A French Affair (36 page)

‘You need to turn to your left,' Luc said.

She did as she was told, and once he was satisfied she was at the right angle, she found her thoughts returning to Charlie and how it would be when she saw him again. She'd missed him in so many ways that she had no doubt she'd be pleased to see him, but for now she was perfectly happy to be spending another
week alone. Already she was sensing how much it was going to nourish her simply to feel the pleasure of her surroundings now she was free of the dark thoughts she'd had before, and that would benefit them both. She also wanted to work on her book some more, take long walks in the countryside, read, explore and listen to music, so many small things that she could do for herself before allowing him and Harry to return to the centre of her world.

Sighing gently to herself as the prospect of more solitude coasted warmly through her, she then fell to wondering if, when the time came, she and Charlie would celebrate their reunion by making love. She hoped they would, because sitting here now, basking in the fierce scrutiny of an attractive man, with the sun streaming down on her, and the music swirling and eddying through her, she was sensing her body in a way she hadn't in so long. She could feel the arch of her back, the smoothness of her arms, the slender length of her legs, the angle of her shoulders . . .

‘Mmm,' Luc murmured, standing back to inspect his work.

She looked at him, and felt a small spread of heat in her cheeks. Had her inner pleasure somehow found its way into her expression?

He continued to regard the sculpture. ‘There is something I am not capturing,' he said, glancing her way.

She only watched and waited as he tried to fathom out what it might be.

‘Perhaps that is enough for today,' he said in the end.

Feeling oddly let down, she was almost tempted to remain where she was, but understanding she couldn't, she picked up her phone and started towards
the door. ‘Shall I come again tomorrow?' she asked, turning round.

He was still looking at the sculpture. ‘Yes,' he said distractedly. ‘Maybe in the morning. It is not so hot.'

She nodded and started to walk on, then as she reached the door he said, ‘Are you doing anything this evening?'

She paused for a moment, then turned back. ‘I was planning to do more research for my book,' she replied. ‘Notes. Not actual writing. I'm not at that stage yet.'

His back was still to her. ‘I have the French version of
Suite Française,
' he reminded her
.
‘Would you consider reading some chapters for my father after dinner? I think he'd like to hear you, instead of me. We both would.'

She started to smile. ‘I'd love to,' she told him, and picking up the straw hat she'd hung by the door, she put it on her head and left.

As she walked back to the cottage she felt the urge to reach out her arms as though she could embrace the beauty of the pristine blue sky, along with the succulence of the fruits and stillness of the leaves. The sibilance of crickets was a continual, rhythmic sound, while jasmine and dust were elusive scents in the air.

She rested a hand against her chest, and felt the swell of a nipple, pressing into her palm. Then keeping her hand there she inhaled gently, as though to take in the potency that was like a hypnotic essence all around her.

When she got back to the cottage she spread a towel on the patio, then slipped into her briefest bikini. As she lay down she gazed up at the big empty sky, and
the sense of freedom she felt was so exhilarating it was almost like wine. She closed her eyes as the merest whisper of air turned itself into a caress. She thought of nothing and nobody – for once not even of Natalie – all she knew was the exquisiteness of melting away from fear and blending with nature this way.

That night she sat under the pergola with Fernand and Luc, a lamp glowing on the book she was holding, while all around them the vines seemed to shimmer in silvery moonlight. As she read the chapters Luc had selected she thought her voice seemed lower, as though the meaning of the words was going to another depth now she was speaking them in French.

The portrait of forbidden love between a middle-class Frenchwoman and a German officer had always resonated with her, for the words the author had used to describe it seemed to float as gently as dandelion clocks in the air, conveying all its fragility and ephemerality. Sitting here now, on this perfect summer's night, not so far from where the story was set, it was as though its beauty and power might take her over completely.

At first Lucile and her German barely even knew there was an attraction between them. It was as though their feelings were just another part of the strangeness that had come into their lives. They almost never touched, and yet they became aware of one another in ways that often made it feel as though they had, or perhaps it was in ways that were even more potent than touch. They knew no-one would ever understand, or accept how they felt. Maybe they didn't either. They only knew that life was allowing them this brief, bittersweet spell to feel love at a depth most never
reached, and perhaps to find out if they really had the will to resist it.

The next morning when Jessica arrived at the studio Luc was already there. Neither of them mentioned her reading of the night before, or her refusal to let him walk her back through the vines afterwards. It was almost as though the evening hadn't happened at all, for they merely picked up their conversation of yesterday, as though hardly any time had passed.

‘There is something about your face that I am not understanding,' he told her, as she came to join him in front of the sculpture. ‘It is not the obvious features, because I think I have them. It's something else.'

As Jessica studied the clay replica of herself, the barely discernible slant of her eyes, the wide flare of her nostrils, and the full bow of her long upper lip, she could only feel awed by the way his hands had taken her beauty and turned it into something that was both her, yet not her, for there was a quality about this sculpture that was almost disturbingly transcendent.

‘Right now you're escaping me,' he told her. ‘You are moving away, going towards what is to come, or perhaps back to what was, while I need to feel that you are here, with me, the viewer, in this time, this place. Do you understand what I am saying?'

‘Yes, I think so,' she replied pensively. Then looking at him, ‘I don't know what to tell you.'

‘It isn't for you to tell, it is for me to find,' he responded. ‘And I will. Perhaps today.'

But by the time the village clock chimed midday in the distance his frustration was clearly building, and finally conceding that he could be trying too hard, he suggested they take a break.

‘I was wondering,' he said, as she got up to leave, ‘if you would be interested in taking a drive to Issy-l'Evêque.'

Her eyes widened with delight, for it was the village where Irène Némirovsky had begun writing
Suite Française
. ‘I'd love to,' she replied, ‘but are you sure it's not too far?'

‘It'll take perhaps less than an hour,' he assured her. ‘I think my father will expect us for lunch first, but I've already asked him not to tempt us with wine. I hope that wasn't presumptuous,' he added with a drollness that made her smile, ‘but I felt sure, if you had nothing else arranged, that it was a place you would like to visit.'

An hour later, after a meal of smoked salmon with creamy herbed cheese, and garlic-dressed salad, Jessica slipped into the Mercedes next to Luc and tried to scowl at the look he gave her, because, unlike him, she'd been unable to resist the wine.

‘But I only had one glass,' she protested, as he started down the hill.

He gave her a look of dismay.

‘OK, maybe it was two.'

‘I stopped counting at three.'

She started to object, then laughing she simply let her head fall back against the seat until he brought the car to a stop outside the cottage.

‘I am hoping you won't snore when you fall asleep,' he said as she started to get out.

She turned back. ‘I would never do anything so inelegant, but my mouth might fall open, so please feel free to lift up my chin. Now, I shall be less than two minutes, so please don't go without me.'

True to her word she was back a moment later with
a hat, a belt purse and a tube of sunblock that she began rubbing into her neck and shoulders as he steered the car out of the
combe
onto the top road.

Soon they were passing through undulating countryside with sunbaked acres of vines and shady forests all around them, and constant reminders of the past, so she coaxed him to tell her what he knew of the region's colourful history, from the great Dukes of Burgundy and their ties to the French throne, to the bloody massacres of the French Revolution, right through to the ignominy of German Occupation. As he talked, particularly about the Second World War, she felt herself transported back to last night's reading for a while, thinking of Lucile and her young officer, but then he was describing the resurgence of the great wine estates, followed by their slow, inexorable dissolution due to the French Inheritance laws and competition from New World blends.

By the time they arrived at Issy-l'Evêque the topic had moved on to Alphonse de Lamartine, the celebrated poet and politician who was born in Macon. They were still trying to recite various extracts of
Jocelyn
as they parked close to the
mairie,
where an abundance of vivid flowers tumbled from the window sills and the ubiquitous tricolour hung limply from its pole. She stood looking at it for a moment, imagining the German swastika in its place, then with an imperceptible shudder she turned away.

As they set out along a sleepy cobbled street, with no particular goal in mind, they absorbed the feeling of timelessness that seemed to seep frombuckled stone walls and closely shuttered windows. Though
Dolce
– the second part of
Suite Française –
was set in another village, they agreed that this one must have provided
its share of inspiration, for it was there to be seen in the church, the war memorial and a beautiful golden house with a blue front door. They imagined the sound of German boots on the cobblestones, and the shadows of suspicious old women who'd lost husbands and fathers in the First World War, then sons in the Second, as they peered out of their darkened windows. Then there were the young girls who sashayed along the streets, flirting with the smartly uniformed officers while the local traders took pleasure in fleecing them. And lastly, there were the broken, embittered men who'd limped back from the front to find their homes inhabited by the enemy and their women not always pleased to see them.

They'd fallen quiet for a while, when Luc said, ‘You read very well last night.'

‘Thank you,' she replied, pleased by the compliment. They were crossing a small shady square towards a fountain, where the afternoon sun was making the single trickle of water sparkle like crystal beads on a harsh bedrock of stone. ‘It's the most beautiful part of the book, so I'm not surprised you chose it.'

His voice was droll as he said, ‘I had a feeling it might be the section you enjoyed most. I find Lucile a very subtle and courageous woman, do you?'

She thought about that. ‘Subtle, certainly. But do you say courageous because she was able to resist her desire for Bruno, the German officer, or because she was willing to indulge it for a while?'

He started to smile. ‘Both, I suppose – except she never indulged it in the ultimate sense.'

‘You mean they never made love?'

He nodded.

‘Do you think they should have? Would it have made the story more believable? Or perhaps more poignant?'

‘No, I think its greatest power is probably in the fact that they did resist one another.'

She put her head to one side as she considered that, then slowly started to nod. ‘I agree,' she said, and stopped to put a hand in the cool, clear water of the fountain. ‘I think,' she continued after a while, ‘that I especially love the scene where he plays the piano for her, then stops when he realises that the beauty of his music is touching her loneliness and making her cry.'

Perching on the wall he looked thoughtfully back across the square towards a
pâtisserie
, where a scattering of tables and chairs on the cobbles outside appeared both restful and abandoned. Then quoting the German officer he said, ‘“
Come, let's go away together. I'll show you many different countries. I'll be a famous composer, of course, and you'll be as beautiful as you are at this very moment
 . . .”'

Jessica was on the point of picking up Lucile's response, when she realised she couldn't – not because she was unable to remember the words, but because of what they were.
And your wife, and my husband, what will we do about them?
Her eyes went briefly to his, but he was still staring across the square, so looking down at her hand swirling about in the water, she said, ‘You know what I find extraordinary about that part of the book is that they hadn't yet admitted to their feelings for one another. They might not even have recognised them.'

‘I think he had,' he said.

Her heart contracted, and knowing they couldn't go any further with this she removed her hand from the
water and walked away from him, towards a narrow archway the other side of the square.

When he eventually caught up with her the lane they had followed was yielding to a footpath around the edge of a wheatfield where ploughs had left deep gouges in the earth, and the occasional hare could be seen scurrying its way towards a farm in the distance. ‘Do you think the German was serious?' she asked, snapping off a blade of grass, and twisting it around her fingers.

‘About them going away together? He probably wanted to be,' he replied, after considering it, ‘but it's my belief he was giving them both a dream, a reality apart from the one they were in, because it was the only way they could be together.'