Page 30 of The Magic of Provence (A Year in France #3)

The days were growing longer and warmer as summer officially grew closer.

The amount of time each day that Jeannie Gilchrist was spending with Gordon was also growing longer. At first she’d stayed in the old barn with him, talking to him or simply sitting in the sunshine outside in silence. Patchy memories, or at least parts of them, were slowly returning.

‘Do you remember working on the fishing boats? How cold it could be? Your hands would feel like blocks of ice when you got home.’

‘I remember a fire in a house and how much my hands would hurt as they warmed up. Is that why I feel the way I do when I walk past the poissonnerie ? Seeing – and smelling – all those fish makes my head spin so much I can’t think. I try to not go near them.’

She cooked him meals. The kind of meals she’d made for him when they were first married.

‘Remember stovies? And your favourite leftover meat to go in them?’

Jeannie had made the corned beef herself, at Ellie’s house, cooking the meat in a brine of vinegar and pepper, brown sugar, bay leaves and mustard.

She’d served the favourite family meal of corned beef with hot mustard sauce, cabbage and roasted potatoes and carrots to Ellie and Julien, Laura and Noah, making sure she had enough leftovers to chop up and use to make the classic Scottish dish of stovies.

She’d made oatcakes, as well, to go with it.

Oh… the look on Gordon’s face when he tasted it!

He remembered. Of course he did. Taste would have to be able to evoke memories in the same way a scent could.

What else could she make him? Her famous cottage pie?

The special Sunday dinner of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with cauliflower cheese and the garlic potatoes that you could make so crispy by parboiling and then rolling them in semolina before putting them in the roasting pan?

Perhaps she wanted to cook everything for him. Because feeding someone was the first and easiest way to nurture them.

She took the sketches she’d found in the attic in her Oban cottage and he traced that ruined building with his finger and then closed his eyes and was silent for so long she thought he’d fallen asleep. She jumped when he started speaking.

‘It was a grey day but that only made the moors more beautiful. I wanted to fix that little stone cottage and live in it in the hills forever. With you…’

She watched him work on a large painting as he began to feel better.

And then sketching on tiny cards with a touch of colour from water paints, a simple bunch of daisies on one, poppies on another and lavender on a third.

There was a carefully written message inside each card, for each one of his daughters.

Jeannie had been carrying them in her handbag ever since, waiting for the right moment to give her girls something she knew would be heart wrenching.

Sometimes, now, she and Gordon went out somewhere, into nearby villages and up into the mountains to walk in the forests.

She took him to the hospital, too, for his outpatient appointments that were monitoring his general health and his reaction to the anti-seizure drugs he was now taking.

There were appointments with therapists who had been provided to help him through the traumatic process of trying to sort the tangle of what he knew to be reality and what he had assumed to be nightmares.

He was learning to catch wisps of confusion and, with Jeannie’s help, to find out if they, too, were parts of his missing life.

He had a passport now. A birth date. He knew the names of his parents and that he’d spent his earliest years in the town he’d instinctively gone back to. He’d recognised the brother he’d forgotten he had from the old photograph Ellie had found hidden in the book.

‘I’m starting to feel like a real person,’ he told Jeannie. ‘When I’ve always only felt like a ghost. This would never have happened without you, darlin’.’

Ohh …

It had taken a long time for Gordon to start smiling much at all but this smile – this was the one that had woken something that had been very deeply buried to try and protect it from pain.

Perhaps it was the endearment it came with.

Or the look in the dark brown eyes of the quintessential Scottish Highland warrior who had been her first true love.

Her only true love.

That was the place that this smile had touched.

Her soul.

She could see the man she’d married so clearly again now.

Her Gordie.

She’d wanted, so much, to kiss him. More than that. She’d wanted to see if his body would recognise hers and remember the familiar rituals they’d created in their lovemaking. That would happen, she realised in that moment.

But not yet.

She could see him coming closer but he still wasn’t within that kind of touching distance – because he wasn’t ready?

Rejection could only damage what was happening between them, so Jeannie wasn’t going to be the one to make the first move or to try and encourage Gordon to make it.

This was a journey that couldn’t be rushed, and it was well past time that Jeannie went back home to Oban and back to her work as a practice nurse in the local medical centre.

* * *

‘I can’t afford to lose my job,’ she told Ellie and Fi, a day or two later.

She was sitting on the low stone wall that was part of the terracing of La Maisonette’s sloping garden, with Bonnie in her arms. ‘They’ve been very accommodating, giving me extra, unpaid, leave but I’ve got to get back.

Goodness knows the kind of mess my garden is in after nearly two months of total neglect. ’

Ellie was knocking the caked sand off the surface of one of the mosaic paving stones she and Fi had made this week.

‘You don’t really want to go back though, do you, Mam?’

Jeannie sighed. ‘I do and I don’t. I miss my wee house. I miss my job. But… if I go back…’ She paused for a long moment. ‘I’ll miss Gordon,’ she admitted. ‘It was so strange at first and I was all over the place but…’

Fi stopped the job she was doing, using a scrubbing brush and water to clean a stone that had already had the sand knocked off onto the plastic sheet so it could be used again.

‘You still love him, don’t you?’

‘Aye… I don’t think I ever stopped.’ Jeannie blinked away tears, focussing on the pattern on the stone Fi was cleaning as she tried to keep control.

There was a flowerpot outlined with the thin edges of dark stones and filled with the round surfaces of paler stones.

Three stalks were coming out of the pot and there were five small daisy-like flowers over the top of the stalks.

It was pretty enough to distract her and dry up any tears.

‘That’s so bonny,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy it myself, if you’ll let me, and take it home to my wee garden. Except it would be far too heavy for my luggage. And aren’t you working to get enough ready for the markets?’

‘I’m still thinking about whether I want to commit to going to markets,’ Ellie said. ‘If I did, it would just be for the evening summer markets in Vence, I think – like the one where I first saw Dad.’

‘When do they start?’ Fi asked.

‘Next month sometime. And they finish towards the end of August, so it’s only a few weeks.’

‘Maybe you could share Dad’s stall,’ Fi suggested.

It made Jeannie smile, how natural it sounded to hear them talking about their father when, for so much of their childhood, any reference to him was carefully avoided.

It made her proud how willing they seemed to be to forgive him and let him back into their lives.

It was harder for Laura, she knew that. She’d seen more during the bad times.

Heard more and, more importantly, felt more.

Her oldest girl had tried to help mother her younger sisters.

She’d even tried to mother Jeannie at times.

She’d lost too much of her own childhood, so she had a lot more to forgive, but she was trying.

The love was still there, Jeannie was sure of it, but it needed more time for trust to allow it to resurface.

Bonnie was falling asleep in her arms, which made her feel heavier, somehow. Jeannie shifted her slightly, letting her knees take some of the weight.

‘I’m sure he’d be delighted to share his market stall,’ she said, ‘…if he’s still here.’

Ellie looked startled. ‘What do you mean? Where’s he going?’

‘Nowhere,’ Jeannie added hurriedly. ‘Unless he wants to. It’s just that I have to go home and it occurred to me that he might like to come and visit for a wee while.

Being in Scotland again, where he could see the places in Glasgow where he grew up and went to school and our house in Oban where we were together as a family…

well, it might help to bring back memories.

The good memories instead of all those terrible nightmares.

’ She swallowed hard. ‘He told me he was sure he’d killed me in one of those dreams. He knew he’d tried to hurt me and that there was blood and that he had to run – as far and as fast as he could – because he couldn’t bear to look at me, and he’s been fighting that fear and the panic ever since.

That’s why he thought I was a ghost when he saw me.

Why it was such a shock that he ended up having that terrible seizure. ’

Ellie and Fi were staring at her.

‘You’re going to take him home?’ Fi whispered. ‘To live with you? You’d like to go back to your marriage?’

If Jeannie didn’t have the baby in her arms she would have reached to hug Fiona.

She could see that this daughter of hers was still struggling.

Oh, God… was she still blaming herself for being subjected to that horrific sexual assault?

Or for defending herself physically when she was afraid it might happen again?

That she’d tried to hurt someone, like her father had?

‘Aye,’ she said quietly, holding Fi’s gaze.

‘Everyone deserves a second chance, don’t they, hinny?

And everyone is worthy of being loved, but I think it’s hard to accept that love when you can’t forgive yourself.

To not forgive yourself for something that’s not even your fault would be too sad, so if there’s something I can do to stop that happening to someone I love, I have to try and do it. Don’t I?’

‘Oh, Mam… of course you do.’

Both Fi and Ellie scrambled to their feet. They sat on either side of Jeannie, putting their arms around her and their heads on her shoulders, the way they’d done when they were just wee bairns.

‘We love you,’ Ellie said.

‘ So much,’ Fi added.

Jeannie could feel that love. So strong, and it was going in both directions. Not just between herself and her grown-up daughters but with the granddaughter she was holding in her arms.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ Fi whispered. ‘We’ll get there. All of us.’

Jeannie looked down at Bonnie’s face, with that delicious expression of peacefulness that babies had when they were asleep. The kind of peace that could only come from absolute trust and unconditional love.

‘Aye,’ she said quietly. ‘I think we will.’

* * *

She gave Fi her card from Gordon in a private moment as Ellie wound Bonnie into her wrap to carry her home. She gave Ellie hers as soon as she was back in her own home, and then she went to give Laura hers because she wanted all her girls to have them at the same time.

She knew what they said on the back.

Laura – my first bairn. Today, I remembered you waiting at the door to give me a kiss when I came home from work. I love you so much, Lulu.

Dada

My Fiona – you look so much like your mam did when I fell in love with her, but she tells me you’re the most like me on the inside. You’re the quiet one. The thinker. The peacemaker. I know how deeply you will feel things. I love you.

Dada

Ellie – you see things in a way no one else can, but you can show them what you see through your art.

It’s a gift. Treasure it. I am so proud of you.

How can I thank you enough for what you saw in my art, because that has led to this.

I have a family again. I owe you my heart and all the love inside that I can give you.

Dada