French Kiss (3 page)

            After that rousing display of moral support, she didn't have the energy to call Mark after all. Instead, she waited until that evening and left two messages on his answering machine, letting him know that she was okay.

            Having arrived on Friday night, Charlotte spent two full days at the cottage without seeing a soul. She had finished the gratuitous bottle of wine by Saturday afternoon and it took her until Sunday evening to get through the meagre contents of the fridge. She made a cheese sandwich – delicious – and ate it while watching the sun set behind the forest to the right of the cottage.

            She listened to the sound of someone chopping wood in the distance and later she heard animated French voices, presumably all coming from the house at the end of the drive. Until then, she supposed, she could have been in the countryside in any number of European countries, but that jovial, distant interaction fixed her in rural France.

            It was frightening, but exciting to be so far from everything she knew. Now that she had eaten almost the entire contents of the fridge, she'd have to explore the village. Tomorrow. She was no longer hungry and it was late Sunday afternoon, so she reasoned that everything would be shut by now anyway.

            It remained dark inside the cottage, even with the lights on. Every fitting sported an energy-saving bulb that took an interminably long time to reach full brightness, which meant that the shadows retreated slowly and then only into the corners. She perched on the bed in the master bedroom, waiting for the light, passing her fingers over the books on the shelf, wishing she had packed a DVD player.

            By Monday, she was keen to get off the grounds and visit the neighbourhood. To her surprise, she'd discovered that she'd had more than enough time by herself for now.

            She left the cottage armed with a small bottle of tap water, a French-English dictionary, her near-useless mobile phone, a neatly-handwritten list of things to do and the last remaining cube of cheese. The most important items on her agenda were getting a better mobile signal and finding an internet café where she could finally check her email message from Mark. She'd played it cool long enough and was now desperate to know what he had to say.

            As she passed the house at the end of the drive, she looked through the trees. It was a beautiful house, not nearly as old as the cottage she was staying in, but with character nonetheless. It had big windows to let in the light and a chimney with a weather-vane with a cockerel on top. In the garden was an array of gardening tools as well as items that seemed somewhat more heavy duty than might be found in the average garden: several saws, an axe, a massive sledgehammer. There was no sign of the owner, however, and she was tempted to have a closer look at the property when she was distracted by her phone bleeping in her bag.

            “Finally,” she said, gazing at the single bar on the LCD display. By hovering at the corner of the drive and standing on a boulder beside the neighbour's tree-line, practically teetering on one leg, she was able to receive one, two, three text messages.

            The first was from the mobile phone company, reminding her that she was indeed in France.

            The second was from her mother, asking her to ring immediately, because it was urgent, but not between six and nine o'clock in the evening.

            The third was a wrong number, but it cost her who knew how much to pick up the voicemail to find that out.

            Before jumping down from the rock, she noticed a shadow in the window of the neighbour's house and she twisted her ankle upon landing.

            “Ouch! A great way to introduce myself,” she said.

            Before whoever it was came out and questioned her, she took off down the road, turning left and then right, hobbling along the steep descent that the taxi had climbed a few days earlier.

            The pain in her ankle eased eventually and she reminded herself that it would be better going down than coming back up, so she should enjoy it while she could. It did please her to be getting exercise at last and to be making real progress rather than watching a screen on a treadmill.

            She was quickly tired and realised not only how unfit she was but how much further five minutes by car is than five minutes by foot. Tempted to break from the path here and there in attempt to follow a straight line through the forest, she determined that it was not a good idea yet and followed the winding road all the way to bottom of the hill.

            She arrived drenched with sweat and rewarded herself by pouring water over her face and sitting for a while at the side of the road. Back in London, it had to be said, she did little all day but sit in the flat and watch television. On discovering that she could even do the weekly shop online, she'd stopped walking the three and half minutes to the supermarket.

            Supermarket.

            “Wine!” Charlotte thought suddenly and added 'wine' to her list, aware though that her money would not last forever. If she was honest, it might not last the month, and it behoved her to at least pop into the town hall and see about the possibility of getting a job. She could clean or work in a factory or something. Even rural France had factories, right? They actually made things. They probably had need of her ability to speak English, because the tourist season was fast approaching. She was sure that she'd find something or someone who would point her in the right direction.

            Speaking of directions, she passed under the bridge, under the old train line that once would have saved her taxi fare from Sarlat to the cottage, and then couldn't remember which way to turn. She had never been particularly good with directions, but the taxi ride had been taken in the dark and she'd had her eyes closed for some of it.

            There was nobody to ask, despite it being a glorious Spring day.

            “We-ird,” she said, doing her best American accent and headed left, hoping that she'd bump into someone on the way. Fortunately, her sense of direction proved to be good, because she didn't meet another body. Even the houses she passed seemed to be empty, because most of them had their shutters closed. The immaculate, colourful gardens were empty. It was too beautiful to be a ghost town, but that was what it seemed to be.

            When she got to the square in which the baker and the café were situated, she immediately saw that the car park out front was empty. On closer inspection, her t-shirt sodden, her legs aching and her feet sore, she saw that the bakery window was dark and that the shutter had been pulled down in front of the café.

            “What the ...”

            She drained the last drops of water in her bottle, wishing that she'd rationed her supply, got her breath back and then headed on to where she remembered that there had been a school and the town hall.

            “There must be something open somewhere,” she croaked. “It's the middle of Monday afternoon!”

            The school, like the neighbouring houses, appeared to be shut for the day. She reasoned that it may have closed early on account of the blistering, sweltering, stifling heat or perhaps it was merely a school holiday. But then, if it was a holiday, where were the kids? Where were the bicycles and scooters and girls playing hopscotch.

            There was no sign of any activity when she reached the 'mairie'. She climbed the steps, losing hope and shoved the door. Incredibly, it opened.

            “Bonjour,” said the woman behind the desk and that was the last French word that Charlotte understood for the next ten minutes. The woman was in her fifties, heavily-made up with her hair tied in a bun and secured with a single stick. Charlotte thought 'stake', but it was a stick.

            “All the shops are shut,” Charlotte attempted to say in French. “What's going on?”

             The woman regarded her without expression.

            Charlotte repeated in English.

            “Shut,” she said. “The shops.”

            The woman shook her head.

            “Do you speak any English?” Charlotte asked. “Since you don't understand my French.”

            Nothing.

            The reception desk was made of pine. It looked cool and inviting. Charlotte considered resting her forehead against it, just for a minute.

            “Is there anyone here who speaks English?” she asked. “Anyone.”

            “No,” the woman said.

            “That was English!” Charlotte said. “I got you.” But the woman didn't see the funny side.

            Instead, she said something that Charlotte found unintelligible.

            “Please,” Charlotte said. “I'm very tired. I just want to buy some food. And another bottle of water.” She held up the bottle. It might have helped. “Maybe you can give me directions to the … to the … local ...”

            The woman's eyes had actually glazed over. A moment later, she spun in her swivel chair and called for her colleague to join her in reception. Using only hand signals, she introduced Charlotte to her colleague - a tall woman in a smart white blouse and an impressively-ironed, cream skirt - and invited Charlotte to try again, looking at her the way a child looks at a goldfish in a bowl.

            “My name's Charlotte and I'm -”

            “Charlotte. Yes. I understand.”

            “... Yes. And I'm staying at the cottage at Le Pech Noir.”

            The women behind the desk exchanged a look.

            “Le Pech Noir. Yes. I understand. Go on.”

            “... Yes. I came down to the village to get some milk and bread, but … everything's … everyone's … I want to buy some ...”

            The second woman's eyes took on a glassy quality too.

            “Je m'appelle Charlotte,” she tried again. “Je voudrais voir someone … er … Je voudrais du pain, mais … er …. mais ...”

            The two women gabbled at each other in French. One of them made a farting sound with her lips and the other one shrugged.

            The first woman said something about Le Pech Noir and the second woman with the glasses looked Charlotte up and down and then shook her head.

            Charlotte picked up the word: 'Anglaise' thrown back and forth a couple of times and perceived that it was best not to bother asking about work today, especially considering that she had ended up unable to string a sentence together in English let alone French. Today, she decided, was not the day for doing anything sensible.

            The door to the mairie opened then a tall man entered in dusty, black boots and torn jeans. His shirt was plaid, like a lumberjack's and he was wearing a cowboy hat. Removing his hat, he and the French women all said 'bonjour' to each other and Charlotte sighed, feeling excluded.

            The man said something in French to her, but, as before, she was unable to decipher it, but then he asked: “Can I help you?”

            For a second, she was lost in his eyes, which were extraordinarily dark, like hers in fact. The tiled floor disappeared, as did the flowering plants and the picture of the French President on the wall.

            The newcomer exuded darkness, but warmth, like turning the lights off at the end of a long day and knowing that she was safe, a sensation that she had not felt in a long time.

            He was clean-shaven, but rugged-looking. He smelled not of aftershave, but of the field. In one hand, he was holding his hat and in the other a set of what looked like bolt-cutters. His hands were large; strong.

            “I seem to have forgotten how to speak French,” Charlotte admitted.

            “You're in the country,” he said. His voice was deep, yet mellifluous. Charlotte felt at ease. “People speak fast,” the man noted. “It's not easy.”

            Charlotte felt less stupid. The women behind the counter were watching attentively to see how this was going to play out. Charlotte took a deep breath as if to make a massive announcement, but in the end all she said was: