La Vie en Rosé: PART EIGHT

As the door slammed shut, Susan's hand loosened on the heavy frying pan, tipping its perfectly cooked yellow guts onto the kitchen floor. The sight of the abandoned scrambled eggs scattered over the red tiles filled her with unbearable sadness. She began to cry. She desperately wanted to run after George, stop him from leaving, make love to him and, just as desperately, also wanted to kill him.

The desire for a drink took possession of Susan with such force that she found herself standing in the pantry reaching for a bottle of red as if she were remotely controlled. Floating above the gentle chirrup of early morning birdsong a harsh and monotonous sound suddenly erupted into her consciousness: a dog barking - an idiotic bark barkbark, pause, bark barkbark, pause.

Susan stood still, listening intently, remembering as if it had been a dream a sepia-stained kitchen and the priest's calm, reassuring silence. She put the wine bottle back on its shelf. Upstairs she dressed quickly in jeans and trainers, took her rucksack and sun hat off the hook. At the front door she hesitated for a moment, staring at her car. She wished the car would become invisible and reappear only when absolutely needed. In London she had walked rather than take any form of transport but here, out in the country, absurdly, she was always driving. Now she would walk, just walk and walk. There were intriguing side roads she had never explored.

* * *

(Which do you like better of the two versions of the illustration below? I can't decide.)

Père Lafitte on his bicycle, hair and cassock flowing in the wind, looked like some strange black bird, especially when he took both hands off the handlebars, stretching his arms out like wings as he coasted downhill, exhilarated. Every morning after mass he would get on his bike and pedal purposefully, always taking the same route along the winding country lanes. When parish duties prevented a morning ride, he would find time for it in the evening. He could not let a day go by, whatever the season, without a visit to to his own private paradise.

The villagers were used to le Père sur son vélo whizzing past, so intent on his mission that he would forget to greet them. They shrugged, muttering about his eccentricity. Everyone knew about his mother's legacy, that piece of land he was so attached to. Some had tried to buy it from him and been brusquely rejected. Questions about what, if anything, he intended to do with it were also severely brushed aside. Le terrain du Père Lafitte came up in village gossip as regularly as the tide and just as regularly receded.

At first Lafitte didn't recognise Susan. She was coming down the road just as he was about to turn into the narrow track leading to his property and her features were blurred by the shade of her straw hat. When she saw him a wide smile broke over her face. To his surprise, he found that he was pleased to see her.

"It's fate," she said, "You're exactly the person I wanted to run into this morning."

"Bonjour Madame, you are well today?" He dismounted and stood awkwardly leaning on his bike.

"Je suis Suzanne, Père Lafitte, not Madame, and I'm much better today. I'm sorry for my behaviour last night, whatever it was. I can't quite remember!" She laughed. "Where are you off to if I may ask?"

The furious debate in Lafitte's mind was quickly resolved. "I am visiting mon terrain. Would you like to see it?"

"There is nothing I would like more, mon Père."

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La Vie en Rosé: PART SEVEN

Susan awoke to the sounds of breakfast-making, sounds which sent the unmistakeable message up the stairs and into her ears: "Why aren't you doing this for me?" Dimly through the hangover blur she remembered that George was leaving for America today. One of those lucrative lecture tours she had become expert at setting up for him. Susan sighed, rolled out of bed and pulled on a tee shirt.

In the kitchen, George was drinking coffee and eating toast.

"Do you want scrambled eggs with or without Alka Seltzer?" he said, giving her his best smile, the melt-in-your-heart smile.

Susan began breaking eggs into a bowl, glancing sideways at George. Freshly shaved and showered, carefully-casually dressed, he looked alert and mischievous, the look he always had when going off on another adventure. Why did he have to be so damned attractive?

"Why can't there be burkas for men?" she said, "For women to put on their men when they go out. So that other women can't lust after them."

"That's a brilliant idea! Put Your Husband In A Burka And Save Your Marriage. Brilliant! Work it out while I'm away. Make some designs. We'll start a business." He noted the weariness in Susan's face. "I'm serious, Susan: do it!"

"Here we go. Always giving me a project when you're about to leave so you won't feel guilty. Not that you ever feel guilty."

George pushed his chair back, making a harsh screeching sound on the tiles. "I'll have breakfast at the airport. Keep this up and I won't come back." He picked up his suitcase which was ready and waiting in the hall. Susan moved towards him, still holding the frying pan. "Wait! Eat your eggs at least!"

George opened the door and walked out into the misty morning without a backward glance. The taxi driver, Henri Bazaine, was already waiting for him at the bottom of the dirt track leading to the house. The airport was almost two hours' drive away and Monsieur Georges was a generous tipper so Henri made sure he was always on time and that his old Renault was clean and shiny. Besides, he liked talking to the famous writer, perhaps one day he would write about Henri.

"Bonjour Monsieur, vous allez bien?"

Instead of sitting next to the driver as usual, George got into the back of the car. He didn't really want to sleep but neither did he feel like chatting. "Bonjour Henri. Oui, ça va mais je suis fatigué. I'll sleep for a bit, if you don't mind."

"But of course Mister Georges! I will be quiet as a pin drop." Henri was proud of his English, picked up over the years from the Anglo expats and summer tourists.

George smiled at Henri's turn of phrase. Mistakes were so much more interesting than correctness. He leaned back and closed his eyes. A cloying smell of rose-scented air freshener filled the car although the windows were open. Henri believed in air freshener and in all other synthetic miracles and nothing could shake his faith. George felt a wave of irritation rising from his chest into his head. If Susan was going to start drinking again everything would go haywire, the order she had brought into his haphazard life would disintegrate. Why was she focusing so relentlessly on his sexual habits? George hated the word promiscuous: he simply took what life generously offered him. And why the hell not? Susan demanded 'honesty'. But what purpose could disclosure possibly serve? The details - who, where, when, how? Pointlessly cruel honesty. George's denials were a form of courtesy, protecting Susan's feelings. So-called open marriage was a sham, a fiction, and polygamy would be unutterably boringly predictable. The charm of affairs was that you never knew if or when or where one might happen and whether or not you would give in to temptation. The decision to marry or live with someone was sufficient commitment and little trips down interesting side-roads didn't mean you were leaving home or had any desire to leave home. Susan had always understood this but since their move to France she had begun to play the jealous wife and he couldn't bear it. "The only kind of fidelity I understand," George thought," Is fidelity to one's work. No one can tempt me away from the muse."

"Henri, are you faithful to your wife?"

"Ah Monsieur! I am the most faithful type, me. Mais c'est les femmes who do not be true. My wife she trumped me with another man. Now I have another wife mais je ne la trust pas non plus."

George laughed, closing his eyes again. He was getting impatient to be in the air, on his way.

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La Vie en Rosé: PART SIX

"I like Lafitte. He's completely free from bullshit." Susan was talking to herself, caressed by a warm breeze. "Rare in anybody but in a priest, it's a bloody miracle. I should have got to know him sooner."

The way home was through the village and then twenty minutes down a pot-holed road with a boarded-up tile factory and a couple of abandoned farms as the only scenic attractions. When they decided to move to France, minimal traffic was the first item on George and Susan's list. All the picturesque places shown to them by over-excited estate agents could only be accessed in summer if you were willing to spend hours sitting nose to tail in traffic queues longer than those in London. So they went off on their own, driving randomly around the country, drinking a lot of wine and following hunches until, eventually, they found La Rive and an unremarkable house with potential to become their home.

Susan shivered, one of those sudden, mysterious shivers not caused by the weather but by some inner climate change. George. She did not believe in love at first sight and it was not love when she first laid eyes on him. Only a certainty that all the affairs and occupations which had crowded her life until then were merely rehearsals and that here, at last, was the role she was meant to play. No question, no hesitation. Whoosh! Her past was swept off the map and the future was clear: George. She had no illusions. He was so transparent you knew immediately that he was trouble. No matter. He was the only unambiguous decision she had ever made. And decisive she became. Susan seduced him slowly, trusting her instincts, ignoring all obstacles, especially those designed by George to make her fail. " I'm not your man, " he'd say repeatedly. But year by year, denial after denial, he grew to depend on her. Susan was making an adequate living as a free-lance proof-reader and typist and he had come to her recommended by a friend. George was well-enough established among the cognoscenti but he was no literary superstar and too disorganised to go after superstardom, though he craved it. Susan, he discovered, was an excellent organiser and it was foolish to keep on resisting when she was so eager to take on the task of ensuring his immortality, as if her own life depended on it.

* * *

By the time George got home from the party Susan was asleep. "You could have told me you were leaving," he said, getting into bed, "I looked all over for you."

"No you fucking didn't. You were busy entertaining Mrs. Morrison."

"Look,' George said, turning away and closing his eyes, " If you want to go back on the booze, that's your choice, Susan. But I'm not going down that road of paranoia with you."

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La Vie en Rosé: PART FIVE

In the distance a dog barked once, twice, paused for ten seconds, barked again twice then repeated the whole pattern until Susan stopped counting. Crickets sang their crickety tunes, lavender, thyme and oranges dispensed their perfume generously and time-worn cobblestones massaged her tired feet. Everything about this evening felt heightened, momentous, as if she had stepped outside her usual life and seen it from another angle.

"It's not just the booze," she said aloud.

The party was still on at the Morrison's house. Susan could hear familiar English voices making loud party noises in the back garden. Apparently her absence had not been noticed or if it was, had not caused much concern. Susan couldn't remember how long she'd been gone. It seemed a very long time. Her car was still parked in front. No doubt George's conversation with Mrs. teetotally bitch had progressed to a quickie upstairs. The thought of re-entering all that stress made her feel sick. Susan decided to walk home. Let George take the car. She wanted to hold on to the new calm mood as long as possible.

* * *

Père Lafitte finished his evening prayers and reached up to a shelf high above his bed. He pulled down the book he read every night, a book he had stolen, aged thirteen, from the public library. He was not sorry for the theft because the book was meant for him: of this he was certain. It was his companion, his entertainment, his inspiration: Exploits Etranges et Extraordinaires. In these accounts - truth or fiction, no matter - of amazing, outlandish exploits by ordinary/extraordinary people, he found a kind of faith which religion didn't entirely supply. He turned to his favourite story. No matter how many times he read it, each time it was new and thrilling.

As he settled back in his narrow bed, the heavy book propped up against his knees, Père Lafitte heard a dog barking once, twice, pausing for ten seconds, barking again twice then repeating the whole pattern. The priest smiled contentedly. Every night the dog performed this ritual. Every night Marcel Lafitte read the same book. Every morning he would say mass. Things were as they should be.

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La Vie en Rosé: PART FOUR

Marcel Lafitte was used to silence, he craved it as others craved communication. But the insistent, demanding silence which now inhabited the room oppressed him. C'est toujours la même chose avec ces gens, he thought, le sexe, l'argent, le mécontentement.

"Alors c'est quoi?" he could not hide his irritation, "The problem? Sex? Money? Discontent with yourself?"

Susan stared at him. "The money's fine, the rest is a mess." The priest's lack of social graces was surprisingly encouraging. "I was looking out the window. My husband and yet another other woman. All these voice were chattering around me and suddenly I couldn't understand anything. Nothing real. C'etait pas vrai, you know? So I drank all the booze and walked out."

"You went looking for a nunnery."

Susan shrugged. "I was drunk. I am a drunk. A reformed one, at least until tonight. Three whole years! Trois ans j'ai pas touché la bouteille! Not even a sniff. "

"Alors, what is your next step?"

"I have no fucking idea!" She laughed. "What kind of a priest are you? You're supposed to be telling me what to do next."

"Madame, this collar does not give me wisdom. A gendarme's uniform does not make him obey the law. I have little experience of the life you speak of. And I must retire now, I have an early mass tomorrow. Do you wish me to accompany you back to your friends' house?"

Susan stood up reluctantly, disappointed, like a child being sent to bed. "No, I can manage on my own, Padre. Thank you for your hospitality." She extended a limp hand which the priest shook politely, gravely.

"If I can be of any assistance, you can always find me here or in my church. Bonne nuit, Madame."

Swaying a little, Susan walked out into the warm night, carrying her shoes. The village street was deserted, lit only by the moon.

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