The Long Hot Summer (9 page)

We see each other virtually every day and endeavour to be discreet. He doesn't feel comfortable coming to the village house so most nights, very late, we end up back at his place. We don't talk very much about what we are doing, we simply allow it to carry us along. Having broken through the barriers he has built around himself, I find my new lover to be quite a surprise. A delightful surprise. When we are alone together he is a different person. Passionate, uninhibited and very giving. He has let his guard down and allowed me into a secret place in his life. He
explains that it takes him a long time to feel totally comfortable with a woman, to feel secure enough to be himself. He's been hurt in the past and is determined, I suspect, never to be hurt that way again. In many ways he brings out the nurturing side of me. He has a certain vulnerability that makes me want to look after him. Mother him. It's a common attraction for women and is not simply because I am several years older than him. Once or twice I ask him how he is feeling. What his thoughts are about our relationship. He is, as I probably should have expected, reticent and non-committal. All he will say is that he is ‘pleased' that our relationship has moved onto a different level. That it is a lot of fun. It certainly is. But the seriousness of what we are doing is hovering, always in the background.

Whatever happens, David must never find out this time. It would be the end. More than he could tolerate. He has already suffered enough, I simply have to keep my cool and not allow my emotions to give the game away. I must learn to lie, something I have never been very good at. When he phones from Australia I do my best to sound carefree and bright, filling him in on the business of my days, the plans I am making for renovating the house, the feedback from the walking tour, which has been a great success.

How am I feeling through all this? Well, after the initial shock of it wears off and I reconcile myself to the fact that it is real, that it is actually happening to me, I feel a thrilling sense of abandonment. Having a younger lover is exciting and I relish the wickedness of it. I enjoy being a ‘bad girl' and, even though I know it is completely without moral justification, I love every moment of it. It is like a drug and I am addicted.

I try not to ponder the rights and wrongs of the situation, I
just want to experience every sensation to the full and I use my all-too-familiar life-coping strategy of burying my head in the sand in order to avoid confronting what is happening in my life. I have always had the ability to put difficult issues in the ‘too hard basket' to avoid thinking about them and therefore to avoid having to deal with them. It is the same mechanism I used as a child to deal with the painful circumstances of my dysfunctional and disruptive family life. It is the same technique I employed during my long relationship with David as a way of avoiding those aspects of our life together that I found frustrating or deeply unsatisfying. Indeed, I now realise that for most of my adult life I have crowded my days with busyness and demands both on a professional and personal level as a way of sidestepping various truths that I don't wish to confront. I am certain a lot of people do exactly the same thing – evading the deeper issues of life by just being far too busy and involved to stop, take stock and make difficult decisions.

This time I am determined not to get caught up in the emotional side of the relationship. I certainly feel love for this man and a strong attachment to him because of our friendship over the past three years, but I don't wish to experience the pain of the last affair. I don't want to fall head over heels in love – this must be more cut and dried. Obviously there is closeness brought about by intimacy, yet there is also a sense of detachment – as though we both know it must not be a permanent arrangement but a delicious interlude in our lives. Without obligation or commitment and certainly without responsibility. Not that there is anything casual or flippant about the relationship. It is intense and there is undeniable electricity between us when we find ourselves thrown together by social circumstances.

I suspect this is why love affairs are so compelling. A lot of men, my father included, spend their entire married lives conducting a series of extra-marital sexual relationships – not because they don't love their wives, but because there is a powerful thrill in illicit relationships. The first signals of attraction; the body language and chemistry; the first touch – which may be little more than an accidental brushing of skin against skin; the first kiss; the inevitable seduction.

It's what happens as the relationship evolves that is important. Is it to be an affair that changes the course of your life? Ends a marriage or even two marriages? Breaks up families and causes widespread pain or disruption? Or should it remain a secret between the lovers? A shared intimacy that brings pleasure and joy to the couple without hurting anyone else?

The danger is, of course, not simply in being discovered. It is the risk of falling in love and therefore becoming so overwhelmed by and attached to the new relationship that it seems impossible to let it go. That's exactly what happened to me last time, and I was forced to make the ultimate choice between my husband and family and my lover. This time I am determined not to fall in love – and certainly not to be discovered.

For me, life in Frayssinet has always been a hive of social activity. It is here that I burn the candle at both ends. My life in Australia has always had a strong element of socialising, but over the past decade the shift has been from friends and work colleagues to my own ever-expanding family. I simply don't have the energy to cook for and entertain friends when the weekends are often taken up with large family gatherings that involve the preparation of mountains of food and all the accompanying caring for and clearing up after small children.

So France has become a very special place for me, because it is where I enjoy the company of friends almost to the exclusion of all else. While I get homesick and certainly do miss the little ones, I also revel in the freedom of being able to spend time with friends whenever and wherever I please. I haven't really been able to do that since before I had children and I am sure most working mothers would recognise the situation – family and work commitments always seem to take priority over just plain ‘having fun'.

David finds the social life in France overwhelming. He's much more of a homebody and can't keep up with the pace of the life I lead when I am ‘in residence' in the village. There's always something happening and I seem to be out virtually every night in the summer and often busy during the day as well – either meeting my mix of expat and French friends for drinks or a visit to markets or having a ‘serious' lunch. Lunch
is
serious in France, and I can't resist being part of the spirit of it all.

My friends are diverse. Many are funny and odd, even eccentric, and while they don't all get along with each other, we somehow muddle along amid frequent social gaffes and the occasional outright embarrassment. There's an undercurrent to social life here that I have only really begun to discover by coming back year after year. During my first visit I viewed the social scene through rose-coloured glasses, but now the more subtle nuances of the life here are beginning to sink in. I try to ignore them as much as possible, but it isn't always possible.

My good mate Jock is somehow at the centre of my social scene because everyone seems to love him and to realise that a lunch or dinner with Jock will never be boring. He speaks very softly, which can be a problem at large, noisy gatherings, and he often remains subdued early in the evening, so that those who don't know him may be fooled into thinking he is shy. But Jock is crafty. He's simply biding his time. Getting a feeling for the room and the other guests. He usually starts with the odd one-liner. A quip that is perfect for whatever is being discussed. Then come the jokes – every year he seems to acquire a new repertoire. And finally, as the evening begins to disintegrate with too much good food and wine, Jock starts with anecdotes of his years as a journalist – first in New Zealand, then Australia and finally in
New York. They are mostly hilarious, often self-deprecating, and demonstrate his wit and the path he trod to develop his easygoing philosophy of life. He sometimes falls off his chair with enthusiasm as the anecdotes get more lively, and our friend Roger, the English artist, describes this as ‘Jock's attention-getting behaviour'. Roger has drawn the most delightful action cartoon of Jock in the process of falling backwards off his plastic chair.

Roger too is a larger-than-life character. He lives half the year in a small cottage on the outskirts of a remote village and the other half at Brighton in the UK, where he is surrounded by a vibrant artistic and cultural scene. The best of both worlds. Last summer Roger and his wife Ann installed an in-ground pool at their French cottage and the ongoing saga of its construction, with the accompanying fiascos and communication breakdowns with the tradesmen, kept us entertained all summer long. It was finished just in time for the autumn cool. It's hard to lure Roger out of his studio and garden – he's become a bit reclusive these last few years – but when he can be inveigled into an outing it's always a bonus. He throws outrageous parties – often fancy dress – and prefers inviting people to dinner to being asked out.

Jan and Philippe remain constant companions, although they have become more subdued these past few summers. Jan, like Jock, was born in New Zealand but has spent most of her life in the northern hemisphere. She gave up alcohol a few years back and now drinks a variety of ‘mock' champagnes while we quaff the wonderful local reds. It must sometimes be alarming for her to observe the conversation and general demeanour of the table deteriorating as the night wears on. Philippe is a landscaper, so they are therefore rarely available for lunch – and if they do come to dinner they tend to flag early. The big difference is that
while so many of the people in our circle are retired and can sleep off the excesses of the night before the following morning, poor Jan and Philippe are usually up at dawn to start work. They find the late nights totally exhausting. Jan is also very careful about her weight and eats like a bird, which seems madness when, like all of us, she is constantly surrounded by so much tempting food and wine. She stoically endeavours to keep Philippe on a punishing ‘health regime', but every so often he breaks out and falls ravenously upon the foie gras and the red wine. It's good to see. Jan is my translator and support system for the walking tours and we always have a riotous time together – feeding, entertaining and guiding our Australian visitors around this corner of the world that we both love so much.

Philippe, like most of my French friends, is fascinated by all things Australian. The French, on the whole, don't travel overseas as often as many other nationalities, but they certainly read a lot and watch documentaries about foreign countries, and Australia is always one of their favourites. I have a lot of fun teaching Philippe slang expressions, which he trots out at social gatherings to the amusement and amazement of everyone. I taught him to say, when feeling thirsty, that he is ‘dry as a dead dingo's donga', which he pronounces with such an alarming accent on the word ‘donga' that people fall off their chairs with laughter. Someone else then taught him to say, ‘I am so hungry I could bite the crotch out of a low flying duck', which is totally appropriate given the quantity of duck eaten in our region. Finally, I taught him the expression, ‘Don't come the raw prawn with me', which he just adores but gets wrong every time because of the order in which the French language places words.

‘Hey Mary,' he says with gusto, ‘don't come on me with your raw prawn.' It brings the house down.

I also teach Christian and Christiane from the bar to say ‘gidday' as a greeting, and they use it regularly instead of ‘bonjour'. It results in very strange expressions on the faces of their French customers, and once again their pronunciation is way off the mark. It makes me feel a little better about my muddled French!

Claude, the retired photographer, has recently undergone heart surgery but it doesn't seem to have slowed him down. Being from England, he could have had his operation in London using a top surgeon, but chose instead to go to a hospital in Toulouse that has the reputation of being the best facility for heart surgery in the world. While the operation and immediate aftermath were traumatic, Claude has bounced back in his inimitable style. He exercises daily and watches his food and alcohol consumption to some degree, which results in his looking at least a decade younger than his chronological age. He still loves to tap on my window just as the church bells chime at midday, in the hope I might join him for ‘une verre' at the bar. Invariably we end up lunching together, often with a few other waifs and strays who have wandered into the bar at lunchtime.

Claude's only concession to ageing is his vagueness, which appears to have plateaued but is nevertheless quite noticeable to his friends. I suspect he has always been a bit vague; it's just that it's become more apparent of late. His way of dealing with the problem is to write himself reminders on yellow Post-it notes which he sticks in obvious places so he will be reminded of what he needs to do. On his bedside phone will be the note he'll see on waking, reminding him of his first few chores of the day. By
the main phone are numerous notes with instructions about which tradesmen he needs to call and what myriad small jobs require attending to around his large house and garden. On the back door he leaves notes about what he needs to do when he goes out shopping – these are quite apart from the actual shopping list. His house seems perpetually covered in yellow sticky notes, and even then he still manages to forget things. In preparation for a trip to the UK, he bought hundreds of euros' worth of glorious French cheeses and some local saucisson to distribute among his English friends and family. Despite a note on the back door reminding him to pack the tasty gifts into an esky and put it in the boot of the car, he left the lot behind and we were the beneficiaries, after a frantic phone call.