Page 64 of Sisters Making Mischief
‘He might be fiercer than he looks,’ Luc said.
‘An attack poodle,’ I agreed, and he laughed.
I flicked him a glance. Wondering how I had come to this place, sitting in this truck with a man I hardly knew, but feeling unexpectedly comfortable in his company. And we were going out for lunch together, people seeing us might think we were an actual couple. Couples did that all the time, didn’t they? But I hadn’t, not for several years.
We reached a small town where he pulled the truck into the side of the road and we got out.
‘I can’t provide you with wonderful views, but I can vouch for the food,’ he said.
Inside was a low beamed room, quite small but wonderfully scented with garlic and herbs and woodsmoke from the open fire. And yes, there were couples sitting at tables, some of them chatting, others concentrating on their food and hardly speaking. We found a table next to a window, with a view over the garden and beyond that fields, which had been ploughed into orderly lines.
‘You prefer red wine I think, you like Bordeaux?’ he said, and I nodded rather touched that he had remembered.
He went to the bar returning with two glasses of wine and two menus.
‘By all means take a look, but I know they do a very finecroque monsieur. And you did say that’s what you wanted.’
‘Perfect,’ I said.
And it was. Although that lunch was so simple and some might say, unexciting, it was exactly what I had wanted. And as I sat there picking the strings of gruyère cheese off my face, the fledgeling feeling of happiness inside me increased.
‘This is marvellous, such a treat,’ I said.
He looked a little puzzled. ‘It’s just a modest meal, nothing out of the ordinary.’
‘It is to me,’ I said.
How could I tell him that asking for something simple and getting it was something I wasn’t really used to. Stephen would have said it was just posh Welsh rarebit and not worth the price. That as we were eating in a French restaurant, I would have been better off withsteak frites, or duckà l’orange. And then he would probably have ordered for me, and fool that I was, I would have let him.
‘I wonder if the shepherd’s hut has arrived,’ I said after a few minutes, ‘I can’t wait to see it. I’d really love to have one.’
‘And what appeals to you about it?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, just the thought of a small, private space like that, where everything is close to hand. Somewhere that doesn’t need a lot of work, or stuff. Where I can put the things that really matter to me, rather than clutter that I have collected. I’ve been trying to get rid of things in the last few years since my marriage ended. I’ve realised I have too much, too many things, that no one will want after I am gone. So, to get rid of things now is good, I’m sparing someone else a task.’
He took a sip of wine and shook his head. ‘You are very young to be thinking of that.’
I laughed at that, and he held up one hand.
‘No, don’t laugh as though you don’t believe me, you are young. You may live for another twenty or thirty years. Shouldn’t you be enjoying your life on your own terms, not worrying about making things easy for other people?’
Yes, perhaps I should. I sat up a bit straighter in my chair.
‘You’re right, I do that a lot,’ I said, ‘I worry about other people and what they will think of me. It’s just the way I am.’
‘I didn’t used to think like that,’ he said, ‘but now I do. Something happened which made me change.’
Aha, for the first time he was talking about himself, what had made him decide to be so isolated for so long in a sleepy little corner of France.
‘And what was that?’ I asked, amazed at my own boldness.
He hesitated.
‘Many years ago, I was lecturing in a university – English history as you know, and I met Sabrine. She was a research student. Oh, this was perhaps fifteen years ago, up until then I had not made the opportunity for finding a wife, but with her it felt right. Eventually we married, we were very happy, we had a little apartment in the middle of town near a park where we could walk and talk. She had her studies, and I had mine. She cooked, for me and for our friends. We made all sorts of plans for the future. Where we would travel, perhaps it wasn’t too late to have a family, she was some years younger than me, but then two years later she died. A car accident, icy roads just outside Lyons, no one else involved.’
I gasped. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘People were kind but eventually I couldn’t bear the sadness, or the sympathy. People thinking I could be mended, it just reminded me of what I had lost. So, I made my work into my life again. Until the time came when I could not continue, because I was being encouraged to retire. Money, it all came down to money, and I was expensive to employ at a time when budgetswere being reduced. And then I realised that without my work, without Sabrine, I actually had nothing. Oh yes, I had a home, my books, a few good friends but nothing that defined me, as a person. It was like putting my head over the top of the trench where I had been hiding. And finding that everyone had gone, that I was alone. But then I had made my choices, and I had to live with them.’
