L'amour Actually (20 page)

  Pushing away the unwelcome thought, I wobbled my way down the lane to the right house. It hadn't seemed so bad when I was sitting down but now I was standing up (and trying to walk), I realised that I was pretty plastered. The road seemed to buck and sway as I walked along. Closing one eye didn't make it any easier. Having not seen Julien for a couple of weeks this really wasn't how I wanted to be for The Big Reunion. 'Bums,' I said out loud. 'Bums, bums, bums!'

  Maybe it would be better to head home and try again another day, but I'd come so far and to be honest, I didn't really fancy walking all the way home, the way I was feeling. The
eau de vie
seemed to be having a slow-burn effect. The fresh air was making me feel more drunk, instead of sobering me up. In fact, I felt pretty awful. I was hot and sticky in the heat and a headache was starting behind my eyes. I was sure that I was sweating alcohol.

  The sound of a tractor coming down the lane brought me out of my thoughts. I squinted into the sun to see who was driving but it was too bright, and despite shading my eyes with my forearm, all I could see was a black outline against the brilliant white light. The tractor slowed down as it reached me.

  
'Ma belle?'
asked the one voice I'd been longing to hear. 'What the hell are you doing here?' Not the words I'd hoped would be spoken.

  'I came to find you,' I slurred, 'to talk.'

  He turned off the tractor and climbed down to me.

  'Are you drunk?'

  'Not zhrunk, jusht a bit tipsy.' I smiled, doing my best to focus on him. He looked bloody lush, I thought. His damp T-shirt clung to his body, outlining the contours of his muscles, the sweat throwing off a musky fragrance that I found ridiculously sexy. Must be all those phenomones… phemonomes… phero. Oh, what the hell, never mind what they were called, I just wanted him. Right there, right then, there. Bloody hell, what was in that stuff I'd drunk?

  'Why do you keep moving?' I said, swaying gently.

  'I'm not, it's you.'

  'Oh. So, sit down with me.' I plonked myself down in the middle of the road.

  'Maybe not there.' He pulled me up and helped me to the verge at the side of the road.

  'Not more of your bloody dizhes there, I hope.'

  'No, you're quite safe,' he replied, sitting down next to me.

  I turned to look at him. 'Hmm, I can see two of you. Which one is the real you and which one is the imposter?' I said, swinging my arm wide and nearly hitting him square in the face.

  'Ooops, sorry,' I giggled and put my hands up to my cover my mouth like a naughty schoolgirl.

  'I think I should get you home. Can you manage to get in the tractor?'

  'You think I'm drunk, don't you? Well I'm not. I'm a little bit tipsy maybe, but I'm most definitely not drunk. Look.'

  I stood up and made my way unsteadily to the middle of the lane. 'You know how they do it in the American movies? I'm going to walk down the white line in the middle of the road.'

  'There aren't any white lines.'

  'Hmm. Well I'll pretend. Here's the white line.' I pointed out an imaginary white line in the road. Then, carefully putting one foot in front of the other, I made little fairy steps down it, wobbling like a tightrope walker.

  'See. Now, I'm going to shut my eyes, put my finger on my nose and stand on one leg. Oooh…' I crashed painfully to the ground. 'It's nothing,' I said, seeing the concern on Julien's face. 'I think, maybe, I should get you home,' he offered, helping me up.

  'Your home or mine?' I put on my best provocative face but with the addition of Philippe's
eau de vie
the effect was probably more drag queen than seductress.

  Julien smiled benignly. 'Yours I think.'

  'But yours is nearer. Look, it's only down the lane.' He didn't answer.

  'What? Are you hiding a wife there or something?'

  He just smiled and tried to steer me towards the tractor.

  'So,' he asked, 'where have you been to get like this?'

  'At your Uncle Philippe's.'

  'Oh
mon Dieu
, that would explain it. You didn't have any of his
eau de vie
did you?'

  'Jusht a little, teeny, tiny one,' I said holding up my thumb and index finger to show him just how tiny, 'or two. Maybe even three.'

  'Well if you managed three, I salute you. One is enough, two is too much and three will probably kill you.' He smiled at me. I smiled back.

  'Fancy a shag?' I slapped my hand over my mouth and looked at him in horror. What was in that
eau de vie
? Some sort of truth drug?

  'Sorry?'

  'Er, nothing,' I said, my face colouring.

  'OK, it's just I thought you asked if I fancied a shag.' He smiled at me. 'Come on, let's get you home. Your carriage awaits you.' He bowed deeply and gestured towards the tractor. I didn't fancy my chances of getting in it very much.

  'OK,' I said, rolling up my sleeves and squaring up to the tractor as if I was getting ready to scale Everest.

  'Just put your foot here,' he said pointing to the footplate, 'and take hold of this handle here.'

  It took a few tries to co-ordinate my hands and feet but eventually I seemed to be in the right position.

  'OK, one, two, three…' I tried to haul myself up but the alcohol in my body seemed to sap the strength in my arms and I barely managed more than a little hop.

  Julien laughed. 'OK, try again.'

  The second attempt was hardly much better than the first but on the third, I managed to get myself up onto the footplate with a bit of manhandling from Julien.

  'Julien,' I said, turning round on the tiny step to face him.

  Without warning, he wrapped his arms round my waist and buried his face in my neck, murmuring softly in French. 'Yes?' he asked.

  'Forget it,' I said. Our mouths grazed and I nibbled his lower lip. He nipped me back and then it happened. The moment I'd been waiting for since I first met him. He kissed me, slowly at first, then with more passion until we were buried in each other, kissing as if the world would end. He pushed his hands through my hair, pulling my head towards him. It was everything and more than I had hoped for. I pulled away to catch my breath.

  'Julien…'

  'Yes?'

  'I think I'm going to throw up.'

  He let go of me unceremoniously and I rushed for the verge, only just getting there in time before I emptied the entire contents of my stomach. I felt too awful to feel mortified, even when Julien came over and started to rub my back gently as I dry heaved into the wild flowers.

  'I'm so sorry,' I whispered, in between retches.

  'Don't worry. If I had known you'd go to Philippe's, I would have warned you not to touch that stuff. It's deadly.' He went back to the cab of the tractor and came back with a bottle of water. 'It's a bit warm but it will do to rinse your mouth.'

  I took it, drinking deeply and swilling out my mouth. Well, that's blown it, I thought. Again.

  When I couldn't be sick any more, he helped me up into the cab of the tractor and turned it back up the lane towards the fields and on to Les Tuileries. I sat in the tractor ashen-faced, every jolt churning my stomach, and breathed a sigh of relief when we finally pulled up outside my cottage.

  
'Allez, hop,'
said Julien, helping me down. I felt distinctly unsteady as I made contact with solid ground again. 'Keys?'

  I got them out of my bag and he unlocked the door, helping me in with an arm around my waist.

  'I need to go to the bathroom. Make yourself at home,' I said waving in the vague direction of the lounge.

  I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. A pale face with red-ringed eyes stared back at me.

  'You look like shit, girl,' I told my reflection, before squeezing some toothpaste onto my toothbrush and brushing away the sick taste from my mouth.

  I splashed my face with water and raked my fingers through my hair before pouting at myself in the mirror. 'Julien d'Aubeville, I fully intend to have you.'

  I rummaged through the laundry basket for my push-up bra which I was pretty sure I'd put in there a couple of days previously, at the same time pulling out a pair of minute denim shorts that erred just on the wrong side of decency and a tiny camisole top. They were a bit scrunched up so I shook them out, after all, I wasn't planning on keeping them on for very long. A quick squirt of perfume to freshen everything up and I was ready for the next part in my seduction plan. Well, it wasn't so much a plan as I was just making it up as I went along. Could I get him into the pool to practise the lifts like in
Dirty Dancing
? Unlikely. Maybe Kim Basinger in
9½ Weeks
. My girlfriends and I had often had
9½ Weeks
movie nights, even though most of us hadn't even been born when the film came out. Our other favourite was
Sing-a-long-a Sound of Music
, but I was prepared to concede that, even if I did have a convenient nun's habit lying around, it would probably be a bit too weird. But
9½ Weeks
, now that was a classic seduction scene and all I needed was a chair and Tom Jones singing 'You Can Leave Your Hat On'.

  On second thoughts, the chair was a bad idea bearing in mind the problems I was already having with co-ordination. I'd have to manage without it.

  I bent over – bad move – and shook out my hair. The months without a hairdresser had left me with a full head of pre-Raphaelite curls and I wanted a tousled, bed-hair look. I stood up, staggering slightly and checked my reflection again. Not bad, I thought. A bit pale though. I applied a bit of blusher, forgetting the key rule about never putting your make-up on in artificial light. I was so pale that I decided a second layer was necessary. 'Right,' I said to myself. 'Let's go.' I opened the door, wincing slightly as I walked out into the sunny hallway.

  'Da, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah...' I sang as I slid round the door frame into the lounge.

  Julien looked slightly alarmed.

  'Do, do, do, do, do, dooo…'

  I started to gyrate against the wall. The look I was aiming for was vampish, the one that I achieved was Eastern European soft porn, especially with my over-made up face.

  'Baby take off your coat…' I sang tunelessly, wiggling my bottom at Julien, whose chin was now in his lap, but not in a good way.

  '… real slow.' I turned towards him, pulling out the straps on my camisole to reveal the very impressive cleavage that my push-up bra had produced, then leaned forward, thrusting my breasts towards him. He looked like a startled rabbit. Clearly
9½ Weeks
movie nights were not big in rural France.

  'What the hell are you doing?'

  'You can take off your shoes…' A few more hip gyrations and he was mine, my drunken self told me. I threw my head forward so my hair tumbled down in front of me then flicked it backwards. With an alarming
thwack
I cracked my head on the stone wall behind me and collapsed on the floor.

  I slowly became aware of a voice calling my name. It seemed a million miles away. I concentrated hard then opened my eyes.

  'Thank God, don't move. The ambulance is on its way.' Julien's concerned face swum into view, a bloodied tea towel in his hand. I tried to sit up but he pushed me gently back down onto the floor. 'Stay where you are until the
pompiers
get here. You are bleeding.'

  'The
pompiers?
Why is the fire brigade coming? Are we on fire?'

  'Well you certainly were,' he smiled gently. 'The
pompiers
always come out first then we will decide if you need to go to hospital.'

  'What happened?'

  'I'm not really sure to be honest. You were being very, er, entertaining.'

  'Shit. I remember now.'

  There was a knock at the door and Julien got up to answer it. Five burly men suddenly appeared in the living room, all talking away rapidly in French to Julien. I recognised the man from the paper shop, the young guy who worked at the petrol station in Bussières and another who worked in the local supermarket. Suddenly the downside of living in a small rural community became apparent. There was a sudden burst of laughter and they all looked over at me.

  Now was probably a good time to be unconscious, I thought. Either that, or a giant fissure in the earth's crust, previously unknown to man, could open and swallow me right up.

  An older man came over with Julien and knelt down next to me. Julien introduced him as
le chef, th
e chief rather than the cook.

  'He doesn't speak English so I'll translate for you. He wants to know your name.'

  'Well can't you tell him that?'

  'No, he's asking you so he can see if you remember what it is.' I reeled off my full name, including middle ones.

  'He wants to know if you remember how you had your accident.'

  'Tell him, unfortunately yes.'

  Julien chuckled quietly and turned to the
chef
who spoke to him for several minutes. 'OK, he needs to do a thorough check over. Can you take your top off?'

  'What? No!'

  'Come on,
ma belle
. He needs to check your heart.'

  'Oh ho, does he indeed. I banged my head. You're not getting me like that.'

  '
Chérie
, please be reasonable.' The
chef
reached over and started to try and remove my top. I hung on to it for all I was worth.

  'I'm not taking it off in front of this lot. I have to see them at least once a week.'

  'Look, they are all professionals. There is nothing they haven't seen before.'