One Day in May

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Gustavian bleeding Grey.’

  ‘I know,’ I muttered. We’d mixed it specially for her. Or had our mates at Perfect Paints do it for us.

  ‘What on earth will my husband think?’ we heard her say as she paced up and down, one arm clenched around her minuscule waist. ‘It’s for tomorrow night!’

  ‘Her husband won’t give a monkey’s,’ remarked Greg. ‘He’s in a maisonette in Battersea most afternoons after work, with his secretary.’

  ‘How d’you know?’ I said, appalled.

  ‘I’m painting her kitchen, aren’t I? Lilac Wine. Recognized him.’

  Lucinda was back and Greg sank gnomically to the skirting again. She tucked her phone in her jeans, so tight over her skinny hips she could barely get it in, and turned to me. A fine fretwork of lines framed the azure eyes that gazed from a once very beautiful face.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Any ideas?’

  Happily I had.

  ‘The skirting boards and ceiling are brilliant white,’ I explained, ‘and they need to be softer. Off-white certainly, or even palest grey, or taupe.’

  ‘Oh.’ She blinked. ‘But I always do them white.’

  It was as if I’d suggested a radical rethink of her underwear drawer or something equally personal.

  ‘Yes, but in a French themed room like this, they need to be more muted, otherwise the contrast is too stark. Too Dulux.’ This had the desired effect. She froze. Dulux, to a woman like this, was a worse word than fuck. ‘All the colours need to blend in,’ I went on, ‘so you don’t notice them. One of these will be fine.’ I fished in my bag and pulled out a National Trust colour chart – always useful in extremis – flopping it open on the table.

  ‘Something like Pontoon,’ I pointed. ‘Or even Dead Salmon.’ Greg smirked, but then decorators always did: at the bloody silly names, and the hated paint that went on like water, and needed three coats, not having any plastic in it.

  ‘Oh, I see.’ She peered. ‘I rather like Muff.’

  ‘Don’t we all,’ Greg muttered.

  I shot him a look.

  ‘Muff’s a bit dark,’ I told her.

  ‘Beaver’s nice, though,’ Greg couldn’t resist, mouth twitching. ‘I reckon your husband would like Beaver too.’

  ‘I can’t see Beaver,’ she frowned.

  ‘It’s been discontinued,’ I said quickly, rolling up the chart. ‘But if you’re not sure about these, I can get one mixed specially for you, if you like? Something that fits in exactly?’

  ‘Oh, would you?’ Suddenly she was all charm and smiles, and I wasn’t an annoying interior designer who’d got it wrong, but a magic wand waver, who really was awfully clever. ‘Thank you so much. I’d be so grateful.’

  ‘Not at all,’ I murmured as Greg smirked into the skirting some more. He knew full well I’d pop a splodge of colour into a pot of cream paint, shake it up, put a homespun label on it, and charge her eighty pounds, which, with two hundred for the house call – house calls were pricey – plus VAT, netted a clear three hundred pounds. By anyone’s yardstick it was a rip-off, but then, as Maggie said, women like Lucinda Carr deserved to be ripped off. She wanted to tell her friends her paint had been ‘specially mixed’ and she certainly didn’t want me charging her twenty quid for it, either.

  I sighed as I bid her goodbye and went down the steps to the street. I wouldn’t tell Maggie about the husband, I decided. She’d love it too much. Maggie had recently become more gleeful about our friends’ marital disharmony, and although a bit of me in the past had secretly exulted too, these days I felt uncomfortable with it. Surely women – all women – deserved our loyalty? Our support? Somewhere within me, I realized, I believed in something woolly and indeterminate called the sisterhood: I didn’t want to be rubbing my hands at my married friends’ misfortune. If I said as much to Maggie, though, she’d say sharply, ‘Why not? They deserve it. They bring it on themselves.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘By not doing anything with their lives. By relying on a man.’

  But what could they do? I thought as I walked on. Women like Lucinda Carr? What else did she have, besides the institution of marriage? Not a career. That, she’d never had, and never thought she’d need, either. And now it was too late to start one. So what could she do but marshal what forces she had: her fading beauty, her money, keep doggedly at the highlights, the manicures – never say die? Shouldn’t we feel the pain and recognize the bravery of women like that? What could she do but plaster her walls with photos of her offspring – a constant remainder to her husband – restlessly tart up her house and her wardrobe, slap on a smile and hope for the best? Hope to still be here in ten years’ time, and actually, if she could get through the next five, she probably would. Brave? I thought so.

  As brave as being alone at forty? I turned down Sydney Street and felt the cool breeze on my cheeks as I headed towards St Luke’s. That, of course, depended on the day. Depended on whether one woke up full of beans and optimism, or awoke, slowly opened one’s eyes, and stared down the barrel of loneliness: at the years stretching ahead. I turned the collar of my coat up against the breeze, which, I recalled, always whistled very keenly down this particularly wide and gracious street. Then I put my head down and marched on.

  16

  Weeks passed and Provence beckoned. Historically, Maggie and I would spend the time leading up to a trip to France making plans. Heads bent over the apothecary’s desk, excitement mounting, we’d draw up detailed lists: in one column we’d write what was selling and what was popular, and in another, what was passé, and what we should avoid at all costs. There was a bit of that this time. Lanterns, we decided were big this year, burnished and rewired. We sold masses. Armoires, too, for freestanding kitchens. Commodes were popular for putting TVs on, and overmantel mirrors flew out as soon as we’d shipped them in. But the larger mahogany pieces were anachronisms now. No one had houseroom for a vast old sideboard or a twelve-foot dining table, and likewise, wardrobes were a no no. We shuttled ideas this way and that, pacing the shop, sucking pencils, pausing to scribble or pontificate, both of us talking at once, and yes, a degree of excitement returned. Christian was right: Provence in autumn was just what we needed, and although we didn’t fizz and buzz quite like we used to – years of experience ensured we could take a more relaxed attitude, leave more to chance when we got there – it undoubtedly put a spring back into the step of the French Partnership. Undoubtedly gave us a boost.

  Which was why it was something of a blow when Maggie rang the night before we were due to leave, sounding dreadful.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Hatts, I’ve come down with this ghastly flu,’ she wheezed, coughing away from the mouthpiece. ‘I’ll join you out there for Fréjus, but I’m going to have to miss Montauroux, I’m afraid. I feel awful.’

  ‘Oh.’ I realized I was bitterly disappointed.

  ‘But if I bring the van down when I come, we can fill that up as well. Get far more stock that way. It makes complete sense, actually, to have two vehicles,’ she told me nasally. It did, commercially. But Maggie and I had never taken the sensible, commercial route, preferring the camaraderie of a giggle together in the lorry. It was the whole point actually.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said, wondering if her voice was brightening slightly. It seemed to veer from being extremely blocked up to perfectly normal. ‘But what a shame.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You seemed all right in the shop. It’s awfully sudden, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very, but that’s how this bug is, apparently. My cousin had it. One minute you’re as fit as a fiddle and the next, you’re at death’s door, feeling lousy.’

  ‘Which cousin?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘Um, Cousin… Alfred.’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘No, well, he’s kind of the black sheep of the family. No one really speaks to him.’

  ‘And yet he rang to confide the details of his appalling malaise?’

/>   ‘Yes…’ Maggie was nowhere near as consummate a liar as I was.

  A scuffle could be heard in the background, then a deep cough. I cleared my throat.

  ‘Maggie, is Henry with you?’

  There was a shocked silence. Then: ‘How did you know?’ she hissed. No sign of a blocked nose now.

  ‘I can tell. Why didn’t you just say, “Look, Henry’s appeared out of the blue, he’s back from New York, can I join you down there?” ’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, chastened. Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘His wife’s gone to her sister’s for a week. I was going to ring back later and tell you, I just didn’t want…’

  Henry to hear her say it. Because for all her scorn of the Lucinda Carrs of this world, Maggie’s life was equally poised on the whims and caprices of a man. A phone call from Henry could have her life veering off in a completely different direction, away from her career, her friends, her commitments. Henry rendered her permanently pivotal.

  ‘I wasn’t going to lie to you, I promise,’ she hissed, clearly having fled to the sanctuary of the bathroom now. I heard a door close. ‘But I didn’t want him to think I was dropping everything just because he’s back.’

  ‘Which you are.’

  ‘Hattie…’ she sighed, and implicit in that sigh was: you know.

  I did know. Had heard all her arguments. About how she only got to see him about twice a month, about how every moment was precious, but that one day, all their moments would be precious, because they’d be together for ever. He’d leave his wife for her. And yes of course she felt guilty about deceiving another woman, but Henry had fallen out of love with Davina years ago, and who, after all, deserved her loyalty? This woman she didn’t know, or Henry, the man she loved? We’d sit for hours in the shop, cradling coffees, analysing the relationship this way and that: Maggie trotting out clichés about not being able to choose who one fell in love with and only having one life, me trotting out ones about how Henry was never going to leave his wife and was having his cake and eating it with two women at his beck and call. But as her face collapsed, I’d be kinder. Agree that it was terribly painful all round. Difficult for everyone. And after all, who was I to moralize? Hadn’t I once fallen in love with someone I had no right to fall in love with?

  I wondered too if she really would have told me the truth, or if in fact she knew that what she was doing was so desperate, she wasn’t sure even her best friend would understand? I did, though. I knew how nothing else mattered. How everything became irrelevant. How you’d let friends and family down, drop everything to be with the object of desire, and yes, feel ashamed, but still hurtle on towards that bright, blinding white light, trampling everything and everyone in its path.

  ‘Be careful,’ I warned her, as I’d warned her a million times before.

  ‘Oh I will!’ she exulted, knowing this was the green light to her white one. Knowing, by not being angry, I’d given her the nod of friendship and complicity. That I’d somehow condoned it.

  ‘And I’ll see you in a week or so, I promise. Meanwhile, I thought I’d work on your sister’s place?’

  ‘Meanwhile?’

  ‘Well, obviously Henry has to go to work in the day.’ Ah, right. Not wall-to-wall bonking then. ‘So I thought I’d pop down on a daily basis and see how Rod and Kenny are getting on.’

  These, our two wonderfully capable, experienced workmen, who’d been with us for years, and whom we’d installed at the Abbey, knowing once briefed, they’d need no guidance whatsoever. I frowned. Then it dawned. Christian was lined up to take care of the shop, a job he loved occasionally, looked forward to, in fact. Now his wife had died, it got him out of his flat, made him feel useful, which he surely was. He’d be bitterly disappointed to hear the plans had changed. So yes, Maggie’s love affair, without this frantic damage limitation, could have had a devastating domino effect. And of course she couldn’t just sit at home and wait for Henry while Christian minded the shop. Even Maggie at fever pitch had pride. Where could she go?

  ‘You say “pop down”,’ I said slowly, ‘but Little Crandon’s hardly down the road.’

  ‘Oh, it’s only an hour or so,’ she said breezily. ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘OK. So… d’you want me to check with Laura?’

  ‘No, it’s all right, I already have.’ I nearly dropped the phone. ‘She, um, says it’s fine to come. I emailed her.’

  I could almost feel her blush radiate down the phone.

  ‘I didn’t know you had her email?’

  ‘I looked it up on yours.’

  ‘Right…’ I said faintly. ‘Well, it looks like you’ve got it all sorted, Maggie.’ I couldn’t resist a little edge to my voice. She’d gone to Laura before consulting me, so desperate was she that her plan should not fall through?

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, glimpsing for a moment the scale of her nerve. ‘I just… can’t help it.’

  No more she could, I thought as the lorry rumbled down the ramp off the ferry in Calais the following morning, yours truly perched alone and aloft at the wheel. No more than I ever could. But if we can’t help ourselves, I thought, as I drove through the familiar, bustling town keeping firmly to the right, and more particularly, if my caustic, sharp, wise old friend couldn’t help herself, what hope was there for us? Not for the first time I thought how neat and simple life would be if it weren’t for love.

  However, much as I’d have liked Maggie’s company, happily I’ve never minded my own. Have been entertaining myself for years, in fact, and was content with the silence and my thoughts. Indeed, as the urban landscape gave way to a more rural one, as fields of golden brown stubble bristled to attention either side of the straight road ahead, I narrowed my eyes into the shimmering distance and felt myself relax, as I only truly did, I realized, away from home, particularly in France. I loved the anonymity of being abroad. Loved stepping out of myself, being someone else for a change. Dad would disagree. You can change your skies, but you can’t change your soul, he’d say, and I’d hear it with an ache of dread. The truth, it seemed to me, doesn’t so much have a ring about it, but a dull thud. And Dad had travelled a lot. I shifted in my seat. Well, if I couldn’t change my soul, I could at least soothe it, and Burgundy’s flat, anonymous, roomy landscape seemed to me the perfect balm.

  There was also something faintly romantic, I always thought, about taking the lorry to France: something bold and heroic. To that end I always made sure I looked the part – hair freshly washed, a bit of make-up… I glanced at my reflection in the mirror. Yes, it was essential to look like the English chick abroad, cruising the markets and earning an approving nod from the louche Frenchmen – who, unlike their English counterparts, had no qualms about showing their appreciation – and, please God, never descending into the realms of a Woman of a Certain Age who still persisted in pitching up year after year. To that end, the mascara was on, the denim skirt long but wraparound – ensuring fake-tanned legs flashed alluringly when I sat in a bar and sipped my cassis – the espadrille heels slightly raised.

  And neither would I be totally alone when I got there, I thought with a sudden smile. I’d been frowning, I realized, hunched at the wheel. I straightened up. Ivan, who still doggedly trawled the smaller, cheaper fairs of France, which Maggie and I now eschewed, was on the coast in Montpellier, and although Aix wasn’t a natural hunting ground for him he’d declared a drive of a hundred and thirty kilometers and an overpriced brocante not sufficient deterrent to keep him from my hotel room.

  ‘Remember Castellane?’ he’d demanded down the phone.

  I giggled. ‘I might not have a balcony this time.’

  ‘Trust me, we’ll improvize. We’ll find a roof terrace. I definitely feel something a little al fresco coming on.’

  I smiled to myself as I rumbled along the dusty roads behind an old Citroën van that looked in danger of collapsing at any minute, in the heat of a late Indian summer, the sun on my bare arm through the window. Yes, I too would have
my share of love and laughter these next few days, so who was I to deny Maggie hers? And would I give Ivan up if he were married? Well, luckily he wasn’t, I thought quickly, banishing the face of the girl I’d seen him with in the bar. Luckily, Ivan just had lots of good friends, at which point I reached, Pavlovian style, for my lippy in my bag beside me. I slapped it on.

  Montauroux was heaving when I finally arrived, late in the evening. The main square was full of tourists who’d left it late and were looking for a spot for supper. Patrons at their awnings now turned away those who they’d recently sought to entice inside with promises of fresh moules, escargots swimming in garlic, or a fridge full of oysters on display. Seasoned antique dealers from London, however, did not leave so much to chance. They were already on their café cognacs and post-supper cigarettes, eyeing up the best sites for their trestle tables under the trees in the morning, preparing for an early night.

  I greeted those I knew with a wave and a promise to yes, possibly join them for a drink later, and no, Maggie wasn’t with me but would be along in due course. There was a camaraderie amongst us, as well as a fierce rivalry: we’d drink into the small hours together and laugh like drains, but the following morning, had no qualms about selling one another something we’d bought for half the price the previous week. In the early days Maggie and I had fallen for some classic ruses, but were unlikely to be duped now.

  Amongst the French contingent of stall holders – most of whom looked like they were straight out of central casting – I spotted Antoine Renard propping up a long zinc bar. Jowly and bug-eyed, a Gauloise dropped from his lips as he ostensibly read Le Monde, but in reality scanned the crowd to see which of his rivals from the porcelain world were here. Jacques Dupont, he of the seedy dark looks, who’d smile and sell his own grandmother, was with him. At a table for one, under an awning, the once beautiful, now haggard, Madame Alain – never Pascale – with her dyed orange hair and tiny nervous dog on her lap, was impeccably dressed as ever, dripping with jet beads, and feeding Kiki the remains of her plat du jour.