The bar was packed out with people. Many of them Evie had never seen before. Ray had insisted they all meet in O’Driscoll’s after the service for a wake, he would lay on a spread, and she hesitated in the doorway, gazing around at the crowds. Maura and Caroline were at her elbows. Evie breathed in and said, ‘Here goes – the gangplank,’ and Caroline whispered, ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’
Evie walked through a line of people who took her hand, kissed her cheek, hugged her, muttered ‘Désolé’, offered help with the wine harvest and promised a visit. Everyone gave her their most sympathetic expressions. She put on her sweetest smile and spoke to each of them – ‘Thank you’ – ‘Merci’ – ‘Vous êtes gentils’ – ‘I miss him very much’ – ‘You’re very kind’ – until she arrived at the bar where Ray and Paulette hugged her.
‘You’ll need a stiff drink, love,’ Ray suggested, and a glass was in her hand. Billy the Banjo was picking out a soft tune in the corner; voices were hushed and Evie was aware of a tremor in her lungs, constricting her breathing. She was determined not to cry. She had sobbed at the crematorium and the weather made it worse: the sun was slung soft and hazy behind clouds and the distant hills were obscured by a low mist that hung heavy as a sigh. She wondered about Jean-Luc, if he was watching it all, smiling and thinking of nature and pantheism, but she doubted it and she pushed the thoughts from her mind. She’d looked at the coffin, at the dark wood and the gold handles. She knew he was gone from her and her chest was racked with convulsions.
She sipped her brandy and put it down on the bar. She didn’t want it. There wasn’t much she wanted: the only thing she needed she could never have back again and it was easy to lose herself in thoughts which, when she tried to remember them, amounted to blankness. Maura linked an elbow through Evie’s and attempted a question.
‘What will you do now? I mean, will you come back to Dublin?’
Evie looked horrified. ‘I’ve no intention of going back to Dublin. I live here. I’ll never go in another bloody care home. This is my life.’
Maura looked anxious and Ray leaned across to both of them.
‘Just a week or so ago, he came in here for a brandy at lunchtime. He said he was taking you to stay in his little cottage in the mountains. I said I’d take the girls to the coast and we’d all benefit from a day or two off work.’
‘I remember it.’ Evie forced a smile.
‘He knew he was unwell, Evie.’
She blinked hard, as if someone slapped her face. ‘He knew? What did he know?’
Ray looked at Maura; they exchanged a glance that Evie did not see, which gave him permission to discuss Jean-Luc.
Ray chose his words carefully. ‘He’d been to the doctor’s and then to his solicitor. He’d had bad news. He wasn’t getting better, despite the tablets, and he said he needed a brandy. We had a long chat. Mostly about you, how you’d changed his life, made him happy. Everything belongs to you, you know, Evie. He had it all arranged.’
Evie took a mouthful of her drink and closed her eyes. ‘He’s the most perfect man.’ She realised that she was speaking of him in the present tense: she could not let him go, not yet, and tears threatened to start again. She looked directly at Ray. ‘Do you think it would be all right if I …? So many people are here to say goodbye to him and they’ve all been so kind. Could I – would it be all right to say thank you?’
Ray put his hand over hers, and then he rapped on the bar and said something in French, introducing Evie. The room became hushed. She sipped her brandy again and saw all the faces. She remembered some of them: the two men who had fought in the bar that night; the little man in the beret who had bought her drinks; Paulette; Billy the Banjo and his wife; there were other familiar faces from the market and from the wine-tasting event she had organised weeks ago, when it had all begun. In the corner she could see Benji in a black suit and tie with a tiny lady who was sitting down, her dark hair pulled back. She was wearing a black dress and her eyes were shining towards Evie.
Evie coughed. ‘I – I wanted to say thank you all for coming here today to remember. I won’t try to say it in French. I am not that good yet, but someday I will be.’ She paused, thinking of Jean-Luc, their lessons together. ‘I will get much better at French. That is my first promise. My second promise is that I’ll always remember the most wonderful man I ever met, Jean-Luc Bonheur.’ She stopped again. All eyes were in her direction, all faces sombre. She raised her voice a little. ‘We didn’t know each other for very long but I knew him long enough for him to become … what’s the phrase the young ones use today? My soulmate. He is my soulmate, such a lovely kind man.’ She stopped. Present tense. She wondered how long it would be before she would stop thinking of him in the present. She carried on quickly. ‘A lovely man, intelligent, warm, generous, a little bit sentimental but he had a—’
She clamped her lips together. She couldn’t say he had a good heart. She tried again. ‘He was full of love and I loved him.’ She swallowed once. ‘I still love him and – and I want to—’
She paused and fumbled in her pocket and brought out a piece of paper, her hand shaking as she pulled on reading-glasses. She felt Maura and Caroline both put a hand on her shoulder. ‘I went on the Google Translate.’ There was a small laugh. ‘He once said this poem to me – it’s French – Alphonse de Lamartine. It sounds beautiful in French and he said it to me when we were together in the mountains and I didn’t know what he’d said, what it all meant. After he – after – well, I decided I might – I wanted to know what he’d told me so – so, yesterday, I found it on the Google and I translated it and I want to read it in his memory.’
She took in the people around her, staring at the faces all focusing on hers. She adjusted her glasses and took a shuddering breath, and she read:
‘So let us love, let us love; and the transient hour
Let’s enjoy in a hurry;
Man has no harbour, time no shores;
It flows, we fade merely!
Jealous time, can it be that these drunken moments
When love fills us with bliss to overflow
Fly from us at the same speed
As do our days of woe?’
She stopped and felt the silence heavy on the air. Then she could hear Maura sniffing behind her. Others were crying, some wiping a single tear, some with wet faces, unashamedly moved. She picked up her small glass and lifted it high, and her voice was slight and weak.
‘Jean-Luc Bonheur.’
His surname was lost in the chorus repeating his name over and she slumped back against the bar, the poem clutched tightly in her fist.
When they arrived back it was early evening and a van was parked outside. Three men were packing away their equipment. The huge wooden bottle that sloped at an angle had been removed completely and a new sign was upright in its place. It was beautifully crafted, worked in wood, with the name ‘Cave Bonheur’ engraved deeply into the grain in black and gold. Next to the lettering was a design of a man in silhouette leaning over, playing a guitar. He had a little ponytail. It was unmistakeably Jean-Luc.
Evie struggled out of Caroline’s car and she rushed over. Her face shone. It took her a while to speak, then she said, ‘It’s perfect.’
Maura and Caroline were behind her, sharing anxious looks.
Evie smiled but there were tears on her face. ‘I ordered it for him. It was meant to be a surprise. Oh, he would have loved it.’
Caroline hugged her. ‘It’s beautiful, Evie.’
She pulled away. ‘It’s a memorial.’ She sighed and went into the house.
Late into the evening, she and Maura were sitting by the fireside. A clock was ticking, but both women were quiet. Wood snapped and crackled and sparks flew up the chimney and they glanced at each other and saw the fire reflected. They were both deep in thought.
Maura spoke first, her hand curved across her belly. ‘It’s hard to believe there’s a little babby in here.’
‘Life is funny.’ Evie’s voice was toneless. ‘Someone dies and someone else is born. That is the way of things, isn’t it?’
Maura did not know what to say. Evie sniffed. ‘Are you looking forward to having this little one, Maura?’
‘I will be, when I get used to the idea. I can’t imagine it just yet, how it’ll feel being big and then giving birth and then bringing up a little human being.’
‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Evie, what if I am all by myself? A single mother? What’ll I do?’
‘We’ll all help out. You’ll manage. That’s what we do, we women. We manage.’
Maura thought for a moment. ‘What if I’ve lost him, though? Brendan. He was the only man I ever loved. The only one. And I might’ve lost him for ever.’
Evie raised her head, her stare was firm, and her breath, when it came, was stretched out. ‘I know how you feel.’ She leaned over and grasped Maura’s hand for a moment. They both looked back into the flames and were occupied with their separate thoughts, their separate troubles, their personal pain.