Nancy’s kitchen was full. Hope and Jazzy sat eating macaroni cheese and peas at the table, her mother leaned awkwardly against the work surface, holding a cup of tea and wearing a slightly spaced-out expression that puzzled Nancy, and Jim stood by the front door, recently home from teaching one of his students in Mal’s garden shed. He had his guitar in his hand, which Jazzy immediately pointed to. “Jim, can we do singing after supper?”
He grinned. “Sure, finish up and we’ll go through to the piano room.”
“Yay,” chorused the girls.
“Mum, sit down. You don’t look comfortable there,” Nancy glanced anxiously between Jim and her mother, knowing the past two weeks, since Jim’s return from France, had been full of tension. Frances had been charming to him, but in a very deliberate, purposeful manner. Jim, on his side, had been cautious, careful not to say much and engage in only uncontentious niceties. But there was no ease between them and Nancy felt like the referee at a boxing match. She was exhausted by her attempts to keep them both happy, but there seemed no solution except to wait and see if familiarity bred some degree of affection, rather than the fabled contempt.
“Tea?” she asked Jim. He looked effortlessly handsome, standing there in his black leather jacket, his face creased in a smile just for her. She wanted to hug him and kiss him immediately, but she didn’t relish her mother’s predictable disdain. A memory of the row she and Jim had had the previous night flashed through her head as she rummaged in the blue-and-white-striped china caddy for a teabag. They had drunk a bit too much, tense from a strained supper with her mother, where Frances had persisted in talking about Christopher and his bloody Downland singers until Nancy had been quite sharp with her, prompting Frances to retreat haughtily upstairs, leaving a sour note in her wake.
She and Jim had then sat in grim silence, knocked back another glass of wine each and gone to bed, but the desire they had felt for each other was stifled, half-hearted, the release they both craved eluding them as the bed creaked with each move they made, Nancy stiff and able to see only her mother’s disapproving face in front of her, not Jim’s.
“Her hearing’s not that good,” Jim insisted, grabbing her and burrowing under the covers, making them sweaty and breathless.
“Old people can always hear what they want to,” she said.
“Surely she doesn’t want to hear what we’re up to.”
“Oh, but she does. So that she can be cross about it.”
“We can’t let it get to us, Nancy,” he said, yanking the covers off irritably and sitting up. They hadn’t made love properly since France. The only time they’d tried, Jim’s erection had faltered just as it had on their first night together and he’d become agitated and upset.
“I know, but I can’t help myself. I know she’s listening.”
“For God’s sake, Nancy. That’s ridiculous. She’s old and ill and deaf and probably fast asleep right now. Those pills she takes will make sure of that.”
“Dunno what they are, but she seems quite dozy at times, doesn’t concentrate when you talk to her, and her pupils are sometimes dilated.”
“She’s not on any drugs, Jim.”
“Okay, maybe I got that wrong. She just reminds me of Jimmy P when he was taking all sorts.”
“Are you suggesting Mum’s a drug user?”
He’d chuckled. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that. I just assumed the doctor had given her something for the pain.” He’d leaned close to her and kissed her nipple, but she’d batted him off.
“Well, he hasn’t.”
“Sorry! I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about. Come here, let me kiss you.”
But she had been wound up, not least because she had noticed her mother being a bit strange and hadn’t bothered to investigate. “Stop it, Jim,” she’d said, pushing him away, and he’d taken umbrage. They’d moved to opposite sides of the bed and Nancy had lain there for hours, unable to sleep. She was angry with Jim for no reason, and worried about her mother.
It was the way things were, these days. Nancy felt she was continually monitoring her own speech, being careful not to let her mother overhear things, or discuss things in front of her that might offend, trying to include both Jim and Frances in conversations. She had no real time for Jim, having always one ear listening out for her mother, night and day.
Although Frances was adamant she hated being fussed over, she clearly required help, increasingly, in many areas, from bathing to eating to getting about. Nancy had summoned her own GP, Dr. Khan, a couple of days ago when her mother had seemed particularly breathless, hoping she would be able to get through to Frances where the twelve-year-old hadn’t—but her mum had given her short shrift too, basically told her in no uncertain terms to get lost.
“What happens when she gets really bad?” she’d asked Mariam Khan, in despair at her mother’s intransigence.
“I spoke to Guy Henderson, and he says he thinks your mum might have a stomach tumor, but he can’t be sure without tests. If she collapses, you must call an ambulance, of course. Perhaps if she’s actually in hospital she’ll go along with having a proper examination.”
“Eat your peas, Jazzy,” Nancy told her granddaughter now. “Hurry up, or there won’t be time to sing. It’s getting late and your mum will be here soon.”
Louise was at the restaurant. Nancy had looked after the girls every day this last week after school because Jason was taking time off again, this time to look after his father—now in his seventies—who had suffered a collapse after the death of his wife.
*
The sounds from the music room made Nancy smile. Jim was singing a country song called “Chicken Fried,” which the children loved and which required frequent harmonies. Nancy listened as she heard Jim teaching them their part, then his deep, gravelly voice singing his own quietly while they thrashed around and ended up singing the main tune, which made him switch to the harmony. There was a lot of laughter, but in the end they got it and the cheers from the room were jubilant.
“Again from the top,” Jim said, as if he were speaking to Mal or Jimmy P. “One, two, three . . . ‘A little . . .’”
“Wait, wait,” Hope said, clearing her throat.
The sound of the guitar made Nancy’s foot tap and on impulse she poked her head round the door. “Need a piano player?” she asked. The girls were clustered round Jim, who was sitting on the piano stool, their faces flushed with pleasure.
“Always need a piano player.” Jim grinned, moving to the chair next to the baby grand. “Know the song?”
“I’ll pick it up,” Nancy said, and had no problem following Jim’s lead.
“Nana, you sing too,” Hope said.
“Right . . . From the top.” And they were off, a mess of voices as Nancy found the right chords and joined in the harmonies with the girls, who, overexcited by her presence, were temporarily distracted and lost track of the notes they were supposed to be singing, collapsing in frequent giggles.
Nancy forgot all her problems in that half-hour, her joy in the music, her grandchildren, Jim, blotting out everything else.
They would have gone on forever, but Louise poked her head round the door.
“Sounding good,” she said, grinning, as the girls rushed into her arms and began talking to her both at once.
*
Nancy and Jim were finally on their own, sitting together on the sofa, her mother safely stowed in bed with the television for company. Jim put his arm round Nancy’s shoulders and began to speak. She felt he was about to say something important, something he had been storing up ever since he’d come back from France. On a few occasions he had started to tell her, his eyes intent on her face, his tone requiring her attention. But each time someone from her family had interrupted, either the girls wanting a biscuit or Louise on the phone or her mother calling from upstairs, and he had stopped, waved his hand, said it didn’t matter, he’d tell her later. And she’d forgotten to ask. Now his voice was hesitant.
“Nancy, you know the house, Stevie’s house . . .”
She nodded.
“Well, I’ve been thinking. I know it would make sense to sell it, use the money to buy something over here . . . but I don’t want to do that.” He stopped.
“Okay . . .”
He drew his arm from around her shoulders and leaned forward, skewing his body so that he was facing her, his knees brushing against her thigh. He took her hand, looking solemnly into her eyes.
“You see, I think I want to live there . . . like properly live there.”
“Oh,” she said, her heart fluttering in her chest. But before she could say any more, he was talking again.
“And I want you to come and live with me. Make our life in France.” He was talking faster now and she realized he had thought this out in some detail. “I’ve always loved it—as you said yourself, it’s a magic place. Avignon is close, and there are loads of musicians and artists there, so we’d have a chance to explore our music . . . Then there’s Lavender House itself if we wanted to do the whole gîte thing—which might be good for a few months a year—or not if we don’t want to. And it’s so beautiful, such a great lifestyle . . . the sun . . .” He stopped and held his hand up as she frowned and began to object. “I know, you can’t come now, what with your mum, but if . . . when things are resolved, would you consider it, Nancy? I know you wouldn’t want to be there the whole time, but you could come back and forth . . . I really think we could be happy there.”
Nancy didn’t know what to say. His proposition made her want to cry with the sheer impossibility of it all.
“What do you think?” His question was anxious as he watched her face.
“I can’t,” she said simply. “You can see, I can’t.” A lump formed in her throat. Would he leave her, go and live in France without her?
He took her in his arms, laid his large hand over her head as she rested it on his chest. “I know you can’t now, and I wouldn’t dream of asking you to. But say your mother . . . Well, you know what I’m saying and I don’t want to upset you, jump the gun, but we both know this can’t last. If it was just Louise and the girls you were leaving, could you do that? Make it your main home? Would you want to do that, do you think?”
She felt the tears on her cheeks, but didn’t want to move from his embrace just yet. Could she leave the family, not see the girls every day, let her daughter cope with Ross and his problems on her own?
“I just feel it’s such a fantastic chance,” Jim went on. “It’s our time, Nancy. We’ve put in the slog—or, at least, you have—and now you deserve to have some fun, do your own thing.”
She drew back from him reluctantly, wiped her eyes with her fingertips. “Maybe this is my own thing,” she said quietly.
Jim sucked his bottom lip under his teeth. “Is it?”
“Well, not all of it. Not . . .” she lowered her voice, “not Mum, but the girls, seeing them grow up. And Louise, how would she cope if I suddenly upped sticks and moved to France?”
Jim smiled. “You make it sound like Timbuktu! It’s not even two hours to Marseille. They could come in the holidays and you could come back whenever you felt like it. They’d love it there.”
All of which was true, and Nancy knew it. But the thought felt too dangerous. She wasn’t capable, right now, of projecting herself into the life she might have in the farmhouse: she wouldn’t allow herself to. But the thought that Jim would leave her ran rings round her heart.
Jim let out a long sigh. “Thing is, Nancy, it’s never going to work, you and me in this house, is it? Not in the long term.” His voice was gentle, but he spoke a truth that neither of them had so far articulated properly.
She refused to answer, to validate his words, and felt a stab of annoyance in her gut. Moving away from him, shifting along the sofa cushions until their bodies were entirely separate, she said, “You honestly think this is a choice? Me leaving the family and coming with you? You honestly think I could do that?”
Jim looked taken aback. “Not now. I’m not saying now, Nancy. But some time in the future? Could you see it?”
“How, though? Tell me how, Jim.” Her voice had risen. “How could I leave the girls when they spend so much of their time with me? Who do you think would look after them when Lou is at the restaurant? And how would my daughter cope, left in the lurch with all the shit she has to deal with?” Her eyes were flashing, she was sure, with anger, yes, but also with frustration at what she knew was a trap of her own making.
“I know what you’re saying, obviously. I’m not a moron. All I’m asking is that you consider the possibility . . . No, all I’m asking is this. Family aside, is it something you’d like to do?”
Hot, angry tears began to pour down her face. “It’s never ‘family aside,’ though, is it?”
“Oh, Nancy.”
Jim pulled himself closer, but she held back. She didn’t want to remind herself of how much she loved him. “I can’t come with you, Jim. End of. I have absolutely no idea what’s going to happen with Mum, and even without that pressure, would I really want to abandon my family?”
His look was steady and determined as he asked again, “But is it something you could imagine yourself doing . . . ever?”
And for a moment she did allow herself to imagine. The bewitching Maison Lavande, that incredible view, the soft light in the mornings, the warmth, the delicious French food, walks in the pine forest, cafe crème at that little tabac in town, the peace . . . and Jim. Her expression softened.
“I can definitely imagine it . . . yes,” she said.
“Ah,” he said, a soft smile on his lips. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
“It’s no good, though, is it?” she added, hearing an almost petulant note in her voice. “Thinking I might love it and there being no way I can go.”
“It’s a start,” Jim said, and this time she allowed him to take her hand and plant a tender kiss on the palm.