L'amour Actually (34 page)

  'She certainly has what we would call a chip on her shoulder.'

  'I think it was a bit mean of the others to put you with her.'

  'I expect they only did it so they wouldn't have to put up with me,' I sighed. 'Honestly Martine, I try so hard with them but they give nothing back. They hate me.'

  Martine looked away and thought for a minute. 'It's not you they hate, I'm sure of that. It can be very difficult when they have all grown up together for a stranger to try and fit in. We all adore Julien and Louis but sometimes situations arise that mean…'

  'Hey ladies, wait for me.'

  I turned to see Julien running after us. 'Where are you going?'

  'Martine and I were just going for a little walk between courses.'

  Julien caught up with us and pulled me towards him, wrapping me up in a bear-like hug. I laughed and reached up to kiss him.

  'I'm so sorry,
chérie
. I would much rather be sitting with you than with the
comité
but it's tradition.' 'You know what they say about traditions. They were made to be broken.' 'I thought that was rules.'

  'Picky! Have you seen who I'm sitting next to? Bloody Pia, the mad Belgian with the runaway husband.'

  Julien laughed. 'You poor thing.'

  'Well, I'm going to head back and leave you love birds,' said Martine.

  'Oh you don't have to. Walk with us for a bit,' I pleaded.

  Martine looked at Julien and then at me. 'No, if you don't mind I'll head back.'

  'Well, OK. See you later then.' I watched her go, wondering why she had changed her mind so suddenly.

  I slipped my arm though Julien's and we headed off in the direction of the little market square.

  'What is that building?' I asked, pointing at an old ruin attached to the next building and then to the
mairie
or town hall.

  'That's the old keep. This was originally a fortified castle with a church for the
comte
and
comtesse
in the middle and that's all that's left of it. It's why it's so big and grand for such a small village. The other little chapel, St Martin, on the edge of the village was for everyone else. It originally belonged to the Comte de Beauclerc. He built it for his wife but when she died in childbirth, he could not bear to stay here anymore so he just abandoned it and it fell into disrepair over the years. They used the stones to build the
mairie.
'

  'What a sad story. This village has certainly had its share of tragedy, hasn't it?'

  'Hmm. I suppose it has.'

  We sat on the bench outside the
mairie
watching our breath condense in the cold air. Julien slipped his arm round me and kissed the top of my head. I leaned into him and wondered if it was possible to feel any happier than I did when I was with him. The stupid Belgian didn't matter anymore, nor did the offhand behaviour of Julien's friends. All that mattered was Julien. I was in love with him. I was absolutely sure. As if he read my mind, his lips brushed my ear and he whispered,
'Je t'aime.'

  I turned to him and looked deep into his eyes.
'Moi non plus.'

  'Pardon?'

  
'Moi non plus,'
I repeated, certain that was what they said in that old Serge Gainsbourg song, the one about coming and going between your kidneys. On second thoughts, maybe I was wrong to rely on that for the correct response to a declaration of love from a Frenchman.

  'You neither?'

  'Pardon?'

  'That's what you said. Me neither.'

  'But… in that song, you know, with that Jane Birkin woman…'

  Julien roared with laughter. 'Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin? We always said that the English never really understood that song.'

  I could have kicked myself for ruining the moment but still, he'd said it hadn't he? He loved me.
'Je t'aime, Julien.'

  He kissed me deeply, holding my face in his hands. 'I have never been so happy,
chérie
.'

  
'Moi non plus,'
I smiled. He smiled back at me and enveloped me in his arms.

  'Come on, we should get back. We still have another three courses of meat to get through.'

  'Oh God, I don't think I can,' I said, but knowing that Julien loved me, I could get through anything. 'Will there be cheese?'

  'Of course,' he replied, 'this is France.'

The flash of lightning lit up the bedroom and the crash of thunder that followed was enough to rattle the windows. I sat up quickly, roused from a deep sleep by the storm. I padded over to the window, still half asleep. The rain battering against it sounded as if someone was throwing handfuls of gravel and the wind was whipping the poplars in the garden into a frenzy. I had experienced some storms since my arrival in France but this was in a different league. The gusts of wind whistled under the roof tiles, blowing small clouds of dust through the wooden slatted ceiling. The big oak tree next to the house was creaking and groaning arthritically and I hoped that it would hold up. There was no hope of any more sleep until the storm passed so I went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea.

  Huddled under a blanket on the sofa with Basil snuggled up on my lap, I sipped a mug of hot tea as flashes of lightning illuminated the room, casting spooky shadows in the corners. Hot embers still glowed in the wood burner so I threw on a few more logs to get it going again. I was halfway through my tea when the lights went out. It was nothing unusual for the electricity to go off during a storm; in fact, it often took little more than a strong wind to knock it out. I felt my way to the dresser and took some matches out of the drawer then lit the candles I had dotted around the room, with the kitten attacking my bare feet as I went. I hoped that the henhouse was surviving the onslaught outside.

  The wood burner started to roar back to life as I settled down on the sofa listening to the wind rattling the windows. From my vantage point, I could see through the window out across the valley. Forks of lightning split the sky, crackling with pent-up electricity. The storm still seemed to be some way off and I wasn't normally worried about storms; however, this one was making me a bit nervous. The rain continued to batter the windows and the rolling booms of thunder became almost continuous. On my lap, Basil started to look around nervously, digging his little claws into me every time he heard a thunderclap. 'It's OK,
minet.
It will be over soon,' I told him.

  From the bedroom, a steady dripping started and I went to investigate. Water was leaking through the ceiling in big brown droplets that were splashing onto the bed. I quickly pushed it out of the way and ran to the kitchen to get a bowl. By the time I came back, more leaks had appeared and the water was starting to trickle down the walls at the point where it met the roof.

  'Oh shit!' I muttered as I headed back to the kitchen to get more bowls. Basil followed me, mewing loudly. I bent down and picked him up, snuggling him close to my chest.

  'Poor kitty, you're frightened aren't you?' He purred like a little train and nestled into me. As I was putting him down gently on the sofa, a huge fork of lightning lit the room up like daylight, followed by a loud clap of thunder that made the ground shake. I jumped and Basil dug all twenty of his needle claws into me, making me shriek with pain. 'Jesus bloody Christ,' I said loudly, half at the kitten, half in fear.

  From the window, I noticed a glow in the distance, which seemed to get bigger as I watched it.

  'Oh no,' I said under my breath. The flickering and dancing lights were undoubtedly flames and I tried to visualise what was there, but the darkness and the storm had disorientated me. Was it a house or just a barn? Either way, it had taken a direct lightning strike. Over the noise of the storm, I could just make out the sounds of the
pompiers'
sirens and as I watched, faint blue lights could be seen making their way up the hillside towards the flames. I'm not a religious person but I found myself saying a quick prayer that no one had been hurt.

  Suddenly, an overwhelming need to speak to Julien hit me. Normally he would have been here but he had had to go to a meeting in Bussières to do with farming subsidies or some other such tedious subject, so we had decided to meet up again the next day. When I picked up my mobile, I saw that there was no signal, so I tried the house phone but that was dead too. Around me, the wind got stronger and the cracks and thuds of branches being ripped from the trees got more frequent. The old tree by the house was groaning loudly but so far holding up to the gusts of wind.
Rafales
, I thought. The French word for gusts made them sound so harmless but there was nothing harmless about these.

  I climbed back under the throw on the sofa and pulled Basil onto my lap. Sitting there in the candlelight with nothing else to do but listen to the storm raging around me was a humbling experience. In London, I was barely aware of the forces of nature, but here, on a remote hillside in rural France, Mother Nature was getting right in my face and I wasn't enjoying it one bit.

  I pulled out my phone to check the signal again, just on the off chance that I had one. As I tried to compose a text to Julien, my hands were shaking enough to make typing difficult. I still had no signal, but at least my text would be sent as soon as I did.

  Firing up my laptop that had been left on the coffee table earlier, I was relieved to see it still had some battery left, but of course, I had no Internet connection. The storm had obviously knocked that out too. I had never felt as isolated as I did now. If Tracey were here, we would have sat together with a bottle of wine and laughed our way through it but with only the kitten for company, the dripping ceiling in the bedroom and the gusts of wind howling round the cottage and lifting the roof tiles, I felt very much alone.

  I was awoken the next morning by Basil sitting on my chest meowing furiously for his breakfast. I had finally fallen asleep sometime after four as the storm had started to blow itself out.

  'Just a minute, buddy,' I said to the kitten, untangling my stiff limbs and stretching out my neck. The sofa definitely wasn't designed for sleeping on and I suspected it wasn't really designed for sitting on either as it had never been particularly comfortable at the best of times.

  Hauling myself up, I circled my hips and arched my back to get my stiff muscles working again. I looked out of the window on to a bright, sunny day with whitish-grey clouds scudding across the sky. Remembering the fire, I looked across the hillside to see if I could pinpoint the location. It wasn't difficult. Blue lights still flashed in the distance, but I could see that it was definitely a barn and not a house that had caught fire.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, I slipped my feet into a pair of Crocs, put the kettle on and ventured out to see how we had fared in the storm. The garden was a mess of broken branches and any trees that still had leaves on them were now stripped bare. On the bank behind the house several trees had come down, but apart from that there didn't seem to be too much damage, maybe a loose tile here and there and a bit of mopping up to do inside. I made a mental note to call Madame Mollet to let her know.

  The kettle seemed strangely quiet as I went back into the cottage and then I remembered that the power had gone down during the storm. I emptied the water into a saucepan and lit the gas cooker. At least I could still cook even if I couldn't watch television, use my laptop or do any of the hundred and one other things that made my life bearable during these dull winter months. I picked up the phone, hoping against hope for a dial tone. There wasn't one. My last chance was my mobile but that was still showing no signal. Bloody hell, I thought, it's like being in one of those 'let's live like the Victorians' documentaries; but I wanted to live like a twenty-first century girl and being so completely cut off made me feel a bit twitchy. I resolved to drive into town later in the hope that they still had power and access to up-to-date gadgetry.

  A while later, after a lukewarm shower and a piece of toast made over one of the gas rings, I set off in the car to see what was happening in Bussières. I didn't get very far. The road had turned into a small but fast-flowing river as water ran off the hills and down into the valley. Tentatively, I drove through, hoping it wasn't deeper than it looked. When I reached the bottom, the little river, which normally meandered lazily in the vague direction of the Atlantic Ocean, had been transformed into a raging torrent of muddy water stretching about 20 metres across. Les Tuileries was effectively cut off. Standing at the edge of the floods, Martine, Monsieur Brunel and Monsieur Marcel were huddled together deep in conversation gesticulating wildly at each other.