French Kiss Read online

  “Oh? Where?”

  “In France,” Charlotte said.

  Her mother laughed.

  “Darling,” she said, “you can't possibly be thinking of moving to France full-time.”

  Full-time. Like a country was a job.

  “I am,” Charlotte said. “And I can. And I will.”

  And that was how she talked herself into living in France for good. She realised, too late, that her style of achieving independence meant saying and doing the opposite of what her mother demanded she do, which would be dangerous if her mother ever caught on.

  When Charlotte finally put the phone down, she was shaking from head to toe, but was able to recognise her fear as another step into the future of her new life.

  Before she could change her mind, she took a taxi – actually, it was THE taxi and fortunately he wasn't busy - into town to find out what she needed in order to work legally in France. It turned out that the main requirement was patience and a thick skin. She pretended she had both, but ultimately returned from the relevant offices with an armful of paperwork, new blisters on her feet and not much hope.

  Almost every job posted in the 'Pole Emploi' seemed to require a French speaker and those that didn't required a level of technical expertise that she had never had. She had effectively been a housewife since living college, the feminist revolution having passed her by. Between her mother and Mark, life had been comfortable, at least physically. It had all been too comfortable and now she wasn't really able to do anything but type. In English.

  “I must be able to do something,” she thought. “There must be something I can do other than type.”

  On the way back to Lillac, she happened to pass the supermarket she had visited with Gilou and thought of him waiting patiently for her in the car park. She was conflicted about him. On the one hand, he had turned out to be extraordinarily gallant, driving far out of his way to make sure that she had food in the fridge, but on the other hand he had been consistently rude to her, as if that had been the agreed trade-off.

  She determined that he had felt sorry for her, but couldn't help twisting the knife. Sadist. Perhaps he and her mother would get along. Maybe a toy-boy would mellow her out.

  Still, there had been a genuine warmth to his smile when he saw her return from the shop with two bags full of groceries. He'd leapt out of the car to help her, taking them in his strong hands and setting them in the back as if they weighed nothing. At that moment, and several times since, she had imagined that he had lifted her by the waist and set her down in the back of the 4x4 too. In her imagination, she was weightless in his arms. She hated herself for it.

  “I don't need him,” she told herself. “I don't need anyone.”

  She asked the taxi driver to drop her off outside the mairie, checking that it was really open before paying him and waving him on his way. She asked him not to wait, because she had to watch her spending until she found work. At the current rate, having to take a taxi every time she went into town, she'd have to eat bread for the next two weeks and go home early. She'd have to ask her mother to give her the money for a flight, because she'd only booked one way. That prospect, more than any other, gave her motivation to cling to her new life abroad.

  “Be positive,” she thought and, bracing herself, marched into the mairie with her head held high.

  Being back in that white-walled foyer with the President on the wall and the French flag high above the desk was a humbling experience. Both women were in reception once again today, reminding her of her past experience. They stared at her as if they had thought she would have swam the channel home by now.

  “Oui?” one of the women said, incredulous.

  In her best, schoolgirl French, Charlotte proceeded to ask if there were any jobs available in the local area.

  The first woman shook her head so vehemently that her glasses almost flew from her nose. The other woman looked Charlotte up and down and made her mouth tight and small while frowning furiously.

  “Non,” she said, as if Charlotte had not understood well enough. Before Charlotte could structure a reply, the woman said again: “Non.”

  Deflated, she turned to go with her unintelligible papers under one arm, prepared to tackle the hill, but perhaps not prepared to tackle France after all. It was possible, just possible, that her mother had been right after all about living abroad being at best a childish dream and at worst an irresponsible self-indulgence. In effect, that meant that Mark was right too. She couldn't survive without him.

  The first woman adjusted her glasses and said that she should try the 'pole emploi'.

  Again, Charlotte kept her head high as she went to the door, determined not to show them any weakness, though she could feel her lip quivering and was tempted to slap herself right there in the mairie. As she turned the handle to face the sun's assault, the second woman said:

  “Attend.”

  She was holding out a sheet of white paper and making a point of looking the other way, as if doing her some kind of secret favour.

  Charlotte knew that she would have to be wary. Gilou, pain that he was, had said that there were no secrets in Lillac and she couldn't help thinking that he was right.

  “Regard,” the woman said, not prepared to dangle the paper at her all day.

  Reluctantly, Charlotte went back across the room and took it from her. As she did so, she glanced up, as if a net were about to fall on her from the ceiling.

  The paper appeared to be a job-posting. Enunciating painfully slowly, the woman in the glasses said that it was something that had arrived that very morning. At exactly the same time, the other woman said that it was something they had been holding back. The two of them argued while Charlotte read the advertisement's wording and wondered if there was something that she could do after all.

  She pointed to one word that she was particularly confused about and interrupted the argument to ask what it meant.

  “The mayor,” the second woman said.

  Wow. She'd be working for the mayor himself. If that didn't improve her standing within the community then nothing would. She skim-read the rest of the page, but there was one more important word that threw her, over and over again. She pointed again and demanded a translation.

  The women searched for the English word and then the first came up with it:

  “Manual labourer,” she said with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

  Speaking very slowly and clearly, so Charlotte could understand her, the second woman told her that she was very unlikely to be suitable for the role, because not only was she a woman but she was also too skinny.

  It was true that the heaviest thing she had lifted in the last six months had been her head when getting out of bed. She was more used to pushing a pen than a wheelbarrow. It didn't look promising, but she had to try. This was her last hope.

  “Merci,” Charlotte said, shoved the paper into her folder and headed out the door, despite their calls to have the notice back. She decided that it was her turn not to understand them.

  Back in the relative safety of the luscious countryside, she re-read the letter more carefully and saw that the mayor, René Debat, lived in the same locale as her, which she hoped would go in her favour. It would certainly be a bonus, because then she would be able to walk to work every morning. She wondered which of the houses she had seen was the mayor's. Unlike her cottage, some of the buildings at the summit of the hill were particularly grand, with enormous fences and keypads allowing entry into the grounds. She thought that maybe these were holiday homes for rich tourists and considered posting notes in their letterboxes in the hope of finding work cleaning if working for the mayor didn't work out. The problem with that would be that nobody ever seemed to be home. Better to perform the odd jobs of the mayor of the village, she supposed, than clean toilets for spoilt tourists, though beggars could not be choosers.

  Like Le Pech Noir, all the dwellings in the area had names. There were no numbers, so she had no idea when she co
uld come across the mayor's home. Beautiful houses came and went with no sign of 'La Gaillarde'.

  She reached the top of the road. Her drive was on the left, which left only one more house nearby, the house on the corner where she had heard friendly banter and the sound of chopping wood. As she crept closer, she noticed the little green postbox and, underneath, the name of the house, modest but unhidden on the stony border of the property.

  La Gaillarde.

  This couldn't be better, she thought at first, and then changed her mind instantly. It couldn't have been worse, because he had seen her more than once balancing on his rockery in order to get one bar of mobile signal. She had been so embarrassed at being caught that each time she had run away without introducing herself, so he must have thought that she was incredibly rude as well as incredibly stupid.

  Well, she'd have to undo all that. She'd have to be charming. She'd have to be smart.

  “I'll do an impression of Jean,” she thought. Gilou had said that she was well-respected and that everybody knew her. “She and the mayor were neighbours. I'll pretend to be like her and he won't be able to help thinking kindly of me.”

  It would not be easy with only a handful of email correspondence to go by, but she'd attempt to put herself in the mindset of the woman who had decorated the cottage.

  It was an admittedly flimsy plan, but planning like that had got her here in the first place and that had not yet proven to be a bad thing.

  There was no gate to La Gaillarde, no boundary marking it from the public road aside from those boulders that seemed to have been placed there because they hadn't been necessary for the construction of the house rather than to make a wall. She walked in, keeping her back straight, acting as if she owned the place. She hoped that this was the correct tactic.

  As she approached the house, she thought that it might have been wise to pop home and wash, but it was too late for that now, because if he was in he would probably have seen her and she didn't want to be seen turning back yet again. Jean would never turn back. And Jean wouldn't worry about her armpits being slightly stinky. Jean was cool. Jean didn't stink, and neither would Charlotte.

  She marched up to the front door in trainers, swinging her hips as if she were wearing high heels.

  It was a pretty house and not at all imposing. No gargoyles. There was a flimsy fence bordering the house, more of a trellis in fact covered in flowers. She wondered if she had the right place.

  Her steps had just begun to falter when the door opened and Gilou greeted her with a pleasant smile.

  Charlotte's mouth fell open for a few seconds before she remembered herself. “Hello,” she said, “er, bonjour, I'm looking for the mayor. I must be in the wrong place. I'm sorry.”

  “Must you be in the wrong place?” he said. He met her on the steps where she had paused halfway up.

  She pulled the letter from her folder and looked at the address again. She showed it to him.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “La Gaillarde. This is the mayor's house. I must be the mayor.”

  “But you can't be the mayor,” she said.

  He smiled, very amused by this.

  “That's what people said,” he replied, “but it is incredible what hard work can achieve.”

  “No,” she said, “I mean, the mayor's name is René Debat. It says so here. Look. René. Debat.”

  “René is my given name. I used to be a performer. Gilou was my stage name.”

  “What kind of performer?”

  “A comedian,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  “I find that hard to believe,” Charlotte murmured.

  “I'd like to return to René, but everybody knows me as Gilou.” He took the piece of paper from her. “If you are bringing me this, then you must be my manual labourer.”

  “Er.” She was repulsed by the idea of working for him, but at the same time, he seemed to be offering her the only job in Lillac that she might reasonably hold. “Yes,” she said.

  “Good,” he replied. “The man who used to work for me let me down. Badly. When can you start?”

  “Monday?”

  “Nobody works on Monday,” he said and she burned with embarrassment. “What about today?”

  “Now? But it's late.”

  “Precisely,” he said. “And there's lots to be done.”

  ~~~

  He went back inside for his coffee and returned to the step to show her around the property. It was bigger than she thought it would be with a number of closed off areas. He had a chicken house with ten chickens, for which he said he needed a cockerel to fertilise their eggs and to keep them in line.

  “I think they're probably doing just fine as they are,” Charlotte said, watching them roam their clearing in search of food.

  “They need a male,” Gilou insisted.

  They clucked at Charlotte warily.

  “They don't bite, do they?” she said.

  “I don't go near them,” he said. “That will be for you to find out.”

  “You're joking, right?”

  Far on the right, there was an electrified enclosure in which stood two horses. The first was fine and black and proud, with a long mane and strong legs. The second was comparatively shaggy and sheltered beneath the boughs of an oak tree. It didn't look up as they approached.

  Charlotte didn't realise until that very moment that she was terrified of horses.

  “Are you okay?” Gilou said. “You're shaking.”

  “I'm fine,” Charlotte said.

  “This is Gitane,” he said, introducing her to the tall, black horse. It approached the fence and Charlotte tried not to scream when it presented its head for stroking. Though she found it menacing, she was charmed when Gilou put out a hand and petted its head. It was calm and surprisingly gentle. “That,” said Gilou, pointing to the lonely, brown horse in the distance, “is Gilou. Gilou the second.” It chewed hay nonchalantly and flicked flies away from its body with its tail.

  “I think this is more like you,” said Charlotte, tentatively stroking the black horse's nose at last but trying to make it look as though she did this kind of thing all the time.

  “This is a mare,” Gilou said.

  “Oh.”

  “I'll need you to clean up their shit.”

  Charlotte looked at their enclosure. That wasn't all mud after all.

  “Don't worry,” Gilou said. “I have boots you can use, but you must wash them afterwards.”

  “Great.”

  There was a small pond that needed clearing of dead leaves, a log-pile to organise and a compost heap to relocate because it was too near the house. Her nose wrinkled at the thought of it. She was glad she wasn't able to smell this place from her cottage.

  “Don't worry,” Gilou said, seeing that she looked daunted. “I'll be here to supervise in the beginning.”

  “That's comforting,” she said, and then: “Won't you be at the mairie?” Part of her didn't believe that he was really the mayor. It was something about the way he wore ripped jeans and a tatty bodywarmer. His old 4x4 was parked on the other side of his cottage under a makeshift shelter made of bricks and corrugated iron. She thought that being mayor would be more glamorous, even in a tiny village.

  “In England I believe you have a phrase: why have a dog and bark yourself?”

  At first, Charlotte thought that he was referring to her as a dog, but then she realised that he was talking about the women in reception and she smiled at last, feeling a measure of friendliness growing between them. What she had thought on the way up the hill still stood: it would be good to have him on her side.

  At that moment, as if thinking that Gilou had referred to him, a little French bulldog with a face only Gilou could have loved ran out of the house, padded down the steps and jumped on Charlotte's leg. It had claws. She screamed.

  Gilou picked it up.

  “This is Patrick,” he said. “Isn't he beautiful?”

  Charlotte laughed. This was the funniest thing she had heard in
a long time.

  “He needs feeding and walking, twice a day,” Gilou said.

  Charlotte scowled.

  “The animals keep me busy,” Gilou said, turning his back on her. There was an air of sadness in his voice, as if he was admitting to a grave secret in a village that refused to let them lie. “It has been good to be busy, but now I need to spend my time working for the village. It's a very important time.”

  “So why are you not at the mairie, if you don't mind me asking?”

  “I'm always at work,” he replied. At that exact moment, his telephone rang inside the house. “You hear that? It even rings in my sleep. I'll be back.” He left her with the horses and chickens and the dog. The dog growled at her.