by Minna Howard
‘That’s fine then. We could do with more wall space in the campervan, so I’ll be glad to let them go. I’ve a whole lot more at home.’ Eadie said.
‘I thought the campervan was home?’ Flora said, wondering how many more pictures she had.
‘It is, but I rent out a little cottage I have to friends in the summer. It’s our bolthole in the winter and I’ve lots more pictures in the attic.’
‘You really think her pictures will sell?’ Xavier said when they were out of earshot on the way back.
‘Yes, I do. It’s a bore my two bosses have gone away, but the gallery’s not open until the middle of October. By then the new part will be up and running and, as far as I can remember, there will be a space in late summer or the autumn, although it’s not me that makes the final decisions.’
Xavier broke off a bit of baguette and handed it to her. It was warm and comforting and utterly delicious.
Flora, feeling guilty at being seen coming back wet from the beach, said, ‘Do you think Eadie will think we’re up to something, going off to swim like that?’
‘Not Eadie, she’s a great one for love,’ he said seriously.
‘I guessed that, but I’m married and what happened when we were young… that was ages ago and…’ She tailed off, feeling out of her depth, afraid she was making too much of something that wasn’t there. For all she knew he had a girlfriend waiting for him somewhere.
They reached the open gate of the villa. Xavier stopped and turned to her, his face serious. ‘Love is love,’ he said. ‘It can be like a plant that creeps up from under a stone, or appears on parched earth. You can either pull it up and throw it away, or water it and let it grow.’ And before she could answer he went quickly into the garden, across the lawn and into the villa to find Laurie.
23
Flora had hoped to escape to her room and change out of her damp clothes before being seen by anyone else.
Now they were back at the villa with the others, guilt was seeping through her as though she and Xavier had made blatant love on the beach. His last words disturbed her. If Hugo hadn’t deserted her she’d be safe, she told herself petulantly.
She went inside and walked along the passage to her room. As she passed the door to the back garden she saw Susie, Didi and Martha huddled together just outside.
‘Ah, there you are. Been for a walk?’ Susie broke away from the group. ‘Poor Ben had a fall and might have fractured his leg. Tony and Matt have just taken him to hospital.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, how did it happen?’ Flora asked.
‘He slipped in the shower, came down hard and injured his leg. He can’t put any weight on it.’ Martha joined them in the passage. ‘He’s bound to have to wait ages in casualty.’
‘Poor man, perhaps it’s just a bad sprain,’ Flora said hopefully.
‘Well, whatever it is, he can’t possibly do today’s catering,’ Susie said. ‘Ah, here’s Xavier.’ She called to him. ‘Have you heard about poor Ben?’
‘No, I haven’t. I’ve just been in my room. What’s happened?’ He looked concerned.
Susie told him. ‘So he won’t be able to help you get the food from the market today. I wondered,’ she turned to Flora, ‘if you would mind doing it with Xavier?’
Flora glanced at Xavier. Laurie, playing by the pool with Alegria, ran to join him. ‘Of course,’ she said.
‘That’s a good idea.’ Xavier flashed a look at her. ‘Poor chap, let’s hope it’s not as bad as it sounds.’
‘Will his leg come off?’ Laurie asked with interest.
‘Oh, no dear, no,’ Martha said, a little shocked.
‘Well, let’s have breakfast and then we’ll go down to the market. I’ve got some fresh baguettes for breakfast,’ Xavier said. ‘I’ve put them in the kitchen, I don’t know if Ben had any good ideas for supper dishes. I have none, but perhaps you can think of something, Flora?’
‘I’ll try. Better to wait until we get to the market, decide then, see what’s fresh.’ She moved to go to her room, her bottom half feeling clammy and cold.
Susie hovered behind her, steering her along the passage into the kitchen. ‘Your bra is hanging out of your back pocket,’ she said quietly, ‘and I can see your tracksuit is damp. Have you been swimming?’
‘Yes, in the sea. That slip of beach down a hill. Xavier showed me,’ she said defiantly.
‘I know it well,’ Susie said. ‘It didn’t used to be so overgrown and we often skinny dipped there when we first came here years ago.’ Susie dropped her voice. ‘Just thought I ought to tell you, in case it’s misinterpreted and makes trouble between you and Hugo.’
‘Thanks, things can get so exaggerated,’ Flora said with a guilty smile, feeling that Susie wanted to know more, but there was nothing to tell, nothing she wanted to share with her, anyway. She pushed her bra deeper into her back pocket and made for her room.
She changed and showered quickly, silently blaming Hugo for leaving her so open to temptation. Of course he didn’t know that she and Xavier had once been passionately in love with each other. If he hadn’t been so introverted, closed in on himself missing the girls, he might have suspected something, but as far as she knew, he hadn’t picked up on any of the attraction that still smouldered between her and Xavier. Susie might have noticed, but it couldn’t go further.
She joined the others for breakfast. There were biscotti, the baguettes and apricot jam, fruit and coffee and she was hungry after her swim.
After breakfast Xavier said, ‘We’ll leave in about half an hour, if that’s OK. Laurie will come with us. Can you think of something we haven’t already had for supper?’ He stood close to her; he’d changed too, and was now in a pair of denim shorts and a crisp dark blue shirt. His face was tanned his dark eyes watched her carefully, almost tenderly. ‘Are you OK?
‘Fine, thanks.’ She was not she wanted him, to be just them alone as they had been all those years ago. The echoes of their love and passion for each other sang in her body as if woken from a long sleep.
Laurie interrupted them by saying he wanted a swim and Xavier promised they’d go to the beach later.
Flora pushed aside her feelings for him, annoyed with her body for responding so. She thought of her daughters – it would break their hearts if their parents split up. Would they come back if there was only a fractured home left to come to, with all the agony of choosing one parent above the other? And what if Hugo were ill, suffering from some sort of breakdown? Work had been difficult these past two years; they’d had to get rid of some of their long serving staff. Travel agents were not in such demand now there was so much easy access to travel plans on the Internet. And on Xavier’s side, there was Laurie, his home life seemed precarious enough, without her making it worse by her going off with his father. Apart from their obvious attraction for each other and romantic memories of their youthful passion, was there anything deeper, lasting? If they made love would that be the end of it? A kind of closure to their feelings of long ago.
Susie gave them a couple of huge shopping bags; Laurie was strapped in the back of Xavier’s open car and Flora sat in front.
There was a gentle breeze which freshened the air; Laurie chattered most of the way. He seemed to have lost much of his shyness and Flora thought how hard it must be, ferried from one parent to the other and having to slot into a different lifestyle each time.
They reached the small town and Xavier found a place to park. Then, armed with the large straw shopping bags, they set off for the market. Laurie bounced beside them, asking for an ice cream.
‘You’ve only just had breakfast,’ Xavier said mildly.
‘But I’m hungry again,’ he said slipping his hand into his father’s.
‘Perhaps later. We’ve got to find good things to feed people before they all sell out. What on earth can we have for supper?’ Xavier said to Flora. ‘We don’t want something that’s going to take ages to produce.’
‘How are your cooking skills?’
Flora asked him, hoping he wasn’t expecting her to do all the cooking in this heat.
‘He can cook spaghetti,’ Laurie broke in, ‘and frozen peas, and sausages.’
‘And a bit more,’ Xavier protested. ‘Roast chicken and chops.’
Laurie said, ‘My mum is a Courton Bleu cook.’
‘Cordon Bleu,’ Xavier corrected him. ‘Yes, she is. Much better than I am.’
‘Is that why she was cross with you?’ Laurie asked, looking up at him with a frown.
Xavier exchanged a glance with Flora. ‘Perhaps that was one of the reasons, but you tell us what we should cook for everyone for supper.’
They came to the fish stall and Laurie held his nose and hurriedly moved away. The fish – silver, white and grey with their staring dead eyes – lay on ice. There were crabs and prickly sea urchins, brown shrimps and langoustines all arranged on a marble slab.
‘It’s a bit hot to make fish pie,’ Flora said, moving on to a butcher’s shop with its cuts of meat in the window. It felt too hot to cook at all and her mind was blank so she walked on to the vegetable stalls with their green and succulent peppers, courgettes, red and yellow tomatoes, deep purple aubergines, asparagus tips touched with purple. Martha and Sylvia had produced just what she wanted, delicious ham and ratatouille. She suggested that they could make a salad with couscous and masses of fresh raw vegetables. Laurie screwed up his face.
‘Let’s have sausages, or mince. They’re my favourite.’
Xavier said, ‘We could do that for you, but perhaps the grown-ups would like an exotic salad, or we could have saucisson, lovely and strong flavoured,’ he suggested.
‘What, with a quite substantial salad?’ She thought they needed something better, though she didn’t know what without hours of cooking and preparing.
‘Yes, and bread and some of that lovely cheese.’ On one stall a huge round Camembert oozed onto a bed of straw amid a large assortment of other cheese. ‘And what about Charente melons for pudding?’ He smiled at her.
‘And ice cream?’ Laurie said hopefully.
24
It was hardly surprising that the stallholders assumed that the three of them were a family, Xavier thought. They looked so comfortable together, Laurie pulling at Flora’s hand, pointing things out to her, asking her questions as he might with his mother.
He felt a pang of sorrow that he and Darcy had not achieved that ease between them. Things had gone wrong before Laurie was born and though both of them had tried to stay together when he arrived, they soon accepted that it was wrong for Laurie to have such warring parents. They got on much better living apart.
By contrast it seemed that Flora and Hugo had shared a happy and secure family life with their daughters, though now without them, they seemed like strangers to each other.
It was extraordinary meeting up again like this, and dangerous, too. Being with her again brought back deep feelings from that long lost summer and he sensed she felt the same way. He longed to be close to her again, make love to her even if the time and place were hardly right for them to renew their love story. Although if Flora were free again, her marriage finished and packed away, well then…
He watched Flora as she shopped, examining the vegetables and fruit as carefully as a Frenchwoman would, picking out the ones out she wanted and paying for them. What would their lives have been like if they had stayed together? Flora was only just eighteen and on her way to university, he was Brussels bound for his law studies and then their relationship was suddenly cut off, leaving him with feelings of betrayal, cursing her for not having the guts to tell him their love affair had gone far enough. Now, meeting her again, he’d discovered that it had not been like that at all.
Since the break up of his own marriage, he’d had girlfriends, though he’d shied away from getting serious. His own parents had broken up when he was fourteen. He remembered the agony of going from one to the other with his sister and how some of his father’s girlfriends would suck up to them, hoping to curry favour with their father. Their mother had at least settled with one man, who was distant but kind to them, and now he was doing the same thing to his own son.
But here, now, was Flora and they slotted back together like pieces in a jigsaw.
‘Do you like apricots, Laurie?’ she asked now, picking one up and stroking its velvety skin.
He sniffed at it, winkled his nose. ‘I don’t know, do I, Dad?’
‘I expect so, if they are ripe. What do you think? Would you like to try one?’
‘I was thinking of making a compote with them flavoured with sticks of vanilla. I’ll do it when we get back. It’s delicious when really cold and served with thick cream.’
‘Ice cream?’ Laurie asked.
‘You can have ice cream, but I think double cream tastes best for this,’ she said.
‘Sounds good.’ Xavier smiled, a spark of joy rising in him at being with her. ‘Now what about the main course?’ He wondered how it would have been if Ben had not been injured and they had taken over the night’s supper, as planned. He mentioned saucisson and pâté, again.
‘Y… yes,’ Flora said doubtfully, ‘but I think that’s more of a lunch thing, or a picnic. I think supper, when we’re all sitting down together, means a different kind of menu.’
‘Like what?’ Her answer dampened his spirits.
It was stifling in here, the many stalls trapping any fresh air. He was too hot and swiftly getting bored. Shopping for food was not something he enjoyed; there were too many choices. Flora seemed to be making too much of it – making a meal of it – determined to choose the right thing, when he wanted to be away from here, somewhere beautiful and quiet with her and Laurie.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Let’s have mince,’ Laurie said. ‘I like mince. Mum hides tomato ketchup in it and I like it like that.’
‘So do I,’ Flora agreed with him and for a ghastly moment Xavier thought she’d buy that for them all.
Flora caught his look and giggled. ‘I’ll get that for Laurie, if he’d like and perhaps, well… duck.’ She saw some trussed and ready for the oven. ‘Let’s have duck, no fuss, just roasted with a bit of orange. What do you think?’
‘Monsieur, votre femme a bien choisi.’
Flora blushed, opened her mouth, perhaps to say she wasn’t his wife, so he jumped in quickly. ‘Oui, tres bien, nous en aurons deux… ou trois? Oui trois,’ he said, as the bearded stallholder put three ducks into two bags and he took out his wallet to pay for them.
‘Ducks don’t have a lot of meat on them, not like a chicken, I think four, “quatre.”’ Flora smiled at the stallholder.
‘OK, if you say so.’ Xavier grinned at her, handing over more money.
‘We’ll split the cost of everything when we’ve finished,’ she said firmly to him. ‘Hugo would expect it.’
Before he could answer she’d moved on, with Laurie running beside her. ‘And my mince, and an ice cream. Dad said I could have one.’
She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ll find the mince. We need to go to the butcher for that. And your dad must decide about the ice cream.’ She smiled at Xavier, her face radiant and he yearned to be married to her, with Laurie as their son.
She went into the butcher’s and pointed to a huge pink pile of minced meat. ‘Un demi kilo, s’il vous plait,’ she said. The butcher looked at them both enquiringly.
‘Oui, un demi kilo,’ Xavier said, annoyed at the butcher for not understanding Flora.
The sun was even hotter now, beating down and creeping through the spaces between the stalls and in the open street making each of them long for the coolness of the water.
‘We must go back to the villa first and drop the food, then we will go down to the beach as promised,’ he said to Laurie. ‘What do you want to do when we’ve finished here, Flora?’ Her face was rosy with the heat.
‘I… don’t know. Let’s go back first and then decide. Perhaps the beach, I do love the sea.’ Her eye
s caught his.
‘I remember.’ He wished he could hold her. ‘Even that icy, grey North Sea?’
‘What’s the North Sea?’ Laurie asked, looking up at them both.
‘It’s one of the coldest seas in the world,’ he joked, holding her gaze.
‘Have you been in it… and have you, Flora?’ Laurie asked, wide eyed, as though they were talking about the North Pole.
‘Yes, long ago when we were young. It’s in Suffolk and we sailed there,’ Flora told him.
‘In the North Sea?’ Laurie asked.
‘Not often. We mostly sailed on an estuary that ran beside it, you know, where a river meets the sea. It was the only sea around and not warm and a lovely blue colour like here,’ she said.
‘I don’t want to go there, I like it here best,’ Laurie said. ‘Look, ice creams, you promised.’ He turned to Xavier.
‘We are going back now we’ve got your mince. Got everything we need?’ He looked at her and she nodded.
‘OK, let’s move. We’ll off load the shopping, then go to the beach and get an ice cream after lunch. They had very good ones, I remember.’
‘Oh, I want one now,’ Laurie whined.
‘On the beach, I promise. So, let’s hurry back before all these stallholders’ vans get on the road,’ he said, picking up the bags and heading for the car.
25
Ben was back from the hospital when they returned from the market, his leg in a pristine white plaster. He was sitting alone in the shade, looking faint and forlorn, but he gave them a brave smile as they greeted him. There was no one else in the garden or by the pool.
‘Can I draw on your leg?’ Laurie was fascinated by it and tentatively touched the plaster with his finger.
‘Oh, Laurie, leave the poor man be, he’s been through a terrible time,’ Xavier said, pulling him away.
‘It wasn’t much fun,’ Ben agreed, ‘but it’s not as bad as it looks. A clean break, should mend.’