by Faith Wolf
She glanced at him in an attempt to see if his eyes still contained love for Jean, but he kept his head low. She'd only seen him like this once before, on the porch of the house with a freshly-opened wine bottle beside him. She'd been afraid then. Now she was terrified.
“It's a shrine to yourself,” Jean answered. “To your ideals and your beliefs. To your arrested future.”
“Did you really come all this way to lecture me?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “It's so much better in person.”
“Don't you have something for me to sign too?”
“Yes,” she said, “but torturing you is much more fun.”
“Jean,” he said, “give me what you need signed and I'll sign it and you can go.”
“What about your ideals?” she smirked. “There was a time when you said that marriage was -”
“Give me the damned papers!” he said. “And go!”
“I should leave,” Charlotte said.
“Yes,” Gilou agreed. “You should certainly go.”
“Let's both go next door,” Jean told Charlotte, “and give him a few minutes to calm down.”
Charlotte suspected it would take longer than a few minutes. Although she didn't want to be with Jean, Gilou's wife of all people, it was marginally preferable to being in a room with the two of them, so she opened the door and they left while Gilou looked around for something to smash.
~~~
“What's got into him?” Jean asked as they walked toward the cottage. “You?”
“I'm just the maid,” Charlotte grumbled.
“Sorry about that,” she said, though Charlotte could see that she wasn't sorry at all. Rather, she was glad that her comment had not only hit the mark, but stuck. “It was tactless of me.”
“Yes, it was tactless.”
When they reached the cottage, Charlotte stepped aside to let Jean go first, but she refused.
“It's your home now,” she said and gave Charlotte's elbow a nudge.
Not for the first time, Charlotte felt trapped.
Once again, Jean did the thing where she spun around and her skirt fanned out around her. She appeared to be looking for something.
“Something wrong?” Charlotte enquired.
“He's done it here too,” Jean said. “He's taken all the life out of it. It's pretty, yes. But it's not the way I left it. It has no soul. Where are all my things? He's taken down my paintings.” She looked at the book shelf and looked as if she was flipping through a mental photograph album. “The vase,” she said and then began striding from room to room. “I hope he didn't throw away the vase. Have you seen it? It's blue, with yellow and white flowers. Japanese.”
“I'm sure it was very beautiful,” Charlotte said. She followed Jean about the cottage, hoping that she didn't look in the bin. “I thought that you had decorated this place before you left,” she added in an attempt to distract Jean from her search.
“I left in a hurry.” she said. “He really hasn't told you anything about me, has he?”
“No,” Charlotte admitted, embarrassed.
“That makes me feel sad.” She didn't look sad. She looked angry about the vase, but that was all. “Do you think he's happy?” she said.
“How should I know?” Charlotte said.
“You love him don't you?” said Jean.
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
They stood opposite each other, uncomfortably close in the doorway to the bedroom, as if having a competing to see who could fold their arms the tightest.
“Then it's true,” Jean said.
“You're mistaken,” said Charlotte.
And so is everybody else.
“I can see why you love him,” Jean said.
Charlotte wished that she would stop saying that.
“He's handsome,” Jean said. “Boy, is he handsome. He's smart. He has country-boy wisdom. He's modest.” At this, Charlotte laughed. “And he has ideals. But mark my words, he'll never leave for you. Lillac could flood ...”
“...We're on a hill ...”
“.... It's an analogy. Lillac could flood and he'd go down like the captain of a sinking ship. I'll be waving goodbye from the raft. You might choose to drown with him, of course, but that would be a waste of your ...” Jean looked Charlotte over. “That would be a waste.”
“I'm not doing anything with him,” Charlotte said. “He fired me.”
“I know,” Jean said. “It's for the best. Now, where is that vase?”
“I'd like you to leave now, Jean.”
“I'm sure you would,” Jean said, unphased, “but I own this house and you had better remember that, unless you want to be sleeping in Gilou's shed for the winter.”
“I do understand that,” Charlotte said, “but I'd still like you to leave. Now.”
“Are you going to smash something too?”
“Perhaps,” Charlotte said.
“Go ahead,” Jean said, heading to the door. “Enjoy yourself. I'll send you the bill. Let's hope it's not more than you can afford.” She looked Charlotte over one more time and smiled a satisfied smile.
Charlotte hoped that Jean would trip, but she didn't. She had perfect poise, even in her tall, black shoes. She trailed away along the path and up the drive, letting her bejewelled fingers pass through the long grass, stopping momentarily to smell flowers, not looking back.
Now Charlotte knew why she had felt that the cottage was haunted. It was. No wonder she had felt ill at ease. Gilou had decorated, but Jean was in the walls, like sweat in the pores. If there was such a thing as an aura, and Charlotte thought there was, then every part of Jean's aura would have been yelling at Charlotte to get out.
As Jean had walked up and down the cottage, the rooms had made sense. Now that she was gone, the cottage seemed empty again, even with Charlotte in it, especially with Charlotte in it.
If the vase hadn't already been broken, Charlotte would have shattered it.
Chapter 7
For the next few days, Charlotte found herself in an unsettling limbo state between wanting to escape the cottage – Jean's home – and wanting to avoid La Gaillarde. She sat on the swing chair for a few minutes, but this no longer held its appeal, because it was Jean's chair and she imagined Jean sharing it with Gilou, her long, lustrous hair on his shoulder, laughing that shrill, bird-laugh of hers while he muttered meaningless pleasantries in English and French.
So that explained why his English was so good. He'd been practising on Jean. Ultimately, however, she'd left him to become a big shot in the city and he was still sulking about it.
She wanted to walk, but the only way off the grounds without being seen by Gilou or Jean was to cut through the forest, where she would be cut by a multitude of brambles.
“Maybe later,” she thought. “When I can't stand it here anymore. Having said that, maybe sooner will be better than later.”
Not long after, she heard scratching at the door and when she investigated she found Patrick looking up at her, his ears flat against his big, round head.
“You don't like her either,” Charlotte said. He sniffed the doorstep, but refused to come inside. “Okay,” she said. “Let's walk.”
The journey did her good, even if the brambles did slice her hands and tear her shirt. She had got past wondering what she looked like. It wasn't her appearance that mattered.
“You know what I'm thinking about don't you, Patrick?” she said and the dog attempted to lick her face. “You know that better than anyone.”
The walk cleared her head. As she had experienced while wielding an axe the morning before, walking through the prickly vines of the forest, occupied a small part of her mind to the extent that all other parts became still. When she had stumbled off the plane at Bergerac, she had felt like a girl. Now she was a woman, able to take care of herself and numerous living, breathing, furry creatures.
By the time she got back to the cottage, she realised that she had finally found what she had b
een looking for all these years.
Herself.
*
“But you can't come home, darling. You're doing so well.”
She could trust her mother to say the opposite of what she needed at any given moment. She was not a support, but a slide, doused liberally in olive oil and a smattering of banana skins for good measure.
“I'm coming home, mum,” Charlotte said. “ I got what I wanted and now I can come home. I won't stay with you long. It will be just until I find my own place and find work.”
“But you had work in France,” her mother whined. “What happened to that?”
“Let's not go there, okay?” Charlotte said. “It didn't work out. I thought you'd be pleased.”
“I do want to see you,” she said, “but I want you to be happy too, really I do.”
“I am happy,” Charlotte said. “But now I need to come home.”
“What shall I say to Mark?”
“Did he ask about me this week?”
“No, but-”
“Then don't tell him anything.”
“I don't think that's reasonable.”
“Reasonable! Look. Mum. I don't want to have this discussion again.”
“But -”
“Never again.”
“Okay, darling. You can stay as long as you need.”
“Three months,” Charlotte said. “Maximum. And I'll pay you rent.”
“You know that you don't have to do that.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes I do.”
“Can I say one more thing, since we won't be able to talk about it once you move in, although God knows how that conversational nightmare is going to work?”
“Yes,” Charlotte said. For once, she felt in control of the conversation. Her mother was asking her for permission to speak.
“Mark told me that he wants you back.”
Charlotte considered this for a while. She tried to work out whether or not it was true and how her hearing it was supposed to make her feel at this point.
“He says that he misses you,” said Charlotte's mother, “and he wants you to come home to him. He's been playing R&B. He said that things will be different. You can have anything you want. If you want to move, you can move. He's willing to make it work.”
“I'm not,” Charlotte said. “He misses me. Of course, he does. Like I miss brown sauce. Oh, you can get it in the supermarket, but it's expensive and you have to get right down on the floor. Anyway, my point is that he may have said that he misses me, and I miss him too, but he doesn't love me.”
“Oh, but Charlotte, of course he said that he loves you too.”
“No, he didn't,” Charlotte said.
“He always says it.”
“No, he doesn't.”
She didn't know how she knew, but she knew.
“We were never in love,” she said. “We were compatible for a few months. We were comfortable for a year. But comfort isn't everything. Meeting in the middle, splitting everything down the middle, that's okay on paper, but actually, it's unbearably dull. That slight tension, the pushing and the pulling, giving here, taking there. That's exciting.”
“Nonsense,” said her mother.
By the time Charlotte got off the phone, she was furious again. Everything would be better once she got her own place. She'd start again, but this time in a place she knew, where it wasn't incredible to see a black face in the high street. Where there was, in fact, a high street. Where the landlady didn't drop in in her high heels and swan about the rooms telling her that they were cold and lifeless. Where the neighbour didn't treat her like dirt and expect her to come back for more, day after day.
She imagined the mayor of London demanding that she chop logs and stack them next to his mayoral office in Tower Hill. She imagined him with his shirt off, showing her how it was done. She burst out laughing.
The woman who owned the café was right: Gilou was exceptional. It was only a shame that he was such an exceptional pain in the arse as well.
~~~
Packing up was easy. She'd arrived in France with only a wheelie case and a backpack and she had no more belongings now than when she had arrived. Her case felt unusually heavy, nonetheless, and it surprised her to think that, having fled her old existence, she had taken so many things with her. So many pairs of shoes and jeans and combs. Comfort was a completely different thing to her now. Comfort was how she felt inside, not what she wore on her feet.
Having said that, it would be good not to have to wear those silly boots of Gilou's ever again. She wasn't sure that her feet would ever forgive her for that one, particularly not the big toe of her right foot.
“I'll treat you to something special when we get back,” she told it. “I promise. Just me and you, and your nine friends.”
The phone rang. She didn't answer it.
It was either the electricity company – there was a note about it in Jean's guide for people staying at the cottage – or Gilou. She desired to speak to neither of them.
“What is it about these men?” she thought, and then more specifically: “If you want to talk to me, don't be such a coward. Get off your bum and come see me.”
Every now and then a shadow passed in front of the door, but it was never Gilou.
At just before midday, she heard a car trundle along the driveway and she was holding her breath again.
Footsteps crunched along the path and then, once more, a large shadow fell across the kitchen. There was a weighty knock on the door.
Charlotte didn't look at first, savouring the moment, preparing her face. No matter how much preparation she made, however, she was unable to hide her disappointment when she saw that it was not Gilou, but a saggy-faced man in a flat cap.
“Hi Pascal,” she said, lips trembling.
Pascal asked if she was ready and she told him that she was almost there.
“Vous etes gentil,” she said.
“De rien,” Pascal grunted and made a grabbing gesture with his hands. Charlotte fetched her case and handed it to him. He immediately swung it up and carried it in his arms like a child.
“It has wheels,” Charlotte called after him, but he just grunted and began loading it into the back of his car.
She really thought that Gilou would come and say goodbye. In a small village like Lillac, he had said, there were no secrets. Everybody knew everybody else's business. Everybody would have known that she was leaving today. By tomorrow, everybody would know that Gilou hadn't said goodbye.
Charlotte double-checked that she had turned everything off and then she locked the door. She hesitated with the key for a moment and then slipped it back under the plant pot.
Her eyes felt hot, watering slightly. Best to get into the car quickly and get moving. Plane to catch.
She sat in the back of Pascal's car and he expressed regret that, while he could offer her a discount, he had to charge her for petrol. With work being scarce in the village, he needed every centime he could get. Especially as his primary business, a camp site near the river, was about to be closed for good.
Charlotte asked if he was talking about the road that might be built through the village and he said that the road was a certainty, and that the mayor did nothing but get slapped on the back and drink wine with people who amounted to little more than murderers.
Charlotte told him that she didn't think that was the case, but he was unconvinced. He told her in turn that he'd seen the developers, with his own eyes, in the mayor's house. What else could that mean? He said that Charlotte shouldn't be so naïve and that if it wasn't for the closure of his campsite, he might have employed her himself.
The village was not her business any more, it never had been, so she decided to let the argument go. She certainty wasn't prepared to spend her last moments in Lillac defending Gilou.
At the end of the drive, Charlotte asked Pascal to turn right and go down the hill, but he turned left, protesting that this way was quicker. What was done was done. Unable to re
sist, she looked out of the window to see if Jean's flashy 4x4 was still in the driveway.
To her dismay, it was. She'd obviously been with Gilou this whole time.
At least now there was no room for doubt.