Jane resettled herself. On the floor by the fireplace there was an old coal bucket. ‘Why not use that?’ she offered.
‘Thanks. I smoke and drink too much. Luc was always on at me about it. Mind you, he smoked plenty. Jeez, I miss him.’
Annie spoke of Luc with such affection, such intimacy. It was painful to hear. She would not appreciate the comparison, but in certain aspects, her gestures, mannerisms, she took after Clarisse. Jane longed to chat about Luc, to magic him into the room with them, conjure him up and have him present at their serendipitous tête-à-tête. It was wonderful to sit of an evening and have someone to talk to, particularly about Luc, but there was also a frisson of jealousy. The world that Annie and Luc had shared with Patrick, and their communal lives, she had been barred from. Excluded by their choice, never hers. If the truth had been divulged, would she have accepted to be a member of their select little family? Yes, like a shot. Whose decision had it been to preclude her from all knowledge of Annie and Patrick’s blood relationship to Luc? Had it been Luc’s, because of her father? Who knew that Peter was Annie’s father? It was conceivable that Clarisse had never confessed it to Luc.
Annie was lighting a cigarette and dragging on it. Her hands were shaking. She’s more nervous than she’s letting on, thought Jane. The smoke rose into the warm humid evening. It was still raining hard: Jane could hear rolling claps of distant thunder, the falling drops hitting the garden tiles and sodden earth. Occasionally the room was lit by a flash of lightning. Annie leaned forward to refill their glasses.
‘What do you do?’ asked Jane.
‘You mean as in how do I earn my living? And how pathetic am I at it, that Luc was subsidizing us?’
‘Well, I –’
‘I write music. I write it but I’m not yet selling a whole heap. It certainly doesn’t keep the bills paid, the wolf from the door. I wonder where that expression came from.’
Annie wrote music!
What shall we sing next, Dad?
What would you like to sing? You choose, Janey. Or how about ‘The Bells Are Ringing For Me And My Gal’ or ‘My Melancholy Baby’?
I don’t know those songs, Dad.
No, you weren’t born when they were written.
Let’s sing one that you wrote then … Yours are the best.
‘You OK? You look a bit green again. Does it freak you having me here?’
Jane shook her head.
‘Are you angry because Luc never told you about us?’
‘Why didn’t he? Why keep such a huge secret from me?’
‘He felt Clarisse behaved very badly towards me. He knew you and she didn’t get on, which hurt him, and he didn’t want you to carry any further gripe against her. He wanted to tell you, I know that. He felt you should know that he’d been, well, more or less keeping us.’
Jane lowered her head, wondering whether this was the subject Luc had alluded to when he’d said they must talk. ‘It was all a bit of a shock. On top of everything else.’
Annie sipped from her glass. ‘I’m glad it’s out in the open.’
They sat a while in silence, both lost in their own memories.
‘I wrote the soundtrack for one of Luc’s films. He was really cool about it and encouraging. He said to work on it and not give up, but he didn’t use it. I didn’t study music or anything, didn’t attend the Conservatoire. I would’ve liked to go to college, but when I found out about my background … I went a bit loopy. Music helped. It seems to come naturally, an easy way to express myself.’ She paused, dragged on her cigarette. Jane kept silent. Annie shrugged, looking embarrassed. ‘I talk too much, smoke, drink. I’m full of nervous energy but when I’m with my music, I feel at peace. Songs. I like penning songs best. Jazz, ballads.’
‘Your father was a musician.’
‘Sorry?’ Annie’s face, with a light brush of freckles, clouded with confusion.
‘Peter was a musician. He doesn’t play much now, strums a few bars for his own pleasure. He has Alzheimer’s and, well, that’s it really.’ Tears had sprung from nowhere and were falling down Jane’s face, rolling off the end of her chin and landing on her T-shirt. She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand, sniffed and stared into the empty fireplace. ‘Chimneys in summer are triste, aren’t they? Lacking purpose. I must remember to get them swept.’
‘Are you talking about your dad, or whose dad? Sorry to hear he’s got Alzheimer’s.’
‘Clarisse had an affair with my father. It was the summer of 1980. I found them together. Sunday, the eleventh of July. She was already pregnant with you, as I understand it. I was a little upset, to say the least, and Peter, my father, and I left the following morning. I never came back here until I returned as Luc’s wife ten years later. You gatecrashed our wedding supper, remember?’
Annie nodded, mouth open, silenced.
‘According to Clarisse, you were born six months after I found her in the throes of … with my father.’
‘January the tenth, 1981, that’s my birthday. I think we need more wine. Maybe Clarisse was sleeping with someone else. Or had been before your dad came on the scene.’
‘She claims Peter is your father and that she was, well, in love with him.’
‘Wait, are you telling me that …’
‘That we’re sisters, half-sisters. Yes.’
‘Holy Moses, Jane, that’s amazing. We do need more wine. We need champagne.’
‘Luc didn’t know. You’re sure?’
Annie shook her head. ‘Definitely not. Wow! This is extraordinary.’ Annie jumped up and began to pace the room. Jane watched her. ‘It’s like being born again.’ She was punching her arms above her head as though dancing to music. ‘You and I are sisters?’
Jane grinned. ‘Half-sisters.’ She lifted her glass. ‘Cheers. I’ve never had a sister before. I’ve been thinking about what sisters do.’
‘Me neither. Awesome. Fucking fantastic. We should run out in the rain and shout it to the heavens.’ Annie held out her hand. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
‘Are you serious? It’s lashing down.’
‘How many times in your life do you meet your big sister for the first time?’
Jane stood up. ‘Kid sister in my case.’ She took Annie’s hand. They cantered through into the kitchen where the door was still open and the rain was settling on the mat.
Annie stepped out first. She lifted her face into the rain. ‘Come on, Jane, don’t be wet!’ She burst out laughing and Jane joined in.
Jane ventured outside, hunching her shoulders against the downpour. ‘This is madness. We’ve got no shoes on!’
‘Too right. Feet sinking into mud! Give me a hug. I’m going to write a song about this moment. It’ll be a huge hit.’
Come on, Janey, let’s sing. She heard her father’s voice, so clearly he might have been at her side, and lifted her fingers to her face. ‘Oh, Annie, I wish I could share this moment with Peter.’ They were dripping, both of them sopping wet. Walnut had padded through into the kitchen and stood at the door inside watching them, his head turned to one side, a habit he had when he was curious or puzzled.
‘Look at him!’ laughed Annie. ‘He’s such a cute thing. I will miss him. I wonder if my mum knows. Or maybe best not to say anything. Our secret. It’s AWESOME.’ Annie was yelling now, arms spread out either side of her.
‘I think Matty has a fair idea. Come on, let’s go in.’
They ran through to the library, squelching as they went. Annie was shaking her head, raindrops spinning about her. She was pouring the last of the wine into her glass and topping up Jane’s, even though it was hardly touched. ‘So Clarisse, cold-hearted and bitchy, fell in love and got hurt. How about that? Hey!’ Annie swung about and hurried across the room to Jane, who was pulling off her T-shirt and using it as a towel to dry her hair. She hugged Jane tightly.
‘I’m completely blown away by this. Hi, sis.’
21
The summer gale raged on for another day and
night. By Monday, calm had returned, leaving just one tree uprooted. A dead soldier straddling two terraces. There was little other damage. They had been fortunate. The television news was showing footage of floods further west into the Var. Homes destroyed, roofs, tiles, dustbins and cars floating down streets transformed into mucky rivers. At Les Cigales, the bright summer sun reappeared. One of the hired hands sawed up the fallen pine, stored the logs in the woodshed, and it was as though the storm had never passed that way, except that the grounds had been well and truly irrigated and, for the next week or so, the fire risk was non-existent.
By Tuesday, the men had resumed their land-clearance tasks and Jane set off for London. Annie drove her to the airport. The two sisters had agreed between them that Annie and Patrick would come back at the end of the school term to spend their summer on the farm.
‘I don’t think Clarisse will be too thrilled when she finds out,’ declared Annie, as Jane was closing the car door.
‘She’s bedridden. It’s unlikely she’ll know you’re with us.’
‘But she’s not going to be confined to her house for ever, is she? She’s not terminally ill or anything. She’ll be up and about again at some point. And if she should catch sight of me or Patrick strolling about the place, she’ll be fit to kill.’
‘We’ll deal with that problem when it arises. See you soon. Have a safe trip back to Paris and tell Patrick his aunt looks forward to meeting him.’
They smiled at one another and hugged tightly.
‘On one of your trips to London, maybe I could tag along. I’d like to, you know, meet your father. My father. Well, Claude’s my dad and always will be, but …’
‘He won’t know you, Annie. Even if I try to explain to him who you are.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It would just be good to see him. Take a look at where I came from. Those musical genes.’
Jane nodded, careful not to make a promise, uncertain as to whether this would be a good idea for Peter. ‘Let’s talk about it at the end of the summer.’
A tailback of vehicles queuing behind them was growing impatient. One or two drivers were hooting. A head poked out of one of the windows and shouted impatient abuse.
‘See you soon.’ They embraced again and Jane was on her way, back to London, running with a spring in her step that she hardly recognized, that she hadn’t known in a while. Nothing and no one could replace Luc, but for the first time in months she felt less alone, less abandoned. She felt the embrace of family.
The worst of all tragedies had befallen her, the loss of her husband, childhood friend and sweetheart, the man she had loved all her life, and she was still here. She had not killed herself, although her own annihilation had been what she had craved. Life would move her forward gently and it would be kinder to her from now on.
As she was about to enter the terminal, she turned her head and swung round. Annie had pulled the car over and stepped out. She was jumping and waving, like a demented creature. ‘Bring me back a photo of Prince Harry.’
Jane’s face broke into a broad grin. She stuck out her arms and gave her sister a double thumbs-up.
Part Three
* * *
SECOND HARVEST
France
1
The days of summer were slipping away and the drowsy mellowness of autumn was rolling in. The vine leaves were growing burnished, claret-toned and yellow. The few shrivelled grapes that remained on the stems beyond Les Cigales’ modest wine harvest had been left as fodder for the birds and scavengers. The air was redolent with all the scents and portents of a year drawing ineluctably to its close. Bonfires burning; beads of morning dew on the plants; squirrels foraging; mulch underfoot along the wooded pathways; leaves drifting to land, decorating the lawns; long fine threads from spiders’ webs glistening in the sharp, clear sunlight; the setting forth of flocks of swallows borne on gentle winds. The cicadas had gone underground, but the long-bodied wasps were still droning, gorging on the overripe figs that had split open and were bleeding red, resinous seeds all along the pathways.
There was a serenity yet a finality about the shift in the seasons.
Mother Nature was turning the great wheel, resolute in what she was about.
Claude, with Arnaud, was arranging logs for the bastide for winter. The woodshed was almost stocked to bursting.
Due to a bout of pneumonia and a perpetually troubled mind, Jane had relocated Clarisse, almost kicking and screaming, to one of the spare rooms on the first floor at the bastide. After her return from London, she had replaced Matty in the regular ministrations to her mother-in-law. It was essential. Clarisse’s behaviour towards her housekeeper had grown unsettling and aggressive. However, the twice-daily excursions to and from Cherry Tree Lodge had proved debilitating during the preparations for the vendange and the grape crushing. Jane was exhausted by Clarisse’s mood swings and demands. Still, she was coping, and while her mother-in-law was close by her, she could care for and keep a wary eye on her. Aside from flying to London one weekend in every three to spend precious hours with her father, and occasionally snatching lunch in town with Robert or a girlfriend from the old days, Jane remained on Luc’s family estate. This rural existence, she was discovering, brought a structure to her days, and the lifestyle was therapeutic. She enjoyed rising early, working hard, sharing al fresco packed lunches with Claude and les mains embauchés. And when the day was drawing in, the sun setting, she looked forward to solitude, time alone to be with her memories and the spirit of Luc, to deliver the farm’s news to him. Or she would sit reading peacefully, sipping wine, enjoying the musical accompaniment of frogs at twilight, playing long-forgotten CDs, while glancing at the swooping excursions of the bats.
Before Luc’s death she had been one creature, and at some point she would become another, though she had no urge yet to shed her cocoon. She was too timid to fly. This life stage seemed to be a necessary process and a protection. Her dead husband was spinning a web about her, holding onto her, embracing her.
Was grief redefining her?
She had no urge to return and buy a small flat in London. Aside from proximity to her father, and the few cherished hours in his fading company, England held no draw for her now. It represented the past. She was discovering that she was more at home in France and she regretted painfully that she had been so resistant to the move during Luc’s lifetime. Her stubborn resistance to Clarisse shamed her now.
Jane’s money had been invested but she was not quite ready to turn her mind to where she might put down permanent roots. Possibly, at some future date, in the springtime perhaps, she might lean towards Paris: the City of Lights, the city of sweet memories and the city she felt had belonged to her and Luc. The added bonus would be that she would be close to Annie and to her nephew, Patrick. Wherever it was to be, whatever her next move, she trusted that Luc would give her a sign, that he would guide her forward.
It was more than a full year since Jane had led the grape harvest for that one nightmarish day. It might as well have been a lifetime ago for all that she had lived through since, although the loss of Luc, now ten months gone, tore into her as sharply as it had at its first hook. Time will heal, was proving to be a preposterous lie.
Led by Claude, who had risen to the occasion like a newly appointed adjutant heading up the battalion, they had achieved this year’s vendange a month ago and the wines were now in their settling tanks. The regular smattering of les villageois, hired country folk, had assisted, but no foreign labour, not this year. A turbulent, humid summer climatically and the tardy tidying up of the vineyards had, as Claude had predicted, blighted much of their crop. The result was an 8,000-litre vintage, a paltry quantity by this domain’s habitual production standards but, once sold, the returns would bring in sufficient revenue to keep the estate afloat for possibly another season. The end-of-year land and habitation taxes, plus the arrears, had all been paid – a whopping sum – and the books were showing a very modest positive balance. Jane
was satisfied. At some point she would hand her temporary, self-appointed responsibilities to Claude or Annie or conceivably back to Clarisse, if she rallied from her health problems. (Jane’s own small investment of three weeks’ pay for the men to partially clear the land, she had chosen to see as a gift.) One day she would leave, move on. But not yet, not just yet. She felt no urge to go anywhere yet. She intended to mark the anniversary of Luc’s accident, his departure, here alongside him, and she had promised herself she would not walk away and leave Matty to care for Clarisse. In time, Jane supposed, Annie and her biological mother would be reconciled, then Jane’s work here would be at an end.
For the present, they were enjoying Indian-summer days and preparations for the olive harvest were afoot, which, in spite of Claude’s misgivings, promised to be far more bounteous than he had predicted. This revelation caused an uplift in spirits, a certain merriment. As a tiny team, they had achieved the bringing in and pressing of the grapes, and now they were moving on, heads held high, to the next challenge.
Elsewhere, chainsaws were striking up like instruments in a rehearsal orchestra, whirring across the valleys, anticipating the slow creak and crack of felled trunks as they thudded, like shot beasts, to the earth.
The starlings had arrived. Jane drank her morning coffee in the courtyard sunshine while Walnut twitched and snored at her side. She tilted her head skywards and played audience to the high-flying pyrotechnics of the murmurations, swooping and wheeling playfully – until, in one united dip, they bee-lined for the olives. The movement of their wings – how many thousands of wings? – was like the tinkling of tiny bells; a caravan whizzing across the sky. Most farmers hated them, perceived them as predators. Some spoke of trapping them or laying down poison for them, but wouldn’t that kill all other birds as well and put the dogs at risk? At Les Cigales, Claude’s decision was not to go with the chemicals, not to kill or trap, but to move the date of the olive harvest forward, to gather in the semi-purple drupes before they were gobbled from the branches.
The Forgotten Summer Page 31