by Judy Leigh
He woke up the next morning, warm and soft in the bed, and suddenly the remembrance of the troubles of the night before hit him. The bed was empty. When he went downstairs, Maura was sitting at the wooden farmhouse table eating croissants and drinking coffee. Her hair was piled up and fastened with a clip and she wore a bright yellow top and red earrings. Her face was flushed pink, a healthy glow. She smiled at Brendan and he noticed she was wearing pink lip gloss. ‘I didn’t wake you. You were fast asleep.’
He sat down and interlocked his fingers and she poured coffee from the metal jug and passed him a pain au chocolat. She stirred his coffee. ‘I have decided we need to get organised today. What time are we picking the Panda up?’
Brendan found his voice. ‘Two.’
‘OK, we’ll pack, then I’ll go and buy us some provisions for our journey and a little something for Clémence to say thank you. Then we can have lunch in that nice café again and be on the road for half two.’
‘What shall I do?’ Brendan was annoyed with himself, allowing her to make decisions. That would need to change if he had to make his way alone in life.
‘Find a map and work out our route,’ she told him. ‘Saying we’re going south just won’t cut it – who knows where the Caucasians are. Speak to your mother and ask her straight out where she is.’
‘OK.’ He pushed the plate and the bread away from him. ‘I don’t feel like food.’
Maura was surprised. She reached out and patted his hand. ‘We’ve a long day ahead of us. You’ll need a proper breakfast if we’re going to drive halfway across France.’
Brendan stood up. ‘I’m not a child,’ he said and walked towards the staircase, aware of her hurt expression. Once in the bedroom, he felt his head clear. He would ring his mother, find out where she was and arrange to meet her the following day. He took out his phone and pressed the button for Evie’s number. The phone rang a moment, then he heard her voice and he felt his heart lurch.
‘Mammy, it’s—’
‘Brendan. Oh it’s good to hear you. How are you? I’m having such a good time.’
‘That’s nice. Where …?’
‘I have a little campervan now but I am staying in an Irish bar at the minute in a lovely little town. Oh, it’s so nice here in France, the people are so friendly.’
Brendan’s mouth filled with cunning. ‘Irish bar? Sounds lovely, Mammy. Where is it?’
‘Between two towns, Saint-Girons and Foix.’ She pronounced it ‘Foykse’ and Brendan reached for a pen and wrote it down. ‘You’d love it. And the market, oh, it’s wonderful, Brendan, and the food is delicious, and do you know, they have free wine-tastings and …’
‘Sounds grand.’
‘Oh it is, it is. I’ll send you a postcard in a day or two. I might even be able to take a picture on my smartphone and mail it to you.’
‘That would be good.’
‘Brendan, I have to go now. Paulette is doing breakfast and I’m showing her how to do potato farls so I’ll have to get off and away. Is everything grand with you?’
Brendan hesitated. He thought about telling her where he was. His plan had been to meet tomorrow. He thought about Maura downstairs at the table, her cheerful face and smiling pink mouth, and about his mother, who was having such a good time on holiday that she didn’t need him at all to help her. His resolve weakened and he shrugged. He would tell her next time he rang, and suggest they meet. There was plenty of time. Perhaps he’d try to sort things out with Maura today, then everything would be back to normal when he reached his mother. He smiled at his plan.
‘Fine, Mammy – you enjoy your holiday.’
‘Oh I will, Brendan. I’m having such a good time. Now you take care.’
‘Bye, Mammy.’
‘Give my best to Maura and you take care of yourself.’
‘Yes, I will. Lots of love …’
She was gone and Brendan felt a pang of shame for his lies and lack of determination. He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. He didn’t know what to do about Maura; whether they had a future to rescue or whether they had grown apart. He didn’t know what to do about his mother, who had sounded so carefree and so distant from him that he was afraid to tell her he was coming to bring her home. Brendan looked around the room and scratched his head, feeling foolish. He delved within himself and decided he would take action. He stood up, breathed in and picked up the note he’d scribbled. He checked the two place names and opened the map, pen in his hand, and started to draw a line from Angers to Foix, his lips clamped together in concentration.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Evie put the phone in her pocket and smiled. ‘That was my son, Brendan. He’s a sports teacher, you know.’ She pushed her hands back into the flour, raising powdery clouds around her as she lifted and patted the potato farls into shape and dropped them into the skillet. Paulette watched with round brown eyes, her chin resting in her palms.
‘Ray tells me you come all by yourself here, alone in the camping car?’
Evie nodded, flour on her hands. The skillet sizzled.
Paulette shook her dark curls, tied them back and set the table while young Alice and Sophie sat in front of empty plates, their forks lifted in the air, waiting for a real Irish breakfast. ‘I think you are very brave, Evie, to do this journey by yourself.’
Evie looked at the slight woman in the cotton frock, her feet bare and her hair tied in a blue ribbon. ‘Sometimes, Paulette, you just have to get up and do things.’
Paulette rolled her eyes. ‘It is difficult for me. The girls are still young. Five and seven years. Maybe later when they are grown up, I will do something brave for myself.’
The farls sizzled and were flipped. Evie piled them onto plates and added more potato dough to the skillet. ‘When you’ve young ones, you give all of your time to them. All of your life and soul and energy. But they grow and find their own way. Now I’ve time for myself, and I don’t want to waste it any more.’
Paulette handed plates of steaming food to her children and their eyes widened.
‘They’re nice with butter. Beurre,’ Evie explained and the children nodded and poked their knives into a slab of golden butter. There were soon greasy smudges on their faces; their chestnut hair tied back away from damp fingers.
Paulette made a soft humming sound. ‘What was it like to be in the home for the old people?’
Evie placed more farls on a plate. ‘To be honest, it was sucking the life from me, Paulette. I was getting old. Here I’m just a person, no age. Age is just a number. We have to be alive and have adventures if we’re to be who we are. Does that make sense?’
Paulette pressed her lips together and held a farl in delicate fingers, nibbled the end thoughtfully. ‘I am thirty-four years old. For me, I have much to do with my life. But for now I am just Maman, or I am just the wife of Ray or I am the barmaid. Or sometimes I am the cook. I want so much to be more than that.’
Evie sat to table and reached for the butter. ‘What do you want to do with your future, though? For yourself?’
The young woman shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Good wife. Good mother. They are enough, non?’
‘For a while.’ Evie chewed and thought. ‘Yes, all that is grand, and it’s important to do it well. But what else would you like to do, Paulette? Later on, for yourself?’
Paulette shook her curls free of the ribbon and then tied them again. ‘I don’t know. I have no talents. Maybe I could be like you, Evie? Be strong, independent, brave?’
Evie laughed. ‘You’d be surprised about your own talents, Paulette. Sometimes they wait their turn and show themselves when you’re ready for them. For now, maybe you just concentrate on the babbies, you’ve plenty of time afterwards. But I could lend you a good book for the time being, to give you something to think about. Have you read much by Simone de Beauvoir?’
Later, as the children wiped the butter from their mouths, Paulette explained that there would be a party in the bar that evenin
g as it was Ray’s birthday and asked would Evie like to help with ideas for Irish food. She had intended to go to Benji’s free wine-tasting, but that would keep until tomorrow in favour of making soda bread and Dublin coddle, colcannon, stew and dumplings, sausages and finally caramel rice pudding. She was writing a list: they would have to buy cheeses, cream, fresh vegetables, fruit. Evie was keen to make a banquet for her new friends and there would be live music in the bar from Billy the Banjo, and new people to meet. Paulette put a sign up outside in French and English advertising the birthday bash and she tied back her hair in a fresh ribbon and put the kids in little aprons so all four of them could cook up a feast. Alice and Sophie stood on chairs and delved little fingers into flour as Evie showed them how to make soda bread. Paulette flitted between chattering in French to her children, interspersed with giggles and warnings, and English to Evie, asking for help and instruction, and Evie washed her hands and set out ingredients. It was going to be a busy day.
The Irish bar was decked out with little candles in jam jars and they made a space for a stage at the other side of the room, opposite the bar. Tables were pushed closer together to accommodate the food, and people could help themselves. Paulette’s dark eyes flashed as she pointed out that the cost of the food would easily be offset by the amount people would drink. Evie and the children helped her get the pub ready while food was in the oven. Ray was out for the day, playing golf with friends, and although he knew they were planning a party, he was banned from seeing their work until opening time. There were ‘Happy 40th Birthday, Ray’ signs, which Paulette made on poster-sized paper with a realistic-looking cartoon of Ray’s smiling face and his body in golf kit, and Sophie and Alice quietly coloured them in. They stuck photos around the bar, Ray as a teenager, gawky in skinny jeans and floppy hair; photos of him on his wedding day and more recent ones of him in the bar, pulling pints and grinning into the lens.
The kitchen smelled of cooking at its various stages: the hot fat of meat roasting, vegetables frying and steaming, and a delicious smell of caramelised sugar. Billy arrived with his banjo and his wife, Marion. He was an Irishman from Waterford who had lived near Foix for twenty-five years and was now in his sixties. Marion was tall, dark, with red-framed spectacles. She spoke little English but she hugged Evie and said hello to Paulette and the kids and rolled up her sleeves to help put out the food while Billy enjoyed a pint of the strong stuff.
Evie wrinkled her nose and turned to Paulette. ‘Simone de Beauvoir wouldn’t be too pleased. Here we are again, the women presenting the food while the men sit on their arses and drink.’
Paulette smiled politely and agreed but Evie thought that she didn’t have a clue about Simone or her ideas on misogyny – and Paulette was French! Evie resolved to definitely lend her the book.
Evie thought about her life in Dublin, with Brendan and Jim, then at the Lodge, and she decided she too had so much to learn and so much to think about – what was the word? – sisterhood? The women getting together, sometimes cooking, but mostly talking, sharing support and ideas. Maybe that was what was happening. She had never had any real female friends. She and Jim had been out with other couples but they’d never really talked or shared more than a drink and a laugh. And Maura had never been friend material.
Evie pulled a face. Maura wasn’t even daughter-in-law material. She’d been a bubbly one at first, but Evie could see that she’d been determined to get her claws into Brendan and Evie had noticed sadly how her sweet-natured son was always so attentive and thoughtful. Maura would giggle and pout and Brendan would be at her side with a soft word, holding out his coat to keep her warm and dry. If they’d had children, perhaps they’d have had a common interest. But, Evie thought as she pressed her lips together, Maura’s only interest was to keep Brendan under her thumb. She smiled. Brendan was like Jim, good-natured, indecisive and affable. But he was also her son, and he had her stubbornness. The worm would turn. She had sensed it when they last visited her in Sheldon Lodge. He was made of strong stuff; she was sure of it.
Evie surveyed the bar. Guests had started to arrive in groups. Billy the Banjo was already on his second pint and eating pork scratchings. She popped out into the backyard to ring Caroline, the friendly English woman she’d met selling her preserves in the market, and asked her if she and her partner would like to come to a proper Irish party at the pub in an hour or two. Caroline’s voice was full of enthusiasm. She and Nige would be there later and she said how kind Evie was to think of her.
Evie leaned against the wall and her life in Sheldon Lodge popped up as a picture in her head. Bereaved, bored and going barmy, she thought, as she remembered the yoga classes with the old ladies and the ill-tempered Mrs Lofthouse and Barry the chef and lovely Ukrainian Alex. But now she was in France, organising a birthday bash and inviting friends. This was the life for her.
Noisy voices brought her out from deep thought; Paulette and the children shepherded Ray up the stairs to shower and change so that he wouldn’t see what was going on in the bar. Ray protested good-naturedly in French and the children laughed as Paulette waved him on with a tirade of language Evie didn’t understand.
The grin on Ray’s face as he walked into the bar later stayed with him all night. As he took his usual position behind the pumps, everyone clapped and sang ‘Happy Birthday’, led by Billy. Ray beamed as he pulled the first pints. He sniffed the food and his nose turned up like the Bisto kid. Billy the Banjo took to the stage and launched into ‘The Irish Rover’ and Ray was still smiling at eight thirty, when Paulette joined him behind the bar in her party dress, the kids now fast asleep, to give him a huge kiss on the lips.
Caroline turned up in a long flowery dress with Nige, who had grey hair cropped closely to his head and round glasses. She and Evie discussed Simone de Beauvoir while Nige chatted fluently to a man in a cap who apparently lived near them and brought logs twice a year. Evie recognised the two little men she had been drinking with the night before. One of them was called Maurice; he remembered her and waved a greeting. She couldn’t see the tall irritable man with the little ponytail and she was glad he was not there, brooding in the corner with his gloomy eyes.
The food was a great success and Evie felt the centre of attention. She drank two glasses of red wine and was talking to people she’d never met. A woman asked her for the Irish stew recipe and she promised that she would write it down with Paulette to help with the French. Caroline ate two helpings of the caramel rice pudding and said it was the best she’d ever tasted. The bar was busy. Paulette was right; people were standing in huge clusters, their arms straight out holding glasses for a refill, and Ray and Paulette were constantly darting about, fetching bottles and replenishing glasses and taking money.
Nige handed Caroline and Evie another glass of wine each, although neither had asked for one. Nige was chewing colcannon and bread and sipping his orange juice. Billy the Banjo was playing ‘Whisky in the Jar’ and a thought popped into Evie’s head.
‘Caroline, do you think you and Nige would ever go back to England?’
Caroline shook her auburn hair and answered without hesitation. ‘Definitely not.’ She explained that they had been living in the converted guest house for almost twenty years and as they had no children or ties, there was no reason to go back to England.
‘But what about the people you left behind? Don’t you miss friends and family?’
Caroline laughed. ‘We have all we need here. Oh, I’d never go back, Evie. We did go to England for a few weeks when Nige’s mum was ill. We stayed for the funeral, but we don’t go back there much now. I have a brother but he lives in South Africa, and Nige’s sister comes over for Christmas with her three kids and the dogs, but our friends are here. And we make new friends all the time.’ She clutched Evie’s arm and hugged her. ‘Why’d you ask?’
‘Not sure, really. I was just wondering what it is like to be here long-term. I’m just having such a good time here on holiday, but I don’t know how long
I will stay. I’ve a campervan so I can go wherever I like.’
‘You travel by yourself? In a campervan?’
‘Don’t you start.’ Evie laughed. ‘I was cross with a doctor in the hospital. She told me I was too old to be travelling alone—’
‘I think you’re bloody marvellous,’ Caroline interrupted.
Evie had never thought of herself as a role model. Suddenly, a hand touched her shoulder and a face came close to hers; she recognised the strong breath and the Waterford accent. It was Billy the Banjo.
‘Evie, do you know “Danny Boy”?’
She nodded. ‘Everybody knows “Danny Boy”.’
Billy began to propel her towards the stage area. ‘Duet with me. “Danny Boy”.’
Evie took a gulp of wine. ‘Ah, but I am not really a singer.’
Billy the Banjo indicated the room with a toss of his head. ‘Sure, they’re all pissed. Nobody will notice.’
Then they were on stage and he pushed the microphone towards Evie. He put on his warm voice for the crowd. ‘Mesdames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen. Voici la chanteuse la plus célèbre Irlandaise, Evie, et la chanson la plus célèbre de mon pays, Irlande. “Danny Boy”.’
‘What did you say to them?’ Evie asked in a whisper.
‘Oh I just told them it was your first time on stage and to give you a big round of applause.’
Certainly, everyone was cheering and, as Billy the Banjo played the first notes, Evie took a gulp of wine, closed her eyes and started to sing. She and Billy the Banjo got through the first verse about the pipes calling and she found her voice on ‘But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow’, and by the final ‘I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me’, she and Billy were competing with each other for the mic. Evie’s voice wobbled on the high notes but she was enjoying herself. A cheer went up for an encore and she decided to sing an octave lower as they began the last verse again. She opened her eyes and was thrilled to see the crowd smiling and clapping. The man in the beret, Maurice, was wiping tears from his face and Caroline and Nige were clenching their fists and encouraging her on. She glanced across at Ray who blew her a kiss and Paulette waved.