Evie put the phone in her pocket and smiled. ‘That was my son, Brendan. He’s a sports teacher, you know.’ She pushed her hands back into the flour, raising powdery clouds around her as she lifted and patted the potato farls into shape and dropped them into the skillet. Paulette watched with round brown eyes, her chin resting in her palms.
‘Ray tells me you come all by yourself here, alone in the camping car?’
Evie nodded, flour on her hands. The skillet sizzled.
Paulette shook her dark curls, tied them back and set the table while young Alice and Sophie sat in front of empty plates, their forks lifted in the air, waiting for a real Irish breakfast. ‘I think you are very brave, Evie, to do this journey by yourself.’
Evie looked at the slight woman in the cotton frock, her feet bare and her hair tied in a blue ribbon. ‘Sometimes, Paulette, you just have to get up and do things.’
Paulette rolled her eyes. ‘It is difficult for me. The girls are still young. Five and seven years. Maybe later when they are grown up, I will do something brave for myself.’
The farls sizzled and were flipped. Evie piled them onto plates and added more potato dough to the skillet. ‘When you’ve young ones, you give all of your time to them. All of your life and soul and energy. But they grow and find their own way. Now I’ve time for myself, and I don’t want to waste it any more.’
Paulette handed plates of steaming food to her children and their eyes widened.
‘They’re nice with butter. Beurre,’ Evie explained and the children nodded and poked their knives into a slab of golden butter. There were soon greasy smudges on their faces; their chestnut hair tied back away from damp fingers.
Paulette made a soft humming sound. ‘What was it like to be in the home for the old people?’
Evie placed more farls on a plate. ‘To be honest, it was sucking the life from me, Paulette. I was getting old. Here I’m just a person, no age. Age is just a number. We have to be alive and have adventures if we’re to be who we are. Does that make sense?’
Paulette pressed her lips together and held a farl in delicate fingers, nibbled the end thoughtfully. ‘I am thirty-four years old. For me, I have much to do with my life. But for now I am just Maman, or I am just the wife of Ray or I am the barmaid. Or sometimes I am the cook. I want so much to be more than that.’
Evie sat to table and reached for the butter. ‘What do you want to do with your future, though? For yourself?’
The young woman shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Good wife. Good mother. They are enough, non?’
‘For a while.’ Evie chewed and thought. ‘Yes, all that is grand, and it’s important to do it well. But what else would you like to do, Paulette? Later on, for yourself?’
Paulette shook her curls free of the ribbon and then tied them again. ‘I don’t know. I have no talents. Maybe I could be like you, Evie? Be strong, independent, brave?’
Evie laughed. ‘You’d be surprised about your own talents, Paulette. Sometimes they wait their turn and show themselves when you’re ready for them. For now, maybe you just concentrate on the babbies, you’ve plenty of time afterwards. But I could lend you a good book for the time being, to give you something to think about. Have you read much by Simone de Beauvoir?’
Later, as the children wiped the butter from their mouths, Paulette explained that there would be a party in the bar that evening as it was Ray’s birthday and asked would Evie like to help with ideas for Irish food. She had intended to go to Benji’s free wine-tasting, but that would keep until tomorrow in favour of making soda bread and Dublin coddle, colcannon, stew and dumplings, sausages and finally caramel rice pudding. She was writing a list: they would have to buy cheeses, cream, fresh vegetables, fruit. Evie was keen to make a banquet for her new friends and there would be live music in the bar from Billy the Banjo, and new people to meet. Paulette put a sign up outside in French and English advertising the birthday bash and she tied back her hair in a fresh ribbon and put the kids in little aprons so all four of them could cook up a feast. Alice and Sophie stood on chairs and delved little fingers into flour as Evie showed them how to make soda bread. Paulette flitted between chattering in French to her children, interspersed with giggles and warnings, and English to Evie, asking for help and instruction, and Evie washed her hands and set out ingredients. It was going to be a busy day.
The Irish bar was decked out with little candles in jam jars and they made a space for a stage at the other side of the room, opposite the bar. Tables were pushed closer together to accommodate the food, and people could help themselves. Paulette’s dark eyes flashed as she pointed out that the cost of the food would easily be offset by the amount people would drink. Evie and the children helped her get the pub ready while food was in the oven. Ray was out for the day, playing golf with friends, and although he knew they were planning a party, he was banned from seeing their work until opening time. There were ‘Happy 40th Birthday, Ray’ signs, which Paulette made on poster-sized paper with a realistic-looking cartoon of Ray’s smiling face and his body in golf kit, and Sophie and Alice quietly coloured them in. They stuck photos around the bar, Ray as a teenager, gawky in skinny jeans and floppy hair; photos of him on his wedding day and more recent ones of him in the bar, pulling pints and grinning into the lens.
The kitchen smelled of cooking at its various stages: the hot fat of meat roasting, vegetables frying and steaming, and a delicious smell of caramelised sugar. Billy arrived with his banjo and his wife, Marion. He was an Irishman from Waterford who had lived near Foix for twenty-five years and was now in his sixties. Marion was tall, dark, with red-framed spectacles. She spoke little English but she hugged Evie and said hello to Paulette and the kids and rolled up her sleeves to help put out the food while Billy enjoyed a pint of the strong stuff.
Evie wrinkled her nose and turned to Paulette. ‘Simone de Beauvoir wouldn’t be too pleased. Here we are again, the women presenting the food while the men sit on their arses and drink.’
Paulette smiled politely and agreed but Evie thought that she didn’t have a clue about Simone or her ideas on misogyny – and Paulette was French! Evie resolved to definitely lend her the book.
Evie thought about her life in Dublin, with Brendan and Jim, then at the Lodge, and she decided she too had so much to learn and so much to think about – what was the word? – sisterhood? The women getting together, sometimes cooking, but mostly talking, sharing support and ideas. Maybe that was what was happening. She had never had any real female friends. She and Jim had been out with other couples but they’d never really talked or shared more than a drink and a laugh. And Maura had never been friend material.
Evie pulled a face. Maura wasn’t even daughter-in-law material. She’d been a bubbly one at first, but Evie could see that she’d been determined to get her claws into Brendan and Evie had noticed sadly how her sweet-natured son was always so attentive and thoughtful. Maura would giggle and pout and Brendan would be at her side with a soft word, holding out his coat to keep her warm and dry. If they’d had children, perhaps they’d have had a common interest. But, Evie thought as she pressed her lips together, Maura’s only interest was to keep Brendan under her thumb. She smiled. Brendan was like Jim, good-natured, indecisive and affable. But he was also her son, and he had her stubbornness. The worm would turn. She had sensed it when they last visited her in Sheldon Lodge. He was made of strong stuff; she was sure of it.
Evie surveyed the bar. Guests had started to arrive in groups. Billy the Banjo was already on his second pint and eating pork scratchings. She popped out into the backyard to ring Caroline, the friendly English woman she’d met selling her preserves in the market, and asked her if she and her partner would like to come to a proper Irish party at the pub in an hour or two. Caroline’s voice was full of enthusiasm. She and Nige would be there later and she said how kind Evie was to think of her.
Evie leaned against the wall and her life in Sheldon Lodge popped up as a picture in her head. Bereaved, bored and going barmy, she thought, as she remembered the yoga classes with the old ladies and the ill-tempered Mrs Lofthouse and Barry the chef and lovely Ukrainian Alex. But now she was in France, organising a birthday bash and inviting friends. This was the life for her.
Noisy voices brought her out from deep thought; Paulette and the children shepherded Ray up the stairs to shower and change so that he wouldn’t see what was going on in the bar. Ray protested good-naturedly in French and the children laughed as Paulette waved him on with a tirade of language Evie didn’t understand.
The grin on Ray’s face as he walked into the bar later stayed with him all night. As he took his usual position behind the pumps, everyone clapped and sang ‘Happy Birthday’, led by Billy. Ray beamed as he pulled the first pints. He sniffed the food and his nose turned up like the Bisto kid. Billy the Banjo took to the stage and launched into ‘The Irish Rover’ and Ray was still smiling at eight thirty, when Paulette joined him behind the bar in her party dress, the kids now fast asleep, to give him a huge kiss on the lips.
Caroline turned up in a long flowery dress with Nige, who had grey hair cropped closely to his head and round glasses. She and Evie discussed Simone de Beauvoir while Nige chatted fluently to a man in a cap who apparently lived near them and brought logs twice a year. Evie recognised the two little men she had been drinking with the night before. One of them was called Maurice; he remembered her and waved a greeting. She couldn’t see the tall irritable man with the little ponytail and she was glad he was not there, brooding in the corner with his gloomy eyes.
The food was a great success and Evie felt the centre of attention. She drank two glasses of red wine and was talking to people she’d never met. A woman asked her for the Irish stew recipe and she promised that she would write it down with Paulette to help with the French. Caroline ate two helpings of the caramel rice pudding and said it was the best she’d ever tasted. The bar was busy. Paulette was right; people were standing in huge clusters, their arms straight out holding glasses for a refill, and Ray and Paulette were constantly darting about, fetching bottles and replenishing glasses and taking money.
Nige handed Caroline and Evie another glass of wine each, although neither had asked for one. Nige was chewing colcannon and bread and sipping his orange juice. Billy the Banjo was playing ‘Whisky in the Jar’ and a thought popped into Evie’s head.
‘Caroline, do you think you and Nige would ever go back to England?’
Caroline shook her auburn hair and answered without hesitation. ‘Definitely not.’ She explained that they had been living in the converted guest house for almost twenty years and as they had no children or ties, there was no reason to go back to England.
‘But what about the people you left behind? Don’t you miss friends and family?’
Caroline laughed. ‘We have all we need here. Oh, I’d never go back, Evie. We did go to England for a few weeks when Nige’s mum was ill. We stayed for the funeral, but we don’t go back there much now. I have a brother but he lives in South Africa, and Nige’s sister comes over for Christmas with her three kids and the dogs, but our friends are here. And we make new friends all the time.’ She clutched Evie’s arm and hugged her. ‘Why’d you ask?’
‘Not sure, really. I was just wondering what it is like to be here long-term. I’m just having such a good time here on holiday, but I don’t know how long I will stay. I’ve a campervan so I can go wherever I like.’
‘You travel by yourself? In a campervan?’
‘Don’t you start.’ Evie laughed. ‘I was cross with a doctor in the hospital. She told me I was too old to be travelling alone—’
‘I think you’re bloody marvellous,’ Caroline interrupted.
Evie had never thought of herself as a role model. Suddenly, a hand touched her shoulder and a face came close to hers; she recognised the strong breath and the Waterford accent. It was Billy the Banjo.
‘Evie, do you know “Danny Boy”?’
She nodded. ‘Everybody knows “Danny Boy”.’
Billy began to propel her towards the stage area. ‘Duet with me. “Danny Boy”.’
Evie took a gulp of wine. ‘Ah, but I am not really a singer.’
Billy the Banjo indicated the room with a toss of his head. ‘Sure, they’re all pissed. Nobody will notice.’
Then they were on stage and he pushed the microphone towards Evie. He put on his warm voice for the crowd. ‘Mesdames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen. Voici la chanteuse la plus célèbre Irlandaise, Evie, et la chanson la plus célèbre de mon pays, Irlande. “Danny Boy”.’
‘What did you say to them?’ Evie asked in a whisper.
‘Oh I just told them it was your first time on stage and to give you a big round of applause.’
Certainly, everyone was cheering and, as Billy the Banjo played the first notes, Evie took a gulp of wine, closed her eyes and started to sing. She and Billy the Banjo got through the first verse about the pipes calling and she found her voice on ‘But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow’, and by the final ‘I’ll simply sleep in peace until you come to me’, she and Billy were competing with each other for the mic. Evie’s voice wobbled on the high notes but she was enjoying herself. A cheer went up for an encore and she decided to sing an octave lower as they began the last verse again. She opened her eyes and was thrilled to see the crowd smiling and clapping. The man in the beret, Maurice, was wiping tears from his face and Caroline and Nige were clenching their fists and encouraging her on. She glanced across at Ray who blew her a kiss and Paulette waved.
The song ended, Billy the Banjo offered up a flurry of final notes and the applause echoed around O’Driscoll’s Bar. Evie was mouthing her thank-yous when she saw him. He was leaning on the bar, a glass in his hand, not clapping. His little ponytail stuck out from beneath the cap and his eyes were shining. She felt mischief rising through her lungs and she blew him a kiss. He continued to stare without looking away.
Evie grabbed the mic and brushed the blonde fringe from her eyes. ‘I am so glad you are all having a good time tonight, on this special celebration, Ray’s birthday,’ she cooed sweetly, batted her lashes and looked directly at the grumpy man. ‘I want to say how nice it is to meet such lovely people in France, so kind and so welcoming and so friendly.’ The applause became louder and she curtseyed.
At this point she was Edith Piaf in her little black dress; she was on the verge of asking Billy the Banjo if he knew ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’ when she realised she didn’t actually know the words. She smiled beatifically at the audience and suddenly wanted to speak to them in French. She raised her hands in appreciation, then took a bow. ‘Merci.’ She thought again. ‘Je t’aime.’ The applause was even louder. She racked her brain for another phrase but decided that ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir’ wasn’t really going to fit the bill.
She bowed again and Billy helped her down from the stage area and began playing another tune. She joined Caroline and Nige who both said she was wonderful. She made her excuses, saying that she was going to visit the ladies’ room, and edged towards the bar, deliberately squeezing through the drinkers until she was behind the ill-tempered man who was leaning over a drink at the bar, his back hunched and square. She was not about to let a grumpy man ignore her performance. She muttered to herself, ‘So he won’t clap, then? I’ll show him.’
She wriggled between him and a man holding out a glass and she called out to Ray, who was pulling a pint from a long-handled pump. ‘What did you think of my song, Ray? It was for you, on your birthday.’
Ray winked. ‘Wonderful, Evie, love. Top class.’
She heard the cantankerous tall man make a sound through his nose. She looked at him, directly meeting the chestnut eyes. ‘And just what is your problem?’ She batted her eyelashes. ‘You have a problem with emancipated women who enjoy themselves, do you?’
The man was a little taken aback at first, but he soon found his composure. ‘I have no problem, Madame. But it appears that you do. You sing like a frog.’
Her heart pounded. She met his eyes. They were dark and brooding, tormented eyes as she’d imagined Heathcliff’s to be, but she wouldn’t look away. He had just insulted her singing.
‘And you look like a bloody toad.’ Evie made herself as tall as she could, but she barely came to his shoulder. ‘A big, ridiculous, rude toad. No wonder you are by yourself and have no friends. You are just fecking miserable. You need to get a life and stop being such a miserable bollix.’
She narrowed her eyes and watched what he would do next. He gave an exaggerated shrug with his big shoulders, and pulled a creased face. ‘Who knows? Maybe you are right.’
He looked sad for a moment, and she felt the instinct to put out her hand and pat his shoulder, to comfort him. She looked at her hand and mentally willed it to be still. She had drunk too much wine again. She supposed it was part and parcel of being in France. She met his eyes again and found she couldn’t look away. The big man breathed out deeply, a sigh like a volcano, then he turned his face back to Evie.
‘But it was a miserable song, all about death. I dislike all this morbid remembrance of death of which you people sing. And you, Madame, you still have the voice of a frog.’
He took another swig from his glass. Evie put her hands on her hips and stared at him.
‘And just why are you so rude? What is it you have a bee in your bonnet about, for goodness sake?’
He shook his head. She noticed his broad shoulders, his deep-set eyes, and she felt her pulse pound in her throat. He would have been good-looking once, but his face was sad, ravaged by lines around his mouth, presumably from being so miserable.
His voice rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest. ‘You English people with your sayings, bees and bonnets. I suggest you go back where you came from, Madame, and take your terrible songs with you, and leave me in peace.’
‘I’m not English, I’m Irish,’ she breathed, and stared at him for a few moments, taking in the leather skin and iron grey hair, the tattered jacket and the Bob Dylan T-shirt. ‘I’d wish you a nice night, but I don’t think you’ll have one, you being so grumpy and all.’ She marched away, her heart beating hard and her fists clenched.
Ten minutes later, she was talking pointedly about ‘Danny Boy’ to Caroline and Nige, trying to push Mr Grumpy away from her thoughts. Nige thought it was a Scottish song. He was offering cashew nuts from a bowl to everyone who came past.
‘Why does everything have to be Scottish?’ Evie asked, remembering the couple she had met at the night market in Marmande. ‘Or English.’ She glanced across towards Mr Grumpy, who was still leaning against the bar and had his back to her. She noticed the stretch of muscle across his shoulders encased in the leather of his jacket.
‘It mentions pipes and glens – aren’t they Scottish?’ Nige had drunk three orange juices but he appeared merrier than anyone, swinging his hands up and down to show what glens were.
Caroline took his arm affectionately. ‘It was written by an English lawyer. Based on a tune called the “Londonderry Air”.’
‘Irish, then,’ Evie insisted.
Nige was round-eyed with admiration. ‘How did you know that, Caroline?’
‘Pub quiz champion, 1985.’
They laughed and Nige began to talk to them about his plans for the cellar and how he could use it for wine storage. Caroline was explaining that they could create a gym or a sauna, even a hot tub, and she invited Evie to visit them and stay for dinner in a few days’ time. Evie peeped between them and noticed Mr Grumpy was still at the bar. She resumed listening intently to them both talking across each other; her mouth was full of nuts and she tried to think about dinner with Caroline and a visit to the free tasting she had promised herself, when there was a crash of glasses from the bar.
Over her shoulder, she saw two men were fighting, fists raised and legs kicking, and Ray’s worried face as he steered Paulette to the back of the bar area. There was another loud shout, which sounded like swearing, and one man had a beer glass which he broke and pushed towards the other’s face. An arc of beer flew from a glass and there were punches and a wooden stool was shattered as someone fell back onto the floor, knocking into an old man. There was more screaming and the flurry of knuckles. Ray was trying to position himself between the two men but they were locked like battling bulls and he couldn’t separate them. A space widened around them, and they lurched backwards into the crowd; one of them knocked Evie forward and Caroline caught her and kept her upright. The men were on the floor and the sound of their voices snarling was like slavering dogs. They rolled and spat and fists rose and descended.
They were pulled apart and noise became silence as the two men snarled at each other. The tall irritable man held them up, one in each hand, where they drooped like coats from a hanger. He said something to them in a soft, slow voice and put them down gently, at a distance from each other. One of the men had spattered blood on his shirt and Ray was there with a first-aid kit. The injured man was still angry and he pulled his hands away from his stomach and cried out.
There was blood on the other man’s forehead, a handkerchief stopping the cut. Ray and Paulette were tending to the groaning man who was bent double, clutching his belly, a woman next to him, holding his hand. Ray joked that it was nothing more than a little flesh wound, a plaster would probably do it and he’d be right as rain in the morning. The other man moved away.
Evie’s eyes sought out the bad-tempered man. He was leaning over, catching his breath at the bar, as he swallowed the last of his drink. He met her eyes, and he nodded briefly at her before walking away, his wide shoulders and his black cap sliding swiftly through the crowd before he disappeared behind groups of drinkers. She watched him go, and wondered what made him so grumpy, whether he had a difficult life, whether he had a nice wife at home to cheer him up. Obviously not. He was too miserable – who’d want to live with a man like him? Billy the Banjo struck up his chords and he began to sing ‘Dirty Old Town’.
‘What was that all about?’ she asked Caroline.
‘It happened so quickly.’
Nige shrugged. ‘A party isn’t a party without a good fight.’ He finished his orange juice in a swig. ‘They’ll be best friends again tomorrow.’
It was almost midnight. She went over to the food and helped herself to a sausage and some cold colcannon. The last of the Dublin coddle bubbled in a slow cooker, still warm, so she spooned it on top of the potatoes and cabbage. She lifted the fork to her mouth, watching Ray move chairs and Paulette clean glasses. Billy the Banjo packed away and put his arm around Marion, who looked at him with adoring eyes. Caroline and Nige helped each other into their coats and the man with the winded belly was happy enough, his arm around his opponent, who now had a plaster over one eye. Evie finished her food and watched the couples going about their business and she yawned: it had been a long day and she was ready for bed.
She turned to go upstairs to her room, but stood still again and recalled her conversation with the irritable man. He spoke good English, with a little American twang, and she wondered where he had lived to become so fluent. She frowned and remembered Ray’s words; the reverential way he spoke about him … she recalled his name, Jean-Luc. She thought of how readily and skilfully he had stopped the fight, how others seemed to respect him. She thought again about the glow of his eyes, the rumble of his voice, and how sad he seemed. He had leaned against the bar, alone, his broad shoulders set, as if the troubles of the world rested on them. He had criticised her voice, been quick to insult her. She had set him straight though, she thought, and she felt pleased with herself. She took the thought upstairs with her and was still thinking about the irritable man as she slid between the covers and closed her eyes.