Invitation to Provence(31)
Clare had turned thirty-five a few months ago. The realization that life was speeding by and there was a lot she was missing out on because she was still hooked on that unfaithful * Marcus had prompted her finally to leave him.
There were other lives to be lived, she’d decided, instead of the Marcus trap. At the time, marrying Marcus had seemed safe, and it had saved her from an increasingly hard life.
Clare sighed. She was just a dumb kid from a small Georgia town and all she’d ever wanted was what she’d advised Franny to look for: a salt-of-the-earth guy who’d always love her, a guy who’d be faithful, a guy who’d look after her.
And what, Clare wondered, would she give him in return? What had she to offer a man like that? A great wardrobe? A nice line in “I don’t care about anything,” when the truth was that at heart she was just another divorced woman licking her wounds.
She drank the last of her mango iced tea then paid the bill, leaving a big tip because she knew most waiters were marking time working for a living while waiting for real life to start, and besides, she believed in karma, small acts of goodness. What if I were to tell them there is no “real life”? she thought as she sauntered to the exit, waving thank-you. What if I said, “Look, girls, this is all there is, better make the most of it.” She wondered if they’d believe her or just keep holding on to their dreams.
She pressed the elevator button and stepped in, alone. Alone in her room, she decided to pack for the trip to Provence. She did not like “alone.” The very word sent shivers down her spine.
She thought about the chateau and the old woman who wanted to reunite her family. She wondered who she might meet there. Her spirits rose—she’d always loved adventure and this was something special, new faces, new places, new everything, and about as far from her past as she could get.
“It’s the simple life for me,” she sang, flinging clothes into an expensive suitcase.
Then she threw herself onto the bed, kicking her feet in the air. “Wow!” she yelled. “Oh, wow! This time next week, I’ll be in France!”
ON HER WAY HOME, Franny thought about what Clare had said, and she stopped off at a small boutique, where she bought a pretty silk skirt, yellow with a pattern of tiny blue flowers, and some T-shirts. She also bought a couple of pairs of shorts and some turquoise-beaded thong sandals. She popped across the street to a shop called Only Hearts and picked up some cute underwear—just in case I get run over, she told herself with a grin. The purchases would cut into her small savings a bit, but Clare was right. She couldn’t go to meet her aunt looking like the poor relation. And what the hell, she was going on the first real vacation of her life. Next week, she was flying to Paris!
22
RAFAELLA WAS WAITING AT THE Café des Colombes for Scott Harris to show up for their weekly business lunch, a pleasure she always looked forward to. He knew as much about wine as Rafaella did, if not more, since he’d been brought up in a famous wine-growing region of Australia. Ten years ago, when she had finally “retired,” he’d come to run the Domaine Marten for her. And he’d done it most successfully.
In addition to his knowledge of wine, Scott was an attractive and amusing man, something to which she had always been partial, and besides he managed to make her feel young again.
She sat at her usual table by the French doors leading onto the vine-shaded terrace with the view of the church and the sandy pétanque court under the plane trees where, in the cool of the evening, the village men played highly competitive games. The dogs flopped, panting beside her, and the sun cast deep shadows under the arcade where Alliers greengrocery was already closed for lunch. The bronze bell in the monastery in Saint-Sylvestre tolled the hour. Life in the village of Marten-de-Provence was the way it had always been, slow and ponderously sweet.
Laurent Jarré threw a pink cloth over the table and brought a bottle of his own rosé, which he plunked on top, along with a fresh baguette and a saucer of new olive oil for dipping.
Laurent was the son of the original proprietor of the café. He was a big, flamboyant-looking man with olive skin, a full head of thick black hair, a bristling mustache, and eyes like shiny black olives. He always wore a collarless white shirt and black pants, with an immaculate white apron slung loosely around his hips.
“The gypsy,” Rafaella called him, and he agreed there must certainly be Romany stock somewhere in his bloodline. With his fierce expression, he looked a man to be reckoned with, but Rafaella knew he was at heart a gentle man. Laurent’s wife had died some years ago and he was without a lady in his life.
As she did every week, Rafaella asked him if he was seeing anyone from the village or the neighboring town who might make him a suitable wife.
“After all, you’re still a young man,” she told him sternly. “You need a woman in your life.”
Jarré said there was nothing doing, nobody he fancied. “I might just have to take a trip to Paris and find myself a wife there,” he said gloomily.
“But you’ve never been to Paris,” she said astonished, knowing that he’d never been farther than Marseille in his life and that not for many years. “How will you meet anyone? Whatever will you do with yourself all day?”
He looked back at her with mystified black-olive eyes. Such a problem had not occurred to him. “Then maybe I won’t go,” he said uncomfortably, and Rafaella said that perhaps it was better to stay put and keep trying his luck locally.