by Leah Hope
The friends exchanged news and gossip enthusiastically although neither Bridget nor Gil felt that anything of much interest had happened in their lives since they had all last met.
“So, how’s business at the shop?” Gil said, turning to Tony.
Tony and Heather had arrived in France just before Gil and Bridget bought Les Cerisiers. They bought the little shop in the square, which had previously been a gift-shop, and re-named it The Best of British, as well as Les Volets Bleus. The shop was aimed at the local ex-pat community, stocking items that they hoped to persuade self-respecting Brits that they couldn’t possibly do without. Jars of Marmite, tins of baked beans, packets of chocolate digestive biscuits, bottles of salad cream and boxes of cream crackers and a whole host of foodstuffs that couldn’t be bought anywhere else, crammed the shelves. They soon realised that they would never survive by aiming sales at such a limited clientele so had started stocking an extensive range of health foods and supplements which they hoped would appeal to the health-conscious French as well as to ex-pats. Although business picked up, the Lloyd-Jones were only just getting by, but on the plus side, they were in France and were their own masters.
“Could be better,” replied Tony, “it’s always been a bit up and down but things should pick up over the next few months when the second home owners arrive en masse.”
At thirty-one, Tony was only two years older than his wife but tonight, Bridget thought, he suddenly looked much older. His short dark hair was newly flecked with grey since she had last seen him and there was little trace of his usual boyish grin. Tonight, he had a strange, almost haunted look.
“We’ll have to pop in, won’t we Gil? There’s a few things I need to restock our cupboards,” said Bridget, more from a sense of wanting to help her friends than from necessity.
“We’ll hold you to that,” Heather said with a weak smile.
Bridget couldn’t help notice how strained Heather still looked but perhaps she looked a little less than she had done the previous day. She was still very pale however and her mousey coloured hair, which was normally streaked with blonde highlights, now hung limply around her thin shoulders. The sludgy yellow dress she was wearing wasn’t doing her any favours either and managed only to drain her of what little colour she had. Although she couldn’t match Helen’s expensive wardrobe, Heather was always “well turned out” as Bridget used to comment and was surprised to see her friend looking less than immaculate. She watched Heather closely as she fidgeted nervously with the stem of her wineglass. Something’s not right, Bridget thought to herself as Tony suddenly grabbed hold of his wife’s right hand and held it tightly in his, not daring to let it go. No, something’s not right at all.
The conversation had now turned to topics close to the hearts of ex-pats; property prices, the value of the pound and whether any of them had ever actually managed to get tickets at the ridiculously low prices advertised by the budget airlines. Heather was taking little part but turning to Helen she suddenly asked, rather brusquely, “Is there any more wine?”
“I’m so sorry Heather,” said Helen, jumping up, “what a terrible hostess I am, I didn’t notice that your glass was empty.”
That’s probably because you only filled it up five minutes ago, Bridget thought to herself, Heather’s certainly knocking it back tonight.
Tony’s face was a picture of embarrassment but Heather didn’t seem to notice, continuing to stare instead at her empty glass.
“Look who I’ve brought with me!” beamed Helen as she returned to the table with more wine. A man who was unmistakable as Doug’s son strode along the lawn next to Helen, towering over her. His mop of blond hair was longer and thicker than his father’s but the athletic gait was exactly the same. He was immaculately dressed in a sapphire blue shirt, which emphasised the brilliant blue of his eyes perfectly, and which he wore casually over tailored white shorts.
Bridget was impressed by this vision of sartorial elegance until she looked at his feet which she was disappointed to see were encased in flip-flops. Oh dear, we only wore those to the beach in my day, she said to herself, but I suppose everything’s more casual now.
“Max, let me introduce you to our good friends Gil and Bridget, they own Les Cerisiers,” said Helen.
“Lovely to meet you both,” said Max, holding out his hand first to Bridget and then to Gil.
At last, none of that continental kissing nonsense, Gil thought to himself, if first impressions are anything to go by, he’s off to a good start.
“So how long are you over for?” Max asked.
Bridget had quickly picked up the unmistakable clipped vowels of Max’s public school accent and, much to Gil’s astonishment, replied in the “posh” voice she sometimes used when answering the phone.
“We arrived last weekend so we’ve got just over five wonderful weeks left, but it’s never long enough in somewhere so charming as this, is it dahling?” she replied, turning to Gil.
Trying to stifle a giggle, it was all Gil could do to stammer a response. I hope she’s not going to keep this up all night, he thought to himself. But he needn’t have worried, a couple of glasses of wine or two later and her voice had thankfully returned to normal, even if it was a little blurred around the edges.
“I think we’ve got you to thank for those gorgeous puddings I’ve spotted in the fridge,” said Max to Bridget. “They look absolutely wonderful, you should take it up professionally, I’m sure you could give our patisserie here a run for their money.”
“Oh, they’re nothing special, I just hope everyone enjoys them,” said Bridget modestly, flushing a little at the compliment, or maybe it was under the gaze of Max’s intense blue eyes.
Just as Gil had at last managed to steer the small talk that followed around to cricket and England’s chances in the forthcoming test, Max jumped up and shouted, “Over here darling,” waving as he did so. Everyone’s attention turned to the slender figure in white who had just stepped through the French doors. She kissed Doug briefly on either cheek before making her way in their direction. Max was on his feet and walked towards her and as she came near, he took both her hands in his and placed a light kiss on her lips.
“You look beautiful,” he whispered, as he led her towards the circle of guests.
“Darling, you know Tony and Heather of course, but I would like to introduce you to Gil and Bridget, they own the house with red shutters next door.”
Turning to Gil and Bridget, Max said with obvious pride, “This is my fiancée, Genevieve.”
Genevieve leant over and shook everyone by the hand, with a brief, “Hi, lovely to see you both again,” to Tony and Heather and a, “Please, don’t get up,” to Gil and Bridget. Bridget was first to speak.
“It’s lovely to meet you, and what a pretty name.”
“Thank you but it’s a bit of a mouthful sometimes so most people call me Genni,” the younger woman replied.
“Well I think I’ll stick with Genevieve if you don’t mind, it’s such a pretty name it seems a shame to shorten it,” said Bridget. “It’s French, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is, I am too, well I was born here but my parents moved to London when I was small so I grew up there.”
“But don’t you miss France?” Bridget went on.
“Well to be honest, I don’t remember much about it, London’s my home and that’s all I’ve really known. We visit when we can of course, I’ve still got relatives here, in fact Max and I were visiting my grandmother this afternoon. She’s in a home nearby and it’s her birthday today, she doesn’t get many visitors now so I wanted to do what I could to make her day special. And to show her this of course!” said Genevieve proudly holding out her left hand to show off an exquisite antique ring with three perfect diamonds sitting next to each other above a delicate platinum band.
“Oh, it’s absolutely beautiful!” gasped Bridget, without the slightest trace of envy. “You’re a very lucky girl.”
“I know,” replied Genevi
eve quietly, but it was Max that she was looking at, not the ring.
Gil’s second attempt to steer the conversation around to cricket was once again thwarted. This time by a booming, “Come on you lot, grub’s up!” from Doug, whose face was by now as red as the geraniums in the nearby tubs. Like hungry school children heading for the dinner queue, the group hurried towards the terrace, Max and Genevieve racing each other for first place.
“Don’t they make a lovely couple? Max has got such lovely manners,” gushed Bridget to no-one in particular.
“Genevieve’s not bad either!” said Gil.
“Steady on, she’s spoken for,” Bridget teased.
“I’m under no illusions sister dearest that even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t look twice at an old fogey like me!”
“A man can dream though eh!” said Tony, catching Gil up.
“I heard that!” shouted Heather, a few steps behind, a smile on her face for the first time that evening.
Helen had gone on a few minutes ahead of the others to arrange chairs casually around the table on the terrace, which she had laid, buffet style, earlier in the day.
“Come on, get stuck in, there’s plenty here so don’t hold back,” said Doug as he carried serving plates piled high with chicken, spare ribs, steaks, and juicy Toulouse sausages fresh from the morning’s market towards the table.
“It’s a bit of a meat-fest I’m afraid, I leave all the fancy stuff to Helen, help yourselves to salad and bread, bon appétit everyone!”
“Don’t forget to leave room for pudding, you’ve got a real treat in store,” Helen added.
“Hold on, I almost forgot the piece de resistance,” said Doug, suddenly dashing into the house. He emerged almost immediately with a jug-full of barbecue sauce which he placed in the centre of the table.
“You must all try this,” said Helen, “it’s Doug’s own recipe.”
“What’s in it altogether Doug?” asked Tony, spooning a large dollop of the reddish, orange goo onto his sausages.
“Oh, just a basic tomato sauce with a few chillies and other bits and pieces thrown in, can’t give away all my secrets of course as I’d have to kill you!”
Laughter rippled around the table until an enforced silence broke out as everyone got down to the serious business of eating.
Although food had been her life, Bridget had never had a particularly big appetite and had soon had her fill. While the others were still busy eating, she took the opportunity to sit back and indulge in her new-found pastime of people watching. She put her enjoyment of this newly discovered pleasure down to the fact that she had spent most of her adult life time mainly in the company of just two other people and was simply making up for lost time. She discovered that she had also lost much of the shyness and awkwardness that had dogged her early years and she relished the company of others. By contrast, her brother seemed to appreciate solitude more as he grew older.
Bridget cast her eyes around the table, her gaze finally coming to rest on the two women sitting side by side opposite her. An increasing interest in fashion and her appearance had crept up quite surreptitiously on Bridget in recent months. She studied Helen and her future daughter-in-law carefully, determined to gain some insight into how they managed to achieve an understated elegance, a look Bridget admired but had never seemed able to master herself. Helen possessed an almost Nordic fairness which she accentuated to great effect by wearing pale colours. Tonight was no exception and she was dressed in a pale blue linen tunic over a pair of white Capri pants, a pair of “designer” silver sandals completed the outfit. Her light make-up was immaculate and her hair was drawn into a simple, but stylish chignon.
Genevieve by contrast was as dark as Helen was fair. Her hair was cut very short and highlighted her elfin features to perfection. She was wearing a simple white shift dress, with a tan leather belt casually tied around her slim waist. Her perfectly manicured feet were encased in gold high heeled sandals, showing off long, tanned legs. It’s quite a simple look really, Bridget said to herself. I’m sure it can’t be that difficult to achieve. Had she known the true cost of Helen and Genevieve’s outfits, not to mention the weekly “maintenance” costs of manicures, pedicures, hairdressing and a whole host of other beauty treatments, “simple” is probably not an adjective that she would have chosen. I’ll get the catalogue out when I get back home, Bridget decided, they’re sure to have something similar. A request from Helen to clear away her plate, woke Bridget from her reverie.
“I think we’ll give it a little bit longer before we have dessert, if that’s alright with everyone, after all, we want to do it justice!”
“Do you want a hand with clearing up Helen?” Bridget asked.
“I wouldn’t hear of it, you’re on holiday don’t forget!” replied Helen as she stacked the dirty plates and cutlery onto a tray and disappeared into the house.
The others turned their chairs westwards to catch the still intense heat of the evening sun.
“This is what I love about living here,” said Dough wistfully after a while, “warm summer evenings, good food and wine, the company of friends, but most of all the peace and quiet, you can’t beat it.”
“It’s not all peace and tranquillity here though, is it said Helen?” who had just returned from the kitchen and was sitting down under the shade of an umbrella.
“Have you told Gil and Bridget about the incident with the Mayor the other week?” she said to her husband.
“I’d clean forgotten about that, most excitement we’ve had here for years!” said Doug, leaning forward in his chair. “You know we have a market here once a week, well the Mayor, Bernard Sellier, you may have met him, funny sort of a chap, well anyway, he’d arranged a photo opportunity with one of the stallholders who’d won a regional prize for his cheeses. Damn good stuff it is too, we had some the other week, didn’t we Helen, very good with a drop of Merlot.”
“Yes Doug we did, do get on with it!” replied Helen, her face bearing the expression of the long-suffering wife of a man not known for his brevity.
“Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, there’s old Sellier posing in front of the stall, first of all cutting a bit of cheese and then smelling it, then he takes a bite, you’d have thought he’d made it himself! Anyway, just as the local press are busy clicking away with their cameras, up comes Jean-Paul Janot, grabs him by the collar and starts shouting and yelling at the top of his voice that he was going to kill him, amongst other things. I think he would have killed him if a couple of heavyweights on the fish stall hadn’t pulled him off. You have to hand it to old Sellier though, he just carried on as if nothing had happened, looked a bit ruffled though.”
“So what was it all about do you think?” asked Gil.
“My French is pretty good but this was such rapid-fire stuff I couldn’t grasp it all,” said Doug. “But I think the gist of it was something to do with Janot being turned down for planning permission but I couldn’t make out if that was for his shop, he runs the fruit and veg shop in the square, or if it had something to do with the market garden he owns up near the lake. He’s got quite a place up there, supplies the shop of course and some others in the area and some of the restaurants too. I think Pete McNally gets quite a bit of the Mirabeau’s supplies from him and it’s top quality stuff. We’ll probably get to hear on the grapevine what it was all about, but I’ll tell you something, if Janot’s face was anything to go buy, we’ve not heard the last of it.”
“I thought all you had to do with French Mayors was to wave a bottle of single malt at them and they would be eating out of your hand,” said Gil.
“We should be so lucky, those days are long gone I’m afraid,” replied Doug. “They have to follow strict rules and regulations nowadays, although the Mayor is still very influential. Although I have to say we had absolutely no trouble when we applied for permission to build the swimming pool, it all went through very smoothly, took a while though, but you expect that anywhere.”
“I
wish I could say the same,” said Tony, “we got turned down out of hand as you know, maybe it’s a case of who you know not what you know.”
“Steady on old man,” said Doug, slightly affronted, “we played it by the book, completely straight, as did Sellier to be fair, I’m not a fan of the man as you know but everything was above board, no hint of any backhanders or anything dodgy.”
“I’m sorry Doug, you know how much that planning permission would have meant to us, I just get so steamed up when I think that weasel of a man can ruin people’s lives without a second thought,” said Tony, still obviously angry.
“What was the problem?” asked Max.
“You probably know from your father that the shop’s not been paying its way for some time, which is why we so grateful for him and your mother keeping it open a few hours a day when we were away, we need every penny. Anyway, we had an idea a few months ago to open up the back of the shop, just enough to make room for a few tables for afternoon tea, nothing too grand. There’s quite a nice bit of garden behind the shop and we thought it might be a decent money-spinner. I’ve got a bit of money put by that my father left me so I went to see Sellier to discuss planning permission before we went to the expense of getting plans drawn up. He turned me down, right there on the spot.”
“Did he give you a reason?” asked Max.
“He said that Saint-Rémy didn’t need any more cafes and that there was enough “foreign” presence in the village already without having a tea-room to pander to English needs. He was really quite offensive about it.”
“Sounds a bit of a flimsy reason to me, but why don’t you make a formal application? I bet Sellier wouldn’t be too keen to commit his xenophobic views to paper,” Max suggested.
“It wouldn’t be any use,” Tony replied, “he made his position very clear and besides, I can’t afford to waste money getting plans drawn up that may never see the light of day. If the shop carries on as it is, we’re going to need every penny we’ve got to move our stuff back to the UK. We’ve got the house of course but there’s very little equity in it so even if we were to sell it, the money wouldn’t last us long and we’d still need somewhere to live.”