February 2016
The bar limps along on the tightest of margins. I scrutinise stocks, rotate dishes from the freezer and Mollie and I live off the leftovers. Our regulars grumble about the Monday and Tuesday closures but, on Wednesday mornings, Claude is waiting outside when I arrive.
“Did you miss me then?” I ask.
He screws his face into a grimace that softens when I hurry across to the bar and fire up the coffee machine, before switching on the heating or the lights.
“Merci, Madame.”
Claude treats me to one of his rare smiles when I hand him his coffee and we’re friends again. He’s a man who rations cheerfulness and thrives on discussing the gloomier side of life and where better to do this than from a stool at our bar?
“What progress on the building?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I reply.
His eyes light up and he wriggles his stiff buttocks on his stool but I’m not in the mood for sharing misfortunes.
After taking our ten-thousand euros, the Berger brothers turned up at Les Quatre Vents on the appointed Monday morning. Henri and I were there to meet them. While Guy smoked, Giles stalked the site in his heavy boots, pausing every few metres to dig his shovel into the ground, scarcely breaking the surface. Before Guy had lit his second cigarette, Giles returned and pronounced the frozen conditions, “Impossible.”
The three men leaned their heads together in a murmured discussion, impenetrable to me.
“What are they saying?” I asked Henri, struggling to catch his attention.
“One moment.”
“Can’t they at least start on the demolition?”
Slowly Henri broke away from the others and shook his head. “It’s not worth starting because of the equipment. They need to minimise the hire period.”
Giles climbed into the driver’s seat of their van and started the engine. Guy clutched his unlit cigarette and shook my hand in farewell. My heart plummeted.
“What happens now!”
“Don’t worry, they won’t disappear with your money,” Henri reassured me. “They’ll bring forward a small indoor job and return when the weather improves.”
Lilianne has found a cleaning job to plug the holes in her income but never once reproached me. We’re groping towards a tentative friendship.
“Come round for a coffee after supper,” I suggest and I’m surprised when she agrees, and in my excitement, I bake a fruitcake.
I wonder what she’ll make of the cottage. I’ve cleared away Mrs Browning’s fragile ornaments and put a few framed family photos on the mantelpiece. Living with impermanence, it seemed simpler not to lay down too many markers. I hope Lilianne’s keen eye will see that the essence of our family is not in this cottage.
Lilianne cuts herself a crepe-thin slice of cake and we chat about the regulars and changes she’s seen in the village.
“So many new homes,” she exclaims, referring to the lotissements—small estates of twenty or so houses, spreading like arteries away from the heart of the village. “That was the finish of the village grocery.”
I recall Remy telling me it closed five years ago. The post office and bank shut two years before that.
“But surely, more people living in the village means more customers?”
“No. They are young couples. For them it is the supermarket on their way home from work. They do not shop local.”
“That’s such a pity.”
She nods. “For the bar, it will be different. Perhaps some younger people will come, and in summer many visitors pass through to visit Oradour.”
“Is that the village where over six hundred people were massacred at the end of the War?”
She nods. “Tourists from all over the world come to visit, but I have never been.”
“Maybe we’ll go there. When Paul gets back.”
“You must miss him?”
I nod, but I’d rather find out about her than talk about myself. “What about you? Have you ever been married.”
Her eyebrows arch and faint lines appear on her forehead.
“Sorry—didn’t mean to pry.”
She flicks her wrist as if dismissing my question then changes her mind and sighs, “When I was young it didn’t happen. There was someone once, but it ended. Now, I think it is too late.”
I’d love to ask what she thinks of Henri. Each carries their solitude like a burden: Henri’s is so habitual he doesn’t seem to notice, while Lilianne’s intensity of longing is painful to witness.
Half an hour later, she stands up, smooths down her skirt and collects her coat but the evening must have been a success because the following week we repeat it.
“I hear Lilianne has visited you,” says Henri the following day. He could only have heard it from her.
He and I have finally agreed on an hourly rate for his bar work. Since then, the bar’s been so quiet, I’ve hardly needed to call on him, but he drops in most days for a coffee or a beer.
“Why don’t you join me and Lilianne one evening?” I suggest.
He smiles. “We could play cards.”
That’s not quite what I had in mind. My name isn’t Emma for nothing, and I’m not above smoothing the path to love like my namesake in Jane Austen’s novel. Though, I seem to remember, she messed up her matchmaking attempts quite spectacularly. Still, this could be an opportunity for Lilianne and Henri to spend time together outside of the public arena of the bar.
“Come next week.”
When we gather for the evening, Henri brings rough red wine that I feel obliged to drink, while Lilianne sticks with coffee. Henri drinks too much and I have to remind him to keep his voice low, so as not to wake Mollie. He apologises and slides a pack of cards from his pocket.
“I thought you were joking!” My head aches from the red wine and I put my hand over my glass to stop him refilling it.
The pack of cards, still in its cellophane wrapper, lies abandoned on the table as our conversation flags but when Lilianne stands up to leave, earlier than usual, Henri fetches her coat and walks her home.