L'amour Actually (11 page)

  I could hardly wait for him to finish so I could tell him that I would definitely love to buy a piece of his family's heritage... sorry, cheese. He cut me a small wedge, wrapped it lovingly in greaseproof paper, then slipped it into a brown paper bag. I stared at him, open-mouthed. The best part of twenty-five quid for a bit of cheese? He looked back at me, impassively, knowing he had led me past the point of no return. Handing the package to me, I was too embarrassed to say no so I took it and gave him a bundle of euro notes in return. He handed over my change and thanked me for my custom.

  I stomped off, angry with myself for being taken advantage of. Maybe Alex was right about the French. Maybe they couldn't be trusted. I stopped myself. I'd been ripped off. It happened everywhere. I pushed the unwelcome thought away and set off to find the Alliance Franco-Brittanique, which was, after all, the main reason I had come into town. It was the drop-in coffee morning today and I wanted to find out about French lessons.

  The club was on a road off the market square in a dismal little building that looked like it may have started life as a cowshed and hadn't really progressed much since. I pushed my sunglasses up on top of my head, opened the door and walked into a hallway which was lined with notice boards advertising local traders, items for sale, pets, local clubs and societies. I browsed the notices. Keep Fit. Not quite Zumba but it might do. Scottish country dancing. Nope. Bridge Club, Mah Jong, Cribbage. There seemed to be a bit of a pattern emerging. A sign by the notice board indicated the 'English Library' with a big arrow pointing to a door on the right. That might be worth a look.

  Pushing open the door, I walked into a room that was barely bigger than a broom cupboard, with every space on the wall crammed with shelves of books. An older lady with half-moon glasses sat behind a desk rummaging through an index box full of library cards. She looked up, smiling vaguely, as I walked in, before returning to her rummaging.

  I wandered down the rows of books: Barbara Taylor-Bradford, Catherine Cookson, Jilly Cooper, Danielle Steel. Not really my thing to be honest.

  'Are you looking for anything in particular?' The lady at the desk peered over the top of her glasses at me.

  'Umm, do you have any Catherine Alliott?' I asked.

  'I'm not sure I'm familiar with her I'm afraid.'

  'Wendy Holden?'

  'Err…'

  'Jodi Picoult?'

  'We've just had this very nice book returned,' the woman suggested hopefully, holding up a book that would definitely have appealed to my mother, but sadly not to me.

  'Thanks but I think I've already read that one,' I lied. The poor woman was only trying to be helpful after all. 'By the way, where is the coffee morning?'

  'Just down the hallway dear, last door on your right. I think Priscilla and Jeremy are hosting it today.'

  Priscilla and Jeremy… Prissy and Jerry, I thought as I headed off to meet my doom – or at least that's what it felt like. With names like that it didn't bode well. I paused for a moment, my hand on the door handle. Deep breath, I told myself. Pushing open the door I walked in, a fixed smile plastered across my face. Conversation stopped and twenty heads swivelled in my direction. Twenty old heads. I was probably the youngest by about forty years.

  'Hello, dear,' came a voice from across the room, 'can I help you?' A shrew-like woman in her sixties came towards me, pulling a cardigan around her bony chest despite the warmth of the room. Her long, grey hair was pulled back into a tight bun and everything about her screamed 'anally retentive'. It had to be Prissy, I thought.

  'Um, yes, no… um… sorry, I'm in the wrong place. I was looking for the… the…' My voice petered out. 'Toilets?' Oh for heaven's sake, I thought, why did I have to say that?

  'Next door along dear. You're new here aren't you?'

  'Yes, quite new. I've been here a few weeks now. I'm living up at Les Tuileries.'

  'Oh yes, the one with the creative sanitary facilities,' said the woman, smirking. 'No wonder you want to use ours.'

  'Ah, I see the reputation of my lavatorial arrangements precedes me. Anyway…' I crossed my legs and feigned desperation. 'Got to go, literally. See you again.'

  I hurried from the room, pulling the door closed behind me. In the hallway, I collapsed against the wall. God's bloody waiting room. That's all I needed. French lessons would have to wait. I could surely find them somewhere other than there. Looking at my watch I realised that the hour was nearly up. Time to go and meet Julien. Slipping my sunglasses down over my eyes, I stepped back out into the street and headed for the café.

  Up ahead I caught sight of one of the Twin Hunks through the crowd. Julien or Louis? Julien, I thought, definitely. I stepped out to try and catch him up but then stopped abruptly, as if I'd walked into an invisible wall, so abruptly, in fact, that the lady walking behind cannoned into me.

  
'Excusez-moi, madame.'

  The woman glared at me and carried on walking. I had lost sight of the twin in the crowd.

  The terrace of the café was busy but there was one table in the corner, shaded by the awning. I sat down and pushed my bag under the table, still perturbed by what I had seen, or at least, thought I'd seen. The waiter came to take my order but I told him that I would like to wait for my friend.

  Julien arrived a few minutes later and sat down opposite me, stretching out his long legs and running his fingers through his hair.

  'You have ordered?' he asked.

  'No, I thought I'd wait for you.'

  Julien signalled for the waiter to come over. 'What would you like?'

  'Do they do lattes?' I asked.

  He laughed. 'I will get you a
grand crème
. It's the nearest thing we have.'

  He called a waiter over and put in his order. The waiter had the slightly crazed look of someone who was not quite managing. He repeated the orders back in slow, broken French.

  'Oh, are you English then?' I asked. 'Because if you are, you can just talk to me in English.'

  He replied to me in French.

  'No, you see I'm English so it's OK. I can see you are struggling.'

  The waiter scowled at me. 'I've got to learn French. It's taken me two years to find this job but they'll only keep me on if I can speak the language.'

  Two years to find a job as a waiter in a café? I wondered if I had overestimated my own chances of finding work. The coffees on order, Julien asked me what I'd bought in the market.

  'Well, you know, just the usual. A baguette, some fruit and vegetables, oh, and a rabbit.'

  'A what? A rabbit?'

  'Yes, well, you see it was going to be sold for food and I couldn't stand it. It was curled up in my arms and all warm and fluffy…' a smile started to form on Julien's lips, '… and I just, well, bought it. It's in the car. I'm going to keep it, you know, for a pet.'

  Julien roared with laughter. '
Mon dieu
, you have a lot to learn about life in the country. Here we keep things only for eating, well, apart from dogs and cats of course. Rabbits are not pets, they are food.' I looked down into my lap, feeling ever so slightly silly.

  He leant across the table and pushed a strand of hair back from my face. 'You are so funny,
ma belle
.'

  Instinctively, I put my hand up to cover his, feeling the roughness of his palms against my face, so different from the city-soft hands of Alex.

  
'Voilà,'
said the waiter exuberantly as he put our coffees down on the table. The spell was broken. Opening up the paper on the cube of sugar, I dropped one into my cup and stirred it slowly.

  'I could have sworn I saw you earlier,' I hesitated. 'Um…' I hesitated again, wondering whether to go on or not. 'With a woman. You were kissing her.' I looked up at him.

  'Me,
non,
it's not possible,' he replied almost too quickly. 'It must have been Louis.' For a split second, I thought I saw a shadow cross his face.

  'Well, it's not as if it's anything to do with me anyway. I mean, we've only just met.' Oh for heaven's sake, I told myself, just shut up!

  I stirred my coffee intently, feeling stupid and embarrassed at the turn of events. Julien looked away.

  'Oh look, I'm sorry. That all came out wrong. Let's just forget it shall we? Look what I bought in the market.' I fished in my basket, coming out with the bag containing the world's most expensive piece of cheese. 'Do you want to try it? It's made to an old family recipe in their farm in the foothills of the Pyrénées.'

  'Let me guess. By Guillaume, the one over there in the
béret
,' said Julien, pointing across to the cheese stall where another unsuspecting couple were listening intently to the story of the family
fromage
. 'We're nearer to the Pyrénées than that cheese has ever been. He buys it from a supermarket in Bergerac and he lives in the HLM, the public housing, in Bussières.'

  'What?! He charged me twenty-five bloody euros for it!'

  'He does it all the time to the tourists.'

  'But I'm not a tourist, I live here,' I protested.

  'I know but you have to understand that around here if you can't trace your family back to the Hundred Years War you will always be a foreigner or a tourist. Still, at least you are not from Paris. They are even less accepted than foreigners.'

  'So I heard. But why?'

  'Oh, you know, they are so different to us rural people, arrogant, rude, condescending...'

  Yes, that sounded about right I mused, thinking back to my experience on a school exchange. When I was thirteen, I had spent a thoroughly miserable week in France with Elise, a precocious Parisian girl. Elise clearly felt that the little English girl was far too provincial and set about making sure I knew how inferior I was to a cool
parisienne
. She had taught me all sorts of words which were totally unsuitable but which I had then used to shocking effect in Madame Martin's French lessons on my return. We finished our coffees in companionable silence. Despite my earlier
faux pas
it felt so comfortable being with him. There was no need to talk to fill the silence.

  'Come on, we should go. There's a bored bunny waiting for us in the car.'

  'Bored? It is a rabbit. It doesn't get bored.'

  I threw him a withering glance then smiled and gathered up my bags.

  'Just a moment, I need to do something. I'll be back in a minute.'

  He got up and walked over to where Guillaume, the cheese man, was counting the money he had swindled from the unsuspecting tourists. I watched him go. I could watch that rear view all day I thought. Meanwhile, an unsuspecting Julien was having a very animated conversation with Guillaume who was looking very sheepish. Julien saw me and waved me over.

  
'Voilà,'
he said handing me twenty-five euros. 'A refund for your overpriced cheese.' Guillaume shrugged his shoulders and smiled, giving me one of those 'well you gotta try' looks.

  I rummaged in my basket and handed back the cheese but he held up his hands. 'No,
mademoiselle
, you can keep it.'

  Back at the car park, the
boules
players were gradually packing away and a tablecloth had been spread over one of the benches. A few bottles of red wine were opened and one of the old ladies was slicing
saucisson
, another a
Brie
, while a third tore apart a baguette. It was so simple but looked divine. So much better than the homogenised sandwiches that I was used to. As I opened up the boot to put my basket in, a black streak shot out, making me jump back and cry out in surprise. A pile of chewed cardboard was all that remained of the box that had held the rabbit and with its first whiff of freedom it had taken off, jumping down from the boot and zigzagging its way across the car park. People leapt out of the way of the speeding bunny as it shot between their feet.

  Sadly, freedom was short-lived, as was the rabbit. From nowhere, a little russet spaniel appeared, yapping as it gave chase, and in fright, the little bunny shot across the road, straight into the path of a car.

  I screamed and covered my eyes as a squeal of breaks heralded the end of its life. I peered through my fingers, hoping against hope that the rabbit had made it across the road. My mouth dropped open in horror as the driver of the car hopped out, picked up the dead rabbit, flung it in his boot and drove off, tomorrow's dinner no doubt sorted. I stood there, stunned.

  'Welcome to the countryside.' Julien put his arm around me and gave me a hug.