One Day in May

by Catherine Alliott

  He was waiting in the bar downstairs, as somehow, I knew he would be, talking easily to Monique, the patronne: fluent French, of course, which even after all these years I still hadn’t mastered. But then he lived here. Well, had a house here. He turned as I approached.

  ‘Hattie, hi.’

  How easily he got up from the barstool, put an arm around my shoulders, drew me in to lightly kiss my cheek. Not the awkward Hal of old, hunched at a table in the library in that terrible old greatcoat, hair needing a wash, not even looking up as I plonked my books beside him and informed him I’d had a rubbish day and now a bitch of an essay to do, as he told me to lower my voice or we’d get thrown out. No, here, in a French bar, wearing a pink linen shirt, a blue cashmere sweater thrown casually around his shoulders, his tanned face was creasing into a lovely smile as he offered me a drink.

  ‘Or shall we get on? We could have one there, if you like?’

  ‘Sure, let’s do that,’ I agreed, not wanting to be under Monique’s interested gaze, and feeling, surely, like the one in the greatcoat as I lumbered after him, wishing I’d packed some heels.

  The car, naturally, was a convertible Italian jobby, and as we purred out of the square very close to the ground, I found myself lifting my thighs off the seat to make them look thinner, something I’d done with Dom in a very similar car, I realized.

  ‘OK?’ he called above the roar of the engine. ‘Or d’you want the roof up?’ His hand went to a button on the dashboard.

  ‘You mean to protect my hairdo?’ I yelled, patting my cropped locks ironically.

  He laughed and shrugged as if to suggest some girls might and, once again, I glimpsed Céline.

  Little did he know, I thought, settling back into the leather, that I had a cupboard full of decent clothes back home and could be as committed to good grooming as the next Parisian lawyer, if I felt like it. The fact that I didn’t have to now was actually very relaxing. Was it always like that in a relationship, I wondered as the wind whipped through my hair. Someone making the effort, whilst the other party relaxed? I had the impression Hal had made an effort to seek me out, and it was not an unpleasant feeling to be in the courted shoes for once. In fact, as we left town and golden stubble fields swept by under a low sun, flickering on and off like a searchlight as it disappeared behind trees, I let my thighs spread defiantly on the seat.

  Where are we going, was what I’d been about to say, when instead I caught my breath. We’d abruptly taken a left fork down a road so bumpy I had to hold the seat to steady myself. An old man wobbled on his bike beside us, knees at right angles to the wheels. Hal slowed down.

  ‘Bonsoir, Claude – ça va?’

  ‘Ah, oui.’ The old man’s livid face creased like a cheaper cut of beef as he smiled and we inched our way beside him down the potholed lane. ‘Ça va!’

  ‘Très mal, n’est-ce pas?’ Hal indicated the road.

  ‘Mais non, c’est charmant!’ Claude roared with laughter; had to pause his bike, in fact, to wheeze heartily. Hal smiled grimly as we bumped on, through fields of beefy white Charolais cattle.

  ‘I swear to God this is the next thing I do,’ Hal told me. ‘The very next thing. I’ll tarmac it from top to bottom, if needs be, Surrey style, with nouveau iron gates, which of course is what he wants.’ He grimaced as the car hit another rut.

  I glanced at him, surprised. ‘This track is yours?’

  ‘And Claude’s. That’s his farm down there.’ He pointed. ‘But the last thing Claude Labert is worried about is his tractor tyres or his bike so, naturally, it’s down to me.’

  ‘We’re going to your house?’

  ‘Is that OK? Everywhere else is still so touristy at the moment and I thought you might prefer it.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love it!’ I enthused. I really would, actually. Would love to slot the pieces of Hal’s life together, but also knew, implicit in our coming here, was Hal’s wanting to show me. He must be aware I knew that, but it didn’t seem to bother him. I glanced at his profile, calm and impassive at the wheel. Well, after all, he was getting married in a few weeks, that surely gave him the impunity to bring any number of old friends back to his place while Céline was away. Would I mind, I wondered, if I were Céline? Obviously I’d be beside myself if it were Ivan inviting anyone: would stress and neurose about it for weeks, wonder exactly what sort of an old friend it was, as I had done when I saw his hand cover that girl’s on the table in the bar. I shifted in my seat. But perhaps successful corporate lawyers were more mature. Perhaps they entertained numerous friends. They must take clients out constantly – Glyndebourne, Good-wood… Indeed, Hal was picking up his phone from the dashboard even now, glancing at a text, smiling. What did it say? ‘With Jacques B. at La Coupole again. On his second plate of oysters – merde Cx’ – or something equally urbane and sophisticated? I sighed. The only Other Man I ever had lunch with was Christian, and that was a Prêt à Manger sandwich, if I was lucky.

  Hal’s house nestled in the fold of a hill, in an idyllic spot in the valley. Vineyards rose up behind it in steep, geometric lines and before it, in long meadow grass, a gnarled olive grove made a more tumbled, haphazard picture. The house itself was stone and flat-fronted, with tall thin windows and streaky grey shutters. It had that slightly guarded, arrogant look French houses have. It was perfect and I told him so.

  ‘Hal, what’s happened to you?’ I said as I got out and gazed around. ‘You’ve gone all tasteful.’

  ‘Oh, thanks!’ He laughed, relieved I was making fun. But then I’d always known the way forward: knew instinctively how to lighten the indelible fact of his bringing me here. ‘You mean I never was before?’

  ‘Never. Not one ounce. Your clothes were dire. Remember that fur hat that looked like a dead cat?’

  ‘I loved that hat! Bought it in St Petersburg. Still got it somewhere, actually. I’ll dig it out if you’re not careful.’ We were passing through the front door into a cool flagstone hall.

  ‘No, thanks. Remember when I tried to burn it?’

  One bonfire night, pissed and giggling I’d run out of the pub, across the road, and into the recreation ground that was hosting our local firework party. Hal was running after me, roaring with indignation as I’d pretended to toss it in the flames. He’d caught up with me and seized me from behind, clamping my arms down, both of us gasping with laughter, an organizer bustling up to shoo us away – ‘Bloody pissed students!’ Hal, with his arms tightly round me, the closest we’d ever been physically, his face, as I turned, in the light of the flames, on fire too. Why was it that night, of so many, that I’d reached for and tossed between us, like that old hat, on this still warm night so many years later? Instinctively I saved us, reminding him of my own legendary good taste, even in those days; inviting him to scoff.

  ‘Yours!’ he spluttered. ‘You used to go to parties in silver lurex tights and one of your father’s old shirts.’

  ‘That was actually a Bad Taste party, Hal, which, if you recall, you attended as an airline pilot with a white stick.’

  ‘Inspired,’ he grinned, as we sailed under an arch into a room full of squashy cream sofas and bright rugs. ‘At least I’d given it some thought. And the white stick came in very handy later, if you remember.’

  I’d gone into town with some hero dressed as Hitler, but Hitler had turned amorous outside the chippie, and when Hal came to find me at two in the morning the white stick had kept the dictator at bay as we’d legged it and flagged down a taxi.

  Hal was crossing to open the French windows now, reaching up for the lock, his back to me. I ran a practised eye around the high-ceilinged room. The beams were all painted cream in the Provençal way – no zebra effect here – and the blue and white ticking-covered chairs I’d have chosen myself. The doors he flung wide issued onto an achingly pretty terrace, tumbling with Mediterranean plants, and a shimmering view of the hills beyond. No wonder he’d wanted me to see it.

  I followed him out. Centre stage on the terrace
was a table laid for two: napkins, flowers, the lot. For a moment I was lost for words. Hal was doing better. Pulling a cork from a bottle he’d plucked from an ice bucket, he was accusing me of sluttishness now, saying he couldn’t really believe I was an interior designer.

  ‘Your room in Edinburgh was a complete tip, as far as I remember.’

  ‘No it wasn’t, it was organized chaos, very arty.’ He’d set the table and rigged up the ice bucket? My mind was busy as I sat down. ‘And no worse than Kirsten’s. Yours was just ridiculously tidy, Hal, verging on the anal. Don’t you remember all your pens and pencils had to be lined up in strict formation on your desk? Does that still upset you?’ I reached forward and messed up the knives and forks, as I used to mess his immaculate desk.

  He smiled. ‘Not as much as it used to.’ He poured me a glass of wine and put a bowl of olives, little artichoke hearts, and tiny slices of cured ham between us. ‘Your starter,’ he warned, sitting down. ‘So what type of houses do you do?’

  I felt stupid with the haphazard cutlery before me and moved it back surreptitiously. If he wasn’t embarrassed by the effort he’d made, why should I be?

  ‘Whatever I can,’ I answered truthfully, then wished I hadn’t. Wished I’d stuck to skittishness. ‘This looks delicious,’ I said quickly, popping in an olive. ‘Did you do it?’

  ‘God, no.’ He laughed. ‘I’m pretty ham-fisted in the kitchen. I’ve got a housekeeper – she left it for me. There’s some cold duck breast too.’

  Questions crowded my mind. Is the housekeeper here when Céline is here? Do neither of you cook? Are you both so high-powered you don’t need to, or do you banish the housekeeper when Céline is back and she rolls up her Dior sleeves and makes perfect profiteroles? It seemed indecent to ask just yet, and anyway, we were still on my life, which seemed to be shrinking by the moment: with every perfect glass I picked up, every which way I turned, glimpsing more beautiful rooms.

  ‘Is it the sort of thing you see in magazines?’

  ‘A bit,’ I hedged. ‘But magazine coverage is quite spasmodic. Country Living did an article about us a while ago, though.’

  ‘I don’t know that one. Céline gets something called Interiors sent from England.’

  Yes she would, wouldn’t she.

  ‘Oh, yes, and of course, Interiors,’ I couldn’t resist.

  ‘Really?’ He looked interested. ‘That’s pretty ritzy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Pretty,’ I agreed. ‘And quite time-consuming too, so we don’t always say yes.’ Now I was turning down Interiors?

  ‘But sometimes you do?’

  ‘Well, publicity’s always good for business. Not that we need much these days; our reputation pretty much goes before us.’

  I was rather pleased with the way that had sailed out of my mouth. And after all, I hadn’t said it was a great reputation, had I? He wasn’t to know Maggie and I had not one, but two little disputes ongoing in the small claims court: one with a woman who hadn’t realized the cherubs on her toile curtains were going to be naked and frolicking, and in her view pornographic, and another with a client who’d complained the distressed kitchen cupboards we’d done for her whilst she sunned herself in Marbella were too distressed. Positively weepy.

  ‘Which edition?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Which Interiors did you do?’

  ‘Oh, way back. Last winter,’ I said quickly, sensing a recent copy might be lurking on one of those elegant coffee tables.

  ‘Jan? Feb?’ He was on his feet now, going inside to a veritable stack, under a table. It looked like a year’s worth. My mouth dried as he crouched.

  ‘Um, yes. But actually, I think it was the year before,’ I mumbled. ‘It was ages ago.’

  ‘Oh, OK.’

  He moved around to another pile, because of course the refined and organized Céline kept, as I did, all her precious copies from years back. I gazed, mute, as he ran his finger down the spines for the requisite month. I seemed to have swallowed my tongue. It tasted rank. As he pulled out a couple of copies, I found my voice.

  ‘It was… American Interiors.’

  He turned, magazines in hand.

  ‘Yes, they love the French angle, you see,’ I gabbled, ‘being so… American. And as I say, it’s all rather overdone in London. But in the States – God, they go crazy for us.’ I rolled my eyes and shuddered, as if hordes of crazy Americans mobbed Maggie and me whenever we got off a plane at JFK. Black-and-white footage of the Beatles in a similar predicament sprang to mind.

  ‘You go there a lot?’

  My voice sounded unnatural. ‘Whenever we can spare the time. But of course there are lots of Americans living in London,’ I finished lamely. ‘We have enough work at home.’ And who wants to be jetting off to Madison Avenue or Beverly Hills, I seemed to be suggesting, when we can get the number 319 to Streatham Hill and rag-and-drag someone’s spare room?

  I felt weak. Lunged for my wine. Popped another olive in.

  ‘So how many shops have you got?’

  I nearly choked on the stone.

  ‘One. Just the one shop.’ Had he always been this nosy? ‘Which I share with my partner, Maggie. The one you met in the village, remember? You’ll love her.’ Would he necessarily get to know her? I felt hot. Became garrulous to compensate for nerves. ‘She’s lovely, very outspoken and forthright, and she’s always got a bee in her bonnet about something. At the moment it’s people who let their dogs foul the pavements. She keeps a poop scoop in her bag, scoops it up, then runs after them saying, “I think you forgot something!” ’

  ‘Quite bold.’

  ‘Oh, she’s fearless. She’s a bit older than me and she’s convinced HRT is the secret to eternal youth, but her doctor won’t give it to her ’cos she hasn’t got any symptoms, so she’s constantly banging his desk demanding it, claiming she’s having hot flushes and things. The other day she sat in his waiting room bundled up in coats and scarves and when it was her turn, she threw them off and ran in saying, “See? Take my temperature. See how hot I am – phew!” ’

  Hal laughed. ‘So did she get it?’

  ‘No, he won’t budge, so she’s working on the mood swings now. Sunny smiles one minute and murderous rage the next – not hard at our age. Well, her age. She’s a bit older than me, as I said. Ten years, ish.’ Five, in fact, and would she ever forgive me? For telling a complete stranger her most personal details? Easily. Maggie told everyone her most personal details, and was vociferous on this topic: ‘She’s definitely on it,’ she’d hiss as a Joanna Lumley type swept into the shop, or, ‘See the alternative?’ as a Nora Batty type shuffled out.

  ‘And of course Margaret Thatcher swore by it,’ I rambled on. I couldn’t quite believe I was still running with this. ‘Only needed four hours’ sleep a night.’ Hal was clearing the plates. I got up to help. Why weren’t we tumbling over our words as we had been in Montauroux? Why was this more difficult? No teeming streets, of course, no background chatter. I followed him inside. ‘But as I say, she’s a bit older than me – Maggie, I mean. My Maggie, not Maggie Thatcher. Well, Maggie Thatcher is too, obviously. She must be—Oh.’ Happily I was stopped in my tracks. ‘Is that Céline?’

  I’d been passing a walnut sofa table at the time, crowded with photographs. The largest of them was of Hal, sitting on some lichen-covered steps, his arm around the shoulders of a girl of such astonishing beauty, it fairly took my breath away. A relief all round, I should think.

  Hal glanced over but carried on walking, plates in hand. ‘Yes, a friend took it last summer.’

  I stared. Couldn’t help it. She was gorgeous. Long, silky dark hair swept back off a heart-shaped face, leaf-shaped eyes, full lips. She was laughing into the camera.

  ‘How old is she. Hal?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  Right. Seven years younger than me. Him too, of course, which was fine for men, quite usual. But perhaps not so usual the other way round. I might keep quiet about that.

 
‘And Ivan?’ he asked as I joined him in the kitchen. I nearly dropped the plates.

  ‘How d’you know about Ivan?’

  ‘Letty mentioned that your sister had said something.’

  ‘Oh! How news travels.’

  He shot me a sympathetic look. ‘Well, you know how it is. If you’re single and over thirty, family and friends see it as their positive mission to help you settle down.’

  ‘They do rather, don’t they?’ It was nice to hear it from another single, albeit affianced, one. ‘They’re so flaming smug,’ I added, slightly more fiercely.

  He grinned. ‘Marriage is the Holy Grail, as far as they’re concerned. So if Hattie’s got a young man…’ He wiggled his eyebrows knowingly at me. I laughed.

  ‘Yes, all right, he is young. A bit younger than me.’ I left it at that. To be honest I didn’t actually know how old Ivan was. Hadn’t asked. In case it was horrific. And he hadn’t volunteered. Which meant it probably was. At the thought of him, though, my heart gave an exultant little kick. Ivan was like a guilty secret: I wasn’t used to airing him in public.

  ‘Is it serious?’ Hal was reaching in the fridge for the duck breasts.

  ‘Um, yes. Yes, it is.’ It was, to me. And I wanted to have something as serious as Hal. To Ivan? Probably not.

  ‘Good,’ he said lightly. ‘That’s good.’

  Yes it was, wasn’t it? I thought as I followed him back to the terrace, head held high, clutching the salad bowl. It was absolutely bloody marvellous. My life was marvellous.