French Kiss Page 8

  It was strange, but he had helped her without making it easy, which had allowed her to accept his help without realising what he was doing. Watching him, as she had to admit she did often, she had learnt a great many things about herself. Gilou had a stillness about him, a self-confidence and certainty that had evaded her all her life, and she had learnt that to find those things she didn't have to look far. They had been within her all along. She was like an archaeologist, digging for the remains of a ruined temple. In the background of her fantasy, her mother and Mark sat in identical cranes swinging demolition balls.

  She wondered if Gilou knew how much he had done for her, just by being there and just by being him. She wondered if it was safe to tell him yet.

  “Duck,” Gilou said.

  “Probably an owl,” Charlotte said.

  “Watch out for that branch!”

  “I know,” she said, leaning to one side and giving his waist a squeeze. “I'm kidding.”

  “I'm determined to get you home in one piece,” he said.

  The thought of going home made her sad. She wanted this ride to go on forever. Unless that is, he was talking about taking her to his home. His home, like his heart, was a fortress. It was seemingly unguarded, but whenever she attempted to cross some threshold or other, he was there, distracting her, giving her something to do for him. There were only so many times she could pretend to take a wrong turn after visiting the downstairs bathroom. He'd always been there to prevent her getting 'lost'.

  “This is the most relaxed I've ever seen you,” Charlotte said. She rested her head on his broad back.

  “You too,” Gilou said.

  She thought that he might suggest doing this again, but there was only the sound of Gitane and Gilou the second's hooves on the steep road home.

  “Leaning forward helps her balance the weight,” Gilou said. “Although, of course, you are still as light as a feather.”

  Later, he led the horses down her drive and stopped them in front of the cottage where he had done his speedy turn and had wheel-spinned away in his 4x4, destroying a section of the drive. She'd left a light on for herself, but she was sad to see it again so soon.

  He advised her on how to get down and she followed his instructions, sliding gracefully to the ground. Not bad for her first dismount. He gazed down at her, impressed.

  She thought that he looked like a true cowboy now in that hat. His face was all shadows, a mountain range of experience.

  “I don't suppose you'd like to come in?” she said.

  “The horses,” he said, excusing himself. He tipped his hat at her.

  “Until tomorrow,” she said and watched him turn the horses and go, walking up the path, swallowed by shadows.

  Chapter 5

  She woke the next morning to the sound of chopping wood. The rhythmic strike of an axe against wood punctuated her morning routine of brushing her teeth, throwing on some clothes and tussling her hair to make it look like she'd done something with it. The sound was coming from the direction of La Gaillarde and, unable to wait until her workday started; she brewed her coffee and took it up the drive.

  When she arrived on Gilou's property, she saw that he had discarded his shirt over a wheelbarrow and was bare-chested as he raised the axe high and brought the head down and through a vertical log, splitting it deftly in two so that each half flew aside and the axe became wedged in the chopping block, an old tree stump. He wrenched the blade out of the stump and set up another log to be split.

  Charlotte cleared her throat.

  “Merde!” he said. “Don't do that.”

  “I didn't mean to scare you,” she laughed.

  “I was concentrating,” he said and set the axe aside before retrieving his shirt. “I'm thinking that I will fix that fence today, but then I got distracted.”

  “I can see how that could happen,” she said. “Don't stop on my account.”

  “You're early,” he noted.

  “I've come to watch you work for a change.”

  “Was it everything you hoped it would be?”

  “Oh yes,” she said.

  “Well, I hope you watched carefully, because this is what you will be doing today.”

  “You want me to chop wood?”

  He passed her the axe.

  It was heavy and she almost dropped it on her foot.

  He set her coffee safely on the ground and then positioned himself behind her.

  “May I?” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He reached around her, taking her hands in his, showing her how to grip the axe handle and how to let it slide through her fingers as it passed overhead.

  “Legs apart,” he said. “More.”

  “This doesn't seem all that safe,” she said.

  “Concentrate,” he told her. “Look at the log, not the axe, not at me, and split it in two.”

  He took a few steps back and she raised the axe high and brought it down, taking the corner off the log.

  She hissed.

  “Good,” he said. “You hit it. Now try again.” He set it back on the tree stump. “This time, pretend that it is someone you hate.”

  A month ago, that person might have been Gilou, but that was far from the case now.

  “I don't hate anyone,” she said.

  “Keep thinking,” he said patiently.

  More than once, Mark's face floated into her mind. She didn't hate him, but he was probably the person to whom she felt the most animosity. He hadn't called her once to see if she was okay, content instead to pass messages through her mother. He was a coward. He was a ...

  “Now you have someone,” Gilou observed.

  “Yes,” Charlotte admitted.

  “A man?” Gilou asked.

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “Break his face,” Gilou said.

  Charlotte took a deep breath before raising the axe.

  “Good.”

  She slammed it down and chopped the log in two. The pieces flew in opposite directions, as they had when Gilou had chopped the log. She was so pleased that she jumped. She felt elated. She hadn't realised how much anger she'd been carrying until now.

  “Can I do another one?” she asked.

  Gilou looked at the log pile.

  “You can do a hundred more,” he said. “Then call it a day.” He retrieved his shirt and headed towards the house via his postbox, at which point he added: “Save some for me. By the look of this letter, I may need to split some wood myself.”

  At times, Charlotte had tried meditation, but had always been too anxious and too fidgety to make it work. Chopping wood, however, had the effect of focusing her mind while giving her something useful to do. Soon she was surrounded by split logs and she was grunting like a tennis player every time she halved one. Relaxed. Confident. Capable. For the first time in her life, she was being all of those things all at once.

  Her shoulders became sore fairly quickly, because she was using muscles that she was unaccustomed to exercising, and as the sun rose in its arc across the sky the heat slowed her progress. She thought that maybe now would be a good time to take Patrick for his daily walk.

  She ran up the steps, energised by the lightness of her mood, knocked on the door and breezed in.

  “Hey Giles,” she said, deciding that that would be a good English nickname for him. “I've chopped enough wood to last you until -”

  “What are you doing in here?” he snapped. He was sitting at the table, hunched over one of the letters he had received in the post this morning. The envelope was torn into a few pieces, which were scattered over the floor, but the letter was intact in his hands. His fingers were trembling.

  “I came in for a glass of water and -”

  “Get out,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Leave me,” he said.

  “Whatever. I'm taking Patrick for a walk, so -”

  “Patrick has had enough walks. I want you to get out. Now. Out.”

>   “Why are you being so mean?” she asked.

  “I'm not your friend,” he said. “I'm your boss.”

  She left, slamming the door behind her and marching down the steps. Before she was off the property, he was at the top of the steps calling her back.

  “Good,” she thought. “The occasional apology might certainly take the sting out of working here.”

  “You need to clean up this mess you made,” he said, indicating the split logs strewn about the ground like the scraps of envelope he had torn up. “Use the wheelbarrow and put them beside the house. Then I expect you to finish the rest of your duties. If you don't, then you can find yourself another job.”

  She bit her tongue.

  When he went inside, she waited a few moments to calm down, a fury of emotions contending for precedence.

  Several times, she considered marching in to the house to give him a piece of her mind, but each time she dissuaded herself and for a different reason. He wasn't worth it. That was what he wanted. He was under a lot of stress. He was right; they were employer and employee. Nothing more. Last night had meant nothing.

  She threw herself into her chores rather than throw herself at him. She built the stack of split logs beside the house so quickly and so neatly that her conscientiousness itself was an act of defiance.

  “Your cruelty can't touch me anymore,” she said. “If you won't let me in, then I won't let you touch me either.”

  When her work beside the house was done, she was pleased to get further away by mucking out the horses and the chickens. Even now, the dirty work usually made her feel squeamish, but now she lost herself in it, wiping her sweating brow with the back of her sleeve.

  She thought that she was being calm and efficient, but the chickens ran away from her and didn't indulge their curiosity as to what she was doing. Even Sarko kept his distance.

  Gitane and Gilou the second ate their hay warily.

  “I'm not going to poison you,” Charlotte said. “Not you anyway.” Gilou the second raised his ears.

  She stopped in the shed to dump the empty buckets, return the shovel to its corner and hang the axe back on its hook.

  She'd lost some weight and could feel the difference in her body. She felt strong and powerful and alive. She laughed, imagining what Mark would think if he could see her now.

  Before leaving, she caught sight of her reflection in a shard of glass serving as a mirror on the wall. She had excrement of one kind or another smeared across her forehead. Her hair was a tangled mess, littered with straw and sawdust. A fly buzzed nearby and she swatted it away. She looked gaunt. Her eyes were hollow, waiting to be filled.

  If Mark could see her now, he'd make her a cup of tea and send her to bed for a week. She sank to her knees and sat heavily against the shed wall. She sank her face into her knees and allowed her body to be racked by sobs. A breeze blew the door into her and she turned away from it, crying for all the times she hadn't allowed herself tears over the last two years.

  ~~~

  “And how are things going in your backwater and with your backwater employer?” Charlotte's mother enquired.

  “He's not backwater,” Charlotte said. She didn't know why she was defending him. Perhaps because her mother was only trying to get at her. Or perhaps because she knew that it wasn't true. “He's a jerk, but he's not backwater.”

  “Is he still making you clean up chicken poo?”

  “Yes, mother,” she said, knowing that she hated it when she called her 'mother'.

  “He'll be making you kill them next, for the pot. You'll be chopping their heads off with an axe.”

  “You know what he made me do today?” Charlotte said. “He made me chop logs into little tiny bits. And then he made me stack them all neatly next to his house. And then he told me that he hasn't had the chimney swept, so its unusable, and he's going away for the winter too, so he totally wasted my time.”

  “He's paying you,” her mother said. “You should be thankful.”

  It was just like her to take his side. She could change side several times during one conversation, just to be against her daughter. Charlotte imagined her mother polishing her demolition ball, then giving it a little kiss to set it in motion.

  “You make it sound like he can do no wrong,” Charlotte said. “Maybe you love him a little bit.”

  “You know,” said her mother, “I was about to say the same of you.”

  Charlotte hurried to get off the phone. When it was safely down on the cradle she tore it from the wall and threw it across the room. The phone gave the vase of flowers a slight knock. It wobbled, then toppled, then rolled off the shelf and smashed on the floor.

  Charlotte gasped. It didn't look valuable, but that wasn't the point. She had a sense that Jean would have made an inventory of every item in the house and would not look favourably on the vase's destruction.

  She swore and set about sweeping up the pieces, but it had broken in such a way that there was no sense in trying to fix it. It would never be the same. Regretfully, she tossed the shards into the bin and then set the phone back on its table.

  ~~~

  Unable to sleep that night, she tormented herself with what she was going to say to Gilou next time she saw him. She decided to be magnanimous. If he apologised for his behaviour, she would accept graciously, but accept also that he had drawn a line in the sand. Attempting to close the gap between them always ended with him slapping her hand. No more. If he decided to be cold, then she could be cold too. She'd let him see what that felt like.

  Though settled on a course of action, she still could not sleep.

  Their meal and their lovemaking. The horse ride beneath the stars. The way he had held her when demonstrating how to wield an axe. Had none of that really meant anything to him?

  She began to wonder what it was that had changed his mood so dramatically from one hour to the next, but she was also loathe to excuse his behaviour. She wasn't that person any longer. That particular Charlotte had sloughed away down a plug hole. Nobody had the right to treat her like dirt. Nobody.

  In the morning, she went out to drink her coffee on the swing chair and kicked an envelope that had been placed on the step. She opened it and found that it was thick with Euros, significantly more than Gilou owed her for the week.

  It looked as if he had become one of those black-suited, tie-less men after all, attempting to buy her forgiveness or her body. He had said that everyone has their price and this, she supposed, tucking the bulging envelope into her dressing gown, was what he estimated to be hers. Though she felt insulted, she at least appreciated that he'd aimed high.

  She enjoyed her coffee and admired the view as she chose the words she would use when she thrust the envelope back into his hands. Many things could be bought, but her affection wasn't one of them.

  She arrived at La Gaillarde at nine thirty on the dot. Patrick ran to greet her.

  “Not right now, Patrick,” she said, knocked on the door and waited.

  “Entrez!” came Gilou's voice.

  He looked up from his table as though shocked to see her.

  “Nice acting,” she thought. She marched across the room and threw the envelope so that it skidded to a stop amid his papers and pens.

  “I don't want it,” she said.

  “You're entitled to it,” he said.

  “I don't want it.”

  He shrugged and looked through the contents.

  “I took what you owed me for the week,” she said. “That was all.”

  He riffled through the notes, as if he didn't trust her. She bristled, but then he pulled out a piece of white notepaper.

  “You didn't read this?” he said.

  Damn. She hadn't seen that.

  “I didn't need to,” she said. “I don't want your money, just some respect. Thank you.”

  “Okay,” he said. He put the note back into the envelope and put the envelope into the drawer.

  It turned out that they had nothing more
to say to each other, so she headed for the door.

  “Leave your boots by the step,” he said.

  “What now?” she said.

  “Your boots. In fact, they are my boots. Leave them by the step.”

  It took a few more steps towards the door to realise what all that money in the envelope had been about.