by Di Morrissey
‘No HF radio contact?’ asked Cameron, his voice tight.
‘Not enough time! Brace yourself!’ snapped Johnny.
Already the plane was dropping, the strain of its engine deafening in Jacqui’s ears.
Cameron squeezed her shoulder then folded himself behind Johnny’s seat, arms around his head.
‘Oh, God, this can’t be happening,’ Jacqui found herself muttering as she shoved her fingers in her ears to try to blot out the screaming, grinding sound of the engine and the sensation of rushing towards the ground.
Next to her, Jacqui could see Johnny pulling back, lifting the plane’s nose as, with a high scraping whine and a shuddering thudding bounce, the plane hit the ground and rushed forward, its nose cone ploughing into the surface. Then the little aircraft pitched forward, yawing over onto the pilot’s side. There was a grinding crunch, then silence.
Jacqui opened her eyes, stunned. Then she heard Cameron’s voice.
‘Jacqui . . . Jacqui . . . Open your door, jump and run.’
‘Oh my God, what about Johnny . . . ?’ She could see that the pilot was slumped against his door on the side of the plane that was wedged into the ground.
‘Just get out!’ shouted Cameron. ‘In case of fire!’
Jacqui pushed open her door and fell onto the ground beneath the tilted wing. She scrambled to her feet and ran a few metres before turning. She could see Cameron in the front, trying to pull Johnny across the seat but moving awkwardly.
She waited a second or two. As it didn’t look like the plane was going to burst into flames, she raced back, shouting up to Cameron, ‘Is he hurt badly? How can I help?’
‘He’s unconscious, so it’s hard to move him, and I’ve hurt my shoulder,’ he panted, grimacing. ‘Have to get him out your door – his door’s jammed.’
‘I’ll help you get him down.’
She could see that Cameron was in pain. He’d gotten Johnny upright, his head tilted back. The pilot was pale and had a cut on the side of his head.
‘I’ll get his legs over the seat, and I’ll hold his shoulders if you can reach his feet. We’ll try to ease him down.’
She heard Cameron’s expletive as he manoeuvred the pilot to the edge of the passenger seat, legs dangling out the door, his head slumped forward on his chest.
‘Can you reach him?’
‘I have his feet. Let him go gently and I’ll take his weight.’
Jacqui tried to go slowly but Johnny was a dead weight, and as she took hold of him they both tumbled to the ground. Cameron jumped down after Johnny and helped put him in a comfortable position. Jacqui quickly felt for Johnny’s pulse.
‘His pulse seems okay. His head took a knock, though. How are you?’
Cameron moved his arm and winced. ‘Seem to have done something to my shoulder. I’m okay.’
‘The plane’s not going to blow up? Catch fire? Should we move away from it?’
‘Can’t smell any fuel. But the sun will kill us; we need shade. Here, I’ll hoist you up. There’s a first-aid box and some gear in the rear. Throw down whatever you can find.’
Inside the plane Jacqui hurriedly ferreted around, throwing out several blankets and small head pillows. At the rear she found the first-aid kit, bottles of water and a plastic box labelled Remote Area Rations.
She swung her legs out and Cameron awkwardly caught her as she slipped from the doorway. He yelped in pain and sat down. She handed him a plastic bottle of water and with another poured some onto her hands and wiped the blood from the side of Johnny’s head.
Cameron handed her a folded blanket. ‘Put this under his head. It’s probably just concussion, but he could be out for several hours.’
‘How long till someone finds us?’ asked Jacqui as she took a sip of water, and for the first time took in the enormity of what had happened.
‘No idea. I assume when we don’t turn up someone will come looking for us. Might take a while, though. We’re in one of the remotest places in the country.’
Jacqui took a few steps away and looked slowly around them, taking in the strange landscape. They were to one side of a silvery-white dried lake. Tufts of orange grasses and red clumps of bushes lined one edge, while further away was a larger island of grasses and shrubs. In the distance she could see a low rise of sandhills or bare soil. In the wet season this would be a vast, glittering lake. Now it was barren, but oddly beautiful. And hot. She sat back under the meagre shade of the Cessna as it lay like a wounded bird, its damaged wing crumpled, its nose planted in the ground.
Cameron looked pale. He had settled next to Johnny against the fuselage beneath the wing, nursing his arm. Both men had their eyes closed.
Jacqui crouched beside Cameron and touched his head. ‘Are you okay? There might be a sling in that first-aid box, I’ll take a look.’
Jacqui found a sling and slipped it on Cameron so that the weight of his arm was supported. She handed him two painkillers and the water bottle.
‘Sorry, no brandy.’
He managed a half-smile. ‘It could be a long wait. Go easy on the tucker and the water. Just in case.’
‘In case what?’
Cameron closed his eyes, a look of pain crossing his face. ‘We’ll be fine.’
Jacqui checked Johnny’s pulse again. He hadn’t moved but his breathing was steady. ‘The bleeding has stopped, but I’m worried about him. You too.’
Cameron didn’t answer.
‘Cameron, stay awake, stay with me. Talking.’
‘I’m uncomfortable. I want to stretch out.’
‘Here, lie down.’ She made a pillow for him with another blanket. ‘Do you want some more water?’
He took the bottle she handed him, took a few sips and resettled himself. ‘Tell me a story.’
‘What sort of story?’
‘Anything. Tell me about you. Tell me what happened to you after you left uni.’
‘Ha. Not much. I met a Frenchman.’
‘Ah, the great romance. Tell me all about it. Why you married him, what you did, where you went, why you left.’ He glanced at her, settling himself, one hand holding his injured arm, and waited expectantly.
Jacqui paused. Sitting there was like being in a vacuum; the silence, the emptiness, the strange situation she’d suddenly dropped into, as if her life was on hold.
For the first time in many years, she allowed herself to reflect.
‘How young and naïve I was,’ she mused. ‘Of course, at first I thought I was super sophisticated. I’d left university, and before taking up my teaching appointment I was working as an assistant to the general manager of an import–export firm in the city. One of his clients had this group of French vignerons visiting and there was a cocktail party arranged, and, as most of them were single, me and some other “young ladies”, as my boss called us, were invited along to add a little sparkle. It was a lovely function, actually, and so a group of us went out to dinner afterwards. Four girls and four French guys. Then there were lunches and a weekend in the Hunter Valley. All beautifully arranged and very chichi. We’d each teamed up with a French guy, and saw the same fellow on each occasion.’
‘So you fell in love with him?’
‘No! Well not straight away. Three of the Frenchmen stayed on for two months and so I saw a lot of him. I became quite besotted. He was good-looking, very charming, and that French accent . . .’
‘Debonair...urbane...sophisticated?’ Cameron pressed.
‘No, more earthy, rather latino . . . being a wine producer. I didn’t discover his other qualities until we were married and then I was, well, on a rather large learning curve.’
‘It sounds such a cliché: naïve Aussie city girl falls for handsome French winemaker. Finds herself barefoot, pregnant, not speaking French, among the vineyards of southern France. Did you keep geese and make yo
ur own cheese?’
‘I’m glad you’re starting to feel better,’ she said tartly, but almost smiled. ‘Yves went back to France and we started a long-distance relationship. I had been saving to go to Europe and London anyhow – I wanted to travel before I started teaching – so I quit my job and went to Paris. His family had a tiny flat where he said I could stay. It was in the 7th arrondissement, the classiest sector of Paris – “old money”, nobility, high-ranking military officers and so on. Far more chic than the brash 16th arrondissement with its vulgar nouveau riche, I was told.’ Jacqui chuckled. ‘I loved that apartment. It had polished parquet floors and gorgeous fireplaces. It was a little cramped but I didn’t care. The elevator took three people – if all three breathed in for the ride. Furniture and belongings had to be moved in – and out – via the windows. Pretty perilous on an extended forklift elevator!’
‘I can imagine,’ said Cameron with a smile. ‘What did you do when you were there?’
‘The apartment was a stone’s throw from Rue Cler with all the fab food shops – especially the cheese boutique – and a short walk away from the Champ de Mars and the Eiffel Tower. When Yves went to work selling the family’s wines, I’d go for early morning jogs up and around the gardens that separate the Eiffel Tower from the École Militaire. I loved Paris back then for many reasons. The animation of the streets and boulevards, the morning aromas of freshly cooked bread and ground coffee, the fashion, the shops, the markets, classical concerts in medieval churches, the museums and art galleries . . . all so accessible! For a suburban Sydney girl, it was mind-boggling. And I loved it.’
‘Did you feel at home, or a tourist?’ asked Cameron, shifting his position slightly.
‘I was determined to look the part of a Parisian – which I could do as long as I kept my mouth shut! And I didn’t want to look like an American tourist with their loud voices, beige raincoats stuffed with maps, their silk scarves, sandshoes and cameras . . . easy prey for metro pickpockets.’ Jacqui smiled slightly at the memory. ‘I mean, what was not to love about it all? So when he proposed . . .’
‘You said, Oui. How was your French?’
‘Terrible. High school level. I mean, I never expected to end up in France. But I got pretty good in the end.’
‘It sounds like you had a glorious time, though.’
‘In Paris, yes. In the beginning.’
‘So you had a provençal wedding?’
‘Nope. A nice Sydney wedding. I insisted and he was much more easy-going back then. Rellies, schoolfriends, and the groom had a best man he worked with whom he didn’t know very well. No close family.’
‘And your family thought you’d done well for yourself?’
‘My family are down-to-earth. Not pretentious. Though my paternal grandmother did sniff, “Good grief, girl, his English is very odd!” And so I became Madame Yves Bouchard. My father kept introducing him by saying, “This is my son-in-law, Wives Bouchard”. It always cracked me up, but Yves – pronounced “Eve” – didn’t ever think it amusing.’
‘That’s funny. I like your dad. He used to stop by and chat to me whenever I was hanging over the front gate.’
‘I know. He used to worry about you. Said you’d either make something of yourself or get into trouble.’
‘I’ve done both,’ said Cameron with a grin. ‘Tell me more. So you went to France. And after the honeymoon?’
‘Ah, the return to the real word. Initially we lived in a dull little house in Montpellier. A few generations before, his mother’s family had made money in the textile business in Nîmes, but his father’s family were always vignerons. The Nîmes area has been wine country since the Roman occupation. Yves’ family home was a full-blown winery with many producing acres, five kilometres outside Nîmes. After two years we moved to Nîmes to the family home and vineyard. I never really knew much about how the business ran, but this wasn’t because I wasn’t interested. It was made known to me that it wasn’t my place.’
‘You’re not telling me your place was in the kitchen?’
‘Belle Maman thought so.’
‘So no wild foot-stamping and dancing in tubs of grapes?’
‘You’ve seen too many old French movies.’
‘Yes, I have. So you became a provincial French wife?’
Jacqui paused, closing her eyes briefly as a stab of pain caught her unawares. She had tried. She had so wanted to be a good wife and she’d worked hard to please her husband and his family. But her dreams and expectations had been smothered by the reality of a new and different life.
‘What did you do with yourself? How did you get on with your mother-in-law?’
‘I was a discomforting surprise, and a foreigner. My mother-in-law had had a girl in mind for Yves. She was from an influential family in the southern France wine business. I simply didn’t fit any of her expectations. But I did not accept my role as being locked in the kitchen, with a husband dominated by an overbearing mother who couldn’t accept or understand why he’d married outside his village.’
Cameron sighed. ‘An attitude from the Middle Ages.’
‘Quite. In this part of France, you were still considered a foreigner even if you were French and had come to settle from Paris. Initially I was something of a novelty – an exotic catch. Of course, things have changed rapidly since then, so bringing a foreigner into the family is not as unusual as it used to be. This just wasn’t the case back then. Yet I knew Yves had fallen in love with my ingenuity, my Australian-ess. I think he liked that I was so different, so unaffected, so unlike French women – at first, anyway. Yves’ family were nice to me but weirdly different to mine. I was like a new animal in the zoo, very much a curiosity. My French was pretty scrappy at first so there was little or no conversation from either side. As was the custom, old ma-in-law – “Belle Maman” – was moved out of the big house, the family residence, into a small mazet on the property, very cute, what we’d call a cottage but a very different style of architecture. She was not too happy to have lost her official place at the top of the pecking order in Yves’ home, and above all to a foreigner. So I took over the running of the household. It was a typical rural French lifestyle. They grew their own vegetables and fruit trees, and had an old sow called Claudette and a cow called Mignonette. Belle Maman used to milk the cow herself, until she got too old, anyway. It wasn’t because she had to – it was a tradition she enjoyed and carried on from her mother and grandmother. I refused to take on that chore!’
‘Didn’t you have help?’
‘Of course there were staff working in the vineyards and the business. In the house I had two servants and a gardener who took any opportunity to run over to the mazet. They’d hear Yves and me arguing and assumed my future there was anything but secure. So they kept on her good side.’
‘Did you win her over?’
Jacqui sighed. ‘Never. My mother-in-law had to tolerate me because I’d been brought into the family unit, but in her eyes I had no value. She considered me to be la pièce rapportée, which basically means a patch on a garment – it’s a very demeaning expression. I’d say Princess Di was considered as such by the royal firm. Yves’ family were well-to-do, but certainly not “old money”. She’d never ever speak English to me; in her eyes that would have been a sign of submission, a weakness. All I ever got was a tight, polite smile when I tried hard to be friends. She made it clear that no one could look after her son – that is cook, clean, console him, etcetera – the way she could. I believe my husband did appreciate my pragmatism and marketing ideas to boost wine sales, which was certainly something his mother had no clue about. But after Jean-Luc was born she managed to give the impression that I was neglecting him by taking an interest in the business.’
‘Sounds downright hostile.’
‘Yes, it was, and it did wear me down. Needless to say I was nervous all the time, always trying to do the right t
hing. The biggest disaster had to be when I tripped and accidentally broke the precious soupière as I was carrying it to the table one Sunday. That soup tureen was a family heirloom handed down from the eighteenth century. Well, did that set the old girl off! I felt terrible about it, but it was an accident, and she treated me as if I’d done it on purpose. Plus my husband, knowing the gravity of the incident in his mother’s eyes, did nothing to make me feel better – he only tried to calm his mother’s distraught reaction. If ever there was a spat, he would only ever say about his mother, “She means well”.
‘The deadliest situations happened over the holy rite of cooking. My in-laws used to call me “Miss Sandwich” because they saw how much I liked, or was satisfied with, a baguette and a piece of cheese or a slice of ham. I had no great pretensions on the cooking side of things. I vividly remember serving pumpkin soup once at a dinner for one of Yves’ friends, who told me in no uncertain terms that pumpkins were exclusively fed to pigs.’
‘Cad. Your mother-in-law sounds a tough old boot.’
Jacqui nodded sadly. ‘Oh, she was. If she’d only been a little more open to me things might have been different. But instead she refused to acknowledge or accept me in any way, so there was really nowhere to go from there. And I was just too busy trying to fit in and deal with Yves, who changed so much from when I met him, becoming so moody and difficult, to make much of an effort with her after a while.’
Cameron glanced at her. ‘Did you consider leaving him?’
‘Not for some time. I hated to admit defeat. Jean-Luc’s birth was a happy time – Yves was overjoyed to have a son to carry on the family name, and eventually the business. My mother-in-law was pleased about the child, too, but the attention around me would throw her into a jealous rage. While she would never comment on anything to do with raising Jean-Luc, that didn’t stop her criticising me obliquely – she would say the child looked either too thin or too fat, or, if he cried a lot, that she knew “exactly” why. In the end, though, I made my own decisions about how to raise my son.’ Jacqui gave a small smile. ‘And one personal act of defiance was to plant a gum tree at the edge of the vineyard. It was my way of saying, “Jean-Luc is mine . . . and he’s half-Aussie”.’