The Forgotten Summer

by Carol Drinkwater

  There had to be another explanation. One that was not about to demolish the twenty years of marriage she and Luc had shared, all that she had held as true. But if this was the reality, the real reality, the sky above her would split wide open, she would be blasted into a thousand pieces and the fragments would never come together again. She was trembling, grasping for a line, a logical thought. Jealousy and insecurity were seeding themselves.

  She would return to London on the first available flight, hang the expense, organize the removal of her belongings from the flat, put into storage everything she wanted to keep, vacate the premises immediately, hand the keys to Robert Piper and draw a final line under that period of her life. Then she would return here. Clarisse would surely make no objection. Until then she would steer clear of this hateful studio. Once the sale of the London flat had been completed, once her horizon was uncluttered, she would face these revelations head on. It was more than she was capable of at this juncture. Practicality and logical thinking had to be her path forward. One step at a time.

  8

  There was no one Jane could turn to, no one to confide in. No friend she felt able to share her black doubts with. If he were in his right mind, what would her father have said to all this? But all conversation and intimacy, their father-daughter bond, had long been denied to her. In any case, confiding in her father, even if he had been in full health, was a nonsensical idea. Had she not disturbed him in Clarisse’s embrace? Her father, she had learned before her mother’s death, had enjoyed a string of mistresses. Clarisse had not been the only one. She had not been singled out as special. Yet now, it seemed, he remembered only Vivienne. No other.

  If she was to return to France for any length of time, what was to become of him? Could he be moved from the home? When Jane met with the director of the nursing home, to inform him of her extended absence, he counselled against Clarisse’s suggestion of bringing him to Les Cigales. ‘We wouldn’t recommend it. Unfamiliar surroundings will disorientate him further.’

  ‘He knew the estate well when he was younger,’ Jane argued. ‘I thought it would be nice for him to be near me, to have him close.’

  ‘Are you intending to move to France permanently?’

  She lifted her hands out of her lap and let them drop again. She was exhausted, hadn’t been sleeping. She had no answers, only a Ferris wheel of questions turning in her head.

  ‘Whether he is moved or stays here, he needs trained care and that will become more critical as his illness progresses. Any move will cause disorientation, which could trigger periods of wandering, sleeplessness, physical falls, and changes in his eating habits. Are you planning to be away long?’

  Jane sat in the director’s antiseptic office listening to voices along the corridor, a clock ticking on the wall above the closed door behind her. Time passing. She looked out of the window. In the grounds of Garden Park, a man on a four-wheel tractor was mowing the garden while a few elderly patients were sitting huddled together on benches on the sidelines, watching him and clapping, as though a cricket match were in play. One old codger in a woolly hat darted forward onto the lawn, gathered up handfuls of the mown grass and began throwing them like snowballs.

  ‘I have no idea,’ she admitted eventually. ‘My husband was killed in a road accident. I have matters abroad to … contend with.’

  Dr Eath offered his condolences. He had heard of it from several members of his staff. If there was anything he could do … Would she like a cup of tea?

  Jane lowered her head. How could she divulge even to this man of medicine, of supposed healing powers, the depth of the uncertainties she was facing? The abyss. The distress. The grief.

  ‘If I may offer a word of advice, Mrs Cambon? Relocating a patient with dementia, Alzheimer’s in your father’s case, involves challenges. There are risks. My observation of the situation has always shown that you are a caring daughter. Don’t feel guilty about Peter. He’s in good hands here, and can’t share your burden or your bereavement. He’s no longer able to respond to the emotions that are hurting you now. Unless you’re unhappy with the care we’re offering him – and that is quite another matter – my advice is that you should do what you need to do and we will take care of your father. Leave us all contact details, please, and keep in touch with us regularly, as we will with you, but please put yourself first, Mrs Cambon.’

  ‘I don’t want him to think I’ve abandoned him.’

  ‘He won’t. You know yourself that dates, periods of time elude him. If he grows anxious and feels isolated or abandoned, I’ll be in touch with you immediately. Does that offer you some peace of mind?’

  Peace of mind …

  Jane nodded. She had been given the physician’s blessing. Even so …

  ‘If you would like me to suggest someone for you to talk to, please don’t hesitate to give me a ring. If I may venture into territory that is not directly mine, you need to heal yourself now, Mrs Cambon. Please take care of your health. Look to the future.’

  What future remained for her? England was the country she had so stubbornly clung to during her married life and now her stake in it was being sold from under her feet. She perched on a sealed crate in her living room, which was cluttered with boxes, books and jettisoned coat-hangers, and punched out the number for Cherry Tree Lodge.

  ‘Hello, Clarisse?’

  ‘Why would I object to your return? I expect you back, I insist you return. You owe me,’ Clarisse reiterated crisply. As Jane had been so cavalier as to reinstate the Lefèvres, she went on, it was her duty to be on the domain to set them to work, to keep them occupied, earning their living. ‘I expect you to supervise. And Luc would have expected no less.’

  It had been only the previous autumn that Clarisse had accused Jane of lacking all management skills, but Jane did not remind her of this. ‘Shall I suggest to Claude that we begin with the kitchen garden?’

  ‘And the rest. The estate needs regular injections of cash. That means harvests. When can I expect you?’

  Less than forty-eight hours later, Jane watched the small removal van chug away and disappear beyond the bend in the junction. She walked the empty rooms, her echoing footsteps on bare wooden floors, and then she walked them again, recalling conversations, precious moments, lovemaking, laughter, arguments, sometimes foolish ones, arrivals home, departures. Where had he been going on all those occasions when she had waved him au revoir from here? Was it credible that the man who had so vitalized her years in this home had been double-dealing her? No. No. Grief and financial instability had caused her to overreact. She was sure of it. How could he, Luc, who was so full of kindness and integrity, betray everything she believed had belonged exclusively to him and her? To Luc and Jane.

  He hadn’t.

  The previous afternoon she had found a note, shoved at the back of the drawer of her habitually cluttered bedside table. He must have written it and hidden it there, leaving it for her to find during one of his absences – and somehow it had got pushed, unopened, behind nail varnishes, scissors, tissues and never seen the light of day till now as she packed up the flat. Sealed in an envelope, crumpled and squashed, a plain white card: Tender are the nights by your side. Whatever happens, I will always love you. Lucx

  In the earlier days of their marriage they had frequently stashed notes for one another in luggage or books or wallets. It had become a treasure hunt they played to sweeten their separations. That note, discovered only now, was far more recent: he had used one of the hand-printed Mode de Paris cards from Quill stationery she had bought for his birthday in August the year before.

  She walked to the front door, opened it, hauled outside the belongings that hadn’t been loaded into the van for storage, and pulled it shut. For the very last time.

  Typically it was raining, a late-spring steady downpour, as she closed and Chubb-locked the door. Struggling with an umbrella, surrounded by bags and cases, she hovered on the step at the foot of her empty home, with its high ceilings, n
aked light bulbs, the ghostly marks on the walls where paintings and mirrors had hung since she and Luc had taken possession. They had spent a weekend climbing over boxes, listening to the Stones on the stereo, jiving on the unmade bed, eating fish and chips out of paper, while happily bickering over the where-shall-we-hang-this decisions.

  This was yet another farewell hurdle to be faced. Another moment of ‘moving on’. Wheeling her suitcases, struggling with the brolly hooked now under her chin, she proceeded down the leafy street she had trodden so frequently, in all seasons, with and without Luc, its plane trees growing alongside the kerb, its snug corner shop, which reeked of washing powder, newsprint and spices, with its overpriced cartons of milk. Mr Patel, who had occasionally agreed to look after her door keys when she was out and someone needed access to the flat, was outside, gathering up a display of brushes he had hung out earlier before the rain had started. She nodded a good morning to him and strode on past without a further glance. ‘Off on holiday, Mrs Cambon?’ he called after her. ‘Fleeing our British weather? Very wise.’ Round the corner, down towards the high street, she waited for a taxi but none passed, so eventually she climbed aboard a C2 bus heading for Oxford Circus. From there she went to Piccadilly, to Robert Piper’s offices, where she deposited three sets of keys with his receptionist.

  ‘Robert has my number if he needs me,’ she reassured the young woman.

  To save her dwindling funds, she travelled with her two suitcases on the Piccadilly line to Heathrow. From there, a British Airways flight back to Nice.

  Claude collected her at the airport. She would buy herself an old run-around at some point, she promised him, if she stayed for any length of time. She was determined to project an optimistic frame of mind, a foreseeable, tangible future.

  ‘I thought we might attack the kitchen garden.’ She laughed. ‘It’s late in the season for planting, I know, but once the beds have been cleared and dug, you and I could decide together what is still growable. It’s a hell of a jungle, but we can’t leave it idle.’

  ‘I made a start during your absence. Yes, it’s late for planting so I thought it’d be best not to waste these precious days. The weather’s been kind. I’ve put in some tomatoes, about a hundred plants of various varieties, and a couple of rows of courgettes and aubergines. It’s too late for strawberries. When you’ve got a moment, perhaps you’ll take a look.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll reimburse you for the plants. What condition are the greenhouses in now?’

  ‘More broken windows than glass.’

  Isabelle had ordered the construction of a quartet of greenhouses, originally for the reproduction of the wine stocks, but then she had tracked down a family-run nursery in the Var, near the town of Gaillane, and it had proved more cost effective and less time-consuming to buy the grape seedlings. So from that day onwards, the greenhouses had been given over to winter tomatoes, strawberries, and a few half-hearted attempts at more exotic fruits until they fell into total neglect. According to Claude, rats had set up home there.

  ‘Shall we take a look and calculate the cost of repairing them?’

  ‘Not cheap, I’d say. If you order the cut panes, I can glaze them in. It’ll cost a fair bit in time, but I can do it.’

  ‘It would provide food for the winter, so perhaps worth a try.’

  ‘Matty and I were thinking, if the idea appeals to you, that I could take you on a tour of the whole estate. Not all at once, of course. We can do it a few hectares at a time. You know the layout and have been more or less everywhere, but I don’t suppose you’ve looked at it from the perspective of wine production. What do you say?’

  She hadn’t seen Claude so chirpy in years and his mood rubbed off on her.

  ‘I tell you what,’ she replied, with a smile, ‘why don’t I allocate my mornings to emptying out Luc’s cellars and doing my translation work, and if the afternoons suit you, we could dedicate them to my learning the business of winemaking. Is that a good plan?’

  ‘And not forgetting the olive groves.’ He winked.

  ‘Not forgetting the olive groves.’

  She hadn’t visited the olive groves since she and Luc had played there as kids and, on one or two occasions, helped with the harvests. Carefree memories. She looked forward to spending time among those trees again, to washing herself in joy remembered. As she waved her thanks to Claude from the door of the big house, she felt a rush of excitement. She was allowing herself to believe that what lay below in the cellars was just a bad dream, that reality was a happier story.

  9

  It was the beginning of June. The summer solstice was but slender weeks away. The sun rose early, bursting into the bedroom, shedding a golden light that was warm and clear. Blossom abounded, green shoots flanked the pathways, and Jane felt drawn into the season’s radiance. It was hard not to feel buoyant. There was a mood of optimism about the flower-filled grounds, of renewed activity, regeneration. She threw open all the windows of the manor house and slept with the shutters latched back, allowing the blessed mornings to creep into her room. It was a visual alarm call to accompany the cockerel’s and the distant bray of donkeys. Within a matter of days she was sleeping better than she had in weeks. Hard work and long hours in the fresh air were the remedies.

  She asked Claude if he could do anything with the stagnant emerald-green swimming-pool or if it required emptying, scrubbing and refilling: an expense beyond any of their budgets.

  ‘The broken tiles and the leak will have to wait, but I can get it scrubbed up for you,’ he promised. ‘Give me a few days and I’ll have it looking spick and span.’

  On her first morning back, when she went down to the empty kitchen, she found a pot of coffee on the boil, three fresh eggs in a small faience dish and one of Matty’s homemade loaves awaiting her. A discreet expression of the caretakers’ gratitude.

  Over coffee, Jane set herself some resolutions. She would begin each day with a swim. There would be exercise, walks along the beach. No moping. No grieving the loss of her London home. The more profound loss of Luc was more than sufficient. She and Clarisse must find a modus vivendi, even if it was simply to live their lives separately on the same estate. As Luc had pointed out last year, Clarisse was not far off her eightieth birthday and Les Cigales was a challenging responsibility. Jane must show her kindness, whatever inner turbulence it cost her.

  While Claude gave an hour or two of his time pouring ghastly chemicals into the pool and lifting from it, day by day, the deepening layers of algae and rotting leaves, Jane forced herself to return to the cellars. She sat at Luc’s desk and gathered up the photograph she had found the last time she had been down there. While she had been in London packing up their home, she had determined to destroy it, rip it to shreds. She had persuaded herself that it was nothing. But now that she was looking A’s boy directly in the face, her resolve wavered. The doubts came flooding back. She had allowed herself to be lulled into a state of denial, but the face was real. This mother and child existed. And she had no idea who they were or what role they had played in Luc’s life.

  She plucked a red rose from the garden and took it to Luc’s grave. There were always flowers standing upright in jars on his earthy dwelling. Today there were gentians and aromatic lavender. She slipped the rose among them and sat at his side on the freshly grown grass, the sun on her face, watching bees and other pollinators feeding off the hedges and plants, listening to the occasional aircraft overhead dipping its way to the coast. She brushed her fingers against an invisible shadow where she imagined his arm might be.

  ‘Tender are the nights by your side.’ They were, Luc. No words can describe how much I miss the warmth of you … but I have to move on. Not from you, of course not, but it’s essential I find a way forward without you. I need your strength. I’m earning a little money, translating books and enjoying the work. The sale on Lady Margaret will soon be completed so I’ll be handling the debts. I’ll clear out your workspace, be sure your material ends up whe
re it needs to, but that face, Luc, that boy with his mother. If there was someone else … another family … don’t let me find it. Please, Luc, don’t take everything from me.

  One of Jane’s favourite spots in the past had always been the little-frequented beach known as the Cove of Illusions. It lay almost directly south of the property beyond the winding coast road that led from St Tropez to Cannes. By car, it was barely ten minutes from the manor but Jane preferred to cycle. Out of the main gates, along the A road, then second left, heading seawards, hair flying behind her, through lanes flanked by vineyards and olive groves where occasionally she spotted families of goats chewing freshly blooming wild flowers. Walnut used to delight in haranguing those poor goats.

  It had been Luc who had first taken her to these secluded shores when she was a girl. Since then, the cove had become her place of escape, a solace and refuge, a gently sloping bank of shingle surrounded by colossal arms of blood-red boulders. Here, birds were her only companions. Flotsam and garlands of seaweed interspersed with discarded plastic bottles were the sole signs of man’s occupancy on earth and, occasionally, cinders from a late-night beach party. The water was clear and clean – even during the months of heavy tourism – ideal for paddling and lazy swimming. She left the bike on the grass bank at the edge of the coastal path and descended the dishevelled weedy track. Slender, finger-sized lizards fled at her footfall. She bent to a pair of Swallowtails fluttering about a willowy milk parsley, with its tight droplet heads. Swallowtails had been the subject of Luc’s debut film. The first stone of his success as a film-maker. She lifted a finger to the plant’s umbel, watching them playing, flirting. These creamy-based beauties with their fine black stripes she could identify. Years earlier she and Luc had come across a fat green caterpillar with two orange horns secreted in a fennel plant in the kitchen garden. ‘They never stop eating.’ He’d laughed. ‘Chomp away for months until they burst out as glorious Swallowtail butterflies and then they only live a few weeks.’