Page 12 of Love In Provence
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ I say.
‘Got everything I need. I won’t be any bother. Look forward to meeting the others when they arrive tomorrow. I’ve plenty to be going on with.’
I’m not sure what she means, but I leave her to it, relieved to get away. I don’t have any small-talk just now. What could I say? One of our best friends has just died, and I sent my partner off to join the band he used to play with in a moment of madness and grief?
With that, Rhi and I finish off the bedrooms in the barn. Later, as the day starts to cool, I check on the lavender again, Ralph bounding through the rows as the sun sets over the purple fields. I bend to break off another stem and examine it. I hear his voice again:Nearly there.The buds are just starting to flower, so that by the time we pick, some will be fully open and others not quite. This field will be ready first, and the second lot on the other side of the slope. When we finally get a distillery, I’ll keep half of the field for drying and half for turning into oil. But not yet. There’s no spare cash to buy the still or create a workshop for a bottling unit. Who knows? Maybe after Fabien’s stint on the road with the band, a good harvest, and a busy summer atthe bistro, things will look better by the autumn and we can think about it then for next year. Something to look forward to!
I pick off another head of lavender, roll it in my palm and hold it to my nose as I walk back to the farmhouse.Nearly there, I hear again, and this time I know he’s right. It’s nearly there. This is where I need to be right now. Here, among the lavender plants. And the lavender needs me. Right now, it feels good to be needed.
Come Monday morning, it’s a rush. Jen spent yesterday lying beneath her camper van raised up on axle stands in the shade of the apricot tree. She’s barely surfaced. I’ve offered her drinks and baguettes, but she hasn’t left the van. This morning she’s searching the internet, apparently for a new clutch.
‘I have to go to the station soon to pick up some others,’ I tell Rhi and Stephanie, who is there with the children, ‘and meet the glazier at Henri’s. The blooms are nearly ready for picking and drying. We’ll need to start tomorrow. Maybe I should get Serge to check them.’ He had taught me about lavender. He had a farm in the area but wanted to retire and had passed on plants, with advice, to me. Fabien had introduced us. ‘God, I wish Fabien was here. I wish Henri was here, too.’ I feel a wobble. ‘He’d know!’
Rhi steps forward. ‘He’d tell you to trust your instinct,’ she says, taking my elbows.
My hands fly to my eyes, which bunch tightly shut. I push my fingers into the sockets to stop any leakage. I can’t crack now. Rhi puts her arms around me, as does Stephanie, then Tomas and finally little Louis. We stand for just a moment and I pull myself together. I remember being in the field yesterday and hearing Henri’s voice.
‘Look at what you’ve achieved here! When you realized you and Ollie were over and, rather than returning home, you stayed with nothing,’ Rhi says. ‘Just the empty shell of a house in a country where you barely spoke the language. With a daft dog for company. Look at how you dug deep then, made a life for yourself, Stephanie and Tomas.’
‘She’s right,’ says Stephanie, in her usual no-nonsense way. She’s packing her bag before she takes Tomas to school. She’s already been baking at the unit, ready for the market today. ‘You should listen to Rhi.’
‘Remember when Lou and I came to find you to see if you’d gone crazy?’ Rhi says. ‘And there you were, firmer in your mind than I’d ever known you! You were divorcing Ollie and staying put. Then you started baking with the lavender from the cookbook.’
‘It was the cookbook that saved me. One recipe, one day at a time. And Henri who sorted me out with the market stall.’
‘And then me,’ says Stephanie, waving the lavender cookbook I’d found in Fabien’sbrocantewhen I was trying to source cheap furniture, something to sit on, sleep on and eat with. I couldn’t afford the book, or the dressing-gown I’d seen, but Fabien gave them to me as a moving-in present.
‘It was the lavender that saved us both,’ I say to Stephanie, and once again, I feel a swell of pride for the woman she has become.
‘And now let’s hope it sets us on the right path again, starting today,’ says Rhi, gently.
‘You have a harvest to bring in,’ says Stephanie, less gently. ‘We need the lavender for the baking.’ Without it, she will have to buy in lavender from elsewhere. The whole business is reliant on the farm and the lavender we grow here, which we sell to tourists at the market, to the restaurateurs and cafés who provide baked goods to their customers. Stephanie makes ice cream and sorbet, biscuits and desserts. We need the lavender. I pull myself up as tall as I can.
‘Big-girl pants on!’ I say to Rhi.
‘Absolutely! You can do this! Just tell me how I can help.’
‘And me.’ Stephanie softens.
‘Et moi,’ says Tomas.
Tears prick my eyes as I bend to hug him. This is what I need. I can do this, I hope. Everyone else seems to think I can. I’m not so sure … With Fabien away forI don’t know how long, and without Henri to guide and help … The only thing I can do is give it my best. I told Fabien I could. And I will.
Suddenly the day is busy, collecting pickers from the station and walking them back to the farm, fetching others from the bus stop, and booking a taxi to wait for a delayed flight.
They’re an eclectic bunch, I think, as I hurry from the farm to meet the glazier, who is to price up the new window, and explain to the signwriter the lettering I want to replicate what was already there, in gold,Bistrot Henri. I visibly reel when the glazier tells me the cost of the new window. I have no idea where the insurance documents are. I left those details to Henri. They’ll be in his desk somewhere, I suppose. I should’ve asked. He kept saying he’d sort it all out when he was home next. Everything happened so quickly when he left and I took over the kitchen. His paperwork is a shocking mess. It all needs to be gone through. But the window has to be done. I need it replaced quickly so I can be up and running again. Maybe there won’t be a still for making oil this year. I’m using all of my savings, my safety net, to fix the window. I’ll look out the insurance paperwork once the window is in.
I’m standing on the street outside the bistro, looking down at the quote in my hand. The glazier ispacking away his tape measure and making a final note on his iPad.
‘Del!’
I look up the cream-stone-lined cobbled street and see my friend, the local estate agent, walking towards me holding her little daughter Clémentine’s hand.
‘Carine!’ I call. We kiss each other warmly. The little girl asks to be picked up and sits on Carine’s slim hips.
‘How is everything?’ Carine says. ‘How are you?’ she adds, concerned. ‘Fabien said he was going on tour with the band.’ She frowns. ‘Surely it’s not a good time for him to be away.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I told him to go. I thought it was what he wanted. To rejoin the band one last time. It was … What with Henri going, just like that, I thought he should grab the chance.’
