Bella... A French Life (36 page)

Is he asking me?

I do not reply because I think he should seek the answer from within himself.

I run my fingers over his face.

“Bella,” he asks, “why did you not marry? Or you might have and your marriage broke up.”

“No. I have never walked down the aisle.”

“May I ask why you did not?”

Did Jean-Louis not ask me this same question? Do I give Colin the answer I gave him?

“It just never happened,” I say.

“Never met a man you wanted to spend the rest of your life with as they say in novels?”

“I do not read that kind of novel. But no, I have … how shall I put it? I wanted, wanted very much to marry someone but it did not happen.”

“Why did it not happen?”

“He was a married man.”

“Did he not tell you this when you met him?”

“He told me.”

“And?”

“And it did not matter. I still fell in love with him and I hoped he would divorce his wife and marry me.”

“Should he come back, divorced this time, will you take up with him again?”

“He will not come back.”

“So you are no longer in love with him?”

“To be honest with you, I do not know. If I put my mind to it, I will probably decide I am no longer in love with him, but I miss loving him. Loving. It is such a wonderful thing for me to love … to love a man, and to know he loves me. That he cares, cares about me, that he wants me to be happy, to be safe. Forget the sex, it is not that I am talking of. I am talking of the togetherness. Of the congeniality of spirit.”

He nods.

“I have never had that, Bella. I always had to be elsewhere, in some other place. I always ran. Maybe the time has come to say put.”

“Maybe, Colin.”

“Maybe, yes, such a time has come.”

-0-

For a while longer we lie in each other’s arms, my head in the hollow of his shoulder. He is playing with the nipple of my breast, the breast nearest to him. The nipple hardens under his touch. I sit up because this, I decide, is not a moment for sex. I slip from the bed. I take down the nightgown hanging behind the bedroom door. I fold it around my naked body.

Colin has turned over onto his side; he is watching me.

“My Bella,” he says. “My lovely Bella.”

I walk to the bathroom and in the shower I stand under the cold tap for a while.

Back in the bedroom, Colin is no longer lying on the bed. Neither is he in the bedroom.

-0-

Chapter Thirty-Four

I am in the kitchen.

Colin and I have each had two croissants and a bowl of coffee: we were hungry.

Now, Colin has gone back to his bedroom. He told me there were a few things he needed to do this morning. I said this was alright with me. I need to go into the village for provisions, and I want to go to Salon Larissa for a shampoo and blow wave. Marion is right. A crash helmet is not kind to a woman’s hair. The sea air further did its damage.

The Merc’s key in my hand, I knock on the closed door of the ‘White Room’. Colin does not often close the door, but he is probably writing and does not want me to disturb him. After a second knock he opens the door.

“Are you busy?” I ask.

He is working, yes. Behind him, on the bed, which he did not use last night, lie books, folders and many sheets of paper.

“Colin, I’m off to Saint-Marie-sur-Brecque. I’ll be out for a while. I’ll stop at the
charcuterie
and I’ll get us something light for lunch. Maybe we can go out for dinner tonight. It will be my treat.”

“Do you have a moment?” he asks.

“Sure.”

I give a step into the room, but quickly he steps in front of me.

“I’ll come down with you, Bella.”

If I am not mistaken he said this hastily as if he did not want me in his bedroom.

“Fred may come round today,” I say cheerfully to the footsteps behind me. “He always comes once a week when the guest house is closed and he did not come last week.”

We go into the kitchen.

“Would you like another coffee maybe? Or a cup of tea?” I ask.

“No! I’m ok. You get along to the village.”

“You wanted to say something to me?”

“I did not want you to go without me seeing you off. That’s all.”

“How thoughtful, Colin. Thank you.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

Rain water drips from the trees in the courtyard. Overhead the sky is grey.

“It is going to rain,” I say. “It is good we went for our ride yesterday because had we left it for today, we would have had to cancel it.”

We descend into the parking bay. The three cars stand like sentinels in the dark. My mother’s
Deux Chevaux
seems to be tilted to one side. I must really sell the car or give it away, give it to some charity to sell.
I must stop being such a sentimental.
 

Colin holds a hand out for me for the car key.

“The door’s not locked. No need to lock it as no one can get in here,” I tell him.

“Don’t be so certain of that,” he says. “A determined thief can get in anywhere.”

This man actually cares about my safety.

“Good, I will lock the car from now on.”

“Bella,” he says. “It is so good to be here, here with you. I can tell you I have not ever been as happy as these days here with you. You are a super human being.”

He leans forward and pulls me against him.

“Colin …,”

His lips stop my words. His kiss is tender. Tender but long. The weight of his body pressing me against the car. Slowly he lets go of me.

“Now, off with you,” he says, “or I may change my mind.”

Change his mind about what?

I get into the car and I turn the key in the ignition. At the entrance to the parking-bay I lean out the window and look back. Colin is standing in the doorway. He raises his right hand, his fingers together, his thumb tugged against the hollow of his hand, his forearm straight and horizontal to the floor, and with the tip of his forefinger he touches the outer edge of his right eyebrow.

He is saluting me again.

-0-

Larissa has gone back to being blonde. She has several yellow curls hanging over her heavily made-up face. Jonny too has yellow hair now. The colour is an improvement to the green of before. So is the 1920s cinema idol style of a heavily-oiled short back and sides.

As Larissa is in tight white pants and tight white sweater, while Jonny is in tight black pants and tight black sweater, the two look like a Hollywood dancing duo.

The salon is crowded, a woman sitting at every lilac heart-shaped mirror and one sitting on each of the chairs at the wash basins and on the chairs under the dryers. It makes me happy to see because Larissa, being so busy, she will not have time for chatting to me this morning. Neither will Jonny.
They might just ask about my winter guest.
 

“Not any of your fancy conditioning stuff, please, Larissa,” I say.

“Doctor Wolff is in a hurry,” comes from Jonny.

He is busy applying dye to the hair of one of the village’s elderly female inhabitants.

One, two, three and my hair is washed, the collar of my T-shirt wet and soap in my eyes, and I too am sitting in front of one of the lilac heart-shaped mirrors. I close my eyes when Larissa begins to wrap strands of my hair around a round brush to which other women’s hair cling, in order, as she says, to make me look “even more beautiful than you are, Miss.”

Looking as I always look, my hair though much less unruly than when I walked in, I pay Larissa and discreetly drop a five-franc coin into Jonny’s palm as a tip.

Back in my car, I drive to Avranches. There, at the
LeClerc
supermarket, I buy quite a few things. Not that I need any of it, but I want to give Colin a treat. I will also definitely telephone Gertrude to ask her to come up one evening to cook us one of her specialities.

Both arms on my watch pointing to twelve, my shopping done, I am back on the road to Le Presbytère. There is little traffic because it has started to rain, rain heavily. It also means, I cannot drive as fast as I wish. I am eager to get back to the house.

In Sainte-Marie-sur-Brecque I see Fred going into the Vaybee. I make a U-turn. I will go and tell him that should he see Gertrude to ask her to give me a ring about coming up to the house one evening to cook a meal.

“No lunch for me, Frascot,” I say walking in.

I saw him glance over the already crowded Vaybee to see where he can seat me.

Alice is behind the till. She waves to me as if we are the closest of friends. Reaching her, she confirms this: she throws both her arms around me and hugs me, a perfumed cheek brushing against one of my perfumeless ones.

“Where’s the hulk, Doctor?” she asks.

To me a hulk is green and ugly as I’ve seen in a television series.

I join Fred at the bar. To please Frascot I say I will have a glass of orange juice.

“Sounds a good idea,” says Fred.

He assures me he will give Gertrude my message.

I drink the juice while listening to a joke one of the patrons is telling. I laugh because everyone is laughing, although I fail to see the joke. It is something about an elephant and a mouse walking into a bar.

Driving up to Le Presbytère I turn the window on my side of the car down. I ignore the fact it is raining into the car and onto my left arm. Soon, my arm is wet and so too the hair I have just had done. I keep the window open.

A cat shoots across the house’s driveway. He is chasing a pigeon which, fortunately, has the sense to flap its wings to fly higher and out of the cat’s reach. The cat dives under some vegetation.

Colin’s motorcycle is not parked under the copse of trees.

He must have gone out.

I park the car in the parking-bay and I start carrying my purchases to the kitchen. What needs to be frozen, I put into the freezer. The rest I set out on the work table. First, I will go upstairs to rescue what can be rescued of my blow wave and then I will come to pack the stuff away.

I shoot up the stairs. Colin has left the door of the ‘White Room’ open: a strip of light falls from the room into the corridor. This is the first time he has left the door open when he has gone out. I reach the doorway. I look into the room. His typewriter is not on the writing table. There is nothing on the writing table. I step into the room. His bags, transistor radio, his tape recorder and his tapes, some of it having stood on the writing table, the rest on the two bedside tables, are gone.  I look into the bathroom. I cannot see his shaving things on the shelf above the washbasin. I walk into the bathroom; the toilet seat is down and the extra toilet rolls which are usually in the cupboard under the washbasin are on the seat. I walk back into the bedroom. I open the wardrobe. It is empty but for coat hangers.

Has he moved into my bedroom? He must have. How wonderful.

I run to my bedroom. I look into the room from the doorway. I do not see his things. I walk through the bedroom. His things are not in my bedroom.

He has gone. Dear God, he has gone. He has left. Left Le Presbytère. Left me.

I return to the kitchen. I sit down at the work table. I look towards the Peace Lily. A piece of paper has been pasted to the terracotta pot with sticky tape. I do not have to get up to see what the piece of paper is. I know what it is. I remain sitting at the table. I stare at the piece of paper. The chime of the grandfather clock brings me to my senses. I walk to the Peace Lily. Holding the piece of paper, folded double, I sit down at the work table again. I open the piece of paper, flattening it against the surface of the table.

Bella … I will never forget these days here with you. Now - I have to go. I will never forget you. Colin.

My telephone begins to ring. I listen to the message being left on the answerphone. It is Gertrude’s voice. Fred has given her my message and she is asking when I would like her to come up to the house to cook a meal for Mr Colin.
What about a vegetable soup followed by grilled fresh ham and a cheese soufflé, Miss?
She wants me to call her back.

-0-

Chapter Thirty-Five

It is two in the afternoon.

I see dust and dirt everywhere in Le Presbytère.

If I start to clean immediately by five or six the house will be clean. I will be free then. I will be able to drive off with the certainty no one will find a dirty house when they come in here.

But where to start?

I have poured myself a cognac and here I sit in the drawing room on the armchair where I sat on the night of Colin’s return from Paris and he walked into the room holding the cellophane-wrapped basket.
Bella, I could not resist buying you a small gift. I hope you will like it.
 

Liked it?

I liked you, Colin. I can even say I allowed myself to fall for you, fall in love with you. Just as I had fallen in love with Jean-Louis.

I am talking out loud to myself. My parents once had a guest from Argentina who talked to herself. She walked through the house speaking to herself. “If only she will speak in English we will know what she’s on about and we will be able to calm her,” said one of our English guests. One day, in one of her calmer moments, the woman told my mother in broken English how she had lost both her sons and also her husband, her father, two uncles and two nephews during Argentina’s military rule. “They should have killed me too,” she said. I wondered why she did not do so herself. Being that lonely, that miserable, her future a black hole, why did she continue to live, to torture herself with this thing known as life.

It is raining. Raining buckets as our English guests always say. In the distance the mount has vanished in mist. There are though still cars on the causeway driving towards it.

I start cleaning. I start in the drawing room. I dip a cloth into a large bucket filled with wax which Gertrude makes. It smells of lavender because she adds lavender oil to the beeswax and paraffin and what-not she mixes together. Honorine and Martine sing when they wax the furniture - it annoys some of our guests - but I wax the furniture in silence. Standing on a chair to reach the niche above the bay window, I see dust has gathered in the holes forming the crucifix. I wax the niche too. Stepping from the chair I cannot stop myself looking towards the copse of trees where Colin had parked his motorcycle and where, now, there is nothing but fallen and rotting leaves.