Mirepoix, France, Summer 1981
Frances awoke to a cool breeze and the bleating of sheep coming from the farm about one kilometer to the north. To the south was the village itself, a place to which she walked each day, and which felt so far removed from her quiet village life in Bibury back at home in England. In the mornings, when the air was still hazy and the southerly wind slipped from the distant shoulders of the Pyrenees, it was hard to imagine ever leaving this place. She had spent the last seven summers here, and this was her third week of staying with her aunt at the artist’s retreat just outside the town of Mirepoix. The previous summers had been shared with her parents, and she had endured the relentless car ride with Bach on repeat, only because of what she knew to be at the other end of it. But this year she had arrived alone by train. Oddly enough, as the carriage rocked through the expansive French countryside, she had found that it felt very much to her as if she was returning home. When the taxi turned onto the long private track and she had seen the barn spreading out before her, the painters dotted across the endless fields, it had, she realized, felt like relief.
For a while she lay there in the giant bed, watching the gauzy drapes shudder in the breeze, smiling at her most recent collection, seashells that she had dotted along the windowsill. Voices echoed from the terrace below, the clinking of teaspoons and the lull of relaxed chatter. Some days she was up early, eager to get on with her day. But today she wanted to lounge, thinking about the night before, the kiss she could still taste on her lips. Men in England could never taste that way, impossible to replicate the heat of summer, the slick of salt on a top lip. Cigarettes and stewed tea, that’s what it would be like at home, she imagined, like her father’s breath when he used to lean down to kiss her when she was a child. The thought made her shudder. It was just one more wonderful thing that was different in France. In England she felt lost, unsure about most things in her life. Yet here, although it was possible to struggle with the simplest of tasks thanks to a language barrier that she was yet to fully cross, she felt in every way as if she was right where she was supposed to be.
With the lure of breakfast and an empty stomach Frances pulled herself from bed and dressed in a light cotton dress, perfect for the weather, and slipped her feet into her sandals. Arriving in the kitchen, she kissed her aunt on the cheek.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” her aunt Henrietta said. Her greetings were always warm, as if she was always pleasantly surprised that Frances was there. Her aunt’s style of care allowed her to feel free, like herself, and she loved her even more for that gift. Without breaking her attention on the pan of sizzling eggs, she handed Frances a plate filled with croissants and bacon. “What wonderful things does life have in store for you today?”
“Erm, not much,” Frances lied, selecting a croissant and taking a bite. Aunt Henrietta was so kind, always touching her hair, taking her in for a hug. It was so different here, and Frances wished she had not created a barrier of mistruth between them. The lies felt awful, but what choice did she have? “I’ll just head to the market, I think. Maybe the bookstore, and see Amélie.”
“Ah, Amélie,” her aunt said. “I haven’t seen her once since you got here. Last year you were joined at the hip.”
“I think she has a boyfriend,” Frances said, knowing that would be a reasonable explanation. Nodding, her aunt seemed to buy into the possibility.
“That I don’t doubt. There’s not much else to do around here.” Plating the eggs, she handed them to Frances. “Well, don’t forget your duties in the barn before you go. I need everything set up by twelve.”
“No problem,” Frances said.
“Unless perhaps today you might choose to stay. It wouldn’t hurt would it, to give it another try?”
Frances smiled, but her body caved. “Oh, come on. We tried already, Aunt Henrietta. I was useless.”
Her aunt scoffed as she cracked another egg into the pan, this time fried, sunny side up. “Your problem is that you have no appreciation for art.” Fat sizzled as she cracked a second. “I have one son who is a lawyer, and a daughter who does nothing but make money for other people. You, my dear, were my last hope.”
“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I think that ship has already sailed. You can’t force somebody to like something or to be good at it. Just ask Dad.”
“I know, I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You want to be an archivist, not a doctor, and apparently not even a painter. You know I’m only teasing you.”
“Dad isn’t teasing,” she said, taking another rasher of bacon. Her father was in a constant state of distress over her becoming a doctor, and they had argued repeatedly before she left for France. A worse fate, she could not imagine. Her place was in a museum, archiving the past, restoring paintings, protecting treasures. That was what she wanted to do. Frances motioned to the eggs. “Which table?”
“The one with the Swedish couple,” her aunt said, kissing her on the forehead. And then she whispered, “Your dad will come around. He loves you. Just give him time.”
“I’ve already given him all the time he’s going to get. You can’t force somebody into something, can you? I’d make a terrible doctor.”
“No, my love, you can’t. And yes, I’m sorry to say that I’m quite sure you would. But at least you know what you want.”
Oh yes, she really did. Frances knew exactly what she wanted. But she didn’t want to talk about her father or his determination she become a doctor. Picking up the plate, she moved toward the door. “I better get these to the table before they go cold.”
“Don’t forget about the barn,” Aunt Henrietta called as Frances left.
Frances knew she would never be able to. Not since Benoit had kissed her there the night before.
The view from the terrace was something that Frances often conjured to her mind’s eye during the winter months of drudgery in her home country. The light trickled through the mature trees that bordered the garden, allergens and ground dust picked out in the sun’s rays. Packed earth scorched by the sun was cracked underfoot, but nestled as they were in a valley, greenery stretched out all around them, like giant ripples on a pond. Closer to the farmhouse, roses tangled around each other, pink and white, so intertwined it was impossible to tell where one stopped and where the other began. The mountains were there in the distance, their summer caps, gray and craggy, just visible through a mist of cloud. In the dark of night, picked out by a full moon, it was their silhouette that formed the backdrop to last night’s kiss.
Frances had first met Benoit the summer before, when he moved back to Mirepoix. Lured back to his provincial roots by the business of antiques, he was a collector and dealer, and he fascinated her. Of course, she didn’t know any of that when he first spoke to her, when she had walked into the village with her aunt on that balmy July evening to attend the book festival. The summer before, bored by the poetry readings in a language she couldn’t properly understand, and feeling a little light-headed after drinking a warm pastis, she wandered over to a table of old books.
“That’s an interesting choice.” Hearing her native language startled her. Nobody but her aunt or Amélie spoke to her in English. But this voice was male, gravelly. “For you, or a gift?”
When she turned around, she saw a tall man with a slim frame, dressed in a baggy pair of chinos with the cuffs rolled up at the ankle. What struck her was how different he looked to anything she knew from back home. His hair was neatly styled in a side parting, his sunglasses clipped in the open neck of his shirt, despite the grayness of the evening. A crescent scar punctuated his cheek, giving him a permanent dimple. When he smiled his lips drew wide, big and plump, the shape of a heart. Like nothing she had ever seen before, she lost all sense of what to say. He seemed to gaze at her, as if there was nothing else to see.
“The book,” he eventually said, pointing to the one in her hand. “Is it for you?”
“I don’t know.” His upfront approach had stunned her, his intense stare almost uncomfortable. She wanted him to look away, but feared if he did she would simply stop existing. “How did you know I was English?”
“I didn’t, but those red shoulders were a good hint.” He laughed, taking the book from her. “You know this?” he said, holding it up.
“No.” The truth was that she had barely even registered the book in her hand, was holding it by chance. She looked across and saw the cover, read the title. “Is it any good?”
Turning to rest against the table, he stretched his legs out before him with his feet crossed at the ankle. Sighing, he opened the cover to read something on the inside before closing it again with a snap.
“I am going to bet that nobody knows this book is here.” Before she had picked it up it had been sitting in a suitcase along with close to one hundred others. “You know Edouard, who runs this bookshop?” He motioned to the shop behind him and she shook her head. “Well, let me tell you that he has no appreciation for historical items, or the value of books. He only cares about making money to keep his wife in designer clothes.” He laughed at his own joke, and so she did too, although she tried to hide it the best she could. “This book is a first edition. Printed in 1925, New York. You know the story?”
“No.”
“It is of a man who loves a woman he should not.” His hands brushed the cover, the darkest black leather, fine gold gilt down the spine. “It all goes wrong, of course. It always does. But he had a damn fine time along the way.” Heat blushed her cheeks, and she could feel him beside her as if the air was charged, pulling her in like a magnetic field. Cicadas vibrated in the trees as he lit a cigarette, offered her one that she didn’t accept. “You should take this with you,” he said after a time. “I have a feeling you will appreciate it more than Edouard.”
She shook her head. “I was just looking. I don’t have any money.”
By then her heart was beating fast. Each time his gaze rested on her she felt her cheeks grow hotter. What was it about this man that had reduced her to this? She focused on the book as he patted the spine against his hand.
“Let me share with you a secret. Just for you, okay?” She nodded and leaned in closer as he beckoned her forward. “If you were to take this to the counter with the intention of buying it, and our poor, simple Edouard realizes what he finds in his possession, you would not have enough money in the pockets of that beautiful strapless dress to buy it.” Her hands reached to her bare shoulders. “I doubt that if everybody here pooled all the money in their pockets together that we would have enough even then.” He shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody here cares about this book. A book like this should never be left in a pile like that. Nothing of such beauty,” he said, his voice lowered to a whisper, “should ever be hidden among such, such . . .” He paused, his face crumpled with confusion. “I forget the word. What I mean is that something so special should be treasured. Kept safe, by a person who loves it.” By then he was leaning toward her, and she felt herself leaning into him. Their faces were only inches apart. “It is a great book, worthy of something more than a tatty old suitcase. Deserving of a keeper who would care for it, don’t you think?” There was a chance in that moment that she would have agreed to anything, perhaps even becoming a doctor. Nodding, she showed her approval for the idea. “So,” he said, pushing the book toward her. “Edouard is busy over there, watching the performance.” On a nearby stage somebody was reading another poem, a crowd clapping. “I think you should walk away with it.”
“Steal it?” she whispered.
“Why not? Won’t you look after it?”
“Of course I would, but . . .”
He interrupted her. “Better than Edouard, I bet. You would be doing history a favor.”
The way he dropped his Hs made her mouth dry. “But it belongs to him.”
Benoit smiled then, beckoned her forward. A scent simmered from him, something woody, unlike anything she had ever smelled before. The book was still in his hands. “If it was always supposed to be yours, how can anybody accuse you of theft?” Pulling a pen from his back pocket, he opened the first page of the book and wrote something, before handing it back. “Now it belongs to you. It’s got your name in it.”
“No,” she insisted, looking around to see if anybody was watching them. Her aunt was, but she didn’t notice that at the time. “You just said it was a first edition. You don’t write in a first edition.” He smiled. “Anyway, I couldn’t take it.” Then she realized what he’d said. “Wait, how do you know my name?”
He threw his cigarette to the floor and stamped it out. His cheek was close to hers as he whispered in her ear. “Let me show you how it’s done.”
He took the book from her hands, tucked it under his arm. With a quick smile and a wink of his left eye he turned to leave, moving quickly away. Just like that he was gone, leaving nothing but a memory of his smile and the scarred dimple in her mind.
“Who was that you were talking to?” Aunt Henrietta asked when Frances returned to her seat, her skin slick with sweat and her heart still pounding.
“I don’t know,” Frances said then. But in her head, a thought gained ground. But I want to. So later that night, when she arrived home and climbed the stairs to her bedroom, she was pleased to find that book waiting on her bed. Picking it up she sniffed the cover, leafed through the pages. He had been there, in her room. There was that woody scent again, as if he was still right there with her. She locked the door, as if she had a secret to keep. In that moment it felt as if he could do magic. Whoever he was. “The Great Gatsby,” she read aloud as she sat back on her bed. Opening the cover to see what he had written inside, she found the proof that he had been real all along.
Dear Frances. You cannot steal what is already yours, B.
The moon shone brightly through her window, so light she couldn’t sleep that night. Warm under the covers she didn’t stop once until she had read the whole of the novel, and even after that, when her bones ached with fatigue, when she closed her eyes, sleep remained elusive. All the while she was thinking about the initial signed in the book and wondering how it was possible that he knew her name. And although she had no answers as to how, what she did know was that she was glad he did.
The most eager of the painters were already at their easels when she left the barn behind. The track that led away from the barn was long, dusty underfoot as she walked toward the road. She was still thinking about that night when she had met Benoit for the first time. It was hard to believe that evening at the book fair was over twelve months ago. They had spent most of that time apart, but they had written often. Sometimes she thought it was only his letters that got her through those days at home, the countdown until she was able to return to France.
Less than one kilometer from her aunt’s retreat, tucked behind the hedge of the neighboring farm, she waited for Benoit just as they had planned. It wouldn’t do for them to be seen together. Aunt Henrietta would never understand what they shared, would surely revoke the freedoms that allowed her to live and love as she did. If she was just a few years older the age difference wouldn’t matter. But she wasn’t, and so it did. Sitting down on the small boulder onto which Ferme des Bonnets—Bonnets’ Farm—had been engraved many years before by Benoit’s grandparents, she waited. That kind of coincidence, that her aunt would buy the property next to his family farm, made her believe that their meeting was little more than destiny.
The whir of his Citroën 2CV grew louder. Pulling up at speed just as he knew she liked, so that for just a moment the dust from the summer ground fogged the car, she could see him laughing as it cleared. Nerves beat through her as she skipped to the car, the excitement of seeing him getting her every time. But today that feeling was even stronger, bolstered by the memory of the kiss from the night before. As she pulled the door closed Benoit was leaning over, his hands on her body, leaning in to hold her. As he pulled her close her heart quickened, everything right as she felt his hand caress her face, her waist, then her leg. His hand moved quickly under the edge of her skirt and brushed against her thigh. Her skin shivered as he pulled it away.
“I have missed you,” he whispered as he kissed her. “Now you are back in France I do not want to be anywhere but with you.” With his smooth hot hands on her skin and his breathy whisperings amid kisses and gentle touches, she could imagine her whole life before her. It all looked just as perfect as that moment, where everything seemed possible. It all looked like Benoit.
“You only saw me last night,” she giggled.
“And I will see you again, every night. How could I not? But is that ever enough? How am I not supposed to miss you when we’re apart?” He kissed her again before turning to the wheel. During a brief pause in his touch, she looked to the back seat and saw the picnic basket from which they had eaten the previous night. A subtle smell of warm cheese filled the car. It could have been unpleasant, but it wasn’t at all.
“Do you have to work today?” she asked as he began to drive.
He nodded, his lips pouted. “I’m afraid so. The march of real life continues on.”
When he didn’t work, they would often spend the day together. Last week he even took her to the beach, Gruissan-Plage, just outside of Narbonne, where they swam and ate fish and drank wine. By the time she got home she was tipsy, her head dizzy with the secret of their connection as she placed the seashells on the windowsill of her bedroom. They had walked hand in hand, unafraid and in full view. Magical moments she knew she would treasure forever. They had visited a beautiful old antiques shop and he talked her through the value of old books, how to spot a first edition as he had given her the year before.
“Then I guess I’ll go to the town,” Frances said. By then they had already reached the outskirts of Mirepoix, the houses steadily multiplying, the scent of the countryside fading. Lavender replaced by cooking and fuel. “I’ll go to the bookshop and find something to read. Edouard lets me read as much as I want.”
He smirked. “He wouldn’t if he knew.”
Her breath caught at the truth, just thinking about the night he took that book. It was still on the bookshelf in her room, and she would often get it out just to look at that message he wrote to her, finger the letters as if they were part of him. It was the first thing she did after arriving in France this year, yet the thought of how she had acquired it left her with a sense of shame. It made her want to hide away, close the door on the world.
“Don’t. I still can’t believe you took it.”
He winked as he pulled the car over into a narrow side road just before the crowds began to gather at the market square. “I might have taken it, but you chose to keep it.”
That was true, she supposed, but he hadn’t left her much choice once her name was written in it. Perhaps it was a test, she wondered, and smiled to herself to know that she had passed. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Exactly what you did,” he said as he reached over and kissed her again, but with less urgency as the thrum of the town beckoned just over their shoulders.
“Maybe we can meet at lunchtime?” she asked as he pulled away, his hands still in her hair.
He grimaced. “I’m sorry. I cannot today. I will see you tonight, I hope.”
“You hope?” she asked, in a way that was anything but hopeful.
His lips curled into a pout. “It is a busy day. Work cannot wait.”
He kissed her cheek once more and she knew that was her sign that the meeting was over. As she stepped from the car, he opened the little window. They had spent so much time together that she felt sure she could read his face by now, knew he was truly sorry.
“Tomorrow will be different, not such a quick meeting. Tomorrow,” he said, pointing his finger in an official fashion that reminded her a little bit of both her father and school, “I will take you out. What do you say to that?” Without hesitation, her smile widened. “You know how hard that is for me, right? A whole day just for us.” She nodded. “But I do it, for you. Because?” he asked, waiting for her reply.
It was their own private joke. He asked the question and she gave the answer. “Because you love me.”
“Because I love you,” he said, so sure of everything. At the beginning she too had been so sure of what they had, but as time moved on things seemed to be getting harder for her rather than easier. Why was it so hard to keep something so important a secret? Surely there was nothing to be ashamed of if they loved each other. Yes, there was the age difference, but she wasn’t a child. People would understand. And yet when she thought this way, she couldn’t help but acknowledge her own secret, the thing she had kept from Benoit. If people would understand, why had she lied to him? Would he love her the same way if he knew the truth? She couldn’t bear the thought that he wouldn’t, and so each time she had tried to be honest, the chance had come and passed like a firework that failed to explode.
“I love you too, Benoit,” she said in place of the truth she wanted to share. “And I would do anything for you. You know that, don’t you? That I’d do anything at all.”
His lips curled into a soft smile. “And I would do anything for you, my sweet.”
She leaned into the car. “Would you really?”
Letting his head drop to the side, he stared intently, as if he was perhaps the first person to ever really see her. But it was a look of pity, she knew, as if she was too stupid to understand; sometimes she felt so ridiculous in front of him. Like the child she felt so sure she was not. When she felt like that she wanted to run, and not just away from Benoit, but from everything. But then she would remember that sometimes the way he looked at her made her sing inside, as if the very business of being alive gave off a vibration that could be heard as song.
“I would do everything within my power,” he said. “Now go and give Edouard my regards.” He drove away laughing to himself, as if he had just told the best joke in the world.
As the car curved around a bend in the road, one arm waving out through the window, she watched him disappear for another day. It was quiet then, save a couple of birds singing in the willow trees above. What should she do now? Go to town, sit in the shade of the oak trees in the marketplace, reading a book and sipping chocolat chaud? Go home and mope, as her father always said she did? It all felt pointless, standing there on the road, Benoit nowhere in sight. Her mind drifted to all those letters he had sent her in the buildup to her return. Her parents had called her maudlin for months, couldn’t understand her mood that waxed and waned with the tide of his secret communication. For close to a year all she had wanted was to be there in France with Benoit in the shadow of those beautiful mountains, in fields that gave off a scent that smelled of kisses and skin and whispered promises of a future that seemed impossible if she thought about it for too long. Mirepoix, with Benoit, was the only place she felt truly at home. And now she was there, doing what she had craved for so long. Or at least, she told herself, something close. But it didn’t feel as she had expected. At least not at moments like this, alone at the side of a road, her feet covered in dust, with no company but her own.
The town lay ahead of her, Edouard and his bookshop from which she would always consider herself a thief. When she did buy something, she always made a point of telling him to keep the change, even though she would never be able to buy enough books to cover the value of a first edition of The Great Gatsby. It still felt wrong to keep it, but not so wrong she was prepared to give it up. That stolen book belonged with her, that’s what Benoit had said. And she belonged with him. When you knew something was right, you just had to treasure it, keep it safe.
The sounds of the busy marketplace filtered on the breeze, the commotion of trade and life. Somehow there seemed little point in going there. So instead she reached up, picked a few blackberries from a bush by the side of the road, and turned to head for home, the juice of them sweet in her mouth. Sometimes, especially moments like this, she thought about how little she knew Benoit, or the things he did, and the places he went. The company he kept. But she’d always tell herself not to worry, that he loved her, and today was no different. He would do anything for her, he had just said so, and she knew she would do anything for him. Like lie to him, she heard the voice inside her head. She did her best to ignore it, couldn’t let silly childish thoughts ruin what they had. He was hers, and she was his, and nothing that was already yours could ever be stolen. But did that also mean that it could never be taken away? As she walked back to the retreat with sweet blackberry juice on her lips, she realized that was one thing she didn’t know.