The French for Love

by Valpy, Fiona

  It was the ‘Love E’ that really got my attention.

  It’d been over three months since we split up.

  As I was mulling this over, my phone beeped, signalling an incoming text message, and I fished it out of my bag. From: Ed. ‘Call me when u get this. X’.

  Heavens, what was going on? Love Ed? A kiss? After months of radio silence. I was confused. I clicked the message shut, then sat staring at the computer screen for a few seconds before reopening the email to scan it again. Whichever way you looked at it, it was a definite invitation to reopen lines of contact. Hah, maybe he’d realised what he was missing now his ‘bit on the side’ had moved to a more central—and no doubt less exciting—position. He’d moved out of my flat and into Camilla’s in Pimlico in one smooth step, smoothness always having been one of Ed’s most obvious character traits.

  But perhaps now he’d broken it off with her, I thought, and I imagined a highly satisfactory scene where we would meet up and he’d be contrite, begging me to take him back. Naturally, being strong-minded and highly principled, I would turn him down. But then after a suitable period of begging and a campaign involving several large bouquets of flowers, boxes of chocolates, etc., he would convince me that he had truly seen the error of his ways and would be faithful to me forever more, I would take him back, forgiving him in a mature and dignified manner. My life back on track for marriage and motherhood. Perhaps even a diamond ring would feature at this point...

  I snapped myself out of my reverie with a shake of my head. ‘Yeah, and watch out for flying pigs, too,’ I muttered under my breath.

  I was still in a state of distraction when Harry Wainright leant out of his office and said, ‘Gina, can I ask you to come through, please?’

  And so it hardly sank in at first when he told me that the company had been bought by one of the big chains.

  And then he’d dropped the bombshell. ‘I’m sorry, Gina, and I know the timing couldn’t be worse with all you’ve been going through, but I’m going to have to let you go.’

  I turn over in bed with a sigh. My eyes feel gritty with weariness, and thoughts flutter and whirl in my head like a flock of noisy starlings that refuse to settle down for a quiet night’s roosting.

  And so, that awful day when I heard I’d lost my job, of course I’d called Ed. Drowning in grief, shock and despondency, those messages he’d sent out of the blue seemed as though he was holding out an emotional lifejacket.

  We met in the local Italian restaurant, familiar territory since we used to go there on Friday nights to celebrate the end of the working week, relaxing over plates of spaghetti puttanesca and a bottle of house plonk. Ed was already there when I arrived—notable in itself as he is usually late as a matter of course—and stood up solicitously to embrace me as I reached the table. He ordered a bottle of wine, a Barolo from the top end of the wine list I’d noticed, rather than our usual Valpolicella, and I was pleased and cautiously flattered that he was making such an effort. Where is this going, I wondered, trying to ignore the glow of hope that had rekindled itself in my heart. Had he and Camilla split up? I’d forgotten how very good-looking he was, and how utterly charming he could be when not otherwise distracted. I asked Ed, with a smile of irony at the normality of the question after the turmoil I’d been through in the last seven days, how his week had been.

  Ed is Director of Sponsorship for an events company. When you come down to it, this means he sells advertising. But of course it would never do to voice such a vulgar thought. The job mainly involves wining and dining contacts made though the Old Boy networks of the public schools of southern England and persuading them, in the most gentlemanly manner of course, to part with large dollops of money to have their companies’ names displayed at polo matches, rugby fixtures and regattas. Apparently at the moment things weren’t going too well, due to the recent economic nosedive, and it was proving, Ed admitted over his bresaiola and rocket salad, to be a bit of a bore.

  ‘But that’s enough about me. More importantly, how are you?’ he asked, reaching a sympathetic hand across the table to hold mine.

  The glow of hope flickered into a small flame.

  ‘I was so sorry to hear about your job. Still, in the big scheme of things, it’s funny how it’s worked out really, isn’t it? You’ve obviously reached an important crossroads in your life. What are you planning on doing next, now you have carte blanche?’

  I was surprised that he saw my current situation in quite such exciting and positive terms, but Ed’s always been an optimist and I thought perhaps he was right—I should see this as an opportunity for a fresh start rather than having the distinct feeling that I was being swept rapidly up a certain well-known creek without a paddle.

  He gazed across at me over the flickering tea light and the bottles of oil and vinegar as I described the calls I’d been making and the copies of my CV I’d sent out, completely fruitlessly. ‘The wine industry seems to be taking a similar battering,’ I explained. ‘Like your sponsorship, I suppose wine is seen as a luxury item, so when times get tight it’s one of the first things people cut back on. The supermarkets will carry on undercutting everyone else, so they’ll be okay. But I don’t expect Wainright’s will be the only independent wine merchant to disappear. And at least they were bought out. Some of the independents are sure to go under. Every wine buyer in the country will be sitting tight and trying to hang on to their job. So it looks like I’m going to be a lady of leisure for the foreseeable future.’ I‘d tried to make light of my situation, which actually sounded even more dire to me when I had to explain it like this.

  The waiter appeared with our plates of pasta and then suggestively brandished an oversized pepper grinder in my direction. ‘Pepper for the bella signorina?’ Ed waved him away and poured me some more of the dark red wine.

  ‘Well I’d like to propose a toast,’ he said with a flourish of his own glass. ‘Here’s to ladies of leisure. I was sorry to hear about your Aunt Liz, of course, but talk about good timing. Presumably she’s left everything to you? Bit of a silver lining as it turns out, eh?’

  For a few seconds I continued to smile as I tried to work out what he could possibly mean. And then, as realisation dawned, a wave of icy cold water washed over the blaze of hope that, I have to admit, had by now been burning brightly within me, extinguishing it completely.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said frostily. ‘I’m not sure I quite follow.’

  Ed continued breezily, ‘Well, she must have been pretty minted, and you were certainly her nearest and dearest relation, just like a daughter in fact, so surely she’s come up trumps just when you need it most. I always did like the old girl—a great character.’

  His mobile phone, on the pink tablecloth beside a half-eaten bread stick, suddenly vibrated. He glanced down at it and then smoothly—too smoothly—returned his gaze to my face. ‘Gina?’ he asked, as I glared at him in cold fury.

  I reached over and picked up his phone. On the illuminated square of the screen was a little yellow envelope and next to it the name Camilla.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I said, ‘how is the lovely Camilla these days? Still your landlady? Or did you finally strap on a pair of balls and decide to stand on your own two feet for a change? No?’ I continued, as his gaze flickered uncertainly to the plate of food in front of him. ‘So you’re still living with her, but thought it would be worth checking me out again in case I’d suddenly become a better financial proposition? I should have known. The trouble with you, Edmund Cavendish, is that you are, and always will be, a complete arsehole. Thanks for supper, but sorry, I’ve just remembered I’d rather be at home scrubbing the mould off the shower curtain than waste one more second of my life in your company.’

  Shaking with rage, I pushed back my chair and stalked out of the restaurant, Italian waiters with their oversized pepper grinders scattering before me as I went. Not such a bella signorina after all, evidently.r />
  And my fury had propelled me to my front door and up the stairs to my flat before I collapsed on the sofa and lay there, breakers of humiliation, pain and grief crashing over me as I contemplated the twisted pile of wreckage that my life had become.

  I must finally have fallen asleep because I come to and the morning light is streaming in at the window, casting the clusters of wisteria flowers that hang outside into elongated, dancing shadows across the bedspread. I lie there for a while longer, my head feeling thick and heavy after yet another troubled night, lost in thoughts of the past few weeks.

  After that ghastly evening with Ed, when I finally accepted what a complete loser he really is, I’d plummeted into a deep depression. I spent my days lying on the sofa eating my body weight in chocolate HobNobs and watching Bargain Hunt on TV. The odd glimmer of hope would come when an envelope landed on the doormat in response to one of the job applications I’d sent in, only to be dashed as the words of yet another polite rejection swam before my eyes and I’d reach for another biscuit to numb the pain.

  I was in grave danger of becoming an expert on Art Deco ceramics and developing a backside the size of the Bay of Biscay.

  The days were bad enough, but I particularly dreaded the nights, contemplating each one with trepidation as it stretched before me, a dark desert to be crossed alone, knowing that in the shadows my anxious thoughts lurked, waiting to ambush me and harry me, nipping at my heels like a pack of wild dogs. Some evenings I would drift asleep in front of the television before dragging myself groggily into bed an hour or so later, only to lie there wider awake than ever the minute my head hit the pillow. Sometimes, relieved that another restless night was over, I would fall into a deep sleep just as dawn broke, floundering in a quicksand of troubled dreams which relinquished their grip on my mind only reluctantly when I woke, leaving me queasy and emotionally drained.

  One of these dreams still stays with me with particular clarity. In it I’m trying to get to France—I have to get to France to see Liz urgently—but am held up at every turn. Firstly I have work to finish (ha!), then I jump into a taxi to get to the airport only to find Ed sitting in it. He insists we go back to his place to pick up his suitcase. I realise we’ve missed the plane, so I go to catch a bus to the station, but there’s one just pulling away and I run to catch it but my legs are like lead weights and my lungs constrict so that I can hardly move. I push on though and get to the station. The Eurostar is—miraculously—still there and I go to buy a ticket. But there’s a long queue and it’s not moving. I crane my head to see who’s holding it up and Ed turns to smile at me from the front of the line. Weak-kneed with relief, I go up to him, but he turns away. Then I see he has bought two tickets and I know the second one is not for me. In desperation, I get on the train anyway just as it pulls away from the platform. But instead of whizzing soundlessly through the countryside, it seems to have developed the same problem as my legs, and drags itself along laboriously. I get out and miraculously find myself at Sainte Foy—hooray, nearly there; hang on Liz, I’m coming. I force my leaden limbs to carry me up the hill and finally I turn into the drive under the oaks. But the courtyard is empty and the trees are skeletons and I know I’m too late. All I can hear is my desperate, gasping breath and then a magpie flutters down from one of the trees and starts towards me with menacing intent. It gives a rasping cry and I wake with a start.

  The last time I dreamed that dream was when I hit rock bottom.

  I’d woken, gasping for breath, to find that there really was a magpie calling in the trees in one of the neighbouring gardens.

  I’d lain there for a while, trying to calm my breathing and gather my thoughts. I needed to get a grip. How do you know when you’re losing it? Was this what a nervous breakdown felt like?

  I got up and went through to the kitchen. Opening the fridge door, I gazed at an unappetising heel of stale bread and a single pot of yoghurt which, on closer inspection, turned out to be about a week past its sell-by date. I went to the biscuit tin, but there was nothing in it but the forlorn empty wrapper from a packet of HobNobs.

  The phone lay on the counter beside me and, almost without thinking, I picked it up and dialled. ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, ‘how are you?’

  ‘Oh, hello darling, just getting ready to go out, actually. What are you doing today?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just wondering if I could pop over sometime?’

  ‘Well I’m going shopping this morning and then I’ve got Bridge this afternoon,’ she replied breezily.

  ‘Okay, well another day then.’ I’d tried hard to keep the tremor in my voice from spilling over into something unstoppable.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  I swallowed hard and suddenly found that I couldn’t get the words out because if I opened my mouth I’d start to cry and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop.

  ‘Actually the shopping can wait,’ said my mother briskly into the silence that hummed down the phone line between us. ‘Come straight over. Or shall I come to you instead?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I’ll come to you. Be nice to have a change of scene,’ I said into the phone with a watery smile.

  Half an hour later, Mum was putting two mugs of coffee onto a tray beside a Royal Doulton plate bearing some leftover home baking from her latest Bridge afternoon. The familiarity and homeliness were comforting.

  ‘It’s such a lovely day, let’s take this into the garden,’ she’d said.

  Instead of sitting on the terrace beside the wall of the house, she led the way across the lawn to Dad’s bench. We sat and she offered me the plate of cakes. I shook my head and she’d said kindly, ‘Come on, Gina, you look as if you haven’t eaten properly in days. Or slept either, come to that. Take one and tell me what’s on your mind.’ Balancing her mug of coffee on the arm of the bench, she’d reached over and taken my hand.

  And we sat there for a while as the tears poured silently down my face and she waited patiently and calmly until the torrent turned to a trickle.

  Then, releasing my hand, she pulled a neatly folded handkerchief from her sleeve and passed it to me. ‘My poor darling girl,’ she said, which set me off again, but I was almost cried out now, so after a minute or two I blew my nose and found that the oppressive weight of my grief, which had been crushing my heart into a lump as dense and heavy as lead, had been washed away in the flood and now I was left empty and exhausted, but calmer.

  ‘I’m going to have to sell Liz’s house,’ I blurted out, gazing sightlessly at the blue of the southerly skies before us. ‘If I sell it, I can pay off the mortgage on the flat, so at least I won’t lose that as well. Then hopefully my redundancy money will tide me over, if I’m careful, until I can find another job.’

  My mother looked at me appraisingly. ‘I see. Is that really what you want to do? It doesn’t sound much fun to me.’

  Fun? I bit my tongue in order not to snap her head off. Overwhelmed with self-pity, I sniffed and then blew my nose again on the crumpled handkerchief which I was clutching in my fist. ‘Well, I don’t exactly have any choices at the moment,’ I said bitterly.

  ‘Nonsense, darling. Choices are exactly what you have. This is a wonderful opportunity for you.’ I started to interrupt, but she held up a hand. ‘Now hear me out. I know you’ve been through a horrible time, and I’m not surprised you’re knocked sideways. You must feel as if you’ve lost absolutely everything just at the moment.’

  A sob escaped me and she took my hand again.

  ‘But in reality you’ve gained enormous freedom and that’s not something that happens to everyone in life. This is a chance for you to take yourself off and do something completely different.’

  ‘But I can’t sell the flat here,’ I protested. ‘The way things are right now, nobody’s buying.’ I’d felt a flash of irritation towards my mother. It’s okay for her, si
tting here in her comfortable cocoon protected from the economic gales that are howling just beyond her front gate, I thought. She honestly hasn’t a clue about managing money and the reality of other people’s financial problems.

  ‘Well, darling,’ she’d replied brightly, ‘I don’t think it’s the time to sell the house in France either. If des-res properties in commuter belt Arundel aren’t selling, then tumbledown farmhouses in the depths of rural France are unlikely to be going like hot cakes either. And with the euro so strong against sterling at the moment, you won’t have queues of Brits lining up to buy over there.’

  I turned to look at my mother in astonishment. Blimey, not quite so clueless after all, it seemed.

  ‘Let’s face it,’ she continued. ‘This isn’t just a little economic blip; it’s likely to be a serious recession for at least a year, maybe more. And despite the resulting increase in the number of people drowning their sorrows, the wine trade is going to be going through rocky times for the foreseeable future. So if the prospect of mouldering in your flat wallowing in self-pity appeals, then by all means go ahead. I just think you can find a more positive solution to all this, a bright girl like you.’

  She was really getting into her stride now. ‘You’re right that no one’s buying at the moment, so why not rent out your flat? That way your mortgage will be covered. And apparently the rental market is booming, especially in places like Arundel. Go and spend some time in France. You have somewhere to stay that you love. Your redundancy money will tide you over for a while and I’ll help out too if need be. You’ve always said you wanted to get your Master of Wine qualification and you can easily do it from there and come back to sit the exams when you’re ready. Indeed, what better place could there be to immerse yourself in wine? Within reason of course,’ she finished with a smile.

  We sat in silence for a few seconds while I took all this in. I turned to her with a wry smile. ‘Heavens, you have been giving my life a good deal of thought.’