Bordeaux Housewives

Very quick and quiet, the wedding was. Timothy wanted to do some work on her before he introduced her to his friends. And when he did finally get around to it, he introduced her as Daphne. It was as simple as that. ‘This is my wife, Daphne. Mrs Daphne Duff Fielding.’

He never asked her if she minded the new name, and in a way she didn’t. She was young and rootless – and dazzled by the attention of her rich, worldly, older husband. She would have done anything to please him.

For the first year or two of their marriage, the knotty task of ridding Dawn Bigg of any embarrassing traces of Dawn Biggness became Timothy Duff Fielding’s favourite project. Even more fun than wine-tasting. He changed her name, of course, and the way she spoke. He changed the way she dressed and sat and waved and blinked; the way she nodded and chewed, and the way she held her knife. Until suddenly, almost immediately after his son was born, he grew tired of it all. However much she changed for him, and she did, it seemed that something about her would never be quite right. ‘You can take the girl out of Croydon,’ he would sigh to his older sister, ‘but you can’t take the Croydon out of a girl.’ Today, ten years on, there is really nothing left of the Croydon Dawn he met and married. There is nothing much left of anyone at all.

Daffy had never travelled alone before. But two days after that first conversation, she took the plane ticket her husband handed her and flew to Bordeaux. She took a taxi, just as he instructed, from Bordeaux airport to Lady Emma Rankin’s château, nearly an hour away. Timothy’s secretary, Lucy (Lovely Lucy), had printed out David and Emma Rankins’ address on a sheet of bank-headed paper, and Daffy handed the paper to the driver with a helpless smile, and the words, ‘pardon, s’il vous plaît…’ They drove the journey in silence.

Fortunately for Daffy, Lady Emma Rankin, caught on an empty day, turned out to be as helpful as Timothy had promised. She provided Daffy with delicious thick black coffee, in her outrageously elegant drawing room, and a large glass of the local pineau, which Daffy glugged back eagerly though it was still only eleven o’clock. She felt intimidated by Emma’s grace and watchfulness. She had never seen anyone so seamless, so exquisite, so poised, so perfectly charming. Few people ever have.

Meanwhile, Emma watched, as is her wont, and smiled, and confided, and decided on one of her whims to tell Daffy about the Hotel Marronnier, which had been for sale in the local village for so long.

‘Golly-gosh,’ said Daffy, eyes watering from the pineau, nose and throat threatening to explode into alcoholic flames. ‘You mean run a hotel?…Don’t know. Sounds pretty diffif—diciff—Pretty difficult.’ (After half a glass she had trouble getting her tongue round the word.) ‘I’m not sure what Timothy would say.’ She giggled. ‘Seeing as how I pan’t even seak French.’

Emma smiled again, a lovely smile that wrinkled her nose. ‘Sweetheart, you can always learn French,’ she said. ‘And don’t you think it would be fun for us to be neighbours?’

‘I…Fun?’

‘Intelligent, interesting, unusual women like you, Daffy Duff Fielding, are a rare find in this neighbourhood. We need people like you to come and liven things up for us.’

Daffy wasn’t sure what to say to that. How could someone like Emma Rankin possibly think it would be ‘fun’ to have someone like her as a neighbour? How could anyone? Daffy lifted her empty coffee cup and held it to her mouth for an absurd length of time while she tried to collect herself. Nobody, except possibly her son James, had ever said anything so lovely to her. Never. Behind the coffee cup, her lips were trembling.

Emma looked on, curious and not entirely unmoved. She didn’t think she’d ever met a woman with so little self-esteem. It was odd, she thought. Manifestly, Daffy was neither intelligent nor very interesting. Of course not. Emma had just said that because that’s what she said. It’s what she always said to everyone, because they liked it. Nevertheless, without those awful Bond Street lady-clothes, and the helmet of tidy dyed-blonde hair, and the immaculate mask of ageing, orangebased make-up, Emma could clearly see that Daffy was at least a lovely-looking woman. Which was half the battle.

Emma smiled, quite kindly for Emma, for whom kindness has never been a priority.

‘Wait there, Daffy,’ she said, patting her knee just like Timothy did. ‘I’m going to call the Marronnier owners, and we’re going to go over and tour the place right now. This minute! And you’re going to fall in love with the place. I know you will.’

And sure enough that’s just what Daffy did. It was love at first sight. It was the first time Daffy ever experienced love so passionate, except with James, her son, who’d been so harshly taken from her.

At the end of the tour she thanked Emma Rankin and Monsieur Paul, the bar owner. She thanked them profusely, with tears of gratitude in her lonely, love-starved eyes. Then she took a taxi from Montmaur village directly to the airport and returned home.

Two months have passed. Timothy, without discussing it with his wife, sent a private consultant to look over the Hotel Marronnier, a consultant who specialises in finding property abroad for rich men’s wives, and who is, as Timothy would put it, ‘fully cognizant’ of all those subtle requirements such a property search entails. He was sent a report, very thorough, which told him exactly what he needed to know: namely that for a relatively small investment Hotel Marronnier could be made to operate at a perfectly supportable loss for many years to come: a loss which Timothy was more than willing to absorb, having calculated that running a small, inefficient hotel/bar in the Charente Maritime would cost a great deal less than running a wife in London. For a very rich man like Timothy, buying her the Hotel Marronnier was a cheap way to get rid of a wife who, at only twenty-nine, was already past her sell-by date.

So he bought the place. Secretly. He has agreed to a short weekend in France and is pretending to his wife that he has only come to window-shop. In fact the keys to the property were FedExed to him last week. He looks forward to the expression on her face when he finally hands them to her. She’ll be happy, he thinks. Which is nice. A nice bonus. It’s the closest to feeling affection that Timothy will ever get.

A fortnight ago, when they were discussing the French weekend, he told Daffy to ask Emma Rankin to invite them both to dinner on the Saturday night.

Daffy managed it, or thought she did, though the embarrassment nearly killed her. She left a message on Emma’s answering service, the first third of which went like this:

‘Oh, hello. Emma. It’s Daffy. Daffy Fielding. Sorry. You probably don’t remember me. I’m Timothy’s wife. Timothy Duff Fielding. Not that you’ve met Timothy. But I believe Timothy works with your brother-in-law Rory, as he’s called. At the bank. And also I think David, your husband, is also familiar to him, indirectly. As I think I explained when you were kind enough to meet me at your lovely, beautiful, amazing, gorgeous château. Anyway. Sorry. You must be so busy…What am I trying to say? My husband was wondering…That is he, Timothy, or rather WE – Timothy and me. I. Timothy and me. Myself. Timothy and myself are both coming out next weekend to have a look at the Hotel Marronnier. Which I simply loved. Absolutely loved it. And you were so kind and took the time to show me round it…Well I was wondering if there was any chance…’

It was at about this point that Emma’s attention began to wander. She noticed her trusty housekeeper, Mathilde, had arranged the drawing-room sunflowers in the wrong-coloured vase, and felt a stab of great irritation, half with Mathilde, half with the drivelling idiot on her answer machine. She pressed delete without ever discovering what Daffy had been wondering about, and without the slightest interest in ever finding out.

DAFFY’S LITTLE PROJECT (#ulink_f7ce5ad0-ea23-57f3-876e-241da54f25a5)

It is Saturday morning, on the day that Daffy has assured Timothy that Lady Emma Rankin is expecting them to dinner. Daffy and Timothy are in France, at last. They’re in a hire car, on the wide, empty French motorway, speeding towards a new life. Her new life. What Timothy is still calling her ‘little project’. And she likes that. It makes the whole enterprise seem much less intimidating. Plus it makes Timothy sound affectionate, she thinks, and she always yearns for that.

She feels hungry and headachy and sick with nerves. She’s been so excited about this trip she’s been unable to eat properly all week. Now she’s map-reading, or struggling to map read, and she’s just missed their exit, again. Beside her, silently, both hands on the steering wheel, Timothy waits for her to correct her mistake.

His mouth is still neatly positioned for that raspberry, his back is nice and straight – and he’s not shouted at her. They’ve missed the exit three times now, and he’s not even raised his voice. He hasn’t needed to. His cold silence is making her panic quite efficiently enough. She’s beginning to pant. She’s on the point, he suspects, of bursting into tears.

‘Stop flapping, Daphne,’ he says now, in that low, clipped monotone he reserves for wives and other non-attractive underlings. ‘I said stop flapping. Now, please. And stop that silly breathing…Right. Fine. Now, look at the map.’

‘Please, Timothy. Please… Can’t we just stop and then you can look. I can’t – I just –’

‘Not on a motorway, Daphne, no. It’s against the law.’

‘I mean in a lay-by or something. Please. I just – We’re going so fast, and I’m not even sure – Which way are we going? Up or down?’

‘We’re heading north, Daphne. On the motorway. Towards Paris. Can you find Paris on the map?’

‘I think I’m looking on the wrong – Is that a motorway? Are the motorways blue or red?’

‘I can’t look at the map, Daphne. I’m driving. Now – No, don’t look at me. Calm down and look at the map.’

‘Oh God…’

‘It’s really not that difficult. We’re heading north, towards Nantes. Can you see Nantes?’

‘…No! No I can’t see bloody Nantes. If I could see bloody Nantes –’

‘There’s absolutely no need to swear, Daphne. I told you to calm down. Calm down and look at the map. Look at it.’ He glances at her. Her chin is trembling. One more time, he thinks. One more for luck. ‘Look at it,’ he orders.

‘But I…CAN’T.’ And sure enough, Daffy bursts into tears.

He takes the map from her lap and, with one eye on the road, leaves her to weep in soggy silence while he works out the route. It is very easy; only fifteen minutes off the motorway and then all in a single straight line. As they turn into the village square, Daffy at last opens her eyes and looks about her.

‘Oh!’ she says, ‘here we are! Here we are, Timothy! Stop! Look – there’s the bar, there! HOTEL MARRONNIER. See it? Next to the bouchanlerie –’

‘The what?’

She giggles. ‘Next to the bouchan—bougan—bouchanrie.’

‘Boulangerie, I think you mean. I thought you’d been teaching yourself French?’

Daphne went to Waterstones and bought some French-in-a-Fortnight tapes the very evening she flew back from Bordeaux. But what with one thing and another – passing over all those laundry bags – she hasn’t yet had a chance even to break open the plastic wrapping.

‘Oh Timothy,’ she says, eyes watering with excitement. ‘See – the teeny-weeny tables on the terrace? Those gorgeous trees – and the little shutters, and the church just there…And look! There’s even a little market. Emma Rankin said there was a little market. Twice a week. And on Sundays there’s a little stall selling oysters, can you believe it? In London we’d have to go all the way up to Conran’s, wouldn’t we? If you wanted fresh oysters. Oh, Timothy, love. Isn’t it just the most beautiful place in the world?’

‘Didn’t you say you’d bought some of those teach-yourself-French tapes?’

‘Hm? Oh yes, I did. Look, Timothy. Please look! There’s a Frenchman with a loaf of bread! See? And look! Look at the old church! Isn’t it gorgeous?’

‘Well, it’s no good simply having the tapes, Daphne. You’ve got to listen to them. How can you possibly expect me to buy you a place in France if you can’t even say boulangerie?’

She looks at him. Drags her eyes away from the church and the beautiful old bell tower above it, just now striking one o’clock. She looks at her husband, at his moist, pursed lips and the sour, hard face he pulls when he’s telling her off. ‘Boulangerie,’ she says simply, sweetly, and then smiles. She hadn’t meant it to sound rude.

Timothy looks away, his dislike for her at that small moment so intense he can’t trust himself to speak.