My Grape Escape

by Laura Bradbury

He shrugged. “I don’t think so but who knows, really? If it is, it’s farther back than even Mémé can remember. Strange though, isn’t it?”

  But it wasn’t really. Of course Franck’s name was carved in an old church bench. It had always been clear to Franck, and to me, that he was protected by a higher power. Franck was convinced that no matter what stupid things he did in life, like driving his friend’s mobilette under a truck on the highway when he was fourteen, he was shielded from harm. How I envied that conviction.

  The fact that my husband didn’t agree with the Pope’s position on birth control or gay marriage or a myriad of other things didn’t shake his faith one iota. Some of his best memories of his youth came from his stint as an altar boy. It was the best way to meet new girls from other villages, he had explained to me, not to mention there was never a lack of excellent sacramental wine to enjoy. I envied his freedom to take what he wanted from his religion and leave the rest.

  Beside me, Franck bowed his head and closed his eyes. I had become used to his praying whenever we were in a church. I could almost see the young altar boy he had been, complete with an angelic white robe and a heavy wooden cross the size of a pain au chocolat around his neck, transposed onto the man he was now.

  Part of me wanted to pray for strength while I waited for tomorrow’s phone call. Instead I stared at the statue of the Virgin Mary in the stone alcove in front of us. Much of her paint had worn off, but her eyes were still visible. The carver had made them very kind. They were the eyes of someone I wanted to talk to – the eyes of someone who wouldn’t laugh at the grief I felt over losing the house in Marey or the ridiculousness of someone as privileged as me drowning in anxiety much of the time. Tears filled my eyes. Without opening my mouth or closing my eyes, I found my thoughts projecting out to her.

  I know you’re the Virgin Mary and you probably have better things to worry about, like that little Baby Jesus in your arms for example, but I need help. I have been so miserable over the past few months – no, truthfully, over the past two years. I know I must be on the right path but could you please make me feel happier on it? The expression in her eyes seemed to change in the shadows, becoming even more compassionate as she took in every one of my tormented thoughts. Can you please make this horrible fear that makes me feel like sometimes I can’t even take one more breath, and that is eating away at who I am, disappear? Could you give me a sign to let me know that things are going to get better, that I will one day start to feel happy with my life and what I’m doing? I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I am so ungrateful. Help me. Show me the way. Je t’en supplie.

  I could have sworn she blinked slowly in response. I felt calmer than I had in a long time. It made no sense, of course, but I still couldn’t break away from the understanding in her eyes.

  Franck’s hand slipped into mine and we waited for a few moments more, neither of us wanting to break the peace that seemed to flow around us both. We didn’t speak until we had made our way back out into the sunshine. I closed the carved wooden door behind us feeling as though I was also closing it on my troubles; I had left them inside in excellent hands.

  I blinked until the peeling white shutters of the ramshackle house across the street came into focus.

  “What did you pray for?” I asked Franck. We began walking back up the hill towards the vineyards and Villers-la-Faye. “Or is it like a wish and if you say it won’t come true?”

  “I prayed that you hear what you want to hear when the phone call comes tomorrow.”

  A lump of gratitude stuck in my throat. His prayer had been for me.

  “I love you,” I reached up to kiss him.

  Getting what I wanted would be wonderful, of course. The only thing better, like I had confided in the Virgin, was to get what I needed.

  Chapter 8

  The lists of finals marks were being posted outside the Examination Schools in Oxford’s High Street. I knew that, like every year, a mob of students, armed with champagne bottles, were clamoring over one another to get a glimpse of their grade. They were desperate, like I was, to find out those two little numbers that possessed the power to radically alter their future for better or for worse. A 1:1, or “First”, would pave the way for money, glory, and fame. A 2:1, or “Upper Second”, earned respect, whereas, a 2:2, or “Lower Second”, was a mark that could dog a person’s steps until their dying day in England.

  After learning the verdict of their Oxford career the students would careen off to The Turf or The Bear to celebrate or drown their sorrows over champagne and pints. As for me, I was sitting at Franck’s kitchen table, watching the clock for the scheduled time when I needed to go upstairs into Franck’s bedroom and await the phone call from my tutor, the taciturn Mr. Partridge. He had promised to phone me with my grades as soon as he returned to college from the Examination Schools. He was an unusually young tutor and quivered with ambition like a plucked violin string. It was even more stressful a day for him than it was for his students. He wanted to collect as many Firsts and Upper Seconds among his students as possible. This reflected glory could push him up the byzantine levels of status amongst Oxford academics. Bad results would be like hitting a snake in Snakes and Ladders; one tended to slither down much faster than one climbed up.

  Mr. Partridge had been helping me with my application to the Master’s program, but he had already made clear to me that this wasn’t solely out of the goodness of his heart.

  “It looks good for me to have my students continue on in the Master’s program here,” he had informed me when I asked him to write me a letter of reference. He had offered to review my whole application, made me make a bunch of changes, and had mentioned the Master’s program almost every time he saw me during my last year of law school, both as an encouragement and a threat.

  I was swirling the final drops of my café au lait in my bowl when the bell to the front gate rang. Franck’s mother went out, flustered and still in her dressing gown, to see who was there. Shortly after, she returned to the kitchen followed by a tiny old man whose spine was so crooked that he shuffled along almost bent in two.

  Franck made the introductions. This was the Père Bard, the ninety and something year old village priest who uncannily resembled a gnome and who had taught Franck and several generations of village children how to fly a kite as well as how to say their “Je Vous Salue Maries”. Père Bard didn’t have the reputation of being very interested in his adult parishioners. His true calling was the children of his parish, but not in the way that has sadly become assumed of priests. It was more that he had always retained his own childlike spirit and wanted to surround himself with that energy. He and the village children put on convoluted and tortuously long plays for the parents, travelled down South to the Spanish border on the train to volunteer at Lourdes, and took long walks on Les Chaumes searching for an orchis, a rare orchid that grew wild in the Hautes-Côtes.

  The Père Bard shook my hand and settled himself down in the chair opposite me. He refused Michèle’s offer to divest himself of his voluminous black cape which must have been stifling in the July heat. We all watched him as he carefully rested his battered cane against the kitchen table, waiting for him to inform us of the purpose of this visitation. He looked back at us with an amused glitter in his eyes.

  “Alors, how have you been keeping, Mon Père?” André finally asked.

  “I come for toilet paper rolls.”

  Michèle, who had grown up around the Père Bard, did not seem particularly surprised by this pronouncement. “Empty ones?” she asked.

  “Oui. As many as you have. I’ve been making dolls with the children and we’ve run out. So you see, I have no choice but to come begging.”

  He foraged around in his black cape and drew out a toilet paper roll with twigs sticking out of it for arms and silver tinsel hanging down in a fringe around the top for hair. “Do you see? These are what we are going to make. Isn’t she lovely?” He danced the toilet paper roll doll across the ai
r as he hummed a jaunty little tune. I was riveted.

  “I’m not sure I have very many for you, but I’ll see what I can find,” Michèle warned as she got up to look.

  He placed the doll down tenderly on the table and tapped his fingers on the polished wood. “Now then, how are you all today?” he asked Franck and André and myself. “As for me, I quite fancy a coffee. Am I the only one?”

  “Of course!” André leapt up and Franck followed him. “We’ll go and make a pot right away.”

  Le Père watched them go, then beckoned me closer with a crooked finger.

  “What do you think of my dolls?” he whispered once I had leaned in.

  “Very nice,” I said. “The children will have fun with them.”

  “Yes.” He beamed at me with a mostly toothless smile, picked up the doll and danced it around some more. He stopped suddenly and fixed me with translucent blue eyes. “I always did believe, you know, that God has created all of this because he wants us to have fun.” He twirled his hand around, encompassing the kitchen table, the house, the whole world. He began to hum again as his words sunk into me like pebbles thrown in a river.

  God put us here to have fun? What about hard work and not quitting and climbing the career ladder? I tried to think of the last time I had done something just because it was fun. Nothing came to mind. Nothing at all.

  Le Père Bard thrust the doll into my hand. “I’d like to see you try,” he said. I made a half-hearted attempt at jerking the doll through the air. He rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t work if you don’t sing.”

  I began to hum and then encouraged by his nods, broke into a rollicking chorus of row-row-row your boat while flitting the doll around above my head.

  “Very nice.” He cut me off just as I was getting into the swing of things and gestured at me to hand the doll back. “I must hurry back, you know. Perhaps you should go and check on how they are coming along with the toilet paper rolls and my café.”

  Just then Michèle came back into the room. “I could only find three,” she handed them to him and he tucked them somewhere under the folds of his cape.

  “Three is marvellous.” He winked up at her. “En plus, I still get a free coffee.”

  Franck glanced at the clock just after we waved au revoir to the Père Bard.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” he said. “I’ll set the phone up for you in the bedroom.” I checked my watch. Mr. Partridge would be calling in about ten minutes’ time. I nodded and headed towards the stairs like a condemned person heads towards the scaffold.

  Up in Franck’s bedroom he set up the phone on the bedside table using a huge red extension cord. “This way you can lie on the bed and watch the clouds while you’re waiting,” he patted the mattress. “Do you want me to stay here with you?”

  “Stay with me until the call comes,” I said. “I think I need to be alone after that.”

  I lay back on the bed and Franck lay down beside me. I reached over and grasped his hand. We lay like that, side-by-side for I don’t know how many minutes; I saw a dragon float by in the rectangle of blue sky above us, then a Citroën Deux Chevaux, and then…

  A shrill ring shattered the peace. Annoyance reared up in my chest, but it was quickly overtaken by the urge to throw up. I gave myself a shake and picked up the receiver.

  “Bonjour.”

  I must have sounded convincing as Mr. Partridge paused for a few seconds, then tried to ask for me in French. Thinking of the Père Bard, I listened to my suave tutor butcher the French language with unholy appreciation.

  “This is Laura,” I admitted, after he was done. “Hello.”

  Franck blew me a kiss and ducked out the doorway.

  “It was you ” The starch had already returned to Mr. Partridge’s voice. “I just returned from the Examination Schools.” He waited. I had forgotten how the British could be sadists, or maybe this was revenge for the French thing. Was he going to make me beg for them?

  My heart pounded in my chest but I waited.

  “There is some good news and some bad news. Which do you want first?” Bad news. It must have been that Criminal Law paper. How bad was bad? Had it wrecked my chances of getting into the Master’s program? “Where do you want me to start?”

  “Good news,” I said.

  “You were awarded a 2:1 overall.” My shoulders dropped down a notch. There! I had done it – acquitted myself well with a 2:1, a perfectly honorable grade. It also meant I was in for the Master’s program. I waited for a swoop of relief, but it didn’t come right away. Where was the room for the bad news?

  “But?” I prompted.

  “There was a fairly disappointing mark on your Criminal paper. A beta minus. What happened?”

  It all came rushing back. Criminal Law had been my last paper. I had pushed myself as far as I could be pushed. What happened was that my stomach was so upset from the stress that I vomited blood on the morning of that final exam. What had happened was that I felt dizzy, as though I was on the verge of passing out. What had happened was that I couldn’t seem to get enough air in my lungs no matter how much I gasped. That is what had happened, but I couldn’t say any of that to Mr. Partridge.

  “It was my last paper,” I said, simply. I had been well trained not to complain to an Oxford tutor about the stress of finals. They saw it every year and I deserved no different treatment than the rest. If everyone else could cope, I should be able to as well. We were all expected to suck it up and soldier on.

  “Luckily, most people won’t have to know about your Criminal Law paper.”

  He meant it was shameful, something to be ferreted away at all costs because marks were the religion of Oxford. It was a race and just like that single asphalt lane in front of a sprinter, the world narrowed down so that the only reality you could comprehend was that one tunnel that lay out in front of you.

  “Okay,” I said. I felt the queasy lie settle in my stomach.

  “Now for the bad news.”

  “I thought the Criminal paper was the bad news?”

  “Not exactly. It’s about the Master’s program.”

  “But the cut off is a 2:1. You just told me I received a 2:1…”

  Mr. Partridge cleared his throat. “There are an unusually high number of candidates for next year. As a consequence, they’re changing the entrance requirements.”

  “But I’ve already been offered a provisional acceptance based on getting a 2:1,” my voice came out shrill. I had pretty much sold my soul to complete my end of the bargain, how dare they renege on the deal?

  “True. They do, however, have the right to change the requirements even after a provisional acceptance has been offered. It’s in the small print. Remember that you are dealing with lawyers. They are very good at small print.” He laughed at his own joke.

  I didn’t join in. “So they won’t let me in now? Is that it?”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions yet. I have thought out a plan of attack. We may have to fight for it, but I believe our chances are excellent. I will write a letter supporting your candidature, and let it be known that you were taught Criminal Law by an inexperienced teacher-”

  “My mark wasn’t my teacher’s fault. I was the one who bombed that exam.”

  “That approach won’t serve us,” Mr. Partridge replied. “I will explain that your teacher’s lack of competency is the reason for that atypically low mark.” Mr. Partridge made a funny little sound of satisfaction, a sound someone would make without realizing it as they preened themselves in the mirror. “With that and my recommendation, I am sure they will find a place for you.”

  The phone line went silent. I couldn’t believe how quickly he would torpedo my teacher’s reputation just for the glory of getting one more student into the Master’s program. He was waiting for a thank you, I realized, and my reiteration that, as any sane Oxford student would say, I wanted a spot in the coveted Master’s program more than life itself. I opened my mouth but no words came out.

  “They
will want to interview you,” he added. “You must return to Oxford immediately.”

  I twisted the black phone cord around my wrist. Back to Oxford? Now?

  “Are you still on the line Laura?”

  Stone walls flashed through my mind beside polished flagstones and a centuries old wooden statue of the Virgin Mary.

  “Non,” I whispered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Non.” It came out in French again, louder this time, and sounded like the response of an impetuous five-year-old who had just been ordered to give back the bonbon she had stolen from her brother.

  “But I can hear you. You must still be on the line.”

  “I meant the Master’s program.”

  A pause of disbelief. “You mustn’t worry about it not being fair tactics, you know. That is simply the way - ”

  “No!” It came out in clear English this time and louder still. We were both stunned into silence for a few seconds. He spoke first.

  “I simply don’t understand,” he admitted, peevish.

  “I…I appreciate your offer,” I stumbled over my words. “I really do. It’s just that…maybe that Criminal paper is a sign that I’m not meant to do the Master’s program after all.”

  “Nonsense! You mustn’t undersell yourself. You must know by now that one thing we value above all at Oxford is self-confidence. It is imperative that you believe in yourself, Laura. You will never get ahead otherwise.”

  Did I still want to get ahead, Oxford style? That was the question. What I really wanted was to watch the clouds float by and make toilet paper roll dolls and wake up in my own little house in France.

  “I’m not certain I want to get ahead anymore,” I said.

  I knew that in his Oxford office Mr. Partridge was shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Laura,” he began, his voice soothing now. “I believe that perhaps the pressure has affected your judgment. I suggest that you take a day or two to think things over. Not any longer than that, mind. If we are to be successful we must start campaigning as soon as possible.”