A week passed and I had to get back to Britain. On my last day I sat on the terrace and listened to Susie opine on the vexed issue of creating a foolproof watering operation for the new car park in the summer. Then she showed me the daisies, and explained how she was going to put them out in pots, reminiscing about her house in Gloucestershire where she had first grown daisy trees.
A few cars disturbed the gravel of her car park. She turned her head to see if they were berberis thieves, but they were tourists, in high spirits. The car doors slammed and we heard laughter. The village was coming to life. The season was renewing. Self-satisfied pigeons were cooing and fluttering under the eaves. The breeze possessed more than a hint of warmth and down in the valley the oak woods were quickening with unfurling leaves. Soon the girl with the piano would open her window, the holiday houses would awaken from their sleep, and the cloisters would fill with red-faced tourists.
If spring comes, can winter be far behind? I thought.
It was the order of these things. This was now how we were going to live. The drama of the end could be put aside without being removed. The matter was settled. Now all that had to be done was to do the living before the dying. But it had been decided and agreed: life was too sweet to waste with decrepitude.
Before I drove to the airport I decided to take a wander round the village. I ambled to Le Bar des Arcades, where I had spent so much time on my own over the past eighteen months. I wanted to bid George goodbye but he totally blanked me. I had developed a niggling fear. Now that we had spoken so openly about the end, it seemed as though the time between now and then would be too taken up with thinking about it. Which would be sad and grim, and in many ways counter to what Susie wanted to achieve by planning the drive to St Antonin. But I thought I had detected a sad atmosphere. I hoped Susie would still be able to smile again, and enjoy laughter.
When I got back Susie was at the railings on the terrace.
‘There are some people here to see you,’ she said.
‘Who?’
‘Two gendarmes. It’s about a speeding ticket and something about insulting the Police. It’s a serious offence in France. They have an arrest warrant. What have you done?’ I thought immediately, this must be a wind-up, but I hadn’t mentioned my speeding ticket letter to Susie.
‘Shit,’ I said.
‘And that Italian woman Claudia’s here.’
‘What!!!’ I dodged under the veranda.
‘She’s got someone called Gianni with her.’
‘Gianni? What?’ Gianni was the idiot who dropped his pants whenever he went into a restaurant. ‘Tell them I’ve already have left for the airport. No …’ I thought of Claudia at customs control grabbling me, forcing me to take her out to lunch with Gianni and listen to her lecture me on the best place to buy sardines, while Gianni dropped his pants, before handing me over to the flics. ‘Tell them I left yesterday.’
‘I can’t. The Police saw your passport on the table and have confiscated it. They know you’re here. They are very nice actually. One used to be a pompier. I am thinking of opening a bottle of fizz. And Claudia is holding your hire-car keys very firmly in her fist. I don’t think she’s going to let them go till she sees you.’
‘What!’
‘You better come up.’
I trudged up the stairs. This was as nasty a pincer as I had ever felt closing in on me, and I had experienced a fair few.
‘Bonjour! Bonjourno! Ciao!’ I gaily called as I entered the room, where my mother stood, alone, with a broad smile on her face, holding a glass of sparkling wine.
‘Allow me a titter,’ she said.
I looked around. She was indeed on her own. ‘How did you … Ah, of course, my book. Our book, I mean.’
‘Your face was a sight,’ she said.
‘Gianni was a nice touch,’ I said.
I laughed with her.
‘You got me with him,’ I said. ‘The idiot.’
I gave her a hug, said goodbye and went downstairs to get my coat and bag. I took the house keys off my ring and hung them on the hooks by the door, next to Susie’s car key. She would be needing that for the trip to St Antonin, whenever it was.
But right then, and I hoped for some time, it felt as though there was plenty of time to go, before it would be her time to go.