‘The house was already starting to get shabby when I was a boy. Josette had spent forty years here by then.’
‘Josette?’
‘Yes. She didn’t like to be called grand-mère. She didn’t much like children, come to that.’
‘What about when you were older? Did you get on better then?’
‘I never saw much of her. Not as much as I should, I suppose. I drifted rather, after university and everything, and she never seemed particularly to care whether or not I came to see her.’ He took a reckless gulp of champagne. ‘I was named for my grandfather. A hero of the Resistance who was killed at the end of the Occupation. I’d catch Josette looking at me, and knew I was never good enough.’
‘Yet you don’t mind living here?’
He looked around, surprised, as if this question had never occurred to him before. ‘No. No, I don’t. But then I couldn’t imagine existing anywhere else. It’s a house that absorbs outcasts. A kind of safe house for three generations that failed to belong elsewhere.’
‘Is that how you were made to feel, when you were sent here in the holidays?’
He was puzzled.
‘An outcast,’ she repeated.
‘Oh, then. Yes. I suppose I was a bit. Certainly abandoned. Unwanted. You must remember how kids get about things. I always believed it was my fault that my parents sent me away, didn’t want me with them; another reason why Josette was always so unforgiving about having me.’ He gazed around the room, where lozenges of evening sun were lengthening across the newly polished parquet and shadows were beginning to pool in the furthest corners. ‘I’ve enjoyed the work. It’s very meditative. A psychologist I saw once thought I should take anti-depressants, but sanding and painting and varnishing are far more effective.’
She looked at him in surprise.
‘I want you to learn the worst about me,’ he said in a rush. ‘I don’t want you thinking I’m a good bet when I’m not.’
She was moved. ‘Is anyone?’
‘I’m sure you are.’ Embarrassed, he topped up their glasses while Leonie glowed at the compliment. ‘I’m in two minds which room to do next,’ he went on, before she could speak. ‘Maybe it should be the hall. What do you think?’
‘It would look rather grand.’
‘The hall it shall be, then.’
He contemplated the room once more, dwelling with obvious satisfaction on his craftsmanship. But after his avowal she felt relaxed enough to bear his silence. Then, to her surprise, and without looking directly at her, he reached out and took her hand, wrapping both of his around it as if it were the most natural gesture in the world.
‘It’s rubbish that I was abandoned, of course,’ he said. ‘My father worked for multinational companies that kept moving him around all over Europe at fairly short notice, and I boarded at school in England, so it made sense for me to come here. Though I suspect I was right about Josette being resentful. I think she felt my mother showed a lack of respect in expecting her to look after me. Like it meant that Josette lost face somehow in the eyes of the town. She was a very proud woman.’
‘Are they still alive, your parents?’
He nodded, and at first she assumed he wasn’t going to say more. ‘Poor Maman,’ he said at last. ‘They say it’s not Alzheimer’s, but she’s not sure who I am any more.’
Leonie filed that away to tell Gaby; it might explain why Agnès had failed to stay in touch with Catherine, her old friend from school.
‘Dad and I keep a distance between us. After he put Maman in a home in Surrey, he found a grateful widow to take care of him and moved to Bournemouth. So that was that, really,’ he ended drolly.
Leonie couldn’t help laughing. ‘My parents divorced, but I get on fine with my stepfather and stepsisters. He’s Canadian, and they all moved back there when I finished university, so I don’t see them much. My real father drifted away years ago. Can’t say he was missed.’
Patrice squeezed her hand, and she caught his eye, hoping he was about to kiss her, but he didn’t. ‘I hope you like risotto. Come and talk to me in the kitchen while I stir.’ Managing to pick up the nearly empty champagne bottle without letting go of her hand, he led her through to the kitchen. Once there, he placed his hands on her shoulders, guiding her into a chair at the wide table while he lit the gas, took down an ancient iron pan and set about chopping shallots and fresh herbs.
Leonie looked about her. Nothing in the room appeared to be new. The image of Miss Havisham flitted into her mind, and she couldn’t decide what to make of this bizarre set-up. Why return to the scene of his not-happy childhood? If his marriage had ended because of another woman, maybe his heart had been doubly broken and, like Leonie herself, he had run away. Yet why, having returned here, had he failed to alter and renew things? He didn’t come across as a man who was stuck in his ways, was neither fussy nor self-neglectful. So what was going on?
She studied his movements as he discarded vegetable peelings into a bin for the compost and reached up for a box of arborio rice from a cupboard, and her growing fascination with his psychology melded with the first real stab of desire. She resisted the strong temptation to stand up, wrap her arms around him from behind and inhale the smell of him.
‘Tell me more about homeopathy,’ she requested.
‘Sure? It’s a huge subject.’ His tone was light and amused.
‘How did you get into it?’
‘Drawn to it, I suppose. Poor Maman was anxious, obsessively so, and as a kid I had the usual omnipotent fantasies of finding a magical cure that would make her better, make her happy. Orthodox medicine failed to appeal to me, but I was always interested in ideas about treatment and healing.’
‘I know next to nothing about it.’
‘I’m still learning. It’s an endless challenge.’ He proffered a misshapen box grater. ‘Fancy doing the Parmesan?’
It felt good to stand and work alongside him. One of the things she most missed about Greg was having someone to cook with. Though Gaby was endlessly hospitable, she was an unimaginative cook and had little patience for tasting, adjusting and thinking ‘what the hell’ with new combinations. But Patrice was dextrous, observant, well-attuned, and the thickening risotto smelt delicious. Glancing up at him as he judiciously added a last ladle of stock, she found her gaze wandering to his top shirt button, once again imagining tracing the brown skin beneath his collar. He caught her eye and briefly held her gaze. She stopped breathing, sure this time that he would kiss her. Turning off the gas, he announced, ‘It’s done. Let’s eat.’ And he busied himself setting the table with mismatched silverware and chipped, old-fashioned plates.
They ate opposite one another at the kitchen table, and now he did ask her where she had grown up, about her student years, her affinity with this part of France. She realised that he had an easy way of eliciting feelings rather than facts; yet, when their fingers touched as she handed him her empty plate, she saw once again a shyness, a physical reticence. She found it endearing, the lure of unavailability erotic. She, too, was essentially modest, but if there had been no women in his life since he returned to France – and four years was a long time for a man – then maybe he needed to be both enticed and reassured. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to make the first move, to seduce him, but, on the other hand, what did she have to lose? A little dignity? She was old enough to survive that. And why else, after all, would he have invited her alone tonight and then exchanged confidences as he had done so readily?
Patrice served a tarte aux pommes from the local patisserie and strong coffee in tiny cups, while answering more of her questions about homeopathy, explaining miasms and susceptibility and dyscrasia. Normally she would have dismissed such unlikely concepts as hocus-pocus, but tonight she was ready to suspend her critical faculties and respond instead to his genuine commitment and belief. His hopefulness and earnest wish to help the people who came to him in distress reminded her of Stella. Only a cynical beast could mock such well-me
aning and oddly astute idealism. Their conversation petered out, and Leonie looked at her watch: eleven-fifteen.
‘I should go,’ she offered, not meaning it. They both rose awkwardly to their feet. In the embarrassed stumble towards the door, she turned into him, placing her hands against his cotton shirt and holding up her face for a kiss. Even then he hesitated. Impulsively she placed her lips on his. They were cool and soft, and she realised she had been right: although he had evaded the role of seducer, he now pulled her to him and kissed her as if he could draw from her mouth some elixir of life.
He soon led her upstairs, where the house was, if anything, even more neglected. He left her outside the bathroom, where a giant sink and claw-foot bath were both streaked with green below crooked brass taps, and the wood of the lavatory seat was worn smooth as silk. The window overlooked the silent garden, and as Leonie swiftly washed her face and rinsed her mouth she gazed out into unfamiliar darkness. Emerging, she tiptoed across the hall towards the light shining from Patrice’s bedroom. He had switched on a rosy-shaded lamp and turned back the worn linen sheets on a narrow double bed that looked too short for his height.
He laughed at her surprise. ‘I had this room as a boy. We’ll manage, won’t we?’
‘Yes!’
‘Back in a minute.’
To her dismay, he went out, brushing his fingertips across her collarbone as he went. She sat on the bed to take off her shoes, wondering whether to undress. Unsure of the etiquette – she hadn’t done this with anyone other than Greg since she was at university – she decided, with a shiver of excitement, to wait for his return. Besides, she almost appreciated a moment alone to take in his room. There was a vaguely religious framed print over the bed, matching bedside cabinets edged with brass fretwork, one piled with paperbacks, the other bearing a modern clock-radio and the lamp. The curtains of faded toile de Jouy were an odd choice for a boy, and Leonie guessed intuitively that this had previously been Agnès’ room before she married and went away. A small rag rug on the parquet floor by the bed, a chest of drawers, a cupboard built into the alcove beside the disused fire-grate and an incongruously ornate dining chair with a broken stretcher made up the rest of the furnishings. It was all strangely comfortless.
Patrice soon came back. He’d already taken off his shirt, which he laid on the chair as he kicked off his shoes beside hers. He stood a moment, uncertain and apprehensive, the lack of sunburn beneath his shirt making him appear especially naked. She went to him, stroking the warmth of his bare shoulders before putting her arms around his waist, her fingertips exploring the muscled contours of his back. He dropped his lips to her neck, then locked his mouth to hers, strained to help her to drag off both their clothes and groaned when their naked limbs met under the sheets.
Leonie awoke in the small hours from a deep sleep. He too stirred and folded himself around her. Breathing in the redolent scents of his bed, she felt a deep rush of joy.
II
By Sunday evening, Leonie was beside herself. She couldn’t remember when she’d last felt like this, and could hardly bear to believe that she’d fallen so headlong into the cliché-ridden trap of waiting for a man to call and wondering if he ever would. Nearly forty-eight hours earlier, awake in Patrice’s arms and smiling into the darkness of the unfamiliar room, she had allowed the fantasy of happy-ever-after to wash over her. She’d been unable to explain to him before they went to bed on Friday how Saturdays were her busiest days at work, and so she’d have to scramble off at dawn. He had woken with the light and, apart from saying good morning and asking how she’d slept, had set about making love to her again without further speech. Then she had decided that, for once, she could be late, even though afterwards she’d had to rush off without even a cup of coffee, apologetic, embarrassed and glowing from the unaccustomed sex.
All day, she’d been a grinning fool with a spring in her step. When she had come home on Saturday evening exhausted from work it had simply never occurred to her that he wouldn’t want to speak to her. She had even hummed to herself as she took leftovers out of the fridge for her supper, sure he would call and interrupt her meal at any moment. But as bedtime had come, and the instrument of her torture remained infernally mute, terrible forebodings had begun to take shape. Was her rushed exit that morning the reason he’d not rung? Had he wrongly assumed that work was just an excuse, that she’d dashed away because she regretted being there? In which case, ought she to call him? But she knew that was impossible. She may not have had much experience of starting relationships, either before or after Greg, but she knew it was mandatory for her to wait for him to call.
And so she had lain in bed that night, watching the clock. This could not be! Before she’d left his house, she’d scribbled down her home number – maybe he couldn’t read her handwriting? Or had lost the piece of paper? Eventually she slept, but all Sunday morning she had hovered near the phone. To keep busy, she had set about spring-cleaning her small apartment. By mid-afternoon, it was spotless, so she had driven to the nearest Carrefour to stock up on essentials she didn’t need. And now, at eight o’clock on Sunday evening, she was exhausted and climbing the walls.
She would just have to accept that she was a one-night stand. She could live with that, she told herself; she was a grown-up after all. It had been heavenly to be reminded what it was like to be touched, aroused, desired, held. Extraordinary to remember, to realise how the body could forget pleasure as easily as it forgot pain. She had no regrets. She just had to pull herself together. Okay, she’d obviously been wrong about Patrice, but not for her the agony and humiliation of persisting in a belief that it had been anything more than it was. She might have been a bit naïve, assuming he felt the same way as she did, but being a bit naïve wasn’t going to turn her into an object of ridicule. Or pity. She’d simply have a good cry before she went to sleep, and hold onto a glimmer of the sexual afterglow.
Leonie was very glad to reach the haven of the office on Monday morning, despite having to maintain constant guard against Gaby’s acuity. The busy phones were a welcome distraction, so she was taken completely by surprise when, answering routinely, she heard his voice.
‘Hello. It’s Patrice. How are you this morning?’
‘Fine.’ She tried to keep the incredulity out of her voice. ‘How are you?’
‘Very well. I’ve got something for you. Spent most of the weekend on it.’
‘Oh!’
‘Would you like to come for supper tomorrow night?’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Then I can show you.’
Leonie made a rapid emotional calculation: ‘Yes. Thanks. What time?’
‘Come when you like. I’ll be home by seven.’
‘Okay.’
‘Bye!’ And he hung up.
The weekend had given her enough of a scare to hide her relief and delight as much as she could from Gaby. But she felt elated, exonerated, reprieved, as if the story with the happy ending could now be resumed.
On Tuesday evening when Leonie saw what Patrice wanted to show her, she was enchanted. She forgave him utterly for all the misery he had unwittingly put her through over the weekend.
‘It’s been rusting in the shed,’ he told her. They were in his garden, where he had wheeled out a woman’s bicycle. ‘I cleaned it up and oiled it, and I got new tyres and brake blocks. It’ll be a hundred per cent safe, I guarantee. Nothing much I could do about the saddle, I’m afraid. It’s a bit tatty. Otherwise all it needs is a basket.’
‘And a bell! At least until I learn to ride in a straight line.’
‘Do you like it?’ he asked shyly.
‘Yes!’
‘Good. Then we’ll be able to go places together.’ Patrice looked at her with such transparency that her heart melted. It was clear to her now that she had completely misunderstood how new relationships were managed. She’d been a student when she met Greg, but thirty-somethings obviously had all sorts of priorities beyond some juvenile head-long rus
h into romance. During those long hours over the weekend while she had been mentally accusing him of just using her for a quick fuck, he had been innocently planning ahead, imagining picnics, outings, grown-up time spent together. A future. She resolved never to doubt him again.
‘It’s adorable! Thank you. Thank you so much.’
She went to kiss him and saw that same little flicker of alarm, of hesitation, that he had shown the day they ate their baguettes together on the bench by the church. As before, she was engulfed by tenderness. Then he kissed her back, and they did not make supper until after they had led each other upstairs to bed, hungry for warm, smooth skin, ravenous to reach inside one another and find release.
He held her hand as they went back down to the kitchen, hungry now for food and wine. ‘We’re pretty good together, aren’t we?’ he said, squeezing her hand, and giving her a sideways grin.
Patrice made salad and a hastily prepared omelette. Leonie sipped red wine and watched him handling the bowl, reaching for the eggs, adjusting the burner on the stove; she smiled to herself, imagining all over again with each of his deft, confident movements the pleasure contained in each touch of his fingertips. They ate in rested silence, mopping up their plates with bread, then she dried the dishes while he washed up, making a joke together of her attempts to work out where things were to be put, habit having superseded any rational storage system decades ago. They chatted in a desultory way, too satiated with physical knowledge to enquire into anything much beyond the present moment.
Before returning to bed, Patrice opened the garden door and they stood, his arm around her shoulders, listening to the night sounds – small rustlings, a passing car, the inevitable barking of a distant dog – and enjoying the cooling air on their faces. As he switched off the hall light and followed her up the stairs, Leonie had a vivid sense of eternity, of male and female together, forever approaching the same inevitable conclusion. They undressed again without self-consciousness, and he nestled in behind her in the narrow bed. He stroked her hip for a while, then they dropped effortlessly into sleep.
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