to stay. ‘I’ll sort it out with Clarisse, but I’ll settle everything owed to you both later this afternoon, if I may? And if there is any other expenditure, extra hours worked, for example, just add it to the list.’

  Jane had somehow delivered the translated manuscripts for three travel guides during her grieving days in London. The extended contract with the publishing house had been a lifeline, a reason to get out of bed, and the funds due in her bank account any day now would see her through this trip, at least.

  ‘Matty’s kept the accounts. That’s not my department. I never was too good with figures.’

  ‘How is she? How are you both keeping? And the family?’

  He dropped his head and worried at his Panama. ‘We’re trying to keep ourselves active. We’re doing just the one day a week here so we’re struggling … and Madame says she might let us go altogether.’

  ‘Yes, I heard from her.’ Pause. ‘Is she around?’

  ‘I saw her out and about this morning. She was headed in the direction of her office at the winery.’ Claude sighed. ‘It’s a poor vintage, this one, the worst we’ve known in quite some years. On top of everything else …’

  Jane felt a stab of guilt. In spite of her protestations at the time, had the loss of crop on that fateful September day been the worm in the apple for this poor harvest? Was she inadvertently responsible for the laying off of Claude and Matty?

  ‘It’s proving tough on the treasury, according to Madame Cambon. She’s struggling to pay us. She’s asked us to look elsewhere for employment but …’ he lowered his gaze ‘… we’re not getting any younger, you know. We’ve lived here all our married lives. Raised the kids here. All three of them. Well, you know all that …’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ muttered Jane. ‘If there’s anything I can do …’

  Silence. The sound of Claude’s heavier breathing. ‘Pity you’re not staying longer. We could do with you here.’

  ‘Maybe next time.’

  ‘Would you like me to call Madame for you and tell her you’ve arrived?’ He dug into the chest pocket of his overalls, proudly displaying a mobile phone. ‘Arnaud bought me this contraption for my birthday. No peace with it. No skulking in the groves.’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary. Thank you. I’ll pop down to her myself.’

  ‘Will there be anything else for now?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Then I’ll be on my way.’ He hesitated. ‘Madame Jane, my wife and I are both deeply sorry for the lo–’

  ‘Merci, Claude. I’ll drop by later after I’ve been to the bank.’

  He nodded and touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘It’s good to see you here. The old place is, well, it’s a bit sorry for itself, these days. We’re missing Luc too. Idleness improves nothing and that includes gardens and us old folk.’

  Idleness was a killer indeed. Thank God for her own little business. She’d check her bank account later, draw out sufficient funds to cover Claude and Matty’s expenditure. But, first, there was Clarisse.

  2

  Cherry Tree Lodge, Le Cottage du Cerisier, was situated in a magical setting in the middle of what might have been mistaken for nowhere, halfway along a narrow, rutted lane that continued onwards to the north-east boundary of the domain. The house perched at the edge of a copse of holm oak and Mediterranean shrub, a spinney for pheasants when the hunters, led by Arnaud Lefèvre, were prowling the countryside during the season. It was an attractive two-up two-down cottage, and in better condition than most of the other less substantial habitations on the estate. Clarisse had bagged it for herself after Isabelle passed away, at which point she declared the main property ‘too rattling’ for her requirements.

  It had its own patch of flower-filled garden, a tapestry of multi-coloured blooms, few of which Jane could name and none of which were from Clarisse’s labours. They grew wild, irrigated by a mountain-fed stream flowing fast at the foot of her backyard.

  Less than half a kilometre along this same path, further north, towards the lower Alp ranges, had stood an impressive water mill, constructed in the seventeenth century by the Benedictine monks who had owned these lands and had transformed them from Mediterranean scrubland into lucrative wine and olive oil reserves. All that remained of the mill today were heaps of stones and rubble. In its heyday, it would have been a sight to behold: the great oakwood wheel creaking and grinding, turned by the force of the stream’s flow, throwing off whorls of sweet crystal-clear drinking water, snow melt from the Alps. The wheel, according to Luc’s calculations, had stood two and a half metres high. Its purpose had been to mechanize the mighty crushing stones that pressed the estate’s olives into a thic
k paste from which was drawn the golden oil. Constructed from stone with oak beams, the mill had lain in ruins, defunct for a century or more. But it was the reason the cottage had been built. Originally, Clarisse’s habitation would have been intended as the miller’s residence.

  Few passed this way. There was no reason to, unless you were visiting Cherry Tree Lodge, as Jane was now. As she drew up, the catkins garlanding the holm oaks glowed a soft moon-yellow, a halo of light shot through with sun, and the splendid ornamental cherry tree that gave the lodge its name, decades old, hanging low over the gated pathway, was in full May flower, a day or two past its glory. Its white blossoms were shedding flurries of drifting petals that quilted the paved stones. Jane lifted the latch on the wooden gate and paused to look out beyond where she had parked, to ingest the farmland view, the far-reaching acres of leafy green vineyards. She stood very still, head thrown back, staring at a blizzard of flowers, inhaling the cherry blossom scent, inhaling the marvellous seclusion, firing up her courage. Nothing but the distant putt of an engine, a tractor or mower, broke the stillness of Clarisse’s kingdom, and songbirds trilling in the young green thicket; Luc would have identified each and every one of them. How she longed for the sound of his voice; how she missed his head-thrown-back laughter, his loosely cut long hair, like a black stallion’s mane. She reached up to the tree and snapped off the head of a thin branch, breathing in the perfume from the delicately rose-tinted white blossoms.

  It was remote here. She had forgotten the extent of its isolation. Was Clarisse at risk in this unpopulated hinterland? Jane couldn’t picture how the old woman managed. She suffered from arthritis; she walked with a cane; this was an outback location even for a woman half Clarisse’s age. Was she not afraid, living so far from others in the sweeping plain under a wide blue sky, crickets and vines her sole companions?

  But nothing scared Clarisse. She was not one to fade away, frail as a winter leaf. She was a fighter, a stayer, and Jane had no desire to run up against her another time. All Jane craved was a dignified departure. A civilized adieu. Her heart was beating fast as she lifted the knocker and rapped it against the door. She had not yet broached the subject of Luc’s financial calamities with Clarisse. She had no way of assessing to what extent Clarisse had been implicated or what of the reality the old woman knew.