It was mid-afternoon on the day after we arrived at the château when the removal vans arrived – both ours and Steve and Manda’s within an hour of each other. By then we’d unloaded Gray’s hired van, Gray and Steve taking the heavy items in while Manda and I carried boxes in. It was hard work, but fun as we went back and forth to the van. We’d sent Phil into the kitchen, unpacking boxes rather than lifting heavy items.
But when our own stuff arrived it was a different story. Phil insisted on helping with the shifting of furniture. He didn’t go so far as to carry it in from the van and up the stairs, but once the removal men had deposited a piece of furniture in a room Phil was there shifting it into position, sometimes by himself, sometimes with Gray’s help.
‘Phil, darling, I don’t think you should be doing that heavy lifting,’ I said, as he and Gray man-handled a large sofa into a space along one wall.
‘I’m all right,’ he said, or rather, he grunted, with the effort of moving the sofa. And he glared at me, a look that I knew meant, shut up, we’ll talk about this later in private.
I tried to get to each piece that needed moving before Phil did, to either move it myself or ask the men from the van to do it, but it was all a bit of a rush. The removal men seemed to want to dump all the furniture in approximately the right rooms as fast as possible and then get on their way. I knew they’d had a long journey and had to drive back – a couple of days each way – but we were paying them well and it wasn’t too much to expect them to place furniture and boxes where we actually wanted them.
‘What are you doing?’ I yelled, as I spotted Phil carrying a heavy box upstairs, puffing and panting. He’d had a heart attack just a few months before – he shouldn’t have been doing this sort of thing.
‘It’s books, but it’s the ones I want in our bedroom,’ he said, as he struggled on.
‘Here, let me take it,’ I said, coming up beside him to take the box from him. It was as heavy as it looked, and it was all I could manage to carry it up the rest of the stairs to our room. I put it in a corner by the bookcase and turned to Phil who’d followed me up anyway. ‘You go and sit down on that sofa you and Gray were heaving about. I’ll come down and make you a cup of tea. Leave the rest of the unloading to the men.’
‘Lu, it’s all right. I’m fine. And I want to be involved.’
‘But you shouldn’t. In your condition—’
‘I’m fed up of my condition, as you put it.’ He made air quotes around the words with his fingers. ‘The heart attack was months ago. I’ve been perfectly all right for the last seven, eight weeks. Look at me, I’m as capable of moving furniture as Steve or Gray.’
It’s true he was already looking slimmer and healthier than he had for years, but still – he’d had that heart attack. He’d had stents put in. He was on medication. Immediately after the operation he’d been told not to do anything that would put a strain on his heart – and surely carrying a heavy box of books up a set of stairs counted as straining your heart?
‘Love, I am only trying to take care of you,’ I said. I hated it when we had cross words. It didn’t happen often. We had a strong, happy marriage and had very rarely rowed. But since his heart attack, Phil seemed to get irritated with me on occasion. Like now, when he just threw up his hands, shook his head, and walked away from me.
I followed him downstairs to make that cup of tea I’d promised, but he didn’t go to sit on the sofa as I’d suggested. He went out to the removal van, hefted one of the remaining boxes into his arms, and carried it inside.
‘It only contains cushions,’ he said as he passed me, before I could object. ‘Light as a feather.’
There wasn’t much I could say to that. Well, if he stuck to the lighter boxes, he’d be all right. I kept an eye on him during the rest of the unloading period, earning myself a few winks and smiles from him as he passed me, carrying bags of duvets, a box labelled ‘coats and hats’, a small rolled-up rug. As soon as the van was empty, the men had drunk a cup of tea and been tipped, they were off, with a couple of hours’ drive to the hotel where they were booked in for the night.
I went inside and was relieved to see Phil sitting on a sofa, his feet up on an unpacked box.
‘Good job, well done,’ said Steve, passing him and me a cup of tea each. ‘Just a lot of unpacking and sorting out to do.’
‘I’ll get started on our stuff in a minute,’ Phil said. ‘Need to get some of these boxes unpacked to make space to live in!’ He kicked the one his feet were resting on, which was labelled Books and DVDs.
‘No, Phil, you take a rest,’ I said. ‘You’ve done enough today. I can unpack the boxes in here.’
He gave me a look. A look that told me once again to shut up and stop fussing. Steve caught the look, glanced from me to Phil and back again, and then discreetly left the room, muttering something about sorting out something in the kitchen.
‘Lu, just stop fussing, will you? I’m not an invalid. I’m not your mother.’ Phil stood up and walked out with his tea, to the patio where Gray and Manda were arranging the outdoor furniture we’d brought.
I shrugged to myself. I was only trying to help. It was a spouse’s job, wasn’t it, to care for your partner and make sure they didn’t do anything to harm themselves? That was all I was trying to do. We should have had fun today, as our stuff arrived. But instead I’d irritated him once again. I hoped this wasn’t going to set the tone for our new life. I blinked back a tear and went to help Steve in the kitchen, where he was ripping open boxes of kitchen equipment and trying to find homes for everything.
By evening we had furniture scattered throughout the château and what looked like a thousand half-emptied cardboard boxes. Three households merging into one. Soon we found out that we had three kettles but no toaster, ten fish slices and no can opener. The château was a hive of activity as we all began organising the kitchen first – as Steve pointed out, the sooner that was up and running the sooner we’d be able to cook full meals.
Phil and I had made up, thankfully. We’d both been in our room, silently unpacking boxes on opposite sides of the room, when he’d stopped, come over to me and put his arms around me without saying anything. I leaned into him, tucking my face into the crook of his neck, and knew he was both apologising and letting me know he understood and that I was forgiven. Words aren’t always necessary after thirty years of marriage.
It felt odd, looking around the rooms at our own furniture arranged in the château. Once again it made it all seem real – this was not a holiday home; we had actually moved in, and were here for good, for better or worse.
We had a late dinner (cooked by Steve today) by which time we had the kitchen and our own bedrooms more-or-less organised. There were still piles of boxes in the sitting room, and a stack of mismatched bookcases that needed to be constructed and filled. I was dreading the rest of them finding out that at least fifteen of the boxes were filled with my books that I’d been unable to part with. I had a bit of a reputation among them for hoarding books. Mum had been the same. I remembered her sitting room, which had one long wall completely covered with bookcases jam-packed with paperbacks. I used to spend ages in there, browsing her shelves, picking out books to read a few pages and then discovering with shock I’d read a hundred pages and had been in there for hours.
Ah, Mum. I missed her so much, still. While her last few years had been difficult as I took on more and more of her care, I still missed that sunny smile she’d always had for me, even when she was totally bed-bound. I missed her unconditional love, her gratitude for every little thing I did for her, her boundless optimism that however we might feel at any given moment, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Getting over her death had been a wrench for me. I knew that many people, my best friends and husband included, privately considered that her death was actually a relief, that she was never going to improve and her continued existence was making my life hard. But I never truly resented a moment that I spent with Mum. She’d done so much for me throughout her life – caring for her at the end was my way of repaying her, just a little. She’d never complained, not once. She’d smile and reach out her hand to me, and apologise that she couldn’t do more for herself. She’d try so hard – she’d take the hairbrush from me and try to brush her own hair; she’d undo the buttons of her nightie ready for me to change and wash her; she’d carefully stack her used cup on top of her breakfast plate on her bedside table to make it easier for me to clear up. If I had any small sewing job that needed doing, she’d offer to do it for me. ‘I can still see well enough, and my hands are steady enough to sew,’ she’d say, and I’d go round the house looking for small things to mend, buttons to sew on, little tears to repair. She’d do a good job, despite her illness and disabilities, and her smile of pride at her work, at being useful, was beautiful.
I missed her so much. I missed the work, caring for her. I missed her company, her smiles, her presence. It was true I had more time for myself since she’d gone, and fewer demands on me, and life was less stressful – at least up until Phil’s heart attack. But I’d take any amount of demands and stress to have her back with me again. The others didn’t seem to understand this. I was the only one who’d become a carer of an elderly parent, the only one of us who’d given up time and money to do this.
And the only one who’d then had to care for a spouse through a serious illness. I just hoped we were through the worst now and could relax as we got used to our new lifestyle in France. If indeed I would ever get used to it. Every now and again I felt a wave of panic that I’d never feel at home here, never truly fit in with the local community.
We were back in the bistro a week after moving in, celebrating the end of our first week in the château. Monsieur Christophe greeted us like old friends, kissed each of us on both cheeks (‘that’s ten kisses!’ Phil whispered in my ear) and opened a bottle of red wine on the house for us, before we’d even sat down.
It was a lively meal, as we were all in high spirits, talking about the things we’d done already, the things we were going to do, what the summer would be like, what the following winter would be like, our plans for the coming weeks.
‘I want to visit some of those cute little hilltop villages,’ Manda said. ‘There are loads in this area. I was reading up on them. Cassos, Gourdon, Tourrettes-sur-Loup …’
‘The Loup river? Oh, there’s a fantastic gorge on the Loup, and a bike ride up through it. I’ve got that on my list too,’ Gray said. ‘Lu, there’s some fab walking around there as well. Especially from Gourdon which is quite high up. I went there on a holiday about ten years ago. Stayed in Tourrettes. They grow lots of violets in that area.’
‘Violets?’ Phil frowned.
‘For perfume, and for flavouring sweets.’
Phil’s eyes lit up. He was partial to sweets of any kind, and violet flavour was not something he’d ever tasted, as far as I knew. ‘Well, we’ll have to take a trip to that valley sometime soon, eh?’
‘Definitely. I’ll drink to that.’ Steve raised his glass and we all clinked ours against it.
‘You are ’aving a good time?’ Monsieur Christophe asked, as he brought our desserts (crème brûlée for Gray and Steve, chocolate mousse for Manda and me, and sadly nothing for dieting Phil).
‘We certainly are!’ We all grinned.
‘You ’ave met Madame la Maire?’
‘Er, not yet,’ I admitted. I remembered he’d suggested we go to see the mayor as soon as possible, but it had slipped my mind. And probably everyone else’s too.
Monsieur Christophe tutted. ‘You must. You must all go to see ’er. She ees quite, ’ow you say, formidable. She was ’ere last night. She ask me, ’ad I met the Eenglish from le château yet, and I say I ’ave, and she make a face, like thees.’ He turned down the corners of his mouth. It was comical but we dared not laugh, realising we were being told off.
‘Let’s go tomorrow?’ I said, looking at everyone.
‘Hmm, can’t, got the chap coming about the electrics,’ Steve said. We’d had a few problems – lights flickering, fuses blowing, and wanted someone to check all the wiring, tell us what we should get done and what we must get done, and quote us. We weren’t prepared to accept the explanation that it was a resident ghost. Not quite yet.
‘OK, well, soon then.’ I smiled at Monsieur Christophe, and then the conversation moved on to whether or not we should start baking our own bread.
We forgot, of course we did, in all the excitement, to visit Madame la Maire as Monsieur Christophe had suggested, twice. We’d talked about it after the trip to the bistro but that was all.
‘Gray, you go,’ Steve suggested. ‘You’re best at turning on the charm, and your French is pretty good.’
Gray widened his eyes. ‘Why me? I don’t want to go and see the old battle-axe.’
‘She might be young and blonde and gorgeous,’ Steve said, with a wink.
‘Huh. Doubt it. She’ll be eighty, with a steel-grey perm. She’ll have one of those terrifying stares that make you die inside, like a junior school headmistress. I think we should send one of the girls. Lu, you go.’
‘Me? Not on my own,’ I said. ‘My French isn’t up to it. What if she doesn’t speak English?’
‘Why do we have to go anyway?’ Phil asked.
‘Because Monsieur Christophe said we should. The mayor likes to meet everyone in the village. There are probably forms we’ve got to fill in. You know what they say about French bureaucracy. Besides, we want to make a good impression here, don’t we?’ Steve had poured out more wine, and somehow the entire conversation was forgotten about. Over the following days we were busy settling in, emptying boxes and walking around the village to get our bearings yet somehow not managing to remember about calling on the mayor whenever we were near the mairie.
Before we knew it, we’d been there a fortnight and we still hadn’t visited to introduce ourselves, and then one morning the huge iron ring set into the front door was rapped smartly against the wood three times. I was in the sitting room at the time, organising books onto the bookcases. Manda was out on the patio with some paperwork, Steve was baking something that smelled amazing in the kitchen. Phil and Gray were somewhere in the garden.
Steve went to open the door, and a moment later ushered a smart fifty-something woman with a blonde bob, who wore glasses with pink sides that should have looked tacky but somehow looked fabulous on her, into the sitting room.
‘And this is Lu Marlow,’ he said. ‘Lu, this is Aimée Leblanc, the maire. I’ll … um … make some tea.’
‘Coffee, please, for me,’ said Madame la Maire, and Steve nodded, ducking quickly out of the room, leaving me to … what? Make the apologies for not having visited her first, I suppose.
‘Please, do sit down, Madame,’ I said, then realised there were books on every surface as I’d been trying to organise them before shelving them. I gathered up a pile to make a space and ended up dropping some. The maire took a skip backwards to avoid having them land on her foot. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, je suis désolée,’ I said, cursing myself inwardly. What would she think of us?
‘It is all right,’ she said, moving another pile of books without a hiccup and perching herself on a sofa. She was wearing a pair of perfectly pressed loose linen trousers, a silk blouse and a scarf draped artfully around her neck. It was the kind of look I have never, ever been able to pull off. On me the trousers would be horrendously creased (life’s too short to iron linen, has always been my motto), the scarf would be slipping off and the blouse would have a coffee stain on it somewhere. But our maire looked elegant and poised and, to me, absolutely terrifying. I’ve always felt slightly intimidated by elegant women.
‘Let me just call the others in to meet you,’ I said. I couldn’t face sitting alone with her, and who knew how long Steve would be with the coffee. I could see Gray and Phil poking at a flower bed at the end of the garden. I crossed over to the patio doors, opened them and yelled for them to come, startling Manda.
‘Bloody hell, Lu, I thought the château was burning down or something,’ she said, then spotted the maire and clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Ah, excusez-moi, I didn’t realise …’
‘Manda, this is the mayor,’ I said. I’d forgotten her name already. Manda stepped forward, a huge smile on her face, and air-kissed the maire on each side, the French way. I cursed inwardly yet again for having forgotten this social nicety. Not a good start.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said the maire, in perfect but accented English. ‘I like to meet the people of the village when they move in. To say hello, to offer my help with anything you might need. As you are English perhaps you do not know … how to say … how everything works here. I can help. The mairie is there to help all the people.’ She smiled graciously. I felt as though I was in the presence of royalty. ‘You are settling in? It is a beautiful château, is it not?’
‘Thank you, yes, we are very happy to be here,’ Manda said. ‘It is such a beautiful area, and the village is gorgeous. We can’t wait to get out and about and explore a bit. Cycling, walking, skiing – it’s all right here! And riding. I love horses.’ She was rambling a bit, as though she too couldn’t wait for the others to join us and take over. Thankfully at that moment Steve came in with a jug of filter coffee and a plate of cookies he’d just taken out of the oven, and Phil and Gray came in through the patio doors.
The atmosphere improved immediately, as the fellas began chatting with the maire about the château, places to go, things to see. I had the impression the maire was one of those women who get on better with men than with women. Or perhaps Manda and I in our faded jeans and baggy overwashed T-shirts were just not her type of women. Whatever, I was happy to sit on the edge of the group and listen to the conversation, nodding now and again as I sipped my coffee, rather than take an active part in it. Manda did likewise. Once or twice she caught my eye, smiled and raised an eyebrow. I smiled back but wasn’t sure what message she was trying to convey. There’d be time later to dissect it all.
I did notice, however, that Gray seemed to be making an especially big effort to charm our visitor.
The thing about Gray is, he’s commitment-phobic. He had a seven-year relationship with Melissa, whom he’d met shortly after we left university.
Since then, other than one relationship that we all thought was going somewhere, he’s never stayed with anyone more than a few months.
I think, from having had many an in-depth conversation over late-night wine with Gray over the years, that his problem stems from his own parents’ failed marriage. They divorced when Gray was little, and he grew up spending weekdays with his mum and weekends with his dad, plus whichever ‘stepmum’ his dad was shacked up with at the time. There were at least fifteen different women, Gray says, from the time his parents divorced to the date he went to university. All of whom his dad wanted him to call ‘Mum’.
When Gray and Melissa split up, he resolved never to put his daughters through that same level of pain and confusion. There would be no ‘stepmum’ living in his house when his daughters stayed. There’d be only him, and the girls would have his undivided attention.
He’s a great dad and has the best relationship with his offspring of all of us. Open and honest, and truly loving. But it’s come at the expense of his personal life, his love life.
There was one woman after Melissa, that we all thought was The One. Her name was Leanne, but we refer to her as The One That Got Away. Gray and Leanne were together for over five years, but he never let her move in. She wanted more – she wanted to marry and have children with him, but he wouldn’t let her stay with him if the girls were there. She’d go out with them on day trips but would then have to return home. Even when Clemmie reached her teens and told him, ‘Dad, it’s OK, we don’t mind if you sleep with Leanne when we’re there’, he would send Leanne back to her own flat after dinner and before the girls went to bed.
Eventually it all became too much for poor Leanne. She gave Gray an ultimatum. Let her move in, or she was leaving. He agonised for weeks, stringing her along, and then eventually made what he thought was the right decision – the girls must come first. He would not live with another woman until both had left home and were settled elsewhere. Leanne tried to talk him round. She pleaded with him. She phoned each of us and asked us to intervene on her behalf, and we tried, but he’d made his decision. In the end, for the sake of her dignity Leanne accepted his decision, found herself a new job in Vancouver, and moved. Now she’s still there, married to a Canadian, with three children of her own and a lifestyle that involves sailing all summer and skiing all winter. She and Gray are still friends on social media, and frankly, I think he regrets losing her. But, as I’ve counselled him, he made what he thought was the right decision at the time. Now he needs to look forward not back, as you can only move forward starting from where you are.
There’ll be someone for him, somewhere. Now that the girls are grown-up and he’s on his own, he can be more relaxed. Of course, now he’s acquired new housemates – but we won’t mind in the slightest if he invites someone to stay over! Not saying he won’t get a bit of stick for it, when the lady in question is out of earshot, but we’ll be delighted for him, if it ever happens.
‘You have met le fantôme?’ asked Madame la Maire, as I tuned back in to the conversation. ‘The last owners of the château said it was friendly but sad. So you have nothing to worry about.’ She smiled at us all.
‘Fantôme – ghost? Not sure I believe in them,’ said Steve, with a nervous laugh. Nervous because of the idea of a ghost, or because he feared insulting the mayor? I wasn’t sure.
‘No, they probably do not exist, but we do not know for sure,’ she said, with a gracious nod in Steve’s direction. The conversation then moved on to other things.
I felt the mayor been holding something back, not telling us everything. Did I even believe in ghosts? I’d always been a bit in two minds about it. I’d ‘felt’ the presence of my mum more times than I could recall, since her death. But I’d always dismissed this as my own wishful thinking, missing her, wanting to believe she was still near me, watching over me. And there’d been a time, once, when I was a teenager, I was cycling along a country lane on holiday and saw a small boy wearing a red jumper, followed by a little white dog, run across the road and vanish into the hedge. When I reached the spot there was no sign of boy or dog, and strangely, no gap at all in the hedge on either side. Nowhere they could have come from or gone to. I still remember feeling spooked by the experience, so much so that I didn’t sleep for the next few nights for thinking about it. I told Dad at the time, but he just laughed and said there must have been a gap in the hedge I hadn’t spotted. Mum had looked thoughtful, but made no comment.
But were we now living in a haunted house? That mysterious missing aristocrat still hanging around, perhaps? I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about that idea.