The French Gardener

by Santa Montefiore

  “Ava Lightly is my life.”

  “You are young enough to start a new one. You will recover. She is irresponsible to have led you astray.”

  “I will not hear a word against her. It was I who was irresponsible. I am the guilty one. She would not have yielded had I not pushed and pushed. Be certain of this, maman, if I have to leave her, I will never recover.”

  His mother tut-tutted down the line. “This is nonsense. But it is over. As far as I am concerned, it is in the past. You will come home the first week of September. Let’s speak no more about it.”

  Jean-Paul fumed alone in the cottage. Of course, his mother was right. Ava Lightly was not his to have. He couldn’t convince her to leave her children; love and loyalty were two of the qualities he most admired in her. Would she be the Ava he adored if she were capable of leaving her young family for him, if she were capable of such selfishness?

  He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. Certainly not since childhood. Yet the thought of leaving her reduced him to sobs. He buried his face in a pillow. He had ridden the rainbow knowing that in the end he’d pay for it with his own blood. For all the pain, he was certain of one thing: it had been worth it—a lifetime of suffering for a summer of joy.

  XXXIII

  The amber light of dusk, the smell of burning fields, the shortening days of September

  As if to reflect their misery, the skies were gray, the rain heavy and unrelenting on the roof of the cottage, and there was not a glimmer of a rainbow in sight. Ava made tea in his small kitchen, trying to retain a sense of normality while her world was collapsing about her. She laid the table. Two teacups, two saucers, a plate of coffee cake and a jug of milk. They sat opposite each other, barely daring to speak, knowing words were superfluous when saying good-bye.

  They held hands across the table like prisoners through bars and gazed at each other in despair. They both felt the same pain in their hearts, the same tearing of nerves and flesh, the same irreparable damage to their souls. Ava poured tea and sliced two pieces of cake, but its delicious taste was little consolation.

  “It is September. I have to return to France. Even though I would sacrifice the vineyard and my inheritance for you, living here in secret is no life.”

  “Darling Jean-Paul, I would never ask that of you. We always knew the summer would come to an end.”

  “Please don’t cry,” he said when her eyes filled with tears. “If you cry I will never be able to leave.”

  “Loving you has been my greatest joy and my most dreadful sorrow. You will always be here in my heart. Every day I walk around our garden I will think of you and with every year that passes my love will grow stronger and deeper.”

  “I will wait for you, ma pêche.” She so longed for him to mean it. Gratefully she grabbed the lifeline he now threw her.

  “You promise? Because as soon as my children are older and Phillip doesn’t need me I will cut myself free. I’ll be ready for you to take me to France. We can grow old together and love without guilt, knowing that I stayed when I had to. That I did my duty.”

  “I wish you could leave with me now, but you’re not that sort of woman and I love you for it. We have got away without hurting anyone. Only ourselves.”

  She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. “Everything will be so empty once you’re gone. So pointless. There will be no more magic, just soil and plants like every other garden in the world.”

  He looked at her with fire in his eyes. “The magic is deep in the earth, Ava. It will always be there because we sowed it. Don’t ever forget that.”

  They made love one last time as the rain rattled against the windows. “One day I’ll come back to this cottage and reclaim you,” he said, kissing her temple. “I’ll find you here, waiting for me, and nothing will have changed. The teacups will be on the table, the kettle hot and a fresh coffee cake, your very best, to welcome me home. This is our special place. Leave it as it is. As a shrine to us, so that one day, when I come back, it will be like yesterday. I will walk in as if I have only been away for an hour and we will pick up where we left off. We will look older, a little frayed at the edges, a little wiser, but our love won’t have changed. I will take you to France and we will sow our magic in the gardens of Les Lucioles and live out the rest of our days together.”

  “What a beautiful dream,” she sighed, burying her face in his neck.

  “If we dream hard enough it might come true. Like your silly pink in between the green and the blue. If we look hard enough we may see it.”

  “We’ll create a rainbow to last,” she whispered, no longer able to restrain her tears.

  She stood in the doorway and watched him walk away. It was as he wanted, a small bag in his hand, as if he were only going for an hour. She watched until he was out of sight, walking down the river towards the village where he would take a taxi to the station. He hadn’t wanted to say good-bye to the children or Phillip; he didn’t think he could bear it. Instead, he had kissed the woman he loved and taken her love with him.

  No one else seemed in the least surprised that Jean-Paul had gone, though Phillip was a little put out that he hadn’t bothered to say good-bye. It was the end of the summer and he had always said he would stay a year. Hector and Ava continued in the gardens as they always had. But Hector missed him, too. Ava wondered whether he knew about their affair; he looked at her with such sympathy in his eyes, as if he understood her pain. The children went back to school and Phillip finished his book. Toddy took Ava riding on the hills and noticed that the bounce had gone from her step and that she had lost her glow. She suspected it had something to do with Jean-Paul, but for once she kept her thoughts to herself. When Ava had told her that Jean-Paul had left, she had tried so hard to mask her pain, but Toddy had seen it behind her eyes and in the way she had averted her gaze. She knew if she pressed her on the subject she would cause her friend terrible suffering. Ava would tell her when she was ready. In the meantime, she stayed close, as an old and trusted friend, giving comfort with her familiar presence.

  Ava wandered around the gardens like a specter. Alone at night she sat on the bench beneath the mountain ash, recalling their relationship in painstaking detail, from the day they met to the day they parted, until finally she withdrew to the cottage where she began her scrapbook, sticking in petals from the flowers they had planted together and leaves from trees and shrubs that held a special significance for them. She wrote poems, descriptions of the gardens, lists of the things she loved the most from the morning light on the lawn to snowdrops peeping through frost. She wrote because it was cathartic and because her memories relieved the pain.

  Jean-Paul returned to France, his heart bleeding from a wound that would never heal. His life stretched out before him like an eternal sea upon which he would drift, abandoned and alone, like the Flying Dutchman. He had no desire to discuss his feelings, but his father picked him up at the airport and drove him home, and he found himself confiding his hurt. To Jean-Paul’s surprise, Henri didn’t berate him as his mother had done, but smiled indulgently. “Look,” he began when they were on the open road. “Let’s talk man to man.” Jean-Paul was in no mood for one of his father’s lectures. “I make it no secret that I have lived half my life in Paris with Yvette. There is nothing wrong with a man taking a mistress. There’s a great deal wrong with a man wanting to marry his mistress. Especially if the woman in question is Ava Lightly.”

  “I didn’t plan to fall in love with her, Papa.”

  “I don’t question your taste, Jean-Paul. In fact, I admire it. She’s a rather fascinating woman. But you have a responsibility at Les Lucioles. You are my only son and I need you to produce an heir to continue after you are gone. Ava has her own family. Nothing will come from a relationship with her. She is as dry as the desert. You need a fertile young filly…”

  “I don’t want anyone else,” Jean-Paul interrupted.

  “I’m not asking you to fall in love with another woman. I did
n’t fall in love with your mother. I admired her, respected her. I knew she would be good for me and Les Lucioles and I was right. Look what she has done to the gardens! She created them out of nothing and now they are the envy of France. She is the perfect hostess to my clients. The perfect chatelaine. A good wife and mother. It is a shame she did not bear me more children. Tant pis! Marry a lady like I did. Take a mistress. But Ava is the wife of my friend and therefore she is out of bounds. Cut your losses and thank the stars that Phillip never found out.”

  “I don’t want to marry a woman I don’t love,” Jean-Paul began, but he knew his father wouldn’t understand.

  “Love,” he said dismissively. “Love with your head, not with your heart. That is the advice I give to you.” He patted his son’s knee and his voice softened. “I admire you for walking away, though. For leaving without causing ripples. Had Ava not been married she would have made the perfect wife for Les Lucioles. You are not far off the mark. Find another Ava.”

  “There is only one.”

  Henri shook his head and chuckled. “You are young. You will learn that no woman is unique. But if you marry your mistress, you create a vacancy.”

  As the car swept up the drive to the château Jean-Paul felt more isolated than ever. Without Ava by his side its beauty was an affront. He wished the sky were gray and the vines less luxuriant. It was indecent that the place should vibrate with such magnificence when his heart was so full of unhappiness. The dogs trotted out to greet him and he patted their heads and rubbed his face into their necks.

  “Go and see your mother,” said Henri. “She is beside herself. She thinks this is all her fault.”

  Jean-Paul found his mother on her knees beside the dovecote, pulling out weeds. When she turned to greet him he could see that she had been crying. “Maman?” he inquired anxiously, hurrying to her side to embrace her. “I’m so sorry that I’ve caused you pain.”

  “It is all my fault,” she whispered, taking his hand. “I encouraged her to persuade you to return to England. She must have thought I condoned the affair. But I didn’t know. I was only thinking of you. I didn’t consider her, not for a moment.”

  “It’s not your fault. I was already in love with her. If she hadn’t come I would have returned to her in the end.”

  Antoinette’s voice hardened. She looked at him steadily. “But you won’t ever go back, will you, Jean-Paul?” When he hesitated, she pressed him further. “Your father has made my life a misery because of Yvette. Don’t ruin Phillip’s life. Think of the children.”

  “We have both thought of nothing but the children. That is why I am here.”

  Her shoulders drooped. “Thank God.” She pushed herself up. Jean-Paul followed her back through the gate to the château. “You are young. You will love again. You can’t see it now, but you will. The heart has a miraculous way of mending. You think it is not strong enough to withstand such pain and yet it survives to love again.

  “Find a girl who can make you happy and give you children. Fill Les Lucioles with love and laughter. Don’t be like your father. Make her happy in return by remaining faithful to her as your father should have remained loyal to me. Forget the past. Look at this beautiful corner of Bordeaux. It is ripe for a new family and a new beginning. You will promise me, Jean-Paul?”

  “I will try.”

  She stopped on the lawn and turned to him, determined to bring the matter to a close. “No, you will promise me. I’m your mother and I love you. You’re all I have. I know what is best for you. Don’t contact her again. Leave her in peace with her family. Please, Jean-Paul. If you want to be happy, consign her to the past and let her go.”

  “I will wait for her children to grow up. When they no longer need her she will come to me.”

  “Eh bien, let us leave it at that,” she conceded, certain that he would forget about Ava in time and marry someone else. “Come now, I want to show you what I have planted in the orchard.” He let her slip her hand through his arm and walk him back up the garden.

  Jean-Paul felt a small spark ignite in the stone chambers of his heart. For the first time since leaving her he felt uplifted. He would nurture the gardens and tend the vineyard, plant more trees and shrubs and expand the land. He would channel his love into Les Lucioles so that when she finally came home she would see what a paradise he had built for her. She would know that he had never stopped loving her.

  It was in the cottage that Ava began to feel sick, a continuous nausea that she put down to misery. She didn’t want to eat and only Coca-Cola calmed her stomach. She drank it by the can, lying on the bed beneath the eaves, writing her scrapbook in her pretty looped handwriting. The days wore on. If it wasn’t for the approaching autumn she noticed in the cooler wind and shorter days and in the gradual fading of color in her garden, all the days would have merged into one long, miserable day. She wanted to write to Jean-Paul, or telephone him just to hear his voice, but she knew it was useless. Only time would dull the pain of their parting and she had to give herself that. So she wrote the scrapbook with the intention of one day giving it to him so that he would know how much she had missed him. That she had never given up.

  “You’re looking rather pale, Shrub,” said Phillip one evening during dinner. “You’re not eating. Are you unwell?”

  “I don’t think so. I just feel tired and deflated. Must be the weather.”

  “Nonsense. I think you’re pregnant.”

  Ava was astonished. “Pregnant? Do you think?”

  “Absolutely. You’re feeling sick. You’re tired all the time. You’re not eating. There’s nothing physically wrong with you. Why don’t you get one of those kits they’re always advertising and check.”

  “I hope you’re wrong.”

  “Why? It wasn’t so long ago that you yearned for another child.” He took her hand. “Perhaps your wish has been granted. Why not, eh? We make such charming children.” Ava paled at the thought of another baby. Then a small spark of optimism ignited in her heart. If she was pregnant, it could be Jean-Paul’s baby. She put her hand across her lips to hide her smile. Jean-Paul’s baby. She barely dared cast the wish.

  The following day she drove to the chemist and bought a kit. With trembling fingers she dipped the stick into her urine, then waited. She closed her eyes and wished: If there is a God please give me the blessing of Jean-Paul’s child so that I may keep a part of him to love. I haven’t hurt anyone. I’ve sacrificed my love for my husband and children. A baby shall be my reward, were I to deserve it. She opened her eyes to see the clear blue stripe of a positive result. She was indeed pregnant.

  She rushed to the telephone to tell Jean-Paul that the child he had longed for was growing in her belly. A part of him and a part of her, created with love. She opened the address book to find the number of Les Lucioles, but she didn’t dial. She stood staring at the page, her enthusiasm shriveling in the harsh glare of reality. What would it achieve? It would only make their situation even more impossible. He’d have every right to claim their child. He had nothing to lose. She, on the other hand, had everything to lose. If she confessed to Phillip, she would risk her own children and create unhappiness for everyone around her. She would hurt the very people she had sacrificed everything to protect. She closed the book. It would have to be her secret. No one must ever know. Phillip would think it was his and the children would accept their new brother or sister without question. She would take the truth to her grave.

  The following spring, when daffodils raised their pretty heads and blossom floated on the breeze like confetti, Ava gave birth to a little girl. She insisted on calling her Peach after Jean-Paul’s nickname for her. Verity questioned her daughter’s state of mind in choosing such a ridiculous name, but Phillip indulged her. He gazed upon his new daughter with pride. According to him, Peach looked just like her mother. Ava was relieved at the baby’s blond hair and fair skin, but she saw Jean-Paul in the beauty of her smile. To Ava, every smile was a gift.

  XXXIV


  The melancholy light of summer’s end fills my soul with wistfulness

  London, 2006

  David had never felt lonelier. He had lost everything. Miranda refused to answer his calls. He had written to her, hoping she’d take the time to read his lengthy apology and confessions of stupidity and arrogance. Most of all he missed his children. He tried to keep focused at work, yet Gus’s and Storm’s inquiring little faces surfaced to flood his heart with shame. He hadn’t spoken to Blythe since they had parted at Waterloo Station. He had watched her walk through the crowds of commuters holding Rafael by the hand and had suffered a pang of self-loathing. The people who lost the most were the children. Rafael would never again enjoy a weekend in the hollow tree, and Gus and Storm would never again run around the old ruined castle with their father. Just when he was beginning to enjoy them.

  He regretted his arrogance. He had believed he had a right to everything because he worked hard and earned lots of money. But Miranda wasn’t one of his chattels like his house and his car, to be added to a list that included mistress and pied-à-terre. He loved her. She was the mother of his children. He was a family man. He’d do anything to put back the clock. Anything.

  David had many acquaintances, but there was only one friend he could really talk to. Somerled Macdonald, nick-named Mac, was someone he had known for a very long time. The kind of man he could trust to keep the most shameful of secrets and not think any less of him for it. With honest hazel eyes, the strong, sturdy body of a gifted sportsman, Mac was reliable and consistent, with a sense of humor that always made the best out of the very worst. Mac’s wife, Lottie, had grown close to Miranda over the years they had been married. They had enjoyed weekends shooting on Mac’s family estate in Yorkshire, and David shared Mac’s obsession with rugby and cricket, staying up until the early hours of the morning in Mac’s Fulham sitting room to watch the Ashes on the telly. Mac was Gus’s godfather and David was godfather to Mac and Lottie’s son, Alexander. Now it was he who needed a godfather’s wise counsel.