One Day in May - Catherine Alliott [52]
I’d seen the French girl, Françoise, at a distance, but knew she’d arrived later than me. Knew the night boat had given me the edge. Once I’d secured my booty I’d race back to the van to dump it, bags hanging from pushchair handles. And then it dawned. The pram. With crucial shopping basket underneath, which I’d brought in case Seffy needed a flat-out sleep – perfect. I assembled it quickly, lifted my sleeping child in, and hurtled back. Here and there I collected treasures stall holders had kindly held for me when I’d explained, in faltering French, I’d be back, their Mediterranean faces melting at un bébé. When the basket below was full I’d squirrel my finds carefully around Seffy’s head, his feet, calling out my mercies, hurrying on.
When I’d returned to England, Christian had been surprised. He’d shuffled out of Antiquarius in his baggy fawn trousers, cardigan and cravat, cigarette dangling from his fingers, and helped me unload in the King’s Road.
‘You’ve done well,’ he observed as he admired a beautiful Haviland Limoges bowl, translucent in its whiteness and with a magenta and gold rim. He turned it upside down to look at the mark. ‘I thought you come back weeth crap, but is OK.’
I felt faint with relief. In my heart I was sure I’d done pretty well, but this was high praise from Christian.
‘All the more reason then,’ I told him now, a month later, ‘to let me go to Provence.’
He made his outraged face: mouth down, everything else up – eyebrows, shoulders, hands – and I knew I’d won. I beamed and gave him a hug.
Crazy of me not to have allowed Mum and Dad to have Seffy as they insisted they should. Crazy of me to take him with me. But the pilgrim soul in me wanted to prove something: wanted to prove Seffy and I against the world could do this, that we could cope.
Unfortunately, Seffy was teething, and the dreaded autoroute went on and on in a horrific shimmering mirage of heat, all the way down to the South. However much I stopped in service stations and tried to pacify him, rub his gums, give him a bottle, a dummy, he didn’t stop crying. Under a blazing sun, no airconditioning, poor Seffy wailing beside me, I coaxed the van on, which seemed to be ailing – oh, please God, don’t break down – willing us to make it.
Finally, eyes gritty with tiredness and concentration, I found myself sitting outside a café in a square surrounded by high medieval walls. Even in my strung-out state I could see it was astonishingly beautiful. My sleeping babe was beside me in his pram, face still pink from crying, and a large glass of rosé was before me. I sipped it gratefully. A formidable madame dressed in black, whose chin ran into her not inconsiderable chest, put a plate of juicy figs and the thinnest ham in front of me, together with a basket of crusty bread, none of which I’d ordered. I explained. She flashed me a toothless smile. ‘C’est normal.’ As the church clock chimed nine, fairy lights, strung amongst the plane tree branches, sprang into light to proclaim the town was en fête, and bunting fluttered in the breeze. In that moment, I felt something unclench and relax within me. Although my head felt like a thousand bees had hived in it and my tongue was like leather, under those twinkling lights, with Seffy beside me, the Provençal sun setting in a rosy hue, I knew why I wanted to do this. Why it made sense.
I didn’t have enough money for a hotel, so