French Kiss Read online

  ~~~

  Although Pascal was friendly and good-humoured for the most part, Charlotte found it difficult to interpret his thick Dordogne accent and she was in no mood for conversation that afternoon. After several false starts and conversational blind alleys, they both decided that it would be better if they listened to the radio. Charlotte drifted off in a reverie of her own, gazing out of the window and watching the scenery slide by.

  There were so many things that she hadn't seen. She'd been so wrapped up in Gilou and his little world that she hadn't explored as much as she might have if she'd known it was all going to come to such an abrupt end.

  This led her to wondering whether or not she was doing the right thing by leaving. Wasn't she running away again? How many times could she do that? And why not start again in another town in France?

  She didn't want any more handouts from her mother. It was bad enough that her mother was paying for her return flight. And Charlotte was proud not to have used Mark's credit card the entire time she was away. That would make a big difference in the days and though the inevitable discussions to come, but it had already made a big difference to her self-esteem. Mark and her mother had had a lot invested in her failure, she realised, their own self-esteem among them.

  Her need to be financially-independent, however, was not her only reason for not starting again in France. She was sick of France and everything French. It all reminded her of Gilou. The beautiful trees stretching across the road – he'd told her that the Romans had planted those to provide shelter for troops on the march – the old men playing petanque in the 'children's' playground, the inexorable sun baking her arms through the windows and making her stick to the seat. She was ready to say goodbye to it all.

  If she could have had her way, she would have liked to have turned the radio off too, but she suffered French music rather than risk more conversation with Pascal. She simply wasn't in the mood. She really would.

  She was only glad that it was lunch time and so the roads were empty and she'd get to the airport in plenty of time.

  At one point, even this looked doubtful, because Pascal got stuck behind a tractor for about twenty minutes. Cars sounded their horns as they overtook both him and the tractor. Charlotte almost gave him some words of encouragement, but it seemed out of place because she didn't have her license yet. That was another thing she would achieve when she got home.

  Eventually, they got to a roundabout where the tractor went left and they were able to go straight on. She looked at her watch. At their current rate, they'd be on time. She'd have to check -in straight away and then head straight for the plane. That was for the best. It couldn't have been better-timed.

  When they finally arrived, Pascal insisted on parking in front of the departure building itself to save time, which would have been good if they hadn't been moved on by a queue of cars behind. In the end, they'd had to double back to the airport's short-stay car park, which meant a long walk back to the building.

  Pascal made a 'be cool/slow down' gesture with his hands.

  “You know,” she said, in some approximation of French, “many people miss flights from inside the airport. I don't want to be one of them. I can't afford to miss this flight.”

  He put his hand on his heart and then took her bag and began wheeling it across the car park. She didn't know what that particular hand gesture had meant, but at least he was going in the right direction now.

  After a brief queue, she was able to check in and was told to go through security immediately.

  She gave Pascal a hug goodbye, which took him by surprise, as he had been expecting a handshake or a kiss on the cheek. Seeing his confusion, she gave him kisses too and realised that it had all been nonsense: of course, she was sad to go, but she had had to tell herself that she was fed up of France in order to hold it together. She had to keep looking to the future. Making the future. Wherever that may be.

  Pascal was standing with his mouth open.

  “Oh come on,” Charlotte said, “don't tell me you've never been hugged before.”

  He pointed over her shoulder.

  She turned and there was Gilou, in his boots and plaid shirt. He looked distinctly out of place in the airport, which, though small, was relatively modern compared to anything in Lillac.

  As the two of them stared at each other, people passed between them with bags and trolleys and children.

  “I have to go,” Charlotte told him.

  “Five minutes,” said Gilou.

  Charlotte glanced at her watch.

  “And then I go,” she said.

  He ushered her away from the security area and out towards the coffee shop. When she looked back, Pascal was standing in the middle of the check-in area, scratching his head.

  ~~~

  “You weren't going to say goodbye,” Gilou said.

  “Four minutes,” said Charlotte.

  “Okay,” he said with a grimace. “I'll get straight to the point.”

  “Please.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  “... Is that it?”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully. “Er ...”

  “That was it,” she said. “You thought that you'd apologise and that I'd forgive you for being such a … such an arsehole!”

  People at neighbouring tables looked and then settled.

  “I don't know where to start,” he said.

  “Me neither.”

  “Five minutes is not enough,” he said.

  “It's all you've got. Three minutes in fact.”

  “I'm sorry that I humiliated you,” he said. “That I laughed at you with the animals. And made fun of your accent. And that I deliberately got your name wrong from time to time.”

  “You know, I'd forgotten about some of that.”

  “I'm sorry that I sacked you.”

  “And?”

  “And I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about Jean.”

  “Which part? Which part should you have told me?”

  “I should have told you that I was married.”

  “Yes, you should have.”

  “And that Jean was your landlady.”

  “That might have been helpful.”

  “And that the house I built was actually for her.”

  Charlotte was stunned. She hadn't realised that.

  “Oh,” said Gilou.

  “You must have loved her very much,” said Charlotte through clenched teeth.

  “Yes.”

  “It was quite a surprise meeting her like that.”

  “If I'd known she was coming,” Gilou said, “that would never have happened.”

  “I'm sure.”

  “We are divorcing. She said that I would receive the papers. She didn't say that she was going to bring them.”

  “I see.”

  “She likes to feel like a cat among pigeons. Always impulsive. You never knew what she was going to be doing from one moment to the next.”

  “Spare me the love story, Gilou. Jesus. One minute.”

  “What I mean is, I didn't mean to hurt you. I would have told you, but I didn't know how to make you believe me that it was over between us, long ago, and that I saw to that.”

  “You didn't hurt me,” Charlotte said. “I just feel disappointed, because I thought that I could trust you.”

  “You can.”

  “You were right that there are no secrets in a village the size of Lillac. The word on the lane is that she left you and that you were never the same after that. A 'broken man' someone called you.”

  She'd finally touched a nerve. A flicker ran over his face. For a moment she was frightened. She'd done enough, she thought. Now it was time to go.

  “The person who leaves the village is said to do the leaving,” Gilou said. “She wanted to change the world and would not let anything get in her way. I wanted to change Lillac and this was not enough for her. I couldn't leave. A village is more than a place, it's its people. Yes, she left me in Lillac, but I had already parte
d ways with her.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Charlotte asked.

  “Because you know it's true,” Gilou said. “I didn't come all this way to lie to you. Yes, she went away, but only because I refused to leave. Everybody thinks that that I should have 'escaped' with her when I had the chance. That's why they call me Gilou, the clown, and not René.”

  “It's funny to see you here,” Charlotte admitted. “I thought that you'd explode if you drove more than 50 kilometres from home.”

  “So did I,” he said. “I think, in fact, that it's the village that explodes if I leave.”

  “Too bad,” she said, smiling, despite herself.

  “I really am sorry,” he said. “Will you give me another chance?”

  “No chance,” she said.

  She knocked her espresso back in one, retrieved her hand-luggage from the table and returned to the airport security area.

  “Wu-what?” said Gilou.

  ~~~

  When Charlotte reached security, the man in uniform scowled at her and indicated his watch. Charlotte shrugged her most Gallic shrug and gave him her best smile.

  “Boarding pass,” he said.

  She reached into the side pocket of her handbag and found a few Euros, but that was all. She undid the zip and searched the interior. The buttoned pocket. Her trouser pockets.

  “Boarding pass,” the man said, bored, as if that would make it magically appear, as if she had come all this way not to collect her boarding pass.

  She retraced her steps. She'd gone to the check-in desk, she'd received her boarding pass and had put it in her handbag, she'd said goodbye to Pascal and then she'd seen Gilou. If she had been holding it at the time, she would have been liable to have dropped it right there on the floor, but she'd already slid it into the handbag. She was sure. Even so, she checked it again, in case she had gone mad the first few times.

  She turned to see Gilou behind her. She had a feeling that he was doing something terrible.

  He was holding his cardboard cup of coffee and was dunking something in it and stuffing it into his mouth.

  But he hadn't ordered food.

  He didn't ...

  “You didn't,” Charlotte said.

  “Uh-huh,” Gilou said, his mouth full. His cheeks were bulging with mushed up paper. “This tastes horrible,” he assured her and took another swig of coffee to wash it down.

  “Oh no, you didn't,” Charlotte said.

  “Yeah,” Gilou said, beating his chest with one fist. “Indigestion. Oh. It's really horrible.”

  “You're really horrible,” Charlotte said. “Why did you do that!?”

  “Because I can't let you get on that plane,” Gilou said.

  “What's it got to do with you?”

  “Nothing,” he admitted. “And everything.”

  “I'm fed up of your cryptic messages. Just say what you mean for once.”

  “I'm in love with you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I need you.”

  “Hang on. That was good, but go back to that other thing.”

  “I didn't want to get involved with you, because I didn't want to get hurt. And so I hurt you instead. It was cruel. And selfish. I know that. I did it to keep you away, but you kept coming back.”

  “... Hang on, this was romantic a second ago.”

  “I didn't want to fall in love with you, because I knew you'd never stay with me. You're a sophisticated woman from London. Educated. Smart. Beautiful. And I'm the mayor of a village that most people have never heard of, even people who drive through it don't realise they are doing so.”

  “But you're a mayor,” Charlotte said. “That's something. I'm nothing.”

  “You're not nothing to me,” Gilou said. “I knew that I loved you when you apologised for breaking the handle of my 4x4.”

  “I thought I'd got away with that,” she said.

  “Even before that, in the mairie, when you thought that I was laughing at you, I had announced to the mairie that my heart was once again doomed by a foreigner and that I was too stupid to look the other way. They laughed, because they knew it was true. You've had my heart ever since that moment, I've been trying to keep you at a distance, because even if anything did develop between us, I know that we would last six months, a year, two, and then you'd want to leave, to change the world.”

  “Just like Jean?” Charlotte said.

  “Like Jean,” he admitted. “But without the pretentious, evil gene.”

  “At least you're not pretending that you never loved her.”

  “I loved her very much once,” Gilou said.

  “Alright, don't rub it in.”

  They laughed.

  “I'm sorry,” Gilou said.

  “I'm going to forgive you,” Charlotte said. “But I'm going to make you suffer some more first.”

  “Okay.”

  “I want you to tell me truth. Always. No secrets.”

  “Yes.”

  “And I want you to keep apologising.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  A announcement came over the tannoy in English. The speaker sounded frustrated.

  “This is a call for Passenger Cross. Could Passenger Cross immediately go through security and make your way to departure gate A. Your flight has boarded and is ready to leave.”

  “Will you stay in France, with me?” Gilou asked.

  “Let's slip away quietly,” Charlotte said.

  “So I don't have to finish this?” Gilou removed a soggy morsel of boarding pass from one cheek.

  “That,” she said, “is disgusting.”

  Outside, walking through the car park to Gilou's 4x4, Charlotte said: “And under no circumstances will you offer me my old job back. I won't accept charity, but I will accept help filling out applications.”

  “The women in the mairie will help you. No, really, they will. I'll see to it.”

  “Why did you ever sack me? I was doing a brilliant job.”

  “I saw you in the shed,” Gilou told her. “You were crying. I couldn't see you like that. And so I sent you away. But now I know that I can't be without you.

  “And what if it doesn't work out between us?”

  “Of course it won't work,” he said. “But we will have tried.”

  “René,” she said. “Kiss me.”

  “Of course.”