Life in a French Village

 Excerpt Six from 'A Life Lived Twice' by B A Spicer 

(Click on the title to go to Amazon and download Martha's story for 99p/99c 24th - 30th May.)  Offer now ended.

After two years, Claude had reluctantly left his apprenticeship under the guidance of Felix Dumas, to return to his father, who could no longer fulfil the occasional contracts required of him.  The time had come when he did not have the stomach for his trade and preferred to busy himself with his undertaking business, making arrangements for the dead instead of providing new corpses for the coffins he sold.  So, despite an overwhelming wish for his son to qualify as a lawyer, he sent for Claude one cold afternoon, when his heart had been touched by ice for the last time.

Claude had not hesitated. He would not have said so for the world, but he knew fundamentally and categorically that Felix Dumas would never make anything of him.  The former was restricted by the law he served, despite his undeniable intelligence.  The law was a prison.  Claude coveted his freedom, both physical and spiritual – he would never be able to abide by such petty rules.

And now, his father was dead.

Rosa Cousteau had grown older and fatter, her expression set and sullen.  She worried about the past and the future, leaving no time for the present.  She had no love for her son, but grieved still for the daughter she had lost years ago to a cruel virus.  Claude was no substitute, with his cadaverous features, his sunken eyes and his untidy, mouse-coloured hair. 

She could not bring herself to kiss her son when he came to visit, but listened politely to his descriptions of the places he had been.  It was always places that he spoke of and never people.  Almost never.  Only one name came up in conversation: Felix Dumas was a paragon of virtue, selfless and generous to a fault.  She was sick of hearing about him.  His father had been a constant drain on her husband.  Such a big man!  Wealthy and educated.  Pah!  Her husband had been caught in his flame, like a moth, bobbing and blundering to remain in the circle of light, just as her son now did, a generation on. 

The life had been sucked out of her husband slowly but surely, until his heart had given out one day during dinner and he had died in front of her, the agony on his face a memory she could not forget, his love for her too tragic to be savoured.  Dumas had not attended the funeral but his son had sent a message – she remembered how Claude had read it out to her.  It had made her sick to her stomach.

Rosa Cousteau’s bills were paid, and food was put before her.  She lived on, cared for by servants who whispered behind her back, and a son who fulfilled his professional obligations with a sang froid that her husband had lacked. 

      The sun rose each morning and lit the room where she slept, but could not warm her heart.  And when Claude came to visit, it was without love that she surveyed the dull features of a man who killed, she suspected, without conscience.  More than once, she had considered taking the shotgun from the cabinet and pretending that she had mistaken him for an intruder, for, the thought that she had brought such a monster into the world was, at times, unbearable.  

Don't Judge a Book by its Cover!

Review: 'Jessica Lost her Wobble' by J. Schlenker

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Both the cover (which shows a bicycle on a bridge), and the author’s plot summary set me on course for the tale of a ‘damaged’ woman who had moved to an island to begin a new life and who, metaphorically speaking, might lose her ‘wobble’.  It was a fairly under-whelming premise.

The style of writing is explicit - there were no real surprises.  I must admit that although the story of Jessie’s life on the island and her memories of when she moved to New York from England as a young girl are well-written and engaging, the candid nostalgia of a woman writing about life in the mid-nineteen hundreds was not ringing my bell.  Strange then, how comfortable it felt to pick up my kindle and retrieve Jessie where I had left her.  Strange, the vague affinity I had with this woman who seemed to be working through a tragic history and searching for a new interest: yoga, cooking Indian food, opening a tea shop… 

The people she meets are interesting and well-developed characters, the stories of her past are from another era, and demonstrate a shocking naivety and a touching vulnerability.  Jessie is nice, with a capital ‘N’.  But ‘nice’ just doesn’t cut it in the real world.  Not for me, at least.  Lots of people will enjoy the life and times of a woman like Jessie, who has lived a varied and interesting life.  A woman who it’s easy to like and for whom we wish at least some happiness in her new life on the island.  But I couldn’t quite understand why this book was a finalist in the 2014 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.

Then comes the twist.  Exquisite!

I wanted to know more about the author.  The only thing I could find was a single photograph on Amazon India.  In it, she’s wearing a huge grin.  How appropriate!

Life in a French village...

Excerpt Four from  'A Life Lived Twice'

Angeline had taken on one of the local girls and she had made a good choice.  Alicia was fast and careful, only needing the company of the radio to keep her amused.  In the three hours that she worked, she got through more or less all the ironing from five large loads of washing.  What was more, she folded the clothes beautifully and packed them neatly into bags so that, when Angeline returned at eleven thirty with more laundry, Alicia had done everything she had asked of her and more.

Adrian was booked in at summer school, so his mother took on more clients and made deliveries in the mornings, washing the next loads in the afternoons, ready for Alicia to iron, going out with a second delivery when she had finished. 

At first, the girl came three times a week, just in the mornings, but soon she was there four full days a week, working flat out.  The laundry room was large and light, with plenty of space for the extra business, but Angeline wanted to have sturdy shelves built to store the bags of laundry safely and neatly so she called in a neighbour and paid him to build some.  She bought a new washing machine to add to the one she already had, choosing one that took almost twice as many kilos and which spun the clothes so well that they did not need to be hung out, but could be tumble dried for a few minutes and ironed straight away.

The mornings were the busiest time for Angeline; she got Adrian off to school and loaded the van for her deliveries.  There was little time to spare, although she always made her clients feel as though she had all the time in the world to give them the best possible service.  In the afternoons, as the machines whirred, she sometimes slept and sometimes did the mounting paperwork that came with the new business.  This, she was good at.  Then, she went out with her afternoon deliveries, making twice as many as the previous month, sometimes coming home with more than twenty envelopes containing various amounts of cash.  She ran her affairs efficiently and profits were increasing.  As a result, her savings account was growing fast.

On Wednesday mornings, Alicia had said she could not come and so Angeline made herself beautiful, loading the van with a few bags and setting out early, as soon as she had dropped her son off at his school.

‘I will be here at midi, my darling.  Work hard and do your lessons well,’ she said.

Then, after making a few deliveries that would not wait until the afternoon, she would drive to the large house on the outskirts of the next village and pull off the road out of sight, taking two medium-sized bags to the door and knocking gently.

‘You look beautiful! I have missed you!  So much time to wait!’  he said, as she skipped into the hall and teased him with her carefree attitude.

‘I am busy.  I have to work.  I am not rich like you, and I need new shoes.  Look at these!  I would like to come with beautiful shoes to see you, but there are too many bills to pay and there is no money left for me,’ she simpered.

And afterwards, when they had made love and he had told her he would do anything for her, he gave her money and she laughed, saying she could earn more in an hour, that she would not have time to come every week to see him.  Then he would hand her his wallet and watch her dance down the steps, back to her husband and child, until the following Wednesday.  And the next time, he would make more of a fuss of her – telling her that he loved her and could not be without her.

Angeline Roche was a businesswoman.  She did not consider that she was being unfaithful to her husband, because she did not love Felix Dumas.  His love making was quick and gentle, almost as though he made no effort at all to arrive at his pleasure.  Then he would stare at her and say that she was beautiful and that he wished they could marry and move away to an island somewhere, where people would not know them and they could live a simple life.  She would listen and think to herself that he was mad to believe she would go away with him, unless it were to live in a palace with servants and money to spend on the high life she desired.  And, at the same time, she knew that he did not mean any of it, any more than she did.  He was happy with the arrangement they had and so was she.  Of course, now that the business was going so well and Guy had started at the hotel, there was plenty of money coming into her home and it would have been easy to put a halt to her affair.  But she saw no harm in it and always thought of the fatness of her lover’s wallet, as he handed it to her at the end of her visit.  She never took all of the notes; the most she had taken in the past had been the two hundred euros for the van repair.  Usually she had taken one hundred euros, estimating that there were always at least five hundred left.  Now she took two hundred, sometimes three.  She thought this was reasonable and supposed that he did too.

After she had showered and tidied her hair and make-up, Angeline left, never forgetting to take his laundry, pulling out onto the deserted country lane and sticking to the back roads, avoiding the village. 

Adrian would come out and wave to her as he said goodbye to his friends and chattered like a bird, throwing his arms around her neck, kissing her and telling her about his day.  Angeline rarely spoke to the other mothers, who, it was rumoured, thought her stuck up.  Of course, they were envious of her success.  She did not care.  Let them stare.  She had a few good friends in the village and that was all she needed.  If the others wanted to gossip about her and stick knives in her back, it was of no consequence to her whatsoever.

At home, Angeline would get lunch and wait for her husband to come in from work.  Wednesday afternoons were leisurely and she loved to watch Guy playing with their son, while she tidied away the dishes and straightened the kitchen.  It occurred to her that it had been over three weeks since she had seen her husband with a cigarette in his mouth and, although she could not be sure, she thought that he might have stopped altogether.  Certainly, when Adrian put a hand into his work jacket these days, there was nothing to steal.

 She would not ask him about it so soon.  It would be better to wait for him to tell her.

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