French Kiss (8 page)

            He handed Charlotte a coffee.

            “I don't know how you take it,” he said. “There is sugar on the table.”

            “I mustn’t,” she said.

            “Don't deny yourself,” he said. “You've worked hard. You need to replace some energy”

            It was the first time he'd acknowledged her work.

            “Milk?” she asked.

            “In coffee? Really?”

            “Forget it,” she said, and then added politely: “It's a beautiful room.” She couldn't help emphasising the word 'room', wondering when she might be invited to see the rest of the house. “How long have you lived here?” she said.

            “Three years,” he said. Again, that air of sadness. He kept looking at the soaking wet raincoat on the hook.

            Charlotte knew that she would have to keep the tone light or he'd close up on her again and she'd be back out in the rain. Before she could say more, however, he went on.

            “I built it over a period of a year and it was finished in the spring. The weather was as it is now.”

            “You built this room?” Charlotte said.

            “This house,” he corrected and sipped his coffee.

            Charlotte had come from London, where houses and skyscrapers were built by men in hard hats and cranes swung beams all over the place. Two weeks after work started it looked like nothing and then, almost instantly, it was finished. Houses were thrown up by teams of ant-like workers and their machines. They weren't built by … well … Gilou.

            She looked at the solid beams running across the ceiling and those over the windows. It had electricity and running water and everything. The kitchen, in fact, was beautiful. Though it was part of the dining room, it was spacious. It was tidy, because everything had its place. He'd obviously thought ahead and he'd seen to that.

            She was pleased that he had built something beautiful, but was sad to think of him living here all alone.

            “What are you thinking?” he said.

            His eyes were fixed on hers. He often seemed to be analysing her, but was as yet unable to read her. She liked that.

            “You're unhappy,” Charlotte said.

            “Sometimes I feel grumpy. Yes. Doesn't everyone?”

            “I didn't say grumpy. I said unhappy.”

            He shrugged.

            “Can I see upstairs?” she asked.

            “Yes,” he said, “but all in good time. We should get to know each other some more first. At least finish your coffee.”

            “I didn't mean it like that,” she scowled.

            “Now who's being grumpy,” he said.

            In the silence that followed she imagined him leading her upstairs and showing her the room in which he slept, ushering her inside, closing the door.

            “Why did she leave?” Charlotte asked, aware that she was pushing him into an area that was painful, but he had started it the afternoon he'd given her a lift up the hill.

            “Who?” he said.

            “I don't believe that you've always lived her alone,” Charlotte said. “Why did she leave?”

            He took a deep breath before answering, suggesting that the words, while going round and round inside his head, had rarely issued from his mouth before.

            “Everybody does,” he said finally.

            “Why didn't you go with her?”

            “Why should I?” he said.

            He slammed the conversation shut on her fingers. She realised that she had strayed way too far into personal territory, but it had been too interesting to stop, even if that meant that he now gave himself license to be a pig to her for the rest of the month.

            “When you love a thing, you have to set it free,” he said.

            “If it comes back, it's yours,” she finished. “And if it doesn't ...”

            “Exactly. So now you know why I am such a bastard.”

            “I'm sure this is only one of many reasons,” she said.

            They laughed uneasily and the ensuing pause between them was full of meaning. Like him, however, it was neither entirely decipherable nor entirely comfortable. She felt the urge to take his hands in hers and tell him that he needn't be alone, that everything would be okay. He may have picked up on this, because he chose that moment to refill his coffee.

            “You want more?” he asked.

            “I'm not sure I can handle more right now,” she said.

            “I meant coffee,” he said.

            “So did I,” she said.

            He folded his arms and looked out of the window where it was raining harder than before. Most of the chickens were in their house, but two had escaped and were hiding with the cockerel under Gitane.

            “Good weather for a vegetable garden,” Charlotte suggested. “Not so good for Sarko.”

            “What?”

            “I named your cockerel,” she said.

            “Sarkozy? You can't.”

            “I did.”

            He closed his eyes, pained.

            “Tell me about the vegetable garden,” he said. “Quickly.”

            “I was hoping that you'd have some ideas. I don't really know where to start.”

            “I used to dream of being self-sufficient,” Gilou said, “but now there is no need. Everything can be bought from the supermarket and the supermarket inches closer and closer every day.”

            “When I was in the London, I used to buy groceries on the internet. I'd click on their pictures and put them in a picture of a basket.”

            “Convenience,” he said.

            “Becomes very inconvenient,” she added.

            “But still, there is no need for me to grow anything.”

            “Maybe there's more need now than ever.”

            Gilou seemed exhausted by the conversation, so Charlotte decided to take action.

            “Vegetables don't grow themselves,” she said and began to pull on the raincoat. “Well, they do, but you know what I mean.”

            “You can't work in this weather,” he said. “I won't allow it.”

            “Well, tomorrow then.” She thanked him for the coffee and pulled on the boots.

            “You could work inside today,” he suggested.

            She looked around the kitchen/dining room with its neatly-stacked crockery and clear table. The  floor was swept, as was the fireplace. There was fruit in a basket.

            “What is there to do?” she asked.

            He blinked at her, thinking. Eventually, he crouched down beside the dining room table and ran his index finger along the underside. He held his finger up for her to examine.

            “Filthy,” he said.

            “Yes,” she agreed. “Outrageous.”

            He went into the next room and returned with a bottle of oil, two cloths and a pair of yellow gloves.

            “I have an important meeting in here tomorrow,” he said. “I want this table looking like new . When you're done with that, I'll give you something else to do.”

            “You're serious?”

            “But of course.”

            “There wasn't anyone before me, was there?” she said.

            “What are you talking about?”

            “You had no manual labourer before I arrived, did you? You've been creating things for me to do that you're quite capable of doing yourself. You like looking after the animals. I've seen you with the horses. Even Sarko respects you.”

            “I don't understand what you're talking about,” he said. “And I don't have time for this right now. Just do as I ask.” He turned on his heel and went upstairs then, leaving her with the polishing cloths and something called Teak Oil that had a massive warning on the front.

            She pulled on the gloves.

            “Thank you,” she said and began preparing the table, according to the instructions on the bottle, wondering once more when she might be allowed to cross the boundary to the upper floor.

~~~

            The following day, it rained again. Gilou had instructed Charlotte to take the day off, regardless of the weather, but she was determined to get started on the vegetable garden, because he had been so pleased by the idea. She donned her boots and raincoat and got straight to work without announcing her arrival.

            She wanted to do something to encourage him to allow her in. The way to his heart seemed to be through digging in the dirt and so be it.

            She'd found numerous books on gardening and self-sufficiency on his bookshelves the day before, after polishing the table and every other stick of furniture in the main room. The majority of the books were in English, which surprised her at first, but ultimately explained to some extent the quality of his English. She knew that she ought to be practising her French while with him, but their shared English was somehow more intimate. For him it was like a secret. She would have said that it afforded them the ability to talk without others understanding them, but nobody ever came to the house. Sometimes she left late in the evening and Gilou never seemed to have plans aside from reading or catching up on paperwork.

            As described in a book she had borrowed the evening before, she decided what it might be possible to grow, worked out where the best place to grow those vegetables was and began to measure  out how much space she would need. She was still measuring when Gilou threw the door open and she spun to see him glaring at her as if he had never seen her before and she was ransacking his garden.

            “Here we go,” she thought.

            He yelled at her in French and Charlotte was momentarily thrown.

            He yelled at her again and then said, above the sound of heavy rain turning the dirt to mud: “What! Are! You! Doing!?”

            “I'm making you a vegetable patch,” she announced.

            “You're destroying my garden,” he said. “I want you to go home.”

            She put her hands on her hips.

            “What are you talking about?” she said. “We agreed.”

            “No,” he yelled. “I told you to take the day off today.”

            She decided to play his game. “You just want to avoid paying me, but I'm not as easy to put off as you think. And I bet your other guy didn't work half as hard as me.”

            She was startled when a second French voice came from behind him. It was a grumble, even deeper than his voice. Patrick came running between Gilou's legs and the man who had spoken appeared in the doorway. She couldn't see so well, because the rain was falling hard, but he looked familiar.

            A brief exchange followed between the two men and then a third appeared on the porch. Another was inside.

            Now she knew where she had seen them before. The three of them had entered the mairie after her the same day that she had made a fool of herself. They were dressed much the way they had been then, as if their black suits and tie-less shirts were a uniform.

            The biggest man, who had the air of leadership about him, intoned something to Gilou again and Gilou smiled. It was the cruel smile that Charlotte had seen fleetingly in the mairie, but this time he looked pained. In hiding his face from the men behind him, Charlotte was able to see that he was in fact tormented.