L'amour Actually Read online

  'Hello, hello. Anybody there?' My voice echoed around the empty building. 'Hello? Please, is anybody there?'

  I heard the muffled sound of footsteps and eventually a door opened, revealing a middle-aged woman with a shock of frighteningly orange hair.

  'Oui?'

  'Do you speak English... er, parlez-vous anglais?' I asked hopefully.

  'A little bit. Can I 'elp you?' replied the woman.

  'I need a taxi, un taxi. To St Amans de Pierrepoint.'

  'A taxi, hein? You call Gérard. I give you his number. He 'as a taxi. He will come.'

  She scribbled a number down on an old boarding card and handed it to me.

  'Um, there's one other petit problème, madame, I don't have any coins on me, only notes. Could you change a fifty-euro note?'

  The woman raised her eyebrows so far that they disappeared into the orange thatch.

  'I am not une banque, mademoiselle.' Muttering to herself, she rooted around in her pocket and withdrew a handful of cash mixed up among a load of old sweet wrappers.

  'Tenez,' she said, handing me a euro before disappearing back into the bowels of the terminal building.

  'Merci, merci, madame,' I called out to the woman's departing back. She responded with the slightest of Gallic shrugs.

  Thankfully the telephone was working, a welcome change from the ones near my flat in London. Not that I ever used them of course, who did these days? After a few rings, a deep male voice answered the phone.

  'Allo, oui.'

  'Er, parlez-vous anglais, monsieur?'

  'Non, désolé, français.'

  Bugger, bugger, bugger! I took a deep breath to compose myself.

  'Je voudrais un taxi to St Amans de Pierrepoint from the aéroport,' I said in my best French, hoping I had got my tenses right. Never mind integration, it was conjugation that really mattered.

  The man replied in a machine-gun staccato of completely unintelligible French. I didn't catch a single word. Damn, I thought, wishing I'd put more effort in to learning the language. A friend was studying French at night school and had given me some tapes. I could say a few useful sentences, but I had completely overlooked the fact that the French would then reply to me in, well, in French. I hadn't a clue what he was saying. I decided to keep it simple. 'Taxi, oui ou non, monsieur?'

  'Oui, mademoiselle,' the voice said slowly, over-enunciating as if speaking to a slightly stupid child. 'Cinq minutes.'

  Cinq, cinq? That's five. Five minutes. Brilliant!

  Outside, I slipped my aching feet out of my shoes, perched on the Louis Vuitton and for the first time since arriving in France, sat back and took stock of the surroundings. The sun shone down from a cloudless, blue sky with just the faint wisps of a vapour trail breaking up the vast cerulean expanse. I slipped off my jacket and took advantage of the wait to catch a few rays. No more spray tans for me now, I thought, remembering the embarrassment of standing in my kitchen, stripped down to a pair of paper knickers and a fetching plastic cap while Kelly, the local beauty therapist, did her work with a spray gun.

  Tilting my face skywards, I felt the sun turning my cheeks pink. It was heaven… if only that God-awful smell would go away. Still, wasn't this so much better? Life in London had become such a slog recently and I'd been overtaken by a sudden urge to get back to the land and grow my own vegetables. It was quite out of character considering that I originally came from Beckenham, and struggled to keep alive the little pots of basil and coriander on the kitchen windowsill in my London flat. I'd even thought about joining the Women's Institute. Instead, I had bought a copy of Smallholder, 'the leading monthly magazine for the amateur small farmer' the cover told me; as well as a rather lush shabby-chic Cath Kidston gardening set – currently unused.

  It had seemed serendipitous to come across an old school friend, Polly, on Facebook. She had moved to France to 'live the dream' a few years previously and now ran a bed and breakfast in the Loire Valley. It had piqued my curiosity. I'd always found the idea of moving out of London unthinkable, but the more I talked to Polly, the more intrigued I became. There was a real sense of community in the French countryside she had told me, unlike London where I barely even knew my neighbours. Mind you, with Tattooed Mary and her Rottweiler in the flat next door, I wasn't sure that being friends with your neighbours was all it was cracked up to be. It didn't matter how many times Mary told me he was a pussycat, every time I met the huge, slavering beast, I expected to lose an arm at the very least.

  Polly had told me how everyone looked out for everyone else in the country and hardly a day went by without some shiny, happy local leaving a box of muddy potatoes or a few freshly laid eggs on the doorstep. I could just imagine if someone left something on my doorstep in Wandsworth. It would be gone in a nanosecond.

  Yes, this was altogether much better. I checked my watch. The taxi should be here any moment now.

  Chapter Two

  Half an hour later, I was still sitting there staring hopefully up the long, straight road that led from the airport. Gérard, the errant taxi driver, clearly had a different understanding of 'cinq minutes' than I did.

  So far, the first impression I had formed of France was, well, that it was all very... empty. The stinking cows, chewing the cud and contemplating me with their large, brown eyes, were my only companions as far as the eye could see. They were starting to give me the creeps.

  In the distance, a cloud of dust finally heralded what I hoped was the arrival of Gérard. An ancient Peugeot 106 slid to a halt. Hmm, not much chance of air conditioning in that then, I thought.

  Gérard, a small, squat man in old jeans and a T-shirt that showed evidence of the remains of his breakfast and possibly last night's supper too, jumped nimbly out of the car, bid me 'bonjour' with a toothless grin and swept up my suitcase. He pulled on an old piece of baling twine that was fed through a hole where the lock should have been, and the boot popped open. I wondered what he'd last had in the boot. Fowl of some sort judging by the amount of feathers and what looked suspiciously like bird droppings, and now he was about to put my favourite suitcase in there.

  'Non!' I shouted a little too loudly, making him jump back like a scalded cat. He shoved my bag at me.

  'I'll keep it with me thanks,' I smiled at him, feeling a little mean that I had spoken so sharply.

  Gérard shrugged and motioned for me to get in the back. From close up it appeared that it had been some time since his last close encounter with soap and water, and possibly a toothbrush, not that there was that much left to brush. I wondered whether I'd still be able to get my teeth whitened here.

  I handed him the address of Les Tuileries and Gérard took off at an alarming pace, all the while babbling on at me in unintelligible French whilst the ancient Peugeot bounced and rattled over the pitted road surface. Yet again, I wished I'd paid more attention to French lessons at school. Mind you, the very idea that I would one day move to France would have been laughable back then. Even the welcome, but sadly short-lived, addition of a very cute language assistant from Paris wasn't enough of an antidote to the linguistic Temazepam that was Madame Martin's dreary lessons.

  Winding down the window a bit to get some cooler air circulating around the stuffy car, I leaned back and shut my eyes. I'd done it. I was in France. This was the start of my own 'French Dream'. As the wind tousled my hair and Gallic love songs spilled out from the crackly radio, Gérard hummed along softly. All was well with the world. My eyelids grew heavy and within minutes, I had drifted off into a light sleep dreaming of feeding my chickens, weeding my vegetable plot and bottling my delicious homemade jam while the smell of freshly baking bread wafted from my Aga – did they have Agas in France? It was a scene straight out of one of those French lifestyle magazines that I'd been devouring hungrily for the past few months, and here I was, in the middle of it.

  I was jolted awake as we went round a sharp bend and suddenly, in front of us and taking up practically the whole of the road, was an enormous agricultu
ral machine. I shouted at Gérard who, startled, wrenched the wheel to the right and slid by the huge mechanical beast with millimetres to spare. I breathed again, we had made it. Suddenly I let out a scream as the old jalopy slid gracefully into a huge ditch, like a seal slipping off an ice floe, and came to rest on its side, wheels still spinning, churning up clouds of dust that floated in through the open windows.

  Inside the car, I lay on my side, held in place by my seatbelt. My suitcase, which had been on the seat next to me, was on top of me, along with assorted detritus that had been in the seat pockets. As the dust settled, a quick check of my limbs revealed that nothing was broken and I struggled to undo my seatbelt. Gérard was already scrambling over the passenger seat to climb out through the door, a purplish bruise that was starting to form on his cheek the only visible evidence of how close we had come to disaster. He pulled open my door and pushed the suitcase out of the way, before hauling me rather inelegantly up and out onto the road with surprising strength for such a small man. The only casualty was my blouse, which caught on the window winder and tore open. Gérard averted his eyes chastely as I quickly pulled it together. Apart from that, we seemed to have escaped unscathed. The monster machine, a combine harvester, had stopped a bit further up the road and the driver was already racing back to the scene of the accident. 'Ça va?' he asked us, a worried look on his face.

  Gérard nodded in the affirmative and with a dip of his head towards me said, 'Anglaise.'

  'Are you all right, mademoiselle?'

  I nodded. Tears pricked the back of my eyes as I struggled not to cry. This was definitely not in the little tableau I'd created in my dream.

  'Oui, yes, I'm OK.'

  The driver made me sit down on the verge and produced a bottle of lukewarm water from one of the many pockets of his combat trousers. Gérard swilled his mouth out and spat noisily into the ditch before handing me the bottle. Eeuugh, I thought, but my mouth was full of dust and my throat was as dry as an African riverbed; so wiping the top vigorously on my skirt (and noticing that the combine driver took the opportunity for a quick peek at my legs), I drank deeply. 'Crachez, mademoiselle,' said the driver, feigning spitting.

  Well this was a fine start to my dream; sat at the side of a road, filthy, my blouse torn, my hair hanging in dusty rats' tails and being told to spit in the dirt. The only spitting I had planned was at wine tastings at the local vineyards. On the positive side though, I had to admit, our rescuer was really quite cute. Out of the corner of my eye, I studied him more closely; he was tall and strong with thick, wavy chestnut hair and light hazel eyes that gave him an almost ethereal appearance. He had a bit of the look of Channing Tatum about him, just slightly more rustic. From the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt I could see tanned forearms, knotted with muscles, and through his combat trousers, I could make out a pair of seriously impressive thighs. He had full lips, perfect for… Oh, for heaven's sake, I told myself, you've only been in France for a few hours and you're already acting like a love-struck teenager. I gave him my best winning smile. Not easy when your face is covered in dust and your blouse is torn, revealing rather more décolletage than was probably decent in these parts. He looked at me strangely. Maybe this was considered a bit too forward out here in the sticks.

  Pulling a mobile phone from his pocket, he punched in a number, speaking more quick-fire French that I couldn't understand. When he finished, he turned to me and choosing his words carefully, explained slowly in English that his brother would be along in a few minutes with his tractor to pull the car out of the ditch. As we waited, my phone suddenly sprang to life, emitting a symphony of beeps. Well, at least I now had a signal. I looked at the list of texts, mainly from my friends, wishing me luck in my new life. To them, my new life was just going to be one long round of sunshine and chilled rosé. Not so far, I thought. There was one from Madame Mollet, the letting agent:

  I am afraid I have a meeting and cannot come to Les Tuileries today. The key is in the post box. I call tomorrow. Cordialement.

  The knight in shining armour came and sat down beside me.

  'Julien d'Aubeville,' he said offering me his hand. Suddenly feeling very self-conscious, I took his hand and introduced myself, holding onto it for just a moment longer than necessary. He pulled it away. 'Ah, you have a good French name, hein?'

  I'd never really thought about it but, rolling off his tongue, it certainly sounded French and maybe even a little bit sexy.

  'So where are you going?'

  'To St Amans de Pierrepoint. Do you know it? I've rented a cottage there.'

  'St Amans? Yes, I know it well. Our farm is only about half a kilometre from there. If you like, when we've got the car out of the fosse, the ditch, I will take you there.'

  'Would you? That would be really kind. I don't think Gérard's car will be going far.'

  A loud chugging engine and a whiff of diesel signalled the arrival of the tractor to pull the car out of the ditch. A young man jumped out and strode purposefully towards us. I did a double take, turned to Julien and then back to the newcomer. I took in the same wavy, chestnut hair, hazel eyes and slight look of Channing Tatum. Hmm, things were really starting to look up. Julien noticed me looking from him to his brother and back again.

  'Yes, we are identical twins. Well, nearly identical. I am of course much better looking. This is my brother, Louis.'

  'Enchanté,' Louis said putting out a work-roughened hand and giving me the once-over in a way that made me ever so slightly uncomfortable again.

  I watched, fascinated, as the two brothers hitched up a cable to the back of the old Peugeot and then Julien leapt nimbly into the cab.

  'Vas-y,' shouted Louis, giving his brother the thumbs up. Slowly and carefully, they started to winch the poor old car out of the ditch. It creaked and groaned arthritically as it inched out and I could hardly bear to watch. I was sure that the newly redesigned Peugeot wouldn't make it in one piece, but despite all indications to the contrary, within minutes it was upright and back on the road.

  Julien stopped the tractor, climbed down from the cab and Gérard walked round the car to inspect the damage amid much huffing and scratching of his head.

  'C'est foutu,' he announced sadly.

  I looked to Julien for a translation. 'He said it's fucked.'

  I resisted the urge to smile at his use of an Anglo-Saxon expletive, but looking at the damage to the car, I had to agree he had a point.

  'You speak, er, good English,' I commented.

  'No, I swear good. My English is actually quite shit. Me and Louis worked in Ashford in Kent for a while but it's the trou du cul of England so I came back.'

  Trou du cul? I guessed it wasn't a compliment.

  'Right. Yes, it's not a great place really,' I replied, making a mental note to Google Translate trou du cul as soon as I could fire up my laptop.

  'OK, are you ready?'

  'Yes,' I replied. 'Oh, wait a minute. My suitcase.'

  Julien retrieved it from the back of the car and then put it in the cab of the tractor. He offered me his hand to help me to my feet and motioned for me to get in. I rated my chances of successfully climbing onto the tractor in heels as somewhere between nil and not a chance and in any case, my precious Louboutins were now ruined beyond any hope of repair. 'Oh well, new life, new footwear, I suppose.' It was clear that killer heels would be completely impractical in rural France. I bent down and removed them, planted a kiss on each toe and with all my strength, hurled them into the undergrowth. They might make a nice home for a mouse or something. Brushing my hands together, I hitched up my skirt and with a helping hand from Julien and a push from behind from Louis (though I did wonder if he really needed to touch my bum), I scrambled into the tractor, a knot of childish excitement in my stomach. I'd never been in a tractor before.

  'It is not very comfortable,' said Julien, 'and you must hold on tight.' I looked for something to hang on to. 'Non, you must hold on to me,' he smiled.

  Oh well, if you say
so I thought, wrapping my arms around his muscular chest and feeling the warmth of his back pressed into my breasts. I was sure I could feel his heart beating a little faster than was normal and I smiled to myself. There had definitely been a frisson of something between us.

  We bumped along in the tractor, every rut in the road making me more aware of the hard muscles of Julien's body pressed up against me, separated only by my filmy blouse and his work shirt. I wondered how long it would take to get to Les Tuileries, secretly hoping that it would be a while. As we continued along the road for several miles, I had a panoramic view of the countryside from my vantage point in the cab. It stretched on endlessly but was worryingly devoid of any people. Where on earth were they all? I was just starting to wonder if I had picked the only part of France where cows outnumbered humans three to one when the tractor turned sharply up a hill.

  'This is the road to your new home,' smiled Julien, a broad grin spreading across his face. 'That is our farm.' He pointed to a crop of buildings spread across the lower slopes.