Page 52 of Where Do We Go From Here?
She explains about moving out during Covid, and living at Jill’s, and about falling out with her children and how she feels they have sided with their father. She even tells Manon about her suspicion that Harry is having an affair and it is Manon’s reaction to this which is perhaps the most surprising.
‘All men have affair,’ she declares, sounding ultra sure of herself. ‘Many women, too, but definitely most men. If they don’t haveaffair, they leave.’
‘Really?’ Wendy asks.
‘Really. My father has many. At least four. Ones we know…’
‘And you think most French men are like this?’
‘Everyone is like this,’ Manon says with the certainty of youth.
Wendy sips her wine as she ponders the subject for a moment. She’s wondering whether French people have more affairs than the English, or if they’re simply more honest about it.
‘You know, I don’t really think that’s true,’ Wendy says once she has gathered her thoughts. ‘Not in England, anyway. Not all men are bastards. They really aren’t.’
Manon laughs at this. ‘I don’t say they are bastard,’ she says. ‘I say they have affair. It is you who thinks this makes them bastard.’
‘Bastards,’ Wendy says, because Manon keeps asking her to correct her. ‘It’s a plural, so it takes an “S” at the end. But I don’t agree. I really don’t.’
Manon shrugs. ‘It is, I think, how you say… the nature.’
‘Human nature?’ Wendy offers.
‘Yes, this.’
The French session, predictably, does not go so well.
Wendy barely manages to ask Manon intelligible questions and understands nothing of the girl’s answers. Once or twice Manon repeats what she has said slowly enough that Wendy is able to make out the odd word here or there – just enough to understand that the girl is indeed answering her question – but even then, the bulk of whatever she’s saying remains lost in a stream of random-sounding vowels.
‘Do not worry,’ Manon tells her as she’s leaving. ‘It will get better.’
‘God,’ Wendy says. ‘I hope so!’
Only once she’s alone does the implication of Manon’s reassurance hit Wendy. ‘It will get better’ means they’ll be doingthis again, a thought which lifts her spirits to the point she finds herself almost buzzing.
For the first time in a week, she heads to Facebook.
Just had my first ever French lesson in France, she posts.The teacher says I can only get better. Not sure how to take that, haha :-)
And then she refills her glass, takes a sip, and thinks about the fact that she came here to get away from other people, to be alone and to reflect. Yet what’s truly making her happy is human connection. It’s a conundrum that for the moment she can’t resolve.
NINE
A NICE LITTLE LIFE
Wendy has a new routine, or rather two alternating routines.
Every morning, she rises, has breakfast in the glorious sunshine, and then hikes up to the radar where she snaps her daily photo.
Afterwards, she walks back home before, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, continuing as far as the bakery where she buys food for the next two days. She’s careful to make sure she orders enough to justify a delivery but not so much that she ever has to skip one. After all, it’s the delivery of these orders on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays that guarantee her French lessons.
The walking is making her feel fitter – she can sense it as she marches up the hill each day – and the French conversation sessions are definitely improving her language skills. She can negotiate most aspects of her bakery visit now without ever resorting to English.
It’s a little life – she’s aware that there’s nothing ground-breaking here – but it’s a nice life, too. It feels good, it feels healthy, and learning something new is fun. Mentally, she’s in the best place she’s known since she came here. In fact, she feelsso happy with her new routine that on some days she forgets entirely to hassle the car hire company. As they have now assured her that the period during which she is car-less will be refunded, the whole situation feels like something of a win.
She really does like young Manon. There’s something about the fact that they have to talk to each other every other day which has led to the strange situation where she feels like Manon is one of the people she knows best on the planet.
She knows that Manon’s father is also a postman, for example, and that he makes a wicked cheese soufflé and has a new girlfriend called Louise, who is way too young for him. She knows that Manon’s brother is a drug addict who favours ‘speedballs’ which are a potent mix of cocaine and heroin, and that Manon worries every time the phone rings with an unknown number that it’s a hospital phoning to tell her he’s dead. She knows that Manon’s mother died years ago (though the cause seems to be a taboo subject) and that Manon loved her deeply and misses her so much that occasionally she finds herself crying about it even now. Music-wise, Manon (surprisingly) favours retro Britpop seemingly because that’s what her mother liked to listen to, and she has revealed she has a girlfriend called Celine, who lives in Draguignan and who Manon is trying to encourage to brush her teeth more often!
