The Little Paris Bookshop (27 page)

Jean Perdu felt a sharp pang of jealousy.

Together Luc and Mila had a vineyard, an estate, a popular restaurant, maybe a garden. They had sunny, flower-filled Provence, and someone to whom they could confide all their concerns; Luc’s luck had simply repeated itself. Or maybe not simply, but at that moment Jean couldn’t muster the will to form a more balanced opinion.

‘How lovely,’ he muttered, more sarcastically than he meant to.

Max snorted. ‘What did you expect? That Luc would flagellate himself, never look at another woman and wait, on a diet of dry bread, shrivelled olives and garlic, for death to come?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You tell me,’ Max hissed back. ‘To each his own way of mourning. The wine man chose the “new wife” option. So what? Do we blame him? Should he have done … what you did?’

A blaze of indignation shot through Perdu.

‘I could punch you right now, Max.’

‘I know,’ Max replied. ‘But I also know that afterwards we’ll still be able to grow old together, you daft git.’

‘It’s the mistral,’ said Madame Bonnet, who had heard them arguing and crunched grimly past them across the gravel towards the main house.

‘Sorry,’ Jean muttered.

‘Me too. Damn wind.’

They fell silent again. The wind might have been merely a convenient excuse.

‘Are you still going to go and see Luc?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you something ever since you got here.’

And when Max revealed what had been making him feel so ill for the past few weeks, Jean was sure that he must have misheard him amid the buzzing and jeering of the wind. Yes, that must be it, because what he heard was so wonderful and yet so terrible that it could hardly be true.

Max served himself another helping of the aromatic scrambled eggs with truffle that Brigitte Bonnet had cooked them for breakfast. In keeping with Provençal tradition, she had placed nine fresh unbroken eggs in a Kilner jar with an early winter truffle for the eggs to absorb its fragrance. Only three days later did she carefully scramble the eggs and garnish them with a few wafer-thin slices of truffle. The taste was sensual, wild, almost earthy and meaty.

What a lavish last meal for a condemned man, it occurred to Jean. Today, he feared, would be the hardest and longest day of his life.

He ate as though he were praying. He didn’t speak; he relished everything with quiet concentration so as to have a reserve to fall back on in the coming hours.

Aside from the scrambled eggs there were two varieties of juicy Cavaillon melon, white and orange; full-flavoured coffee with steaming-hot, sugared milk in large flowery mugs; and homemade plum and lavender jam, freshly baked baguette and buttery croissants, which Max had fetched, as always, from Bonnieux on his wheezing scooter.

Jean looked up from his plate. Up there was Bonnieux’s old Romanesque church. Alongside it the cemetery wall, blazing hot in the sun’s rays. Stone crosses reared into the sky. He recalled the promise he had broken.

I’d like you to die before me.
 

Her body had embraced his as she gasped, ‘Promise! Promise me!’

He had promised.

Now he was sure: Manon had known then that he wouldn’t be able to keep his oath.

I don’t want you to have to walk to my grave on your own.
 

Now he would have to walk that path alone after all.

 

 

After breakfast, the three of them set out on their pilgrimage, through cypress groves and orchards, vegetable fields and vineyards.

After a quarter of an hour the Basset winery – a long, three-storey, soft-yellow manor house, flanked by tall, spreading chestnut trees, copper beeches and oaks – came glittering into view through the rows of vines.

Perdu gazed uneasily at the splendid building. The wind was teasing the bushes and trees.

Something stirred inside him. Not envy, not jealousy, not last night’s indignation. Rather …

It often turns out very differently to how you feared.
 

Warmth. Yes, he felt a detached warmth – towards the place and towards the people who had named their wine
Manon
and dedicated themselves to restoring their own happiness.

Max was smart enough to keep quiet that morning.

Jean reached for Catherine’s hand.

‘Thank you,’ he said. She understood what he meant.

There was a new hangar to the right of the winery – for trailers, large and small tractors, and for the special vineyard tractor, the one with the tall, narrow wheels.

Two legs in work overalls poked out from beneath one of the tractors, and some imaginative swearwords and the clink of tools could be heard spilling forth from under the machine.

‘Hi, Victoria!’ called Max, his voice a mixture of cheeriness and despondency.

‘Oh, Mister Napkin Man,’ a young female voice could be heard saying.

A second later the tractor girl rolled out from under the vehicle. She wiped an embarrassed hand over her expressive face, but only succeeded in making things worse by smudging the dirt and oil stains.

Jean had steeled himself, but still it was bad.

A twenty-year-old Manon stood before him. No make-up, her hair longer, her body more androgynous.

And of course she didn’t really resemble Manon; when Perdu looked closely at this captivating, athletic, self-assured girl, the picture went fuzzy. Nine times he didn’t see her, but the tenth time there was Manon, looking out of the unfamiliar young face.

Victoria’s entire attention was focused on Max as she ran her eyes over him from top to bottom, scrutinising his work shoes, his threadbare trousers and his washed-out shirt. There was a hint of acknowledgment in her gaze. She nodded appreciatively.

‘You call Max “Napkin Man”?’ asked Catherine, hiding her amusement.

‘Yeah,’ said Vic. ‘That’s precisely the kind of guy he used to be. Used a napkin, took the metro instead of walking, had only seen dogs in special holdalls, and so on.’

‘You have to excuse the young lady. Out here in the sticks, they only learn manners in the run-up to their wedding,’ Max taunted her fondly.

‘Which, as everyone knows, is the key event in any Parisian woman’s life,’ she countered.

‘Preferably more than one,’ Max said with a grin.

Vic shot him a complicit smile.

The journey is over when you begin to love, thought Jean, as the two youngsters feasted their eyes on each other.

‘Did you want to see Papa?’ said Vic, abruptly breaking the spell.

Max nodded with a glazed look in his eye, Jean nodded uneasily, but Catherine said with a smile, ‘Yes, sort of.’

‘I’ll take you to the main house.’

She didn’t walk like Manon either, it struck Perdu, as they followed her under soaring plane trees from which crickets chirped.

The young woman looked around at them.

‘By the way, I’m the red wine: Victoria. The white’s my mother, Manon. The vineyards used to belong to her.’

Jean felt for Catherine’s hand. It pressed his briefly.

Max’s eyes were glued to Victoria as she skipped up the stairs two at a time in front of them, but he suddenly stopped and tugged Jean back by the arm.

‘One thing I didn’t mention last night is that this is the woman I’m going to marry,’ Max said with calm sincerity. ‘Even if she turns out to be your daughter.’

Oh God. Mine?
 

Victoria gestured for them to come inside and pointed to the wine-tasting room. Had she overheard? There was an edge to her smile: Marry me? A napkin man like you? Only if you seriously up your game.

Aloud she said, ‘The old cellars are through there to the left; that’s where we store the
Victoria
. The
Manon
is matured in the vaults under the apricot orchard. I’ll fetch my father. He’ll show you around the winery. Wait here in the tasting room. Whom shall I … announce?’ Vic concluded with a cheerful flourish. She flashed Max a smile, a smile that seemed to radiate out from her entire body.

‘Jean Perdu. From Paris. The bookseller,’ said Jean Perdu.

‘Jean Perdu, the bookseller from Paris,’ Victoria repeated contentedly, then disappeared.

Catherine, Jean and Max heard her bound up some creaking steps, walk along a corridor and speak to someone. Speak for some time, question, answer, question, answer. Her steps coming back down, equally lithe and carefree.

‘He’ll be with you right away,’ said Victoria, poking her head into the room, smiling, fleetingly turning into Manon, and then disappearing again.

Jean heard Luc walking up and down upstairs, opening a cupboard or a drawer.

Jean stood there while the mistral gathered speed, tore at the building’s shutters, raced through the leaves of the towering chestnut trees and heaped dry soil between the vines.

He stood there until Max made himself scarce and went after Victoria; until Catherine rubbed his shoulder and whispered, ‘I’ll be waiting in the bistro, and I love you whatever happens,’ and set off to visit Mila’s domain of the farm.

Jean waited as he heard Luc’s footsteps approaching across the squeaking floorboards, creaking stairs and tiled floor of the winery. Only then did Perdu turn to the door. Any moment now he would be face-to-face with Manon’s husband. The man whose wife he had loved.

Jean hadn’t considered for one second what he was going to say to Luc.

Luc was the same height as he was. Almond-coloured hair, dulled by the sun; short, but in need of a trim. Intelligent light-brown eyes bordered by many tiny wrinkles. A tall, slender tree in jeans and a faded blue shirt, a body shaped by its dealings with soil, fruit and stone.

Perdu immediately saw what had appealed to Manon.

Luc Basset possessed an obvious dependability combined with sensitivity and virility. A virility that could not be measured in money, success and wittiness, but in strength, stamina and the ability to care for a family, a house, a piece of land. Such men were bound to the land of their ancestors; selling, leasing or even granting a new son-in-law a piece of it was equivalent to having an organ removed.

‘Weatherproof’ would have been Lirabelle’s comment on Luc. ‘You’re a different person if you’ve been warmed by open fires rather than by central heating as a child, if you’ve climbed trees instead of cycling on the pavement with a helmet on, if you’ve played outside rather than sitting in front of the television.’ That was why she would send Jean out into the rain at their relatives’ in Brittany and heat his bathwater in a kettle over the fire. Hot water had never felt so good since.

What was it that reminded Jean of that boiling kettle when he looked at Luc? It was because Manon’s husband was every bit as intense, alive and authentic as it. Luc’s sturdy shoulders, his work-hardened arms; his whole bearing said, ‘I will not bend.’ This man looked at him with his dark eyes, studying Jean’s face, examining his body and fingers. They did not shake hands.

‘Yes?’ Luc asked instead from the doorway. A deep, measured voice.

‘I’m Jean Perdu. I’m the man your wife, Manon, lived with in Paris. Up until … twenty-one years ago. For five years.’

‘I know,’ Luc said steadily. ‘She told me when she knew she was dying.’

The two men stared at each other, and for one crazy moment Perdu thought they were going to hug. Only they could understand each other’s pain.

‘I’ve come to ask for forgiveness.’

A smile flickered across the vintner’s face.

‘Ask whom?’

‘Manon. Only Manon. As her husband … you couldn’t possibly forgive me for loving your wife. Or for being the other man.’

Luc’s eyes narrowed. He stared very intently at Perdu.

Did he wonder whether Manon had liked feeling these hands? Did he wonder whether Jean had been capable of loving his wife as well as he had?

‘Why have you only come now?’ Luc asked slowly.

‘I didn’t read the letter at the time.’

‘My God,’ Luc said in surprise. ‘Why not?’

This was the hardest part.

‘I expected it to contain only the kind of things women usually write when they’re sick of their lovers,’ said Perdu. ‘Refusing was the only way to preserve my dignity.’

It was so, so hard to say these words.

And now, at last, pour your hate on me, please.
 

Luc gave himself time. He paced up and down the wine-tasting room. At last he spoke again, this time to Jean’s back.

‘It must have been terrible – when you did read the letter, and realised that you’d been wrong the whole time, that they weren’t the usual words. “Let’s stay friends” and that sort of rubbish. That’s what you expected, right? “It’s not your fault, it’s mine … I hope you find someone who deserves you …” But this was totally different.’

Jean hadn’t reckoned on such empathy. He was beginning to understand why Manon had married Luc. And not him.

‘It was hell,’ he admitted. He wanted to say more, much more. But it was choking him. The idea that Manon had stared at a door that never opened. He didn’t look around at Luc. His eyes burned with tears of shame.

It was then that he felt Luc’s hand on his shoulder.

Luc turned Jean to face him. He looked him in the eyes, searching them, exposing his own grief to Jean.

They stood a mere yard apart as their eyes spoke the unspeakable. Jean saw sorrow and tenderness, anger and understanding. He saw that Luc was wondering what they should do now, but he also noticed his readiness to endure whatever might happen.

I wish I’d known Luc earlier.
 

They could have grieved together. After the hatred and the jealousy.

‘I have to ask this now,’ said Jean. ‘I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since I saw her. Is … is Victoria …?’

‘She’s our daughter. Manon was three months pregnant when she went back to Paris; Victoria was conceived in the spring. Manon already knew she was sick, but she kept it to herself. She decided in favour of the child and against the cancer therapy when the doctors assured her that the baby stood a chance.’

Luc’s voice was quavering now too.

‘Manon chose certain death on her own. She told me only when it was too late … too late to give up the baby and to attempt to cure her. She kept her cancer secret from me until her letter to you, Jean. She said that she was so ashamed, and it was her just deserts for loving twice in one lifetime. My God! As if love were a crime … Why did she have to be so hard on herself? Why?’

The two men stood there and though neither cried, they both watched the other man struggle for breath, swallow hard, grit his teeth and try not to sink without a trace.

‘Do you want to know the rest?’ Luc asked after a while.

Jean nodded. ‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘Please – I want to know everything. And Luc … I’m sorry. I never meant to steal someone else’s love. I’m sorry I didn’t resist and …’

‘Forget it!’ Luc said wildly, fierily. ‘I don’t hold it against you. Of course I felt like the forgotten man whenever she was in Paris. And when she was with me, I came to life again as her lover and your rival, and all of a sudden you were the one who was being cheated on. Yet that was all part of life … and, strange as it may seem to some people, it wasn’t unforgivable.’

Luc slammed his fist into his other palm. His face was flushed with such turmoil that Jean feared the other man might hurl him against the wall at any moment.

‘I’m so sad that Manon had to make things so hard for herself. My love would have been sufficient for her and you, I swear, just as hers would have been for you and me. She never robbed me of anything. Why didn’t she forgive herself? It wouldn’t have been easy between you and me and her and whoever else. But life is never easy, and there are a thousand ways to live it. She needn’t have feared – we’d have found a way. There’s a path up every mountain, every one.’

Did Luc truly believe that? Could anyone feel so intensely and be so full of love for others?

‘Come on!’ Luc ordered him.

He led Perdu along the corridor, right, left, another corridor, and then …

A light-brown door. Manon’s husband collected himself before pushing a key into the lock, turning it and pushing down the brass handle with his large, dependable hand.

‘This was the room where Manon died,’ he said in a rasping voice.

The room wasn’t very big, but it was bathed in light. It looked as though it were still used. A tall wooden cabinet, a bureau, a chair with one of Manon’s shirts draped over it. An armchair, flanked by a small table with an open book on it. The room was lived in; not like the one he had left behind in Paris – the bleak, tired, sad room in which he had locked away their memories and their love.

It was as if this room’s occupant had popped outside for a second. A wide door led out onto a stone terrace and a garden full of horse chestnut trees, bougainvilleas, almond, rose and apricot trees. A white cat was weaving its way between them.

Jean looked at the bed. It was covered with the bright patchwork quilt that Manon had sewed before her wedding at his place, in Paris; along with the flag with the book bird emblazoned on it.

Luc followed Jean’s gaze.

‘She died in that bed. Christmas Eve 1992. She asked me whether she would make it through the night. I said yes.’

He turned to Perdu. Luc’s eyes were very dark now, his face riven with pain; all control had deserted him. His voice was cracked, choked and distressed as he blurted, ‘I said yes. It was the only time I ever lied to my wife.’

Before he knew what he was doing, Perdu reached out to pull Luc to him. The other man didn’t resist. Sighing ‘Oh, God!’ he returned Jean’s embrace.

‘Whatever you meant to each other, it was not spoiled by what I meant to her. She never wanted to be without you, never.’

‘I never lied to Manon,’ mumbled Luc, as if he hadn’t heard what Jean had said. ‘Never. Never.’

Jean Perdu held Luc as convulsions racked his body. Luc didn’t weep, Luc didn’t speak. He just shook endlessly in Jean’s arms.

Shamefully, Jean dug up Christmas Eve 1992 from his memory. He had got drunk, staggered through Paris, sworn at the Seine. And while he was occupied with those trivial, trifling things, Manon had been fighting, fighting to the bitter end. And she had lost.

I didn’t feel it when she died. No wrench. No earthquake. No bolt of lightning. Nothing.
 

Luc recovered his composure in Jean’s embrace.

‘Manon’s diary. She told me to give it to you if you ever came,’ he said in a reedy voice. ‘That was her wish. She continued to hope beyond death.’

Hesitantly they let go of each other. Luc sat down on the divan. He reached over to the bedside table and opened the drawer.

Jean recognised the notebook immediately. Manon had been writing in it when they first met in the train to Paris. As she wept at leaving the south she loved so much. And she would often note things in it at night when she couldn’t sleep, after they had made love.

Luc got up and handed the book to Jean. He took it, but the stocky vintner’s fingers clung to it for a moment.

‘And I need to give you this from me,’ he said calmly.

Jean had foreseen it – and knew he mustn’t duck. So he simply closed his eyes.

Luc’s fist struck him between lip and chin. Not too hard, but hard enough to knock the wind out of Jean, blur his vision and send him reeling against the wall.

Luc’s apologetic voice reached him from somewhere. ‘Please don’t think that it was because you slept with her. I knew when I married her that one man could never be everything to Manon.’ Luc offered Jean his hand. ‘It’s more because you didn’t come to her when you should have.’

Fleetingly, everything blended into one.

His forbidden, lifeless room in Rue Montagnard.

The warm, bright room where Manon had died.

Luc’s hand in his.

And all of a sudden the memory was there.

Jean
had
felt something when Manon died.

In the days leading up to Christmas, when he was often drunk and on the brink of sleep, in that confused state he had heard her talking. Scattered words he couldn’t understand: ‘friends’ windows’, ‘coloured crayon’, ‘southern light’ and ‘raven’.

He stood there in Manon’s room, her diary in his hand, and had a premonition that he would find these words inside. All of a sudden he felt a great inner peace, and the welcome pain of the deserved blow stung his face.

‘Can you eat with that?’ Luc asked sheepishly, pointing to Perdu’s chin. ‘Mila’s made lemon chicken.’

Jean nodded.

He no longer needed to ask why Luc had dedicated a wine to Manon. He understood.