Precious by Stephen Bridger, Sauvignon Blanc,

He is as sure as any father can be that his daughter must have stolen it.

‘No, Daddy, I didn’t take it.’

Zia is nine. She doesn’t fidget or look away. Her hazel eyes are wide open, urging him to believe. And he wants to, but there’s a weird complicity here. A game she’s playing as much as he is because it has to be her. If it isn’t then he’s lost. Up until now this possession has always been a permanent fixture.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jeffrey, you’re obsessed!’ His wife spits the last word back at him.

He knows what kind of day she has had by the way she unpeels her work shoes from her sweaty feet, or the manner in which she hugs, kisses and lifts Zia into her tired arms, or the moment she lets go and sinks, deflated into her armchair.

He boils the kettle, places the decaffeinated teabag into her favourite mug, the one with the two smiling foxes on either side.

‘I expect it’s where you left it.’ There’s a time when she would have invested more energy into her assessment of his failings. ‘Men can never find anything,’ she adds.

The Six O’clock News is about to start. When he sets her mug of tea on the trestle table beside her, she barely glances up at him.

Zia has had her dinner – two fish fingers, peas, and reheated white rice – and now sits at the kitchen table, her left leg swings like the beat of a metronome, while she chews the top of her pencil and focuses on the next sum in her arithmetic exercise book. ‘Do you need help?’ he asks.

‘No, Daddy, I don’t.’

He has already searched her school bag, the side pockets of her grey uniform, the drawers of her bedside table, under her bed, under her mattress, in her odds and bobs jars on the windowsill, in her two piggy banks and in her wardrobe with the jumble of boxes containing soft toys, dolls, miniature tea sets, spirographs, a telescope, a selection of My Little Ponys and even a pink Light Sabre which had once been her favourite thing but now sits neglected next to all the other stuff she’s outgrown.

‘They grow up fast, don’t they?’ It is one of his wife’s favourite expressions. He nods his agreement. ‘One moment they’re this high, and the next…’

Zia is their only child. He doesn’t know why his wife invokes the plural to make her point. They will never be capable of having another. One cycle of IVF paid for by the NHS and the other three are not. When Zia arrives on a frosty morning in January, they both decide she’s worth more than the sum of their disappointments. By then he can no longer work. Instead he has to battle through various assessments and appeals to claim his Personal Independence Payments. The princely sum of seventy-two pounds and sixty-five pence. Not much more than his hourly rate as a plumber, but spinal stenosis has put paid to fiddling with downpipes and u-bends.

He refuses to believe they are poor. They just have to make do with a little less. He stays at home. His wife works.

 

His father gave him the silver coin a week before he died. His voice little more than a hoarse whisper, his face emaciated, his eyes dull and lifeless. Withered fingers pressed the silver into the palm of his hand. ‘Keep it,’ his father said. ‘It’s yours now, like it was my fathers before me.’

He knows the story. They all do. Passchendaele. The third battle of Ypres. August 1917. In the trenches or some muddy hell hole, a sniper’s bullet hit his grandfather full square on the chest. He would have died save for the silver shilling within his breast pocket. The coin still bears the marks of where the bullet struck. Two millimetres – the thickness of the tarnished metal - the difference between life and death. A memento handed down from grandfather to father to son.

He wouldn’t be alive today without its protection - nor Zia - her life as much tied to her great grandfather’s coin as it is to him.

 But his wife is right. When last checked he could buy a 1916 silver shilling for barely more than the cost of a franchise latte. It shouldn’t mean anything, and yet it’s the last thing he touches when he leaves the house, and the first thing when he returns, a habit so ingrained that the next morning his fingers linger on the hallway shelf where it normally sits, and he pauses for its absence, filled with a strange foreboding.

‘Wait, Zia. Wait!’

Her hand turns the front door handle.

‘What is it, Daddy?’

‘Let’s have a mufti day,’ he says.

‘What’s that?’ Zia stands there, front door open, her tiny eyebrows squished together, frowning.

He’s as confused as she is. Maybe his mother said this once, or his grandmother. ‘It means a day where we can wear what we want, Zia. A day of….possibility.’

‘But I want to go to school.’

‘Not today. School is off. How about we watch TV, make pancakes…’

‘But I won’t see Ginni!’

‘You’ll see Ginni tomorrow.’ But he remembers tomorrow is a Saturday and she won’t and his face crumples, unsure why he is lying and why it is so important she doesn’t leave the house when it’s not raining, not even that cold. It’s the week before half-term, eight days before Halloween and all that nonsense which comes around with wearying predictability every year. It seems so fake and yet Zia loves it.

 ‘Promise?’

‘Yes, I promise,’ he replies.

While she is changing out of her uniform, he phones the school.

‘I hope she’s better soon,’ the school secretary says.

‘I’m sure she’ll be back by Monday,’ he replies.

He makes Zia a hot chocolate, and then lets her watch cartoons on the TV while he carries out another search of their house. He goes through every pocket in every trousers, even those he hasn’t worn in years. And when she tires of television, they play a game of treasure hunt – he has secreted half a dozen mini chocolate bars from a variety bag bought for the Trick Or Treaters. Zia greets each new discovery with a shriek of joy, but the only thing of importance remains unclaimed.

There’s the occasional muffled sound of sirens but no more than usual, and when he checks the local news reports there are no reported accidents. No acts of violence. Just the usual Friday morning in South London.

He is being an idiot. He has overreacted. But when Zia asks to go to the park, he says no.

‘You said we could do anything!’ Chocolate smears her lips, her left cheek, her fingers.

He wipes her protesting face with a Jay Cloth. ‘You know what, why don’t we try out your Halloween costume? We’ll surprise Mummy when  she comes home. How about that?’

This endless negotiation exhausts him, and he’s not good at it. Is he a bad father? But his doubts run deeper than making Zia stay at home when she should be at school. He loves her – of course, he does – but is that enough? He has always compared himself to others – other parents, other relatives - who laugh and chat as if this were the most natural thing in the world, but it isn’t. For him. He’s older. He walks with a stick. The spinal stenosis and surgeries have reaped their toll on his failing body. Getting anywhere takes effort, energy and will, and the supply of each is dwindling.

Sometimes he wonders whether the tension between the three of them is a product of the way Zia arrived in this world. An unnatural occurrence when nature and the natural order decreed otherwise. It’s a stupid thought, made stupider by the fact he wouldn’t have it any other way but his bond with Zia is fragile. He witnesses this fragility in a thousand ways -  and the older she gets, the more he considers that one day their connection will break and she will drift away as if there was nothing between them.

He wants her to grow up. He wants her to have the chances and choices denied to him but at the same time – and this is the contradiction he holds tightly within himself - he wants the Zia whose whole world can be encompassed by his arms. But now she has Ginni, Emma and Francine and too many others of whom he isn’t even aware of.

There is a world growing outside of him. A world he will never know. Soon she will have other friends. And boys, and what will he mean to her then? A dutiful call? A filial act of obligation?

 

His wife returns home with a plastic carrier containing a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc still cold from the supermarket refrigerator, and a party sized bag of cheese and onion crisps. She swings their daughter who is now cloaked in her witches’ garb in a wide arc around the kitchen. Zia whoops in delight, her hat flies to the floor, her feet narrowly miss the nearest of the kitchen chairs.

‘How was school today?’

‘I didn’t go to school, mummy. We had a mufti day!’

It takes a little explaining. He’ll tell the truth later.

He reheats his wife’s favourite lamb curry which they eat with rice and two different jars of shop bought chutneys. All three of them sit at the kitchen table. This is the first time they have sat together this week.

‘What are we celebrating?’ he asks when he’s pouring them both a glass of wine.

‘Oh, nothing,’ his wife replies. ‘I just thought…I deserved it.’

 

Three weeks later, Half Term and Halloween over, the coin still missing - not forgotten, but he’s learning to accept its absence as a new normal, something he will tolerate because he has no choice but to. And he has to acknowledge that despite his fears – irrational as he now admits  -  nothing bad has happened to him or Zia. ‘And nothing will,’ his wife assures him when he confesses. He expects her to laugh or scream, but instead she smiles – a weak, half smile - and places her hand on his shoulder as if he needs support. ‘I didn’t realise you were so superstitious. You didn’t think that coin was lucky, did you?’

 

Zia has written her usual wish list to a Santa whom she no longer believes in, while he accumulates the required yuletide stuff –  a snow globe (she always has a snow globe), scented candles, glittery wrapping paper, Christmas crackers – counting every penny as he negotiates needs and wants in Poundland and the Charity shops, but there is an item he cannot find – a calendar with pictures of her favourite singer from her recent world tour. It is enough to drive him half mad hunting for something which should be there but isn’t. In the end, he has to ask his wife.

‘It’s thirteen pounds and ninety-eight pence,’ she says. ‘Daylight robbery!’

‘Can I have a look?’ He holds out his hand.

She flicks her eyebrows to the heavens, but hands him her phone.

‘Do you want tea?’ She pushes herself up from her chair.

He shakes his head and scrolls. There are over 400,000 results related to her search – Amazon, Etsy, the official Taylor Swift domains and many others - but most aren’t for calendars. Many are not even related to the singer, but at the bottom of the screen there’s an offer on eBay for under a tenner. He clicks on this link, taps impatiently on the side of his chair for the site to open. It’s his wife’s eBay account. He knows it’s wrong but can not resist the opportunity to see what she last bought. Instead the screen opens at her selling history. It’s there. The King’s head in half profile, his left ear blurred and blunted from the imprint of the German bullet. George V DEI GRA: BRITT: OMNI: REX inscribed around its circumference. His silver coin. Sold for the cost of a calendar. Or a cheap bottle of wine and a packet of crisps.

He stabs at the X on the top right of the screen, places the phone on the table beside his wife’s chair and presses both his shaking hands hard into his thighs. The spinal stenosis has numbed his legs but there’s still a faint echo of pain where his fingers squeeze withered flesh.

‘Did you find a better deal?’ his wife asks on her return. One of the foxes grins at him as she places her mug on the coaster.

‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘It’s cheaper on eBay.’

‘Oh, is it? That’s good. Well, I’ll get it then, shall I?’

‘Yes, dear. If you don’t mind.’

About the author

Stephen Bridger is a former hospital doctor and a fledgling writer. 

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Harriet and Horace by Geoff Naumann, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc

‘For the love of Horace.  You’re too much, and so are your feathers! Why didn’t you pluck pluck pluck the day you arrived? I’d’ve sent you straight back with the farm lady.’ Harriet couldn’t tell you if she was speaking out loud or only in her head. After all these years alone it was one of those things that just was. 

 

            She went to her notice board,  wrote: sweep up duck feathers and: clean up crap. Then stopped. Suddenly. Like going to do something important, but forgetting what it was. ‘For the love of Horace - next I will embroider a plush cushion with a farm yard scene. Gotta find a saying that fits. All the world’s a barn and we’re all merely animals.’ Chuckling, she exclaimed to Horace, whose wobbling head implied he had heard her this time: ‘I just made that up. Me!’

 

            After collecting a full dustpan of his feathers she twisted gently toward the cluttered kitchen bench and pulled a plastic bag from the over-stuffed bottom drawer; the feathers tumbled over each other floating up and down until finally settling at the bag’s base. Harriet swirled and knotted it. ‘Ha ha. You’ll come in handy after all you plucky plucky duck.’ Returning to the blackboard, she started a new column: Pillow with number 347 red barn, 3045 brown for the fence, stock up on the sixty-three DMC greens. ‘I’m going to need a larger To Do board!’

 

            She stepped over her sweater and house slippers shedded earlier and sat in her sun-faded, once-plump wing chair to carry on with her current embroidery project, another of those sayings. She pulled at her skein of stranded cotton removing three of the six threads to thicken the 311 blue of the capital letter T.

 

            Harriet looked to Horace from apologising eyes.  She really had thought to find him a companion. Didn’t happen though.

 

            Now just two old ducks alone; that’s what Kathleen from her work days says, anyhow. It was Kathleen who’d wondered about the duck’s name. Only other Horace Kathleen knew was Vandergelder, from that Hello Dolly show. But she knew after William passed Harriet was never going to get around to finding her own Horace, one who’d install new green window shutters for Harriet.

 

            ‘So long ago. Fifteen years. Good that he hadn’t suffered. But suddenly, alone? How can fifteen years apart still feel so together?’

 

            She again returned to her embroidering and chattering to Horace. ‘I’m doing one about today,’ she called through the screen door. She couldn’t recall if she’d read this one, heard it, or just created it from within. Kind of always knew it. She didn’t know the Latin for it though. Diem is integral, she nearly convinced herself; or is it?

 

            Harriet liked all those quotes. Fun ones. Old ones. I like all that olde worlde stuff, she would say. She was drawn indulgently to that Latin poet’s quotes. And that’s how she’d named the duck - ‘Yes you! A picture is a poem without words, that’s one of his,’ she informed Horace.

 

            After the words came the curlicues, then the flowers, culminating in surrounding the words with whole kaleidoscopic cotton gardens.  She was at that age where her eyes believed she was appreciating fresh flowers whenever imitation ones were in a vase. She’d redden every time she smelled them. Now she worried her embroidery blooms were themselves getting less realistic, not more. ‘Damn my eyes.’

 

            She remembered to thread her needle, she was up to the D: check, enter, exit, pull, again. Her daily pattern with a descant of bon mot murmured creatively. ‘A stitch in time saves mine. Mine? My what? Really?’ 

 

            Harriet still had plenty of shelves and tables and cabinets in the house to fill with her embroidery despite having attempted a garage sale after Bill passed.  Some of his bits and bobs had sold. She thought to sell the sadness with them. When she realised that didn’t work, she gave up.

 

            She’d been stitching, and making plans, ever since. Supposed to be calming. It was, sometimes, maybe.  To Harriet, the handmade pieces had become like presents; either birthday or Christmas, didn’t matter which; presents you eagerly await, open slowly but excitedly.  She loved revealing them thread by thread.

 

            Into this contemplation weaved the wonderment of that one day, long ago, when she just made it happen. She paused her needle, took a long breath. Exhaling slowly she felt herself walking into the boss’s office, recalled her trembling voice: ‘I need to talk to you.’ She distinctly heard the actorly quality of her boss’s response, sincere but rehearsed: ‘We heard about William, so sorry. Anything you need; take as long as you like.’ ‘Well that’s just it,’ she replied, just as rehearsed. ‘All the time, Today Tomorrow The Day After That, I’m taking it all, for me. I’m going. Now.’

 

            Threading her needle with a double strand of 18 yellow, she questioned waiting until he’d gone? ‘We could’ve enjoyed the garden, cottage, sitting, doing nothing, together?’ She was up to the Y.

 

            Fifteen summer’s ago, as an anniversary gift, William had dug a little pond. Harriet had always wanted a water feature, maybe some day would add one of those quaint bridges you could buy at the pottery shop. It had been rewarding hard work. He had loved doing things for her. ‘She keeps dreaming up all these garden ideas,’ he’d tell the neighbours, ‘pergola near her potting shed is next.’ This pond project meant shifting the area’s notoriously heavy clay soil. Barrows upon barrows were piled against the fence (weed the clay mounds is actually on Harriet’s blackboard). William lined the pond, bought specially-ordered aquatic plants. ‘The old girl wants to bring the whole country’s wildlife to our section,’ he mockingly complained to all who listened. The final inclusion was the solar water spray, to aerate for life more than art or enjoyment.

 

            The pond flourished into a picturesque wildlife scene - but only after he’d gone. The ambulance came quickly, but was too late. Their local country doctor came too. He said it was one of those things: ‘Could have happened anytime. Hearts tick like windup clocks.’ William’s heart just chose to seize that day. 

 

            That was a Sunday, her day was the Monday. Life was going to be full she’d decided.

 

            William’s pond agreed. The water hawthorn was prolific, the jointed twig rush whistled in the wind, the golden creeping jenny dotted the water with its summery yellow flowers. Harriet and Horace knew a little green and golden bell frog had made its home. Harriet was once inspired to start a Monet-like embroidery, but the pond became so full of life, it wasn’t visible. Her muse was hidden. She had not written, clean up the pond, on her blackboard.

 

            Harriet glanced up from her embroidery and out to the verdant labyrinth. That’s what started it all. That pond, now lurking murky within the muted green threads of rushes and weeds.  

 

            Horace’s scratching and pulling disrupted her pondering. ‘More? Seriously?’ She yelled at her retirement companion: ‘Go and pick up your own feathers, you messy thing.’

 

            Then it was finished. Things do tend to just finish. She set down the linen. Turned off the standard lamp. Sat. Those dark moments seemed to go on, far too long. Shallow breathes threatened to overflow. Turning to the deck door she saw the thin sideways moon smirking at her.

 

            ‘Now is the time to drink! Horace’ - never a question with Harriet, always a statement. She turned on the lounge room pendant light. She draped this newest unframed embroidery over her grandest Ibsen stitchery of a thousand words that commandeered the fireplace.

 

            She collected a bottle of sauvignon blanc from the fridge and a glass from the cabinet. A small rustic pine frame, hung with heavy twine on the knob, swung as she opened and closed the door - In vino veritas, that was one of the earliest ones she’d stitched. Her first brimful glass always ran effortlessly and swiftly, submerging the past.

 

            Harriet circled back into the lounge room, placed the glass and bottle on her side table and stood with hands-on-hips, facing her latest wordy garden piece: If it’s worth doing today it’ll still be worth doing tomorrow.

 

            ‘For the love of Horace,  I misspelled today!’ 

 

            Harriet bent to the side table to seize the glass. Posed like Lady Liberty she exclaimed another of her favourites, ‘Carpe vinum,’ as she raised a toast to TOADY.

 

            With bemusement, crossed with a little frustration, she plonked into her chair. Harriet gazed beyond the deck to the small garden. She imagined the moon’s soft light illuminating the wind-strewn mottled green swirls of duck weed on William’s pond.

 

            Horace was pacing; waddling sentinel-like across the deck; surprised at the late night attention. Who there?; he raspingly called in his low base notes; Who you? ‘We are two funny old ducks,’ Harriet replied, confirming the obvious, ‘M’lady and mallard.’

 

             Harriet, consoled, smiled. Horace, reassured, plucked.

 

            As she allowed her droopy eyelids to close, Harriet looked back to that decisive fifteen-year-old Monday: ‘Every duck has its day…..that was mine.’

About the author 

 

Geoff retired, early, from careers in the theatre, hospitality management, and marketing since "there wasn't time to read". Now in phase two of retirement Geoff is attempting to gather his own words into stories. Geoff is an Australian who migrated in the atypical direction and now resides in New Zealand. 

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A Valentine for the Teacher by Sarah Das Gupta, Sauvignon Blanc

 June Brown stared at the cardboard box lying at the back of the empty class room. Wearily she walked between the desks to pick it up. ‘3 A Valentines!’ had been written in bright red across the side. Various drawings of red hearts, red roses and one or two less romantic sketches had been added. The class had been difficult all day until finally the box had been opened. It had been the usual suspects. Things had got out of hand when Tom Sanders poured custard on someone’s cabbage during a fight in the school canteen. Then there had been the predictable tears when some girls had no Valentine cards. Donna
 Hicks with her bleached hair, plucked eyebrows and tan makeup seemed to have secured at   least twenty.
June smiled at her own thoughts. Something had made her more cynical and disillusioned than usual that day. The truth was she’d been bitchy, yes, downright bitchy, when it came to Donna Hicks. She sighed as she opened the first exercise book on top of a big pile. ‘Describe Your Best Christmas Present’ – did she really want to know thirty answers to that? Did she  want to know any, come to that?
   St. Valentine’s Day. Well, you had to have something frivolous between Christmas and Easter. Her first experience at school though had hardly been ‘frivolous!
    A self-conscious, rather serious child, she’d always dreaded the fourteenth of February. One particular year, just after her fifteenth birthday, had been the worst. There had been a gang of boys who dominated the class, hanging around smoking, smuggling booze into school. June had studiously avoided them. Just as she was leaving at the end of the day, the gang had stopped her in the school yard. The leader, Joe Hall, stepped forward. His blond hair was spiked and gelled. He was holding a card and a wilting red rose. He pushed them into her hands, saying, ‘Give us a kiss darling!’
   Before she knew it, she was being passed round the group. Wet lips were pressed against hers, rough hands groped under her school skirt. At last, she had escaped over the playing fields, the rose and card trodden into the mud. Never had she felt so humiliated and used.June realised she hadn’t marked a single book. She blinked back the tears. It still hurt.
    Somehow, she corrected a few essays but her mind was elsewhere. February the fourteenth had never been fun! Well, should she have expected it to be when it came to Steven? Why had she married him in the first place?  Her friends were already married. Many had kids. June would meet them with their pushchairs and snotty children. Their husbands already with beer bellies, standing, propping up the bar on Saturday nights.
   Yet, Steven had seemed different. He drank wine for a start and wore a suit to work. The  honeymoon had been wonderful, the sex great!  But then the phone calls had started, the  weeks away on business trips, the shirts smelling of expensive perfume.  The excuses for  coming home late became increasing implausible. Often, he was drunk or high on   something.
    June had decided to make one more effort on Valentine’s Day. Taking the day off, she had spent hours preparing dinner. The table looked beautiful with posies of snowdrops and candlelight glowing softly.  A silver vase with velvet red roses stood in the hall. Upstairs, the bedroom was openly seductive. Red candles burnt on either side of the bed, new linen sheets and romantic music playing.
   She had sat waiting, her hair styled, a new black dress, rather shorter than her usual choice. The romantic scent of an expensive perfume drifted through the room. Time passed, nine o’clock became ten. Eventually, it was nearly midnight. June tried to stay calm. She flipped through the television channels. She checked the food. She ran up and down stairs. She tried Steven’s mobile. She thought of ringing the Police. Suddenly, she heard fumbling and a key turning in the lock.
   Steven stumbled into the hall. He was in his shirtsleeves, no jacket, tie back to front. His eyes worried June. They seemed to stare into vacancy. Walking unsteadily into the dining room, he abruptly blew out the candles. Angrily he tugged the end of the table cloth.  Cutlery, flowers, tumblers crashed to the floor. Splinters of broken glass scattered over the  carpet! Before she could say anything, June found herself dragged upstairs. Whether drunk  or drugged, Steven was still a powerful man.
   He threw her onto the bed. He kissed her, his lips wet, slobbering. June felt her stomach heaving. She could feel again the mouths of the school gang, their hands fumbling, exploring. Suddenly, Steven released his hold. He stumbled to the bathroom. June could hear him retching. She ran downstairs. Grabbed a coat. Pushed her feet into her old trainers. 

       She had spent a cold February night sitting in the bus station. June snapped out of her reverie. It was after five and the caretaker would be locking up for the night. Stuffing the unmarked books into her bag, she ran down the corridor.
     ‘Night, Miss Brown,’ the caretaker’s cheerful voice came from an empty classroom.
      June pushed the front door open with her shoulder, dragging the heavy bag into the hall. It was exactly ten years that she’d lived alone but she still hated returning to the empty house. She had trodden on something in the dark hall. Switching on the light, she saw it was a slightly crushed red rose with an envelope underneath. Was this a cruel Valentine prank  being repeated? Her fingers shook as she opened the card.
   ‘All my love and thanks to the best teacher in the world.
 I have just heard I’ve got into university.
 I  owe so much to you!
 Very best wishes,
  Jason North’
     Blinking away tears, June put the Valentine card on the mantelpiece and poured herself
a glass of her favourite wine!

About the author

Sarah Das Gupta is a Teacher, worked in UK, India, Africa. Her work has been published in journals from US, UK, Canada, India, Australia, Croatia and Romania. She is progressing in learning to walk again, after an accident. Writing , which she started last year, is a great help! 

Did you enjoy the story? Would you like to shout us a coffee? Half of what you pay goes to the writers and half towards supporting the project (web site maintenance, preparing the next Best of book etc.)

CATCH THE BREEZE by Sally Zigmond, a glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc

  When I reached the top of the hill, I switched off the engine, got out of the car stood in the cool breeze seeing again the green tapestry of the valley. It was exactly as I had remembered it; the house of honey-coloured stone on the opposite ridge, the blood-red roof, the square tower, the tidy lines of clipped vines rippling in olive-green, corduroy waves down to the emerald glitter of the river looping through the lime-green poplars.

            Nothing stirred in the hot shimmer; no sound but the constant churring of the crickets. August was the month when nothing seemed to happen. Yet, under the relentless sun, the grapes were swelling with sunshine and sugar with a magical powdering of noble rot.

            My hands lingered on the nearest vine. Shaded by the papery leaves, each bunch of grapes was cool and heavy in my hand. I remembered Patrice leading me along the rows of regimented vines in the evening shade, proudly stroking the grey dust which made sure his family’s wine would make the finest vintage. How I’d been dazzled by the red ball of the setting sun, hypnotized by his stream of French I could barely follow and how I’d suddenly felt his sweet lips on my cheek and then my lips and then before we sank down into secrecy...

            I shook the memory away, slipped back into the hot car, fired the engine and began to ease it down into the valley and up the other side towards Les Hautes Vignes.

            Just before I reached the crossroads a lean tabby darted across the road, a small lizard dangling from its mouth and disappeared into a field of maize. Was it Lapin, the matriarch, on her way to feed her latest litter. Had nothing changed? Would Patrice be waiting for my as he said he would when I’d caught the train back to Paris for the journey home to England, university and what had turned into a less-than glittering life?

            I turned under the stone arch and parked in the empty yard where once it had been busy. Now, scarlet geraniums wilted in their pots. Weeds pushed between the gravel. A tractor lay on its side in a clump of nettles, its tyres long gone, its paint corroded, like a carcass picked clean by vultures.

            I announced my presence in rusty French.

            A figure emerged from the barn where I once helped press wine with my feet. Even in the sixties it was  more an act of nostalgia than a necessity. The real main grape-pressing took place in a Dutch barn further down the lane.  A scowling young man, his face and clothing creased by sleep. He rubbed his eyes and brushed his dark hair from his eyes with the palm of his hand, a gesture I thought I had forgotten but now hit my with the force of a truck.

            ‘Patrice?’

 

My final day at Les Hautes Vignes sped by: stuffing cheap summer clothes into hold-all and carrier bags full of treasures:  various Livres de Poche I never read that ended up with a charity shop, a peacock feather and six cheap coffee cups I thought were chic. I was panicking over train timetables but then, as now, SNCF trains were fast and efficient and fortunately the Channel was as flat as a pond. This was followed by hellos then goodbyes to my mum and dad then the mad panic of freshers week, making friends, learning how to drink pints and roll reefers. Lingering traces of France, the tang of the Gitanes I smoked and the flavour of France in the garlic I insisted on putting in every meal I cooked and bitter coffee I insisted on brewing until my love for Patrice faded when he never wrote and I forgot his address anyway …

            ‘Why do you smoke those French cigarettes? They’re pretentious and you stink, ’  said Nick.

            That was the last time I smoked a cigarette and the first time I fell into a bed that wasn’t mine after a bottle of Californian wine. He was a friend of a friend of my best friend, was fair-haired but tanned easily, was  had an engaging Liverpudlian sense of humour I couldn't resist, was an avid Everton fan. Our marriage was good but very English, the match on Saturday, roast beef on Sundays,  holidays in Florida or Marbella, two beautiful boys who both flew the nest some years before Nick keeled over from a heart condition no-one knew he had. I cried and thought my life had ended.

            One bleak and rainy August day when I was clearing out cupboards for useful stuff to give to a charity shop; I can’t remember which one, I came across that old blue and white enamel coffee-set I called shabby chic at which Nick had laughed and called tatty-cheap, when I remembered Patrice and set off south...

 

            How stupid of me. I could feel shame congealing in my veins when the insolent young Frenchman confronted my audacity and flicked a cigarette butt which landed at my feet.  I winced. How the hell did I think I would find Patrice and make love beneath the poplars?

            Even so, I stepped over it with typically English disdain into the awkward space between us and, remembering the formality of the French, I stretched out my hand and said, ‘Good morning, young man. I am delighted to meet you. I am Mrs O’Brien. I stayed here many years ago and am touring the region, I wondered...’  My words trickled away like spilled wine. How could I ever explain?

I don’t think he was even listening. He nodded curtly but didn’t take my hand. Times had changed indeed.

            ‘Do you live here?’    

            He gave a Gallic shrug. So like Patrice but without his easy charm. As if only just registering my very first words, he said. ‘Why did you say Patrice?’

            ‘Patrice. Patrice Gaston. This was his house. I mean it was his parents’ house and he was going to inherit it when he—'     

The boy’s eyes burned cold. ‘My Grandfather lies in the village cemetery. My father sold this place years ago. He works in the city—in Bergerac. A rich Anglais syndicate owns the vines now. They pay me grape-pips to keep an eye on things.  No one lives here—except cats, rats, lizards and scorpions. He spits into the geraniums.

            I should have guessed, should have known but I was still shocked. If I had expected him to show some curiosity as to my identity, I was disappointed. Without another word he picked up his vélo and swung onto the saddle and drove out of the yard and down the hill, the angry wasp drone of his machine diminishing rapidly.

            Nostalgia is dangerous and heart-breaking. Time marched on. I should never have left. I shivered and drove all night back to Caen. 

About the author 

 Sally was born in Leicester and now lives in Middlesbrough. She has published numerous short stories, one novel and a novella. 

 

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