Page 41 of A French Inheritance

Late on Easter Sunday night, Adam and Lucy had looked up at the cloudless sky and gone to bed fearing the worse.

Easter Monday and they were both up early and Adam groaned as he looked out of the window.

‘It’s not a heavy frost, but there’s definitely been one.

Come on, let’s get down to the vines and see what the damage is. ’

Walking down through the rows of vines in the south-facing field, Adam began to breathe a little easier.

Every row appeared to be virtually untouched by the frost. Until the last two rows at the bottom of the slope.

Lucy took out her phone to film the damage on those rows, comparing it to the others that had escaped the damaging frost for her next video.

Bruno was already there assessing the damage and muttering.

‘We seem to have got off lightly,’ Lucy said. ‘Have you heard how other vineyards have fared?’ She knew that Bruno had an active network of winemakers both in the south and further upcountry.

‘We’ve been lucky,’ Bruno said. ‘The truly hard frost reached as far down as the Languedoc department.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘We wait and we watch for secondary budding on these two rows and hope for a good summer and they catch up with the rest.’

‘What about the frosted shoots and leaves?’

‘They’ll turn brown in the sun and drop off eventually,’ Bruno answered.

‘We’d better go and check the avocados,’ Adam said. ‘You want to come up to the farm for breakfast in about half an hour?’

‘Thanks. I’ll see you then.’ And Bruno turned his attention back to the vines.

Adam and Lucy walked quickly across to the avocado plants and both heaved sighs of relief as they moved between the rows and saw they too had thankfully survived the frost.

‘I’ll add a short video of these onto the vine one, showing how well the avocados have survived,’ Lucy said.

* * *

Briony woke early on Easter Monday and lay in bed half listening to the dawn chorus, cocooned with her own thoughts under the duvet.

Yesterday morning with Elliot before and after he’d hugged the tree was uppermost in her mind.

Had she done the right thing in not hugging him?

She pushed her doubts away and consoled herself with the thought that Elliot actually asking her for a hug was a sign that their friendship was becoming stronger.

As the birds’ chorus became quieter Briony got up and made for the bathroom. After breakfast, she was going to do some research on her laptop and then start to formulate a proper plan for setting up the brocante.

Jeannie was already downstairs with the coffee set up and bread sliced ready for the toaster.

Sitting out on the terrace after breakfast, Briony opened her laptop. ‘I’m going to see if I can find out who this EM is; she was clearly important to Great-granny. Not got a lot of information to go on but…’ she shrugged. ‘It’s worth a try.’

Briony typed the name Elsa plus several of the names Marie-Louise had mentioned in her journal. But Google kept showing ‘no results’. After half a dozen failed attempts, Briony gave a frustrated sigh.

‘No luck?’ Jeannie said.

Briony shook her head. Her hands hovered over the keyboard trying to remember how Yann had described the woman. As they came back to her she typed them in.

Elsa + 20th century celebrity + American + arranged parties + French Riviera + the nineteen thirties.

Anticipating the ‘no results’ answer again, she pressed enter for one last try.

But a second later she had a result. There was a name and photos of a woman called Elsa Maxwell, with several links to information about her on the screen. Briony sat back and looked at the pictures. Was this her great-granny Marie-Louise’s friend Elsa?

When she clicked on one of the links and read that Elsa Maxwell had lived with a friend in a small Provencal farmhouse in the village of Auribeau-sur-Siagne in the countryside behind Cannes, Briony felt her excitement rising.

That village was just a kilometre or two away.

This had to be the woman with the initials EM that Marie-Louise had been friends with.

Even if this unprepossessing woman looked nothing like the image of her Briony had visualised in her mind.

Most sites she clicked on the links to, described Elsa Maxwell as an ‘American gossip columnist, author, radio personality and a professional hostess famed for lavish parties for royalty and high-society figures of the time’.

‘Hostess with the mostess’ was a frequent description.

Together with the much-used old-fashioned phrase ‘closet lesbian’.

So was that the reason Albert had been so adamant that Elsa wasn’t a respectable woman and Marie-Louise was not to be seen with her?

Attitudes amongst the people he knew and lived amongst were so different in those days.

Elsa might mix with, and be accepted by, the wealthy, royalty and well-known figures of the twentieth century, but Albert, from all accounts, was a parochial product of the nineteenth century and would have found it hard to accept the new morales of a world changed by the Great War.

Briony saved the original page with all its links as Jeannie put a cup of coffee in front of her. ‘Mum, I think I’ve found our mysterious EM,’ and she pushed the laptop across to Jeannie.

After Jeannie had looked at several of the links, she agreed with Briony. ‘Poor Marie-Louise.’

Briony nodded. ‘At least we know now why Great-granddad Albert was so anti her friendship with Elsa, but we still do not know why Great-granny stopped painting. And that’s one mystery I don’t think we’ll ever solve.’

Briony closed the page down and opened a new file.

‘Right. Time to start planning my new business. Which basically involves setting the unit up with some stock, creating a stock list, doing an advert, painting the parrot cage, planting up the handcart, deciding on a name and finding a signwriter. All in just a few weeks.’

‘Yann is taking me out for dinner this evening. He’s booked a table at the Auberge in Cannes. Honestly I seem to have done nothing but eat since I got back, but I’m all yours for the day,’ Jeannie said.

‘I was hoping you would say that. Fancy working up at the unit with me today? I know it’s a holiday, but I also know time from now until the day I open will fly past. We can put up the trestle tables from the garage and see where they fit best. Need to find some cloths to cover them.

And then maybe start going through the boxes I took up from the garage and decide what to sell, what to keep and what to throw. ’

* * *

The day passed in a flash as, between the two of them, they decided on the best position for tables, where the parrot cage would go when ready and lamented the lack of shelves.

They opened several boxes and made a note of the items they were going to put on display, and Briony made a stock list spreadsheet on her laptop.

One of the boxes contained some vintage tablecloths that would cover the trestle tables beautifully.

Briony’s phone pinged with a text message from Elliot as they were starting to wind up and get ready to go back to the cottage.

Fancy a small picnic down by the lake at eight o’clock?

Briony immediately text back.

Yes please. Can I bring anything?

Just yourself and Meg.

‘You’re not the only one with a date tonight,’ Briony said, turning to smile at Jeannie. ‘I’m having a picnic with Elliot.’

* * *

Jeannie and Yann had left for their dinner date in Cannes before Briony locked the cottage doors behind her and walked with Meg down to the lake. It was a perfect late-spring evening, the temperature from the day still lingered in the air as a half-moon started to show in the sky.

Elliot was already there standing near the shoreline watching Luna swimming.

A shallow wicker basket with a cloth over the contents was on the bench and a bottle of Prosecco was half buried and chilling in the water at the edge of the lake.

He turned and smiled as soon as Meg alerted him to Briony’s arrival.

He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek before stooping to pull the bottle out of its impromptu cold place.

‘Now, where shall we have our picnic?’ he asked. ‘On the bench or shall we wander out onto the jetty?’

‘I quite fancy sitting and dangling my legs over the water, but what about the dogs if we sit on the jetty?’

‘I predict Luna will follow us and lay down on the jetty hoping for tidbits and Meg always follows her so…’ Elliot shrugged.

‘The jetty it is then,’ Briony said. ‘I’ll carry the basket while you take care of the bottle.’

A few minutes later and they were both sat at the end of the jetty, legs dangling over the edge and the picnic basket between them.

‘Am I allowed to peek in the basket?’ Briony asked.

‘In a moment,’ Elliot said as he reached in and pulled out two wine flutes, which he handed to Briony, before starting to carefully release the cork from the bottle with a satisfactory pop and then pouring them each a drink.

‘ Santé ,’ he said and Briony smiled and clicked her glass against his.

‘Before we eat, I want to thank you for yesterday. You listened and responded with such kindness. Kindness that I really appreciated.’

‘You’re not down and out still from Robyn’s unkind knockout blow then?’ Briony said quietly.

Elliot shook his head. ‘No. You helped me stand back up again. I’ve pushed the pain of that final revelation into the far corner of my mind, where I’ve buried all the other detritus of my marriage.

’ Elliot took a sip of his drink. ‘I am not going to allow Robyn to disrupt my life ever again. My working life as a vet is back on track…’ He paused and looked directly at Briony, before taking a deep breath.

‘My personal life on the other hand needs a lot of help. I really like you and I sense that you possibly like me a bit too, so will you please help sort me out?’

Briony smiled. ‘Yes, I can admit I like you too and I will be delighted to help you, but right now…’ She stopped.

‘What?’

‘Can we please eat; I’m starving. What’s in the basket?’

* * *

Half an hour later, the basket was empty. Elliot had made salmon, cucumber and mayonnaise sandwiches, there were slices of melon with Parma ham wrapped around them, and one large dish of strawberries and cream that had been shared between them – all washed down with the Prosecco.

‘That was an absolutely perfect picnic, thank you,’ Briony murmured. ‘I hereby appoint you chief picnic maker for all future picnics.’

Elliot smiled and nodded. ‘I reckon I can handle that. Right now I think it’s time we moved off the jetty and sat on the bench. It’s getting a bit cold out here on the water.’

Sitting on the bench, the two dogs at their feet, Elliot’s arm around her shoulders, Briony looked up at the moon shining in a darkening sky and gave a happy sigh.

‘I forgot to tell you earlier,’ Elliot said, breaking into her thoughts.

‘I had a phone call this afternoon from Jill, the daughter of Meg’s old owner, asking how Meg was and hoping she’d settled in well.

She would also like to accept your offer of taking Meg in to see her father before it is too late, if you’re still happy to do that. Her father is not in a good way.’

‘Oh, that’s sad. Did she say when she would like us to visit?’

‘Wednesday afternoon. I’m off then and I could come with you.’

‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Briony said, giving an involuntarily shiver.

‘Time to leave, I think,’ Elliot said. ‘The walk back will warm us up.’

Back at the cottage garden gate, Briony turned to Elliot. ‘Thank you for a lovely evening.’

‘Can I have a hug tonight?’

‘Definitely,’ Briony said, moving into his arms and holding him tight.

The kiss Elliot gave her seconds later was an unexpected welcome delight.