Early February 2016
February in the bar is bleak. Bleaker even than Henri foretold. We only open at lunchtimes and on Saturday evenings but there are days when I gaze out along the icy street and wonder if hell has frozen over. It’s so cold that builders are forced to abandon work. The ground is too heavy even for mechanical diggers to break.
Claude and Hubert are propping up the bar when Lionel, the electrician, comes in rubbing his hands and stamping frosted mud across the floor and bragging, “Pah! In this weather, even plumbers cannot work, but we electricians have the power. Always we can work.”
He orders toad in the hole. It’s the only lunch we’ve sold today.
I join Lilianne in the kitchen, seize a cloth and pummel the metal surfaces until they gleam.
“We’ll have to edit the menus. Restrict to two choices—one must be from the freezer.”
“But you insist always on a vegetarian option!”
She’s right to tease me. Demand for meat-free meals is low and I end up eating our veggie choices for my supper.
“There’s something else.” I force myself to meet Lilianne’s eyes. It’s good she’s kept her coat on under her overall because my next words will chill her. “I think we’ll have to close on Monday and Tuesday lunchtimes.”
“I see.” She fiddles with the strap of her bag.
“I’m sorry.”
“No problem. I will find cleaning work.”
She leaves her overall hanging over a chair, instead of folding it neatly away. Lilianne rents a tiny apartment with a balcony, where she grows geraniums and tomatoes in summer. If you stand in the centre of her kitchen, you can stretch your arms out and touch all four walls.
When I first met her, I assumed she was younger than her forty years. She has perfect bone structure and luminous skin, though her long dark hair is flecked with grey. She knots her scarf in that elegant way I’ve never mastered and gives a farewell flick of her hand.
As she reaches the door, Henri arrives, glancing back over his shoulder, perhaps checking his car, and canons into her.
“Sorry, Lilianne.”
“Really, no problem.” She rubs her arm, pulls her coat tighter and slips away.
“What’s got into her?” asks Henri.
I grimace. “My fault. Had to give her bad news.”
Henri raises an eyebrow. “Something I should know?”
“I’ve decided to close on Monday and Tuesday lunchtimes.”
“Things that bad?”
I shrug and fiddle with my phone. “I’m not taking enough to cover costs. From Wednesday on, it’s a little better.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He removes his gloves and stuffs them in a pocket. “I came to bring you some news.”
“Good news? I could do with that.”
He nods. “The Bergers can start work on Les Quatre Vents next week. If the big freeze lifts.”
“That’s brilliant!”
“They’ve asked for ten-thousand euros up front for equipment hire, materials and so on.”
“Of course,” I stutter.
“Have you thought about project management?”
I shudder. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. Paul should be back in a couple of weeks.”
“They’ll need some direction to get started.”
After the last customer leaves, Henri strolls behind the bar, lifts down a bottle of Scotch and pours himself a glass. He takes the exact change from his pocket and lays it on the counter, drains his Scotch and bangs the glass down.
“Come on. Let’s take a drive up and check the lie of the land. Figure out what they need to do first.”
I grab my coat and hang the Fermé sign on the door. Henri waits in his Renault, with the engine running, leaning across to open the passenger door for me. As I exhale, the windscreen mists over. He fiddles with the ventilation controls and unleashes air that smells of burning dust.
“Turn it off. I’d rather freeze!” I laugh, covering the vent with my palm to block the blast of hot air trained on my face.
Henri winds down the window, wipes the inside of the screen with a cloth and we wait for it to clear the old-fashioned way.
Les Quatre Vents looks blurred against a background of frosty fields; the oaks on the boundary are flecked silvery-white. As we bump along the rutted track, I take a picture with my phone.
“Here.” Henri holds out his hand for my phone. “Let me take one of you to send to Owen.”
I pose with one hand on the weather-beaten front door and smile. Something looks odd. “Where’s the caravan?”
“Don’t panic. Paul asked me to drag it inside the old barn to keep it weatherproof.”
He leads me round to the rear courtyard, tugs the heavy barn door open and shows me the caravan, snug inside.
“Shouldn’t we lock the barn?”
“Yes, but I’ll give a key to the Bergers. They’ll need somewhere to store equipment.”
We traipse across to the main building, my feet skidding on icy patches. I need two hands to turn the key in its stiff lock. Inside it’s dark, rotting shutters blot out exterior light. I edge across the floor and water slops over my shoes from a brackish puddle collected in the dirt.
“Oh no. The roof’s leaking,” I say but really, why am I surprised? At the far end of the building, the roof collapsed long ago.
“Doesn’t matter. Roof will have to come off.”
Henri shines his torch along a wall, blackened by damp and soot, and finds a window recess. He opens the shutter and makes a sawing motion with his hand on the adjacent wall made of rough stones, sandwiched together with dirt.
“The new bricks will start from here.”
“Are the foundations strong enough to hold new bricks on top of old?” I ask.
“Yes, once the structure’s reinforced. I’ve seen it done before.”
My mind is waking up to the complexity of our project. This is no quick fix. It will take months to transform Les Quatre Vents into a home.
Henri nods. “That’s first. Then site clearance before they can dig foundations for the extension. That’s why they’ll need guidance.”
“But it’s all in Maxim’s plans.”
“Sure but that’s only an interpretation of what you’re looking for.”
I cast my eyes around the rough walls, the piles of debris and loose stones.
“I don’t know anything about demolition.” Or site clearance or digging foundations.
“Would you like me to be here?”
Would I! I snatch a breath. “Henri—we’re broke. You’ve done so much for me already and I’ll settle up with you for that, but we can’t afford to pay you to do any more.”
He switches off his torch. The light tumbling in through the open shutter is grit-grey. I can’t see Henri’s face and guess he can’t see mine, so this is the moment to confess.
“Paul’s still waiting for his redundancy pay-off. Until then we’ve barely enough for the Bergers’ ten-thousand euro deposit.”
I stumble outside and lean against the wall, shivering.
Henri follows me outside. “What’s going on, Emma? Why isn’t Paul here with you?”
“Nothing’s going on!” I yell, clenching my hands. “We’ve been through a bad patch. I’m doing everything I can.”
I stomp off towards his car, hesitate by the passenger door, and continue down our track to the road. As I reach the end of the drive I glance round and see Henri locking up. I set out along the road towards Sainte Violette.
Moments later, his Renault pulls alongside me. I hold my head high, jut out my chin and stride on. He slows to a crawl, winds down the window.
“Emma, get in.”
I shake my head and march on.
Henri’s done nothing wrong. He’s helped me in every possible way, but I can’t handle my own humiliation. For a few hundred metres, he keeps pace with me, his car crawling along on the wrong side of the road and pulling onto the verge when oncoming drivers sound their horns or flash their lights.
“I’ll be at Les Quatre Vents to meet the Bergers at eight on Monday morning,” he calls through the window. “And there’s no need to pay me.”
He accelerates and I hobble on towards the village in my high-heeled shoes.