by Louise Dean
Three years before, the pizza man’s wife left him to start her own restaurant elsewhere, and the little woman who ran the tea shop took the risk of going from knick-knacks to gourmandises, and the greengrocer expanded his range to include dried pulses and pastas, cheese and eggs and they all wondered whether they would make it through the winter; now they had made it through three. The ex-pats were leaving but the tourists were still coming.
The owner sets the pizza down with pride. The little black wet marbles, the picholine olives, roll forth, the pizza crust is lighter than a crêpe and wood-smoked dirty enough to push the confection beyond sanitary into something far more pleasurable. He’s been good-natured to the odd customer through the winter months, he was good-natured to the crowds through the summer. He’s taken it all in his stride. It isn’t so much, but it’s something.
After three years of building works which jeopardized the commerce of the town, a week of free events has been organized by the municipality and so the town is unusually full as people come and find a table for the music this lunchtime.
Richard nods at the winegrower from Château Thuerry, the vineyard on the road to the motorway; a man with walnut skin, wearing today, in place of his blue overalls, a cowboy hat with studs, a nylon shirt with a Japanese tiger prowling down its side.
Out of the backwoods they come in from the winter in denim shirts for the men and elastic-waisted long skirts for the women, the less judicious with short skirts, fags in gobs, singing along.
With his equipment plugged in, up and running, the lone young singer, bandana Springsteen-style, gives it emotion, the tendon on his neck taut.
‘Wiz or wizout you . . .’
There they are — Richard, Simone, Valérie and Max, having lunch. Valérie keeps a seat free opposite her and leans forwards to touch it when other would-be lunchers enquire. She shakes her head and says it’s taken.
It’s the first hand of summer, there’s drink and talk, and they stay away from anything difficult, just as they always had done, only now they know it, and now they know it’s not for ever.
Guy emerges from the photographer’s two doors down where he went to ask after an old black-and-white camera, and takes the free seat opposite Valérie. She reaches forwards to touch the camera he’s holding and the two of them dip their dark heads to the prize.
Simone is smoking and watching the human traffic. Richard has an arm around Max’s seat and he’s keeping time with his hand to the music, but he’s playing and replaying in his mind excerpts from Rachel’s email of the morning.
He kisses the boy’s head. He kisses the boy’s head again. He smiles at Guy. His eyes prick. He is full of gratitude to him for helping him make Max better. For insisting he’s special.
They go home in Guy’s other new acquisition, a clapped-out Nissan truck. Guy pulls over after the first roundabout and offers a lift to Jacques, who squats down in a derelict van in the woods just past the German’s place. Many times on her way back and forth from shopping Simone has passed him and not once has she stopped, though, like her, every day he goes to the village for his wine and bread, only by foot.
Max turns to look through the rear windscreen and sees the man, his hair and beard blowing, crouching, holding on to the sides of the truck and he smiles at him. Jacques smiles back, risks a tentative thumbs-up, almost losing hold. Max returns the thumbs-up. He is sitting behind his grandparents, between his mother and father.
Thrilled with this exceptional show of neighbourliness, when he bids them farewell, Jacques, against his own interest, enthuses about the land he’s squatting on and explains how Richard would be able to snap it up for next to nothing as the owner is desperate to sell.
‘I could help you. I could speak to him for you. I could arrange it. Man, I’m hungry. And lonely.’
He looks from face to face, keenly. He is trading his shelter for something he has not defined. They turn him away.
‘You’re a good man, Guy,’ says Richard.
‘No,’ Guy says. ‘No, I’m not.’
As he goes on his way Guy says that he hopes the fellow won’t misunderstand the gesture. Simone scorns him, she insists the man will be round in the morning, bothering them; this she foresees with conviction.
* * *
Standing outside their back door speaking to Rachel on the phone early in the morning, Richard sees Guy giving Jacques his marching orders from their terrace. Jacques tramps down the slight hill from their bungalow towards the grassy alley that separates the three houses, looking scalded.
‘I thought we were friends! A little tartine! A lousy piece of bread! For pity’s sake. A small glass to warm a man!’
‘I’m not drinking with you. Go on with you. Fous le camp!’ Guy calls after him.
‘Some people don’t know anything about brotherly love.’ He gestures at Richard. He puts his hands on his hips. ‘One lift! One measly ride on the back of a truck and he thinks he’s Jesus Christ.’
Guy sucks on his cigarette, squinting after him until he sees the man diminished by distance. Then he sits back down at the table with Max for their early-morning game of chess.
‘I know that I’m lucky,’ he grumbles in a low voice. ‘I could be him.’
He moves his moustache with his nose and cheeks, considers the chess pieces. His brow floats as surreptitiously his eyes take in the double doors behind his grandson. Catching Max’s eyes, he nods at the chequered board to confirm it has his attention.
When the door opens, when the wind chimes tinkle, when Simone emerges in her buttoned-up housecoat, his whole face changes.