Love in a Warm Climate (8 page)

“That's because he's Mummy's boyfriend and they kissed on the lips,” says Edward dancing around me. “Kissing on the lips, kissing on the lips,” he chants.

“Edward, stop it now. He is not my boyfriend,” I say sternly, crossing my fingers behind my back. “I have never kissed him on the lips, he is an extremely old friend and Daddy is just teasing when he says he's my boyfriend.”

“When I'm grown up, I'd like a boyfriend like Johnny,” says Emily.

“Why?” asks Charlotte. “He smokes, you know.”

“Well, apart from the smoking I mean. But he's rich and famous and on telly and that's nice.”

“Come on,” I say, “we need to get to school. Emily do you really need to wear your cat's ears?”

“But I can't hear without them,” she protests. “And I have to learn French today.”

I decide to let it go and try another time; there is enough going on today. At least Edward is not wearing ballet kit.

We decide to walk to school. It means walking through the vineyards of our next-door neighbour, but I can't see that he'd mind – it's not as if we're standing on any plants, as the vines are still just small sticks, but even if they were in bloom there are tracks between them. It is a crisp January morning and the air is cold enough to make your nipples stand on end – unless, like mine, they have lost the habit. There's not a cloud in the sky. Wolfie the dog, who as the agent said, seems to live at the house, follows us, but at a safe distance. He was obviously badly treated by someone; he seems really scared of people. The only person he goes anywhere near is Nick. I guess I will feed him now – maybe that will help him to grow to trust me as well.

We are all kitted out with hats and gloves and scarves, Emily of course
with her cat's ears on top of her hat. “Knitting with one needle, that girl,” Nick would say if he were here.

I can never get over just how much clutter one needs, especially when there are three children involved. And just where do all those missing gloves and socks go? Are they all partying together, making more odd socks in accessory heaven?

There are already a few people standing at the school gates waiting for them to open when we get there. The school is made up of two small buildings: one for the kindergarten section and the other for the primary school. I recognise the yellow walls from the website, which has a lopsided photograph where you can just about make out the fact that it is a building and there is a playground around it. There are drawings in the windows of animals, trees and vines, obviously by the children. It is much smaller than the school they went to in London.

My mobile phone rings. It is Nick.

“How are you?” he asks.

“Fine,” I say, not wanting to give anything away to the children. “Just fine. Do you want to speak to the young French scholars?”

He talks to each in turn wishing them good luck. Edward hands me the phone back.

“Let's talk later,” I say. “I need to focus on the kids.” I hang up before he has a chance to say anything that might make me cry again.

“Are you the new girl?” says a voice behind me as we wait for the school gates to open.

I say yes, more out of surprise than anything else. The voice is English and belongs to a man wearing a light pink shirt, with big brown eyes and a mop of blond hair.

“Hi, I'm Peter,” he says, leaning forward to kiss me on the cheek three times. Can't this man count? “We kiss three times down here,” he explains. “Twice is Parisian. They hate the Parisians here.”

“Right,” I say. “Good to know. Do you, er, live here?”

“Yes darling, have done for two years. This is Amelia, our daughter. She's seven.” He gestures towards an Asian-looking girl wearing a Hello Kitty Alice band and pink dungarees.

“Oh that's great,” I say. “My girls are seven too. Maybe she can help them settle in.” I look around for Charlotte and Emily. They are already chatting to a girl with masses of blonde hair wearing a tie-dye dress. They are speaking English.

“Hey, I thought we were supposed to be in France?” I joke.

“This is our new friend,” says Emily. “She is going to translate for us.”

“I could do with one of those,” I say turning back to Peter. “I have to go to the social security office this afternoon. Does your wife live here too?” I ask.

He starts laughing. Amelia saunters off to join the others.

“Darling I AM the wife,” he says, taking hold of my hand and patting it. “My other half is Phil. We adopted Amelia from Vietnam when she was a baby. We both worked in advertising in London and decided enough was enough. No more rat race, no more rush-hour tubes or fear of crime. So here we are!”

“Oh God I'm so sorry, how stupid of me,” I bluster.

“Don't give it a second thought. It's an easy mistake to make. It's not as if I'm wearing my gay pride T-shirt. Anyway, what brings you here? Someone told me you're going to make wine?”

“Yes, that's the plan, although it will be a slow start. Nick, my husband is going to keep working in London for the next few months…” I trot out that line as if it is still true. What else can I do? I can hardly tell Peter that only one of us around here has a husband and it's not me.

“Oh, you poor thing,” he says, once again patting my hand. Now that he's told me he's gay it seems perfectly obvious. “Well, if you ever need anything, I'm your girl!” he says, sounding like Jack Lemon in
Some Like it Hot
. “By the way, I've got my shopping hat on today. Anything you need from town?”

“No, thanks, that's sweet of you. Where do you go?”

“Carrefour in Pézenas, it's the best place around, and then of course Pézenas market on a Saturday for all the fresh stuff. Must dash, see you this afternoon for the school pick-up.”

The bell rings and we say goodbye. I walk the girls to their bit of the school and watch proudly as they stand in line wearing their matching jeans, dresses and ponytails. I am not one of those mothers with twins who insist on dressing them the same to confuse the rest of the world, and actually Charlotte and Emily are non-identical twins so are easy to tell apart, and of course Emily has her additional ears. But today I thought it might be useful to show a united front. I changed schools when I was little more times than I care to remember and I would have loved to have had a twin with me. There is nothing quite as scary and lonely as that feeling of walking into a school playground not knowing anyone or having a clue where anything is. But the girls seem totally unaffected by all this newness and march into school with great confidence, chatting and smiling all the way.

They barely notice me say good bye. I walk with Edward to the nursery section of the school, the
maternelle
.

The nursery mothers are already assembled. I look at them. They are not 
a glamorous bunch; most look to be housewives or wine growers and they are not all pencil thin, thank God. One of them stands out; she has blonde ringlets and is very pretty. But I'm relieved to conclude that the
mum-upmanship
I so loathed in London is not going to be an issue. There people would look at the label on your jeans before they look at your face. And there is no worse start to the day than feeling dowdy and worthless in comparison with other thinner, richer and more fashion-conscious mothers. Here it is clear that no one cares if your jeans come from the local market or Prada. In fact they'd probably think you were deranged to spend enough on a pair of jeans to buy you a whole new wardrobe in downtown Béziers.

Edward's new teacher Magali is waiting for him along with her classroom assistant Sylvie. I have read about Magali on the school's website, which says she has been working at the school for ten years. She doesn't look older than twenty. Maybe she went straight from nursery school into teaching.

“
Bonjour Madame Reed
,” she says smiling. “
Et bonjour Edouard, comment ca va? Bienvenue à l'école de Boujan
.” She shakes my hand and says something that makes Sylvie laugh. Edward looks dubious. I'm not surprised; I can't understand what she's saying either. Sylvie looks like the stricter one; maybe they have a ‘good cop bad cop' routine going. They would need to do something to control the thirty or so toddlers I see fighting their way into the classroom.

I am always in awe of people who actually chose this career. ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?' ‘Be surrounded by screaming excitable and disobedient children whom I will calm down enough to teach to read.' Yep, sounds good.

“
Bonjour
,” I begin. Oh help. What the hell do I say next? Edward seems more confident than I am; he starts to walk towards her. She leans down to greet him then takes his hand and starts walking towards the classroom. This is all going swimmingly.

She turns and nods as if to say ‘that's all' like Meryl Streep in
The Devil Wears Prada
. I walk back towards home. Have I really just left my three children in a foreign school? How callous it sounds. But there is no other way; I can hardly sit in their classrooms making sure they're all right. Although it might be good for my French grammar.

Sarah says the best way to learn a language is to take a lover whose native tongue (no pun intended) is the one you want to learn.

“I learnt Spanish in three weeks,” she told me proudly before we moved here. “And it would have been less if we hadn't spent so much time having sex.”

If I were planning on staying, I might consider it.

I walk back through my neighbour's vineyard towards home. There are worse school runs, I reflect, as I see Wolfie come out from the ditch to join me at a distance and the mountains ahead.

I am just thinking about starting to sand down the shutters before I paint them with the new olive-green colour I've chosen to make the house easier to sell, when I am almost deafened by an almighty bang. It comes from nowhere. The shock makes me jump up in the air. I look around me, terrified. It can't be thunder – there's not a cloud in the sky.

A split-second passes and then it happens again. I crouch behind a bush.  This time there is no doubt as to what it is. It's a gun. Who the hell is shooting at me? And why?

My first thought is that I have been hit. I look down, dreading to see where I am bleeding from. I can't feel anything; my whole body is shaking. The faces of the children pass through my mind and I scream out loud.

“
Qu'est-ce que vous faites ici Madame
?” says a voice. A rather unattractive man wearing far too many layers of dirty clothes carrying a rifle is standing above me. He looks like Baldrick on a bad hair day.

I am still too stunned to speak (let alone in French) and far from convinced that I am still alive. Is this what happens when you die? There is no pain: just a man in a cloth-cap with dodgy teeth. I scramble to my feet and try to explain that someone just tried to kill me.

“
C'est une propriété privée ici. Vous n'avez pas le droit de vous promener
.” he tells me, pointing his rifle in my general direction. “You have not the right,” he repeats in English when he sees I am not responding to French. I leap away from him.

“
Not the right
?
” I yell. Who the hell does this man think he is? Anger is now taking over as I realise I am alive and not bleeding to death and that this is the man who shot at me. “You haven't got the right to go around shooting at innocent people, what the hell were you thinking of, you could have killed me.”

I'm not sure how much he understands but it feels good to shout. Hell, it feels good to be alive.

“
Vous n'êtes pas de Paris
?” he asks.

Am I from Paris? I translate the phrase in my head. What the hell has that got to do with anything?

“
Non
.” I say, remembering that should he try to kiss me, I need to kiss him three times. Happily he doesn't.

“
Hmm. Bien. But anyway, you have not the right to walk on le terrain of M. de Sard.
”

He throws his rifle over his shoulder and walks away. Great, I think: as
well as matching underwear I'm going to have to invest in a matching
bulletproof
vest.

After my near-death experience with the man in the cloth cap, I decide to collect the children for lunch in the car. The school bell rings and the assembled mothers walk in. I see the blonde pretty lady from earlier and hear another mother say hello to her and call her Audrey. As we file into the
maternelle
section, Sylvie calls out the name of the child whose mother has arrived. She spots me and calls out “Edouard.” Soon after he trots out looking fine. No scars, no tears and no ripped clothes, no accusing stares. Phew.

“How was it, darling?” I ask as we walk out into the playground to collect the girls.

“There’s an English boy there called Sky,” he says. “You know like the sky. The others are all French.”

“Is he nice?”

“Yes, he is. Better than Charles. He’s French and he thinks he’s Spiderman. And he’s not Spiderman, I am.”

The girls join us. “Mummy, we have a new friend called Cloud,” says Emily, hugging me.

“Oh, any relation to Sky?” I ask as a joke.

“Yes, it’s her brother, he’s in the
maternelle
section. Cloud’s mummy is really thin and pretty and works in TV. You’ll meet her soon.”

“Can’t wait,” I say, rolling my eyes. “How was your first day, darling?” I turn to Charlotte.

“Good, it was hard to understand everything but Cloud helped us both translate, she sat between us, and the teacher is really nice, he’s a man called M. Chabour. I can even spell his name in French now; listen.”

“So can I,” shrieks Emily and they both start spelling and yelling.

“Calm down, first Charlotte then you Emily. It was Charlotte’s idea.”

By the time we get home even Edward knows how to spell his name in French.

This is my first day as a French mother. Well, not really a French mother, but a mother doing things the French way, which includes bringing your children home at midday for a proper lunch. I have prepared a healthy and nutritious lunch of chicken breasts, runner beans and mash. Predictably, they hardly eat any of it, preferring instead to finish off the
pain au chocolat
from breakfast, which of course I won’t let them do.

“This is beauty food,” I say pointing at a runner bean, sounding like an Avon Lady on a hard sell. “This food will make you grow. Chocolate won’t.”

No reaction.

“Ok, here’s the deal. Ten runner beans each, five mouthfuls of mash and three of chicken. Then you can have a
pain au chocolat
.”

“No,” says Charlotte. “Seven, three and one of chicken.”

“Eight, four and two,” I insist, although it is against my policy to negotiate with terrorists.

They look at each other and nod. “Deal,” says their leader, Charlotte.

I wonder how many French mothers have to go through this kind of thing every day at midday. I get the feeling that it’s not very many. French children seem incredibly well behaved; they are always sitting in restaurants for meals that go on for longer than some marriages without so much as a twitch of dissatisfaction. Maybe it’s in the genes.

Getting into the car after lunch I spot my would-be assassin. I decide to confront him and ask him in broken French what his problem is with us walking through the vineyards.

“
Oui, madame, mais vous comprenez
…” he begins.

“No, you see that’s just the problem, I don’t ‘
comprenez
’ in the slightest. Why can’t we just walk across the vineyard? It’s not doing any harm to anyone. We’re not walking on the vines or damaging anything, and it saves us 15 minutes each way, which when you add it all up is an hour a day I could be spending doing any number of more useful things than avoiding this vineyard.”

I already hate old M. de Sard, the owner. I don’t actually know that M. de Sard is old, having never met him, but it seems to me only an old person could be so stubborn and irrational. My cleaning lady Agnès tells me that he lives between the family apartment near the Opéra in Paris, a vast château near Avignon and his more modest (but still huge) château next to mine. But, it seems, despite spending only about three days a year here, he has sent instructions that the children and I are on no account to be given permission to cross his land on our way to school. The only thing between our house
and the village school is his land. Avoiding his land means a huge detour, which on a school-run morning we don’t have time for. And I didn’t move to the middle of nowhere in France to get in my car every minute where there is a school walking distance away.

Gilles, as the dreaded foreman is called, repeats his mantra.

“You no go on land,
c’est interdit
.”

“What does
interdit
mean?” I ask the girls.

“Forbidden,” all three children answer at the same time. Obviously that’s one of the first words you learn at French school.

“What should be
interdit
is trying to shoot people who are innocently walking across land that happens to be in their way,” I snap. I ask him in my basic French when his lord and master is due to come back.

“
Oh la la
,” he says shrugging his shoulders. I am stunned. They actually SAY that? I thought that was just a cliché, some sort of joke perpetuated by the French Tourist Board. He’ll be donning a beret and picking up a snail to munch on any second.

“
Je n’en sais rien
,” he says.

I guess that means ‘I don’t know and I don’t care’.

“Well, when he does come back, could you please ask him to call me or come and see me? I want to sort this out. Come along children,” I snap, wagging my finger in his general direction until I notice my nails are shamefully un-manicured. I put them away in case he decides to report me to the French style police.

At the school gates, the children’s new friends are already gathered.

“Mummy, this is Calypso,” says Charlotte dragging me running towards a thin and attractive woman with long dark hair. “Cloud’s mummy.”

For some reason I am reminded of being a child, with my mother trying to set me up with other children – something I always hated.

“How do you do?” says the woman, who is wearing a similar tie-dye outfit to the one I saw her daughter wearing earlier, only in yellow. I read somewhere that yellow is the most unflattering colour you can wear, but she seems to look good in it. Mind you, she is the kind of person who would look good wearing a bin-liner, or even a yellow tie-dyed dress.

“I’m Calypso Hampton.”

“Hello,” I say shaking her outstretched hand. “I’m Sophie.”

“Good to meet you, Sophie. Don’t look so nervous,” she laughs. “It’s not compulsory to be friends with me. I hate the idea that just because you come from the same country as someone you have to be friends, don’t you?”

I smile and agree and immediately want to be friends with her.

“How are you finding things?” she asks.

I can’t tell her the truth; it might put her off me for life. “I find the whole French language thing very difficult,” I say. “A few days ago in a café I asked for some butter and ended up with two beers.”

She laughs. “I once told Cloud’s teacher that Cloud had lice in her horses,” she said. “The difference between
chevaux
and
cheveux
is totally imperceptible to me. I mean, for us hair is hair and a horse is a horse. Much more sensible. I think they do it just to confuse us foreigners. Do you know that in France your class is obvious not so much by your accent but your command of the language? For example if you use a liaison between two words ending in vowels, you’re considered posh.”

I can’t even think of two French words ending in vowels, let alone a liaison – whatever that is. But I just nod and say “how interesting”. I don’t know how she sounds in French, but Calypso sounds very posh to me in English.

“Must dash,” she says. “Let’s arrange a play-date soon, the kids all seem to be getting on well. The little English mafia.”

I laugh and nod. “Yes, it’s lovely that they have made friends so quickly. I was a bit worried.”

“Oh don’t worry, it really is a lovely place to live, we’re all very friendly.” She waves and goes off.

I think to myself that there’s probably not much point in my making friends, or even arguing about walking on M. de Sard’s land, when we won’t be here for much longer. Although at the very least I would like the children to do one term in a French school, which will mean they are miles ahead when they go back to England.

England… Soon I will have to get used to the weather again, used to that relentless greyness, the drizzle, the children’s muddy feet. That’s one of the most incredible things about living here; there’s no mud. Mud has become a thing of the past; the wellies, which back home were out every day, haven’t even been unpacked.

On the way back from school I call Sarah. As I dial her number, I wonder how she’ll react; she’s always got on well with Nick. She’ll probably tell me to do a couple of sun salutations, breathe deeply and hope he comes back.

“Hi sweetpea, it’s me,” I say.

“Hi my darling, how are you?”

“Not good. Nick has another woman.”

There is a crash.

“Sarah?”

“Oh God, sorry Soph, I was in downward dog and I dropped the phone. What the fuck is going on?”

“He’s gone; he’s got some woman called Cécile from Paris. They’ve been having an affair for about five months, I found out yesterday. I’m in shock.”

“Bloody hell. What a bastard. Who is she? Have you told the children?”

“She’s a client, apparently. And no, I haven’t said anything yet.”

“How did you find out?”

“I found one of her bras in his luggage.”

“Shit, shit, shit. How indiscreet. What the hell are you going to do? Will you stay over there?”

“No, I don’t think I can,” I say. “I mean what would I do? It’s not like I can find a job and we’re going to need money.”

“What do you mean what can you do? Run the frigging vineyard, like you went out there to do.”

“But I don’t know anything about wine,” I protest.

“Neither did your husband, unless you count drinking it as previous experience. But that didn’t stop him. You were going to market it, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, now you’ll just have to do the other bits too. How hard can it be? Millions of people all over the world grow vines and make wine out of them, even Australians.”

Sarah’s last boyfriend was Australian and he chucked her and moved in with his male yoga instructor. She is still quite bitter.

“Can’t you get your mysterious French château-owning neighbour to help?”

“No, he’s hateful. He won’t even let us walk on his blessed land. Oh Sarah, I just don’t think I’ve got the energy. Where the hell do I begin? I don’t know the first thing about it. I wouldn’t even know when to pick the damn things. In fact I wouldn’t even know how to pick them.”

“Don’t be silly,” says Sarah. “If you can find out how to make a bomb on the Internet, then I’m sure there is some information about running a vineyard. Soph, you can’t just give up and come back. What the hell would you do here?”

“Find a job I guess, and somewhere to live.”

“If you think being a single parent in a lovely house in France is tough, then try it in South London. Not that I know anything about being a single parent, but I see them Soph, and they look stressed. You don’t need to come home. Nick the faithless bastard will have to support you all to some extent, so take advantage of that and get the vineyard up and running.”

“Oh Sarah, I just can’t face anything, I feel so alone. But enough about me – how are you?”

“Oh for God’s sake, Soph, stop being so thoughtful. I’m fine of course – more than fine actually. I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“When will that be do you think? Not that I am desperate. Well actually, to be honest, I am.”

“I’m looking on the Internet for a ticket right now, Montpellier isn’t it?”

I nod.

“Hello? You still there?”

“Sorry, yes, I forgot I had to speak, I was nodding.” The tears have started again.

“Soph darling, I can’t imagine what you’re going through, but you need to be strong. Are you eating?”

“Hell no, I can’t face a thing. Mind you I could do with losing some weight; it’s probably my fat thighs that drove him into Cécile’s lissome arms.”

“Loathsome more like,” says Sarah. “But losing weight and getting yourself in shape is a good thing to do at a time like this, it makes you stronger, you feel empowered. I’ll email you my fifteen-minute toning yoga workout now and run you through it when I get there. It’s great for your abs, bum and all flabby bits. You’ll be in shape within a month. And there’s that book I gave you about finding your inner French woman.”

“Thanks, but right now I just feel like curling up and dying to be honest, with or without matching underwear.”

“Oh my darling, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know, sweetpea. You’ll have to tell the children, you know,” she adds gravely.

“What do I say?”

“You tell them that Daddy has decided to go and live in England.”

“I can’t, they’ll feel totally rejected and abandoned. Can’t I just tell them that he’s gone there for work?”

“I don’t know. You really need to talk to him about that. Call him. I’ll let you know what time my flight gets there. I probably won’t be able to leave until tomorrow. I’ll have to square it with Cruella de Ville first. I’ll rent a car, so don’t worry about collecting me. What do you want from Blighty?”

I try to think of something I am missing, apart from self-waxing legs. “No, just some girlie time,” I say. “Thanks Sarah.”

I spend most of the afternoon on my bed, alternating between sleeping and fretting. I am exhausted from the events of last night but can’t seem to switch off. I look at my clock every ten minutes, worried I will fall asleep and miss the school pick-up. At 4.15 I get up and go to collect the kids.

On our way back from school, I reflect that it is now almost twenty-four
hours since I found Cécile’s bra in my husband’s luggage and so far I have done nothing at all in terms of making decisions, breaking the news to anyone except Sarah or even considering what to do with Frank and Lampard. Maybe they could transfer to old M. de Sard’s land? As long as they don’t walk through the vineyards, that is.