A very french wedding, p.1
A Very French Wedding, page 1
Maeve Haran
A Very
French
Wedding
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
For my fabulous friend Carol Danti who helped me research the region and her lovely daughter, Lucie Spence, who suggested we escape to the delightful Château Carbonneau
One
‘Oh shit,’ wailed Stephanie to her husband. ‘That was Meredith, and she wants to come and stay with us. For two whole weeks!’
David looked at his wife curiously. ‘Meredith Harding, your old school friend? Isn’t that good? Because one, we’re running a B&B, and two, I thought she was a great friend of yours.’
‘She is. One of my oldest. But David, they call Meredith the Queen of the East! She’s used to staying in five-star hotels, or even seven-star hotels, if there are any. We’re much too humble for her. I mean – the thought of all the guests dining together at one table. She’d have a fit!’
‘Then you’ll have to explain that the idea of the chambre d’hôte is all about people getting to know each other,’ David replied calmly. ‘Anyway, what makes her so grand? You’re making her sound like Cleopatra and Madame Mao rolled into one.’
‘She works in some incomprehensible high-powered job in finance. She’s always moving from Hong Kong to Singapore to Shanghai making vast amounts of money, so I hardly ever get to see her. That’s why it’s so great that she’s coming here.’
‘And what brings her?’ David asked, intrigued by the prospect of meeting this dazzling-sounding person.
‘I don’t know. I expect she’ll tell us when she gets here.’
‘And when’s that?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’
Steph and David had opened their B&B in France ten years earlier. Since it was only March and the season hadn’t really started yet, they had plenty of room.
‘Do you want me to get something special from the butcher?’ asked David. ‘I imagine you’ll want to kill the fatted calf?’
‘Absolutely. I’ll get down my recipe book. Did you pick up the croissants?’
‘Of course I picked up the croissants,’ he replied patiently. ‘As we have discovered, fresh croissants are part of the fantasy of staying in France and people get pissed off if you try and palm them off with French bread, no matter how delicious.’
It was this same fantasy that had lured Steph and David here themselves. No other country seemed to have quite the same alluring effect on the British mind as France. That and their love of this particular landscape in the south-west, with its clear, shining rivers – so clear that people actually swam in them, unlike their British equivalents – and its rich sprinkling of châteaux for their guests to explore on day trips; not to mention its lush farmland, deep gorges and gentle rows of vines. They had been here on countless holidays and utterly lost their hearts to the place, so when they’d decided to finally take the plunge and buy somewhere to turn into a B&B, it had to be round here.
They had found a handsome maison de maître, a solid stone house, more practical than a crumbling château but with oodles of charm. In order to do it up they had enlisted the help of Steve, a local builder beloved of his fellow expats because he seemed to be able to do his work efficiently without speaking any French. He managed this simply by pointing, gesticulating and having a way about him that the suppliers seemed to regard as engagingly rosbif (eating roast beef being – obviously – the most defining of British characteristics).
Over three years – trying not to get discouraged by rising damp or sudden holes in the walls or floorboards so riddled with damp rot that David had almost fallen through – they had prepared six bedrooms, each with the essential en suite bathroom no tourist could live without, put in a swimming pool, and got ready to open just as their money was about to run out.
The life suited them both. Steph loved to cook and David was the most sociable of beings, happy to host the large shared table that was the big feature of the chambre d’hôte – where all the guests got to meet each other. The only drawback was the grinding tiredness that sometimes enveloped them both as a result of the constant shopping, cooking and bedmaking.
Steph finished laying the table and putting out the pretty pots of home-made jams (another must at a chambre d’hôte), the fruit salad and the cold meats.
‘Madame, s’il vous plaît,’ called a voice from the staircase.
‘Oh my God,’ Steph muttered, ‘it’s that Belgian family again.’ A large family called LeBrun had recently arrived, trying to pack extra children into their bedroom and constantly demanding assistance of one sort or another. ‘What do they want now?’
‘I’ll go and see,’ soothed David.
‘Ideas for what to do today,’ he announced when he got back ten minutes later. ‘Perfectly reasonable, really. That’s what we’re here for, after all.’
‘What did you tell them?’ Steph murmured. ‘To get lost in the caves, I hope!’
‘Now, Stephie.’ David smiled at her. ‘I suggested a day-long boat trip on one of those barge things with the sails. That should get them out from under your feet.’
‘Let’s hope they fall overboard and drown!’
David looked at her in consternation. This wasn’t like her.
‘And why on earth you let them bring that bloody dog . . .!’ The list of his sins was growing.
He was about to answer crossly that it had actually been Steph who agreed to the dog, when he noticed the deep lines of tiredness under her eyes. ‘Hey,’ he said, his voice softening, ‘come out here on the terrace and look at the view.’
‘Really, David,’ she answered irritably. ‘I’ve got too much to do.’
He watched her anxiously. She was like this more and more at the moment. He never knew when he was going to get his head snapped off. Eventually, Steph realized she was being a cow and followed him, wiping her hands on the jokey apron he’d given her, proclaiming ‘I Kiss Better Than I Cook’.
Beyond their terrace the land slipped away, gentle, green and fertile, right down to the river. ‘Nice, huh?’ David ventured.
Steph smiled, looking suddenly pretty and years younger. ‘Very nice. Beautiful.’
‘It’s the reason we came, remember?’
‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just that I get so tired and then I start to get grumpy. Sorry.’ To think she’d imagined running a B&B together would be good for their marriage! She tried to concentrate on Meredith and how silly she was being. It would actually be great fun to see her old friend after all this time. The realization made her feel instantly better.
‘Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?’ David suddenly grinned.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she replied.
He pulled her against him and pointed to the slogan on her pinny.
‘That was just a silly joke.’ Steph eased herself out of his embrace.
‘So I’m beginning to learn,’ he observed, in a tone of weary irritation she hadn’t heard from him before.
‘Good morning, Miss Harding,’ the flight attendant prompted gently, offering her a glass of wake-up orange juice.
Meredith sat up and stretched. She had slept well on the business class bed, as she always did. Years of flying across continents had accustomed her to dealing with jet lag and making sure she slept as long as possible. She wasn’t like the real pros, though, who got on, donned their masks and ear plugs and lay straight out on their beds till they arrived at the destination. Meredith liked to enjoy dinner served on a tray with its own white linen cloth, with proper knives and forks and glassware. She also particularly enjoyed the glass of champagne you were offered as soon as you took your seat, while the rest of the passengers were still queuing up to board. She always made a point of having dinner and watching a film before settling down; and as for all that wellness nonsense about no alcohol – there was too much of that sort of telling you what to do in modern life. She’d actually bought a bottle of water the other day that had instructed her to ‘Do the right thing today.’
She sat back, enjoying her fresh fruit and thinking about her visit. Her colleagues had been stunned when she’d announced she was suddenly taking two weeks off. Meredith was famed for putting work first in her life. She had plenty of other pleasures, of course. She loved spa weekends and opera and she had a sprinkling of good friends she spent time with, even though moving between cities as she did could mean it was tricky to maintain friendships. She knew she was admired and also a little feared, but she didn’t think much more about it.
So she had been taken aback recently when a young woman she was mentoring blurted out that Meredith was her role model in everything but her personal life. Realizing what she’d said, the girl had instantly tried to cover up her tactlessness, but it was too late. The damage was done. My personal life is perfectly fine
And then her father had died so suddenly. He and Meredith had always been very close; it had been he who told her she could do anything with her life, so often that she began to really believe it. Her mother, on the other hand, had been both difficult and distant, and seemed to find having a child faintly irritating. She clearly resented the closeness of father and daughter. Obviously Meredith was sorry when she died, but with nothing like the dreadful void that had opened up when her beloved father had a heart attack while Meredith was on the other side of the world. It had been sudden and unexpected, but everyone had said it was a merciful release, as he was beginning to decline in other ways. Even so, losing him had rocked Meredith’s well-ordered world. She had come home for the funeral, said her own personal goodbyes and gone back to work even more feverishly.
Yet something had changed. She found herself thinking all the time about the years when she and her father had been happiest together. He had always loved camping and his favourite place to do it had been south-west France, where people took camping really seriously. When Meredith was a child, he had found a campsite where the tents were fixed and even quite luxurious – with their own camping loos! It was right on the banks of the Savarin River and her father would take three whole days to drive the family there, being honked at by angry French motorists and overtaken on the inside on motorways, but staying at the speed he blithely thought appropriate. Then they would arrive and move in, having brought their special put-u-up beds and pillows, and Meredith would dash off and see if any of the usual children had arrived since it was the kind of place people came back to every year, often at the same time. To an only child, it was bliss, and it meant that Meredith learned to get on with lots of different nationalities – a skill that would become very useful in her adult life.
But the best moment of all was when she and her dad would walk along the banks of the river into the nearest village to buy the bread in the mornings. If they dawdled enough, this could mean a whole hour together, just the two of them. Dad would talk about all the possibilities ahead for his clever daughter, and how her dreams must never be limited by the realities of life, as his had been. He was saving, he told her, so that by the sixth form when the important exams loomed, she could go to a really good school where the teachers would do nothing but encourage her, unlike the local school she was at now.
Sometimes Meredith would notice a beautiful butterfly and ask him about it, and he would always know. His knowledge of nature was encyclopaedic. The sun would be beating down on her back and she would run ahead, laughing. And when they got to the village he would buy her a delicious, flaky pain au chocolat, fresh from the baker’s oven, and whisper not to tell her mother about it. Her mother was forever carping that he spoiled Meredith too much anyway.
On the way back he would tell her about the region, its history, the wars that had shaped it, what made the landscape so special. They would cross the river on a small narrow bridge that swayed when it was windy, like something from Indiana Jones, and halfway home they would always stop at the same spot, where they had a perfect view of the château on the other side. It was the most beautiful building Meredith had ever seen, built of golden stone, with four turrets that looked to a child’s eyes like giant pepperpots. It even had its own moat, as every proper castle should. She could just imagine Rapunzel letting down her hair from one of the towers, or one of the Disney princesses waiting for her prince to come and rescue her.
‘Now there’s a real château!’ her father had said. ‘None of your nineteenth-century rubbish. Think of all the history that’s taken place there. Tell you what, one day I’ll buy it for you and we can run away and live there. I’m sure your mother would be all for it,’ he added with a grin.
And they had both laughed and gone back across the rickety bridge to the campsite, where Meredith grabbed her things before dashing off to find her friends for a swim in the wide, shallow river.
And now, all these years later, a very strange thing had happened. A couple of months ago Meredith, flying to Berlin for a meeting with some banks, had opened an in-flight magazine. There, in an article about France, she had come across a photograph of their very own château.
At first she dismissed it as a silly coincidence; but when she idly browsed places to stay near the château and Steph’s B&B came up, she decided that was it. She was going to drop everything and go there. It would mean she could say goodbye to her father properly and catch up with Steph at the same time.
And here she was.
She handed her tray back to the attendant with a smile and headed for the toilet before the masked sleepers woke up and took it over, working their way through all the goodies in their freebie Calvin Klein bags and forgetting the existence of anyone who might be stuck outside, desperate for the loo.
One glance in the mirror told her she didn’t look too bad. Her shoulder-length grey-blonde Helen Mirren hair needed a comb, but her skin was clear and healthy. All those facials had paid off. She touched up her natural lipstick and dusted her face with Dior powder. The beauty writers might claim shiny skin was fashionable, but in Meredith’s view, ladies of her age looked better flatteringly matte.
She patted her well-cut beige trousers and surveyed her silk top. She always travelled in silk – both light and warm – usually with a cosy pashmina to wrap herself in if it got cold. Her long cashmere cardigan was perfect too, both smart and comfortable.
‘Right then,’ she told herself with a smile. ‘They might all think you’ve lost your marbles at work, but what the hell. The adventure begins!’
And, for the first time in months, she felt a happy anticipation about what the next two weeks would hold.
Once she’d cleared immigration at Charles de Gaulle she would find the driver of the comfortable Mercedes she’d ordered and go straight to sleep in the back. It was a crazy extravagance, of course, when she could perfectly well get a high-speed train; but hell, she could afford it.
With a bit of luck and not too many traffic jams, she would be at Steph’s by early evening.
‘Where do you want to put Meredith?’ David asked.
‘In the Oriental Room,’ Steph replied at once. ‘She’s coming from Shanghai, so that should be appropriate.’
During their renovations Steph had found a gorgeously exotic length of fabric at her favourite brocante, the French version of an antique shop, which also sold superior junk. She had taken out her old sewing machine and run up floor-length curtains and a canopy to go above the bed. There had even been just enough left over to cover a stool, which she had put in front of a French dressing table she’d picked up and repainted. With a few oriental prints and a Japanese fan fixed to the wall, the effect might not be authentic, but it was good all the same – both inviting and exotic.
It was in the same brocante that she had found most of the treasures that gave the rooms their themes: the Flower Room, where a marvellous set of flower prints was ranged across the walls, and the Chandelier Room, named after a fabulous gilded chandelier she’d discovered that somehow took you straight back to the lost elegance of the eighteenth century.
Steph had always fancied sleeping in the Oriental Room herself, or at least having a bath in the en suite bathroom, which had a wonderful old tub with feet. One afternoon, after Meredith was gone, maybe she’d sneak up there with a glass of champagne . . .
She sighed. Not very likely.
Their young helper, Marcelline, who came in two days a week because that was all they could afford, would make up the bed and ensure everything was ready for Meredith’s arrival. Steph returned her focus to the plan for tonight’s dinner. It looked like a full house – twelve people – which was good news, as it meant she’d make a bit of profit if she budgeted cleverly enough. Before she left home she’d bought a little book called Running a B&B in France, and it had become her bible. By doing dinner, the book asserted, you could double the income from every room. Most people who stayed in places like theirs didn’t want to go out to eat because they’d often be doing a lot of driving anyway. And of course, there was the drink/drive risk, which the French gaily ignored, as they did any troublesome bureaucratic imposition. So most guests liked to eat in.
