2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees (36 page)

“I hope so,” I said, throwing a glance at Fi. “I’m going to make a formal invitation later.”

“Good,” said Arlene.

I looked at John and Arlene. Forty years together. God, how impressive is that, I thought. To be married for forty years. To live in the same house, share the same bed, bathroom, holidays, anecdotes and dreams. Well, maybe you don’t share the same dreams. Perhaps that’s how you survive. I guess that they’d had their ups and downs. What couple hasn’t? I suppose the secret to longevity is to have more ups and fewer downs. That would be the challenge ahead for me and Fi, if we ever managed to get our act together and actually start something.

“Where’s Tony going to sleep?” asked Arlene, as we staggered back into the house, filled with excellent food, wine and festive champagne. “Shall I make up the sofabed in the lounge?”

“It’s all right, Mum,” said Fi. “He can come in the guest room with me. There are two beds in there.”

My mind began to race. This was good. Very good indeed. I would deal with the problem of the twin beds later. One step at a time.

Five minutes later I was offering my final congratulations to Fi’s parents before being led by the hand towards the guest room by their beautiful daughter. She opened the door, pushed me into the room, shut the door behind her with her foot and pulled me towards her.

And at that moment our friendship ended. Fortunately something rather lovely took its place.

§

The weekend was all over so quickly. Just as Fi and I had finally begun the relationship that had been so long in gestation, we were parting again. I was driving back to France and she was flying back to the UK.

I drove Fi to Valencia airport, only freeing my hand from hers when I needed to change gear. All too soon I was pulling the car into the departures drop-off point where we would have to say goodbye. The two of us got out of the car and hugged. The hug intensified and soon we became locked in a deep embrace. I knew that we were creating the kind of amorous spectacle that I’d watched so often with envy when I’d been at airports travelling on my own. It was my turn now to be the leading player in what could have been the final shot of a romantic movie. The trouble was that this wasn’t a film and that our lives would continue the moment this embrace was over. Just as soon as the credits had rolled and the audience had filed out of the movie theatre, Fi would have to queue up at check in, and I would have to drive for bloody hours on a dull Spanish motorway.

Why do they never put that bit in films?

As I motored north towards the relatively lush greens of France I thought of Fi flying home and wondered if at any point she’d be directly above me in the air. One thing was for sure. She’d be travelling much faster than me. By the time I checked into the same charmless hotel that had housed me on the outward journey, she would have been in London and on her way back to her flat. She’d have crossed seas and mountain ranges, whilst I was still stuck in Spain.

I slept soundly, though, and with a deep contentment that felt somehow new to me. In the morning I would complete the final leg of the journey and face the inquisition of the four Frenchmen who would be working at my house. I’d mentioned the reason for my Spanish excursion to the boys just before I’d left and there’d been a good deal of unintelligible Bigourdian banter on the subject.

Fabrice was working alone when I made it back to the house.

“
Bonjour, Monsieur Tonny!
” he exclaimed. “And how is Casanova?”

He was standing near the would-be swimming pool, beaming cheekily. I started to tell him the story of the weekend, and I soon discovered that now his chums weren’t around him, he was happy to talk more seriously to me. He seemed anxious to know more about the background to my new relationship, and when he heard the details he couldn’t quite believe it.

“
Mais non!
” he said, shaking his head. “After thirteen years! This is
incroyable!
”

He wanted to know still more. How did I feel?

It was no good, though. I just couldn’t find the French words to sum up what I was really feeling, however hard I tried. I wanted to communicate how I felt sure that this was the start of something significant, even though I only really had some history and a weekend in Spain to base it on. I struggled to convey to him how the usual doubts that surrounded the beginning of a relationship just didn’t seem to be there. I attempted to explain that I had no explanation.

Fabrice, power drill in hand, looked at me with an expression that suggested I was overcomplicating things. Then he shook his head and said a few English words, no doubt gleaned from the American films he’d watched.

“Tony, you are in love.”

Then, in a masterful display of bathos, he began drilling.

§

In the days that followed I felt more alone in the house than I had done before. The peace and quiet of which I’d grown so fond now only served as a reminder that something was missing. Suddenly this house didn’t feel like the best place to complete the work on my screenplay and I started to contemplate heading back to England earlier than I’d planned. After all, I had Roger to think about. How would he feel if he knew that I’d met a potential perfect
petite Anglaise
and then I’d failed to go back to England to pursue her?

So it was, days later, that I stood in my garden and attempted to lecture Fabrice, Philippe, Laurent and Stephane on what work needed to be done in my absence.

I had booked myself on a flight back to London.

§

“How are you coping?” I said to Brad as we sipped coffee in Covent Garden.

The heating in the café didn’t seem to be working very well and we were both still wearing our thick coats. The British winter had just begun its long slow assault on the disposition of its people. They weren’t fully fed up with it yet—but give them another three months.

“I’m better than expected,” an upbeat Brad replied. “It’s almost like losing my mother has been a wake-up call to me. It’s made me re-evaluate my life. It’s made me really think about what I do and don’t enjoy.”

“And as a result of this thinking, have you drawn any conclusions?”

“I’ve done more than that. I’m in the process of winding up my project-management business.”

“Wow. And what will you do instead?”

“I don’t know.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Nope. The right thing will come along. All I have to do is be ready and waiting. In the meantime I’m helping Ron out with the odd bit of building work.”

“That’s great news. How is the old bugger?”

“He’s on fine form, Tony. I really think he’s turned the corner with that depression thing that he battles with.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“And what about you, Tony? Anything to report on the love life?”

“Ah. I’d better order two more coffees. This might take a little time.”

We were still talking about it as we left the coffee bar half an hour later. Brad was thrilled at the news. He’d not met Fi when the two of us had first been spending time together but he claimed that he’d heard me talk so much about her that it felt like he knew her.

“It feels like we’ve been going out for ages,” I said.

“That’s because you’ve known each other such a long time.”

“Maybe.”

“But the big question is—when are you going to take her to the house in France?”

“Immediately after Christmas. I want her to see the house when there’s snow on the ground.”

“Excellent romantic work,” said Brad, looking most impressed. “I wonder what the house looks like in a winter wonderland.”

“Why don’t you come out for New Year and find out for yourself?”

“That sounds fantastic. I’m definitely up for that.”

“Well, let’s see, but I think we can make it happen.”

§

I started dating
la petite Anglaise
in London and we nearly overdosed on fun. We were clearly enjoying the golden period of euphoria in a new relationship when both parties look adoringly at their partner, firmly believing that the sun shines out of every available orifice. Experience had shown me, though, that what comes next is a trickier period when it begins to cloud over a bit. Each party discovers, somewhat to their horror, that their partner doesn’t agree with them on absolutely everything, and actually dares to quarrel with them on some matters too. Worse still, they don’t always want to do the same things as the other one, or at the same time, or whilst wearing the skimpy outfit they’ve just bought. People, it seems, can be inconsiderate.

Then there are the additional problems created by the fact that men and women are completely different creatures. I had to keep reminding myself that Fi was from Venus and that I was from Sussex. We began to have the occasional quarrel, but we did so healthily, and more often than not we both ended up apologising to each other by the end of it. There was every sign that we were making it through the tricky cloudy period, and that we were ready for the sun to burn its way through, making way for us to start thinking about what it might be like to have a fortieth wedding anniversary attended by our daughter and her new boyfriend.

The future, in so far as it ever can, looked rather rosy.

Nature Boy

“Hey, it’s so beautiful!” said Fi, as we drove down the narrow lane that had first led me to this haven of tranquillity a year before. “Look at the snow just nestling on the trees. It’s heaven on a stick.”

A fresh fall of snow had deposited a white blanket over the green fields, and the trees looked like they’d been touched up with white paint by an over-exuberant decorator. Brad hadn’t been far off the mark when he’d referred to it as a winter wonderland.

“Snow is amazing stuff, isn’t it?” I said, gazing out across the whiter than white horizon. “You know, scientists say that no two snowflakes are the same.”

“I’ve heard that too, but quite how they can be sure of that I don’t know. I mean, unless someone checks every snowflake that falls, then how can they be entirely certain?”

“That’s a fair point, Fi. I don’t think scientists should make bold statements like that until they’ve found an enthusiastic enough team of volunteers to check every snowflake.”

“It’s only fair.”

“I agree.”

It felt good to have found someone who was also a heavyweight thinker on matters of such importance.

Fi liked the house. Thank God for that. I don’t know what would have happened to our relationship if she’d turned up and said, “It’s horrid. Looking at mountains gives me a headache, and swimming pools make me sick.”

Not that there was a swimming pool yet, of course. Just a hole that was more sophisticated than it had been before, and which had been lovingly prepared for the imminent fitting of the blue liner by Fabrice and the Three Musketeers. The water would be added shortly afterwards. My project-management skills had ensured that I would have a pool just in time to be able to take advantage of January’s arctic conditions.

We awoke on our first full day in the house together to be greeted by a healthy dose of December sun. Somehow the sky seemed clearer than it ever had before, and bluer too. The light was crisper, the definition of the snow-capped peaks more pronounced. The mountains were majestic. I felt proud—almost as if this being such a beautiful day was somehow down to me.

“Can we ski today?” asked Fi.

“Oh all right, if we must,” I replied, with mock reluctance.

One of the many things I liked about Fi was that she was as keen on skiing as I was. I hoped that she could last longer than Kevin had done almost a year before, because I wanted more than half an hour on a day like this. I looked at Fi and saw someone who looked likely to deliver just that. She was younger, fitter and considerably prettier than Kevin. Pleasingly, too, she collected less wood.

“So what are you like at skiing then?” asked Fi, just as the sense of excitement was building as we viewed the white peaks in the distance.

“I’m pretty good actually,” I said.

“Oh. You’re ‘pretty good actually’, are you?” said Fi, mockingly.

“Well, I can’t see the point in false modesty. I’m pretty good, so I may as well say I am.”

I could tell that Fi thought I was cocky. I didn’t mind, though. I reckoned that over the years I’d developed enough skiing technique to be able to fulfil the description of my skiing that I’d just given.

“What about you?” I asked. “What are you like?”

“Crap. But I can get down most slopes.”

“Great. In the end, that’s all that matters.”

§

Bizarrely enough, downhill skiing was invented by the British. Pretty impressive, given the amount of snow-capped mountains available to them at home. Having learnt how to ‘Telemark’ from the Norwegians, adventurous (and wealthy) Brits headed off to Switzerland where they came up with the idea of the downhill race. Lord Roberts of Kandahar introduced the first one ever at Montana-sur-Sierre in 1911. The result was a marvellous 1
st
, 2
nd
and 3
rd
place for the British—a dominance that we continued to hold over the sport until the following year when we let some other countries have a go.

Fi and I followed in these historic footsteps, and having got together all our paraphernalia—skis, boots and poles, gloves, goggles and salopettes—we then had half an hour of queuing for our lift passes before we were ready to take on the slopes. I was excited. I love this sport. However, I wasn’t without nerves as Fi and I set off for the first chairlift of the day with a spring in our ungainly, ski-boot-laden steps. I’d talked up my skiing prowess and perhaps this had been a mistake. Maybe false modesty would have been the better option after all. At least then I would have had nothing to lose. I could warm up slowly. Now, thanks to my big mouth, I would have to look good from the word go, and that might not be easy given that I hadn’t skied for nearly a year, and that had been for only half an hour thanks to Kevin’s needless five-a-side-football ankle injury.

There was only a small queue for the lift. It moved much faster than we’d expected and we were happily chatting away when suddenly it was our turn to jump on the next chair as it was whizzed round. We were bellowed at by the burly ski-lift attendant and he hurriedly manhandled us into position. Something went wrong and I seemed to get a ski caught somewhere, so instead of being in position for the chair to sweep me up neatly, I was sideways on when the chair arrived and I fell direcdy on top of Fi.