Page 12 of A French Inheritance
Looking around, she remembered several magical childhood Christmases spent here, the smell of the greenery – holly, mistletoe and pine Giselle had placed everywhere – filling the cottage with its outdoor scent. They didn’t come every year for Christmas, but summer holidays here were the highlight of Briony’s school years until she finished college when the long summer holidays became a distant memory.
The dining room was smaller and had only one set of double French doors. The polished round table was big enough to sit ten around – more when the extension was slotted into the middle. The heavy wooden buffet contained all the crockery, including the fragile Limoges dinner service with its fine gold decoration that Giselle used at Christmas and on special days. Sets of delicate wine and champagne glasses were neatly stacked on the shelves.
The floor in both rooms was tiled with traditional red hexagonal terracotta tommetes and covered with several scatter rugs. One of Briony’s happiest memories was seeing the table extended and loaded with food and wine the last time she’d been here in the cottage. She and Jeannie had come over for several days to help celebrate Giselle’s eighty-second birthday. The cottage had been buzzing that weekend. So many people dropping in with presents, cards, champagne and flowers. Jeannie had decided that a full-on party would be too much for Giselle and had invited people for lunch aperitifs on the Saturday. For two hours, there was never less than twenty people out on the terrace as friends came and went.
It was that weekend the decision had been made for Giselle to move to England to live with Jeannie. A sudden thought struck Briony. Why hadn’t Jeannie simply moved to France to look after her? Surely if Jeannie had always longed to live here, that would have suited them both better.
Returning to the hallway, Briony stopped to look at the painting hanging by the hall stand. Reputedly painted by Great-granny Marie-Louise, it was a scene of one of the cobbled streets in the perched village of Saint-Paul de Vence and perfectly captured the beauty of the ancient buildings. It was a painting Briony had always loved and one she’d thought about asking Jeannie if she could have as a memento of Granny Giselle. The thought that it was now hers made her smile.
Climbing the stairs to the first floor, Briony trailed her hand along the smooth wood of the banister, smiling as she remembered secretly sliding down it numerous times as a child when Giselle was occupied in the kitchen or out in the garden with the chickens.
When she’d mentioned her childish pleasure to Marcus on the one and only time he’d come with her to France, he’d looked at her in disdain. ‘That was the highlight of your holidays? Sliding unseen down a wooden banister in an old cottage.’ Useless to protest she’d been six or seven years old at the time and it had been innocent fun.
That whole visit with Marcus had been a disaster as he hadn’t bothered to hide his irritation with the place being inland. He wanted to be down where the action was happening, morning, noon and night. Especially night. A fifteen-minute drive to the coast was apparently unacceptable. She’d been so hurt by his attitude on that visit, but stupidly she’d pushed aside the doubts that were starting to niggle and married him two months later.
At the top of the stairs, she stood for a moment looking along the corridor. Four good-sized bedrooms and a bathroom were on this floor. Giselle’s old room was the largest, with its en suite bathroom, and Briony decided to leave it for another day. Today she couldn’t cope with the sadness that going in there she knew would overwhelm her. Jeannie was in the adjoining bedroom and her own bedroom was at the other end of the house with the main bathroom and the remaining bedroom.
Briony smothered a sigh and made for her own room. Maybe wandering around the cottage hadn’t been such a good idea. Throwing up bad memories of Marcus was not helping her to sort out her thoughts.
Dropping down onto the bed, she lay there staring at the ceiling. The guilty feelings she’d been trying to suppress since breakfast immediately flew into her mind. She knew she didn’t deserve to inherit the cottage. She’d been so immersed in her marriage problems during the last year of Giselle’s life, she hadn’t visited as often as she wanted to. Once she and Marcus had separated, it had become easier, but even then she’d often phoned, or made a Zoom call, rather than drive the twenty minutes to Jeannie’s, citing being busy at work. She knew both Giselle and Jeannie were upset and sad for her that the marriage hadn’t worked out, even though she now realised neither of them had liked Marcus. They tolerated him because he was her choice and they wanted to be supportive. But she was realising in hindsight how Marcus had tried to separate her from the people she truly loved and the good things she had in her life long before she met him.
How many times during her life had she fantasied about living in France? Living in this very cottage? And now it was possible to do just that, she was fighting against it, saying it wasn’t feasible. That her life was in England. But that wasn’t strictly true currently, was it? No job. No permanent home.
As for Jeannie wanting to move to France and begin a new life, how could she deny her mother the chance to do something she clearly longed to do? Why was she, Briony, fighting it? Why didn’t she suggest they came together? It would be a new beginning for the two of them.
But she needed a job. It was just over a week now since the redundancy and four or five days since she’d sent out an ‘I’m unexpectedly available’ letter to her contacts. And heard zilch back from any of them.
Briony sat up and reached for her laptop on the bedside table. Checking the job sites and the websites of some auction houses couldn’t do any harm and might actually turn up an opportunity.
Half an hour later, Briony closed down the laptop and leant back against the bed headrest. Nothing. Maybe it was time for a career change? As much as she’d loved her job, there had to be something else she could do. So many people worked remotely these days. Could she live in France and work for a UK company? Could she set up her own business? Become an entrepreneur? Again the question was, doing what? Living in France, her French would need improving. Granny Giselle had always been scolding her for not using the language she had tried to teach her all through her childhood. Briony gave a rueful sigh. If only she’d listened and tried harder with the language during those long summer holidays that she’d loved spending in the cottage with Granny Giselle.
She loved Owls Nest. Always had, and the idea of actually living here full-time was more appealing to her than Jeannie would ever realise.
As a dream it was irresistible. As a life plan, though, it would take a lot of thought and time to work through all the obstacles in the way of trying to put it into action, if she decided she wanted to follow her grandmother’s wishes.
* * *
Jeannie was still working in the garden when Briony went downstairs an hour later. ‘I’ll give you a hand, shall I?’ Briony said, seizing the pair of shears that Jeannie had temporarily abandoned and started to prune the overgrown oleander bush near the path.
‘Thanks, I can’t find the hedge trimmer, so I’m going to see if the strimmer works on the bottom hedge.’
To Briony’s inward relief, with both of them concentrating on what they were doing, plus the noise of the strimmer, there was no chance of conversation between the two of them.
Once the oleander bush was cut back, Briony wandered happily down through the garden towards the oak tree with its hollowed-out hole in the trunk, cutting back various plants as she walked. Giselle had always maintained working in the garden was not only great exercise but also a great stress reliever, better than any medicine. This afternoon, Briony could agree with that.
Cutting through the ivy that was covering the trunk of the oak and pulling it away, Briony unexpectedly recalled Giselle’s voice telling a teenage Briony, ‘And hugging a tree for five moments is unbelievably therapeutic. You should try it when exams or life itself is stressing you out.’
Being a typical teenager, Briony had just smiled at her grandmother and teased her about being an old hippy. It wasn’t until after her marriage to Marcus that she’d actually heeded Giselle’s words and hugged a tree in desperation. Giselle had been right. It was therapeutic. Since then, whenever she felt stressed, she looked for a tree to hug. Marcus had seen her once hugging an ancient oak and had been remorselessly sarcastic about it. The thought of the words he’d flung at her still made her flinch whenever she remembered them, but it hadn’t stopped her hugging a tree whenever the opportunity arose. Like now. Impetuously Briony flung her arms around the trunk of the oak tree she’s just torn the ivy away from and hugged it tightly. Closing her eyes, she swore to herself that now Marcus was out of her life, his influence over her was also a thing of the past.
* * *
Sitting together on the terrace, Briony and Jeannie ate a light supper of ham with a green salad and some sliced baguette, washed down with a glass of red wine. Briony was conscious they were still both choosing their words and subject matter carefully as they spoke to each other. She wasn’t yet ready to discuss her inheritance and she was grateful that Jeannie was clearly trying to give her time to think.
Jeannie started to stand up just as her mobile on the table pinged with a text message. She picked it up, read the message, smiled and put the phone in her pocket before starting to clear the table. ‘I’m going to walk to the lake. Do you want to come?’
‘No thanks, I’m going to have an early night,’ Briony said, wondering who the text message was from while inwardly acknowledging it wasn’t any of her business. ‘Enjoy your walk. I’ll finish clearing this and tidy the kitchen and I’ll see you in the morning.’ She knew her mother would realise that she was avoiding talking to her, but until she knew in her own mind exactly what she was going to do she didn’t want Jeannie, whether intentionally or not, putting any pressure on her to decide one way or the other.
As she set off for the lake, Jeannie pulled her mobile out of her pocket and re-read the text message.
